MAY/JUNE 2014

Americas Purpose and Role in a

Changed World
Joshua Muravchik

Almost every war that America has fought since the beginning of the twentieth century was a
war America had determined to avoid. We were neutral in World War I...until unlimited
submarine warfare against our trans-Atlantic shipping became intolerable. We resisted entering
World War II until Pearl Harbor. We defined the Korean peninsula as lying outside our defense
perimeter, as our secretary of state declared in 1950, a few months before North Korea attacked
South Korea and we leapt into the fray. A few years later, we rebuffed French appeals for support
in Vietnam in order to avoid involving ourselves in that distant country which was soon to
become the venue of our longest war and greatest defeat. In 1990, our ambassador to Iraq
explained to Saddam Hussein that Washington had no opinion on...your border disagreement
with Kuwait, which he took as encouragement to swallow his small neighbor, forcing a half
million Americans to travel around the world to force him to disgorge it. A year after that, our
secretary of state quipped about the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia that we have no dog in
that fight, a sentiment echoed by his successor, of the opposite party, who, demonstrating his
virtuosity at geography, observed that that country was a long way from home in a place where
we lacked vital interestsall this not long before we sent our air force to bomb Serbia into
ceasing its attacks on Bosnia and then bombed it again a few years later until it coughed up
Kosovo.
Yes, there is a pattern here. When international conflicts devolve into serious violence, they often
land on Americas doorstep regardless of our wishes because ours is a big, influential, powerful
country with far-flung interests. Ours is also arguably historys most successful country, so it is
natural that those who have the good fortune to be Americans would rather go about their lives
than entangle themselves overseas. But time and again we have seen that the choice is not up to
us. Switzerland can remain neutral as wars come and go. America, not so easily.
On my list of wars above, several might have been averted or at least fought on more favorable
terms had we been more ready to fight. By the same token, our most brilliant foreign policy
success, namely, averting a hot World War III and bringing the Cold War to a conclusion on our
own terms, was the fruit of the most energetically internationalist policy that the US had ever
adopted, indeed that any non-imperial power had ever pursued. This experience, as well as our
dismal record at staying out of wars, should teach us some strong lessons about the deepest and
most important question in US foreign policy, which is not about tactics and places but about
how intensely engaged we should be. The shorthand for this debate is internationalism versus
isolationism. The latter term may be unfair since no one preaches true isolation, but I use it to
characterize the impulse toward a modest or restrained approach.
Related Essay
The R2P Doctrine
Joshua Muravchik | ESSAY
Joshua Muravchik reviews the history and flaws of the latest school of American interventionism.
The case for this isolationism is weak, but not nonexistent. If we have sometimes erred in the
direction of being too reluctant to engage, there may also have been instances when we were too
hasty. We plunged into a second Iraq War that many Americans came to believe was too costly,
too difficult to win, and of uncertain necessity. But even if this judgment is right, the Iraq War
was a part of President George W. Bushs Global War on Terror, and possibly that war might have
been averted had we fought terrorism more energetically before September 11, 2001. This
includes opportunities to take Osama bin Laden out of action that we failed to seize. Had we been
bolder, too, in 1991 and forced the ouster of Saddam Hussein at the end of the first Gulf War, we
might have found no reason to go back into Iraq twelve years later.
My point is not that America should resort to force lightly, heedless of the risk of embarking on a
war that is either unnecessary or unwinnable, but rather that rarely is it realistic to imagine that
we can mind our own business and let other countries get along as best they can, however much
Americans may wish to do just that. American power is the ballast that keeps the world relatively
stable. Because it is both very powerful and devoid of imperial ambition, there is no other state,
consortium, or international institution that can replace it. This is what President Bill Clinton
meant when he called America the indispensable nation. The locution sounded embarrassingly
self-glorifying but in fact merely reflected his wonderment at discovering that he could not
successfully offload Americas burdens onto the UN, as he attempted during his first term in
office, when he sought to focus like a laser on the domestic economy.
Despite Clintons epiphany, President Obama has sharply downsized Americas global role. It is
said that the president is merely reflecting the national mood, but it is scarcely surprising that
popular opinion is trending isolationist in the absence of a presidential summons to international
action.
Since the end of the Cold War, isolationism has been fed by two contradictory ideas: on the one
hand, that America should not sully itself in a messy world; on the other, that America, itself,
with its capitalism and its hyper power, is a bane to others. President Obama, whose
intellectual origins were on the Left and who came to office criticizing his predecessors for
insensitivity and arrogance, seems to embody the second of these two ideas, while his policy of
disengagement draws support from a public more apt to believe the first of them.
Of course, the important question, as always, is not an absolute choice between internationalism
and isolationism but whether America can be active enough to forestall another cataclysmic event
like 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. And if it is to serve our security in this respect, activism cannot be a
goal in itself nor can it be random. It must be guided by an assessment of potential threats.

Today, one stands out, and that is radical Islam, or political Islam. This is a movement whose
core goal is to mobilize the umma, the universe of believers, against the West. It also entails a call
(often backed by harsh coercion) to stricter observance of the faith. But this in turn is motivated
less by the fancy of saving souls, as in eras of Christian brutality, than by the conviction that the
derogation from piety is the cause of the Muslims weakness vis--vis the infidel, and this
weakness, conversely, is said to be the ultimate evidence of Allahs displeasure with the umma.
Al-Qaedas attacks on America on 9/11 constituted the expression of this ideology most
devastating to Americans. But the problem is much larger and potentially even more threatening.
Political Islam aims to dominate the Muslim world. Whether it can succeed in this goal remains
an open question.
We might consider its progress to date in comparison to the history of the last movement that
challenged Western civilization, Marxism. Born in the middle of the nineteenth century, this
powerful ideology accumulated millions of adherents but really took off only after seventy years,
when a Marxist movement seized Russia and harnessed the power of a great state to its
revolutionary goals. For another thirty years, despite gathering momentum worldwide, it failed to
gain sway beyond the borders of the USSR (and Mongolia) before finally exploding outward after
World War II to gain power over one-third of humanity, nearly bringing the West to ruin.
Political Islam is in an earlier stage of its trajectory. It was born with the Muslim Brotherhood in
Egypt in the 1920s (and also had separate roots in India), giving rise to a worldwide movement
that took over its first important country, Iran, fifty years later. This gave a sense of momentum
to political Islam everywhere, notwithstanding the divide between Shia and Sunnis. Only about
one-fifth of the worlds Muslim-majority countries are electoral democracies, and the proportion
is much smaller in the Middle East, but such elections as have been held in recent decades have
consistently registered great strength for parties espousing political Islam, and opinion polling in
countries without elections reveals similar public sentiment.
True, support for the most violent and extreme versions of this philosophy is expressed by only a
minority, but not a negligible one. Something like fifteen or twenty percent in many Muslim
countries say they approve of al-Qaeda, or did of Osama Bin Laden when he was alive, which is
often a larger share than express positive views of the US or its president. On the whole, political
Islam commands more adherents globally than did Communism when it seized Russia or during
the years that it constituted such a menace to civilization. And although it may represent only a
minority, the dynamism of political Islam gives it an ability to dominate events at the expense of
the silent majority, as exemplified by the conflict in Syria. There, a secular regime is heavily
dependent on (Shiite) Islamist fighters from Lebanon and Iran, while an opposition movement,
which is or was also predominantly secular, has been largely swallowed up by (Sunni) Islamist
militants.
The strength of political Islam has been all too evident since the Arab uprisings of 2011. The
Muslim Brotherhood came to power briefly in Egypt, arguably the most important Sunni state if
not quite the largest, and in Tunisia. It has suffered setbacks in both countries, but whether it can
recoup and achieve similar gains in the surrounding countries remains an open question. Also,
Turkey has gone Islamist. This is worrying not only because of its strategic weight but also
because the secularizing legacy of Kemal Ataturk that Turkey appears to be shrugging off was the
closest analog in Islam to the Enlightenment in the world of Christendom. Of course Ataturks
greatness lay elsewhere than Voltaires, but the cardinal contribution of each was a radical assault
on clerical authority.

Do we really have anything to fear from Turkeys ruling Justice and Development Party or
Egypts Muslim Brotherhood or Tunisias Ennahda? Arent they moderates and isnt their
moderation even, as some have suggested, the best antidote to immoderate Islamists like al-
Qaeda? However moderate they may be, the essence of their ideology is a sense of grievance
toward the West or at least of competition. Even if merely the latter, it is not to be satisfied by
peaceful achievements any more than the Prophet Muhammad sought to demonstrate the
superiority of his revelation by leading his disciples in outperforming the infidels in industry and
learning.
If political Islam comes to rule over a large part of the Muslim world, it will lead to wars, perhaps
some among the believers as in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon today, and also between them and the
non-Muslims. The terrorist wing of political Islam may not predominate, but it will flourish,
battened on new resources. Al-Qaeda will grow, or there will be one, two, many al-Qaedas, to
borrow a phrase from the Communists, and there will be more state-directed terrorism of the
sort Iran has pioneered.
All of this will be infinitely more terrible if political Islam comes to be armed with nuclear
weapons, as President Obama seems ready to allow rather than break faith with his ideological
conviction that Americas problems are overwhelmingly of its own making. An Iranian nuclear
bomb need not be detonated to give a tremendous shot in the arm to militant Islam. The Middle
Eastern cauldron, already hot, will boil more intensely, and in the end there will be another war,
or wars, that we will look back on and see could have been averted, had we only acted earlier,
with more wisdom, courage, and energy.
Joshua Muravchik is a fellow at Johns Hopkins Universitys School of Advanced
International Studies.

