Neo"Realists"?

For those of us perplexed and frankly frightened over the weak, Kerryesque direction of Bush Administration foreign policy in the President's second term, it may now have an official name:

A significant change in U.S. foreign policy is taking place between President Bush’s first and second terms as the influence of "neocons” wanes.

"In the past year, the ranks of the neoconservatives within the Administration who molded the American response to 9/11 have grown thin and their influence has ebbed,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Meanwhile a group of what the Journal calls "neorealists” has been gaining power.

These neorealists share the neocons’ conviction that the U.S. needs to foster the spread of democracy, but don’t believe that America can act alone to that end and favor working more closely with allies and the U.N.

Which means that "neorealists" do not share the "neocons" Wilsonian belief in spreading democracy and freedom because our "allies" certainly do not share that vision, and the U.N. is the antithesis of it. So-called "realists" have always been and remain advocates of "stability" and maintaining the status quo at all costs. They were among the biggest critics of the Bush White House's transformative post-9/11 foreign policy during the first term. If they had had their way, Saddam Hussein would still be ruling in Baghdad and probably long since have broken out of the "box" in which the "realists" thought he could be indefinitely contained, also providing al Qaeda with an ideal geostrategic base of operations while denying the same to ourselves.

Because the "neorealists" were out back then, a major Middle East enemy was flipped over to being an ally. It was precisely that momentum that needed to be continued right across the border into neighboring Syria and Iran to complete the sweep of the "Arab Crescent" stretching from the Levant to Afghanistan. But that "mo" has long since dissipated as our advance was halted in place, doubtless reflecting this "neocon" wane and "neorealist" wax. And now Iran may already have nuclear weapons.

And for those who were rubbing their hands together in anticipation at the departure of the decidedly "realist" Colin Powell from Foggy Bottom and Condoleezza Rice's entrance as his successor, well, you'd better sit down first:

The transition coincides with the growing power of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is putting her stamp on foreign policy in Bush’s second term, and the diminishing influence of Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been hampered by the loss of his indicted chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter” Libby.

During his first term, President Bush steered away from the "realist” strategies of his father, which sought stability and alliances rather than ideological causes....

Now Bush’s second-term foreign policy "is more in line with the old realist approach,” according to the Journal.

And we're screwed. It's one thing to stubbornly cling to an untenable status quo, as Bush the Elder did in his day, and leave behind a mess for future administrations to have to clean up, as Bush the Younger had to do. It's something else entirely to begin the transformation of the most dangerous region on Earth, get halfway through it and then stop and try to freeze the process in place. It is akin to the Soviets and Western Allies halting their respective advances at the German border and asking Adolph Hitler for a negotiated settlement. It's like throwing half a dozen eggs into the air and then forgetting how to juggle. It is the foreign policy equivalent of coitus interruptus. It is rank folly, and the diametric opposite of "realism," which is just a diplomatic euphemism for "appeasement."

These, then, are the wages of a years-long public relations rope-a-dope, letting the political opposition pound the living bejesus out of you on a daily basis unanswered and unopposed. It didn't cost Dubya a second term (though it probably should have), but it did cost him most of the brain trust that reinforced his best, most courageous instincts. Now they've been replaced by the same chickenhearted, intellectually inert, disproportionately haughty establishmentarians that have so ill-served so many GOP presidents of the past two generations.

If you doubt me, just read this:

[O]n Monday, Iran’s national security adviser Ali Larijani, suggesting that Iran could be willing to have direct talks with the U.S. about its nuclear program, told USA Today that his American counterpart Stephen Hadley exhibits "logical thinking” and is an improvement over the "neoconservatives” who had advised Bush. [emphasis added]

That plaudit ought to earn Hadley a pink slip all by itself, and serve as a wake-up call to the President to revive his foreign policy vision from the craven stagnancy that threatens to exterminate it - and, ultimately, us - before it's too late.