The toughest question facing US foreign policy isn’t about Ukraine, Gaza, or Taiwan. It’s about who we are and how we should respond to a changing world.
In a period of great power competition, should we double-down on our global responsibilities? Or give up the Sisyphean task of upholding a liberal international order for a narrower set of interests?
That’s the million-dollar question at the heart of Statecraft 2.0: What America Needs to Lead in a Multipolar World (Oxford, 2025), a new book from Ambassador Dennis Ross. Written to supplement a previous work entitled Statecraft: And How to Restore America’s Standing in the World (2007), Ross’s new book starts from a painful new fact: We live in a multipolar world—no more business as usual.
“There is a different political, military, and economic landscape internationally than when I was writing in 2005 and 2006,” he says. “The United States is no longer the uber-power; the world is no longer unipolar. America is challenged from without and within. And statecraft done well has become even more important as a result.”
So begins an extended meditation on statecraft, built on historical case studies and the author’s own experience. As a foreign policy practitioner, Ross is less interested in the philosophy of statecraft than in the practical skills it requires. The core task is “knowing how best to integrate and use every asset or military, diplomatic, intelligence, media, economic, organizational, and psychological tool policymakers possess (or can manipulate) to meet their objectives”—in other words, balancing ends and means in pursuit of the national interest.
America, for all its achievements, has a spotty track record on statecraft. Reviewing past blunders, Ross identifies poor threat analysis, ideological distortion, and ignorance of the situation on the ground as common denominators. Prioritizing ends over means (George W. Bush in Iraq) or means over ends (Barack Obama in Libya), we arrive at the same result: a massive expenditure of American power with little to show for it, and a population skeptical of those at the helm.
Readers will appreciate Ross’s clear prose and sage insights, but will be fascinated by his theme of “national self-image” as it relates to foreign policy. In a liberal democratic republic like ours, statecraft is shaped by (and ultimately limited by) the people’s shared sense of identity and purpose. This shared identity, which constitutes the national self-image, will dictate ends and means alike. Policymakers and presidents can’t do statecraft in a vacuum. When policies are out of sync with the collective mind, they will fail for lack of popular support.
Ross’s argument turns on a simple, if controversial, point: America’s self-image is unique. “Deeply engrained in the American psyche is a belief in exceptionalism,” he writes, locating the essence of that belief in the “theme of providence placing special favor upon the United States.” Steeped in an Anglo-Protestant narrative derived from the Bible, the founders saw themselves as strangers and pilgrims fleeing Babylon to build a City on a Hill in the Promised Land—a city which would radiate light to the nations. Americans have long bickered over how to achieve this end—Should we hold the light aloft so the nations can see it? Or bring it proactively to foreign shores? And what exactly is the light?—yet Americans have agreed that theirs isn’t just another nation-state. America has a mission. America is exceptional.
Such assumptions no longer hold. Of the five foreign policy schools Ross identifies, he lumps the “America First” school of Donald Trump and the “Progressive/Restrainer” school of Andrew Bacevich in the same category. Though different in politics, the two agree on one thing: America may be great, but it’s not exceptional. Our sole foreign policy objective is to look out for ourselves, which usually means leaving well enough alone. Why would we be expected to—or presume to—do anything else?
That the US should minimize its commitments abroad and focus on its own prosperity is accepted doctrine among large segments of the right and left; but Ross remains an exceptionalist, multipolarity be damned. The world has indeed changed, and we can’t afford to make the mistakes of the past. But strong US leadership is more critical than ever.
Ross’s argument is credible and compelling, but falls short on the very question he so helpfully puts in the foreground: Will Americans keep seeing their nation as exceptional? Unfortunately, his case for American exceptionalism is usually framed in the negative (i.e., If we don’t lead, who will? China?) or in the tired language of democracy that no longer resonates. He insists that “an American self-image of selflessness on the world stage…still permeates an important part of the public,” but fails to explain how to re-evangelize the rest.
“No approach to the application of American statecraft is going to be sustainable if it is divorced from the American self-image and the traditions that shape it.” If Ross is right, the most important task in 2025 is to reunify America’s collective psychology; for no nation-state can long endure without a clear sense of self. It was no accident that Samuel P. Huntington wrote his last book to answer the ultimate question facing any nation: Who are we? It’s impossible to defend the national interest without first reaching consensus on national identity.
The real problem today is how to restore America’s self-image for a distracted and divided populace that lacks the biblical imagination of their ancestors. Because it touches on matters of religion and belief, this problem transcends the typical business of statecraft. It also raises a related issue of time. A nation’s mind takes years to develop; once unraveled, it won’t quickly renew. And here we arrive at America’s most pressing dilemma: While better statecraft is imperative, better statecraft is impossible without a robust public vision to drive it. Ross offers no solution to this dilemma, but performs a valuable service in exposing it.
The only sure takeaway is that the foreign policy now en vogue—“Eat, drink, be merry, and let the world burn”—isn’t enough to protect us. More fundamentally, it isn’t who we are.