George W. Bush

In the almost-19 years since they dispatched their military to Afghanistan, US policymakers and the people they represent have learned, relearned, and unlearned several lessons.

Much of Carter Malkesian’s narrative about the Afghan war is spot-on, but he gets several key events wrong.

In the wake of the Washington Post’s big document dump of secret government and military communications about the war in Afghanistan, a fresh wave of calls for pulling out of Afghanistan is sounding across the media.

What is the role of moral values in the conduct of foreign relations? Although many answers have been given, three…

They came from Egypt and Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Some were trained in bomb-making, some in…

When it comes to democracy promotion, it seems the Obama-Trump era is the aberration.

We need a return to a sober Christian Realism that appreciates our fallenness, the fallenness of the world, and our limits in shaping world events.

In fact, this finger-in-the-dam strategy is the best available option given America’s de facto preference to enjoy relative freedom from jihadist violence without the expense of solving the root problems from which jihadism springs. This style of frontier warfare is the price America pays for regional order on the cheap.

All in all, American Power and Liberal Order is an excellent book providing a spirited defense of what has largely been a successful American grand strategy for the past 70 years. The big question remains whether the same framework could work for the next 70 years, or whether new external challenges and internal political changes call for a different approach.