So you know those Realists who ran foreign policy in Bush I's DoS/NSA like Powell and Scowcroft? What if they ran foreign policy for Clinton, Bush II and Obama? I think the first three are obvious - no Iraq, no "War on Terror", no nation building - Realists don't get into projects without predictable outcomes or finite end dates. But then, hindsight being 20/20, I think Clinton made the right choice to be involved in the Balkans. Anyway, this article is well worth a read.
Would it help if I linked to it? http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/04/30/what_if_realists_ran_us_foreign_policy_a_top_ten_list
A true Realist may have stayed out completely, but the way it was executed was totally Realist - they went in knowing exactly what they wanted to accomplish, and were reasonably certain they could get it done quickly. All they wanted to do was free Kuwait from Iraq, and kept Saddam in place. No invasion, no occupation, no ground troops - it was war as Powell & Co. liked. Three men responsible for Bush I's foreign policy, Scowcroft, Eagleburger and Baker, were all realists, not neocons.
if they were realists, they wouldn't have drafted such a shitty foreign policy. they would have understood balance of power politics and the need for accommodating regional powers' needs and ambitions. they would have understood the need for coalitions, rather than the go it alone, cowboy, my way or the highway style diplomacy. they would not have overextended the country in the pursuit of some kind of democratic middle east. if anything, they are idealists in my book. or maybe just idiots.
I was confused because your first post came directly after a reference to Bush I, and then you quoted my post that specifically named members of Bush I's cabinet. So yes, everyone agrees, neocons are not realists. I don't think that was ever in question.
Stephen Walt is to IR realism the way the Pope is to Catholicism, or Octomom is to crazy. He is so gung-ho about its principles that there is no compromise or pragmatism. I like the guy, but he wouldn't have gone into Libya, Kosovo, or Somalia, and there's a very good argument for intervention in all three. He basically believes that as long as we have 10,000 nuclear weapons we're cool, and we should bring the troops home.
During the cold war, "realists" referred to those who gave priority to balance of power calculations and who were neither willing to sever US relationship with allies based on their human rights records or lack of democratic credentials, nor were interested in a crusade to "roll back" the Soviet empire. After the cold war, those who were realists still maintained similar attitudes when it came to the neoconservative crusade for a new "American century" (aka as the crusade to make the Middle East safe for Israel and its aggressions), and took a similarly dim view of nation-building and other adventures that required the US military to act as a policemen in conflicts elsewhere in the world. For me, of course, following a "balance of power" maxim and calculus is by itself neither a virtue nor a vice. If the status quo is satisfactory enough, and if the changes that are required can be accomplished incrementally and overtime, pursuing a realist agenda would entail far less risk and cause less damage than otherwise. In situations, however, that the balance of power that exists is promoting an utterly intolerable and unjust order, one that cannot be remedies incrementally or overtime, if a country has the means and the will to engage in a crusade to make the world better, then obviously to do so is no vice either. However, any suggestion that those who have pushed the US to engage in a neoconservative crusade have had such altruism in mind is something I utterly reject. Which is why, ultimately, I always found "realists" more tolerable than their critics. Even those critics that were genuinely motivated by altruism often displayed a naivete and foolishness that made their prescriptions worse than the ailments they wanted cured, while the more serious danger was always from those who wanted to lead the US down crusades that had objectives in mind that had nothing to do with idealism or altruism.
speaking of crusading, I'm reading Tom Sawyer Abroad, and this seems like it's appropriate here: So then he set to work to get up a plan to make him celebrated ; and pretty soon he struck it, and ofifered to take me and Jim in. Tom Sawyer was always free and generous that way. There's a-plenty of boys that's mighty good and friendly when you've got a good thing, but when a good thing happens to come their way they don't say a word to you, and try to hog it all. That warn't ever Tom Sawyer's way, I can say that for him. There's plenty of boys that will come hankering and grovelling around you when you've got an apple, and beg the core off of you ; but when they've got one, and you beg for the core and remind them how you give them a core one time, they say thank you 'most to death, but there ain't a-going to be no core. But I notice they always git come up with ; all you got to do is to wait Well, we went out in the woods on the hill, and Tom told us what it was, It was a crusade. " What's a crusade ?" I says. He looked scornful the way he's always done when he was ashamed of a person, and says — " Huck Finn, do you mean to tell me you don't know what a crusade is ?" "No," says I, "I don't. And I don't care to, nuther. I've lived till now and done without it, and had my health, too. But as soon as you tell me, I'll know, and that's soon enough. I don't see any use in finding out things and clog- ging up my head with them when I mayn't ever have any occasion to use 'em. There was Lance Williams, he learned how to talk Choctaw here till one come and dug his grave for him. Now, then, what's a crusade? But I can tell you one thing before you begin ; if it's a patent-right, there's no money in it. Bill Thompson he — " " Patent-right !" says he. " I never see such an idiot. Why, a crusade is a kind of war." I thought he must be losing his mind. But no, he was in real earnest, and went right on, perfectly ca'm : " A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from the paynim." " Which Holy Land ?" " Why, the Holy Land— there ain't but one." " What do 7ve want of it .'