Sometimes the news-cycle fates align nicely to highlight a question deserving of more discussion. Today, that question was what role democracy promotion should play in the Obama administration's foreign policy and how the U.S. should interact with odious but strategically useful authoritarian regimes. Full Story »
Posted by Kaizar Campwala
The report makes great reading, but the implications of it for U.S. policy are less clear. At this morning event, Robert Kagan, Peter Beinart and, James Traub — three scholars who approach democracy-promotion from very political perspectives — wrestled with this question in a panel discussion that got pretty heated at times. The central question was when it is appropriate for the U.S. to cooperate with the new authoritarian powerhouses, with Kagan taken a purist pro-democracy stance and Beinart and and Traub emphasizing the need for trade-offs and cooperation on issues like climate change (in the case of China) and nonproliferation (in the case of Russia.)
