Turkey is the closest thing the Middle East has to a “model,” one of only two countries in the world led by a democratically elected Islamist party. According to a 2009 survey, 64 percent of Arab respondents in seven countries believe “Turkey’s EU membership prospects make Turkey an attractive partner for reform in the Arab world.” Considering its growing regional importance, the U.S. cannot afford for Turkey to turn inward and become embroiled in conflict between its secularist military and Islamist-leaning government. For a time, Turkey’s desire to join the EU provided incentives to implement wide-ranging legal and political reforms. However, as the EU drags its feet on accession talks, and Turks lose hope in EU membership, the reform process looks less encouraging than ever. Turkey must, however, remain enmeshed in Western institutions and partnerships. The Obama administration should use its leverage with European allies to ensure the accession process moves forward. ~Shadi Hamid (original article here)

There are a few points to be made in response here, and one of them relates back to the earlierdiscussion on democratization we have been having. The first is that the previous administration made a very concerted, very public effort to push Turkish accession all the way back in 2002, and it backfired spectacularly. There was already opposition to Turkish membership before that, but the use of U.S. pressure to try to force the EU to accept Turkey intensified European opposition as Europeans naturally resented being told by Americans how to conduct their own affairs. Even if this pressure were applied privately, the response would likely be much the same.

In the wake of the Greek debt crisis and the financial woes of many new EU members in central and eastern Europe, it is doubtful that the major EU member states would want to have anything to do with expanding to include Turkey. To the extent that European federalism is gaining strength politically, expansion will seem less desirable. It has been the goal of opponents of EU consolidation to dilute the Union through expansion, but there is not much Euroskeptic support for Turkish membership, either. This is because there is enough nationalist and anti-immigration sentiment across much of Europe to make Turkish accession unpopular for reasons that have nothing to do with the functioning of the EU. Even if it were prudent to apply pressure on behalf of Turkey, what leverage does Washington have that could overcome all of this?

To hear Western critics of the AKP tell it, the problem with Turkey outside the EU is not that it will turn “inward,” but that it will turn east by improving relations with Iran and Russia. This does not necessarily have to be a problem at all, and should instead be viewed in Washington as a welcome development. My guess is that Turkish credibility as an “honest broker” in the region is enhanced by remaining outside the EU, and it is better able to pursue an increasingly independent and influential foreign policy apart from Europe.

This brings me back to one of Hamid’s earlier posts:

But I think Larison overstates the U.S. fear of states pursuing what he calls “independent foreign policies,” especially since there are already two Middle Eastern countries that actively and unapologetically do just that – Turkey and Qatar. They also happen to be close American allies. I’d be comfortable making the argument that, despite their hobnobbing with Iran and sympathy toward Hamas, both countries are more effective American allies than, say, Egypt and Jordan, precisely because their foreign policy conduct is perceived to be more independent and in line with popular Arab sentiment.

I would be comfortable making the same argument, but over the last seven or eight years many in the U.S. have come to view Turkey as a bad ally because of this independence. Washington has become unaccustomed to having close allies that are not also reflexively supportive allies, and Washington tends to sour on allies that attempt to show some independence. Most recently, the administration does not seem to know what to do with Hatoyama’s government in Japan. While Hamid and I regard the pursuit of independent foreign policies by allies as not only inevitable but also potentially helpful, I doubt that this is a view widely shared in the government. I would be very pleased to be wrong on this point, but right now I’m not seeing Washington adapt very well to the rise of increasingly independent democratic allies, to say nothing of future democratic Arab states that might decide to align themselves with other powers.

