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THE HELL OF GOOD INTENTIONS

America's foreign policy elite and the decline of u.s. primacy.

by Stephen M. Walt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 16, 2018

Walt’s call for a greatly reduced military presence overseas will appeal to many readers, though his book will find many...

Want someone to blame for Iraq and Afghanistan? Blame the purveyors of “liberal hegemony,” whose blunders paved the way for Donald Trump.

The 2016 election, argues Walt (International Affairs/Harvard Univ.; Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy , 2005, etc.), went to dark-horse candidate Trump because voters had sensed, somehow, that something was wrong with the way American foreign policy was being conducted. By his account, the establishment against which Trump railed was invested in the idea that America was the primary superpower and responsible for policing the rest of the world. The end of the Cold War allowed the U.S. to pursue ambitious foreign policy objectives “without having to worry very much about the consequences,” some of which would manifest themselves in the rise of Islamism and other reactionary movements. Walt’s arguments against “liberal hegemony”—the adjective meaning not leftist in orientation but instead something that “seeks to use American power to defend and spread the traditional liberal principles of individual freedom, democratic governance, and a market based economy”—are coherent if sometimes strident, and his descriptions match what appears to be happening on the ground, such as the emergence of China as a foreign policy rival to the U.S. The author is not altogether against that emergence, for the arrival of a “true peer competitor” provides powerful incentive to overhaul the system and impose greater accountability for unsuccessful outcomes. In the place of the failed grand strategy followed by both Democratic and Republican administrations in the past few decades, Walt proposes a program of “offshore balancing” that would emphasize American interests and promote world peace. Among its tenets is the abandonment of threats of regime change, as with those recently directed against North Korea. Writes the author, “countries usually seek nuclear weapons because they fear being attacked and want a powerful deterrent, and U.S. efforts at regime change heighten such fears.”

Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-374-28003-1

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | HISTORY | UNITED STATES | U.S. GOVERNMENT | INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | GENERAL HISTORY

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

The osage murders and the birth of the fbi.

by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.

During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann ( The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession , 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.

Pub Date: April 18, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017

GENERAL HISTORY | TRUE CRIME | UNITED STATES | FIRST/NATIVE NATIONS | HISTORY

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BOOK TO SCREEN

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY

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By Jacob Heilbrunn

• Nov. 20, 2018

THE HELL OF GOOD INTENTIONS America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy By Stephen M. Walt 384 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $28.

Stephen M. Walt, who teaches international relations at Harvard’s Kennedy School and writes a column for Foreign Policy magazine, is no stranger to controversy. In September 2002, at a moment when both liberal hawks and neoconservatives were cheering for the George W. Bush administration to topple Saddam Hussein, he helped organize an open letter signed by over two dozen international relations scholars that appeared as an advertisement on the New York Times Op-Ed page, declaring “War With Iraq Is Not in the U.S. National Interest.” Next, in 2006, he and John J. Mearsheimer published a lengthy essay in The London Review of Books that was called “The Israel Lobby.” It caused an international furor, and an expanded version became a best-selling book. Now, in “The Hell of Good Intentions” — the title seems to take aim at the former United Nations ambassador Samantha Power’s impassioned book about the historical failure to prevent genocide, “‘A Problem From Hell’” — Walt denounces America’s pursuit of a “liberal hegemony.”

Like Edmund Burke, who warned, “I dread our own power and our own ambition; I dread our being too much dreaded,” Walt views America’s recurrent bouts of missionary zeal with consternation. Others, like the foreign policy writer Robert Kagan, may fret about an encroaching jungle invading the gardens of the West; Walt’s attitude is to forget about trying to trim it back. As a longstanding member of the realist school of foreign policy, which has traditionally subordinated considerations about human rights and morality to a balance of power, Walt might be expected to wax enthusiastic about Donald Trump, who has espoused a “principled realism” and condemned the foreign policy establishment. Walt, however, exhibits as much disdain for Trump’s bellicosity as he does for the liberal internationalists that he indicts here. Walt’s book offers a valuable contribution to the mounting debate about America’s purpose. But his diagnosis of America’s debilities is more persuasive than his prescriptions to remedy them.

According to Walt, the dominant narrative after the conclusion of the Cold War was that history was on America’s side, even, as Francis Fukuyama put it in a famous 1989 essay in The National Interest, that so-called history had ended and all that remained was economic materialism. Globalization would lead to what Karl Marx had called in the Communist Manifesto a “universal interdependence” among nations; warfare would become a thing of the past. America’s mission was to push other states to protect human rights and to help them transition to democracy.

In Walt’s view, “despite minor differences, both liberal and neoconservative proponents of liberal hegemony assumed that the United States could pursue this ambitious global strategy without triggering serious opposition.” But the very steps that America took to enhance its security, Walt suggests, ended up undermining it. He reminds us, for instance, that George F. Kennan warned in 1999 that NATO expansion eastward was a “tragic mistake” that would, sooner or later, ignite Russian nationalism. Under Vladimir Putin’s leadership, Russia became a revanchist power that launched cyber attacks on the Baltic States, seized Crimea, invaded Ukraine and interfered in the 2016 American presidential election. In Walt’s telling, “the energetic pursuit of liberal hegemony was mostly a failure. … By 2017, in fact, democracy was in retreat in many places and under considerable strain in the United States itself.”

