American Power and Liberal Order : A Conservative Internationalist Grand Strategy

Contrary to popular belief, the United States had a consistent grand strategy across presidential administrations for more than a century. It was a grand strategy based on using American power to create and expand the liberal international system. Has American grand strategy been changed irrevocably by President Trump’s “America First” policies? This book, originally written before the 2016 election, explains the value of the liberal international order as an outer perimeter of American security. Paul D. Miller argues that the world needs US leadership, and that international security is in jeopardy from nuclear-armed autocracies, violent non-state actors, and the failed states who harbor them. In a new preface and epilogue to this first paperback edition, Miller rebuts the impulses of the Trump administration and others to pull back. The core of the book promotes a conservative internationalist American grand strategy based on maintaining a favorable balance of power among great powers, defending the homeland from attack, promoting democracy and good governance abroad, and punishing rogue actors that threaten allies or the stability of the international system. This book is a must-read for scholars and students of international affairs and for anyone who is dissatisfied with the current direction of US foreign policy.