Greg Ip

So even though we've been in this period of very soft, stagnant hiring, there's a few hints out there that things might be picking up.

So even though we've been in this period of very soft, stagnant hiring, there's a few hints out there that things might be picking up.

So I suppose you could say it's a glass half empty, full story on the job market.

So I suppose you could say it's a glass half empty, full story on the job market.

For as long as you and I can remember, when presidents went into another country, they always had high-minded reasons, you know.

Oh, we need to restore democracy.

He's threatening his neighbors.

When George H.W.

Bush freed Kuwait from Iraq in 1991.

When George W. Bush went into Iraq in 2003, they explicitly disavowed any interest in taking Iraq's oil.

In his view, American greatness does not flow so much from values such as the promotion of democracy and freedom.

It flows from more tangible things like military power, economic strength, and territory.

And he is making it clear that when you are deciding whether to invade another country, those sorts of economic interests, including your control of their precious resources, those aren't some tertiary factor.

They are front and center.

You have to sort of like divide US foreign policy in the post-war period into two phases, the Cold War and the post-Cold War period.

So during the Cold War period, the North Star was push back communism.

And the United States did a lot of, you know, unsavory things in the pursuit of pushing back communism.

We fomented a coup d'etat in Iran.

We pushed out duly elected people like the president of Chile because they were too close to the communists and the Russians.

It was less about containing the Soviet Union, which no longer existed.