President Bush I's Secretary of State gets in on the action in terms of outlining a new vision for American foreign policy.  "Pragmatic Idealism" is the title of this bit from the realist foreign policy journal, the National Interest.  Several points.

First, two quotes:
 
"My first maxim is that the United States must be comfortable with using its power. Isolationism and disengagement are simply not options. We are too integrated into the world, in economic and security terms, to walk away from it. If the United States does not exercise power, others will."

"Our pragmatism should inform our foreign policy.  Such a balanced approach can help us avoid both the cynicism of “realism” and the impracticality of “idealism.” It is based on an optimistic view of man but is tempered by our knowledge of human imperfection. It promises no easy answers or quick fixes. But neither did the containment policy pursued by U.S. administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, during the Cold War. Yet that policy ultimately triumphed. It was based, much like the approach I have sketched, on a unique melding of idealism and realism. It eschewed the temptations of both isolationism on the one hand, and rollback of communism through direct conflict with the Soviet Union on the other. And it reflected, at an important level, a confidence about the future that we need to recapture."

The first quote encapsulates my view to a tee.  The second strikes me as similar to Francis Fukuyama's recent push for "Realistic Wilsonianism" as he defines it in his official break from the neoconservatives, "America at the Crossroads."  It seems everyone wants to offer their corrective to neoconservative idealism by tempering it with good old fashion pragmatism, realism, or realpolitik (call it whichever you like).  I suppose it is interesting to see a vision as vilified as that of the neoconservatives get hit by practically everyone from Pat Buchanan to James Baker to Zbigniew Brzezinski to Noam Chomsky.

I think neoconservatism is a bold vision that held much promise.  We will never really know if that vision could have brought a better world into being as the necessary investment was never made by the Bush Administration.  Iraq could have been so much different.  As the "pragmatists" circle the gaggle of Presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle, we should take care to learn what the consequences will be for those who just aren't "worth" the expenditure of our precious political capital.  I am not saying we can solve all problems or that we should.  But I am saying that these efforts to marry pragmatism with idealism will inevitably lead to the rule of pragmatism.  It is on this altar that Rwanda was sacrificed, Bosnia blew up, and Saddam Hussein massacred the rising Shiites in the wake of the first Gulf War.  This does not bode so well for many in the world, irrespective of the  platitudinous sounds of the rhetorically gifted ambassador reciting his talking points.