I'm grateful to Michael Signer, David Schorr and Charles Kupchan for their comments on The American Way of Strategy. Charles has long argued for a concert of power approach, even when that was unpopular during the heyday of American triumphalism a few years back. And in his forthcoming book Demagogue, Michael emphasizes that there is far more to liberal, constitutional government than elections alone, an important truth that we need to be reminded of.

David thinks that liberal internationalism as I describe it is "too passive, heartless and unambitious." However, by the time he has finished qualifying what he calls a "more carefully calibrated liberal interventionism," he has arrived at a position very close to mine in practice. I am opposed to wars to "spread democracy" or "enforce human rights." But the U.S. and other countries can and sometimes should use moral suasion and in extreme cases embargoes to encourage justice in other societies.

Where I may differ with David, if I read him correctly, is that I do not believe that humanity inevitably is growing more interdependent, nor do I believe that interdependence is good in itself, if it results in too great a reduction in the ability of the sovereign peoples, democratic or otherwise, to choose the arrangements under which they live. Unlike world federalists, we traditional liberal internationalists do not view a global society of sovereign states as a stepping-stone to a global federal government or a post-national global society. The global society of sovereign states is our final goal, and it is not an end in itself, but merely a means for distinct peoples to work out their local destinies with a minimum of unsought interference. We did not fight to preserve a system of independent states from German or Soviet hegemony, and we do not reject a misguided attempt at U.S. global hegemony, in order to turn around and eliminate independent states in the name of universal human rights or global trade.

That's why there is a tension between nation-based liberal internationalism and the idea of globalization as a benign and irresistible force that will erode and eventually eliminate national sovereignty, to the benefit of humankind. People who say that globalization is good because it is reducing the control of nation-states over flows of goods, capital and immigrants across borders by definition are not liberal internationalists, for whom nation-states should be free to choose their own trade policies, their own foreign investment policies, and their own immigration policies. Countries may choose stupid and counterproductive policies, but that is their right. Talking about "world governance" rather than "world government" does not change the issue.

In this connection, I should say something more in passing about economics, which is central to foreign as well as domestic policy today. One point I make in The American Way of Strategy is that every major country, whatever lip service it pays to free trade and free investment, in practice seeks to reduce industrial interdependence to some degree by promoting a variety of strategic industries within its own borders. The desire to avoid military and industrial dependence on other countries and blocs is why China, Japan and India are building up their independent space industries; why European governments subsidize Airbus and have teamed up with China to have their own global satellite positioning system, instead of relying on America's GPS system; and why the U.S. subsidizes its aerospace sector through defense contracts and will almost certainly bail out the American automobile industry. Indeed, we are likely to see a retreat from financial interdependence, too, if regional and global attempts to re-regulate financial markets fail and nation-states reassert their own regulatory authority in the aftermath of the present crisis. If interdependence creates transmission belts for contagious pathologens, then less interdependence and more national firewalls may be preferable in the case of dangerous financial products and practices as well as avian flu.

I don't claim to have the answers, but I am convinced that in the post-meltdown era liberal internationalists are going to have to question paeans to allegedly inevitable one-way globalization and do some hard thinking about what kind of mixture of international economic integration and national economic independence best secures a liberal way of life in the U.S. and similar democracies.