The book's orientation is a qualified realism. States are the main actors. They seek power, without which they face elimination from the game of world politics. International politics is a history of endless rise and fall of great powers. Foreign policy is best understood as responses to challenges from the international system. Hybel also incorporates domestic factors, such as powerful interest groups, into the analytical framework. Also, the character of a great power's society and polity affects its foreign policy direction and success. Because the United States has an open, competitive political system and economy, it can learn from policy mistakes and to avoid their repetition.

Hybel does not assume that power translates automatically into desired outcomes. Rather, he asks what led to U.S. policy success in some instances, failure in others. When and why did the United States fail to push the international system toward its own preferences and interests, and when and why did it succeed? Success depends, he claims, on policymakers' capacity to identify and respond to the tensions and contradictions arising from the system and from domestic forces. Usually, U.S. leaders have done well, but notable failures have occurred.

Posing the problem this way leads Hybel to an extended historical treatment of the U.S. role in world politics. The mileposts include westward expansion, entry into World War I, failure to join the League of Nations, the runup to World War II, the postwar settlement, the Cold War, Vietnam, and the demise of the Soviet bloc. The concluding chapter assesses U.S. ability to manage the international system in light of challenges from the world's major regions and from terrorists.

Taking here two important cases, Hybel asserts that U.S. policy failure after World War I resulted from Woodrow Wilson's misapprehension of the contradictions arising from the postwar situation. Wilson did not grasp the political and security needs of the allies, and he soon learned that Americans had little interest in imposing a new international system on Europe while pressing problems remained at home. The passing of the leadership torch from a Great Britain reluctant to give up its leading role to a United States equally reluctant to accept the role proved impossibly complex.

By contrast, Ronald Reagan's foreign policy did correctly apprehend the situation, applied the correct pressure, and allowed the United States to prevail in the Cold War. Although Soviet domestic problems played a part, it is also fair to contend that had Reagan chosen not to initiate the foreign policies his administration started, it is highly doubtful that the world would have witnessed the dramatic transformation it sustained in such a brief period of time (p. 217). Hybel asserts that explaining the end of the Cold War is simple. Reagan abandoned detente and Jimmy Carter's moralism because evidence of Soviet exploitation of U.S. accommodation had mounted. Reagan's policy team correctly perceived that the Soviet Union no longer had the ability to match American defense capabilities. U.S. economic renaissance, due to Reagan's policies, reversed the hegemonic decline of the country, giving the United States the means to overwhelm the Soviets. Reagan's defense buildup and Strategic Defense Initiative were intended to force the Soviets into an arms race they could not sustain against U.S. economic strength. The Soviets had no choice but to give up their designs for world power. Reagan's correct understanding of the international situation led to successful policy.

Hybel's history ranges over many topics and developments in the international system. Yet herein is one of the book's problems. Hybel devotes many pages to recounting European politics, conflicts in various parts of the world, and the like. These digressions undercut the notion that an international system is largely the product of the great power's designs. Hybel's own narrative offers evidence that many forces, quite often beyond the hegemon's influence, play a significant role in defining an international system. Such evidence calls for careful weighing of the influence of different social forces. From this should come a measured conclusion as to how much U.S. hegemony has mattered, where, and in what ways, rather than other factors, such as globalization, ethnic conflict, decolonization, the spread of new ideas, and the like. Hybel does not ignore such issues, but his approach offers no way to arrive at such an assessment.

Further, the book's title implies that something about the American approach to world politics, or something unique about American society, had a significant, visible impact on the character of the international system. For instance, as John G. Ruggie has argued in regard to embedded liberalism, it is not only that American hegemony gave us the postwar order; it is as important that American hegemony gave rise to particular international institutions. Had a different hegemon prevailed following World War II, a different international order would have resulted. Hybel seems to argue that U.S. political and economic institutions provided the country with significant advantages in the conduct of foreign affairs; he does not draw close connections between the character of American society and the world order the United States has played such a large part in constructing.

The book concludes with an assessment of how well the United States is situated to manage various regional challenges emerging in the late 1990s. The author analyzes these challenges in terms of the Clinton-era policy of enlargement. Unfortunately, Bill Clinton's policy failed to capture the imagination of the American people or the commitment of the foreign policy establishment. Hybel had good reason to predict that no act of international terrorism would be of such magnitude as to affect the character of U.S. foreign policy. Still, the demise of enlargement and the events of September 11, 2001, require reconsideration of Hybel's conclusions here.

He may be more on the mark regarding the likely future of the United States and the international system. It is probably correct that U.S. efforts to liberalize the world economy will further marginalize and weaken states outside the core of advanced market democracies. Probably, the United States will remain deeply involved in European economic and security affairs, despite occasional expressions of European resentment against U.S. preponderance. Recent developments also seem to confirm Hybel's expectation that no major conflicts between the United States and Russia will emerge, and that China is far from achieving superpower status. The Middle East presents the most intractable problems, while Latin America and Africa remain peripheral to the central question of continued U.S. dominance of the international system. According to Hybel, the main threats to continued U.S. predominance lie within the United States, namely, a tendency toward complacency and indecisiveness.

Weighing the work's value depends greatly on the intended audience. Hybel intends to reach theorists and practioners of international relations and foreign policy, as well as undergraduate and graduate students, but he might appeal to a more general audience. The general reader who lacks familiarity with the history of world politics and U.S. foreign policy since the nation's founding would find an accessible introduction. For students, although Walter LaFeber's (1994) The American Age offers a better history of U.S. foreign policy, Hybel's attention to the wider international context would prove useful for those seeking a good introduction to the U.S. role in the development of the international system. Specialists will note the author's reliance on standard texts and even college textbooks with which they are likely familiar, and they will find little new information to further theoretical development. Moreover, Hybel's unambitious theoretical aspirations are not likely to generate significant new insights or empirical research.