Free Republic

Revisiting realism in 2018, I realized foreign interventions, meant to ensure American security by “spreading democracy” or “securing stability,” were flawed. The point hit home for me that year when my niece graduated high school, suddenly eligible to fight in a war that started when she was an infant. My idea of realism had turned into a restrained realism, one that I believe still fits my own conservatism. Restraint’s critics, interventionists and neoconservatives derogate “restraint” as “isolationism.” That is just not true. Pundits and the foreign policy establishment recently commemorated NATO’s 75th anniversary and are still considering what the future...