{"id":6171,"date":"2010-07-17T19:53:40","date_gmt":"2010-07-17T23:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=6171"},"modified":"2010-07-17T19:54:12","modified_gmt":"2010-07-17T23:54:12","slug":"foreign-policy-%e2%80%98realism%e2%80%99-as-a-proxy-for-doing-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/6171\/foreign-policy-%e2%80%98realism%e2%80%99-as-a-proxy-for-doing-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreign Policy \u2018Realism\u2019 as a Proxy for Doing Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s an interesting column in Foreign Policy<\/em><\/a> I commend to anyone trying to make sense out of the realignment going on in the Democratic and Republican parties.\u00a0 With former president George W. Bush firmly entrenched in the public\u2019s mind as a neoconservative nation-builder, President Barack Obama did what most political opponents do \u2013 adopt the opposite strategy.<\/p>\n

Thus, we\u2019ve got a Commander-in-Chief who looks and sounds a lot like former president George H. W. Bush, the highest ranking member of the foreign policy \u201crealist\u201d school.\u00a0 To my lights, foreign policy realism is shorthand for \u201cThe world is a really dangerous place run by a lot of bad people.\u00a0 Since there\u2019s nothing we can do to change it we might as well make nice with some of the friendlier dictators.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps that notion is correct; at least in general.\u00a0 Such a view of the world helps explain why President Obama can\u2019t seem to summon his emotions when pro-democracy marchers are killed in the streets of Tehran.\u00a0 Bad people do bad things, but hey; it could be worse.<\/p>\n

But while Jacob Heilbrunn\u2019s Foreign Policy<\/em> article does a nice job of recounting the ebb and flow of Realism\u2019s popularity with Republicans, he seems to miss a more obvious point about the kind of politician who would be attracted to the philosophy.\u00a0 Consider the presidents Heilbrunn identifies as fans: Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, and now Barack Obama.\u00a0 Their commonality?\u00a0 Each president is motivated by pessimism about the world around him.<\/p>\n

Eisenhower\u2019s most memorable speech was his farewell address warning about a military-industrial complex.\u00a0 Nixon had enemies\u2019 lists.\u00a0 Bush didn\u2019t see the value of \u201cthe vision thing\u201d and preferred to talk shop with elites instead of connecting with everyday citizens.\u00a0 And then there\u2019s Obama.\u00a0 He might be the most negatively-oriented president we\u2019ve had since Nixon.\u00a0 The reason America needs \u201cHope\u201d and \u201cChange\u201d is because everything is currently broken.\u00a0 Besides, who are Americans to lecture the world on morals when it\u2019s so obvious to Progressive faculty members that the United States is probably at fault for their problems?<\/p>\n

Foreign policy realism may be a necessary corrective to neoconservative empire-building, but realism\u2019s lack of popularity doesn\u2019t mean it is right; just that if offers an unsatisfying view of the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s an interesting column in Foreign Policy I commend to anyone trying to make sense out of the realignment going on in the Democratic and Republican parties.\u00a0 With former president George W. Bush firmly entrenched in the public\u2019s mind as a neoconservative nation-builder, President Barack Obama did what most political opponents do \u2013 adopt the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,1577,216,445,491,130,1575,127,1576],"class_list":["post-6171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-barack-obama","tag-dwight-eisenhower","tag-foreign-policy","tag-george-h-w-bush","tag-george-w-bush","tag-iran","tag-neoconservativism","tag-realism","tag-richard-nixon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6171"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6175,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6171\/revisions\/6175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}