I have an article in the new issue of the Independent Review covering American strategy from 9/11 to the present. As somebody who never aspired to be a historian (“It’s just telling stories!”), it led me to a greater respect for their craft. Telling stories in a way that adequately summarizes any given period is hard!

The essay concludes,

Domestically, abundant resources and permissive mass opinion left the American foreign-policy elite free to roam. Traditional guns-versus-butter trade-offs were almost irrelevant as the United States significantly expanded both domestic welfare spending as well as defense spending. Meanwhile, the American foreign-policy elite sold the public both a nationalistic, America First story about prevention as well as a liberal story that assured Americans that because the United States was a liberal state, the exercise of American power would benefit oppressed peoples across the globe (see Desch 2008; Mearsheimer 2018, 120–216).

Powerful as the United States was, the American foreign-policy elite dreamed up policies extravagant enough to outstrip that power. During the period from 2001 to 2021, the United States destroyed political orders in Iraq and Libya, prolonged civil wars in Afghanistan and Syria, and danced on the brink of war with Iran. During this same period, by its own scorekeeping, its trade policies created a monster in the form of a much more powerful People’s Republic of China.

[…]

No one was held accountable for the failures of the era. In contexts where the stakes are extremely high and power is concentrated in the hands of a few, accountability is vital.