In their marrow, conservatives believe that culture matters, and many suspect that the only culture capable of sustaining liberal democracy is the Western kind. ~Peter Beinart

If there is anything more tiresome than the idea that Obama has been indifferent and negligent when it comes to democracy promotion, it is this claim that conservatives have shown themselves all to be realists after a few weeks of concern about Egyptian democracy. It takes a bit more than selective skepticism about democratization to make one a realist. Many of the same conservatives who continue to claim that Iraq is now free (rather than acknowledging the reality that it is unfree) and wanted immediate U.S. support for the Green movement have become skeptics of Arab democracy, but only after Obama appeared not to be a skeptic. Beinart wants to treat this as a return to old form, but it isn’t that simple.

Clearly, many conservatives want to position themselves as skeptics now because they see Obama moving towards support for protesters, but this is mostly a function of anti-Obama contrarianism just as opposition to Balkan interventions was the result of Clinton hatred. Many conservatives have convinced themselves that Obama’s foreign policy is aimed at undermining allies and empowering rivals. They have believed that since he was a candidate, and it doesn’t matter that it hasn’t been true. It used to be that Obama was supposedly too indifferent to the plight of the people, but now the line will be that he is paying too much attention to it. This isn’t a result of any considered beliefs about the nature of liberal democracy and its compatibility with non-Western cultures. That would be refreshing. It is a reflex of insisting that whatever Obama has done must be badly mistaken. The how and why are details to be worked out later.

A more serious response to Beinart is that culture matters a great deal, and that is something that is so fundamentally true that it shouldn’t be a serious disagreement regardless of political views. I think it’s fair to say that highly Westernized nations are capable of sustaining liberal democracy regardless of their earlier cultures. It isn’t necessarily the case that nations have to jettison their attachments to their earlier, traditional cultures to sustain liberal democracy, but significant Westernization has typically preceded the successful establishment of liberal democratic government. It is also not certain that significant Westernization is sufficient to make a nation capable of sustaining liberal democracy. In addition to habits and attitudes, institutions are vitally important, and those can be the most difficult to build in a way that is suitable to the existing constitution of a country. It isn’t an insult to other nations to emphasize how difficult finding the appropriate political structures for a given country can be, and it doesn’t follow that it is America’s responsibility to promote the creation of those structures in other countries even if they will be sustainable and enduring.

Most conservatives attacked and exaggerated Obama’s supposed indifference to democracy promotion because they saw an opportunity to oppose Obama’s fairly cautious and more realist approach by pretending to be idealists. Even now, many on the right want to find a way to fault Obama for not magically empowering the Green movement, which allows them to criticize Obama’s overall foreign policy without having to argue specifically against what he did in Egypt. Of course, all of this self-congratulation is a bit premature. Obama has facilitated and so far acquiesced in an Egyptian military coup. That may or may not lead to a more representative government, and that may or may not be a good outcome for Egypt. Obama’s critics and admirers are attacking or praising Obama’s role in ushering in something that has not yet happened.