In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Morality and Realism:A Match Made in Heaven?
  • Medlir Mema (bio)
Ethical Realism: A Vision for Americas Role in the World, by Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman. (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006), 200 pages. $22.00 (hardcover).

In 1505, Niccolò Machiavelli laid out a course of action that, if pursued, would help a ruler—such as The Prince—to maintain and expand his power in an efficient, if violent manner. Five hundred years later, many policymakers in the United States find themselves struggling with questions that are not unlike those of Machiavelli's time. In a period of turmoil and uncertainty, what policies and what principles should a leader follow to maximize the security and prosperity of her country?

A glance at recent political science publications reveals the plethora of policy options facing today's leaders.1 Yet most still struggle to find a realistic path forward, one that avoids the pitfalls of unnecessary ideological struggles and provides some fresh ideas. Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman claim to have an answer in their new book, Ethical Realism, A Vision for America's Role in the World. Lieven is a British national and a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, a liberal think tank in Washington DC. He has written extensively on the war in Iraq and is quite familiar with the American political system. Hulsman was a senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, until early this year. He was a vocal advocate for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The authors indicate that they are each taking a professional risk in writing this book. What justifies such action? According to Lieven and Hulsman, the world has become a dangerous place for the lone superpower, the United States. Yet, leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties are wasting U.S. resources in self-defeating pursuits of vague and utopian notions of democratization. U.S. political leadership, the authors argue, is needlessly alienating current and potential allies by its ultra-realist pursuit of the war on terror.2

This state of affairs is further aggravated by what Lieven and Hulsman call "the cottage industry"—a conglomeration of various think-tanks, policy institutes, and academics in general, to which, ironically, both Lieven and Hulsman belong—that exist only to perpetuate such false notions as the inevitability of democracy and the necessity of a democratic society as an a priori condition for cooperation at the international level. The Democratists, as the [End Page 171] authors categorize passionate proponents of democratization, have wrongfully established the spread of democracy as the cornerstone of the United States' war on terror.3

To make things worse, the authors continue, this extreme utopianism accompanies an equally strict adherence to tenets of ultra-realism. Lieven and Hulsman assert that the methods which the Bush administration has been willing to use in the pursuit of the war on terror have been counterproductive both in terms of intelligence and political outcomes. U.S. prestige abroad has suffered greatly during the last five years, they write, and the administration's treatment of its allies and competitors has left the door wide-open for criticism. The result is a clear deterioration of relationships with a number of important actors in the international arena, and an increased likelihood of potential counterbalancing actions by Russia, China, and Iran.

The conclusion the authors draw is that the United States must not only stop this dynamic, but also reverse it. They offer a vision for moving forward that harkens back to the era of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower—the Democratic and Republican presidents, respectively, that formulated and cemented America's post-World War II foreign policy. Truman and Eisenhower both understood the stakes that were at play in a nuclear era and recognized that neither utopian idealism nor naked realism would do for the post-World War II world order. Instead, with the assistance of Hans Morgenthau and George Kennan, they formulated and implemented a foreign policy that was based on the principles of what Lieven and Hulsman call ethical realism—tough enough for the United States to be ready to take harsh measures to defend itself, but also moral...

pdf

Share