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What say you?
Good post. I appreciate the thoughtful response. I do feel compelled to respond.
I admit that I am not as much on the libertarian side of things. I see the world as an ultimately dangerous place and that the progressive vision of an international order founded upon Kantian ideals and legalisms is deeply flawed and will fail.
Power is coin of the realm in international relations. Obviously, "power" is a diffuse concept that incorporates far more than the mere presence of superior firepower and even state power per se, but firepower is highly relevant. I think history shows that all balances of power breakdown and that benign oversight is the best alternative where regional balances can be made or broken by the "Great Power" as needed to avoid a generalized breakdown of order.
Even this, I acknowledge, is not a panacea nor does it avoid serious problems. This is because I think mankind is ultimately tragic in its corporeal form and can only be redeemed by God. In the present, earthly existence, however, we cannot assume that God is on our side and we must take actions that defend our interests, even our enlarged interests with the hope that we will some day understand more fully what God intends for us.
The famed Athenian statesman Pericles stated in Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War, "Nor is it any longer possible for you to give up this empire ... Your empire is now like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go. "
Whether we wanted this or not, we got it after the conflagration of World War II when Europe and much of Asia lay prostrate. We then led a philosophical and quasi-military struggle against the Soviets for a generation. In the end, we emerged again, in the post-Cold War era as the sole Superpower, irrespective of our intent.
To retrench could be the right thing to do. But it wasn't after World War I and it was realized not to be the right thing to do after World War II. Perhaps, the rise of new powers will make now the right time. Certainly this is Obama's narrative, the narrative of much of the academic left and the narrative of the somewhat, neo-isolationist right.
However, power tends to fill vacuums that are created. If not us, who will be the next arbiter of global issues? China? Brazil? Turkey? Europe? Japan? Or, if power fails to fill the vacuum, does that portend a democratization and more egalitarian world order that will be amenable to the progressive mindet where power will, for the first time in history, matter less than values despite the difficulty of universalizing those values in a way that will allow Chinese, Americans, Arabs, Israelis, etc, etc to imbibe the same culture. Or will the vacuum herald a neo-Middle Ages except this time, combined with the Golden Age of Proliferation that is undeniably ocurring before our eyes, the Vandals, Goths and Vikings will be superempowered with nuclear, chemical and, perhaps, most troubling biological weapons?
Again, I admit, I find the Hobbesian State of Nature a compelling explanation for man when stripped of his cultivation and/or access to Divine love. I am not arguing for the full blown "Global Leviathan", but I do argue that in our best moments, the US has done more good than any other great power in world history and that our retrenchment may not end well for those who have been born into the current era and largely (though far from absolutely) protected under our auspices.
I also must say that I do disagree that Liberty creates a self sustaining order. Liberty without virtue descends into anarchy which actually then ascends into the still troubling, but more stable status of authoritarianism.
The virtue must come first and it must be a Burkean virtue of embraced tradition and modulated progress as opposed to a Rousseau based virtue of radical, "immanentize the eschaton" type social engineering (also, recall that Jefferson was a fan of the French Revolution despite the fact that it descended into the anarchy of Robespierre).
Unlike a neoconservative, I do not buy into the "democratic peace theory". Unlike a progressive, I do not believe in totalizing solutions to human problems because they are endemic to the human condition. Unlike a member of the "old right," I do not believe we can ignore the problems of the world and assume order will spontaneuously emerge becuase of a Lockean belief that peace is the norm for human affairs.
I am conservative because it is order that I believe to be the sine qua non of relative peace. Liberty can augment this, but it is not, in my humble estimation, the foundation for peace when taken solely on its own. I remain open to the hope that God and transcendence can bring, but feel that may not be able to be the guide for all decisions made here and now.