Walt reserves his greatest ire for what Barack Obama’s adviser Ben Rhodes dismissively referred to as the “Blob,” or Washington’s foreign policy elite. Some of his vexation is personal. He reports that the advertisement he signed attacking the invasion of Iraq has disappeared into the foreign policy memory hole: “In the 16-plus years since the ad was printed,” Walt observes, “none of its signatories have been asked to serve in government or advise a presidential campaign.” Walt’s own zest for intellectual combat, though, can lead him into rhetorical overkill. “Instead of being a disciplined body of professionals constrained by a well-informed public and forced by necessity to set priorities and hold themselves accountable,” Walt writes, “today’s foreign policy elite is a dysfunctional caste of privileged insiders who are frequently disdainful of alternative perspectives and insulated both professionally and personally from the consequences of the policies they promote.”

Walt points to the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council and the Center for New American Security, among others, as constituting a kind of interlocking directorate that fosters groupthink and consists of mandarins intolerant of dissenting views. But Walt’s depiction of these organizations misses the mark. There’s plenty of debate in Washington; whether it amounts to much is another question. He also focuses excessively on several rather obscure academic projects that he believes epitomize the sterile moribundity of American strategic thought. It would have been more illuminating had he zeroed in on those few organizations that really do exercise outsize influence in Trump’s Washington, like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is helping to shape Iran policy.

Walt persuasively contends that Washington’s bungled interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya helped propel Trump, who has consistently derided foreign policy experts, to the presidency. But so pervasive is the influence of the foreign policy elite, Walt argues, that it has managed to capture Trump himself. In Afghanistan, Trump ditched his campaign vows and bolstered American force levels, claiming that they would engage in counterterrorism rather than nation-building. Trump has presided over an approach toward Russia and China that is driving them into each other’s arms, precisely as realist doctrine would predict. Walt also drubs Trump for his embrace of foreign autocrats, which amounts to a pursuit of illiberal hegemony: “The United States still sought primacy and its global military role was undiminished, but it was no longer strongly committed to promoting liberal values.” With foreign policy hawks like the national security adviser John Bolton and the secretary of state Mike Pompeo on the White House team, Walt perceptively observes that, far from being an isolationist, Trump has enabled a return to the confrontational unilateralism of Dick Cheney.

So how to rescue the superpower from its own miscues? Walt advocates what is known as offshore balancing. Offshore balancers, he says, believe that only a few areas of the globe are worth fighting to protect, with the Western Hemisphere paramount among them. When it comes to Europe, Northeast Asia or the Persian Gulf, America would intervene to uphold a balance of power only in extremis , and preferably after a war had already begun. Walt notes that while this may sound like a radical idea, it once was the guiding precept for American foreign policy.

In truth, any president who announced such a strategy would immediately initiate a free-for-all around the globe as local potentates tested Washington’s resolve. Walt also makes the easy assumption that America can remain a pre-eminent power, but the mounting national debt and Trump’s steady conversion of the country into what amounts to a rogue state could lead to a very different outcome. Soon Americans may discover that the only thing more vexing than exercising dominance is forfeiting it.

Jacob Heilbrunn is the editor of The National Interest.

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The Hell of Good Intentions Summary and Reviews

Summary | Reviews | More Information | More Books

The Hell of Good Intentions

America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy

by Stephen M. Walt

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Published Oct 2018 400 pages Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion Publication Information

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About this book

Book summary.

From the New York Times–bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy - explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it.

In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have soured, the European Union is wobbling, nationalism and populism are on the rise, and the United States is stuck in costly and pointless wars that have squandered trillions of dollars and undermined its influence around the world. The root of this dismal record, Walt argues, is the American foreign policy establishment's stubborn commitment to a strategy of "liberal hegemony." Since the end of the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to use U.S. power to spread democracy, open markets, and other liberal values into every nook and cranny of the planet. This strategy was doomed to fail, but its proponents in the foreign policy elite were never held accountable and kept repeating the same mistakes. Donald Trump won the presidency promising to end the misguided policies of the foreign policy "Blob" and to pursue a wiser approach. But his erratic and impulsive style of governing, combined with a deeply flawed understanding of world politics, are making a bad situation worse. The best alternative, Walt argues, is a return to the realist strategy of "offshore balancing," which eschews regime change, nation-building, and other forms of global social engineering. The American people would surely welcome a more restrained foreign policy, one that allowed greater attention to problems here at home. This long-overdue shift will require abandoning the futile quest for liberal hegemony and building a foreign policy establishment with a more realistic view of American power. Clear-eyed, candid, and elegantly written, Stephen M. Walt's The Hell of Good Intentions offers both a compelling diagnosis of America's recent foreign policy follies and a proven formula for renewed success.

