UNFORTUNATELY FOR THEM, IT'S AN EVANGELICAL COUNTRY (via Gene Brown):

The Kosovo Conundrum (Peter Beinart, 4/12/07, TIME)

Remember Kosovo? It was fought without U.N. approval against a dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, who, while slaughtering his own people, posed no direct threat to the U.S. Had NATO's campaign failed, it would have been Clinton and Blair who looked like reckless ideologues. But it worked. And Blair made it the centerpiece of a new foreign policy creed, which he called the "doctrine of international community."

That vision, which Clinton largely shared, summed up Democratic foreign policy at the turn of the millennium. In a globalized world, bad things that happen in other countries spread more quickly to our shores. Genocides spawn refugees, who destabilize their neighbors. Corruption sparks financial meltdowns, which rock the world economy. Pandemics hopscotch across the globe. Blair's answer was for Britain and the U.S., working through international institutions, to intervene more aggressively in the domestic affairs of other nations: to strengthen their financial and public-health systems, to push them toward capitalism and democracy, and in cases of extreme neglect and abuse, to take over the nation-building process by force.

For much of the democratic foreign policy establishment, that's still the prism--look at Obama's push for U.N. or even NATO intervention in Darfur, or Edwards' tough talk about Vladimir Putin's rollback of democracy in Russia. Blairism, at its heart, is optimistic. It assumes that the U.S., working with its allies, can make other countries freer, healthier and richer. It assumes those countries will generally want our help. Above all, it assumes that the key to U.S. security is building a world that looks more like us. Blairism may be less militaristic than neoconservatism, but it's still a missionary creed.

Grass-roots Democrats, however--the people who will actually vote for Clinton, Edwards or Obama--are not in a missionary mood. In a June 2006 German Marshall Fund survey, only 35% of Democrats, compared with 64% of Republicans, said the U.S. should "help establish democracy in other countries."

You can sell isolationism for brief periods of time in America, especially in the immediate wake of foreign adventures, but the leadership's trips abroad to meet with authoritarian leaders who actively suppress the democratic aspirations of their people is a tad too reactionary.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 13, 2007 12:32 PM