U.S. needs a new way to deal with dictators
Hal Brands notes:
“Kirkpatrick argued
that insisting that authoritarian allies adhere to U.S. standards of political
freedom and individual rights was an invitation to disaster. It would
destabilize those regimes internally, raising the likelihood of a takeover by
more radical and hostile forces. …
The second school
of thought, expressed most prominently by U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s
secretary of state, George Shultz, held that this choice between interests and
ideals was a false one. Supporting dictators was no guarantee of stability,
because those regimes provoked hatred and discontent that could eventually
erupt into revolution”.
Trump’s Middle East ambitions have been exposed as misguided fantasies
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trumps-middle-east-ambitions-have-been-exposed-as-misguided-fantasies/2018/10/14/5e007bc8-cd69-11e8-920f-dd52e1ae4570_story.html