Bush?s belief in the desire for freedom has influenced the policy of his administration in crucial ways. One reason that the administration hadn?t more seriously considered worst-case scenarios prior to the fall of Baghdad was that its thinking was soaked in the notion that once Saddam Hussein?s dictatorship was removed, the true nature of the Iraqi people would be revealed as freedom-loving democrats. Don Rumsfeld infamously justified the post-liberation looting as the natural exuberance of a newly freed people.

In this, they had forgotten conservative wisdom about the importance of institutions and culture. Even if people desire to be free, it does them no good unless their desire can be channeled through appropriate governmental institutions, which are excruciatingly hard to build up once they have been torn down. We are still working on the Iraqi police, and will probably be doing so for years.

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The last thing the U.S. should do is reward North Korea's missile provocation with direct talks. Yet before yesterday's missile tests, that is exactly what Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar advised. Former Clinton officials Ashton Carter and William Perry have accused President Bush of ignoring diplomatic options with Pyongyang, even as they also propose a pre-emptive military strike. But what are the six-party talks with the North if not multilateral diplomacy? The real story may be, as Nicholas Eberstadt argues in The Wall Street Journal today, that Kim Jong Il has concluded from recent U.S. actions toward Iran and North Korea that Mr. Bush is now as diplomatically pliable as Mr. Clinton.

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Realists can be criticized for not proffering a specific agenda of their own, and that, too, is a fair rap. Realism does not define, and should not limit, America's aims in the world.

It is, however, an indispensable ingredient of a grown-up foreign policy. If realism had the advocacy it deserves, it would be enjoying a renaissance it has earned.

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