Responses: J. Bryan Hehir

Stanley Hoffmann’s description of the world confronting U.S. policymakers is characteristically complex in its analysis and clear in its definition of policy choices. Moreover, Hoffmann’s work over many years provides a basic approach to the making of foreign policy. He has always given priority to an analysis of the dynamics and structure of the international system in the shaping of U.S. choices.

Hoffmann’s method is particularly useful in an assessment of U.S. policy options in the 1990s because of the profound transformation that has occurred in international politics. The depth and nature of that transformation as well as its likely consequences are topics that divide both analysts and diplomats, inside and ...