To Promote and Protect American Value
Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
—Jonathan Swift
You’re standing on the bow of an enormous ship, an international oil tanker set to pass through the world’s most dangerous choke point. It’s a clear day, and you can see both shores—Oman to the south and Iran to the north. A crew member tells you that at its narrowest point, the strait is just twenty-one miles wide, but because the vessel is so big, you’ll be following the other thirteen ships running this gauntlet today inside a shipping lane in the center of the channel that’s just two miles wide for much of the journey.1
Your new friend points left toward Iran and tells you that there are soldiers onshore watching as you pass. They’re close enough that if they decide to attack, they won’t need high-tech weapons. They won’t even need radar. He tells you that, given the narrow sea lanes, it would be easy for Iran to stop traffic with a few well-placed mines in the water. Facing forward, you see both U.S. and Iranian naval vessels ahead. You might even see the Iranians playing chicken with U.S. ships—and the Americans firing water cannons to keep them at a safe distance. You won’t see the U.S. submarine protecting today’s traffic from below. Sensing that he’s spooked you, your crewmate tells you that the United States and Iran haven’t fired at one another in anger in these waters since 1988. Sensing your relief, he quickly adds that the strait offers an ideal target for terrorists.
Why the big U.S. naval presence? About 20 percent of the world’s traded oil travels through the Strait of Hormuz every day. Closing this narrow passage would send global oil prices surging toward panic levels within a matter of hours. For someone looking to attack every energy-importing country in the world, this is a great place to do it. Iran has warned several times over the years that it might block tanker traffic in retaliation for U.S. and European actions it doesn’t like, and its top naval commander warned in December 2011 that closing the strait would be “easier than drinking a glass of water.”* It’s the job of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, based 350 miles away in Bahrain, to ensure that that doesn’t happen.
Why must the United States accept responsibility for keeping these threats at bay? After all, America needs this oil much less than China does. More than three-quarters of the oil passing through the strait today is headed for Asia. Just 12 percent is headed for the Americas, and 8 percent for Europe.2 U.S. dependence on this oil will fall further as new energy technologies and higher U.S. fuel efficiency standards take effect. In fact, crude oil is now produced in thirty-one U.S. states, a record number.3 As noted earlier, breakthroughs in unconventional energy production will help ensure that by 2020, nearly half the oil consumed in the United States will be produced at home, and more than 80 percent will come from the Western Hemisphere. In November 2012, the International Energy Agency forecast that by the end of this decade, the United States might be the world’s number one oil producer—and could become almost entirely energy self-sufficient within the next two decades.
Arguably, Iran needs the strait open more than the United States does. Its own energy exports are crucial for its government revenue, and given how much of that oil and gas is headed for China, Beijing would apply intense political and economic pressure on Iran not to attack the strait or its traffic. Even the threat of such an action would push insurance rates higher, raising costs for China in particular.
Yet no one can afford to take free passage through the strait for granted. If Iran, or anyone else, closed it for a month, the economic shock would be felt around the world, including in the United States. Though we need less of that oil than we used to, we’ll depend on the strait for significant volumes for years to come. And today’s interconnected global economy ensures that even if America were isolated from the first economic shock wave, we would surely feel the second—and sooner rather than later. Ensuring the strait remains open for business is a long-term commitment that only the United States can make. That isn’t going to change in the next ten years. George Washington urged future presidents and lawmakers to resist foreign entanglements, but America’s first president never dreamed of this problem.
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U.S. foreign policy should be designed to make the United States safer and more prosperous; it’s foolish to think that Americans can safeguard their interests and promote prosperity without accepting some costs and risks far beyond our borders. The ideas expressed in the previous chapter won’t create an “Independent America.” This is Isolationist America, a shining city on a hill built high atop Fantasy Island. There are things that must be done, and it’s in America’s national interest for Americans to do.
To safeguard U.S. national security, Washington must lead coalitions of the willing, able, and like-minded to block the proliferation of nuclear weapons and to use any means necessary to deny terrorists the tools they need for a catastrophic attack on U.S. soil. Because the fate of the U.S. economy is tied to that of the world economy, U.S. foreign policy must promote and protect global growth, both by minimizing the risk of war and by giving as many countries as possible a stake in stability through commerce and investment. To safeguard prosperity at home, Washington must forge new trade and investment ties. And we must accomplish all this while living within our means.
It’s true that America’s elected leaders cannot conduct an ambitious foreign policy without U.S. public support. Yet if that support doesn’t exist today, it’s because our elected leaders have done a poor job of explaining why certain things must be done, why the United States must do them, and how those things protect and serve our most vital interests. Afghanistan and Iraq have soured the American people on potentially costly commitments abroad. But these two poorly designed foreign policy adventures do not represent the best we can do. We cannot shrink from the future. There will be more threats, more costs, and more opportunities, and U.S. policymakers must be prepared to confront them.
In 2003, author Michael Lewis wrote a bestselling book called Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.4 It’s the story of how Billy Beane, general manager of the cash-strapped Oakland A’s baseball club, used a hyperrational, rigorous approach to build a winning franchise. The need to do more with less persuaded Beane to question every old assumption, kill every sacred cow, look beyond the familiar, and reinvent the way that successful teams are built.
A Moneyball foreign policy relies on a cold-blooded, interest-driven approach that redefines America’s role in the world in a way designed to maximize the return on the taxpayer’s investment. It recognizes that we have a few responsibilities that no one else can accept, but everywhere possible it sheds burdens in favor of opportunities and focuses our leaders on protecting the bottom line. We can’t police every corner, and Moneyball promotes America’s value, not its values. It comes much closer than isolationist dogma to answering President Eisenhower’s call for a rational foreign policy approach that makes America both more secure and more prosperous.
Security
The toughest choice any president makes is whether to go to war, and our past reluctance to fight has served us well. Those who support the Independent America argument are right that it wasn’t simply victory in the two world wars but our late entry into them that made the United States a superpower. By waiting as long as we could before joining these fights in faraway lands, we enhanced America’s political influence and economic power relative to every potential rival. Yet we mustn’t forget the years between the wars when isolationist U.S. policymakers thought Americans could simply retreat to a world that didn’t need American leadership. Washington should never wage war where it’s not vital to U.S. interests, but nor should we shrink from any fight when it’s clear that our safety and prosperity are at stake. Let’s also remember that the credible threat of force is an essential element of successful diplomacy. If Washington is to conduct the effective (and cost-effective) Moneyball foreign policy that Americans will demand in the twenty-first century, our elected leaders will need a state-of-the-art military. They’ll also need a clear and consistent set of guidelines to help them decide when war is the last best means of defending U.S. interests.
