The Foreign Service Journal - November 2017

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2017 45 Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order Hal Brands, Cornell University Press, 2016, $29.95/hardcover, $14.37/Kindle, 480 pages. In the late 1970s, the United States often seemed to be a superpower in decline. Bat- tered by crises and setbacks around the globe, its post–World War II international leadership appeared to be draining steadily away. Yet just over a decade later, by the early 1990s, America’s global primacy had been reasserted in dramatic fashion. The United States was now enjoying its “unipolar moment”—an era in which Washington faced no near-term rivals for global power and influence, and one in which the defining feature of interna- tional politics was American dominance. How did this remark- able turnaround occur, and what role did U.S. foreign policy play in causing it? Hal Brands, an associate professor of public policy and history at Duke University, uses recently declassified archival materials to tell this fascinating story. The Naked Diplomat Tom Fletcher, William Collins, 2017, $16.99/paperback, $5.99/Kindle, 336 pages. Who will be in power in the 21st century? Governments? Big business? Internet titans? And how can we influence the future? This book looks at how the rise of digital technology is changing power at a faster rate than any time in history, fueling political, economic and even existential uncertainty. The author considers how we—as governments, businesses and individuals—can survive and thrive in the 21st century. He examines how we can use technology to create opportunity, improve security, outsmart the extremists and make it easier for citizens to take back control. Tom Fletcher, a former British ambassador to Lebanon, is visiting professor of international relations at New York Uni- versity. He advises the Global Business Coalition for Education and the Emirates Diplomatic Academy, and chairs the Interna- tional Advisory Board of the Creative Industries Federation. Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow: Confidential Diplomacy and Détente Richard A. Moss, University Press of Kentucky, 2017, $45/hardcover, $27.99/Kindle, 418 pages. This penetrating study documents and analyzes Washington and Moscow’s use of confidential diplomatic channels, from President Richard Nixon’s January 1969 inauguration through what has widely been heralded as the apex of détente, the May 1972 Moscow Summit. Using newly declassified documents, the author argues that while the back channels improved U.S.-Soviet relations in the short term, the Nixon-Kissinger methods left a poor foundation for lasting policy. Richard A. Moss is an associate research professor at the United States Naval War College’s Center for Naval Warfare Studies. A specialist in U.S.-Russia relations and the Nixon presidential recordings, Moss was a graduate intern in the Office of the Historian at the U.S. Department of State, and later worked there as a contract historian. Rwandan Women Rising Swanee Hunt, Duke University Press, 2017, $34.95/hardcover, $24.36/Kindle, 448 pages. To write this inspirational book, Swanee Hunt interviewed some 70 female activists who overcame the unfathomable brutal- ity of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and countless subsequent obstacles, to rebuild their society. Hunt, who has worked with female leaders in 60 countries over the past two decades, shows us that these women’s accomplishments offer important lessons for policymakers and activists who are working toward equality, whether elsewhere in Africa or other post-conflict societies. During her tenure as U.S. ambassador to Austria (1993- 1997), Swanee Hunt hosted negotiations and symposia focused on securing peace in the neighboring Balkan states, and now chairs the Washington-based Institute for Inclusive Security. She is the author of three previous books, also published by Duke University Press: Worlds Apart: Bosnian Lessons for Global Security, Half-Life of a Zealot and This Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace.