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THE HELL OF GOOD INTENTIONS

America's foreign policy elite and the decline of u.s. primacy.

by Stephen M. Walt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 16, 2018

Walt’s call for a greatly reduced military presence overseas will appeal to many readers, though his book will find many...

Want someone to blame for Iraq and Afghanistan? Blame the purveyors of “liberal hegemony,” whose blunders paved the way for Donald Trump.

The 2016 election, argues Walt (International Affairs/Harvard Univ.; Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy , 2005, etc.), went to dark-horse candidate Trump because voters had sensed, somehow, that something was wrong with the way American foreign policy was being conducted. By his account, the establishment against which Trump railed was invested in the idea that America was the primary superpower and responsible for policing the rest of the world. The end of the Cold War allowed the U.S. to pursue ambitious foreign policy objectives “without having to worry very much about the consequences,” some of which would manifest themselves in the rise of Islamism and other reactionary movements. Walt’s arguments against “liberal hegemony”—the adjective meaning not leftist in orientation but instead something that “seeks to use American power to defend and spread the traditional liberal principles of individual freedom, democratic governance, and a market based economy”—are coherent if sometimes strident, and his descriptions match what appears to be happening on the ground, such as the emergence of China as a foreign policy rival to the U.S. The author is not altogether against that emergence, for the arrival of a “true peer competitor” provides powerful incentive to overhaul the system and impose greater accountability for unsuccessful outcomes. In the place of the failed grand strategy followed by both Democratic and Republican administrations in the past few decades, Walt proposes a program of “offshore balancing” that would emphasize American interests and promote world peace. Among its tenets is the abandonment of threats of regime change, as with those recently directed against North Korea. Writes the author, “countries usually seek nuclear weapons because they fear being attacked and want a powerful deterrent, and U.S. efforts at regime change heighten such fears.”

Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-374-28003-1

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | HISTORY | UNITED STATES | U.S. GOVERNMENT | INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | GENERAL HISTORY

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

The osage murders and the birth of the fbi.

by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.

During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann ( The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession , 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.

Pub Date: April 18, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017

GENERAL HISTORY | TRUE CRIME | UNITED STATES | FIRST/NATIVE NATIONS | HISTORY

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BOOK TO SCREEN

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY

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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal

by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel

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The Hell of Good Intentions—A Review

Walt is always thinking of ways to blame the most vexing international problems on liberal hegemony. From proliferation to terrorism to Trump, he sees its malignant influence everywhere he looks.

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A review of  The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy , by Stephen Walt. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, (October 2018) 400 pages.

Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, is sick of academics, politicians, and journalists who regard the United States as the “indispensable nation,” which has to remain “engaged around the world” to ensure that the “US-led international order” is upheld.

These are the fundamental assumptions that have underpinned American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War—a foreign policy that goes by many names, depending on who you ask. Left-wing critics call it “neoliberalism” or “neoimperialism,” Hillary Clinton calls it “American leadership,” and Walt—author of  The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of US Primacy —calls it “liberal hegemony.”

Walt isn’t alone in decrying liberal hegemony—John Mearsheimer (Walt’s  collaborator  and a fellow realist at the University of Chicago) published  The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities  around the same time as  The Hell of Good Intentions , and  The Quincy Institute  was recently founded to advocate a more pragmatic and restrained approach to foreign policy in Washington. With the election of President Trump, who frequently derided American interventionism and the role of US-led international alliances and institutions during the 2016 campaign, critics of liberal hegemony saw an opportunity to challenge the “Blob”—the term President Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes used to describe the foreign policy establishment in Washington, DC.

Walt and Mearsheimer are the best-known opponents of liberal hegemony from a “realist” perspective—a school of thought in international relations that emphasizes the role of states and the distribution of power over, say, the importance of promoting democracy and liberal values. Realists argue that, because the international system has no central authority, states are locked in a sort of Hobbesian trap of permanent competition, constantly vying for influence over one another. This is why Walt argues that the US should pursue a strategy of “offshore balancing,” which “focuses on preventing other states from projecting power in ways that might threaten the United States.” Accordingly, Walt says the US should “deploy its power abroad only when there are direct threats to vital US interests.”

On the other hand, Walt defines liberal hegemony as an ideology that “seeks to use American power to defend and spread the traditional liberal principles of individual freedom, democratic governance, and a market-based economy.” That’s the  liberal  part. The  hegemony  part is the idea that the US is “uniquely qualified to spread these political principles to other countries and to bring other states into a web of alliances and institutions designed and led by the United States.”

The Hell of Good Intentions  is an attempt to explain the “dismal record” of post-Cold War US foreign policy. According to Walt, the main culprit is the foreign policy establishment in Washington, DC, which has remained stubbornly committed to liberal hegemony “even as the follies and fiascoes kept piling up.” While it’s easy to make a case against “follies and fiascoes” like the Iraq War, Walt is far more ambitious than that—he says the United States has failed in “nearly every key area of foreign policy” since the early 1990s.

Walt argues that the consequences of these failures are dire: The US is on worse terms with Russia and China than at any point since the end of the Cold War, rogue states have become even more dangerous, the US armed forces’ “reputation for competence and military superiority” and “America’s democratic brand” have been “tarnished,” liberal democracy is in decline and authoritarianism is on the rise, globalization created the conditions that led to the rise of Trump, Viktor Orbán, and other illiberal leaders, nuclear proliferation has continued, and terrorism has become more widespread.

Walt mentions “threat inflation” dozens of times in the book: “A time-honored method for selling an ambitious foreign policy,” he writes, “is to exaggerate foreign dangers.” But for Walt, threat inflation is also a means of convincing his readers that US foreign policy has been a disaster. Although he wants us to believe that a more restrained foreign policy makes sense at a time when the “dangers the United States faces are less daunting than in earlier eras,” he also has to demonstrate how dangerous the world has become as a result of liberal hegemony.

This is why Walt approvingly cites even the most hysterical threat inflators when they support his argument:

In 2014, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, judged the world to be “more dangerous than it has ever been.” In 2016, Richard Haass gloomily noted that “the question is not whether the world will continue to unravel, but how fast and how far.” Or as Henry Kissinger observed darkly, “The United States has not faced a more diverse and complex array of crises since the end of the Second World War.”

If these were quotations from a National Security Strategy or a report by the American Enterprise Institute, Walt would ridicule them as cynical excuses for the perpetuation of liberal hegemony. But as arguments  against  liberal hegemony, they suddenly become credible assessments of the state of the world.

Meanwhile, Walt ignores facts that are inconvenient to his thesis. For example, he explains that the “Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations all made democracy promotion a central goal of US foreign policy,” going on to observe that the United States’ “efforts to promote democracy and human rights have gone into reverse.” This analysis echoes recent  reports  by organizations like Freedom House, which have presented evidence of a “democratic recession” around the world. But if Walt is going to cite large-scale democratic trends, he should be honest enough to cite them for the entire period covered by his book.

Compared to the past three decades, the “democratic recession” is a statistical blip—in 1990, there were just  57 democracies  in the world and 111 autocracies. In 2018, there were almost 100 democracies and only 80 autocracies. Far from being a period of “democracy demotion,” as Walt argues, the post-Cold War era has seen the largest democratic explosion in human history.

Walt is similarly selective in his appraisal of the United States’ efforts to promote economic liberalization. Before explaining why “globalization failed to deliver as promised,” Walt admits that “Lowering political barriers to global trade and investment did boost world trade” and “helped countries like China and India lift millions of people out of deep poverty.” Make that well over a  billion  people: In 1990, there were 1.9 billion people living in extreme poverty—36 percent of the planet. By 2015, that number had fallen to 733 million—less than 10 percent of the planet.

Of course, the United States doesn’t deserve credit for all of these developments. The world is a complicated place and it’s difficult to isolate the direct effects of US policy on the trends toward democratization and market liberalization. But it’s also difficult to determine the extent to which liberal hegemony has  contributed  to the problems Walt outlines, and in many cases, he just wants to blame US officials for as much as possible without demonstrating clear causal links between policies and outcomes.

A major theme of  The Hell of Good Intentions  is the idea that the United States squandered its “unipolar moment.” As Walt puts it: “When the Cold War ended, the United States found itself in a position of global primacy unseen since the Roman Empire.” Instead of taking advantage of this position, the US abused its power and overextended itself by expanding NATO and drastically increasing its other overseas commitments. A predictable consequence of these policies, Walt argues, is the return of great power politics: “Today, Russia and China are significantly stronger than they were, both are at odds with Washington, and Moscow and Beijing are collaborating more closely than at any time since the 1950s.”

This point reveals one of the biggest problems with Walt’s analysis: His selective use of evidence to argue that the most serious international problems the US faces can be blamed (for the most part) on liberal hegemony. For example, consider his claims about Russia: While eastward NATO expansion has undoubtedly antagonized Moscow, Walt repeatedly draws direct lines from US foreign policy to behavior it can only partially explain. While it would be idle to suggest that NATO expansion, the deployment of ballistic missile defenses in eastern Europe, and so on didn’t have an effect on Russian behavior, there are good reasons to believe Vladimir Putin’s revanchist impulses and the political conditions that already existed in Europe were more decisive causal factors.

In a discussion of US support for the pro-Western demonstrations against Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine, Walt writes, “Moscow responded by seizing Crimea and backing breakaway militias in eastern Ukraine, thereby halting Ukraine’s drift into the Western orbit.” Notice the inversion of responsibility here: The protesters took to the streets because Yanukovych refused to move forward on a political and economic agreement with the European Union. Despite the fact that Kiev had been drifting toward the EU for years and the Euromaidan movement was an organic reaction to Yanukovych’s stubborn allegiance to Moscow, Walt insists that Russia’s aggression was a response to the  United States  instead of the political realities in Ukraine.

In February 2014, the Ukrainian Parliament  voted  overwhelmingly to remove Yanukovych, and Russia invaded Crimea shortly afterward. In a March 2014  address , Putin argued: “In people’s hearts and minds, Crimea has always been an inseparable part of Russia.” Putin was losing his grip on Ukraine no matter what the US did, and his imperial attitude toward Crimea predated the crisis in 2014. While American support for the protesters certainly angered Moscow, it was far from the determinative factor that led to the seizure of Crimea.

Walt’s claims about liberal hegemony and the rise of China are even more dubious. While there are good reasons to believe Russian intransigence can be explained by a vast array of variables, one of them is certainly pressure from the United States. However, the evidence that a change in US foreign policy could have significantly impeded the reemergence of China as a great power is next to nonexistent—in fact, Walt demonstrates that liberal hegemony is one of the few significant  checks  on Chinese power.

