Lithuanian Annual Strategic Review

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 resulted in the Bush Administration (that of the forty third president of the United States) shifting U.S. foreign policy in a direction long urged by a group of intellectuals and policy advocates known as the Neoconservatives. Six years later, it is clear that the U.S. foreign policy community has rejected the Neoconservative argument without coming to consensus on an alternative paradigm. Hence, U.S. foreign policy is likely to be ad hoc in the near to mid-term, dealing with each newly emerging crisis and issue in isolation from others. Given this non-holistic approach, the United States will be forced to attempt to manage global affairs in reactive fashion, ceding the initiative to those states with clearer ideas of their national goals and interests. Among them will be China, Iran, and a newly re-assertive Russia.