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Title: America at the Brink of Empire

Subtitle: Rusk, Kissinger, and the Vietnam War (Political Traditions in Foreign Policy Series)

Author: Lawrence W. Serewicz

Narrator: Randal Schaffer

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-15-17

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

Addressing issues of continuing if not heightened relevance to contemporary debate, America at the Brink of Empire explores the foreign policy leadership of Dean Rusk and Henry Kissinger regarding the extent of the United States' mission to insure a stable world order. Lawrence W. Serewicz argues that in the Vietnam conflict the United States experienced an identity crisis - a near Machiavellian moment - whereby America came close to assuming an imperial role, stretching the country to the limits of its identity as a republic. Serewicz offers a revealing look at the parts played by Rusk and Kissinger - and President Lyndon Johnson - in bringing the nation to the brink of empire in the years 1963-75.

As a true believer in liberal internationalism, Rusk set the stage by defining the war in Vietnam as a threat to the world order based on the United Nations security system created after World War II. Johnson kept an open-ended commitment in Vietnam without a clear goal in sight even as he pursued the ambitious domestic reforms of the Great Society. In refusing to choose between either an imperial mission or a true republican position for the nation, he brought it perilously close to becoming an empire, ultimately failing to achieve his goals either at home or abroad. Kissinger corrected for Johnson's overreach, implementing a pragmatic realism based upon the principle that the United States is an ordinary country - a republic, not an empire - within the international community and therefore must balance its commitments with its resources.

In concluding, Serewicz reflects on the continuing relevance of the Machiavellian moment for the United States by observing the differences and similarities between the presidencies of Johnson and George W. Bush.

The book is published by Louisiana State University Press.

Members Reviews:

Fine template to weigh USA's global role, project

Here the story of Vietnam (and to a lesser extent, W's war on terror, at least in its earlier phases), alongside the thinking of the principal presidential-cabinet architects, gives us a framework to consider the American project globally after World War 2 (and to the present). The primary figures are Dean Rusk under LBJ and Kissinger under Nixon. Rusk was the idealist with no sense of limits to the American project. Kissinger was less sweepingly idealistic and more tactical, more attuned to limits to American projects and ideals abroad. My only criticism would be, the author gets repetitive sometimes. However, as a survey of ideas and their practitioners, made into policy on the ground, and the results for the USA, this in a very fine, clear discussion. The audio version apparently came out in 2017, but the book is copyrighted 2007. For the last hour or so, the book pivots to (and compares the earlier war with) George W. Bush's so-called war on terror and global democratic revolution (yeah, remember that over-the-top bit of hubris?). The discussion seems to date from at least a couple years earlier than that. The financial meltdown of 2008 is of course nowhere on the radar.