Fortunately, Colin Powell has provided one. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state, Powell served as both America’s top soldier and its top diplomat. The so-called Powell doctrine, first articulated in 1990, is an elaboration on a similar framework created by former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger. Powell’s version, based largely on lessons learned from the war in Vietnam, provides a set of commonsense decision-making principles that reflect shrewd Moneyball thinking.
When a president and Congress are considering war, they must answer the following questions:
1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?
2. Do we have a clear and attainable objective?
3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
4. Have all other nonviolent policy means been fully exhausted?
5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
6. Have the consequences of U.S. action been fully considered?
7. Is the action supported by the American people?
8. Do we have genuine broad international support?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, war is not the answer.
With these questions in mind, compare America’s two wars with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. In August 1990, Iraqi forces invaded neighboring Kuwait and crossed the border into Saudi Arabia, briefly occupying the Saudi city of Khafji in the country’s oil-rich Eastern Province before Saudi and Qatari forces, backed by U.S. marines, drove them out. President George H. W. Bush ordered Saddam to withdraw his forces from Kuwait. Saddam refused, and in January 1991, U.S. forces ousted the Iraqi military from that country and imposed sanctions designed to cripple Iraq’s economy.
Twelve years later, a second President Bush launched a second war, one designed to topple Saddam, find and destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and plant the seeds of democracy. These two wars illustrate the difference between a Moneyball foreign policy that was intelligently designed to serve the U.S. national interest and one that falls short of this high standard in every respect. Take these questions one by one.
Was a vital national security interest threatened? In 1990, by seizing control of oil production in Kuwait, and perhaps in eastern Saudi Arabia, Saddam would have controlled a large enough share of the world’s oil to send the U.S. economy into recession simply by cutting output to drive energy prices higher. In that sense, Saddam threatened a vital U.S. interest—as well as the economies of oil-importing countries around the world. But after the war in 1991, Saddam would never again threaten a vital U.S. national security interest, because sanctions deprived him of the means to build weapons of mass destruction. As important, during the second war, U.S. troops remained in Iraq for eight years after Saddam had been defeated, as part of an effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq, though the insurgency that grew from the ashes of the war did not threaten America’s national security.
Did the United States have a clear and attainable objective? In 1991, the answer was yes. The elder President Bush’s objective was to eject Saddam’s forces from Kuwait and cripple his government by isolating its economy. The U.S.-led war drove the Iraqis home within days, and sanctions were imposed that Saddam was never able to fully escape. In 2003, the answer was no. There was no clear and attainable objective. Saddam was removed from power, and the war’s purpose became unclear when no weapons of mass destruction were discovered. The occupation of Iraq did nothing to make America safer or more prosperous.
Were the risks and costs fully and frankly analyzed? In 1991, the central debate among policymakers was whether to pursue Iraqi troops all the way to Baghdad and capture Saddam. After weighing the question, President Bush determined that the risks and costs associated with a war inside Iraq and the need to rebuild the country under new leadership were too high. The younger President Bush did not fully analyze the question of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and he failed to realistically weigh the costs of a long-term occupation of Iraq on American lives, the U.S. treasury, or America’s international reputation.
Were all other nonviolent policy means fully exhausted? In 1991, Saddam could have avoided war by cutting a face-saving deal that included voluntary withdrawal from Kuwait. Unappealing as that choice may have been, the alternative was a fight he couldn’t win. Maybe he didn’t understand that. Aware that Saddam would not back down, President Bush could either have allowed him to maintain his hold on Kuwait’s oil supply—with all the new power that would have given him—or go to war. In 2003, the younger President Bush had an option that his father never really had: He could have done nothing. He might well have determined that Saddam remained trapped inside the box that Bush’s father had built for him and that leaving him in isolation better served U.S. interests than did a poorly conceived war. In short, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait made the first war all but inevitable. The second was a war of choice.
Was there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement? Here the contrast is most obvious. In 1991, the elder President Bush committed U.S. troops to a war that began on February 24. Iraqi troops were forced from Kuwait by February 28. A formal cease-fire ended the conflict on March 3, and troops began arriving home on March 17. The second war erupted in March 2003, and the last U.S. soldiers departed Iraq in December 2011. The father’s war lasted less than a month. The son’s lasted nearly nine years.
Were the consequences of U.S. action fully considered? No one who orders troops into battle can foresee every consequence of that decision, but here again the differences are stark. The elder President Bush intended to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait, prevent an invasion of Saudi Arabia, restore stability in the region, bring the troops home, and impose sanctions, thanks in part to the wise counsel of National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft. An interview with Scowcroft published in 2005 makes clear the difference between a foreign policy decision based on careful calculation of U.S. interests and one based on moral outrage or public support for action:
Though the President had employed the rhetoric of moral necessity to make the case for war [in 1990], Scowcroft said, he would not let his feelings about good and evil dictate the advice he gave the President. It would have been no problem for America’s military to reach Baghdad, he said. The problems would have arisen when the Army entered the Iraqi capital. “At the minimum, we’d be an occupier in a hostile land,” he said. “Our forces would be sniped at by guerrillas, and, once we were there, how would we get out? What would be the rationale for leaving? I don’t like the term ‘exit strategy’—but what do you do with Iraq once you own it?”5
U.S. military action in the Middle East will always generate hostility, and the presence of American soldiers in Saudi Arabia, the sacred land of Mecca and Medina, during the first war with Iraq is thought to have fueled the anger of Osama bin Laden and other Islamist militants.6
But it was the second war that produced direct and dramatic negative consequences for U.S. interests. Far from being “greeted as liberators,” U.S. soldiers found themselves drawn into a conflict that lasted longer than World War II. In March 2003, Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz told Congress that Iraq could “finance its own reconstruction” via oil exports.7 The administration projected that the war would cost U.S. taxpayers between $50 billion and $60 billion, including the cost of rebuilding the country. In 2013, the Costs of War Project, a nonprofit organization affiliated with Brown University, estimated that the war had actually cost $1.7 trillion.8 Add the long-term price tag for veterans’ benefits, and the price rises to more than $2 trillion. There is no credible argument that the second Bush administration understood the most basic costs and consequences of that war—for U.S. taxpayers, U.S. soldiers, our coalition partners, or Iraqis.
