Declinism Among the Foreign Policy Elite

Robert Kagan is concerned about many of his peers in the foreign policy elite:

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the last few years has been the stunningly large number of American thinkers, strategists and pundits who have been perfectly prepared to lose wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. People talk about American decline these days, but it is not in the basic measurements of national power that American decline is to be found. It is in the willingness of the intellectual and foreign policy establishments to accept both decline and defeat.

There is a new doctrine out there that seems to enjoy enormous cache among the smart foreign policy set: fight wars until they get hard, then quit.

I think a large part of Kagan's problem is that he's unhappy that his peers won't discuss national security issues in cartoonish, Manichean terms. They're many things to call a more narrowly tailored counter-terrorism strategy, but "losing" and "quitting" aren't them. But this is an age old and frankly wearisome technique - stake out a sufficiently vague but maximalist position that requires a long-term garrison of American forces on foreign soil and call it "victory" - and then use the most absurd, demagogic language to characterize every alternative, even ones that contemplate a fairly robust use of military power.

If you are concerned about the decline of America, worry more about the portion of our foreign policy elite that refuses to address the range of policy options in front of the United States in an intellectually honest manner.