In the end, and for all its insights, what Kerry’s essay on As You Like It misses is this. And it’s a point that American foreign policy grandees might do well to think on: idealism contending with local realities can be a powerful orienting force, but an idealism that occludes those realities is often just lost in the woods.

John Richard Cookson is a writer in Washington, DC. You can follow him @JRCookson.

Image: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stops in front of the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia. Flickr/Department of State