With the threats from fascist and Marxist totalitarian regimes now repelled, Americans no longer need to conduct a foreign policy that automatically imposes great costs, great risks, and great distortions in the power relationship between the American people and their government.  What replaces this can be a foreign policy based on conservative principles.  This will create that reservoir of public understanding and support from which Washington confidently will be able to draw at those moments when American lives and resources must be risked.

Burton Yale Pines is senior vice-president of the Heritage Foundation.