With democracy on the rise among nations, new challenges confront the United States, said Paul Wolfowitz '65, President George W. Bush's deputy secretary of defense (2001-05) and former president of the World Bank, in Bailey Hall April 12.

"Great progress in the past 30 years has been made in the expansion of freedom and democracy in the world," said Wolfowitz, who led the World Bank from 2005-07, was undersecretary of defense for policy under President George H.W. Bush (1989-93) and ambassador to Indonesia under President Ronald Reagan (1986-89).

He noted that Freedom House in Washington, D.C., counted 90 free countries in 2011, compared with only 50 in 1981, which means about half of the world's countries are democratic. Even more remarkable, he said, is the surprising character of these changes.

In 1981, he said, Japan was the only democracy in East Asia. Since then the Philippines, South Korea and Indonesia -- despite its poverty and largely Muslim population -- have followed. He noted that countries with no prior history of democracy that were supposedly culturally authoritarian have been among the most willing to embrace democratic values.

"This enormous expansion of freedom in the past 30 years will be good for the tens of millions of people whose lives have been improved directly as a result, but it's also good for the United States," Wolfowitz said. "It's turned enemies into friends, and it's made our friends stronger and more self-reliant."

"Now we may be witnessing the end of what some people called the 'Arab exception'" -- the Western concept of recent years that dictators must be supported because democracy is not applicable in Arab countries -- Wolfowitz said. He noted that in the wake of the Arab Spring, it's important for the United States to remain engaged.

Wolfowitz also discussed progress in the economic sphere. "As recently as the 1980s, there was enormous pessimism about the prospects of countries in the developing world," said Wolfowitz. There was a sense that poor countries were expected to remain permanently poor, and that economic growth would only benefit relatively wealthy Western nations.

However, in the last 20 years, the global economy has roughly tripled. "Today, even the term 'developing nation' isn't used so much as that new term, 'emerging markets,'" said Wolfowitz. More importantly, this growth has enabled hundreds of millions of people in poor countries to escape poverty.

"None of these achievements would have been possible without American leadership," noted Wolfowitz.

"Even at its best what this means is that the world will be a much more complicated place," he said, noting that since more and more countries need to play a larger geopolitical role, it's going to be much more difficult to reach agreements on a number of issues, which can increase the possibility of conflict.

"We can't afford to withdraw from the world," said Wolfowitz. With two world wars, the rise of Fascism, Nazism and the Cold War, "the 20th century has turned out to be the bloodiest in human history," he said.

"I hope that our present generation of leaders, and your generation as you become leaders, will have the wisdom to see that our best chance to have a peaceful and prosperous world is for the U.S. to stay engaged and remain a leader," said Wolfowitz.

Wolfowitz's talk was sponsored by the Cornell College Republicans, the Program on Freedom and Free Societies, and the Divisions of University Communications and Student and Academic Services.

Farhan Nuruzzaman '12 is a writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.