TO COMPARE the records of realism and neoconservatism we must first define our terms. Realism consists of two mutually contradictory propositions. One holds that states are bound to behave according to their innate interests. Thus, Hans Morgenthau argued that politics is “governed by objective laws” whose “operation [is] impervious to our preferences.” The other holds that states may deviate from their interests but ought not do so. Thus, George Kennan argued that “the most serious fault” in U.S. foreign policy was the tendency to take a “legalistic-moralistic approach to international problems.” Without resolving the inconsistency we may stipulate that realism posits that states do or should hew closely to a tight conception of the national interest, revolving around matters of geography, resources and power.

Neoconservatives were originally a circle of writers who proclaimed no “ism.” Their approach to foreign policy consisted of what Max Boot has called “hard Wilsonianism.” As one such neocon, I would stipulate that the essential tenets, in contradistinction to realism, include giving a greater weight to moral considerations, attributing larger importance to the ideological element of politics and above all favoring a more contingent assessment of the national interest. While realists believe that we will be safer by seeking to avoid unnecessary broils, neocons believe that we will find more safety using our power to try to fashion a more benign world order. On these points, neocons are liberal internationalists. Where they part company from liberals is in a greater readiness to resort to force and a lesser appreciation of the United Nations. (Realists think little better of the UN, and neither are most of them squeamish about using force, but since they define U.S. interests so narrowly, they see fewer occasions for it.)

U.S. policy has rarely mirrored one school or another in perfect reflection. Policy ordinarily flows from a confluence of sources, including some—for example, domestic politics—that have nothing to do with strategy or philosophy. Nonetheless, it is relatively easy to identify policies that have been more influenced by one school than another.

 

HOW HAS the United States fared when policy hewed closely to the realist or the neocon approaches?

The most important points of comparison are the respective aftermaths of the two world wars. Following the first, the United States spurned Wilson’s architecture of peace and turned instead to realism. Realists may claim that the ensuing twenty years, the most catastrophic era of American foreign policy, ought to be charged up to “isolationism” rather than laid at their doorstep. But this would be a semantic dodge. Isolationism is nothing more than realism in an extreme variant. And U.S. policy in the 1920s and 1930s was not strictly isolationist. On the contrary, these years saw the creation of the foreign service, continued activism in the Western Hemisphere, invigoration of the “open door” in the Pacific and repeated efforts to solve Europe’s financial crisis, amidst a general emphasis on the economic side of international life. What were averted were Wilson’s high idealism and the commitment to using American power to preserve the peace. In short, it was an era of realism. And it led directly to the most disastrous event in human history, a war that snuffed out some 60 million lives, including more Americans than have died in all of our other foreign wars combined.

After the Second World War, in contrast, America turned to what we would today recognize as a “neocon” approach. By this I mean that we set out on the most globalist path that any noncolonialist power has ever undertaken. We formed alliances in Europe, Northeast and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and the antipodes; girdled the globe with military bases; fostered international institutions that helped restore the world economy and gave away an impressive fraction of our income in foreign aid. Above all, we proclaimed a strategy that defined the entire world as the arena in which we would confront our new adversary. This insistence that our own security was linked to the security of others in every corner of the world was the very antithesis of “realism.” Senator Robert Taft bemoaned that we were acting as “demigod and Santa Claus to solve the problems of the world.”

At the time, these policies were termed “liberal internationalist”; the term “neocon” had yet to be coined. But they were muscular policies (we were spending roughly 10 percent of our GNP on defense), to which today’s neoconservatism is the heir much more than today’s liberalism. While realist policy following the First World War led to unparalleled disaster, neocon policies after the second achieved what was arguably the most perfect success in the history of statecraft—our relatively bloodless victory over a foe possessing the most ponderous military machine ever assembled.

Of course, containment was not a perfect strategy. It led to woe in Vietnam. And, too, realists made their contributions to containment, notably the anti-Soviet alliance Henry Kissinger forged with Communist China. But the overall strategy was of neocon design, and it was brought to successful conclusion by the arch-neocon, Ronald Reagan. He rhetorically challenged the “evil empire”; fostered guerrilla war against Communist regimes in godforsaken places; promoted universal democracy; and undermined mutually assured destruction by means of “Star Wars.” These successful tactics were decried by realists as reckless diversions, just as they were cheered at every turn by neocons. Indeed, neocons helped to shape them. Jeane Kirkpatrick was one of their principal intellectual architects. Richard Perle steered the administration’s nuclear-weapons policies. Elliott Abrams was the point man for the “Reagan Doctrine,” which itself was formulated not by Reagan but by neocon columnist Charles Krauthammer.

