Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy

by Leslie H. Gelb

Book Overview

"Fluent, well-timed, provocative. . . . Filled with gritty, shrewd, specific advice on foreign policy ends and means. . . . Gelb's plea for greater strategic thinking is absolutely right and necessary." -- The New York Times Book Review

"Few Americans know the inner world of American foreign policy--its feuds, follies, and fashions--as well as Leslie H. Gelb. . . . Power Rules builds on that lifetime of experience with power and is a witty...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061714569
• ISBN13: 9780061714566
• Release Date: February 2010
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Modern Foreign Policy Primer

Through Power Rules, Gelb conducts a wide-ranging tutorial on American foreign policy. His analysis draws on decades of experience and examples from US history to examine Conservative and Liberal approaches to foreign policy problems and issues. Foreign relations are best understood and explained through power relationships, as posited by Machiavelli. Gelb proposes a pragmatic approach that makes intelligent use of military force as well as diplomatic and moral strengths. The United States is the dominant and essential force in the world today, while at the same time other countries assert themselves in ways that challenge our leaders like they have never been challenged before. Gelb outlines his recommendations to President Obama as he deals with economic, political and military problems. For the general reader, Power Rules succinctly discusses current foreign policy problems and places the policies of GW Bush within the American foreign policy tradition. His recommendations are presented in common sense fashion that provides a context for further analysis by the reader. Power Rules is recommended for those interested in the war on terror, global warming, and how our foreign policy is evolving to meet these challenges.

Power Rules

Power Rules by Leslie H. Gelb; by far is one of the most interesting and informative books on the United States foriegn policy that I have ever read, even when I was in college. This book should be mandatory reading for any one interested in how the United States is percieved in world by all nations. It explains in great detail how we previously gained our reputation and the tools at our disposal to change our over all image in the world. It also points out the pit falls and the rewards the United States earns when formulating an administrations foriegn policy step by step. Very good and easy to comprehend. Highly recommended.

Refreshing Clarity

One of the more thoughtful works on understanding Power. The author takes the reader on a survey course in the use and misuse of Power by leaders attempting to implement both domestic and foreign policy. It is devoid of partisant kant, which in this day and age is especially refreshing. One comes away from a reading with the feeling that you have left the sauna w/o the need for a shower.

A Voice for Candor, Clarity and Common Sense

Leslie Gelb's distillation of a lifetime of experience both as an astute (and at times ascerbic) observer (writing the foreign affairs column for the New York Times) and involved participant (in the Johnson Defense Department and Carter State Department) shine thru in this remarkable book. Written with unusual candor and clarity, Gelb's arguments--that the world is not flat, and that America's foreign policy must center on the principle of "mutual indispensability" are compelling. His frequent use of historical references, and especially his rivoting personal experiences give the book a powerful educational flavor and a fascinating immediacy. I couldn't put it down. Richard Helfant,MD.

Was the Iraq War a war of choice?

Leslie Gelb's new book "Power Rules" is a modern update to Niccolo Machiavelli's 15th century classic book written to the new ruler of the City-State of Florence, Italy. Only Gelb's book is specifically written for new U.S. President Barack Obama about the present U.S. situation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and elsewhere. Machiavelli once wrote: "There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless." Whether *Power Rules* falls into the first or the second of Machiavelli's three types of intelligence is the question to be answered in this book review. Gelb relates what he understands for himself as a political moderate about U.S. foreign policy based on decades of working for Presidents on both sides of the political spectrum. Using Gelb's favorite concept about U.S. foreign policy, - *mutual indispensability,* (i.e., "we swim together, or we hang apart") this book is "indispendable" and should get a wide reading across the political spectrum. Gelb disabuses just about every camp of foreign policy -- hard-dumb, soft-smart, and globalist-economic -- of their preconceived notions about foreign affairs. Instead he opts for what he calls a common sense approach. But unlike Machiavelli who wrote that "men never do anything well except through necessity," Gelb's approach is based on non-necessity or non-imperatives (i.e., choice). Contrary to Machiavelli, Gelb says war is rarely necessary, as necessity is prone to being invented. Gelb is thus a postmodernist Machiavellian, however otherwise realistic and commensensical he is. It is interesting to note that the Afghan War was initially seen as the common sense *war of necessity* and the Iraq War a *war of choice.* Now the Afghan War is seen by many as a war of choice that we should retreat from. What is seen as common sense is changeable. Despite that I couldn't put this well-written book down I am sorry to say that it is a disappointment not by what he wrote but what he didn't. For in singling out the invasion of Iraq by President George W. Bush II as a war of choice Gelb never answers the elusive question of our time: if Bush's invasion of Iraq and his policy of pre-emptive warfare was such an obvious failure why did Machiavelli write "There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others"? Gelb loves to invoke Machiavelli to legitimate his book but unfortunately for us only selectively so. He sidestepped this issue. Of course the Iraq War was a war of choice by President Bush, as pointed out in Lawrence Freedman's book *A Choice of Enemies.* Although al Qaeda has always been highly suspected of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, as Freedman points out in his book the Saudis and Pakistan are the most suspicious sponsors. Faced with the ambiguous situation of who atta