Fareed to U.S. Foreign Policy: Chill Out

The most enduring and dangerous legacy of World War II on U.S. foreign policy has been a worldview devoid of shades of gray. Potential adversaries become pure evil. Negotiations are nothing more than repeats of Munich.

Fareed Zakaria speaks truth:

It's also worth noting that since World War II, the United States has tended to make its strategic missteps by exaggerating dangers. During the 1950s, conservatives argued that Dwight Eisenhower was guilty of appeasement because he was willing to contain rather than roll back communism. The paranoia about communism helped fuel McCarthyism at home and support for dubious regimes abroad. John Kennedy chose to outflank Richard Nixon on the right by arguing that there was a dangerous missile gap between the Soviets and the United States (when in fact the United States had almost 20,000 missiles and the Soviets had fewer than 2,000). The 1970s brought a frenzied argument that the Soviet Union was surpassing the United States militarily and was about to "Finlandize" Europe. The reality, of course, was that when neoconservatives were arguing that the U.S.S.R. was about to conquer the world, it was on the verge of collapse.

Don't get me wrong, the pure evil label may fit some of our enemies (see Al Qaeda; the Taliban). But when prioritizing responses to threats and less clear-cut adversaries (see Putinized Russia; China), some nuance can go a long way.

-Law Dude