History Strikes Back How States, Nations, and Conflicts Are Shaping the 21st Century

This translation of the French bestseller Continuer l'Histoire brings the powerful, articulate message of Hubert Védrine to an even wider audience. With the astute analysis and acerbic wit for which he is famous, the former French foreign minister offers a provocative overview of world politics since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Critical of both the United States and Europe, Védrine calls for a return to a more realist foreign policy, rejecting the ideological notions of recent years. In History Strikes Back, he takes issue with those idealists who believe that states are no longer necessary and that globalization and free markets will automatically make a better world for all. Subsequent events have revealed this to be wishful thinking. Far from having ended with the Eastern bloc's collapse, history continues to present major challenges.

In dealing with the newly multipolar world, Americans have been too bellicose while Europeans have been naïve. Védrine shows why Westerners need to discard the illusions that have guided—or misguided—their international relations for more than twenty years. He presents a realistic vision for building a better world and spells out what Europeans expect from a new American administration. The United States and Europe must partner for a new form of "smart Real-politik" to guide their relations with emerging powers, manage globalization, and deal with looming environmental challenges.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM HISTORY STRIKES BACK:

"I heartily recommend History Strikes Back not because I agree with every sentence, but because every sentence is worth reading whether as a source of information, an invitation to debate, or a rebuttal to easy assumption. This is a work of remarkable intelligence at a moment when critical thinking is essential and history is moving ahead at full throttle. My invitation to you is to read and ponder this timely volume; you will enjoy doing so and will end up considerably wiser than when you began."
—from the Foreword by Madeleine Albright

"Americans believed their leadership and benevolent hegemony to be more necessary than ever for global stability. The more innocent Europeans and Canadians, on the other hand, were keen to start cashing in their peace dividends. They believed that the end of the cold war would lead to the birth of a true 'international community.'"

"The dominant, and almost exclusive, ideology remaining today is market capitalism. Its proponents claim that no other economic system in human history has ever been able to produce so many goods and services capable of meeting human needs. That happens to be true, but it's far from the whole story."

"World government, in any case, will not happen. The forces of deregulation that have been unleashed around the world are such that they cannot be controlled by any sort of global governance, or even by the American hyperpower. No person and no organization will ever control all that."

"France has all the potential in the world, but it has lost confidence in itself—in its ability to reform and recover. This makes no sense."

"Alternative Western policies toward the rest of the world are possible. That is true not only with regard to the Muslim world but also with regard to the emerging powers, as many Americans themselves have begun to recognize."