International Diplomacy

Imagine for a moment that you are about to take a foreign vacation to an exotic destination. You have saved your entire life to travel there. It is a destination with almost unlimited choices of how to spend your time and you know you will not have enough time to explore every opportunity. You are fairly certain that you will never get to take a second trip to this destination; this will be your one opportunity.

An international group of experts confronts challenges to peace and conflict diplomacy—defined as the effort to manage others' conflicts, cope with great power competition, and deal with threats to the state system itself. They consider three potential scenarios for world order where key states decide to go it alone, return to a liberal order, or collaborate on a case-by-case basis to address common problems. These three scenarios are then evaluated through the prism of regional perspectives from around the world and for their potential ramifications for major security threats.

Communist China is ambitious. It wants to replace the United States as the world’s leading superpower. And it is well on its way. It is dominant in the world economy. It is a master at intellectual property theft. It shows strategic genius at cornering essential markets. It has been staggeringly successful in buying influence among American elites. And its military buildup is astonishing. So far, China has been waging a cold war on the United States and its Asian allies. But, emboldened by American weakness and decline, that cold war is about to turn hot.

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Ben Kingsley and Theo James, the gripping true story of a young program coordinator at the United Nations who stumbles upon a conspiracy involving Iraq's oil reserves. "What made this episode in our collective history possible was not so much the lies we told one another, but the lies we told ourselves". Breaking a conspiracy of silence that had prevailed for years, Soussan sparked an unprecedented corruption probe into the Oil-for-Food program.

Landing in Vancouver on a flight from Hong Kong on December 2018, Chinese telecom executive Meng Wanzhou was arrested by Canadian authorities with an American extradition warrant. The US Department of Justice accused Meng of fraud and bypassing sanctions against Iran. Nine days later, in an act of retaliation, China arrested two Canadians—Michael Spavor, an entrepreneur, and Michael Kovrig, a peace advocate—charging them with spying.

The Iran Wars is an absorbing account of a battle waged on many levels - military, financial, and covert. Jay Solomon’s book is the product of extensive in-depth reporting and interviews with all the key players in the conflict - from high-ranking Iranian officials to Secretary of State John Kerry and his negotiating team. With a reporter’s masterly investigative eye and the narrative dexterity of a great historian, Solomon shows how Iran’s nuclear development went unnoticed for years by the international community only to become its top security concern.

The first book written about diplomacy in over 50 years, since Richard Sharp's The Game of Diplomacy, with an homage to that critical work, to Allan B. Calhamer - the game's designer - and so many other legends of the hobby, to bring a new concise look at strategy, tactics, and negotiation.

A character-driven history that describes the bizarrely ill-suited alliance between America and Pakistan, written by a uniquely insightful participant: Pakistan's former ambassador to the US. The relationship between America and Pakistan is based on mutual incomprehension, and always has been. Pakistan - to American eyes - has gone from being a stabilizing friend to an essential military ally to a seedbed of terror.

A news-breaking memoir revealing the secret, high level negotiations that could soon transform the map of the Middle East. Why would a sitting head of state choose to write about the most explosive issues he faces? King Abdullah does so now because he believes we face a moment of truth: a last chance for peace in the Middle East. The prize is enormous; the cost of failure far greater than we dare imagine.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) was one of the most important documents to come out of World War I – specifically the period of the Armistice and the subsequent settlement negotiations. And, a century on, it remains of particular relevance to our times – an uncompromising and forthright analysis of how international diplomacy can be suffused by personalities, prejudices, personal ambition and outright, uncontrolled feelings of revenge.

More than 20 years have elapsed since the United States last brokered a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. In that time, three presidents have tried and failed. Martin Indyk - a former United States ambassador to Israel and special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2013 - has experienced these political frustrations and disappointments firsthand.

1989 heralded a unique prospect for an enduring global peace, as harsh ideological divisions and conflicts began to be resolved. Now, three decades on, that peace has been lost. With war in Ukraine and increasing tensions between China, Russia, and the West, great power politics once again dominates the world stage. But could it have been different? Richard Sakwa shows how the years before the first mass invasion of Ukraine represented a hiatus in conflict rather than a lasting accord—and how, since then, we have been in a 'Second Cold War'.

Few public officials have provoked such intense controversy as Henry Kissinger. During his time in the Nixon and Ford administrations, he came to be admired and hated in equal measure. Notoriously, he believed that foreign affairs ought to be based primarily on the power relationships of a situation, not simply on ethics. He went so far as to argue that under certain circumstances America had to protect its national interests even if that meant repressing other countries' attempts at democracy.

A revealing and controversial account of the events surrounding Pearl Harbor. Pulitzer Prize - winning author John Toland presents evidence that FDR and his top advisors knew about the planned Japanese attack but remained silent. Infamy reveals the conspiracy to cover up the facts and find scapegoats for the greatest disaster in United States military history. New York Times best-seller.

For better or worse - be it militarily, politically, economically, technologically, or culturally - Americans have had a profound role in shaping the wider world beyond them. The United States has been a savior to some, a curse to others, but either way such views are often based on a caricature of American actions and intentions. American foreign relations, then, is a subject of immense global importance that provokes strong emotions and much debate, but often based on deep misunderstanding.

The Good Spy is Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Kai Bird’s compelling portrait of the remarkable life and death of one of the most important operatives in CIA history - a man who, had he lived, might have helped heal the rift between Arabs and the West. On April 18, 1983, a bomb exploded outside the American Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people. The attack was a geopolitical turning point. It marked the beginning of Hezbollah as a political force, but even more important, it eliminated America’s most influential and effective intelligence officer in the Middle East - CIA operative Robert Ames.

The culmination of almost forty years at the highest levels of policymaking and scholarship, Grand Delusion is Steven Simon’s tour de force, offering a comprehensive and deeply informed account of U.S. engagement in the Middle East. Simon begins with the Reagan administration, when American perception of the region shifted from a cluster of faraway and frequently skirmishing nations to a shining, urgent opportunity for America to (in Reagan’s words) “serve the cause of world peace and the future of mankind.”

A new account of America's most controversial diplomat that moves beyond praise or condemnation to reveal Kissinger as the architect of America's current imperial stance. In his fascinating new book, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin argues that to understand the crisis of contemporary America - its never-ending wars abroad and political polarization at home - we have to understand Henry Kissinger.

Many Americans are finally waking up to the alarming reality of China's stealth war on the United States and puzzling over how to push back against its insidious infiltration. What few realize is that we have one real advantage in this war: the Chinese Communist Party strategy for total war has been written out in Unrestricted Warfare, the Chinese book, well known there, that has become their new Art of War. In War Without Rules, retired Air Force Brigadier General Rob Spalding takes Americans inside Unrestricted Warfare.

The definitive biography of Henry Kissinger - at least for those who neither revere nor revile him.