Zócalo Public Square

Iraq isn’t the first war that began with an overestimation of American power. Woodrow Wilson and the pro-war progressives believed World War I would transform the world. Lyndon Johnson and the Camelot intellectuals thought America could stop any communist movement from taking power anywhere on earth. George W. Bush and the neoconservatives imagined they could usher in their very own 1989 in the Middle East. Why does success produce hubris, and can tragedy produce wisdom? In an event sponsored by the UCLA Burkle Center, journalist Peter Beinart, author of The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris, visited Zócalo to chat with The Atlantic's Ben Schwarz about why it’s so difficult — and so crucial — to acknowledge the limits of American power.