Making Sense of New U.S. Interventionism

In the aftermath of the Libya operation, my Naval War College colleague Tom Nicholsconcluded bluntly, "Humanitarian interventions are here to stay and are going to be driven more by moral calculation and military opportunity than by 'national interest.'" This, it seems, is the new American foreign policy consensus; despite the costly U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the anti-interventionist coalition has lost the policy debate.