Remember the peace dividend? With the end of the Cold War, it was surmised that monies lavishly given to the military would be diverted to peaceful purposes. After the atomic bomb was dropped, Harry Truman optimistically predicted in 1945 that such “power” could be used to create “a paradise” in this world.

None of this happened, mainly because the United States began to set its course towards Empire. After Franklin Roosevelt died, his successor, Truman, began to follow Woodrow Wilson’s example of selective moralizing rather than FDR’s pragmatic world vision. Instead of accepting the realities brought by World War II, the United States propped up the dying system of colonialism and began to endorse a contrived project of “nation-building.” Wars came in its wake, from South Korea to South Vietnam.

After 1975, the cry of “no more Vietnams” appeared to confirm a shift in American foreign policy–no such luck. Suddenly, ideologists such as Zbigniew Brzezinski helped fashion a new Cold War. Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s “detente” or accommodation with the Soviet Union and China were discarded in favor of a selective human rights campaign, which ultimately led to conflict. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the US began to explore the expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe. It never stopped.

George W. Bush launched punitive expeditions in the Middle East and reaffirmed a “new world order” that pushed not so much peace as American supremacy. Meanwhile, the NATO bloc moved east slowly but surely.

By the 2000s, Russia had clumsily reasserted itself, first against Chechnya and then against Georgia. Vladimir Putin revived Russia to at least semi-respectable status. The US continued to push, launching “color revolutions” using every pretext to create Eastern European clients. Finally, they managed to force out a Russian-friendly Ukrainian government in 2014. Putin struck back, seizing Crimea and encouraging independent districts within Ukraine, suddenly another cold war with even larger Pentagon budgets and fewer dividends.

Then came Donald Trump, who tried to advance a new approach to foreign policy. He questioned the assumption that every nation had to follow “liberal values.” His instincts were good in that he saw this approach as alienating more conservative governments, such as Hungary, and he correctly questioned US involvement in Libya and other nations, which were once more spread-out commitments all over the globe. As with Nixon and Kissinger, he was a realist. But this earned him inflexible enemies who regarded anything less than US domination as a failure of will.

Which leads up to the upcoming summit between Putin and Trump. Flexibility, perhaps, may work after all, as the President did negotiate a peace last week between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Putin’s backyard. Perhaps a new diplomacy will emerge that emphasizes cooperation rather than confrontation. The so-called liberal “internationalist” order is neither. If a nation is not European or American in orientation, it cannot expect peace. So, it goes. Perhaps, Trump can follow the lead of Kissinger and FDR rather than Harry Truman and Woodrow Wilson.