Read The Long Game for Free Online Page B

especially in Europe; addressing issues like energy security, climate change, and nuclear non-proliferation; putting greater emphasis on the US role in the Asia-Pacific—became the core of Obama’s foreign policy.
    In a broader sense, these policies reflect fundamentally different worldviews between liberals and conservatives. For example, the liberal consensus sees the world as “us and them,” where nations’ fates are linked and therefore they have to work together to address common problems, while conservatives see things in more antagonistic terms, as “us versus them,” in which the US stands apart. Conservatives believe that what is good for the US is good for theworld, while liberals believe that what is good for the world is good for the US. 15
    Conservatives prioritize freedom of action, which helps explain their obsessive focus on issues like missile defense and suspicions of international institutions and law. They prize the idea that an America protected cannot be blackmailed. This also fits within a larger strategy: to ensure invulnerability, the US needs to shed any artificial constraints on protecting the country’s interests, whether treaties or agreements or institutions, that could hinder its ability to act unilaterally.
    Liberals see America as the “indispensable nation” and consider US leadership vital to solving problems. But they believe in the power generated by legitimacy, and maintain that treaties, alliances, and agreements are vital ingredients of influence. Such tools can also help create a shared set of norms to shape state behavior, widening the circle of the global order led by the United States.
    Liberals are also more comfortable contemplating the limits of American power. Although critics belittle such talk as defeatism or underappreciating America’s greatness, it is a reflection of reality in the changing global order. Bill Clinton said after his presidency that the “most important thing is to create a world we would like to live in when we are no longer the world’s only superpower,” and to prepare “for a time when we would have to share the stage.” 16 Every nation is limited by finite resources and competing demands. Even though the US has fewer limits than any other, it, too, can overextend. So the challenge is how to calibrate its approach.
    T HIS IS ALSO an argument about how a country defines its strength. What does it mean to be strong? As he campaigned for president, Obama answered this in two ways.
    First, Obama believed that being strong abroad started with being strong at home. To say that you could only concentrate on one or theother was a false choice. When Obama came into office, he saw an America that few believed was strong at home—in the middle of a financial crisis, with education and health care systems that were in shambles, and a deeply polarized political system. With this trajectory, it was hard to argue that America was in a position to continue to lead in the twenty-first century. At that time, the country was far from the model that both liberals and conservatives claim it to be.
    So what was needed was what Obama called “nation building at home.” This phrase provoked a torrent of criticism by many foreign policy thinkers who tend to think of domestic issues as detached from what makes America great in the world. But in fact, Obama thought they had it exactly wrong. If not strong at home, America would not be able to project its power abroad. It would not be respected abroad. It would not be the inspirational leader to so many around the world. America’s inner strength is an indispensable part of its outer strength. As Peter Beinart observed, “if American power swells overseas but the quality of life for Americans deteriorates at home, then American foreign policy has failed.” 17
    Second, Obama believed that the way you measure strength is by actually being strong,