American Foreign Policy: The Dynamics of Choice in the 21st Century

Excellent introduction to the foundations, history, and various theories of American Foreign policy. Tons of real world examples and theoretical excerpts. Highly recommended.

i enjoyed the fact that we can learn foreign policy fundamentals from an expert whose writing style flows like a novelist, instead of the dry old textbook form assigned to so many courses. his son adam id also in possesion of a progressive yet historiacally rooted mind :). great book.

Like I said it is a text book. I needed it for a class. As far as books that I am forced to read go it is not so bad. As for the seller, super fast shipping

Being a professor in I.R. with classes on US foreign policy I am always on the lookout for any new books on this subjects. I came accross this book last year and have been using it ever since for my classes on the subject. This new book is very good in outlining the major goals that US foreign policy has followed. The author uses an interesting approach that he called the 4 P's, which stand for Power, Peace, Prosperity & Principle. Accoding to him all of US foreing policy can be analysed using these 4 guidelines. However, the 4 P's are usually never simultaneouly achievable in a single foreign policy decision, and hence, some usually have to be sacrificed or traded off for others. This means that foreign policy usually has to be prioritized, since it is highly unlikely that even a superpower like the USA can usually realize all of the 4 P's in a single decision. Hence, the subtitle of the book is called the Dynamics of Choice... Principle, by the way, stands for morals or morality in foreign policy. This method is clearly a good one, for it gives the students a new solid perspective when it comes to analyzing any of the foreign policy decisions that the USA has taken in the past. The book also provides a lot of examples that are both very relevant and vivid when explaining many things to the students and readers. It is up to date, and includes new material and debates, so that, if willing, both the students and the professors can engage in debates. The only negative thing that I found to be really surprising was the fact that this new 3rd edition is actually a lot shorter than my 2nd edition. Why the publishing company did this, is anybodys guess. For my part I'm just glad that I bought the 2nd edition and not the shorter 3rd new edition. If you have the chance I'd urge you to buy the longer 2nd edition. Along with "American Foreign Policy" by Eugene Wittkopf and Charles Kegley this is the best book that I've found on US foreign policy.