A Faustian Foreign Policy from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush
A Faustian Foreign Policy from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush
A Faustian Foreign Policy from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush critiques U.S. foreign policy during this period by showing how moralistic diplomacy has increasingly assumed Faustian overtones, especially during the Cold War and following September 11. The ideological components of American diplomacy, originating in the late 18th and 19th centuries, evolved through the 20th century as U.S. economic and political power steadily increased. Seeing myth making as essential in any country's founding and a common determinant of its foreign policy, Professor Joan Hoff reveals how the basic belief in its exceptionalism has driven America's past and present attempts to remake the world in its own image. She expands her original concept of 'independent internationalism' as the modus operandi of U.S. diplomacy to reveal the many unethical Faustian deals the United States entered into since 1920 to obtain its current global supremacy.
- Controversial, critical of both Democrats and Republicans since 1920 - does not take a partisan stand
- Original historical synthesis
- Covers a number of important themes
Reviews & endorsements
"Joan Hoff is universally recognized as among our most distinguished and perceptive historians of the American presidency and US foreign policy. In A Faustian Foreign Policy from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush she has produced another perceptive, graceful and informative history that targets and explains the deadly combination that too often has led our nation astray: grand visions conceived in a myopic haze of American exceptionalism. It is a major achievement."
-Martin J. Sherwin, George Mason University; Co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, 2006 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for biography
“Joan Hoff has given us a superb critical analysis of post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy. But her book is most important in providing a powerful insight which has been missing from too much recent analysis: how that post-9/11 foreign policy catastrophe comes directly out of how Americans have been viewing and making their foreign policy over the past several centuries. The 17th-century American ‘City on a Hill’ exceptionalist belief (emphasized by Ronald Reagan), the religious Manifest Destiny of the 19th-century which climaxed in Civil War, and, above all, the haunting illusions of Woodrow Wilson’s export-democracy-to-the world -- all, as Hoff masterfully and succinctly explains, are absolutely necessary for us to understand if we are also to understand -- and correct -- post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy disasters.”
-Walter LaFeber, Tisch University Professor at Cornell University
“With customary insight and erudition, and passion to diagnose what ills the United States at this moment in time, Joan Hoff shows how blind faith in American exceptionalism has produced a century of foreign policy that perverted, and threatens to destroy, the nation’s values. That does not have to happen. Like no book since William Appleman William’s The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, Hoff’s study powerfully demonstrates that a better future for America (and the world) lies in coming to terms with the corrupt bargains of the past. By so doing, citizens and leaders together can recover their nation’s lost honor.”
-William O. Walker III, University of Toronto
“In this brilliant book, Joan Hoff deftly explores how the myth of unparalleled virtue has cloaked an increasingly sordid reality of U.S. foreign policy. If more Americans shared her wisdom, they would live in a better nation and a better world.”
-Lawrence S. Wittner, State University of New York, Albany; Editor of Peace Action
"Hoff bases this well-written narrative on solid research and a clear moral standpoint...The American public and its leaders--not only historians--should ponder this excellent, disturbing book."
The Historian, Richard T. Fry, Illinois College
Product details
December 2007Paperback
9780521714044
316 pages
235 × 155 × 18 mm
0.45kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction: foundations of U.S. Faustian foreign policy
- 1. America forms and refines its diplomacy
- 2. The impact of World War I on U.S. diplomacy
- 3. Faustian aspects of prosperity, depression, and war
- 4. Faustian aspects of U.S. Cold War foreign policy
- 5. Cold War transformation of the American presidency
- 6. The United States adrift in the post-Cold War world
- 7. Flaunting U.S. Faustian foreign policy
- Epilogue: the legacy of George W. Bush.
