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sustenance like food and clean water; medicine and shelter. It also requires a society that is supported by the pillars of a sustainable democracy—a strong legislature, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, a vibrant civil society, a free press, and an honest police force. It requires building the capacity of the world’s weakest states and providing them what they need to reduce poverty, build healthy and educated communities, develop markets, and generate wealth.”
    And how are these things to be accomplished? No insight is provided into the myriad of complicated and complex obstacles—both within the United States and in other countries—that would have to be overcome, because they are too numerous to make tangible and too onerous to accomplish. Moreover, if the government were to compel Americans to give of their labor, treasure, and lives to chase the unachievable—an imagined global civil society—America could not survive or improve upon itself.
     

    “But if the next President can restore the American people’s trust—if they know that he or she is acting with their best interests at heart, with prudence and wisdom and some measure of humility—then I believe the American people will be ready to see America lead again.”
    How would this restore the American people’s trust, and in whom and what? How is committing them to a staggeringly unrealistic global task acting in their best interests? Where is the prudence and wisdom in such a reckless overstatement of human possibilities, which completely ignores history and man’s experience?
    In truth, the Statist is and will be no more successful in his foreign policy promises than in his domestic promises. International utopianism has no better chance than its domestic brand.
    But for all his talk of America changing the world, the Statist speaks not of American sovereignity but “global citizenship.” 12
    He speaks not of America as a nation-state but as one nation among many. Rather than maintain its superpower status and act in its own best interests, the United States should relinquish its hard-earned position in favor of multilateral power sharing and conduct foreign policy—including decisions about military action in its own defense—through coalitions and international organizations. In this way, America’s interests are subsumed and contained by the supposed interests of the whole. And the rest of the world will look approvingly upon the United States for empowering other countries to participate in decisions about America’s survival.
    The Statist seeks treaties not to preserve and improve American society, but to commit the United States to a course of conduct that cannot be easily reversed with the change of administrations. He will enter into treaties that include the Convention on the Rights of the Child (signed in 1995 but not ratified due to sovereignty and other concerns); the Convention on All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (which the Senate has refused to ratify since President Carter signed it in 1980); the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (signed by Clinton in 1996, rejected by the Senate in 1999); the Kyoto Protocol on climate change (signed by Clinton in 1998 but never ratified; Bush withdrew it in 2001); 13 the Convention on the Law of the Sea (which would restrict U.S. commercial and military operations, but the Senate has not taken it up); and the International Criminal Court (which the United States has not joined). In each instance, decisions will be made through international bureaucracies that do not have as their moral imperative the preservation and improvement of American society. This is a dangerous gambit.
    America’s adversaries and enemies do not consider themselves global citizens. Nor are they constrained by international sensibilities and arrangements. A resurgent Russia, an aggressive China, communist movements growing in Latin America, rogue regimes in North Korea and Iran, Islamic terrorism, to name a