America at the Crossroads
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Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy
Francis Fukuyama; With a New Preface by the Author
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Format: PaperPrice: $16.95
Fukuyama explores the contention by the Bush administration’s critics that it had a neoconservative agenda that dictated its foreign policy during the president’s first term. Providing a fascinating history of the varied strands of neoconservative thought since the 1930s, Fukuyama argues that the movement’s legacy is a complex one that can be interpreted quite differently than it was after the end of the Cold War. Analyzing the Bush administration’s miscalculations in responding to the post–September 11 challenge, Fukuyama proposes a new approach to American foreign policy through which such mistakes might be turned around—one in which the positive aspects of the neoconservative legacy are joined with a more realistic view of the way American power can be used around the world.
"In this important and clear-sighted book, Fukuyama offers one of the best available concise histories and explanations of the neoconservative movement and its chief ideas, places himself firmly within that movement, and then goes on to register his strong and passionate dissent from the interpretation of the neoconservative approach to foreign policy that characterized George W. Bush's first term. . . . Fukuyama is better able than most to sketch the basic outlines of what he hopes will become a major new pole in American political discourse."—Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs
“Neoconservative scholar Fukuyama has just produced a book renouncing his previous support. . . . Fukuyama’s sharpest insight here is how the miraculously peaceful end of the cold war lulled many of us into overconfidence about the inevitability of democratic change, and its ease.”—Andrew Sullivan, Time
"Mugged by reality in Iraq, a prominent neocon breaks with his ideological allies."—Benjamin Healy and Benjamin Schwarz, Atlantic Monthly
"Fukuyama's America at the Crossroads is the best explanation anyone's come up with yet as to why the Bush administration has made such a mess of things in Iraq."—Jacob Weisberg, Slate
“Fukuyama is always worth reading, and his new book contains ideas that I hope the non-neoconservatives of America will adopt.”—Paul Berman, New York Times Book Review
"This leading public intellectual has second thoughts—and a new plan. . . . [Mr. Fukuyama] came to the conclusion that 'the war didn't make sense.' . . . [He] is a public intellectual of the first rank. . . . As for Mr. Fukuyama's objections to the war, most of them are familiar, though they do have the virtue of being put with great clarity, sophistication and nuance."—Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal
“Fukuyama’s book is elegantly and concisely argued. His call for ‘realistic Wilsonianism’—a mixture of realism, which seeks only to advance the national interest, and idealism, which holds that the United States should pursue democratic and humanitarian goals—is just right.”—Alan Wolfe, Chronicle of Higher Education
“ For anyone interested in the neocons’ history and prospects...a superb guide to this intellectual battleground.”—Philip Seib, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
"The real man-bites-dog story comes when a self-proclaimed neoconservative, a genuine Middle East hawk, decides that the war was a mistake. . . . Fukuyama . . . one of the most prominent neoconservative policy intellectuals . . . now believes that the Iraq war was a mistake, and that his neoconservative comrades have permanently discredited the label. . . . [A] thoughtful book. . . . A lucid and sensible discussion of the intellectual origins of neoconservatism."—Adam Kirsch, New York Sun
"Parting ways with fellow neocons, Fukuyama censures their blunders and those of the Bush administration, and offers advice for the future."—New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
“Fukuyama’s book considers conflicting neoconservative principles and offers a reconciliation of neoconservative thought with a wider worldview, making this a timely book that’ll spur more than its share of discussion.”—Publishers Weekly
“This important, and insightful book is much more than a tell-all memoir of self-discovery. Fukuyama demolishes some of the central tenets of neoconservativism that led to the debacle in Iraq, but he also sets forth an alternative vision, one that he sees as both more consistent with American values and more likely to succeed in an international environment deeply skeptical of American power.”—Christoper Preble, The American Conservative
“Fukuyama sees the Iraq war not simply as a failure of planning or imagination, but as a repudiation of the thinking of the neoconservative intellectuals with whom he has for so long associated himself. . . . Fukuyama's history of neoconservatism is both concise and extremely helpful. . . . In the end, America at the Crossroads lays out a vision for the future of American foreign policy that progressives would be smart to embrace.”—Isaac Chotiner, Washington Monthly
"Written before the watershed 2006 election, this book lays out why neoconservative foreign policy, which drove the United States to invade and attempt to remake Iraq, has run its costly, failed course and should be discarded."—Jane Henderson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Once a neoconservative himself, the author indicts the Bush administration for its war in Iraq and for what he calls the neoconservative idea of ‘benevolent hegemony.’"—Denver Post
"Francis Fukuyama here gives the most lucid and knowledgeable account of the neoconservative vision of America's place and role in world affairs, and where it has overreached disastrously. He argues effectively for an American foreign policy more aware of the limits of American power, less dependent on the military, and more respectful of the interests and opinions of other countries and emerging international norms and institutions."—Nathan Glazer, Professor of Sociology and Education Emeritus, Harvard University
“America at the Crossroads serves up a powerful indictment of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq and the role that neoconservative ideas—concerning preventive war, benevolent hegemony and unilateral action—played in shaping the decision to go to war, its implementation and its aftermath. . . . [It] represents the latest and most detailed criticism of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq—delivered from a conservative point of view. . . . [A] tough-minded and edifying book.”—Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
Named one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year (2006) by the New York Times Book Review
Named one of the Best Books of 2006 by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Publication Date: March 20, 2007
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