There's a dangerous illusion in the legend that Reagan changed course in Cold War policy and set the country on a path to expansive overseas adventurism. Beware of false lessons about his stewardship.
The National Interest stands for realism in U.S. international relations, a conviction that foreign policy should be based upon real-world considerations—forces, pressures and passions emanating from factors of culture and geography.
Obama’s foreign-policy decisions—from provoking Islamabad to two-timing Beijing to alienating Moscow—lack the strategic long-term thinking the U.S. needs. Hypocrisy and incoherence rule.
President Obama came to office promising a new era in international affairs. So far, he’s been big on rhetoric and has accomplished little. Obama’s inability to prioritize foreign policy risks destroying his presidency.
The hope that we might one day rid the world of nuclear weapons is as old as the technology itself. Atomic destruction has always seemed too great a risk to bear. Yet a nuclear-free world is nothing but a dream—world government, a Praetorian Guard
Mismanaged for eight years by the Bush administration, the Republican Party is in peril. Neoconservative table scraps are neither appropriate nor wise. But the GOP has another foreign-policy tradition to which it can turn. Presidents from Eisenhow
Since the end of the cold war, American foreign policy toward Russia has been dismissive of Russian interests. Acknowledging that a country has separate aims does not mean we cannot work toward common goals.
The principles of transformationalism—idealism spread by the barrel of a gun—have been central to America’s foreign-policy failings over the last eight years. With a new leadership in power, Washington has a chance to right past wrongs. But that w
The current conversations of the American political class are frighteningly similar to past black-and-white misinterpretations of fundamental foreign-policy decisions.
John McCain and Barack Obama are busily offering foreign-policy platitudes on the campaign trail, mostly about spreading freedom, working with allies and hunting down terrorists. But what exactly would they do if elected? Digging ourselves out of
Pundits across the political spectrum have been busy making pronouncements about the “real” financial and political costs of the war in Iraq. Most of them are just blowing smoke. In TNI’s Realist, Grover Norquist and Dov Zakheim separate fact from
