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Institutional
Affiliations
Freedom
House: Resident Scholar, 1980-1981 (2), (3)
Social
Democrats, USA: Executive Director, 1974-1980 (2), (3)
Council
on Foreign Relations: Member (2), (3)
World Movement
for Democracy: Member of the Steering Committee (6)
Government
Service
National
Endowment for Democracy: President
U.S. Representative
to the UN: Senior Counselor (2), (3)
National
Bipartisan Commission on Central America: Lead Consultant
(2), (3)
Education
Yale
University: B.A., 1965 (2), (3)
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Right Web Connections
Elliott
Abrams
Frank
Gaffney
Richard
Perle
International Republican
Institute
Social
Democrats USA
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Highlights
& Quotes
Carl Gershman,
the long-time head of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED),
has been a central figure in U.S. sectarian politics for decades.
He was a member of the Socialist Party USA when it split into two
factions in the early 1970s: a left wing led by Michael Harrington
and a right wing led by Gershman, Tom Kahn, and Rachelle
Horowitz. The right faction morphed into Social
Democrats USA (SD/USA), which in the early 1970s rallied around
Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the hawkish Democrat from
Washington State whose staff was made up of several key neoconservative
figures, including Richard
Perle, Frank
Gaffney, and Elliott
Abrams.
Like many of these neoconservatives, Gershman was tapped to serve
in the Reagan administration. In 1984, Gershman took over the helm
of the NED, a congressionally funded organization created by Ronald
Reagan in 1982 to support groups in the Soviet Union and other
communist countries that promote democracy. (7, 8)
Despite its high-minded ideals, the NED under the leadership
of Gershman has had a difficult time walking the thin line between
U.S. intervention and mere democracy promotion. Most recently,
the NED got caught up in the power struggle in Venezuela. After
Hugo Chavez easily won a referendum in August 2004 on his presidency,
accusations emerged about NED’s role in supporting groups
that had been campaigning for Chavez’s ouster. When the government
arrested leaders of these groups, Gershman denounced the action,
saying, “In the spectrum between democracy and dictatorship,
the prosecution against the activists would be moving ... closer
to the authoritarian end.” Regarding Chavez’s claims
that NED was part of a CIA effort to undermine his government,
Gershman remarked: “That’s propaganda.” (9)
Government ministers in Venezuela have also alleged that some
of the groups receiving NED funds were involved in the 2002 coup
against Chavez. Said one minister: “I wonder whether they
are really promoting democracy, because they support people who
have acted against democracy.” (9)
In the mid-1980s the NED was knee-deep in U.S. intervention in
Central America. During the 1984 elections in Panama, for instance,
it supported a candidate associated with the military, Nicholas
Ardito Barletta, despite the fact that the United States was purportedly
opposed to military rule in the country. NED’s actions prompted
an angry response from the U.S. ambassador, who wrote in a secret
cable: “The embassy requests that this hair-brained project
be abandoned before it hits the fan.” (8)
“An even more dubious initiative,” wrote Barbara
Conry for a 1993 Cato Institute report, “was NED’s
involvement in Costa Rica. Not only is Costa Rica a well-established
democracy—former president George Bush visited the country
in 1989 to celebrate 100 years of democracy there—it is the
only stable democracy in Central America. But Costa Rican president
Oscar Arias had opposed Ronald Reagan’s policy in Central
America, especially his support of the Nicaraguan Contras. Arias
received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to dampen conflicts
in the region, but he incurred the wrath of right-wing NED activists.
So from 1986 to 1988 NED gave money to Arias’s political
opposition, which was also strongly supported by Panamanian dictator
Manuel Noriega. As Rep. Stephen Solarz (D-NY) commented: ‘They
may technically have been within the law, but I felt this clearly
violated the spirit. … The whole purpose of NED is to facilitate
the emergence of democracy where it doesn’t exist and preserve
it where it does exist. In Costa Rica, neither of these [conditions]
applies’.” (8)
These and numerous similar activities over the past few decades
have led many observers to call into question the value of the
NED, as well as to highlight the potential danger it poses to U.S.
interests. Concludes Conry, “Promoting democracy is a nebulous
objective that can be manipulated to justify any whim of the special-interest
groups—the Republican and Democratic parties, organized labor,
and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—that control most of NED’s
funds. As those groups execute their own foreign policies, they
often work against American interests and meddle needlessly in
the affairs of other countries, undermining the democratic movements
NED was designed to assist.” (8)
The NED is front and center in the Bush administration’s
plan to spread democracy. In his 2004 State of the Union Address,
Bush asked Congress to double NED funding, from $40 million to
$80 million, with the new funding to be aimed specifically at democracy
promotion in the Middle East. “As long as the Middle East
remains a place of tyranny, despair, and anger, it will continue
to produce men and movements that threaten the safety of America
and our friends,” Bush said. “So America is pursuing
a forward strategy of freedom in the greater Middle East. We will
challenge the enemies of reform, confront the allies of terror,
and expect a higher standard from our friends.” (11)
Gershman called the president’s plan a “very dramatic
move,” saying that the NED would not “impose our views.
This is based on the idea that you have to support indigenous forces.” (11)
Gershman has written for a number of conservative and mainstream
media outlets, including Commentary, the New Leader, The
New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, The American
Spectator, The New York Times Magazine, Midstream, The
Washington Quarterly and the Journal of Democracy. He
is the co-editor of Israel, the Arabs and the Middle East (1972)
and the author of The Foreign Policy of the American Labor (1975).
(2) |
