What Should American Foreign Policy Be?

The collapse of the Soviet bloc and the end of the cold war have changed the face of international politics. What should American foreign policy be in these new circumstances? Dissent asked Harvard’s Stanley Hoffmann to outline an answer to this question, and solicited responses from an array of thoughtful commentators on American and world affairs, which we present below. —Eds.

For forty years, containment provided a rationale, if not always a reliable compass, for American diplomacy. When Gorbachev and his associates decided to replace rivalry with partnership and confrontation with accommodation, American statesmen briefly envisaged a “new world order” remarkably similar to Franklin D. Roosevel...