The Biden administration is updating the old foreign policy doctrine of realpolitik by acknowledging the reality of limits on U.S. power today. But it is trying to give the new version a decidedly moral twist.

Realpolitik, version 2021.

That may best describe the new direction President Joe Biden is taking on a pair of Asian policy challenges that have bedeviled U.S. administrations for the past two decades: Afghanistan and North Korea.

In Afghanistan, Washington is winding down its 20-year military involvement with the intention of pulling out all its troops over the next four months. The new tack on North Korea will focus on seeking a gradual rollback of its nuclear weapons program as part of an eventual denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

What they have in common – where the new realpolitik comes into play – is a recognition of the limits to unilateral U.S. power in today’s world, while using Washington’s still superpower-sized resources to build more effective alliances with other democracies.

Old-style realpolitik conveyed something slightly different. The term, literally the “politics of realism,” has its origins in 19th-century Germany and came to imply the hard-nosed pursuit of national interests, regardless of moral concerns such as human rights and political freedoms.

But President Biden – in stark contrast to his predecessor, Donald Trump – has explicitly prioritized such issues in his foreign policy. He has defined the competition between democracies and autocracies as the key struggle of the modern world. Arguing that we’re now at a make-or-break point, he has committed the United States to working with allies to ensure that democratic values and institutions prevail.

Yet the “politics of realism” in Afghanistan – concluding there is no more that American troops can do there, and withdrawing them – does carry serious human rights risks.