From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Wed Jul 01 2009 - 23:32:15 EDT
consortiumnews.com
Obama's 'Realism' on Iran
By Ivan Eland
June 30, 2009
Editor’s Note: The U.S. reaction to the Iranian election dispute
represented a test of President Obama’s commitment to “realism” in
foreign policy as opposed to the neoconservative interventionism of George
W. Bush.
In this guest essay, the Independent Institute’s Ivan Eland assesses
whether a less aggressive foreign policy may help restore the principles of
the American Republic:
Barack Obama’s reaction to the mass protests and violence in Iran shows
he is following through on his pledge to be more like George H.W. Bush
rather than his son, George W. Bush.
Obama has admired the father’s realism and has criticized the idealistic
neo-conservatism of the son. But is realism a better foreign policy for the
United States?
The answer is a resounding “yes”! Obama has been reluctant to be goaded
into meddling in the delicate situation in Iran by the likes of Republicans
John McCain and Charles Grassley. They want him to harshly criticize the
Iranian government, thus allowing it to portray the protesters as lackeys
of an imperialist superpower.
In contrast, realist Republicans — such as Henry Kissinger, Richard
Lugar, Pat Buchanan and George Will — have jumped to defend Obama’s
cautious handling of the situation. George Will correctly pointed out that
the Iranian protesters already know how the U.S. government feels about
their government, even in the absence of inflammatory U.S. government
pronouncements.
Obama has also demonstrated an orientation toward realism by stating
publicly that the goal of transforming Iraq and Afghanistan into
pro-Western democracies should no longer be the U.S. goal. George W. Bush
was clearly committed to achieving this neo-conservative nirvana.
Obama, however, is not a pure realist. Obama seems willing enough to
abandon the younger Bush’s nation-building quagmire in Iraq.
But instead of doing the same in Afghanistan, withdrawing U.S. troops from
that country, and using intelligence, law enforcement, and maybe an
occasional Special Forces raid to go after al Qaeda in Pakistan, Obama has
elected to escalate the military social work in Afghanistan.
This strand of Obama’s thinking more resembles the idealistic muscular
liberalism of Woodrow Wilson and Bill Clinton.
And, of course, the liberal interventionism of Wilson and the
neo-conservative overseas meddling of Theodore Roosevelt and George W. Bush
are two birds of a feather. In the 1800s, they both originated in the
idealism of American Christian missionaries trying to convert heathen
peoples to believe in Jesus Christ.
Today, the secular goal of converting countries to democracy has
substituted the religious one.
But is the reality-based worldview of the hard-nosed realists superior to
the messianic democratization of the liberal and neo-conservative
interventionists? Yes, because when people feel that their way of living is
superior to others, all opposed to that way of life become “the other,”
who can be demonized, attacked, and either converted to the cause or slain.
To absolve realism of bad behavior, however, would be a mistake. The
realism of Henry Kissinger gave us American carpet-bombing of North Vietnam
and active U.S. assistance to the brutal Argentine government to commit
human rights violations against dissidents.
Overall, however, realists are usually more pragmatic than their idealistic
counterparts on both ends of the political spectrum and are much less
likely to go off on ideological crusades, such as George W. Bush’s
invasion of Iraq.
In fact, even the “offensive realist” school practices a more
restrained foreign policy than either the liberal or neo-conservative
interventionists. And one strain of realist thought — the realist
minimalists — laudably advocates taking military action only under rare
circumstances — when U.S. vital interests are at stake.
Realism, however, tends to focus on the international balance of power and
pragmatic U.S. strategic goals overseas and attempts to be value-free. But
foreign policy is supposed to protect the domestic system and allow it to
flourish, not warp the domestic system to further objectives overseas.
Realism overseas is good up to a point, but the goal of U.S. foreign policy
should be to preserve, protect, and defend the republican form of
government at home. The traditional foreign policy of the United States —
practiced, with some exceptions, from the founding until the Cold War began
— was inclined to avoid most overseas conflicts.
The nation’s founders, who initiated this restrained foreign policy, were
realist minimalists with a twist. They realized that among nations, the
United States had a unique strategic position: very intrinsically secure
because of vast distances over oceans that separated the country from the
world’s main centers of conflict.
The founders also abhorred what the militarism of European monarchies had
inflicted on their common citizens — high costs in blood and treasure.
They realized that war, above all else, threatened liberty and limited
republican government.
Obama’s pragmatism in foreign policy is more reassuring than the
messianic meddling overseas of George W. Bush. But if Obama is to avoid a
common pitfall of realism — a dearth of values — he needs to value
liberty at home above all and promulgate a restrained foreign policy that
will preserve it.
Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent
Institute. Dr. Eland has spent 15 years working for Congress on national
security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign
Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget
Office. His books include The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy
Exposed, and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy.