Decline of the Detente Devotees

William Kristol has noticed that former devotees of detente have become Reaganites. There is now "morality in foreign policy," dedicated to ending, rather than "containing," threats to the civilized world. This means, among other things, taking the character of regimes seriously which Nixonians and other Republicans, including some members of Bush's own cabinet in former lives as Ford hands, did not do. A necessary corollary to this new foreign policy is garnering the approbation of conflict resolution specialists who cringe at the supposedly inflammatory language of morality.

Kristol's essay is timely as James Baker, today in the WSJ, calls the case for military action against Iraq "compelling." Baker is another containment type coming around to "idealpolitik" as our friends at OxBlog put it. This is quite a change because Baker has been fairly orthodox in his adherence to a more Nixonian foreign policy; he has been resilient in his "realism." He and Brent Scowcroft just a few months ago in high-profile OpEd pieces argued for the president to go slower against Iraq.

Just as we predicted in mid-September, Bush, much more Reagan-like than his father, has stayed the course and converted his domestic doubters, the detente devotees.