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Christopher Lydon: Those who see in Iraq a massive and reckless strategic failure in
the now discredited name of neoconservatism may well wonder about the pathway back
to world order. For the wounded, embarrassed, reviled, but still arguably indispensable
goliath in international politics, the course is not yet charted. John Ikenberry of
Princeton University and Stephen Walt of Harvard University are the kind of policy
designers who saw and said in advance that the Iraq war would be a ruinous mistake.
So they can both claim to have been right about the past, yet they differ interestingly
about the future. Steve Walt argues that neoconservatives were essentially liberals on
steroids, and the neoliberal internationalists like John Ikenberry are just kinder, gentler
“neocons.” John would warn you that neorealists like Steve Walt are veering dangerously
toward isolationism. Steve Walt, what might constitute a future U.S. role driven neither by fear nor the hope of domination?
Stephen Walt: The overriding goal of U.S. foreign policy is, of course, to protect U.S.
citizens and promote U.S. prosperity. Our primary strategic objective has long been
to prevent challenges to our dominant position. No presidential candidates ever run
for office saying they want to make the United States number two. Realism in foreign
policy begins by dealing with the world as it really is, without unrealistic or idealistic
follies. The neoconservatives in the Bush administration have been a foreign policy
disaster because their basic views on foreign policy, though appealing to U.S. values
and U.S. pride, were deeply unrealistic. They thought wrongly that liberty was easy to
export and U.S. power could dominate the world. Liberal internationalists like John
Ikenberry are not in complete agreement with this vision but are, in a sense, fellowtravelers:
kinder, gentler neocons who want to remake the world in the United States’
image. Unfortunately, using U.S. power to spread democracy—to forge a world of liberty under law—puts us on the slippery slope of intervening all over the world.
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