It is difficult to think of another election season in modern history in which so many traditional tenets of U.S. foreign policy were being questioned. This is understandable at some level. The United States has fallen far short of its aspirations in its foreign policy, and it seems that conflicts and threats, rather than opportunities, are dominating our relations with virtually every region of the world.

Recent statements, however, not only by our presidential candidates but also by President Obama, suggest that our national debate is drifting in a concerning direction. The following points are becoming all too common in the national discourse, and must be considered with appropriate perspective as we decide on a sound new U.S. strategy.

1. We should disengage from the Middle East.

The bluntest articulation of this view has come from President Obama and his closest aides. The Arab Spring, according to CIA Director John Brennan, convinced the president that “the Middle East was consuming us.” President Obama concluded that only a few threats—Al Qaeda, Israel’s existence and a nuclear Iran—justify direct military intervention. Otherwise, he stated, “There is no way we should commit to governing the Middle East and North Africa...That would be a basic, fundamental mistake.” Overextension in the region, President Obama fears, could “ultimately harm our economy, harm our ability to look for other opportunities and to deal with other challenges, and, most important, endanger the lives of American service members for reasons that are not in the direct American national-security interest.”

The problem with the president’s critique—shared to varying extent by the presidential candidates—is that it fails to consider the even greater problems that would arise amid a U.S. retreat. The United States protects access to the Persian Gulf, holding the line against a regional conflagration that would instigate an oil price shock. The ill-considered disengagement from Iraq in 2010, the resulting rise of ISIS and the conflict in Syria offer a taste of what would happen amid a further U.S. withdrawal. Already, regional powers were doubling down behind their proxies in the Iraqi and Syria civil wars, but the assertion of Russian power has made these wars even more dangerous. Moscow has returned as a significant player in the geopolitics of the region—a factor that, until now, had been absent since the Cold War. Other great powers, particularly China and the Europeans, are also becoming more involved in the Middle East, which points to the beginning of a chaotic multipolar trend as a consequence of American retrenchment.

Confidence in the United States to manage regional security has already declined. Some states are hedging by building relations with U.S. rivals, including China and Russia. However, it is difficult to see how the United States could avoid defending a critical set of interests beyond what the President has outlined. If sectarian war were to spread to the Shia areas of eastern Saudi Arabia, where ten million barrels of oil are produced every day, could we remain uninvolved? Facing the prospect of a major recession at home from disruptions in global energy markets and a further tilt toward Iran in the geopolitical balance, Washington would be compelled to undertake a large-scale U.S. intervention in defense of Saudi Arabia on the order of Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

We are better off remaining engaged in the Middle East, and shaping events positively, rather than allowing major crises to arise, which would compel us to intervene in much more difficult and costly circumstances.

2. We should strike terrorists kinetically, but avoid getting involved in nation building.

As Sen. Ted Cruz put it, “It is not the job of the U.S. military to engage in nation building to turn foreign countries into democratic utopias.” Donald Trump has also argued against nation and state building abroad.

In fact, the rationale for U.S. involvement in nation and state building has always has been more hard-headed and nuanced than creating “democratic utopias.” Consider the history of why the United States decided to pursue nation building in Afghanistan in the first place.

As a White House official in 2002, I shared the view, espoused by President Bush and his principal advisers, that the United States should maintain a light military footprint in Afghanistan. After spending many months in Afghanistan as a presidential envoy, however, I realized that it would be impossible to prevent the reemergence of terrorist safe havens without rebuilding the country’s institutions.

I, among other skeptics, came to embrace state building, not out of airy idealism, but rather because there was no other way to secure our core counterterrorism interests at a cheaper cost. We concluded that the long-term solution to achieving even basic counterterrorism objectives was to enable Afghans to defend and police their own territory, thereby preventing the infiltration of terrorist groups from Pakistan and the regrowth of such groups from within. Otherwise, Americans, rather than Afghan troops and police, would have to stand watch unless we were prepared to allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist sanctuary again.

A bipartisan majority in Congress—hardly eager to spend taxpayer dollars on Afghanistan—agreed with this analysis. In 2004, Congress funded a $1.6 billion increase in Afghanistan reconstruction programs to build stronger Afghan institutions, knowing that it would create a virtuous cycle that redounded to the benefit of U.S. counterterrorism interests.

