Home › Books & Reviews › Capsule Reviews › Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy Toward Russia After the Cold War

Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy Toward Russia After the Cold War

James M. Goldgeier and Michael Mcfaul
Reviewed by By Robert Legvold
January/February 2004
Print Email
Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.
James M. Goldgeier and Michael Mcfaul
Brookings Institution Press
2003
450 pp.
0815731736
$19.95

This is the first book to explore U.S. policy toward Russia from Bush to Bush, and to do so with both a sophisticated conceptual framework and inside information. Goldgeier and McFaul do not try to explore every dimension or every major issue in U.S.-Russian relations. Rather, they focus on the core challenge of aiding Russia's domestic transformation and promoting its constructive integration into a changing international system. Thus, the analytical interplay is between the contrasting ways Republican and Democratic administrations approached this challenge, on the one hand, and the different weights they attached to security concerns versus support for Russian economic and political reform, on the other. The subtlety, balance, and insight of the analysis gives the book weight; the wealth of highly revealing material, gathered from interviews with a wide range of officials from the first Bush and Clinton administrations, gives it depth.

Related

Essay, Sep/Oct 2001
Russia's Unformed Foreign Policy
Robert Legvold

Although Russia has projected itself more forcefully on the world stage since the beginning of the Putin era, its foreign policy still lacks any sort of grand strategic vision. Russian leaders continue to squabble over issues from NATO expansion to the world economy. But they are particularly concerned about Russia's identity, especially with regard to the post-Soviet states. If the Bush administration fails to devise a coherent policy of its own toward its former rival, it may face serious problems down the road.

Read
Snapshot, August 20, 2010
Reimagining Eurasia
Samuel Charap and Alexandros Petersen

The United States may have reset its Russia policy, but the U.S. approach to the other states in the region is in dire need of a conceptual revolution.

Read
Essay, Jan/Feb 1997
Democracy Without Illusions
Thomas Carothers

What enthusiasts took for a global rush to democracy may be reversing direction, with backsliding and stalled transitions in the former Soviet Union, Africa, the Middle East. So far, one sees disarray or new strongmen much like the old; no competing ideologies seem to be beckoning. Market reforms have not been the cause in most cases. More affluent countries with Western ties seem to be sticking the course better. However the trend plays out, it should lead the administration to rethink democracy promotion. The truth is that U.S. policy is not significantly responsible for democracy's advance or retreat in the world.

Read