Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy
    The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy
    The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy
    Audiobook11 hours

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

    Written by Stephen M. Walt

    Narrated by Stephen M. Walt

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateOct 16, 2018
    ISBN9781250303448
    Author

    Stephen M. Walt

    Stephen M. Walt is the Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and was academic dean of the Kennedy School from 2002 to 2006. He is the author of Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy, among other books.

    Related to The Hell of Good Intentions

    Related audiobooks

    International Relations For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Why Kissinger Still Matters

      Jul 21, 2020

      Why Kissinger Still Matters
      14 min read

    • Article

      Who Are The Taliban Leaders?

      Sep 3, 2021

      Emir of the Taliban, the 60-year-old Islamic legal scholar from rural Kandahar, who was the Taliban’s top religious judge, became leader of the group in 2016, after a US drone strike killed his predecessor. There is only one known photograph of Akhun

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Return Of Nonalignment

      Jul 11, 2022

      The Return Of Nonalignment
      4 min read

    • Article

      In Memoir, Nikki Haley Hammers White House Team But Pledges Allegiance To Trump

      Nov 11, 2019

      In With All Due Respect, the former U.N. ambassador says Trump's ex-Chief of Staff John Kelly and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asked her to help them "save the country" from the president.

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Return Of Containment

      Jan 19, 2021

      The Return Of Containment
      7 min read

    • Article

      How Beijing Sees Biden

      Apr 18, 2022

      How Beijing Sees Biden
      10 min read

    • Article

      Iran’s New Top Diplomats Are a Problem

      Jan 17, 2022

      As the sixth round of Vienna talks aimed at restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear deal ended last June, there was little in either the tone or substance of the public statements by senior U.S., European Union, German, Iranian, and Russian diplomats that su

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Case For A Middle Path

      Jan 19, 2021

      The Case For A Middle Path
      10 min read

    • Article

      Larry Diamond

      Jun 24, 2019

      The Stanford scholar known as Mr. Democracy on the shrinking free world, the U.S.’s irreplaceable role in it and his book Ill Winds

      2 min read

    • Article

      Worlds Apart

      Mar 4, 2019

      For decades, American foreign policy has rested on a consensus view about the U.S. role in the world. In an international order in which there is a single unrivaled superpower, foreign policy experts widely agree that American soldiers and taxpayer d

      4 min read

    • Article

      What Would America Do?

      Aug 1, 2017

      The days of other countries looking to the United States for leadership are coming to an end.

      4 min read

    • Article

      American Déjà Vu

      Jan 3, 2024

      American Déjà Vu
      10 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Hell of Good Intentions

    3.5/5

    10 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 1/5
      The writer is another big government establishment Historian that is a "Dealer in second hand ideas."

      In Walt's defense he admitted he thought it would be a short work. It was a 5 page unworkable essay posing as a book. That's because he was wordy; the pages empty of original thought; empty as to anything new. He spends much time denigrating Trump; because like most elitists he is shocked that Trump has some consideration for individual property rights. Walt thinks the State is needed to make decisions for you. Trump's foreign policy he says was a disaster. How different it was from the presidents before and since Trump! George Bush I ignites the middle east in war to save Saudi Arabia, Clinton terror bombs Christians in Bosnia to help Saudi Arabia move into Europe and more war, Bush ii, back to war with Sadam, a bad guy but the world is filled with bad guys, some are in Saudi Arabia, some in China, some in Russia. But Bush junior's job was to finish off Sadam so Saudi Arabia could rule middle east along with their arch enemy Iran, The Obama destroys Libya. The work of these three presidents made Islam a power house. Not only that, the US began the importation of hundreds of thousands of Islamo fascists; men and women who hate America and come here on taxpayers' extorted money where they can make America even less stable, and now Biden, opening the doors to mass immigration of ignorant government dependent foreigners in southern border, immigrants that won't get fired from doing nothing if they don't get Covid shots, and then the hundred thousand mass influx of Afghans that are bred in a primitive tribal culture. They bring their primitivism with them. The US will become even more centrally controlled and Americans poorer and less safe. But then that is the plan.

      Of course Walt is obsessed with blaming Trump for being a bad foreign policy man. When the actuality there was no mass murder on the scale of the previous presidents no big invasions, no retreats and sacrifice of Americans over seas like the current foreign policy of Biden. What we have yet to see is where will the US government re nvade; who will we terror bomb as happened under Bushes, Clintons, Obama.