While a bipartisan consensus has endured in supporting Afghanistan’s reconstruction efforts, the Obama years have seen a greater emphasis on Special Forces, drone strikes and kinetic operations. The persistence of the terrorism threat and the broader disorder in the Middle East have exposed the limits of these instruments. The United States needs to put much greater emphasis on mobilizing indigenous forces who themselves oppose extremism and terrorism, and who can foster and sustain a positive, alternative vision for the region’s peoples.

Shallow criticisms of state building ultimately distract from the more serious question that needs to be asked: Why is the U.S. government so poorly equipped to handle post-conflict planning and implementation? Growing disorder in the world will compel the United States, whether we like it or not, to engage in state and nation building in difficult settings. The real question is how we can develop stronger capabilities and mechanisms to succeed in these operations.

In my book The Envoy: From Kabul to the White House, My Journey Through a Turbulent World, I propose a number of reforms in both the State Department and USAID to increase our effectiveness in state- and nation-building missions. Establishing a new expeditionary “cone” at the State Department, for example, supported by a civilian reserve of specialists, is one of many cost-effective steps we could take. Doing so would undercut the temptation later on to turn to the military when there is a need to engage in state and nation building.

3. The United States does not need to contain major powers like Russia, China, and Iran, and instead, can rely on our friends to keep them within confined spheres of influence.

A “sphere of influence” approach to managing major powers is making a comeback. President Obama wants Saudi Arabia and Iran to “share” influence in the Middle East, and dismisses the “idea that talking tough or engaging in some military action” in areas “tangential” to U.S. interests are going to “influence the decision making of Russia or China.” The president concedes the “fact” that Ukraine, as a non-NATO country, “is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.” Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has gone further, declaring that the unipolar world is over and that we now live in a multipolar world. Donald Trump, too, in his skepticism of NATO and other long-standing U.S. alliances, has endorsed a de facto sphere of influence strategy for Europe and Asia.

As a Pentagon planner in 1992, my colleagues and I considered seriously the idea of conceding to great powers like Russia and China their own spheres of influence, which would potentially allow the United States to collect a bigger “peace dividend” and spend it on domestic priorities.

Ultimately, however, we concluded that the United States has a strong interest in precluding the emergence of another bipolar world—as in the Cold War—or a world of many great powers, as existed before the two world wars. Multipolarity led to two world wars and bipolarity resulted in a protracted worldwide struggle with the risk of nuclear annihilation. To avoid a return such circumstances, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney ultimately agreed that our objective must be to prevent a hostile power to dominate a “critical region,” which would give it the resources, industrial capabilities and population to pose a global challenge. This insight has guided U.S. defense policy throughout the post–Cold War era.

Giving major powers the green light to establish spheres of influence would produce a multipolar world and risk the return of war between the major powers. Without a stabilizing U.S. presence in the Persian Gulf and U.S. relationships with Jordan and the Gulf States, Iran could shut down oil shipments in its supposed sphere of influence. A similar scenario in fact played out during the 1987 “tanker war” of the Iran-Iraq war, which eventually escalated into a direct military conflict between the United States and Iran. Iran’s nuclear program makes these scenarios even more dangerous.

The United States can manage the rise and resurgence of great powers like China, Russia and Iran at an acceptable cost without ceding entire spheres of influence. The key is to focus on normalizing the geopolitics of the Middle East, Europe and the Asia-Pacific, which the United States can do by strengthening its transatlantic and transpacific alliances and adapting them to the new, dangerous circumstances on the horizon. The United States should promote a balance of power in key regions while seeking opportunities to reconcile differences among major actors.

In Asia, the United States should enhance the U.S. presence in the Asia-Pacific region to sustain a balance against the rising Chinese power and shape Beijing’s behavior in partnership with allies, while pursuing a forum for confidence building that includes all the countries of the region, including China. The forum might resemble the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has succeeded in establishing basic rules and processes to manage regional disputes. With U.S. prodding, the Helsinki Accords could serve as a model for the charter of an Organization for Security and Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific. It would complement the multiple regional organizations and groups already in place, and would complete the security architecture of the region. Perhaps the best candidate to evolve into this role is the East Asia Summit. It has the right membership, but to perform a role similar to OSCE, it must be institutionalized with a clear mandate and structure. It would also need to be established in a context in which the United States and its allies are developing a joint approach regarding the contested maritime issues in the East China Sea and South China Sea—one that draws red lines where necessary but employs diplomacy to avoid the risk of escalating crises.

