TRYING TO MANAGE THE UNMANAGEABLE: THE LIMITS OF REALIST DOCTRINE

John Derbyshire does an excellent job of explaining why Brent Scowcraft, despite his decades of expertise, is giving seriously flawed advice on Iraq. In the process, he explains why realism, with its ethos of managing foreign policy is incapable of responding to the challenges of determined ideologues who do not accept the ground rules of the international order.

The Scowcroft problem is not one of timidity or over-accommodation: It is one of commitment to managerialism. To Scowcroft, international relations are to be managed. The Soviets were to be managed; the Chinese are to be managed; Saddam Hussein is to be managed. This business of managing the world requires high skill and deep experience; and there is no place in it for emotion, sentiment, rhetoric, moral judgment, dramatic initiatives or leaps of the imagination....

Now of course, this Kissingerian-Scowcroftian view of things is correct most of the time in all places, and all the time in most places. International relations are to be managed; and it is a good thing we have skilled diplomats and seasoned advisers to manage them for us. These managerial methods fail, though, when a serious and ruthless threat to the international order, or some important part of it, arises. The British Foreign Office of the 1930s was not short of policy wonks, international-relations PhDs and seasoned advisers. Unfortunately, they were all wrong. The man who was right was a self-educated romantic with a reputation for political unreliability and personal eccentricity, yet who knew that Hitler could not be managed but had to be confronted — as, of course, though unfortunately later rather than sooner, he eventually was....

Yes: when management has failed, confrontation becomes necessary: and a self-educated romantic like Winston Churchill or Ronald Reagan, with clear moral vision and unshakeable faith in his own powers of judgment, is just the person you want in charge at such a time, however much the Kissingerians may cringe at rhetoric about "gangster cliques" or "evil empires."

The issue we currently face with Saddam Hussein is, of course: Is this actually such a time? Have managerial principles actually failed? It seems clear to me that they have — not only in respect of Iraq, but all over the Middle East...