The other day, Ross called for other conservatives to be more critical of Republican politicians and conservative “entertainers,” and Jim Manzi made the mistake of taking up this challenge and applying intellectual rigor and honesty to a prominent conservative radio host’s book on a subject he understands fairly well. The inevitablecircling-of-the-wagons that has followed illustrates perfectly the problem Manzi was trying to address in Levin’s work. Not only do Manzi’s colleagues automatically defend Levin’s sub-par arguments, but they regard it as horribly bad form to dare criticize those arguments with the vehemence that their poor quality would seem to merit. Small wonder that there are so few “magazines and conservative columnists…willing to call out Republican politicians (and, to a lesser extent, conservative entertainers) for offering bromides instead of substance, and for pandering instead of grappling with real policy questions.”

One need only quickly read Levin’s chapter “On Self-Preservation” to find that the sloppiness Manzi skewers so effectively is not limited to the discussion of climate change. In the early part of the chapter, Levin begins by misrepresenting the content of Washington’s Farewell Address:

The address makes clear he did so not because neutrality was an end in itself, but because he feared that taking sides could split the country apart. (p.177)

This is a good example of a deeply misleading half-truth. Washington was concerned about passionate attachments to other countries partly because of the domestic political effects, but he also explicitly argued that the American interest dictated that we remain free of foreign political attachments for many other reasons:

Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

And again:

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible [bold mine-DL]. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?

Why, indeed? In other words, President Washington made it quite clear that neutrality provided many goods that Americans would be foolish and unwise to throw away for the sake of taking sides in foreign conflicts in which we had no real stake. Levin badly misinterprets and distorts the meaning of the Farewell Address because Washington’s genuine support for neutrality as the obvious policy that takes advantage of our unique geographical position is deeply at odds with the aggressive interventionism he lauds later in the chapter. Central to Levin’s vision is the maintenance of American superpower status, when this is impossible without the permanent alliances that Washington specifically rejected. As Washington said:

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.

Later, Levin critiques Obama’s 2007 Global Affairs speech as a perfect expression of “Statist” foreign policy, as if Obama’s emphasis on interdependence and the inextricable connections between American and the security of rest of the world were not almost identical to the freedom-babble of Bush’s Second Inaugural. At the time of Obama’s speech, hawkish interventionists on the right cited that Obama speech as proof that he supported American “leadership” in the world, which they regarded as a very good thing. Indeed, nothing really separates Levin’s “Statists” from Levin himself on foreign policy, except that he prefers that the U.S. remain a superpower that is as unfettered by international agreements as possible. This has nothing to do with “preserving and improving American society,” as Levin likes to put it, and everything to do with securing and expanding the power of the national security and warfare state.

Following up on the previous post, I find it remarkable how quickly Clegg’s rise seems to be completely overtaking Cameron’s modest foreign policy re-positioning of the last few years. A few years ago, it was Cameron and his advisors who wanted to move away from a “slavish” relationship with Washington and spoke of their desire to have “lots of Love, Actually moments.” This referred to the scene when Hugh Grant’s Prime Minister dressed down the visiting American President and criticized him for bullying Britain. As Clegg complained back in March, the major parties basically abandoned distinguishing themselves from one another on foreign policy in the run-up to the election campaign. Now what seems to terrify some British and American conservatives (via Andrew) is that a government with Clegg in it might actually follow through on Cameron’s earlier rhetoric and perhaps go beyond it.

In his Chatham House address, Clegg said something that seems like simple common sense:

I do not believe that we can carry on in 2010, and beyond, thinking that the events of the 1950s and the place of America in it should continue to be the pivot around which we organise all of our foreign policy issues.

This view is a problem for the major parties in that it is quite reasonable and it is one that they seem absolutely unwilling to take seriously. It is much more of a problem for them when Clegg pairs this view with an affirmation of his own Atlanticism:

I’m an Atlanticist much like everyone else. I spent a happy time working in the United States. I think it is vital to our interests that we maintain a positive, strong and even uniquely warm relationship with the United States [bold mine-DL]. But it is not our only relationship and it mustn’t become a relationship that at every junction, every time a decision is made we have no choice but to follow the decisions made in the White House. And yet that seems to have been happening with greater velocity and frequency in recent years rather than less.

