What is America's purpose?

• Author: Heilbrunn, Jacob
• Position: Symposium

Several decades after the end of the Cold War, the United States is confronting an increasingly unstable world in which its preeminence is facing new challenges. What, if anything, should be the purpose of American powers?

In 1989, a recent college graduate interviewed for a job with National Interest editor Owen Harries. Harries, the former Australian ambassador to UNESCO, asked whether he sympathized more with the neoconservative or realist approach to foreign affairs. After a short pause, the candidate boldly split the difference, observing that it was wise to set limits on intervention abroad, but that it was also the case that, as Norman Podhoretz had recently observed in Survey, it was imperative to elicit a certain amount of nationalism among the American public to rouse it to action.

That candidate was, of course, me. The National Interest may have been founded in 1985 by Irving Kristol as a counterweight to Commentary, as Jonathan Bronitsky notes in this issue, but it proceeded, more or less, in an ecumenical spirit. One of my early assignments as an assistant editor was to work on an essay about the end of history by someone named Francis Fukuyama. Fukuyama's article, which appeared in the Summer 1989 issue, established the basis for a crusading neoconservative doctrine that reached full flower in the George W. Bush administration, though Kristol, with his characteristic acerbity, commented, "I don't believe a word of it." (Fukuyama himself would go on to decry the intellectual votaries of the 2003 Iraq War.) A year later, on its fifth anniversary, TNI conducted a lengthy series in which the contributors sought to explain what purpose should inform America's foreign policy. Now, on the magazine's thirtieth anniversary, it seemed like a good idea to return to that question. The answers that follow suggest that it is as pertinent today as it was a quarter century ago.

Graham Allison

The primary purpose of American power should be to "preserve the U.S. as a free nation with our fundamental institutions and values intact." This sturdy one-liner from the Cold War captures the big idea. It also reminds us of our too-often-forgotten yet most vital national interest. In the twenty-first century, such a bold assertion of "America First"--without apology--offends many postmodern sensibilities. For many U.S. citizens today, "American leadership" means serving as a global 911, defending those unable or unwilling to defend themselves, bearing any burden, paying any price. Abroad, any intimation that Americans at home should come first invites criticism for short-sighted selfishness unworthy of a great power.

But brute facts are hard to deny: the survival and success of the United States as a free nation is the essential prerequisite for America's power being applied to achieve any larger objectives in the world.

Having paid the price in blood and treasure of two world wars in the first half of the twentieth century, leaders we now revere as "wise men" knew that withdrawal to Fortress America could no longer assure Americans' survival and well-being. A new international environment required nothing less than a new world order. Their grand project combined enlightened self-interest with lofty ideals of a people whose Declaration of Independence claims for all human beings basic rights "endowed by their Creator." It also called for mobilization of all dimensions of American power. In a unique surge of imagination and initiative, these pragmatic visionaries created the Marshall Plan (to rebuild Europe); the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (to provide basic economic order); NATO and the U.S.-Japanese alliance (to ensure that what they saw as geostrategic centers of gravity became pillars of international security); and the United Nations--all building blocks of an emerging global order. This order aimed to advance the cause of peace, prosperity and freedom for all--Americans, their allies and other nations, in that order.

The past seven decades of great-power peace, unprecedented economic growth and unparalleled expansion of freedom bear testament to the foresight and courage of these statesmen. Since the end of the Cold War, American policy has too often lost its grounding in American national interests. As we address challenges posed by Russia, China, the Islamic State and others, Americans should study the strategy of the "wise men" and try to follow their lead.

Graham Allison is director of the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a former assistant secretary of defense for policy and plans.

Ian Bremmer

Only the United States can combine military muscle, economic clout and cultural appeal to exert power in every region of the world. It will remain the world's sole superpower for the foreseeable future. How should America use that power? To promote American values, advance U.S. interests, do both or do something else entirely? For Americans and the future of their country, what is the wisest path forward?

For decades, the Soviet threat persuaded Washington to use the nation's power in support of both American values and U.S. interests around the world. The Cold War sometimes blurred the line between the two as some U.S. policy makers argued that each bolstered the other. But when the Soviet Union imploded, so did the strategic coherence of U.S. foreign policy.

A quarter century later, important changes, in America and the world, demand that U.S. policy makers redefine the purpose of U.S. power. Following the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American people will not support a U.S. military commitment that might require a costly, long-term commitment of U.S. troops and taxpayer dollars, limiting the range of options available to any president. There is now an entire generation of Americans not old enough to remember Cold War-era U.S. leadership.

Further, a lengthening list of emerging powers has begun to challenge the American-led order. China and others cannot undermine America's global preeminence anytime soon, but they have the political self-confidence and economic heft to resist U.S. plans and demands. As a result, even traditional U.S. allies have begun to hedge their bets on American staying power, further limiting Washington's foreign-policy options.

For Washington, choices loom. Perhaps the time has come for Americans to declare their independence from the need to intervene in other people's problems. Instead of spending trillions to occupy and rebuild troubled countries, invest the money at home. Rebuild American infrastructure, invest in education, care for America's veterans and leave more in the taxpayer's pocket to fuel an economic revival. This is not isolationism. America should trade with both friends and competitors, and welcome immigrants to build the world's strongest workforce.

Or maybe we should maintain an ambitious foreign policy, but one that focuses on America's value rather than its values. Focus mainly on managing relations with China. Avoid further entanglement in the Middle East, including by allowing others to take the lead in combating the Islamic State. Build an intelligent foreign policy designed to maximize return on the taxpayer's investment. Set aside support for democracy and human rights where it creates obstacles rather than opportunities.

Or maybe our globalized, interconnected world demands American leadership. Some will insist that America cannot remain secure and prosperous as long as both autocracy and anarchy generate turmoil. Maybe democracy and human rights are the only answer to these forces, and America is the only nation strong enough to ensure that governments around the world answer to their citizens.

There is no clearly correct answer to this question, but we can't do all these things, and none of these options is viable without durable public support. The men and women running for president in 2016 will have to make a compelling case for a single, coherent foreign-policy strategy if Washington is to move beyond the costly improvisation of the past twenty-five years and employ American power in an intelligent and useful way.

Ian Bremmer is the president of Eurasia Group and the author of Superpower: Three Choices for Americas Role in the World (Portfolio, 2015).

David Bromwich

No nation has a purpose engraved on its character as the natural law was said to be engraved on the heart of a person. A nation, even more than a person, is a complex entity: you cannot touch, taste, hear, smell or see it as a whole. America's purpose, if we have one, must be inferred from our actions, as measured by the judgment of sane and reasonably well-informed persons.

The elites that governed the United States between 1990 and the present were broadly agreed on our national purpose. We existed in order to dominate the world for the world's own good. After all, most people everywhere wanted to be like us. On the other hand, a Gallup poll released at the end of 2013 showed that the United States is perceived worldwide as the greatest threat to world peace. American elites and international opinion have come to different conclusions.

Edmund Burke instructed the British Parliament concerning the American colonists in 1775: "Slavery they can have any where. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you." Americans, Burke thought, cared for liberty exorbitantly--in this they resembled the British--and Britain deserved to hold on to the colonists only if it respected their love of freedom without any coercive imposition.

Abraham Lincoln spoke in a similar vein regarding another American ideal, our faith in equality. The signers of the Declaration of Independence, said Lincoln, when they...