At War with Ourselves: Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World - Hardcover

Hirsh, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195152697 ISBN 13: 9780195152692

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2003

Synopsis

As correspondent for Newsweek, Michael Hirsh has traveled to every continent, reporting on American foreign policy. Now he draws on his experience to offer an original explanation of America's role in the world and the problems facing the nation today and in the future.
Using colorful vignettes and up-close reporting from his coverage of the first two post-Cold War presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Hirsh argues that America has a new role never before played by any nation: it is the world's Uberpower, overseeing the global system from the air, land, sea and, increasingly, from space as well. And that means America has a unique opportunity do what no great power in history has ever done--to perpetuate indefinitely the global system it has built, to create an international community with American power at its center that is so secure it may never be challenged. Yet Americans are squandering this chance by failing to realize what is at stake. At the same time that America as a nation possesses powers it barely comprehends, Americans as individuals have vulnerabilities they never before imagined. They desperately need the international community on their side.
In an era when democracy and free markets have become the prevailing ideology, Hirsh argues, one of America's biggest problems will be "ideological blowback"--facing up to the flaws and contradictions of its own ideals. Hence, for example, the biggest threat to political stability is not totalitarianism, but the tricky task of instituting democracy in the Arab world without giving Islamic fundamentalists the reigns of power. The only way for Washington to avoid accusations of hypocrisy is to allow the global institutions it has built, like the U.N., to do the hard work of promoting U.S. values.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Hirsh is the former Foreign Editor and chief diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek. He is currently a senior editor in the magazine's Washington bureau. He is a lecturer and has appeared numerous times as a commentator on Fox news, CNN, MSNBC, and National Public Radio. In addition to Newsweek, he has also written for Foreign Affairs, Harper's, and Washington Monthly. Hirsh was co-winner of the Overseas Press Club award for best magazine reporting from abroad in 2001 for "prescience in identifying the al Qaeda threat half a year before September 11" and for Newsweek's coverage of the war on terror, which also won a National Magazine Award. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

America's profound ambivalence toward stewardship of the international system will be the "permanent quagmire" of the 21st century, argues Hirsh (a senior editor at Newsweek, which excerpted this book in its May 12 issue) in his timely contribution to recent literature on the U.S. role in the post-Cold War world. While America "the "oberpower" dominates the globe by exerting a combination of ideological influence and military and economic power, Hirsh says that successive administrations have failed to grasp the nation's historic mandate as orchestrator of the new world order. Having been a foreign correspondent from Kosovo to Afghanistan, Hirsh reports on the discordant policies of Clinton and Bush, while providing the lay reader with an overview of the conflicts and personalities that have shaped a lackluster U.S. foreign policy over the past decade. Unconventional threats like terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction render the U.S. vulnerable and necessitate, in the author's view, a multilateral approach. In Hirsh's perfect world, Clinton's Wilsonian idealism-marked by economic integration, democratization and multilateral cooperation-would coalesce with Bush's unilateralist view of overwhelming military power to forge a strong and principled American leadership. In the meantime, America must confront the pitfalls of "ideological blowback" caused by the spotty application of its own ideals abroad. Repairing the disconnect in U.S. foreign policy that backs autocratic regimes in places like the Middle East while failing to press democracy in the area, offers, Hirsh says, a good place to start.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

How is it that the same country that gave the world Woodrow Wilson's crusade for a League of Nations to guarantee peace has now also given us George Bush's dismissal of the United Nations as an irrelevance to the waging of war? A longtime diplomatic correspondent, Hirsch has watched closely as America has stumbled into being the only superpower to survive the cold war. The stumbling was apparent during the Clinton administration--which freely deployed the Wilsonian rhetoric of international idealism but botched its handling of the Kosovo crisis and recoiled from the horrors of Rwanda. But Hirsch expresses even deeper skepticism about the go-it-alone assertiveness of Bush conservatives. Our real national interest, Hirsch argues, lies in leading--not abandoning--the international community that the U.S. helped bring into existence. Only a full commitment to international organizations can limit the "ideological blowback" America has incubated by preaching self-determination and free enterprise while denying the claims of Third World separatists. An ideal primer for general readers trying to fathom the promise and peril of global politics. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195152697
• ISBN 13: 9780195152692
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304