Let Me Explain Realism

Today's foreign policy realists always seem to gravitate to the position that fighting enemies is hard and it is realistic to cut deals with those enemies. Those who want to defeat our enemies and spread freedom are the dreaded "neo-cons." What rubbish. I was always a realist--during the Cold War--and remain a realist. What changed is the world. What changed is what realism demands.

In our world with a Moslem world too eager to support jihadis (or willing to look away or too afraid to stop the jihadis), it is no longer realistic to cut deals with whoever runs the palace. We need to help Moslem reformers purge the Islamic world of jihadi nutballs. Those nutballs, who would nuke us if they could, are the biggest threat right now.

Recall that in the Cold War, realists were willing to work with thug rulers if they were willing to help us defeat the major threat of our day--Soviet-led communism. We preferred to have democracies as allies, but if a thug ruler gave us a port or an air base that could be used to sink Soviet ships or drop a nuke on a Soviet industrial city, we accepted the thug ruler as an ally. The little problem was nothing compared to the big problem we had to defeat. That, my friends, was realism.

Today the term realism has been hijacked to mean the opposite--we cut deals with enemies and just pretend it advances our bigger interests.

But I remain a realist-a traditional realist. And I have an example. Lately, the news is about a young girl napalmed in South Vietnam 40 years ago and caught in a famous picture. A supposed symbol of our evil, she was actually the victim of a foreign invasion and a horrible friendly fire incident. Her tragedy was a picture that reflected the tragedy of an entire nation that was subjugated. But for that defeat, South Vietnam might be what South Korea and Taiwan are today--free and prosperous nations.

Yet I favor bolstering our relations with Vietnam to counter China's increasing power. Jihadis may be the current threat, but China is a potential looming threat that we also have to deal with. The Vietnamese are bastards. Sorry. But they are. We fought them--and I respect their fighting ability--but they are essentially North Vietnam, which conquered South Vietnam. And even though I regret we let North Vietnam defeat South Vietnam (while being grateful that our fight bought time for the rest of Asia to strengthen and resist communist influence) when it was within our power to stop them, realism demands that I accept this part of the world as it is and go from there.

And since Vietnam would like help resisting China and we would like to bolster those who would resist Chinese domination, we need to support Vietnam notwithstanding the past that I wish had been different. We don't have a free South Vietnam to support. We have a North Vietnamese elite that controls all of Vietnam that wants our support.

That, my friends, is realism: doing what it takes to win the most important fight. How dare those who would retreat from every enemy appropriate the term to justify retreat.