Confronting Authoritarianism in the Middle East

Tunisian demonstrators flash victory signs during a solidarity rally with the victims of Sidi Bouzid clashes on January 8, 2011 in Tunis.

Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations who supervised US policy in the Middle East during the Bush administration, argues that backing democracy over authoritarianism in the Middle East isn't empty idealism, but the "real" realism and talks about his new book, Realism and Democracy: American Foreign Policy after the Arab Spring (Cambridge University Press, 2017).