Tea Party and Foreign Policy

In the Financial Times, Gideon Rachman ponders the consequences of last Tuesday's election results for America's foreign policy. His conclusions are not comforting:

The problem with a foreign policy grounded in a belief that America is uniquely powerful and virtuous is that it assumes that the rules that apply to other nations do not apply to the US as well. As a result, the Tea Party people are not well adapted to cope with the inexorable rise of new centres of power around the world. They are liable to interpret setbacks and frustrations, at home and abroad, not as a consequence of the inevitable and growing constraints on American power – but as a result of some sort of “stab in the back”, whether by “liberal elites” in Washington, or conniving foreigners overseas. That, in turn, risks leading to an unstable foreign policy that is aggressive, self-righteous and self-pitying in equal measures.