Greg Scoblete points out that Krauthammer is fixated on the wrong threat (again) when he describes the main threat in the Near East:

As in Soviet days, the threat is both internal and external. Iran a mini-version of the old Soviet Union, has its own allies and satellites – Syria, Lebanon and Gaza – and its own Comintern, with agents operating throughout the region to extend Islamist influence and undermine pro-Western secular states.

Krauthammer is very deliberately re-fighting the last (cold) war, which should make us realize that the Cold War analogy is probably not the best one, but what is interesting here is that Krauthammer doesn’t (can’t?) acknowledge the contradiction between his proposed Freedom Doctrine and his goal of containing Iranian influence. The first principle of the Freedom Doctrine is also the most reckless:

The United States supports democracy throughout the Middle East. It will use its influence to help democrats everywhere throw off dictatorial rule.

If the U.S. actually were in a “long, twilight struggle” with Iran and its allies, Krauthammer’s first principle would guarantee that the U.S. would end up with virtually no allies anywhere in the region in fairly short order. This is not because those governments would be taken over by forces sympathetic to Iran or by “totalitarian” forces following democratization, but because even properly functioning democracies in these countries would have no interest in serving as America’s front-line states in a regional contest with Iran. I can’t say that I blame them. Our Iran policy is irrational, and it is based in a wildly exaggerated fear of what Iran is capable of doing. Western Europe was at risk of being dominated or conquered by the Soviet Union, and other anti-Soviet allies were at risk of being overthrown or invaded by Soviet-backed forces, so their self-interest dictated allying themselves in defensive pacts with the U.S. Little of this applies to the countries Krauthammer is talking about here.

The larger obstacle to Krauthammer’s Freedom Doctrine is that Arab publics apparently have little interest in serving as U.S. allies in a struggle with Iran. Egypt seems to be a good example of this. According to the WINEP poll that we have been discussing recently, 19% of the Cairo and Alexandria respondents favored aligning Egypt with the U.S. as part of the old system of “moderate” Arab states, and almost as many (18%) wanted Egypt to align itself with the “resistance front” against Israel. Another 16% favor more distance from the U.S. and an independent foreign policy similar to Turkey’s, and 15% want reconciliation and alignment with Syria and Iran. If that’s right, most of the respondents don’t want Egypt to take part in an anti-Iranian coalition, and a sizeable number would rather have Egypt on the other “side.” Given the reputation that the alliance with the U.S. has there, that is perfectly understandable, but it is also why it makes no sense for Krauthammer to argue simultaneously for democratization and an anti-Iranian containment policy.

If the U.S. ditched its anti-Iranian policy first, and abandoned hegemonist policies in the region, I could see the consistency and perhaps even the desirability of promoting democratization later on. Americans should want to stop hegemonist and confrontational policies, but pursuing democratization and hegemonism together is foolish. As long as opposing Iranian influence is the priority, Washington will keep finding itself paralyzed when confronted by popular uprisings, and each time that Washington “succeeded” in helping remove another autocrat Iranian influence would grow (or resistance to it would weaken). Krauthammer’s Freedom Doctrine would probably lead to the U.S. trying and failing on both counts.

The Cold War analogy falls apart on closer scrutiny. Consider the example of Turkey, which should be the equivalent of Britain or France in Krauthammer’s “long, twilight struggle.” Turkey has been naturally trying to increase its trade with Iran, improve relations, and deflect Western hostility away from Iran’s nuclear program. The bigger problem for the U.S. is that the Turkish approach makes sense for Turkish interests, and our Iran policy doesn’t for ours, but that’s an argument for another day. Krauthammer and his allies regard a more fully democratic Turkey as a problem, because Turkey has ceased to serve as a reliable supporter of U.S. policies. Many of our regional policies are directly harmful to Turkish interests, and the Turkish public now has more effective control over its government’s actions than it once did.

The AKP government has an interest in pursuing better relations with its neighbors, including Iran and its allies. That suggests that democratic states in the region are likely to take a less confrontational line with Iran than their authoritarian and monarchical predecessors. Provided that the U.S. started adapting its policies towards Iran and the entire region well in advance of all this, I don’t regard that as a problem. It could be a very healthy and desirable development. What would be a significant problem is if the U.S. continued to pursue an anti-Iranian policy at the same time that it cut off its regional allies at the knees by pushing democratization.

