Go BUY THE BOOK.   It rocked & Walter Russell Mead is a stud.  An excerpt from my review:

Special Providence is the best book I've read in 2003.  Some books are great because of their special insight, others because of their intellectual depth (I consider them 2 different things...) and finally others because of their approachability by the lay person.  Walter Russell Mead's is all 3 and provides outstanding historical commentary on American foreign policy, analysis of underlying issues and synthesis of a thoughtful, prescriptive framework for discussing future trends. 

Special Providence earns the coveted "Vinod's Blog 5-star Rating" - the first book to do so in 2003.

A great interview with Mead can be found here - for the time-challenged, I recommend this page which provides the basic overview of his 4 themes in US Foreign Policy.   In light of 9/11, the Jacksonian school has been getting much airtime in the Blogosphere:

[The idea is]: "Don't bother with people abroad, unless they bother you. But if they attack you, then do everything you can."

...Jacksonians: when somebody attacks the hive, you come swarming out of the hive and you sting them to death. And Jacksonians, when it comes to war, don't believe in limited wars. They don't believe, particularly, in the laws of war. War is about fighting, killing, and winning with as few casualties as possible on your side. But you don't worry about casualties on the other side. That's their problem. They shouldn't have started the war if they didn't want casualties.