It is telling that his British conservative critics have to resort to denying Clegg’s Atlanticism. It is simply desperation when Tories are reduced to distorting Clegg’s position as an “anti-American” one. What Clegg protests against is the substitution of a reflexively “pro-American” stance for a foreign policy that serves British interests. The other problem for the major parties is that Clegg is telling a basic truth when he describes the relationship between Britain and America as “a lopsided asymmetrical relationship.” One can vehemently disagree with specific policy proposals Clegg makes, but his analysis of the quality of the relationship and his call for significant re-thinking seem correct. Obviously, I agree with this description, and I don’t see much evidence that there is a better way to describe it. It is a measure of how lopsided a relationship our governments have that the British party leader willing to describe it accurately is denounced as anti-American, and meanwhile the leaders of the two largest parties dare not even whisper this sort of statement for fear of receiving the same scorn.

Obviously, Clegg is an ardent Europhile, and I don’t sympathize with this view at all, but he delivers a very effective rhetorical shot at Tory Euroskeptics who feel compelled to back every U.S. initiative:

I’d like to see us repatriate our foreign policy interests so that we conduct a foreign policy which doesn’t just conclude that we have no choice in vital matters such as whether you go to war or not just because a vital strategic partner tells us we must. That is a loss of real sovereignty about which I never hear the swivel-eyed Eurosceptics worry about at all.

Remarkably, Clegg struck a far more defiant note verging on proud nationalism than many Euroskeptics themselves can muster when discussing how to balance the relationships with America and Europe:

It is in America’s own interests to have Britain standing tall in its European backyard. Acting not just as a bilateral bridge between Washington and London, but also as a leader of opinion and events in Europe as a whole.

Whether or not one agrees with Clegg’s entire speech, it is flatly dishonest to portray the views contained in it as “anti-American,” and it is misleading at best to say that Clegg is anti-Israel. Clegg will not be the next Prime Minister, but America and Britain would be much better off and would have a much stronger, more balanced relationship if the next Prime Minister paid attention to even some of Clegg’s ideas.

Update: Jerome Armstrong obviously has no idea what “neocon” means if he thinks I am one, and he certainly never bothered to read the post. One of the more significant obstacles to any left-right alliance against unnecesary wars and empire is the bad left-wing habit of assuming that they have some sort of monopoly on these issues.

That is why I will continue to ask … difficult questions about foreign policy assumptions the other parties don’t want to question at all. ~Nick Clegg

The alliance with America is the sacred cow of British foreign policy, many of whose practioners dream, in unguarded moments, that Britain can play Greece to America’s Rome. Disparaging the relationship publicly is just not done. ~R.M., Democracy in America

Clegg is hardly the first one this year to disparage the relationship in public. Actually, disparage is the wrong word. It would be more accurate to say that Clegg was acknowledging the real nature of the relationship, just as the Select Foreign Affairs Committee’s report did last month. We all understand that Clegg is going to be more outspoken on this because his party is far more at odds with the British foreign policy consensus, and his position as the Liberal Democrat leader allows him an amount of greater freedom in making such criticisms. At present, the Liberal Democrats are surging in popularity partly because they offer an alternative, they are still marginal enough that they can attack the major parties without enduring too much scrutiny, and they can make refreshing critiques of stale consensus views. What we will probably find after the next debate is that Clegg is speaking for a huge number of people in Britain appalled by the one-sided nature of the U.S.-U.K. relationship.

Whatever the election outcome, it is still virtually impossible that Nick Clegg will become Prime Minister, so on one level Lib-Dem views on the relationship with the U.S. are not that important. Then again, the Liberal Democrats are most likely going to be an important part of any governing coalition, so their views cannot be dismissed as entirely irrelevant. At least as far as the alliance is concerned, my guess is that Clegg’s remarks reflect the views of far more people in Britain than the “default Atlanticism” of the major parties that he has been criticizing, and Washington would be unwise to ignore how poorly the “special relationship” is now viewed.

