Thomas H. Henriksen is Senior Fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford University, USA. Henriksen is the author of America and the Rogue States (2012) and American Power after the Berlin Wall (2007) as well as many other books and articles. 

Introduction

I

1. George Herbert Walker Bush: A Disorderly World Put Right

2. George H.W. Bush: Interventionism Unbound

II

3. William Jefferson Clinton: The Post-Cold War's Inward Look

4. Bill Clinton and Two Reluctant Interventions into the Balkans

III

5. George Walker Bush and the International Outreach

6. George W. Bush's Overstretch Abroad

IV

7. Barack Hussein Obama and the New Retrenchment

8. Barack Obama: A Foreign Policy of Disengagement

9. Observations on the Cycles in U.S. Foreign Policy

This book describes how American international policy alternates between engagement and disengagement cycles in world affairs. These cycles provide a unique way to understand, assess, and describe fluctuations in America's involvement or non-involvement overseas. In addition to its basic thesis, the book presents a fair-minded account of four presidents' foreign policies in the post-Cold War period: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. It suggests recurring sources of cyclical change, along with implications for the future. An engaged or involved foreign policy entails the use of military power and diplomatic pressure against other powers to secure American ends. A disengaged on noninvolved policy relies on normal economic and political interaction with other states, which seeks to disassociation from entanglements.