The Realistic Appraisal of America’s Interests

anitarian intervention against genocidal dictators, and ‘democracy promotion’ enthusiasts. Sotto voce, other are being attacked, namely the Iraqis who believed, and still believe, that Iraq might become a federal and pluralist democracy. Many of these Iraqis have a major grudge against James Baker III. After all, he decisively argued that Saddam should be left in power in 1991 after the first President Bush had encouraged the Kurds and Shi‘a Arabs to rebel. Baker now reportedly says that no one asks him any longer why he did that. If so, that is proof of consistency. Baker does not listen to representative Kurds and Shi‘a Arabs, or follow their counsel, because they are disposable instruments in the realistic appraisal of America’s interests. The ISG Report suggests, by implication that President George W Bush should have listened to Baker, in the way that his father did. This last sentence now has widespread consent within informed American opinion, which has mostly turned strongly against America’s intervention in Iraq. But Baker was wrong in 1991. Moreover he is wrong now, and it must be hoped that his errors do not become the new orthodoxy of American foreign policy.