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home > by publication type > op-eds > After Iraq war, resist the isolationist impulse
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June 19, 2007
Christian Science Monitor
Sometime, somehow, the Iraq war will end. The surge may stabilize the country sufficiently to allow the withdrawal of American troops (less likely). Or the American public may simply sicken of the war to such an extent that US forces are pulled out regardless of the consequences after the 2008 presidential election (more likely). Either way, the end of the war will be the starting bell for a much more sweeping battle over the future of American foreign policy.
The question? Quite simply, What role should the United States play in the world?
Both parties are in severe disarray over this issue. A shrinking group of Republican loyalists still holds fast to the Bush vision of remaking the world in America’s image through the aggressive use of force. But many conservative thinkers and lawmakers have deserted the president. They accuse him of recklessly using American troops to pursue state-building abroad and advocate a return to isolationist policies aimed at protecting America’s core interests.
On the Democratic side, disgust with the war has produced a hard core of antiwar activists whose overriding foreign-policy priority is to bring the troops home. Their distaste for the use of American military force abroad brings them into conflict with the party’s more hawkish and internationalist wing. The latter also finds itself under siege from antiglobalization advocates on the left and their instinctive distrust of international free-trade agreements and multinational companies.
In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.
America Between the Wars explores how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today.
In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.
Complete list of CFR Books.
This report argues that the United States must lead with domestic action on climate change and proposes a U.S. negotiating strategy for a global UN climate agreement that includes commitments from all major economies, while also promoting a less formal Partnership for Climate Cooperation that would focus the world's largest emitters on implementing aggressive emissions reductions.
This Task Force report examines changes in Latin America and in U.S. influence there, while taking account of the region's enduring importance to the United States. The Task Force offers an agenda for U.S. policy toward Latin America and identifies four critical areas that should provide the basis of a new U.S. approach.
About Independent Task Forces at the Council.
Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.