      Walt either doesn't understand the real reason for the USMC (US Mercenary Corpse:) welcomed in many countries is because the US government does run a mercenary service. We invade and kill certain people in order to get the people we like in the ruling class. And worse is the soldiers themselves are NOT patirots they are the mercenary soldiers. The problem with this business model of the USG and any president that is claimed to be a hero of America is that the foreign entities don't pay for the US military interventions. We provide the services free. And we make the men we want to run a country rich. For example the x president of Afghanistan left with a couple hundred million bucks with the blessings of our State Department.

      The bureaucracies exist first and foremost for their own benefit. They need big budgets to lobby politicians. Politicians need big money to win. This internal cooperation was worked out hundred years ago. Walt says he has a plan; his plan is the only plan that can save America. He never said save "Americans." Get it? The guy doesn't see Americans as individuals. It is the state he wants to save NOT our individual property rights not our freedom.
      Walt wants to substitute his plan for the central planners. It is understood or slipped to us in a droning part of the audio as the replacement for your individual plans. He is a little totalitarian establishment intellectual/historians and he doesn't want to be a Trump. Because Trump was outside looking in; Walt wants to be on the inside with the big boys making incompetent decisions that result in bigger budgets.

      Walt's ignorance of Capitalism. I have to admit he has plenty of company. If he did understand capitalism he would probably still want the same big ass government plans.

      Walt is also ignorant of history. The US foreign policy as we understand it today has its roots with the "Open Door Policy" of the USG in the 1850s. The open door policy was sophistry. What the US was then and is now, is an empire builder; it is masked as something else. The first foreign policy intervention by the US government was when Commodore Perry floated an Armada of big black steamship gun boats in Japanese Harbor. ( Yes it is true jefferson used gun boat diplomacy in 1812; it was defnitely interventionist but not sure it represented the FP of today. You could argue it was.
      But the really big, let's say the biggest foreign policy intervention in the history of the US under its new un named as yet open door foreign policy was under Lincoln. Abe doesn't get the credit he deserves for expanding America's colonial empire. He used same method that other presidents have used as an excuse for intervention; mainly, the US was minding its own business, negotiating in goof faith with the party of the second part, when it was "suddenly and deliberately attacked" by those sneaky.... fill in blank. That was Fort Sumter of course. The US retaliated against that foreign party by declaring war on the Foreign country at the time Known as "Confederate States of America." It cost 800,000 American lives, but Lincoln turned confederate states into a colonial possession of the North. The other times of interventionist foreign policy was under Wilson when the US invaded Mexico, Haiti, some other places, Then there was TR colonial empire building: Panama, The Philippines (which resulted in death of 200,000 Filipnos.

      Thus The foreign policy Walt describes has been around over a hundred years. It is not an invention of cold warriors.
      The single qualitative difference with exception of The Confederacy's "Revolutionary War" against the Despotic Lncoln was the wars involve countries further away from the US and killed many more humans though terrorism by the N orth against southerners was used then as well as now.

      The budgets of State department and US G are huge. They are out of control. Once the US government created the central bank known as The Fed and later ended gold standard, along with banks being allowed to expand money supply by eliminating 100 percent reserve requirement then the government can do anything it wants. It is out of control; the government has money printed that has not value. It is fiat money. This money is a form of theft from productive Americans. The US could not go to war under Wilson nor FDR nor Truman nor LBJ, nor the BCBOB war complex without being able to borrow and print money.

      As long as government doesn't have to follow the rules of an advanced western capitalist society the US will never have a "common sense" foreign policy. Money is free to the bureaucrats and that money finds its way back to politicians who promise it to the voters. Who on a much smaller scale love big government because the voters think they can live at the expense of the producers too.

      Having missed this important point Walt is wasting your valuable time .

      Walt claims the interventionist foreign policy was a cold war invention. But he didn't even get that right. How he could go through a whole wordy work without mentioning US Empire building, US colonialism with euphemism "territories." US foreign policy is run by the worst of Americans, in a democracy the worst rise to the top. It is mob rule. And the US government as soon as it could start extorting enough money from its citizens started intervening in foreign countries operations. Say. . That would have been T Jefferson and his war with those crazy "Mohamadens." A war that the dumb ass Bushes revived and made a year in year out perpetual war 185 years later. But that created the foreign policy of today. The stinking crap filled "entitlement [rpgram" for state department war department you know as Department of Defense, "Private sector" who specialize in the individual assassination all the way up to mass murder (weapons, drones, MOABs, etc, drugs, everything but HHS it seems. sn't the foreign policy that created And his plan like all the interventionist presidents/ the individuals that benefit from an interventionist policy that started
    • 1/5
      The author begins with the premise that USA warmongering has been going on for the it 25 years.

      USA has been warmongering for 235 years of is 250 years.