The CSAD conference continued today, launched by morning remarks with Elliott Abrams and Nicholas Burns. I’d like to focus on the speakers’ insistence that American foreign policy relies on a balance between American interests and ideals. That’s a broad theme to cover, but as the Observer’s Tess Waggoner noted in her article in this week’s issue, the question of promoting democracy abroad includes not only “should” and “how,” but also “can.” Our intervention sometimes benefits neither our interests nor our ideals, as opposed to one at the expense of the other.

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