Jonah, I don’t follow your second paragraph. Just because governments have acted in a certain way historically, that doesn’t mean that they should have done so. Your second point, I think misses mine. You say that “the idea that the folks we call “realists” are the only ones concerned with our national interest just doesn’t fly.” I agree but that’s not the point I would make. I’m sure that many of the idealists (let’s use the term) are concerned to a certain degree with the national interest (as traditionally defined), but I suspect that they might attach less weighting to it than those in the “realist” camp. Certainly, that was true of Worsthorne who, remember, had this to say about the policy he was advocating: “Whether any material advantage to Britain will accrue from doing the world this great service is pretty doubtful.” As for nations often having “a more romantic understanding” of the national interest than advocates of realpolitik, I think that that can be true but, more often than not, such romantic understandings have very unromantic consequences.