cover image Toward Managed Peace: The National Security Interests of the United States, 1759 to the Present

Toward Managed Peace: The National Security Interests of the United States, 1759 to the Present

Eugene V. Rostow. Yale University Press, $60 (416pp) ISBN 978-0-300-05700-3

This concise scholarly history of United States diplomacy reviews national security policies from the Anglo-French conflicts of the mid-18th century to the current challenges of a post-Soviet world. Rostow, a research professor of law and diplomacy at National Defense University and emeritus professor of law at Yale, identifies America's concept of national security as the juxtaposition of self-interest and a sense of mission. Even in the years of ``diplomatic apprenticeship'' prior to 1941, he argues, the U.S. practiced power politics tempered with idealism. After 1945, U.S. diplomacy became a sustained, ultimately successful effort to protect the country's interests while responding to the moral codes of its people. In this light the U.S. ``victory'' in the Cold War is viewed as a step toward achieving world peace through law and consensus. (Mar.)