A sit-down with Brent Scowcroft.

• Position: The Realist - Interview

TNI's editor Justine A. Rosenthal talks with the General about the tasks ahead and advice to be heeded by the incoming Obama admininstration.

What are the acute foreign-policy problems Barack Obama will face as he takes office?

The tasks ahead are enormous. The situations we face in the Middle East, Central and South Asia are at the heart of our most acute problems. By going into Iraq and Afghanistan with a transformationalist agenda, we have brought long-standing problems of the region to a boiling point. Whether it is a Shia, Sunni, Palestinian, Israeli, Persian or Arab issue, they all form one big mare's nest, and they all feed off one another. The question is how the new administration will deal with these diverse issues. We can only hope that, at least for a time, America has had enough of transforming the world.

What would a more realist-driven approach look like?

We tend to throw terms around loosely these days--realism, idealism, isolationism, interventionism. Perhaps this is because U.S. foreign policy has followed a compound track with three distinct stages, and we have struggled between the ideals of a city on the hill and a city on the march. During the first one hundred years of our foreign policy, we adhered to a formulation of our goals conceived by George Washington: realism in the most traditional sense. The notion was best phrased by John Quincy Adams who said we welcome all those who are searching for freedom and democracy, but we go "not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." We are the well-wishers of all who seek freedom. We are the guarantors only of our own.

But with the advent of Wilsonianism, the Washington/Adams dictum was deemed insufficient. Instead, we aspired to be evangelizers of democracy. From that time until very recently, we have debated how important democracy promotion is to American foreign policy. During the cold war, it was acceptable to support dictatorships in the larger struggle against the Soviet Union. But with 9/11 came a new manifestation of foreign policy, perhaps best thought of as a battle between the realists and the transformationalists. Realists argued we needed to gather our friends, our allies, and join together in combating terrorism. The transformationalists--some people call them the neocons--disagreed. They contended we did not have time to reach out to our friends and our allies--such an approach would only slow us down. America knew what had to be done, we had unmatched resources and thus we should do what was needed--transform the world. We should do so starting with the Middle East; it needed to be turned into a bastion of democracy. This was transformationalism: idealism with a sword. Especially in light of the current crises we face, a return to a more realist approach would be an appropriate move.

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How should we prioritize with this different modus operandi?

The enlightened realist would say we always ought to hope to do somewhat more than we think we are able to, but never try to do more than we clearly know we can. The most idealistic dreams sometimes lead to the worst disasters because they cannot be implemented. When it comes to...