I happen to believe that the character of the regimes the U.S. partners with abroad matters. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule when American national interests are at stake. Statecraft is a dexterous art. In the main, however, promoting liberal democracy abroad serves U.S. interests. Barring prohibitive exigencies, the U.S. should do what it can to encourage democratic reforms in our partners and preserve those conventions in our allies.
That’s what I believe, but it’s not what the realists believe. To the extent proponents of that school are familiar with it, realists should reject ideological foreign policy prescriptions. To hear them tell it, the character of a pro-American regime shouldn’t matter to policymakers in Washington so long as it is pro-American. The only calculation that should preoccupy foreign affairs practitioners is: How many advantages can we extract from our allies and partners until our rent-seeking reaches the point of diminishing returns?
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