Thanks for the invitation to participate in the Book Club and first off apologies for being slow to engage in the debate, which is the result of my having to travel unexpectedly for a family matter. I'm returning to Washington tomorrow and hope to be more active after that.

U.S. vs. Them is a provocative read and there's much in it that I agree with. However, since it's always more fun to disagree, my main point of contention with Peter's first post is the sharp distinction he seems to draw between "conservative" foreign policy and American foreign policy more generally, which has been fairly consistent in the post-World War II era whether the president in power is a conservative Republican or a liberal Democrat.

Peter argues that the "Bush administration's foreign policy bore a striking resemblance to the conservatism that developed after World War II under the tutelage of William F. Buckley, Jr," which "advanced a view of the Cold War not as a struggle between superpowers but rather as an apocalyptic struggle between good and evil, and that "the ramifications of Cold War conservatism presaged the Bush administration's foreign policy."

But even though there are distinctions between the foreign policy agendas of various American administrations, the priority under all (unsurprisingly) has been the expansion and consolidation of American economic and political power. So in my view there are more similarities than differences with "containment" under Harry Truman and the "Bush Doctrine" and "Freedom Agenda" of the current administration. The same goes for the "rollback of communism" under Ronald Reagan and the foreign policy of Jimmy Carter, which was driven, rhetorically, by the demand for universal human rights. All of those presidents, even Reagan, emphasized America's commitment to democracy abroad, yet cut the same deals with foreign dictators willing to support American foreign policy objectives.

And sure, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan had different ideas about foreign policy, but Carter, by vastly increasing the Pentagon's budget and in his response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, paved the way for Reagan's "freedom fighters" and his even massive military build-up.

Furthermore, much of American foreign policy has been reactive, not proactive, even the Bush administration's. The "neoconservatives" may have had particularly hawkish foreign policy goals, but it's doubtful they would have been able to so fully act on them without 9/11, which gave the administration an awful lot of room to maneuver.

I'm not arguing that foreign policy is preordained or that a Gore administration would have been identical in its foreign policy to the current administration or that Barack Obama would act precisely like John McCain. (nor that U.S. foreign policy has been one mistake after another). But I do think, and here's where I part ways with Peter, that there's quite a bit of continuity in "conservative" foreign policy and "liberal" foreign policy. The primary reason is that it's American foreign policy is inextricably entangled with the needs of -- for lack of a batter term -- empire.