Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 360
•
Trim: 6½ x 9⅜
978-1-4422-2562-6 • Hardback • July 2014 • $136.00 • (£105.00)
978-1-4422-2563-3 • Paperback • July 2014 • $55.00 • (£42.00)
978-1-4422-2564-0 • eBook • July 2014 • $52.00 • (£40.00)
Sean Kay is Robson Professor of Politics and Government at Ohio Wesleyan University where he is also director of the Arneson Institute for Practical Politics and Chair of the International Studies Program. He is also an associate of the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at the Ohio State University and a fellow at the Eisenhower Institute in Washington, D.C. Kay has previously worked at the Institute for National Strategic Studies in the U.S. Department of Defense and as visiting assistant professor at Dartmouth College. He has published widely on American foreign and defense policy and international security issues, is frequently quoted in major national and international news sources, and is a co-editor of two books. His previous books include Celtic Revival: The Rise, Fall, and Renewal of Global Ireland,Global Security in the Twenty-first Century: The Quest for Power and the Search for Peace, and NATO and the Future of European Security.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Triumph of Idealism and the Return of Realism
2. The Eagle Rises
3. The Cold War
4. Realism and the End of the Cold War: From Vietnam to Reagan
5. The Liberal and Neoconservative Consensus
6. The Costs of Imbalance: The Iraq and Afghan Wars
7. Realigning American Power: The Asia Pivot
8. The Politics of Foreign and Defense Policy
9. America’s Search for Security in the Twenty-First Century
Index
About the Author
Sean Kay's America's Search for Security is a deeply insightful, often brilliant, analysis of recent U.S. foreign policy making. With keen historical insight Kay tackles everything from the relevancy of NATO, Middle East wars, and the realist vs. human rights debate. His range of intellect is beyond impressive. Highly Recommended!
— Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University and author of Cronkite
If you want to know why the conduct of US foreign policy has been so consistently flawed in the post-Cold War period, read Sean Kay's important new book. Using basic international relations theory as a framework, he shows how America's powerful liberal inclinations were kept in check by realist calculations before 1989, which produced a foreign policy that served the country well for over two centuries. However, he also shows in exquisite detail how unbounded liberalism over the past twenty-five years has helped get the United States into one mess after another. One can only hope US policymakers read America's Search for Security and recognize the error of their ways.
— John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago
America's Search for Security captures brilliantly the tension between crusaders in foreign policy who charge at every injustice and problem in the world with little regard to America's stock of power and those who prioritize America's causes and purposes by what is doable and what maintains America's strength. The struggle between these camps has vital consequences for a nation that was king of the hill and then proceeded to be a king kicking down its own hill. Today, the Obama administration is trying to rebuild US power in order to do great things in the world -- a very tough challenge that Sean Kay explicates with valuable insights throughout his terrific book.
— Steven Clemons, Washington Editor-at-Large, The Atlantic
"[A] superb realist account of US foreign policy history and, as such, is a must for US foreign policy reading lists, as well as the bookshelf of any foreign policy academic."
— Oxford Academic Journals
·Written in a clear and accessible way that includes vital historical and contemporary transition points in America’s global role that both students and practitioners and the public will find of value.
·Author a well-known scholar and foreign policy commentator who has both worked in government and consulted for governmental agencies. Thus the book helps the reader read between the headlines and understand how policy really works – or doesn’t – in Washington, D.C.
·The book provides an important focus on detailed but accessible historical trends that shape contemporary American foreign policy thinking.