ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, a revelatory, inside account of U.S.-Russia relations from 1989 to the presentIn 2008, when Michael McFaul was asked to leave his perch at Stanford and join an unlikely presidential campaign, he had no idea that he would find himself at the beating heart of one of today’s most contentious and consequential international relationships. As President Barack Obama’s adviser on Russian affairs, McFaul helped craft the United States’ policy known as “reset” that fostered new and unprecedented collaboration between the two countries. And then, as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, he had a front-row seat when this fleeting, hopeful moment crumbled with Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency. This riveting inside account combines history and memoir to tell the full story of U.S.-Russia relations from the fall of the Soviet Union to the new rise of the hostile, paranoid Russian president. From the first days of McFaul’s ambassadorship, the Kremlin actively sought to discredit and undermine him, hassling him with tactics that included dispatching protesters to his front gates, slandering him on state media, and tightly surveilling him, his staff, and his family.From Cold War to Hot Peace is an essential account of the most consequential global confrontation of our time.

    The New York Times called it, in an article published nearly ten years after the book's appearance, the seminal statement of principles underlying political psychology.The perspective established by Jervis remains an important counterpoint to structural explanations of international politics, and from it has developed a large literature on the psychology of leaders and the problems of decision making under conditions of incomplete information, stress, and cognitive bias.Jervis begins by describing the process of perception (for example, how decision makers learn from history) and then explores common forms of misperception (such as overestimating one's influence). Finally, he tests his ideas through a number of important events in international relations from nineteenth- and twentieth-century European history.In a contemporary application of Jervis's ideas, some argue that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 in part because he misread the signals of American leaders with regard to the independence of Kuwait. Also, leaders of the United States and Iraq in the run-up to the most recent Gulf War might have been operating under cognitive biases that made them value certain kinds of information more than others, whether or not the information was true. Jervis proved that, once a leader believed something, that perception would influence the way the leader perceived all other relevant information.

    Not simply revised, but completely re-written, the Second Edition of this classic text is a fresh reinterpretation of the theories and events surrounding the Cuban Missle Crisis, incorporating all new information from the Kennedy tapes and recently declassified Soviet files. Essence of Decision Second Edition, is a vivid look at decision-making under pressure and is the only single volume work that attempts to answer the enduring question: how should citizens understand the actions of their government?

    Now, great power competition is back and the liberal order is in jeopardy. Russia and China are increasingly revisionist in their regions. The Middle East appears to be unraveling. And many Americans question why the United States ought to lead. What will great power competition look like in the decades ahead? Will the liberal world order survive? What impact will geopolitics have on globalization? And, what strategy should the United States pursue to succeed in an increasingly competitive world? In this book Thomas Wright explains how major powers will compete fiercely even as they try to avoid war with each other. Wright outlines a new American strategy—Responsible Competition—to navigate these challenges and strengthen the liberal order.

    Observers declared the end of history, confident in a peaceful, globalized future. But we now know this to be premature. Authoritarianism first returned in Russia, as Putin developed a political system dedicated solely to the consolidation and exercise of power. In the last six years, it has creeped from east to west as nationalism inflames Europe, abetted by Russian propaganda and cyberwarfare. While countries like Poland and Hungary have made hard turns towards authoritarianism, the electoral upsets of 2016 revealed the citizens of the US and UK in revolt against their countries' longstanding policies and values.But this threat to the West also presents an opportunity to better understand the pillars of our own political order. In this forceful and unsparing work of contemporary history, Snyder goes beyond the headlines to expose the true nature of the threat to democracy. By showcasing the stark choices before us--between equality or oligarchy, individuality or totality, truth and falsehood--Snyder restores our understanding of the basis of our way of life, offering a way forward in a time of terrible uncertainty.

