When Americans debate foreign policy they are debating not just how the United States should be positioned in the world but what its goals should be. At the conceptual level, there are such issues as the relationship between force and diplomacy, the benefits or liabilities of alliances, the virtue or folly of democracy promotion, and the merits or demerits of free trade.
There are also policy questions at a more practical and immediate level. For example, whether the United States should support regimes that promote freedom and market economies or seek to alleviate human suffering in the face of calamities such as natural disasters, terrorism, or war. And there are such specific policy choices as the extent to which the United States should engage in military interventions, work to strengthen international institutions, or form informal coalitions to take on challenges.
These practical questions, of course, must be weighed against the limits of America’s power and the realities of a changing global order. In that sense, the debates over what to do and how to do it reflect the classic tension between realism and idealism.
In the end, the best policy is likely to be a mix of realism and idealism. It will be a policy that recognizes that the United States cannot insulate itself from a world that is increasingly global, where missiles, people, germs, ideas, drugs, money, and goods have no respect for national boundaries. And it will be a policy that acknowledges that the United States does have unique military and economic capabilities that can make it a useful leader in such a globalizing world.
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