What is the difference between an idealist and a realist in foreign policy? The difference is the beliefs of Wolfowitz and Scowcraft. This is an excerpt from the New Yorker article by Goldberg.
The President’s foreign policy, which the political scientist John Mearsheimer calls “Wilsonianism with teeth,” is a rejection of his father’s approach. It is certainly a rejection of Scowcroft’s sentiment-free pragmatism. “I’ve been accused of tolerating autocracies in the Middle East, and there’s some validity in that,” Scowcroft said. “It’s easy in the name of stability to be comfortable with the status quo.”
The status quo, Scowcroft said, is not necessarily a good thing, but it might be better than what follows. “My kind of realism would look at what are the most likely consequences of pushing out a government. What will replace it?”
What will replace autocratic but stable governments, neoconservative thinkers say, is whatever the people of the Middle East decide will replace them. Robert Kagan, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a Kristol ally, has written critically of the Bush Administration’s incomplete adherence to its own anti-tyranny doctrine.
Referring to President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Kagan wrote, “Perhaps there is concern that too much pressure on Mubarak might produce a victory by the Muslim Brotherhood, the most popular Egyptian opposition party, which has been outlawed by the government. That’s a risk, of course, but if the Bush Administration isn’t willing to let Islamists, even radical Islamists, win votes in a fair election, then Bush officials should stop talking so much about democracy and go back to supporting the old dictatorships.”
Scowcroft believes that the Administration has already gone too far in Kagan’s direction. “Let’s suppose Mubarak disappears and we have an election,” he said. “The good guys are not going to win that election. The bad guys are going to win that election. The bad guys are always better organized. Always. The most ruthless, the tough ones, are the ones who are going to rise to the top in a chaotic society. That’s my fear.”
The Bush Administration does not, as a rule, concede that democratization in the Middle East could lead to a series of Islamist states. One day, I mentioned to Scowcroft an interview I had had with Paul Wolfowitz, when he was Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy. Wolfowitz was the leading neoconservative thinker in the senior ranks of the current Bush Administration. (He is now the president of the World Bank.) I asked him what he would think if previously autocratic Arab countries held free elections and then proceeded to vote Islamists into power.
Wolfowitz answered, “Look, fifty per cent of the Arab world are women. Most of those women do not want to live in a theocratic state. The other fifty per cent are men. I know a lot of them. I don’t think they want to live in a theocratic state.”
Scowcroft said of Wolfowitz, “He’s got a utopia out there. We’re going to transform the Middle East, and then there won’t be war anymore. He can make them democratic. He is a tough-minded idealist, but where he is truly an idealist is that he brushes away questions, says, `It won’t happen,’ whereas I would say, `It’s likely to happen and therefore you can’t take the chance.’ Paul’s idealism sweeps away doubts.” Wolfowitz, for his part, said to me, “It’s absurdly unrealistic, demonstrably unrealistic, to ignore how strong the desire for freedom is.”
There are two severe problems with the Bush administration displayed in this article. First, they don’t consider that facts limit what they can achieve. As a result they attempt to achieve goals that cannot be achieved at a realistic cost. Goals matter, cost is not a consideration. Second, they don’t listen to and react to people who disagree with them.
In addition there is the problem that Bush has no interest in government policy, so supervision of on-going operations simply does not happen. This is the major failing axacerbated by cronyism. They appoint people to jobs based on friendship and ideology and then don’t hold them to any standards of success and achievement.
Finally there is the problem that Cheney has his own foreign and military policies, and is allowed to have a free hand in implementing them as though he were the President himself.
Read the article. It is lengthy, but explains a great deal about the Bush 43 administration.