    Policies governing everything from trade and investment to energy and exchange rates are wielded as tools to win diplomatic allies, punish adversaries, and coerce those in between. Not so in the United States, however. America still too often reaches for the gun over the purse to advance its interests abroad. The result is a playing field sharply tilting against the United States.In a cogent analysis of why the United States is losing ground as a world power and what it can do to reverse the trend, War by Other Means describes the statecraft of geoeconomics: the use of economic instruments to achieve geopolitical goals. Geoeconomics has long been a lever of America’s foreign policy. But factors ranging from U.S. bureaucratic politics to theories separating economics from foreign policy leave America ill prepared for this new era of geoeconomic contest, while rising powers, especially China, are adapting rapidly. The rules-based system Americans set in place after World War II benefited the United States for decades, but now, as the system frays and global competitors take advantage, America is uniquely self-constrained. Its geoeconomic policies are hampered by neglect and resistance, leaving the United States overly reliant on traditional military force.Drawing on immense scholarship and government experience, Robert Blackwill and Jennifer Harris show that if America’s policies are left uncorrected, the price in American blood and treasure will only grow. What geoeconomic warfare requires is a new vision of U.S. statecraft.

    In this important book, Hal Brands explains why grand strategy is a concept that is so alluring--and so elusive--to those who make American statecraft. He explores what grand strategy is, why it is so essential, and why it is so hard to get right amid the turbulence of global affairs and the chaos of domestic politics. At a time when grand strategy is very much in vogue, Brands critically appraises just how feasible that endeavor really is.Brands takes a historical approach to this subject, examining how four presidential administrations, from that of Harry S. Truman to that of George W. Bush, sought to do grand strategy at key inflection points in the history of modern U.S. foreign policy. As examples ranging from the early Cold War to the Reagan years to the War on Terror demonstrate, grand strategy can be an immensely rewarding undertaking--but also one that is full of potential pitfalls on the long road between conception and implementation. Brands concludes by offering valuable suggestions for how American leaders might approach the challenges of grand strategy in the years to come.

    Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions dissects the faults and foibles of recent American foreign policy--explaining why it has been plagued by disasters like the "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan and outlining what can be done to fix it.In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have soured, the European Union is wobbling, nationalism and populism are on the rise, and the United States is stuck in costly and pointless wars that have squandered trillions of dollars and undermined its influence around the world.The root of this dismal record, Walt argues, is the American foreign policy establishment's stubborn commitment to a strategy of "liberal hegemony." Since the end of the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to use U.S. power to spread democracy, open markets, and other liberal values into every nook and cranny of the planet. This strategy was doomed to fail, but its proponents in the foreign policy elite were never held accountable and kept repeating the same mistakes.Donald Trump won the presidency promising to end the misguided policies of the foreign policy "Blob" and to pursue a wiser approach. But his erratic and impulsive style of governing, combined with a deeply flawed understanding of world politics, are making a bad situation worse. The best alternative, Walt argues, is a return to the realist strategy of "offshore balancing," which eschews regime change, nation-building, and other forms of global social engineering. The American people would surely welcome a more restrained foreign policy, one that allowed greater attention to problems here at home. This long-overdue shift will require abandoning the futile quest for liberal hegemony and building a foreign policy establishment with a more realistic view of American power.Clear-eyed, candid, and elegantly written, Stephen M. Walt's The Hell of Good Intentions offers both a compelling diagnosis of America's recent foreign policy follies and a proven formula for renewed success.

    In the late 1940s, George F. Kennan—then a bright but, relatively obscure American diplomat—wrote the "long telegram" and the "X" article. These two documents laid out United States' strategy for "containing" the Soviet Union—a strategy which Kennan himself questioned in later years. Based on exclusive access to Kennan and his archives, this landmark history illuminates a life that both mirrored and shaped the century it spanned.Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Biography

    Originally published in 1977, it continues to define and shape the discipline of international relations. This edition has been updated with a new, interpretive foreword by Andrew Hurrell. Bull explores three fundamental questions: What is order in world politics? How is order maintained in the contemporary states system? What alternative paths to world order are desirable and feasible? Laws and institutions, Bull points out, shift and change over time. "The Anarchical Society" addresses the unwritten rules which have allowed international order to exist across the ages.

