Weeks after the Institute of Politics (IOP) Book Club cancelled an appearance by an author critical of President Bush, the club held its first event yesterday.

Foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead told a small group of students yesterday that while American foreign policy has often been flawed in theory, it has historically been successful in accomplishing its goals.

“The fact is that we stink at foreign policy, but over the years, we win,” said Mead, who is a senior fellow of U.S. policy at the Council for Foreign Relations and a contributing editor to the New York Times.

Mead’s discussion was the IOP Book Club’s first event this year. The series got a late start this fall due to the organizers’ desire after Sept. 11 not to have discussions criticizing President Bush.

Book Club coordinator Brian J. Wong ’03 said the group had planned to bring Mark Crispin Miller to discuss his book The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder.

The Harvard Political Union, the student committee of the IOP that oversees the book series, voted to cancel Miller’s appearance.

“It was seen as inappropriate in the wake of Sept. 11 to criticize the Bush administration,” Wong said.

Eight students and three other members of the Harvard community attended yesterday’s event, which was held in the Lowell House Junior Common Room.

Mead discussed the many divergent criticisms of American foreign policy that he wrote about in his recently published book, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World.

“Just about everybody in the U.S. and abroad agrees that American foreign policy is terrible,” Mead said.

Mead cited the divided U.S. political system as the primary source of the nation’s problems with America’s foreign policy.

“It’s horrendous,” said Mead. “It’s controlled by contentious lobbies that focus on short-term and domestic goals.”

But Mead also said that the U.S. has had consistent success it achieving its foreign policy objectives.

“If international life was a game of Risk, we’re winning,” Mead said.

In his book, Mead argues that American foreign policy should be viewed not in terms of realist and idealist theories, but in terms of four schools of foreign policies tracing their histories to four leaders in American history.