Books by Board Members | Streit Council

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Brendan Simms, Hitler: Only the World Was Enough, Penguin Books, 2019.

Adolf Hitler's main strategic preoccupation was not, as widely believed, the threat of Bolshevism and the Soviet Union, but that of international capitalism and Anglo-America. These two fears drove both his anti-Semitism and his determination to secure the “living space” necessary to survive in a world dominated by the British Empire and the United States. Hitler's aim was to create a similarly global future for Germany – a country seemingly doomed otherwise not just to irrelevance, but to extinction. His principal concern during the resulting cataclysm was not just what he saw as the clash between German and Jews, or between German and Slav, but above all that between Germans and what he called “Anglo-Saxons.”

John Davenport, A League of Democracies: Cosmopolitanism, Consolidation Arguments, and Global Public Goods, Routledge, 2018.

The end of the Cold War has not brought the peace, freedom from atrocities, and decline of tyranny for which we hoped. It is also clearer now that problems like economic risks, tax havens, and environmental degradation arising with global markets are far outstripping the governance capacities of our 20th century system of distinct nation-states, even when they try to work together through intergovernmental agreements and organized bureaucracies of specialists. This work defends a cosmopolitan approach to global justice by arguing for new ways to combine the strengths of democratic nations in order to prevent mass atrocities and to secure other global public goods.

Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman, Donald Trump: The Making of a World View, Endeavour Press, 2017.

On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump won the American presidential election, to the joy of some and the shock of many across the globe. Now that Trump is Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful country on Earth, Americans and non-Americans alike have been left wondering what that means for the world. It has been widely claimed that Trump's foreign policy views are impulsive, inconsistent and that they were improvised on the campaign trail. Drawing on interviews from as far back as 1980, historians Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman show that this assumption is dangerously false in this new book.

Stanley R. Sloan, Defense of the West: NATO, the European Union and the Transatlantic Bargain, Manchester University Press, 2016.

Defense of the West delivers a clear and balanced interpretive history of transatlantic security relations from the late 1940s until 2015. The author writes in the authoritative and highly readable style that has made his work required reading for policy makers as well as academic experts on and students of international relations on both sides of the Atlantic. The lively text is also highly accessible for the citizen who wants to develop their understanding of how the United States and Europe came to their current, complex security relationship. The analysis suggests that the democratic principles and shared interests on which NATO and the European Union are based serve as the foundation for "the West," a term that originated in the Cold War conflict between western democracies and the Soviet Union, but which continues to have meaning today in light of new challenges to Western security.

Richard Rosecrance, The Resurgence of the West: How a Transatlantic Union Can Prevent War and Restore the United States and Europe, Yale University Press, 2013.

Richard Rosecrance calls for the United States to join forces with the European Union and create a transatlantic economic union. A U.S.-Europe community would unblock arteries of trade and investment, rejuvenate the West, and enable Western countries to deal with East Asian challenges from a position of unity and economic strength. Through this great merger the author offers a positive vision of the future in which members of a tightly knit Western alliance regain economic health and attract Eastern nations to join a new and worldwide international order.

Kenneth Weisbrode, Old Diplomacy Revisited: A Study in the Modern History of Diplomatic Transformers, Palgrave Pivot, 2013.

In historical terms, the Old Diplomacy is not really that old—many of its concepts and methods date to the mid-nineteenth century—while the practices of New Diplomacy emerged only a couple of generations later. Moreover, "Diplomacy 2.0" and other variants of the post-Cold War era do not depart significantly from their twentieth-century predecessor: their forms, particularly in technology, have changed, but their substance has not. In this succinct overview, historian Kenneth Weisbrode reminds us that to understand diplomatic transformations and their relevance to international affairs is to see diplomacy as an entrepreneurial art—and that, like most arts, it is adapted and re-adapted with reference to earlier forms. Diplomatic practice is always changing, and always continuous.

Paul Findley, Speaking Out: A Congressman's Lifelong Fight Against Bigotry, Famine, and War, Chicago Review Press, 2011.

In his twenty-two years as an Illinois congressman and in the years since he left office, Paul Findley has fought to eradicate famine, end wars, and eliminate bigotry in U.S. foreign policy. This sweeping political memoir opens with Findley’s early days in rural Pittsfield, Illinois, and chronicles his service during six administrations in Washington. His many accomplishments in Congress include authoring the Famine Prevention Act, coauthoring the 1973 War Powers Resolution, leading agricultural trade missions to the Soviet Union and China, and strongly opposing the Vietnam War. This autobiography is also a no-holds-barred critique of Israel’s lobby and its toll on the national interests of the United States. Few politicians are so openly critical of their government, and Findley’s opinions on what he believes to be disastrous foreign policy provide a unique behind-the-scenes perspective on the shaping of these policies in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Federiga Bindi, The Foreign Policy of the European Union: Assessing Europe’s Role in the World, Brookings Institution, 2010.

