America in Retreat
The Decline of US Leadership from WW2 to Covid-19
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The story of how America turned its back on the world...
In the heady days after 1945, the authority of the United States was unrivalled and, with the founding of the UN, a new era of international co-operation seemed to have begun. But seventy-five years later, its influence has already diminished. The world has now entered a post-American era, argues Michael Pembroke, defined by a flourishing Asia and the ascendancy of China, as much as by the decline of the United States.
This book is a short history of that decline; how high standards and treasured principles were ignored; how idealism was replaced by hubris and moral compromise; and how adherence to the rule of law became selective. It is also a look into the future – a future dominated by greater Asia and China in particular. We are in the midst of the third great power shift in modern history – from Europe to America to Asia.
Covering wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, interventions in Iran, Guatemala and Chile, and a retreat from international engagement with the UN, WHO and, increasingly, trade agreements, Pembroke sketches the history of America’s retreat from universal principles to provide a clear-eyed analysis of the dangers of American exceptionalism.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian and foreign policy analyst Pembroke (Korea: Where the American Century Began) accuses the U.S. of failing to meet its responsibilities as a global leader in this disappointing polemic. He argues that America gave up on its post-WWII promise to install a "rules-based order" based on international institutions long before Donald Trump won the presidency on an isolationist platform, noting that previous administrations had already begun to distance the U.S. from the United Nations and the World Trade Organization. Pembroke also takes the U.S. to task for consistently seeking military solutions to international problems, instead of trusting in the institutions it helped create, and sketches the problematic motivations and outcomes of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and covert CIA operations in Chile and Guatemala. Arguing that global power is inexorably shifting from America to Asia, Pembroke faults U.S. foreign policy makers for their ineffectual antagonism toward China, and details how Asian nations are strengthening their trade agreements with one another, building their military defenses, and forging ties with Africa and Latin America. Pembroke's complaints are familiar, and his analysis of the domestic political dynamics that have impacted U.S. foreign policy lacks depth. This half-baked treatise falls flat.
