Bringing Our Foreign Policy Home

A doctrine of restoration can strengthen the U.S. position abroad by focusing on nation building — our own

David Goldman / AP

U.S. Marine Chris Verderosa walks into a tent decorated with the American flag at Combat Outpost Shir Ghazay in Helmand province, Afghanistan

Twenty-first century international relations will be dominated by dozens of states exercising military, economic, diplomatic and cultural power. This is not your father's world, dominated by the U.S., Europe and Japan. Nor is it a world dominated by two superpowers, as it was during the Cold War, or by one, as it was for a moment in the 1990s. Power will be found in many hands in many places — diffuse, diverse, not concentrated, power.

The primary threat to peace and prosperity in this new era is not a push for dominance by any great power. Today's great powers are not...

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