In a relatively short time, the European Union has become one of the world's most powerful and important bodies. Its plays a critical role in many aspects of international affairs, including economics, culture, the environment, and international security and foreign affairs. This significant book examines European foreign policy in all its complex dimensions. Is there really such thing as European Union Foreign Policy? If so, what is it? What are its goals and priorities, and how effective is it? How do outsiders perceive EU foreign policy, and what are the ramifications of those views? These are just some of the questions addressed in Federiga Bindi’s book. In order to draw the most comprehensive picture possible of EU foreign policy, Bindi and her contributors dissect both horizontal and vertical foreign policy issues. Vertical concerns focus on particular geographic regions, such as the EU's policies toward Africa and Asia and its relations with the United States. Horizontal issues explore wider crosscutting themes that help explain the EU's foreign policy choices and operations, such as decision-making processes, European self-identity, and European core priorities such as peace, democracy, and human rights.

Stanley R. Sloan, Permanent Alliance? NATO and the Transatlantic Bargain from Truman to Obama, Continuum, July 2010

In Permanent Alliance? Stanley R. Sloan discusses the global trends that are changing the environment for transatlantic relations, such as European integration, global security, emerging powers, and the role of the United States as a world leader. A completely updated and refocused version of Sloan’s previous work, NATO, the European Union, and the Atlantic Community, the book now examines whether NATO has become the “permanent alliance” about which President George Washington warned or if it is nearing the end of its utility. Permanent Alliance? links historical development with contemporary issues and relationships, discussing such topics as the permanence of the alliance, NATO missions, nuclear strategy and missile defense, relationship with the EU, the crisis in the alliance during the George W. Bush administration, and the challenges faced by the Obama administration. A significant contribution to the literature, the book will be a key text for anyone studying and researching transatlantic security relations and international relations.

Kenneth Weisbrode, The Atlantic Century: Four Generations of Extraordinary Diplomats who Forged America's Vital Alliance with Europe, Da Capo Press, November 2009.

The Atlantic Century is the first major historical study to re-examine the American-European partnership with an emphasis on the personalities behind the policy. Our strong system of European alliances built during the last century did not happen serendipitously. It was carefully constructed and cemented by a network of diplomats and politicians, who imagined, built, and sustained a new international system. In their vision, America and Europe were part of a single cooperative transatlantic community—not rivals or one another’s periodic savior, as they had been during two world wars. Historian Kenneth Weisbrode reveals—for the first time, warts and all—the insider’s story of such well-known figures as Dean Acheson, W. Averell Harriman, and Henry Kissinger. It is the story of how and why the State Department’s Bureau of European Affairs (EUR)—the “mother bureau” as it was called, the nerve center of the Atlanticists—rose to become the U.S. government’s preeminent foreign policy office.

John Richardson, A New Vision for America: Toward Human Solidarity through Global Democracy, Ruder Finn Press, June 2006.

In a lively, personal style with self-deprecating humor, Richardson traces the evolution of his worldview from his elite prep school days and service as a World War II paratrooper through the years and into his eighties. After starting as a lawyer (Sullivan & Cromwell) and investment banker (Paine Webber), he moved on to public service. His book recounts his eight years as CEO of Radio Free Europe, touching on its ties to the CIA, and his later service as assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs, CEO of Youth for Understanding, chair of the National Endowment for Democracy, and board member of numerous educational and service organizations. In between, other interests and sometimes self-assumed tasks focused on Poland and on refugees, initially sparked by his intense and energetic response to the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Throughout, his goal remained that of moving toward a better world, led by the example of the United States as an inevitably flawed but vibrant democracy.

James G. McGann, Erik C. Johnson, Comparative Think Tanks, Politics and Public Policy, Edward Elgar Pub, 2006.

Examining the role of think tanks in the policy formulation process, this groundbreaking study provides the first systematically comparative and methodologically rigorous map of such organizations and the social, political, legal and economic conditions that shape their work. Once found only in advanced industrial democracies, think tanks now provide information and advice for policymakers in countries as diverse as India, Lebanon, Chile, Bulgaria, Germany, Senegal and Thailand. Using case studies of 20 countries across five regions of the world (Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, Europe and Asia), James McGann and Erik Johnson explore how the environments in which think tanks operate serve to expand or constrict their autonomy and influence. They also suggest ways donors, policymakers and international organizations can ensure the viability and sustainability of these important organizations.

