US Foreign Policy - Myth versus Reality

US global leadership has never been plain sailing
https://www.ft.com/content/4d594c51-f1a1-4701-8a8d-975beb28780a
Historian Adam Tooze notes:
The ambushing of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office last week is driving a frantic search for historical orientation.
It was clearly more shocking than anything that occurred during Donald Trump’s first term. But is it, in its consequences, worse than the push for the global war on terror under George W Bush? Worse than Richard Nixon’s disruption of the Bretton Woods system? Or America’s outrageous bombing of Cambodia and Laos? More egregious than numerous cold war coups or the brutal bargaining that took place, admittedly behind closed doors, during the second world war? 

Trump's Foreign Policy May Be Crude, But It's Realist
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/opinion/us-foreign-policy-realism.html

Trump isn’t ‘un-American’, he’s just transparent
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2025/03/03/trump-isnt-un-american-hes-just-transparent/
The Zelensky clash wasn’t a bolt from the blue, but a continuation of 20th-century US foreign policy. 

The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/reading-the-myth-of-american-idealism
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/11/15/chomsky-foreign-policy-book-review-american-idealism/ 

The Reckoning That Wasn’t: Why America Remains Trapped by False Dreams of Hegemony by Andrew J. Bacevich
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/andrew-bacevich-the-reckoning-that-wasnt-america-hegemony

The Harsh Price of U.S. Profit in Latin America
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/09/harsh-times-mario-vargas-llosa-novel-guatemala-us-coup-latin-america/

Stephen Walt on the Realist Approach to Foreign Policy:

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/01/08/what-would-a-realist-world-have-looked-like-iraq-syria-iran-obama-bush-clinton/

“Realism sees power as the centerpiece of political life and sees states as primarily concerned with ensuring their own security in a world where there’s no world government to protect them from others. Realists believe military power is essential to preserving a state’s independence and autonomy, but they recognize it is a crude instrument that often produces unintended consequences. Realists believe nationalism and other local identities are powerful and enduring; states are mostly selfish; altruism is rare; trust is hard to come by; and norms and institutions have a limited impact on what powerful states do. In short, realists have a generally pessimistic view of international affairs and are wary of efforts to remake the world according to some ideological blueprint, no matter how appealing it might be in the abstract.”