The Foreign Service Journal, December 2022

ISTOCK/31MOONLIGHT31 THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2022 59 PROMOTING Democracy INTUMULTUOUSTIMES Retired FSO Bill Wanlund served for 26 years with the United States Information Agency and the State Department in Sierra Leone, the Philippines, Germany, Venezuela, and Austria, as well as in Washington, D.C. Following retirement he took several assignments as a reemployed annuitant before working as a freelance journalist for CQ Researcher. FEATURE How do we advance democracy in a world where autocracy is on the rise and challenges to democratic principles abound in our own nation? BY B I L L WANLUND R etired USAID FSO José Garzón’s Speaking Out column in the September FSJ , “Democ- racy as a Vocation, ” was thoughtful and timely testimony to the need to promote America’s signature value. It carries wisdom born of the long, practical experience of a true believer. It might be useful to survey the uneasy environment in which the For- eign Service is carrying out its democracy mandate today. President Joe Biden clearly shares the view that democracy must be cultivated. It was a major issue in his presidential cam- paign in 2020, and he backed it up by holding a virtual Summit for Democracy in December 2021. That meeting was launched with relatively little fanfare and a low bar for expectations. Something of a pre-summit summit, the meeting’s “deliverables”—the agree- ments, treaties, and other tangible results that typically emerge from summits—weren’t likely to cause much of a stir. Nor were they necessarily meant to. Rather, Biden intended the event to focus the attention of the 100-plus participating world leaders and to harvest pledges from them to strengthen democracy at home and promote it abroad. It was to serve as the “kick-off of a year of action,” as the president put it, to culminate in a second, in-person summit about a year later (no date has yet been announced). Moths never reach the moon, but they navigate by it; we humans may never reach democracy … but we navigate by its ideals. — Author Rebecca Solnit, praise for Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone, by Astra Taylor