I did a lot of skimming in this thoughtful book. So, I'm a bit uneasy about stating my position, but here it is. Walt suggests a move away from our long-time US practice of "liberal hegemony" toward a practice of "offshore balancing". First, don't assume you know what is being referred to until you read Walt's definitions.

It seems to me that Walt is suggesting that we (the USA) move to a global engagement model based on the practice of preventing other countries from becoming hegemons through a variety of practices which he outlines. By doing this, and avoiding direct conflict, we can reduce our foreign investment costs, and reallocate these funds to domestic infrastructure needs (which I totally agree I would like to do).
The concern I have is that I can't see other nations accepting this practice by the USA (or any other nation) in the long term. Isn't every country going to want its "fair share" of global resources, human rights, and quality of life?
Hence, offshore balancing may be a step in the correct direction but it is short-sighted in my own view.
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I have read writings of this author for many years. This book is great. He is clear, he has foundations for each assertion, argument and conclusion. This is a masterful work on US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War, including numerous errors of policy. ( )

Harvard international affairs scholar Stephen M. Walt is critical of the U.S. "foreign policy elite" in his book "The Hell of Good Intentions". I had trouble maintaining focus and interest, and didn't find the book to be an easy read, nor particularly helpful. I went through the book too quickly and failed to put the effort needed to retain the full message. This is more a reflection on my skill and efforts as a reader than on Walt's skill and efforts as a writer.
I gather the message he tried to deliver is that we continue to b e over-extended, and pick the wrong battles to fight, which in many cases only made things worse. For example, trying to aid eastern Europe energized Russia, which has been increasing its foreign power influence, as evidenced by seizing Crimea, confronting Ukraine, conduct cyber attacks in Estonia, and their interfere in our elections as well as in other countries. I believe he'd suggest that we need to change our focus, put our efforts chiefly where our interests are strongest.
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Pretty impressive. Definitely recommended. ( )

A lucid and thorough indictment of the failure of modern U.S. foreign policy and of the utterly self-serving and corrupt establishment (the Blob, as Ben Rhodes famously described it) that has enabled it for so long. After the cold war, U.S. adopted a strategy of "liberal hegemony", intent on promoting the adoption of the American political and economic system throughout the world. This is the logic behind the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the near constant agitation for war with Iran. The reasoning that says if only we invest enough lives and resources in remaking the region in our image, our problems could be solved. Walt expertly critiques this approach, describing how it has failed us, and is built on faulty premises.

The book ruthlessly names names. The fifth chapter in particular ("Is Anyone Accountable?") is enough to induce a rage aneurysm. Over and over the Blob promotes those that are demonstrably wrong, as long as they flatter the powerful and conform to the consensus, and punishes those expressing unpopular, but ultimately correct analyses. I wasn't completely unaware of this. Many who worked to sell the Iraq war are still around, having failed upwards in the intervening time, while its critics have been marginalized, but to hear it laid out as Walt does is bewildering.

This is just one manifestation of the Blob protecting itself. In the sixth chapter we see how Trump, who ran on vague, inarticulate skepticism of the foreign policy consensus, was quickly absorbed into the Blob, and is now just a more explicitly cruel version of what we've had for decades. Obama also had a degree of skepticism, and was thoroughly admonished by liberals and conservatives alike for his reluctance to arbitrarily bomb Syria, or for abstaining from a UN votes on Israel-Palestine, for example.

What's mildly frustrating is the framing of the book in describing the grand strategy of liberal hegemony as "well-intentioned". What does it mean for a grand strategy to be well-intentioned? Weren't most of history's great monsters acting on some conception of what they thought was best for their people? It's hardly any consolation if those doing the ethnic cleansing really, truly believe their own rhetoric. As scathing as the critique in this book is, I found odd the repeated assurances that the people who have failed repeatedly, in exactly the ways others had predicted, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths are basically good guys, just a little misguided.

Walt's proposes an alternative grand strategy called "offshore balancing". Essentially avoiding open-ended commitments while working to preserve a balance of power, as to prevent any rival regional hegemonic force from developing. He makes a convincing case that this would be less bad than the Blob consensus, but he doesn't really grapple with moral questions. Do the lives on non-Americans matter? Is scheming to oust democratically elected leaders, as was done in Chile, Iran, and numerous other places an acceptable application of offshore balancing? Was arming both sides of the Iran-Iraq war a prudent move to preserve the balance of power? Liberal hegemony superficially engages with morality, expressing selective outrage at human rights abuses when useful, but Walt's realist perspective doesn't seem to at all, which was disappointing.

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