The Best Way to Spread Democracy Abroad? Welcome Foreign Students

By Charles Kenny. As Washington wonders how to encourage democratic reform in North Korea, Burma, and Iran and how to shore up new democracies in the Middle East and Africa, it seems clear what not to do: invasion. On measures of civil and political rights, countries we have invaded (Afghanistan, Iraq) are roughly equal with those we haven’t (Iran and Burma, respectively). As it turns out, soft power may be far more effective. In particular, educating future leaders here in the U.S. could be one of the most powerful and cost-effective ways to spread democracy that we have. In 2008, about one in five of the 3.3 million foreign students enrolled worldwide were studying in the U.S., and while that’s still a tiny share of the planet’s 7 billion population, foreign-educated students have an outsize impact on their home countries. More...