Bringing together for the first time his many penetrating essays on U.S. foreign policy, Europe, and the Soviet Union, written during the Carter and the Reagan administrations, Laqueur in this book focuses on the absence of a U.S. global strategy.Laqueur shows that this lack of strategy, a hallmark of both Republican and Democratic administrations, has its counterpart in the general drift that characterizes Western European politics. For both the United States and Europe, there has been a weakening of political will.Exposing the myth that the United States is in an enviable position in the world, Laqueur reveals how the media and the academic community have been unwilling to accept the fact of diminished U.S. stature in the Western world.