FP Book Club: The End of Arrogance

Posted By Elizabeth Dickinson Friday, September 3, 2010 - 4:55 PM

Bruce Jentleson and Steven Weber's November/December 2008 cover story for FP, "America's Hard Sell," described the collapse of 50 years of U.S. foreign policy assumptions -- that democracy, capitalism, and Western values were key to peace and prosperity worldwide -- and argued, presciently, that America had to learn to compete in the marketplace of ideas against many other forceful and skeptical players. Now the authors -- Jentleson is a professor of political science at Duke University and Weber the director of the Institute of International Studies at Berkeley -- have expanded their piece into a book for Harvard University Press, due out next week. The End of Arrogance makes a strong case for the end of the hegemony of American ideas in the foreign-policy sphere, examines what a more complex and diverse set of influences could create in terms of a future world order, and offers some important advice on how America can keep up in a more competitive world: "It's when dominance gives way to influence that genuine leadership comes to the fore," the authors say. Check it out.

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