Ken,

"Despotism" has many components, and certainly the perceptions of the governed regarding how one rose to power and how one is sustained in power is nearly as important as is how they feel about how one governs while in power.

The coup we ran in 1953 to take out the democratically selected leader of Iran because he dared to stand up to the British and their rape (robbery?) of the Iranian oil resources is not our finest chapter. The Shah was many things, but he was never legitimate and he was always a "Made in the USA" leader. In hindsight we should have told the Brits to get over it and worked out a relationship with Mosaddegh.

It was a Cold War though, we had a new president, we were deep into a Korean conflict that could have easily became a war with a "newly" enemy China; The French were getting defeated by communists in Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaya were struggling with Communists as well, newly nuclear Russia was flirting with Mosaddegh, and Ken White had just retired for the third time from DoD. It was a bad year, and it seemed like the right thing at the time.

But now it is 2011. The Cold War is long over, though the majority of our governmental and diplomatic framework for waging it remains rusted in place. No longer containing Soviet threats, or even communist ideology threats, it now serves primarily to sustain a family of wealthy despots who don't cut us many special favors (no discount oil for US coming out of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Iraq...), and most have become enabled by such relationships to become even more removed from the concerns of their own citizens.

As the Saudis like to brag, the people have no taxation, so they get no representation. I suspect someday when they are sitting in exile, scraping by on their last Billion once their assets are nationalized, they won't think that is as clever as they do currently.

But the U.S. need not, and should not abandon these governments. Nor should the U.S. use the history of our relationships with these governments ; or the rise of AQ and Islamist ideologies to rationalize not supporting the reasonable demands of these many populaces for moderate reformation of Government. Play this right and we turn down the flame beneath the boiling pot of popular discontent that we call "The War on Terrorism." Play this wrong and we raise it to a whole new level. The allegations of our sins will become cold, hard, current facts, and this could all boil over into a regional/global disaster.

We need to recognize and prioritize the opportunity currently provided by the people of the region. We need to lend stability to these inevitable transitions, to empower and facilitate evolution of government in order to prevent revolution of government. This means a mix of both assuring allies and cautioning/threatening them to be careful in how they respond to their populaces. Similarly to be supportive and cautioning/threatening to these populaces as well in regards to how we support peaceful evolution, self-determination and the principles we proclaim so loudly in our own founding documents; but that we will not stand idly by to outrages on the part of either side.

We also need to be on our guard that AQ will seek to leverage this as well; to attempt to tilt outcomes toward their agenda. I suspect when the music stops that it will be the Islamist terrorist/UW guys who don't have a chair. But that is not a guarantee, and they will seek to prevent that from happening.

This is where the real lesson from Malaya comes to play. If we enable the right governmental reforms, then when the dust settles and the Islamists come in from the cold looking for support, they will find that the populace no longer needs what they are selling and is moving on without them.

We have an opportunity for "Malaya in the Desert," but that will only happen if we can break our Cold War paradigms and find the right balance between stability and change, between governments and populaces, between influence and control.

Given how much play this topic was given in the State of the Union though, I have my concerns...