"We're All Realists Now."
No. Pragmatists maybe, but not "realists." Barack Obama's election as U.S. president delighted many people, especially the self-described foreign-policy "realists" who accused his predecessor, George W. Bush, of denying reality in favor of dangerous idealism. Obama has praised the realpolitik of Bush's father, George H.W. Bush. And a White House official recently told the Wall Street Journal, "[Obama] has really kind of clicked with that old-school, end-of-the-Cold-War wise-men generation." The elder Bush's national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, called Obama's election a rejection of the younger Bush "in favor of realism."
Of course foreign policy should be grounded in reality. Americans agree that foreign-policy goals should be achievable -- that the United States should match its ends with its means. What sensible person could argue with that? That is simply pragmatism. But "realism" as a doctrine (I'll spare you the quote marks henceforth) goes much further: In the words of one leading realist, the principal purpose of U.S. foreign policy should be "to manage relations between states" rather than "alter the nature of states."
Unquestionably, what makes realism seem so plausible today is skepticism about the war in Iraq and the belief that it was part of a crusade to "impose" democracy by force. I believe, to the contrary, that the purpose of the war was to remove a threat to national and international security. Whether the Iraq war was right or wrong, it was not about imposing democracy, and the decision to establish a representative government afterward was the most realistic option, compared with the alternatives of installing another dictator or prolonging the U.S. occupation. In Afghanistan, the same choice was made for the same reasons after the Taliban fell, and many realists not only supported that decision, but argued for putting even more effort into "nation-building."
This is not the place to reargue the Iraq war. So let's stipulate that the issue here is not whether to use military force to promote changes in the nature of states; it's about whether -- and how -- to promote such changes peacefully. On that issue there is a genuine debate between realists and their critics. And a desire for pragmatism should not be confused with a specific foreign-policy doctrine that minimizes the importance of change within states.
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Ambassador Paul Wolfowitz, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and former president of the World Bank, was U.S. deputy secretary of defense from 2001 to 2005.
I quote from this remarkable article: "This is not the place to reargue the Iraq war. So let's stipulate that the issue here [today] is not whether to use military force to promote changes in the nature of states; it's about whether -- and how -- to promote such changes peacefully"
One understands why Wolfowita wouldn't want people looking too closely at why Iraq was invaded in 2003 -- unnecessarily, as it seems to most observers -- and I suppose he now goes toward the grave without expressing any need ever to explain to the world why he and his crew (cabal might be better) seem to have expended absolutely no effort throughout 2002 toward what he now describes as "promot[ing] such changes peacefully". Richard Clarke has suggested a course of conduct obvious to him in the White House from 2001 that's simply encapsulated in the motto "Shoot first, ask questions afterwards", and Wolfowitz's coyness in this article suggests that Clarke got it right -- except that Wolfowitz would rather that questions be few.
Was such peaceful change possible in 2002? Of course, we'll never know. We do know that the arts of peace played no part in Bush-Rumsfeld-Wolfotwitz et al's views of how to improve things in Iraq and we also know that under the military and scientific supervision supplied by the United Nations, the IAEA and the USAF during the Clinton years, there was no reason to fear that Iraq presented a military threat to anybody.
Realism does not seems a thing the 2009 Wolfowitz senms qualified to run on about. He had his chance; he missed it; he missed it twice. Hundreds of thousands died resultingly. One evident result is thar the Afghanistan melee continues not to US advantage. This in large part is because the Wolfowitze crew decided to rob Coalition forces in that nation of the military units desired by the "realists" to invade Iraq. These days, even commanding US generals don't seem to be arguing that any international terrorists are succumbing to the US military presence and military deaths in Afghanistan. A triumph of Wolfowitz-style "realism"? So it seems.
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