adapting successfully to this new geopolitical environment, or is this still pursuing a foreign policy shaped by assumptions that perhaps no longer hold?

I would not use the word rupture.

I think that's too strong.

But the international order is certainly under pressure from two directions for two reasons that have nothing to do with Donald Trump.

One is that the relatively peaceful international order of the immediate post-Cold War era, of the 25 years from the collapse of the Soviet Union to 2015 and possibly even to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, that era, that unusually peaceful era, has been overtaken by events, and those events are the belligerence, the interest in overturning the system forcibly, if necessary, on the part of China and Russia.

China has put itself in opposition to the current order because it's stronger.

It has greater leverage now.

So at least there are some people, serious people, nuclear scientists who are supposed to know about these things, who are greatly concerned about this particular issue.

But I think the neighborhood policy with Canada, which is an ally, is just as important for the United States going forward.

Let me add a couple of things about alliances.

We should remember that an alliance was crucial for the United States at the beginning.

The American colonies would never have won their independence without the help of France.

Without the French intervention, the British would have prevailed.

George Washington appreciated the French, but he didn't trust them, and he didn't want a permanent alliance with the French.

And when he gave his farewell address, He warned against entangling alliances.

So that's an underlying strength of the United States, but we always have to fight to preserve that.

Just simply demonstrating the virtues of democracy and that that would be influential.

Yes.

They, they profoundly believed that.

That's what the founders believed.

Uh, there are two other continuous features of American foreign policy that distinguish it from other countries, from the foreign policies of other countries.

First, we've conducted an unusually economic foreign policy in that we have tried to use economic measures, such as sanctions, to achieve political goals.

Most countries most of the time have done the reverse.

So that's an underlying strength of the United States, but we always have to fight to preserve that.

Could one argue, Michael, that there is an element of hypocrisy in the American way of not just foreign, but domestic policy? And how are they connected? Especially something like slavery, which, of course, so profoundly goes against the principle and spirit and text of the American Republic, and yet existed for a long time and was only ended after a bloody civil war.

Well, slavery certainly contradicts the founding principles of the United States.

So it counts as a glaring case of hypocrisy, which was understood at the beginning.

But the founders just couldn't find a way to bring together all 13 colonies without tolerating slavery.

And it became, of course, the most divisive issue in the history of the United States, culminating in a bloody civil war.

So although one could say that the practice of slavery was an example of American hypocrisy, the fact that hundreds of thousands of Americans fought to destroy the institution and tens of thousands gave their lives in order to do so, does at least suggest that Americans have also had some fidelity to their founding ideals.

Now, in the case of foreign policy, the great hypocrisy if one can call it that, would be the American possession of an empire.

Is that a manifestation of the American way of foreign policy or is that in its own odd way un-American?

How do you respond to arguments that the ideology is just window dressing?

Uh, there, there are two points to make here, I think, Jim.

Uh, one is that foreign policy, like all other social activities, is multi-determined.

There isn't any single cause, especially for such a complicated matter as foreign policy.

Take, for example, the threeMajor conflicts in which the United States is engaged in the 20th century, the two world wars and the Cold Wars.

Those were waged for realist power political reasons.

The United States was concerned, uh, that its adversaries would become too powerful, would capture territory, and would threaten the United States.

How does President Trump's approach to foreign policy fit in with these threads, these themes that you've seen over the past 250 years?