Stacie E. Goddard
For almost 30 years after the Cold War ended, American foreign policy elites argued that the United States should use its unmatched military and economic power as a force for transformation. For some, this meant working to expand the role of multilateral institutions such as NATO, promoting unfettered free trade, and protecting human rights worldwide, even by using military force. Others believed that the United States should wield its military power as democracy’s spear by subduing violent terrorists, overthrowing tyrannical regimes, and deterring potential revisionist powers. These views, however, were two sides of the same coin: underlying both was a belief that the United States must maintain its dominant position in the world and, when necessary, wield its might to defend liberal rights.
But after the failures of U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the rise of rival great powers, and the weakening of American democracy at home, this era of relative bipartisan consensus has ended. U.S. foreign policy is in disarray, with no obvious vision for what should come next. For Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, the path forward lies in what she calls “realist internationalism.” Grounded in a long tradition of realist thought, this strategy places the national interest—not ideology—at the center of foreign-policy making and views the pursuit of democratization abroad as unnecessary, even foolish.
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