Washington’s obliviousness to the DPJ in Japan before the last election was a mistake. Because virtually no one had paid any attention to the possibility of an LDP loss, our government was forced to scramble blindly to make sense of what a DPJ win meant for the alliance with Japan. That led to a period of overreaction and confusion, which was followed by an even less productive period of assuming that everything could continue on exactly as it had done before. The quarreling over Futenma shows us that this was also mistaken. If the Liberal Democrats have a significant role in the next British government, Washington will have to take account of the changing attitudes of the British public. It would be another mistake to assume that Washington can continue to count on “default Atlanticism” after next month’s election.

Jonah Goldberg tries to explain the Tea Party movement as a “delayed Bush backlash” and claims that the prevailing attitude among Tea Partiers is that “we won’t be fooled again.” The first part of this might be true for the the 27% of Tea Partiers who view Bush unfavorably, but for the majority I doubt this is true. It might not be true in every case, but on the whole Bush’s 57% favorability rating probably came from those Tea Partiers who identify as Republicans (54%), and it is the remainder of mostly independents that has reservations or objections to Bush era policies. Partisan identification may not account for everything, but it explains the attitudes of at least a majority of those who identify with this movement.

As for not wanting to be fooled again, this is quite clearly not the case. If most Tea Partiers did not want to be fooled again, they would not enthusiastically latch onto the first pseudo-populist huckster who happens to say the things they like to hear. According to the survey, Palin’s favorability among Tea Partiers is at 66%, and her unfavorable rating is just 12%, which means that two-thirds of the anti-tax, anti-bailout, small-government protesters are extraordinarily well-disposed towards another under-prepared governor who sends all the right cultural signals. More to the point, this one has a short and unimpressive record of endorsing bailouts, hiking taxes and redistributing revenues to buy votes, and that was after she sank Wasilla into terrible debt before moving on. Of course, as with so many of her admirers, pro-Palin Tea Partiers must be uninterested in her actual record, because there is nothing in that record that an anti-tax, small-government conservative would find appealing.

I don’t doubt that the objections of most Tea Partiers are genuine and many of them were and are principled opponents of the policies they now decry when they happened earlier during a Republican administration. It’s just that most of those principled opponents were probably never Republicans, or they ceased being Republicans because of their objections. Partisan identification explains a large part of the pro-Palin sentiment, but it still cannot excuse the foolish enthusiasm for yet another deeply flawed Republican politician.

One of my commenters pointed me to this bizarre item* by Michael Novak at one of the blogs at First Things. Novak writes:

We again need such Christian realism. Such tough-mindedness. The most dreadful war of all time is just ahead of us, is already well begun. Many of us want to save the Christian Holy Places, and Israel, too–our best ally in the world, the creator of the most economically creative and democratic society in its region.

Fulfilling this desire will not be easy in the next twelve months, fateful months, clock-ticking months. If the nuclear capacity of Iran is not destroyed before functioning nuclear weapons are in their silos or other weapons platforms, the whole world will experience blackmail.

To make an object lesson, one nation in particular is on notice that it is listed as first for destruction.

How will we live with ourselves if Israel is annihilated with nuclear bombs? How will we survive? How will our understanding of the Word of God survive, if the fleshly, tangible heart of Jewish and Christian faith is obliterated?

He goes on to urge a war of aggression against Iran to “prevent” the absurd fantasy of the Iranian destruction of the Holy Places. It is bad enough that Novak invokes Niebuhr (!) in support of this mad call for unprovoked, unnecessary war, but when he says that the “most dreadful war of all time is just ahead of us, is already well begun” we can safely say that he has lost all touch with reality. WWII remains the most dreadful war of all time, and nothing on the horizon even remotely compares to the loss of life and destruction that occurred in that war. So there is nothing realistic at all about Novak’s “Christian realism,” and neither is there anything Christian about it if that word is to have any connection to the teachings of Our Lord.

