Wealth & Money Quote by Frank Carlucci

The candor is almost the point: Carlucci frames U.S. Middle East policy as a three-part machine - legitimacy, resources, and a strategic client - then presents it as simple prudence. “Friendly regimes” is the loaded phrase doing most of the work. It sounds like diplomacy; it really means governments aligned with Washington’s interests, regardless of how “friendly” they are to their own citizens. He adds “broad participation” not as a moral commitment to democracy, but as a stabilizer: just enough buy-in to keep the street quiet, the pipeline open, and the security architecture intact.

That’s the subtext: participation is instrumental. It’s a technology of control, not emancipation. Carlucci’s formulation treats stability as the ultimate virtue because instability threatens two things the U.S. historically prioritizes in the region: “access to the region’s wealth” (a blunt acknowledgment of oil and strategic chokepoints) and the security of “our good friend Israel” (a rhetorical intimacy that signals a non-negotiable pillar of policy). The sequencing matters too. He leads with governance and stability, then admits the material and geopolitical stakes, as if political reform is a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

Contextually, this is the late Cold War national security worldview speaking: manage allied autocracies, prevent revolutionary upheaval, and keep regional order under an American umbrella. The quote’s effectiveness lies in how it collapses ideals into logistics. It doesn’t argue that U.S. interests are righteous; it assumes they are, and smuggles that assumption through the language of stability and friendship.