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Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World
Oxford University Press
October 2004
On Sale: October 14, 2004
320 pages
ISBN: 0195176022
EAN: 9780195176025
Paperback
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Non-Fiction Political
As correspondent for Newsweek, Michael Hirsh has traveled to
every continent, reporting on American foreign policy. Now
he draws on his experience to offer an original explanation
of America's role in the world and the problems facing the
nation today and in the future. Using colorful vignettes and
up-close reporting from his coverage of the first two
post-Cold War presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush,
Hirsh argues that America has a new role never before played
by any nation: it is the world's Uberpower, overseeing the
global system from the air, land, sea and, increasingly,
from space as well. And that means America has a unique
opportunity do what no great power in history has ever
done--to perpetuate indefinitely the global system it has
built, to create an international community with American
power at its center that is so secure it may never be
challenged. Yet Americans are squandering this chance by
failing to realize what is at stake. At the same time that
America as a nation possesses powers it barely comprehends,
Americans as individuals have vulnerabilities they never
before imagined. They desperately need the international
community on their side. In an era when democracy and free
markets have become the prevailing ideology, Hirsh argues,
one of America's biggest problems will be "ideological
blowback"--facing up to the flaws and contradictions of its
own ideals. Hence, for example, the biggest threat to
political stability is not totalitarianism, but the tricky
task of instituting democracy in the Arab world without
giving Islamic fundamentalists the reigns of power. The only
way for Washington to avoid accusations of hypocrisy is to
allow the global institutions it has built, like the U.N.,
to do the hard work of promoting U.S. values.
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