Andrew Sullivan attempts to ding Daniel Larison for an overly dogmatic realist critique of democratization.

Larison first:

Egypt and Jordan can remain at peace with Israel despite the profound unpopularity of this arrangement because the governments are unaccountable and authoritarian. Surely the elections in Gaza should tell us that democratization allows people with deep grievances to vent them by empowering the most extreme and radical elements. This has proved to be ruinous for people in Gaza and far from what Israel wants. Democratization and regional stability are incompatible. If you desire one, you cannot have the other.

Sullivan writes, “I don’t buy the argument that in the long run, autocracies are more stable than democracies, even in the Middle East,” and goes on to cite Iran as proof of the instability of the autocratic model when it comes to succession.

He’s missing the point, though. I’m not sure even steely Larison would go so far as to argue that autocratic succession is any kind of ideal. Autocracies by their very nature change leaders amidst a tension that can at any time spill over into war. Indeed, the greatest achievement of democracy has been that power transfers have been institutionalized to the point of violence being a nearly unthinkable outcome.

What Daniel is correctly railing against, however, is the by far most questionable aspect of Democratic Peace theory: namely that democracies do not go to war against each other. Democratic Peace theorists like the claim, with some sleights of hand, that history bears out this claim. But Daniel’s counter-example is a powerful one. Is there much doubt that the Arab Street, if given access to the reins of power, would demand anything but the annihilation of Israel?

Brad DeLong has been on fire of late. Without much context, I present to you my favorite paragraph of the week (from this very worthwhile post):

…if you had told any Republican in 1980 that 2008 would see (a) a Negro with an Arabic-Swahili name beating a veteran figher pilot in the presidential polls and (b) gay marriage as the big cultural issue of the day, said Republican would have blown several gaskets. And if you had said that this would have been the result of an “Age of Reagan” said Republican would have melted down completely.

Reagan-worship has always struck me as a strange thing. Though his presidency perhaps hastened the end of the Cold War, and though many people found his sunny bromides inspiring, my memories of the end of his administration are dominated by the disgrace over Iran-Contra, with the president coming off as either a senile grandparent or a mendacious schemer.

Brad DeLong goes back in time via Lexis to prove that there’s nothing particularly new or shocking about how things work in Washington today. This is not to say that we should just shrug off the excesses and lawlessness of the Bush administration as business as usual, but rather that we should try to keep perspective. I get the sense that 8 years of Bush and his media enablers is being seen as some sort of profound nadir, the depths of which will shake us awake to a new way of doing things. I very much doubt it will work like that.

If you don’t feel like reading a ton of Balkan history, Christopher Hitchens distills what you need to know about Kosovo and delivers it in his inimitable polemic style:

In fact, Kosovo has never been recognized internationally as part of Serbia. It was only ever recognized as part of Yugoslavia, and with the liquidation of that state Serbian claims upon its territory became null and void. A little history here is necessary.

During the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, the then-distinct kingdom of Serbia, with some regional allies, did manage to invade and annex a formerly Ottoman territory that had been the scene of a Serbian military defeat in—wait for it—1389. (In that year, England was laying emotional claims to large and beautiful areas of France.)

As most things Hitchens, the essay’s worth reading in its entirety. If you’re hungry for more Balkanalia after you’re done, whip out your wallet and pay Noel Malcolm. Though it’s a short history, don’t go expecting it to be particularly “lite”—it’s a solid, well sourced book written by an academic (not a sloppy prejudiced screed scribbled by some hack journalist).

Dana Perino shattered my idea of her the other day:

Perino said she “panicked” when she got the Cuban missile crisis question because she wasn’t exactly sure what the Cuban missile crisis was. “I really know nothing about the Cuban missile crisis,” Perino said. “It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I’m pretty sure.”

 Perino said she went home that night and asked her husband, “‘Wasn’t that, like, the Bay of Pigs thing?’ And he said, ‘Oh, Dana.’”

I had been thinking that there was a mysterious, icy-cold uptightness about her, an uptightness which I found very appealing. Alas, it’s just “deer in the headlights” syndrome, a far less attractive trait. What else does she not know, one wonders?