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"Starred Review. This excellent analysis is cogent, accessible, and well-argued. " - Publishers Weekly "Starred Review. A scholarly yet accessible read. Anyone interested in American foreign policy will want to reflect on Walt's thesis." - Library Journal "Walt's call for a greatly reduced military presence overseas will appeal to many readers, though his book will find many critics inside the Beltway and his own Harvard Yard." - Kirkus "Between a president bent on ripping up the international liberal order and a foreign policy establishment determined to reestablish 'liberal hegemony,' Stephen Walt has laid out a real alternative, a foreign policy that rebuilds America at home and promotes peace through restraint and alliance building abroad. It's a brilliant analysis that will define debate for years to come." - Michael Ignatieff, President and Rector, Central European University "Steve Walt has written an engaging and long overdue critique of the widely accepted canon. Regardless of whether you agree with his prescription, this is essential reading for those who care about our role in the world." - Paul B. Stares, General John W. Vessey Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations "This book will wake you up, shake you up, and leave you smarter...Members of the US foreign policy establishment won't like this book. They should read it anyway. The fate of the nation may depend on it." - Rosa Brooks, Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, Georgetown University Law Center, author of How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything "Very controversial, expertly argued and engagingly written, this book will spark an indispensable debate about how to ensure that America's foreign policy is aligned to America's interests. A must read." - Moisés Naím, Distinguished Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, author of The End of Power "Anyone who wants to understand why post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy has been plagued by disasters like the Iraq War should read Steve Walt's brilliant new book. He shows with characteristic flair and sophistication that the taproot of the problem is America's foreign policy elite, which is suffused with misguided ideas about international politics." - John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago "This is thoughtful and smart analysis, and timely contribution to the critical debate that is taking stock of American foreign policy, and is bound to decide its future direction - a must read for policy-makers and students of American foreign policy alike." - Vali Nasr, Dean and Professor of International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University, author of The Dispensable Nation "Much American foreign policy is the product of a suffocating consensus, notwithstanding the partisan combat that also characterizes American politics. Stephen Walt provides an illuminating and well-researched look at that consensus and persuasively explains how it keeps pushing the United States into the same costly mistakes abroad." - Paul R. Pillar, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Georgetown University Center for Security Studies "Sadly, Stephen M. Walt is right: the American foreign policy establishment has failed America. America's standing in the world has sunk. All of us, both Americans and non-Americans, should read this book to help the country regain its once constructive global leadership. A must-read for decision-makers around the world." - Kishore Mahbubani, Professor, National University of Singapore, author of Has the West Lost It?

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Author Information

Stephen m. walt.

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University. He is the author of The Origins of Alliances ; Revolution and War ; Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy ; and, with John J. Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. He writes frequently for Foreign Policy .

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June 8th, 2019

Book review: the hell of good intentions: america’s foreign policy elite and the decline of us primacy by stephen m. walt.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

In  The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of US Primacy ,  Stephen M. Walt offers a character study of three US administrations and the vast network of think tanks and policy wonks that have influenced the trajectory of America’s recent foreign policy – from its political victories to its fiascoes. This book will be rewarding reading for anyone wanting to understanding contemporary developments in US foreign policy and the emergent shifts in the nation’s political landscape, writes  Joanna Rozpedowski . 

The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of US Primacy . Stephen M. Walt. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2018.

Ever since Antiquity, two rival perspectives have accompanied the practice of diplomacy. The first inquired after what was morally right, whereas the second focused on what was pragmatic and expedient. The Greek city-states, long regarded as the enlightened architects of diplomatic customs and traditions, bequeathed upon the Western world the lofty ideas, aspirations and vocabulary of the political ethos and practice of such commonplace concepts as democracy, commercial accords, truces, alliances and conventions. The preferred methods of achieving these entailed persuasion, inducements, threats and intimidation, with an occasional resort to arms. Subsequent travails of Imperial Rome, Constantinople and the Florentine courts of the Renaissance showed that the reigning canon of all diplomatic endeavours rested on enlightened self-interest aimed at the preservation and aggrandisement of empire.

While conquest and territorial expansion lay at the heart of continental Europe, the promise of the New World offered a form of republicanism absolved of foreign entanglements, where in the words of John Adams, the ‘business of America with Europe is commerce, not politics or war’. ‘Why by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe’, George Washington in his Farewell Address asked, ‘entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humor or Caprice?’ This post-revolutionary idealism carried over to the Wilsonianism of open covenants and self-determination of peoples, only to be tested and eventually buried by the tragic reality of World War Two and the consequent chill emanating from the Cold War.

It is at this moment in history that Stephen M. Walt’s The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of US Primacy begins. Walt starts his reflections on the American foreign policy establishment with a skeletal reliance on the thoughts of the US forefathers or the long and rich history of a diplomatic esprit de corps , choosing instead to focus on the late twentieth and early twenty-first-century’s moral compulsions and ideological convictions that led to the nation’s many political victories as well as fiascoes. His is a character study of three US administrations and the vast network of think tanks and policy wonks that have influenced the trajectory of America’s foreign policy.

At the centre of Walt’s argument is the critical assertion that the United States is a benevolent power with noble intentions, an ‘indispensable nation’ intent on pursuing an ambitious grand strategy of liberal hegemony based on liberal principles of individual freedom, democratic governance and a market-based economy, which in the past 25 years has tragically misfired. Rather than making the United States ‘safer, stronger, more prosperous, or more popular […] and the rest of the world more tranquil and secure’, Walt contends that ‘America’s ambitious attempt to reorder world politics undermined its own position, sowed chaos in several regions, and caused considerable misery in a number of countries’ (23). The Cold War victory has been squandered, Walt argues, and the United States has found itself bearing a disproportionate share of global security burdens with a considerable cost to America’s own blood and treasure.

