America has always included an element of “might makes right.” The marshal in the old West meets the villains and defeats them. Order is restored. The good people are able to get on with their lives.

Typically, however, the good comes more slowly but also more peaceably. Child labor is defeated: perhaps by a combination of ballot box and shame. Corrupt political bosses are voted out of office when a free press shines light on their activities.

Nazi Germany was defeated by military might. Yet the structures which have prevented a return to world wide conflict are of a more peaceable sort.

The Marshall plan directed American aid to countries ravaged by World War II (including our enemies) and helped them rebuild. The U.S. used trade and commerce instead of war.

International bodies set rules about fair trading. Scholarships were given to foreign students for study in American universities so they might return and benefit their countries with new knowledge and skills, as well as spread American influence.

Certainly, the attacks of September 11, 2001, called for a military response in Afghanistan. Yet the war in Iraq drew us into a quagmire more because of our desire for cheap oil than anything else. It was might for our own economic benefit rather than a true desire to rid a small nation of a cruel dictator.

War is expensive in both lives and fortune. The United States is still strong enough to win by bolstering its working and middle classes. It can keep alliances with allies, especially democratic allies. It waited out the Soviet Union by such policies. It can do the same now—if it doesn’t yield to the pre-World War II kind of America First syndrome. That was the slogan of Nazi sympathizers before Pearl Harbor silenced them.