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A Foreign Policy for America? A Review Essay Linda B. Miller Stanley Hoffmann, Primacy or World Order, New York: McGraw Hill, 1978, 331 pp. Kenneth A. Oye, Donald Rothchild, Robert J. Lieber, Eagle Entangled, U.S. Foreign Policy in a Complex World, New York: Longman, 1979, 365 pp. Tad Szulc, The Illusion of Peace, Foreign Policy in the Nixon Years, New York: Viking Press, 1978, 821 pp. critics of American foreign policy often talk past each other and the administrationsthey analyze. For many, a central concern remains George Washington’s warning about foreign entanglements. For others, who accept the inevitability of a global role for the United States, the main problem is the declining value of assets like military power as America experiences economic interdependence and the fragmentation of alliances. Rarely do observers who charge that the substance of policy is flawed respond directly to those who insist that the processes of policy formulation and implementation are at fault. Radical prescriptions-a call for junking both the content and institutional structure of U.S. foreign policy-find a small audience in the post-Vietnam era. Too frequently, authors speak to the already convincedwho suspectthat there is truth in single-track explanations of U.S. behavior, whether the culprit be economic determinism, national security manias, or leaders’ misperceptions . The three volumes reviewed reveal the range of contemporary writing about American foreign policy. As a group, they alert us to: 1. the hazards of a presidency and bureaucracy cut off from democratic 2. the complexity of functional issues that pit states against each other in 3. the dangersof an internationalsystemin which America clingsto obsolete constraints (Szulc); troubled geographical regions (Oye, et al); and notions of hegemony (Hoffmann). Linda B. Miller is Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College and Adjunct Research Fellow at the Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University. During 1979-1980 she is also Senior Fellow/Guest Investigator of the Marine Policy and Ocean Management Program, Woods Hole OceanographicInstitution . 177 lnternutional Security I 178 I Tad Szulc writes about the recent past, specifically the Nixon’s Administration ’s creation of an “illusion of peace.” In arguing that virtually every foreign policy matter Nixon and Kissinger handled suffered from a contradiction between the public and private aspects of diplomacy, Szulcreveals the source of problems that plagued both Ford and Carter in relations with Iran, Cambodia , China, the Middle East, and the Soviet Union. He documents the bypassing of the State Department, the downgrading of ambassadors, the suspiciousness and duplicity of the secretary of state and the hyperbole of the president. As a skilled journalist, Szulc tries to breathe life into what could be a deadly, repetitive account of Kissinger’s secretive management of the National Security Council and later the State Department. Although he acknowledges the difficulties of relying on confidential interviews, Szulc often reconstructs conversations with key aides on the basis of “composite” quotations . To be sure, the reader is warned but could be misled, for example, when Szulc reports that Kissinger instructed his aides to ”map out what would be a savage decisive blow” against North Vietnam, a scenario that might include the possible use of tactical nuclear devices (p. 150ff). Szulc’s year-by-year analysis makes it difficult to follow a single issue as it developed, say SALT or oil pricing. Nevertheless, he recreates the atmosphere of juggling many balls in the air by emphasizing Nixon’s admission that diplomacy was “theater” (p. 335). In Szulc’s retelling, the play does not have a happy ending. For, despite the much-touted rational weighing of costs and benefits that were supposed to be hallmarks of Nixon’s policy planning, Szulc demonstrates that lurches, shocks, deceit, and tension characterized the White House in its dealings with both friends and foes. Much of what Szulc carefully explains is not new. Others have explored at length what Nixon and Kissinger meant by dCtente or linkage. Others have written extensively of Kissinger’s “lust for power” or his disdain for Nixon. Szulc’stalent is for summingup what are now widely-held judgments in straightword terms: For his part, Kissinger was increasingly hostile to the president-in private, of course. He...

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