Less-than-Total Devotion to the Cause

Ellis Sharp points to an interesting blog that I expect to be reading regularly from now on. The Democrat's Diary is written by David Wearing. He describes his blog as follows:

Whilst Western governments often state their desire to see liberal democracy spread throughout the world, in case after case the facts reveal a less-than-total devotion to the cause. The Democrat’s Diary explores the gap between the sales pitch and the product.

From recent posts on "Coup in Gaza?":

What we're witnessing now is not just civil war but also the attempted overthrow of a democratically elected Palestinian government, not four years since Blair and Bush announced their grand vision to spread democracy in the Middle East. The
strangulation of Gaza, which I've written about previously, prepared the ground for this. The current violence may well turn out to be the culmination of that strategy.

And "Venezuala: myth and reality":

Few occurences in politics are unambiguously good or bad, but recent events in Venezuela may be viewed with cautious optimisim. If Venezuela can demonstrate that it is possible to defy the dominance of international political-economic power, and chart its own independent path whilst retaining, even deepening its democracy and effectively attending to the needs of its most deprived citizens then it will stand as a source of enormous encouragement to countries across the developing world. Perhaps it is this prospect, the threat of a good example and a functioning challenge to Western power, that so offends Washington and its ideological allies.