In recent years, diplomatic historians have produced a burgeoning literature on the role of human rights in U.S. foreign relations during the Cold War, but the related topic of democracy promotion has received much less attention. In Democracy Promotion, National Security and Strategy: Foreign Policy under the Reagan Administration, Robert Pee offers a well-researched, balanced, and astute analysis of the Reagan administration's campaign to promote democracy. Focusing on both the administration and the broader foreign policy elite, the book traces the tensions between democracy promotion and U.S. national security strategy in the 1980s.
Pee asserts that the era of Ronald Reagan represented a turning point in the U.S. government's approach to democracy promotion by bringing about a reassessment of the relationship between democracy and security at the strategic level. This led to the creation of the first U.S. organization dedicated exclusively to the promotion of democracy abroad: the National...