Does America Need a Foreign Policy?
Toward a New Diplomacy for the 21st Century
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In this timely, thoughtful, and important book, America's most famous diplomat explains why we urgently need a new and coherent foreign policy and what our foreign policy goals should be in this new millennium.
In seven accessible chapters, Does America Need a Foreign Policy? provides a crystalline assessment of how the United States' ascendancy as the world's dominant presence in the twentieth century may be effectively reconciled with the urgent need in the twenty-first century to achieve a bold new world order. By examining America's present and future relations with Russia, China, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Asia, in conjunction with emerging concerns such as globalization, nuclear weapons proliferation, free trade, and the planet's eroding natural environment, Dr. Kissinger lays out a compelling and comprehensively drawn vision for American policy in approaching decades.
With an Afterword by the author that addresses the situation in the aftermath of September 11, Does America Need a Foreign Policy? asks and answers the most pressing questions of our nation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former Secretary of State Kissinger ambitiously undertakes herein the total revamping of U.S. foreign policy. This is necessary, he contends, because even though the U.S. is enjoying an unprecedented preeminence, it lacks "a long-range approach to a world in transition." Recent U.S. foreign policy, he says, has become dangerously ad hoc, a case-by-case response to challenges as they occur. Needed instead is "ideological subtlety and long-range strategy," which Kissinger provides. Chapter by chapter, he analyzes the broad challenges facing the U.S. and the world, from globalization and its attendant promises and disruptions (he warns that globalization has enriched many and impoverished and dislocated many others) to humanitarian intervention from Somalia to Kosovo. In other chapters he offers recommendations on how the U.S. should proceed in various areas of the world: Europe, the Western Hemisphere, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Kissinger's point is that each region is unique and thus so should be U.S. foreign policy toward them. Our alliance with Europe, for example, is the bedrock of Kissinger's U.S. foreign policy; we must make sure, he warns, that the European Community remains a political partner, not a competitor. While not all will agree with his findings he is, for instance, quite skeptical about humanitarian intervention it is a pleasure to experience a first-class mind subtly explaining in an accessible way the immense intricacies of modern U.S. foreign policy. 6 maps.
