Realism or Appeasment?

Stanford professor and Telos editor Russell Berman's "The Price of Realism," is a powerful essay in which he correctly identifies the inability of Iranians and Syrians to stablize Iraq. The so called 'realists' are suffering from a delusion if they think by giving the mob (Iran and Syria) what they want, they will save Iraq for the "Great Satan":

More specifically—so the plan may go—if the US begins to "talk" with Iran and Syria, the axis-of-evil member and its mini-me might stop making trouble and become engaged in the establishment of order in Iraq. Clearly one important and dubious assumption is that the sectarian and factional war in Iraq (which for a long time has surpassed anything like an insurgency against the US) is primarily a function of Iranian and Syrian policies and not—as is much more likely—a consequence of the nature of Iraqi society itself. The regional version of realism which places the emphasis on an arrangement with neighboring states tends to minimize the significance of domestic Iraqi concerns: which is exactly why it involves dismissing "democracy." Instead of pursuing the establishment of domestic Iraqi institutions, this strategy implies ceding influence to Tehran and Damascus, in order to "solve" Baghdad. (As if the Yugoslav wars could have been solved by "talking" in Budapest and Athens.)