It’s difficult to tell what point Walt is trying to make about China in  The Hell of Good Intentions . He points out that China has become increasingly assertive, making bolder territorial claims in the South and East China Seas and increasing its economic influence in the region. But this would be happening regardless of what the United States did, and Walt gives us no reason to believe otherwise. He also makes strange connections without attempting to explain their significance, such as this one: “With the United States bogged down in the Middle East and elsewhere, in 2013 Beijing announced an ambitious ‘One Belt, One Road Initiative,’ a multibillion-dollar infrastructure project to develop transportation networks in Central Asia and the Indian Ocean.” Is he really suggesting that China would have held off on a massive, multi-regional economic initiative if the U.S. wasn’t “bogged down” in the Middle East?

If anything, Walt unintentionally makes a convincing argument that the biggest mistake the US has made with its China policy was the  abandonment of liberal hegemony. It would be difficult to think of a more quintessential example of liberal hegemony than the Trans-Pacific Partnership—a major international trade agreement that encompassed 40 percent of global economic output and gave the United States a leading role in setting rules and regulations for the fastest-growing economies in East Asia. When the Trump administration withdrew from TPP, American economic influence in Asia was drastically reduced.

For someone as critical of liberal hegemony as Walt, his appraisal of Trump’s decision to pull out of TPP raises many questions:

Trump clearly saw China as a serious economic and military rival … and he understood that the United States needed to counter China’s rising power and growing ambitions. But if so, then abandoning TPP was an enormous misstep that undermined the US position with key Asian allies, gave Beijing inviting opportunities to expand its influence, and brought the United States nothing in return. It was also a mistake on purely economic grounds, as TPP’s remaining members went ahead with the agreement, depriving US exporters of more open access to a large and growing market and giving Washington no say over the health, regulatory, or labor standards embedded within the agreement.

Barack Obama couldn’t have said it better himself. Walt would doubtless argue that this was a case in which his realism happened to coincide with liberal hegemony, as checking China’s economic ambitions helps to maintain a balance of power in East Asia. But his arguments about TPP still undermine his core thesis. By Walt’s own admission, a vast US-led trade agreement was the most powerful check on China’s rising economic power. At the very least, this should lead us to conclude that liberal hegemony has its advantages.

Walt is always thinking of ways to blame the most vexing international problems on liberal hegemony. From proliferation to terrorism to Trump, he sees its malignant influence everywhere he looks. But although he makes persuasive arguments against the United States’ prosecution of the War on Terror and open-ended military engagements like Iraq and Afghanistan, he drastically overstates the negative influence of liberal hegemony and ignores its successes in other areas.

For example, after mentioning a few anti-proliferation victories since the end of the Cold War (such as the successful efforts to persuade former Soviet states to give up their nuclear weapons, the Nunn-Lugar Act, and the removal of Libya’s WMD stockpile), Walt argues that “US efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons achieved relatively little after 1993.” Walt doesn’t mention the major arms control treaties negotiated with Russia in the 1990s and 2000s (START I and II, SORT, and New START). Nor does he mention the fact that there were more than 55,000 nuclear warheads in the world in 1990—a number that has collapsed to around 9,200.

Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan weren’t the only countries that agreed to hand over their nuclear stockpiles at the end of the Cold War—South Africa did so as well. Meanwhile, countries such as South Korea and Japan pledged not to build nuclear weapons, largely thanks to the security guarantees provided by the United States. The American-led security umbrella in East Asia is another area where Walt is all in favor of liberal hegemony—he points out that a substantially reduced US presence in South Korea would “undermine the US role in Asia and constitute a major victory for North Korea and its Chinese patron.”

Walt’s assessment of the United States’ record on nuclear proliferation disregards the most significant anti-proliferation victories of the past 30 years. What’s more, his criticism rests on unconvincing assumptions, such as the idea that other countries developed nuclear weapons because they were upset about American hypocrisy: “Washington kept demanding that other states refrain from developing WMD, at the same time making it clear that it intended to keep a vast nuclear arsenal of its own.” He continues: “If the mighty United States believed its security depended on having a powerful nuclear deterrent, then surely a few weaker and more vulnerable states might come to a similar conclusion.” Does Walt really think vulnerable states needed the United States to demonstrate the advantages of having a nuclear deterrent?

According to Walt, the “perceived threat  from  the United States is the main reason why North Korea, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Iran were interested in acquiring a nuclear deterrent.” He doesn’t mention that all of these countries have major regional rivals (South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc.) that account for their pursuit of nuclear weapons—a peculiar omission for a realist. This isn’t to say the threat of American intervention wasn’t a factor, but where’s Walt’s evidence that it was the  main  factor for each of the states he mentioned?

The Hell of Good Intentions  presents a simplistic and selective picture of the costs and benefits of liberal hegemony. Walt’s arguments against nation building and the worst excesses of the War on Terror (the use of torture, Abu Ghraib, warrantless surveillance, etc.) are compelling, but most of his critics have already been convinced by those arguments. Meanwhile, he fails to substantiate his more controversial claims about the relationship between liberal hegemony and the “democratic recession,” great power rivalry, nuclear proliferation, and a wide range of other problems.

Walt refuses to engage with the strongest arguments against his position. In a section of his last chapter titled “Counterarguments,” he presents a few hypothetical objections to his criticism of liberal hegemony that don’t address any of the points outlined above. For example:  Didn’t Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, and Recep Erdogan do a much worse job than US policymakers?  But Walt doesn’t point to a single academic, politician, or journalist who has made this argument or anything resembling it.

Other “counterarguments” include the claim that US foreign policy has outperformed “other public policy sectors.” Walt explains that this “misses the point” because there are “no benchmarks or performance measures available to rank different government sectors, making precise comparisons among them largely meaningless.” Well, yes. But who has actually  tried  to defend liberal hegemony by comparing it to domestic policy? Walt also says some of his critics may point out that “U.S. foreign policy is no worse today than it was in the past,” which sounds more like a concession than an argument.

With Trump in the Oval Office, the growth of authoritarian populism in Europe, the inevitable tension with a rising China and an increasingly aggressive Russia, the persistent threat of terrorism, chaos in Syria, Libya, and Yemen, and a wide range of other international crises and challenges, it’s easy to forget the successes of the past 30 years. So easy, in fact, that Walt finds himself looking back fondly at Cold War US foreign policy—the days of a “laserlike” focus on “containing and eliminating the Soviet rival.” The record of Cold War American policymakers may not be perfect (Walt makes passing references to Vietnam), but it’s “better than the parade of missed opportunities and self-inflicted wounds recorded by the four post-Cold War presidents.”

Is it? Vietnam was far more destructive than the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s a bloody counterpoint to Walt’s claim about the “laserlike” foreign policy of the era. The Cold War was a time of obsessive military build-ups (in 1986, the US had two and a half times more nuclear warheads than the entire planet does today); violent and subversive clandestine operations everywhere from Central and South America to Southeast Asia; policies that had little to no regard for human life (such as the United States’ support for Saddam Hussein as he waged a catastrophic war with Iran, a policy Walt endorses as a prime example of offshore balancing); and nuclear brinkmanship with the Soviet Union that could have turned the entire planet into a radioactive inferno. Considering the historical context, a “parade of missed opportunities” doesn’t sound so bad after all.

Just as supporters of liberal hegemony should be realistic about its costs, critics should be honest about its benefits. Perhaps it’s true that the re-emergence of great power competition, the recent democratic setbacks in the West, and all the other problems Walt lists in his book can be blamed on liberal hegemony, but you’ll have to look elsewhere for the evidence.

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Book summary and reviews of The Hell of Good Intentions by Stephen M. Walt

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The Hell of Good Intentions

America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy

by Stephen M. Walt

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About this book

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From the New York Times–bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy - explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it.

In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have soured, the European Union is wobbling, nationalism and populism are on the rise, and the United States is stuck in costly and pointless wars that have squandered trillions of dollars and undermined its influence around the world. The root of this dismal record, Walt argues, is the American foreign policy establishment's stubborn commitment to a strategy of "liberal hegemony." Since the end of the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to use U.S. power to spread democracy, open markets, and other liberal values into every nook and cranny of the planet. This strategy was doomed to fail, but its proponents in the foreign policy elite were never held accountable and kept repeating the same mistakes. Donald Trump won the presidency promising to end the misguided policies of the foreign policy "Blob" and to pursue a wiser approach. But his erratic and impulsive style of governing, combined with a deeply flawed understanding of world politics, are making a bad situation worse. The best alternative, Walt argues, is a return to the realist strategy of "offshore balancing," which eschews regime change, nation-building, and other forms of global social engineering. The American people would surely welcome a more restrained foreign policy, one that allowed greater attention to problems here at home. This long-overdue shift will require abandoning the futile quest for liberal hegemony and building a foreign policy establishment with a more realistic view of American power. Clear-eyed, candid, and elegantly written, Stephen M. Walt's The Hell of Good Intentions offers both a compelling diagnosis of America's recent foreign policy follies and a proven formula for renewed success.

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"Starred Review. This excellent analysis is cogent, accessible, and well-argued. " - Publishers Weekly "Starred Review. A scholarly yet accessible read. Anyone interested in American foreign policy will want to reflect on Walt's thesis." - Library Journal "Walt's call for a greatly reduced military presence overseas will appeal to many readers, though his book will find many critics inside the Beltway and his own Harvard Yard." - Kirkus "Between a president bent on ripping up the international liberal order and a foreign policy establishment determined to reestablish 'liberal hegemony,' Stephen Walt has laid out a real alternative, a foreign policy that rebuilds America at home and promotes peace through restraint and alliance building abroad. It's a brilliant analysis that will define debate for years to come." - Michael Ignatieff, President and Rector, Central European University "Steve Walt has written an engaging and long overdue critique of the widely accepted canon. Regardless of whether you agree with his prescription, this is essential reading for those who care about our role in the world." - Paul B. Stares, General John W. Vessey Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations "This book will wake you up, shake you up, and leave you smarter...Members of the US foreign policy establishment won't like this book. They should read it anyway. The fate of the nation may depend on it." - Rosa Brooks, Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, Georgetown University Law Center, author of How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything "Very controversial, expertly argued and engagingly written, this book will spark an indispensable debate about how to ensure that America's foreign policy is aligned to America's interests. A must read." - Moisés Naím, Distinguished Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, author of The End of Power "Anyone who wants to understand why post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy has been plagued by disasters like the Iraq War should read Steve Walt's brilliant new book. He shows with characteristic flair and sophistication that the taproot of the problem is America's foreign policy elite, which is suffused with misguided ideas about international politics." - John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago "This is thoughtful and smart analysis, and timely contribution to the critical debate that is taking stock of American foreign policy, and is bound to decide its future direction - a must read for policy-makers and students of American foreign policy alike." - Vali Nasr, Dean and Professor of International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University, author of The Dispensable Nation "Much American foreign policy is the product of a suffocating consensus, notwithstanding the partisan combat that also characterizes American politics. Stephen Walt provides an illuminating and well-researched look at that consensus and persuasively explains how it keeps pushing the United States into the same costly mistakes abroad." - Paul R. Pillar, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Georgetown University Center for Security Studies "Sadly, Stephen M. Walt is right: the American foreign policy establishment has failed America. America's standing in the world has sunk. All of us, both Americans and non-Americans, should read this book to help the country regain its once constructive global leadership. A must-read for decision-makers around the world." - Kishore Mahbubani, Professor, National University of Singapore, author of Has the West Lost It?

