The Hell of Good Intentions

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An expert diagnosis of U.S. foreign policy—why it keeps disappointing us, and what we can do to fix itIn 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have deteriorated, the European Union is wobbling, and violent extremism is spreading.The reason for these recurring failures, Stephen M. Walt argues in The Hell of Good Intentions, is the combination of America's still-unmatched power and the foreign policy establishment's stubborn consensus around a strategy of "liberal hegemony." Because the United States is so powerful and secure, it can pursue ambitious foreign policy goals even when they are unnecessary and doomed to fail. Walt exposes the inner workings of the foreign policy elite across the Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations and shows how they have been...