Obama and Egypt: The Limits of Pragmatism

In a recent short book on U.S. foreign policy in the twentieth century, Joseph Nye, of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, divided American Presidents into two camps: “transformational” leaders, such as Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush, who pursued a vision of spreading democracy and liberty; and “transactional” pragmatists, such as Dwight Eisenhower and George H. W. Bush, who had more modest goals—and, in Nye’s opinion, often proved more effective. “There is little evidence to support the general assumptions of leadership theory and public discourse that transformational foreign policy leaders are better in either ethics or effectiveness,” he writes.

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