Image Credit: ( Robert Couse-Baker CC BY 2.0 )

Given America’s abundant advantages, Walt claims, the price of US primacy has been mistakenly perceived by administrations on both ends of the political spectrum to be modest and easily absorbed by the world’s largest economy. Excessively burdensome democracy promotion remained the central foreign policy objective of the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, despite ballooning federal deficits, budget sequesters, cuts in defence spending and world financial crises. In the meantime, the Washington D.C. policy establishment eagerly embraced a singular solution to the world’s crises irrespective of the peculiarity of the problem at hand – that, in order to keep the liberal order alive, the US must remain ‘deeply engaged’ and take the lead in ‘solving every global issue’ (132).

To execute foreign policy and convince the American public of the benefits of global activism, policy experts engaged in meticulous rationalisations ranging from threat inflation and exploitation of uncertainty, to the exaggeration of benefits guaranteeing the country’s security and prosperity, finally to the concealment of the real costs, effectively masking the loss of human lives and risks associated with potential blowback resulting from military interventions abroad (147-80). According to Walt, liberal hegemony, pursued by ‘an out-of-touch community of foreign policy VIPs’ (181), has failed not only in Iraq, but also heavily miscalculated:

fallout from the NATO expansion, the consequences of regime change in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere, the open-ended ‘‘war on terror,’’ the mismanagement of the Middle East peace process, the continuing spread of weapons of mass destruction, and the antidemocratic backlash that has occurred since the 2008 financial crisis (259).

But why should an otherwise benevolent empire intent on acting on humanitarian impulses in the face of human tragedy be excoriated for its use of power in the pursuit of ennobling ends? For Walt, diplomacy – as a tool of statecraft, rather than an ideology devoid of tangible deliverables – ought to be a primary means to an end. To win on the diplomatic front, however, America’s diplomatic ranks, the author argues, are in need of reform in order to absolve ‘inexperienced amateurs’ (273) of the responsibility and unmerited prestige of holding key diplomatic positions. Professionalising the ranks also means ridding the foreign policy establishment of excessive secrecy, self-protective inbreeding and immunity from accountability which encourages members of the group to pursue precarious foreign policy goals at no personal or professional expense. Walt further indicts diplomatic corps’ penchant for marginalising dissention, silencing criticism of policy or policy ‘insiders’ and eschewing strict accountability in order not to jeopardise friendships while routinely embracing elements of expansionism and power projection towards which the lay American taxpayer feels increasing tedium and aversion (215). These include overreliance on military force when confronted with political crises, elites’ lack of interest in diplomacy and a tendency toward unilateralism executed under the prestigious mantle of ‘global leadership’ (288).

The Hell of Good Intentions offers an exacting autopsy of America’s successive foreign policy pursuits since the end of the Cold War in the name of liberal hegemony. While finding the outcome inadequate to the enormous soft power appeal of the US and the overwhelming military might at the country’s disposal, Walt offers an alternative approach – offshore balancing – which instead of attempting ‘to make the world in America’s image, focuses on preventing other states from projecting power in ways that might threaten the United States, while engaging its resources only when there are direct threats to vital U.S. interests’ (261).

This strategy, Walt argues, would permit the United States to focus on four primary geographical regions where its vital interests are at stake: that is, in the Western Hemisphere itself, as well in Europe, Northeast Asia and the Persian Gulf. As industrial and military centres of power, America’s primary role would be in maintaining an ‘offshore’ presence or, in certain circumstances, providing for small military contingents or intelligence-gathering facilities. Rather than launching into ‘costly and counterproductive crusades’ (263), the regional security challenges would be repelled by regional stakeholders themselves, leaving the United States in the position to enter conflicts only when another major power or peer competitor should patently threaten to obstruct its pursuit of strategic aims and upset the regional balance of power. By monitoring and ensuring that the regions of vital interest to the United States do not fall under the control of other powers, Walt projects, this will buffer the country from harmful foreign policy blowbacks fostered by nationalist resentment, terrorism and anti-American extremism (264).

While the sensible American public would welcome reduced military expenditures on foreign campaigns and significant reductions to the $750 billion Pentagon defense budget, Walt does not tell his readers how much buy-in ‘offshore balancing’ has among the Washington D.C. foreign policy establishment or how the strategy would fare when confronted with new regular and irregular trials and perturbations outside of the purview of the country’s traditional geographical spheres of influence and expertise. Putting a high premium on ‘patient diplomacy’ and ‘moral suasion’ (289), as Walt indeed does, while also promoting liberal values abroad, is a theoretically attractive proposition until, of course, realpolitik and the prerogatives of hegemonic exceptionalism launch the country into its longstanding default crisis response of retaliatory invasive warfare and excessively protracted conflict with a staggering human cost.

