A Cold Eye Assessment of US Foreign Policy: It’s the Policies, Stupid

Abstract

Perilous Power: The Middle East and US Foreign Policy Dialogues on Terror, Democracy, War and Justice. By Noam Chomsky, Gilbert Achar, Stephen R. Shalom. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press, 2009. 319 pp., $18.95 (ISBN-13: 978-1-59451-313-8). The United States and Latin America after the Cold War. By Russell C. Crandall. New York City: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 260 pp., $24.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-71795-3). America and Its Critics: Virtues and Vices of the Democratic Hyperpower. By Sergio Fabbrini. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2008. 222 pp., $22.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4251-2). To See Ourselves as Others See Us: How Publics Abroad View the United States after 9/11. By Ole R. Holsti. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2008. 234 pp., $24.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-472-05036-9). The Obama administration faces many challenges in the world from the ongoing war on terrorism and the quest for peace in the Middle East, to issues of the environment and trade. Each of the books reviewed suggest that the United States cannot solve these problems alone. Ole Holsti argues, “few contemporary international problems lend themselves to unilateral solutions” (p. 218). However, a hallmark of the Bush administration has been the idea that you are either with us or against us. This philosophy of unilateralism has led to short-sighted and reactionary policies that have unintended consequences. The alienation of our allies and the “wariness of China and Russia” have led to a situation where “we have more to fear from our own mistakes” (Chase 2002:8). According to Russell C. Crandall, the challenge for future policymakers is “not [to] let outdated assumptions…automatically lead us to foregone conclusions” (p. 247). The authors reviewed analyze American policy in different regions of the world, ask different research questions and use different methodological approaches. But the thread that ties these books together is a call for a more multilateral approach to foreign policy or, in the words of Holsti, “a cold eye assessment of policies and consequences” (p. 187). In Crandall's, The United States and Latin America after the Cold War we get an exhaustive look at American foreign policy in Latin and South America. Crandall contends that the end of the Cold War “diminished the ideological and strategic constraints that…dictated US policy” (p. xi). However, he states that political analysis of the region continues to suffer because we continue to view it through an outdated security paradigm. This text is an attempt to fill that gap in the literature by systematically addressing US policy through the post-Cold War administrations. He finds that America has “acted …