Doctrine Matters

After reading the Walt/Muravchik realist/neocon smack-down at the National Interest, Blake Hounshell at Foreign Policy says we should "forget labels and sweeping doctrines, and do what works."

That's the rub. "What works" is in the eye of the bolder. When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, this was U.S. policy working, at least according to neoconservatives. To some realists, it was an example of U.S. policy gone dreadfully astray.

Doing simply "what works" requires deciding on some basic definition of what it is that should work - which in turn requires shared goals and agreement on a common direction. But that's clearly not the case in the realist/neoconservative divide. One camp is bent on global hegemony, the other isn't.