Since the book is largely retrospective and reactive in approach, Walt’s analysis would also benefit from a closer look at America’s prospective foreign policy challenges, particularly how ‘offshore balancing’ might address the shift in the economic balance of power towards Asia; the escalation in Russian belligerence and its fine-tuning of propaganda and misinformation campaigns; North Korean and Iranian malign influence; the great power scramble for the Arctic; technological innovation in artificial intelligence and the cyber-dimension of (hybrid) warfare fought by bit and bot as well as the rise in irregular armies and the inevitable weaponisation of outer space.

Anyone who wants to understand historical trends and contemporary developments in America’s foreign policy and the emerging shifts in the country’s political landscape will nonetheless find Walt’s book a rewarding reading and an apt and timely companion to John Mearsheimer’s The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities (2018).

• This review originally appeared at the  LSE Review of Books . 

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Joanna Rozpedowski  –  Durham University Joanna Rozpedowski is a doctoral researcher in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University. She specialises in political theory, international relations and international law and can be found on Twitter @J.K.Rozpedowski

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Book Review: The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy

Ever since Antiquity, two rival perspectives have accompanied the practice of diplomacy.

The first inquired after what was morally right, whereas the second focused on what was pragmatic and expedient. The Greek city-states, long regarded as the enlightened architects of diplomatic customs and traditions, bequeathed upon the Western world the lofty ideas, aspirations, and vocabulary of the political ethos and practice of such commonplace concepts as democracy, commercial accords, truces, alliances, and conventions. The preferred methods of achieving these entailed persuasions, inducements, threats, and intimidation, with an occasional resort to arms. Subsequent travails of Imperial Rome, Constantinople and the Florentine courts of the Renaissance showed that the reigning canon of all diplomatic endeavors rested on enlightened self-interest aimed at the preservation and aggrandizement of empire.

While conquest and territorial expansion lay at the heart of continental Europe, the promise of the New World offered a form of republicanism absolved of foreign entanglements, wherein the words of John Adams, the “business of America with Europe is commerce, not politics or war.” “Why by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe,” George Washington in his Farewell Address asked, “entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humor or Caprice?” This post-revolutionary idealism carried over to the Wilsonianism of open covenants and self-determination of peoples, only to be tested and eventually buried by the tragic reality of World War Two and the consequent chill emanating from the Cold War.

At the centre of Walt’s argument is the critical assertion that the United States is a benevolent power with noble intentions, an “indispensable nation” intent on pursuing an ambitious grand strategy of liberal hegemony based on liberal principles of individual freedom, democratic governance, and a market-based economy, which in the past 25 years has tragically misfired. Rather than making the United States “safer, stronger, more prosperous, or more popular […] and the rest of the world more tranquil and secure,” Walt contends that “America’s ambitious attempt to reorder world politics undermined its own position, sowed chaos in several regions, and caused considerable misery in a number of countries” (23). The Cold War victory has been squandered, Walt argues, and the United States has found itself bearing a disproportionate share of global security burdens with a considerable cost to America’s own blood and treasure.

Given America’s abundant advantages, Walt claims, the price of U.S. primacy has been mistakenly perceived by administrations on both ends of the political spectrum to be modest and easily absorbed by the world’s largest economy. Excessively burdensome democracy promotion remained the central foreign policy objective of the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, despite ballooning federal deficits, budget sequesters, cuts in defense spending and world financial crises. In the meantime, the Washington D.C. policy establishment eagerly embraced a singular solution to the world’s crises irrespective of the peculiarity of the problem at hand – that, in order to keep the liberal order alive, the U.S. must remain “deeply engaged” and take the lead in “solving every global issue” (132).

To execute foreign policy and convince the American public of the benefits of global activism, policy experts engaged in meticulous rationalisations ranging from threat inflation and exploitation of uncertainty, to the exaggeration of benefits guaranteeing the country’s security and prosperity, finally to the concealment of the real costs, effectively masking the loss of human lives and risks associated with potential blowback resulting from military interventions abroad (147-80). According to Walt, liberal hegemony, pursued by “an out-of-touch community of foreign policy VIPs” (181), has failed not only in Iraq but also heavily miscalculated:

Fallout from the NATO expansion, the consequences of regime change in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere, the open-ended “war on terror,” the mismanagement of the Middle East peace process, the continuing spread of weapons of mass destruction, and the anti-democratic backlash that has occurred since the 2008 financial crisis (259).

But why should an otherwise benevolent empire intent on acting on humanitarian impulses in the face of human tragedy be excoriated for its use of power in the pursuit of ennobling ends? For Walt, diplomacy – as a tool of statecraft, rather than an ideology devoid of tangible deliverables – ought to be a primary means to an end. To win on the diplomatic front, however, America’s diplomatic ranks, the author argues, are in need of reform in order to absolve “inexperienced amateurs” (273) of the responsibility and unmerited prestige of holding key diplomatic positions. Professionalising the ranks also means ridding the foreign policy establishment of excessive secrecy, self-protective inbreeding, and immunity from accountability which encourages members of the group to pursue precarious foreign policy goals at no personal or professional expense. Walt further indicts diplomatic corps’ penchant for marginalizing dissent, silencing criticism of policy or policy “insiders” and eschewing strict accountability in order not to jeopardize friendships while routinely embracing elements of expansionism and power projection towards which the lay American taxpayer feels increasing tedium and aversion (215). These include overreliance on military force when confronted with political crises, elites’ lack of interest in diplomacy and a tendency toward unilateralism executed under the prestigious mantle of “global leadership” (288).