Dr. Hadar has written a good column that explains the difference between Obama’s handling of Egypt and Carter’s handling of Iran. He also makes a comparison between what happened in 1989 and what is happening now by comparing the responses of Gorbachev and Obama:

If anything, Obama is now trying to come up with the least costly strategy to help manage American decline in the Middle East, not unlike the man who presided over the collapse of Soviet power in Eastern Europe in 1989. Mikhail Gorbachev had hoped that Moscow’s willingness to allow the downfall of its friendly dictators in Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Berlin, would help preserve Soviet influence in the region.

And like Gorbachev, Obama and the rest of the political establishment in Washington believe that backing the protest movements in Egypt and elsewhere in the region, and partnering the United States with the dramatic change in the Middle East – that is, being on the right side of history – will make it possible for the Americans to drive that transformation to the benefit of long-term U.S. interests.

Needless to say, Gorbachev’s acquiescence in the end of communism in eastern Europe did not preserve Soviet influence in the region, but led to a decisive repudiation of that influence and the domination of its former satellites by U.S. and western European influence. Obviously, this is the exact opposite of what Krauthammer expects will happen if the U.S. actively supports democratization in allied countries. Even if backing the protests puts the U.S. government on the “right side of history,” so to speak, there will be no reward for that. If the U.S. pursued Krauthammer’s Freedom Doctrine, U.S. influence in the region would be sharply reduced and would remain so for decades. Unlike Krauthammer, I wouldn’t regard this as an unmitigated disaster, but I’m not the one spouting ideological nonsense about democracy promotion.

Larison’s pessimism is a sometimes necessary corrective, but his current campaign against Egyptian democracy is confusing. He requests that fans of democracy promotion in Egypt flesh out the connection between economic betterment and free elections. He’s right that democracy by itself can’t fix Egypt – democracy is a tool that can be used to fight corruption or it can be perverted to entrench it. The exact effects of democracy on Egypt are unknowable, but Larison’s abstract arguments against Egyptian democracy are a lot less convincing when considering the alternative – the continuation of a regime that has already failed its people. Democracy is a high risk, high reward proposition, but at least it has the power to produce change. ~Patrick Appel

As far as the corrective goes, I’d like to think that this is what the “current campaign” is providing by way of balancing out the countless arguments in support of rapid political change in Egypt (and especially the opportunistic “we were right” bleating from democratists who haven’t been right about anything so far). It’s true that I am very skeptical of mass democracy as a form of government, but that is because I worry about its potential for degenerating into an equally oppressive despotism, creating majoritarian tyranny, and smothering liberty. I have concerns about the prospects of Egyptian democracy, but what really moves me to keep making contrarian arguments is the need to counter the enthusiasm and wishful thinking that characterize most of the Western responses to these events. What I am most interested in here is that everyone paying attention to these events give some serious thought to how representative of the Egyptian people the protesters are, how Egyptians perceive these protests, and the possible consequences of rapid political change.

If the protesters are actually unrepresentative, that makes a significant difference not only for how we understand what to expect in a democratic Egypt, but it also tells us how successful democratic reformers are liable to be. Austrian liberals made great strides in forcing their government to become a constitutional monarchy with a representative parliamentary system, but they represented a small minority of the population and their politics and their agenda were profoundly unpopular in rural areas and among the working class. As the franchise expanded, they were swamped by mass movements that were more representative of the population and were also strongly illiberal and anti-liberal. Should democracy ever come to Egypt, that process will happen all at once. The Ghad and Wafd parties will be buried under tidal waves of populist, Islamist, nationalist, and socialist sentiment. Perhaps Egypt will still be better off in the end as a result, but it does no one any good to overlook the potential pitfalls.

It may be that the economic policies that would most benefit Egypt and most effectively address the economic grievances of the protesters would also be enormously unpopular and politically radioactive in a democratic Egypt. In that case, democratization might cause Egypt to stagnate economically more than it already has. Economic liberalization was associated with Gamal Mubarak and his circle, and that program is now politically dead for years to come, especially if the military has anything to say about it (and they have a lot to say about it). If most Egyptians see the protests as protests about economic conditions and unemployment, the main causes of instability in Egypt are not authoritarianism and repression as such, and Egypt will likely continue to suffer from political instability as long as these economic problems persist. If most Egyptians do not see a lack of democracy as the principal reason for the protests, that suggests that they may not see constitutional change as a top priority, and they may regard a movement focused on constitutional changes as irrelevant to their concerns. That doesn’t bode well for the flourishing of a functioning democratic system. What I have been trying to do is to use as many concrete examples of democratization as possible, and to discuss the realities of Egyptian politics as specifically as I can, so I would like to think that these arguments have been something other than abstract.

