Discourse shapes reality and dictates even the direction of realist interventions in public policy.

From a critical and constructivist perspective, on the other hand, the realist hypocrisy matters a great deal. As neorealists acknowledge, critical and constructivist theorists embrace an altogether dissimilar epistemology and ontology, employing reflexive and interpretive, rather than rationalist and positivist, research choices.69 Critical theorists identify the assumptions and practices that undergird power relations and through immanent critique attempt to identify the unsustainable aspects of power relations, which might suggest plausible alternative outcomes. Public criticism of the Iraq war and so-called Bush Doctrine, for instance, may not have stopped war in 2003, but it has created mounting pressure for early withdrawal from Iraq and has clearly influenced the tenor of the public policy debate about Iran. Conceivably, neorealist and other anti war critics have fomented an "Iraq Syndrome" that will significantly constrain American use of force for the fore seeable future. Moreover, the realist hypocrisy matters because critical theorists argue reflexively that IR theory helps make the world what it is-and that IR theorizing itself is vulnerable to the same sort of critical evaluation. Indeed, this article serves essentially as an analytical exercise in critical theory, applying its methods to neorealist arguments about theory and public policy. The fissures identified here could provoke scholars to rethink longstanding assumptions about IR theory and policy. After all, it appears as if there is much wider agreement than previously thought that discussion about world politics matters for determining how a state like the U.S. can and should act in the inter national system. Twenty-five years ago, the critical IR theorist Robert Cox famously argued that "theory is always for someone and for some purpose." Ironically, however, Cox viewed Waltz's neorealism as a theory "ideologically to be a science at the service of big-power management of the inter national system."70 Neorealist theory is not a critical theory, but many of the scholars who have helped develop this theory in the field of international relations behave very much as critical theorists when they partake in foreign policy debates. The neorealists implicitly and explicitly embrace presuppositions about the importance of public debate and political communication that are almost entirely consistent with the premises of critical theory. In the Iraq debate and in other examples, the neorealists are revealing lies, political spin, and other distortions of the debate pro mulgated by government elites and their allies. They chal lenge the legitimacy of established policies and critique what they see as excessive secrecy. Most importantly, these neorealists seek to transform public and elite conscious ness so as to produce social pressures for alternative out comes. For critical theorists, this contradiction between realist theorizing and policy action is logically unsustain able and suggests an opening for alternative outcomes. It would strongly imply the significant need for an under standing of foreign policy, and likely a theory of inter national relations, that accounts for communicative action.