/lit/ - Literature

The prospect of a reduced U.S. presence around the world does not disturb Matlock, Gallarotti, or Preble. Each is confident that other countries will step forward to fill any geopolitically perilous vacuum that a more modest U.S. foreign policy creates. With the passing of what they regard as the wantonly unilateralist Bush administration, all see great potential for more extensive international cooperation. All believe, that is, that other countries will risk lives and spend money in pursuit of goals they have in common with the United States.

Perhaps eventually they will, but the first year of the presumably kinder, gentler, more multilateral Obama administration yielded little evidence of a willingness on the part of others to share the United States' global burdens. If, as Washington pulls back, others do not step forward, the world is all too likely to become both more disorderly and less prosperous. In that case, the verdict on the state of the world in the year 2030 may differ sharply from the judgment these three books pass on the last 20 years. Whereas their common theme is the dangers that arise when the United States has too much power, their successors two decades from now will be chronicling the even worse -- perhaps far worse -- consequences of the United States' having too little of it.