"A longtime American foreign policy insider's biting and definitive reckoning with the high cost of this country's ambitious meddling in the Middle East-and its bitter end The culmination of almost 40 years of expertise and insider policy access, Grand Delusion is Steven Simon's tour de force, offering a comprehensive yet analytical tour of U.S. involvement in the Middle East. Simon begins with the Reagan administration, when the Middle East shifted...

Thirty years after the Soviet Union's collapse, this book reveals how tensions between America, NATO, and Russia transformed geopolitics between the Cold War and COVID. Not one inch. With these words, Secretary of State James Baker proposed a hypothetical bargain to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev after the fall of the Berlin Wall: if you let your part of Germany go, we will move NATO not one inch eastward. Controversy erupted almost immediately...

"Since China joined the WTO in December 2001, the West has been developing ever closer business and political ties. China's hosting of the Olympic Games and its economic leadership in 2008 as the world faced recession were signs that China's new power and wealth would herald greater global prosperity for all. But that era is over. What was the cause of this rupture, leading China expert Andrew Small asks and what does it mean for the future? Using...

A former ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration describes how the progress made between the two countries was destroyed when Vladimir Putin returned to power and recounts how the Kremlin actively sought to discredit and undermine him. "A revelatory, behind-the-scenes acount of Rusian-American relations from the optimistic days of the end of communism in the Reagan-Gorbachev era to the confrontational era of Putin. In 2008, when Michael...

"In 1932, Japan was in crisis. Naval officers had assassinated the prime minister. The military had a stranglehold on the government. War with Russia loomed, and propaganda campaigns swept the country, urging schoolchildren to give money to procure planes and tanks. Into this maelstrom stepped Joseph C. Grew, America's most experienced and talented diplomat. When Grew was appointed to serve as ambassador to Japan, not only was the country in turmoil,...

The year is 2065, two decades after the great economic collapse that destroyed Western civilisation. With its power broken and its cities ruined, life in the West continues in scattered communities. In rural Dorset, Jake Reed lives with his fourteen year old son and memories of the great collapse. Back in '43, Jake was a rich, young futures broker, immersed in the datascape of the world's financial markets. He saw what was coming - and who was behind...

Black describes nine "phases" of the strategic rise of the nation, in which it progressed through grave challenges, civil and foreign wars, and secured a place for itself under the title of "Superpower." He discredits prevailing notions that our unrivaled status is the product of good geography, demographics, and good luck. Instead, he reveals and analyzes the specific strategic decisions of great statesmen through the ages that transformed the world...

"'Fascinating ... Shlaim presents compelling evidence for a revaluation of traditional Israeli history.' --New York Times Book Review. For this newly expanded edition, Avi Shlaim has added four chapters and an epilogue that address the prime ministerships from Barak to Netanyahu in the 'one book everyone should read for a concise history of Israel's relations with Arabs' (Independent). What was promulgated as an 'iron-wall' strategy--building a position...

"For more than a century, no US adversary or coalition of adversaries - not Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or even the Soviet Union - has ever reached sixty percent of US GDP. China is the sole exception, and it is fast emerging into a global superpower that could rival, if not eclipse, the United States. What does China want, does it have a grand strategy to achieve it, and what should the United States do about it? The Long Game draws from a rich...

"From a writer with long and high-level experience in the U.S. government, a lively, provocative, and eminently readable reexamination of American foreign policy, capturing not only its extraordinary achievements but the diplomatic missteps, intellectual confusion, and political discord from which they usually emerge. American foreign policy since World War II has long been seen primarily as a story of strong and successful alliances, domestic consensus,...