Esther Nathanson, and Dan Wittenberg of the New York Times. The second piece deals with what it means for America’s role in the world.

“America’s role in the world” is a phrase that’s become all-too-familiar—a line that can be taken from a column or cable news segment, or even the title of an American newspaper: America’s role in the world or America’s past and future. In this article, I’ve argued that it’s not exactly accurate to speak of America’s “global role,” or its “first world role,” because these terms are too abstract to capture what happens in some places that others are more comfortable talking about. Instead, I’ve attempted to capture the complexity and nuance of America’s global role, exploring American interests and obligations here in the U.S. and across the region.

It’s important to understand American interests and obligations in the twenty-first century in order to understand the current geopolitical predicament. America’s global role includes a range of activities. The first line of analysis is often a matter of the definition of a state by the United Nations; for instance, the United States considers itself an “axis of democracy.” The U.S. government defines a state in many ways—not all of which apply in the twenty-first century. Other times, the U.S. government uses the term as an umbrella term, with numerous overlapping definitions. For instance, for Israel, the U.S. defines it as the “state of Israel and the Jewish people.” To Americans, in the twenty-first century, Israel is Israel, and “the Jewish people” is not considered an ethnic group in the United States, but the national or ethnic group. This distinction is important because it helps Americans to understand the different states and regions within the global order—with no need to define each instance.

The second line of analysis is that a country’s global role is determined by its population, not by the economic output it produces. As in the “first world role,” it includes, for instance, the question of the extent of social inequality in a country. The second line of analysis has a different focus: it investigates, in large part, how the United States defines and interprets its role in the world. American policymakers (including presidents) have relied on a number of definitions of U.S. global interests, including that of an “American exceptionalism” or “global