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America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy ( Yale University Press )
Release Date: 2007-03-20
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Product Description
Francis Fukuyama’s criticism of the Iraq war put him at odds with neoconservative friends both within and outside the Bush administration. Here he explains how, in its decision to invade Iraq, the Bush administration failed in its stewardship of American foreign policy. First, the administration wrongly made preventive war the central tenet of its foreign policy. In addition, it badly misjudged the global reaction to its exercise of “benevolent hegemony.” And finally, it failed to appreciate the difficulties involved in large-scale social engineering, grossly underestimating the difficulties involved in establishing a successful democratic government in Iraq.
Fukuyama explores the contention by the Bush administration’s critics that it had a neoconservative agenda that dictated its foreign policy during the president’s first term. Providing a fascinating history of the varied strands of neoconservative thought since the 1930s, Fukuyama argues that the movement’s legacy is a complex one that can be interpreted quite differently than it was after the end of the Cold War. Analyzing the Bush administration’s miscalculations in responding to the post–September 11 challenge, Fukuyama proposes a new approach to American foreign policy through which such mistakes might be turned around—one in which the positive aspects of the neoconservative legacy are joined with a more realistic view of the way American power can be used around the world.
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 America at the Crossroads ( elhazard )
I'm "pigging out" on Fukuyama's books (bought three of 'em) and they are exactly what I expected. They're all well worth reading.
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 The history of the neoconservative movement and its hijacking. ( kmquigg )
OK, I am not a neoconservative. However, I wanted to know a little more about this movement since many in the Administration are deemed neoconservatives. Fukuyama makes his point that real neoconservatives didn't want to go to war in Iraq. An element of the neoconservative movement made that decision much to the dismay of most leading members. He then cites the reasons why the Iraq War was not on the neoconservative agenda. I am not sure his different shadings of political movements made sense. What does make sense are the wrong reasons we went to war in Iraq.
This is a politics book and attempts to put a political label on what neoconservatives, conservatives, and liberals are. I am not sure we can put everybody in a political category. However, the book gave me a somewhat better idea what neoconservatives stand for on the foreign policy agenda of this country.
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Required Reading ( robhogan3 )
The past success of Francis Fukuyama has created high expectations for each new book and he does not disappoint us with America at the Crossroads. The book is an excellent primer for understanding the state of the foreign policy of the United States. The scope of this work is more narrow and focused than his classic The End of History and the Last Man, which is arguably one of the greatest non-fiction books of the twentieth century.
This new work is focused on American foreign policy after September 11th. The contentious and confusing topic is expertly analyzed and explained by Fukuyama in a manner that is understandable to the layperson, yet thorough and complex. It is a thought-provoking analysis that is unusually non-partisan. Extremists from both the left and right political circles will not find countenance in this book. Professor Fukuyama is astutely fair in his criticism of the Bush Administration and, yet, carefully realistic on what the U.S. options are in fighting Islamic terrorism.
This book is highly recommended to anyone who wants to broaden their understanding of the foreign policy matters. It should be required reading by all presidential candidates and the media who cover those candidates. It is a rarity to find this combination of complexity, evenhandedness, and readability in one book.
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Anarchistically arrogant ( wuivre_eternelle )
With The End of History and The Last Man, Fukuyama provided neo-conservatives and their political acolytes with the academic legitimacy they did not have otherwise. So the world and history was no longer moving thanks to the free play of its inner contradictions but it had reached its end. Fukuyama, fifteen years later, does not criticize this basic idea of his, but criticizes the neo-conservatives who turned this anti-historical pronunciamento into the policy that led to the Iraq catastrophe. Fukuyama is thus totally unaware of his responsibility. But he shows clearly how Iraq has become a major mistake and hence a major hindrance and handicap in the aftermath of Iraq. But he does not change his idea that America is the only superpower in the world, not understanding the change occurring right now under our own eyes with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that brings together, among others, Russia, China, India, Kazakhstan, etc. He still goes on advocating that the US has the sole responsibility in the world to promote democracy. Yet he concedes two points. That has to be done through rather homogeneous coalitions, not understanding the world has to be managed collectively with and by everyone. He also concedes that democracy and regime change has to come from within a country and not from outside. And yet he advocates the voluntary association of some states around the US to promote and impose the US point of view and interest. He even goes one wide step further by considering the UN should be sidetracked and replaced by an array of organizations that would overlap over one another. The examples he defends are the International Organization for Standards (ISO) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), two absolutely opaque and non-transparent organizations bringing together private interests and enabling these to establish their rules and impose their power. ICANN is an archetypical case since it only depends on the US Commerce Department and it regulates the Internet through extensions and addresses. Fukuyama forgets to state what ICANN did at the beginning of the War on Iraq at the demand of Washington: it clicked the extension "iq" out, grounding all internet relation inside or from Iraq and all internet relation from outside Iraq into the country. It erased Iraq off the map of the Internet and global communication. And this imperialistic approach is consistently repeated from beginning to end in this book, even if it seems to consider the war on Iraq and the global war against terror were two fundamental mistakes. He is so far away from reality that he scholastically asserts that Moslem militants are young people born from Arab immigrants in poor and deprived suburbs in Europe, themselves being poor, deprived and largely uneducated, as if the French had not seen highly trained technicians moving into these groups as soon as the late 1980s and as if Glasgow and London did not reveal that place of highly educated people in these groups. And the conclusion he borrows from Madeleine Albright is typical of his own stance: "Americans deserve to lead because they can `see further' than other people." This is plainly vain and can turn into arrogance in no time.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
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Interesting and formidable reading ( rolfdobelli )
This is a dense book on political theory. It covers the origins and future direction of the neoconservative movement. Primarily a personal essay by analyst (and former neocon supporter) Francis Fukuyama, it meanders, digresses and, at times, makes a call for action. He includes enough academic material to make both interesting and formidable reading, even for those with a serious interest in government. This is not about everyday politics, but about underlying ideas and concepts, although the author does not clearly state what he thinks will happen after the neoconservatives are removed from power - or even how soon, or if, that might happen. He reserves his recommendations for the last chapter, but the book's opaque presentation and unfortunately stilted language blunt his usual bite about the role of the neoconservative movement. We recommend this book primarily to those who have followed Fukuyama's earlier works or who are very interested in political theory. Serious poly sci students will find it rich and substantive.
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