Who is American foreign policy for? Why, the American people, of course. It is Americans, collectively, who are menaced by the ambitions of great powers or the fanaticism of terrorists; Americans, collectively, must act in the face of global threats like climate change or nuclear proliferation. Every other sentence of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, whose sole subject was foreign affairs, includes the word “we”—we Americans, prepared to pay any price to defend freedom.
This idea is so deeply ingrained that we may be pulled up short by the expression that has come to be identified with President Joe Biden: “a foreign policy for the middle class.” It’s a novel phrase. Former President Bill Clinton, with his laser focus on the middle class, never thought to use it. A former Obama administration official, now a senior member of Biden’s foreign-policy team, told me last year that during President Barack Obama’s tenure if a policy was understood to advance national interests, “people just assumed it was good for the middle class.” In fact, he said, “How do you know if a foreign policy is good for the middle class? And what do we mean by ‘foreign policy’?”
