National Security Online Resource Center

by Richard J. Bishirjian

In Summer 2004 Modern Age published my case for a realistic American foreign policy grounded in pursuit of the national interest. 1 The essay had a long gestation— about twenty-five years. 2 At the time this essay was prepared for publication I hoped that President Bush was pursuing a foreign policy aimed at preserving the national interest of the United States. If not, I argued, “this country may become something other than it is now,” a revolutionary nation (not unlike the French nation of Napoleon), and a disruptive influence on the world stage, a threat to itself and to the stability and the order of traditional cultures, and world politics. 3 President Bush’s Second Inaugural and subsequent statements by him and his Secretary of State and other Administration spokesmen are clearer evidence that Wilsonian liberalism has been renewed and American foreign policy is in a steep spiral from which there is no escape. more

by Ellis Sandoz

In the following commentary I want to pose this question to the readers of Modern Age: What is the proper role of the United States in world affairs? My answer is that it must be what it has always been: To serve liberty and justice as best we can while defending our security and national interests. None of these terms is susceptible of tidy definition, of course. more