International Relations Commons^™

Conclusion: Strategy In A Murky World, Melvyn P. Leffler, Jeffrey W. Legro

Political Science Faculty Publications

Making national strategy is a byzantine business in the best of times. When dramatic events happen, when the international arena is complex and changing, when threats and opportunities are uncertain, leaders struggle to understand and react effectively. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the attacks of 9/11 opened vistas that were unfamiliar and complicated. How did U.S. leaders manage those transitions?

U.S. Standing In The World: Causes, Consequences, And The Future, Jeffrey W. Legro, Peter J. Katzenstein

Political Science Faculty Publications

America’s global standing has become a central concern of U.S. leaders and citizens. U.S. leaders, regardless of party, pledge to “restore U.S. standing” as a central goal of America’s foreign policy agenda. Standing has been the subject of widespread public discussion and intellectual debate.

Yet despite all this attention, three issues fundamental to standing have been relatively ignored:

-What is standing and how has it varied?
-What causes standing to rise and fall?
-What impact does standing have on U.S. foreign policy?

This task force answers these questions by synthesizing what we now know about U.S. standing and/or identifying what …

The Ties That Bind The United States: A Recount (Book Review), Jeffrey W. Legro

Political Science Faculty Publications

Review of the book, World Out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy by Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlworth. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

Response To Book Review (To Lead The World: American Strategy After The Bush Doctrine, Melvyn P. Leffler, Jeffrey W. Legro

Political Science Faculty Publications

Response to Book Review (To Lead the World: American Strategy after the Bush Doctrine)

We want to thank the commentators for their thoughtful and constructive remarks on our book. We think they highlight some of the key attributes of the volume and raise key issues for further reflection.

In order for readers of H-Diplo to understand the comments, we want to reiterate here what we stated in the introduction to the book. We tried to bring together some of the nation’s most renowned scholars and public intellectuals from all sides of the political spectrum to focus on what …

Introduction, Melvyn P. Leffler, Jeffrey W. Legro

Political Science Faculty Publications

For many Americans, the past decade has been a bewildering era. They have seen their country attacked and their husbands, sons, wives, and daughters sent to war in faraway places. They have read about orange alerts and red alerts. They have waited on long lines at airport security checks. They know that defense expenditures have soared and that Homeland Security has mushroomed. They have seen gruesome daily headlines about the carnage in Iraq, the strife in Afghanistan, and the turmoil in Pakistan. They read about the suicide attacks that were prevented or aborted in Europe, and they know, darkly, that …

Dilemmas Of Strategy, Melvyn P. Leffler, Jeffrey W. Legro

Political Science Faculty Publications

America’s crystal ball on strategy is murky. Officials in the next administration will face a complex world, will receive conflicting advice, and will need to mobilize domestic support for their policies. They must nonetheless act, most likely without the convenience of a single threat such as the Soviet Union during the cold war or terrorism in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. In this conclusion, our aims are to highlight the decisive issues of consensus and contention that resonate across the chapters. We seek to delineate the trade-offs involved in making choices, and we hope to illuminate the national …

Why Nuclear Disarmament May Be Easier To Achieve Than An End To Partisan Conflict Over Judicial Appointments, David S. Law, Sanford Levinson

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.