Foreign policy deals across time as well as space.
America's problem is how to free itself from the grip of it's exhausted ideas.
The truth is that history constantly presents new problems in the guise of old.
The center holds; passion falls away. That is what happened ideologically in Western Europe over recent years.
For four hundred years European civilization has dominated the world - for better or for worse. It is convenient, and flattering, for Americans to assume that this is all over; but it very rash to do so.
The problems of elites is an old one for which Americans have found no solid answer.