Through careful navigation, the US can reassure its allies, deter its enemies, and win the confidence of its citizens.
America’s foreign policy, no less than its domestic politics, has been gripped in intense polarization. Caught between the dueling monsters of Greek mythology on opposite sides of the channel—Scylla of a revived but more militant isolationism and the Charybdis of a new ultra-liberal diplomacy—the US ship of state can rarely keep a steady course. The chances of reaching its destination diminish while the dangers of floundering grow.
For much of the past century US foreign policy sought two paramount goals. The first was to secure America’s strategic and economic interests abroad through strong diplomatic ties, the projection of military power, and the forging of stable alliances. Secondly, the United States saw itself as the defender of the free world and of freedom in general, a “city on a hill” that existed not only for itself but for all humanity.
The US must avoid getting bogged down in state-building. This is especially true in the Middle East where states are often created and maintained solely by brutal force.
Commitment to these twin objectives guided America’s foreign relations throughout World Wars I and II, the interwar period, and the Cold War. They impelled America’s decade-long intervention in Vietnam yet emerged from that debacle undiminished. The dual urge to project power and promulgate liberty persisted into the current century and climaxed in the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the failure of those prolonged and costly conflicts cast doubt on America’s traditional foreign policy pursuits for the first time. Those doubts came from two opposing camps.
The first, largely identified with the Right though not confined to it, rejected America’s role as global police officer and gave priority to addressing internal US interests. It recoiled from projecting power, downplayed diplomacy, and questioned foreign alliances. Though isolationism is hardly new to America—it historically followed painful wars and financial upheavals—the America First policy has deep roots that are likely to endure.
The second camp, by contrast, aimed not to retreat from the world but to change the nature of that involvement entirely. Championed by graduates of elite institutions that lionized internationalism, opposed American exceptionalism, and prioritized peace over virtually all other objectives, the purveyors of this new foreign policy viewed war as the ultimate evil. Ending violent conflicts, irrespective of their winners, became their goal. Human rights could be advocated, even pressed, but never fought for.
The United States cannot ignore a civil war like Syria’s and then wonder why, after more than a half million deaths, it lacked influence with the victors.
This second, peace-minded camp, even more than the America Firsters, represents a radical departure from diplomatic norms. Presidents from Washington to Lincoln and Roosevelt viewed diplomacy as an ancillary means of winning wars, not stopping them. If not for such an approach, it’s doubtful whether Germany, Japan, and the Confederacy would have been defeated or American independence achieved.
Looking to the near future, US foreign policymakers can steer it back to a course familiar to the majority of their predecessors. They can avoid radical departures from tradition—navigating, as it were, between neocon and nonaligned shoals—and adopt positions that can reassure American allies, deter its enemies, and be backed by the bulk of its citizens.
In practical terms, the US must avoid getting bogged down in state-building. This is especially true in the Middle East where states are often created and maintained solely by brutal force. On the other hand, the United States cannot ignore a civil war like Syria’s and then wonder why, after more than a half million deaths, it lacked influence with the victors. America can, and must, remain active in the search for Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian peace, pursuing the first as a precursor to, rather than a substitute for, the second.
Most crucially, America must return to diplomacy that is designed to win, and not merely manage, wars. Such diplomacy understands that deescalation can often be achieved only by escalation and that conflict is sometimes the necessary precursor to peace.
Michael Oren, an American-Israeli historian and statesman, is the Hon. Joseph B. Gildenhorn Fellow for the Wilson Center. He served as Israel’s ambassador to the United States (2009-2013), a Knesset Member, and the Deputy Minister for Diplomacy. Oren is the New York Times bestselling author of Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide, Six Days of War, and Power Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East from 1776. A former professor at Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown universities, Oren remains a prominent voice on global diplomacy and Middle East affairs.
