The Tragedy of Great-Power Foreign Policy

Do Realists Hold the Solution to a World in Crisis?

Abstract

Nearly 30 years after the end of the Cold War, U.S. foreign policy elites argued that the United States should use its unrivaled military and economic power as a driving force for transformation. For some, this has meant working to expand the role of multilateral institutions such as NATO, promoting unfettered free trade, protecting human rights around the world, and even using military force. Others believed that the United States should use its military power as a weapon to support democracy by subduing violent terrorists, toppling authoritarian regimes, and deterring forces that might seek to change the world order. But these two visions were only two sides of the same coin: they led to the belief that the United States should maintain its dominant position in the world and use its power, whenever necessary, to defend liberal rights.