Managing Global Chaos: Sources of and Responses to International Conflict
This massive tome represents the collective wisdom of a high-powered group of foreign policy practitioners and scholars, most of whom have been associated with the U.S. Institute of Peace over the past few years. Like other books of this type, it is very difficult to summarize; the richest chapters are probably those discussing the prospects and pitfalls of intervention in regional conflicts and humanitarian relief operations. The chapters by Crocker and Richard Betts serve as good counterpoints, the former arguing for an activist policy of preventive engagement and the latter cautioning about the illusion of "depoliticized" intervention. Henry Kissinger's chapter on the "New World Order" is misnamed: the new order is the same old one of power and politics that Kissinger has spent his life analyzing, only with the great-power deck reshuffled. The quality of the essays is uniformly high, and the edition should be useful in university courses surveying the contemporary international scene.
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Seymour Martin Lipset explains why the United States is exceptional. Michael J. Sandel blames its individualistic tradition for the country's ills and says America should return to the New England town square. But it isn't exceptional, and it shouldn't return.
Moscow with a Soviet hangover tests the patience even of those who most wish to engage it. As Chechnya festers, privatization lags, and the world contemplates the possibility of a communist president in the Kremlin dreaming of empire, some ridicule the notion of partnership. Russian chauvinists paint America as the enemy, but the interests of the two countries after the Cold War are compatible. The West should focus its attention--and Russia's--on common interests like nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, regional peace, and full participati0n in the world economy. America should deal rationally with irrationalities in a nation finding its way.
When Congress swings the budget ax, it cripples U.S. foreign policy. Now is the time to make a virtue of necessity and craft a system both leaner and better able to promote America's aims abroad.

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