In recent years a lopsided and often unedifying debate has been taking place. Criticism of America's world role has been characterized by rhetorical excess, partisan acrimony, and ideologically driven assessments that fail to weigh the lethality of the threat we face in the post-9/11 world, the limits of international institutions, and the long-term implications for American strategy and policy. These shortcomings are evident not only in the policy and academic worlds in the United States, but even more so in Europe. Sterile debates about “empire,” ad hominem denunciations of the Bush administration, ritual incantations about multilateralism, and an acrimonious climate of blame and counterblame over Iraq are rampant (a veritable reductio ad Iraqum). Conversely, on the part of those more favorable toward recent American policy, there has been some keen dissection of opposing arguments but also a substantial amount of stridency, partisanship, and self-satisfaction.

The recent past has demonstrated that problems of policy implementation and flawed diplomacy matter a great deal. It is also clear that American predominance or hegemony in itself can trigger resentment and even hostility. But legitimate expressions of concern about the exercise of American power ought not to make us lose sight of what can happen in the absence of such power. This is something often lost in the volley of charges and countercharges over Iraq, over flaws in American intelligence, and in relation to the dangers or virtues of primacy and preemption.