National Endowment for Democracy

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The National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, is non-profit organization which claims to help train people in democracy and manages money grants to that effect, which was founded in 1983. Although administered by a private organization, its funding comes almost entirely from a governmental appropriation by the United States Congress. The NED is sometimes referred to as "Project Democracy", an appellation favored by Lt. Colonel Oliver North.

Founding of the NED

The NED was first funded by President Ronald Reagan in 1982 and was shaped by an initial study undertaken by the American Political Foundation. [1]

NED was created with a view to creating a broad base of political support for the organization. NED received funds from the US government and distributes funds to four other organizations; one each created by the Republican Party and Democratic parties, one created by the Chamber of Commerce and one by the AFL-CIO.

The four affiliated organizations are Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS) or Solidarity Center. NED's long time president is businessman Carl Gershman.

Funding of foreign political parties

According to left-wing critics, the NED regularly provides funding to opposition candidates in elections in countries other than the USA. It does not directly fund any political party, as this is forbidden by law. However activities such as student "get-out-the-vote" campaigns are funded [2].

According to right wing critics such as Pat Buchanan, progressives at NED foment worldwide democratic revolution and regularly interfere in the affairs of other countries, especially dictatorships and undemocratic regimes [3].

It was also alleged that the NED only supports candidates with strong ties to the military and who support the rights of U.S. corporations to invest in those countries, and that the NED does not support candidates who oppose investments by US corporations or who promise restrictions on investment rights of US corporations. For example, Bill Berkowitz of Working for Change claims that, "The NED functions as a full-service infrastructure building clearinghouse. It provides money, technical support, supplies, training programs, media know-how, public relations assistance and state-of-the-art equipment to select political groups, civic organizations, labor unions, dissident movements, student groups, book publishers, newspapers, and other media. Its aim is to destabilize progressive movements, particularly those with a socialist or democratic socialist bent." [4]

Supporters of the NED claim that the NED in fact supports a myriad of groups of social-democratic and liberal orientation everywhere in the world. NED also supports, provides training, and consults openly anti-American groups as far as they are committed to the norms and principles of democracy in countries like Indonesia and Ukraine. The NED contends it focuses funding on democracy-minded organizations rather than opposition groups; however it does not support groups that openly advocate communism, fundamentalism, or any dictatorships. Michael McFaul, in an article for the Washington Post, argues that the NED is hardly an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. As an example of this he states that the NED was willing to fund pro-democratic organizations even as the U.S. government was reluctant and has been supportive of non-democratic governments in the region. [5]

Central America

In 1984, NED funded a Panamanian presidential candidate backed by Manuel Noriega and the CIA. Congress afterwards issue a law prohibiting use of NED funds "to finance the campaign of candidates for public office".

John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton wrote that before the 1990 elections in Nicaragua, "President George H. W. Bush sent $9 million in NED, including a $4 million contribution to the campaign of opposition presidential candidate Violeta Chamorro". Chamorro's party won 55 percent of the vote.

In the 1990 elections in Haiti the NED supported Marc Bazin, providing a big fraction of his total $36 million in campaign funds. Despite this funding, he only obtained 12% of the vote. Marc Bazin had earlier been a World Bank official.

Between 1990 and 1992, NED donated a quarter-million dollars to the Cuban-American National Foundation, the anti-Castro group.

Venezuela

In 2004, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez publicized documents which purported to show that the NED funded opposition groups in the country, including a tripling of funding from about $250,000 to nearly $900,000 between 2000 and 2001 in the lead up to an attempted coup in 2002. [6] NED also sponsored exit polls for the recall referendum; the exit poll predicted that Chávez would lose by 20%, whereas the election results showed him to have won by 20%. This was used by the opposition party as the basis of a claim of election fraud, but the election results were endorsed by Jimmy Carter and were later audited successfully. [7] [8]

Western Europe

NED also funded political groups in the democracies of Western Europe in the 1980s. The French newspaper Libération published a report which claimed that the U.S. funded the National Inter-University Union. The United States government disassociated itself from these actions. This has taken place in France, Portugal and Spain amongst many other places. In France, during the 1983-4 period, NED supported a "trade union-like organization for professors and students" to counter "left-wing organizations of professors". To this end it funded a series of seminars and the publication of posters, books and pamphlets such as "Subversion and the Theology of Revolution" and "Neutralism or Liberty".

Eastern Europe

According to the critics, during the 1990s, NED invested millions of dollars in Eastern Europe to support its vision of economics and the shock therapy program. The NED itself does not fund economic reform programs; the Center for International Private Enterprise indeed supports programs aimed at development of private enterprise but this does not account for monetary stabilization programs. NED helped to overthrow democratically elected governments in Bulgaria in 1990 and Albania in 1991-1992.

Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia, Slovakia

The NED played a significant role in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election in Ukraine. In an article in the Washington Post, NED director Nadia Diuk acknowledged that there was a controversy surrounding the involvement of the NED: "Some have sought to portray the events in Ukraine as orchestrated in the West, a model executed with the support of Western pro-democracy foundations.' Comparing this to similar recent interventions in Slovakia, Serbia and Georgia, she writes, "Some commentators believe that the similarity of their actions proves they are part of a U.S.-sponsored plot, an effort to extend American influence throughout the world." Diuk states that critics are overlooking a genuinely "home-grown" aspect to the "election revolts" in these Eastern European countries. She also stated that, "...there was a massive effort by nongovernmental organizations to monitor the vote, whether through parallel vote tabulations, exit polls or reports from domestic observers. These strategies were supported by the reports of Western election observers," and that "all these breakthrough elections have been accomplished with the vigorous participation of civic groups that support free and fair elections by monitoring the media, carrying out voter education, publicizing the platforms of candidates in the absence of a free press, training election observers, conducting polls and so on."

Others

Mongolia in 1996, Philippines in the mid-1980s.

Source of funding

The NED receives an annual appropriation from the U.S. budget (it is included in the chapter of the Department of State budget destined for the U.S. Agency for International Development-USAID) and is subject to congressional oversight even as a non-governmental organization. In the financial year to the end of September 2004 NED had an income of $80.1 million, $79.25 million of which came from U.S Government agencies, $0.6 million came from other contributers, plus a little other revenue [9].

The NED receives a small amount of funding from various foundations, among whom the Smith Richardson Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation and the Bradley Foundation, which has provided the most to date, nearly $1.5 million in the past 18 years to support the Journal Of Democracy [10]. All three associations are indirectly financed by federal contracts.

Links with other think tanks

Current directors of the Endowment's Board include Lee Hamilton of the 9/11 Commission, former Congressman Richard Gephardt, Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Senator and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Frank Carlucci of the Carlyle Group, General Wesley Clark, Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Dr. Francis Fukuyama of Johns Hopkins SAIS, and U.S. Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, former chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council.

Quotes

  • "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA" Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, in 1991.

See also

External links

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