American Foreign Policy: Consensus at Home, Leadership Abroad

American Foreign Policy: Consensus at Home, Leadership Abroad. By Karl von Vorys. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997. 392p. $59.95.

The world is at a critical juncture: Either mankind will progress toward the development of a common sense of shared humanity and identity or it will slide into the chaos, brutality, and the violence of ethnic and national conflict. The post-Cold War world is one of both promise and peril. Whether the future will be one of global community or deepening strife will depend largely on what role the United States chooses to play-active engagement and leadership or aloof withdrawal-and the values which will animate its foreign policy. Such is the message of Karl von Vorys in American Foreign Policy: Consensus at Home, Leadership Abroad. While occasionally thought provoking and ambitious, American Foreign Policy is ultimately a frustrating book that disappoints more than it satisfies. Most exasperating is the fact von Vorys's more interesting and unconventional ideas receive remarkably little attention, leaving the reader with a sense of promise unfulfilled.

There are two fundamental issues at stake according to von Vorys-the direction of world politics and what role the United States might play in influencing this direction. Von Vorys summarizes his basic thesis early on: "The most fundamental fact of international reality is that without active, constructive, even inspired American leadership we shall exist in a perpetually and generally volatile international environment that is becoming progressively more explosive because of an increasingly dominant reactionary trend" (p. 4). There are "two main culprits of the reactionary direction" (p. 7). The first is "the reversion to political fragmentation" (p. 7). Von Vorys bemoans the fact that "our international environment now includes nearly 200 members, each of them inordinately proud of its sovereignty and equality" (p. 7). A good...