David Calleo

Washington insider opinion is mirrored in John Newhouse's Europe Adrift, but that does not mean the book is an accurate reflection of the continent.

In recent years, American policy at home and abroad has seemed more pressed by events and less sure of its responses than at any time since the late 1940s. Since World War II, the guiding ideals of policy have been neo-Keynesian "full-employment" at home and neo-Wilsonian leadership abroad. It is difficult to count the achievements unimpressive. Along with an unparalleled domestic prosperity, America's leadership and power have coaxed the world into a structure of collective security and liberal economic interdependence--a pax Americana that has been, on balance, the happiest era of this troubled century. The present disarray of American policy arises from two broad trends that have increasingly undermined both its domestic and foreign achievements. The first is the apparently relentless acceleration of domestic inflation--a process that involves increasingly violent swings of the business cycle and a progressive stagnation of real growth and competitiveness. The second is the deterioration of American power abroad and, with it, the disintegration of the pax Americana.