AMERICA IS FUNDAMENTALLY INCAPABLE OF FOSTERING STABILITY IN UNFREE LANDS:

Learning to love change: Why America needs to end its obsession with stability (Thanassis Cambanis, April 3, 2011, Boston Globe)

An overemphasis on stability — and, perhaps, an erroneous definition of what “stability” even is — has begun harming, rather than helping, American interests in several current crisis spots. Our desire to keep a naval base in a stable Bahrain, for example, has allied us with the marginalized and increasingly radical Bahraini royal family, and even led us to acquiesce to a Saudi Arabian invasion of the tiny island to quell protests last month. To keep Syria stable, American policy has largely deferred to the existing Assad regime, supporting one of the nastiest despots in the region even as his troops have fired live ammunition at unarmed protesters. In a moral sense, this “stability first” policy has been putting America on the wrong side of the democratic transitions in one Arab country after another. And in the contest for pure influence, it is the more flexible approaches of other nations that seem to be gaining ground in such a fast-changing environment. If we’re serious about our goals in the Middle East, “stability” is looking less and less like the right way to achieve them.

Our ideas always swamp the aims of the striped-pants set.

Posted by oj at April 3, 2011 4:37 PM
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