BOTH NEOCONSERVATIVES and liberals have overestimated the extent to which one nation, even a superpower with United Nations support, can re-engineer regimes. Neoconservatives believe forced democratization is possible; liberals believe in the transformative power of foreign aid, debt relief, trade concessions and support for reformers. The tragic reality is that both approaches to long-distance, large-scale social engineering have failed in most cases.
One cannot stop genocide without bringing home body bags (as the Dutch found in Srebrenica). Brutal international realities often require following a "second-worst" course to avoid the "first-worst" one-our choices are not always between the best and the second best. In short, ask not what international order you desire, but what international order you can achieve.
Dimitri Simes made the same point in the last issue of The National Interest:
