The persistent problem of how to deal with American-allied strongmen has long tripped up a president who prefers pragmatic solutions to moral purity but has been unable to find much of either in the Middle East. While every U.S. president struggles to balance values like democracy and human rights with national security, Obama has struggled more than most because of the vast gap between his inspirational rhetoric and the compromises he has made with thuggish world leaders, especially—but by no means exclusively—in a Middle East where authoritarian heads of state from Riyadh to Cairo have cracked down with renewed vigor after the unsettling protests of the Arab Spring.
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