Rethinking America S Security

Sustaining security : rethinking American national security strategy / Jeremi Suri and Benjamin Valentino -- Dollar diminution and new macroeconomic constraints on American power / Jonathan Kirshner -- Does American military power attract foreign investment? / Daniel Drezner and Nancy Hite-Rubin -- Preserving national strength in a period of fiscal restraint / Cindy Williams -- State finance and national power : Great Britain, China, and the United States in historical perspective / Jeremi Suri -- Reforming American power : civilian national security institutions in the early cold war and beyond / William Inboden -- To starve an army : how great power armies respond to austerity / John W. Hall -- Climate change and US national security : sustaining security amidst unsustainability / Joshua William Busby -- At home abroad : public attitudes towards America's overseas commitments / Benjamin Valentino -- The right choice for NATO / William Wohlforth -- The United States and the Middle East : interests, risks, and costs / Daniel Byman and Sara Bjerg Moller -- Keep, toss, or fix? : assessing US alliances in East Asia / Jennifer Lind -- Terminating the interminable? / Sumit Ganguly -- Neutralization as a sustainable approach to Afghanistan / Audrey Kurth Cronin -- Conclusion / Jeremi Suri and Benjamin Valentino

"During the Cold War, American national security seemed clearly defined: to protect against the overarching threat of the Soviet Union and Communist expansion. But with the demise of Communism, America must reconsider its role in the world as dramatically as it did after victory in World War II. As the only real superpower, how should we use our military strength? What are the lessons of the Persian Gulf War? How and when do we cut back on our defense and national security establishment? In the New World Order a country's social cohesion and economic strength at home are increasingly important determinants of its success. To what extent does America need to reconsider its national security in domestic terms - i.e., improving economic competitiveness and learning to live within its means?" "In this new collection, sponsored by the American Assembly and the Council on Foreign Relations, a group of leading experts assesses the changing conception of national security in the 1990s and its implications for American policy at home and abroad."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Social insurance in the United States--including the Social Security Act of 1935 and the Medicare, Medicaid, and disability insurance programs that were added later--may be the greatest triumph of American domestic policy. But true security has not been achieved. As Michael J. Graetz and Jerry L. Mashaw show in this pathbreaking book, the nation's system of social insurance is riddled with gaps, inefficiencies, and inequities. Even the most popular and successful programs, Medicare and Social Security, face serious financial challenges from the coming retirement of the baby boom generation and the aging of the population. This book challenges the notion that American social insurance must remain inadequate, unaffordable, or both. In sharp contrast to policymakers and analysts who debate only one income security program at a time, Graetz and Mashaw examine social insurance whole to assess its crucial role in providing economic security in a dynamic market economy. They recognize that, notwithstanding a proper emphasis on individual freedom and responsibility, Americans share a common fate that binds them together in a common enterprise. The authors offer us a new vision of the social insurance contract and concrete proposals to make the nation's families more secure without increasing costs.

The U.S. military economy incorporates hundreds of American communities. This is the first book to connect our national security apparatus to the local level via deeply reported portraits of six carefully selected locations, including military Meccas and out-of-the-way places. They are woven into the warfare economy by bases, nuclear weapons labs, and production sites. The book includes an invaluable overview of how the military is structured, how its budget is made, and what it costs. It also shows how the military economy perpetuates itself. In on-the-ground reporting, Pemberton traces the lines of connection between the tour stops presented here and our country’s foreign policy, industrial policy, and budget priorities. She examines the meaning of national security in the current moment, as climate change becomes what the military itself calls "an urgent and growing threat." And she dramatically demonstrates how redirecting our militarized foreign and industrial policy toward climate security can help these communities become part of the solution. For students, scholars, public servants, and all concerned citizens, this book is essential reading.

As the world shifts away from the unquestioned American hegemony that followed in the wake of the Cold War, the United States is likely to face new kinds of threats and sharper resource constraints than it has in the past. However, the country's alliances, military institutions, and national security strategy have changed little since the Cold War. American foreign and defense policies, therefore, should be assessed for their fitness for achieving sustainable national security amidst the dynamism of the international political economy, changing domestic politics, and even a changing climate. This book brings together sixteen leading scholars from across political science, history, and political economy to highlight a range of American security considerations that deserve a larger role in both scholarship and strategic decision-making. In these chapters, scholars of political economy and the American defense budget examine the economic engine that underlies U.S. military might and the ways the country deploys these vast (but finite) resources. Historians illuminate how past great powers coped with changing international orders through strategic and institutional innovations. And regional experts assess America's current long-term engagements, from NATO to the chaos of the Middle East to the web of alliances in Asia, deepening understandings that help guard against both costly commitments and short-sighted retrenchments. This interdisciplinary volume sets an agenda for future scholarship that links politics, economics, and history in pursuit of sustainable security for the United States - and greater peace and stability for Americans and non-Americans alike.

What is grand strategy ? What does it aim to achieve? And what differentiates it from normal strategic thought--what, in other words, makes it "grand"? In answering these questions, most scholars have focused on diplomacy and warfare, so much so that "grand"? In answering these questions, most scholars have focused on diplomacy and warfare, so much so that "grand strategy" has become almost an equivalent of "military history." The traditional attention paid to military affairs is understandable, but in today's world it leaves out much else that could be considered political, and therefore strategic. Just as contemporary world politics is driven by a wide range of non-military issues, the most thorough considerations of grand strategy must consider the bases of peace and security--including gender, race, the environment, and a wide range of cultural, social, political, and economic issues. Rethinking American Grand Strategy assembles a roster of leading historians to examine America's place in the world. Its innovative chapters re-examine familiar figures, such as John Quincy Adams, George Kennan, and Henry Kissinger, while also revealing the forgotten episodes and hidden voices of American grand strategy. They expand the scope of diplomatic and military history by placing the grand strategies of public health, race, gender, humanitarianism, and the law alongside military and diplomatic affairs to reveal hidden strategists as well as strategies. --

This edited volume helps bridge the elusive gap between theory and practice in dealing with the issue of "security" broadly conceived. A quarter of a century has passed since the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. Yet our notions of security remain mired in Cold War thinking whose realist ethos is predicated on holding the nation state's power, interests, and survival as the guiding unit of analysis in international relations. Security is ever changing. Confronting new dangers to the individual, the state, and the international order calls for new categories that speak to the new influence of globalization, international institutions, and transnational threats. Composed of original essays by a cosmopolitan mix of leading figures inside and outside the academy, this book proves relevant to any number of classes and courses, and its controversial character makes it all the more necessary and appealing.