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Ever since the end of World War II, a classic problem has been debated and redebated: the alleged conflict between American security interests and American idealism. In one view, America's strategic position in its global conflict with Communism, which is the greatest threat to democracy, must be the first consideration. In the other view, the moral values that America stands for are more important, and ultimately more powerful politically. Much of the argument, however, is artificial. The Carter Administration tried for a while to put idealism first, by cutting aid to repressive regimes, but soon had to make exceptions for countries strategically necessary to the U.S. Conversely, the Reagan Administration came in with a policy of more or less indiscriminate support for anti-Communist regimes but soon learned that anti- Communist militancy and rhetoric were not enough by themselves to make a country a reliable U.S. ally.
In fact, the idealistic approach and the security approach often converge. When a regime becomes so unpopular that it no longer has the support of its own people, it has obviously lost its usefulness as an anti-Communist force, however solid its anti-Communist convictions. The Reagan Administration first learned that lesson in El Salvador when it realized that a regime dominated by the loudest and fiercest anti-Communists--but hated for its death squads and reactionary economic policies--was not America's best bet. The U.S. rightly decided to back instead a left-of-center politician, Jose Napoleon Duarte, who may seem like a dangerous socialist to conservatives but who is in fact a committed democrat with a popular following.
The lesson was even plainer in the Philippines, where Marcos had become so unpopular that his continuance in office would have helped the Communist insurgents and endangered U.S. bases--another situation where idealism and realism successfully coincided.
But obviously the reverse is not necessarily true: while repression can strengthen Communism, removing repression does not automatically weaken Communism or other totalitarian forces. The Kennedy Administration decided that the Diem regime in Viet Nam no longer deserved U.S. support, among other reasons because its oppressiveness made it unpopular and therefore ineffectual. But the governments we put in place after we eliminated Diem were not necessarily any better in the long run. The Carter Administration made a similar decision about Somoza in Nicaragua, and yet again the Sandinistas are hardly an improvement, as most Nicaraguans know only too well today. The withdrawal of U.S. support from the Shah of Iran clearly came much too late, but it is far from certain that an earlier move would have enabled the U.S. to control or influence the fanatical anti-Western passions of Islamic fundamentalism.