Second Chance(s)

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who, in his capacity as National Security Adviser during the Carter administration, bears a fair share of the blame for what is happening in Afghanistan, has a new book out, called Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower. As the title suggests, it’s an analysis of American foreign policy under George Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.

In her review in The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani calls the book “compelling” and says Brzezinski’s analysis of the last 20 years of foreign policy is “dispassionate” and “sobering.” She ends the review with a direct quote:

“Nothing could be worse for America, and eventually the world,” [Brzezinski] writes at the end of this unsparing volume, “than if American policy were universally viewed as arrogantly imperial in a postimperial age, mired in a colonial relapse in a postcolonial time, selfishly indifferent in the face of unprecedented global interdependence, and culturally self-righteous in a religiously diverse world. The crisis of American superpower would then become terminal.”

You can read the piece in full here.