Why, oh why, must semi-professional pundits talk about things they don't know much about? This hour's irksome example is the following from Douglas Brinkley in a Christian Science Monitor story on differences between Bush and Kerry's approaches to foreign policy.
"Bush is part of the realist, realpolitik school of foreign policy, that first and foremost showcases America's force," says historian Douglas Brinkley. "Kerry is part of what they used to call the moralist or multilateral school of foreign affairs."Brinkley is a fine historian, but perhaps he needs to sit in on some undergraduate international relations classes before he starts pontificating on IR theories. Bush is most definitely not a Realist of the Realpolitik variety (he might be an Offensive Realist, but they are not the same thing). One of the main reasons he is not is his incessant moralizing (which has little to do with a tendency toward unliateralism or mulitlateralism; you can fight some righteous cause either way). Most of the country's best-known Realist scholars have been opposed to Bush's foreign policies. Posted by armand at May 27, 2004 02:47 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics