I wonder if such a pose – democracy promotion when it aligns with our strategic interests – is really all that tenable. Isn’t this a rather bald-faced hypocrisy? Why would anyone take the idea of political liberalism seriously if the U.S. – the supposed standard-bearer of the concept – holds it as nothing so much as a cynical cudgel to wield against regimes it disapproves of? ~Greg Scoblete

It is tenable enough as far as our domestic debate is concerned. What Boot proposes is more or less what the U.S. has done for at least the last ten years: preach the “freedom agenda” for all but only lend support to dissidents and protesters in countries with regimes Washington wants replaced. Left-populist movements in Latin America that have won power in elections are regularly regarded with suspicion and hostility here in the U.S. because they are social democratic or even genuinely socialist movements, and they are movements that stand in direct opposition to U.S. influence in Latin America.

Very few Americans seriously propose a sustained effort at democracy promotion in any of the allied Arab states, but a great many Americans still seem to believe that the “color” revolutions were full-fledged democratic protest movements that were going to usher in new liberal democratic governments. Those “revolutions” just happened to serve a perceived U.S. interest in the region. Of course, all the “color” revolutions have either stalled or ended in disaster for their countries with Kyrgyzstan as the latest to suffer, but a surprisingly large number of people retain some confidence in their original purpose. The trouble is not so much that the “freedom agenda” is hypocritical or cynical, but that it tends to impose worse governments on the countries that it was supposedly helping to free and ultimately manages to weaken U.S. influence in those countries when the failed “revolutionary” governments discredit or destroy themselves. If one wanted to come up with a proposal that would contribute to the ruin of the countries in question and have stated U.S. goals in their regions mostly or completely undone, pursuing the “freedom agenda” would be the way to do it.

There are other times when democracy promoters have misjudged the relationship between promoting democracy and securing perceived U.S. interests. Before the invasion of Iraq, advocates of democracy promotion had convinced themselves that a democratic Iraq would not fall into Iran’s orbit. There was a lot of talk about the significance of Iraqi nationalism that would prevent this, and as I recall there were even one or two amateur attempts to discern nascent Jeffersonianism in the Shi’ites’ hostility to the caliphate after Ali. Not only was there a willingness to use democracy promotion as a “cynical cudgel” against unapproved regimes over the last ten years, but there was the strange, unwise notion that all newly-democratic regimes would almost of necessity be friendlier towards U.S. and Western interests than their authoritarian predecessors. We have heard this countless times in connection with the Iranian protests. Part of this was informed by ahistorical “democratic peace” theory, and part of it was an attempt to reconcile perceived U.S. strategic interests and the results of democratization. As should be readily apparent to us now, the results of democratization are often in tension or at odds with those interests as Washington defines them.

Indeed, so long as Washington defines U.S. interests in such a way that Iran must severely limit or abolish its nuclear program, a fully democratic Iran would be no less intransigent on this issue and possibly even more so. A democratic Iran would probably expect to be treated as the regional power that it is, and it would probably seek to wield influence and project power as any regional power would. Many Westerners seem to assume that a democratic Iran would “solve” the “problem” of an empowered Iran that is not effectively checked by any of its Arab neighbors. Having supported the destruction of the Iraqi government that would and could have balanced Iran, anti-Iranian hawks have been eager to find some way to change the regime in Iran that they helped empower. In the short and medium-term, this will not work. Iran’s government is not going to succumb to opposition forces in the foreseeable future, because it is a much stronger, deeper and more entrenched state apparatus than the ramshackle post-Soviet governments that fell and keep falling.

Boot states quite clearly what many Western Green movement sympathizers have believed all along: support for the Green movement is appropriate and necessary mainly because it provides the U.S. with a way to “solve” the problem with Iran’s regime, and it does so with minimal risk to us. This is why the Green protests received intense coverage for months, and why the protests that are destabilizing an Asian ally in Thailand barely register. Given the relative weakness of the opposition in Iran, it was always far-fetched that the protests would significantly change or topple the Iranian government. There are other problems with the administration’s Iran policy, but its unwillingness to spend much time or energy on the Green movement has not been one of them.