Search results

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1970

The United States remains "the indispensable nation." In this book, the distinguished international relations theorist and foreign policy specialist Robert Lieber argues that in a world full of revisionist powers, America's role is more important than ever. No other country is capable of playing that role. America remains the essential pillar of the postwar liberal order. It is a center of both political and financial stability, and it promotes important values that the revisionist powers do not. Not beholden to any particular theory, this is a clear-eyed analysis of the role the United States should play in the world as it exists today.

Foreign policy retreat and the problem of world order -- Burden sharing with Europe: problems of capability and will -- Middle East policy: regional conflicts and threats to national interest -- BRICS: stakeholders or free-riders? -- Retreat and its consequences -- Can America still lead and should it?

1. The American future: problems of primacy, policy, and purpose -- 2. Domestic and global interactions: economics, energy, and American power -- 3. American attitudes and institutions -- 4. Threats to persistent primacy and the rise of others -- 5. Stretch or 'imperial overstretch'? -- 6. Power and willpower in the American future