    Burns is the most distinguished and admired American diplomat of his generation. Over the course of four decades, he played a central role in the most consequential diplomatic episodes of his time--from the bloodless end of the Cold War to post-Cold War relations with Putin's Russia, from post-9/11 tumult in the Middle East to the secret nuclear talks with Iran. Upon his retirement, Secretary John Kerry said Burns belonged on "the short list of American diplomatic legends, alongside George Kennan."In The Back Channel, Burns recounts with vivid detail and incisive analysis some of the seminal moments of his career. He draws on a trove of newly declassified cables and memos to give readers a rare, inside look at American diplomacy in action. His dispatches from war-torn Chechnya and Qadhafi's camp in the deserts of Libya and his searing memos warning of the "Perfect Storm" unleashed by the Iraq War will reshape our understanding of history and the policy debates of the future. Burns sketches the contours of effective American leadership in a world that resembles neither the zero-sum Cold War contest of his early years as a diplomat, nor the "unipolar moment" of American primacy that followed. Ultimately, The Back Channel is an eloquent, deeply informed, and timely story of a life spent in service of American interests abroad, as well as a powerful reminder, in a time of great turmoil, of the importance of diplomacy.

    By the next day the USSR was officially no more and the USA had emerged as the world’s sole superpower. Award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy presents a page-turning account of the preceding five months of drama, filled with failed coups d’état and political intrigue.Honing in on this previously disregarded but crucial period and using recently declassified documents and original interviews with key participants, he shatters the established myths of 1991 and presents a bold new interpretation of the Soviet Union’s final months. Plokhy argues that contrary to the triumphalist Western narrative, George H. W. Bush desperately wanted to preserve the Soviet Union and keep Gorbachev in power, and that it was Ukraine and not the US that played the key role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. The consequences of those five months and the myth-making that has since surrounded them are still being felt in Crimea, Russia, the US, and Europe today.With its spellbinding narrative and strikingly fresh perspective, The Last Empire is the essential account of one of the most important watershed periods in world history, and is indispensable reading for anyone seeking to make sense of international politics today.

    Mearsheimer, great power politics are tragic because the anarchy of the international system requires states to seek dominance at one another s expense, dooming even peaceful nations to a relentless power struggle. The best survival strategy in this dangerous world is to become a regional hegemon like the United States in the Western Hemisphere and to make sure that no other hegemon emerges elsewhere. In a new concluding chapter, Mearsheimer examines the course of Sino-American relations should China continue its ascent to greater economic and military power. He predicts that China will attempt to dominate Asia while the United States, determined to remain the world s sole regional hegemon, will go to great lengths to contain China. The tragedy of great power politics is inescapable."

    Millions have been infected and killed. The economic crash caused by the pandemic is the worst since the Great Depression, with the International Monetary Fund estimating that it will cost over $9 trillion of global wealth in the next few years. Many will be left impoverished and hungry. Fragile states will be further hollowed out, creating conditions ripe for conflict and mass displacement. Meanwhile, international institutions and alliances already under strain before the pandemic are teetering, while the United States and China, already at loggerheads before the crisis, are careening toward a new Cold War. China's secrecy and assertiveness have shattered hopes that it will become a responsible stakeholder in the international order.Colin Kahl and Thomas Wright's Aftershocks is both a riveting journalistic account of one of the strangest years on record and a comprehensive analysis of the pandemic's ongoing impact on the foundational institutions and ideas that have shaped the modern world. This is the first crisis in decades without a glimmer of American leadership and it shows--there has been no international cooperation on a quintessential global challenge. Every country has followed its own path--nationalizing supplies, shutting their borders, and largely ignoring the rest of the world. The international order the United States constructed seven decades ago is in tatters, and the world is adrift. None of this came out of the blue. Public health experts and intelligence analysts had warned for a decade that a pandemic of this sort was inevitable. The crisis broke against a global backdrop of rising nationalism, backsliding democracy, declining public trust in governments, mounting rebellion against the inequalities produced by globalization, resurgent great power competition, and plummeting international cooperation.And yet, there are some signs of hope. The COVID-19 crisis reminds us of our common humanity and shared fate. The public has, for the most part, responded stoically and with kindness. Some democracies--South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, New Zealand, among others--have responded well. America may emerge from the crisis with a new resolve to deal with non-traditional threats, like pandemic disease, and a new demand for effective collective action with other democratic nations. America may also finally be forced to come to grips with our nation's inadequacies, and to make big changes at home and abroad that will set the stage for opportunities the rest of this century holds.But one thing is certain: America and the world will never be the same again.

    Included in the text is commentary on Reagan's deal with Iran in 1980, Bush's deal with Iraq up to the invasion of Kuwait, the Middle East peace talks and the collapse of Soviet Union.