Jonathan Clarke reviews Stephen Walt’s Taming American Power (2005) in December 2005 issue of The Washington Monthly:
There are no two bricks anywhere in the world, one resting on top of the other, that American cruise missiles cannot knock over, on a 24/7 basis under all weather conditions. But, however impressive this capability is in terms of technology, does it really translate into an ability to impose America’s will? Walt writes of “hubris” and the persistent overestimation of this power capability by the American foreign-policy elite. Somewhere out there (preferably not from one of the usual anti-American suspects), there are fundamental questions to be asked about whether the so-called “revolution in military affairs” — the fusion of information technology and airborne platforms to deliver a global precision strike capability — is anything more than a will-of-the-wisp. This would lead into a discussion of how powerful America really is, power being defined as the ability to secure America’s long-term interests, not just in terms of knocking over buildings.
Read more at “New Balance: What other countries can do about American power”.
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