Stanley Hoffmann on America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy by Francis Fukuyama, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy by Stephen M. Walt, and Diplomacy Lessons: Realism for an Unloved Superpower by John Brady Kiesling, in the New York Review of Books:
The US is back to debating what to do next but the setting of this debate is quite different from that of the past. In addition to the familiar world of interstate conflicts, some of the most horrible wars of recent years have been internal; and some of the most spectac-ular acts of violence have been committed by private groups of terrorists not allied to any state. More than a few of the members of the UN—Zimbabwe, Somalia, Uzbekistan—are “failed” or murderous states, whose inhabitants live in a nightmare of chaos and violence. The “realists,” i.e., those who believe national interests are fundamental—must now take into account the UN, which for all its flaws serves to certify legitimacy, as the current administration discovered when it defied the predominant opinion of the Security Council in attacking Iraq.
It is also a world in which globalization—partly under American leadership—erodes effective sovereignty of states (although least for the US) and creates a world economy that offers a very complex combination of permanent competition—especially for oil— and incentives to cooperate, not only for states but for private interests. There is now a transnational society that includes multinational corporations, nongovernmental organizations, criminals, and terrorists. This global economy, with its unprecedented combination of private and state capitalisms, can be immensely destructive, as when it eliminated millions of jobs in developed countries. It deepens inequality—at home and abroad.
More here.