Editor’s note: Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute. The views expressed are his own.

Since he took office, Obama has displayed deep ambivalence about using U.S. power to advance the nation’s liberal ideals. Early on, he was at pains to distance himself from George W. Bush’s “Freedom Agenda,” which unwisely conflated U.S. support for democracy with military intervention. In 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Congress the new administration’s foreign policy would revolve around diplomacy, defense, and development, pointedly omitting a fourth “D” – democracy.

Now Obama wants to test President Hassan Rouhani’s professed desire to negotiate an end to the nuclear confrontation, and hastens to reassure Iran that the United States is not interested in “regime change.” But what happens if talks collapse again, or simply buy time for Iran to enrich enough uranium to make nuclear bombs? Over the long-term, our best hope for better relations with Iran rest on internal political change that gives rise to a more representative and less outwardly aggressive government.

But such is the lot of a superpower. In any case, it makes little sense for Washington to ignore or downgrade the “values dimension” of American power. Like Europe a century ago, the broad Muslim crescent from Afghanistan to Morocco is convulsed by ethnic, religious and national feuds. It is hatching virulent ideological rivalries and most of its governments lack solid foundations of political legitimacy. (Hereditary monarchies seem the most stable).

Obama is right that the United States ought to be humble about our ability to shape events in the Middle East. But we should always throw America’s weight behind popular hopes for greater economic and political freedom. And for democracy too, because as a means of sharing power, enabling compromises and trade-offs, and managing social pluralism, it’s the only plausible alternative to the region’s zero-sum politics of guns, rockets and car-bombs.