Were the actions supported by the American people? In January 1991, President George H. W. Bush’s plan to go to war won the backing of 55 percent of Americans in a Pew Research poll. Speedy victory drove that number to 80 percent, though a recession helped ensure that he lost his bid for reelection in 1992. A dozen years later, his son had even broader prewar support. Another Pew Research poll found that 77 percent of Americans supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But how did these wars wear over time? In 2001, ten years after the first war, 63 percent of Americans said the first President Bush had made the right decision in going to war. Just 31 percent disagreed.9 In April 2008, Pew found that just 37 percent supported the still-active second war with Iraq with 57 percent opposed.10 Both presidents had the public backing they needed to go to war. The younger Bush could not sustain support for a commitment he should have known would last for years.
Did these two wars have broad international support? The first war could claim the support of more than thirty foreign governments. Fourteen of them contributed at least one thousand military personnel. The second war had the initial support of an even larger number of governments, though only Britain, Australia, Spain, Italy, Ukraine, and Georgia contributed at least one thousand of their citizens to the effort. But the younger President Bush moved forward despite fierce opposition from NATO allies France and Germany. UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said in 2004 that from the point of view of the UN Charter, the second U.S.-led war on Saddam was “illegal.”11 Saddam’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the threat he posed for Saudi Arabia united much of the world behind the effort to oust him. The war to finish him off in 2003 had nothing like that kind of backing—and serious resistance from traditional U.S. allies.
War-weary Americans are sick of debates over Iraq, but if we are to build a foreign policy that truly serves our national interest, one that enjoys consistent popular support because it doesn’t waste American lives or taxpayer dollars, we must learn the lessons that these two wars have to teach us. As secretary of state, Colin Powell played a major supporting role in selling the need to go to war in 2003. That should not discourage us from using the principles he created to help us decide when war is necessary and when it is not. Every American should set aside the political biases that too often distort our reason and blind us to the vital lessons of our past—especially those we can learn from our worst mistakes.
Bad Reasons to Fight
One of the most important of those lessons is that no leader or lawmaker should ever treat a decision about war solely as a test of personal or national toughness. Russia’s assault on Ukraine in 2014 undermined the case for an intelligently designed Moneyball foreign policy by persuading some in Washington that brute force is still the trump card in relations among nations. Russia’s Vladimir Putin has cultivated the image of steely-eyed strongman over many years, and his aggressive action against former Soviet subjects—Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014—left some Americans disappointed when U.S. troops didn’t ride in like the cavalry to punish his overreach and remind him who’s boss. Some who criticized Obama were motivated by the demands of election-year politics, but others were driven by a dangerously expansive conception of American power and the responsibility to use it in places where it makes no sense.
A bias toward always “projecting strength” is a foolish basis for a foreign policy. In October 1962, President John F. Kennedy faced down pressure from some of his own senior military advisers to respond to the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba with a U.S. invasion of that island. Fortunately, we’ll never know how close the world came to nuclear war or how many American lives might have been lost in an effort to appear “resolute” and “strong.” Instead, Kennedy used a defensive naval blockade of Cuba to prevent Soviet resupply and a backdoor diplomatic deal on U.S. weapons in Turkey to bring the Cold War’s most dangerous direct confrontation to a peaceful conclusion. Tough-minded diplomacy, backed with the credible threat of force, carried the day. The nuclear threat was averted. Loss of life was limited to two American pilots.* Americans didn’t have to pay for an unnecessary war.
Still, whenever an American president decides not to use force, there are opportunistic critics at home and abroad who say that the White House has made America look weak. Many who level that charge have selfish motives. Foreign detractors are often trying to pressure a president to act on their behalf. Domestic critics want the president they’re attacking to lose the next election. Yet a truly strong leader cares only about acting in the country’s interest. A Moneyball approach demands that we fight when and where we choose—and on our own terms.
Kennedy is far from the only president to find the courage to avoid useless confrontation. Before he was elected president in 1980, Democrats attacked Ronald Reagan, just as they had attacked Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater in 1964, as a reactionary, trigger-happy firebrand more likely to turn the Cold War hot than to achieve peace and prosperity. Yet one of President Reagan’s wisest and most courageous foreign policy decisions was one that would have branded most presidents as cowards.
In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. By the end of that summer, a multinational peacekeeping force of 800 U.S. marines, 800 Italian soldiers, and 400 French soldiers arrived in Beirut to safeguard the evacuation of Palestinian fighters from the country and act as a buffer between warring factions. Over the next year, Lebanon’s security deteriorated dramatically, and on October 23, 1983, a small group of Islamic militants launched one of history’s most successful terrorist attacks. Early that morning, a suicide bomber drove a truck carrying more than ten tons of TNT into a barracks housing the multinational force. The attack killed 241 U.S. servicemen, the deadliest single-day loss of U.S. marines since the battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. Minutes later, a second truck bomb at another site killed 58 French paratroopers.12
Not surprisingly, President Reagan responded first with defiance, and some within his administration argued that links between the group claiming responsibility for the attacks and the government in Iran justified a U.S. attack on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, a politically powerful branch of Iran’s military. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger had failed to persuade Reagan that the insertion of U.S. marines was a bad idea, but he won the internal argument over the question of retaliating against Iran. The evidence of Iranian involvement was circumstantial, he insisted, and an attack could serve no useful purpose. Reagan also insisted that the marines would not “cut and run.” He argued they must remain in Lebanon “until the situation is under control. . . . We have vital interests in Lebanon. And our actions in Lebanon are in the cause of world peace.”
But by themselves, U.S. marines could never bring the situation under control, the United States did not have vital interests in Lebanon, the U.S. presence was not in the cause of world peace, and Reagan soon found the courage to change his mind. In February 1984, he ordered the withdrawal of the marines from Lebanon, and all had been evacuated within three weeks. Asked later what lesson had been learned from this episode, Weinberger said the following:
You have to have a mission; you have to know what you want to do; you have to use force as a last resort after everything else has failed; that when you use it, you have to use it at overwhelming strength, and win your objective and get out.13
That’s the Weinberger doctrine, which established the basis for the Powell doctrine. It was inspired primarily by the war in Vietnam, but the deadly humiliation in Beirut brought that lesson home yet again. Yet the value of a Moneyball foreign policy is not simply in avoiding poorly conceived commitments that cost lives. It’s also in having the courage to admit mistakes, to make the right corrective call, and to stand by it when critics, foreign and domestic, question your toughness and America’s strength. We shouldn’t go to war because the American people (or our president) are angry. We shouldn’t go to war to appear resolute. We should never go to war to defend a principle. Building a winning foreign policy is not simply a matter of will. It’s a test of vision and temperament.