Protection Racket: Responsibility to
Protect Becomes a Doctrine
Joshua Muravchik
NATOs deployment of air power against Muammar el-Qaddafis forces in Libya has been
calledby some with hope, by others with alarmthe first exercise of the Responsibility to
Protect. This new principle, which calls for international military action against genocide, war
crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, was endorsed at the 2005 high- level
plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly. It is so contemporary that it has been given a
textable, Tweetable acronymR2P.
In truth, while it sounds cutting-edge, R2P has a pedigree that is old, some even say ancient. An
acquaintance with this history is essential to assessing whether R2P is likely to prove a boon or a
bane to the human condition and to American interestsor whether it is likely to make much
difference at all.
The more traditional name for this principle is humanitarian intervention. I first encountered it
as a graduate assistant in the late 1970s. The professor for whom I worked, Georgetown
Universitys much beloved William V. OBrien, was an expert on war, international law, and the
relation between the two. The importance of the concept was that it legitimated the use of force
under certain circumstances. International law is quite restrictive of the right of states to go to
war, all the more so since the adoption of the UN Charter, which allows states to take military
action only at the behest of the UN Security Council or in the exercise of individual or collective
self-defense.
Related Essay
1989 and 2011: Compare and Contrast
Michael Zantovsky | ESSAY
A comparison of the two great revolutions of our era illuminates the promise and sobering challenges ahead for
the Arab Spring.
But traditionally, authorities on international law had recognized another grounds for lawful war-
making, humanitarian intervention. Scholars have identified expressions of this idea in texts as
old as Hugo Grotiuss 1625 De Jure Belli ac Pacis , generally taken as the starting point of
international law, and even in the writings of classical philosophers and theologians on whom
Grotius and his co-thinkers drew.
The concept was not hard to grasp. Although sovereignty has been a powerful principle of
international law at least since the birth of the state system, moral intuition suggested that it
could not be absolute. When a governments depredations against its own subjects far exceeded
the level of brutality that is all too common, then it in effect forfeited its sovereignty and others
might rightfully send combatants to protect the victims. No one ever succeeded in defining the
threshold, but no one doubted that it existed. Who would have objected to forceful action to stop
Hitlers Holocaust of the Jews or Pol Pots auto-genocide of the Khmer on the grounds that
foreign intervention was illegal?
But of course no one did intervene to save the Jews or the Khmer. This was not only tragic; it also
created a legal question. Those who asserted that such a provision existedand they included
L.F.L. Oppenheim, Hersch Lauterpacht, and other of the most luminary names in the field of
international lawheld it to be part of customary law. (Custom, which is roughly analogous
to common law within the British legal tradition, is a major source of international law.) My
Georgetown mentor William OBrien, however, writing on the laws of war, was not convinced. He
pointed out that custom self-evidently derives from what states actually donot from what
many think they ought to have done but failed to do. To test his skepticism against the opinions
of those who propounded the tenet, he tasked me with searching for concrete examples of
humanitarian intervention.
The contemporary literature on the subject mostly pointed to one latter-day instance. During the
Congo crisis of the early 1960s, a joint American-Belgian task force was airlifted in to rescue
Westerners who were being held hostage. This was not very satisfying. The extrication of white
people from African mayhem did not make a uniquely morally compelling tale. And the number
of lives at stakejust shy of a thousandwas not on the order of the Holocaust or Pol Pots
rampage. The same number of blacks might vanish in an episode of African fratricide any week of
the year without outsiders taking much notice.
OBrien and I thought we had at last hit upon a more solid example in another African event, the
1979 overthrow of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada by the army of neighboring Tanzania. Even
by the standards of a day when all of Africa groaned under the dictatorial rule of so-called big
men, Amins bloody reign stood out. He is estimated to have executed one hundred thousand of
his countrymen; and reportedly tortured to death Ugandas Anglican archbishop with his own
handseven, by some accounts, feasting on the remains.
However, when I interviewed officials of Tanzanias embassy in Washington, they were adamant
that their forces had ousted Amin because of the invasion of Tanzanian territory by his soldiers,
which had in fact occurred. They insisted that their government had not acted against Amin due
to his cruelties against his own people and that it would not have done so since it was faithful to
the central principle of the Organization of African Unity (later succeeded by the African Union)
of absolute non-interference in one anothers internal affairs, a policy in which each of these
autocracies had an obvious self-interest.
Our quest having proved fruitless, OBrien treated the matter with scholarly skepticism in the
book he was writing. The need for humanitarian intervention to save a people from its own
government has not coincided with the availability of a power or group of powers capable and
willing to intervene, he said, which made the whole concept problematic.

The situation changed, however, over the next two decades, in ways that led to the emergence
of R2P as a principle of US foreign policy. In 1986, the US Senate gave its consent to ratification
of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which had come
into force among other nations some decades earlier. It bound signatories to undertake to
prevent and to punish genocide. This meant that at least in some instances, humanitarian
intervention might be based on something stronger than customary law, namely, treaty
obligation. It gave the whole matter more weight.
A second, more momentous changethe ending of the Cold War in 1989made humanitarian
interventions more feasible. During the Cold War, any movement of military forces into a new
territory by one superpower, whatever the reason or pretext, was seen by the other as the
ominous advance of a pawn on the global chessboard. At a minimum, it heightened tensions, and
often it provoked a counter-response.
Now there was greater freedom of action, and for the United States the demands of national
security felt less urgent. No longer burdened by the exigencies of parrying an existential threat
from the Soviets, America could give greater rein to its moral sensibilities.
Crises that engaged Americas values or principles more than its security took center stage in
international politics for a stretch of years in the 1990s when Yugoslavia disintegrated, famine
overtook Somalia, and inter-tribal bloodletting reached epic proportions in Rwanda. The latter
two posed only humanitarian concerns, while the Yugoslav case entwined these with more
practical ones. Serbias attacks on Slovenia, Croatia, and especially Bosnia-Herzegovina
challenged a basic rule against cross-border aggression in which America (and others) had a
security stake, the same rule that had been invoked against Iraqs invasion of Kuwait, while the
mass murder and rape of civilians added moral issues.
President Bill Clinton, eager to focus like a laser on the domestic economy during his first term,
deferred to the UN to handle these crises. In the end, both the world body and Washington
covered themselves in shame by their ineptitude and lack of urgency in the face of wholesale
atrocities, preparing the ground from which R2P sprung.
The Somalia events had sprung from the decision of Clintons predecessor, George H. W. Bush, in
his last days in office, to send Marines to stem a famine in that country that had been caused less
by natural events than by the disappearance of law and order and the commandeering of food by
armed gangs. The Americans set up well-protected feeding stations and saved perhaps a million
lives. But this left the question of how they could extricate themselves without tragedy returning.
The UN decided on an ambitious nation-building project and persuaded Clinton to leave several
thousand US soldiers in the country as the backbone of a UN force to shield it. When, in October
1993, eighteen US Army Rangers were killed in a shootout in Mogadishu, the president, at a loss
to explain to the public why US forces were in combat in Somalia, ordered a hasty withdrawal.
Six months later, ethnic strife in Rwanda exploded into the first unambiguous episode of
genocide since the Holocaust. Rather than reinforce UN peacekeepers stationed in the country
due to earlier outbreaks of violence, UN officials encouraged them to flee. When some Security
Council members sought action to stanch the bloodshed, the US took the lead in blocking it. Once
he had left office, Clinton offered the lamest of apologies to Rwanda. The international
community...must bear its share of responsibility for this tragedy, he said, without
acknowledging that in this case the international community was first and foremost himself.
He had even gone so far as to order members of his administration to avoid using the word
genocide while the Rwanda killings were under way, lest this invoke Americas obligation under
the genocide convention to attempt to prevent it. As a result, administration representatives
would only reluctantly concede that acts of genocide may have occurred.
When war had broken out in Bosnia-Herzegovina in April 1992, President Bush had called it a
hiccup and sat on his hands. As a candidate, Clinton criticized this policy, but as president he
continued it. The UN role actually made things worse. The Muslim victims of ethnic cleansing
at Serb hands were invited to take refuge in six safe areas under UN protection, provided they
turned over their weapons. One of these was Srebrenica, which was overrun by Serb forces in
July 1995. As the Serbs moved in, UN forces refused to protect the Muslims or to return their
guns so they could try to protect themselves. Some seven or eight thousand males of or near
military age were rounded up and slaughtered en masse, the only such massacre in Europe since
World War II. This prompted Clinton finally to order air strikes, which ended the war quickly and
easily.
Embarrassed by the long delay in taking action in Bosnia, during which 100,000 to 250,000
people, mostly civilians, had perished, and alarmed by the strains the situation had caused within
NATO, Washington and its European allies responded with alacrity when Kosovo heated up in
1998. A bombing campaign forced the withdrawal of Serb forces.
NATOs action may have been morally justifiable, but it had no plausible basis in international
law. The use of force had not been approved by the Security Council because Moscow, which
holds a veto, stood with Belgrade. Absent a Security Council vote, military action can sometimes
be legitimated under the rubric of collective self-defense, but unlike Bosnia-Herzegovina, which
was an independent country, Kosovo was indisputably a province of Serbia, so no issue of cross-
border aggression arose.
A few NATO governments, but not most, justified their offensive as an exercise in humanitarian
intervention, but this stretched the concept beyond all meaning. There is no doubt that Serbs
persecuted the Albanian population of Kosovo, but persecution occurs in many places. The
number of Albanians killed by Serbs by the time the bombing began probably did not exceed
double digits. Tragic though it was, this did not nearly rise to the extraordinary level of violence
that had always been seen as the threshold for humanitarian intervention. Without any legal
right, NATO acted above all out of the regret that it had failed to act in the earlier crises in
Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Rwanda.
Unease over what was done in Kosovoand done or not done in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Somalia
prompted the government of Canada, with backing from UN officials and funding from major
foundations, to create an International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. Its
deliberations fructified in a report issued in December 2001 that coined the term Responsibility
to Protect. This in turn was incorporated in the recommendations released in 2004 of the so-
called High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, appointed by then Secretary General
Kofi Annan to spearhead UN reform. This was then codified the following year at a special
meeting of the General Assembly, the world summit.

