Grand Strategies : Literature, Statecraft, and World Order

by Charles Hill

• ISBN13: 9780300163865
• ISBN10: 030016386X
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2010-06-22
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

"The international world of states and their modern system is a literary realm," writes Charles Hill in this powerful work on the practice of international relations. "It is where the greatest issues of the human condition are played out." A distinguished lifelong diplomat and educator, Hill aims to revive the ancient tradition of statecraft as practiced by humane and broadly educated men and women. Through lucid and compelling discussions of classic literary works from Homer to Rushdie,Grand Strategiesrepresents a merger of literature and international relations, inspired by the conviction that "a grand strategist . . . needs to be immersed in classic texts from Sun Tzu to Thucydides to George Kennan, to gain real-world experience through internships in the realms of statecraft, and to bring this learning and experience to bear on contemporary issues." This fascinating and engaging introduction to the basic concepts of the international order not only defines what it is to build a civil society through diplomacy, justice, and lawful governance but also describes how these ideas emerge from and reflect human nature.

Author Biography

Charles Hill, a career minister in the U.S. Foreign Service, was executive aide to former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz (1985-1989) and served as special consultant on policy to the secretary-general of the United Nations from 1992 to 1996. He is currently a research fellow at the Hoover Institution as well as Brady-Johnson Distinguished Fellow in Grand Strategy, Senior Lecturer in International Studies, and Senior Lecturer in Humanities at Yale University. He has collaborated with former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on Egypt's Road to Jerusalem, a memoir of the Middle East peace negotiations, and Unvanquished, about U.S.-U.N. relations in the post---Cold War period. Hill is also the editor of the three-volume Papers of U.N. Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali.

Table of Contents

Works Discussed in This Book	p. ix
Prologue: Books of the Red Chamber	p. 1
Classical Orders	p. 9
Creative Disorder	p. 49
Sources of Modern World Order	p. 73
What Kind of State?	p. 88
Enlightenment: Critique of Diplomacy, State, and System	p. 118
America: A New Idea	p. 134
Disorder and War	p. 177
The Imported State	p. 232
The Writer and the State	p. 282
Epilogue: Talleyrand and Everything Else	p. 293
Notes	p. 299
Bibliography	p. 325
Acknowledgments	p. 344
Index	p. 347
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