Focusing on the intricate intra-alliance politics during the Cold War, this volume explores the critical Berlin crises of 1958 and 1961. It reveals how the major governments' decisions were heavily influenced by their relationships with allies. By examining the evolution of policy from the perspectives of key governments, as well as those on the periphery and the military headquarters involved, the book provides a nuanced understanding of the factors shaping Western military strategies in response to these tensions.
"The rules-based international order is being challenged... not by the usual suspects, but by its main architect and guarantor, the US." —European Council President Donald Tusk, 8 June 2018 Under President Donald Trump, the United States has burned like a wildfire through the goodwill it accrued in 70 years of propagating its liberal political values. Can Western nations preserve the liberal world order against rising authoritarian powers without the United States, or with Washington working against them? In America vs the West , Kori Schake argues that the success of the liberal order is not preordained. It will have to be fought for, compromised for, and rejuvenated. Can it be done without American leadership? That will depend on the strengths of the major challengers—Russia and China—but above all on whether the West’s middle powers are prepared to band together.
What does a successful State Department look like and how can one build support for creating it? Described here is a State Department whose ideas for shaping the world in positive ways drive the agenda of America's engagement and build a broad base of public support to which elected leaders can respond. The author outlines her ideas on how to create a State Department that attracts entrepreneurial people, developing n them the means and providing the support to effectively promote U.S. values and interests throughout the world: a State Department that cultivates support by understanding and solving problems, our own and those of other countries, that has as its core mission the protection of Americans at home and abroad, and that has built a solid basis of domestic support for its needs and activities. Included in this proposal is tighter focus on consular activity as the department's "raison d'être", limbering up the personnel system, providing professional education, encouraging greater risk tolerance in the performance of duty, reconsidering where representation needs to be physically located, and establishing a stable basis for long-term funding - all basic elements of good management.
History records only one peaceful transition of hegemonic power: the passage
from British to American dominance of the international order. To explain why
this transition was nonviolent, Kori Schake explores nine points of crisis
between Britain and the U.S., from the Monroe Doctrine to the unequal special
relationship during World War II.
