Three leading thinkers respond to the bold thesis of Nikolas K. Gvosdev and Ray Takeyh.
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.
No national interest was cited as a rationale for America's Libya campaign; the action was justified solely on humanitarian grounds. This marks a fundamental break with past U.S. policy prescriptions for such military interventions.
It took Tony Blair one speech in 1999 to trap the Western world in an unending series of interventionist wars. We may care about the people of Tibet, Baghdad and Libya, but are we the knight-errant of the human race?
Somalia. Bosnia. Sierra Leone. Kosovo. Armed intervention is on the rise. Libya proves once again that humanitarian adventurism is a mere shroud for Western imperialism.
One fact is certain: foreign interventions end badly. Think the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan. Libya will be no different.
The prophet armed, Samantha Power, has now drafted Obama into her crusade against mass slaughter. Liberal hawks and neocons, reunited. Make way for a profound foreign-policy transformation.
Like his two most recent predecessors, President Obama is embarking on a disastrous foreign policy bent on global domination.
One must wonder why, with the end of the cold war, NATO did not dissolve. How do we explain the organization's transformation and vitality at the end of the twentieth century?
How to contain the virus of ethnic conflict.
