Foreign Policy Begins at Home

This week, The Cairo Review of Global Affairs published myreview of Richard Haass’ book,Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America’s House in Order. Haass is an American diplomat and president of the Council on Foreign Relations, with expertise in foreign relations, international security and globalization.

An excerpt from the review:

“Richard Haass is a foreign policy establishment man upset with the establishment. The former head of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff and current president of the Council on Foreign Relations laments that a decade of poor strategic choices has left the United States in an untenable position to exercise credible global leadership. Haass wants Foreign Policy Begins at Home to serve as a guidebook for righting the ship: downsizing America’s expectations for what it can do abroad while strengthening its domestic foundations so that its engagement with the world is on a sustainable, credible basis: ‘[T]his is a book that argues for less foreign policy of the sort the United States has been conducting and greater emphasis on domestic investment and policy reform.’

Haass begins with a whirlwind tour of the international political status quo, an overview that will be familiar to readers of Thomas Friedman or Joseph Nye. The United States remains the prime world power, but that power is more diffuse than it was after the end of the Cold War (he calls the current situation ‘nonpolarity’), due in part to a variety of factors: economic and technological globalization, which has facilitated the economic catch-up of several countries in the developing world; the anachronisms inherent in international institutions, which do not reflect this reality (too much Europe and not enough Asia on the UN Security Council, for example); and a decade of poor foreign policy decision-making, principally the ill-considered invasion of Iraq, and the 2009 surge in Afghanistan, which Haass argues has weakened America’s position in the world.”

Head over to Cairo Review to read the full conclusion.

Tags: foreign policy, afghanistan, richard haass, neil bhatiya, un, foreign relations, cairo review, security council