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This thread focused on topics and books related to "foreign affairs and international policy and affairs".

Washington Post focuses on five major books:

The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War.

by Thucydides

Yes, it’s a classic, and yes, it’s cliched to bring it up, but it doesn’t matter. Simply put, it’s the ur-text of international relations. Dani Rodrik has argued recently that economics is all about producing an array of models and then figuring out which model applies which situation. One could argue that an awful lot of the models in international relations are contained in Thucydides� history. There hasn’t been a time in the post-1945 era when something from it doesn’t seem relevant to American foreign policy. For 2017, I’d suggest that the incoming president to pay close attention to the erosion in Athenian democracy, and Greek civil society, over the course of the long war.

Source: Washington Post - Article published in the Washington Post (Author is Daniel W. Drezner)

Washington Post focuses on five major books:

2) E.H. Carr, “The Twenty Years� Crisis, 1919-1939.�

by Edward Hallett Carr

Also a classic, though often a misread one. Carr’s discussion of utopian and realist modes of thinking about the world are very useful in contemplating about how to navigate world politics � as well as parsing out presidential rhetoric. Too often, readers of Carr believe that he dismissed utopian thinking entirely, but it’s more that at the time Carr was writing, the world seemed to be suffering from to much utopianism and too little realism. Incoming presidents almost always are too utopian in their thinking, however, so this is a useful check against that bias.

Source: Washington Post - Article published in the Washington Post (Author is Daniel W. Drezner)

Washington Post focuses on five major books:

by Scott D. Sagan (no photo)

3) Scott Sagan, “The Limits of Safety.� The first two books on this list deal with great power politics; time to drill down a bit. Sagan took Charles Perrow’s theory of “normal accidents� and applied it to command and control of U.S. nuclear weapons. Perrow’s book is a great read, but the results Sagan finds of near-nuclear accidents is frightening beyond words. This appears to be a moment when the public seems pretty damn fearful. The next president should read this to recognize the conditions under which additional security precautions can make America less safe.

Source: Washington Post - Article published in the Washington Post (Author is Daniel W. Drezner)

Washington Post focuses on five major books:

by Daron AcemoÄźlu

4) Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. There seems to be a lot of state failure going on around the world right now. Why is that? This book doesn’t have all the answers, but it has a very big part of the answer. There also are a lot of revanchist states that seem concern Americans. If Acemoglu and Robinson’s thesis is true, then the next president should be far more concerned about, say, a weak China rather than a strong one.

Source: Washington Post - Article published in the Washington Post (Author is Daniel W. Drezner)

Washington Post focuses on five major books:

by Peter Trubowitz (no photo)

5) Peter Trubowitz, “Politics and Strategy: Partisan Ambition and American Statecraft.� What latitude will the next president have to launch an ambitious grand strategy? Trubowitz’s book offers some evidence for the conditions under which a president can choose to invest resources into foreign policy and the conditions under which such a course of action will not be on the table. Based on current attitudes about defense spending, the next president will likely face fewer constraints on this front than Barack Obama.

Source: Washington Post - Article published in the Washington Post (Author is Daniel W. Drezner)

Robert M. Gates, A Passion for Leadership: Lessons on Change and Reform From Fifty Years of Public Service.

by Robert M. Gates

Gates knows a thing or two about U.S. foreign policy. He started out as an entry level analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, worked on the staff of the National Security Council, and eventually became director of Central Intelligence and then secretary of defense. When someone of Gates’s experience and accomplishments offers advice on how to make the federal bureaucracy work, you probably should listen

Source: from The Water's Edge
Five Foreign Policy Books the Next President Should Read
Blog Post by James M. Lindsay - Council on Foreign Relations

Interesting quote:

But making wise choices—and making sure they are carried out—is easier said than done. As former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates noted earlier this week, running a government is "different than business. It’s different than surgery. It’s different than anything else. It’s a skill set that you bring based on experience and based on dealing with other people.�

Source: from The Water's Edge
Five Foreign Policy Books the Next President Should Read
Blog Post by James M. Lindsay - Council on Foreign Relations

Gordon Goldstein, Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam.

by Gordon M. Goldstein (no photo)

Goldstein set out to understand why the United States went to war in Vietnam. In doing so, he deftly teased out six lessons that every president would be wise to heed. My favorite? “Conviction without rigor is a recipe for disaster.�

Source: from The Water's Edge
Five Foreign Policy Books the Next President Should Read
Blog Post by James M. Lindsay - Council on Foreign Relations

Morton Halperin and Priscilla Clapp with Arnold Kanter, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy.

by Morton H. Halperin (no photo)

We like to imagine that presidents order and bureaucrats execute. But as Halperin, Clapp, and Kanter show, the compendium of departments, agencies, offices, and bureaus that make up the U.S. government often substitute their own interests, visions, and judgments for those of the White House. If presidents want the bureaucracy to do their bidding, they need to understand the myriad of ways it can frustrate their plans.

