They come not to praise the republic, but to bury it

Over the course of two presidential debates, our candidates have largely failed to distinguish themselves from one another in the realm of foreign policy, confirming my long-held suspicion that, when it comes to foreign policy at least, we do not have a two-party system; we have a one-party system, and it is the party of the Establishment. And the Establishment is forever wedded to a quasi-imperial foreign policy.

The best summation of our present condition that I’ve yet seen is in Barry Posen’s review of John Mearsheimer’s Tragedy of Great Power Politics:

The post-Cold War “debate” on foreign policy between Democrats and Republicans has not been fought out over the issue of whether the United States should have an activist foreign policy: the two parties could only disagree on how much military management of the internal politics of strategically insignificant failed states the United States should undertake. The two parties agreed that the U.S. military’s Unified and Specified Commands and Commanders should continue to organize the entire globe for war; that NATO should expand; that the U.S. military should be substantially more capable than that of any other state or combination of states; and even that the U.S. military should be forward deployed–still a quarter million troops as of June 2001. They have also agreed, more or less, that the United States should preserve some degree of nuclear superiority over other nuclear powers, and that it would be better if no other nuclear powers emerged […] And the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which portend a significant increase in the cost of hegemony to the United States, seem to have injected still more energy and commitment into an expansive U.S. foreign policy not less.

Even accepting this, however, I find it curious that no serious contender for the Oval Office has, if only for tactical electoral reasons, tried to outmaneuver his opponents by appealing directly to what might be called America’s Jacksonian constituency. Would a candidate, besides Ron Paul, not find some electoral success in saying, in effect, “Screw those bastards, we’re going home”? Certainly, Obama could have played this card in the one area where he has disagreed with John McCain: Iraq.

Now, I realize that the Robert Kagans and Max Boots of this country are heavily invested in demonstrating that Americans actually favor maximalist policies abroad, but is it true?

(Excursus) By the way, did anyone else find Kagan’s Dangerous Nation irritating as hell, not to mention mendacious? It’s as if Kagan ran into an Old West saloon shouting how some men loitering in the street were a bunch of cattle thieves. The saloon’s patrons then rouse themselves to find and lynch the supposed thieves. Upon discovering that the men were not, in fact, cattle thieves, the town turns to Kagan to say, in effect, “What the hell, man?” to which Kagan replies, “Boy, the folks in that saloon were pretty wild, huh? In fact, I wrote a book about it. It’s called Dangerous Saloon.” (End excursus)

It seems to me that the combination of the public’s ignorance, our financial solvency (dwindling), and a standing, non-draft military insulates the Establishment from the political consequences of their misrule. Nonetheless, in the coming years, I suspect the field will be open to a successful (i.e., not Ron Paul) populist (and probably demagogic) politician to push back against our geopolitical tendencies.

Until then, however, any attempt to counsel a more modest and prudent foreign policy will be tarred as isolationism — which term occupies approximately the same position in our national discourse as “child molester.”