American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony
by Samuel P Huntington
If you compare the United States to small powers with no real obligations for providing security and public goods in the world, we look like a mean-spirited, self-interested, old-fashioned major state. But if you compare us to previous hegemons we look like positive angels…
Recommendations from our site
“Having described the international system and the world of foreign policy in which states have to operate, the next thing to understand is the particular actor that is the United States. What is it that makes this actor’s behaviour distinctive? The best book I know on that topic is by one of my PhD advisers at Harvard, Samuel Huntington, now unfortunately deceased. The essence of Huntington’s point is that the United States is a peculiar beast. It is an ideological polity. It is based on a creed; it is based on an idea, and it feels obliged to live up to that. But it is also a state like another state. A state with interests, a state living in the real world of international relations. For Huntington, that fundamental tension – between the idealism inherent in the American creed, and its ordinary nature as a state like other states – creates the dynamic of American policy.” Read more...
The best books on US Foreign Policy
Gideon Rose, International Relation
