"A bracing assessment of U.S. foreign policy and world disorder over the past two decades, anchored by a major new Pentagon-commissioned essay about changing power dynamics among China, Eurasia, and America--from the renowned geopolitical analyst and bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography and The Coming Anarchy. In the late thirteenth century, Marco Polo began a decades-long trek from Venice to China. The strength of that Silk Road--the trade route between Europe and Asia--was a foundation of Kublai Khan's sprawling empire. Now, in the early twenty-first century, the Chinese regime has proposed a land-and-maritime Silk Road that duplicates exactly the route Marco Polo traveled. In the major lead essay, recently released by the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, Robert D. Kaplan lays out a blueprint of the world's changing power politics that recalls the late thirteenth century. As Europe fractures from changes in culture and migration, Eurasia coheres into a single conflict system. China is constructing a land bridge to Europe. Iran and India are trying to link the oil fields of Central Asia to the Indian Ocean. America's ability to influence the power balance in Eurasia is declining. This is Kaplan's first collection of essays since his classic The Coming Anarchy was published in 2000. Drawing on decades of firsthand experience as a foreign correspondent and military embed for The Atlantic, as well as encounters with preeminent realist thinkers, Kaplan outlines the timeless principles that should shape America's role in a turbulent world: a respect for the limits of Western-style democracy; a delineation between American interests and American values; an awareness of the psychological toll of warfare; a projection of power via a strong navy; and more. From Kaplan's immediate thoughts on President Trump ("On Foreign Policy, Donald Trump Is No Realist," 2016) to a frank examination of what will happen in the event of war with North Korea ("When North Korea Falls," 2006), The Return of Marco Polo's World is a vigorous and honest reckoning with the difficult choices the United States will face in the years ahead. "These essays constitute a truly pathbreaking, brilliant synthesis and analysis of geographic, political, technological, and economic trends with far-reaching consequences. The Return of Marco Polo's World is another work by Robert D. Kaplan that will be regarded as a classic."--General David Petraeus (U.S. Army, Ret.)"--

Why is the Atlantic slowly filling with crude petroleum, threatening a millions-of-years-old ecological balance? Why did traders at prominent banks take high-risk gambles with the money entrusted to them by hundreds of thousands of clients around the world, expanding and leveraging their investments to the point that failure led to a global financial crisis that left millions of people jobless and hundreds of cities economically devastated? Why would the world's most powerful military spend ten years fighting an enemy that presents no direct threat to secure resources for corporations? The culprit in all cases is neoliberal ideology—the belief in the supremacy of "free" markets to drive and govern human affairs. And in the years since the initial publication of Noam Chomsky's Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order, the bitter vines of neoliberalism have only twisted themselves further into the world economy, obliterating the public’s voice in public affairs and substituting the bottom line in place of people’s basic obligation to care for one another as ends in themselves. In Profit Over People, Chomsky reveals the roots of the present crisis, tracing the history of neoliberalism through an incisive analysis of free trade agreements of the 1990s, the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund—and describes the movements of resistance to the increasing interference by the private sector in global affairs. In the years since the initial publication of Profit Over People, the stakes have only risen. Now more than ever, Profit Over People is one of the key texts explaining how the crisis facing us operates—and how, through Chomsky’s analysis of resistance, we may find an escape from the closing net.

The din and deadlock of public life in America - where insults are traded, slogans proclaimed, and self-serving deals are made and unmade - reveal the deep disagreement that pervades our democracy. The disagreement is not only political but also moral, as citizens and their representatives increasingly take extreme and intransigent positions. A better kind of public discussion is needed, and Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson provide an eloquent argument for "deliberative democracy" today. They develop a principled framework for opponents to come together on moral and political issues.

Amitai Etzioni has devoted a lifetime of study to the question of what makes a good society, and his work as the founder of the communitarian movement attests to his influence in moving the public debate away from a preoccupation with rights to a balance between individual rights and social responsibilities. In this landmark new book, he invites us to examine how a communitarian society should operate in practice and what values we must bring to our social interactions if we are to achieve stronger and more enduring community ties. The New Golden Rule takes its title from the familiar adage to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." But when taken to a society-wide level, the Golden Rule's admonition expands, taking the formulation "respect and uphold society's moral order as you would have society respect and uphold your autonomy to live a full life." The problem facing society today is that many of us are wary of morality and order while others are suspicious of liberty - which in their mind is equated with permissiveness. In an analysis that powerfully cuts this Gordian knot, Etzioni lays out how we can and must have both order and autonomy if we are to create an environment in which individuals and neighborhoods can thrive. Recognizing that excessive morality and excessive liberty are each a dire threat to the health of a society, Etzioni shows that we have overreacted in recent years by assuming that there must also be a tradeoff between morality and freedom. That need not be the case, he argues, because when order is largely based on moral commitments rather than on the law, and autonomy is regarded as a place in a social space, these two social virtues can reinforce each other. Using this framework, Etzioni studies the implications for the future of community in America and explores the policy implications for governments, community groups, and families

