American Foreign Politics and its critics

This article employs the theory of hegemonic stability as the analytical tool and the starting point for the examination of the goals sought by a stream of critics in the United States who are proposing changes in the conduction of the current American foreign policy. The concepts of hard power and soft power, and the implications of both, are discussed in the context of external actions of the United States, with a contrast between the Cold War priorities and the new post-Cold War challenges, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and the war in Iraq.

United States; Foreign Policy; Hegemony; Hard Power; Soft Power; Unilateralism