American Foreign Policy

Thomas Ausa, an obscure but adequately credentialed professor of American International Relations, at the end of his career imagined he might best illustrate what he called the "themes" or "frames" or "buzzwords" of American foreign policy by telling a few stories about typical Americans living through these pandemic times in ways he hoped would illustrate terms like "deterrence," "containment," "asymmetrical warfare," and "mutual assured destruction." The novel fragment he left attempts to do that. Whether he succeeded only future readers, if any, will tell. The afterword by Liv Wells, former U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission at several American embassies, doesn't help much.