Stability vs. Democracy.

In the last few years, Republicans and Democrats have swapped their political ideologies in the realm of foreign policy. After 9/11, the Democrats became the party of the status quo, preferring to maintain stability and the old order and lacking a true vision for the future. And it was the Republicans, under the leadership of President Bush and the much maligned neo-cons, who realized that the old systems that had been created after WWII and congealed during the Cold War could no longer be effective in this new age of non-state actors.

The vision that emerged in the Bush Administration was one of radical transformation of the Middle East from the established support of useful dictators – the “he might be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch” approach – to democratization as the only way forward. This was again expressed by President Bush in his Air Force Academy Commencement Speech:

For decades, free nations tolerated oppression in the Middle East for the sake of stability. In practice, this approach brought little stability, and much oppression. So I have changed this policy. In the short-term, we will work with every government in the Middle East dedicated to destroying the terrorist networks. In the longer-term, we will expect a higher standard of reform and democracy from our friends in the region. Democracy and reform will make those nations stronger and more stable, and make the world more secure by undermining terrorism at it source. Democratic institutions in the Middle East will not grow overnight; in America, they grew over generations. Yet the nations of the Middle East will find, as we have found, the only path to true progress is the path of freedom and justice and democracy.

With the perceived difficulties in Iraq many, including some conservatives, have taken a step back from this. Still, the majority seem to continue to harbor the belief (or at least the hope) that such a transformation will succeed.

Alternatively, the new Democrats including Kerry have no such beliefs and hopes. As Jeff Jacoby writes in today’s Boston Globe, their goal is not change but stability.

Similarly, Kerry told reporters in April that the United States should not get hung up on trying to democratize Iraq.
"I have always said from day one that the goal here . . . is a stable Iraq, not whether or not there's a full democracy," ... And in case the intended contrast with Bush, who speaks often about the importance of bringing democracy to the Middle East, wasn't clear, Kerry's foreign policy adviser, Rand Beers, underscored it. "We have been concerned for some time," he told the Los Angeles Times, "that Bush's position about having some kind of democratic state was too heroic."
This is how members of the so-called "realist" school of statecraft talk. Theirs is a cautious, managerial worldview, one that values what it sees as concrete interests much more highly than broad democratic ideals.
[…]
The problem with Kerry-Bush I Realpolitik is that the stability it champions is often beneficial only in the short term, and sometimes not even then. American backing for Middle Eastern dictatorships helped turn the region into an incubator of terrorism. The supposedly "realistic" decision to bolster Saudi Arabia's royal family by leaving thousands of US troops within its borders after the Gulf War inflamed an Islamist fanatic named Osama bin Laden. Iraq under Saddam was certainly stable. It was also a threat to its neighbors, a supporter of terrorism, and a savage violator of human rights.
[…]
A free and democratic Middle East will do more to make America secure in the long run than Kerry's focus on stability will. Whether Bush can make good on his vow to transform the region is very much an open question. It is an enormous undertaking, and Bush may fail. But his eye is on the right prize. His opponent's -- like his father's -- isn't.

The stability that Kerry and the Democrats seek does not solve the problems that exist; it merely perpetuates the existing corrupt and violent systems, and as Thomas Friedman shows in his column (at least in the beginning of it) breeds the next generation of tyrants.