At the dawn of the new year, the most important foreign-policy debate facing the United States isn’t unfolding in Ukraine or the Middle East. It’s playing out much closer to home—in Central and South America.

The United States has long viewed the Western Hemisphere like a fire extinguisher: important in theory, hopefully unnecessary, out of mind unless something is on fire.

For decades, U.S. foreign policy has reflected that view, chasing crises in every corner of the world while overlooking the one region whose stability most directly affects American security: The Western Hemisphere.

The U.S. National Security Strategy finally breaks from that old pattern.

It is the most radical and long-overdue change in U.S. foreign policy in a generation. For the first time in living memory, the Western Hemisphere is treated as a top priority.

The strategy calls for a reallocation of military resources toward our own neighborhood and is grounded in a principle most Americans would consider common sense: the United States should act abroad in ways that make the United States stronger, safer, and more prosperous.

Imagine that!

Predictably, large parts of the foreign policy establishment hate this. They fail to understand that the National Security Strategy is not novelty. It is continuity with the best of the American tradition.

The document not only

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