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experience revolutions are usually the countries that lack the
preconditions for Anglo-American style relatively peaceful
revolutions that end with the establishment of stable constitutional
order. If things were going well in those countries, they would not be
having revolutions.
Historically, revolutions in foreign countries are both necessary for
their political development and inevitable. They often tend to make
American foreign policy more difficult — and the world more
dangerous. On the evidence so far, this is the pattern we are seeing in
the Middle East today.
Revolutionary Realism?
The difficulty American policymakers have in coming to grips with
the recurring phenomenon of foreign revolutions is rooted in
America’s paradoxical world role. We are not just the world’s
leading revolutionary nation; we are also the chief custodian of the
international status quo. We are upholding the existing balance of
power and the international system of finance and trade with one
hand, but the American agenda in the world ultimately aims to
transform rather than to defend.
It is harder to be an effective revolutionary power than to be a
conservative one — and it is harder still to combine the two roles.
A traditional conservative power knows what it wants. Revolutionary
powers have a tougher job; building the future is harder work than
holding on to the past. This is particularly true in the American case;
the global transformation we seek is unparalleled for depth,
complexity and scale.
We are not sure how this revolutionary transformation works. We
know that it involves liberal political change: governments of law
rather than of men and legitimacy derived from the consent of the
governed as measured in regular and free elections. We also know
that involves intellectual and social change: traditional religious ideas

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