By directly challenging existing accounts of post-World War II relations among the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, Divided Allies is a significant contribution to transnational and diplomatic history. At its heart, Divided Allies examines why strategic cooperation among these closely allied Western powers in the Asia-Pacific region was limited during the early Cold War. Thomas K. Robb and David James Gill probe the difficulties of security cooperation as the leadership of these four states balanced intramural competition with the need to develop a common strategy against the Soviet Union and the new communist power, the People's Republic of China. Robb and Gill expose contention and disorganization among non-communist allies in the early phase of containment strategy in Asia-Pacific. In particular, the authors note the significance of economic, racial, and cultural elements to planning for regional security and they highlight how these domestic matters resulted in international disorganization. Divided Allies shows that, amidst these contentious relations, the antipodean powers Australia and New Zealand occupied an important role in the region and successfully utilized quadrilateral diplomacy to advance their own national interests, such as the crafting of the 1951 ANZUS collective security treaty. As fractious as were allied relations in the early days of NATO, Robb and Gill demonstrate that the post-World War II Asia-Pacific was as contentious, and that Britain and the commonwealth nations were necessary partners in the development of early global Cold War strategy.

Many Transatlantic security concerns in the coming decades will originate not in Europe, but in the Greater Middle East, which encompasses the area from the Maghreb to the Caspian basin. This volume juxtaposes essays from U.S. and European scholars on selected areas and issues: the Arab-Israeli peace process, the Persian Gulf, Turkey and the Caspian Basin, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and military force projection. Each author considers American and European strategies toward a particular issue and makes suggestions for future policy collaboration between the countries on both sides of the Atlantic.

In this collection, senior scholars explore the transit ion from war to uneasy peace: how and why the war ended as it did, whether a different resolution was possible, and if the ensuing Cold War was inevitable.

A Brookings Institution Press and Russell Sage Foundation publication The extraordinary swings in the scope and content of the policy agenda during the first Clinton administration revealed a fundamental partisan divide over the social role of the federal government. This book argues that the recent conflicts over social policy represent key elements in strategies that parties designed in an attempt to consolidate their hold over the federal government. Long frustrated by divided government, each party exceeded its electoral mandate in hopes of enacting major policy reforms aimed to shift politics in their direction for the foreseeable future. The book traces the overreaching and limited legislative success that characterized the first Clinton administration's approach to three distinctive features of politics and policymaking: the polarization of political elites; the predominance of advertising campaigns and intense interest group politics as political parties have ceased to mobilize ordinary people; and the unprecedented role that budgetary concerns now play in social policymaking. Although neither party managed to enact its major transforming agenda, Congress did pass new policies--most notably welfare reform--that together with a host of other changes in the states and the private sector altered the landscape for social policy. The poor have been the biggest losers as Democrats and Republicans have fought to win the middle class over to their vision of the future. The authors first analyze the institutions and tools of policymaking, including Congress, the political use of public opinion polling, and the politics of the deficit. They then consider policies designed to win over the middle class, including health care policy, employer-provided social benefits, wages and jobs, and crime policy. Last, they address policies targeted at the disadvantaged, including welfare, affirmative action, and urban policy. In addition to the editor, the contributors include John Ferejohn, Lawrence R. Jacobs, Robert Y. Sha