Okay, Andrew, then I’m at a loss to see how your view of the national interest has much teeth to it all. States should do what’s in the national interest with the caveat that if it’s put up to a vote states should do whatever the people want? And if the people want to do something against the national interest, that’s okay too? If it was the consensus of experts thing that threw you off, let’s just stipulate that the experts are right in some confirmable objective sense and the people are wrong. Which takes precedence, public opinion or the national interest? Should politicians — i.e. the people running governments — follow the winds of the public mood or the national interest. Because I think you’ll agree they are often at odds, not just when it comes to humanitarian issues but on such things as trade. FDR, many argue, moved us toward war when the people were decidedly against it. Was he wrong until the people decided he was right? Or was he right all along? This is ultimately my problem with conversations about foreign policy. There’s a whole lot of theory in the abstract, but when it comes to real life the argument is ultimately about what’s the right or smart thing to do on a case by case basis. And in such circumstances it is simply impossible to cleanly separate right and wrong in a moral sense from right and wrong in a narrowly constructed national interest sense and right and wrong according to the political calculation of what “the people” want. So creating some iron law, as you did at the outset, whereby it’s always wrong for the government to do things that aren’t in national interest becomes little more than debater’s point, usually employed against policies you don’t like. Almost by definition, any foreign policy direction you — or I — disapprove of can be fit into the argument that it’s “against the national interest” because we all have our own definitions of what’s in the national interest. For example, no one who favors strong U.S. support for Israel says it’s not in our national interest. But people who oppose strong support for Israel routinely claim they care about the national interest and the “Israel lobby” doesn’t. When in reality, both sides disagree on what’s in the national interest.