Democracy is now the realistic policy.(Geopolitics)

"The policy of the United States is to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.... All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."

Those and other idealistic passages in President Bush's second inaugural address sparked criticism that he was biting off more than even a superpower could chew. Are such prescriptions realistic in the Middle East? Is it wise to demand that voting must follow economic liberalization in China, or is isolating an autocracy of a billion people too dangerous? Is an elected but increasingly authoritarian Russian president Putin a quasi-, pre-, or post-democrat?

The foreign policy Realists want nothing to do with George Bush's idealism. They rely exclusively on deterrence and balance of power to adjudicate relations abroad: We must deal with the world as it is, they say, rather than as we think it should be. Isolationists likewise bristle at the idea of expending blood or treasure in an open-ended commitment to spread our values. And don't expect liberals to applaud the new idealism, as if their 1960s vision of an ethical foreign policy has at last arrived. The Left's attachment to "multiculturalism" long ago ended the idea that the U.S. had any right to place Western ideas of politics over indigenous practices. Other "progressives" are de facto pacifists; for them, any use of U.S. force is a betrayal of global diplomacy.

Old-style State Department officers, meanwhile, will resist formulating any typology of bad, worse, and worst regimes. Censuring Iran, Syria, North Korea, or Cuba is easy enough. But are nuclear China and Russia to be isolated or praised? Should mitigating factors temper our democratic crusade--the oil of a Wahabi Saudi Arabia or Castro-friendly Venezuela, a Mubarak dynasty that promises not to war against Israel, a Pakistan that offers sporadic help in rounding up terrorists?

Despite these many reservations and pitfalls, George Bush's new idealism may eventually make America's foreign initiatives more consistent and predictable to friend and enemy alike. ...