Every time a “color” revolution broke out somewhere in the last decade, we were treated to fairly superficial analysis and triumphalist cheerleading that ignored any explanation for the events we were seeing except for the one that suited our assumptions. When the Green movement protested the election results in Iran, we were bombarded with commentary that expressed with certainty that the movement represented the Iranian people and that the Iranian government was tottering and gravely wounded. These were things that we Westerners wanted to believe, and so for the most part they went unchallenged. They also happened to be wrong. It was only later, after this initial wave of enthusiasm was broken by unpleasant realities, that people started to notice that events were not matching up with the stories we were telling about them. Many of the stories people have been telling about the Egyptian protests do not ring true to me, and so I am trying to explain my objections as best I can. If that is a “campaign against Egyptian democracy,” so be it.

Update: So that there is no misunderstanding about my argument, readers should also look at the follow-up remarks I make in the comment section.

Arizona’s Sen. John Kyl will retire next year, at the end of his third term. Sen. Mitch McConnell touched on this quickly in his boisterous (for him) speech to CPAC, calling the retirement a “big loss for the country.” The conservatives in the hall hardly reacted. There were no gasps of regret.

I’m not sure why. There was nothing in Kyl’s record to offend Tea Party activists. He carried the ball on the campaign to stop new START last year, and it wasn’t successful, but it aligned him perfectly with the right of the party. ~Dave Weigel

My guess is that the audience wasn’t moved for a few reasons. Kyl is the Senate minority whip, and he has been in the Republican Senate leadership since 2007. As long as Tea Party activists correctly see McConnell as a compromised establishment Republican, Kyl is probably tainted by this association with the party establishment. It doesn’t help Kyl that McConnell was the one mentioning the retirement. What certainly doesn’t help is that Kyl voted for the TARP, as most of his Senate colleagues did*, so it isn’t really true that there was nothing in Kyl’s record to offend them. Kyl voted for the bailout that ended the career of at least one Republican incumbent in neighboring Utah.

As for Kyl’s resistance on New START, I suppose it’s true that he defended the position favored by a lot of conservative activists and many Tea Partiers. On the other hand, if fighting an arms control treaty is the main thing he’s known for, that’s more likely to elicit yawns than cheers. As I see it, Kyl’s opposition to the treaty was a bad end to an unremarkable career in the Senate, and Arizona would be well-served to have someone like Jeff Flake take his place in the upper chamber. For the record, Flake voted against the TARP.

* How many Republican Senators returning in 2011 were anti-TARP votes? Just eleven: Sessions, Shelby, Barasso, Enzi, DeMint, Inhofe, Wicker, Cochran, Roberts, Vitter, and Crapo.

Or maybe he wants to play spoiler against Romney? I wonder if there is some history between them, perhaps going back to the Olympics. Some enterprising journalists should start digging around. ~Steven Hayward

Hayward’s suspicions seem to be correct, but it doesn’t take much digging. Once the Huntsman 2012 talk started up again, I noticed this report in The Salt Lake City Tribune describing the bad blood between the Huntsmans and Romney over Romney’s selection to oversee the Salt Lake Games after the corruption scandal exploded. Paul Rolly described the start of the feud:

When Salt Lake City’s 2002 Winter Olympics bid committee was hit with an international bribery scandal while the city’s Winter Games preparations were still under way, committee head Tom Welch and his chief deputy Dave Johnson were dumped, so local community and government leaders needed a new honcho.

Romney, sired by Mormon royalty whose father George, the former Michigan governor, had been a presidential candidate, was chosen to right the ship. The Olympics were a great success and Romney used that experience to launch a successful bid for governor of Massachusetts and later a run for president in 2008.

But when Romney was selected, the Huntsman family publicly declared that he was part of a corrupt bargain.

Jon Huntsman Sr., the billionaire Utah philanthropist and father of the would-be presidential hopeful, publicly decried the pick at the time and said his son had been manipulated and deceived by the Utah king-makers, including then-Gov. Mike Leavitt.

Huntsman said the selection of Romney made it clear there was a deal between him and Leavitt from the beginning, but Jon Huntsman Jr., who already had impressive credentials as a former U.S. ambassador, had been asked to apply for the job just to give the appearance that there was an honest search.

