International Order And Foreign Policy

The author develops a new perspective for the study of problems of international order by drawing on and integrating insights from game theory, social psychology, hermeneutics, and language philosophy. His case study is the rise and demise of the Cold War. This newly developed approach not only allows a critical evaluation of the contending argumen

"A valuable primer on foreign policy: a primer that concerned citizens of all political persuasions—not to mention the president and his advisers—could benefit from reading." —The New York Times An examination of a world increasingly defined by disorder and a United States unable to shape the world in its image, from the president of the Council on Foreign Relations Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. The rules, policies, and institutions that have guided the world since World War II have largely run their course. Respect for sovereignty alone cannot uphold order in an age defined by global challenges from terrorism and the spread of nuclear weapons to climate change and cyberspace. Meanwhile, great power rivalry is returning. Weak states pose problems just as confounding as strong ones. The United States remains the world’s strongest country, but American foreign policy has at times made matters worse, both by what the U.S. has done and by what it has failed to do. The Middle East is in chaos, Asia is threatened by China’s rise and a reckless North Korea, and Europe, for decades the world’s most stable region, is now anything but. As Richard Haass explains, the election of Donald Trump and the unexpected vote for “Brexit” signals that many in modern democracies reject important aspects of globalization, including borders open to trade and immigrants. In A World in Disarray, Haass argues for an updated global operating system—call it world order 2.0—that reflects the reality that power is widely distributed and that borders count for less. One critical element of this adjustment will be adopting a new approach to sovereignty, one that embraces its obligations and responsibilities as well as its rights and protections. Haass also details how the U.S. should act towards China and Russia, as well as in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. He suggests, too, what the country should do to address its dysfunctional politics, mounting debt, and the lack of agreement on the nature of its relationship with the world. A World in Disarray is a wise examination, one rich in history, of the current world, along with how we got here and what needs doing. Haass shows that the world cannot have stability or prosperity without the United States, but that the United States cannot be a force for global stability and prosperity without its politicians and citizens reaching a new understanding.

As economic power diffuses across more countries and China becomes more dependent on the world economy, Chinese leaders are being forced to abandon their largely passive approach to global governance. This report analyzes China’s interests and behavior to evaluate both the recent history of its interactions with the postwar international order and possible future trajectories. It also draws implications from that analysis for future U.S. policy.

A rising China, climate change, terrorism, a nuclear Iran, a turbulent Middle East, and a reckless North Korea all present serious challenges to America's national security. But it depends even more on the United States addressing its burgeoning deficit and debt, crumbling infrastructure, second class schools, and outdated immigration system. While there is currently no great rival power threatening America directly, how long this strategic respite lasts, according to Council on Foreign Relations President Richard N. Haass, will depend largely on whether the United States puts its own house in order. Haass lays out a compelling vision for restoring America's power, influence, and ability to lead the world and advocates for a new foreign policy of Restoration that would require the US to limit its involvement in both wars of choice, and humanitarian interventions. Offering essential insight into our world of continual unrest, this new edition addresses the major foreign and domestic debates since hardcover publication, including US intervention in Syria, the balance between individual privacy and collective security, and the continuing impact of the sequester.

"When and why does international order change? Easy to take for granted, international governing arrangements shape our world. They allow us to eat food imported from other countries, live safely from nuclear war, travel to foreign cities, profit from our savings, and much else. New threats, including climate change and simmering US-China hostility, lead many to worry that the "liberal order," or the US position within it, is at risk. Theorists often try to understand that situation by looking at other cases of great power decline, like the British Empire or even ancient Athens. Yet so much is different about those cases that we can draw only imperfect lessons from them. A better approach is to look at how the United States itself already lost much of its international dominance, in the 1970s, in the realm of oil. Only now, with several decades of hindsight, can we fully appreciate it. The experiences of that partial decline in American hegemony, and the associated shifts in oil politics, can teach us a lot about general patterns of international order. Leaders and analysts can apply those lessons when seeking to understand or design new international governing arrangements on topics ranging from climate change to peacekeeping, and nuclear proliferation to the global energy transition"--

"When and why do powerful countries seek to enact major changes to international order, the broad set of rules that condition behavior in world politics? This question is particularly important today, as Donald Trump's apparent disregard for the liberal international order and uncertainty over what China might seek to replace it with mean that queries about great power motives vis-à-vis order will remain at the forefront of debates over the future of world politics. In seeking to explain this phenomenon, prior studies have focused on the consensus- driven and inclusive origins of international orders. By contrast, I argue in this book that the propelling motivation for great power order building at important historical junctures has most often been exclusionary, centered around combatting other actors rather than cooperatively engaging with them. My core contention is that dominant actors pursue fundamental changes to order only when they perceive a major new threat on the horizon, a threat to their security or to their enduring primacy. When these actors seek to enact fundamentally new order principles, they do so for the purpose of targeting this perceived threat, be it another powerful state, a contrary alliance or a foreboding ideological movement. The goal of order building, then, is weakening, opposing and above all excluding that threatening entity from amassing further influence in world politics. Far from falling outside the bounds of traditional statecraft, order building is, to paraphrase Clausewitz, the continuation of power politics by other means"--

As the world economy is becoming increasingly global in nature, thefuture of Canada's welfare will directly depend on thecountry's response and reaction to a wide range of economic regimeswhich govern the international economy. This volume is an important andtimely analysis of past and current Canadian policies toward both theformal and less formal arrangements which regulate such areas asinternational trade and financial transactions, international serviceindustries, fisheries resources, and the environment. Often influencedby domestic political concerns and its relations with the UnitedStates, Canada has, as the authors point out, exhibited a high degreeof variation in its responses to these regimes. Canadian Foreign Policyand International Economic Regimes addresses a broad range of foreigneconomic policies not generally considered in the foreign policyliterature. Interdisciplinary in its approach, it will be of interestto those in political science and public policy, economics, and law, aswell as to those involved in international business.

Not since the Roman Empire has any nation had as much economic, cultural, and military power as the United States does today. Yet, as has become all too evident through the terrorist attacks of September 11th and the impending threat of the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran, that power is not enough to solve global problems--like terrorism, environmental degradation, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction--without involving other nations. Here Joseph S. Nye, Jr. focuses on the rise of these and other new challenges and explains clearly why America must adopt a more cooperative engagement with the rest of the world.