Andrew Latham
American Foreign Policy: Lost in the New World Multipolar Era
“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley” – or, in standard English, “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” That line from the famous Scots poet Robert Burns lands differently in April 2025 than it did when he first wrote it – and even when it landed a year ago. We’re living in the wreckage of a world of failed strategic assumptions. The American-led order isn’t fraying. It’s fractured – it’s totally agley.
Grand strategies crafted in think tanks and federal agencies now lie scattered across a world that no longer plays by yesterday’s rules. The real crisis in international affairs today isn’t Ukraine, Taiwan, or the Red Sea. It’s that the geopolitical architecture we spent 30 years propping up has collapsed, and the foreign policy establishment still hasn’t caught up.
Multipolarity isn’t a prediction. It’s the present tense.
Washington continues to talk like it’s managing a rules-based order. But in reality, we’re negotiating a post-American world from a position of fatigue, debt, and denial. And the real danger isn’t China, Russia, or Iran. It’s the growing mismatch between U.S. commitments and U.S. capacity. We’re trying to fight on three fronts, reassure every ally, deter every rival, sanction every rogue, and still believe we’re the center of global gravity. That’s not strategy. It’s inertia with delusions of grandeur.
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