The problems of regional rivalry, sectarian conflict and state collapse pose the most difficult and immediate challenges in the Middle East. The fundamental solution, I believe, is to promote a regional balance of power, strengthen moderate and progressive states, and undertake with others the heavy lifting of fostering internal political settlements in Syria and Iraq. Improving governance and economic development in states that actively oppose extremism is perhaps our greatest lever in effecting a balance of power in the region. The United States should also establish a new diplomatic forum for dialogue akin to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Just as the religious wars of Europe eventually provided an impetus for a rules-based order through the Westphalian system, we should consider whether talks to end the Syrian stalemate might lay the groundwork for a neo-Westphalian agreement for the region, starting with an agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia for mutual acceptance and some rules for cooperation and interaction in the region. Such an agreement can be followed by a broader forum for dialogue that could set forth a program for confidence building and cooperation.

In Europe, though Putin’s actions are vexing, it should be possible to check his aggressive ambitions while cooperating in areas of common interest. Putin’s Russia is troubled internally, with low oil prices creating major budget deficits and population trends pointing to a demographic decline. With modest NATO deployments to Central and Eastern Europe and a program to arm the Ukrainian armed forces, we can not only raise the price of aggression, but also bolster deterrence in the Baltic and other frontline states. At the same time, we should engage Putin and continue to cooperate on space exploration, countering proliferation and fighting Islamist extremism. Though cooperation may need to be transactional in the immediate future, trends might encourage Russia to cooperate more fully over time.

4. The United States can afford a much lower defense budget.

This argument would be credible were it not articulated in the context of irresponsible schemes, like sequestration or dramatic increases in domestic spending, which would weaken the United States abroad. Too often as well, proponents of this view fail to acknowledge that, although the U.S. military still enjoys technological superiority, it has declined relative to other powers. As a result, the U.S. military, even at current levels of spending, is losing its ability to deter dangerous actors or dissuade them from trying to achieve parity with the United States.

Still, Pentagon reform is long overdue to ensure that we are spending our defense dollars better. Our focus should be on developing instruments to prevent or shape conflicts early and proactively before they turn into costly military engagements down the line. The most obvious way to do this is to redress the imbalance between our diplomatic and military instruments. And when we deploy force, we need to improve civil-military integration, particularly in coordinating the deployments of ambassadors and military commanders. The next administration should work with Congress in undertaking a major review, like the Goldwater-Nichols Commission in the 1980s, to design an integrated civil-military command for expeditionary operations.

Strengthening our diplomatic instrument requires a number of steps. The first is simply to increase funding for the State Department and other civilian agencies. To respond rapidly to changing circumstances, civilian agencies, like the military, need flexible operational funding. The State Department also needs to develop a strong capability to develop and implement regional strategies. One option to consider is for the State Department to develop the equivalent of the regional combatant commanders in the military: individuals who are not tied to the interagency process and have the necessary authority and resources to shape policies over an entire region.

5. The United States should reduce its involvement in democracy promotion.

In his 2004 inaugural address, President Bush called for “ending tyranny in our world.” Today’s remaining GOP candidates appear more interested in ending U.S. democracy-promotion efforts. Trump has repeatedly endorsed more cooperative ties with Moscow, irrespective of its crackdown on journalists, and waxes nostalgic for the reigns of Muammar el-Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein. Cruz promises that he would not “treat democracy promotion as an absolute directive” and, instead, would consider it as nothing more than “a highly desirable ideal.”

Criticizing U.S. missteps in promoting democracy is certainly reasonable—particularly in light of the debacles in Iraq and Libya—but elevating these criticisms into high doctrine and principled critiques of democracy promotion more generally misses the point. It is not the strategic rationale behind democracy promotion that has steered U.S. policy off course; the spread of human rights and democracy remains the most promising way to promote tolerance, human dignity and peace between great powers. Rather, U.S. setbacks have resulted from the failure of recent administrations to match their rhetoric and goals on democracy with the practical investments that are necessary to help local leaders build democratic institutions over the long term.

Our biggest shortcoming, in my judgment, is the failure to translate civil society efforts into party-building activities that ultimately allow liberals to compete effectively in elections. I learned the hard way as ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq that illiberal actors are often best prepared to take advantage of elections. We are weakest in supporting the consolidation phase of a democratic transition, when new leaders must stand up to institutions to deliver security, services and the rule of law.