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Author Information

Stephen m. walt.

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University. He is the author of The Origins of Alliances ; Revolution and War ; Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy ; and, with John J. Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. He writes frequently for Foreign Policy .

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The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy Paperback – Oct. 22 2019

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From the New York Times –bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy―explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have soured, the European Union is wobbling, nationalism and populism are on the rise, and the United States is stuck in costly and pointless wars that have squandered trillions of dollars and undermined its influence around the world. The root of this dismal record, Walt argues, is the American foreign policy establishment’s stubborn commitment to a strategy of “liberal hegemony.” Since the end of the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to use U.S. power to spread democracy, open markets, and other liberal values into every nook and cranny of the planet. This strategy was doomed to fail, but its proponents in the foreign policy elite were never held accountable and kept repeating the same mistakes. Donald Trump won the presidency promising to end the misguided policies of the foreign policy “Blob” and to pursue a wiser approach. But his erratic and impulsive style of governing, combined with a deeply flawed understanding of world politics, are making a bad situation worse. The best alternative, Walt argues, is a return to the realist strategy of “offshore balancing,” which eschews regime change, nation-building, and other forms of global social engineering. The American people would surely welcome a more restrained foreign policy, one that allowed greater attention to problems here at home. This long-overdue shift will require abandoning the futile quest for liberal hegemony and building a foreign policy establishment with a more realistic view of American power. Clear-eyed, candid, and elegantly written, Stephen M. Walt’s The Hell of Good Intentions offers both a compelling diagnosis of America’s recent foreign policy follies and a proven formula for renewed success.

• Print length 400 pages
• Language English
• Publication date Oct. 22 2019
• Dimensions 13.72 x 1.91 x 20.96 cm
• ISBN-10 1250234816
• ISBN-13 978-1250234810
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"[ The Hell of Good Intentions ] offers a valuable contribution to the mounting debate about America's purpose . . . Walt persuasively contends that Washington's bungled interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya helped propel Trump, who has consistently derided foreign policy experts, to the presidency." ―Jacob Heilbrunn, The New York Times Book Review "The Trump-era establishment narrative ignores the fact that, despite his campaign rhetoric (“our foreign policy is a complete and total disaster”; “we’re rebuilding other countries while weakening our own”), the current president has not veered very far from the playbook of the bipartisan foreign-policy elite. Stephen Walt’s The Hell of Good Intentions helps explains why . . . Walt’s portrait of the Blob and those who inhabit it is nothing short of damning." ―James Carden, The Nation "Walt's book should be recommended reading for all those who work on US foreign policy, even if it may, on occasion, make some of us a little uncomfortable." ― Financial Times "[Walt] skewers the naiveté and idealism that has guided U.S. foreign policy . . . Walt, a clear writer and incisive thinker, has written a fine book . . . These sensible ideas deserve close attention." ―Rajan Menon, The Boston Review "A scholarly yet accessible read. Anyone interested in American foreign policy will want to reflect on Walt's thesis." ―Daniel Blewett, Library Journal (starred review) "Thought-provoking . . . This excellent analysis is cogent, accessible, and well-argued." ― Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Between a president bent on ripping up the international liberal order and a foreign policy establishment determined to reestablish ‘liberal hegemony,' Stephen Walt has laid out a real alternative, a foreign policy that rebuilds America at home and promotes peace through restraint and alliance building abroad. It’s a brilliant analysis that will define debate for years to come.” ―Michael Ignatieff, President and Rector, Central European University “If we are to have a healthy and honest debate about the future of U.S. foreign policy―as increasingly we must―we need more books like The Hell of Good Intentions . Steve Walt has written an engaging and long overdue critique of the widely accepted canon. Regardless of whether you agree with his prescription, this is essential reading for those who care about our role in the world.” ―Paul B. Stares, General John W. Vessey Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations "This book will wake you up, shake you up, and leave you smarter. Walt takes aim at the bipartisan verities of Washington’s foreign policy establishment, skewering its conformity, self-righteousness, and shared illusions―and offers his own thoughtful prescription for a humbler, wiser and more effective US foreign policy. Members of the US foreign policy establishment won’t like this book. They should read it anyway. The fate of the nation may depend on it." ―Rosa Brooks, Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, Georgetown University Law Center, author of How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything "Very controversial, expertly argued and engagingly written, this book will spark an indispensable debate about how to ensure that America’s foreign policy is aligned to America’s interests. A must read." ―Moisés Naím, Distinguished Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, author of The End of Power "Anyone who wants to understand why post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy has been plagued by disasters like the Iraq War should read Steve Walt’s brilliant new book. He shows with characteristic flair and sophistication that the taproot of the problem is America’s foreign policy elite, which is suffused with misguided ideas about international politics." ―John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago "American foreign policy is at an inflection point. The Hell of Good Intentions provides an insightful account of the crisis facing American foreign policy, but more important, it shows how this is a crisis of its own making, the result not so much of lack of imagination as that of blunders of well-meaning foreign policy practitioners. This is thoughtful and smart analysis, and timely contribution to the critical debate that is taking stock of American foreign policy, and is bound to decide its future direction―a must read for policy-makers and students of American foreign policy alike." ―Vali Nasr, Dean and Professor of International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University, author of The Dispensable Nation "Much American foreign policy is the product of a suffocating consensus, notwithstanding the partisan combat that also characterizes American politics. Stephen Walt provides an illuminating and well-researched look at that consensus and persuasively explains how it keeps pushing the United States into the same costly mistakes abroad." ―Paul R. Pillar, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Georgetown University Center for Security Studies "Sadly, Stephen M. Walt is right: the American foreign policy establishment has failed America. America’s standing in the world has sunk. All of us, both Americans and non-Americans, should read this book to help the country regain its once constructive global leadership. A must-read for decision-makers around the world." ―Kishore Mahbubani, Professor, National University of Singapore, author of Has the West Lost It?

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; Reprint edition (Oct. 22 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250234816
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250234810
• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 kg
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.72 x 1.91 x 20.96 cm
• #492 in International Security (Books)
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Stephen m. walt.

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Book Review: The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy

Ever since Antiquity, two rival perspectives have accompanied the practice of diplomacy.

The first inquired after what was morally right, whereas the second focused on what was pragmatic and expedient. The Greek city-states, long regarded as the enlightened architects of diplomatic customs and traditions, bequeathed upon the Western world the lofty ideas, aspirations, and vocabulary of the political ethos and practice of such commonplace concepts as democracy, commercial accords, truces, alliances, and conventions. The preferred methods of achieving these entailed persuasions, inducements, threats, and intimidation, with an occasional resort to arms. Subsequent travails of Imperial Rome, Constantinople and the Florentine courts of the Renaissance showed that the reigning canon of all diplomatic endeavors rested on enlightened self-interest aimed at the preservation and aggrandizement of empire.

While conquest and territorial expansion lay at the heart of continental Europe, the promise of the New World offered a form of republicanism absolved of foreign entanglements, wherein the words of John Adams, the “business of America with Europe is commerce, not politics or war.” “Why by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe,” George Washington in his Farewell Address asked, “entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humor or Caprice?” This post-revolutionary idealism carried over to the Wilsonianism of open covenants and self-determination of peoples, only to be tested and eventually buried by the tragic reality of World War Two and the consequent chill emanating from the Cold War.

At the centre of Walt’s argument is the critical assertion that the United States is a benevolent power with noble intentions, an “indispensable nation” intent on pursuing an ambitious grand strategy of liberal hegemony based on liberal principles of individual freedom, democratic governance, and a market-based economy, which in the past 25 years has tragically misfired. Rather than making the United States “safer, stronger, more prosperous, or more popular […] and the rest of the world more tranquil and secure,” Walt contends that “America’s ambitious attempt to reorder world politics undermined its own position, sowed chaos in several regions, and caused considerable misery in a number of countries” (23). The Cold War victory has been squandered, Walt argues, and the United States has found itself bearing a disproportionate share of global security burdens with a considerable cost to America’s own blood and treasure.

Given America’s abundant advantages, Walt claims, the price of U.S. primacy has been mistakenly perceived by administrations on both ends of the political spectrum to be modest and easily absorbed by the world’s largest economy. Excessively burdensome democracy promotion remained the central foreign policy objective of the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, despite ballooning federal deficits, budget sequesters, cuts in defense spending and world financial crises. In the meantime, the Washington D.C. policy establishment eagerly embraced a singular solution to the world’s crises irrespective of the peculiarity of the problem at hand – that, in order to keep the liberal order alive, the U.S. must remain “deeply engaged” and take the lead in “solving every global issue” (132).

To execute foreign policy and convince the American public of the benefits of global activism, policy experts engaged in meticulous rationalisations ranging from threat inflation and exploitation of uncertainty, to the exaggeration of benefits guaranteeing the country’s security and prosperity, finally to the concealment of the real costs, effectively masking the loss of human lives and risks associated with potential blowback resulting from military interventions abroad (147-80). According to Walt, liberal hegemony, pursued by “an out-of-touch community of foreign policy VIPs” (181), has failed not only in Iraq but also heavily miscalculated:

Fallout from the NATO expansion, the consequences of regime change in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere, the open-ended “war on terror,” the mismanagement of the Middle East peace process, the continuing spread of weapons of mass destruction, and the anti-democratic backlash that has occurred since the 2008 financial crisis (259).

