Reluctant Crusaders

In Reluctant Crusaders, Colin Dueck examines patterns of change and continuity in American foreign policy strategy by looking at four major turning points: the periods following World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He shows how American cultural assumptions regarding liberal foreign policy goals, together with international pressures, have acted to push and pull U.S. policy in competing directions over time. The result is a book that combines an appreciation for the role of both power and culture in international affairs. The centerpiece of Dueck's book is his discussion of America's "grand strategy"--the identification and promotion of national goals overseas in the face of limited resources and potential resistance. One of the common criticisms of the Bush administration's grand strategy is that it has turned its back on a long-standing tradition of liberal internationalism in foreign affairs. But Dueck argues that these criticisms misinterpret America's liberal internationalist tradition. In reality, Bush's grand strategy since 9/11 has been heavily influenced by traditional American foreign policy assumptions. While liberal internationalists argue that the United States should promote an international system characterized by democratic governments and open markets, Dueck contends, these same internationalists tend to define American interests in broad, expansive, and idealistic terms, without always admitting the necessary costs and risks of such a grand vision. The outcome is often sweeping goals, pursued by disproportionately limited means.

This book develops a concept and a theory of reluctance in world politics. It finds that reluctance emerges when governments fail to devise clear foreign policy preferences and face competing international pressures.

This volume is a collection of the best essays of Professor Benjamin Miller on the subjects of international and regional security. The book analyses the interrelationships between international politics and regional and national security, with a special focus on the sources of international conflict and collaboration and the causes of war and peace. More specifically, it explains the sources of intended and unintended great-power conflict and collaboration. The book also accounts for the sources of regional war and peace by developing the concept of the state-to-nation balance. Thus the volume is able to explain the variations in the outcomes of great power interventions and the differences in the level and type of war and peace in different eras and various parts of the world. For example, the book’s model can account for recent outcomes such as the effects of the 2003 American intervention in Iraq, the post-2011 Arab Spring and the conflicts between Russia and Ukraine. The book also provides a model for explaining the changes in American grand strategy with a special focus on accounting for the causes of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Finally, the book addresses the debate on the future of war and peace in the 21st century. This book will be essential reading for students of international security, regional security, Middle Eastern politics, foreign policy and IR.

American foreign policy is the subject of extensive debate. Many look to domestic factors as the driving forces of bad policies. Benjamin Miller instead seeks to account for changes in US international strategy by developing a theory of grand strategy that captures the key security approaches available to US decision-makers in times of war and peace. Grand Strategy from Truman to Trump makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of competing grand strategies that accounts for objectives and means of security policy. Miller puts forward a model that is widely applicable, based on empirical evidence from post-WWII to today, and shows that external factors—rather than internal concerns—are the most determinative.

James M. Powell here offers a new interpretation of the Fifth Crusade's historical and social impact, and a richly rewarding view of life in the thirteenth century. Powell addresses such questions as the degree of popular interest in the crusades, the religious climate of the period, the social structure of the membership of the crusade, and the effects of the recruitment effort on the outcome.

The book deals with the legitimising authority of the papacy, the nature of the crusade vow and of the privilege accorded to crusaders, the developments of the indulgence, and the role of Military Orders.

To reveal the importance of a subject that has long suffered from scholarly neglect, Professor Whorton demonstrates that health reform campaigns were not mere fads but ideologies composed of a mixture of religious and scientific ideas and themes from the popular culture. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book examines changes in Taiwan’s policies toward Mainland China under former Republic of China (ROC) President Ma Ying-jeou (2008-16) and considers their implications for US policy toward the Taiwan Strait. In recent years, the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s increasingly assertive foreign policy behaviors have heightened tensions with its regional neighbors as well as the United States. However, under the Kuomintang (KMT) administration of Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan discounted Beijing’s coercion and pursued rapprochement on the basis of the “1992 consensus,” which was a tacit agreement reached between the KMT and Chinese Communist Party in 1992 that both Taiwan and the mainland belong to one China though that “China” is subjected to either side's different interpretations. The author of this volume analyzes why Taipei underreacted towards the security challenges posed by the PRC and chartered policies that sometimes went against the interests of Washington and its allies in the Asia-Pacific. The KMT was pushing for nation-building initiatives to rejuvenate the ROC’s “one China” ruling legitimacy and to supplant pro-independence forces within Taiwan. The island’s deeply fragmented domestic politics and partisanship have led policy elites to choose suboptimal strategy and, thereby, weakening its security position. The implications from this study are equally applicable to Taiwan’s newly elected Democratic Progressive Party government that has taken off ice in 2016.