Henry A. Kissinger, as national security adviser and secretary of state the evil genius of U.S. foreign policy, was attacked regularly by critics for being excessively rooted in realism in his approach.

		Dan Simpson, a retired U.S. ambassador, is a Post-Gazette associate editor (dsimpson@post-gazette.com).

"Realistic" was considered at that time to have meant not principled or idealistic or "American" enough, in part a veiled Swift Boat-like personal slice at the European-born, Jewish Kissinger.

But a lack of realism in overseas policy can lead to catastrophic mistakes. But rather than looking at the election-based or faith-based errors of judgment that put America into the Iraq war and are keeping its hand in that fire for no good reason, let's focus instead on Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld in Latin America last week, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent "warning" to China that it must make economic changes.

Rumsfeld, 73, went to Paraguay and Peru and used the visits as a platform to warn Latin Americans against falling under the pernicious influence of leftists -- old, ancient leftist Fidel Castro, 79, and new rich leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. "Leftist" meant something entirely different back in Rumsfeld's younger days when the Soviet Union was still around as America's global rival.

Castro's sin, according to the Bush administration's South Florida Cuban exile supporters, is still to be alive, although if he weren't, the United States would have to find something else to build a Cuba policy on other than the eventual death of the Cuban president. By the way, there is no indication from Rumsfeld or any other administration official of what U.S. policy toward Cuba will become the day Fidel drops off the twig.

Chavez's sin is to have managed to survive a 2002 U.S. attempt to see him, an elected president, overthrown in a military coup d'etat. Chavez was cross about that, and hasn't forgotten it. Unfortunately for the Bush administration, he's gaining popularity across the region -- he is prosperous and generous with his own people and with his Latin American neighbors, including Cuba.

Rumsfeld accused Chavez and Castro of stirring up trouble in Bolivia, a country whose internal political problems are already so severe without outside interference that the country is approaching chaos. Rumsfeld's comments are the moral equivalent of jumping on a bystander for smoking a cigarette near a five-alarm fire.

The Bush administration has done real damage to U.S. relations with some 12 Latin American countries by cutting their aid because they haven't signed agreements removing U.S. forces and officials from the jurisdiction of the new International Criminal Court. Washington has become more frantic on that subject as the Abu Ghraib and other prisoner abuses have been only lightly punished by U.S. military authorities. Aid cuts in the region on that basis have so far amounted to at least $24 million.

In addition to Rumsfeld's songs from another era, the other example of extravagant, unrealistic vocalizing heard last week was from Secretary of State Rice on the subject of China's policies. After criticizing its military activities, which included joint exercises this week and last with Russia, and its limits on religious freedom and other human rights failings, she said that China had to make important "structural changes" in its economic policies if it were not to remain "a problem for the international economy."

What is bizarre about Rice's comments at this time is, first, that they come on the eve of a visit to the United States by Prime Minister Hu Jintao, his first since he took office two years ago. The second odd note in Rice's comments is the fact that the United States currently depends on China to buy an important part of $2 billion a day in U.S. treasury bonds to cover the Bush administration's fat budget deficit. We will assume that that one is not an economic policy we would like China to change.

The fortunate part of this affair is that the Chinese, in general, are realistic in their policies and pay little or no attention to speeches such as Rice's, or to other political gestures. One Chinese national oil company was denied the possibility of buying the U.S. oil firm Unocal for political reasons. Another is now buying instead PetroKazakhstan, which controls 12 percent of oil-rich Kazakhstan's production -- price tag, $4.18 billion. The Chinese are also showing no inclination to take revenge for the Unocal rebuff by interfering politically in the efforts of Merrill Lynch, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs to buy into China's big state-owned banks.

In the more earth-based category of foreign matters, helicopters arrived just in time last week to save three Polish researchers from being devoured by polar bears on an island in the Svalbard peninsula; the hungry beasts were within 20 yards of the scientists and closing in.

Neither Rumsfeld, nor Rice, nor the United States is at risk yet of ending up as bear chow as a result of Rumsfeld's atavistic or Rice's starry-eyed approaches to U.S. relations with Latin America and China. On the other hand, both would do well to make careful reference to reality before proclaiming their views as senior U.S. officials on important U.S. partners.