But why should an otherwise benevolent empire intent on acting on humanitarian impulses in the face of human tragedy be excoriated for its use of power in the pursuit of ennobling ends? For Walt, diplomacy – as a tool of statecraft, rather than an ideology devoid of tangible deliverables – ought to be a primary means to an end. To win on the diplomatic front, however, America’s diplomatic ranks, the author argues, are in need of reform in order to absolve “inexperienced amateurs” (273) of the responsibility and unmerited prestige of holding key diplomatic positions. Professionalising the ranks also means ridding the foreign policy establishment of excessive secrecy, self-protective inbreeding, and immunity from accountability which encourages members of the group to pursue precarious foreign policy goals at no personal or professional expense. Walt further indicts diplomatic corps’ penchant for marginalizing dissent, silencing criticism of policy or policy “insiders” and eschewing strict accountability in order not to jeopardize friendships while routinely embracing elements of expansionism and power projection towards which the lay American taxpayer feels increasing tedium and aversion (215). These include overreliance on military force when confronted with political crises, elites’ lack of interest in diplomacy and a tendency toward unilateralism executed under the prestigious mantle of “global leadership” (288).

The Hell of Good Intentions offers an exacting autopsy of America’s successive foreign policy pursuits since the end of the Cold War in the name of liberal hegemony. While finding the outcome inadequate to the enormous soft power appeal of the U.S. and the overwhelming military might at the country’s disposal, Walt offers an alternative approach – offshore balancing – which instead of attempting “to make the world in America’s image, focuses on preventing other states from projecting power in ways that might threaten the United States, while engaging its resources only when there are direct threats to vital U.S. interests” (261).

This strategy, Walt argues, would permit the United States to focus on four primary geographical regions where its vital interests are at stake: that is, in the Western Hemisphere itself, as well in Europe, Northeast Asia, and the Persian Gulf. As industrial and military centers of power, America’s primary role would be in maintaining an “offshore” presence or, in certain circumstances, providing for small military contingents or intelligence-gathering facilities. Rather than launching into “costly and counterproductive crusades” (263), the regional security challenges would be repelled by regional stakeholders themselves, leaving the United States in the position to enter conflicts only when another major power or peer competitor should patently threaten to obstruct its pursuit of strategic aims and upset the regional balance of power. By monitoring and ensuring that the regions of vital interest to the United States do not fall under the control of other powers, Walt projects, this will buffer the country from harmful foreign policy blowbacks fostered by nationalist resentment, terrorism and anti-American extremism (264).

While the sensible American public would welcome reduced military expenditures on foreign campaigns and significant reductions to the $750 billion Pentagon defense budget, Walt does not tell his readers how much buy-in “offshore balancing” has among the Washington D.C. foreign policy establishment or how the strategy would fare when confronted with new regular and irregular trials and perturbations outside of the purview of the country’s traditional geographical spheres of influence and expertise. Putting a high premium on “patient diplomacy” and “moral suasion” (289), as Walt indeed does, while also promoting liberal values abroad, is a theoretically attractive proposition until, of course, realpolitik and the prerogatives of hegemonic exceptionalism launch the country into its longstanding default crisis response of retaliatory invasive warfare and excessively protracted conflict with a staggering human cost.

Since the book is largely retrospective and reactive in approach, Walt’s analysis would also benefit from a closer look at America’s prospective foreign policy challenges, particularly how “offshore balancing” might address the shift in the economic balance of power towards Asia; the escalation in Russian belligerence and its fine-tuning of propaganda and misinformation campaigns; North Korean and Iranian malign influence; the great power scramble for the Arctic; technological innovation in artificial intelligence and the cyber-dimension of (hybrid) warfare fought by bit and bot as well as the rise in irregular armies and the inevitable weaponisation of outer space.

Anyone who wants to understand historical trends and contemporary developments in America’s foreign policy and the emerging shifts in the country’s political landscape will nonetheless find Walt’s book a rewarding reading and an apt and timely companion to John Mearsheimer’s The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities (2018).

This article was first published in the London School of Economics Review of Books . It represents the views of the author, and not the position of Global Security Review, the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics.

About the Author

Joanna Rozpedowski

Dr. Joanna Rozpedowski is a Policy Fellow at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. She can be found on Twitter @JKRozpedowski .

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The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy

The hell of good intentions: america’s foreign policy elite and the decline of u.s. primacy offers readers a persuasive explanation that aims to define exactly where everything went wrong with american foreign policy, and how it can change its course..

• U.S. Foreign Policy
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• Liberal Order
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The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy offers readers a persuasive explanation that aims to define exactly where everything went wrong with American foreign policy, and how it can change its course. Stephen Walt frames his introductory lesson on the aspects of liberal hegemony, explaining its problematic failures and how its main supporter, the foreign policy community, has played a crucial role toward ensuring that the current status quo is maintained. Walt suggests that a foreign policy strategy called ‘offshore balancing’ can be a remedy that ensures American dominance while appeasing the international community. The issue lies that there is very little support for offshore balancing as it opposes the mainstream agenda that is prevalent throughout foreign policy.

Currently, there is an inherent belief that America by its very nature, should be geopolitically engaged everywhere as a sort of fulfillment of its unique destiny as a nation. Having no global rivals, a massive economic budget, and external strength unseen since the Roman Empire, America occupies a unique position of global influence post-Cold War. This idea, which Walt calls liberal hegemony, has three distinct objectives to ensure U.S. global supremacy: to remain dominant within the military sphere, to expand the areas of U.S. influence, and to promote liberal democratic norms and human rights (p. 58). The main intent is to shape the global community in a way that suits U.S. preferences, with this plan then sold off to the American public by means of inflating external threats, and exaggerating the benefits gained while concealing the costs of the operations (p. 8). Walt cites such failures as the interventions in Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya as having very little positively gained (p. 80). Liberal hegemony is largely to blame for the current international failures in foreign policy with very few successes to boast of.

Clinton, Bush, and Obama, though in differing ways, adopted liberal hegemony as the modus operandi of American foreign policy. Aside from American leaders, those who support liberal hegemony aren’t just the policy makers themselves; the mainstream media, scholars, politicians, and civil society members actively promote this agenda to pursue their own visions of an ideal global world (p. 85). Walt criticizes this elite group of privileged insiders as a dysfunctional community whose members are frequently scornful of alternative perspectives and are protected professionally from the policies they promote (p. 85). There is an immense pressure to conform, a drive to climb up the career-ladder, and to keep the U.S. actively busy abroad, as it guarantees perpetual employment by increasing the foreign policy sector as a whole (p. 99). Indeed, few oppositional think tanks, politicians, and media outlets exist within the U.S. that are able to critique the liberal hegemonic agenda successfully. Walt notes a divide between the public and the elite, which refers us back to how the concept needs to be sold to the American public to get them on board. Interestingly enough, Walt comments that there are no negative repercussions for any failed decisions from the foreign policy community, rather those decision-makers are still in the same positions today.

Chapter six, “How Not to Fix Foreign Policy,” is strictly a critique of President Donald Trump (p. 184). While Trump was primarily elected due to American citizens’ desire for foreign policy change, the reality is that he simply is not the right person; he is surrounded by all the wrong people, and he lacks a clear plan to replace the current course (p. 185). While avid in promises, Trump has often been thwarted within his own team and the “blob” of the foreign policy community (p. 185). This has led to a continuation of America’s overcommitted, misguided strategy, with Trump mismanaging relationships with NATO, Russia, and China, just to name a few (p. 191). Despite distancing himself from Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy plan, Trump has ended up mimicking nearly all of it (p. 214). Walt does highlight one Trumpian departure from the liberal hegemonic ideation: that of Trump’s disinterest in promoting democracy and nation-building, and his frequent overlooking of the unsavory human rights violations of his international counterparts (p. 201). In the end, Trump has ended up being his own biggest adversary; his mishandling of his own cabinet, and his blatant disregard for foreign leaders, no doubt leaves a legacy of a foreign policy theory that “sounds good but doesn’t work.”

The American audience wants something different than what’s been done before. Walt supports this fact with relevant statistics and reference to the changing dynamics of the millennial generation to emphasize his superior alternative, namely offshore balancing. Shrinking the global priorities to those that play strictly into America’s interests, or potentially threaten American hegemonic dominance, is the main emphasis of Walt’s alternative policy, which prevents the potential rise of a regional hegemon which would disturb the balance of power. Offshore balancing requires reliance on global partners to solve their own dilemmas and disputes, and only intervening when a problem threatens U.S. interests and requires military involvement. Walt refers to this as a traditional grand strategy that comes from a much older time in America, a modified isolationism so to speak that fits into a globalized world.

The Hell of Good Intentions does an excellent job of defining the current ongoing issues within American foreign policy, precisely recounting wherein the blame lies and how the solution of offshore balancing can actually be practical. Walt acknowledges that his solution will go largely ignored, with campaigns actively against offshore balancing already being enacted by the foreign policy community (p. 235). Offshore balancing is in dire need of advocates to support the radical reformulation of American global objectives – this message remains one of the sirens blaring conclusively in this text. Due to the strength and consistency of the elite, however, Walt’s recommendations will likely go unheeded. This book is highly influential for those seeking to stay current on American foreign policy issues, particularly as it showcases an alternative view against the status quo. This book can also serve as a great introduction for those new to American foreign policy that want to understand the greater picture of internal discourse. Appropriately, Walt gives a balanced approach for his arguments against liberal hegemony in favor of offshore balancing, and the context will remain relevant until more drastic changes occur within the current world order.

• Past U.S. Policies
•  Liberal Thought
• Liberal World Order
• U.S. Offshore Balancing

Reviewed by Brittney Nichole Postma

Author Stephen Walt

Publisher New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

ISBN 9780374280031

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June 8th, 2019

Book review: the hell of good intentions: america’s foreign policy elite and the decline of us primacy by stephen m. walt.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

In  The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of US Primacy ,  Stephen M. Walt offers a character study of three US administrations and the vast network of think tanks and policy wonks that have influenced the trajectory of America’s recent foreign policy – from its political victories to its fiascoes. This book will be rewarding reading for anyone wanting to understanding contemporary developments in US foreign policy and the emergent shifts in the nation’s political landscape, writes  Joanna Rozpedowski . 

The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of US Primacy . Stephen M. Walt. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2018.

Ever since Antiquity, two rival perspectives have accompanied the practice of diplomacy. The first inquired after what was morally right, whereas the second focused on what was pragmatic and expedient. The Greek city-states, long regarded as the enlightened architects of diplomatic customs and traditions, bequeathed upon the Western world the lofty ideas, aspirations and vocabulary of the political ethos and practice of such commonplace concepts as democracy, commercial accords, truces, alliances and conventions. The preferred methods of achieving these entailed persuasion, inducements, threats and intimidation, with an occasional resort to arms. Subsequent travails of Imperial Rome, Constantinople and the Florentine courts of the Renaissance showed that the reigning canon of all diplomatic endeavours rested on enlightened self-interest aimed at the preservation and aggrandisement of empire.