The Hell of Good Intentions offers an exacting autopsy of America’s successive foreign policy pursuits since the end of the Cold War in the name of liberal hegemony. While finding the outcome inadequate to the enormous soft power appeal of the U.S. and the overwhelming military might at the country’s disposal, Walt offers an alternative approach – offshore balancing – which instead of attempting “to make the world in America’s image, focuses on preventing other states from projecting power in ways that might threaten the United States, while engaging its resources only when there are direct threats to vital U.S. interests” (261).

This strategy, Walt argues, would permit the United States to focus on four primary geographical regions where its vital interests are at stake: that is, in the Western Hemisphere itself, as well in Europe, Northeast Asia, and the Persian Gulf. As industrial and military centers of power, America’s primary role would be in maintaining an “offshore” presence or, in certain circumstances, providing for small military contingents or intelligence-gathering facilities. Rather than launching into “costly and counterproductive crusades” (263), the regional security challenges would be repelled by regional stakeholders themselves, leaving the United States in the position to enter conflicts only when another major power or peer competitor should patently threaten to obstruct its pursuit of strategic aims and upset the regional balance of power. By monitoring and ensuring that the regions of vital interest to the United States do not fall under the control of other powers, Walt projects, this will buffer the country from harmful foreign policy blowbacks fostered by nationalist resentment, terrorism and anti-American extremism (264).

While the sensible American public would welcome reduced military expenditures on foreign campaigns and significant reductions to the $750 billion Pentagon defense budget, Walt does not tell his readers how much buy-in “offshore balancing” has among the Washington D.C. foreign policy establishment or how the strategy would fare when confronted with new regular and irregular trials and perturbations outside of the purview of the country’s traditional geographical spheres of influence and expertise. Putting a high premium on “patient diplomacy” and “moral suasion” (289), as Walt indeed does, while also promoting liberal values abroad, is a theoretically attractive proposition until, of course, realpolitik and the prerogatives of hegemonic exceptionalism launch the country into its longstanding default crisis response of retaliatory invasive warfare and excessively protracted conflict with a staggering human cost.

Since the book is largely retrospective and reactive in approach, Walt’s analysis would also benefit from a closer look at America’s prospective foreign policy challenges, particularly how “offshore balancing” might address the shift in the economic balance of power towards Asia; the escalation in Russian belligerence and its fine-tuning of propaganda and misinformation campaigns; North Korean and Iranian malign influence; the great power scramble for the Arctic; technological innovation in artificial intelligence and the cyber-dimension of (hybrid) warfare fought by bit and bot as well as the rise in irregular armies and the inevitable weaponisation of outer space.

Anyone who wants to understand historical trends and contemporary developments in America’s foreign policy and the emerging shifts in the country’s political landscape will nonetheless find Walt’s book a rewarding reading and an apt and timely companion to John Mearsheimer’s The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities (2018).

This article was first published in the London School of Economics Review of Books . It represents the views of the author, and not the position of Global Security Review, the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics.

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The Hell of Good Intentions—A Review

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The Hell of Good Intentions

From the New York Times–bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy—explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have soured, the European Union is wobbling, nationalism and populism are on the rise, and the United States is stuck in costly and pointless wars that have squandered trillions of dollars and undermined its influence around the world. The root of this dismal record, Walt argues, is the American foreign policy establishment’s stubborn commitment to a strategy of “liberal hegemony.” Since the end of the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to use U.S. power to spread democracy, open markets, and other liberal values into every nook and cranny of the planet. This strategy was doomed to fail, but its proponents in the foreign policy elite were never held accountable and kept repeating the same mistakes. Donald Trump won the presidency promising to end the misguided policies of the foreign policy “Blob” and to pursue a wiser approach. But his erratic and impulsive style of governing, combined with a deeply flawed understanding of world politics, are making a bad situation worse. The best alternative, Walt argues, is a return to the realist strategy of “offshore balancing,” which eschews regime change, nation-building, and other forms of global social engineering. The American people would surely welcome a more restrained foreign policy, one that allowed greater attention to problems here at home. This long-overdue shift will require abandoning the futile quest for liberal hegemony and building a foreign policy establishment with a more realistic view of American power. Clear-eyed, candid, and elegantly written, Stephen M. Walt’s The Hell of Good Intentions offers both a compelling diagnosis of America’s recent foreign policy follies and a proven formula for renewed success.

