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The American Foreign Policy Legacy

Walter Russell Mead
January/February 2002
Summary -- 

Conventional wisdom has long been dismissive of and uninterested in the American foreign policy tradition. This neglect is a mistake. Not only has the United States been extraordinarily successful in its international relations, but its past foreign policy debates are very much alive today.

Walter Russell Mead is Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. This article is adapted from his recent book Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. Copyright (c) 2001 by the Century Foundation; published courtesy of Alfred A. Knopf.

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