The emergence in the George W.Bush administration of America as Crusader State, More. In Sands of Empire, veteran political journalist and award-winning author Robert W.Merry examines the misguided concepts that have fueled American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. Moreover, these grand-scale flights of interventionism, regime change, and the use of pre-emptive armed force are without precedent in American history. bent on remaking the world in its preferred image, is dangerous and self-defeating, he points out. bent on remaking the world in its preferred image, is dangerous and self-defeating, he points out