Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since 1776, by Walter A. McDougall (Houghton Mifflin, 304 pp., $25)
THE end of the Cold War unleashed a series of debates among policy-makers and foreign-policy experts over emerging international trends and correct American responses. Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the End of History, arguing that liberal democracy’s victory was a final triumph over the ideologies that had cursed the planet for the past couple of centuries. Henry Kissinger has insisted that the post-Cold War world is reverting to a multipolar condition; that geopolitics will continue to define the international system. While Edward Luttwak has made the case for geo-economics as the defining theme of the new world order, Samuel Huntington contends that deep cultural divides, “a clash of civilizations” among Muslim, Confucian, Hindu, and Western societies, is destined to define the foreseeable future.
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