Originally published in 1970. This volume presents a study of American foreign policy during the Cold War period, investigating the United States' involvement with the U.S.S.R., China, and communist parties throughout the world.

Showing how the development of space technology could affect the present system of deterrence, the authors consider the consequences for U.S. foreign policy, alliance relations, and strategic stability. In the first essay, Dr. Tucker argues that a greater commitment to defensive systems would not substantially affect deterrence or extended deterren

Since the end of World War II, the United States has faced moral and strategic issues in its management of force that are unique in the history of international politics. At the heart of these issues is the heavy reliance of the United States and its allies on the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons and the fact that their use would very likely lea

The strategy of limited war has transformed the American approach to the use of force and played a key role in U.S. foreign policy since World War II. As the mainstay of containment it was designed to deter and fight wars effectively at a tolerable cost and risk in the nuclear age by providing the United States with a flexible and controlled response to a variety of military threats. The strategy met a severe challenge in the Vietnam war; it has nevertheless continued to prevail as a doctr...

A look at corporate authoritarianism that William Shirer called "the best thing I've ever seen on how America might go fascist democratically."In 1980, US capitalist politics wore a "nice-guy mask," a troubling disguise to cover up a creeping despotism in which the ultra-rich and corporate overseers were merging with a centralized state power in order to manage the populace. This immanent corporate authoritarianism threatened to subvert constitutional democracy. But...

Safe from the battlefields of Europe and Asia, the United States led the post–World War II global economic recovery through international assistance and foreign direct investment. With an ardent decolonization agenda and a postwar legitimacy, the United States attempted to construct a world characterized by cooperation. When American optimism clashed with Soviet expansionism, the United States started on a path to global hegemony.In US Foreign Policy and Defense Strategy, ...

**A pre-eminent scholar challenges the notion of inevitable American decline, arguing that the nation can still lead in a rapidly shifting world order“Nye marshals his wide grasp of history, politics, and economics to produce a compelling book.” —The Economist**In this pioneering work, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., reckons with the enduring claim that American decline is inevitable. He argues that the United States will remain the dominant world power and shows that narrativ...

In this widely discussed and influential book, Herman Kahn probes the dynamics of escalation and demonstrates how the intensification of conflict can be depicted by means of a definite escalation ladder, ascent of which brings opponents closer to all-out war. At each rung of the ladder, before the climb proceeds, decisions must be made based on numerous choices. Some are clear and obvious, others obscure, but the options are always there.Thermonuclear annihilation, says Kahn, is un...

"Myths of Empire offers the best-developed theory to date of the domestic sources of international conflict and security policy.... Snyder has taken a major step toward ending the theoretical impoverishment of the study of the domestic sources of international conflict."― American Political Science ReviewOverextension is the common pitfall of empires. Why does it occur? What are the forces that cause the great powers of the industrial era to pursu...

This book began as a personal effort to comprehend the effect of nuclear weapons on the current era and its international system. Nuclear weapons have not merely revolutionized the military sphere but havce also left their stamp on the world order. Knowledge of the basic principles of nuclear strategy has become a prerequisite to understanding world events. Consequently, no country can remain indifferent to nuclear strategy or can consider itself exempt from its implications. The very impo...

Can a nation accept limits in an arms competition?James H. Lebovic explores the logic of seeking peace in an arms race. Flawed Logics offers a compelling intellectual history of U.S.-Russian strategic nuclear arms control.Lebovic thoroughly reviews the critical role of ideas and assumptions in U.S. arms control debates, tying them to controversies over U.S. nuclear strategy from the birth of the atomic age to the present. Each nuclear arms treaty—f...

What is Soviet-American competition all about? Is the Soviet Union a security problem that the United States must solve? Or is it an insecurity condition with which the U.S. must learn to live—and if so, on what terms? What kind of a player is the United States in the great game of power politics? In The Geopolitics of Super Power, one of our most respected strategic theorists answers these and other questions.In geopolitical terms, Colin Gray sees the Soviet-American anta...