So What Is Our Strategic Foreign Policy Plan?

The administration's "on again off again" response this week to the Libyan crisis is a cause for real concern. By now it is pretty clear that President Obama's advisers are badly divided over the whole issue of how to respond to the various Arab popular revolts, and that he is just responding reactively to day-by-day events, not on the basis of a well-thought-out foreign policy strategy.  In Egypt the result of our indecision was that we ended up in a lose-lose situation. The opposition saw that we really weren't all that dedicated to democracy, and the leaders of other authoritarian regimes in the area - regimes that we depend on like the Saudis- learned that the US wasn't a dependable ally. So now neither side trusts us, and in Egypt we may well end up with a Muslim Brotherhood government as authoritarian as the previous one, but hostile to the US.

Frankly I think foreign policy based on vague idealistic principles like "spreading democracy" is dangerously naive, and historically has generally led to bad, even disastrous outcomes.  I would be much happier if I thought the Obama administration was in the hands of experienced and realistic advisers who understood history, appreciated the differences in the cultures of the nations we deal with, and had a clear vision of and strategy for protecting American interests.  I don't see much evidence of that at the moment.  In the case of Libya the most pragmatic adviser Obama has got, Secretary Gates, has been overridden by the starry-eyed liberal interventionists in this administration, and that will probably not lead to a good outcome.