The grizzled ex-cop Mike, with his dry wisecracks and his Realpolitik masculinity, fulfills our antihero needs.
It is when other policies have become mixed with that foreign-policy realpolitik that trouble has arisen.
But even for someone like Mr Bush, idealism has to be tempered with realpolitik.
But it should not be forgotten that Americans also have a genius for mixing realpolitik with their religion.
This is the basic tenet behind 19th-century realpolitik, which Putin fully subscribes to.
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This spry former academic is seen as the architect of Turkey's soft power, which blends realpolitik with a fierce pride.
Among the masters of realpolitik Nicos Sampson may have had no more than a small role, if a violent one.
Perhaps, however, Mr MacAskill's moralising is merely rhetorical chaff, thrown up to disguise the realpolitik that lay behind the release.
The last year taught us an important lesson: What used to be called "realpolitik" is not actually "real" any more.
And in the halls of Washington the ideas of Realpolitik ruled.
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But now is exactly the wrong time for a short-sighted realpolitik approach.
Ex-European Mrs Albright sounds fully at home in America, and her higher-mindedness sits more easily on the American mind than Mr Kissinger's realpolitik.
And unlike its member states the EU as a union is bad at realpolitik, being a slow-moving bureaucracy based on rules and legal texts.
For Europe and the U.S., realpolitik means understanding they can never outbid China, Russia or any other conscience-free competitor in supplying investment-as-aid to Southern Africa.
Those who believe in realpolitik argue that Mourinho is simply trying to get some kind of a psychological edge for his next encounters with Barcelona.
The new note is realpolitik: hardnosed deals with Germany and Russia.
But it is widely accepted that realpolitik triumphed under General Kriangsak.
Surely our sophisticated European friends would appreciate our sense of Realpolitik in ensuring that they don't make a moral hazard of our guarantee of their security.
But the two countries have buried ancient enmities, and the prevailing view in France is that the relationship should nowadays be pragmatic and based firmly on realpolitik.
The necessary business of Realpolitik would be protected by the rules of diplomatic immunity (which Britain says the general did not enjoy) that exist for expressly that purpose.
Colin Powell was complicit in all of those mistaken judgments, as was the State Department over which he now presides and which is usually the home of such Realpolitik.
And after all, the leading spokesman for Realpolitik used to be Henry Kissinger, who has since declared that realism needs to be tempered with a dose of American idealism.
Mikati might quote Voltaire, but he had to fall back on realpolitik to explain to his Twitter followers yesterday why Lebanon voted against suspending Syria from the Arab League.
From its inception, the World Bank, which occupies an imposing thirteen-story building off Pennsylvania Avenue, a few blocks west of the White House, has represented a peculiar blend of idealism and Realpolitik.
Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has just been warmly received in the Iranian capital, Tehran, a reflection of the realpolitik that has kept links open despite the Islamic Republic's international isolation.
It is a worthwhile and necessary call, but cricket's gritty realpolitik makes it moot how many of the recommendations will be implemented, and how many get implemented in a way that effects genuine change.
In pursuit of this simple idea he was willing, up to a point, to discombobulate long-standing American allies whose autocratic behaviour at home America had long forgiven or overlooked in the interests of realpolitik.
It is worth waving away this fog of dogma that dominates much discussion involving America to consider that, even in a world characterised by realpolitik with its shades of grey, there remain issues in black and white.
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