America's Inadvertent Empire

America's Inadvertent Empire
Author: William E. Odom
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2008-10-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0300130368

div The United States finds itself at the center of a historically unparalleled empire, one that is wealth-generating and voluntary rather than imperialistic, say the authors of this compelling book. William E. Odom and Robert Dujarric examine America’s unprecedented power within the international arenas of politics, economics, demographics, education, science, and culture. They argue persuasively that the major threat to this unique empire is ineffective U.S. leadership, not a rising rival power center. America cannot simply behave as an ordinary sovereign state, Odom and Dujarric contend. They describe the responsibilities that accompany staggering power advantages and explain that resorting to unilateralism makes sense only when it becomes necessary to overcome paralysis in multilateral organizations. The authors also offer insights into the importance of liberal international institutions as a source of power, why international cooperation pays, and why spreading democracy often inhibits the spread of constitutional order. If the United States uses its own power constructively, the authors conclude, the American empire will flourish for a long time. /DIV

America's Inadvertent Empire

America's Inadvertent Empire
Author: William E. Odom
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2005-04-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300107714

A thought-provoking and timely analysis of American power, with unexpected conclusions about the most serious threat we face in coming decades

Kill Anything That Moves

Kill Anything That Moves
Author: Nick Turse
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2013-01-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0805086919

Based on classified documents and interviews, argues that American acts of violence against millions of Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War were a pervasive and systematic part of the war.

The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 3, 1900–1945

The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 3, 1900–1945
Author: Brooke L. Blower
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 866
Release: 2022-03-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108317847

The third volume of The Cambridge History of America and the World covers the volatile period between 1900 and 1945 when the United States emerged as a world power and American engagements abroad flourished in new and consequential ways. Showcasing the most innovative approaches to both traditional topics and emerging themes, leading scholars chart the complex ways in which Americans projected their growing influence across the globe; how others interpreted and constrained those efforts; how Americans disagreed with each other, often fiercely, about foreign relations; and how race, religion, gender, and other factors shaped their worldviews. During the early twentieth century, accelerating forces of global interdependence presented Americans, like others, with a set of urgent challenges from managing borders, humanitarian crises, economic depression, and modern warfare to confronting the radical, new political movements of communism, fascism, and anticolonial nationalism. This volume will set the standard for new understandings of this pivotal moment in the history of America and the world.

American Empire

American Empire
Author: Christopher Layne
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2006-11-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1135928436

In this short, accessible book Layne and Thayer argue the merits and demerits of an American empire. With few, if any, rivals to its supremacy, the United States has made an explicit commitment to maintaining and advancing its primacy in the world. But what exactly are the benefits of American hegemony and what are the costs and drawbacks for this fledgling empire? After making their best cases for and against an American empire, subsequent chapters allow both authors to respond to the major arguments presented by their opponents and present their own counter arguments.

The Body of the Conquistador

The Body of the Conquistador
Author: Rebecca Earle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2012-04-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107003423

This fascinating history explores the dynamic relationship between overseas colonisation in Spanish America and the bodily experience of eating.

American Foreign Policy in a New Era

American Foreign Policy in a New Era
Author: Robert Jervis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2013-01-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 113542523X

To say that the world changed drastically on 9/11 has become a truism and even a cliché. But the incontestable fact is that a new era for both the world and US foreign policy began on that infamous day and the ramifications for international politics have been monumental. In this book, one of the leading thinkers in international relations, Robert Jervis, provides us with several snapshots of world politics over the past few years. Jervis brings his acute analysis of international politics to bear on several recent developments that have transformed international politics and American foreign policy including the War on Terrorism; the Bush Doctrine and its policies of preventive war and unilateral action; and the promotion of democracy in the Middle East (including the Iraq War) and around the world. Taken together, Jervis argues, these policies constitute a blueprint for American hegemony, if not American empire. All of these events and policies have taken place against a backdrop equally important, but less frequently discussed: the fact that most developed nations, states that have been bitter rivals, now constitute a "security community" within which war is unthinkable. American Foreign Policy in a New Era is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the policies and events that have shaped and are shaping US foreign policy in a rapidly changing and still very dangerous world.

Unexceptional

Unexceptional
Author: Marc J. O'Reilly
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780739105900

Unexceptional examines U.S. policy vis-à-vis the Persian Gulf since the Second World War. It asserts that the American experience in this strategic yet volatile region known for its plentiful oil and gas can be best understood as an unexceptional imperial endeavor similar in kind to that of the British and Ottoman empires of previous eras.

The Empire of Civilization

The Empire of Civilization
Author: Brett Bowden
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 570
Release: 2010-10-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1459605721

The term civilization comes with considerable baggage, dichotomizing people, cultures, and histories as civilized - or not. While the idea of civilization has been deployed throughout history to justify all manner of interventions and sociopolitical engineering, few scholars have stopped to consider what the concept actually means. Here, ..

To Make and Keep Peace Among Ourselves and with All Nations

To Make and Keep Peace Among Ourselves and with All Nations
Author: Angelo M. Codevilla
Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2014-05-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0817917160

Author Angelo Codevilla asks, What is to be America's peace? How is it to be won and preserved in our time? He notes that our government's increasingly unlimited powers flow in part from our statesmen's inability to stay out of wars or to win them and that our statesmen and academics have ceased to think about such things. The purpose of this book is to rekindle such thoughts. The author reestablishes early American statecraft's understanding of peace—what it takes to make it and what it takes to keep it. He reminds Americans why our founding generation placed the pursuit of peace ahead of all other objectives; he shows how they tried to keep the peace by drawing sharp lines between America's business and that of others, as well as between peace and war. He shows how our 20th-century statesmen confused peace and war as well as America's affairs with that of mankind's. The result, he shows, has been endless war abroad and spiraling strife among Americans. Codevilla provides intellectual guidelines for recovering the pursuit of peace as the guiding principle by which the American people and statesmen may navigate domestic as well as international affairs.