Let your people go

Matt Yglesias usually does an excellent job of pointing out the shortcomings of conventional approaches to foreign policy...but a somewhat less-than-excellent job of advocating clear alternatives. In this post, he discusses the limitations of the U.S. threatening Egypt's government into going democratic. Good points all around. But if we want to help Egyptians increase their freedom, what do we do? Here's he's not very clear, and even explicitly says that he's "pessimistic that much will get done."

Hogwash. There's plenty to be done, and a glance at our past successes - South Korea, Taiwan, Mexico - clearly demonstrate that it's possible for the U.S. to encourage a country to go democratic. And, as Yglesias says, it's not by threatening these countries; it's by embracing them. We respect the sovereignty of dictators, and become a key ally of those dictators. Then we encourage people from that country to come study and work in the U.S. When they return, those people will have see the better life available here, and they'll push for change at home. And when the dictator pushes back, that's when we threaten to withdraw our support unless the dictator lets people power prevail. And when people power prevails, the people of that country will feel a strong sense of national pride, for having democratized their own country, and they'll feel positive toward the U.S. as well.

Of course, using this method would require a paradigm shift in our foreign policy thinking. We'd have to respect the sovereignty of dictators. Obviously, we can't do this for monsters like Kim Jong-il or the Burmese junta, but for authoritarian technocrats like Hosni Mubarak it just might work. And that means we've got to stop clucking and finger-wagging at any country that's rated "Not Free" in Freedom House's reports. That's a bold change, but it's one that would work. Pragmatic idealism demands that we do things like this.

It would be nice if liberal foreign-policy mavens like Yglesias started taking a harder look at alternative paradigms like this one.