What type of "realist" is President Obama?

I am ever amused/confused by the rhetoric surrounding President Obama's foreign policy.

I just ran across Abe Greenwald's piece about Obama's move to neo-conservatism, apparently reflected in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Obama recognized the potential necessity of using force to confront bad actors.

The recognition that the use of force is a necessary tool of diplomacy is traditionally called "realism."

Pundits such as E. J. Dionne know what they are talking about when they call Barack Obama a "realist."  But I often wondered if dovish Democrats knew what "realist" meant in terms of foreign policy when they extolled Obama's realism compared to President Bush's approach to foreign policy.  I suspected that they would have favored foreign policy liberalism.

So, does the average political liberal realize that if Obama is a foreign policy realist then he's closer to the traditional Republican position than to the one they probably favor?

It's hard to say, but I think I detect some of the confusion in a newspaper story appearing in the wake of Obama's speech:

Nobel Speech Places Obama Within Realist-Liberal Tradition

Uh, OK.

That's a bit like Obama's coin-flip tendencies falling within the heads-tails tradition. Or his footwear tendencies placing him within the shoes/no shoes tradition.

Neoconservatism, as a foreign policy approach, borrows elements from reallism and liberalism.  It is, as a result, within the realist-liberal tradition.  If Obama's foreign policy approach likewise borrows from both of the main recognized foreign policy approaches, we should try to note with interest how his approach truly differs from neoconservatism.