American Foreign Policy Reaping Benefits Of Dumb Luck

“In other words, for all its many missteps of the past two decades, America is remarkably well placed to win the war of ideas now unfolding in the Middle East. This is not because Arabs are fond of America. Most aren’t, right now. But thanks to globalisation, education, satellite television and the palpable failure of the local alternatives, most Arabs (and Iranians) are fully aware of what sort of societies the Western democracies are, and they would like some of the same fresh air for themselves. Is America less powerful today than when its pilots were shooting up Saddam’s Republican Guard on the highway out of Kuwait 20 years ago? It has certainly learnt the hard way that it cannot shape the Middle East just as it wants. But its power of example remains strong in an Arab world whose people want most of all just to breathe free.”
 — How America wins wars of ideas now: Support despots who govern in direct opposition to our ideas. Abandon many of those ideas ourselves. Wait a few years.