Fareed Zakaria

James F. Hoge

Celebrating the 75th anniversary of "Foreign Affairs", the most widely circulated journal of foreign policy, this remarkable collection gathers the most important essays from the past and present issues. The result is a book that reads like an intellectual history of the American century. photo insert.

The United States And The Making Of The Modern World

The American Encounter

James Hoge Jr F

In 1993, Samuel P. Huntington boldly asserted in the pages of Foreign Affairs, the preeminent magazine on foreign policy and international relations, that world politics was entering a new phase, one in which cultural differences in religion, history, language, and tradition were replacing Cold War tensions and would soon become the world's fundamental points of conflict.Huntington's striking thesis elicited both criticism and praise from the media and political experts around the world. More than a decade later, "The Clash of Civilizations?" continues to be a touchstone in global politics as writers passionately debate its merits and propose countertheories of their own.This collection presents the original, seminal essay followed by critical responses published in Foreign Affairs, including the author's reply to his critics and contemporary additions to the enduring question of how to understand world conflict.

The Clash of Civilizations? The Debate

Gideon Rose

Pundits often treat foreign policy decision making as a simple matter of morality or politics, and academics often ignore it entirely, viewing policy as driven not by individual officials but by broad structural forces. Foreign policy professionals, in contrast, generally see the subject as an arena of constrained choice. They try to figure out just how much freedom of action they actually have in a particular situation, and debate how best to use that freedom to advance the national interest. The hallmark of the serious professional's approach to foreign policy is not certainty but doubt; they live in a world with no easy answers, only an endless series of unpleasant tradeoffs. This collection is an introduction to that world. Originally published in Foreign Affairs, the essays gathered here offer a broad array of opinions on pressing topics ranging from handling rogue states to humanitarian intervention, from designing trade policy to dealing with the UN to managing relations with China. The authors all know what they are talking about and have the best interests of the country and the world at heart, and yet they come at the issues from different perspectives and often passionately disagree with each other's conclusions and recommendations. They all score at least some points and must be taken seriously, which only sharpens the reader's dilemma in trying to decide what should be done in each case. An excellent and accessible guide to foreign policy as it actually is, rather than the two-dimensional version so often on display in public debate.

James F. Hoge

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