Even under very broad interpretations of just war theory, there cannot be a just war when the other party has inflicted no grave, lasting injury on us. By definition, preventive war cannot be just, and yet it is most certainly preventive war that Novak and other advocates of attacking Iran demand. War is sometimes necessary and permitted for the restoration of peace. There is no justification for destroying what peace exists to satisfy our irrational fears of a deterrable and containable threat. There is no conceivable justification for initiating hostilities to attempt to stop the potential future acquisition of a weapon that the other state is very unlikely to use against us or our allies. To start a war for such a reason would be a crime against God and man.

What would make such a war even more unjustifiable is the improbability of success: a war against Iran might delay an Iranian bomb, but it would not eliminate Iran’s nuclear program and it would almost certainly make the acquisition of such weapons an even higher priority to deter future attacks. Meanwhile, the consequences of such a war could be very bad for U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf states, as well as for Israel and our Gulf state allies, to say nothing of the potential damage it would do to the global economy and the hardship and suffering it would inflict on the Iranian people. Thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of people would die, many more would be injured and displaced, and our government and the governments of any states that helped us would obviously be implicated in yet another illegal war. Beyond the loss of life and resources, the damage to our national reputation would be staggering.

Novak warns against the “blackmail” that will follow if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, but the only one engaged in a sort of blackmail here is Novak. He would exploit the emotional and religious attachment Christians naturally have for the Holy Places to inspire support for massive, unnecessary bloodshed. The message is quite clear: if you treasure the sacred places where God revealed Himself, you will endorse my monstrous proposal, and otherwise you probably don’t really care about these places or the revelation itself. The proposal is horrible, and the manipulation being employed to advance the proposal is simply despicable.

As for the Iranian threat, Novak is simply wrong. The “whole world” will not experence blackmail from Iran. Most likely, no other state will experience anything of the kind. It is possible that Iranian nuclear weapons could push other states towards nuclearization, in which case the danger would be an arms race and not Iranian “blackmail.” That would be undesirable, but it would not be worse than the regional conflagration that an attack on Iran would cause. Israel’s nuclear arsenal will ensure that Iran would never attempt a nuclear first-strike against Israel.

For that matter, Jerusalem is also considered holy in the eyes of Muslims. I have no idea how Westerners can claim to “know” that the Iranian government would be so moved by religious apocalyptic fervor that it would engage in suicidal nuclear warfare, but they also seem remarkably certain that the holy status of Jerusalem in the eyes of Muslims somehow doesn’t really “count” and will be tossed aside at a moment’s notice. We often see this selective reliance on the beliefs and statements of people in other states. When Ahmadinejad or some other figure of authority in Iran makes demagogic, bellicose statements against Israel, these statements are regarded as essential for understanding the thinking of the Iranian government. On the other hand, when their politico-religious authorities say repeatedly that they regard the use of nuclear weapons as abhorrent, we are supposed to dismiss these statements automatically.

* That is, it is genuinely bizarre, but it’s actually sadly predictable and normal for many of the people at First Things.

There is a new round of “where have you gone, John McCain?” liberalcommentary starting up. I used to find this amusing, but it is all based on a profound misunderstanding of McCain the politician. Recently, McCain has been making a fool of himself by repudiating the maverick label he once clung to for dear life in years past, and to head off a strong primary challenge from Hayward he has begun pretending that he has a problem with illegal immigration. This has led to quite a few liberals declaring that McCain is sacrificing his integrity for political purposes, but this gives him far too much credit. This takes for granted that McCain once had integrity as a politician that he could still destroy.

