The 20th century is an extraordinary study in contrasts. It has been one of the bloodies of centuries. At the same time, the growth of democracy has offered us a reason for tremendous optimism. And now, as the century draws to a close, a greater percentage of people is living in freedom than at any other time in history.
I get this figure from Freedom House, an organization that monitors gains and losses in democracy throughout the world and on whose board I am privileged to serve. For a number of years, Freedom House has published its annual "Survey of Freedom," a kind of box score that ranks countries as free, partly free or not free, depending on the health of their democratic institutions and the civil liberties their citizens enjoy. The survey, which offers analysis as well as information, always makes fascinating reading - in fact it would be an excellent tool in a modern history course. This year it also was full of very good news.
According to the survey, the majority of the world's population -- 68 percent -- now lives in countries that arefree or partly free. Nearly half of the countries evaluated by Freedom House were liberal democracies -- 91 out of 183 -- and another 30-odd countries seemed to be moving toward democracy. Countries that became free or partly free included nations from the former communist bloc: for example, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Mongolia. There was also significant movement toward democracy in Africa, where 22 countries adopted multi-party systems and four nations - Benin, Sao Tome and Principe, Cape Verde, and Zambia - were ranked by the survey as free for the first time.
These are not isolated events. Freedom House traces a resurgence of democracy from the beginning of the 1980s, but the movement accelerated dramatically with the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. Over the past three years, societies in which about 1.5 billion people live - nearly 28 percent of the world's population -- have attempted to replace their political systems with more democratic forms of government.
But it would be a big mistake to assume that we are now moving effortlessly toward a world in which everyone will live in a free society. Stable democracies involve more than writing a democratic constitution and holding free elections. Their long-term success depends on creating civil societies that support institutions like a free press and free trade unions, as well as organizations like Boy and Girl Scouts and church and political groups of all kinds. Institutions and organizations like these may have been destroyed by repressive governments or may never have existed at all.
It's up to successful democracies like ours to help new and vulnerable democracies survive. This is not a popular idea at the moment. Now that the Cold War is over, many people say, we should look out for ourselves. But helping these democracies is essential, even if we see it strictly in terms of self-interest. If the newly emerging democracies in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, for example, fail and revert to their pre-glasnost state we can stop talking about cutting the military budget. We'll go back to pre-glasnost spending, which will mean lots more money than we'd need to help make these fragile democracies solid. And the world will be even more dangerous than it was in the days of the Cold War.
In addition to conventional aid packages, we need to offer the kind of contacts that will help these nations build democratic institutions. Right now, everyone talks about helping to create market economies. This is important, but free enterprise alone will not lead to a free society. People need to learn about the many other things that make a vibrant democracy; they need direct contacts with trade unionists, lawyers, teachers, journalists and community leaders from democratic nations.
This kind of help doesn't have to be expensive. For $39,000, AFT ran eight weeks of training for 200 teachers in Poland and Hungary. The teachers learned some of the basic skills of a free society, like how to set up a democratic organizations, how to conduct a meeting and how to achieve consensus. These skills are ones that people living under a repressive regime are unlikely ever to learn -- or need -- but it's impossible to imagine running a democracy without them.
Twenty years ago, when there were many fewer free societies than there are now, and the number seemed to grow smaller every year, some people started talking as though democracy was a luxury that only a few societies could afford. People in the rest would be happy if they just had enough to eat. Attempts to encourage democracy elsewhere in the world were denounced as elitist and ethnocentric -- even immoral. The last few years have shown us that a desire for freedom is universal. So we also owe something to the people who still are not free.
We should not be giving aid and comfort to governments, like the Chinese, that deny their citizens civil and human rights. We shouldn't be having relations with puppet organizations -- the so-called trade unions or cultural organizations sponsored by these regimes -- because that provides them with legitimacy. That's the least we can do to support dissidents, like the students of Tiananmen Square.
The end of the Cold War, and the changes it has brought, gives us reason for great hopefulness. But people in the fragile new democracies -- and those who still live in societies where they are denied the most basic freedoms -- need our help. We must not fail to give it.