While conquest and territorial expansion lay at the heart of continental Europe, the promise of the New World offered a form of republicanism absolved of foreign entanglements, where in the words of John Adams, the ‘business of America with Europe is commerce, not politics or war’. ‘Why by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe’, George Washington in his Farewell Address asked, ‘entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humor or Caprice?’ This post-revolutionary idealism carried over to the Wilsonianism of open covenants and self-determination of peoples, only to be tested and eventually buried by the tragic reality of World War Two and the consequent chill emanating from the Cold War.

It is at this moment in history that Stephen M. Walt’s The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of US Primacy begins. Walt starts his reflections on the American foreign policy establishment with a skeletal reliance on the thoughts of the US forefathers or the long and rich history of a diplomatic esprit de corps , choosing instead to focus on the late twentieth and early twenty-first-century’s moral compulsions and ideological convictions that led to the nation’s many political victories as well as fiascoes. His is a character study of three US administrations and the vast network of think tanks and policy wonks that have influenced the trajectory of America’s foreign policy.

At the centre of Walt’s argument is the critical assertion that the United States is a benevolent power with noble intentions, an ‘indispensable nation’ intent on pursuing an ambitious grand strategy of liberal hegemony based on liberal principles of individual freedom, democratic governance and a market-based economy, which in the past 25 years has tragically misfired. Rather than making the United States ‘safer, stronger, more prosperous, or more popular […] and the rest of the world more tranquil and secure’, Walt contends that ‘America’s ambitious attempt to reorder world politics undermined its own position, sowed chaos in several regions, and caused considerable misery in a number of countries’ (23). The Cold War victory has been squandered, Walt argues, and the United States has found itself bearing a disproportionate share of global security burdens with a considerable cost to America’s own blood and treasure.

Image Credit: ( Robert Couse-Baker CC BY 2.0 )

Given America’s abundant advantages, Walt claims, the price of US primacy has been mistakenly perceived by administrations on both ends of the political spectrum to be modest and easily absorbed by the world’s largest economy. Excessively burdensome democracy promotion remained the central foreign policy objective of the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, despite ballooning federal deficits, budget sequesters, cuts in defence spending and world financial crises. In the meantime, the Washington D.C. policy establishment eagerly embraced a singular solution to the world’s crises irrespective of the peculiarity of the problem at hand – that, in order to keep the liberal order alive, the US must remain ‘deeply engaged’ and take the lead in ‘solving every global issue’ (132).

To execute foreign policy and convince the American public of the benefits of global activism, policy experts engaged in meticulous rationalisations ranging from threat inflation and exploitation of uncertainty, to the exaggeration of benefits guaranteeing the country’s security and prosperity, finally to the concealment of the real costs, effectively masking the loss of human lives and risks associated with potential blowback resulting from military interventions abroad (147-80). According to Walt, liberal hegemony, pursued by ‘an out-of-touch community of foreign policy VIPs’ (181), has failed not only in Iraq, but also heavily miscalculated:

fallout from the NATO expansion, the consequences of regime change in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere, the open-ended ‘‘war on terror,’’ the mismanagement of the Middle East peace process, the continuing spread of weapons of mass destruction, and the antidemocratic backlash that has occurred since the 2008 financial crisis (259).

But why should an otherwise benevolent empire intent on acting on humanitarian impulses in the face of human tragedy be excoriated for its use of power in the pursuit of ennobling ends? For Walt, diplomacy – as a tool of statecraft, rather than an ideology devoid of tangible deliverables – ought to be a primary means to an end. To win on the diplomatic front, however, America’s diplomatic ranks, the author argues, are in need of reform in order to absolve ‘inexperienced amateurs’ (273) of the responsibility and unmerited prestige of holding key diplomatic positions. Professionalising the ranks also means ridding the foreign policy establishment of excessive secrecy, self-protective inbreeding and immunity from accountability which encourages members of the group to pursue precarious foreign policy goals at no personal or professional expense. Walt further indicts diplomatic corps’ penchant for marginalising dissention, silencing criticism of policy or policy ‘insiders’ and eschewing strict accountability in order not to jeopardise friendships while routinely embracing elements of expansionism and power projection towards which the lay American taxpayer feels increasing tedium and aversion (215). These include overreliance on military force when confronted with political crises, elites’ lack of interest in diplomacy and a tendency toward unilateralism executed under the prestigious mantle of ‘global leadership’ (288).

The Hell of Good Intentions offers an exacting autopsy of America’s successive foreign policy pursuits since the end of the Cold War in the name of liberal hegemony. While finding the outcome inadequate to the enormous soft power appeal of the US and the overwhelming military might at the country’s disposal, Walt offers an alternative approach – offshore balancing – which instead of attempting ‘to make the world in America’s image, focuses on preventing other states from projecting power in ways that might threaten the United States, while engaging its resources only when there are direct threats to vital U.S. interests’ (261).

This strategy, Walt argues, would permit the United States to focus on four primary geographical regions where its vital interests are at stake: that is, in the Western Hemisphere itself, as well in Europe, Northeast Asia and the Persian Gulf. As industrial and military centres of power, America’s primary role would be in maintaining an ‘offshore’ presence or, in certain circumstances, providing for small military contingents or intelligence-gathering facilities. Rather than launching into ‘costly and counterproductive crusades’ (263), the regional security challenges would be repelled by regional stakeholders themselves, leaving the United States in the position to enter conflicts only when another major power or peer competitor should patently threaten to obstruct its pursuit of strategic aims and upset the regional balance of power. By monitoring and ensuring that the regions of vital interest to the United States do not fall under the control of other powers, Walt projects, this will buffer the country from harmful foreign policy blowbacks fostered by nationalist resentment, terrorism and anti-American extremism (264).

While the sensible American public would welcome reduced military expenditures on foreign campaigns and significant reductions to the $750 billion Pentagon defense budget, Walt does not tell his readers how much buy-in ‘offshore balancing’ has among the Washington D.C. foreign policy establishment or how the strategy would fare when confronted with new regular and irregular trials and perturbations outside of the purview of the country’s traditional geographical spheres of influence and expertise. Putting a high premium on ‘patient diplomacy’ and ‘moral suasion’ (289), as Walt indeed does, while also promoting liberal values abroad, is a theoretically attractive proposition until, of course, realpolitik and the prerogatives of hegemonic exceptionalism launch the country into its longstanding default crisis response of retaliatory invasive warfare and excessively protracted conflict with a staggering human cost.

Since the book is largely retrospective and reactive in approach, Walt’s analysis would also benefit from a closer look at America’s prospective foreign policy challenges, particularly how ‘offshore balancing’ might address the shift in the economic balance of power towards Asia; the escalation in Russian belligerence and its fine-tuning of propaganda and misinformation campaigns; North Korean and Iranian malign influence; the great power scramble for the Arctic; technological innovation in artificial intelligence and the cyber-dimension of (hybrid) warfare fought by bit and bot as well as the rise in irregular armies and the inevitable weaponisation of outer space.

Anyone who wants to understand historical trends and contemporary developments in America’s foreign policy and the emerging shifts in the country’s political landscape will nonetheless find Walt’s book a rewarding reading and an apt and timely companion to John Mearsheimer’s The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities (2018).

• This review originally appeared at the  LSE Review of Books . 

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Note: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of USAPP– American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

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About the reviewer

Joanna Rozpedowski  –  Durham University Joanna Rozpedowski is a doctoral researcher in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University. She specialises in political theory, international relations and international law and can be found on Twitter @J.K.Rozpedowski

