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Richard John Neuhaus does a sort of off the cuff summary of American foreign policy objectives today at First Things. A taste:

One must ask, What is the alternative to expanding political and economic liberalism? In his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus (The Hundredth Year), John Paul the Great contended that the source of global poverty is not to be found chiefly in exploitation (as Marxist theory held) but in exclusion from the circle of productivity and exchange. Justice, he said, requires a constant expansion of that circle. On balance, that is the goal of U.S. policy in the world. I say “on balance,” because there are notable inconsistencies, such as barriers that deny African nations, for instance, fair access to world markets for their agricultural and other products.

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