Obama, diplomacy, and democracy

The (UK) Independent’s Adrian Hamilton, slams the Obama administration’s foreign policy of prioritizing diplomacy over political reform in places like Burma, Iran, North Korea,

We are back, in other words, to the old world of propping up discredited and oppressive regimes because stability has once again become more important than values…

…the problem of the doctrine of spreading democracy and humanitarian intervention was not that the aims were necessarily wrong, but they were used as cover for a Western assertion of power that was entirely contradictory to them…

You have only to travel almost anywhere abroad to understand just how much damage the charge of hypocrisy has done to “our cause” as we talk of “democracy” and “freedom” while all the while interfering to the opposite effect.

…we should stand here saying to those who want freedom abroad: “Yes, we are on your side, we won’t keep quiet as to your plight and if you want a safe haven, our doors are open here.”

I agree fully.  The lesson the Obama administration seemed to have learned from the Bush administration was that pushing for democracy has no place in US foreign policy.  Yet, as Hamilton notes, the administration’s efforts to advance democracy were typically insincere.  Moreover, the world didn’t turn against the US because the Bush administration advocated for democracy, but because it started wars.  The Obama administration sees diplomacy as a policy.  It’s not.  It’s a means to a policy.  And if the Obama administration values diplomacy over democracy in countries like Egypt and Iran where the people want change, the image of the US will not improve.