Strategic futures

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Robert W. Tucker, David C. Hendrickson

"With communism in retreat following the sudden end of the cold war, America's brand of democracy appeared triumphant around the world. Yet, paradoxically, the United States was left floundering for a new global agenda. In this critical analysis of American foreign policy priorities, Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson argue that the Bush administration, in its attempts to address the challenges posed by the new global realities, has betrayed the fundamental ideals on which this country was founded." "Taking the gulf war as their starting point, Tucker and Hendrickson dissect President Bush's vision of a new world order, exposing its inconsistency with America's traditional diplomatic principles. They criticize Bush's all-out military assault on Iraq as a disproportionate and inhumane response to the crisis. By using force to resolve the gulf crisis when other means were available--for example, a policy of "punitive containment"--and then walking away from the ruin created by the war, Bush succumbed to an "imperial temptation" that has seduced and corrupted other great powers in the past." "Tucker and Hendrickson make a compelling argument that U.S. foreign policy should return to the guiding principles set forth by the Founding Fathers. They maintain that these principles offer a far better guide for dealing with the perils and opportunities facing America today than Bush's foreign policy agenda. They believe that the nation has developed an attitude toward the use of force that is both unnecessary and irresponsible, and they advocate a foreign policy for the coming generations that would protect America's vital interests while remaining faithful to the nation's traditional ideals." "The Imperial Temptation makes an important--and what is sure to be viewed as controversial--contribution to the national debate over the future of U.S. foreign policy and offers a revealing examination of the classic ideas underlying American diplomacy and their relation to the nation's historic purpose."--BOOK JACKET.

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George Monbiot

In this collection of essays on money, religion, war, power, culture and nature, the author explains why we are heading into an uncertain future in which peace and sound politics are paramount to our survival. From his attack on the countries that deny the existence of global warming to his rally against the injustices of the Iraq war, the author turns his gaze on the aspects of modernity that most endanger the prevailing world order. With characteristic precision, he offers unassailable proof that the desecration of the resources on which we all depend threatens the peace, equality - and very existence - of humanity. This book is an urgent wake-up call that we cannot afford to ignore. -- Publisher details.

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Jeffrey E. Garten

No issue may be more crucial to America's standing in the world and to its ability to solve its social and economic problems at home than its widening competition with Japan and Germany. In A Cold Peace, Jeffrey E. Garten, an investment banker who has served in the White House and the State Department, shines an intense light on the growing conflicts with our two most important allies and rivals--and on the critical impact they will have on America's future. Garten explains how the often irreconcilable agendas of Washington, Tokyo, and Berlin stem from over a century of deeply held cultural, institutional, and political traditions. Whether the issue is trade, banking, technology, defense policy, immigration, or the environment, in the coming decade we could well see grueling struggles among the three countries including new forms of economic warfare, differing notions of national security, the formation of new regional empires, and destructive rivalries in global organizations. Going beyond today's headlines and sound bites, beyond the sterile debates over protectionism versus free trade, and beyond the dead-end arguments over whether America is the lone superpower or whether it is in decline, A Cold Peace reveals the most fundamental dilemmas for America in the years ahead. In a powerful analysis drawn from two decades of high-level experience in both the public and private sectors, Garten shows that the greatest threat to the United States is home grown--in our reluctance to recognize the links between our domestic and foreign policies, in our inability to see how the global rules of the game have changed, and in our failure to adopt a new mind-set not only toward Japan and Germany but toward ourselves as well.

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Olivier Roy

In this book, Olivier Roy, Europe's leading scholar of political Islam, argues that the consequences of the "war on terror" have artificially conflated conflicts in the Middle East in such a way that they appear to be the expression of a widespread "Muslim anger" against the West. But in reality, there are no us and them. Instead, the West faces an array of "reverse alliances" that operate according to their own logic and dynamics. The West supports General Musharraf in Pakistan, yet his military intelligence services are in league with the Taliban; in Iraq, the United States shores up a government that is closely linked to its archenemy, Iran; Iraqi Kurds, allies of the Americans, give sanctuary to the PKK, an adversary of a fellow NATO member, Turkey; while the Saudis support the Iraqi Sunnis who are, in turn, fighting Coalition forces. As if these issues were not complicated enough, the ever-worsening Shia-Sunni divide now threatens to disrupt any future strategic planning the West might attempt in the Middle East. Roy unravels the complexity of these conflicts in order to better understand the political discontent that sustains them. He also emphasizes that the war on terror should not be regarded merely as a geopolitical blunder committed by a fringe group of neoconservatives. It is instead a problematic outgrowth of our deeply rooted Western perceptions of the Middle East, including the belief that Islam, rather than politics, is the overarching factor in these conflicts, thus explaining the West's support for either would-be secular democrats or (more or less) benign dictators. Roy's conclusion argues that the West has no alternative but to engage in a dialogue with the political forces that truly matter—namely the Islamo-nationalists of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.