The American Conservative hosted its 8th annual Foreign Policy Conference Thursday. At previous conferences in years past, speakers often focused on the necessity to pull out of Afghanistan and shift our focus away from the Middle East. But now that we’ve left Afghanistan and both parties seem to agree that America’s focus must be shifted elsewhere, TAC’s Foreign Policy Conference took place in the midst of a transitional period for American foreign policy, and realists and restrainers gathered to discuss where we’ve been and where we’re going.

The conference, titled “American Security In A Multipolar World: Cooperation Or Competition?” forwarded these very questions. When TAC hosted its foreign policy conference for the first time in 2014, it wasn’t totally evident to the average Republican voter that the American empire was in a free fall that would usher in an era of increasing multipolarity. China was viewed as a still-malleable, up-and-coming competitor, not a civilizational adversary, and the transatlantic ties that held the West together seemed unbreakable. Oh, how so much has changed in the past eight years. As our power wains, America increasingly has to grapple with where and how its finite power and resources should be dedicated. Is America capable of prudentially countering China while maintaining its presence in the Middle East and bolstering Europe against Russia? The answer, as any of the speakers from the conference’s first panel, titled “A Retrospective on Afghanistan: Lessons Learned,” may tell you, is no.

So, where to from here? The second panel, “Revisiting the Monroe Doctrine: Central and South America as a Security Issue,” moderated by TAC Managing Editor Micah Meadowcroft and featuring Catholic University’s Jon Askonas, Hillsdale College’s Michael Anton, and the Hudson Institute’s John Fonte, considered the possibilities for the United States to return to its traditional sphere of influence within the western hemisphere in line with America’s desire to shift its focus towards solving its myriad of domestic problems.

The next panel, dubbed “The Rise of China: How Should the West Respond?” attempted to balance America’s retreat from global omnipresence with properly confronting an increasingly aggressive China, whose territorial ambitions are evident in the South China Sea, and its economic ambitions seen scattered throughout South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and even on U.S. university campuses.

The Institute for Peace & Diplomacy’s Arta Moeini, TAC’s Curt Mills, George Mason University’s Colin Dueck, and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Dan McCarthy then considered how the resurgence of nationalist sentiments in the West and beyond will play a role in shaping the increasingly multipolar geopolitical landscape, and how in some sense it might offer America reprieve in defense commitments it has upheld since the end of the Second World War.

The conference also featured a keynote address from Joe Kent, a retired member of the U.S. Army Special Forces turned congressional candidate for Washington state’s third district. Restrainers certainly may take issue with some of Kent’s positions—for example, his views on militarily and economically pressuring Iran. However, whether or not Kent wins his congressional race, he is surely a rising star in Republican politics, and chose TAC’s Foreign Policy Conference to lay out his vision for America’s future role in the world. Not long ago, it seemed virtually impossible that the foreign policy attitudes of a rising star within the GOP would be more closely aligned with restrainers than the interventionist neoconservatives that defined the party’s establishment.

Of course, Kent, as for all of the other speakers, are mere men and women. It would be too much for us to ask that they have every little detail worked out in the face of immense, civilizational questions with so many different variables. Some who scoff at beltway conferences as just another opportunity for insiders to pad their own egos and pat each other on the back may think this is a cop-out, and somewhat understandably so, given many conferences in this town seek to do just that. However, what unfolded Thursday morning at Catholic University of America shows exactly why putting on such conferences is important. What the conference participants gave us was a series of tools we can use to build this future vision for American foreign policy in a period of crucial transition, and devise ways to meet those ends. 

Longtime readers of TAC are well aware that this publication was started in large part to oppose the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq. Thus, influencing the conservative movement in a direction toward foreign policy realism and restraint has always been a central focus for writers who have passed through TAC’s doors for the last two decades. Given what has transpired in the wake of our drawdown in the Middle East, there is undoubtedly a sense of vindication, especially when I talk to those who have long been within the TAC sphere, for the founding purpose of the magazine and the stand they took against the Republican Party establishment and foreign policy blob.

Their ultimate vindication wasn’t without plenty of waiting, however. Eight consecutive years of war waged by the Bush administration in a vain attempt to recreate the Middle East in our chosen image was not enough for the Republican Party to realize the error of its ways. We nominated John McCain in 2008, who would carry on Bush’s torch, and had he won, we would have likely gotten even further involved in the domestic affairs of far away lands. With the election of Barack Obama, who, despite some gestures in a restraint direction on the campaign trail, was nevertheless just another liberal internationalist humanitarian at heart, we got a continuation of the Bush foreign policy anyway. Obama infamously sent a surge of troops into Afghanistan in 2009. Under Obama’s watch, the U.S. became far too involved in Syria, and helped depose Gaddafi in Libya. Somewhere between all that, Obama was elected for a second term, beating another Republican establishment candidate in Mitt Romney.

And then, of course, Trump happened. Would he have been successful without the foreign policy failures spanning two consecutive administrations to serve as a backdrop? We may never know. But the rise of Trump—whose instinctual rather than intellectual foreign policy preferences often overlapped with those of restrainers, and perhaps stemmed from his desire to focus on America’s domestic issues—accentuated real cracks within the foreign policy establishment.

While Trump may have left much to be desired for the pure realism and restraint intellectuals in his four years, Trump did have some notable achievements, such as decreasing our footprint in the Middle East and laying the groundwork for our complete withdrawal from Afghanistan.

To a certain extent, Joe Biden’s election does represent a threat to that progress. Nonetheless, Biden followed through and left Afghanistan (after a questionable delay), and, thus far, his administration has been much less cozy with China than those who know the Biden of old may have anticipated.

Which brings us to today. We are entering a period in which even some paid to think and write (including yours truly) about foreign policy issues seek to see an America that refocuses itself on restoring the homeland. Yet, the successes on the domestic front will always be linked to the foreign, and vice versa. America’s ability to revitalize itself domestically is incumbent upon not repeating the mistakes of the past—our wars of choice, our attempts at nation building, our constant buildup and forward deployment. The foreign policy foibles of the past 20 years have proved TAC and other realists and restrainers right. Now, we move forward.

To watch the complete 2021 TAC Foreign Policy Conference, click here.