America's Purpose, edited by Owen Harries

...Those offering direction include Charles Krauthammer, Irving Kristol, Patrick Buchanan, Ben Wattenberg, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Congressman Stephen Solarz...

...On this point, at least, isolationists, realists, and democratic idealists would likely agree...

...In fact, the Gulf crisis merely reaffirmed the inability of the far left ever to countenance the use of force, even when our vital interests are at stake and we are faced with an undisputed villain...

...Despite an occasional rhetorical overture, the sad fact is that there are few figures of major political significance willing to bear the democratic torch...

...19.95 Michael Chapman I t wasn't long after Germans took their sledgehammers to the Berlin Wall that our foreign policy establishment began asking, and attempting to answer, the inevitable post-Cold War question: What do we do now...

...But if isolationism emerged from the Persian Gulf chastened, can it be dismissed entirely, as a spent force...

...they are less inclined to threaten their neighbors and, as freely elected entities, more likely to possess the popular legitimacy necessary for domestic stability and economic prosperity...

...foreign policy at one time or another—isolationism, realism, and democratic idealism...

...Not all of these views, of course, held up so well when Saddam Hussein provoked the first crisis of the post-Cold War world...

...This is particularly true when appeals to this sentiment are couched in terms of "realism" and the "national interest," as they were at the end of the war, when President Bush initially refused to stop Sad-dam Hussein's slaughter of the Kurds in the interest of maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity...

...If this was a classic example of realism's triumph, however, the junior Metternichs have little cause for smug satisfaction...

...As American troops were setting up refugee camps and dropping food to the pleading Kurds, the Wall Street Journal was moved to argue that "realpolitik is not so readily separated from national values, from a country's common idea of itself...

...By practicing a policy consistent with American values and making intelligent decisions about what activities—carried out by organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S...

...While it was proper to feel sorry for the Kurds, their plight was simply "bad luck," and we had no business attempting to correct it...

...New Visions of U.S...

...The Gulf conflict appears to have dealt a lethal blow to right-wing isolationism, as presented by Patrick Buchanan in his fevered essay, "America First—and Second, and Third...

...In the span of ten years, the United States has, under the banner of national interest, bolstered Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran, destroyed much of his country in one of the largest and most impressive military operations in history, and finally, in cooperation with another dictatorship, Saudi Arabia, refrained from effectively toppling the Ba'ath regime—only to see it remain a menacing presence in the Middle East and send the United Nations on a wild-goose chase in search of nuclear weapons materials...

...What, then, of those who contend that the expansion of democracy should be the centerpiece of U.S...

...Should we be "realistic" and base our foreign policy purely on what is thought to be in the national interest...

...A more democratic world would be good for America, since democracies are naturally more amicable toward the United States...

...Despite dire warnings that George Bush was leading the country to a political and military disaster for no good reason, there is scant evidence to indicate that the isolationist arguments against going to war with the Iraqi tyrant persuaded many Americans...

...Finally, if the last ten years have revealed anything, it is that advancing democracy is hardly an arrogant, foolhardy attempt to remake the world in America's image...

...Krauthammer, Wattenberg, and Josef Joffe make the convincing intellectual case against isolationism—much of it vindicated during the Gulf crisis—by arguing that the United States is too politically, economically, and militarily integrated with the rest of the world to retreat into a "Fortress America...

...24.95...

...Although they have been unfairly accused by both isolationists and realists of promoting a messianic crusade, Wattenberg, Carl Gershman, and other internationalists (including Joshua Muravchik in his recent book, Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America's Destiny) make the compelling case that encouraging the expansion of democracy is, in fact, in the national interest...

...Foreign Policy, a collection of essays originally published in the National Interest by sixteen mostly (though not exclusively) conservative thinkers...

...A few of the pieces are a bit eccentric: Senator Malcolm Wallop, for example, suggests in soaring rhetoric that America's purpose is to become a "spacefaring" nation and conquer the "lofty horizons" of the universe, but fails to tell taxpayers where he would find the billions of dollars necesMichael Chapman is foreign policy assistant to Rep Dave McCurdy (D-Okla...

...Moreover, most Americans (though certainly not all) recognize the vital importance of American power and leadership in international crises...

...Although the debate is by no means over, it has crystallized around the three philosophical traditions that have characterized U.S...

...The effort to define America's role in a world without the threat of Communism provoked a lively debate in the nation's op-ed pages and foreign policy journals: Should the United States come home and let the rest of the world fend for itself...

...Or should we continue to "wage democracy" in the tradition of Woodrow Wilson and John Kennedy...

...40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1991...

...For the democratic idealists, the problem is that the construction of a Pax Democratica must figure prominently in the ideas, policies, and platforms of our political leadership...

...sary to pay for this endeavor...

...trengthening democratic movements where and when conditions are ripe need not be done mindlessly, or without regard to financial burdens...

...Although its spokesmen are notably absent in this book, the same can be said.of left-wing isolationists, including those in the Democratic party...

...Editor Owen Harries has captured the essence of this debate in America's Purpose...

...This bloodless act of realpolitik must have come as a welcome relief for Kristol, Peregrine Worsthorne, and other proponents of realism...

...AEI Press, 259 pp...

...But it is one thing to win the intellectual argument and quite another to over39 come the isolationist temperament which, despite the brief enthusiasm for the Gulf War, still has a nostalgic allure for many Americans...

...Most, however, offer more earthly and cogent prescriptions...

...foreign policy in the post-Cold War era...

...Information Agency, and the Agency for International Development—will help move a country toward democracy, the United States can conduct a democratic foreign policy for far less than it has cost to contain Communism...

...The peoples of Eastern Europe, Latin America, and—to an increasing extent—Africa, the Soviet Union, and Asia have embraced democracy willingly and enthusiastically without coercion by the United States...

...As Kristol argued at the time, to have come to the aid of the Kurdish women and children would have been a signal that moral purpose, not mere self-interest, was again directing our foreign policy...