If you liked George W. Bush’s foreign policy...

IN MITT ROMNEY’S 2010 campaign book, No Apology: The Case for National Greatness, the former Massachusetts governor cites twelve countries that the United States has invaded for the “cause of freedom.” Readers expecting to learn about World War II or the downfall of Slobodan Milošević might be surprised by Romney’s list. The dozen include not only the Philippines, where the United States sought to supplant the Spanish as imperial rulers in 1898 and then fought a brutal 14-year war against Filipino independence forces, but also, astonishingly, the Dominican Republic, where Lyndon Johnson sent the Marines in 1965 to prevent the return of an elected government toppled by a military junta.

One person who would be especially perplexed by this list is Mitt Romney, or at least the Mitt Romney of 18 years ago. When he challenged then-Senator Ted Kennedy in 1994, Romney criticized the intervention in Haiti and laid down strict rules for military action. The Boston Globe wrote, “Romney leans slightly toward an isolationist stance.” But as a presidential candidate, Romney has, yet again, changed positions.

Romney’s recent gung-ho romanticizing of America’s imperial calling might simply be ascribed to ignorance. But a close reading of his books and speeches suggest that the one-time quasi-isolationist is in the grips of a very different ideology. Romney has embraced a sharply defined worldview that calls for the United States to engage in a no-holds-barred struggle for global hegemony against the forces of darkness threatening Americans’ freedom. First among evils is Russia (our “number one geopolitical foe”), followed by China, and Iranian and other Islamists who want to establish a “caliphate with global reach and power.” To defeat them, Americans should use any means available, including what Romney euphemistically dubs “interrogation techniques.”

These ideas are new to Romney, but they have a long pedigree. Romney describes his foreign policy as seeking to create a “new American Century”—a term popularized by Time-Life founder Henry Luce in 1941 and recently revived by neoconservatives. “I’m guided by one overwhelming conviction and passion,” Romney declared last October. “This century must be an American Century.” His foreign policy white paper is even titled “An American Century: A Strategy to Secure America’s Enduring Interests and Ideals.” But if he becomes president, will this vision actually guide his foreign policy, or would he return to a more limited view of America’s national interest? The circumstances of Romney’s life, and the prevailing ideology among Washington’s conservatives, suggest that, if he is elected, Romney’s campaign rhetoric is likely to become reality.

IN 1941, HENRY LUCE was, in many respects, a conventional upper-class Republican wary of the collectivist impulses he saw in the New Deal. Luce feared that, if Germany, Italy, and Japan were to overrun Europe and Asia, the United States would go beyond even the New Deal and embrace national socialism. In February 1941, he published an essay, “The American Century,” warning that, if the Axis powers emerged victorious, “there is not the slightest chance of anything faintly resembling a free economic system prevailing [here].” Luce called on the United States to enter the war as Britain’s “senior partner.”