Matthew Kroenig

The United States of America has been the most powerful country in the world for over seventy years, but recently the U.S. National Security Strategy declared that the return of great power competition with Russia and China is the greatest threat to U.S. national security. Further, many analysts predict that America's autocratic rivals will have at least some success in disrupting-and, in the longer term, possibly even displacing-U.S. global leadership. Brilliant and engagingly written, The Return of Great Power Rivalry argues that this conventional wisdom is wrong. Drawing on an extraordinary range of historical evidence and the works of figures like Herodotus, Machiavelli, and Montesquieu and combining it with cutting-edge social science research, Matthew Kroenig advances the riveting argument that democracies tend to excel in great power rivalries. He contends that democracies actually have unique economic, diplomatic, and military advantages in long-run geopolitical competitions. He considers autocratic advantages as well, but shows that these are more than outweighed by their vulnerabilities.Kroenig then shows these arguments through the seven most important cases of democratic-versus-autocratic rivalries throughout history, from the ancient world to the Cold War. Finally, he analyzes the new era of great power rivalry among the United States, Russia, and China through the lens of the democratic advantage argument. By advancing a "hard-power" argument for democracy, Kroenig demonstrates that despite its many problems, the U.S. is better positioned to maintain a global leadership role than either Russia or China. A vitally important book for anyone concerned about the future of global geopolitics, The Return of Great Power Rivalry provides both an innovative way of thinking about power in international politics and an optimistic assessment of the future of American global leadership.

Democracy Versus Autocracy from the Ancient World to the U. S. and China

The Return of Great Power Rivalry

"What kind of nuclear strategy and posture does the United States need to defend itself and its allies? Contrary to conventional wisdom, this book explains why a robust nuclear posture, above and beyond a mere second-strike capability, contributes to a state's national security goals" (ed.).

Why Strategic Superiority Matters

The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy

Robert D. Blackwill

Meghan L. O'Sullivan

Ray Takeyh

Elliott Abrams

Robert M. Danin

Richard A. Falkenrath

Iran: The Nuclear Challenge maps the objectives, tools, and strategies for dealing with one of the most vexing issues facing the United States and global community today. The book brings together leading experts-CFR's Elliott Abrams, Robert D. Blackwill, Robert M. Danin, Richard A. Falkenrath, Matthew Kroenig, Meghan L. O'Sullivan, and Ray Takeyh-on the issues and contingencies surrounding Iran's nuclear program, including sanctions, negotiations, U.S. and Israeli military options, regime change, and how to deal with a latent or actual Iranian nuclear weapons capability. This volume presents one of the clearest pictures of Iran's nuclear program to date, along with the various policy options available to the United States and others and their potential consequences.

The Nuclear Challenge

Iran

M. Steven Fish

Where is the power? Students of politics have pondered this question and social scientists have scrutinized formal political institutions and the distribution of power among agencies of the government and the state. But we still lack a rich bank of data measuring the power of specific governmental agencies, particularly national legislatures. This book assesses the strength of the national legislature of every country in the world with a population of at least a half-million inhabitants. The Legislative Powers Survey (LPS), is a list of 32 items that gauges the legislature's sway over the executive, its institutional autonomy, its authority in specific areas, and its institutional capacity. Data were generated by means of a vast international survey of experts, extensive study of secondary sources, and painstaking analysis of constitutions and other relevant documents. Individual country chapters provide answers to each of the 32 survey items, supplemented by expert commentary and relevant excerpts from constitutions.

A Global Survey

The Handbook of National Legislatures

Neil Narang

Erik Gartzke

This volume examines the causes and consequences of nuclear postures and nonproliferation policies. The real-world importance of nuclear weapons has led to the production of a voluminous scholarly literature on the causes and consequences of nuclear weapons proliferation. Missing from this literature, however, is a more nuanced analysis that moves beyond a binary treatment of nuclear weapons possession, to an exploration of how different nuclear postures and nonproliferation policies may influence the proliferation of nuclear weapons and subsequent security outcomes. This volume addresses this deficit by focusing on the causes and consequences of nuclear postures and nonproliferation policies. It is the aim of this book to advance the development of a new empirical research agenda that brings systematic research methods to bear on new dimensions of the nuclear weapons phenomenon. Prior to the contributions in this volume, there has been little evidence to suggest that nuclear postures and policies have a meaningful impact on the spread of nuclear weapons or security outcomes. This book brings together a new generation of scholars, advancing innovative theoretical positions, and performing quantitative tests using original data on nuclear postures, nonproliferation policies, and WMD proliferation. Together, the chapters in this volume make novel theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions to the field of nuclear weapons proliferation. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, international relations and security studies.

Causes and Consequences for the Spread of Nuclear Weapons

Nonproliferation Policy and Nuclear Posture

Matthew Kroenig

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