The current crisis clearly demonstrates that our model of society has reached its limits. The time has come to recognize that our affluent societies have more than enough to meet their essential material needs—provided it is done fairly. The time has also come to question whether we are going to live with less, rather than more, money. We have the necessary means to do so, provided we accept this as an irrevocable principle of our lives. Rather than losing heart, this crisis can instead awaken within us unprecedented creative forces so that together, we can construct a satisfying world for heart, mind, and spirit. In the face of a joyless society of overabundance, the “power of restraint” represents a realistic alternative. As a liberating moral and physical force, it is a political act of legitimate resistance to this juggernaut that is destroying the planet and isolating the individual. The time has come to break free of these bulimic habits and the constant quest for more and more. Pierre Rabhi adopted this way of life many years ago; he offers us a form of simplicity and gratitude that gives meaning to our existence, along with a unique sense of lightness: the power of restraint.

Honorable Mention, 2024 T.V. Paul Best Book in Global International Relations, Global International Relations Section, International Studies Association Conventional wisdom holds that China’s rise is disrupting the global balance of power in unpredictable ways. However, China has often deferred to the consensus of smaller neighboring countries on regional security rather than running roughshod over them. Why and when does China exercise restraint—and how does this aspect of Chinese statecraft challenge the assumptions of international relations theory? In Power and Restraint in China’s Rise, Chin-Hao Huang argues that a rising power’s aspirations for acceptance provide a key rationale for refraining from coercive measures. He analyzes Chinese foreign policy conduct in the South China Sea, showing how complying with regional norms and accepting constraints improves external perceptions of China and advances other states’ recognition of China as a legitimate power. Huang details how member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have taken a collective approach to defusing tension in maritime disputes, incentivizing China to support regional security initiatives that it had previously resisted. Drawing on this empirical analysis, Huang develops new theoretical perspectives on why great powers eschew coercion in favor of restraint when they seek legitimacy. His framework explains why a dominant state with rising ambitions takes the views and interests of small states into account, as well as how collective action can induce change in a major power’s behavior. Offering new insight into the causes and consequences of change in recent Chinese foreign policy, this book has significant implications for the future of engagement with China.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the United States emerged as an economic colossus in command of a new empire. Yet for the next forty years the United States eschewed the kind of aggressive grand strategy that had marked other rising imperial powers in favor of a policy of moderation. In Power and Restraint, Jeffrey W. Meiser explores why the United States—counter to widely accepted wisdom in international relations theory—chose the course it did. Using thirty-four carefully researched historical cases, Meiser asserts that domestic political institutions and culture played a decisive role in preventing the mobilization of resources necessary to implement an expansionist grand strategy. These factors included traditional congressional opposition to executive branch ambitions, voter resistance to European-style imperialism, and the personal antipathy to expansionism felt by presidents like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. The web of resilient and redundant political restraints halted or limited expansionist ambitions and shaped the United States into an historical anomaly, a rising great power characterized by prudence and limited international ambitions.

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The first comprehensive treatment of public health law by the nation's leading expert in the field. In his research and teaching, Gostin has defined the field of public health law; this book represents the culmination of his research and thinking on the subject.

Comprehensive examination of restraint in international politics, considered across a range of contexts as a political process, device, and strategy.

The United States, Barry R. Posen argues in Restraint, has grown incapable of moderating its ambitions in international politics. Since the collapse of Soviet power, it has pursued a grand strategy that he calls "liberal hegemony," one that Posen sees as unnecessary, counterproductive, costly, and wasteful. Written for policymakers and observers alike, Restraint explains precisely why this grand strategy works poorly and then provides a carefully designed alternative grand strategy and an associated military strategy and force structure. In contrast to the failures and unexpected problems that have stemmed from America’s consistent overreaching, Posen makes an urgent argument for restraint in the future use of U.S. military strength. After setting out the political implications of restraint as a guiding principle, Posen sketches the appropriate military forces and posture that would support such a strategy. He works with a deliberately constrained notion of grand strategy and, even more important, of national security (which he defines as including sovereignty, territorial integrity, power position, and safety). His alternative for military strategy, which Posen calls "command of the commons," focuses on protecting U.S. global access through naval, air, and space power, while freeing the United States from most of the relationships that require the permanent stationing of U.S. forces overseas.

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Allied nations often stop each other from going to war. Some countries even form alliances with the specific intent of restraining another power and thereby preventing war. Furthermore, restraint often becomes an issue in existing alliances as one ally wants to start a war, launch a military intervention, or pursue some other risky military policy while the other ally balks. In Warring Friends, Jeremy Pressman draws on and critiques realist, normative, and institutionalist understandings of how alliance decisions are made. Alliance restraint often has a role to play both in the genesis of alliances and in their continuation. As this book demonstrates, an external power can apply the brakes to an incipient conflict, and even unheeded advice can aid in clarifying national goals. The power differentials between allies in these partnerships are influenced by leadership unity, deception, policy substitutes, and national security priorities. Recent controversy over the complicated relationship between the U.S. and Israeli governments—especially in regard to military and security concerns—is a reminder that the alliance has never been easy or straightforward. Pressman highlights multiple episodes during which the United States attempted to restrain Israel's military policies: Israeli nuclear proliferation during the Kennedy Administration; the 1967 Arab-Israeli War; preventing an Israeli preemptive attack in 1973; a small Israeli operation in Lebanon in 1977; the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982; and Israeli action during the Gulf War of 1991. As Pressman shows, U.S. initiatives were successful only in 1973, 1977, and 1991, and tensions have flared up again recently as a result of Israeli arms sales to China. Pressman also illuminates aspects of the Anglo-American special relationship as revealed in several cases: British nonintervention in Iran in 1951; U.S. nonintervention in Indochina in 1954; U.S. commitments to Taiwan that Britain opposed, 1954-1955; and British intervention and then withdrawal during the Suez War of 1956. These historical examples go far to explain the context within which the Blair administration failed to prevent the U.S. government from pursuing war in Iraq at a time of unprecedented American power.

The end of the Cold War was a "big bang" reminiscent of earlier moments after major wars, such as the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the end of the world wars in 1919 and 1945. But what do states that win wars do with their newfound power, and how do they use it to build order? In After Victory, John Ikenberry examines postwar settlements in modern history, arguing that powerful countries do seek to build stable and cooperative relations, but the type of order that emerges hinges on their ability to make commitments and restrain power. He explains that only with the spread of democracy in the twentieth century and the innovative use of international institutions—both linked to the emergence of the United States as a world power—has order been created that goes beyond balance of power politics to exhibit "constitutional" characteristics. Blending comparative politics with international relations, and history with theory, After Victory will be of interest to anyone concerned with the organization of world order, the role of institutions in world politics, and the lessons of past postwar settlements for today.