Americans actually like being the world’s policeman

The greatest foreign-policy guru of the last century, Hans Morgenthau, had an explanation for this. What drives nations, he said, is the will to power, the craving for glory. That’s why, past a tipping point, large countries spend more on their military than smaller ones, why Russia, China and India seek regional dominance, why the French and British sense of national identity is tied to their former empires.

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Glory is a discredited word, one that belongs to the knights of the round table. Or so we think. But you’ll find a search for glory on the playing field and the sports arena. It’s an ineradicable part of our nature.

For Trump, America First means two different things. But one of them is not so far different from what Charles Krauthammer talked about in 2004, the glory of being the world’s colossus.

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