Leavitt and the other leaders denied there was a secret deal with Romney, but the ice storm between the Huntsman and Romney camps was evident.

Rolly goes on to tell how Huntsman’s decision to back McCain soured the relationship again:

Later, when Romney was contemplating his 2008 presidential bid, Huntsman Jr. was a foreign affairs adviser to Romney. But when the Republican front-runners were set and the campaign began heating up, Huntsman, who had become the governor of Utah, was an early endorser of Romney foe John McCain, the senator from Arizona who eventually won the nomination.

Sources close to both camps told me at the time that Huntsman got an unfriendly call from his fellow Mormon Romney after he announced his endorsement of McCain, and was called an unprintable name.

I wouldn’t put it past McCain and his allies to do what they could to sabotage Romney. McCain seems to take an unusually intense personal dislike of his political competitors, and much of his modern political career has been the result of acting out one grudge or another, but he has normally directed his ire at the politicians who defeated him. The idea that he would be trying to undermine Romney with Huntsman is an entertaining story, but it doesn’t really make sense. Many of Huntsman’s would-be campaign advisors come from McCain’s camp, but they are simply gravitating to the candidate perceived as the most moderate in the field. I don’t see what Huntsman would get by running against Romney just to get back at him because of old rivalries. A Huntsman candidacy would work to Romney’s disadvantage, but Huntsman would have to have more of a reason to run than that.

Via Scoblete, I see that WINEP (Washington Institute for Near East Policy) has a poll on Egyptian public opinion. It has several interesting results. Everyone is very excited to point out the relatively low level of support for the Muslim Brotherhood (15% favorability), and I’ll talk about that in a minute, but what I found more interesting is that a combined 33% of Cairo and Alexandria respondents expressed a preference for Mubarak or Suleiman as president. Obviously, that’s not a majority, but put together that is still a large constituency apparently in favor of some form of continuity with the old regime and/or the status quo. Amr Moussa receives 26%. Perhaps this is because of name recognition and stature as head of the Arab League, but Moussa has been in Mubarak’s cabinet in the past and hardly represents a sharp break the old system. All together, that’s 59% favoring one of the old fixtures of the system, and another 33% don’t know or refuse to answer.

Perhaps most important is the Egyptian assessment of the reasons for the protests. Economic conditions, corruption, unemployment, and poor delivery of basic services top the list and make up a combined 65% of the “first most important reason” category, and they make up 51% of the “second most important reason” category. (Multiple responses were allowed.) This is overwhelmingly a protest about lack of opportunity and economic conditions. For just 3%, “political repression/no democracy” was the first most important reason, and the second most important for another 6%. About one in ten of urban Egyptian respondents sees these protests primarily in the terms that virtually everyone in the West sees them. Just 6% cite abuses by the security services, and another 6% cite the issue of succession. I’d be interested to hear from democracy promotion fans how exactly the U.S. could have been changing poor economic conditions in Egypt by insisting on free elections.

The 15% favorable/52% unfavorable rating for the Muslim Brotherhood is important to note, but it’s also worth observing that this is a poll of Cairo and Alexandria residents. Assuming that it is an accurate reflection of the views of residents of those cities, that leaves a lot of Egyptians completely unrepresented in the results. Cairo and Alexandria residents are probably more secular and more hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood than Egyptians outside the major cities. Were there a more comprehensive, nationwide poll that reflected the views of the entire population instead of a sample with a heavy urban bias, we might be seeing significantly different results.

Update: WorldPublicOpinion.org polled Egyptians in the summer of 2009. It’s worth a look to see how its results compare with WINEP’s more recent survey. On the Muslim Brotherhood, WINEP and WPO polls have almost reversed results. In a survey of 600 urban Egyptians from Cairo, Alexandria, Giza, and Subra, WPO found that 29% had “very positive feelings” about the Muslim Brotherhood, and another 35% with “somewhat positive feelings.” It’s entirely possible that the Muslim Brotherhood has lost a lot of support in the last two years, but is it likely that the group went from having a net 64% “positive feelings” result to a 52% unfavorable rating? Is it likely that opposition to the Brotherhood more than tripled from the 16% who expressed “negative feelings” in the WPO poll to the 52% that had an unfavorable view of the group in the WINEP poll?