As the presidential campaign showed once again, McCain’s actual acquiantance with the substance of any policy, especially domestic policy, was extremely sketchy and poor. During at least the last ten years he never adopted a domestic policy position because he had studied the issue carefully and determined that a certain kind of legislation made the most practical sense or was the best expression of certain guiding principles. He determined that the fastest way to get attention and to aggrandize himself was by breaking with his party in melodramatic fashion over issues that happened to appeal to mainstream media journalists and pundits. The latter played along because they liked what he was saying, and they wanted to reward a Republican politician for strongly disagreeing with his party. They helped McCain to invent the myth of his being a “maverick,” when he was really the most predictable establishment “centrist” on almost every important issue. It helped that he always frames his disagreements with others in the most obnoxious, moralizing way possible, so that he is always playing the heroic crusader against corruption and his opponents are tainted villains on the take.

McCain’s primary fight with Bush in 1999-2000 seems to lend substance to the “maverick” myth, but this was misleading. McCain ran his campaign arguing against movement conservatives and rank-and-file Republicans because it was useful for the moment. This provided him with the free media coverage that gave his campaign enough oxygen to last for as long as it did, and it raised him to the level of a national Republican figure who would be the heir apparent for the next nomination. After a few years playing the aggrieved loser and critic of some of Bush’s domestic policies, McCain began to lose his liberal admirers as he became more and more reliably a team player.

On immigration, he and Bush were on the same page and were working for the same goals. This worked well for McCain in that it allowed him to play the part of a Bush supporter who was also advancing an amnesty policy that establishment “centrists” everywhere applauded. As 2007 wore on and his early presidential campaign was crumbling around him, he had to pivot away from his record on immigration and claim that he had “learned” why most Republicans were so furious with the legislation and with him. This didn’t persuade many people on the right, but it reduced his vulnerability on the issue because he refused to make it an important part of his campaign beginning in the fall of 2007.

Quite a few mainstream pundits completely misunderstood why McCain’s primary campaign had been faltering, and some began absurdly praising him for his supposedly principled support for the “surge” despite the damage they imagined this was doing to him. Of course, he supported the “surge” because he had been the hawkish interventionists’ preferred candidate for years, and because he had made a habit of supporting troop escalations regardless of circumstances going back at least to Kosovo in 1999. It didn’t hurt that the vast majority of Republicans remained convinced of the rightness of the war and had immediately gone into full purge mode against anyone who questioned or opposed the “surge.” During the primaries, he had no scruples about making the most outrageous claims against his opponents, including the lie that Romney favored “surrender” in Iraq, and we saw the same habits emerge during the general election campaign as well.

McCain reacted to his defeat in 2008 in much the same way that he reacted to losing to Bush in 2000: he became a petulant, angry and frequent critic. Of necessity, this meant that McCain had to align himself closely with the anti-Obama stands of his party. At first glance, this seems to be at odds with how McCain conducted himself in the past. There was a time when he was the embodiment of “centrism” and enthusiasm for bipartisanship, but that was when Republicans were in the majority and McCain’s personal advantage dictated breaking with them. Now McCain’s personal advantage dictates that he become a reliable partisan and that he must tack sharply to the right to prevent the rank-and-file conservatives he has spent much of his career insulting from defeating him in the primary. All of this is by way of saying that almost all of the liberal praise for McCain in the past was a product of McCain’s adoption of positions that liberals favored. Back then, he had high-minded principle, integrity and political courage because he said things that matched up with liberal assumptions. Now that the political landscape has changed and McCain’s calculations have changed to match it, he has supposedly betrayed “core principles.” Of course, these “core principles” that liberals thought that he had were nothing of the kind.

Naturally, when I go looking for informed commentary on Russian foreign policy the names Judith Miller and Doug Schoen are the first to come to mind. Who wouldn’t want to have the international affairs insights of a journalist best known for funneling pro-Iraq war agit-prop to The New York Times and some pollster? Their argument boils down to the usual “nefarious Russians are thwarting our noble intentions” story, and it all hinges on this claim:

Opposition leaders have long said they would eject Western forces from the base at Manas, as Russia desires.

