Robert Kagan and Obama's Alleged "Realism"

Presumably Kagan gets paid to write this stuff. So you'd think he'd be better at it. Unfortunately, he isn't.

First: if people are going to write about foreign policy, they need to get clear on the fact that "realism" is importantly ambiguous. It sometimes has its ordinary meaning--something like "pragmatism," or it can have its technical sense. In the technical sense a foreign policy realist believes that moral considerations should never come into play when we make foreign policy decisions. We must, these "realists" believe, make decisions only on the basis of our narrow national interest. This view is based on some fallacious reasoning about morality, and it is indefensible. But that is the view.

Second: Obviously Obama was never a realist in that second, technical sense of 'realist.' But that's what Kagan is trying to pin on him here. And if he ever did believe that, then it's good that he's abandoning it, not bad. Realism, in the technical sense, is not a good thing.

Third: part of the confusion is the fault of liberals who, disgusted by Bush's war in Iraq, began saying things like "you can't impose democracy at the point of a gun," and so forth. Many liberals said we needed to stop trying to impose "our system" on other countries, when what they should have been saying was (a) Bush's war was never really about bringing democracy to Iraq, and (b) spreading democracy is a noble goal if you do it in an at least minimally rational, minimally competent and cost-effective way. Unlike Iraq, that is.

Fourth: Remember when Jimmy Carter tried to promote democracy and human rights in a rational, modest way? The GOP has never stopped ridiculing him for it. But apparently rationalizing a monumentally disastrous war by tacking on some rhetoric about promoting democracy--well that's just find and fekkin' dandy somehow.

I'm about yeah far from cutting off my intertube connection and conceeding defeat to the forces of the Stupid..