The Reagan paradox

Library Journal

This is an insightful analysis of American foreign policy during the Reagan era by a respected researcher at Australian National University. The author analyzes the Reagan paradox--the disparity between the declaratory and operational policies--by examining an array of issues, including U.S.-Soviet relations, the Atlantic alliance, and Third World conflicts. The author delves beneath the surface to demonstrate the built-in logic of the Reagan paradox. Although the author's scholarship and the breadth of coverage is admirable, in the case of her analysis of the Third World, she fails to go beyond the journalistic treatment of Reagan's foreign policy failures in that area. Readers will be better served by Fred Halliday's From Kabul to Managua ( LJ 8/89). Recommended for college libraries.-- Nader Entessar, Spring Hill Coll., Mobile, Ala.