Global Perspectives: International Relations, U.S. Foreign Policy, and the View from Abroad

This innovative text/reader illustrates a range of national and regional perspectives on international relations and U.S. foreign policy. The twenty-eight selections include speeches, essays, and book excerpts, offering opinion and analysis by leading politicians, journalists, and scholars from around the globe.

Divided into two parts, the book begins with a survey of contrasting views about the emerging post–Cold War order. Part 2 continues with readings that present a U.S. perspective on important issues in world and regional politics, followed by perspectives that originate from within each region covered. Each reading is introduced by a contextual note. Lai demonstrates how different national leaders define the challenges they face in the internal politics of their regions, how they view their interests within the larger world community, and how they view their current and future relations with the United States. Designed to encourage critical thought about controversies in world politics and the appropriate role of the U.S. as a world leader, the book is ideal for use in courses on international relations, U.S. foreign policy, and comparative foreign policy.

• The United States in a New World: Getting to Know Itself and Other Powers—David Lai.
• Views of a New World Order.
• Principles and Opportunities for American Foreign Policy—Warren Christopher.
• At the Threshold of the 21st Century—Mikhail Gorbachev.
• The New Atlantic Initiative—Margaret Thatcher.
• Japan’s Role and Responsibility—Ichiro Ozawa.
• Let Us Work Together for a Better World—Jiang Zemin.
• Latin America in the “New World Order”: Prospects for Democracy—Carlos M. Vilas.
• Islam and the West: Confrontation or Cooperation?—Khurshid Ahmad.
• African Marginalisation and Marginality: Context, Issues and Viewpoints—Adebayo Adedeji.
• Regional Politics in a Changing World.
• Europe.
• The Future of NATO and Europe’s Changing Security Landscape—Richard C. Holbrooke.
• Russia’s Priority Interests—Mahmut Gareyev.
• German Grand Strategy after the Cold War—Josef Joffee.
• 1945-1995: Reflections on Half a Century of British Security Policy—Michael Howard.
• From Independence to Cooperation: France, NATO and European Security—Anand Menon.
• Asia.
• U.S. Policy Toward East Asia and the Pacific—Winston Lord.
• China’s Muscular Nationalism—Wang Jisi.
• Putting Old Diplomatic Principles into New Bottles—Kitaoka Shin’ichi.
• Western Modernism vs. Eastern Thought—Mahathir Mohamad.
• India and the United States—M. Granger Morgan, K. Subrahmanyam, K. Sundarji, and Robert M. White.
• The Middle East.
• U.S. Policy in the Middle East—Robert H. Pelletreau.
• Towards a “Floating” World System: An Arab Reading of a World in the Making—Mohammed Sid-Ahmed.
• Iran’s Foreign Policy Principles and Objectives—Mohammad Javad Larijani.
• Africa.
• Building a Better Future—Al Gore.
• The Imperatives of Self-Confidence and Self-Reliance in African Development—Bade Onimode.
• Africa’s Turn Towards Pluralism—Paul Ntungwe Ndue.
• Latin America.
• U.S.-Latin America Relations in the 1990s: Toward a Mature Partnership—Alexander F. Watson.
• NAFTA: The Intersection of the Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of Capital—John Saxe-Fernández.
• Cuba’s Relation with the United States—Fidel Castro.