front cover of Measuring the Health of the Liberal International Order
Measuring the Health of the Liberal International Order
Michael J. Mazarr
RAND Corporation, 2017
As part of a larger study on the future of the post–World War II liberal international order, RAND researchers analyze the health of the existing order and offer implications for future U.S. policy. The study’s overall conclusion is that the postwar order continues to enjoy many elements of stability but is increasingly threatened by major geopolitical and domestic socioeconomic trends that call into question the order’s fundamental assumptions.
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Meeting China Halfway
How to Defuse the Emerging US-China Rivalry
Lyle J. Goldstein
Georgetown University Press, 2015

Though a US-China conflict is far from inevitable, major tensions are building in the Asia-Pacific region. These strains are the result of historical enmity, cultural divergence, and deep ideological estrangement, not to mention apprehensions fueled by geopolitical competition and the closely related “security dilemma.”

Despite worrying signs of intensifying rivalry, few observers have provided concrete paradigms to lead this troubled relationship away from disaster. This book is dramatically different in that Lyle J. Goldstein’s focus is on laying bare both US and Chinese perceptions of where their interests clash and proposing new paths to ease bilateral tensions through compromise. Each chapter contains a “cooperation spiral” —the opposite of an escalation spiral—to illustrate these policy proposals. Goldstein makes one hundred policy proposals over the course of this book to inaugurate a genuine debate regarding cooperative policy solutions to the most vexing problems in US-China relations.

Goldstein not only parses findings from American scholarship but also breaks new ground by analyzing hundreds of Chinese-language sources, including military publications, never before evaluated by Western experts. Meeting China Halfway, new in paperback, remains a refreshing and unique contribution to the study of the world’s most important bilateral relationship.

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Melting the Ice Curtain
The Extraordinary Story of Citizen Diplomacy on the Russia-Alaska Frontier
David Ramseur
University of Alaska Press, 2017
Just five years after a Soviet missile blew a civilian airliner out of the sky over the North Pacific, an Alaska Airlines jet braved Cold War tensions to fly into tomorrow. Crossing the Bering Strait between Alaska and the Russian Far East, the 1988 Friendship Flight reunited Native peoples of common languages and cultures for the first time in four decades. It and other dramatic efforts to thaw what was known as the Ice Curtain launched a thirty-year era of perilous, yet prolific, progress.

Melting the Ice Curtain tells the story of how inspiration, courage, and persistence by citizen-diplomats bridged a widening gap in superpower relations. David Ramseur was a first-hand witness to the danger and political intrigue, having flown on that first Friendship Flight, and having spent thirty years behind the scenes with some of Alaska’s highest officials. As Alaska celebrates the 150th anniversary of its purchase, and as diplomatic ties with Russia become perilous, Melting the Ice Curtain shows that history might hold the best lessons for restoring diplomacy between nuclear neighbors.
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Metternich's Diplomacy at its Zenith, 1820-1823
Austria and the Congresses of Troppau, Laibach, and Verona
By Paul W. Schroeder
University of Texas Press, 1962

What Metiernich wanted at the peak of his career, why he wanted it, and the methods by which he achieved his goals are questions brilliantly answered in this survey and analysis of the Austrian chancellor's diplomacy during the period when he was the pre-eminent figure in European politics.

Metternich's single-minded objective during 1820–1823 was to preserve the Austrian hegemony he had gained in Central Europe after long wars, enormous effort, and great sacrifice. If the internal security and international-power position secured by Austria at the Congress of Vienna were to be defended against the impact of widespread revolution in Europe, it was imperative that peace in Europe and the status quo be maintained. This required an unyielding opposition to all political movements that might disturb the equilibrium, especially French chauvinism and the spread of French constitutional ideas.

A one-man distillate of the doctrine of absolute monarchy, Metternich was the relentless foe of any cause, just or unjust, that threatened European repose. Hence, when the revolution in Naples seriously menaced Austrian hegemony in Italy, Metternich determined that the constitutional regime in Naples must be overthrown by an Austrian armed force, an absolute monarchy restored, and an Austrian army of occupation kept there. Nor did he scruple to use duplicity, secret negotiation, trickery, or deceit against ally and adversary alike in his effort to enlist them in the common cause of all thrones. At the Congress of Troppau, Metternich succeeded not only in defeating Russian ideas for peaceful intervention and a moderate constitution at Naples, but also in converting Tsar Alexander to thoroughly conservative views, thereby making Russia a powerful supporter of Austrian policies and knowingly alienating England, formerly Austria's closest ally.

Paul W. Schroeder brings to this bookexceptional scholarship and an objectivity hard to attain when dealing with a personality. Although Metternich, as Schroeder sees him, doubtless helped to maintain European peace and order, his real greatness consisted not in his European principles, but in his ability to defend Austrian interests under the guise of European principles. The evidence, gathered from documentary material in the Haus Hof- und Staatsarchiv in Vienna, has forced the author to the conclusion that Metternich was no real statesman. The very qualities that distinguished him as a brilliant diplomat—keen vision, cogent analysis, fertility of expedients, farsightedness, flexibility, and firmness of purpose—were converted into those of blindness to reality, superficial analysis, sterility of expedients, dogmatism, and failure of will when confronted with fundamental problems of state and society.

