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From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift? Andrew J. Bacevich, one of the country's most respected voices on foreign affairs, offers an incisive critical history of this ongoing military enterprise - now more than 30 years old and with no end in sight.
Donald Trump's presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we'd be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang--in a revolution or military coup--but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms.
Fractured Continent is an urgent examination of how the political and social volatility in Europe impacts the United States and the rest of the world. The dream of a United States of Europe is unraveling in the wake of several crises now afflicting the continent. The single Euro currency threatens to break apart amid bitter arguments between rich northern creditors and poor southern debtors.
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. The rules, policies, and institutions that have guided the world since World War II have largely run their course. Respect for sovereignty alone cannot uphold order in an age defined by global challenges from terrorism and the spread of nuclear weapons to climate change and cyberspace. Meanwhile, great power rivalry is returning. Weak states pose problems just as confounding as strong ones.
"We were eight years in power" was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. Now Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America's "first white president".
In Mission Failure, Michael Mandelbaum, one of America's leading foreign policy thinkers, provides an original, provocative, and definitive account of the ambitious but deeply flawed post-Cold War efforts to promote American values and American institutions throughout the world.
From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift? Andrew J. Bacevich, one of the country's most respected voices on foreign affairs, offers an incisive critical history of this ongoing military enterprise - now more than 30 years old and with no end in sight.
Donald Trump's presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we'd be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang--in a revolution or military coup--but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms.
Fractured Continent is an urgent examination of how the political and social volatility in Europe impacts the United States and the rest of the world. The dream of a United States of Europe is unraveling in the wake of several crises now afflicting the continent. The single Euro currency threatens to break apart amid bitter arguments between rich northern creditors and poor southern debtors.
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. The rules, policies, and institutions that have guided the world since World War II have largely run their course. Respect for sovereignty alone cannot uphold order in an age defined by global challenges from terrorism and the spread of nuclear weapons to climate change and cyberspace. Meanwhile, great power rivalry is returning. Weak states pose problems just as confounding as strong ones.
"We were eight years in power" was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. Now Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America's "first white president".
In Mission Failure, Michael Mandelbaum, one of America's leading foreign policy thinkers, provides an original, provocative, and definitive account of the ambitious but deeply flawed post-Cold War efforts to promote American values and American institutions throughout the world.
During the 1970s, American foreign policy faced a predicament of clashing imperatives - US decision makers, already struggling to maintain stability and devise strategic frameworks to guide the exercise of American power during the Cold War, found themselves hampered by the emergence of dilemmas that would come to a head in the post-Cold War era. Their choices proved to be of enormous consequence for the development of American foreign policy in the final decades of the twentieth century and beyond.
In A Superpower Transformed, historian Daniel J. Sargent chronicles how policymakers across three administrations worked to manage complex international changes in a tumultuous era. Drawing on many newly-released archival documents and interviews with key figures, including President Jimmy Carter and Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Sargent explores the collision of geopolitics and globalization that defined the decade. From the Nixon administration's efforts to stabilize a faltering Pax Americana; to Henry Kissinger's attempts to devise new strategies to manage or mitigate the consequences of economic globalization after the oil crisis of 1973-74; to the Carter administration's embrace of human rights promotion as a central task for foreign policy, Sargent explores the challenges that afflicted US policymakers in the 1970s, offering new insights into the complexities that emerged as the new forces of globalization and human rights transformed the United States as a superpower.
A sweeping reinterpretation of a pivotal era, A Superpower Transformed is a must-listen for anyone interested in U.S. foreign relations, American politics, globalization, economic policy, human rights, and contemporary American history.
This book provided very good foreign policy introduction, as a prelude to my increasing focus on today's foreign policy. It is detailed, showing the competing considerations behind many leaders' decisions, but nicely stops short of being too encyclopedic and abstruse. Major events, laws, leaders and predicaments are clearly depicted. The point of view is, as I prefer, calm and weighing, rather than shrilly polemic. This distance respects the listener's capacity to form opinions. At the close of the book, the narrative zooms more quickly forward to the present, which was helpful to connect narratives to today. I recall many of these events, experienced then on a more naive and emotionally immediate level. The account feels true to my recollections too. I would not call the tone sprightly, quite, perhaps stately.
Containment and building a nuclear arsenal was complicated first by Nixon's and Kissinger's detante, then Carter's partial embrace of human rights in terms of int'l relations. Meanwhile, the world economy left its moorings, with oil price rises in reprisal for America's support of Israel, and Nixon felt compelled to abandon the gold standard and Bretton Woods entirely. All three presidents became weak at home, making foreign policy their best hope for a legacy. While a bit academic at times, this book effectively covers its subject.
Would you try another book from Daniel J. Sargent and/or Kalen Allmandinger?
Any additional comments?
Listening to this brought back memories of the boring lectures I sometimes endured in college. Rather than try to relate to the layman listener/reader, the author seems to have written this for the academic community. Disappointed.