Max Boot flirts with realism:
'I donâ??t have a problem with the fact that Obama isnâ??t doing much to promote democracy in states that are strategic allies. My problem is that he has missed â?? and is still missing â?? a golden opportunity to promote democracy in the country that happens to be our deadliest enemy at the moment. He has let the Green Revolution come and go in Iran while maintaining a hands-off attitude. There is surely a case to be made for attempting to reach a modus vivendi with the Nazarbayevs of the world â?? dictators who are concerned only with keeping power and are willing to accommodate our interests. There is no case to be made for accommodation with the Ahmadinejads and Khameinis of the world â?? dictators with grandiose ambitions that threaten ourselves and our allies and who have no interest at all in reaching any kind of entente with us.
'
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?
And I would disagree that there's "no case to be made for accommodation" with the "likes" of Iran's rulers: isn't Nixon-to-China a pretty good example of accommodating a regime we loathed (which had nukes and an orders of magnitude worse record on human rights) to achieve a larger strategic good? We accommodate Pakistan and you could make the case that the rap sheet on that country is at least as bad as Iran's, if not worse. They supported the Taliban during the 1990s, providing crucial support for a regime that enabled 9/11. They have done more to proliferate nuclear weapons than any country on Earth. They are rapidly building out their nuclear weapons capacity while waging a terror war against their democratic neighbor. They have a military and intelligence service which is reportedly riddled with Islamists and they continue to release Taliban fighters who turn around and kill Americans in Afghanistan.
There are differences between the two countries, obviously. Pakistan gets a few billion a year in U.S. development aid for their trouble and Iran gets sanctions, to take one significant one.