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As correspondent for Newsweek, Michael
Hirsh has traveled to every continent, reporting on American
foreign policy. Now he draws on his experience to offer
an original explanation of America's role in the world and
the problems facing the nation today and in the future.
Using colorful vignettes and up-close reporting
from his coverage of the first two post-Cold War presidents,
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Hirsh argues that America
has a new role never before played by any nation: it is
the world's uberpower, overseeing the global system from
the air, land, sea, and, increasingly, from space as well.
And that means America has a unique opportunity to do what
no great power in history has ever done -- to perpetuate
indefinitely the global system it has built, to create an
international community with American power at its center
that is so secure it may never be challenged. Yet Americans
are squandering this chance by failing to realize what is
at stake. At the same time that America as a nation possesses
powers it barely comprehends, Americans as individuals have
vulnerabilities they never before imagined. They desperately
need the international community on their side.
In an era when democracy and free markets
have become the prevailing ideology, Hirsh argues, one of
America's biggest problems will be "ideological blowback"
-- facing up to the flaws and contradictions of its own
ideals. Hence, for example, the biggest threat to political
stability is not totalitarianism, but the tricky task of
instituting democracy in the Arab world without giving Islamic
fundamentalists the reins of power. The only way for Washington
to avoid accusations of hypocrisy is to allow the global
institutions it has built, like the UN, to do the hard work
of promoting U.S. values.
Michael Hirsh is the former Foreign Editor
and chief diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek.
He is currently a senior editor in the magazine's Washington
bureau. He is a lecturer and has appeared numerous times
as a commentator on Fox news, CNN, MSNBC, and National Public
Radio. In addition to Newsweek, he has also written
for Foreign Affairs, Harper's, and Washington
Monthly. Hirsh was co-winner of the Overseas Press Club
award for best magazine reporting from abroad in 2001 for
"prescience in identifying the al Qaeda threat half
a year before September 11" and for Newsweek's
coverage of the war on terror, which also won a National
Magazine Award. He lives in Washington, DC.
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