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It is time to have these debates and begin reducing US ambitions, instead focusing on the interests of the American people while adapting policies to available resources.

by Doug Bandow

It is tough today to be a member of the Washington foreign policy establishment, called “the Blob” by onetime deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes. Members of the Blob make, implement, and assess foreign policy. Their general shared objective is to run the world. Alas, nothing they do seems to be working very well.

Although they fight fiercely over influence, positions, and rewards, they even more resolutely work together to resist accountability. The Blob took America over a humanitarian cliff in the Iraq war, yet who among those responsible for years of brutal sectarian conflict, hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, millions of people displaced, and the destruction of historic religious minorities in Iraq alone paid a professional price for their grotesque policy malpractice?

To the contrary, they uniformly advanced professionally and continue to despoil the foreign policy debate, authoritatively pushing more interventions, commitments, and wars. The cost never seems to matter because others always pay.

Instead, Washington should be retrenching. America is under domestic siege, with widening political divides and uncontrolled government spending. Today policymakers are juggling at least four possible wars: Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. An outside observer could be forgiven for believing that Blob members have never heard of the concept of setting priorities. Everything is vital and we are a global power! The entire world must be brought under Washington’s, meaning the Blob’s, control. Onward, irrespective of cost and risk!

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