The Soviet Union presented a challenge—partly conventional military, partly unconventional military and above all ideological—for which realism was not designed and to which it had no answers.

 

NOW, WHAT about the post-cold-war world?

The first challenge was Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The path to this event was paved by one of America’s most nakedly realist sallies, our quiet support for Iraq in its war with Iran in the 1980s. This is reported to have included sharing intelligence and funneling arms from third countries, as well as averting our gaze from Iraq’s use of chemical weapons. Had it not been for this support, Saddam Hussein might have been in no position to make a grab for Kuwait in 1990, nor perhaps would he have assumed American acquiescence. This assumption was reinforced by the assurances offered by our ambassador, April Glaspie, that the United States does not intervene in intra-Arab quarrels. Whether she was to blame for this much-criticized message or was merely following orders, it undeniably represented a realist sentiment.

The decision to force Iraq to disgorge its prey was taken by a realist president surrounded by realist advisors like James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell. But this necessary action received more solid backing from neocons than from other realists, some of whom, such as Patrick Buchanan, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Schlesinger, Russell Kirk, and columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, among others, echoed most liberals in opposition to the war.

The war concluded on a consummately realist note—the decision to leave Saddam in power. The principal justification given for not marching on Baghdad to oust the dictator ourselves was that this would exceed the UN mandate under which we were fighting. But this does not explain our response to the large insurrection against Saddam that broke out at war’s end. Although we had ordered the grounding of all Iraqi military aircraft, we allowed an exception for the helicopters used against the rebels, and when Saddam’s loyal Republican Guard battalions passed close to American lines on their way to suppress the uprising, we made no effort to hinder them. Neither keeping those choppers grounded nor scaring off Saddam’s troops would have violated any mandate or involved us in more fighting. So another reason must be found for our cynical complicity in Saddam’s retention of power. In a joint essay some years later, former-President George H. W. Bush and former–National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft claimed that they did in fact want Saddam removed from power, but they also offered an insight into the realist calculations that led them to act otherwise. “Neither the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state,” they wrote. “We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf.”

 

BY THE mid-1990s we found ourselves faced with a series of local bloodlettings that raised humanitarian concerns more than ones of security. In general, neocons would treat purely moral concerns, such as human rights, as a higher priority than would realists. In the episodes in question, the specific issue was whether America should use force in situations in which the stakes were more moral than strategic in nature.

In the 1870s, Bismarck had summed up the realist position when he commented that stemming mayhem in the Balkans was “not worth the healthy bones of a single Pomeranian musketeer.” To be sure, most American realists today would offer disaster relief to save foreign lives, but they would draw a sharp line against risking American lives to rescue others. The neocon position is a bit harder to distill. Most neocons would endorse military action for purely humanitarian reasons in some circumstances. Where and when would depend on some intuitive arithmetic about how many foreign lives might be saved and how many American lives might be lost in the process.

One hundred and twenty years after Bismarck’s pithy remark though, the Balkans were yet again aflame. The Bush administration brushed this aside with Secretary James Baker’s realist observation that “we have no dog in that fight.” President Clinton continued this hands-off policy, with Secretary Warren Christopher explaining that our inaction amounted to “doing all [we] can consistent with our national interest.”

Realists applauded both administrations for their restraint. Neocons, in contrast, mostly joined the camp urging U.S. action in the form of air attacks against the Serbs and/or supplying arms to the Bosnian Muslims. I and others of my general persuasion—for example, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle, Max Kampelman and Charles Fairbanks—argued that in addition to the considerable humanitarian stakes, security considerations also required some form of American intervention. The principle that the United States had advanced in respect to Kuwait—collective response to aggression—was being put to the test. Bosnia-Herzegovina, however fledgling a country, was a UN member recognized by most other states, and it was being subjected to aggression from Serbia. Moreover, it was a European state. Upholding the peace of Europe had been part of the bedrock of U.S. policy since 1945. To tolerate aggression there, neocons believed, would be to invite it elsewhere.

