In the run-up to the Iraq War, many of us raised a familiar objection: not that democracy was undesirable, but that it was not necessarily ours to impose. Iraq, we were told, was not “ready.” Besides, we maintained cordial relations with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and others for whom democracy was at best a distant rumor. The question was never whether democracy was good, but whether it was our role—and whether we possessed the wisdom or resources—to midwife it by force.
That hesitation has curiously vanished.
Today, the administration speaks with an unsettling breeziness about regime change—not only in Venezuela, but in Greenland, and, on occasion, even Canada. The question of whether such interventions would serve the interests of those who actually live in these places appears almost beside the point. Feasibility is waved away. Responsibility scarcely enters the conversation.
At the same time, we are told Europe should no longer accept migrants from the Global South, while masked federal agents are granted sweeping discretion to arrest and deport people in American cities. A 60 Minutes segment—fact-checked, vetted, and sober—detailing the treatment of undocumented migrants in El Salvador is quietly pulled. Transparency, it seems, has become negotiable.
Meanwhile, we declare rhetorical war on wind turbines—among the most efficient responses to a world increasingly starved for power. We look away as a friendly Russia jails citizens for calling its invasion of Ukraine a war. Healthcare grows steadily more unaffordable. Corporate power consolidates. Inequality is treated not as a problem to be solved, but as an irritant to be ignored.
Which raises an uncomfortable question: what does success even look like now?
We want peace. We hope for the safety of our soldiers. But how are we to understand “victory” when the leader of the so-called free world no longer seems especially committed to freedom—when equality, pluralism, and self-determination are recast as indulgences rather than principles?
It is a strange moment indeed when one hesitates not merely to cheer, but to ask whether one’s own side still stands for the good.