On November 9, 1989, a mob of jubilant Berliners dismantled the
wall that had divided their city for nearly forty years; this act
of destruction anticipated the momentous demolition of the European
communist system. Within two years, the nations of the former
Eastern Bloc toppled their authoritarian regimes, and the Soviet
Union ceased to exist, fading quietly into the shadows of twentieth
century history and memory. By the end of 1991, the United States
and other Western nations celebrated the demise of their most
feared enemy and reveled in the ideological vindication of
capitalism and liberal democracy. As author Hal Brands compellingly
demonstrates, however, many American diplomats and politicians
viewed the fall of the Soviet empire as a mixed blessing. For more
than four decades, containment of communism provided the overriding
goal of American foreign policy, allowing generations of political
leaders to build domestic consensus on this steady, reliable
foundation. From Berlin to Baghdad incisively dissects the numerous
unsuccessful attempts to devise a new grand foreign policy strategy
that could match the moral clarity and political efficacy of
containment. Brands takes a fresh look at the key events and
players in recent American history. In the 1990s, George H. W. Bush
envisioned the United States as the guardian of a "new world
order," and the Clinton administration sought the "enlargement" of
America's political and economic influence. However, both
presidents eventually came to accept, albeit grudgingly, that
America's multifaceted roles, responsibilities, and objectives
could not be reduced to a single fundamental principle. During the
early years of the George W. Bush administration, it appeared that
the tragedies of 9/11 and the subsequent "war on terror" would
provide the organizing principle lacking in U.S. foreign policy
since the containment of communism became an outdated notion. For a
time, most Americans were united in support of Bush's foreign
policies and the military incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq. As
the swift invasions became grinding occupations, however, popular
support for Bush's policies waned, and the rubric of the war on
terror lost much of its political and rhetorical cachet. From
Berlin to Baghdad charts the often onerous course of recent
American foreign policy, from the triumph of the fall of the Berlin
Wall to the tragedies of 9/11 and beyond, analyzing the nation's
search for purpose in the face of the daunting complexities of the
post--Cold War world.
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