America's foreign policy God complex

The U.S. is more powerful than any other single nation on the planet, but it is not unlimited in what it can accomplish or control. Not even close.

America to the rescue.
(Image credit: Swim Ink 2, LLC/CORBIS)

As dawn broke over the Middle East on Tuesday morning, no one thought the day would end with NATO working to avert an escalation of armed conflict between Russia and one of the alliance's members (Turkey). But that's the unpredictable way that events sometimes unfold in international affairs, especially when several world and regional powers with divergent interests are involved in a multi-front war.

These dangerous tensions serve as a perfect backdrop for reading and pondering two important documents: a speech that Hillary Clinton delivered last week at the Council on Foreign Relations, and an essay by Robert Kagan, the smartest of the neocons (and sometime Clinton advisor), in Saturday's Wall Street Journal.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.