Slate's Fred Kaplan: "The Idealist in the Bluebonnets"

[flpoljunkie]

The Idealist in the Bluebonnets

What Bush's meeting with the Saudi ruler really means.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, April 26, 2005, at 3:10 PM PT

Monday's chummy meeting between President Bush and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah—replete with a hand-holding stroll through the Crawford Ranch bluebonnets—should splash some cold water on the dreamy gaze that has transfixed too many faces this season.

It's a natural temptation to exaggerate the impact of tumultuous events—to see a hopeful advance as a cosmic leap, an unexpected twist as the harbinger of a new direction in the course of human events. The armistice of 1918 moved Woodrow Wilson to declare "an end to all wars." The West's triumph over communism excited Francis Fukuyama into believing we'd reached "the end of history." And this winter's drama in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Ukraine inspired George W. Bush to proclaim that American interests and American ideals are no longer at odds and, in fact, are identical—that, in other words, the dilemmas which have racked statesmen across the span of American history are now resolved.

But then Crown Prince Abdullah came to visit.

<>Which leads us back to the stroll through those bluebonnets. Regardless of what Bush really thinks about the Saudi royal family and its undemocratic ways, he—like any other modern American president—has a strong interest in assuring access to oil, preferably at lower prices. Similarly, a president might like China's rulers to treat dissidents more humanely, but he really wants China to keep buying dollars and floating the U.S. deficit. (Bush's commitment to freedom might be taken more seriously if he took action to promote oil conservation, and cut the deficit, in order to make us less beholden to the Saudis and Chinese.) These conflicting desires are nothing new. During the Cold War, presidents tried to undercut communism and to pressure the Kremlin to ease emigration; but they tried even harder to avoid World War III.

The point is not that realpolitik always trumps values. But there usually is a tension between the two. Sometimes a nation can afford to choose the latter; sometimes it can't; sometimes a balance can be managed; sometimes the two coincide. But it's a delusion—a defiance of everything Condi Rice learned in graduate school—to pretend they're one and the same.

[KoKo]

1. Could you give the link for this? Thanks....bet you forgot. n/t

[flpoljunkie]

2. I, did, indeed. Thanks! Link below.

http://www.slate.com/id/2117517/