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Book details

The Hell of Good Intentions

America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy

Author: Stephen M. Walt

INTRODUCTION ON JANUARY 20, 2017, Donald J. Trump became the forty-fifth president of the United States. It was the culmination of a political odyssey that had defied the experts’ predictions from the day he announced his candidacy. Hardly anyone expected him to do well in the Republican primaries, and pundits repeatedly reassured the public that his early successes could not be sustained. Yet he swept the Republican field aside and won the GOP nomination despite strong opposition from a number of top Republican leaders. He trailed Hillary Clinton throughout most of the general election campaign, performed poorly in three televised debates, and was endorsed by hardly any major U.S. newspapers. Days before the election, pollsters generally saw his chances as bleak, judging the probability of a Clinton victory to be 70 percent or higher. Yet he won, and in singular fashion. He defeated a large field of Republican rivals, many of them with far more experience in politics and representing a range of familiar conservative views. He defied the established norms of U.S. political campaigning—refusing to release his tax returns, making vulgar comments about female journalists, openly mocking a handicapped reporter, and scorning the grieving family of a decorated U.S. soldier who had given his life for the country. He told supporters the entire election might be “rigged,” threatened to arrest his opponent and “lock her up” if he won, and survived the exposure of well-documented accounts of past sexual predation and the release of an audiotape exposing deeply misogynistic attitudes. Most remarkable of all, he won in the face of fervent opposition by established figures in both political parties. Prominent Democrats opposed Trump for obvious partisan reasons, but in 2016 a sizable number of Republican politicians declined to endorse his candidacy, and a handful—including former secretary of state Colin Powell—endorsed Clinton. Nor did he win the support of any living president, including George Bush p è re et fils . As the campaign wore on, by far the most unified and fervent warnings about Trump came from the ranks of America’s professional foreign policy elite. He was of course opposed by foreign policy experts in the Democratic Party, such as former secretary of state Madeleine Albright; and Hillary Clinton’s supporters included literally dozens of familiar insiders with impressive foreign policy credentials, including Jake Sullivan, James Steinberg, Kurt Campbell, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and many, many more.1 But opposition to Trump was, if anything, more vehement on the Republican side. In March 2016 the former State Department counselor and Johns Hopkins University professor Eliot A. Cohen organized an open letter signed by 122 former national security officials that denounced Trump’s views on foreign policy, described him as “fundamentally dishonest,” and judged him “utterly unfitted to the office.” A few months later, fifty top Republican foreign policy experts—including former ambassador to India and NSC aide Robert Blackwill, former deputy secretary of state and World Bank president Robert Zoellick, former National Security Agency chief Michael Hayden, and former head of the Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff—released a public letter saying they would not vote for Trump and warning that he lacked “the temperament” to lead the country and would be “the most reckless president in American history.”2 It was hardly surprising that Trump’s ascendancy alarmed the foreign policy establishment. Not only had his conduct during the campaign raised doubts about his character and judgment, but he had repeatedly challenged some of the most enduring shibboleths of U.S. foreign policy. He had openly questioned the value of NATO and raised doubts about whether he would fulfill the treaty obligations the United States had undertaken toward its European allies. He had accused allies in Asia and Europe of “not paying their fair share” (which was not by itself a controversial claim) and said it might not be a bad thing if countries like South Korea or Japan built their own nuclear weapons. He had praised Russian president Vladimir Putin as a “strong leader” and refused to condemn Russia’s seizure of Crimea, its aggressive use of cyber-weapons, or its support for the Assad regime in Syria, which had killed several hundred thousand civilians in a long and bitter civil war. He called the multilateral agreement that had capped Iran’s nuclear program “a terrible deal” and threatened to launch trade wars with China, Mexico, Canada, and South Korea. He also gave lengthy interviews on foreign policy that revealed a shallow, even ill-informed knowledge of international affairs.3 Among other things, Trump’s startling victory revealed considerable public dissatisfaction with the foreign policy of the past three U.S. presidents. Far from rendering him unappealing or unfit for office, Trump’s “America First” rhetoric took dead aim at the grand strategy that had guided the foreign policies of the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. Instead of viewing the United States as the “indispensable nation” responsible for policing the globe, spreading democracy, and upholding a rules-based, liberal world order, Trump was calling—however incoherently—for a foreign policy he claimed would make Americans stronger and richer at home and less committed, constrained, and bogged down abroad. To be sure, foreign policy was not the biggest issue in the 2016 campaign. Issues of race, class, and identity drove a substantial number of voters toward Trump, who was also aided by lingering hostility toward the nation’s first black president and Hillary Clinton’s own tarnished reputation and tiresome familiarity after more than two decades in the public eye. Media fascination with Trump fueled his rise as well, and he proved to be a far more effective marketer and user of social media than any of his rivals. It would be a mistake, therefore, to see foreign policy as the taproot of Trump’s victory in 2016. Yet foreign policy was far from irrelevant. For starters, a consistent theme of Trump’s message was opposition to globalization in all its forms. He claimed that Washington had been negotiating “bad trade deals” with other states for decades, beginning with NAFTA in 1993, China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, and especially the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in Asia and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with Europe. According to Trump, this “false song of globalism” had cost millions of Americans good jobs and left the American economy far weaker. Globalization had also encouraged what he termed “senseless immigration policies” that threatened America’s core identity and allowed dangerous criminals and violent extremists to enter the U.S. homeland.4 If elected, he promised, he’d tear up those bad trade deals, “build a wall” with Mexico, keep “extremists” from coming to America, abandon the Paris Agreement on climate change (a phenomenon he claimed was a Chinese hoax designed to stifle U.S. businesses), bring the jobs lost to globalization back to the United States, and “make America great again.” Equally important, a long string of foreign policy failures under the previous three presidents reinforced Trump’s antiestablishment message and cast doubt on Hillary Clinton’s claim to be an experienced leader with the judgment and seasoning needed in the Oval Office. Trump repeatedly criticized her performance as secretary of state, pointing out that as a senator, she had supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, backed the ill-advised toppling of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, and called for deeper U.S. involvement in the Syrian civil war. Clinton may not have deserved all of Trump’s gibes, but she could not counter his attack by citing a compelling list of undisputed foreign policy achievements, simply because there weren’t any. In fact, the track record of U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War was difficult—maybe impossible—to defend, and certainly not in a way that American voters could relate to and understand. Instead of a series of clear and obvious successes, the years after the Cold War were filled with visible failures and devoid of major accomplishments. President Barack Obama had even suggested that modest achievements were all one could reasonably expect, telling an interviewer in 2014 that his approach to foreign policy “may not always be sexy … But it avoids errors. You hit singles, you hit doubles; every once in a while you may be able to hit a home run.”5 There were precious few home runs in the years since the Cold War ended, however, and plenty of pop-ups, strikeouts, and weak ground balls instead. Some of these failures were missed opportunities, such as the bipartisan failure to capitalize on the Oslo Accords and achieve a lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Other debacles—such as the Iraq and Afghan wars—were costly, self-inflicted wounds. In a few cases, what were advertised as farsighted and constructive U.S. initiatives—such as the decision to expand NATO or the policy of “dual containment” in the Persian Gulf—ended up sowing the seeds of future troubles. None of these decisions made Americans more secure or prosperous. Nor was the United States successful at spreading its preferred political values. The collapse of the Soviet empire was a striking vindication for America’s democratic ideals, and many observers expected these principles to take root and deepen around the world. These idealistic hopes went unfulfilled, however: existing dictatorships proved resilient, several new democracies eventually slid back toward authoritarian rule, U.S.-led efforts at regime change produced failed states instead, and, over time, it was the United States that began to abandon its core principles. In the years after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, top U.S. officials authorized torture, committed war crimes, conducted massive electronic surveillance of U.S. citizens, and continued to support a number of brutal authoritarian regimes in key regions. The 2008 financial crisis exposed deep corruption within key financial institutions and cast doubt on whether U.S.-style free-market capitalism was the best formula for sustained economic growth. Meanwhile, America’s democratic order was increasingly paralyzed by ideological polarization and partisan gridlock, and new democracies increasingly modeled their constitutions on examples from other countries rather than on the United States.6 By the time the 2016 election ended, in fact, the United States no longer seemed to be a particularly attractive political or economic model for other societies. Instead of being a beacon for liberal ideals and a model of enlightened democratic rule, the country had become an inspiration for such leaders of xenophobic nationalist movements as Marine Le Pen in France or Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, who greeted Trump’s election with enthusiasm and hoped to follow his example in their own countries. From a broader perspective, both the overall condition of the world and America’s status within it had declined steadily and significantly between 1993 and 2016. Despite a number of positive trends—including a sharp decline in the number of people living in extreme poverty—the optimistic visions of the early 1990s were not fulfilled. Great power competition had returned with a vengeance, weapons of mass destruction continued to spread, terrorists and other violent extremists were an active force in more places, the Middle East was in turmoil, and the euro crisis, Brexit decision, and illiberal trends in several member states left the European Union facing an uncertain future. U.S. foreign policy was not the primary cause of all of these developments, perhaps, but it played a significant role in many of them. When Trump told audiences that “our foreign policy is a complete and total disaster,” he was telling it like it was.7 Most damning of all, Trump pointed an accusing finger at a foreign policy establishment that had failed to recognize its repeated errors, refused to hold those responsible for them accountable, and clung to discredited conventional wisdoms. Like the Wall Street bankers who caused the 2008 financial crisis, the architects of repeated foreign policy debacles never seemed to pay a price for their mistakes, or even to learn from them. A bipartisan coterie of senior officials circulated from government service to the private sector, from think tanks to corporate boards, from safe sinecures to new government appointments, even when their past service was undistinguished and the policies they had conceived, sold, and implemented hadn’t worked. Pundits and policy wonks whose predictions and prescriptions had proved to be misguided were shielded from sanction as well, while those who challenged the bipartisan consensus were marginalized, ignored, or vilified even when they were right. And while members of the establishment routinely jockeyed for position and sparred over tactical issues, they remained united in the belief that the United States had the right and the responsibility to lead the world toward a broadly liberal future. Copyright © 2018 by Stephen M. Walt

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From the New York Times –bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy—explaining why it has...

Book Details

From the New York Times –bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy—explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have soured, the European Union is wobbling, nationalism and populism are on the rise, and the United States is stuck in costly and pointless wars that have squandered trillions of dollars and undermined its influence around the world. The root of this dismal record, Walt argues, is the American foreign policy establishment’s stubborn commitment to a strategy of “liberal hegemony.” Since the end of the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to use U.S. power to spread democracy, open markets, and other liberal values into every nook and cranny of the planet. This strategy was doomed to fail, but its proponents in the foreign policy elite were never held accountable and kept repeating the same mistakes. Donald Trump won the presidency promising to end the misguided policies of the foreign policy “Blob” and to pursue a wiser approach. But his erratic and impulsive style of governing, combined with a deeply flawed understanding of world politics, are making a bad situation worse. The best alternative, Walt argues, is a return to the realist strategy of “offshore balancing,” which eschews regime change, nation-building, and other forms of global social engineering. The American people would surely welcome a more restrained foreign policy, one that allowed greater attention to problems here at home. This long-overdue shift will require abandoning the futile quest for liberal hegemony and building a foreign policy establishment with a more realistic view of American power. Clear-eyed, candid, and elegantly written, Stephen M. Walt’s The Hell of Good Intentions offers both a compelling diagnosis of America’s recent foreign policy follies and a proven formula for renewed success.

Imprint Publisher

9781250234810

In The News

"[ The Hell of Good Intentions ] offers a valuable contribution to the mounting debate about America's purpose . . . Walt persuasively contends that Washington's bungled interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya helped propel Trump, who has consistently derided foreign policy experts, to the presidency." —Jacob Heilbrunn, The New York Times Book Review "The Trump-era establishment narrative ignores the fact that, despite his campaign rhetoric (“our foreign policy is a complete and total disaster”; “we’re rebuilding other countries while weakening our own”), the current president has not veered very far from the playbook of the bipartisan foreign-policy elite. Stephen Walt’s The Hell of Good Intentions helps explains why . . . Walt’s portrait of the Blob and those who inhabit it is nothing short of damning." —James Carden, The Nation "Walt's book should be recommended reading for all those who work on US foreign policy, even if it may, on occasion, make some of us a little uncomfortable." — Financial Times "[Walt] skewers the naiveté and idealism that has guided U.S. foreign policy . . . Walt, a clear writer and incisive thinker, has written a fine book . . . These sensible ideas deserve close attention." —Rajan Menon, The Boston Review "A scholarly yet accessible read. Anyone interested in American foreign policy will want to reflect on Walt's thesis." —Daniel Blewett, Library Journal (starred review) "Thought-provoking . . . This excellent analysis is cogent, accessible, and well-argued." — Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Between a president bent on ripping up the international liberal order and a foreign policy establishment determined to reestablish ‘liberal hegemony,' Stephen Walt has laid out a real alternative, a foreign policy that rebuilds America at home and promotes peace through restraint and alliance building abroad. It’s a brilliant analysis that will define debate for years to come.” —Michael Ignatieff, President and Rector, Central European University “If we are to have a healthy and honest debate about the future of U.S. foreign policy—as increasingly we must—we need more books like The Hell of Good Intentions . Steve Walt has written an engaging and long overdue critique of the widely accepted canon. Regardless of whether you agree with his prescription, this is essential reading for those who care about our role in the world.” —Paul B. Stares, General John W. Vessey Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations "This book will wake you up, shake you up, and leave you smarter. Walt takes aim at the bipartisan verities of Washington’s foreign policy establishment, skewering its conformity, self-righteousness, and shared illusions—and offers his own thoughtful prescription for a humbler, wiser and more effective US foreign policy. Members of the US foreign policy establishment won’t like this book. They should read it anyway. The fate of the nation may depend on it." —Rosa Brooks, Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, Georgetown University Law Center, author of How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything "Very controversial, expertly argued and engagingly written, this book will spark an indispensable debate about how to ensure that America’s foreign policy is aligned to America’s interests. A must read." —Moisés Naím, Distinguished Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, author of The End of Power "Anyone who wants to understand why post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy has been plagued by disasters like the Iraq War should read Steve Walt’s brilliant new book. He shows with characteristic flair and sophistication that the taproot of the problem is America’s foreign policy elite, which is suffused with misguided ideas about international politics." —John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago "American foreign policy is at an inflection point. The Hell of Good Intentions provides an insightful account of the crisis facing American foreign policy, but more important, it shows how this is a crisis of its own making, the result not so much of lack of imagination as that of blunders of well-meaning foreign policy practitioners. This is thoughtful and smart analysis, and timely contribution to the critical debate that is taking stock of American foreign policy, and is bound to decide its future direction—a must read for policy-makers and students of American foreign policy alike." —Vali Nasr, Dean and Professor of International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University, author of The Dispensable Nation "Much American foreign policy is the product of a suffocating consensus, notwithstanding the partisan combat that also characterizes American politics. Stephen Walt provides an illuminating and well-researched look at that consensus and persuasively explains how it keeps pushing the United States into the same costly mistakes abroad." —Paul R. Pillar, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Georgetown University Center for Security Studies "Sadly, Stephen M. Walt is right: the American foreign policy establishment has failed America. America’s standing in the world has sunk. All of us, both Americans and non-Americans, should read this book to help the country regain its once constructive global leadership. A must-read for decision-makers around the world." —Kishore Mahbubani, Professor, National University of Singapore, author of Has the West Lost It?

