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| Dangerous Nation: America's Foreign Policy from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Vintage) | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert Kagan
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 29327
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 544
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0375724915
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN: 9780375724916
ASIN: 0375724915
Publication Date: November 6, 2007
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| Customer Reviews:
 Still Dangerous After All These Years November 26, 2006
15 out of 19 found this review helpful
This is the first of a two volume history on American foreign policy. It starts with the beginnings of the nation and concludes after the Spanish-American War. This is not a comprehensive work- all American History teachers will find significant omissions. However, the author provides details and motives that are generally absent from the typical survey course.
There is a common perception that America has only been prominent in world affairs since WWII- that we have intentionally avoided the petty squabbles of European royalty and concentrated on improving the nation. To the extent this is true we can thank geography and common sense- not some master plan engineered by Washington. America has always been a player in foreign affairs if our interests were aroused. Indeed, we had a foreign policy (blast the Brits) before we had a nation.
Several themes resonated over many generations. One was the realization by thinking people everywhere that America was bound to be a dominant world power. In our infancy we were seen as a dangerous nation. Our treatment of Indian tribes and neighboring countries were not viewed as domestic transactions by the rest of the world. Too often, we were rightly seen as the young giant eager to kick butt to gain respect.
The practice of slavery influenced every aspect of our foreign relations. Up to the Civil War, Southerners were only interested in expansion if it would allow slavery. Of course, speaking as equals with foreigners of color was out of the question. Slavery nullified our every moral claim in other nation's eyes.
Kagan's critique of causes of the Spanish-American War is quite good. He makes a case for our entry on humanitarian grounds, though many events propelled the seemingly inevitable clash.
There is a persistant theme that has shaped the conversation of war throughout history and is doing so today. That's the general tendency of non-military people to advocate armed force to solve disputes. They are balanced by veterans who have seen war and are more apt to urge restraint. If wars go badly, only the combat veterans are allowed to disagree with policy. Non-vets cling to hawkish proposals for fear of being dismissed as wimps. Of course it makes little sense, but such is the code. And yes, I can think of a few politicians and pundits that should have been shot at forty years ago.
"Foreign entanglements" are the American Way May 2, 2007
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
In our current public debate, intellectual laziness often causes us to support this or that position with certain favorite quotes from the Founding Fathers, stripped of their historical context. How many times do we need to hear about Jefferson's "wall" separating Church and State brought into a discussion about a woman's "right to choose"? How many times has Washington's exhortation "to avoid foreign entanglements" -- in his 1796 Farewell Address -- been quoted to us when the topic is "what to do" in Bosnia, Kosovo or, lately, in Iraq?
Clearly, Robert Kagan is tired of these quotations, which stop all argument, too. The fulcrum of his book is Washington's Farewell Address. He spends the first 120 pages of his book preparing the historical context of this speech from the French-Indian War to 1796, and spends a full 20 pages explaining all of the foreign entanglements a fledgling America had already involved itself during 1796. In effect, Kagan modifies Washington's "rule" of foreign policy by making the case that Washington argued not to eliminate all foreign entanglements, but only those, which were not in America's "interest." The trick since then has been to decide, which entanglements were in America's interest and which weren't.
It is instructive to know that Kagan began this book in 1996, before publishing "Paradise and Power." Not only was 1996 the 200th anniversary of the Farewell Address, but also a special moment in American history when Americans were so tired of "history" and "foreign entanglements" that it looked like we would never want to or have to "entangle" ourselves again. At the same time, we were forced to watch the genocide in the Balkans go unstopped by both a "weak" Europe and an "indifferent" America.
Of course, this moment in history is explored in depth in "Paradise and Power," but it informs "Dangerous Nation."
While I must admit that I still have 100 pages to go in Kagan's book, the reason is twofold: on the one hand, the book is exhaustive in detail and in creating context; and, on the other hand, the book is somewhat exhausting to read, such that I can only manage about 30 pages per day.
Nevertheless, the book must be read due to it's unique perspective on American history. Kagan definitively demonstrates that the American mission has been messianic, interventionist, and idealistic from its Founding.
