The characteristic fault of realism is that it believes the application of a morality to foreign policy to be negligible, if not entirely irrelevant. The characteristic fault of liberalism is that it considers the application of morality to foreign policy to be easy. In fact it is both necessary and difficult. And as the balance shifts between a world vertically divided into sovereign states and a world horizontally connected by interdependence, it is likely to become even more necessary and more difficult.And Harries channels Isaiah Berlin nicely: "There is no contradiction involved in, on the one hand, holding firm beliefs concerning what constitutes the good and, on the other, believing that promoting what is good may require patience and compromise in dealing with those who have different views." Exactly. And most people, I think, get this. it would be good to note that the big foreign policy debates going on in the United States today really take place on a somewhat narrow spectrum, not between pure "realists" and pure "idealists" (though there's some of that), but over empirical claims about where and when patience and compromise is necessary.