After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made
by Ben Rhodes
View on GoodreadsFormer Obama deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes's reflection on the post-Trump-1 international landscape — Hungary, Russia, China — and what they reveal about an American democratic project Rhodes himself worked on for eight years.
Core ideas
- The book's structure is travelogue-as-frame: Rhodes visits Hungary, talks with Russian and Hong Kong dissidents, and uses each conversation as a window onto the American situation seen from outside.
- The argument is partly self-critical — Rhodes is honest about Obama-era policy choices that look worse in retrospect (Syria red line, drone policy, Afghan continuity) and about the limits of the values-based foreign policy he was part of articulating.
- The implicit thesis is that the United States is not exceptional anymore in the way the Obama administration's rhetoric assumed, and that "after the fall" reasoning has to start from that acknowledgment.
Published2021
Pages339
ISBN9781984856067
ReadDec 2025
