A Darker View of U.S. Policy in the Cold War

This book focuses on the politics of human rights in U.S. foreign policy, and this is clearly a timely topic. At the present moment, the importance of human rights has become a staple of American political discussion, among politicians in both political parties. The rhetoric of the Bush administration has emphasized the need to export democracy and fight tyranny, and this of course was one of the main public justifications (whether plausible or not) for the 2003 Iraq invasion. The public consensus on America's “Wilsonian” mission has become so generalized that even critics of the Iraq war accept the official explanation that Bush and his neoconservative advisers genuinely were motivated by a quest for global democracy; the administration is faulted mainly for being overly zealous in pursuit of this objective.1 And the Obama administration seems equally fond of idealistic rhetoric. The idea of America as a uniquely moral country also has a constituency in academia, among such figures as Tony Smith and (to some extent) John Lewis Gaddis

Administration (probate law · Cold war · Democracy · Foreign policy · Human rights · Law and economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Sociology · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Intelligence, Security, War Strategy · Law · Philosophy · Public Administration