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Military Occupation and Diplomacy
Soviet Troops in Romania, 1944–1958
Sergiu Verona
Duke University Press, 1992
In 1958, after fourteen years of military occupation, Khrushchev—in an unprecedented act—withdrew the Soviet Union’s troops from Romania as part of a political move intended to encourage the withdrawal of Western military forces from Europe. In analyzing this crucial historic episode, Sergiu Verona’s comprehensive study illustrates the dynamics of Soviet military presence in Romania and provides a framework for understanding Soviet security policy, then and now, as well as the interaction between Soviet military objectives and diplomacy.
Drawing on declassified archival material in the United States and the United Kingdom, the author considers Khrushchev’s reversal of Stalinist expansionism by examining the motivation, function, and operation of the initial occupation of Romania; the complex involvement of Soviet diplomacy and its perception by the United States and other Western powers; the process by which Khrushchev decided to withdraw Soviet troops from that country; and the impact of this decision on Soviet policy. Verona extends his analysis, providing comparisons between Khrushchev’s and Gorbachev’s approaches to Eastern Europe, noting that similarities exist not only in domestic policies but in the realm of foreign policy as well.
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Mixed Emotions
Beyond Fear and Hatred in International Conflict
Andrew A. G. Ross
University of Chicago Press, 2013
In recent years, it’s become increasingly clear that emotion plays a central role in global politics. For example, people readily care about acts of terrorism and humanitarian crises because they appeal to our compassion for human suffering. These struggles also command attention where social interactions have the power to produce or intensify the emotional responses of those who participate in them.
           
From passionate protests to poignant speeches, Andrew A. G. Ross analyzes high-emotion events with an eye to how they shape public sentiment and finds that there is no single answer. The politically powerful play to the public’s emotions to advance their political aims, and such appeals to emotion also often serve to sustain existing values and  institutions. But the affective dimension can produce profound change, particularly when a struggle in the present can be shown to line up with emotionally resonant events from the past. Extending his findings to well-studied conflicts, including the War on Terror and the violence in Rwanda and the Balkans, Ross identifies important sites of emotional impact missed by earlier research focused on identities and interests.

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The Moscow Factor
U.S. Policy toward Sovereign Ukraine and the Kremlin
Eugene M. Fishel
Harvard University Press, 2022

In 2014, Russia illegally annexed Crimea, bolstered a separatist conflict in the Donbas region, and attacked Ukraine with its regular army and special forces. In each instance of Russian aggression, the U.S. response has often been criticized as inadequate, insufficient, or hesitant.

The Moscow Factor: U.S. Policy toward Sovereign Ukraine and the Kremlin is a unique study that examines four key Ukraine-related policy decisions across two Republican and two Democratic U.S. administrations. Eugene M. Fishel asks whether, how, and under what circumstances Washington has considered Ukraine’s status as a sovereign nation in its decision-making regarding relations with Moscow.

This study situates the stance of the United States toward Ukraine in the broader context of international relations. It fills an important lacuna in existing scholarship and policy discourse by focusing on the complex trilateral—rather than simply bilateral—dynamics between the United States, Ukraine, and Russia from 1991 to 2016. This book brings together for the first time documentary evidence and declassified materials dealing with policy deliberation, retrospective articles authored by former policymakers, and formal memoirs by erstwhile senior officials. The study is also supplemented by open-ended interviews with former and returning officials.

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The Muslim Brotherhood and the West
A History of Enmity and Engagement
Martyn Frampton
Harvard University Press, 2018

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year

In the century since the Muslim Brotherhood first emerged in Egypt, its idea of “the West” has remained a key driver of its behavior. From its founding, the Brotherhood stood opposed to the British Empire and Western cultural influence. Its leaders hoped to create more pristine, authentically Islamic societies. As British power gave way to American, the Brotherhood oscillated between anxiety about the West and the need to engage with it, while American and British officials struggled to understand the group, unsure whether to shun or embrace it.

The Muslim Brotherhood and the West offers the first comprehensive history of the relationship between the world’s largest Islamist movement and the powers that have dominated the Middle East for the past hundred years. Drawing on extensive archival research in London and Washington and the Brotherhood’s writings in Arabic and English, Martyn Frampton reveals the history of this charged relationship down to the eve of the Arab Spring. What emerges is an authoritative account of a story that is crucial to understanding one of the world’s most turbulent regions.

“Rigorous yet absorbing…Fills a crucial gap in the literature and will be essential reading not just for scholars, but for anyone seeking to understand the ever-problematic relationship between religion and politics in today’s Middle East.”
Financial Times

“Breaks new ground by examining the links between the Egyptian Brotherhood’s relations with Britain and…the United States.”
Times Literary Supplement

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front cover of My Missions for Revolutionary Bolivia, 1944-1962
My Missions for Revolutionary Bolivia, 1944-1962
Victor Andrade
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976
Victor Andrade, Bolivian ambassador to the United States at various times between 1944 and 1962, recounts a unique Latin American perspective on U.S. politics and foreign policy. He describes meetings with Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, and with the many journalists, cabinet members, senators, and House members who were part of his daily work in the world of Washington politics.

Andrade first came to Washington as ambassador in 1944, representing a young revolutionary government determined to check the power of the Bolivian tin barons who had dominated the country for decades. After his government was overthrown, he spent six years in exile, and returned to Washington when the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario resumed power in 1952. His deep understanding of Washington's massive political and bureaucratic establishment, combined with his renowned charm, resourcefulness, and perseverance, gave him the ability to negotiate massive economic and military aid for the development of the country. It also allows him to present a candid, knowledgeable inside view of U.S.-Bolivian relations through these years which will at times make U.S. readers proud and at times ashamed.
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