It's Never Black and White

As a young idealist I was continually disturbed by the fact the the United States, despite its' "freedom" rhetoric almost always found itself supporting the "wrong" regime.

From Central to South America; across the ocean to Africa and up the continent to the Middle East and over to Asia, we never missed an opportunity to support a right wing dictatorship.

This was strange in that from an ideological political point of view it made no sense that a democracy would support a dictatorship.

Then I read Huntington's axiom that strong democracies and strong dictatorships have more in common than strong democracies and weak democracies and I began to understand the rational  of Realpolitik in American foreign policy.

And Realpolitik, or Realism in foreign policy is what the United States, and therefore President Obama is currently exercising- and all the idealists and ideologues want to hang him for it.

That is what grated on me as an idealist and why idealists now grate on me.  They are unwilling to accept some home truths.

Tyranny is better than anarchy.  As bad as a Saddam Hussein was, the Iraqi's were better off in general under him than with the secular bloodbaths of the Islamic State.

Democracy takes years and institutions to be effective. Just because one institutes elections it does not follow that the rule of law is an automatic corollary.  Bribery and corruption are everywhere, but are not everywhere held in contempt.

Every problem does not have a solution, and certainly not a good one.  Often the answer lies in choosing the lesser evil.  Assad is somehow preferable to the Islamic State.  Sometimes doing nothing is better than doing something, even if it appears to be indecisive.

Interests come before values.  The Arab Spring, although seemingly a revolt against royal and/or military dictatorships was not a democratic uprising, although idealists like to paint it as such.  It removed semi-non-secular dictatorships and opened the doors to secular dictatorships-even if they were "democratically" elected.

Emotion has no place in policy making.  Passionate pleas or demands to do something can quickly turn into accusations of flawed policy if the expectations voiced in the heat of the moment by idealists or the ideologues prove to have been unrealistic once you have already committed.