How the United States pivoted from containment to regime change in Iraq between the Gulf War and September 11, 2001.

The tale of the Bechtel family dynasty is a classic American business story. It begins with Warren A. 'Dad' Bechtel, who led a consortium that constructed the Hoover Dam. From that auspicious start, the family and its eponymous company would go on to 'build the world,' from the construction of airports in Hong Kong and Doha, to pipelines and tunnels in Alaska and Europe, to mining and energy operations around the globe. Today Bechtel is one of the largest privately held corporations in the world, enriched and empowered by a long history of government contracts and the privatization of public works, made possible by an unprecedented revolving door between its San Francisco headquarters and Washingto

In this important work, Steven Hurst demonstrates how the much-criticized Bush administration dealt effectively and skillfully with the massive upheavals associated with the end of the Cold War and began to shape a coherent US foreign policy for the post-Cold War era. Using government documents and recently published memoirs of key policymakers, Hurst provides the most detailed account so far of the policymaking processes of the Bush administration. He provides new insights into those policy areas which have already received critical attention, including relations with the USSR and the Persian Gulf Crisis, as well as neglected fields such as US-Latin American relations. Finally, the author addresses the much-derided concept of the "New World Order." He demonstrates that far from being a meaningless phrase dreamed up by Bush during the Gulf Crisis, the New World Order actually represented a coherent strategy founded in American values and foreign policy tradition and forms a logical and sustainable basis for,US foreign policy in the post-Cold War era.