What is America’s cause today? What is our mission in the world? For what end, other than defending our citizens, vital interests and crucial allies, would we be willing to send a great army to fight–as we did in Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan?
Are all the global causes of Bush I, Clinton, Bush II over?
Where is the coherence, the consistency, of U.S. policy in the Middle East that should cause us to draw red lines, and fight if they are crossed?
If our belief in democracy demands the ouster of the dictator Assad in Damascus, how can we ally with the theocratic monarchy in Riyadh, the Sunni king sitting atop a Shiite majority in Bahrain, and the Egyptian general on his throne in Cairo, who took power in a military coup against a democratically elected Muslim government?
Other than supporting Israel, maintaining access to Gulf oil and resisting ISIS and al-Qaida, upon what do Americans agree?
Henry Kissinger seeks a restoration of the crumbling strategic architecture. Neocons and interventionist liberals want to confront Russia and Iran. Reluctant interventionists like Obama, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders think we should stay out of other wars there.
“When a people is divided within itself about the conduct of its foreign relations, it is unable to agree on the determination of its true interests,” wrote Walter Lippmann at the climax of World War II:
“Thus, its course in foreign policy depends, in Hamilton’s words, not on reflection and choice but on accident and force.”
America is a nation divided, not only upon the means we should use to attain our ends in the world, but upon the ends themselves.
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