Hearing the retired four-star general and former commander of CENTCOM speak is an exercise in whiplash. He opposed the invasion of Iraq—and supported the surge. He’s optimistic that the Obama administration will chart a new course in foreign affairs—but laments the absence of a strategic statement and admits that there has been no significant break with failed policies. He wants to “internationalize” the war in Afghanistan—or reconsider our NATO membership if our allies don’t agree. He eschews nation-building—but favors institution-building. He wants to free ground troops from outdated installations like Korea and Okinawa—so that they can be sent to the Afghan front.

One minute, Anthony Zinni brims with “then what?” pragmatism. This is not someone who would bomb without a morning-after plan or promise anyone a cakewalk. Neither is he game to throw dollars and boots after some global democracy scheme dreamed up in a think-tank.

But then without warning, the wind shifts, and the cold-eyed strategist turns as idealistic as any Weekly Standard scribbler, speaking of “taking risks for values” and criticizing institutional unwillingness to “think big.” He would put civil affairs under a military umbrella “because that’s where it’s going to end up anyway” and seems unburdened by his own plan’s “then what?”—the new and exciting uses we might find for his comprehensive breaking-building machine.

Zinni fits these mismatched pieces into a “smart power” frame. The Marine in him can’t concede that America needs to be more modest in its ambitions. We just have to be prudent about the fights we pick. This is a sort of progress. It might have kept us out of Iraq—or, as the general’s CENTCOM war plan dictated, caused us to plow in 380,000-400,000 troops. Zinni speaks of “working ourselves out of a job” in the Mideast, a refreshing change from John McCain’s thousand-year reign. But he leaves no room for the possibility that we have neither moral right nor infinite ability to renovate other societies in the first place, whether from the passé top-down model or his no less invasive bottom-up.