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A generation of American activists was inspired by the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, which promised moral clarity amid the cruel compromises of the cold war. As Barack Obama vividly explained in Dreams from My Father, he was one of them. Given the foreign policy dilemmas that the president will face in the years ahead, it's worth thinking through the lessons of the South African transition.

With the possible exception of the fall of fascism in Germany and Japan, the South African experiment represents the most successful transition from authoritarianism the world has yet seen. And as South Africans will ceaselessly remind you, there was nothing inevitable about this success, particularly in light of the massive economic inequality and enduring racial resentment...