The Silence of the Rational Center
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
What has happened to American foreign policy? Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke argue that the members of what used to be called the foreign policy establishment are no longer doing the job of keeping our foreign policy informed and rational. Instead, hungry to coin the next Big Idea, they are in the business of advancing simplistic, glib mythologies. The result is that Americans are often presented with a fantasy world of nightmare scenarios rather than with explanations that lead to rational choices. Taking to task such well-known figures as Samuel Huntington, Noam Chomsky, and Jeffrey Sachs, Halper and Clarke argue for a revival of integrity within our foreign policy elite so that America's standing in the world can be restored. A book that pulls no punches, The Silence of the Rational Center is both a penetrating diagnosis and a stirring call to reform in what is possibly the most important area of American political life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The experts we trust to provide guidance to our elected officials have\t\t failed us, seduced by the lure of cable television fame and popular book sales,\t\t argue Halper and Clarke (coauthors of America Alone:\t\t The Neoconservatives and the Global Order). Abandoning scholarship,\t\t too many have instead set off in search of the next Big Idea in foreign policy\t\t that purports to explain the world in five words or less. This phenomenon is\t\t not new "the authors identify Big Ideas from manifest destiny through the\t\t domino theory to the clash of civilizations "but the tendency to simplify a\t\t complex reality has become especially pernicious in the Iraq war debate.\t\t Finding targets on the right and left, the authors excoriate the Heritage\t\t Foundation as much as Noam Chomsky for lowering the level of public discourse.\t\t Though sometimes overblown (e.g., calling a public intellectual's decision to\t\t pen a regular op-ed column for a major daily newspaper a "Faustian arrangement\t\t with the media"), they paint a picture familiar to anyone who follows politics.\t\t Ironically, for a work that praises dispassionate, in-depth investigation, this\t\t book would have been better as a short essay.
