Location: The Heritage Foundation's Allison Auditorium

In the annals of United States history, war often has served as the catalyst for fundamental transformations of American grand strategy. Not surprisingly, the War on Terror has triggered a passionate debate about the purposes of American power and America’s role in the world. But it has also given rise to the Bush Doctrine of the preemptive use of force and democratic regime change. Are these new ideas consistent with the first principles of American foreign policy? Looking at the long traditions of American diplomatic history and the prudential grounds of statecraft, Kaufman strives to reconnect the current foreign policy debate to America’s past and to consider the implications of this new doctrine – consistent with what he calls prudential democratic realism – for the future.

Robert G. Kaufman is a professor of public policy at Pepperdine University. He is the author of Henry M. Jackson: A Life in Politics and is currently completing a biography of Ronald Reagan.