Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower

From the most highly respected analyst of foreign policy writing today, this book presents a story of wasted opportunity and squandered prestige - the history of the last three U.S. presidents' foreign policy. The most distinguished commentator on foreign policy, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, offers a reasoned but unsparing assessment of the foreign policy of America's last three presidential administrations. Though spanning less than two decades, these administrations cover a vitally important turning point in world history: the period in which the US, having emerged from the Cold War with an unprecedented degree of power and prestige, managed to squander both in a remarkably short time. This is a tale of decline: from the competent but conventional thinking of the first Bush administration, to the good intentioned self-indulgence of the Clinton administration, to the mortgaging of America's future by the "suicidal statecraft" of the second Bush administration. Brzezinski concludes with a chapter on how America can regain its lost prestige, if not its former dominance. This scholarly yet highly opinionated book is sure to be both controversial and influential.