Watch the Cost
The Independent America advocates are also right that we can’t afford our current foreign policy. We must rationalize the costs. Though the United States is not and should never become an imperial power, we still spend more on our military than all our potential challengers combined, and we’re investing too much in too many of the wrong weapons. The U.S. Navy is equipped with twelve aircraft carrier groups that allow Washington to project power in every region of the world, create jobs, and enhance our prestige. But this hardware can only counter conventional military threats from other governments; it’s built to fight the wars of the last century. It gives presidents the ability to commit U.S. forces into conflicts best avoided, and it can’t help us rebuild a country after we’ve removed its government. It does little to protect us from terrorists with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons and nothing to protect us from cyber-attack. If China or Russia one day attacks the United States, they’re much more likely to hit us in cyberspace than to use cruise missiles or nuclear submarines.
The United States can afford to remain the one nation with influence in every region of the world, but only if we rely on our partners to share the costs and risks. We can’t afford to be the dominant voice in every neighborhood. Instead, a Moneyball foreign policy guides us to rely on willing and able friends and allies to build partnerships, ties that are based on respect for the interests, values, and preoccupations of all the major players in each region—including those who choose to remain outside these partnerships, even our enemies. When we discover on a particular issue that we have no willing allies, it’s best to back off.
The best way to manage our costs is to stop trying to police every neighborhood. Instead, Washington should build and support regional balances of power.14 The United States has interests in Latin America and in sub-Saharan Africa, but these regions pose little threat to U.S. national security or prosperity. Western Europe has no serious security challenges. That’s why a Moneyball approach will guide America’s next president to shrug off criticism that his security policy ignores these places, allowing him to focus almost entirely on East Asia, Eurasia, North Africa, and the Middle East.
In East Asia, the United States should pursue a strategic balance—in our approach to the region generally and to China in particular. First, Washington must strengthen both security and economic ties with China’s neighbors—particularly Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines—not to prevent those countries from building solid commercial relations with China, but to allow them to do so without becoming economically dependent on Beijing. Those partners should understand, however, that the United States will not back them when they provoke China needlessly. U.S. support can never be unconditional. Washington must also strengthen trade and investment ties with China—to ensure that Americans continue to benefit from China’s rise, to deepen the economic interdependence that promotes stability in the relationship and across the region, and to reassure Beijing that deeper U.S. involvement in East Asia need not come at China’s expense. Those who support an Independent America will say that East Asia’s rivalries are none of our business, while the Obama administration too often appears less than fully committed to any strategy at all. A Moneyball approach will lead us to rely more on trade and investment and less on security guarantees that we can’t afford to honor indefinitely. America’s economic and security interests demand a stable balance of power in East Asia, and only America can lead the effort to sustain one.
It’s vital that once the president sets priorities, the administration must stick to them. Everyone knows that distractions are part of the job. But the Obama administration committed itself during the president’s first term to that pivot to Asia, a plan to rebalance American security and trade policy toward a deeper focus on East Asia, in particular. Given that this region is more important than any other for the strength and resilience of the global economy over the next generation and that it has more than its share of dangerous rivalries, this was a wise plan, one completely consistent with a Moneyball approach to foreign policy.
In his second term, however, President Obama has allowed himself to become distracted by a conflict in Syria that has monsters well represented on both sides, as well as a quixotic bid to establish an Israeli-Palestinian peace that neither side is ready to negotiate. The United States can’t solve every problem. We must focus our attentions where they are best able to promote U.S. national security and economic opportunity. The next president must build an intelligently designed plan based on limited objectives—and stick to it. The pivot to Asia remains an excellent place to start.
When managing relations with Russia, a Moneyball approach requires that Washington let Europe take the lead. Given Russia’s much deeper economic ties with Germany, Britain, and France, it is those countries whose interests are most directly at stake, and those that are best able to exact a political price for Russian aggression. National pride remains among the world’s most powerful political forces. Attempts to play the world’s policeman are far more likely than a Moneyball approach to arouse the sort of nationalist backlash that the Soviets faced in Eastern Europe—even within the Soviet Union itself—and that the United States encountered in Vietnam and Iraq. Let the Russians play the aggressor, undermining national pride among their neighbors. As defender of that pride, America can restore some of the credibility it has lost in other conflicts.15
That’s not to say that the United States has no role to play in the Ukraine conflict. Washington can and should use sanctions and other affordable means of punishment to raise the cost for the Kremlin of every Russian action that Washington wants to discourage. But we can’t afford the illusion that Washington has the power to isolate Russia or to change the Kremlin’s behavior on any issue on which Moscow believes its core interests are at stake. The Independent America advocates will say that Russian actions do not threaten us and are not our concern, while those in our current government talk as if we have a moral responsibility to save Ukraine. Both are wrong. A Moneyball approach requires that we maximize return on minimal investment. We must directly confront Russia only if it attacks one of our formal alliance partners. Only America can give this threat the credibility it needs to deter hostile Russian action.
In the Middle East, the relationship that best defines the region’s balance of power is the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. A Moneyball foreign policy will lead the United States to try to maintain open and constructive relations with both. Washington would do well to build a more pragmatic (if not always positive) relationship with Iran. This increases the importance of solidifying ties with Saudi Arabia. The Saudis want a clearer U.S. commitment to their security. The next U.S. president can provide one.
Building mutually profitable commercial and investment relationships with both of these countries will give Iranians the chance for prosperity they want, make it more difficult for their government to isolate them from the rest of the world, and give the Saudis the confidence they need to avoid a conflict with Iran that could ignite the entire Middle East. Finally, America should help bolster the security of Israel, the only reliable U.S. ally in the region, but Washington need not back every Israeli action against Palestinians. The Israelis have every right to kill those who threaten their citizens, but Israel’s willingness to inflict mass casualties on Palestinian civilians does not serve U.S. interests. Americans need a stable balance of power in the Middle East, and only America can support one.
