Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace speaks about America and the Crisis of Legitimacy.

He said during election time there is always a desire to make it appear there are huge differences among the candidates, that they have divergent views.

But John Kerry and George Bush, he said, have similar views on some important issues. By extension, he said, a new administration really will not be so different from the present one. Historically, American foreign policy over the past 400 years, even before there was a country, is consistent.

During the last 20 years, Kagan said, “the United States has conducted eight fairly significant military interventions,” approximately one every two years. The United States is less a peaceful nation than its citizens think.

People have said Mc-George and Bill Bundy led the country into the Vietnam War, but most Americans favored it at the beginning. It is the same with the Spanish-American war, Kagan said.

“The truth is, … the U