The State of the Union Address and Bush’s second Inaugural Address focused U.S. and international attention on Natan Sharansky, author of The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny & Terror. Pundits and reporters noted that the president’s lofty rhetoric about “ending tyranny in our world” and guaranteeing “freedom from fear” echoed Sharansky’s language.

In his book Sharansky makes that case that U.S. foreign policy should be guided at least as much by ideals as national interests. Part of that idealism should be a mission to export freedom to countries and societies living in fear, focusing primarily on the Arab world.1 According to Sharansky, the United States should not only prevent terrorist and terrorist states from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, but should also “understand how powerful weapons of mass construction can be in the hands of the free world.”

No doubt that Bush and Sharansky, a Soviet