"What the United States needs now is a careful pruning of its commitments -- not the indiscriminate abandonment of a strategy that has served it well for decades" (p11).
Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Lead article in a group of six published under the rubric 'Come home, America?' and preceded by an editorial with this title by Gideon Rose on p8.

Category Codes: A1.02

"The time has come to say good riddance to the unipolar moment" (p29). US foreign policy should discard its predilection for military intervention and contrive a new grand strategy "to take on challenges that bombs and bullets cannot fix" (ibid).
Deputy director of research and policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Category Codes: A1.02

Just as US foreign policy during the Cold War, despite its rhetoric, had to acknowedge the reality of the Soviet sphere of influence, so does it need to accommodate China's rise today. This does not mean abdication of global responsibilities, but rather a retreat from the over-militarization of recent years and a pursuit of more risk-conscious diplomacy.
Dillon professor of government at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Category Codes: A1.02, A1.10

US stature is being diminished by disregard for the core interests of potential adversaries and the inclinations of actual allies. "What global aims can the country pursue that its allies can support and that its geopolitical rivals can accept?" (p41).
Associate professors of government at Dartmouth College.

Category Codes: A1.02

"For the purposes of US security, it matters more that leaders in the rest of the world govern well than it does that they govern democratically" (p49).
Stuart professor of international relations at Stanford University. Adapted from his book 'How to make love to a despot: an alternative foreign policy for the twenty-first century' (Liveright, 2020).

Category Codes: A1.02, N1
Keywords: DEMOCRACY PROMOTION, GOOD GOVERNANCE

US debate over boosting or slashing defence spending usually misses the crucial point at issue -- what are the capabilities that are truly needed? Simple measures, like cutting expensive programmes or closing bases, are not the right approach. A focus on security policy is preferable, to define the commitments that the national interest demands and to re-assess the capabilities needed to defend them.
Director of the international security programme at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS).

Category Codes: A2.02

"As president, I will take immediate steps to renew US democracy and alliances, protect the United States' economic future, and once more have America lead the world. This is not a moment for fear. This is the time to tap the strength and audacity that took us to victory in two world wars and brought down the Iron Curtain" (p65).
Former US vice president during the Obama administration and candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Category Codes: A1.02

"Officals in Washington clung too long to their preconceived notions of how the war would play out, and neglected opportunities and options that did not fit their biases. Winning in Afghanistan was always going to be difficult. Avoidable errors made it impossible" (p78).
Former senior advisor to Gen Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during 2015-19, and author of 'War comes to Garmser: thirty years of conflict on the Afghan frontier'.

Category Codes: A2.02, B3
Keywords: ENDURING FREEDOM, INTERVENTION
Geographical Index: AFGHANISTAN

"When it comes to deaths of despair, the United States is hopefully less a bellwether than a warning, and an example for the rest of the world of what to avoid. On the other hand, there are genuine reasons for concern. Already deaths from drug overdose, alcohol and suicide are on the rise in Australia, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Although those countries have better health-care systems, stronger safety nets, and better control of opioids than the United States, their less-educated citizens also face the relentless threats of globalization, outsourcing, and automation that erode working-class ways of life throughout the West and have helped fuel the crisis of deaths of despair in the United States" (pp92-93).
Professors of economics at Princeton University, and authors of 'Deaths of despair and the future of capitalism' (forthcoming).

Category Codes: A3.02, A3.08
Keywords: ALCOHOL, OPIOID, SUICIDE

The supposition that information technology would empower the people has proved forlorn. "Digital autocracies have grown far more durable than their pre-tech predecessors and their less technologically savvy peers. In contrast to what technology optimists envisioned at the dawn of the millennium, autocracies are benefiting from the Internet and other new technologies, not falling victim to them." (p104).
Kendall-Taylor is senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and director of its transatlantic security programme; Frantz is assistant professor of political science at Michigan State University; Wright is professor of political science at Pennsylvania State University.

Category Codes: N1
Keywords: AUTHORITARIANISM, INTERNET

"Rather than threatening to undermine national security, breaking up and regulating Big Tech is necessary to protect the United States' democratic freedoms and preserve its ability to compete with and defend against new great-power rivals" (p116).
Professor at the Vanderbilt Law School and author of 'The great democracy: how to fix our politics, unrig the economy, and unite America' (n.d.).

Category Codes: A4.02
Keywords: DIVESTITURE

President Trump is not the sole cause of the USA's alliance troubles -- a failure to adapt to evolving sub-military threats is also responsible. "Trump's antagonistic instincts are certainly destructive, but the changing nature of conflict is the true hazard. Faced with cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns, economic coercion and more, Washington needs its alliance system to preserve order. If the pacts are to be saved, however, they must be renovated for the world they confront: one in which most threats to security and prosperity pass just below the military threshold" (p128).
Schwarzman senior fellow for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and senior fellow at the Tsai China Center, Yale Law School.

Category Codes: A1.02

There has been a global increase in road traffic accidents, despite a decrease in the developed countries.
Sadik-Khan is a former commissioner for the New York City department of transportation, now a principal with Bloomberg Associates; Solomonow is a former deputy commissioner for external affairs at the NYC DoT, now a manager at Bloomberg Associates.

Category Codes: A4.10

Review of (1) Binyamin Appelbaum 'The economists' hour: false prophets, free markets, and the fracture of society' (Little Brown, 2019) (2) Nicholas Lemann 'Transaction man: the rise of the deal and the decline of the American Dream' (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019). "In their attempt to answer normative questions that the science of economics could not address, economists opened the door to economic ideologues who lacked any commitment to scientific integrity... No economist has a privileged insight into questions of right and wrong, and none deserves a special say in fundamental decisions about how society should operate. Economists who argue otherwise and exert undue influence in public debates about right and wrong should be exposed for what they are: frauds" (p157).
Former chief economist at the World Bank and co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel prize in economics, now professor of economics at New York University. See critique by Feuer cited at 2020:01045 (Jul/Aug 2020 issue).

Category Codes: A4.10, N1

Review of Joshua Yaffa 'Between two fires: truth, ambition, and compromise in Putin's Russia' (Tim Duggan Books, 2020). The book does a fine job is explaining why Russians tolerate and accept the corruption and inefficiency that characterizes Putin's roguish rule, but misses the opportunity to expose the fantasies of Western intellectuals that "one day the rogue will vanish and the 'real' Russia will finally emerge" (p159).
Professor of history at the Catholic University of America and author of 'The abandonment of the West: the history of an idea in American foreign policy' (forthcoming).

Category Codes: A3.09
Keywords: AUTHORITARIANISM
Geographical Index: RUSSIA