Furthermore, according to WPO’s poll, 56% said that the Muslim Brotherhood “has found an acceptable way to blend Islamism and democracy.” 60% reportedly believe the government in Egypt “should be based on a form of democracy that is unique for Islamic countries.” As Mark Mellman noted in a column Tuesday, 75% of respondents agreed that “there should be a body of senior religious scholars that has the power to overturn laws when it believes they are contrary to the Quran.” 26% said that a non-Muslim should not be allowed to run for public office, and 34% said a non-Muslim should not be allowed to run for president. Perhaps the WPO results overstate some of these things, but it would seem to be the more representative poll of the two.

Second Update: It occurs to me that the WINEP poll result for the Muslim Brotherhood candidate mentioned in the presidential poll, Muhammad Badi, is potentially misleading. The pollster makes a point of emphasizing the Muslim Brotherhood’s poor showing in the presidential poll (at less than 1%), but the Brotherhood has specifically ruled out running a candidate in the next presidential election. Badi’s likely supporters may know this, and so they wouldn’t volunteer support for a candidacy that they know won’t materialize. Then again, maybe his name recognition is terrible, or perhaps his support really is that low. I don’t know, but I wouldn’t assume we can glean very much from this poll.

Liberal democracies do not tear up international agreements or wage war on other democracies. ~David Cesarini

We have heard some version of this for a very long time. Does it matter to anyone that it is obviously not true? Note that Cesarini doesn’t say, “they tend not to” or “they usually don’t,” but very simply that they don’t do these things. That’s ridiculous.

Aside from the glaringly obvious examples of the South African War, the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, and WWI, there is always the war between the Union and the Confederacy, whose status as liberal democracies can’t be denied except for the purpose of defining liberal democracy so that it automatically supports the “democratic peace” hypothesis. As for not tearing up international agreements, has Cesarini been paying attention for the last couple of decades? The U.S. has illegally attacked at least three countries in violation of the U.N. Charter, and its respect for the Geneva Conventions during the last decade has not exactly been outstanding. If he doesn’t accept that Lebanon was a democracy at the time, he can argue that the 2006 war against Lebanon doesn’t count, but it certainly wasn’t because of any inherent mechanisms of accountability, transparency, and restraint on the part of the Israeli democratic process. Democratic peace and most democracies’ respect for international law are contingent on a lot of other things, most of which have nothing whatever to do with the democratic element of their governments.

As more countries democratize, it will simply be a matter of time before the democratic peace theory is conclusively shown to be the pleasant fantasy that it is. After all, states typically war with one another for the sake of influence, wealth, and power, and it is rare for a state to embark on a war primarily because of ideological hostility to another state’s form of government. As long as there are states competing for power, wealth, and influence, there will be inter-state wars, and the one fairly certain thing that democratization will achieve is that it will make those wars longer and more total than they would otherwise be. Democratization doesn’t reduce inter-state conflict, and isn’t necessarily conducive to peace.

I was wondering if anyone was going to take the bait of running with the completely discredited Wikileaks-related story on Britian and New START, and Andrew Roberts doesn’t disappoint. It’s a story that is really tailor-made for certain hawkish administration critics. These hawks are convinced that Obama has been sabotaging the “special relationship,” which most Britons correctly believe to be a lopsided scam that harms British interests, and they were absolutely sure that New START was disastrous. In other words, they are very often as wrong as it is possible to be.

It was inevitable that some of them would latch onto the story that claimed that the U.S. had compromised British nuclear secrets as part of the New START deal. There is just one small problem with this. It is absolutely untrue.

Via Doug Mataconis, the State Department explained what actually happened:

This is bunk. Under the 1991 START Treaty, the U.S. agreed to notify Russia of specific nuclear cooperation with the United Kingdom, such as the transfer of SLBM’s [submarine launch ballistic missiles] to the UK, or their maintenance or modernization. This is under an existing pattern of cooperation throughout that treaty and is expected to continue under New START. We simply carried forward and updated this notification procedure to the new treaty. There was no secret agreement and no compromise of the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent.

Not that it is surprising, but a source inside the British government confirms the State Department’s version of events. All of this was sorted out over the weekend, so I don’t understand why Roberts’ column was published at all. Unfortunately, this seems to be how many people use the leaked cables. Roberts picked up on a claim based on a misunderstanding of one cable that has already been ripped out of context, and he then fit it into his ready-made, paranoid narrative of the horrible anti-British Obama administration. This story got off the ground mainly thanks to general ignorance about the terms of arms control agreements, and it has been kept alive this long by people who very much wanted to see the new treaty fail. These leaks seem to be best-suited to fueling conspiracies and reinforcing existing ideological prejudices.

