Priorities, not delusions.

AuthorSimes, Dimitri K.
PositionThe Realist

THOSE WHO hoped that the Democrats' victory in November would launch a major foreign policy debate are disappointed. Setting aside the immediate issue of Iraq, which obviously requires the nation's attention, neither presidential candidates nor the Congress nor the media have shown much interest in a serious conversation about the direction of U.S. foreign policy. A majority of legislators and opinion leaders act as if Iraq were an isolated mistake resulting from the peculiar naivety and incompetence of the Bush Administration rather than the logical progression of the country's post-Cold War foreign policy.

Indeed, with the exception of Iraq-where they have demonstrated more indignation and impatience than creative thinking--Democrats in both Congress and academe have displayed little inclination, nor have many of their Republican colleagues, to question the fundamental assumptions of American foreign policy since the Soviet collapse.

Lou Dobbs has asked rhetorically, "Is there not one decent, honest man or woman in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, in either party's leadership, who possesses the courage and the honesty to say, 'Enough. The people who elected us deserve better'? So far the answer is no." I assume that even Mr. Dobbs himself would admit to rhetorical exaggeration in this sweeping indictment, but it is no exaggeration to say that unless we do better--much better--as a body politic, the United States will not be able to develop an effective foreign policy. And without an effective foreign policy, America could face potentially devastating consequences at home and abroad.

Today's collective state of delusion about America's role in the world certainly did not begin with the George W. Bush Administration. When the United States became the only superpower and was no longer restrained by calculations of Soviet reactions to U.S. actions, quite a few in the American foreign policy elite could not withstand the temptation of triumphalism and a sense of unlimited possibilities. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave early voice to such sentiments by publicly portraying the United States as an "indispensable nation." While America had clearly become the dominant voice in international politics, Albright's need to brag about it could not but irritate many abroad. And it did.

The 1999 Yugoslav war was the clearest indication of the very limited differences on key foreign policy issues between the liberal interventionists leading the Clinton Administration and neoconservatives outside it. More broadly, one could see some of the same authors appearing in the pages of the neoconservative Weekly Standard and the liberal interventionist New Republic where they beat the same drum calling for the United States to become the vanguard of a worldwide democratic revolution to liberate the masses and make America safe. And, they assured us, because the United States was strong and would be acting to impose "the will of the international community", it would also be cheap.

This emerging conventional wisdom was not seriously challenged by the media or think tanks. At The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, the editorial and op-ed pages alike were dominated by crusaders carrying the standard of America's new democratic predominance; other major papers, like The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington...

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