foreign policy 
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SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
1/25/2021
Delusions of Dominance: Biden Can’t Restore American Primacy—and Shouldn’t Try
by Stephen Wertheim
To lead a successful foreign policy, Joe Biden must deeply reconsider the American commitment to foreign military intervention.
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SOURCE: Dissent
1/15/2021
Legacies of Cold War Liberalism
by Michael Brenes and Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins
Two historians interrogate the origins of liberal intervention after World War II.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
1/7/2020
What Trump and His Mob Taught the World About America
by Anne Applebaum
"The images from Washington that are going out around the world are far more damaging to America’s reputation as a stable democracy than the images of young people protesting the Vietnam War several decades ago, and they are far more disturbing to outsiders than the riots and protests of last summer."
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SOURCE: The Guardian
12/22/2020
Biden Wants to Convene an International 'Summit for Democracy'. He Shouldn't
by David Adler and Stephen Wertheim
Joe Biden has proposed a summit of democratic nations; this would be an unfortunate exercise in dividing the world into camps of nations following the US and those opposed, without strict regard for whether those nations actually practice democracy. Instead, the authors argue, the US must lead by example: close tax shelters, put the wealthy under the rule of law, and help other nations to control their oligarchs.
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12/20/2020
Trump's Troop Withdrawal in Afghanistan: Part 2 – Is There Even a "Trump Doctrine"?
by Brian Glyn Williams
Many Americans have bought Donald Trump's claim that he seeks to extricate the U.S. from "endless wars," including in Afghanistan. Viewed in the context of his other foreign policy actions, this claim is nonsensical, and undermines the work being done in support of global democracy and American interests.
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12/13/2020
Will Biden Shake Up a Century of US-Ireland Relations?
by Mark Holan
As the second Irish-American Catholic president, Joe Biden may be expected to sprinkle his speeches with lines from Seamus Heaney, but he's likely to tread a moderate path as issues like Brexit test the Irish-American relationship.
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12/20/2020
Trump's Troop Withdrawal in Afghanistan: Part 1 – Abandoning a Vulnerable Ally in the War on Terror
by Brian Glyn Williams
Donald Trump's plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan misrepresents the scope and costs of the American mission and ignores the high stakes of failure for both Afghans and American security, according to a scholar of the War on Terror.
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SOURCE: War on the Rocks
12/1/2020
2020 War on the Rocks Holiday Reading List
The staff of War on the Rocks offer suggestions for reading – on defense issues and otherwise.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
11/18/2020
The World Is Never Going Back to Normal
by Anne Applebaum
American allies can read the newspapers, and have adjusted their expectations of American leadership accordingly in the last four years. It's unlikely a Biden administration can restore American leadership.
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SOURCE: American Conservative
11/11/2020
The Origins Of U.S. Global Dominance
by Daniel Larison
A conservative historian reviews a new book on the history of American interventionism and advocates for reorganizing foreign policy without the imperative to dominate the world.
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SOURCE: London Review of Books
11/1/2020
Warfare State (Review Essay)
by Thomas Meaney
Two new books articulate a critique from a conservative perspective of American military intervention abroad.
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/31/2020
George Shultz Speaks Out for Renewing U.S. Leadership Overseas
The long-serving Secretary of State's new book laments the unwillingness of current leadership to embrace the international cooperation and diplomacy needed to solve the world's largest problems.
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
10/18/2020
Reframing America’s Role in the World: The Specter of Isolationism
by Andrew Bacevich
The release of Stephen Wertheim's book shoud prompt a reconsideration of American intervention abroad.
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SOURCE: Boston Review
10/19/2020
Why Is America the World’s Police? (Review)
by Sam Lebovic
A review of Stephen Wertheim's "Tomorrow, The World" concludes the new book shows how American military supremacy moved in a generation from a novel idea to embedded common sense, and demands rethinking the resources spent to maintain it.
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/15/2020
America Has No Reason to Be So Powerful
by Stephen Wertheim
"There was a time when Americans believed that armed dominance obstructed and corrupted genuine engagement in the world, far from being its foundation."
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SOURCE: Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
9/28/2020
Stephen Wertheim's "Tomorrow the World: The Birth of US Global Supremacy" (video)
In his new book, Tomorrow, the World, Stephen Wertheim reveals how American leaders suddenly and unexpectedly decided to turn the United States into the world's armed superpower — and never looked back.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
10/1/2020
How Trump Brought Home the Endless War
by Stephen Wertheim
The Global War on Terror reconfigured American foreign policy around military force against abstract ideas and indeterminate enemies. The divisions of domestic politics set the stage for Donald Trump to move the war to the streets of the United States.
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SOURCE: New Statesman
9/23/2020
Would Biden or Trump End America's Forever Wars?
Stephen Wertheim questions whether politicians will heed the overwhelming public desire to scale back military intervention and get the Pentagon's spending under control.
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SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
9/18/2020
The Endless Fantasy of American Power
by Andrew Bacevich
Neither Trump nor Biden seems prepared to do the necessary work of moving military power and force from the center of American foreign policy. The consequence will be further endless war at the expense of the global-scale policies needed to confront the most urgent threats.
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9/27/2020
Where Does the Democratic Party Stand on War, Peace, and International Relations?
by Lawrence Wittner
While moving from a party platform to a change in policy is difficult, especially where the Pentagon is concerned, the Democrats seem to recognize a broad-based desire to return America to international cooperation and allocate resources to other national priorities like public health.
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