Even the darkest days of my ambassadorships in Afghanistan and Iraq, however, did not fundamentally diminish my support for promoting democracy abroad. While I am concerned about the global backsliding in democracy and human rights, pessimism about democracy’s future is ultimately belied by polls across the world that consistently register high support for democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Our political class may be losing confidence in our ability to promote democracy, but authoritarian regimes still fear our efforts enough to blame them for the so-called “color revolutions" that have ushered in democratic transitions around the world.

My experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq in some ways made me more optimistic about the U.S. role in promoting democracy. As an implementer on the ground, I realized that a small number of capabilities and reforms could have made the difference between major successes and defeats on the democracy front. I attribute the recent resurgence of authoritarianism, in large part, to the sorry but hardly inevitable shortcomings of new democracies in addressing practical governance challenges.

Going forward, I would prioritize a few changes in our democracy promotion efforts:

• We should provide financial and operational support to liberal democratic parties in order to level the playing field with illiberal forces in elections. This means allowing ambassadors and intelligence officials to use discretion in backing liberal parties in sensitive elections, as was done in Europe after World War II;

• We should cultivate democratic counter-elites in a more systematic way, by training individuals from developing countries in the work of promoting democracy and making institutions deliver after a democratic transition;

• And we should establish an effort analogous to the Cold War–era Congress for Cultural Freedom, which created the infrastructure for publications and intellectual discourse aimed at advancing democratic values. Today’s iteration would emphasize lessons on how to establish the rule of law, foster inclusive economic growth, and reform educational institutions to encourage critical thinking, reason and innovation—all of which can contribute to the long game of promoting moderate political forces in China, Russia and the Muslim world.

My hope is that the electoral discourse on foreign policy simply reflects the country’s current bout of pessimism, and that it will not ultimately overturn the bipartisan consensus behind U.S. global leadership. Even still, this rhetoric has consequences in an open political system that enjoys a unique appeal around the world and that influences, and is influenced by, actors around the world.

The great achievement of U.S. foreign policy was to catalyze an unprecedented period of peace among great powers. Before the United States committed itself to global leadership, world wars and violent rivalries were the norm. After World War II, the United States deployed forces to Eurasia and played a central role in normalizing the geopolitics of Europe and East Asia. In the Cold War, the U.S.-led alliance not only deterred Soviet aggression but also underwrote a “zone of peace” that enabled the emergence of a liberal international order. None of this was a given. It all took enormous effort and skill.

In order to preserve and extend those gains, the United States must pursue a strategy of “balance and reconcile” in three key regions—Europe, East Asia and the Middle East. Those regions remain the focal points of geopolitical competition. If events spiral out of control, the consequences will not be contained in those regions. They will affect the entire world, and the geographic isolation of the United States will not provide us with an escape hatch in an era of globalization.

A strategy of “balance and reconcile” requires the United States to maintain a military forward presence to reassure friends and deter adversaries. It also means that the United States should bolster allies and friends that are front line states through security assistance and, as needed, economic support. At the same time, the United States should engage Russia, China and Iran to seek ways to minimize conflict, create multilateral forums to reconcile rivalries, and develop understandings that will help stabilize these critical regions.

Even as we maintain a geopolitical balance of power, the United States should seek to expand the “zone of peace,” which encompasses the alliances and relationships among the world’s established and aspiring democracies. While every nation must find its own path to a democratic transition, the United States should encourage those seeking political orders that respect popular sovereignty, human rights and the rule of law. Where we can, we should seek to expand the ranks of the world’s liberal democracies.

Recent history offers four lessons about the United States’ role in the world:

• We are crucial to the world order; dangerous vacuums emerge when the United States retreats. U.S. global leadership is crucial to manage the risks associated with the trend towards multipolarity.

• Partnering and burden sharing with allies and friends is the surest path to achieving our goals without overextending ourselves.

• We need to balance our determination and can-do vitality with humility—recognizing the limits of power.

• The instruments of foreign and security policy need to be reformed.

During this period of great turmoil, the question facing our country is whether we can learn from our experiences without being disheartened and defeated by them.

Zalmay Khalilzad was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2007 to 2009. This piece is adapted from chapter 26 of his new book The Envoy: From Kabul to the White House, St. Martin's Press.

Image: Flickr/The White House