The Foreign Policy of Progressive Worldmaking
The book explores the intersection of progressive ideals with security studies and foreign policy, emphasizing that true security is rooted in peace, democracy, and equality. It presents grand strategy as a form of worldmaking, suggesting that American progressives envision foreign policy as a tool to foster a more just and stable global environment.
A new history of Asian peace since 1979 that considers America's paradoxical role
In 2017, the world watched as President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un traded personal insults and escalating threats of nuclear war amid unprecedented shows of military force. Former Pentagon insider and Korean security expert Van Jackson traces the origins of the first American nuclear crisis in the post-Cold War era, and explains the fragile, highly unpredictable way that it ended. Jackson analyzes the US response to North Korea's increasing nuclear threat in the context of Trump's aggressive rhetoric, prior US policy failures, the geopolitics of East Asia, North Korean strategic culture and the acceleration of its nuclear program. Jackson argues that the Trump administration's policy of 'maximum pressure' brought the world much closer to inadvertent nuclear war than many realize - and charts a course for the prevention of future conflicts.
Charting the turbulent history of US-North Korea relations from the 1960s to 2010, Van Jackson surveys the role of reputation to understand why most - but not all - North Korean threats are dismissed and why their acts of unreciprocated violence against more powerful states do not lead to war.