The New Realist Coalition

The Council on Foreign Relations' Leslie Gelb takes to the International Herald Tribune to argue that realists should ditch the GOP and forge a partnership with their fellow realists among the "Truman-Acheson" Democrats:

The two groups of realists should seek common ground on the issue of humanitarian intervention. Americans know they can't be true to themselves and do nothing about genocide. Failure to act against this particular evil corrupts society and inspires deep cynicism, something genuine conservatives always feared.

Now, I can in no way claim to speak for "realism" writ large (or writ small, for that matter), but this strikes me as quite a capitulation on behalf of a fairly dubious claim - that failing to act inspires "cynicism" and societal corruption. I don't recall American society experiencing an inordinate amount of corruption following our passivity in Rwanda. Nor does our society appear to be suffering unduly from our inability to halt the bloodshed in Congo, or Darfur, or Burma, or anywhere else where people are acting inhumanely.

That's glib, I know, but then look at the remedy Gelb proposes:

Yet it is foolhardy to try to tame the problem through nation building. Our experience, as in Bosnia, shows we have a good chance to stop or abate the violence through limited military actions like arming the victims and surgical air strikes.

It strikes me that any realism worth its salt would be very, very skeptical about dropping bombs on people without a solid national security rationale. Vague assertions of cynicism don't cut it.