There was another part of Michael Desch’s review that I wanted to discuss. Desch writes:

Were I of a disputatious bent, however, I might point out that Nau’s own definition of conservatism—the belief “that if man cannot govern himself, he has no business governing others”—could be presented as prima facie evidence that his neoconservative or conservative internationalist foreign policy is hardly conservative at all. How can a philosophy that eschews social work at home be committed to engaging in it around the world?

According to Nau’s response, he doesn’t think he is advocating “social work” around the world, but it’s difficult to distinguish a foreign policy preoccupied with “spreading freedom” from one that seeks to interfere with the political affairs of other nations in just this way. Nau claims not to want American hegemony, but instead prefers a world of “limited government and sovereign states,” but that seems unlikely to be the result of persistent U.S. interference in the internal politics of other states. Regardless, what is meaningfully conservative about a foreign policy that privileges the promotion of rapid political change in other parts of the world? Conservatives should be interested in preserving U.S. security and liberty, but that doesn’t necessarily require “spreading freedom” anywhere, and the U.S. can sometimes jeopardize the stability of an entire region in the attempt.

This brings me back to another part of Nau’s view that keeps bothering me. Nau writes:

Conservative internationalists know that if democracies use military force only as a last resort, despots, who use force congenitally, will use military force during negotiations to achieve their objectives outside negotiations.

Put another way, Nau’s conservative internationalists apparently reject just war tradition and are prepared to imitate the behavior of despotic governments. According to this view, the U.S. should use force to bludgeon other states into accepting less favorable terms. Faced with a foreign policy that is already far too militarized, Nau’s answer is to make the use of force even more of a routine element of American dealings with other states. That sounds like a recipe for an endless series of conflicts, which can only waste U.S. resources in unnecessary wars and provoke retaliation that might have been avoided.