This book describes how American international policy alternates between engagement and disengagement cycles in world affairs. These cycles provide a unique way to understand, assess, and describe fluctuations in America's involvement or non-involvement overseas. In addition to its basic thesis, the book presents a fair-minded account of four presidents' foreign policies in the post-Cold War period: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. It suggests recurring sources of cyclical change, along with implications for the future. An engaged or involved foreign policy entails the use of military power and diplomatic pressure against other powers to secure American ends. A disengaged on noninvolved policy relies on normal economic and political interaction with other states, which seeks to disassociation from entanglements.

This book describes how American international policy alternates between engagement and disengagement cycles in world affairs. These cycles provide a unique way to understand, assess, and describe fluctuations in America's involvement or non-involvement overseas. In addition to its basic thesis, the book presents a fair-minded account of four presidents' foreign policies in the post-Cold War period: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. It suggests recurring sources of cyclical change, along with implications for the future. An engaged or involved foreign policy entails the use of military power and diplomatic pressure against other powers to secure American ends. A disengaged on noninvolved policy relies on normal economic and political interaction with other states, which seeks to disassociation from entanglements.

The collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in American global hegemony in world affairs. In the post-Cold War period, both Democrat and Republican governments intervened, fought insurgencies, and changed regimes. In America's Wars, Thomas Henriksen explores how America tried to remake the world by militarily invading a host of nations beset with civil wars, ethnic cleansing, brutal dictators, and devastating humanitarian conditions. The immediate post-Cold War years saw the United States carrying out interventions in the name of Western-style democracy, humanitarianism, and liberal internationalism in Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. Later, the 9/11 terrorist attacks led America into larger-scale military incursions to defend itself from further assaults by al Qaeda in Afghanistan and from perceived nuclear arms in Iraq, while fighting small-footprint conflicts in Africa, Asia, and Arabia. This era is coming to an end with the resurgence of great power rivalry and rising threats from China and Russia.

In its unprecedented position as sole world superpower, the United States must judiciously consider what course to take in foreign affairs. Foreign Policy for America's Twenty-first Century: Alternative Perspectives presents six carefully crafted and bold approaches to this problem from some of the nation's foremost foreign policy experts. Chosen not for their unanimity but for their conflicting visions, these essays are written in accessible prose without esoteric language or scholarly jargon. Such issues as grand strategy, globalization, isolationism, and free trade are discussed in the context of a post-cold war world and a new century.

A distinguished group of international scholars debates the state of change or continuity in North Korea's post--Kim II Sung regime--shedding light on one of the world's most closed societies, its porential to adapt to post-cold war realities, and the prospects for a peaceful and stable Korean peninsula.

Dr. Thomas H. Henriksen in this publication provides a perspective on the challenging question, "Is leaving the Middle East a Viable Option?" He lays out a convincing argument that historical involvement within the region based on commercial ties, the need to secure stable international oil supplies (for the U.S. as well as its allies), and engagement in the internecine Israeli-Arab conflict all remain critical security issues for the United States. He captures in a few pages volumes of information on the Middle East as he crafts and weaves the history of United States' involvement from 1783 to the present, highlighting the key policy-making decisions concerning the Middle East. The historical review provides the novice reader new understanding of the Middle East and the knowledgeable reader an excellent overview.

A distinguished panel of scholars from around the world convened at the Hoover Institution in June 1993 to assess prospects for a reunited Korea. North Korea's highly publicized stance of nuclear noncompliance, initiated only months earlier, gave the conference historical immediacy. It also underscored the potentially catastrophic consequences of continued ideological friction on the Korean peninsula. Scenarios for reunification identified at that conference are presented in this volume.

The collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in American global hegemony in world affairs. In the post-Cold War period, both Democrat and Republican governments intervened, fought insurgencies, and changed regimes. In America's Wars, Thomas Henriksen explores how America tried to remake the world by militarily invading a host of nations beset with civil wars, ethnic cleansing, brutal dictators, and devastating humanitarian conditions. The immediate post-Cold War years saw the United States carrying out interventions in the name of Western-style democracy, humanitarianism, and liberal internationalism in Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. Later, the 9/11 terrorist attacks led America into larger-scale military incursions to defend itself from further assaults by al Qaeda in Afghanistan and from perceived nuclear arms in Iraq, while fighting small-footprint conflicts in Africa, Asia, and Arabia. This era is coming to an end with the resurgence of great power rivalry and rising threats from China and Russia.