America and the World: Chapter One

In the first chapter of my book, America and the World, which is a series of conversations between Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, they discuss how we got to our current foreign policy crisis. They both agree that it started when the Cold War ended. When the Soviet Union fell we became the only remaining superpower in the world and we were riding high for a long time. As a country we did not pay enough attention to our foreign policy because we believed that we did not need to be aware of the rest of the world. But we didn't realize that the 1990's brought a change to the world, the world became closer than ever with globalization. People could find out what was happening all over the world in seconds, it was no longer just what happened in your local area that mattered. Both of these men agreed that 9/11 was our wake up call, that we realized that we needed to keep up with the world. We can't hide from the world behind our oceans, we had to get out there and keep up or we would fall behind. It was noted that we made a wrong move in invading Iraq and getting involved in Iran, but eliminating the Taliban in Afghanistan was the right thing to do because of the actual threat that it posed. One of the things that really stuck with me was that the UN is not effective anymore and that it does not work in the world that we live in today. The UN's efforts to help keep the peace in the world are futile and either they need to become more effective or they need to be disbanded because they will only end up hurting more than helping. I intend to go into foreign policy work in the future and all of these problems are worth considering because of the rapid changes in the world. America should be always looking towards the future and being more of a role model for the rest of the world instead of intervening in everything, if other countries can look at how successful we are then they can learn from our example.