Yes, they have said this for some time. The provisional government under Otunbayeva has also confirmed that the commitments made to the U.S. by the previous government would be honored. Everyone can acknowledge that Moscow encouraged opposition to Bakiyev and wanted him gone, but if this were solely aimed at getting the U.S. out of Manas the plan seems to have failed. Viewing it as an effort to reverse the results of the last “color” revolution in the “near-abroad” makes much more sense. Viewed that way, Bakiyev’s downfall should be greeted more with relief than with alarm in Washington.

I am also writing on this topic for my next column for The Week, so I won’t say much more right now, but there is something truly twisted in our national discourse regarding Russia and the former Soviet Union that anyone can regard it as a bad thing that Bakiyev is out of power, especially when the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan is not going to suffer as a result. Surely the popular coup in Kyrgyzstan should show us how absurd it is to have “an ongoing U.S.-Russian struggle for influence in Eurasia,” and it should also show us that America has nothing to gain and risks real national security interests in connection with Afghanistan by contesting for influence in these countries.

As someone quite sympathetic to the new Tory emphasis on decentralization and localism, I partly agree with Ross that the polling surge for the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives’ fading support could have very bad effects on the American right as well. Ross writes:

Whatever came of its exertions in the end, a Cameron government would at least put a particular set of right-of-center ideas to the test, and produce an actual record for American right-wingers to chew over. A hung Parliament, by contrast, will just confirm all the prejudices that stateside conservatives harbor about the Tories: Not only are they all Oxbridge squishes, but their squishiness doesn’t even win elections! (I see Jonah Goldberg is already striking this note.)

There are aspects of Cameronism — statist, paternalist, and eco-utopian — that may merit this kind of dismissal. But the core of the current Tory project is an attempt to apply Tocqueville’s insights about American society to the bloated British state.

Then again, it’s not as if movement conservatives are terribly interested in decentralization and localism in the first place. Nonetheless, there are quite a few American pundits who will take some satisfaction in a poor electoral showing for “Big Society” decentralism. Movement conservatives have always seemed remarkably hostile to the ideas of Red Tories, Front Porch republicans, “crunchy” conservatives and generally anyone on the right not convinced of the boundless virtues of “creative destruction” and economies of scale.

What should also be stressed here is that the rise of the Liberal Democrats and the ongoing collapse of Tory support make clear that the Tories are operating in a remarkably inhospitable political climate. As disastrous as Labour’s tenure has been, it enjoys built-in electoral advantages that would rightly infuriate Republicans if they existed here. The Tories have had a series of leaders before Cameron convinced that hewing to Republican-like hawkishness and largely acquiescing to Blair’s egregious trampling of civil liberties were the right moves. Instead of acting like a proper opposition party on these matters, the Tories mostly enabled Blair to run roughshod over British liberties and commit Britain to a prolonged military campaign in Iraq that most people in Britain opposed all along.

It should be no surprise that the Liberal Democrats are much more of a civil libertarian and antiwar party, and this will probably help boost the Liberal share of the vote come May 6. That is ground that the Tories could have tried to occupy over the last seven years, but they never attempted it. When at least 60% of the electorate prefers the center-left and left-liberal parties, the center-right party is going to be very constrained in how radical it can be on domestic policies. In light of all these things, the “Big Society” platform for all its limitations is a fairly bold statement of some kind of guiding principle for a leader who has far too often given the impression of being bereft of substance.

Alex Massie points out that a Tory-Liberal coalition emerging out of the electoral mess might have some advantages:

And it’s not as if there isn’t plenty of common ground for the Tories and Liberals to work together on. The “Big Society”, civil liberties, decentralisation, localism, public spending restraint and so on provide plenty of room for the parties to work together, whether formally or in an informal arrangement.

Regardless of how American conservatives react to such a coalition, that could be the best outcome for the quality of British government from among the available options.