Ideology, pragmatism ... and principle?

Principle escaped from the US completely with the corporate, media and political establishments support of all things Bush.

Emptywheel expands upon the currently ongoing ideology vs pragmatism debate:

... Ideology not only defines means to solutions, but it also defines what the problems are, and in so doing produces a narrative to focus on some problems while ignoring others. It's important to acknowledge this point, because most dominant foreign policy ideologies start from the assumption that oil equals power and that US hegemony is the goal, which leads logically to certain conclusions, including war with Iraq. (This is one of the problems underlying this discussion: while the progressives Glenn aligns with consistently support certain kinds of decisions, their views don't amount to a formal foreign policy ideology, which is why many national figures who opposed the war are pragmatists. We may be seeing the formulation of an alternative to US hegemony based on sustainability and solutions to climate change, but thus far there isn't the infrastructure for those ideas to amount to a formal ideology.)

That said, one could argue that Obama isn't so free from ideology himself. Here's the answer he gives to Daniel's question about his goals: he seeks "a more just and secure world for our children." At least in his own mind, Obama's weighed his choices not against the materialist measure Glenn suggests a pragmatist would be guided by, but justice and security. Obama even names three policies that would support this principle:

• Vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty
• Make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people
• Wean ourselves off Middle East oil

Gosh. That's about as far from Kissinger's realpolitik as you get. It's also, with the call to wean ourselves off Middle Eastern oil, far outside the existing dominant ideologies inside the DC beltway. And note, with his comment that neocon ideology serves to distract us from problems at home, Obama also implicitly ties what we do in the Middle East to economic justice within the US. Call that ideology or call it a pragmatic focus on governing as a whole, but by yoking domestic conditions to foreign policy, Obama's getting beyond the pigeonholes of both good and bad foreign policy ideology as it currently exists in DC.

Read the entire thing.