The United States does not have to adhere to its current imperial form of foreign policy. The choice that most people seem to prefer is called selective engagement or a more multi-lateral foreign policy. Rather than acting preemptively and unilaterally, under selective engagement the U.S. would continue to exercise its military power globally, but only when broadly supported by a multi-lateral coalition.

Given the nature of the existing political, economic, and military distributions of the major European powers and Japan, such a multilateral global intervention is unlikely to emerge. The demographics of these countries, with their aging,declining populations, and these nations' limited economic capacities to generate useful military capabilities limits their ability to address problems of global order. Nor is there the political will to construct these capacities. For example, a coalition of former great powers is unlikely to join the United States in Pakistan, where the collapse of a government in possession of forty nuclear weapons is looming. After all, the only reason the Europeans acted with American leadership in the Balkans was to prevent a massive refugee flow over their own borders.

Therefore, the only real alternative to empire now is American military withdrawal. Under this policy, American national security would be pursued by having the military withdraw to the western hemisphere, employing all of our capabilities and resources to protect us here at home. Such a military retrenchment would acknowledge the degree of global disorder. Such a withdrawal might even reduce some of the hostilities against the U.S. abroad.

Regardless of what foreign policy one favors, it is important to recognize that we as a country began to intervene all over the world, using military means to achieve local governments that were satisfactory to us, without engaging in a national political debate on the subject. In a democracy such debate should be encouraged. Informed public consent really ought to be the precondition for adopting any bold, new foreign policy.