Kagan on Ukraine and the "War to End All Wars":
A Free World, If You Can Keep It
"The war in Ukraine has exposed the gap between the way Americans think and talk about their national interests and the way they actually behave in times of perceived crisis.
"It is not the first time that Americans’ perceptions of their interests have changed in response to events.
"For more than a century, the country has oscillated in this way, from periods of restraint, retrenchment, indifference, and disillusion to periods of almost panicked global engagement and interventionism.
"Americans were determined to stay out of the European crisis after war broke out in August 1914, only to dispatch millions of troops to fight in World War I three years later...."
"Then as now, Americans acted not because they faced an immediate threat to their security but to defend the liberal world beyond their shores."
Imho, "perceived crisis" should probably be rewritten as contrived crisis.
So many of today's "national interests" would not even exist if the US had allowed "peace without victory" in Europe a century ago.