Politics Foreign

From early zeppelins, to the Luftwaffe and the Enola Gay, to the unmanned aerial vehicles of today, air power has long been regarded as an invaluable instrument of war. However, nations have employed aircraft for many other purposes as well; they provide security and surveillance, and they are vital to myriad diplomatic and humanitarian efforts.

It has become axiomatic to contend that U.S. foreign policy must adapt to an era of renewed "great-power competition." The United States went on a quarter-century strategic detour after the Cold War, the argument goes, basking in triumphalism and getting bogged down in the Middle East. Now China and Russia are increasingly challenging its influence and undercutting the order it has led since 1945. How should it respond to these two formidable authoritarian powers?

Career Diplomacy takes listeners inside the world of American diplomats in the US Foreign Service. Members of the Foreign Service represent the country abroad, protect and support American citizens overseas, manage government programs and facilities, and move foreign policy from the abstract to the actual.

Tyson Reeder's book traces early America's rocky beginnings, when foreign interference and political conflict threatened to undermine its aspirations and ideals, even its very existence. Spanning the period from the Revolution to the War of 1812, and focusing on the presidency of James Madison, it reveals a nation adjusting to rancorous partisan politics, aggravated by the untested and imperfect new tools of governance and the growing power of media.

Has the United States been a force for liberty around the world? Should it be? And if so, how? To answer these questions, Christopher A. Preble traces the history of US foreign policy from the American founding to the present, examining the ideas that have animated it, asking whether America's policy choices have made the world safer and freer, and considering the impact of those choices on freedom at home.

As American interests assumed global proportions after 1945, policy makers were faced with the challenge of prioritizing various regions and determining the extent to which the United States was prepared to defend and support them. Superpowers and developing nations soon became inextricably linked and decolonizing states such as Vietnam, India, and Egypt assumed a central role in the ideological struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The biggest threat to the United States comes not from abroad but from within. This is the provocative, timely, and unexpected message of Council on Foreign Relations President Richard N. Haass’ Foreign Policy Begins at Home. A rising China, climate change, terrorism, a nuclear Iran, a turbulent Middle East, and a reckless North Korea all present serious challenges. But U.S. national security depends even more on the United States addressing its burgeoning deficit and debt, crumbling infrastructure, second-class schools, and outdated immigration system

We are entering a new era of global cataclysm in which the world faces a deadly mix of war, climate change, great power rivalry, rapid technological advancement, the end of both monarchy and empire, and countless other dangers. In Waste Land, Robert D. Kaplan, geopolitical expert and author of more than twenty books on world affairs, incisively explains how we got here and where we are going.

The American Revolution was not only a political contest for liberty, equality, and independence (for white men, at least); it was also a contest to define certain accounts of reality to be truthful while defining others as false and dangerous. Misinformation Nation argues that we must also conceive of the American Revolution as a series of misperceptions, misunderstandings, and uninformed overreactions.

It used to be that ravaging another country’s economy required blockading its ports and laying siege to its cities. Now all it takes is a statement posted online by the U.S. government. In Chokepoints, Edward Fishman, a former top State Department sanctions official, takes us deep into the back rooms of power to reveal the untold history of the last two decades of U.S. foreign policy, in which America renounced the gospel of globalization and waged a new kind of economic war.

In US Presidential Elections and Foreign Policy, a team of international scholars examines how the relationship between foreign policy and electoral politics evolved through the latter half of the 20th century. Covering all presidential elections from 1940 to 1992 - from debates over American entry into World War II to the aftermath of the Cold War - the contributors correct the conventional wisdom that domestic issues and the economy are always definitive.

Ein verdeckter Treffpunkt des US-Geheimdiensts in Syrien wurde Ziel eines Anschlags. Noch bevor das dort stationierte Einsatzteam seinen Auftrag ausführen konnte, verwandelten Terroristen den Unterschlupf in ein Blutbad. Anti-Terror-Agent Scot Harvath trägt die Verantwortung für das Desaster. Fieberhaft sucht er nach den Drahtziehern. Es gibt einen Saboteur in den eigenen Reihen und Harvath muss ihn finden.

When I wrote the original version of PILOTS DAWN in the last decade of the previous century, the world was a different place. Three manufacturers of passenger aircraft existed in the United States. Boeing dominated the global market for airliners without serious competition. Airbus, whose share of sales fell short of 20%, was considered by many experts a challenger doomed to failure—if not an outright joke. Politically, the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. The Cold War was over; the KGB had receded into history and expectations of a peaceful democratic Russia were the norm.

Joe Biden made less than $200,000 a year for most of his life, but as soon as he left office, he bought his second multimillion-dollar mansion. He shared a bookkeeper with Hunter Biden, and a law firm with several Biden family members that managed their money. Hunter, who hasn’t had a real job in decades, has raked in tens of millions of dollars. Joe Biden met many of the foreigners writing the checks, but still maintains all of these situations are nothing to be concerned about. James Comer takes listeners on a journey through the murky world of the Biden family’s business dealings.

American Presidents in Diplomacy and War chronicles the major foreign policy crises faced by twelve American presidents in order to uncover the reoccurring patterns of successful and less successful uses of diplomatic, economic, and military power. In this book, Thomas R. Parker reveals how America's most successful leaders manage events instead of allowing events to control them.

Ottawa bureaucrat-turned-diplomat Charlie Hillier is back. Having barely survived his first posting in Havana, Charlie is eager to put what he learned there to good use. And it isn't long before he's thrust into a fresh case - a technical writer from Toronto in a Moscow jail on dubious drug charges. Charlie has barely put a dent in the brick wall that is the Russian legal system when the jailed man turns up dead; the official explanation: suicide. And just when evidence to the contrary is discovered, the body is "accidentally" cremated by the authorities.

As renowned national security law scholar Laura K. Donohue explains in The Future of Foreign Intelligence, global communications systems and digital technologies have changed our lives in countless ways. But they have also contributed to a worrying transformation. New and emerging technologies have radically expanded the amount and type of information that the government collects about US citizens.

In US Foreign Policy and Defense Strategy, the authors analyze the strategic underpinnings of hegemony, assess the national security establishment that sustains dominance, consider the impact on civil-military relations, and explore the intertwining relationships between foreign policy, defense strategy, and commercial activities.

In The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy, Michael Mandelbaum offers a new framework for understanding the evolution of the foreign policy of the United States. He divides that evolution into four distinct periods, with each defined by the consistent increase in American power relative to other countries. His history of the four periods features engaging accounts of the major events and important personalities in the foreign policy of each era.

In Is College Worth It?, William J. Bennett and David Wilezol assess the problems of American higher education at various levels, from runaway costs to inferior academics to poor graduation rates to political indoctrination, and propose serious reforms and alternative methods for improving higher education so that it better serves our students.