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The Hell of Good Intentions From the New York Times–bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy—explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have soured, the European Union is wobbling, nationalism and populism are on the rise, and the United States is stuck in costly and pointless wars that have squandered trillions of dollars and undermined its influence around the world. The root of this dismal record, Walt argues, is the American foreign policy establishment’s stubborn commitment to a strategy of “liberal hegemony.” Since the end of the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to use U.S. power to spread democracy, open markets, and other liberal values into every nook and cranny of the planet. This strategy was doomed to fail, but its proponents in the foreign policy elite were never held accountable and kept repeating the same mistakes. Donald Trump won the presidency promising to end the misguided policies of the foreign policy “Blob” and to pursue a wiser approach. But his erratic and impulsive style of governing, combined with a deeply flawed understanding of world politics, are making a bad situation worse. The best alternative, Walt argues, is a return to the realist strategy of “offshore balancing,” which eschews regime change, nation-building, and other forms of global social engineering. The American people would surely welcome a more restrained foreign policy, one that allowed greater attention to problems here at home. This long-overdue shift will require abandoning the futile quest for liberal hegemony and building a foreign policy establishment with a more realistic view of American power. Clear-eyed, candid, and elegantly written, Stephen M. Walt’s The Hell of Good Intentions offers both a compelling diagnosis of America’s recent foreign policy follies and a proven formula for renewed success. There are no customer reviews for this item yet. Classic Totes Tote bags and pouches in a variety of styles, sizes, and designs , plus mugs, bookmarks, and more! Shipping & Pickup We ship anywhere in the U.S. and orders of $75+ ship free via media mail! Noteworthy Signed Books: Join the Club! Join our Signed First Edition Club (or give a gift subscription) for a signed book of great literary merit, delivered to you monthly. 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Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app. Image Unavailable To view this video download Flash Player Follow the author The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy Hardcover – Illustrated, 16 Oct. 2018 From the New York Times –bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy—explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have soured, the European Union is wobbling, nationalism and populism are on the rise, and the United States is stuck in costly and pointless wars that have squandered trillions of dollars and undermined its influence around the world. The root of this dismal record, Walt argues, is the American foreign policy establishment’s stubborn commitment to a strategy of “liberal hegemony.” Since the end of the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to use U.S. power to spread democracy, open markets, and other liberal values into every nook and cranny of the planet. This strategy was doomed to fail, but its proponents in the foreign policy elite were never held accountable and kept repeating the same mistakes. Donald Trump won the presidency promising to end the misguided policies of the foreign policy “Blob” and to pursue a wiser approach. But his erratic and impulsive style of governing, combined with a deeply flawed understanding of world politics, are making a bad situation worse. The best alternative, Walt argues, is a return to the realist strategy of “offshore balancing,” which eschews regime change, nation-building, and other forms of global social engineering. The American people would surely welcome a more restrained foreign policy, one that allowed greater attention to problems here at home. This long-overdue shift will require abandoning the futile quest for liberal hegemony and building a foreign policy establishment with a more realistic view of American power. Clear-eyed, candid, and elegantly written, Stephen M. Walt’s The Hell of Good Intentions offers both a compelling diagnosis of America’s recent foreign policy follies and a proven formula for renewed success. ISBN-10 0374280037 ISBN-13 978-0374280031 Edition Illustrated Publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc Publication date 16 Oct. 2018 Language English Dimensions 16.18 x 3.81 x 23.7 cm Print length 400 pages See all details Product description About the author, product details. Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc; Illustrated edition (16 Oct. 2018) Language ‏ : ‎ English Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 400 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374280037 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374280031 Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.18 x 3.81 x 23.7 cm 145,551 in History (Books) 290,862 in Society, Politics & Philosophy About the author Stephen m. walt. Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more Customer reviews 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 71% 17% 8% 2% 2% 71% 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 71% 17% 8% 2% 2% 17% 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 71% 17% 8% 2% 2% 8% 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 71% 17% 8% 2% 2% 2% 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 71% 17% 8% 2% 2% 2% Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings, help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyses reviews to verify trustworthiness. Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews Top reviews from United Kingdom There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later.. 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Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy?explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the ?forever wars? in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have soured, the European Union is wobbling, nationalism and populism are on the rise, and the United States is stuck in costly and pointless wars that have squandered trillions of dollars and undermined its influence around the world. The root of this dismal record, Walt argues, is the American foreign policy establishment?s stubborn commitment to a strategy of ?liberal hegemony.? Since the end of the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to use U.S. power to spread democracy, open markets, and other liberal values into every nook and cranny of the planet. This strategy was doomed to fail, but its proponents in the foreign policy elite were never held accountable and kept repeating the same mistakes. Donald Trump won the presidency promising to end the misguided policies of the foreign policy ?Blob? and to pursue a wiser approach. But his erratic and impulsive style of governing, combined with a deeply flawed understanding of world politics, are making a bad situation worse. The best alternative, Walt argues, is a return to the realist strategy of ?offshore balancing,? which eschews regime change, nation-building, and other forms of global social engineering. The American people would surely welcome a more restrained foreign policy, one that allowed greater attention to problems here at home. This long-overdue shift will require abandoning the futile quest for liberal hegemony and building a foreign policy establishment with a more realistic view of American power. Clear-eyed, candid, and elegantly written, Stephen M. Walt?s The Hell of Good Intentions offers both a compelling diagnosis of America?s recent foreign policy follies and a proven formula for renewed success. ISBN: 9780374280031 Publisher: FARRAR Subtitle: AMERICA’S FOREIGN POLICY ELITE AND THE DECLINE OF U.S. PRIMACY Author: STEPHEN M. WALT Out of stock Product Details SKU: 9780374280031 Categories: , Weight 0.35 kg ISBN 9780374280031 Format Publication Date 2018 Pages 346 Author Author Description Stephen M. Waltis the Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and was academic dean of the Kennedy School from 2002 to 2006. He is the author of Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy, among other books. Publisher , Language Book Bargains ECONOMICS OF DEVELOPMENT Set of 4 books by Virginia Woolf Related products. RUSSIAN STRATEGIC NUCLEAR FORCES ISBN: 0262661810 Publisher: THE MIT PRESS Subtitle: Author: PAVEL PODVIG CIVIL LIFE, GLOBALIZATION, AND POLITICAL CHANGE IN ASIA Academics and policy makers have grown increasingly interested in the ways that non-governmental organisations (NGOs) may encourage better governance, democratic politics, and perhaps ultimately a global civil society. However, critics of these organisations have pointed out that NGOs tend to be undemocratic in their internal politics, they speak for groups of people to whom they are not accountable through elections or financial support and they often represent the interests of people in wealthy countries at the expense of truly indigenous people. The main questions revolve around whether and how NGOs actually lead to democratisation, and the ways in which NGOs relate to broader global forces. In Civil Society, Globalization and Political Change in Asia , Robert Weller has brought together an international group of experts on the subject whose chapters address these questions through a series of extensive case studies from east and southeast Asia including Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam. ISBN: 0415343011 Publisher: ROUTLEDGE Subtitle: ORGANISING BETWEEN FAMILY AND STATE Author: ROBERT P WELLER EXPLORING CIVIL SOCIETY ISBN: 0415325463 Publisher: ROUTLEDGE Subtitle: POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS Author: MARLLIES GLASIUS CONFLICT IN AFGHANISTAN Conflict in Afghanistan provides a timely discussion of the concept of asymmetric warfare which has become one of the main issues of the day in the wake of the attacks of 9/11 and the ensuing invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Broadly speaking this describes a means of fighting where comparatively weak belligerents have been able to exploit successfully the vulnerabilities of their more powerful and sophisticated opponents. Two recent examples have been the Vietnam and the Soviet-Afghan wars, but the historical roots of the concept lie deeper, particularly in Afghanistan. Conflict in Afghanistan , laying emphasis on contemporary documents and drawing on material from Soviet archives, centres on wars conducted in Afghanistan which have been of the asymmetric variety. Subjects examined include: • Five wars conducted in Afghanistan by an extemal invader over the past two centuries • The decisions and actions of politicians and the military involved in the wars in question • The successes and failures of diplomatic endeavours during the wars This book is essential reading for those who have research interests in Asian studies, military studies and current affairs. ISBN: 0415341604 Publisher: ROUTLEDGE Subtitle: STUDIES IN ASYMMETRIC WARFARE Author: MARTIN EWANS WHY MUSLIMS REBEL ISBN: 8130900173 Publisher: VIVA BOOKS Subtitle: Author: MOHAMMAD M. HAFEEZ ISLAM, DEMOCRACY AND THE STATE IN ALGERIA ISBN: 0415348293 Publisher: ROUTLEDGE Subtitle: LESSONS FOR THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN AND BEYOND Author: MICHAEL BONNER THE SHI’A OF LEBANON ISBN: 1850437661 Publisher: I.B.TAURIS Subtitle: CLANS, PARTIES AND CLERICS Author: RODGER SHANAHAN THE BIRTH OF MODERN TURKEY The guide and mentor to the Ottoman military was Imperial Germany as the military developed its version of the Prussian ‘School of Empire’ – a set of ideas and practices which in the eyes of the officer corps saw the military as the embodiment of the Ottoman Turkish nation state. The military had intervened decisively in the 1908 Constitutional Revolution and were vital in bringing the Ottoman Empire into World War I on the side of the Central Powers. Based on original Ottoman and German sources, The Birth of Modern Turkey shows how military thinking and policy contributed to the triumph of Ataturk and the founding of the modern Turkish state. ISBN: 1850437971 Publisher: I.B. TAURIS Subtitle: THE OTTOMAN MILITARY AND THE MARCH TO WORLD WAR 1 Author: HANDAN NEZIR-AKMESE Critic’s Notebook The Constitution Is Sacred. Is It Also Dangerous? One of the biggest threats to America’s politics might be the country’s founding document. Credit... Photo illustration by Ben Denzer Supported by Share full article By Jennifer Szalai Aug. 31, 2024 The United States Constitution is in trouble. After Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, he called for the “ termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” Outraged critics denounced him for threatening a document that is supposed to be “sacrosanct.” By announcing his desire to throw off constitutional constraints in order to satisfy his personal ambitions, Trump was making his authoritarian inclinations abundantly clear. It’s no surprise, then, that liberals charge Trump with being a menace to the Constitution . But his presidency and the prospect of his re-election have also generated another, very different, argument: that Trump owes his political ascent to the Constitution, making him a beneficiary of a document that is essentially