Is the Soviet Collapse Dragging the United States Down?
The mix of old and new in the United States's role as world leader creates ambiguity and confusion. The United States is looking for ways to regain its lost economic punch and to consolidate its world hegemony. At present, however, with no true enemy on the horizon, it is being dragged down by the Soviet collapse. The twentieth century was a period of transition but not from capitalism to socialism. The nonmarket alternative or challenge represented by the Soviet Union gave capitalism the means to overcome many obstacles to its reproduction and raise profits to new levels. The United States occupied a privileged position in that process. However, the twenty-first century demands new solutions for capitalism's inherent contradictions, and as a result the United States is apparently still trying to invent a new Soviet Union.
The Tragedy of American Diplomacy
This incisive interpretation of American foreign policy ranks as a classic in American thought. First published in 1959, the book offered an analysis of the wellsprings of American foreign policy that shed light on the tensions of the Cold War and the deeper impulses leading to the American intervention in Vietnam. William Appleman Williams brilliantly explores the ways in which ideology and political economy intertwined over time to propel American expansion and empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The powerful relevance of Williams's interpretation to world politics has only been strengthened by recent events in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. Williams allows us to see that the interests and beliefs that once sent American troops into Texas and California, or Latin America and East Asia, also propelled American forces into Iraq.
Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire : Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War
The first major collection of Mark Twain's antiwar writings, including six previously unpublished essays. Although not a pacifist, Twain was the most prominent opponent of the Philippine-American War and served as vice president of the Anti-Imperial League from 1901 to 1910. His essays, stories, and commentaries on the war are now offered in one volume. 21 illustrations.