For some American liberals, and no doubt for like-minded Europeans, the embrace of
humanitarian intervention, now rechristened as Responsibility to Protect, appeared to entail
some paradoxical reasoning.
During the humanitarian crises of the early 1990s, three schools of thought could be discerned.
One, composed mostly of neoconservatives, advocated armed intervention. Another, composed
mostly of more traditional conservatives, opposed involvement on the grounds that our
sentiments might be touched but our interests were not. A third group, mostly liberals, wanted to
do something to stop the bloodshed but were chary of the use of force.
In the years following the crises, this last group exhibited second thoughts, as exemplified by
Clintons Rwanda apology. Without abandoning wholesale their distrust of military action, some
of these liberals seemed now to feel more comfortable with war for humanitarian ends than for
national self-interest which, as they see it, can too easily slide into self-aggrandizement (a
distrust of American purposes that still lingers from Vietnam).
It was these voices, exemplified by Samantha Power, author of a widely acclaimed book about
genocide who now serves on the staff of the National Security Council, who were seen to have
triumphed over the realists in the Obama administration in persuading the president to
undertake the Libya mission. However, the self-doubt that seems to inhere in liberal hawkishness
was expressed in Obamas decision to end US participation in the Libya bombing campaign, in
favor of NATO, almost before it had begun.
Moreover, the embrace of humanitarian intervention still left the newly fledged liberal hawksor
if not them, then their foreign counterpartsuneasy on one score. The only country with the
capacity to use force decisively in most violent crises was the United States. Was Washington now
to be given a free hand in the name of humanitarianism? Might not Americas war hawks exploit
such a loophole for their own purposes?
Ironically, even as the end of the Cold War had allowed greater focus on humanitarian crises, it
had also stoked dismay over American power. Throughout the Cold War, Western Europe and
many countries elsewhere had sheltered under that power against the depredations of the Soviet
Union and its surrogates. When the sudden Soviet collapse created a unipolar world, America
was no longer needed as a protector, and Americas singular status began to seem ominous, even
to allies. Hubert Vdrine, French foreign minister, coined the term hyper-puissance to liken the
muscularity of the US to a malady of international politics. The Americans, in the absence of
limits put to them by anybody or anything, act as if they own a kind of blank check in their
McWorld, wrote Germanys leading magazine, Der Spiegel .
These anxieties gave rise to insistent demands from statesmen and commentators for obedience
to the principle that the use of force always required the approval of the Security Council. In
Kosovo in 1998, this issue was ignored by some of these selfsame luminaries. But it was asserted
afresh in 2002 in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq by America and its allies, an invasion that
was branded illegal by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan because it had proceeded in the
absence of such approval.
Thus, in enshrining the principle of R2P, the UN world summit affirmed that any such action
must be taken through the Security Council, thereby safeguarding the world against any self-
appointed policing on the part of the United States.
There is, however, a deep problem with the UN Charters conferral on the Security Council of a
monopoly of the rightful use of force. The Charter creates a kind of social compact among
nations, analogous to the compact among individuals in Lockean political philosophy. Under
article 2.4, which outlaws the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political
independence of any state, members forgo the autonomy of action they enjoyed under
customary law in exchange for the protection they will receive from the Security Council. That
protection, as spelled out in chapter 7 of the Charter, will be furnished by a massive international
military apparatus the Security Council will deploy against any miscreant state that threatens or
attacks another. But this entire apparatus is a mirage.
The only two occasions in the UNs sixty-six-year history on which it performed the function
envisioned as its main purpose, that is, to thwart an aggressor, were in Korea in 1950 and in
Kuwait in 1991. On both occasions, the Security Council, having no forces of its own, invited
members to form a posse under the leadership of the United States. In effect, it acted under
article 51, which acknowledges the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense. This
article was designed for occasions when the Security Council fails to act. Yet it turned out to be
the only article under which it could act.
What clearer confession could there be that the compact at the heart of the Charter is broken?
Thus, to repose all authority for the use of force in the Security Council is absurd and dangerous.
This applies to humanitarian disasters as well as breaches of the peace.
The UN was deeply involved in Somalia, Rwanda, and Yugoslavia, and its actions mostly made
things worse. This prompted Kofi Annan, who headed the bodys peacekeeping department
during these crises before rising to become secretary general, to declaim: Peacekeepers must
never again be deployed into an environment in which there is no cease-fire or peace agreement.
In other words, UN forces might play a post-conflict role in restoring normalcy but are generally
helpless where one party or another wants to continue killing.

Does the UN Security Councils authorization of NATOs air campaign over Libya give
grounds for revising this assessment? Does it establish a precedent that is likely to be followed by
other life-saving interventions under UN aegis? The answer is no. The cardinal feature of the
Libyan episode is that Qaddafi is a nut job who has alienated almost all governments except a few
in Africa that he has bribed but that wield little clout.
The clearest measure of Qaddafis extraordinary isolation was the unprecedented resolution of
the Arab League endorsing intervention in Libya, which paved the way for the Security Councils
vote. But when Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, no less a tyrant than Qaddafi, sent tanks and
snipers into cities to mow down hundreds of peaceful demonstrators, the Arab League endorsed
his action and the Security Council refused to pass so much as a resolution offering mere verbal
condemnation.
It is hard to think of regimes as friendless as Qaddafis. Perhaps that of North Korea, but since it
has nuclear bombs and an ally in Beijing, no action is contemplated even though the Kims have
far exceeded Qaddafi in abusing their own subjects. The military junta that rules Burma has been
widely criticized, but its fellow members of ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,
generally coddle it, and military intervention was never considered when it slaughtered Buddhist
monks marching peacefully in 2007.
In short, the Libyan case will prove no more of a precedent than the Security Councils
authorization of the use of force against North Korea in 1950, thanks to an ill-conceived boycott
by the Soviet delegate who thus was unable to cast a veto. The UN cover was handy, but the
United States would have fought to defend South Korea regardless, probably joined by the same
collection of allies.
R2P at best will be a flawed principle of moral action because it cannot be applied even-handedly.
No matter what the regime in Beijing, for example, does to its own citizens, the use of outside
military force to protect them is unimaginable. Who will invade China? Nonetheless, for this
principle to deserve to be taken seriously, it should be applied as uniformly as possible. The
situation in Syria is not the same as in Libya: for one thing, the Syrian people have not called for
outside armed help. But if Assad goes on a mass killing spree (as his father did in the city of
Hamma in 1982) and the Syrian dissidents do call for outside help, then what? It is likely that the
Obama administration would shed its perverse solicitude for that regime. But it is inconceivable
that the UNi.e., Moscow and Beijingwould.
The world has mostly enjoyed peace since 1945, but that owes nothing to the UN and everything
to American power, exercised mostly in the form of guarantees to Japan, NATO, and other allies,
rather than in shooting wars. In this era when violence within states is far more common than
between them, cases of extreme abuse will sometimes cry out for outside intervention. But the
traditional doctrine of humanitarian intervention, invoked by the United States and other
democracies at their own discretion, is likely to offer a more usable basis for such action than the
shiny new version called R2P, which places all authority in the paralytic hands of the United
Nations Security Council.

Joshua Muravchik is a fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins
University's School of Advanced International Studies. His upcoming book, How
the World Turned Against Israel
Americas Purpose and Role in a
Changed World
Michael Zantovsky

It is not a new observation that, just as the twentieth century started late, with the shots in
Sarajevo, so did the twenty-first century, with the September 11th attacks. Compared to the
conflagration that followed the first event, whose centennial this year is a welcome opportunity
for some belated soul-searching, the bloodshed that started with the second event has been
limited, but its consequences may have been just as profound. The two American administrations
that inherited the postSeptember 11th world have since struggled, along with the rest of the
world, with the consequences. One chose to confront the evil head-on, in order to eradicate its
sources and deter its repetition, with mixed results. The other largely opted for seeing and
hearing little evil, with results that the jury is still out considering.
Any rational analysis or critique of the foreign policy of the current US administration must thus
of necessity start with its predecessor. Crusades, and there is little doubt that this was how
President George W. Bush viewed his mission in history, invariably fail, and always for the same
reasons. There is no clean way of dealing with evil. The more brutal it is, the more brutal the
means that need to be used to vanquish it. Second, people, being people, cannot help but
introduce their own motives, interests, and biases into what had originally been a struggle of
values and principles, thus undermining their claim to moral high ground. Third, genuine regime
change can only come from within. A change engineered or imposed from the outside almost
always backfires.
One of the possible reactions to such perceived difficulties in fighting evil and terror is the denial
of their existence. If what had been considered as evil is instead seen as an expression of an
alternative view of the world, co-equal with ours, or at worst a narrow criminal conspiracy, then
much of its threat and the urgency to fight disappears.
Related Essay

The Uncertainty of Freedom
Michael Zantovsky | ESSAY
Questions about law and freedom have haunted societies for centuries, and as past thinkers have concluded, self-
limitation seems to be essential to living in a world that prizes both.
Over the last ten years, Americans have had an opportunity to examine the costs and benefits of
the war on terror and the outlay of funds and energy on a global scale, and many have concluded
that they are not worth the effort and sacrifices. Battle fatigue has set in and moral doubts
obscured the clarity of purpose. It almost feels as if the trajectory of the war on terror followed
that of the war on drugs. The doubters are right in that terror, like drugs, cannot be eradicated by
military means. But the conclusion that many of them have drawn, namely that the lack of
convincing success in fighting terror points to a deeper moral flaw in Americas treatment of the
rest of the world, does not necessarily follow. The choice is not simply between imposing
American will on the rest of the world, by force if need be, and withdrawing from the world.
Americas economic, political, and military strength, still preeminent in a number of areas,
provides it with a whole range of options, a number of which may coincide with both American
interests and those of the rest of the world.
It is exactly such commonality of interest and the ensuing commonality of action that seems to be
lacking as an explicit factor in the design and conduct of the American foreign policy. The attacks
of September 11th were clearly aimed not just against two buildings in the commercial and
cultural capital of the United States, and at least one other in its political capital, or even against
the United States itself, but against a way of life, a culture and a civilization, that together
comprise the West. The shock of the onslaught drove the message home with the kind of crystal
clarity that is usually in short supply in the deliberations of politicians and diplomats. It only took
a day for the NATO alliance to declare, on September 12, 2001: If it is determined that this
attack was directed from abroad against the United States, it shall be regarded as an action
covered by Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, i.e., as an attack against the West as a whole.
Unlike on other occasions in NATO history, this was not a statement requested or solicited by the
United States, but a spontaneous expression of solidarity on the part of the allies.
The reaction of the United States was an underwhelming Dont call us, well call you. Instead of
reinforcing the unity of the alliance in the face of an outrageous attack against one of its
members, the American reluctance, understandable as it may have been, to wage the war on
terror by committee, which had been the less than efficient but ultimately effective way to end
the war in Yugoslavia and to dislodge Slobodan Milosevic from Kosovo, led to the gradual
dissipation of NATO s unity, ending in the bitter aftertaste of Iraq.
The trauma of the September 11th atrocity may partly explain the tendency to go it alone, as if the
wounded warrior felt the need to counter the blow unassisted in some kind of ritual exorcism.
The false certainty provided by the unipolar momentan inherently unstable notion, for it
tends to vanish the moment it is formulated and paraded aroundmay have been another
reason.
It is more difficult to understand why the current administration, which identified and criticized
this fatal flaw in dealing with the rest of the world, did little to address and correct it. Instead of
aiming, rightly, for a NATO-wide concept of missile defense in lieu of the unpopular and divisive
Bush administration plan, it came up with the equally unilateral and not visibly more popular
Phased Adaptive Approach. Instead of trying to devise a new collective policy of the Atlantic
Alliance toward Russia, one that would reflect both the cooperative and competitive aspects of
this crucially important relationship, even more so for Europe than the United States, it opted for
a reset in the hope that the areas of friction and disagreement would go away. Instead they
multiplied. As the events in Ukraine unfold in what may yet become the most serious crisis of the
postCold War era, there is no sign of a unified Western posture suited to its various
contingencies.
For some reason, the American foreign policy establishment had chosen to disregard the lessons
of the 1980s and 1990s, the period of some of its major achievements. This is especially puzzling
given the strong personal links between the foreign policy principals in the years that followed, as
the son of a president became commander in chief, and then the wife of a president became
secretary of state.

