Winter 2009

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Letter from the Editor: Winter 2009

We are all realists now. Or so the revised wisdom has it. This new understanding, far from remaining only the property of pundits, finds blunt expression in the disdain that some of Barack Obama’s key foreign policy advisors have expressed for the “Wilsonian” coloration of recent U.S. foreign policy. Tough guys, they would like everyone to know, don’t do democracy. The point is well taken. But these are not tough guys.

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Democracy promotion isn't quite disproved in Iraq. Active campaigning in forthcoming local and regional elections suggests a lively interest in participative government. Democracy promotion can remain a feature of "Smart Pragmatism" which will soon replace Smart Power as the fashionable slogan for US involvement in international affairs. We remain strong, but not as strong. We will have to pick our interests more carefully now. Democracy promotion in Iraq, still a reasonable prospect for a modern technocratic country within the arc of Islam, seems a better bet than, say, spending limited resources on Russia or China.

Posted by Bob Fonow | January 24, 2009 11:41:37 AM EST

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