December 12, 2017

A recent discussion on foreign policy hosted by the Center for the Study of Statemanship was covered by the National Interest.

... The event was held by the John Quincy Adams Society—which is “committed to identifying, educating, and equipping the next generation of scholars and policy leaders to encourage a new era of realism and restraint” and the newly inaugurated Center for the Study of Statesmanship at CUA. Both are emerging players, who seek to establish themselves as rivals to more interventionist-friendly outfits like the American Enterprise Institute.

“Here in Washington, in particular… Democrats and Republicans alike subscribe to that sentiment” of a unique, near-providential and irreplaceable role of the United States on the global stage, Bacevich argued. “We hear it, in the repeated references to America as ‘the indispensable nation.’ We hear it in the reminders of the imperative of the United States exercising ‘global leadership’—always and everywhere, there being no plausible alternative.”

Such language is music to the years of paleoconservative writers and politicians such as Patrick J. Buchanan, who has long taken issue with the idea of America as the “first universal nation.” ...

Continue reading in National Interest.