home > by publication type > op-eds > Don't Worry, Be Happy
Email
| Author: | Gideon Rose, Managing Editor, Foreign Affairs |
|---|
August 6, 2007
Newsweek International
There is an odd disconnect these days between popular perceptions of international relations and the actual state of affairs. Americans increasingly see the world as a source of threats, worrying about terrorism, nuclear proliferation or immigration. Non-Americans, meanwhile, see the United States itself as a dangerous rogue bent on imperial adventures.
Neither view is quite right: the United States profits far more from its engagement with the world than its citizens recognize. And it’s far more benevolent than outsiders think. Aside from managing the endgame in Iraq, therefore, the greatest foreign-policy challenge facing President George W. Bush in the next 18 months—and the toughest job his successor will confront—will be how to convince everyone else that things really aren’t that bad, and that desperate measures to change course would be unnecessary and unwise.
“Naive claptrap,” many will respond. Don’t I understand that radical Islamist terrorism is a grave and continuing danger, both to the stability of the Middle East and to the security of the West itself? That weapons of mass destruction are about to fall into the hands of angry lunatics in Iran and elsewhere? That authoritarianism is making a comeback, the globe is overheating and China will soon dominate everything? And shouldn’t I acknowledge, many will add, that a lot of these problems are the direct result of America’s greed, brutality and recklessness?
In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.
America Between the Wars explores how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today.
In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.
Complete list of CFR Books.
This report argues that the United States must lead with domestic action on climate change and proposes a U.S. negotiating strategy for a global UN climate agreement that includes commitments from all major economies, while also promoting a less formal Partnership for Climate Cooperation that would focus the world's largest emitters on implementing aggressive emissions reductions.
This Task Force report examines changes in Latin America and in U.S. influence there, while taking account of the region's enduring importance to the United States. The Task Force offers an agenda for U.S. policy toward Latin America and identifies four critical areas that should provide the basis of a new U.S. approach.
About Independent Task Forces at CFR.
Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.
