Diplomacy is the art, the science and the means by which nations, groups or individuals conduct their affairs, safeguarding their interests and promoting their political, economic, cultural or scientific relations, while maintaining peaceful relationships.

The U.S. State Department offers the following under the heading “Regional Stability”: “The State Department uses diplomacy in all regions of the world to keep local conflicts from becoming wider wars that may harm U.S. interests. The State Department joins with other countries in international organizations to promote stability and economic prosperity.”

By the end of 2024, the United States was directly involved in five wars: Ukraine, Gaza/West Bank, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria. The back story to each of these conflicts is, as Sen. Angus King might say, complicated.

Over time, our foreign policy appears to have two major flaws, a lack of hindsight and an absence of diplomacy. The values of a nation are evidenced by how and where it expends its resources. Historically, the leading edge and focus of U.S. foreign policy has been our military. We are currently spending more than $800 billion on our military and $10.4 billion supporting diplomatic programs. Behind these budgetary figures are more than 700 military bases in 80 countries.

The historical record is there for all to see. In 1898, Hawaii was forcibly annexed by the U.S. In 1933, Marine Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler used his resignation speech to describe his military service record in Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and China.

In more recent efforts, in the 1990s we supported Saddam Hussein in a proxy war with Iran. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Afghanistan was a proxy battleground for the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. One could argue that America was the winner in that battle (the Soviet Union and Afghanistan certainly weren’t), except that U.S. actions then created the threat from the Taliban today. There were no winners.

In 1997, when President Clinton decided to use NATO to surround Russia, 50 of our most experienced foreign policy experts called that decision “a policy error of historic proportions.” The letter they sent to the president describing possible results of this error seems prescient today; look our proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

Claiming that the U.S. is a neutral bystander, as Marc Champion implied in his opinion piece in the Maine Sunday Telegram on Jan. 5 referencing the war in Ukraine, strikes me as evidence of the two flaws I mentioned earlier, a lack of hindsight and an absence of diplomacy.

A major result of this activity has been death, destruction and instability in nations around the world. Additionally, the natural flow of emigration and immigration has been transformed, adding to political instability in secondary nations.

The U.S. does not stand alone in responsibility for the current stance of world peace or the lack of it. It takes two to tango. Ideology, religion, power and economics all play their role, thus the need for the art and skill of diplomacy. Using our military as the main tool in our foreign policy tool bag is like using a hammer when some oil or grease would do the trick.

It seems appropriate to finish with an old adage: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”