Is America's National Defense of Ukraine Vital? | Michael Anton vs. Noah Rothman

You won’t want to miss this debate between Michael Anton and Noah Rothman as we chart the best path forward for America.

What are America’s national interests today, and how does our foreign policy serve best serve those goals? The end of the Cold War ushered in a “unipolar moment” of American geopolitical dominance, in which we enforced a “rules-based liberal international order” of freedom and increasing economic prosperity across the world. The last 30 years have almost unquestionably been the highpoint of American exceptionalism. But the rise of great power competitors in Russia and China and American military foibles in Iraq and Afghanistan have triggered a reconsideration of the “unipolar moment.” The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, has thrown the future of the liberal international order in flux, as well as divded Americans over how to respond. What does the war in Ukraine mean for the future of American foreign policy, and for the future of the liberal international order? What should America’s role be in defending that order?

Michael Anton:

Anton is a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a former national security official in the Trump administration. He is also author of the well-known “The Flight 93 Election,” which helped make then-candidate Trump a more intellectually respectable candidate, as well as author of The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return.

Noah Rothman:

Rothman is a senior writer at National Review. He is the author of The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back against Progressives’ War on Fun and Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America.

Daniel McCarthy (Moderator):

McCarthy is vice president for the Collegiate Network at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and editor of ISI’s journal Modern Age. He is responsible for ISI’s college journalism programs, which support independent campus publications and provide internships and fellowships to outstanding student reporters, writers, and editors. He has an extensive background in journalism, including as a columnist for The Spectator and past editor of The American Conservative. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, The National Interest, First Things, Reason, and a wide range of other publications. Before coming to ISI, he was director of the Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship Program at The Fund for American Studies. He is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis (where he edited a Collegiate Network paper) and lives in Alexandria, Virginia.