Idealists argue that global society is not condemned to perpetual conflict because humans possess the capacity to escape from primeval aggressive instincts with the help of rational education, economic abundance and democratic institutions. They point especially to post-World War II Europe, which managed to shed a centuries-old pattern of interstate and civil wars, nationalism, genocides and the Holocaust and create the European Union. Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter are usually placed in the idealist camp.
At first blush, one would be tempted to classify Republican Sen. John McCain as a realist and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama as an idealist. We argue here that McCain is the idealist, and Obama the realist.
McCain's idealist rhetoric emerges most clearly when he proposes a new "League of Democracies . . . that can harness the great power of the more than 100 democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests."
McCain sees staying in Iraq as necessary to finish what was started, because "the best way to secure long-term peace and security is to establish a stable, prosperous, and democratic state in Iraq that poses no threat to its neighbors and contributes to the defeat of terrorists."
One can imagine archetypal realist George Kennan, were he still alive, counseling that "one contains one's adversaries, rather than forcing regime change through military intervention."
During the primaries, Obama promised to withdraw from Iraq in a short period of time, avoid an additional front in Iran, and replace preemptive war with preemptive diplomacy.
For Obama, containment and deliberations (even with one's adversaries) and a return to multilateralism backed by force are all realist recipes for managing a quasi-anarchic international system.
