Obama Labels Fantasy as "Realism"

The Obama administration at some point will have to decide if it is realist or merely anti-Bush in foreign affairs. Despite all the criticism of Bush’s unbounded ideological drive in foreign affairs, Obama’s policy today seems to be merely an ideological reaction to his predecessor's.

The Obama administration at some point will have to decide if it is realist or merely anti-Bush in foreign affairs. The first choice would have its own challenges and trade-offs but at least it would be a serious foreign policy option. The latter approach would be a dumbing down to the extreme and dangerous oversimplifications of the Daily Kos variety with ominous consequences. During the cold war, realists would criticize “hardliners” that they paid undue emphasis to factors like ideology at the expense of aspects like geography and history when it came to understanding the West’s enemies. Now, despite all the criticism of Bush’s unbounded ideological drive in foreign affairs, Obama’s policy today seems to be merely an ideological reaction to his predecessor's. Recently President Obama visited Russia. "The United States and Russia have more in common than they have differences," said the President. Quite the opposite is true. Michael Scherer of Time in an article about what he called the pillars of Obama’s foreign policy said that “If It's Good for the South Side, It's Good for the World.” Adding that “Nothing has been more central to the President's foreign policy approach than the theoretical lessons he learned as a community organizer in Chicago: listen to different views, understand the various motivations and then focus on the commonalities, not the differences.” Despite all the recent talk about a return to realism one gets the idea that the President wishes to somehow transform our Hobbesian world into something like a globalized debate society where his rhetorical prowess will be the most decisive weapon. It’s a persistent problem of a liberal foreign policy that contrary to its belief in the centrality of tolerance and understanding the modern liberal mind is only able to understand the world in its own very narrow terms. Unable to grasp the historical and cultural milieux that generate stances which do not square with its own idea of how a rational world should operate, it opts to decipher hostility to the West into another expression of an aggrieved group’s discontent. So the Obama administration is ready to “reset” the relationship with Russia by giving up something we need (missile defense) in exchange for something we have practically no use of (Russia reducing its nuclear stockpile – a reduction that would occur anyway). If you understand Russian hostility and noncooperation as primarily the product of an arrogant and dismissive U.S. foreign policy then you will be inclined to enter into a nuclear deal like the one above. It will be a foreign policy of sorts, but it won’t be a realist one.