Why 100 Ways?

Over the coming months, I will employ this column to analyze and comment on U.S. foreign policy. But I launch it this week with a short note on the new book, and why I'm publishing this pungent and challenging commentary.

In the Newsweek interview, I was asked if 100 Ways would be considered an "anti-American" diatribe, and a television interview later this month is meant to focus on the same question. It's a reasonable thing to ask, and part of the broader self-doubt that has gripped the right wing in recent years.

The tart answer I give is that 100 Ways is "tough love" for America. We have, all of us, habits, prejudices, ideologies, and reactions that produce unfortunate effects on the rest of the world. We don't realize the powerful impacts that the smallest predilections have elsewhere. This lack of awareness of how our appetites create seismic effects across the oceans and continents is remarkable, and largely neglected in American political discourse.

The need for tought love is just as apparent with respect to intentional U.S. policy. Much has gone badly awry in our   continue>>