Aaron L. Friedberg – författare

How do statesmen become aware of unfavorable shifts in relative power, and how do they seek to respond to them? These are puzzles of considerable importance to theorists of international relations. As national decline has become an increasingly prominent theme in American political debate, these questions have also taken on an immediate, pressing significance. The Weary Titan is a penetrating study of a similar controversy in Britain at the turn of the twentieth century. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, Aaron Friedberg explains how England''s rulers failed to understand and respond to the initial evidence of erosion in their country''s industrial, financial, naval, and military power. The British example suggests that statesmen may be slow to recognize shifts in international position, in part because they rely heavily on simple but often distorting indicators of relative capabilities. In a new afterword, Friedberg examines current debates about whether America is in decline, arguing that American power will remain robust for some time to come.

War--or the threat of war--usually strengthens states as governments tax, draft soldiers, exert control over industrial production, and dampen internal dissent in order to build military might. The United States, however, was founded on the suspicion of state power, a suspicion that continued to gird its institutional architecture and inform the sentiments of many of its politicians and citizens through the twentieth century. In this comprehensive rethinking of postwar political history, Aaron Friedberg convincingly argues that such anti-statist inclinations prevented Cold War anxieties from transforming the United States into the garrison state it might have become in their absence. Drawing on an array of primary and secondary sources, including newly available archival materials, Friedberg concludes that the "weakness" of the American state served as a profound source of national strength that allowed the United States to outperform and outlast its supremely centralized and statist rival: the Soviet Union. Friedberg''s analysis of the U. S. government''s approach to taxation, conscription, industrial planning, scientific research and development, and armaments manufacturing reveals that the American state did expand during the early Cold War period. But domestic constraints on its expansion--including those stemming from mean self-interest as well as those guided by a principled belief in the virtues of limiting federal power--protected economic vitality, technological superiority, and public support for Cold War activities. The strategic synthesis that emerged by the early 1960s was functional as well as stable, enabling the United States to deter, contain, and ultimately outlive the Soviet Union precisely because the American state did not limit unduly the political, personal, and economic freedom of its citizens. Political scientists, historians, and general readers interested in Cold War history will value this thoroughly researched volume. Friedberg''s insightful scholarship will also inspire future policy by contributing to our understanding of how liberal democracy''s inherent qualities nurture its survival and spread.

The West’s strategy of engagement with China has failed. More than three decades of trade and investment with the advanced democracies have left that country far richer and stronger than it would otherwise have been.  But growth and development have not caused China’s rulers to relax their grip on political power, abandon their mercantilist economic policies, or accept the rules and norms of the existing international system.  To the contrary: China today is more repressive at home, more aggressive abroad, and more obviously intent on establishing itself as the world’s preponderant power than at any time since the death of Chairman Mao.  What went wrong?

Put simply, the democracies underestimated the resilience, resourcefulness, and ruthlessness of the Chinese Communist Party.  For far too long, the United States and its allies failed to take seriously the Party’s unwavering determination to crush opposition, build national power, and fulfill its ideological and geopolitical ambitions.  In this timely and powerfully argued study, Aaron Friedberg identifies the assumptions underpinning engagement, describes the counterstrategy that China’s Communist Party rulers devised in order to exploit the West’s openness while defeating its plans, and explains what the democracies must do now if they wish to preserve their prosperity, protect their security, and defend their common values.Also available as an audiobook.