Written over a thirty-year period, the essays included in this volume develop one central theme: the completion of American isolationism in the formative years of the nation. Isolationism, in Kaplan's view, is not to be taken as economic or cultural independence but as abstention from political or military obligations to Europe, from alliances or from purposeful entanglement in the European balance of power. This study focuses on the assertion that Thomas Jefferson was central to the making of American foreign policy from the Revolution to 1803. But Kaplan's view is not always supportive of Jefferson. In fact, Kaplan believes the collection has a "Hamiltonian flavor," although he does not necessarily consider himself a Hamiltonian either. Kaplan is critical of Jefferson and points clearly to the error of his belief that France could be a counterweight to British power. In the short run Hamilton appears more realistic, but in the long run Jefferson's vision for the country proved wiser and sounder.

Throughout what publisher Henry Luce dubbed the "American century," the United States has wrestled with two central questions. Should it pursue its security unilaterally or in cooperation with others? If the latter, how can its interests be best protected against opportunism by untrustworthy partners? In a major attempt to explain security relations from an institutionalist approach, David A. Lake shows how the answers to these questions have differed after World War I, during the Cold War, and today. In the debate over whether to join the League of Nations, the United States reaffirmed its historic policy of unilateralism. After World War II, however, it broke decisively with tradition and embraced a new policy of cooperation with partners in Europe and Asia. Today, the United States is pursuing a new strategy of cooperation, forming ad hoc coalitions and evincing an unprecedented willingness to shape but then work within the prevailing international consensus on the appropriate goals and means of foreign policy. In interpreting these three defining moments of American foreign policy, Lake draws on theories of relational contracting and poses a general theory of security relationships. He arrays the variety of possible security relationships on a continuum from anarchy to hierarchy, and explains actual relations as a function of three key variables: the benefits from pooling security resources and efforts with others, the expected costs of opportunistic behavior by partners, and governance costs. Lake systematically applies this theory to each of the "defining moments" of twentieth-century American foreign policy and develops its broader implications for the study of international relations.

A challenge to long-held assumptions about the costs and benefits of America’s allies. Since the Revolutionary War, the United States has entered into dozens of alliances with international powers to protect its assets and advance its security interests. America’s Entangling Alliances offers a corrective to long-held assumptions about US foreign policy and is relevant to current public and academic debates about the costs and benefits of America’s allies. Author Jason W. Davidson examines these alliances to shed light on their nature and what they reveal about the evolution of American power. He challenges the belief that the nation resists international alliances, showing that this has been true in practice only when using a narrow definition of alliance. While there have been more alliances since World War II than before it, US presidents and Congress have viewed it in the country’s best interest to enter into a variety of security arrangements over virtually the entire course of the country’s history. By documenting thirty-four alliances—categorized as defense pacts, military coalitions, or security partnerships—Davidson finds that the US demand for allies is best explained by looking at variance in its relative power and the threats it has faced.

The first book to tell the full story of American isolationism, from the founding era through the Trump presidency. In his Farewell Address of 1796, President George Washington admonished the young nation "to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." Isolationism thereafter became one of the most influential political trends in American history. From the founding era until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States shunned strategic commitments abroad, making only brief detours during the Spanish-American War and World War I. Amid World War II and the Cold War, Americans abandoned isolationism; they tried to run the world rather than run away from it. But isolationism is making a comeback as Americans tire of foreign entanglement. In this definitive and magisterial analysis-the first book to tell the fascinating story of isolationism across the arc of American history-Charles Kupchan explores the enduring connection between the isolationist impulse and the American experience. He also refurbishes isolationism's reputation, arguing that it constituted dangerous delusion during the 1930s, but afforded the nation clear strategic advantages during its ascent. Kupchan traces isolationism's staying power to the ideology of American exceptionalism. Strategic detachment from the outside world was to protect the nation's unique experiment in liberty, which America would then share with others through the power of example. Since 1941, the United States has taken a much more interventionist approach to changing the world. But it has overreached, prompting Americans to rediscover the allure of nonentanglement and an America First foreign policy. The United States is hardly destined to return to isolationism, yet a strategic pullback is inevitable. Americans now need to find the middle ground between doing too much and doing too little.

Have you ever thought about what a free world would look like? What a world would look like in which men were free to trade with whomever they wanted and wherever they wanted? What a world would look like in which men could travel and live wherever they found it most advantageous and pleasurable? A world in which there were neither immigration restrictions nor emigration barriers? Almost none of us presently alive have ever known such a world, but it did exist once, and not that long ago, in America. Unfortunately, 21st-century Americans have abandoned the principles of freedom of their ancestors. They have accepted government as the sovereign power over their lives. This book presents the uncompromising moral and philosophical case for the right of individuals to trade and move freely wherever they desire without government restriction.

Widely celebrated in its own time, Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural address has been hailed as the Sermon on the Mount of good government. Curiously, this masterpiece--the full text of which is reproduced in this volume--has never received sustained analysis. Here, Browne describes its origins, composition, meaning, and delivery, offering a model of analysis for rhetorical scholars.

Rahul Manchanda spent his entire life within the belly of the proverbial beast—that is, within the secret power structure of the United States and the international community, where he was culled and prepped for bigger and better things within a leadership role in the Deep State/New World Order. Along the way, he grew both alarmed and shocked at just how myopic and short-sighted these Deep State/New World Order types really were and how either inadvertently or purposefully the results of their clandestine and secretive plans of global “divide and conquer” often led to misery, genocide, death, racism, destruction of the family unit, wasted money, constant warfare, terrorism, and a frustration of the ideals of America as enshrined by the Founding Fathers within the U.S. Constitution. A philosophical and ideological founder of the Anonymous movement, with one of his own Associate Attorneys going on to start/lead the Occupy Wall Street/99% Movement at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, he published vast amounts of political/deep state exposing articles anonymously until he was targeted by federal/state/local government mixed in conjunction with organized crime/foreign/domestic espionage and Edward Snowden revealed that there was no anonymity on the internet, whereupon Mr. Manchanda started writing and publishing his essays using his real name and identity. The articles contained in this book are some of those articles written under his real name. His book takes us on a journey to expose some of these conspiracies and plots within the U.S. Judicial Court and Legal System, foreign and domestic policy, non-governmental organizations, finance and economics, international relations, history, and religion while sometimes analyzing many of the leading culprits in their ruthless and bloodthirsty quests for a Deep State New World Order, and tries to bring attention to the plots and plans, cautioning the governed about their governors. History only repeats itself if the people are uninformed, and his book tries to ensure that we as the human race do not fall into the existential pitfalls of ignorance but rather move into a future of enlightenment and learning from past historical mistakes in order to strengthen and preserve our freedoms into eternity.