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The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy Paperback – Oct. 22 2019

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From the New York Times –bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy―explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it. In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have soured, the European Union is wobbling, nationalism and populism are on the rise, and the United States is stuck in costly and pointless wars that have squandered trillions of dollars and undermined its influence around the world. The root of this dismal record, Walt argues, is the American foreign policy establishment’s stubborn commitment to a strategy of “liberal hegemony.” Since the end of the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to use U.S. power to spread democracy, open markets, and other liberal values into every nook and cranny of the planet. This strategy was doomed to fail, but its proponents in the foreign policy elite were never held accountable and kept repeating the same mistakes. Donald Trump won the presidency promising to end the misguided policies of the foreign policy “Blob” and to pursue a wiser approach. But his erratic and impulsive style of governing, combined with a deeply flawed understanding of world politics, are making a bad situation worse. The best alternative, Walt argues, is a return to the realist strategy of “offshore balancing,” which eschews regime change, nation-building, and other forms of global social engineering. The American people would surely welcome a more restrained foreign policy, one that allowed greater attention to problems here at home. This long-overdue shift will require abandoning the futile quest for liberal hegemony and building a foreign policy establishment with a more realistic view of American power. Clear-eyed, candid, and elegantly written, Stephen M. Walt’s The Hell of Good Intentions offers both a compelling diagnosis of America’s recent foreign policy follies and a proven formula for renewed success.

• Print length 400 pages
• Language English
• Publication date Oct. 22 2019
• Dimensions 13.84 x 2.54 x 20.83 cm
• ISBN-10 1250234816
• ISBN-13 978-1250234810
• See all details

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"[ The Hell of Good Intentions ] offers a valuable contribution to the mounting debate about America's purpose . . . Walt persuasively contends that Washington's bungled interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya helped propel Trump, who has consistently derided foreign policy experts, to the presidency." ―Jacob Heilbrunn, The New York Times Book Review "The Trump-era establishment narrative ignores the fact that, despite his campaign rhetoric (“our foreign policy is a complete and total disaster”; “we’re rebuilding other countries while weakening our own”), the current president has not veered very far from the playbook of the bipartisan foreign-policy elite. Stephen Walt’s The Hell of Good Intentions helps explains why . . . Walt’s portrait of the Blob and those who inhabit it is nothing short of damning." ―James Carden, The Nation "Walt's book should be recommended reading for all those who work on US foreign policy, even if it may, on occasion, make some of us a little uncomfortable." ― Financial Times "[Walt] skewers the naiveté and idealism that has guided U.S. foreign policy . . . Walt, a clear writer and incisive thinker, has written a fine book . . . These sensible ideas deserve close attention." ―Rajan Menon, The Boston Review "A scholarly yet accessible read. Anyone interested in American foreign policy will want to reflect on Walt's thesis." ―Daniel Blewett, Library Journal (starred review) "Thought-provoking . . . This excellent analysis is cogent, accessible, and well-argued." ― Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Between a president bent on ripping up the international liberal order and a foreign policy establishment determined to reestablish ‘liberal hegemony,' Stephen Walt has laid out a real alternative, a foreign policy that rebuilds America at home and promotes peace through restraint and alliance building abroad. It’s a brilliant analysis that will define debate for years to come.” ―Michael Ignatieff, President and Rector, Central European University “If we are to have a healthy and honest debate about the future of U.S. foreign policy―as increasingly we must―we need more books like The Hell of Good Intentions . Steve Walt has written an engaging and long overdue critique of the widely accepted canon. Regardless of whether you agree with his prescription, this is essential reading for those who care about our role in the world.” ―Paul B. Stares, General John W. Vessey Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations "This book will wake you up, shake you up, and leave you smarter. Walt takes aim at the bipartisan verities of Washington’s foreign policy establishment, skewering its conformity, self-righteousness, and shared illusions―and offers his own thoughtful prescription for a humbler, wiser and more effective US foreign policy. Members of the US foreign policy establishment won’t like this book. They should read it anyway. The fate of the nation may depend on it." ―Rosa Brooks, Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, Georgetown University Law Center, author of How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything "Very controversial, expertly argued and engagingly written, this book will spark an indispensable debate about how to ensure that America’s foreign policy is aligned to America’s interests. A must read." ―Moisés Naím, Distinguished Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, author of The End of Power "Anyone who wants to understand why post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy has been plagued by disasters like the Iraq War should read Steve Walt’s brilliant new book. He shows with characteristic flair and sophistication that the taproot of the problem is America’s foreign policy elite, which is suffused with misguided ideas about international politics." ―John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago "American foreign policy is at an inflection point. The Hell of Good Intentions provides an insightful account of the crisis facing American foreign policy, but more important, it shows how this is a crisis of its own making, the result not so much of lack of imagination as that of blunders of well-meaning foreign policy practitioners. This is thoughtful and smart analysis, and timely contribution to the critical debate that is taking stock of American foreign policy, and is bound to decide its future direction―a must read for policy-makers and students of American foreign policy alike." ―Vali Nasr, Dean and Professor of International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University, author of The Dispensable Nation "Much American foreign policy is the product of a suffocating consensus, notwithstanding the partisan combat that also characterizes American politics. Stephen Walt provides an illuminating and well-researched look at that consensus and persuasively explains how it keeps pushing the United States into the same costly mistakes abroad." ―Paul R. Pillar, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Georgetown University Center for Security Studies "Sadly, Stephen M. Walt is right: the American foreign policy establishment has failed America. America’s standing in the world has sunk. All of us, both Americans and non-Americans, should read this book to help the country regain its once constructive global leadership. A must-read for decision-makers around the world." ―Kishore Mahbubani, Professor, National University of Singapore, author of Has the West Lost It?

