The Return of the Realists

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The impending report of Baker's bipartisan Iraq Study Group heralds the return of the realists, many of whom worked under Bush the Elder, the most competent foreign policy realist ever to serve as President. Their inner circle huddled last month in Newport News, Va., at the christening of the aircraft carrier named after the former President. They discussed the need for a change to a more pragmatic approach. The cadre included Scowcroft, Baker, Powell and Lawrence Eagleburger (now in Baker's study group) as well as their soft-spoken and clear-minded longtime colleague Robert Gates, who has now been tapped to be Defense Secretary. In addition, the intellectual godfather of contemporary realists, Henry Kissinger, who was the whipping boy of the original neocons during the Ford Administration, has also been weighing in with his emphasis on an unsentimental calculation of America's strategic interests.

The result will be a shift in emphasis toward the goal of seeking regional stability rather than rampant democracy. A consensus is forming, led by Baker and Gates, to bring the countries in the region, including Iran and Syria, into discussions about how to prevent Iraq from spinning further out of control. This is not a recipe for advancing democracy and freedom, but it is designed to further the more realistic and pragmatic goal of seeking a stable balance of power.

The tension between the realist and idealist approach has long split the Republican Party between traditional conservatives and neocons. That will play itself out in the campaign of John McCain. On one shoulder, he has his close friends from the realist camp, such as Kissinger, Powell and Robert Zoellick. Perched on the other shoulder are more crusading neocons and "national greatness" theorists led by William Kristol, whose father Irving helped provide the intellectual underpinnings for a morality-based foreign policy a generation ago.

Like a bracing dash of water to the face, it's useful to have a dose of realism added to America's innate idealistic instincts every now and then. It's also useful to be reminded that the easy-to-swallow bromide about how our ideals are the same as our interests is, alas, not always true in a messy world.

But in welcoming the return of some realism, let's not forget that America's strength comes from its values: being on the side of liberty and democracy. The mess in Iraq does not repudiate this. It merely reminds us that, from the Monroe Doctrine through the Marshall Plan, both realism and idealism have been complementary strands in our foreign policy. The goal, now as ever, is not to pick one over the other or to blur the distinction between them. Instead, it's to weave them together in the right combination so that they reinforce each other. •Isaacson, a former managing editor of TIME, is president of the Aspen Institute and author of biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger