US foreign policy in the domestic cultural conflict

‘Politics stops at the coast’ was once regarded as the American consensus: no matter what the parties squabbled about in domestic politics, they drew up their foreign policy lines together – with different emphases, of course, but the direction was shared. However, with the looming end of the ‘unipolar moment’ and growing American war-weariness, fundamental disputes over direction have now broken out even within the parties themselves. These partly reflect the dynamics of the culture war and mirror fundamentally different visions of what America should be at its core.