Last week, I attended a webinar hosted by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft titled “What Does a Foreign Policy for the Middle Class Look Like?” The idea of a “foreign policy for the middle class,” championed by Joe Biden during the 2020 election, has an appeal so powerful as to be almost insidious. Of course U.S. foreign policy should advance the interests of most Americans, but would the mildly protectionist reforms proposed by Biden accomplish that objective? I was eager to hear an alternative view from Quincy, a collection of scholars and analysts who believe that U.S. foreign policy since at least the end of the Cold War has become overmilitarized, overambitious, and overstretched.
