Quotes of the Day

There are two conflicting cliches beloved by policy analysts:

1. That realism and idealism are the competing strands of American foreign policy.

2. That realism and idealism are indistinguishable these days. Like most cliches, both have a lot of truth to them. However, the messy outcome of our occupation of Iraq, the resounding repudiation of that enterprise in the midterm elections and the ride to the rescue by Bush family fix-it man James A. Baker III prove that the first cliche remains more useful than the second.

The doctrine of realism, or its Prussian-accented cousin realpolitik, emphasizes a hard-nosed focus on clearly defined national interests, such as economic or security goals, pursued with a pragmatic calculation of commitments and resources. Idealism, on the other hand, emphasizes moral values and ideals, such as spreading democracy, and is apt to be more crusading and sentimental in its willingness to pay any price and bear any burden. Adherents of the second cliche argue that these days there is little distinction between the two because spreading democracy is in our economic and security interest. Our difficulties in Iraq, however, show that sometimes not every interest and ideal mesh seamlessly.

Ever since Woodrow Wilson draped foreign policy with a mantle of idealism by declaring that the U.S. should enter World War I to make the world safe for democracy, American leaders have tended in public to stress the idealist elements of the mix when justifying a foreign involvement. That's what President Bush's father did during the first Gulf War when he emphasized, rightly, the moral justifications for defending Kuwait against Iraq's aggression. But James Baker made a gaffe (defined by Michael Kinsley as a politician accidentally saying something true) by stating the obvious, which was that Kuwait's huge oil reserves made the war also an issue of the U.S.'s economic security and "jobs, jobs, jobs."

The current Bush Administration did the reverse in 2003 by using realist rhetoric about security interests (remember those wmd?) to cloak what was, more broadly, a neo-Wilsonian mission of spreading democracy. The two primary realists in the Bush court, Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft, were the most prominent castoffs by the end of the first term. And Condoleezza Rice, for years a sophisticated realist thinker in the mold of her mentor Scowcroft, underwent a post-9/11 conversion to the belief that there was no longer a useful distinction between democracy-crusading idealism and national-security realism.

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.

• Walter Isaacson