Ettore Greco, Italy's European Vocation: The Foreign Policy of the New Prodi Government, US-Europe Analysis Series, The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, August 2006.

No one was surprised when Italy's new resident of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, made his first major public appearance on May 21 on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the death of Altiero Spinelli. Spinelli was an ardent theoretician and tireless promoter of European integration and one of the most venerated icons of European federalists. Italy's new center-left coalition, which elected Mr. Napolitano on May 10, has made the re-launch of Italy's role within the EU the centerpiece of its foreign policy program. This European vocation is reflected in the composition of the new cabinet led by Romano Prodi which took office on May 17. It includes several prominent figures on the European stage, including: Minister of Finance Tommaso Padoa Schioppa, a former member of the executive board of the European central bank; Minister of the Interior, Giuliano Amato, who was one of the architects of the EU's draft constitutional treaty; and the Minister for European Affairs, Emma Bonino, a former European commissioner. With the support of this team, Prodi, who himself was president of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004, hopes to bring the country back onto the center stage of European politics. In Prodi's view, his predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi, departed from a well-established pro-Europe foreign policy tradition that dates back to Alcide de Gasperi, Italy's eight-time prime minister in the post-Second War World period. Berlusconi never considered the EU a priority. He preferred to concentrate on consolidating his government's relationship with the Bush administration as well as on cultivating his personal ties with top world leaders. His center-right government took a lukewarm, and sometimes openly hostile, stance on several proposals to deepen European integration.

James Robert Huntley, An Architect of Democracy: Building a Mosaic of Peace, New Academia Publishing, May 2006.

This book chronicles a World War II veteran’s lifelong search for peace through strengthening democracies and the international institutions that unite them. James Huntley began a promising social service career in Washington State, but the Korean War convinced him to begin a quest for world peace that he continues to this day. As a young diplomat, he helped the Germans take their place among the democratic nations and later worked on the foundations of NATO and the European Union. He conceived of the private multinational Atlantic Institute, reluctantly leaving the diplomatic service to help world leaders bring it about, and later headed the Atlantic Council of the United States. He has devoted his career to study and networking in foundations, research organizations, and nonprofit groups that prod democracies to unite for peace.

Stanley R. Sloan, NATO, The European Union, and the Atlantic Community: The Transatlantic Bargain Challenged, Rowman and Littlefield, August 2005.

Now fully revised and updated, this accessible and astute text provides a full interpretive history of the transatlantic alliance and explores critical developments in U.S.European relations. The first edition highlighted the dangers that U.S. foreign-policy unilateralism could pose for the relationship, a trend that has only intensified over the past few years. Stanley R. Sloan documents and analyzes the substantial ongoing record of U.S. unilateralism and its consequences as the transatlantic and intra-European debate over Iraq produced deep splits among the allies and seriously eroded European trust in U.S. leadership. Ironically, at the same time, the United States and Europe have made historic choices concerning NATO's future, not only continuing the process of enlarging alliance membership but also expanding the concept of NATO's missions to include peacekeeping and enforcement without geographic limitation. Sloan also enlarges on his ideas for a new Euro-Atlantic pact, a call that has now been echoing in both European and American quarters. Assessing both the good and bad news for the alliance, this book remains a central text for college and university courses on U.S.-European relations and transatlantic security issues and thought-provoking reading for all citizens concerned about future US foreign policy and Europe's role in it.

Richard T. Arndt, The First Resort of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century, Potomac Books, 2005.

During the last five decades, US cultural diplomacy programs have withered because of politics and accidents of history that have subordinated cultural diplomacy to public relations campaigning, now called "public diplomacy." With anti-Americanism on the rise worldwide, cultural diplomacy should become an immediate priority, but politicians continue to ignore this relatively inexpensive, age-old tool for promoting understanding among nations. Richard Arndt probes the history of American cultural diplomacy to demonstrate its valuable past contributions and to make a plea for reviving it for the future.

The First Resort of Kings examines the first eight decades of formal US cultural diplomacy, from its tentative beginnings in World War I through the 1990s. Arndt also compares America 's efforts with those of other nations and enriches his narrative by detailing the professional experiences of the men and women who have represented American democracy, education, intellect, art, and literature to the rest of the world. His work shows that this dialogue of American culture and education with the rest of the world is neither a frill nor a domestic political concern but is the deepest cornerstone of a positive, forward-looking US foreign policy. Arndt argues that, particularly in the wake of the Iraq War, America must revive its cultural diplomacy programs as a long-term investment in international goodwill and understanding.

Tiziana Stella, Origins of Atlanticism: The Atlantic Idea and its Implications for Russia-NATO Relations, Saint-Petersburg State University Press, 2004.

An enlargement of the Atlantic system toward the East, to encompass all of Europe understood as inclusive of Russia, despite seeming like a completely new issue after 1989, had in fact been anticipated long before. It had played an integral part in the creation and development of the Atlantic institutions. The comprehension of these deeper roots can widen our conception of the nature of Atlanticism and provide broader foundations for dealing with current problems.

In the existing public perception in the West, the term Atlanticism is either completely unknown or else is reduced to NATO. In the East, a bit paradoxically, the public seems readier to recognize what one refers to by Atlanticism, only to find that there too the public tends to equate it with NATO. However, its enemies in the East, such as Alexander Dugin, tend to have a much deeper, if somewhat skewed, awareness of the breadth of this phenomenon than do its friends.

Because the term Atlanticism tends to evoke immediately NATO, and because NATO is generally associated with the idea of the Cold War, Atlanticism has been confined often in a too narrow contextualization. This in turn has affected the range of future scenarios envisioned for NATO, both in its internal development and in its external relations, or in the dialectic growth of the two through enlargement.

Donald Philips Dennis, Foreign Policy in a Democracy: The Role of the Foreign Policy Association, New York FPA, 2003.

This history of the Foreign Policy Association was written to provide a narrative of its origins and early years and of its development throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. It is a compelling story of extraordinary individuals devoted to an exceptional cause. From its inception in 1918 as the "Committee on Nothing at All" with its goal of bringing about United States Participation in the League of Nations , the Association evolved to encompass a constituency of thousands of individuals across the nation.

James Robert Huntley, Pax Democratica: A Strategy for the 21st Century, Palgrave Macmillan, April 2001.

James Huntley argues that an international regime in which all democracies, great and small, combine to set the tone and develop the framework for lasting peace, global prosperity, and the protection of civil and political rights, is needed. After a turbulent century characterized by vast bloodshed, but also by the spread of democratic government and humane values, the great democracies--led by Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States--need to form an Intercontinental Community of Democracies--a Pax Democratica. An intercontinental, integrated community of democracies, based on experiments such as EU and NATO, could serve as a political and economic backbone for the world, and as a lasting alternative to imperial rule or multipolar Realpolitick. This book explains how this community can be brought about, and why it should be done.

Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Virtual State: Wealth and Power in the Coming Century, Basic Books, 1999.

A new type of nation is emerging—the virtual state. The influential nations of the coming century will look less like traditional Great Powers and more like Hong Kong or Singapore: small, with little military power, agriculture or manufacturing, but powerful in using managerial, financial and creative skills to control assets elsewhere. The developed world will be divided into “head” nations, which create products and mange services, and “body” nations, which manufacture goods. In this world, military conquest will make little sense: armies can only seize real estate, and real estate does not confer knowledge or capital. The Rise of the Virtual State explains what international relations and commerce will look like the world of the next century. Renowned international relations scholar Richard Rosecrance defines how this world will emerge, how the United States will figure in this new system of international politics and economics and who are the likely winners and losers on the coming international scene.

Steve H. Hanke, Alan A. Walters, Capital Markets and Development, ICS Press, 1991.

For decades economists have assumed that poor countries can't support capital markets. This book puts the lie to that. Its wide-ranging exploration of twentieth-century financial institutions reveals that poor countries can't develop without capital markets. From currency management in Russia in 1918 to financial liberalization in modern-day New Zealand and Chile. The case studies of this wide-ranging exploration of financial institutions show that bridging the abyss between barter and a fully convertible currency is no less essential to economic prosperity today than it was eighty years ago. Sound and stable currencies have been easily eroded by government interventions; repressed, fragmented financial systems have been their corollary. Undoing this damage and reestablishing the strength of a currency is far more difficult, as the recent experiences of Argentina and Chile can attest.

As explained in this volume, capital markets were not always critical to development. Through the nineteenth century, when the United States and other developed countries were getting that way, central banks were the exception and appreciating currencies were the rule. Today, central banks are the rule and appreciating currencies are nonexistent. So it is that capital market institutions and instruments that did not exist before the twentieth century are now required for development. Hence this book's attention to the development of securities markets and the promise of equity finance in poor countries: in a study of the Dhaka Stock Exchange, as well as in a comprehensive "how to" and "how not to" guide for establishing new equity markets.

Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World, Basic Books, 1986.

This book blends historical analysis and theory to show how trade has replaced territorial expansion and military might as the key to international wealth and power. Distinguished international relations scholar Richard Rosecrance argues that there is a strong trend toward placing an emphasis on the benefits of trade and cooperation, as well as the growing importance of economic power over military might for achieving national interests. This analysis also identifies trends which offer opportunities for creating a more peaceful international system.