Source: from The Water's Edge
Five Foreign Policy Books the Next President Should Read
Blog Post by James M. Lindsay - Council on Foreign Relations

Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics.

by Robert Jervis (no photo)

Foreign policy decision-making involves not just anticipating and reacting to the actions of other actors on the world stage but also to their intentions. The problem, as Jervis amply documents, is that leaders often misperceive what others are doing. Knowing the ways events can be misperceived doesn’t guarantee better choices, but it can help a president ask the right questions.

Source: from The Water's Edge
Five Foreign Policy Books the Next President Should Read
Blog Post by James M. Lindsay - Council on Foreign Relations

Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers

by Richard E. Neustadt (no photo)

Everyone uses historical analogies. They are powerful tools for defining problems, identifying solutions, and winning arguments. The problem is they are frequently misused and abused. Not every negotiation is Munich, and not every use of military force is Vietnam. Neustadt and May offer guidance on how to use history wisely.

Source: from The Water's Edge
Five Foreign Policy Books the Next President Should Read
Blog Post by James M. Lindsay - Council on Foreign Relations

George Floyd Moves the World


A Black Lives Matter protest in Paris, France, June 2020
Eric Bouvet / VII / Redux

George Floyd Moves the World - The Legacy of Racial Protest in America and the Imperative of Reform - by Mary L. Dudziak -
June 11, 2020

The killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer has thrust the United States into an uncomfortable light, as people around the world have taken to the streets to decry American racism.

In Milan, protesters sat with hands around their necks in front of “I can’t breathe� signs, quoting Floyd’s dying words.

The phrase was spelled out in candles in Australia.

In Dublin, a large crowd, fists in the air, chanted, “No justice, no peace.� Syrians painted a mural of Floyd amid the rubble in Idlib.

Black people across the world, said Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo, were “shocked and distraught� by Floyd’s killing.

In many places, crowds turned their attention to practices by their own countries. In New Zealand, indigenous people stressed their vulnerability to racial profiling. In Bristol, England, protesters toppled the statue of Edward Colston, a prominent slave trader, and threw it into the harbor. In Belgium, protesters set fire to a statue of King Leopold II. The reaction went beyond a rebuke of racial injustice when Minneapolis police shot foreign reporters with “nonlethal� weapons, leading to criticism from foreign governments about the importance of press freedom.

The global impact of the Black Lives Matter movement in recent weeks has felt like a shift “as monumental as the Berlin Wall coming down,� wrote the journalist Kim Zetter. But stunning as the reaction was, it was not unfamiliar: global demonstrations in solidarity with American racial protest were common during the U.S. civil rights movement. And as they did then, U.S. foreign policy leaders today have looked at the global response and considered the effect of the crisis on U.S. foreign relations—worrying that the protests and violent police response, coming on top of the United States� handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic downturn, threaten to undermine American strength in the world. As Richard Haass wrote for Foreign Affairs last week, “The turmoil in the United States, set before the eyes of the world, raises questions about American power.� This message echoes the concern of American diplomats from the civil rights era: failing to live up to the nation’s stated ideals undermines its international influence.

During the civil rights movement, concern over the impact U.S. racism had on the nation’s global image helped reinforce pressure for reforms, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The focus on how the United States was perceived, however, rather than deeper structures of inequality, ultimately limited reform efforts. Race discrimination remained an American feature, undermining rights at home and leaving the United States persistently vulnerable to the charge that its promotion of democracy and human rights abroad was hypocritical.

Remainder of article:
Link:

Source: Foreign Affairs

by Erik Larson (no photo)

Fascinating read on America’s Ambassador to Germany in 1933, his eccentric daughter, and the battle within the State Department to Ambassador Dodd’s missives.