Geopolitics isn't a beauty contest, and the most congenial contestant doesn't come home with the prize.
The world is a place of violence mitigated by ugly compromises that lead to moments of pause that we call peace. Lest we forget these obvious facts, look no further than the temporary truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. A horrific attack by terrorists against Jews—fueled in many cases the uber-stimulant Captagon, which is made in Syria in vast quantities—left 1,200 dead and 240 held hostage in Gaza.
Israel, as soon as it could get its act together, responded with overwhelming force, using air raids and artillery at first and ground troops a few weeks later. The death and destruction in Gaza have been terrible, but the need for justice and even revenge in Israel is overwhelming. Still, realpolitik rears its ugly head.
Despite the hatred the two sides feel for each other, they each have needs that can only be met by the other, so ideologues bend. Israel cannot call what is happening in Gaza today a ceasefire, so it is a pause. It is a pause with a deadline, but a deadline that has been extended against expectations. Hamas wants time to regroup its forces and is happy to have some of its people released from Israeli prisons. Help for civilians in Gaza is merely a bonus.
Israel wants its hostages back and certainly doesn't mind a cooling of public opinion around the world, which has widely condemned the ferocity of the Israeli assault. (It's hard to picture other nations being so roundly criticized for having a military advantage and using it).
This pause is a deal with the devil, but as assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said, "You don't make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies."
Henry Kissinger, who died Wednesday at 100 (only the good die young, right?), would have understood this deal and can only have been a fan of Rabin's sentiment. The secretary of state under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Kissinger believed that diplomacy was war continued by other means. It is the art of the possible, not a game of ideals.
Kissinger, who had immense power and influence within the White House, helped America to let go of its ideals in cases where the nation would benefit overall. Rapprochement with China is the most famous case. He understood that we didn't have to like a Communist China to acknowledge that it was the only China that meant anything. Taiwan, while still an ally, lost its political place on the world stage. It took on its true strategic importance, rather than a romanticized role as the "true" representative of the Chinese people.
The move was ugly. China was in the middle of its Cultural Revolution when Nixon went to China. Millions of Chinese were dying and being imprisoned for reasons that were unclear to even the perpetrators of these crimes. But the United States is better off for acknowledging the reality of China than standing on principles that ignore reality. Even as the Chinese threat increases, we must be honest with ourselves about where U.S. interests lie, whether in peace or war.
Romanticism, which is the opposite of Realpolitik, can lead even a strong nation far astray. Russian President Vladimir Putin's violent irredentism has left his country bogged down in Ukraine without a clear endgame in sight. His military has been shown incompetent while his ambitions have been unmasked as unbounded. The West is against him and lukewarm friends like China can only take him so far.
Still, Putin faces another hopeless romantic in Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, who refuses to see a reality in which Russia is fated to take home at least a piece of Ukraine.
The reality is already clear on the ground. U.S. and European support can only take Ukraine so far, and that support is not infinite. And it doesn't involve the ground troops that would probably be necessary to push Russia firmly back to its side of the border.
Is it right for Ukraine to be picked apart? Is it right for China's people to live out an authoritarian's nightmare? Is it right for Hamas to live to see another day?
As Henry Kissinger might have asked, what does right have to do with anything?
Jason Fields is a deputy opinion editor at Newsweek and the author of the murder mystery Death in Twilight.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
