Henry Kissinger on the limits of democracy in the Middle East

Some states as presently constituted may not be governable except through methods of governance or social cohesion that Americans reject as illegitimate. These limitations can be overcome, in some cases, through evolutions toward a more liberal domestic system. Yet where factions within a state adhere to different concepts of world order for survival, American demands to call off the fight and assemble a democratic coalition government tend either to paralyze the incumbent government (as in the Shah's Iran) or to fall on deaf ears (the Egyptian government led by General SISI - now heeding the lessons of its predecessors' overthrow by tacking away from a historic American alliance in favor of greater freedom of maneuver). 

Henry Kissinger, World Order. Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History (Penguin Books 2015) 136