Two decades ago, the Cold War came to a close, with America emerging victorious as the most powerful nation in the world. Uncle Sam had a golden opportunity.

“It is time,” wrote Patrick J. Buchanan, a three-time presidential candidate and advisor to the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, during the period of the Soviet Union’s downfall, “we began uprooting the global network of ‘trip wires,’ planted on foreign soil, to ensnare the United States in the wars of other nations, to back commitments made and treaties signed before this generation of soldiers was even born.”

Buchanan made a solid point. Did it make much sense for our country to keep its Cold War commitments if said war was ending?

We did not listen. Since these words were written, the United States has waged war in a host of nations around the globe, including Iraq (twice), Somalia, the Balkans and Afghanistan. NATO, the alliance temporarily formed to thwart a Soviet Union that declared the U.S. its enemy (and one in which if a member nation is attacked, all must come to its defense), has now expanded to include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Baltic States (Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania), with Ukraine and Georgia in the offing, all nations in Russia’s backyard. So much for a North Atlantic alliance.

Our Nobel Peace Prize winning president has not removed troops from Iraq while escalating the war in Afghanistan. The U.S. Army is fighting a proxy war in Pakistan, the Senate passed a bill that would expand sanctions on Iran and Connecticut war hawk Joseph Lieberman has said, “If we don’t act pre-emptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war.”

Iraq? Check. Afghanistan? Check. Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Yemen? Check, check, check, check.

Makes one wonder if our leaders use a map of the world as a dartboard and decide whichever country we hit, we target.

Lest we also forget, the United States military is an ubiquitous force around the globe. There are tens of thousands of troops in Japan and South Korea, countries whose populations want us out. We have thousands of troops in Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, subsidizing the defense of Western Europe so the European Union can expand their welfare state.

Our foolish foreign policy is bankrupting our nation while making us less safe abroad. Our troops our stretched far too thin; indeed, insists columnist Tony Blankley, “we do not have enough troops to rationally implement an adequate defense of our national interests.”

There must be a way out of this madness.

Mr. Buchanan’s advice to the country two decades ago may as well have been written today. “What we need is a new nationalism, a new patriotism, a new foreign policy that puts America first, and not only first, but second and third as well.”

How do we put America first? Granted, detailed policy prescriptions cannot, for the sake of space and brevity, be unwound in these pages. However, a few basic ideas can be proposed.

We could start by immediately bringing all of our troops home that are not involved in combat. They are protecting no vital interest and are simply wasting money.

We must stop our culture of belligerence. Our own CIA thinks Iran incapable of building a nuclear bomb. And even if they did, we faced down a Soviet Union with 40,000 nuclear weapons. This is no reason to commit troops to yet another country.

We must abandon NATO, realizing it as the unnecessary Cold War remnant that it is.

While we may not have the opportunity afforded us 20 years ago, the opportunities we do have continue to slip away as our leaders sit back and continue the same old, tired policies.