Foreign policy deals across time as well as space.
But Americans are different from everyone else in the world - except the Canadians, and Americans are more different from the Canadians than they often think.
The problems of elites is an old one for which Americans have found no solid answer.
The truth is that history constantly presents new problems in the guise of old.
America's problem is how to free itself from the grip of it's exhausted ideas.
The achievement of nationhood is a product not only of time and circumstance but usually of war and suffering as well.