Best laid plans
Subtitle: ideas, identity, and the origins of U.S. multilateralism
By: Stewart Patrick.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Lanham, Md
Language: eng
Number of pages: 377
ISBN-13: 9780742562981; 9780742565869
Subjects: International cooperation.; United States -- Foreign relations -- Philosophy.; United States -- Foreign relations -- 1989-
Description: "The long-standing but unresolved debate of the virtues and values of multilateralism vs. unilateralism in American foreign policy is critically important in today's complicated world. To understand the history of each approach is to understand their opportunities and challenges for the future. Stewart Patrick argues that a combination of enduring identity commitments and new ideas, based on the lessons of recent cataclysmic events, shaped the policy preferences of central American decision-makers in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. Although the book is steeped in history, its conclusions have tremendous relevance for the contemporary era, when the United States once again finds itself as the apex of world power, and debates are rife about the role of multilateral cooperation in the realization of U.S. foreign policy objectives."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: From Washington to Wilson; title: Planning the postwar world : from the Atlantic Charter to Dumbarton Oaks; title: "A world of power, tempered by a little reason" : creating the United Nations; title: "When goods move, soldiers don't" : opening the world economy; title: Bretton woods and the british loan : the postwar monetary and trading system; title: "An imperative principle of action" : self-determination; title: A dream deferred : adapting multilateralism to containment; title: A world economy postponed; title: From collective security to collective defense : the origins of NATO; title: Between anticolonialism and anti-communism : the search for a post-imperial order.