Update: Jake Tapper has explained how the treaty relates to British SLBMs.

Second Update: Dr. Jeffrey Lewis discussed Britain’s nuclear deterrent in some detail in this post in December 2008, and added a bit more in another post from late 2009, which helps to provide some background and to explain just how unremarkable this part of the agreement is.

Nonetheless, in both instances — for both the Tea Partiers and the Egyptian protesters — there is a rush to smear and discredit legitimate democratic opposition based upon the actions of those who do not really speak for and to the opposition.

American conservatives, who have been smeared too often themselves, should not sanction the smearing of others, especially our democratic allies overseas. ~John Guardiano

This is one of the more creative arguments in support of the Egyptian protesters, but it doesn’t really hold up.

For one thing, the Egyptian protesters are not “our democratic allies overseas.” If Americans wish to sympathize with Egyptian protesters and want to petition the government to lend them support, that is their prerogative, but it simply isn’t true that these people are “our democratic allies overseas.” As understandable and legitimate as their grievances are, the Egyptian protesters are very actively urging the dismantling of a regime that is formally allied to the United States government. That makes them something other than “our allies.” Even if we all agree that the vast majority of the protesters who have shown up in Tahrir Square are well-intentioned secular democrats, that makes them democratic, but it doesn’t make them our allies. Understandably, the Egyptian public is not well-disposed towards U.S. foreign policy in the region, and to the extent that a future democratic Egypt actually represented the views of most Egyptians in its foreign policy it would be one that is largely independent of the U.S. or formally non-aligned. Egyptians would be perfectly within their rights to do that, and it might be best for their interests if they did, but “our allies” are exactly what they would not be.

More to the point, Guardiano objects to “smearing” the protesters on account of the statements or actions of a few unrepresentative individuals. Fair enough. By the same token, Guardiano and other sympathizers should stop promoting the desirability of Egyptian democracy based on the politics of an unrepresentative, self-selecting sample of protesters in some of Egypt’s larger cities. It could be that the politics of the “Republic of Tahrir” happen to be the politics of a broad cross-section of Egyptians, but I don’t know that and neither does Guardiano. If we should avoid “smearing” an entire group because we should not judge them based on the actions of a few, we shouldn’t run to the opposite extreme and claim that the protesters are representative of what Egyptian democracy would mean.

However, the fact that the Middle East is politically and culturally regressive in significant ways mustn’t cripple American foreign policy and reduce the United States to inaction.

To the contrary: the existence of these problems requires that America redouble its efforts to promote liberal democracy in the Middle East. ~John Guardiano

There’s no question of “crippling American foreign policy” or “inaction.” If democracy promotion is forgotten and put on a shelf, that isn’t going to cripple American foreign policy. Some might argue that it would have a remarkable liberating effect on American policymakers, who would no longer feel compelled to engage in a torturous balancing act between national interests and the promotion of “values.” Setting democracy promotion aside creates the potential for constructive engagement with a number of important states that is not held back or limited by preoccupation with other states’ internal affairs. To the extent that American foreign policy has been crippled in the last decade, it is thanks in part to a strange commitment to a “freedom agenda” that has largely failed or backfired everywhere it has been tried.

Guardiano wants the U.S. government to prioritize something that runs contrary to many of its stated interests, and which has succeeded mainly in empowering Iran and its allies throughout the region. Redoubling American effort in this area seems likely to accelerate the process of undermining all those states that support U.S. containment efforts. Iran containment seems misguided to me, and I would be pleased to see the U.S. disentangle itself as much as possible from the region, but even I can see how dangerous it would be to subvert not just one ally but an entire region of allied governments for the sake of an abstract commitment to a particular regime type.

P.S. There is no reason to expect that liberalizing and democratizing political reforms are going to undo what Guardiano calls “politically and culturally regressive” attitudes. On the contrary, the typical experience of a democratizing country is that its more conservative social and cultural attitudes become enshrined in law, and political liberals quickly find themselves quickly overwhelmingly outnumbered by the forces of populists, nationalists, and religious enthusiasts. Political liberalism anywhere is only as strong as the constituency of liberals, and without meaningful constitutional protections and protections for minorities a liberal democracy will quickly degrade into an authoritarian populist system that will tolerate or even cater to “politically and culturally regressive” attitudes.