*" "Why, can't you understand.? It's in the hands of the paynim, and it's our duty to take it away from them." " How did we come to let them git hold of it ?" " We didn't come to let them git hold of it. They al- ways had it." " Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don't it ?" "Why of course it does. Who said it didn't?" I studied over it, but couldn't seem to git at the right of it, no wa}^ I says : " It's too many for me, Tom Sawyer. If I had a farm and it was mine, and another person wanted it, would it be right for him to — " " Oh, shucks ! you don't know enough to come in when it rains, Huck Finn. It ain't a farm, it's entirely different. You see, it's like this. They own the land, just the mere hand, and that's all they do own ; but it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they haven't any business to be there defiling it. It's a shame, and we ought not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away from them." "Why, it does seem to me it's the most mixed-up thing I ever see ! Now if I had a farm and another person — " " Don't I tell you it hasn't got anything to do with farm- ing ? Farming is business, just common low-down busi- ness ; that's all it is, it's all you can say for it ; but this is higher, this is religious, and totally different." " Religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it ?" " Certainly ; it's always been considered so." Jim he shook his head, and says : *' Mars Tom, I reckon dey's a mistake about it somers — dey mos' sholy is. I's religious myself, en I knows plenty religious people, but I hain't run across none dat acts like dat." It made Tom hot, and he says : " Well, it's enough to make a body sick, such mullet- headed ignorance ! If either of you'd read anything about history, you'd know that Richard Cur de Loon, and the Pope, and Godfrey de Bulleyn, and lots more of the most noble-hearted and pious people in the world, hacked and hammered at the paynims for more than two hundred years trying to take their land away from them, and swam neck- deep in blood the whole time — and yet here's a couple of sap-headed country yahoos out in the backwoods of Mis- souri, setting themselves up to know more about the rights and wrongs of it than they did ! Talk about cheek !" Well, of course, that put a more different light on it, and me and Jim felt pretty cheap and ignorant, and wished we hadn't been quite so chipper. I couldn't say nothing, and Jim he couldn't for a while ; then he says : "Well, den, I reckon it's all right; beca'se ef dey didn't know, dey ain't no use for po' ignorant folks like us to be trying to know ; en so, ef it's our duty, we got to go en tackle it en do de bes' we can. Same time, I feel as sorry for dem paynims as Mars Tom, De hard part gvvine to be to kill folks dat a body hain't been 'quainted wid and dat hain't done him no harm. Dat's it, yousee. Efwewuztogo 'm.ongst 'em, jist we three, en say we's hungry, en ast 'em for a bite to eat, why, maybe dey's jist like yuther people. Don't you reckon dey is ? Why, defd give it, I know dey would, en den — " "Then what?" " Well, Mars Tom, my idea is like dis. It ain't no use, we caiit kill dem po' strangers dat ain't doin' us no harm, till we've had practice — I knows it perfectly well. Mars Tom — 'deed I knows it perfectly well. But ef we takes a' ax or two, jist you en me en Huck, en slips acrost de river to-night arter de moon's gone down, en kills dat sick fam'ly dat's over on the Sny, en burns dey house down, en—" "Oh, you make me tired!" says Tom. "I don't want to argue any more with people like you and Huck Finn, that's always wandering from the subject, and ain't got any more sense than to try to reason out a thing that's pure theology by the laws that protect real estate 1" Now that's just where Tom Sawyer warn't fair. Jim didn't mean no harm, and I didn't mean no harm. We knowed well enough that he was right and we was wrong, and all we was after was to get at the hoiu of it, and that was all ; and the only reason he couldn't explain it so we could understand it was because we was ignorant — yes, and pretty dull, too, I ain't denying that ; but, land ! that ain't no crime, I should think. But he wouldn't hear no more about it — just said if we had tackled the thing in the proper spirit, he would 'a' raised a couple of thousand knights and put them in steel armor from head to heel, and made me a lieutenant and Jim a sutler, and took the command himself and brushed the whole paynim outfit into the sea like flies and come back across the world in a glory like sunset. But he said we didn't know enough to take the chance when we had it, and he wouldn't ever offer it again. And he didn't. When he once got set, you couldn't budge him. But I didn't care much. I am peaceable, and don't get up rows with people that ain't doing nothing to me. I allowed if the paynim was satisfied I was, and we would let it stand at that. Now Tom he got all that notion out of Walter Scott's book, which he was always reading. And it was a wild notion, because in my opinion he never could 've raised the men, and if he did, as like as not he would 've got licked. I took the book and read all about it, and as near as I could make it out, most of the folks that shook farming to go crusading had a mighty rocky time of it. http://www.archive.org/stream/tomsawyerabroadt00clem/tomsawyerabroadt00clem_djvu.txt