Better Realists, Please

Not content to hurt my brain the first time around, Stephen Walt presents us with another "thought experiment":

But if you don't like that "thought experiment," here's another, offered by philosophy professor Joseph Levine at University of Massachusetts: what if Hamas was hiding out among the civilian population of Tel Aviv, and attacking Israel from within? Would the IDF be using massive force to eradicate them? Unless you think that Palestinian and Israeli civilian lives are not equal, what justifies the current policy?

Israel is hardly unique in placing a higher value on its own citizens' lives than it places on the lives of others, and we should not forget that U.S. forces have caused plenty of civilian casualties in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. "The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must." But that doesn't make it right, and there are good reasons to question whether it will even be effective in this instance.

There's so much that's very wrong with this hypothetical scenario. First, as a well regarded realist, you'd think Walt could appreciate the fact that the Israeli government - or any government, for that matter - is first and foremost responsible for the well-being of its own citizenry. If Hamas were embedded within an Israeli city it would of course change the retaliatory options. The IDF is charged with the security of Israelis, not the citizens of the world. Walt admits as much.

I'm inclined to agree with Ross Douthat on this, who rightly argues for a new kind of realism in the realm of foreign policy. What often passes as such in contemporary forums is nothing more than misplaced and misguided contrarianism.