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; Reprint edition (Oct. 22 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250234816
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250234810
• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 kg
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.84 x 2.54 x 20.83 cm
• #204 in International Security (Books)
• #266 in Government and Political Science
• #302 in United States Politics

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Stephen m. walt.

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Vegyn: The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions review – steely relentlessness and glossy melodies

(PLZ Make It Ruins) An engaging, 90s trip-hop-inspired turn from the English producer combines fractured storytelling and long instrumental passages

T hirty-year-old English producer Joe Thornalley (son of ex-Cure bassist Phil) is best known for working with Frank Ocean, back when the singer made albums. Thornalley’s second Vegyn outing develops the chilly, dance-adjacent sound he debuted on Only Diamonds Cut Diamonds . This time, we get more singers and better-structured songs. Nothing as pretty as 2019’s Debold , but it feels like his most accessible project so far – far more engaging than Headache , his recent AI-performed side hustle.

The preponderance of sharp drum breaks on The Road to Hell… is reminiscent of 90s trip-hop – the brighter, trancey west-coast US productions, rather than smoky Brooklyn-via-Bristol beats. It gives his work a steely relentlessness that plays nicely against a glossy melody, especially on Léa Sen’s lovely Turn Me Inside and John Glacier’s murmuring, insistent A Dream Goes On Forever. Ambitious single Halo Flip is a good bellwether for the album. If you enjoy its combination of fractured storytelling and long instrumental passages, you’ll appreciate the consistent quality of the simpler songs around it.

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Superproducer vegyn tells us his musical red flags, by emily sandstrom, april 15, 2024.

Vegyn, photographed by Joshua Gordon.

This is SOUND ADVICE, a weekly destination for playlists curated by  Interview ’s friends, enemies, and lovers. Over the past few weeks, we’ve gathered playlists from Varg2™ ,  José James , and Nourished by Time . This week’s guest is the elusive London-based musician Vegyn, a.k.a Joseph Thornalley. Known for working on the hit albums of artists such as Frank Ocean, Travis Scott, and JPEGMafia, Vegyn dropped his own highly anticipated album, The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions , last Friday. To mark its release, he curated a smooth, echoey electronic playlist and revealed the cinematic influences that play into his sound, from Oceans 11 soundtrack to the twisted indie comedy Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World and, of course, David Lynch .

Where do you dance? Nowhere.  

Bluetooth or wired headphones?   Noise cancelled. 

What was your first concert?  Klaxons, Justice & Crystal Castles on Thursday December 6th at Brixton Academy in 2007. 

The world is ending, what are you wearing? Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023) . 

What song is playing in heaven?  The Oceans 11 Soundtrack by David Holmes. 

Favorite niche aesthetic?  Casino-core. 

What song reminds you of your childhood? “ Hello It’s Me” by Todd Rundgren. 

Dream collaboration?  David Lynch. 

What’s your DJ-ing pet peeve?  Half-broken mixer and decks. 

What era of British music has influenced you the most? 90’s and early 00’s. 

What radio station are you tuning in to?  NTS. 

Best setting to listen to your new album?  On fire.

Where do you find new music?  YouTube, Spotify, Soundcloud. 

If not good intentions, what is the road to hell actually paved with? Irony. 

Best ambient album ever made?  Boards of Canada Live 1999-2001 .

Favorite graphic designer?  @d.pika & @100br .

What’s your music taste red flag?  Ska. 

Who do you trust most with aux?  Cali DeWitt.

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The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy Hardcover – 14 October 2019

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From the New York Times –bestselling author Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy―explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it.

In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have soured, the European Union is wobbling, nationalism and populism are on the rise, and the United States is stuck in costly and pointless wars that have squandered trillions of dollars and undermined its influence around the world.

The root of this dismal record, Walt argues, is the American foreign policy establishment’s stubborn commitment to a strategy of “liberal hegemony.” Since the end of the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to use U.S. power to spread democracy, open markets, and other liberal values into every nook and cranny of the planet. This strategy was doomed to fail, but its proponents in the foreign policy elite were never held accountable and kept repeating the same mistakes.

Donald Trump won the presidency promising to end the misguided policies of the foreign policy “Blob” and to pursue a wiser approach. But his erratic and impulsive style of governing, combined with a deeply flawed understanding of world politics, are making a bad situation worse. The best alternative, Walt argues, is a return to the realist strategy of “offshore balancing,” which eschews regime change, nation-building, and other forms of global social engineering. The American people would surely welcome a more restrained foreign policy, one that allowed greater attention to problems here at home. This long-overdue shift will require abandoning the futile quest for liberal hegemony and building a foreign policy establishment with a more realistic view of American power.

Clear-eyed, candid, and elegantly written, Stephen M. Walt’s The Hell of Good Intentions offers both a compelling diagnosis of America’s recent foreign policy follies and a proven formula for renewed success.

• Print length 400 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
• Publication date 14 October 2019
• Dimensions 16.18 x 3.81 x 23.7 cm
• ISBN-10 0374280037
• ISBN-13 978-0374280031
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc (14 October 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374280037
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374280031
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.18 x 3.81 x 23.7 cm
• 359 in Public Affairs & Administration (Books)
• 759 in U.S. Politics
• 803 in National & International Security (Books)

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Stephen m. walt.

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