The Reluctant Sheriff: The United States After the Cold War

by Richard N. Haass

Book Overview

Richard N. Haass is director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. Previously he was director of National Security Programs and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. From 1989 to 1993 he served a special assistant to President George Bush and a senior director on the National Security Council Staff. This work was first published in 1997.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0876091982
• ISBN13: 9780876091982
• Release Date: June 1997
• Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations Press
• Length: 148 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Necessary to understand Bush's foreign policy?

The author heads the Policy Planning Staff in Colin Powell's State Department - the position George Kennan held decades ago. As Kennan's containment policy became the strategic guide for U.S. foreign policy (but see Kennan's own thoughts on this in his Memoirs), so too might Haass' thoughts hold sway for some time. They certainly are important in the Bush administration. Haass' book (first published in 1997) is based on his complaint that the U.S. by then had not yet formulated a real post-Cold War foreign policy. (Similarly, see Kissinger's Does America Need a Foreign Policy?). For Haass, the new world disorder ought to be called "deregulation" - the dissolution of Cold War assumptions and norms, the weakening of the state as principal actor on the world stage, and the seeming success of liberalism as the model for governments. His prescription is a doctrine of "regulation." This means a policy based on realism (but not excluding some Wilsonianism, economics, and other internationalism when appropriate), acting multilaterally when possible, alone when necessary. Rather than relying on Cold War era institutions, though, Haass argues that ad hoc posses - "coalitions of the willing" (page 93) - will need to be developed as situations dictate. In addition to exposing students to the fundamental arguments of an influential voice in the administration, chapters 2 and 3 on deregulation and regulation, respectively, serve as models for understanding how to approach some kinds of comprehensive-exam questions. One caveat is that the key terms, deregulation and regulation, suggest a much more judicial/legislative/institutional approach than the book actually argues. An important complement to the book is Haass' April 2002 (and thus post-September 11) lecture, "Defining U.S. Foreign Policy in a Post-Post-Cold War World," available at the State Department web site.

A Realist in Sheep's Clothing

No matter that Richard N. Haass is the Director of Foreign Policy Studies, a think tank with a moderate leftist reputation. He may cloak his words in liberal rhetoric, but the ideas he presents belong firmly to the Realist camp. For instance, he argues that the United States, while remaining a member of the UN and using it for our purposes, should not allow the UN to dominate us. Ideas originating in the Realist camp abound in this book. The basic premise of this book, wonderfully supported, is that the United States should, as the title implies, conduct foreign policy "by posse". Whenever possible, the United States should engage our allies (or others when appropriate) in pursuing our objectives, but we should not allow the need for agreement to prevent us from pursuing those objectives important to us. A prime example would be the Persian Gulf War: President Bush devoted an extraordinary amount of time and effort into building the international coalition which defeated Iraq, but he also stated that if need be, the United States would stand alone. Another important idea Haass writes about is that of the "deregulated" world. With the end of the Cold War, many of the restraints imposed by the superpowers have been removed as well. We can expect to see all of the smaller conflicts suppressed during the Cold War to come bubbling back to the surface. This increase in the sheer number of conflicts is going to pose problems for the United States, particularly if they are handled in a haphazard or irrational way. Here his Realist side peeks out from under the sheepskin again: he tells us that the United States must decide whether to intervene guided not by moral concerns or the dictates of the UN, but based on a rational evaluation of whether it would serve American interests. This is an excellent book covering the general world state that American policymakers face today. I almost gave this book four stars out of spite: I didn't want it to end.