This is the story of America on August 12, 1941, four months before Pearl Harbor. Isolationism was still strong, FDR was hammering out the Atlantic Charter, most Americans were absorbed by baseball and radio shows, and Congress decided to keep the draft - by one vote.

"God has a special providence for fools, drunks and the United States of America."--Otto von Bismarck America's response to the September 11 attacks spotlighted many of the country's longstanding goals on the world stage: to protect liberty at home, to secure America's economic interests, to spread democracy in totalitarian regimes and to vanquish the enemy utterly. One of America's leading foreign policy thinkers, Walter Russell Mead, argues that these diverse, conflicting impulses have in fact been the key to the U.S.'s success in the world. In a sweeping new synthesis, Mead uncovers four distinct historical patterns in foreign policy, each exemplified by a towering figure from our past. Wilsonians are moral missionaries, making the world safe for democracy by creating international watchdogs like the U.N. Hamiltonians likewise support international engagement, but their goal is to open foreign markets and expand the economy. Populist Jacksonians support a strong military, one that should be used rarely, but then with overwhelming force to bring the enemy to its knees. Jeffersonians, concerned primarily with liberty at home, are suspicious of both big military and large-scale international projects. A striking new vision of America's place in the world, Special Providence transcends stale debates about realists vs. idealists and hawks vs. doves to provide a revolutionary, nuanced, historically-grounded view of American foreign policy.

During the Civil War, a Union colonel was five times more likely to be court-martialed than a private. Worse, courts-martial of all ranks increased by 400 percent in the winter months. Among the court-martialed transgressors presented in this volume are an officer nicknamed ?Stumpy? because he tended to hide behind tree stumps during combat and a man tried for calling his superior a ?miserable reptile.? The gallery of offenders also includes a Vermont colonel who became a chloroform addict and a New York colonel who rode his horse into a barroom, ordered a brandy for himself and one for his horse, then fired his pistol through the ceiling. The stories of fifty misdeeds, along with a statistical exploration of twenty-two thousand other courts-martial, provide a pioneering study of the little-known world of Civil War misbehavior and clarify the often-bewildering dynamics between volunteer soldiers and their professional superiors.

As the world shifts away from the unquestioned American hegemony that followed in the wake of the Cold War, the United States is likely to face new kinds of threats and sharper resource constraints than it has in the past. However, the country's alliances, military institutions, and national security strategy have changed little since the Cold War. American foreign and defense policies, therefore, should be assessed for their fitness for achieving sustainable national security amidst the dynamism of the international political economy, changing domestic politics, and even a changing climate. This book brings together sixteen leading scholars from across political science, history, and political economy to highlight a range of American security considerations that deserve a larger role in both scholarship and strategic decision-making. In these chapters, scholars of political economy and the American defense budget examine the economic engine that underlies U.S. military might and the ways the country deploys these vast (but finite) resources. Historians illuminate how past great powers coped with changing international orders through strategic and institutional innovations. And regional experts assess America's current long-term engagements, from NATO to the chaos of the Middle East to the web of alliances in Asia, deepening understandings that help guard against both costly commitments and short-sighted retrenchments. This interdisciplinary volume sets an agenda for future scholarship that links politics, economics, and history in pursuit of sustainable security for the United States - and greater peace and stability for Americans and non-Americans alike.

Through an analysis of the general principles of Obama's foreign policy, LaIdi shows how Obama has charted a realist course in the Middle East, in Europe, in diplomacy, and in war.

This book considers European perceptions of their rivals throughout history from the Islamic civilization between the first Crusade in 1095 and the final Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683 to the United States of America from independence in 1776 until the present and investigates Europe's capacity to lead the world.

Religious freedom is widely recognized today as a basic human right, guaranteed by nearly all national constitutions. Exporting Freedom charts the rise of religious freedom as an ideal firmly enshrined in international law and shows how America’s promotion of the cause of individuals worldwide to freely practice their faith advanced its ascent as a global power. Anna Su traces America’s exportation of religious freedom in various laws and policies enacted over the course of the twentieth century, in diverse locations and under a variety of historical circumstances. Influenced by growing religious tolerance at home and inspired by a belief in the United States’ obligation to protect the persecuted beyond its borders, American officials drafted constitutions as part of military occupations—in the Philippines after the Spanish-American War, in Japan following World War II, and in Iraq after 2003. They also spearheaded efforts to reform the international legal order by pursuing Wilsonian principles in the League of Nations, drafting the United Nations Charter, and signing the Helsinki Accords during the Cold War. The fruits of these labors are evident in the religious freedom provisions in international legal instruments, regional human rights conventions, and national constitutions. In examining the evolution of religious freedom from an expression of the civilizing impulse to the democratization of states and, finally, through the promotion of human rights, Su offers a new understanding of the significance of religion in international relations.

This book seeks to answer to a central international politics: why do great powers rise and fall? It provides an innovative argument about how domestic political institutions are the key to a state's ability to amass power and influence in the international system. This text also offers a sweeping historical analysis of democratic and autocratic competitors from ancient Greece through the Cold War. This book employs a unique framework to understand and analyze the state of today's competition between the democratic United States and its autocratic competitors, Russia and China.

This is an American presidential textbook which reveals the process, law and ending of the strategic finals between China and the United States in the 21st century. The United States today is good at creating problems in the world and not at solving problems for the world. America has missiles, dollars, hegemony, but no great wisdom to lead and shape the world. The head of this global village should resign from this position. China has become the world's "chief designer" since Xi Jinping’s advocation of building a community of common destiny for mankind. Farewell to the world hegemony. The United States will be transformed from "tiger country" to "panda country", and the other countries will embrace and kiss the United States.

Wealth vs. Work: How 1% Victimize 99% is about the vanishing American dream, growing inequality inAmerica, shrinking and struggling middle class, plight of labor and unions, economic decline of the nation, and a broken and unstable world surrounding theU.S. Education is no longer the great equalizer. We are heading toward a world where inherited privilege trumps excellence and meritocracy. Carried far enough, it means the end of striving and the American dream. Few Americans realize or want to admit it. Since recorded history, workers have been victimized by the rich and super rich, treated as fungible and disposable. The early warlords and monarchs have been replaced by the titans of industry and masters of the universe on Wall Street. The slaves, peasants and serfs have been replaced by miners, factory workers, and service-sector workers. The GM model of the 1950s and 1960s (that permitted labor to become middle class) has been replaced by the Wal-Mart modelcharacterized by low pay and minimal benefits. By 2025, the economic output of China and India may likely each exceed the U.S. Moreover, the U.S. work force is being increasingly displaced by technology and outsourcing. But we are supposed to be the lucky ones! By historical and geographical accident, the U.S. has been spared most of the worlds poverty and misery. Today, however, the U.S. is heading towards a financial oligarchymuch worse than the aristocratic old world that our Founding Fathers feared and tried to avoid. Yes, the U.S. had a revolution, but in fact it has a new and more powerful elite because the economic pie has expanded several thousand fold since the yeoman farmers status was compared to the plantation owner. Right now the top 1 percent in the U.S. own nearly 40 percent of the nations wealth; moreover, their investments, capital gains and dividends are taxed at a lower rate than workers salaries. Like all great civilizations that have declined before us, we are a nation that needs to re-examine its ideals and institutions.