International is a precise word. It means between nations — peoples who govern themselves, who can err, argue, bargain, and change course. That construct is how the world got to today: trade without an emperor, peace treaties without a permanent viceroy, science and goods crossing borders because countries chose it.
A rival worldview treats the globe as a single office. Global elites write the rule, the public is asked to comply, and there is no election that can fire the authors. That design cannot tolerate the messy part of being human: mistakes, second thoughts, the slow work of neighbors who disagree and still have to live together.
Realism starts with people as they are. Sovereign nations can be wrong. They can apologize, amend, and try again — the same way this country learned after internment, after child labor, after a civil war. A remote board has no such metabolism. It does not share a zip code with the cost of its theory.
The American habit after the great wars — leave other people their governments — is this construct in practice. So is a Marine’s oath to a Constitution rather than a man. Freedom is not a slogan over a world capital. It is a people remaining the boss of their own house, then dealing honestly with the house next door.