"In At War With
Ourselves, Michael Hirsh provides both a vivid account of today's
American foreign policy debate and a powerful vision of what American
foreign policy should be."
—Michael Lind, Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern
Takeover of American Politics
"Mike Hirsh's At War With Ourselves is in effect
a peace plan: it propose the terms of an intellectual truce among many
of the combatants in the Great Debate over realism versus idealism and
unilateralism versus multilateralism. He debunks cliches, punctures
slogans and shows how competing schools, whether squared off against
each other on the basis of history or ideology or partisanship, have
more in common than they recognize. Moreover, he offers sensible advice
on how Americans now at odds over their country's role in the world
might close ranks behind a workable—and widely acceptable—concept
of the international community."
—Strobe Talbott
"This is the best account of the tensions within American
foreign policy today. Hirsh accurately describes America's varying attitudes
towards the world and sets forth his own, intelligent ideas on what
we should do. He moves easily from the telling detail to the big picture—and
does it all in refreshingly lucid prose."
—Fareed Zakaria, author of The Future of Freedom: Illiberal
Democracy At Home and Abroad
"Michael Hirsh's new book makes compelling reading
for all those who care about how the world's only superpower engages
with the rest of the world and wonder why Washington often struggles
to get political support for the sensible policies Hirsh carefully outlines."
—James P. Rubin, former Assistant Secretary of State and host of
PBS's "Wide Angle"
"A masterful account of American foreign policy in
the Clinton and George W. Bush years. With compelling narratives of
the personalities and policy choices that shaped the country's global
relations over the last decade, Michael Hirsh brings into focus the
ideas, turning points, and lost opportunities in America's confrontation
with the post-Cold War era. Hirsh's book is essential reading for everyone
interested in American foreign policy today."
—G. John Ikenberry, Peter F. Krogh Professor of Geopolitics and
Global Justice Georgetown University and the author of After Victory:
Institutions, Strategic Restraint and the Rebuilding of Order after
Major War
"Michael Hirsh has accomplished the (almost) unthinkable—he
has woven together American ideological leadership since the end of
the second World War, the complexities and sometimes schizophrenia of
U.S. foreign and economic policy, the growth (and necessity) of American
hard and soft power, and the gaggle of American attitudes about our
place in the world, and lays out a thoroughly compelling case for enhanced
American involvement in and support of the global institutions and "international
community"—so much the subject of today's popular debate. Hirsh
does not extol the virtues of an internationalist system in the abstract,
or as a matter of political liberalism or nostalgia, but instead cogently
demonstrates that the post-war international institutions created largely
by the U.S. have been, virtually since their inception, a potent vehicle
for the dissemination of democracy, American values and market economics
across the globe. Rather than diminish U.S. sovereignty or impede our
policy aims, these institutions project and amplify American power abroad
in a way that U.S. unilateralism cannot sustain. This book is invaluable—its
prescriptions speak to the uncertain world we face, and it provides
a timely reminder that military supremacy or Washington diktat have
not and cannot substitute for the important and painstaking work of
diplomacy, international leadership and institution-building, that have
been the hallmark of the American century."
—Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky
