One of the many consequences of Soviet communism's collapse is disarray in the conceptual structures of American foreign policy. Left without a clear focal point, one-time hawks now flap like doves, while erstwhile doves behave like birds of prey. Both the strategic role and the moral purposes of the United States in the world are disputed. For conservatives it is a matter of special concern that confusion exists with particular starkness among those who once held common views as "anti-communists."
Today, Cold War-era anti-communists argue among themselves--and the disagreements are not about tactics. Let us be frank: some have become near isolationists. Others enthusiastically espouse Woodrow Wilson's view that the world needs to be made safe for democracy and its family of values. Some of the latter seem to long for a new crusade to keep America at the top of its game, if nothing else. Then again there are those who see the world as still dangerous, but far more opaquely so than it was during the clearer days of the Cold War. They seek an interests-based foreign policy grounded in a concrete agenda of protecting particular peoples and territories, defending open trade and commercial relations around the world, and advancing a commonality of interests with our allies.
Finding myself in this third school, I often turn for guidance to that political philosopher whose understanding of the interplay of interests and values remains unsurpassed. Edmund Burke's insights into civil society seem strikingly apposite today to American foreign policy. Among those are his reliance on the accretion of experience and reasoning from empirical reality, his abhorrence of elevating abstract principles into a theology, and his fear of driving policy on the basis of metaphysics.
