America in Retreat: The Decline of U.S. Leadership from WWII to Covid-19

Historian and foreign policy analyst Pembroke (Korea: Where the American Century Began) accuses the U.S. of failing to meet its responsibilities as a global leader in this disappointing polemic. He argues that America gave up on its post-WWII promise to install a “rules-based order” based on international institutions long before Donald Trump won the presidency on an isolationist platform, noting that previous administrations had already begun to distance the U.S. from the United Nations and the World Trade Organization. Pembroke also takes the U.S. to task for consistently seeking military solutions to international problems, instead of trusting in the institutions it helped create, and sketches the problematic motivations and outcomes of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and covert CIA operations in Chile and Guatemala. Arguing that global power is inexorably shifting from America to Asia, Pembroke faults U.S. foreign policy makers for their ineffectual antagonism toward China, and details how Asian nations are strengthening their trade agreements with one another, building their military defenses, and forging ties with Africa and Latin America. Pembroke’s complaints are familiar, and his analysis of the domestic political dynamics that have impacted U.S. foreign policy lacks depth. This half-baked treatise falls flat. (Mar.)