And as strategists from both sides sift through the rubble—trying to piece together some kind of coherent vision for the United States’ future global role—they’re finding that they agree on more than they’re willing to admit.

If there is one thing that both political parties can agree on, it’s that traditional U.S. foreign policy lies in ruins—or, at least, the idea of America-as-globocop that prevailed in the post-World War II and post-Cold War eras.

If there is one thing that both political parties can agree on, it’s that traditional U.S. foreign policy lies in ruins—or, at least, the idea of America-as-globocop that prevailed in the post-World War II and post-Cold War eras.

And as strategists from both sides sift through the rubble—trying to piece together some kind of coherent vision for the United States’ future global role—they’re finding that they agree on more than they’re willing to admit.

One big point of agreement, at least among many of the younger strategists in both parties, is this: Most of us are realists now, schooled in the hard-nosed realities of power geopolitics in ways that our Pollyannaish predecessors weren’t. And anybody who isn’t—who still longs for the old dream of a liberal international order where the United States benignly plays global policeman—is mired in the past.

Of course, many differences remain. What’s emerging is not yet a new consensus, such as postwar internationalism or Cold War containment—not even close. But neither is it as divisive and incoherent as the current political rhetoric would lead you to believe.

Both sides are grappling with the idea that the United States must remain the world’s dominant power—just not quite as dominant. One big operative word is “restraint”: a dramatic scaling back of U.S. global ambition and a renewed focus on domestic interests in what both sides concede is now a multipolar world. Another important term is “prioritizing” U.S. interests, reflecting a common acknowledgement that Washington is overstretched and must scale back its involvement, especially in Europe and the Middle East.

Though President Donald Trump and the Republicans are in power today, some Democratic strategists are readying their own brand of realpolitik.

“We’re not going to surrender the mantle of realism to any particular political party,” one of the leading thinkers on the Democratic side—Mira Rapp-Hooper, a former senior Biden administration staffer—said in a phone interview. “I would resist the idea that the other side should have a monopoly on admitting that we need to set priorities in foreign policy.”

For both sides, these views have emerged from the common experience of the past couple of decades—especially the disastrous Iraq War and the economically ruinous “China shock” that exposed U.S. workers to unfair trade. Those major errors, among others made by both party establishments, led to a populist backlash, fueled by a common view that excessive wars of intervention and a feckless approach to open