For most of its history, the United States avoided making military commitments that would entangle it in European-style power politics. Then, suddenly, it conceived a new role for itself as the world’s armed superpower — and never looked back.

In Tomorrow, the World, Stephen Wertheim reveals that American leaders made a conscious decision for global dominance. In just eighteen months before the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the Second World War, U.S. officials and intellectuals decided not only to enter the war but also to enforce “world order” in perpetuity.

That decision lives on today, but it has outlived its reason for being. In the 21st century, attempting to dominate the world by force has left the United States with endless war and little prospect for peace, as Wertheim argued in the New York Times.

Bacevich has just finished writing a book on the U.S. national security state after the pandemic. He and Wertheim will discuss how to change America’s role in the world today in light of its past.

The idea of “American exceptionalism” — and the worldwide military dominance that often comes with it — has long been seen as an untouchable third rail in US politics. But recent polls from the Eurasia Group Foundation and the Chicago Council show that Americans, especially younger Americans, are increasingly skeptical of the idea that America is exceptional or needs to police the world.

Join the Quincy Institute’s webinar on the public’s declining belief in American exceptionalism and the rise in their preference for a foreign policy based on military restraint. Why do Americans now want to be more like other countries? What does the changing electorate mean for future US foreign policy? Trevor Thrall of the CATO Institute will moderate as Eurasia Group Foundation senior fellow Mark Hannah, Chicago Council senior fellow Dina Smeltz, and the Quincy Institute’s own Stephen Wertheim discuss these important topics.