The lessons of the last ten years are quite simple. Even a major superpower has to base its
policies on a broader alliance. While this may only marginally contribute to its military strengths,
it provides a formidable political and moral base, shielding the leading power from accusations of
pursuing its own selfish interests at the expense of everyone elses. At the same time, it provides a
check of sorts on its instinct to use the power at its disposal in an unrestrained way. Given the
diverse and complementary historical records of the allies, it also gives it access to a body of
knowledge about foreign lands, cultures, and psychologies, something that has not always been
its strongest suit.
The pivot to Asia may stem from worthy and timely considerations. The balance of power,
economic in particular, is undeniably shifting, and a responsible power must reflect it in its
policy. It is, however, worth keeping in mind what fruits the United States can hope to reap from
this endeavor and what may remain beyond its reach. While it may find new markets, new
clients, new partners and along with them unavoidably encounter new risks and threats, it may
find it not all that easy to discover new allies.
Working together with others will be crucial in coping with the new risks and threats on the
horizon. The cyber risk has been around for a few years, but so far its impact has been limited. It
has apparently been deployed by both state and non-state agents to infiltrate or disrupt
communications, and economic, financial, or industrial infrastructure. There is, however, little
doubt that a further weaponization of cyber tools to attack people and their lives is entirely
possible. It is clear that no country can successfully prevent such attacks on its own. Broad
international cooperation is needed, but it is only genuinely possible between countries with
compatible standards of security, rule of law, and civilian oversight over military and intelligence
operations. In the absence of trust based on these principles, the dividing line between
cooperation and infiltration becomes blurred and intelligence sharing risky.
Risks of a non-military nature cannot and should not be countered by military means. That does
not necessarily mean they are less serious. To preserve an open society living in freedom and
security is without question a fundamental national interest of the United States. Nevertheless, a
large part of the world does not seem to share the same ideas of openness and would gladly do
without some of the liberties enjoyed by citizens of the West. Withdrawing into a Fortress
America to safeguard these liberties would by definition deprive the United States of an
important dimension of the very openness it aims to protect. Once again, an international
alliance of like-minded nations sharing the same values and interests seems to be a necessity.
The big question underneath the uncertainty regarding the current US posture in the world is
whether the self-identification of the United States as a part of the West still has some validity.
The same consideration naturally holds for the rest of the West, and for the concept of the West
as such. It cannot be too often repeated that what used to hold the West together was not just a
common threat it faced but the views of social, economic, and political organization it shared. In
the end, alliances, like states, survive by the ideas they were founded upon.
From the outside observers point of view, the purpose of America is neither to go abroad in
search of monsters to destroy nor to rest content with her heart, her benedictions, and her
prayers. It is to work with others to provide a model and a source of effective support for places
where the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled and in doing so
to make sure that Americas own standard will continue to fly high.
, wll come out next year.
Learning Curve: American Culture and
the Muslim World
Peter Skerry
As Americans struggle to confront economic and fiscal dilemmas at home, we are also
reexamining our role as the lone global superpower. As we do so, one of our most elusive
challenges is coming to terms with the cultural dimension of our engagement with the Muslim
world. This is in part because cultural forces are downplayed or ignored by our intellectual and
foreign policy elites. This neglect is regrettable, for while there are aspects of American culture
that Muslims find problematic, or even repellant, there are others that they findor might find, if
made awareappealing, even admirable.

Both Sides of the Coin . Even as high unemployment, slow growth, and skyrocketing public
debt demand our attention, we must recognize that we are dealing not merely with an economic
system but with the beliefs and values on which it is based, which constitute a way of life. Many
Americans, along with our friends and enemies overseas, routinely attribute our continuing
economic predicament to our acquisitiveness. Indeed, many believe that the true source of
Americas quest for global dominance, however chastened it may be at the moment, is our
inordinate appetite for material possessions and pleasures. But even if this were true, would it be,
as we so often hear, simply a matter of greed?
First, it must be acknowledged that Americans enormous consumer wants and our willingness to
go into household debt to satisfy them distinguish us from most other advanced industrial
democracies. But if we stop to examine the origins of the present economic crisis, it arises in part
from otherwise laudable efforts to satisfy the aspirations of economically marginal African
Americans and Hispanic immigrants to become homeowners. Indeed, the specific goal of
increasing minority home ownership was a critical component of the rationale for the policies
and institutional arrangements that got us into the present mess. Put differently, the greed of
investors was gratified in part by an effort to promote what was viewed by Republicans and
Democrats alike as a laudable social policy goal, even as social justice. Many would prefer to
forget this today, but during the 1990s and well into the first decade of the new century, those
who cautioned against increasing reliance on the sub-prime mortgages that were being marketed
to economically marginal home-buyers risked being accused of indifference toward those
struggling to achieve the American Dream. In some instances, such skeptics were even accused of
racism.
Related Essay
Continental Divide: Immigration and the New European Right
John Rosenthal | ESSAY
Right-wing politics in Europe aren't as reactionary as they've been made out to be.
Once the financial system sustained by those practices and institutions came crashing down, it
has been these same economically marginal families who have been suffering the most. It would
of course be naive to deny that the aspirations of such individuals were at times tainted by poor
judgment and excess. Nevertheless, pointing out that immigrant and minority aspirations
contributed to the debacle should in no way be interpreted as blaming those who have lost their
homes. Without a doubt, primary responsibility for our current situation lies with the investors
who exploited those aspirations and with the government officials whose lax oversight allowed
them to take huge financial risks with borrowed assets.
The point is subtle but critical. Our present predicament illustrates how the extraordinary
dynamism and openness of American society are sustained by our peoples appetite for material
advancement. Opportunities for the rich to grow richer both encourage and permit the non-rich
to move upand perhaps grow rich themselves. In no small way, American ideals of equal
opportunity and social equality depend on our acquisitiveness, even on our greed. This of
course is no original insight; it was the preoccupation of eighteenth-century moral philosophy.
But as is often the case, the insights of philosophers are overlooked just when they can be most
helpful.
Yet if we are guilty of greed, it is not simply greed for things. We are also a restless people who
crave openness and new experiences. We are greedy for what have come to be called lifestyle
optionswhether in terms of alcohol and drugs, sexual partners and practices, pregnancy
decisions, familial and child-rearing arrangements, and so on. Some libertarians understand how
our economic freedoms and cultural liberties are linked, and defend both as two sides of the same
coin. Yet most Americans have difficulty seeing this, and todays polarization of our politics
further distorts their view. Liberals and leftists denounce the market for undermining community
bonds. Conservatives denounce the lefts cultural agenda for its self-indulgence and hedonistic
individualism. The left regards dependence on oil as a sign of profligacy; the right sees easy
access to abortion as an indicator of decadence, even depravity.

The Waters Edge . We Americans may not appreciate how such fundamental disagreements,
which have rent our culture and politics for decades, can be seen as different facets of a coherent
whole. But this is precisely how many Muslimsfriendly and unfriendly, here and abroad
perceive Americas internal cultural conflicts. In their eyes, Americans may disagree about
particulars, but we are united in our preoccupation with unfettered, acquisitive individualism.
It is, of course, hardly surprising that Americans fail to grasp this broader view of our culture
wars. These are our culture wars, after all, and we have been fighting them in a characteristically
self-absorbed way. Yet this is not the whole story. Since 9/11, Americans have taken some
tentative steps toward muting our disagreements and presenting a united front when we turn our
attention overseas, especially toward an enemy who defines himself in fundamentalist religious
terms. To be sure, controversies over abortion and gay marriage continue, but less intensely than
before. This may in part be attributable to economic conditions. In any event, just as Muslims
have come together to defend themselves from criticism and attack from non-Muslims, so too
have Americans closed ranks vis--vis Muslims. Partisan bickering might not stop at the waters
edge any more, but the culture wars do, for the most part.
Conservatives who launched broadsides against the excesses of American culture in the 1990s
now mount the barricades to defend its virtuesagainst the practices and criticisms of Muslims,
who all along have been troubled by those same excesses. The ironies here are too numerous to
count. The most glaring is that conservatives who just a few years ago roundly criticized the
feminist movement and routinely dismissed womens rights as the leading edge of a troubling
liberationist agenda now loudly and insistently criticize Islams failure to advance gender
equality.
Yet in our preoccupation with how Muslim societies treat women, we turn a blind eye to how our
own liberal values have fostered a commercialized culture that condones and even glorifies sexual
promiscuity and pornography that denigrate womenand men. These powerful forces that we
have helped unleash on the world are one reason why many Muslim women seek refuge in
Islamic modesty, including the head scarf. Of course, promiscuity and pornography offend and
alarm many Americans. Yet when we turn our attention overseas, we uncritically close ranks and
defend our way of lifemuch as Muslim societies have.

