Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century

Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century By Henry Kissinger L20.00, 318 pages Simon & Schuster New York, 2001 ISBN 0684855674

Kissinger's book was published at the outset of the new Bush Administration, well before 11 September. But his prescriptions for American foreign policy are not thereby invalidated. Indeed, his analysis of US pre-eminence in the world is distinctly relevant to current American policy and world reactions to it. He acknowledges that the United States is seen in many parts of the world as 'peremptory and domineering' and believes that America should behave as if it were still living in a world of many centres of power.

He is concerned that American preeminence is derived 'less from a strategic design than a series of ad hoc decisions designed to satisfy domestic constituencies'. He sees his country, especially under Clinton, acting as though it needed no long-range foreign policy and could confine itself to case by case responses. Steering between the 'idealism' of the American Left and the 'realism' of the Right, he believes that the fundamental challenge is to merge idealism and realism. Values must be...