Great Post-Cold War American Thinkers on International Relations

A study of the writings of the 10 most widely read and influential American foreign policy theorists/practitioners during the post-Cold War period, 1992-2008, including Francis Fukuyama, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, Sam Huntington, the Neoconservative Robert Kagan and the 'dissident' Noam Chomsky. The collapse of Communism in 1992 was arguably more disorienting for the United States' foreign policy establishment than for the vanquished foe and there was an immediate thirst among politicians and in the general public for an interpretation of the new international landscape and for road maps into the future. The authors under examination rose to the challenge and satisfied the demand for new visions, new paradigms with greater or lesser success. The issues they flagged and their policy recommendations continue to shape the debate on Capitol Hill today. Nine of our ten authors have in common a significant affiliation with Harvard University. Though independent minded and individualistic, they line up along a divide between 'realists' and 'idealists' which gave tight focus to their debates. What results is a tableau of American intellectual history in the period covered.


About the Author
Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. A number of his early scholarly articles on Russian constitutional history under Nicholas II drawn from his dissertation remain 'in print' and are available online. Mr. Doctorow has also been an occasional contributor to the Russian language press including Zvezda (St Petersburg), Russkaya Mysl (La Pens?e russe, Paris) and Kontinent (a journal sponsored by Alexander Solzhenitsyn) on issues of Russian cultural and political life. He regularly publishes analytical articles about international affairs on the portal of the Belgian daily La Libre Belgique. Mr. Doctorow's current research interest is trends in U.S. area studies programs. He is a Visiting Scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University during the 2010-2011 academic year. Mr. Doctorow is an American citizen and a long-time resident of Brussels, Belgium.