Taking Culture Off the Table . That Americans should have achieved some unity in an era of
polarization by focusing on an external foe should come as no surprise. Yet it is surprising, and
especially worthy of note, that we have for a variety of reasons persuaded ourselves that our
differences with Islam are not cultural in any important sense.
With regard to gender equality, for example, we consider it not so much a cultural value to be
encouraged as a human right to be secured. This perspective is epitomized in a 2007 study from
the RAND Corporation. Building Moderate Muslim Networks specifically equates gender
equality with freedom of worship and designates both as internationally recognized human
rights. Here as elsewhere in contemporary discourse, human rightswhose infringement on
account of societal, cultural, or political conditions is presumptively impermissibleare asserted
without any elaboration or justification. This is a complicated and controversial topic that cannot
be fully explored here. My point is simply to highlight this resort to the language of rights as a
salient example of how Americans sidestep the cultural dimension when we turn our attention to
the Muslim world.
Another such example is the tendency, particularly on the part of neoconservatives, to interpret
the American encounter with radical Islamists through the lens of the Cold War, and insist that
we are now engaged in a war with Islamo-Fascism. Muslims hate this term, but there is some
merit to it. As in the Cold War, todays struggle is being pursued incrementally, over a protracted
period of time, without the sustained engagement of huge armed forces. And as Francis
Fukuyama, among others, has pointed out, extremist Islamists are driven less by religion than by
a modern ideology that has clear affinities with communism and fascism.
Yet despite such similarities, the most critical distinction between the Cold War and todays
struggle is that the latter has a substantial cultural component. Indeed, Americas contests
against fascism and communism were waged against adversaries who shared our Enlightenment
heritage, albeit in perverted forms. Today, we confront enemies who emerge from a distinctive
civilization that is not Western and that in fact has a long history of rivalry, contention, and
conflict with the West.
The implications of such a cultural perspective are varied and vital. To begin, cultural conflicts
are arguably more wrenchingpersonally and societallythan ideological ones. Consider, for
example, the difference between the apostasy of a Communist such as Whittaker Chambers and
that of a Muslim such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali. While the former clearly pursued a painful and bitter
path, sundering ideological ties with, and then exposing, old comrades, the pain and complexity
of that experience must pale in comparison with the latters renunciation and condemnation of
the foundational beliefs and practices of her family going as far back as memory itself.
Such treacherous shoals are undoubtedly one reason why our leaders insist that we
are not engaged in any such cultural conflict with Islam. Yet such an assertion hardly seems
credible. Recall that Americas fiscal and economic crises are rooted in our valuessome
admirable, others not. Taken together, they constitute our way of life. This is certainly how
Islamist extremists see it. But so do many ordinary, law-abiding Muslims who are mindful,
though perhaps themselves not always observant, of Islamic principles of thrift and self-restraint.
America is not at war with Islam. Nor is there any unified, global Muslim community that
confronts usno matter how often Muslims invoke precisely that notion when they refer to
the ummah . Nevertheless, our sometimes violent struggle with extremist Muslims is being
fought on cultural terrainand being watched by a vast audience of non-extremist but culturally
conservative Muslims who are keeping close track not only of who is winning but also of how
Americans are waging the battle.
Those who cavil at such a cultural interpretation of the present struggle should stop to consider
why gender equality in Muslim societies (albeit under the rubric of human rights) gets raised by
non-Muslims so quickly and so often. Or why many Muslims are so averse to our popular music
and figurative art. Or why the Muslim world is so profoundly hostile to any hint of open
homosexuality. Such issues clearly loom large for many non-Muslims, as well as for most
Muslims.
Why then do Americas political and intellectual elites habitually relegate culture to the
background of contemporary discussions? One answer is that the mere mention of culture
raises the specter of Samuel Huntingtons clash of civilizations thesis. Indeed, most academics
and analysts reject Huntingtons emphasis on the importance of culture in global politicsa
backlash that he himself helped to provoke when, in support of his thesis, he bluntly asserted that
it is human to hate. Huntingtons point, of course, is that cultural conflicts are nasty and
intractable, especially in this postCold War era. Yet he did not welcome such conflicts, nor did
he regard them as inevitable. Indeed, Huntington opposed the US invasion of Iraq, a fact
overlooked by critics who incorrectly associate him with that wars neoconservative proponents.
Another response is that long before Huntington advanced his controversial thesis, social
scientists were vigorously rejecting cultural explanations of human affairs, particularly those
having to do with religion, as a valid basis of action or of analysis. Academics and intellectuals
have identified this perspective as essentialist, by which they mean the imputation of inherent
or unchanging traits to groups, especially disadvantaged or marginal groups. The concern is that
such groups will come to be seen as unresponsive to meliorative public policies, thereby fueling
negative stereotypes and aiding conservative or reactionary political forces. In contrast,
environmental or social structural perspectives have been seen as progressive, on the dubious
assumption that such factors are more susceptible to governmental interventions.

Our Cultural Blindspots . The consequences of disregarding the cultural dimensions of
Americas contemporary encounter with Islam are considerable. One such is a failure to reckon
with the global impact of our own cultural footprint, which is arguably just as significant as those
left by our economy and military. Yet apart from advocates of so-called soft power, few of us seem
to appreciate this.
A disturbing example emerged from the shocking behavior of American military personnel in
Iraq at Abu Ghraib prison. While most Americans regarded this as a nationally embarrassing
episode of abuse and torture, John Agresto, an American educator who served in Iraq under
Ambassador Paul Bremer as senior adviser to the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific
Research, offers a strikingly different interpretation. In his book, Mugged by Reality: The
Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions , Agresto draws on his conversations and
experiences in post-invasion Iraq to show that Iraqis were hardly surprised by the egregious
behavior at Abu Ghraib. He quotes his Iraqi translator: We are a cruel people. Its in our DNA.
But then Agresto makes a point lost on many Americans: It wasnt the revelations of torture, as
such, that so troubled Iraqis...it was the character and sexual nature of these abuses. He
elaborates: Abu Ghraib displayed not only Americans abandonment to perverse sexuality, up to
and including homoerotic sadism, but also the willingness of American females to be
photographed sexually abusing naked men, and the joy that they all seemed to display at not only
degrading Iraqis but at degrading their own natures as well. Agresto goes on to characterize the
Iraqi perspective: Abu Ghraib looked less like severe treatment of detainees in order to wrest
important information from them as much as it seemed depraved fun and sexual games . . . To a
people told by our enemies that modernity stands for indulgence and the loosening of our moral
rules, that America is a perverse and hedonistic culture, that liberty is libertinism and anarchy,
and that our secularism is really nothing but irreligion and an affront to God, Abu Ghraib was a
gift to our enemies and an utter disaster for America and its friends. In the understandably
outraged commentary on Abu Ghraib here in the United States, the emphasis was just the
reverse. That is, Americans were much more focused on this episode as an example of abuse and
torture, while relegating the specifically sexual nature of many of the misdeeds to the
background.
Ironically, the US military seems to have figured out the crucial importance of culture sooner
than many of our other institutions. Confronting failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, our military
leaders have determined that victory is not simply a matter of applying overwhelming force
against the enemy, but also of winning hearts and minds among civilians. To do this, soldiers
need to understand the values and culture of those populations. Thats why the military has
reformulated counterinsurgency doctrine and made efforts to employ social scientists, especially
anthropologists. As we saw with the Awakening initiative in Iraqs Anbar Province, this approach
means working with erstwhile enemies in order to enlist them in the fight against more
implacable foes. Most recently, the Obama administration has been implementing elements of
this same strategy on the very different physical and cultural terrain of Afghanistan.
But ignoring the cultural basis of Americas encounter with Islam has had another unfortunate
result. We have obscured from our own view critical differences between the United States and
Europe. Ironically, these underscore how much better suited we are than our friends and allies
across the Atlantic to address the cultural concerns of Muslims around the world. Not only are we
more tolerant and open to newcomers than just about any European nation, we lack the strident,
full-throated secularism that in Europe has successfully contained religions role in public life
and consequently marginalized and alienated many Muslims. Muslims here in the United States
appreciate this difference, but Muslims elsewhere are barely aware of it. Yet such vital topics do
not get the attention they merit, because it has been determined that we are not engaged in a
cultural contest with Islam.
One final consequence of side-stepping cultural factors is to obscure commonalities across the
three Abrahamic faiths. To be sure, such similarities get highlighted in myriad interfaith
dialogues, but in the wider, less cloistered public square, the tone is quite different. Listening to
commentators there, one would never know that within living memory, Jewish women were
confined to the balconies of synagogues (and in some Hassidic sects today still are rigidly
segregated); Catholics abstained from meat on Fridays and routinely fasted during Lent;
mainstream Protestants denounced gambling and drinking; and Americans accepted, by and
large, a constitutional amendment prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and distribution of
alcoholic beverages. More generally, one would never suspect that there was a time when
Protestants, Catholics, and Jews all taught the virtues of self-restraint in the social, economic,
and cultural spheres of life in a way not dissimilar from contemporary Islam.
To be sure, there are critical differences of culture, history, and theology across Islam,
Christianity, and Judaism. But there are also some affinities that invite Americans to put
ourselves in the place of contemporary Muslimsnot out of misguided guilt, but out of curiosity
and a sense of urgency. Curiosity about how many Muslims see contemporary American life as
wasteful, exhibitionist, and self-indulgent, given that it was not so long ago that Americans
valued thrift, reserve, and restraint. And urgency because only through such honest and fulsome
exploration will we build genuine bridges of understanding and trust between Muslims and non-
Muslims. I am not suggesting the kind of interfaith dialogue that fatuously asserts common
values while lacking the hard-headedness necessary to address fundamental differences. Nor am
I suggesting that we focus on building friendships in the Muslim world. It is always desirable to
have friends, but friendship can hardly be our primary goal. Right now, we Americans need to
identify commonalities with Muslimsnot just of history and background but ofinterest .
In this vein, Americans must abandon, whether at home or abroad, the fruitless and demeaning
search for so-called moderate Muslims. Such Muslims do not really existnot because all
Muslims are extremists or terrorists, but because their cultural premises diverge so sharply from
our own. A far more promising approach has been suggested by sociologist Amitai Etzioni, who
argues that we be less preoccupied with Muslims who agree with us than with those who are
pragmatically willing to engage with us. Again, the aim is not to find friends but to locate
interlocutors who may not be kindly disposed toward Americans or our values, but who are
willing to explore areas of potentially mutual interest.
In the meantime, if the American Dream is to be kept alive, it will be through continued
economic growth. And if we intend to nurture such growth, we will have to continue to
countenance greed. Now, as we are just beginning to re-learn, there is unrestrained and
restrained greed, just as there are unregulated and regulated markets. In both instances, we will
doubtless be seeing more of the latter. But the basic acquisitiveness of our market-based
capitalist society will not soon be changing.
Nor is our global cultural impact uniformly negative or positive. American appetites and
aspirations are of a piece. Just as our extraordinary cultural fare simultaneously repels and
attracts many Americans, so too does it repel and attract peoples around the globe. Certainly
much of our popular culture appeals to the basest instincts, especially the stuff aimed at
adolescent males here and abroad. Yet on occasion, our cultural output also speaks to the better
angels of human nature. And as evidenced by the cries for democracy now being sounded
throughout the Arab world, our fundamental political values are appreciated in places where our
policies are not. If we are to take the next step in this engagement with the Muslim world, then
we must overcome our reluctance to face up to its complex cultural dimensions.