Fight Terrorism
It’s true that the greatest threat to America’s security and prosperity comes not from the damage that terrorists can inflict on us, but the damage that terrorism can persuade us to inflict on ourselves. One way of avoiding that problem is through effective counterterrorism operations overseas. Isolationism appeals to every instinct we have to cut our risks and maximize our benefits, but it is dangerously naïve to believe that the world will simply leave us alone. No country can do more than America to lead an international fight against terrorism, and it must be done.
Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria can threaten the stability of the entire Middle East and could eventually promote terrorist attacks inside America and Europe. Washington can’t continue to ignore this region’s small problems until they turn into big ones. The United States can and should lead an international effort to ensure that ISIS remains isolated, even if it can’t immediately be dismantled and destroyed. That doesn’t mean U.S. ground forces in Iraq. This commitment will depend as much on Washington’s ability to coordinate the efforts of others as on U.S. firepower. U.S. ties with Saudi Arabia will be crucial for this struggle, because the Saudis are the only existing power with an interest in seeing ISIS survive.
In addition, according to credible press reports, U.S. Special Operations now uses African air bases in Burkina Faso, South Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Djibouti, and the Seychelles to gather information on and target al-Qaeda-inspired militant groups in Mali, Niger, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, and Sudan.16 That’s necessary, because al-Qaeda affiliates like Somalia’s al-Shabaab, Nigeria’s Boko Haram, and Yemen’s al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula couldn’t care less about the U.S. government’s respect for the civil liberties of American citizens. They want to strike Western targets—and the al-Qaeda core that inspired them is still targeting the United States.
Use Drones
The U.S. military should use drones, because they offer a low-cost, low-risk method of killing those who would kill Americans. It’s true that drones also kill civilians. A Moneyball approach to foreign policy is not intended to relieve America’s elected leaders or military commanders of the moral responsibility for taking extraordinary steps to reduce the risk that our actions kill innocent men, women, and children. We must also acknowledge, however, that wherever there is conflict, innocent people die, whether the weapons that steal their lives are ancient or remotely controlled. In that respect, drones are no different from any other weapon in the American arsenal.
It’s true that drones emasculate those who govern the countries they strike, undermining our relations with governments that are not our enemies. But state officials in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia know that they are at greater risk than Americans from those targeted for automated attacks. Some argue that the use of drones violates international law. If you oppose their use on that basis, then you must also oppose the manned attack that killed Osama bin Laden, an assault that also violated Pakistan’s territorial integrity. In that case, you value the sanctity of Pakistani airspace more than the opportunity to kill the world’s most accomplished terrorist. That’s a legitimate moral position. But leaders faced with imminent threats must often choose among options that are terrible each in its own way, and it is immoral to ignore that reality. It is also immoral to condemn a leader’s choice without offering an honest, well-considered alternative.
Those who champion a so-called Independent America will tell you that drones create more enemies than they kill, and that America will attract more admirers by perfecting American democracy. Do you really believe that young men living among the tribes of the Afghan-Pakistan border are less likely to support extremist ideologies if we build better schools in Ohio and better hospitals in Arkansas? Do you accept that Somali jihadis are less likely to plan attacks on Western targets or that U.S. embassies around the world will be safer if U.S. policymakers redouble their commitment to American civil liberties? In the real world, a leader must often choose the least bad of many bad options. Drones achieve military objectives with much less risk for our military and at much lower cost to our economy. Use them.
Never Walk Alone
In one sense, the Russian intervention in Ukraine did Moneyball America a big favor: It persuaded many reluctant Europeans (and Americans) that NATO still has a purpose and is worth the investment. NATO states can do more together than any of its individual members—including the United States—can do alone. NATO skeptics in America should drop their insistence that Washington act without the constraints imposed by its friends, because the alliance allows the United States to share dangers and burdens with willing, able, and like-minded partners. That’s good for the American soldier and for the American taxpayer.
And, yes, wherever possible, America’s leaders should “lead from behind.” Barack Obama didn’t coin that phrase; an anonymous Obama adviser used it during an interview with a journalist.17 But in some cases, leading from behind can help future U.S. presidents manage the risks and costs of conflict. In Libya in 2011, fourteen NATO members and four partner countries prevented Muammar Qaddafi from carrying out a promise to slaughter tens of thousands of his own people—and then they removed him from power. France, Britain, Italy, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and others struck 90 percent of all NATO targets. Spain, the Netherlands, Turkey, Greece, and Romania enforced an arms embargo at sea. Sweden, not a NATO member, contributed naval and air force personnel and equipment. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, and Morocco also contributed.18 There was not a single U.S. casualty.19
The point is not that Washington should persuade others to do all the heavy lifting. NATO jets were able to hit their targets only because U.S. cruise missiles had already wiped out Libya’s air defenses. When Europeans ran short on precision-guided missiles, Washington sent them more.20 Without the United States, there would have been no mission. Critics carp that while NATO rid the world of a dangerous monster, it hasn’t created a stable Libya. That charge misses the point. From a Moneyball perspective, the goal was not to bomb Libya into democracy, start a war, or launch another improvisational bout of nation-building. It was to give Libyans a chance to escape the fate Qaddafi intended for them, and to enable them to begin the long-term process of building their own future. Libyans will have to build the next Libya.
Libya was an exceptional case. Syria, for example, is not so easy to bomb without killing large numbers of civilians, and the fallout could destabilize much of the Middle East. An attack on Bashar al-Assad might also have put a permanent hold on negotiation over Iran’s nuclear program, a matter of far greater importance for U.S. interests. But wherever possible, America’s president must resist school yard demands to talk and act tough at all times. In select cases, leading from behind is a Moneyball-friendly formula for success. From in front or from behind, only America could have led such an operation. It needed to be done in Libya, and a similar use of NATO force will be needed somewhere else one day soon.
Negotiate—Especially with Enemies
A Moneyball approach demands a more modest and realistic foreign policy, one that respects the core interests of other powerful states. Isolationists, both liberals and conservatives, reject the need to sometimes talk with tyrants, and a handshake with Fidel Castro or a smile with Iran’s president draws fire from across the political spectrum. Saudi Arabia is a family-owned business with a human rights record that is even more appalling than we know. Yet we buy Saudi oil because without it the U.S. economy won’t create the jobs that allow millions of Americans to feed their families and educate their children. We buy Saudi oil because it allows the U.S. economy to generate the wealth that pays the salaries of schoolteachers, police officers, firefighters, and our military. We buy Saudi oil because we still need it. The real world is a complicated place, and it’s naïve to think we can protect America without sometimes working with governments whose values we don’t like.
Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan had little in common beyond their affiliation with the Republican Party. But America won the Cold War in part because Nixon was willing to sit down and do business with Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung, one of the twentieth century’s most notorious despots, and because Reagan had the moral intelligence to spot an opportunity for sincere engagement in Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s opening to the West. If, before leaving office, President Obama is able to exploit new opportunities to promote greater openness in Iran and Cuba, this will be among his finest accomplishments. If the next U.S. president will extend the efforts of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama to engage China, he or she will be acting in America’s interest.
Americans believe their country has a legitimate sphere of influence. It is neither immoral nor cowardly to acknowledge that other powers have them too. That’s why the expansion of NATO into Russia’s backyard amounted to an unnecessary provocation of Moscow at its most vulnerable moment—and why we must be careful to ensure that our pivot to Asia does not become a Cold War–minded bid to contain China’s legitimate aspirations for greater regional and international influence.
Remain Flexible
Flexibility is another critical element of a successful Moneyball foreign policy and another means of managing costs. U.S. policymakers too often create strategically rigid tests for themselves that can only be passed by accepting new risks and burdens where the costs outweigh the benefits. America fought in Vietnam because the domino theory determined that we must fight just about anything that appeared to be communist aggression, whenever and wherever it appeared. That assumption led us to see threats to U.S. national security where none existed. U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003 because President Bush determined that if sanctions could not force regime change, the military must. In this case, shrugging off Saddam’s bravado and keeping him isolated was the better choice. In 2013, when Syria’s Bashar al-Assad appeared ready to use chemical weapons on his own people, President Obama drew a red line. Assad’s use of these weapons, Obama warned, was a “game-changer.” Assad is then believed to have used those chemical weapons, but Washington took no action against his government, instead allowing Russia to broker a hasty deal to destroy the weapons. Obama chose flexibility; he was wise to do nothing. His mistake was in drawing a red line that he was not prepared to enforce.
Use Sanctions
Sanctions are another foreign policy tool that can be effective in the right circumstances—and they will always be cheaper than war. Over time, they forced the leaders of apartheid South Africa to acknowledge the need to accept genuine democracy in that country. They prevented Saddam Hussein from banking the money necessary to develop the dangerous arsenal of weapons that would have made him a much greater threat to the Middle East and the world. Sanctions (and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, let’s be fair) helped persuade Muammar Qaddafi to give up his own nuclear material. The impact of sanctions, tightened significantly under President Obama, on Iran’s economy brought that country back to the nuclear bargaining table.
Unfortunately, as Fidel Castro would be happy to remind us, sanctions sometimes accomplish nothing of value. The United States should have enough experience with sanctions to know where they will never work. Restrictions that spread the pain across an entire population can never undermine North Korea, because North Korea’s leaders don’t care if their people starve, and they need international isolation to keep their grip on power. Even those penalties intended to target the elite, by freezing foreign bank accounts and denying them imported luxury goods, will probably never produce positive results. Efforts to sanction North Korean banks, for example, simply make life even more miserable for North Korea’s people, without having any impact on the ruling Kim family and its elite enablers, because it complicates the efforts of foreign NGOs to provide North Koreans with relief from illness and hunger.21
Yet in some cases sanctions can be a necessary tool even when they can’t, by themselves, get us what we want. Visa restrictions and asset freezes on Putin’s personal friends would never have changed his choices in Ukraine. Central to his personal vision of Russia is the creation of a Eurasian Union, a reconstituted Russian Empire that will prove Russian exceptionalism once and for all by creating a counterweight to the European Union. Without Ukraine, once an industrial powerhouse and the agricultural heartland of the Soviet Union, there is no Russian Empire. Even sanctions that helped push Russia into recession could not persuade Putin to sing a different tune. But a Moneyball approach suggests that sanctions can offer a cost-effective way to raise the costs for those who threaten the stability of a strategically important region. In particular, the United States continues to exercise enormous influence over the global financial sector. Imposing penalties on foreign banks, denying them access to financial markets, can be a ruthlessly effective (and cost-effective) way of applying economic and political pressure on a vulnerable government. The United States should not consider going to war with Russia over Ukraine—though a Russian attack on a NATO member is a completely different story—but sanctions, including on the Russian banking sector, offer some means of ensuring that Putin knows he will feel the pain of every action that we don’t like.
Use American Energy
Fortunately, the architects of American foreign policy also have more benign tools at their disposal. It won’t be obvious as you count the U.S. battleships protecting traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, but America’s energy revolution will move global markets and change international politics in years to come. The effects of this change will take time, but they are likely to last. A drive toward energy self-sufficiency will bring welcome news for the long-term health of America’s economy, and a Moneyball approach to foreign policy should lead U.S. policymakers to allow for the export of significant quantities of some of these new energy reserves to improve ties with key allies.
That will take time and hard work, because the U.S. government is not yet well organized to use energy policy to advance the country’s geopolitical interests. The U.S. Department of Energy is not as directly involved in the formulation of foreign and security policy as governments in energy-exporting countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia—or other major importers like Japan, China, or Germany. Nor should we forget that traditional mistrust of government interference in commerce ensures that Washington is not very effective at crafting industrial policy. U.S. refiners, manufacturers, and consumer groups will resist efforts to boost energy exports, because they want to maximize the benefits of cheap energy for the domestic economy—though Putin’s actions in Ukraine boost Moneyball America here as well, by persuading otherwise reluctant lawmakers that if rogues use energy as a weapon, we should too.
The primary responsibility of an effective energy policy in an energy-importing country like the United States is to ensure that we have enough energy to heat our homes, fuel our cars, and boost our economy. Once these needs are met, however, Washington can and should export significant volumes of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Our government doesn’t own these assets, and energy companies will sell them at the highest price. But even if most of our energy exports are headed for Asia, the increase in supply will help our European friends and allies satisfy their growing energy needs at a reasonable cost, indirectly easing their reliance on Russia. Though neighbors like Ukraine and Poland remain deeply dependent on Gazprom, Russia’s gas monopoly, for affordable natural gas supplies, each appears to have enough shale gas deposits of its own to sharply reduce Russia’s leverage with their governments. Washington can help. The U.S. government has created a program to transfer unconventional gas technologies to friendly countries like Poland and Ukraine.
