Sifting Through American Foreign Policy

Abstract

This volume brings together some of the most recent writings of Amitai Etzioni, brilliant sociologist and leading communitarian thinker, on international security issues. The articles, mostly published in 2010 and 2011, with a few from 2009, have been revised and updated. Unlike many other collections of this kind, they work together quite well as a coherent, thoughtful, and impressively wide-ranging analysis of some of today's toughest “hot spots.” Etzioni is always worth reading for his insights, his carefully researched and argued incisiveness, his ability to look at the empirical evidence from different perspectives, and the wisdom which flows from creative thinking across disciplinary divides and long experience both in academe and as a policy advisor. Rightly, the collection starts with three articles exploring the single most important bilateral relationship for the future world order, that between the United States and the People's Republic of China. Although the analysis misses the most recent deterioration in this relationship, its conclusions still stand: While considerable uncertainty surrounds the rise of China in the future, the United States will almost certainly enjoy military superiority for decades to come, and therefore can afford to accommodate this rise, rather than confront China and thus risk turning it into a challenger by way of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Etzioni also points out that some of the accusations the United States regularly levels against China are somewhat hypocritical (for example, “China surely is not a responsible stakeholder, but then few nations are,” p. 40.), and he assures the West that it need not fear the ideological competition from China, given the overall worldwide trend toward democratization.