This brief, lively, and well-written text sparks students' interest by focusing on current trends, issues, and controversies in the field. Through this focus, Wiarda gives students an overview of the field, traces its history and development, and surveys newer approaches in a sequential and systematic fashion....

American foreign policy is in severe crisis. The system and process are not working as they should. On one side we are beset by a seemingly uninformed policy, on the other by paralysis and gridlock. The sense is widespread that the American system of government is broken.

It is tempting to attribute our present foreign policy malaise to a single cause, such as Congress, the president, or the Iraq War. All of these bear some responsibility, but Howard J. Wiarda argues that the crisis goes far deeper. The problem derives from the kind of society we have become over a forty-year period: more divided, fragmented, and dysfunctional. It is a social, economic, and cultural divide as well as a political one.

What are the causes of these deep divisions and of the policymaking paralysis that they produce? Wiarda seeks answers by exploring the fragmentation of American political culture, foreign policy differences between the two major political parties, relations among the large foreign policy bureaucracies, and executive-legislative interactions. He also emphasizes the media’s role in polarizing the debate, the foreign policy role of Washington’s think tanks, and how social life in the nation’s capital both reflects and reinforces preexisting divisions. This book will appeal to students and scholars of foreign policy, political science, and international affairs, as well as anyone interested in improving the American government....

Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA) is one of the nation's leading foreign policy research institutions. In this penetrating book, Howard J. Wiarda explores Harvard's history and culture, the founding and development of WCFIA, its internal dynamics, how it influences foreign policy, and why its influence is so extensive. Engagingly written and from an insider's viewpoint, the book recounts the author's long experience at Harvard and WCFIA....