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For eight years, Nancy Soderberg served with distinction and creativity at the highest levels of American government. She is uniquely positioned to explain how the world works in this new era-and when it's in danger of breaking down.
--Dr. Madeleine K. Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State

Are there limits to American power? The neoconservative brain trust behind the Bush administration's foreign policy doesn't seem to recognize any. For the first time, we have people in power who believe that as the world's reigning superpower, America can do what it wants, when it wants, without regard to allies, costs, or results. But as events in Iraq are proving, America may be powerful, but it is not all-powerful.

In practice, no country could ever be strong enough to solve problems like Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq through purely military means. In the future, America's power will constantly be called up to help failed and failing states, and it is becoming clear that the complex mess of Somalia has replaced the proxy war of Vietnam as the model for what future military conflicts will look like: a failed state, a power vacuum, armed factions, and enough chaos to panic an entire region. Using vivid examples from her years in the White House and at the United Nations, Nancy Soderberg demonstrates why military force is not always effective, why allies and consensus-building are crucial, and how the current administration's faulty world view has adversely affected policies toward Israel, Iraq, North Korea, Haiti, Africa, and Al-Qaeda. Powerful, provocative, and persuasive, this timely book demonstrates that the future of America's security depends on overcoming the superpower myth.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Things Fall Apart
• 2 Crossing the Rubicon
• 3 Go as Peacemakers
• 4 Force and Diplomacy
• 5 A Realistic Foreign Policy?
• 6 A New Breed of Terrorists
• 7 The Myth of Invincibility
• 8 Failure to Be on a War Footing
• 9 Iraq: A Decade of Deceit
• 10 The Hegemonsa?? Failed Peace
• 11 Are We Really Going to War?
• 12 The African Intervention Gap
• 13 Winning the War on Terrorism
• 14 Lessons for the President
• Notes
• Index

Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Soderberg was part of the White House foreign policy staff during the Clinton administration. In this analysis, she compares and contrasts the international styles of the Clinton and current Bush administrations, drawing on her work diaries and files and extensive media articles. The largest part of the book is devoted to terrorism and Iraq. While Soderberg praises and criticizes both administrations, her preferences are clear. In her view, the Bush foreign policy team seeks a military solution first, as if a state achieves superpower status solely by its armed might; this approach represents a regression to the darkest days of the Cold War. In her opinion, emerging issues (e.g., nonstate terrorist groups and diseases like HIV/AIDS) cannot be solved with weapons alone by one country. This thoughtful, informed analysis belongs in academic libraries.-Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

A former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and Clinton foreign policy adviser, Soderberg offers this cogent study of the unilateralism that she believes has taken over American foreign policy and military intervention. The argument that ignoring U.S. allies (and even neutrals) interferes with the administration's own stated goals of peace and increased democracy is familiar, but Soderberg's deep knowledge of the mechanics of diplomacy, as well as of the players and issues, allows her to assess recent moves in depth: the book carries more than 1,150 footnotes. Along the way, we get a defense of Clinton's actions toward bin Laden (and other Clintonian policies) and various swipes at neoconservatives and neoconservative doctrine). Some readers will feel that Soderberg's rehashing of interventions in Somalia and the Balkans do not argue for multilateralism as a guarantee of improved politicomilitary outcomes. And the negative views of the "New Europe" on the aspirations of the Franco-German-Russian axis are not much taken into account-though everything from the Oslo accords to troubles in Haiti is. But as a file from the opposition on the current administration's tactics, this is a satisfying document. Agent, Andrew Stuart. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Commentators from both red and blue sides of the best-seller lists have occasionally found common ground in criticizing, albeit for different reasons, the Clinton administration's attempt to recast the U.S. role in the post-cold war world. Clinton wielded American influence with either too much ambivalence (leading to terrorism) or too much arrogance (leading to terrorism). This book by one of Clinton's foreign policy advisors, is a cogent critique of the current administration's hyperpower hubris and a vigorous vindication of the Clinton team's pursuit of elagant solutions to impossible situations. The U.S. may be the most powerful nation, Soderberg argues, but subscribing to the superpower myth of American omnipotence has led to dangerous miscalculations in Iraq and antipathy worldwide. Clinton, restrained as he was by American voters' limited tolerance of fights in which they had no dog, understood the global equation and the limits of American power. But Soderberg neither whitewashes Clinton's failures nor looks entirely backward; rather, she advocates a humble and realistic foreign policy. --Brendan Driscoll Copyright 2005 Booklist

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Nancy Soderberg is now a Vice President at the International Crisis Group