Squaring the circle of idealism and pragmatism in foreign affairs

Laura Rozen calls our attention to this essay, which she says is about "the false choice between foreign policy idealism and realism": An American Foreign Policy That Both Realists and Idealists Should Fall in Love With by Robert Wright, senior fellow at the New America Foundation New York Times 07/16/06. This gives a flavor of it:

This doesn't mean joining the deepest devotees of international law and vowing never to fight a war that lacks backing by the United Nations Security Council. But it does mean that, in the case of Iraq, ignoring the Security Council and international opinion had excessive costs: (1) eroding the norm against invasions not justified by self-defense or imminent threat; (2) throwing away a golden post-9/11 opportunity to strengthen the United Nations' power as a weapons inspector. The last message we needed to send is the one President Bush sent: countries that succumb to pressure to admit weapons inspectors will be invaded anyway. Peacefully blunting the threats posed by nuclear technologies in North Korea and Iran would be tricky in any event, but this message has made it trickier. (Ever wonder why Iran wants "security guarantees"?)

The administration's misjudgment in Iraq highlights the distinction — sometimes glossed over by neoconservatives — between transparency and regime change. Had we held off on invasion, demanding in return that United Nations inspections be expanded and extended, we could have rendered Iraq transparent, confirming that it posed no near-term threat. Regime change wasn't essential.

But, as Wright himself describes it, his "progressive realism" is an attempt to square a circle.

The neoconservatives' brand of "idealism" is what we see in the Iraq War: neoimperialism, defiance of international law across the board, torture, wrecking the armed forces and losing, too. We don't need to compromise with those people. We need to make sure they never again get the power to bring this kind of harm to the United States and the world.

In my mind, the biggest compromise that needs to be made is between "realists" and "liberal internationalists", and that is to put the primacy of nuclear nonproliferation, global warming and international law at the center of American foreign policy. The so-called "idealists" of the neoconservative school can go to Hades as far as I'm concerned. Maybe better yet, go to Iraq.

So, when Wright echoes the neocons' and nationalists' sneers about "vowing never to fight a war" not approved by the UN, or talks about eroding the "norm" against preventive war, my BS detector starts going off. The "norm" against preventive war is called international law, dude. We hanged German war criminals convicted by the Nuremberg Tribunal of planning and waging "aggressive war", of which preventive war is one form. Calling it a "norm" makes it sound like a lazy habit to be discarded once the blowhard white guys go into a foaming-at-the-mouth war fever.

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