The evolution of all this is interesting. For decades, foreign interventionist was mostly a liberal position and conservatives have long been traditionally isolationist, though some of this got a little mixed up during the cold war. During the 2000 US presidential election, George W Bush campaigned as being opposed to Bill Clinton's foreign interventionism and nation building. Then suddenly Iraq comes along, conservatives and liberals switch sides for while, but Iraq goes sour real quick, and now almost everyone is an isolationist.
If one lives long enough everything comes around again. Isolationism from the eastern hemisphere's political affairs was the traditional American foreign policy from 1789 until 1894 with the acquisition of Hawaii. The Spanish-American War created a desire to get into the empire business along with the major Euro powers. Involvement in WWI was a major departure from Isolationism.
After WWI a form of Isolationism reasserted itself strongly as far as the eastern hemisphere was concerned. Isolationism was discredited with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Japan, Germany and the Soviet Union transformed American foreign policy. Their pressure on America gave rise to two new schools of thought. Realism and Liberal Internationalism. There was overlap between the two.
The triumph in WWII and the Cold War seemed to validate Realism on the Right and Liberal Internationalism on the Left. In retrospect that was foolish. But who sees historic processes and forces clearly? Not Americans and not Canadians.
Neo-conservativism started out as a form of leftism which was transmorgified into a form of conservativism on a mission to spread the ideal of freedom while securing American interests abroad. Only the events of 9/11 allowed Neo-conservativism to make a break out.
In the process of playing out over the last decade Neo-conservativism caused the loss of an empire and the squandering of American resources. The tactical American military victory in Iraq was really a strategic defeat. This has happened to polities, states and empires throughout history. It's a common pattern.
Now the fool Obama, damn him, is squandering American blood in an escalated military campaign in the Hindu Kush. In order to conduct Obama's War he borrows money from the Chinese. Damn him.
I was a Realist for most of my life, but I can see the forces of history at work on America now, and I understand that my beloved land has no choice but to abandon the eastern hemisphere to its fate, and return home.
But I do take a very bitter pleasure in knowing that those in the West who most opposed the era of Pax Americana will be the ones who most regret its end. Pax Americana, like Pax Romana and Pax Britanica, created an international order which kept the world out of world war. They will miss the American imposed phenomenon of Freedom of Navigation throughout the world's oceans.
But Pax Americana is through. NATO is hollow and worthless. The UN is meaningless and toothless. A new era is being born, and a new international order is being born as the old order dies. The new order will be marked by the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the spread of ballistic missile technology, and the rush of other powers to fill the political, economic and military vacuum created by the withdrawal of America. America's smartest bet is to make itself into a very small target, and to feverishly develop missile defenses.