Primacy or World Order : American Foreign Policy Since the Cold War

Describing the 30-year legacy of U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II, this book probes the inadequacy both of the Cold War strategies of the 1950's and 1960's and of the balance-of-power alternative devised by Henry Kissinger in the early 1970's. Professor Hoffmann provides an analysis of U.S. diplomacy abroad and in terms of domestic impact, and he examines the reasons for the failure of the U.S. in Vietnam. This is followed by a critique of Henry Kissinger's ideas, methods, styles, and policies and an appraisal of the condition in which U.S. foreign policy was left after Kissinger's departure from office. Professor Hoffman tells why the U.S. must make world order its chief concern. He sets forth general guidelines for a policy aimed at establishing such an order, despite the profound differences that exist among states that have traditionally pursued foreign policy with an end to increasing their power. And how the complexity of global problems-nuclear proliferation, shrinking energy resources, and the demands of the Third and Fourth World countries for a bigger slice of the world economic pie-means that traditional world politics cannot continue without risking violence and eventual chaos. This book shows how urgent the problem of world order has become it shows why-and what the new world order of the U.S. must be.