Stephen Walt has a good piece on U.S. power and relative decline that's well worth reading, but I wanted to highlight this contention:
If all we were trying to do was defend Americans against major threats and foster continued economic advancement, running U.S. foreign policy would in fact be relatively easy. The main reason American foreign policy looks difficult is because Washington keeps taking on really difficult objectives, like occupying Iraq, trying to turn Afghanistan into a modern, Western-style state, attempting to coerce Iran into giving up all nuclear enrichment in exchange for precisely nothing from us. And that's just for starters. No matter how strong you are, you can make your job more difficult if you consistently try to do things that are both very, very hard and not necessarily all that important.
I don't know how "relatively easy" running America's foreign policy would be - it seems like a tough job under the best of circumstances (even bloggers, omnipotent as they are, have their limitations). Still, Walt's point is one that really needs to be internalized when listening to presidential candidates (and presidents) talk about foreign policy. There is an expectation that U.S. foreign policy is mostly about "solving" problems when in fact it's usually more about managing them. There are some times when "kicking the can down the road" can be irresponsible, but there are other problems (say, like North Korea) where ending your administration without a major catastrophe is something to be content with.