antidemocratic and, in this day and age, increasingly dysfunctional. After all, Trump became president in 2016 after losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College (Article II). He appointed three justices to the Supreme Court (Article III), two of whom were confirmed by senators representing just 44 percent of the population (Article I). Those three justices helped overturn Roe v. Wade, a reversal with which most Americans disagreed . The eminent legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, worried about opinion polls showing “a dramatic loss of faith in democracy,” writes in his new book, “No Democracy Lasts Forever”: “It is important for Americans to see that these failures stem from the Constitution itself.” Back in 2018, Chemerinsky, the dean of Berkeley’s law school, still seemed to place considerable faith in the Constitution, pleading with fellow progressives in his book “We the People” “not to turn their back on the Constitution and the courts.” By contrast, “No Democracy Lasts Forever” is markedly pessimistic. Asserting that the Constitution, which is famously difficult to amend , has put the country “in grave danger,” Chemerinsky lays out what would need to happen for a new constitutional convention — and, in the book’s more somber moments, he entertains the possibility of secession . West Coast states might form a nation called “Pacifica.” Red states might form their own country. He hopes that any divorce, if it comes, will be peaceful. The prospect of secession sounds extreme, but in suggesting that the Constitution could hasten the end of American democracy, Chemerinsky is far from alone. The argument that what ails the country’s politics isn’t simply the president, or Congress, or the Supreme Court, but the founding document that presides over all three, has been gaining traction, especially among liberals. Books and op-eds critiquing the Constitution have proliferated. Scholars are arguing that the Constitution has incentivized what Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt call a “Tyranny of the Minority.” The anguish is, in some sense, a flip side of veneration. Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us; a growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it. We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber?  Log in . Want all of The Times?  Subscribe . Advertisement Politics & Social Sciences Politics & Government Sorry, there was a problem. Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required . Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web. Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app. Image Unavailable To view this video download Flash Player Follow the author The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy Audio CD – Audiobook, October 23, 2018 From the New York Times –bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy―explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have soured, the European Union is wobbling, nationalism and populism are on the rise, and the United States is stuck in costly and pointless wars that have squandered trillions of dollars and undermined its influence around the world. The root of this dismal record, Walt argues, is the American foreign policy establishment’s stubborn commitment to a strategy of “liberal hegemony.” Since the end of the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to use U.S. power to spread democracy, open markets, and other liberal values into every nook and cranny of the planet. This strategy was doomed to fail, but its proponents in the foreign policy elite were never held accountable and kept repeating the same mistakes. Donald Trump won the presidency promising to end the misguided policies of the foreign policy “Blob” and to pursue a wiser approach. But his erratic and impulsive style of governing, combined with a deeply flawed understanding of world politics, are making a bad situation worse. The best alternative, Walt argues, is a return to the realist strategy of “offshore balancing,” which eschews regime change, nation-building, and other forms of global social engineering. The American people would surely welcome a more restrained foreign policy, one that allowed greater attention to problems here at home. This long-overdue shift will require abandoning the futile quest for liberal hegemony and building a foreign policy establishment with a more realistic view of American power. Clear-eyed, candid, and elegantly written, Stephen M. Walt’s The Hell of Good Intentions offers both a compelling diagnosis of America’s recent foreign policy follies and a proven formula for renewed success. Language English Publisher Macmillan Audio Publication date October 23, 2018 Dimensions 1 x 1 x 1 inches ISBN-10 1250303451 ISBN-13 978-1250303455 See all details Editorial Reviews From the artist, product details. Publisher ‏ : ‎ Macmillan Audio; Unabridged edition (October 23, 2018) Language ‏ : ‎ English ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250303451 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250303455 Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 1 x 1 x 1 inches #11,599 in Middle Eastern Politics #11,783 in National & International Security (Books) #36,765 in History & Theory of Politics About the author Stephen m. walt. Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more Customer reviews 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 72% 17% 8% 2% 1% 72% 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 72% 17% 8% 2% 1% 17% 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 72% 17% 8% 2% 1% 8% 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 72% 17% 8% 2% 1% 2% 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 72% 17% 8% 2% 1% 1% Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness. Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews Top reviews from the United States There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later.. Top reviews from other countries About Amazon Investor Relations Amazon Devices Amazon Science Sell products on Amazon Sell on Amazon Business Sell apps on Amazon Become an Affiliate Advertise Your Products Self-Publish with Us Host an Amazon Hub › See More Make Money with Us Amazon Business Card Shop with Points Reload Your Balance Amazon Currency Converter Amazon and COVID-19 Your Account Your Orders Shipping Rates & Policies Returns & Replacements Manage Your Content and Devices Conditions of Use Privacy Notice Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure Your Ads Privacy Choices 193 COMMENTS THE HELL OF GOOD INTENTIONS THE HELL OF GOOD INTENTIONS AMERICA'S FOREIGN POLICY ELITE AND THE DECLINE OF U.S. PRIMACY. by Stephen M. Walt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 16, 2018 Walt's call for a greatly reduced military presence overseas will appeal to many readers, though his book will find many... The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the From the New York Times -bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy―explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident ... A Foreign Policy Realist Challenges America's Zeal for Intervention THE HELL OF GOOD INTENTIONS America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy By Stephen M. Walt 384 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $28.. Stephen M. Walt, who teaches international ... Book Review: The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy In The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of US Primacy, Stephen M. Walt offers a character study of three US administrations and the vast network of think tanks and policy wonks that have influenced the trajectory of America's recent foreign policy - from its political victories to its fiascoes. This book will be rewarding reading for anyone wanting ... The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy E… From the New York Times-bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy--explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new ... The Hell of Good Intentions—A Review A review of The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy, by Stephen Walt.Farrar, Straus and Giroux, (October 2018) 400 pages. Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, is sick of academics, politicians, and journalists who regard the United States as the "indispensable nation ... a book review by Jonathan Power: The Hell of Good Intentions: America's At last a book that attacks the "Blob" and holes it below the water line. Whether it can sink it is another matter. This is about a book just published by the Harvard professor of international affairs, Stephen Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions. The "Blob" is a wonderful word conjured up by President Barack Obama's deputy National Security Advisor, Ben Rhodes. The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy by Stephen M. Walt. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2018, 291 pp.. Stephen Walt's work is especially intriguing given the international relations developments in the last week of 2018; he uses a critical eye to examine the foreign policy record of the United States since the end of the Cold War in his ... The Hell of Good Intentions Book Summary. From the New York Times-bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy - explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States stood at ... The Hell of Good Intentions, by Stephen Walt The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House. Having recently returned from a visit to Iraq — a country still suffering from a reckless decision made more than ... The Hell of Good Intentions The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy is a book by Stephen M. Walt, which focuses on the foreign policy of the U.S. government. According to the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Walt unveils the reality of White House foreign policy and argues that past U.S. presidents such as Clinton, Bush, and Obama, avoided ... The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the From the New York Times -bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy―explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident ... Book Review: The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy The Hell of Good Intentions offers an exacting autopsy of America's successive foreign policy pursuits since the end of the Cold War in the name of liberal hegemony. While finding the outcome inadequate to the enormous soft power appeal of the U.S. and the overwhelming military might at the country's disposal, Walt offers an alternative ... The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Clear-eyed, candid, and elegantly written, Stephen M. Walt's The Hell of Good Intentions offers both a compelling diagnosis of America's recent foreign policy follies and a proven formula for renewed success. "Thought-provoking . . . This excellent analysis is cogent, accessible, and well-argued." — Publishers Weekly (starred review) The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the The Hell of Good Intentions does an excellent job of defining the current ongoing issues within American foreign policy, precisely recounting wherein the blame lies and how the solution of offshore balancing can actually be practical. Walt acknowledges that his solution will go largely ignored, with campaigns actively against offshore balancing ... Book Review: The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy This book will be rewarding reading for anyone wanting to understanding contemporary developments in US foreign policy and the emergent shifts in the nation's political landscape, writes Joanna Rozpedowski. The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of US Primacy. Stephen M. Walt. Farrar, Straus and Giroux ... The Hell of Good Intentions by Stephen M. Walt A depressing report on the short-sightedness of the American foreign policy establishment. The Hell of Good Intentions Book Details. From the New York Times -bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy—explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States ... The Hell of Good Intentions Type New. Format. ISBN 9781250234810. From the New York Times-bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy—explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the From the New York Times-bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy—explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it.. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident ... The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the From the New York Times -bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy—explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident ... THE HELL OF GOOD INTENTIONS From the New York Times?bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy?explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the ?forever wars? in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new ... The Constitution Is Sacred. Is It Also Dangerous? 100 Best Books of the 21st Century: As voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers — with a little help from the staff of The New York Times Book Review. The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the From the New York Times -bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy―explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it.. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident ... assignment essay homework paper phd report review speech thesis