Peter Skerry is a professor of political science at Boston College and a non-resident senior
fellow at the Brookings Institution. An earlier version of this article appeared in the Institute for
American Values online journal IjtihadReason.org

Americas Purpose and Role in a
Changed World
David Rieff

Let me begin by putting my own moral and ideological cards on the table, since I assume that
I have been asked to participate in this symposium because of, and not in spite of, the fact that I
reject the idea that Americas global hegemony is not just good for the United States but assures
global peace and stability as well, and thus is good for the world. In his recent book-length article
for a special issue of the New Left Review titled American Foreign Policy and Its
Thinkers, a brilliant, implacable anatomization of the American Empire, Perry Anderson
approvingly quotes Christopher Laynes observation that in international relations, benevolent
hegemons are like unicornsthere is no such animal. That is certainly my view. And I would add
that a democratic empire (for other than its own citizens, at least) is quite simply a contradiction
in terms.
Like every empire that has preceded it, the American Empire has some unique characteristics,
the most salient being that it is an informal imperium. Whether this makes all that much
difference to the essential character and the global agenda of the United States seems to me
highly questionable. To cite a recent example, can anyone with any historical knowledge who has
listened to the recordings of Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs
Victoria Nulands conversation with the US ambassador to Kyiv, about who should and who
should not be allowed to replace Ukraines legally elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, honestly
not hear the echo of empires past?
Many will say that the recent anti-government protests in Ukraine that culminated with
Yanukovychs ouster demonstrate I am completely wrong about this, and that an empire can
indeed be benevolent. As Robert Kagan put it in Not Fade Away: The Myth of American
Decline, an essay for which President Obama has expressed great admiration, The present
world ordercharacterized by an unprecedented number of democratic nations; a greater global
prosperity, even with the current crisis, than the world has ever known; and a long peace among
great powersreflects American principles and preferences, and was built and preserved by
American power in all its political, economic, and military dimensions.
Related Essay

Fermez la Porte: The Over-simplification of Europe
David Rieff | ESSAY
Christopher Caldwell has a pretty simple read of Europe's woes. David Rieff thinks it's too simple.
In contrast to Kagans relatively sanguine view of the durability of US hegemony, the inspiration
for this symposium seems to be based on the editors perceptions that in a United States
wearied and demoralized by the terrible cost (in every sense of the word) and the dismaying
consequences (putting it euphemistically) of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is becoming
increasingly difficult to rally reluctant citizenry to the cause of Americas international
engagement. I wish this were the case, but as has so often been my experience over the past
twenty years, even though I could not disagree more with Kagan politically, I could not agree
more with him analytically. To paraphrase Mark Twain, a great anti-imperialist as well as a great
writer, reports of the death of the American Empire are greatly exaggerated.
To ask the obvious question: why are so many, including, or so I presume, the editors of this
journal and most of the contributors to this symposium, so worried? Surely, from their point of
view, things are not going all that badly, although the historical assumptions that serve as their
point of departure seem to me highly debatable. Is it in fact true that the United States reigned
confident and supreme in 2000? If Americans were confident, surely not just 9/11, but the rise
of Chinese economic and military power, which was already very much in train in the 1990s,
demonstrated such confidence had been unwarranted to begin with, and was, if anything, a
penumbral effect, not to say a narcissistic delusion, resulting from a unique event: the collapse of
the Soviet empire. As Kagan rightly insisted in his essay, To compare American influence today
with a mythical past of overwhelming dominance can only mislead us.
In my view, the editors anxieties over the risks and dangers that confront the United States are
as misleading in their level of alarm as their portrait of the geostrategic environment in 2000 is
rose-colored. Are the jihadis a real adversary? Absolutely. Are they an adversary as formidable as
the Soviet Union? Absolutely not. Are poverty and illiteracy huge problems? Yes, but in fact
poverty and illiteracy have been declining steadily in most of the developing world since 2000.
And it is hardly unreasonable to take at least as sanguine a view of the other threats, challenges,
and vulnerabilities that the editors enumerate.
To insist on this point is not to say that any of the challenges that the American Empire faces are
easy. But this, I think, is where the editors use of the year 2000 as a point of comparison is
highly misleading, since the 1990s were the only decade in the three-quarters of a century since
the United States became the worlds preeminent power when it had no adversary. In other
words, it was the world of 2000, an era in which all wars were wars of choice and global
hegemony seemed to come unchallenged and virtually cost-free, that was the anomaly. In
contrast, it was the world of the Cold War and now, after the hiatus of the 1990s, the world we
have been living in through the first decade and a half of the twenty-first century that actually
reflect the long-term historical norm.

This is not to say that all that is going on is reversion to mean. But what has changed is not
that the United States faces more powerful adversaries than it ever did in the past, or that the
United States is weaker than it had been previously. As Kagan points out, the period when the
declinists had the strongest case was not now but rather the 1970s. Instead, what has changed,
as both Kagan and Perry Anderson, for all that otherwise divides them, have emphasized, is the
extent to which the US foreign policy establishment now must pay attention to American public
opinion. As Anderson puts it, Since the Second World War, the external order of American
power has been largely insulated from the internal political system. But now, in Kagans worried
formulation, many Americans have convinced themselves that the United States can take a time-
out from its global responsibilities while it gets its own house in order.
To put it bluntly, thats what two wars that seem increasingly pointless and a financial crisis will
do, not to mention the wide perception in the United States that among the greatest losers in
globalization are lower-middle-class and working-class Americans. If, like the editors, I were
seeking for ways that, as they put it, American leaders can rally a reluctant citizenry to the
cause of what I would call the maintenance of the American Empire, and what I assume they
would call the United States indispensable leadership of the world, I would accept that the era of
the autonomy of foreign policy from economic concerns at home has ended, and try to address
Americans absolutely justified fears about not continuing to steadily lose ground economically.
Whether this is possible in the context of a neo-liberal economic order that the US foreign policy
and business establishment is also strongly committed to is another question entirely.
But if the United States continues to pursue wars that are always advertised as great acts of
conscience, and expressions of the countrys values, as well as being matters of crucial national
interest that, as the editors put it, oblige US involvement, and then end very, very badly, even
when, as was the case with the intervention in Libya, these military forays are presented as being
effectively cost-free, then the growing public skepticism that this symposium clearly views with
alarm is only likely to grow stronger. The editors may (awfully euphemistically, it seems to me)
refer to an American public being understandably unnerved that neither [Iraq nor Afghanistan]
has a particularly friendly or stable government in place as US forces withdraw (emphasis
added), but in fact widespread popular frustration and dismay are far stronger than that.
The Republican Party, even if it takes back the Senate in November, is already splintering over
social issues such as same-sex marriage, which religious conservatives now realize is at least as
strongly supported by the business establishment as it is by the hated liberals. And those whom
Walter Russell Mead once defined as Jacksonian Americans, who traditionally supported the
wide global use of US military power, are increasingly uncomfortable with it, as the unexpected
rise of Rand Paul has shown clearly. It is anything but clear that the bipartisan foreign policy
establishment, many of whose leading lights are even now still pressing President Obama to
reverse himself and undertake military action in Syria, has the faintest idea of how to cope with
the first popular pushback since before the beginning of the Cold War, which, crucially, is coming
from the right every bit as much (if not more) as from the left.
Its worth remembering that from the War of 1812, through the forcible, sanguinary annexation
of a huge part of Mexico, to the brutal suppression of the nationalist uprising against American
colonialism in the Philippines in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, there was an
enormous amount of opposition in the United States to the imperial project. It is at least possible
that in the twenty-first century the political conditions that shape and constrain US foreign policy
will more resemble those that obtained in the nineteenth century than in the twentieth. This does
not mean the American Empire will retrench to any significant degree. But it will make its
smooth administration much harder. That said, if President Obama can enthuse over Robert
Kagans essay, which argued that preserving the present world order requires constant American
leadership and constant American commitment, imagine what the far more hawkish Hillary
Clinton would do should she become president. I wish I could conclude that the anxieties
underpinning this symposium were warranted, and that the end of the American Empire was in
the cards in any foreseeable future. But I see no reason to expect any such eventuality. The
editors can stand down.
mericas Purpose and Role in a
Changed World
Michael V. Hayden

Ihad never been a big fan of American exceptionalism. It was too self-referential, self-
identifying, self-focused for my personal comfort.
Then one bitterly cold day in February 1994, I was wandering through the open-air market in
Sarajevo. The market had been hit by a single mortar round the previous weekend and sixty-eight
people had been killed. Holes made by fragments from the 120-mm shell were still visible in the
asphalt.
As I stared at the gouged surface in my battle dress and parka, Sarajevans began to come up to
me, point to the small American flag on my upper sleeve, give a hesitant thumbs-up gesture, and
whisper, almost prayerfully, USA, USA.
Related Essay