Classical Realism is the Way November 6, 2006
11 out of 18 found this review helpful
David Kennedy in his review states, "the deeper theme running through this book has to do with the ways that power does not merely permit but actually defines foreign policy objectives. Kagan acknowledges that, as the United States acquired more power, it simultaneously acquired an `expanding sense of both interests and entitlement'" This is not surprising to those who follow the school of Classical Realism, or the more defined version of State-Centered Realism set out by Fareed Zakaria in his concise but insightful 1998 history of U.S. foreign policy, From Wealth to Power (Princeton University Press). Zakaria is currently editor of Newsweek International. This is not to take anything away from Robert Kagan's more detailed study, which is a must read for those who want America to stay engaged in world affairs and shape events to our national advantage.
 I'm not yet impressed November 17, 2007
11 out of 24 found this review helpful
I recently purchased this book and have started reading it after hearing parts of a radio interview with the author. I have not finished reading it yet, but the portion I have finished I was not overly impressed with. I'm no liberal by any stretch of the imagination, but this book seems to be such a naked apologetic for Neo-Conservatism that it is hard to to take the author seriously.
Although he quotes Perry Miller on Page 8, his treatment of the Puritans in the rest of the chapter seems to be diametrically opposed to Miller's observations and to that his most famous student Heimert, both of whom paint them in a far more generous light.
His comments on the political and practical philosophy of the founding fathers is new to me and somewhat interesting, possibly there will be some pearls waiting for those who decide to stick it out. I'm not sure I will end up being one of their number.
The Most Dangerous Nation -- US? February 18, 2007
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Be prepared to be shocked (and awed) because Robert Kagan posits some of the most controversial theories about the United States' foreign policy including:
Washington's Farewell Address: a speech not for the ages, but one only intended for the first few years of the young republic
Monroe Doctrine: much debated, but not implemented, because of the issue that tore apart the nation in the second quarter of the 19th century
Hawaiian Statehood: applied for annexation to the United States in the first half of the 19th century, but because it fell south of the Missouri compromise line, and thus would be classified as a slave state, refused, and had to wait more than 100 years to join the nation as a state
The Spanish-American War: perhaps the most popular war in U.S. history?
Kagan takes us on an exhaustive, exhausting thrill-ride through the foreign policy decisions of the United States from its pre-Revolutionary War era to the Spanish-American War at the end of the 19th century. (The reader will have to wait for the next volume to find out what happens in the twentieth century.) Forget your dull high school history books; what you'll find here confounds the complacent reader who can name the Battles of each of our wars, but not the battles that were fought before, during, and after the bloodshed.
The saddest, most shocking section of the book focuses on the issue that eclipsed America's external focus of terroritorial expansion in the 19th century as it imploded in the years from the 1820's to the 1860's: slavery. Kagan describes a time when the United States stood alone among the nations of the world as our shameful sin, slavery, was denounced by intellectuals and the common man throughout the rest of the world community. We were founded on a belief that all men were created equal, and indeed had certain inalienable rights, yet we were hypocritically ignoring the denial of rights to our fellow human beings toiling in our own backyards.
The war that erupted between two sections of the country, sections as diametrically opposed to each other as the primary colors of red and blue, was the most wretched, hard-fought, emotionally-charged conflict in our history. And the aftermath was just as devastating as the lead-up to the war, with the South feeling itself to be an occupied country, with its "colored" population hardly any better off than they were before the War.
Kagan introduces us to characters who were the rock stars of their time (Bono, for example, not Britney). John Quincy Adams emerges from the shadow of a much-respected Founding Father father to become the leading abolitionist in public office. And William Seward, who, alas, has gone down in history attached to the unfortunate moniker "Folly," is revealed as one of New York State's (and the nation's) most principled, distinguished statesmen. (And Seward's Folly? Hardly. The 20th century Cold War would have heated up to a boil if Russia had still maintained a presence in the North American continent.)
Perhaps the biggest revelation in the book concerns the Spanish-American War, over the issue of Cuban independence. Cuban rebels, in an attempt to repel the Spanish, ceased working in any industry in an effort to force the Spanish out; the Spanish, playing hardball, removed hundreds of thousands of Cubans from their homes and settled them in (re)concentration camps, where as many as 300,000 are believed to have died from starvation. The citizens of the United States, Kagan maintains, demanded military action, fueled not by revenge for the sinking of the Maine, not by the lurid stories of the so-called yellow journalists, but by humanitarian concerns.
Heroes and villains, brilliant minds and darkest hearts, Kagan introduces you to a country, a people, who struggled to create a society that reflected the very best in human achievement, sometimes attaining it, sometimes not.
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