The Opportunity: America's Moment to Alter History's Course

As the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, one of the country's most influential nongovernmental organizations and the publisher of the essential policy journal Foreign Affairs, Haass has an unique seat from which to weigh the direction of the U.S.'s relations with the rest of the world. In this book, he covers a lot of familiar territory: the collapse of the bipolar world, the advent of terrorism, the unprecedented possibilities for global political cooperation (that follow on the economic), the lessons to be drawn from the way the war in Iraq has been conducted. Haass ends up arguing not just that the U.S. has terrific opportunities to integrate itself politically with the rest of the world, but that it must do so-in order to preserve its economic integrity if nothing else. The final chapter, titled ""The Necessity,"" argues that if that integration does not happen, ""The principal challenges of this era...will come to overwhelm the United States."" Coming as they do from a carefully calibrated source, those are sobering words.