IT'S PAINT & CANVAS, HAIR, EYEBROWS, A DRESS...--YES, IT'S CALLED THE MONA LISA:

Foxes and Hedgehogs (JONATHAN TEPPERMAN, 10/16/05, NY Times)

The library of books on American foreign policy, which has swollen rapidly since Americans rediscovered the world four years ago, can be split into two basic types. First are the Big Ideas books: eye-catching volumes with a single, sexy, overarching theme, often one that promises to revolutionize the world. Then, on the back shelves, are the more nuanced guidebooks, sober, sometimes tedious tomes that scout the territory with carefully detailed road maps.

So far the Bush administration has shown a marked preference for the first type. Last year the president sang the praises of "The Case for Democracy," by Natan Sharansky, the former Russian refusenik turned hawkish Israeli politician. And Vice President Dick Cheney positively gushed over Victor Davis Hanson's "Autumn of War," telling assistants that it encapsulated his tough-guy philosophy. [...]

Hanson and Sharansky both preach democracy promotion - but they don't explain how democracy can be promoted in a nuclear-armed hermit regime like North Korea, or what to do about its destabilizing effects - if, for instance, the new democracies fall apart, attack their neighbors or elect governments hostile to the United States. Ferguson argues that a benign, free-trading empire is the solution to today's fractured and fractious world. It sounds good - but he never explains how Washington should sell the idea to reluctant Americans, or ward off the resentment and competition an American empire would breed. The big ideas are rhetorically attractive, but governments, working on day-to-day problems, don't have the luxury of relying on rhetoric.

Enter the humble how-to guides, the often overlooked ugly ducklings of the foreign policy library. These are books without slogans, manuals that favor subtlety over simplicity, moderation over bombast, pragmatism over ideology.

Consider some recent, prominent examples, all level-headed prescriptions for America's predicament: "Does America Need a Foreign Policy?" by Henry Kissinger; "The Choice," by Zbigniew Brzezinski; and "The Superpower Myth," by Nancy Soderberg. All of these authors have firsthand experience in government (Kissinger served Nixon and Ford, Brzezinski worked for Carter and Soderberg was a top Clinton aide), and it shows. Though they come from different parties, have advised very different bosses and don't necessarily take the same positions on particular issues, their books are remarkably similar in outlook and tone.

They all begin by pointing out how intricate the world is. Unlike Sharansky and the other hedgehogs, these foxes recognize that foreign policy is complex and full of paradoxes - first among them, that the United States today is both supremely powerful and supremely vulnerable. As Kissinger remarks, it is thus impossible to "apply a single formula to the analysis and interpretation of the contemporary international order."

Gosh, you'd think it pertinent that Kissinger and Brzezinski are avatars of the Realist school that dragged the Cold War out for fifty years and very nearly lost it in the 70s, before Ronald Reagan came along, applied an Idealist formula to it and won it in a decade. Meanwhile, when Mr. Sharansky's Idealist formula was applied in Palestine it not only ended the conflict but turned Palestine into a democracy. And, of course, George W. Bush has used Idealism to win the War on Terror in a riduculously short period of time, setting off liberal democratic reforms in pretty nearly every nation of the Middle East and the rest of Islam. The guide books would appear to provide just enough detail so that you completely miss the big picture.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 16, 2005 11:31 AM