As you would expect, Leon Wieseltier disparages the “realist” views that he identifies with Obama and Hagel:
Obama is acting also in the name of a strategic concept. It is an old, cold concept. Obama’s loftiness has provided cover for the ascendancy of “realism”—which is not always the same as realism, as the consequences of our abdication in Syria will eventually demonstrate. The Obama-Rumsfeld lineage is only one of the ironies of the new foreign policy consensus. There is also the bizarre enthusiasm of progressives for the amoral likes of Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski. And richest of all is their sudden reverence for Chuck Hagel, whom none of them admired, and rightly not, when he was in the Senate.
In case it needed saying, there is no such thing as an “Obama-Rumsfeld lineage” in policymaking. Wieseltier starts off by confusing Rumsfeld’s interest in transforming the structure of the military with Obama’s reluctance to embark on new large-scale, prolonged ground wars. He then states that Obama has applied the “principle of shrinkage” to foreign policy, but this is mistaken. Obama’s foreign policy to date has not been an exercise in “shrinking the ends” of U.S. foreign policy, but rather refusing to increase them beyond what they already are. What is Wieseltier’s main problem with Obama’s foreign policy? That it is not dedicated to toppling the regimes of Syria and Iran. According to him, choosing not to back regime opponents as much as Wieseltier would like proves that the U.S. is “about to wane,” as if maintaining America’s position in the world were contingent on constantly overthrowing over governments. The U.S. isn’t “abdicating” in Syria. Abdication implies giving up authority or failing to fulfill a responsibility that rightly belongs to you. The U.S. possessed neither, and it shouldn’t aspire to “shape” or manage the outcome of Syria’s conflict.
I’m not sure that there is a great deal of “progressive enthusiasm” for Scowcroft or Brzezinski, but if there were it would not be so hard to understand. They are prominent former national security officials who publicly argued early on that the invasion of Iraq was a terrible mistake, and they have generally had a better understanding of what advances the U.S. national interest than the hawks in both parties that can’t dislike them. No doubt some of the recent supporters of Hagel on the left are rallying to him for partisan and Obama loyalist reasons, but most progressives that support Hagel seem to be doing so because he is being attacked for holding views that they find appealing. Specifically, Hagel is coming under fire because he is wary of military action, skeptical of sanctions, interested in arms reduction, and open to some reduction in military spending. Insofar as progressives care about avoiding new wars, trimming the military budget, and reducing the number of nuclear weapons, they were always likely to find Hagel a welcome selection. There is nothing ironic about any of this.
James Canning 
Gordon Hanson 
Thomas Sm 
Egypt Steve 
Wesley 
JB 
Bob 
Rob in CT 
Interesting, this interventionism as to Syria does not fit the “Israel first” scenario. The Israelis are warily staying out of the fight, as far as can be seen. So long as Hezbollah doesn’t get nerve gas and no one crosses into the Golan, they are simply keeping their powder dry.
Rather, there seems to be a doctrinaire Wilsonian democratism at work. Assad is a bloody dictator; therefore let’s support the opposition, some of whom mouth democratic slogans. A Caroline Glick did not want the US to help topple Mubarak, but a Jennifer Rubin did.
This stance, I suppose, is some residue of the Trotskyist heritage of the neocons. The Trots were forever splitting over issues they could not affect at all, such as whether to “critically support” the Soviet Union or Finland in the first Russo-Finnish conflict. “Permanent revolution” of late has been transmuted into the “freedom agenda,” so one school of neocons are still forever getting exercised over applying abstractions like “democracy” and “human rights” to places where US interests are minimal. They take this view even when it’s quite clear that Israel doesn’t care, preferring quiet on the armistice line to ill-begotten crusades for “proposition nation” abstractions.