Beyond Snowden
Michael V. Hayden | ESSAY
Edward Snowdens leaks have fixated the media and the public on privacy and espionage, but the larger and more
complex debate on protecting American security in the 21st century has been wanting.
At that point it became clear to me that it mattered less whether I thought America was
exceptional. What mattered was that many people around the world thought that we were, and
expected us to act accordingly.
In many ways this is less something we have earned or even want, and more the product of
historical circumstance. But a burden has clearly been ours, and when it is no longer ours the
best judgment we can hope for is something along the lines of As global hegemons go, these guys
werent bad.
Now, under President Obama, the United States is involved in a redefinition or at least a
recalibration of that exceptional role. And the president is not alone. Some Republicans agree
with him. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has been staking out foreign affairs and security turf
for himself, criticizing American policy as too belligerent and calling for a reduction of
commitments abroad and a renewed emphasis on housekeeping duties here at home.
Those inclined to support the presidents approach applaud him for conducting a reappraisal of
Americas role, for working to more accurately align the definition of Americas interest with the
realities of Americas power.
Those who are more critical characterize the policies as a withdrawal, an abrogation of American
responsibility, motivated by a broad disinterest in foreign affairs and a desire to remake
American society at home without global distractions.
Whatever your judgment on the merits of the course, the trajectory seems clear.
And in military terms, this retrenchment would be described as a retreat, the most difficult of all
military maneuvers since, when badly managed, retrograde can become rout and movement in
the face of the enemy can quickly devolve into chaos.
Take terrorism, for example. Last fall the Economist reported that al-Qaeda now controls more
territory and has more adherents than at any other time in its history. So much for the hope (and
the campaign rhetoric) that al-Qaeda was on the run, near strategic defeat, and that the tide of
war was receding.
There remain real dangerseven as al-Qaeda prime in South Asia is reelingthat the
organization will secure a safe haven in western Iraq and the eastern Syrian desert (unlike
Afghanistan, not in the middle of nowhere, but in the middle of the Middle East); that swaths of
Yemen will resume their status as al-Qaeda bases; that Iraq will be de facto partitioned; and that
al-Qaeda wannabes in Libya, the Sinai, northern Mali, and Nigeria will grow in strength.
The failure to sustain an American presence in Iraq has already moved that country toward the
Iranian orbit and enabled a level of violence that rivals that of 2008. Some have blamed that on
Iraqi obstructionism over a Status of Forces Agreement but, when he announced the total
American withdrawal, President Obama himself labeled it as a promise kept and later (in a
debate with Governor Mitt Romney) denied that he wanted to keep a residual force there.
Americas decision to lead from behind in Libya (and de facto disengagement after Muammar
Qaddafis death) contributed to chaos there, the death of four Americans, a flood of arms
throughout the Middle East, and a resurgence of al-Qaeda in the Sahel.
What now will become of Syria and the Levant since our policy there has never deviated from its
one constant:Minimize American involvement? Absent some dramatic turn in
policy, possible futures are limited to: (1) a continuation of the status quo, which the US director
of national intelligence has labeled an apocalyptic disaster; (2) the Syrian state effectively
dissolving, with one successor fragment a radicalized Islamic caliphate; or (3) perhaps Irans ally
Bashar Assad wins. All these outcomes take place at a historic crossroads of civilization with the
US nowhere in view.
In the Persian Gulf, Americas Sunni allies are feverishly trying to divine the administrations
intentions after the president recently told the New Yorker, You could see an equilibrium
developing between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran in which theres
competition, perhaps suspicion, but not an active or proxy war.
Admittedly, the president prefaced that with a requirement that Iran change its ways, but the
comment comes on top of a broader fear of abandonment and a general sense of unease about
American reliability in the wake of last summers red-line debacle in Syria.
In Europe, the eastward expansion of freedom and free enterprise seems to have stopped at Kyiv
as Russian President Vladimir Putin attempts to baldly re-assert Moscows economic leverage
and political power in the post-Soviet space. The early American response had been so minimal,
with so little apparent willingness to impose costs on Moscow, that the release of an assistant
secretary of states profane phone call actually provided a bit of rare good news in that it showed
that America at least cared.
In Asia, what are we to make of Chinas self-declared Air Defense Identification Zone, which
encompasses broad reaches of the East China Sea, including the airspace over and around islands
disputed with Japan? A rare Chinese diplomatic misstep, perhaps, or maybe overreach fueled by
a Chinese judgment that the American pivot to Asia looks more like a head fake than a
policysomething that should be tested?

To be fair, none of these issues have obvious answers, and many offer alternatives ranging
from bad to very bad. There is also a general fatigue throughout the land. A recent joint poll by
Pew Research and the Council on Foreign Relations found that a record fifty-two percent of
respondents said that the United States should mind its own business internationally and
eighty percent believed the US should address domestic problems over international ones.
But the costs of American inaction (in places like Syria, Libya, and Iraq) are now becoming
obvious, and the toll seems to be mounting. Action in Syria, for example, is much more difficult
and less likely to succeed now than one, two, or three years ago.
And Americans are not quite trending totally isolationist. That same Pew/CFR poll showed that
more than half of Americans did not want the United States to go its own way in the world.
International involvement demands sacrifice, and sacrifice requires leadership. How many in
that eighty percent above were influenced (or felt vindicated) by a president constantly
reminding them that it was time to do some nation building at home?
Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, has accurately characterized
Afghanistan as President Obamas war of choice. Yet even here, the president has committed
little of his personal or political capital, rarely speaks about it, and has created timelines for
withdrawal independent of conditions on the ground.
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gatess recent memoir summarized the approach: the
President...doesnt believe in his own strategy and doesnt consider the war to be his. For him,
its all about getting out.
The account is from an early 2010 meeting in the situation room, four months after the president
announced his Afghan surge.
Recalibration. Retreat. Adjustment. Withdrawal. All tough tasks no matter how you describe
them. Even tougher if they suggest to your adversaries (and your friends) that you lack the
stomach for the fight.
Our greatest security danger in coming years? It might well be us.
mericas Purpose and Role in a
Changed World
Tom Gjelten

The presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama suggest what doesnt work in efforts
to promote US influence in the world. By ordering an ill-conceived invasion of Iraq, Bush
alienated US allies. His policies of secretly imprisoning Islamist militants and then subjecting
them to enhanced interrogation and indefinite detention at Guantnamo struck Muslims
everywhere as evidence of a war on Islam. Barack Obama, elected as the most explicitly anti-war
president since Woodrow Wilson, came into office determined to undo the international damage
done by his predecessor. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot
stand, Obama said in Berlin in 2008, and a year later, speaking in Cairo, he promised a new
beginning with the Muslim world, with relations based upon mutual interest and mutual
respect. As promised, he withdrew US combat troops from Iraq. By 2013, however, Obama had
fared little better than Bush in his global outreach. According to the Pew Research Center,
support for the United States in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Pakistan was actually lower than it
had been in the last year of the Bush administration. In Europe, the US favorability rating was
higher than it was under Bush, but it had fallen steadily in the years since Obama took office, and
it remained far below where it stood in 2000.
One possible lesson from these years is that presidential personalities, speeches on foreign
stages, and the changing international opinions of US policies matter less than we might think.
Perhaps the most reliable measure of Americas standing in the world is how appealing the
country is to all those who are considering migration. Since 2007, Gallup surveys in more than
one hundred and fifty countries have shown that the United States is far and away the number
one favored destination. The most recent survey projected that one hundred and thirty-eight
million people worldwide would like to move permanently to the United States, more than three
times the number who would choose the United Kingdom, the second most favored destination.
Those numbers show the United States still represents opportunity and promise to people
around the world, and it is clearly in the US global interest to maintain that reputation.

