American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers is a, typically for Anderson, well written summary of various theoretical positions on American foreign policy. In particular, addressing American’s future as a hegemon. This is a good introduction to the field, and perhaps more significantly, its thinkers, but is sadly missing the insightful perspective of Anderson’s own thoughts on the greater subject.

Anderson sees all and understands well, but much as I enjoy his obliquely erudite contempt, I can't see what this volume achieves beyond 'the boys are still talking'

This book is split into two sections: one an intensely readable synopsis of 20th century American sins abroad, and the other an inquiry into the intellect behind these sins that is less a merciless condemnation of those sinners than it is an attempt to put oneself firmly within that blissful bubble of American Weltpolitik to understand the origins of those sins. A more enjoyable reading experience would have entailed condemnation.

In any case.

There seem to be two assumptions propelling the narrative Anderson unravels in the first section: first, and primarily, that there is a greater deal of continuity to be found in DC's foreign policy than most historians want to acknowledge, extending back to ideas about the divine right of America to expand and dominate and, secondly, that though America is not without its own exceptional evils as an empire, it behaves according to the logic of all other empires (that is, it is not the benevolent hegemony it claims to be), and that behavior is contingent on the actions not just of rebelling subaltern states but of waning (USSR, UK) and ascendant empires (PRC). Both of these assumptions correspond to the text's implicit argument that America is not as autonomous or judicious in its decisions as it would like to think, and is in fact behaving with the same (nonetheless cruel) predictability of a variable or agent in Marx's theory of capital. What results is not necessarily a Marxist critique of foreign policy but a rather matter-of-fact run-down of the past century of events as understood from this "empire-logic" point of view.

This retelling, though thorough and spellbinding to read, does not portray the events in too different of a light then how I had already understood them. In fact, in what may be a result of the lucidity of Anderson's prose, one may come away from this section with the feeling that they had already known everything they just read.

In the next section, Anderson engages primarily with establishment and neo-conservative foreign policy thinkers. It makes a good deal of sense to engage with these thinkers rather than with Chomsky et al because in many ways they were more responsible . For a crude analogy, understanding their thinking is important in the same way that understanding the thinking of the "founding fathers" is important. But in undertaking this biopsy Anderson seeks to understand and critique the thinkers on their own terms, which is perhaps too fair. There are some specific problems that result from this approach that I do not have the energy or annotations to go into right now but might at a later date.

My main takeaway from reading this is that I would read the history of anything if it were written by Anderson, so I'm glad most of my Verso flash-deal spending has favored him.