It was not his “blunt” (read: rude) language. Adlai Stevenson and Madeleine Albright also used the U.N. as a bully pulpit to lacerate enemies of freedom. Nor were his critiques of the U.N. entirely unwelcome. Any foreign minister who has gotten lost wandering the gloomy, grubby, low-ceilinged corridors of U.N. headquarters in New York and dared to question what real work was being done sympathized with his calls for U.N. reform. No, the real problem was Bolton’s gift for making enemies out of allies.

Here was a man seemingly on a mission to alienate friends and needlessly upset those in the U.N. who were trying to advance peace and democracy, all for the sake of a bit of applause, it often appeared, from Washington’s ultra-right-wing “commentariat.” His was America’s scorning face on any view not 200 percent supportive of the White House and Pentagon. Far from making America and its allies feel safer, more secure and en route to a better tomorrow, “Boltonism” represented a new America that the rest of the world gazed upon with something approaching horror: increasingly nasty, dangerous, riven by fault lines between rich and poor, ideologically fanatical.

History was famously supposed to end with the fall of communism. Today it appears to be accelerating out of control and in the wrong direction, away from democracy, respect for human rights and the globalization of middle-class living standards. Israel feels more frightened, vulnerable and surrounded by deadly enemies than at any time in its history. Iran and Syria empower Hizbullah and Hamas without any effective counterweight from the United States. Condoleezza Rice waits in the queue behind middle-ranking European envoys to see Middle East leaders whom she can neither threaten nor seduce because she has nothing to offer. Thanks to Iraq, America is a paper tiger.

Boltonism has lost Latin America. Its absurdist legacy: a Sandinista returning to run Nicaragua; a bombastic Hugo Chávez turning Venezuela into a Cuba with endless oil revenues to spend, promoting anti-Americanism throughout the region. The Republicans arrived threatening to get tough with Russia, but one look into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and George W. Bush was bowled over. Political power and oil money have combined to create a Kremlin cartel, corrupt to its very core, dedicated to extending its influence throughout the old Soviet imperium and, in some cases, buying politicians in Europe. Enemies die from polonium poisoning or are shot in elevators. Those who survive share the fate of Ukraine’s fading president, Viktor Yushchenko, a visual reminder that challenging the new Russia can have deadly consequences.

Like Rumsfeld and his cronies, Bolton mocked and scorned Europeans as wimps and wafflers. But now America is fleeing Boltonism in favor of a more traditional realpolitik that seeks order and stability in place of change and upheaval. The Baker-Hamilton report could have been penned by Metternich, the conservative Austrian statesman who sought to stabilize Europe after the defeat of Napoleon. Metternich allowed unpleasant autocrats to suppress their people, but that was a price of stopping endless fighting. James Baker’s recommendation of opening talks with Iran and Syria is a victory for the realists. Jaw-jaw, to use Churchill’s formulation, is now to replace the failed Bush doctrine of war-war.

But here’s the rub. Is Baker’s call for realism and diplomacy the beginning of the end of humanitarian interventionism? Under this banner, the United States and Europe twice used force in the Balkans. The British and Australian military interceded in East Timor. Britain went into Sierra Leone, France intervened in the Ivory Coast, Germany sent troops to Congo, U.N. missions went everywhere from Kosovo to Lebanon to Afghanistan. As the new realists retake control from the idealists who wanted to remodel the world–as Bakerism replaces Boltonism–will America step back from these sorts of missions, as well as from such adventures as Iraq?

The mere end of incompetent Boltonism does not guarantee a successful Bakerism. After all, it was Baker, in 1992, who scotched a Balkan intervention at a time when it could have made a difference, saying: “We don’t have a dog in this fight.” Europeans gloating over Bolton’s comeuppance (as a stand-in for Bush himself) should pause. Yes, a dose of realism and more jaw-jaw instead of war-war is welcome. But a wounded America in retreat from the world will only make life for the rest of us more perilous.