Richard Haass: The Return of American Realism
[Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars.]
There are many recurring debates in American foreign policy – for example, isolationism versus internationalism, and unilateralism versus multilateralism. But no debate is more persistent than that between those who believe that American foreign policy’s principal purpose should be to influence the external behavior of other states and those who hold that it should be to shape their internal nature.
This debate between “realists” and “idealists” is intense and long-standing. During the Cold War, there were those who argued that the United States should try to “roll back” the Soviet Union, bring down the communist system, and replace it with democratic capitalism. Others deemed this to be too dangerous in an era defined by nuclear weapons, and the US opted instead for a policy of containment, working to limit the reach of Soviet power and influence. As it turned out, after 40 years of containment, the Soviet Union and its empire unraveled, though this outcome was a byproduct of US policy, not its principal purpose.
George W. Bush was the most recent “idealist” proponent of making democracy promotion the main priority for US foreign policy. Bush embraced the so-called “democratic peace” theory, which holds that democracies not only treat their own citizens better, but also act better toward their neighbors and others.
It was, of course, his father, George H.W. Bush, who was a strong representative of the alternative, “realist” approach to American foreign policy.
Much of this debate can be viewed through the lens of American involvement with Iraq. George W. Bush went to war with Iraq in 2003 to change the government. He expected regime change in Baghdad to lead to a democratic Iraq, a development that would in turn transform the region when people elsewhere in the Arab world saw this example and forced their own governments to follow suit.
By contrast, in the earlier Iraq war, the first President Bush, after amassing an unprecedented international coalition that succeeded in liberating Kuwait, did not press ahead to Baghdad to oust Saddam Hussein and his government, despite the urging of many that he do just that.
Nor did he intervene on behalf of the Shia and Kurdish uprisings that erupted just after the war ended early in 1991. To him, intervention would have placed US soldiers in the midst of a complex domestic struggle, one that would have cost enormous resources to sort out if it could be sorted out at all.
President Barack Obama appears to agree with this realist approach...
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There are many recurring debates in American foreign policy – for example, isolationism versus internationalism, and unilateralism versus multilateralism. But no debate is more persistent than that between those who believe that American foreign policy’s principal purpose should be to influence the external behavior of other states and those who hold that it should be to shape their internal nature.
This debate between “realists” and “idealists” is intense and long-standing. During the Cold War, there were those who argued that the United States should try to “roll back” the Soviet Union, bring down the communist system, and replace it with democratic capitalism. Others deemed this to be too dangerous in an era defined by nuclear weapons, and the US opted instead for a policy of containment, working to limit the reach of Soviet power and influence. As it turned out, after 40 years of containment, the Soviet Union and its empire unraveled, though this outcome was a byproduct of US policy, not its principal purpose.
George W. Bush was the most recent “idealist” proponent of making democracy promotion the main priority for US foreign policy. Bush embraced the so-called “democratic peace” theory, which holds that democracies not only treat their own citizens better, but also act better toward their neighbors and others.
It was, of course, his father, George H.W. Bush, who was a strong representative of the alternative, “realist” approach to American foreign policy.
Much of this debate can be viewed through the lens of American involvement with Iraq. George W. Bush went to war with Iraq in 2003 to change the government. He expected regime change in Baghdad to lead to a democratic Iraq, a development that would in turn transform the region when people elsewhere in the Arab world saw this example and forced their own governments to follow suit.
By contrast, in the earlier Iraq war, the first President Bush, after amassing an unprecedented international coalition that succeeded in liberating Kuwait, did not press ahead to Baghdad to oust Saddam Hussein and his government, despite the urging of many that he do just that.
Nor did he intervene on behalf of the Shia and Kurdish uprisings that erupted just after the war ended early in 1991. To him, intervention would have placed US soldiers in the midst of a complex domestic struggle, one that would have cost enormous resources to sort out if it could be sorted out at all.
President Barack Obama appears to agree with this realist approach...