Guarantees on LNG exports will also be written into the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a U.S. foreign policy priority, enhancing Washington’s leverage with negotiating partners by helping them meet their energy needs. More on that crucial agreement below. The rise of China and the anxiety it generates in Japan have given Washington and Tokyo good reason to reaffirm and deepen their long-term alliance, and U.S. energy exports to Japan can help. Japan is already the world’s leading importer of LNG, and its imports from the Middle East and North Africa are much more expensive than the price enjoyed in the United States.22 Japan will also profit from reliable energy supplies from a predictable partner. The United States will benefit by expanding its commercial and security partnership with a traditional ally that can provide a long-term foothold in the region that is most important for the future of the global economy.
As noted, to build a stable and sustainable geopolitical balance in Asia, better and deeper U.S. relations with Tokyo demand better and deeper U.S. relations with Beijing. The U.S. energy revolution can help here too. China has every incentive to develop its domestic energy potential. Though the United States is becoming less dependent on the always volatile Middle East, China is becoming more reliant on that region’s energy producers, some of which generate more than their share of political turmoil. China is believed to have larger deposits of shale gas even than the United States, yet lacks the technology and know-how needed to exploit them.23 Cooperation on such an important project won’t come easily, but given the stakes for both sides, it’s a path worth exploring. By helping China develop this resource, the United States can enhance the relationship most important for global peace and prosperity over the next quarter century.
American Prosperity
It is not America’s job to make the world safe for democracy, but we would be wise to actively promote the trade and investment needed to establish a stabilizing international economic interdependence. President Obama has tried to move U.S. security policy toward a focus on making the country more secure by making it more prosperous. With that in mind, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton laid the groundwork for “economic statecraft,” an approach guided by awareness that expanded trade and investment ties have never been more important for national strength and resilience.
The next president must translate this vision into policies that extend U.S. influence abroad and spur economic growth at home. Here is where the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) looms large. Global trade talks can’t produce the results we want, as the stalled World Trade Organization’s Doha trade round has vividly demonstrated. Too many negotiators at the table and the domestic political demands of too many governments produce lowest-common-denominator results. Instead, the future lies with regional agreements of unprecedented scale.
There are two reasons why TPP is so important. First, trade will be crucial for future U.S. growth, and this deal is as big as they come. Negotiations now include the United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei. With Japan, the group would represent 40 percent of world trade and 40 percent of global GDP. It’s a geostrategic game-changer and a crucial component of a Moneyball U.S. foreign policy.
Second, TPP is the right answer to China’s state-driven economic model. China’s rise has created important challenges for the United States and its economy, in particular by empowering a system of state capitalism that gives political officials a powerful role in directing market activity. By using state-owned companies, state-run banks, and privately owned but politically reliable national champion firms to achieve political goals, China has made it much more difficult for U.S. and other foreign companies to compete on a level playing field. TPP can help counter the growth of Chinese-style state capitalism and extend U.S. influence in the Pacific in much the same way that potential European Union membership once encouraged reform in former Warsaw Pact countries, states that might otherwise have followed a familiar path of least resistance back toward state-run economics and authoritarian rule.
This trade pact is not an attempt to contain China or stunt its growth. Instead, it’s a big investment in the future of free markets—and an invitation to China’s neighbors to share the benefits of free trade while deepening their political and security relationships with Washington. It’s also a signal that America intends to remain in Asia as a stabilizing force, even as China becomes a more influential economic and security player in the region and beyond.
Washington will have to compromise on key provisions of the deal, but TPP will provide the United States with something it badly needs: a lasting achievement for liberal trade, investment, and regulatory principles in the world’s most economically promising region, one that might otherwise become frozen in China’s lengthening state capitalist shadow. With a similarly ambitious agreement, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), already in the works with the European Union, America’s next president has a golden opportunity to reshape the global trade and investment landscape to better serve U.S. interests and enhance growth prospects at home.
Perhaps the best reason to do these things is that they are doable. On questions of budgets and borrowing, immigration reform, gun control, and a dozen other hot topics, Democrats and Republicans continue to stand miles apart. But if the next president will devote time, energy, and political capital to a trade deal that defines the United States as a permanent Pacific power and tightens the bonds that bind America and its allies, he or she will have enough votes from the two parties—and the support of U.S. business leaders—to make it happen.
Let the twenty-first-century arms race become a trade race.
Today, Communist China enjoys higher trade volumes than America with 124 countries, while free-trade America’s trade outstrips China’s with just 76. In total trade volume, China surpassed the United States in 2012 to become the world’s number one trading nation. Let this setback become our “Sputnik moment,” the point at which we accept that we have fallen behind in a race we can’t afford to lose, that a serious new commitment is required, that we must draw on the best American traditions of commerce and creativity, and that we must act. The world’s governments don’t agree on democracy, but even autocracies like China and Russia have invested in the power of markets to power their prosperity. There is no more effective means of providing all the world’s governments with a stake in a stable and prosperous world than to forge an elaborate web of new trade and investment agreements.
Those who oppose trade will remind us of the extensive trade flows among major European powers on the eve of World War I, and that in the decade before World War II the United States was both the leading importer of Japanese exports and the leading source of that country’s raw materials.24 But this criticism ignores two critical factors. First, the world’s great powers are no longer governed by leaders who believe they must conquer new territory to find the resources needed to fuel an industrial economy.25 Second, according to historian Richard Rosecrance, “about 90 percent of foreign investment in 1913 was portfolio investment, that is, it represented small holdings of foreign shares that could easily be disposed of on the stock exchange. Direct investment, that which represents more than a 10 percent share of the total ownership of a foreign firm, was only one tenth of the total.”26
In that respect, the world has changed dramatically. In developing countries, those most prone to internal and external conflict and where investment is most needed, yearly foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows have increased from an average of less than $10 billion in the 1970s to more than $700 billion in 2012. For the first time ever in 2012, developing economies absorbed more FDI than did developed countries, attracting 52 percent of global FDI flows. More remarkable is the fact that developing economies’ FDI outflows, the investments these countries make in other countries, reached $426 billion in 2012, a record 31 percent of the global total, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development.27
Many Americans have forgotten, or have never read about, the challenges and threats facing Western Europe just after the war. Soviet troops tightened the Kremlin’s grip on Eastern Europe, and communist governments began to appear. In Western Europe, economic despair and an infusion of Marxist ideology began to take hold. Local communist parties made major gains in France and Italy. To protect friendly governments, bolster historically lucrative export markets, and counter the expansion of communist influence, Truman moved to bankroll European reconstruction on an unprecedented scale. He also had the wisdom and modesty to recognize that congressional support for the plan, particularly from postwar isolationists bent on repeating the mistakes of the 1920s, depended on naming it for popular general George Marshall rather than for himself.
