Our Own Worst Enemy

Three former government officials rethink the foreign policy decisions of America’s leaders as they detail their failures and inadequacies and propose effective new moves the nation could make to self-correct.

The authors of Our Own Worst Enemy, each of which have held high positions in the State Department and Pentagon, argue that for more than 20 years the United States has been experiencing a nervous breakdown concerning the making of foreign policy.

As foreign policy continuously becomes more partisan and ideological, and each president disavows his predecessor as he starts anew, the authors describe how America has watched its leaders repeatedly trap themselves in foreign policy debacles.

Within the pages of this book, I.M. Destler, Leslie H. Gelb, and Anthony Lake propose clear and effective measures by which America may extricate itself from the political quagmire it is repeatedly placed in.

I.M. Destler is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington. He was formerly Staff Associate to the President’s Task Force on Government Organization and was a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of Presidents, Bureaucrats, and Foreign Policy and Making Foreign Economic Policy.

Leslie H. Gelb is the National Security Correspondent of The New York Times. He has served as Director of Politico-Military Affairs at the Department of State and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning and Arms Control. He was a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Brookings Institution. His book, The Irony of Vietnam, won the 1980 Woodrow Wilson Award for the best book published on government, politics, or international affairs.

Antony Lake is a Five College Professor in International Relations at Mount Holyoke College. He has been Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department and a member of the National Security Council staff. He served in Vietnam and Washington as a Foreign Service Officer. He is the author of The “Tar Baby” Option: American Policy Toward Southern Rhodesia.