International Relations

In this deeply personal book, Joseph Nye shares his own journey living through the American century.

Using the private journals of commission secretaries Henry Marie Brackenridge and Dr. William Baldwin, as well as Captain Sinclair, this chapter will explore the establishment of American naval identity through its diplomatic experiences in South America. It will also exhibit the role of the U.S. Navy in a proto framework of the Monroe Doctrine.

Hand-Off details the Bush administration’s national security and foreign policy as described at the time in then-classified Transition Memoranda prepared by the National Security Council experts who advised President Bush. Thirty of these Transition Memoranda, newly declassified and here made public for the first time, provide a detailed, comprehensive, and first-hand look at the foreign policy the Bush administration turned over to President Obama.

For the United States, the dominant approach has been economic coercion. Despite applying stringent sanctions, the United States has been ineffective in convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenal in return for a brighter economic and diplomatic future. The myriad U.S. sanctions have also failed to halt major progress in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. However, these setbacks have not caused the United States to change its strategy of economic coercion. On the contrary, the United States has considerably increased its use of this economic statecraft tool. In contrast, China has deepened its economic engagement with the North Korean regime since the late 2000s. Through the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and its counterpart the Workers’ Party of Korea, China has cultivated and monetized political ties. Doing so has provided a powerful mechanism through which the Kim family regime—leaders of North Korea’s ruling and prosperous 1 percent—has shored up stability and thrived.

Fredrik Logevall, a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian takes us as close as we have ever been to the real John F. Kennedy in this revelatory biography of the iconic, yet still elusive, thirty-fifth president. 

In his new book, Do Morals Matter, Joseph S. Nye provides a penetrating analysis of the role of ethics in American foreign policy after 1945 by examining each presidency from Truman to Trump.

Former US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power’s new book The Education of an Idealist (Sept. 2019) traces her distinctly American journey from immigrant to war correspondent to presidential Cabinet official.