Idealism v. Realism v. Pragmatism Posted by David Shorr

The prize for insightful analysis of the foreign policy debate goes to Fareed Zakaria's recent column about Obama's worldview, which focuses on a key, often missed, point. We've seen the idealism-versus-realism story so many times that it seem like it writes itself (which maybe is the point). Zakaria explains how progressives propose to manage this inevitable tension. In a word: pragmatism. It's not that idealism should be tossed aside in favor of a Mearsheimerian cynicism, but that it must be tempered with a careful reading of what is achievable and the potential consequences of our actions. I once heard a very pithy expression of this idea at a Marine Corps conference on stability operations from Chester Crocker (an internationalist Republican), who said we need to be "hard-headed without being hard-hearted."

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