On the one hand, we have one-man band Dr Gene Sharp (my emphasis):

His central message is that the power of dictatorships comes from the willing obedience of the people they govern – and that if the people can develop techniques of withholding their consent, a regime will crumble.

For decades now, people living under authoritarian regimes have made a pilgrimage to Gene Sharp for advice. His writing has helped millions of people around the world achieve their freedom without violence.

"As soon as you choose to fight with violence you’re choosing to fight against your opponents best weapons and you have to be smarter than that," he insists.

Now, of what does that remind you?  

This really is all about the very first principles of modern civilisation and the way we discourage bad behaviour and reward virtue.

Which is why our leaders are in such a tight spot – it’s bad enough grasping that these issues can be presented so starkly, even worse trying to find a reliable and reasonable way forward which does not incentivise more stupidity down the road and/or create a calamitous crash now.

Angela Merkel faces her own Ayn Rand moment. Does Germany continue to supply the wealth for others’ weakness? The Sanction of the Victim (again):

I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win—and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent.

I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was “No."

And on the other hand, we have a self-styled Realist in an Ideological Age, Stephen M Walt as helped by all the wisdom available to a leading Harvard professor, opining a mere month ago:

The toppling of the Tunisian regime led by Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali has led a lot of smart people … to suggest that this might be the catalyst for a wave of democratization throughout the Arab world.

The basic idea is that events in Tunisia will have a powerful demonstration effect (magnified by various forms of new media), leading other unhappy masses to rise up and challenge the stultifying dictatorships in places like Egypt or Syria.

The obvious analogy (though not everyone makes it) is to the velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe, or perhaps the various "color revolutions" that took place in places like Ukraine or Georgia.

Color me skeptical. In fact, the history of world revolution suggests that this sort of revolutionary cascade is quite rare, and even when some sort of revolutionary contagion does take place, it happens pretty slowly and is often accompanied by overt foreign invasion. 

But there’s more. Professor Walt on his first visit to Libya as published on 19 January 2010 (OK, a year ago):

First, although Libya is far from a democracy, it also doesn’t feel like other police states that I have visited. I caught no whiff of an omnipresent security service — which is not to say that they aren’t there — and there were fewer police or military personnel on the streets than one saw in Franco’s Spain…

Libya appears to be more open than contemporary Iran or China and the overall atmosphere seemed far less oppressive than most places I visited in the old Warsaw Pact.

But let’s not be too snarky. He did sensibly analyse why we made an effort to ‘re-set’ relations with Gaddafi:

In a rare display of policy continuity, the Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II administrations managed to simultaneously keep the pressure on and keep the door to reconciliation open. (Great Britain played a key role here too, and the effort may have succeeded precisely because Washington remained in the background).

This effort paid off in when Libya agreed to dismantle all of its WMD programs in 2003 and to re-engage with the West. (A key part of that deal, by the way, was George W. Bush’s decision to explicitly renounce the goal of "regime change," in sharp contrast to his approach to some other countries.)

Libya has also been a valuable ally in the "war on terror" (having had its own problems with Islamic radicals), and Ghaddafi’s son Saif reportedly played a key role in persuading a Libyan-based al Qaeda affiliate to renounce terrorism and to denounce Osama bin Laden last year.

Overall, the remarkable improvement in U.S.-Libyan relations reminds us that deep political conflicts can sometimes be resolved without recourse to preventive war or "regime change."  One hopes that the United States and Libya continue to nurture and build a constructive relationship, and that economic and political reform continues there.

Note a vital point of diplomatic technique, folks, not made by Professor Walt.

President Bush won strategic concessions from Gaddafi by stepping back from the overt threat of toppling him! "I’ll let you stay in business. But calm down and try to be nice."

That worked because the threat had been credible following the invasion of Iraq.

So, take your choice, foreign policy leaders on the Left and Right alike.

If you truly believe in human rights and freedom, now and again topple tyrants, do so. Tricky, but it catches the attention of other tyrants.

If not, cut deals with tyrants on the best possible terms. (And then get on the telephone to Gene Sharp) 

Pragmatism at work.