“There can be no solution to a problem,” wrote Senator Fulbright a generation ago, “until it is first acknowledged that there is a problem.” One of the most basic purposes of any kind of psychological therapy is to investigate the causes of those hidden forces that cause counterproductive behavior, to bring pathology into the open. That initial goal, once achieved, soon gives way to the more important uses of analysis: treatment and cure. Awareness of pathological beliefs is of limited utility unless it is accompanied by a determination to minimize their effects.

Having identified pathologies in U.S. foreign policy, what is to be done? This concluding chapter turns the focus toward the future, reviewing the pathological beliefs identified in this volume and suggesting that treatment is indeed possible, at least over the long term. It then offers thoughts about how such treatment would proceed, and reasons why it is vitally important to begin implementing it as soon as possible. If in the future the United States is to avoid the kind of folly to which it has repeatedly proven susceptible, it will need to jettison some of its deeply held beliefs and turn toward those generated by rational, supportable, healthy realism and prudence.