Related Essay

US Cyber Warriors Seize the Offensive
Tom Gjelten | ESSAY
The US has abandoned its previous dependence on defensive cyber strategies and has shifted into high gear with
the aim of developing superior first-strike capacities.
Consider how many Muslims have chosen to reside in the United States. Though the US
Census Bureau does not tally newcomers by religion, other surveys suggest Muslims constitute
one of the fastest-growing immigrant groups in the country. Data from the US Religion Census
indicate that the number of Muslims in the United States more than doubled in the decade after
the 9/11 attacks, precisely the period when US foreign policies were angering the Muslim world.
Some of this growth was due to natural population growth or conversion, but of the 2010 US
Muslim population, one in four had immigrated to the United States in the previous ten years.
And they appear to be happy. A 2011 Pew survey found eighty-two percent of US Muslims
expressing satisfaction with their American lives, and in comparison with the general US
population, more than twice as many Muslims approved of the way things are going in the
country. To the extent Muslim immigrants communicate those sentiments to relatives and
friends back home, the reports would have a positive impact.
The implication here is that, to the world at large, the American example may mean more than
American words or even actions. As long as the United States is seen as a country where people of
varied backgrounds have an unequalled opportunity to make a fresh start and prosper, its global
standing will be on a strong foundation. Sustaining this position requires that attention be paid
to making sure that America lives up to its promise at home. Keeping America strong, productive,
and welcoming is likely to do as much for the US image in the world as the overt promotion of
democracy abroad or the exercise of public diplomacy in a propagandistic celebration of
American values.
The risk that such an inward focus will reinforce an isolationist perspective is offset by the
likelihood that Americas identity as a nation of immigrants will ensure that it retains an
internationalist outlook. The newcomers among us will make sure of that. The foreign-born
segment of the US population in 2010 was at its highest level since 1920, and never has it been so
diverse. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ended the pro-European bias of US
immigration policy by eliminating the use of national origin quotas in the allocation of resident
visas. As a result, immigrants to the United States now come from across the world and bring
with them a perspective shaped by their experience. This reality need not suggest a tilt in one
policy direction or another, but it inevitably will serve to internationalize Americans awareness
of world affairs and force the peoples representatives in government, even in state legislatures, to
make decisions and choices on issues they might not otherwise need to consider.
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe learned this lesson shortly after his 2013 election. During his
campaign, the large and politically active Korean American community in Northern Virginia
pressed him to promise that any new textbooks used in Virginia schools note that the Sea of
Japan, which separates Japan and the Korean peninsula, is also known as the East Sea. For
Koreans, still pained by Japans brutal occupation of their country from 1910 to 1945, any
reminder of Japanese rule is hurtful, and Korean immigrants in the United States share that
sentiment. Eager to have Korean American support, McAuliffe made the pledge. But shortly after
taking office, he learned that keeping his promise to the Korean community would anger Japan,
one of the states largest trading partners. Republicans saw an opportunity to put the Democratic
governor in a tight spot and supported bills that would mandate the textbook change. Legislators
heard an impassioned appeal by Delegate Mark Keam, who related how his mother had been
humiliated in her classroom and forced to speak Japanese as a young girl in Seoul during the war
years. It was not the kind of issue that representatives of rural Virginia counties were accustomed
to considering, but in an increasingly immigrant society, legislators and policymakers at all levels
of government need to keep abreast of international issues. Jewish immigrants fleeing from
persecution in central and eastern Europe had earlier forced their representatives to support
Israel, Cuban exiles had made US policy toward Cuba an election issue in Florida, and Muslim
immigrants have kept a spotlight on US counterterrorism policy, to be sure it does not unfairly
target Americans on the basis of their religion or Middle Eastern ancestry. Ideally, such pressures
from immigrant communities will serve to make Americans more aware of the rest of the world
and more inclined to appreciate the complexity of global issues.
The American foreign policy thinker who most eloquently advocated modesty was George
Kennan, the Cold War diplomat and Soviet specialist. Kennan is famous as the architect of
containment, but that doctrine did not mean he was resigned to American weakness. Rather,
Kennan recommended patience and expressed faith that America would be most influential in
the world if it kept true to its own values. Writing in 1951, at a time when US policymakers were
focused on the rise of Soviet power, Kennan argued that the most important influence that the
United States can bring to bear upon internal developments in Russia will continue to be the
influence of example: the influence of what it is, and not only what it is to others but what it is to
itself....Any message we may try to bring to others will be effective only if it is in accord with
what we are to ourselves. As for more proactive foreign policies, Kennan was skeptical. The
ways by which peoples advance toward dignity and enlightenment in government are things that
constitute the deepest and most intimate processes of national life. There is nothing less
understandable to foreigners, nothing in which foreign interference can do less good.
Kennan wanted the United States to impress the world and inspire confidence, but argued it
should not be necessary to convince other peoples that America is deserving of their respect. In
the lives of nations, the really worthwhile things cannot and will not be hidden, Kennan said.
With instantaneous international communication and a population now connected to every
corner of the globe, US success has never been more obvious nor the American example more
compelling.
Tom Gjelten, an NPR correspondent, is working on a book about the impact on America of the
1965 Immigration Act.
MAY/JUNE 2014
Americas Purpose and Role in a
Changed World
Sarah Grebowski

Ill never forget my brief and ill-received show of American patriotism as a young expatriate in
Beirut. It was the summer of 2010, and the city was teeming with convoys of Lebanese youth
honking and waving flags to celebrate their favorite teams victories in the World Cup. After an
exciting win by the US, I joined a group of Americans in a street celebration. But cruising down
the main thoroughfare of West Beirut, our procession of stars and stripes was met with
disapproving looks. The image that remains with me to this day is that of an older man standing
silently with his shoe in his hand. The tattered sole was pointed directly at us, an expression of
disrespect in Muslim culture. We recognized the gestures meaning only because a similar shoe
had been thrown at the American presidents head a year earlier.
Todays generation of young Americans, known as the millennials, has come of age at a time
when America has been humbled on the world stage. Many of them have traveled extensively at a
young age and experienced this diminished reputation firsthand. Their parents and grandparents
believe that America has been a remarkable force for good in the world and that the country
should not lose sight of its responsibility to shape events globally because of mistakes made in the
last decade. But millennials seem more fixed on the limits of American power and disenchanted
with ideas of American exceptionalism.
Because of these reservations, the millennial generation is often described as declinist or
isolationist. I disagree. Young Americans care more than any other age group about what
happens beyond our borders. Millennials tend toward multilateralism and the cautious use of
force, and perhaps would be more selective in committing US resources overseas. But far from an
abdication of global leadership, this prudence may prove to be the silver lining to millennials
crisis of confidence in Americas role as, in President Obamas words, not just a place on a map,
but the light to the world.

Other generations have been disillusioned by the tarnishing of Americas image abroad. This
was particularly true during the war in Vietnam. A Foreign Affairs article published in 1970 titled
The New Generation of Isolationists contains remarkable parallels between the attitudes of
young baby boomers at the time and millennials now. The 1970s youth generation saw deep flaws
in American democracy, felt outrage over Americas wars and covert action, and vowed that they
would not repeat the foreign policy mistakes being made by their elders.
Much as the 1972 Democratic Party convention and its presidential candidate harnessed the
political voice of this frustrated generation, the 2008 presidential election, which saw the second-
highest youth turnout in history, focused national attention on the attitudes and opinions of the
eighteen-to-thirty-two-year-old slice of the American population known as the millennials. Amid
the clamor over what it means to be a millennial, this much is clear: the current generation
embraces a distinctly different worldview than that of older generations. In a 2011 Pew Research
poll, The Generation Gap and the 2012 Election, millennials were the least likely age group to
say that the US is the greatest country in the world; in fact, only thirty-two percent of them held
the view.
The reasons for young peoples skepticism toward claims of American greatness that resonate so
strongly with their elders are complex.
For starters, millennials unprecedented level of interaction with foreign cultures makes them
reluctant to think of their country as fundamentally superior to others. More than simply gaining
familiarity with other countries and feeling an affinity for the global community, millennials have
developed bonds with foreign countries through their experiences living, working, and studying
abroad. Especially throughout Americas economic recession, when many college graduates faced
a discouraging lack of job opportunity at home, many have called Beirut, Beijing, Kyiv, and other
places home. Recent polling data from Zogby Analytics confirms that millennials are much less
likely to agree that foreign cultures are inferior to American culture than other generations have
been.
Historical context is also part of the equation. Millennials have come of age during a decade when
Americas image has plummeted as a result of unpopular wars, shaping their perception of the
country. More importantly, they have never seen the world order come under a threat from a
malign force such as fascism or communism. Millennials have read about the exceptional things
America has done to benefit the rest of the world, but were never shaped by the visceral
experiences of stocking a fallout shelter during the Cold War or being conscripted to fight for
Americas way of life. The attacks of 9/11 might have been a seminal event for the millennials, but
the resulting war against al-Qaeda has not affected as many younger people as profoundly as
these previous conflicts did.
Finally, millennials perceive an awkward mismatch between ideas of American exceptionalism
and the pronounced crisis of institutions the country faces. Millennials today witness partisan
gridlock, economic stagnation, and growing socioeconomic inequality at home and wonder
whether the US has the capability or the moral right to provide global leadership when it has such
interminable difficulty putting its own house in order.

If millennials arent thinking like leaders of the free world once did, what then do they see as
the way forward for the US? Isolationism is not the mainstream view among them, despite the
Brookings Institutions 2011 finding that fifty-eight percent of the emerging foreign policy
leaders identified among the younger generation think America is too involved in global affairs
and should do more at home. Millennials on the extreme end of foreign policy opinionwho, for
example, favor slashing the foreign aid budget, which hovers at one percent of federal spending,
for the sake of nation building at homeoften overestimate the degree to which scaling back
our presence globally will fix domestic problems.
But the Brookings profile of millennials may be an outlier. A greater number of studies indicate
that millennials are ready to embrace a robust foreign policy with more, not less, engagement
beyond our borders. A 2005 poll conducted by GQR Research, for example, showed that more
young Americans believed that the September 11th attacks underscored a need for America to be
more connected with the world (fifty-five percent) than a need simply to assert greater control
over its borders (thirty-nine percent). Millennial foreign policy views are also not necessarily
defeatist or declinist. Most young Americans believe that the nations best days are ahead of us
and show more optimism about the future than older generations.
1

The central question, then, is not whether but how the millennial generation of policymakers will
preserve Americas position in the world and promote global stability and prosperity. If trends
continue, the rising generation will likely be cautious in the use of force to achieve foreign policy
goals and prefer diplomacy instead. (In the 2011 Pew poll, sixty-six percent of millennials thought
that relying too much on military force to defeat terrorism actually leads to more hatred and
terrorism.) Multilateralism is also central to the millennial vision. Younger Americans are the
most likely to believe that Americas security depends on building strong ties with other nations,
and think that the US should take the interests of its allies into account even if it means making
compromises.
2

This is no abdication of global leadership, but rather a realistic reaction to the lessons of recent
history. What would be the wisdom after the Iraq War in using military force over diplomacy to
advance democratic change? Where are the financial and political resources for the US to secure
its interests unilaterally?
Millennials see leadership as more than a binary choice between isolationism and
interventionism, and weigh the many forms of agency when it comes to how the US can shape
events around the world. Though shirking a global leadership role is not an option, scaling back
our commitments abroad, especially militarily, does seem to be an important priority among this
young generation. Aware of Americas fallibility and the constraints upon its global behavior,
millennials believe they can craft a more sustainable level of American engagement beyond its
borders by recalibrating its use of hard and soft power to shape events.
Sarah Grebowski is a graduate student in the Master of Science in Foreign Service program at
Georgetown University and a member of the 201314 Future Leaders Program at the Foreign
Policy Initiative.

1. In the 2011 Generation Gap poll by Pew, fifty-five percent of those aged eighteen to thirty
thought that Americas best days lay ahead, compared to fifty-five percent of those aged thirty-
one to forty-six, forty-eight percent of those aged forty-seven to sixty-five, and forty-seven
percent of those aged sixty-six to eighty-three.
2. A 2009 study conducted by the Center for American Progress cites the following findings: In a
2004 Pew poll, sixty-two percent of those aged eighteen to twenty-five said the United States
should take into account the interests of its allies even if it means making compromises with
them, compared to fifty-two percent of their elders; in a 2004 Democracy Corps poll, fifty-seven
percent of those aged eighteen to twenty-nine said that Americas security depended on building
strong ties with other nations; and a 2009 Progressive Study Program youth poll found that
sixty-three percent of young Americans thought Americas security is best promoted by working
through diplomacy, alliances, and international institutions, compared to eleven percent who
dissented.