Agonies of Empire is the product of years of thinking about the United States. Michael Cox reflects on the recent past—the decades of what we still refer to as the “post–Cold War”—to understand the difficulties and limits of US global power.
Tag: George W. Bush
H-Diplo|RJISSF Review Essay 87: Zeiler on Hadley, et al., Hand-Off
Around the middle of 2014, President Barack Obama reportedly noted to his traveling press corps on Air Force One that a hallmark of his foreign policy was “don’t do stupid sh*t.”[1] That realism contrasted to the previous administration of George W. Bush, an idealist who thought he could remake the world with American power. The…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-6 on Leffler, Confronting Saddam Hussein
Not many historians associated with SHAFR would venture a study of President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq based largely on interviews with the engineers of that ultimately disastrous enterprise. Fewer still and, really, only one such foreign relations historian could emerge from this challenge with an untarnished reputation. While not totally convincing the H-Diplo…