The Conflicted Superpower

For decades, leadership in technological innovation has sustained U.S. power worldwide. Today, however, processes that undergird innovation increasingly transcend national borders. Cross-border flows of brainpower have reached unprecedented heights, while multinationals invest more and more in high-tech facilities abroad. In this new world, U.S. technological leadership increasingly involves collaboration with other countries. China and India have emerged as particularly prominent partners, most notably as suppliers of intellectual talent to the United States. In The Conflicted Superpower, Andrew Kennedy explores how the world’s most powerful country approaches its growing collaboration with these two rising powers. Whereas China and India have embraced global innovation, policy in the United States is conflicted. Kennedy explains why, through in-depth case studies of U.S. policies toward skilled immigration, foreign students, and offshoring. These make clear that U.S. policy is more erratic than strategic, the outcome of domestic battles between competing interests. Pressing for openness is the “high-tech community”—the technology firms and research universities that embody U.S. technological leadership. Yet these pro-globalization forces can face resistance from a range of other interests, including labor and anti-immigration groups, and the nature of this resistance powerfully shapes just how open national policy is. Kennedy concludes by asking whether U.S. policies are accelerating or slowing American decline, and considering the prospects for U.S. policy making in years to come.

This book describes the efforts of the United States and the former Soviet Union to resolve regional confrontations. It examines Gorbachev's inheritance in Latin America regarding Soviet-U.S. cooperation and conflict, and prospects for future Russian-U.S. cooperation.

Examines the trajectory of the Cold War and its impact on the rest of the world, to seek lessons for international relations. This title analyses issues such as the unipolar moment, the economic balance of power, the emergence of cooperative security frameworks and nuclear disarmament, outlining where the potential for conflict is ingrained.

A study of superpower co-operation since World War II, this book examines the regulation of USA/USSR rivalry, and outlines the power of regional states to constrain and manipulate them for their own interests.

This edited volume re-assesses the relationship between the United States, the Soviet Union and key regional players in waging and halting conflict in the Middle East between 1967 and 1973. These were pivotal years in the Arab-Israeli conflict, with the effects still very much in evidence today. In addition to addressing established debates, the book opens up new areas of controversy, in particular concerning the inter-war years and the so-called ‘War of Attrition’, and underlines the risks both Moscow and Washington were prepared to run in supporting their regional clients. The engagement of Soviet forces in the air defence of Egypt heightened the danger of escalation and made this one of the hottest regional conflicts of the Cold War era. Against this Cold War backdrop, the motives of both Israel and the Arab states in waging full-scale and lower-intensity conflict are illuminated. The overall goal of this work is to re-assess the relationship between the Cold War and regional conflict in shaping the events of this pivotal period in the Middle East. The Cold War in the Middle East will be of much interest to students of Cold War studies, Middle Eastern history, strategic studies and international history.

Since the war in Iraq of 2003, relations between the USA and the EU have been strained and the UK has been increasingly regarded as the US Government's only dependable ally. In this new book John Redwood examines the growing conflicts between an EU flexing its muscles against the USA, and the dominance of the US global economy and military machine. He points to the phenomenal rise of China to say that whilst eyes are fixed on the EU superstate experiment the real events that will shape the world in the next 50 years are unfolding on the other side of the globe. To maintain a position of influence in the world, he writes that the UK must renegotiate with the EU and keep open its links to Asia and the USA: the true battle for supremacy will not be between the EU and the USA but between Asia and the USA, and it is already underway.

America will remain the world’s only superpower for the foreseeable future. But what sort of superpower? What role should America play in the world? What role do you want America to play? Ian Bremmer argues that Washington’s directionless foreign policy has become prohibitively expensive and increasingly dangerous. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. policymakers have stumbled from crisis to crisis in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine without a clear strategy. Ordinary Americans too often base their foreign policy choices on allegiance or opposition to the party in power. We can no longer afford this complacency, especially now that both parties are deeply divided about America’s role in the world. The next presidential election could easily pit an interventionist Democrat against an isolationist Republican—or the exact opposite. As 2016 rapidly approaches, Bremmer urges every American to think more deeply about what sort of country America should be and how it should use its superpower status. He explores three options: Independent America asserts that it’s time for America to declare independence from the responsibility to solve other people’s problems. Instead, Americans should lead by example—in part, by investing in the country’s vast untapped potential. Moneyball America acknowledges that Washington can’t meet every international challenge. With a clear-eyed assessment of U.S. strengths and limitations, we must look beyond empty arguments over exceptionalism and American values. The priorities must be to focus on opportunities and to defend U.S. interests where they’re threatened. Indispensable America argues that only America can defend the values on which global stability increasingly depends. In today’s interdependent, hyperconnected world, a turn inward would undermine America’s own security and prosperity. We will never live in a stable world while others are denied their most basic freedoms—from China to Russia to the Middle East and beyond. There are sound arguments for and against each of these choices, but we must choose. Washington can no longer improvise a foreign policy without a lasting commitment to a coherent strategy. As Bremmer notes, “When I began writing this book, I didn’t know which of these three choices I would favor. It’s easy to be swayed by pundits and politicians with a story to sell or an ax to grind. My attempt to make the most honest and forceful case I could make for each of these three arguments helped me understand what I believe and why I believe it. I hope it will do the same for you. I don’t ask you to agree with me. I ask only that you choose.”

Strategically placed on the global chess board, as well as controlling vast oil resources, the Middle East was one of the main theatres of Cold War. In the 1950s the Soviet Union had taken advantage of Arab Nationalists’ disillusion with British and French Imperialism, along with the emerging Arab-Israeli conflict, to establish relations with Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The United States responded by moving in to shore up the Western position. Confrontation was inevitable. Superpower Intervention in the Middle East was written in 1978, when this confrontation was at its height. The book’s main theme focuses on how the superpowers became competitively involved in local Middle East conflicts over which they could exercise only limited control, and the risks of nuclear confrontation of the kind which occurred at the end of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. The threat to Western oil supplies is also examined. This is a fascinating work, of great relevance to scholars and students of Middle Eastern history and political diplomacy, as well as those with an interest in the relationship between the Western superpowers and this volatile region.