The Clinton administration finally brought an end to three and a half years of mayhem after the loss of some two hundred thousand lives, mostly civilian. The action required to bring the slaughter to a halt proved to be extremely modest: a few weeks of aerial bombardment plus some training of Croatian and Muslim forces. This reversal of U.S. policy seems to have been motivated in part by Clinton’s political concerns and in part by worries that the Atlantic alliance’s disarray and impotence was sucking the vital spirit out of NATO. This inference is reinforced by NATO’s subsequent rush to intervene in Kosovo, even though the humanitarian issues were much smaller and the legal basis was nil.

From a neocon perspective, our intervention in Bosnia should have come sooner. Realists, I suppose, regret that we ever intervened.

Unlike Bosnia, where, at least in the eyes of neocons, humanitarian and strategic issues were interlaced, the other most pointed humanitarian episodes of that era, in Somalia and Rwanda, admittedly entailed no strategic dimension. In Somalia, intervention to stanch a famine was undertaken by realists (George H. W. Bush at the urging of Colin Powell), but critics would have a fair point if they said that the action had more in common with the spirit of neoconservatism than of realism. Some half-million Somali lives were in fact rescued, but the episode ended in the deaths of nineteen American soldiers, impelling an abrupt U.S. departure. The moral of this episode, in terms of its implications for our debate, is murky.

Much clearer is the case of Rwanda, where upwards of half a million people were slaughtered on account of their race, the truest case of genocide since Hitler’s annihilation of European Jewry. This massacre was accomplished in mere months, implying a rate of killing even faster than the Nazi death machine. All the while, the United States assiduously refused to lift a finger in response and blocked any UN action in the Security Council for fear it would entail U.S. involvement. Here was a great triumph of realism.

 

FINALLY, LET us turn to the events of 9/11 and their aftermath. Americans had been murdered by Middle Eastern terrorists on scores of occasions over the preceding thirty years and in ever-larger batches, starting with the murders of U.S. diplomats Cleo Noel Jr. and George Curtis Moore by Black September in Khartoum in 1973, through the bombing of the U.S. embassy and later the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, to the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998 and of U.S. military housing in Dhahran in 1996, to the attack on the USS Cole in 2000—among many other bombings, hijackings and assassinations. The 9/11 events constituted a climacteric. Most Americans agreed on the need to go after al-Qaeda. But the evidence that many young Muslims were ready to kill themselves for the pleasure of killing us, and that their deeds enjoyed the sympathy of a substantial minority of their various countrymen, suggested that we needed a deeper strategy, as well.

Liberals argued that terrorists were motivated by misery, and that the solution lay in lifting the world out of poverty. Two things took the force out of this argument. One was the neglect to specify how, exactly, we might achieve the unoriginal goal of universal abundance. The second was that most actual terrorists turned out not to be poor.

Bush, instead, set out to precipitate change in the political culture of the Middle East so that it would breed fewer people ready to commit or endorse terrorism. This was a strategy of unmistakably neocon coloration. Why did Bush, who came of realist stock, embrace it? Because realism had virtually nothing to suggest in the face of terrorism or jihadism.

The closest thing to a realist solution was to break America’s friendship with Israel in the hope of allaying the Muslim world’s anger. To be sure, many Muslims are angry at America’s support for Israel. But the preponderant share of violence in the Middle East does not involve Israel; and the Muslim world’s hatred for Israel is only a symptom of a deeper rage at the West for enjoying a superiority of power and status that Muslims feel rightly belongs to themselves. In short, this solution is as unconvincing as it is unprincipled, and the realists were unable to persuade many Americans of its validity. At a loss to understand why, the least decent of them turned to conspiracy theories.

The war in Iraq grew out of Bush’s neocon strategy, whether or not it was a necessary part of that strategy. Since the war turned into a fiasco, neocons rightly receive much blame, just as they or their ideological predecessors did over the war in Vietnam. But Vietnam was a flawed and painful episode in what proved ultimately to be a sound, even brilliant, strategy. The strategy that led us into Iraq may also in the end be vindicated. Meanwhile, neocons take their lumps for Iraq. But realism remains as barren of answers to the threat of global terrorism as it was to the threat of global Communism.

 

Joshua Muravchik is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.