Those groups who are actively involved in foreign policy today,
Kissinger argues, often break down into hyperidealists, who believe
''America has the appropriate democratic solution for every other society
regardless of cultural and historical differences,'' or
hypernationalists, who peddle the notion that the Soviet Union was
brought down simply because of Ronald Reagan's assertiveness, not by a
bipartisan foreign policy of containment that spanned nine
administrations. These hypernationalists maintain that ''the solution to
the world's ills is American hegemony -- the imposition of American
solutions on the world's trouble spots by the unabashed affirmation of
its pre-eminence.'' In today's complex international system, Kissinger
insists, you cannot have an American foreign policy that is based on the
United States as either the world's social worker or the world's
schoolmarm, ruler in hand. It requires a blend of the two, with a large
dollop of humility and caution in between about what can and cannot be
imposed on the world; it requires an appreciation for American traditions
of exceptionalism, with a constant eye to the circumstances in which
those traditions can be brought to bear.
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