Democracy For Me, But Not For Thee

David Brooks quotes John Kerry as describing human-rights activists promoting the Varela project in Cuba as "counter-productive". Here is the article in question; Kerry's supporters will have a bit of a squawk because Kerry supports efforts to bring democracy to Cuba, just not these efforts. Kerry non-lovers will enjoy the tidbit that Kerry supported the Varela Project at one time, but no longer.

Mickey commented on the "realist" strain in Kerry's foreign policy thinking a while back, inspired by the WaPo article to which David Brooks also refers. Mr. Brooks also mentions an Atlantic Monthly article by Josh Marshall which strikes similar notes, as excerpted below.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum rallies to Kerry's uhh, this is a defense? Kevin seems as pumped up about his guy as I am about mine.

Atlantic Monthly excerpt:

[Kerry foreign policy advisor] Feldman emphasized the need for skilled diplomatic management and a willingness to use force abroad, but also an essential caution. The more he spoke, the more he called to mind the policies of the first Bush Administration.

George H.W. Bush has receded into history. But his Administration's traditional if unimaginative attitude toward foreign relations lives on through his National Security Adviser, Brent Scowcroft, who re-emerged two years ago as one of the most unabashed and difficult-to-dismiss critics of the buildup to war in Iraq. Democrats once viewed Scowcroft as the champion of an amoral and shortsighted foreign policy that sacrificed American values in order to achieve stable relations with great powers and avoid trouble in hot spots like the Balkans (a view, incidentally, shared by many of the neoconservatives who surround the current President). It was Scowcroft who secretly traveled to Beijing shortly after the Tiananmen Square massacre to reassure the Chinese that government-to-government relations needn't suffer despite the bipartisan indignation of the American public. But in 2002, lacking a consistent criticism of the drive toward war, many Democrats eagerly took shelter in Scowcroft's high-profile opposition.

Wondering how he would take it, I said to Feldman, "What you're describing to me sounds a lot like what I'd expect from Brent Scowcroft."

"Yes," he said. "I think a lot of what you'd see from a Kerry Administration might be like that. I think there'd be a lot of similarities." When I later made the same suggestion to Kerry's chief foreign-policy adviser, Rand Beers, he agreed.

Comments

[Tim]

Yep. Vote Kerry for President. He has the perfect foreign policy for a September 10, 2001 world...

[Chip Halstead]

This post reminded me of a thought that crossed my mind a few weeks ago, when Kerry made some statement or other windily dismissing the difficult, long-term project to make Iraq over into a free and democratic country.

I'd wondered then whether Kerry was, at bottom, merely a political operator with little understanding of or faith in democracy (in the full sense of the term, i.e., representative self-government, the rule of law, due process rights, personal freedom, equality before the law, free market capitalism).

Instead he sounded like someone whose raw ambition would propel him to a position of power in any old system. Whether fascist, communist, authoritarian, democratic, aristocratic, monarchic, theocratic, it wouldn't matter. Completely amoral, he'd take the rules of the game for granted, and simply play the game to win.