Eisenhower administration officials originally thought that South Vietnamese dictator Ngo Dinh Diem was a democratic tiger who would repel the communist assault against his country. Jimmy Carter toasted the shah of Iran, contending that he was loved by his people and that Iran was an “island of stability” in that part of the world. Carter’s toast occurred barely a year before the Iranian people ousted their beloved monarch and forced him into exile. Vice President George H.W. Bush made an infamous toast to Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos in 1981, hailing his alleged commitment to democracy. Marcos had been a blatant dictator ever since he had proclaimed martial law in September 1972, and proceeded to use those expanded powers to enrich his cronies and loot the country.President Ronald Reagan proclaimed the Nicaraguan Contras to be “the moral equivalent of America’s founding fathers.” Senator Joseph Lieberman asserted that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)—a motley collection of unreconstructed communists, intolerant Albanian nationalists, Islamic radicals, and garden-variety criminals—stood for the same values as America. Even worse, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright acted as though the KLA did.
Galen Carpenter también pone como ejemplos a Viktor Yushchenko, líder de la fallida revolución naranja en Ucrania, y al presidente georgiano Mikheil Saakashvili, que pese a su imagen de pro-occidental se le acusa de haber reprimido a manifestantes pacíficos, censurado medios críticos y arrestado a opositores políticos, aparte de incitar una guerra con Rusia con la expectativa de que interviniera Estados Unidos.
La postura de Galen Carpenter, en cualquier caso, no es maximalista:
There are times, of course, when crucial American interests require us to make common cause with unsavory foreign political figures. But we need to be certain that such associations are essential, not just a lazy convenience, and that the chosen client is competent. Too often, the affiliations have not met even one of those standards, much less both.
Finally, American leaders need to maintain a sober, realistic view of even justifiable relationships. Franklin D. Roosevelt famously quipped about Anastasio Somoza Garcia, the corrupt, but friendly dictator in Nicaragua: “He’s an S.O.B., but he’s our S.O.B.” That cynicism might seem jarring, but it is better than actually believing that the likes of Ferdinand Marcos, Mikheil Saakashvili and Ahmed Chalabi were true champions of democracy and freedom. There should be no place for that kind of gullibility in U.S. foreign policy.