In its first year, the price tag for the Marshall Plan amounted to a full 10 percent of the U.S. federal budget, but over time this investment paid historic dividends.28 By 1952, Western European economies were already operating at double their prewar levels.29 Washington’s decision to keep troops in Europe provided a security umbrella that allowed Western European governments to focus their spending on domestic economic development. The Marshall Plan remains the wisest investment in American foreign policy history. By Cold War standards, this was a milestone of rational, cold-blooded cost-benefit analysis.
Truman’s presidency provides another Moneyball lesson. Eisenhower was still in uniform when Truman made clear that American foreign policy is made by civilians. Those who argue for Independent America are right that we must guard against the risk that our foreign policy will fall into the hands of military hawks or crusaders driven by neoconservative nonsense. In other words, if Harry Truman knew which general to immortalize, he also knew which one to fire.
Fighting the Korean War might have prevented other Cold War conflicts, including perhaps in Japan. But Douglas MacArthur intended to expand the conflict in Korea into China, bringing Moscow and Beijing into alignment as nothing else could. Some will argue that America had an obligation to free China of communism just as it helped free Europe of fascism and Japan of militarism. But World War III would have cost much more—for Americans and for the world—than the Marshall Plan. Even if the United States had won an unqualified victory over Communist China, wouldn’t the U.S. military then have been forced to occupy the much larger China as it occupied Japan? What would that have cost? Would it have worked? Truman, like the elder President Bush, knew when to stop. Douglas MacArthur, like the younger President Bush, did not.
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Let’s be clear: America is not an exceptional nation. America is the most powerful, but that doesn’t mean it’s always right. We are not all-knowing, and the universal benefit is never our main concern. America has done much good in the world, and it will do more. But it has also done a lot of damage, particularly by trying to force our values on others without careful consideration of the consequences. Those who make American foreign policy and those who implement it must be guided by both discretion and humility. And they must remember that freedom is in the eye of the beholder.
As you listen to the next round of presidential debates, imagine you’re listening to Chinese political leaders telling their people that they are the world’s strongest, best, and brightest—that China, not America, is the best hope for a peaceful future. Imagine the French president telling his people that only France can offer the world a true moral compass. Imagine listening to Vladimir Putin telling his people that God has a special purpose for Russia. If you can imagine hearing these words from the leaders of other countries, then you can understand the reactions of their citizens to American debates on American exceptionalism. As George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.” We may believe that ours is the most virtuous great power in history, and that people around the world are inspired by our example. But we can also accept that many are sick of sermons from our flag-lapel-wearing leaders—and that they resent our reflexive grandstanding. We can’t expect others to love their countries less or feel less loyalty for their homelands as we work to persuade them that our ideas are best.30
It’s time to cast a vote for strength, not the appearance of strength. Vote for American thrift, modesty, discretion, and sound judgment—the attributes that made the United States the most powerful and influential nation on earth. Vote for a foreign policy written not in poetry but in prose, one that will enhance our security and prosperity in the world we actually live, not the one we wish for. We can’t afford to hide from the world, but nor can we force our values on everyone else. Vote for the best traditions of our past.
Vote Moneyball.
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Let’s return to the quiz. Here is how a champion of Moneyball America might answer (in italics with a brief explanation for that choice).
A Moneyball America Answer Key
1. Freedom is:
a. The right of every human being.
b. Fragile. Americans must protect it right here at home.
c. In the eye of the beholder.
What gives us the right to define another country’s values?
2. America is:
a. Exceptional because of what it represents.
b. Exceptional because of all it has done for the world.
c. Not an exceptional nation. America is the most powerful, but that doesn’t mean it’s always right.
Our country is in trouble if we can’t speak frankly about its shortcomings alongside its great strengths.
3. Which of these statements best expresses your opinion?
a. America will be better off if we mind our own business and let other countries get along the best they can.
b. America must lead.
c. The primary purpose of U.S. foreign policy should be to make America safer and more prosperous.
Our resources are limited. We can’t solve every problem, but nor can we hide from those challenges that can compromise our security and prosperity.
4. China is:
a. America’s greatest challenge and greatest opportunity.
b. The place where too many American jobs have gone.
c. The world’s largest dictatorship.
We can’t tell China what to do, but nor can we ignore it. We must both engage China and hedge our bets on its future.
5. America’s biggest problem in the Middle East is that:
a. Washington supports the region’s dictators rather than its people.
b. Washington ignores small problems until they turn into big ones.
c. Washington believes it can manage an unmanageable region.
Respond to fires before they burn out of control.
6. U.S. spy capabilities:
a. Will always be a double-edged sword.
b. Threaten our privacy.
c. Are vital for protecting America.
Powerful states have always spied on one another and always will, but we must use this tool only when and where it can make America more secure.
7. The primary responsibility of the president of the United States is:
a. To advance U.S. interests at home and abroad.
b. To promote, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
c. To lead.
We hire presidents to add value, not to lead crusades.
8. Which of the following best expresses your view?
a. A great leader can change the world.
b. A great leader must lead by example.
c. In the real world, any leader must often choose the least bad of many bad options.
A president must have the courage to cope with the problems that cannot be solved.
9. Which is the most at risk?
a. America’s economy.
b. America’s international reputation.
c. The respect of our leaders for America’s founding principles.
If we build a foreign policy that saps our economic strength, our power and prosperity cannot last.
10. I hope that by the year 2050:
a. America will share the burdens of leadership with reliable, like-minded allies.
b. Americans will have created a more perfect union at home.
c. American leadership will have helped as many people as possible around the world topple the tyrants who deny them the freedom they deserve.
We will always need friends to help us do the things that must be done.