"With extraordinary range and research, Robert Kagan has illuminated America's quest to reconcile its new power with its historical purpose in world order in the early twentieth century." -Dr. Henry Kissinger
At the dawn of the twentieth century, the United States was one of the world's richest, most populous, most technologically advanced nations. It was also a nation divided along numerous fault lines, with conflicting aspirations and concerns pulling it in different directions. And it was a nation unsure about the role it wanted to play in the world, if any.
Americans were the beneficiaries of a global order they had no responsibility for maintaining. Many preferred to avoid being drawn into what seemed an ever more competitive, conflictual, and militarized international environment.