The unrepentant regime-changer conceded the American public is war-weary, chary of the reckless foreign policy Wolfowitz himself helped entrench in post-9/11 Washington — but he hasn't let such trifles as bipartisan national opinion damp his enthusiasm for a commitment to permanent U.S. military intervention in the Middle East.

"The alternative is to let a very important, critical part of the world go to hell literally and lose American influence," Wolfowitz argues, envisioning a United States that settles into the role of world police, uses military force to ensure access to oil, and spreads American values at the tip of the sword.

It's an approach that finds many champions in Washington, not least among them Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who slammed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a New York Times op-ed for being insufficiently eager to use the American military to meddle in the internal politics of other countries. Tillerson betrayed America's founding principles, McCain claimed, in his rather inarguable assertion that "in some circumstances if you condition our national security efforts on someone adopting our values, we probably can't achieve our national security goals."