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A dose of
realism
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Is realism finally,
definitively, back in the driver's seat of US
foreign policy?
That's the conclusion
featured last week on the op-ed page of the
nation's most influential newspaper, the New York
Times, in a column by the managing editor of the
nation's most influential foreign-policy journal,
Foreign Affairs, published by the nation's most
influential foreign-policy think tank, the New
York-based Council on Foreign Relations. It's hard
to get more official than that.
"Seven
months into George W Bush's second term, it is
clear that whatever his expansive second inaugural
address may have promised, American foreign policy
has taken a decidedly pragmatic turn," wrote
Gideon Rose in a column entitled "Get Real".
While personnel changes, and notably the
resurrection of the State Department as a dominant
bureaucratic player, and the departure of top
Pentagon neo-conservatives Paul Wolfowitz and
Douglas Feith, help explain the shift, "the real
story is simpler," according to Rose. "The Bush
doctrine has collapsed, and the administration has
consequently embraced realism, American foreign
policy's perennial hangover cure [for enthusiastic
idealism]."
Rose, who depicts the change
as the latest shift in a post-World War II
historical cycle whereby periods of idealistic
adventurism that result in over-extension
alternate with periods of cautious realism, argues
that the second Bush administration is unlikely to
abandon the general goals of the first
incarnation, but rather to pursue a "calmer and
more measured path toward the same ones".
"They still believe in American power and
the global spread of liberal democratic
capitalism," he writes. "But they seek legitimate
authority rather than mere material dominance,
favor cost-benefit analyses, rather than
ideological litmus tests, and prize good results
over good intentions."
While realists -
and their European fellow-travelers - have
repeatedly predicted or proclaimed the final
demise of the unilateralist and neo-conservative
forces since they first gained dominance over
foreign policy in the wake of the September 11
attacks, only to be proved dead wrong, many
observers now believe that the balance of power
within the administration has indeed shifted
decisively in favor of the realists.
"I
think Gideon has it essentially correct," says
Sherle Schwenninger, a foreign-policy analyst at
the World Policy Institute. "Periods of
hyper-idealism - in this case neo-imperialism -
are followed by periods of more sober
commonsense."
Schwenninger also agrees
that while changes in personnel at key posts
throughout the administration have certainly
reduced the clout of the ideologues, "a lot of
[the shift] is purely dictated by the reality that
the US is over-extended in Iraq and doesn't have
good options in either Iran or North Korea. It's
reached a number of constraints, both financially
and militarily."
That is also the
assessment of Anatol Lieven of the New America
Foundation, who noted a similar historical cycle
in his recent book, America Right or Wrong: An
Anatomy of American Nationalism.
"I
think there definitely has been a change," he told
Inter Press Service. "The American system after
all is not an insane one, and that's true even of
the Bush administration. If the price of another
war is going to be the reintroduction of the draft
in America - whose likely consequence is the loss
of elections - they're going to become more
cautious; they have to become more cautious. They
don't have the troops; they don't have the money."
While the pro-democracy rhetoric,
particularly as regards Iraq and the Middle East,
continues to dominate official discourse,
particularly that of Bush and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, the evidence of realist
dominance is indeed very clear, especially
regarding the two surviving members of Bush's
original "axis of evil".
US backing, if
grudging, for the efforts of the European Three
(EU-3) - Germany, Britain and France - to achieve
an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program
was an early sign of change that was subsequently
bolstered by the relaxation - long resisted by
Vice President Dick Cheney - of US procedural
conditions for engaging North Korea in the context
of the now-resumed six-party talks.
Similarly, the administration's efforts at
tamping down rising anti-Chinese sentiment in
Congress, as well as its apparent determination to
remain on friendly terms with what Pentagon chief
Donald Rumsfeld once contemptuously dismissed as
"Old Europe", suggests a new appreciation for
diplomacy at the very least, if not a new
understanding that Washington is, after all, not
immune from traditional balance of power politics
and must indeed take the interests of other great
powers into account.
While it is clear
that these perceptions are centered in the State
Department, and are most strongly promoted by
Rice's team of Deputy Secretary Robert Zoellick,
Under Secretary for Policy Nicholas Burns and
Counselor Philip Zelikow - realists all - it
appears that they have become shared by National
Security Adviser Steven Hadley as well, who,
unlike Rice during her tenure in that post, is
apparently willing to weigh in with his own views
at critical moments.
In addition, no one
should discount the influence of another
heavyweight who has tied her fortunes to Rice's -
Bush confidante, Karen Hughes, the State
Department's new public diplomacy chief.
There is even evidence that Rumsfeld,
despite an irresistible tendency to beat the drums
against Iran, in particular, has also moved closer
to the realist camp, if only to prevent an all-out
mutiny by a military officer corps haunted by its
Vietnam-like nightmare of an unwinnable conflict
and rapidly declining public support.
His
backing for the brass' recent efforts to re-brand
the "global war on terror" with the less
martial-sounding "global struggle against violent
extremism" and to suggest that Washington will
begin a substantial withdrawal from Iraq beginning
next spring, come what may, has drawn outraged
calls for his departure from neo-conservatives,
but, as noted by Lieven, "If you're actually in
charge of the US armed forces, there are certain
realities you have to take into account."
While Rose depicts the realist resurgence
as something in the nature of an historical
inevitability, others are not so willing to count
out the hawks, particularly in the event of
another major terrorist attack on US territory or
the collapse of negotiations on North Korea or,
more particularly, Iran, which remains public
enemy number one for both neo-conservatives and
the aggressive nationalists led by Cheney.
"Cheney has not necessarily lost on Iran,"
according to Schwenninger. "He may calculate that,
as long as we're not helpful, the EU-3 talks are
going to fail, and we will therefore show the
Europeans that soft power doesn't work and what
Iran's true intentions are."
In his view,
Cheney and the hawks have made a tactical retreat
to secure greater international support for
imposing sanctions that could destabilize the
government or justify either US or Israeli
military strikes in late 2006 or 2007.
"When something happens to justify their
interventionist attitudes," according to Lieven of
the coalition of neo-conservatives and aggressive
nationalists in the administration, "they'll be
ready to press their advantage as they did after
9/11."
Moreover, while the realists are
now on top, according to Lieven, the
administration as a whole has "nailed itself to
positions that will be difficult to shift,
particularly on Iran and Israel".
"If the
US would agree to negotiate directly with Iran,
that would really mark the ascendancy of the
realists, but how far the new realism can go in
terms of changing specific policies remains
unclear," he said.
(Inter Press
Service) |
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