Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats | 
| Author: Matthew Yglesias
Publisher: Wiley
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 77859
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.1
ISBN: 047008622X
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.73
EAN: 9780470086223
ASIN: 047008622X
Publication Date: April 14, 2008
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Product Description
Praise for Heads In the Sand "A very serious, thoughtful argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care."
—Ezra Klein, staff writer at The American Prospect "Matt Yglesias is one of the smartest voices in the blogosphere. He knows a lot about politics, a lot about foreign policy, and, crucially, is unusually shrewd in understanding how they interact. Here's hoping that his new book will introduce him to an even wider audience. Once you discover him, you'll be hooked."
—E. J. Dionne, author of Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right and Why Americans Hate Politics "Matthew Yglesias is one of a handful of bloggers that I make a point of reading every day. Heads in the Sandis a smart, vital book that urges Democrats to stop evading the foreign-policy debate and to embrace the old principles of international liberalism—to be right and also to win."
—Fred Kaplan, author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power "Reading foreign policy tomes is seldom included among life's pleasures, but Yglesias has concocted a startling exception. Heads in the Sand is not just a razor-sharp analysis cum narrative of the politics of national security in general and the Iraq war in particular, it's also an enthralling and often very funny piece of writing. Though he administers strong antidotes to the haplessness of his fellow Democrats and liberals, there's more than a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down."
—Hendrik Hertzberg, Senior Editor, The New Yorker, and author of Politics: Observations and Arguments
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Good introduction and argument for an old way of doing foreign policy May 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is an argument that Democrats' problems with foreign policy don't trace back to them not being "tough" enough but instead to their failure to offer an alternate vision. The framework that Yglesias is promoting is liberal internationalism which he ties into to Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Containment, and the first Gulf War.
Much of the book is historical review, one that thankfully maintains the fast pace and wit of Yglesias's blog. Those who enjoy his blog should also enjoy the book, but it's also an excellent introduction to those who aren't already readers. The main value-added versus the blog is the ability to develop support for his ideas at length. He uses this opportunity well, although Yglesias does stick to qualitative analysis of Democrats electoral fortunes. The book contains no statistical analysis over whether Democrats offering a different foreign policy do better than other Democratic candidates.
The specifics of "liberal internationalism" are rather straightforward. Build global institutions, work together with other nations, and try to understand the viewpoints of other nations. He supports the war in Afghanistan but thinks the war of in Iraq was inherently flawed and that complaining about implementation obscures the real problem. That said, the book is not a theoretical treatise. It sits firmly at the intersection between policy and politics and is in fact dubious of the value of big new ideas.
All-in-all it's an interesting read for those dissatisfied with America's recent role in the world and looking for an achievable new direction.
Excellent job May 9, 2008
I greatly enjoyed Matt Yglesias's new book. I'm generally not the type to read foreign policy books, but I'm a regular reader of his blog. He has a reputation for being sharp, and that's definitely evident while reading the book. I found it to be informative and persuasive, but all the while about as unstuffy as one can imagine a book of this sort being.
The main idea of the book is that America's trend toward unilateralism has been a disaster, and that America needs to recommit itself to internationalism. The book constructs the argument that the major animating policy behind the Bush foreign policy is not a love of democracy but rather an aggressive nationalism that believes that international agreements are holding America down. Yglesias is persuasive in arguing that this mindset has produced the opposite of what it intended--America has lost a great deal of power over the past few years--and that creating institutions that foster democracy is a smarter approach. He admits that some of these institutions, such as the U. N., need some measure of reform, though specifics are not given about what to do. Still, he does make a compelling argument as to why the U. N. is still necessary in the book's final chapter despite its flaws.
All in all, it's a very interesting book, and it's well written, paced, and argued. Plus, it's funny. It's certainly worth your while.
Yglesias deserves more profile May 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've been an avid reader of Matt Yglesias's blog since long before he was assimilated into the Atlantic collective. On one hand, it's hard to take someone seriously as a foreign policy expert when they are no older than I am. On the other hand, he's incredibly smart and persuasive, and given the quality of our country's credentialed foreign policy experts, he's a much needed voice of sanity.
If you're of the opinion that the intergovernmental institutions which are central to Yglesias's liberal internationalism are totally irredeemable, you may not be convinced otherwise by this book. But as a history of US foreign policy in the Clinton-Bush years, it is thorough, insightful, and funny.
The postmortem of the Democrats' 2004 campaign strategy regarding the Iraq War is especially good. As Yglesias makes painfully clear, never has so much political cowardice yielded such counterproductive results.
Excellent book. April 30, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Republicans always win foreign policy debates because Democrats don't even try. Democrats will keep losing until they participate. That's what Yglesias says and he's completely convincing and even entertaining.
Yglesias smartly avoids making a specific foreign policy prescription, other than to follow the general internationalist approach that succeeded from Truman though Clinton. It's not so much that Democrats need to march in lockstep, it's just that they should stop running away. But I'll make my pitch for republican security theory, the idea that security means avoiding the extremes of anarchy and hierarchy. In practice it's pretty much the best of liberal internationalism and the small part of realism that makes sense, but the great thing about it is that it ties together approaches from antiquity to America's founding and all the way to the present.
Lind's The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy is a good read and I think an expression republican security theory.
Deudney's Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village is a tough read, but absolutely worth it.
palatable blend of politics and policy April 28, 2008
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
The jump from blog to book worked well for Yglesias. I get the sense that he was pushed toward a less snarky, slightly stilted style, but you essentially get the same tightly reasoned and witty passages you'd expect from his longer posts or magazine stuff. What's surprising (for a blogger) is that these passages actually thread together into one continuous and earnest argument, a case for traditional liberal internationalism.
I'm not a foreign policy nerd, so I can't mount a serious critique of the book's claims about Syria and whatever. I can, however, testify that it's approachable, that it hews to the facts that I do know, and that the arguments address a lot of my concerns head-on. In particular, I wanted to know how a liberal foreign policy might play with the electorate and why a concert of democracies to replace the UN security council is such a bad idea. Yglesias delivers on both counts with even-handed and pragmatic discussions.
Despite the book's cutesy cover, there really isn't any padding. The length feels right. The much-touted take-down of Tom Friedman is a little fluffy and is the most skippable part of the book.
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