A book in current affairs by a columnist for The Nation whose first book sold some 30,000 copies. The new book continues the work the author began in Sound and Fury: The Washington Punditocracy and the Collapse of American Politics (Harper-Collins, 1992). Alterman says that elites dominate U.S. foreign policy at every turn, and that the gap between the views of the public and those of the policy-making elites has increased to the extent that the United States has become an empire.Journalist and historian Eric Alterman argues that the vast majority of Americans have virtually no voice in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. With policymakers answerable only to a small coterie of self-appointed experts, corporate lobbyists, self-interested parties, and the elite media, the U.S. foreign policy operates not as the instrument of a democracy, but of a "pseudo-democracy": a political system with the trappings of democratic checks and balances but with little of their content. This failure of American democracy is all the more troubling, Alterman charges, now that the Cold War is over and the era of global capital has replaced it. Americans' stake in so-called foreign policy issues from trade to global warming is greater than ever. Yet the current system serves to mute their voices and ignore their concerns. Experts have long insisted that the public is too ignorant to contribute to the creation of successful foreign policy. But over the course of two hundred years, as Alterman makes clear, the American people have shown an impressive consistency in their ideals and values. The problem for any elite, the author explains, is that Americans often define their interests quite differently than those who would speak in their name. The American public's values are, ironically, much closer to the "liberal republican" philosophy of our founders than to those of our most powerful elites. Alterman concludes with a series of challenging proposals for reforms designed to create a truly democratic U.S. foreign policy.

Should America try to bring democracy to countries that are young or poor or that have cultures very different from our own? This book shows why the sophisticates have been wrong, why idealism offers the most sound basis for US policy. Since its small beginnings in 1776, America has served as the world's great engine of democracy. Our aid and trade, our overseas broadcasts and libraries, our cloak-and-dagger exploits, but above all else, the power of our example have been forces of moral good throughout the world. Foreseeing a Pax Americana in the next century resulting not from war or diplomacy but from the triumph of democratic ideals, the author argues that the effort to spread democracy further should form the core of US foreign policy.

John B. Judis, one of our most insightful political commentators, most rational and careful thinkers, and most engaged witnesses in Washington, has taken on a challenge that even the most concerned American citizens shrink from: forecasting the American political climate at the turn of the century. The Paradox of American Democracy is a penetrating examination of our democracy that illuminates the forces and institutions that once enlivened it and now threaten to undermine it. It is the well-reasoned discussion we need in this era of unrestrained expert opinions and ideologically biased testimony. The disenchantment with our political system can be seen in decreasing voter turnout, political parties co-opted by consultants and large contributors, the corrupting influence of "soft money," and concern for national welfare subverted by lobbying organizations and special-interest groups. Judis revisits particular moments -- the Progressive Era, the New Deal, the 1960s -- to discover what makes democracy the most efficacious and, consequently, most inefficacious. What has worked in the past is a balancing act between groups of elites --- trade commissions, labor relations boards, policy groups -- whose mandates are to act in the national interest and whose actions are governed by a disinterested pursuit of the common good. Judis explains how the displacment of such elites by a new lobbying community in Whashington has given rise to the cynicism that corrodes the current political system. The Paradox of American Democracy goes straight to the heart of every political debate in this country.

Governments have been taking control of activities - 'public' goods, 'public' utilities, welfare and local government services - which would have been better left to the private sector. Most of them were being privately provided before the state crowded out private initiatives. People will increasingly escape to non-state suppliers unless the government withdraws from many of these activities. Government should reduce its share of national income from 40 per cent to 20 per cent. Arthur Seldon, for many years the IEA's editorial director, argues that attempts to correct market 'imperfections' have created over-government. But the 'escapable power of political government' is up against the 'irresistible economic force of the market'. Sir Samuel Brittan contributes a comment in which he says that Seldon's paper reveals 'a deep belief in the superior ability of ordinary citizens to make their own choices and decisions better than governments or experts or committees'.