Obama's Wilsonian Realism

There was an interesting post on the BBC webpage about the actual effects of Obama's Iran policy: 

In an apparent shift from the Bush administration's efforts to foster regime change in Iran by financing opposition groups, the Obama White House has all but dismantled the Iran Democracy Fund.

While the move has been criticised by neo-conservatives in the US, it has been welcomed by Iranian human rights and pro-democracy activists.

The controversial program was initiated by the Bush administration in an effort to topple the clerical regime in Tehran by financing Iranian NGOs.

While heralded by some in Washington, reactions in Iran to the program were overwhelmingly negative.

This goes to a structural and conceptual flaw in public foreign policy discussions.  There is a false distinction made, in my opinion, between realists and Wilsonian internationalists, wherein human rights are seen as a binary choice.  This ignores the history of infantilism in the history of international relations.   For example, the history of the West would have been different had Kaiser Wilhelm II not fired Bismark in a fit of pique.  Without Bismark to continuously adjust German foreign policy to fit shifting European power dynamics, World War I was inevitable.

Much of America's foreign policy disasters of the past nine years are not a result of Bush's conservatism (however defined), but his infantilism and his dependence on equally infantile (but profoundly ruthless) advisors.  Thus, for short-term domestic political reasons, the G.W. Bush Administration wrecked the U.S. position in the Middle East.

This had Orwellian consequences, since Americans are not unique in their predisposition to think in a binaric fashion; the Bush Administration became, in essence an outreach arm of the Iranian Foreign Ministry with its neocon component serving as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's propaganda ministry. Anything the United States said or did had the oppostite consequence in the reigon.

What we have is the paradox of Obama advancing human rights in Iran by avoiding engagement, much to the disgust of the Iranian government and its co-belligerents at the Weekly Standard.