The Folly of Faith-Based Foreign Policy

The liberal cosmopolitan view, that all other faiths must ultimately crumble before its majesty and appeal, that every knee must bow and every tongue confess that liberal cosmopolitanism is the One True Idea, is, to put it as inoffensively as possible, not proven. But it is the faith in which much of the American political establishment has been raised and, while some of our rulers are hypocrites mouthing liberal platitudes in order to gain power, the liberal faith burns bright in our President and many of those around him. It led them to predict that Erdogan would lead Turkey to become more liberal and democratic; that the Arab Spring would lead to a wave of liberal democratic state building across the Middle East; and that, in due course, Khomeinist Iran, through the same inevitable and inexorable processes that are transforming the whole world into a liberal utopia, will become a liberal regime at peace with itself, its neighbors and the United States.