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The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century.

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The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century by Robert Lieber. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2005. 272 pp. $28.00.

The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World's Government in the Twenty-first Century by Michael Mandelbaum. New York, Public Affairs, 2005. 283 pp. $26.00.

Criticizing U.S. foreign policy is a popular parlor sport, rivaling the World Cup in its global appeal. Iraq embodies U.S. failures: the absence of weapons of mass destruction, a resistant insurgency, and a state at risk of collapse. Largely because of the U.S. presence in Iraq, most of the world thinks the United States is the biggest threat to world peace (Pew Research Centre, 2006). However, as important as it is for America to acknowledge the shortcomings of its foreign policy, it is equally important that analyses be historically grounded and sophisticated, and that these consider alternatives to America's positions and policies.

Two recent books by leading foreign policy analysts take the more difficult and, indeed, more unpopular route. These books, by...

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