A vital exploration of international conflict and world affairs, through the lens of a timeless force: geography.The world is a battleground again. Across continents and oceans, the great-power peace that followed the Cold War is over: Russia threatens to expand; America’s global leadership is in question; China exercises its soaring ambitions on land and sea. The Landscape of Power shows that navigating this new moment will require embracing the strategic...

A provocative and urgent analysis of the U.S.–China rivalry.It has become conventional wisdom that America and China are running a “superpower marathon” that may last a century. Yet Hal Brands and Michael Beckley pose a counterintuitive question: What if the sharpest phase of that competition is more like a decade-long sprint?The Sino-American contest is driven by clashing geopolitical interests and a stark ideological dispute over whether authoritarianism ...

This is a solid piece of scholarship that should be of great value in modern American history classes, foreign policy surveys, and course work in international relations.— Brooks Flippen â•H-Net ReviewsGrand strategy is one of the most widely used and abused concepts in the foreign policy lexicon. 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 statec...

An eloquent call to draw on the lessons of the past to address current threats to international orderThe ancient Greeks hard-wired a tragic sensibility into their culture. By looking disaster squarely in the face, by understanding just how badly things could spiral out of control, they sought to create a communal sense of responsibility and courage--to spur citizens and their leaders to take the difficult actions necessary to avert such a fate. Today, after more th...

It has become conventional wisdom that America and China are running a "superpower marathon." Yet Hal Brands and Michael Beckley pose a counterintuitive question: What if the sharpest phase of that competition is more like a decade-long sprint?The Sino-American contest is driven by clashing geopolitical interests and a stark ideological dispute over whether authoritarianism or democracy will dominate the twenty-first century. But both history and China's current trajectory suggest ...

A leading historian's guide to great-power competition, as told through America's successes and failures in the Cold War"If you want to know how America can win today's rivalries with Russia and China, read this book about how it triumphed in another twilight struggle: the Cold War."— Stephen J. Hadley, national security adviser to President George W. BushThe United States is entering an era of great-power competition with China and Russia. Such global struggles happen in a g...

We often think of the modern era as the age of American power. In reality, we're living in a long, violent Eurasian century. That giant, resource-rich landmass possesses the bulk of the global population, industrial might, and potential military power. Eurasia is a strategic prize without equal—which is why the world has been roiled, reshaped, and nearly destroyed by clashes over the supercontinent.Since the early twentieth century, autocratic powers have aspired for dominance by s...

Looking beyond the headlines to address the enduring grand strategic questions facing the United States today. American foreign policy is in a state of upheaval. The rise of Donald Trump and his "America First" platform have created more uncertainty about America's role in the world than at any time in recent decades. From the South China Sea, to the Middle East, to the Baltics and Eastern Europe, the geopolitical challenges to U.S. power and influence seem increasingly severe—and America'...

For Latin America, the Cold War was anything but cold. Nor was it the so-called “long peace” afforded the world’s superpowers by their nuclear standoff. In this book, the first to take an international perspective on the postwar decades in the region, Hal Brands sets out to explain what exactly happened in Latin America during the Cold War, and why it was so traumatic.Tracing the tumultuous course of regional affairs from the late 1940s through the early 1990s, Latin America’s Cold...

In the late 1970s, the United States often seemed to be a superpower in decline. Battered by crises and setbacks around the globe, its post–World War II international leadership appeared to be draining steadily away. Yet just over a decade later, by the early 1990s, America's global primacy had been reasserted in dramatic fashion. The Cold War had ended with Washington and its allies triumphant; democracy and free markets were spreading like never before. The United States...

A "brilliant" examination of American complacency and how it puts the nation's—and the world's—security at risk ( The Wall Street Journal).The ancient Greeks hard-wired a tragic sensibility into their culture. By looking disaster squarely in the face, by understanding just how badly things could spiral out of control, they sought to create a communal sense of responsibility and courage—to spur citizens and their leaders to take the difficult actions necessa...

A leading historian's guide to great-power competition, as told through America's successes and failures in the Cold WarThe United States is entering an era of great-power competition with China and Russia. Such global struggles happen in a geopolitical twilight, between the sunshine of peace and the darkness of war. In this innovative and illuminating book, Hal Brands, a leading historian and former Pentagon adviser, argues that America should look to the history ...