This is a useful article as it does a good job of transcending the urgency of the moment and reflecting on a large problem for the Republican Party.  This is the problem of what will be the unifying foreign policy of the future.  Will it be the neoconservative vision that is much maligned and still being regularly kicked about, yet seems to have remarkable staying power, or will it be the pragmatism of the realist camp?

Its true that even during the halcyon days of the Reagan Administration, this was by no means a definitively decided matter.  Idealism and pragmatism usually compete with each other and only occassionally collaborate here and there.

However, Republicans need to find an answer.  The potential of years in the wilderness should sharpen minds and allow us to come together.  I would posit that Charles Krauthammer's take on "Democratic Realism" might be the most sensible path of all.  This is a neoconservatism that is tempered and willing to accept less than ideal outcomes, thus preserving strength for times of indisputable necessity.  At the same time, it is a realism that uses all elements of statecraft and power to achieve an ultimate end of something more positive than a mere assertion of will. 

Sen. McCain would do well to embrace this vision in order to be the "realistic idealist" he wants to be (and the GOP needs him to be).

The following quote is from Mr. Krauthammer's 2004 Irving Kristol speech at the American Enterprise Institute. 

"What is the unipolar power to do?

Four schools, four answers.

The isolationists want simply to ignore unipolarity, pull up the drawbridge, and defend Fortress America. Alas, the Fortress has no moat--not after the airplane, the submarine, the ballistic missile--and as for the drawbridge, it was blown up on 9/11.

Then there are the liberal internationalists. They like to dream, and to the extent they are aware of our unipolar power, they don’t like it. They see its use for anything other than humanitarianism or reflexive self-defense as an expression of national selfishness. And they don’t just want us to ignore our unique power, they want us to yield it piece by piece, by subsuming ourselves in a new global architecture in which America becomes not the arbiter of international events, but a good and tame international citizen.

Then there is realism, which has the clearest understanding of the new unipolarity and its uses--unilateral and preemptive if necessary. But in the end, it fails because it offers no vision. It is all means and no ends. It cannot adequately define our mission.

Hence, the fourth school: democratic globalism. It has, in this decade, rallied the American people to a struggle over values. It seeks to vindicate the American idea by making the spread of democracy, the success of liberty, the ends and means of American foreign policy.

I support that. I applaud that. But I believe it must be tempered in its universalistic aspirations and rhetoric from a democratic globalism to a democratic realism. It must be targeted, focused and limited. We are friends to all, but we come ashore only where it really counts. And where it counts today is that Islamic crescent stretching from North Africa to Afghanistan.

In October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we came to the edge of the abyss. Then, accompanied by our equally shaken adversary, we both deliberately drew back. On September 11, 2001, we saw the face of Armageddon again, but this time with an enemy that does not draw back. This time the enemy knows no reason.

Were that the only difference between now and then, our situation would be hopeless. But there is a second difference between now and then: the uniqueness of our power, unrivaled, not just today but ever. That evens the odds. The rationality of the enemy is something beyond our control. But the use of our power is within our control. And if that power is used wisely, constrained not by illusions and fictions but only by the limits of our mission--which is to bring a modicum of freedom as an antidote to nihilism--we can prevail."