Discussion of American foreign policy is an endless string of talking heads and think tank hacks claiming that we “must” do this or that, for reasons such as global security, values, or credibility. With a little bit of knowledge, it is apparent that the foreign policy class is generally responding to problems they themselves caused (if the problems exist at all). Either way, their concerns are completely remote from what any normal person would understand to be U.S. national interests.

In concluding his recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Libertarian Institute Director Scott Horton stated frankly that this does not have to be the way we live, saying, “Donald Trump could get on a plane and go Tehran right now, he could go from there to Moscow, to Beijing, to Pyongyang, and come how being ‘Trump the Great.’” I myself told Horton something similar on an episode of his show earlier this year, discussing the failure of regime change in Georgia. He asked if we had reached the end of U.S. operations in Georgia, and I explained their ruling party is not anti-America; they just oppose the Western-funded swarm of NGO agents trying to overthrow their government. If you tell them that era is over, you could “reset” easily, to which Scott responded, “But that is the empire.” The reality is that our country faces no immediate or mortal threats, and if our rulers would just behave prudently and reasonably we could end this entire destructive farce that accomplishes nothing but to make us poorer and less safe. …

There are a variety of more reasonable tools than a vast military network, constant airstrikes, regime change operations, and coercive sanctions regimes that can be used to ensure states are peaceful towards us, and ideally to their neighbors as well. The first is, as Horton suggested, simply going around and talking to people and telling them we want to move to a new era. Plenty of our supposed enemy regimes would be happy to restore normal diplomatic relations.

Another important tool is our economy. While trying to force the whole world to take part in sanctions regimes is a destructive and generally counter-productive policy that generates global resentment, it isn’t unreasonable to make access to our own enormously valuable consumer market contingent on being passably well-disposed towards us. No matter how much we are meant to believe that various regimes hate us, the evidence that any significant state doesn’t want access to our consumer market is nearly non-existent. It was in this way we managed to develop warm relations with the same Vietnamese communist dictatorship we couldn’t defeat in a decade of war. …

The evidence that any state wants to be our enemy doesn’t exist, while there is much evidence to the contrary. It is laughable to act as if maintaining peaceable relations with states like Venezuela or Cuba risks a global communist takeover. Having productive relations with Iran would primarily threaten Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political career, but no actual American interest. Russia and China require a bit more wisdom to handle as they are major world powers, but both have shown a great tendency towards restraint and concern for internal development, so even there conflict beyond periodically arguing about trade matters or competing for contracts in third states is entirely unnecessary.

The ghouls in our military-industrial complex, think tank, and political classes will fight it tooth and nail, but the reality is that we don’t have to do any of this. America and the world would be much better off if we stopped.