America and a Changed World.

• Author: Quainton, Anthony C.E.
• Position: Book review

America and a Changed World

Reviewed by Anthony C.E. Quainton, Distinguished Diplomat in Residence, American University

America and a Changed World: A Question of Leadership, Robin Niblett (Editor), Wiley-Blackwell: Hoboken, NJ, May 2010, ISBN: 978-1-4051-9844-8, 296 pp., US $79.95 (hardcover) $24.95 (paper)

Do you want to know what the British think about President Obama's foreign policy? If so, you can find the answers in this insightful collection of essays edited by Robin Niblett, the Director of Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs). This volume, which covers developments in U.S. foreign policy until early in 2010, seeks to understand what Obama has in mind when he sets out "engagement" as the central unifying principle of his Administration's foreign policy. It looks at the challenges facing America as the world's sole superpower and deals with a wide array of contemporary issues all of which require the active engagement of the United States. However, one comes away from this volume with a strong sense that while engagement has been announced and the marriage banns posted, the wedding has yet to take place.

Each chapter in this volume follows essentially the same format. It begins with a section on recent history which describes the legacy of the George W. Bush Administration and what it set out to achieve, then looks at how Obama has modified the substance of that agenda and the tactics that have been adopted to advance it, and concludes with recommendations for future action. The result is an exceptionally useful compendium, which provides a quick reference on current American foreign policy in most of the major regions of the world and the functional agenda, which faces the United States in this second decade of the 21st century.

The starting assumption of this work is set out clearly in Niblett's introduction. The active involvement and leadership of the United States will be "indispensable if the world is to tackle successfully some of the major global challenges to international prosperity and security, especially in the areas of nuclear proliferation, climate change and financial stability" However, while U.S. leadership is essential, the authors assert that it must be a shared global leadership, since in the current international environment few countries actually want to be led as they were during the Cold War. For American leadership to be accepted the authors argue that President Obama must "rein in...