It's not too late to dig into some summer reading. If you have a hankering to read something intellectually dense, the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) can help. At the request of the Undersecretary of State for Public Affairs, has put together a “Foreign Affairs Professional Reading List.“
The list aims “to serve as a resource for Foreign Service and Civil Service employees of the foreign affairs agencies,” but the list is befitting of all of us foreign policy buffs.
Since summer is quickly drawing to a close, I’d recommend perusing their “Highly Recommended” list. The New York Times blog about books called “Paper Cuts” had
“The shorter list lends itself to a few observations. The first is that it's comforting to see the department has its priorities straight. The emphasis in books like Dennis Ross's "Statecraft" and Joseph Nye's "Soft Power" is on diplomacy and on what talking and compromise can accomplish in a dangerous world, exactly the perspective we expect the State Department to demonstrate and advocate. Those primarily interested in military solutions to international crises have a different department they can consult for reading recommendations.
Second, and more surprising, the State Department seems willing to entertain the notion that the United States is in fact an empire, with an empire's problems, a point not often made in official Washington, at least not publicly. So department employees are advised to read Niall Ferguson's "Colossus: The Price of America's Empire," Robert Kagan's "Dangerous Nation" and Paul Kennedy's "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers."
And third, in the long-standing intellectual division between the Realists, who argue that foreign policy should be based on national interest, and Wilsonian moralists, who stress ethical principles as a guide to international relations, the department's list is weighted strongly on the side of the Realists, with books by Henry Kissinger, George Kennan, Richard Haass and John Lewis Gaddis. The most influential Wilsonians of our time ‚ the neoconservatives ‚ are represented only by Kagan (and his book is more about American expansion than American values). There is no Victor Davis Hanson here, no Mark Steyn, no Norman Podhoretz.
All of which is to say that if the White House or the Vice President's office were to compile a list of recommended reading for their employees, it would look very different indeed.”
I am guessing the compilation of the list had to be a bi-partisan effort, no? Happy reading!
