Matthew Kroenig - Böcker

The United States of America has been the most powerful country in the world for over seventy years. The U.S. National Security Strategy declares, however, 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 succeed in disrupting or displacing U.S. global leadership. Brilliant and engagingly written, The Return of Great Power Rivalry, Matthew Kroenig 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 cutting-edge social science research, Mattew 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.

For decades, the reigning scholarly wisdom about nuclear weapons policy has been that the United States only needs the ability to absorb an enemy nuclear attack and still be able to respond with a devastating counterattack. So long as the US, or any other nation, retains such an assured retaliation capability, no sane leader would intentionally launch a nuclear attack against it, and nuclear deterrence will hold. According to this theory, possessing more weapons than necessary for a second-strike capability is illogical.This argument is reasonable, but, when compared to the empirical record, it raises an important puzzle. Empirically, we see that the United States has always maintained a nuclear posture that is much more robust than a mere second-strike capability. In The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy, Matthew Kroenig challenges the conventional wisdom and explains why a robust nuclear posture, above and beyond a mere second-strike capability, contributes to a state's national security goals. In fact, when a state has a robust nuclear weapons force, such a capability reduces its expected costs in a war, provides it with bargaining leverage, and ultimately enhances nuclear deterrence. This book provides the first coherent theoretical explanation for why military nuclear advantages translate into geopolitical advantages. In so doing, it resolves one of the most-intractable puzzles in international security studies.Buoyed by an innovative thesis and a vast array of historical and quantitative evidence, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy will force scholars to reconsider their basic assumptions about the logic of nuclear deterrence.

For decades, the reigning scholarly wisdom about nuclear weapons policy has been that the United States only needs the ability to absorb an enemy nuclear attack and still be able to respond with a devastating counterattack. This argument is reasonable, but, empirically, we see that the US has always maintained a nuclear posture that is much more robust than a mere second-strike capability. In The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy, Matthew Kroenig challenges the conventional wisdom and explains why a robust nuclear posture, above and beyond a mere second-strike capability, contributes to a state's national security goals. In fact, when a state has a robust nuclear weapons force, such a capability reduces its expected costs in a war, provides it with bargaining leverage, and ultimately enhances nuclear deterrence. Buoyed by an innovative thesis and a vast array of historical and quantitative evidence, this book provides the first coherent theoretical explanation for why military nuclear advantages translate into geopolitical advantages. In so doing, it resolves one of the most-intractable puzzles in international security studies.

This book provides an innovative way of thinking about power in international politics and provides an optimistic assessment about the future of American global leadership.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.

This book offers valuable insights into the causes and consequences of nuclear proliferation.Through the development of new datasets and the application of cutting edge research methods, contributors to this volume significantly advance the frontiers of research on nuclear weapons. Essays in this volume address why states acquire nuclear weapons, why they engage in nuclear cooperation, and also explore the relationship between nuclear weapons possession and a variety of security and diplomatic consequences. In addition to accelerating the development of an empirical research agenda, the chapters combine to form a coherent storyline that shows nuclear technology and capabilities have been under appreciated as a cause of proliferation in recent scholarly literature. For scholars and practitioners alike, there is a strategic logic to nuclear assistance that is essential to understand. Moreover, several of the essays show that the consequences of nuclear proliferation are more complex than is conventionally understood. Nuclear weapons can have both stabilizing and destabilizing effects. Nuclear weapons may simultaneously cause their owners to become more influential, more successful in the wars they choose to fight, and to have less intense conflicts, when these conflicts occur. This book will be of much interest to students of arms control and nuclear proliferation, war and conflict studies, security studies and IR.

This book offers valuable insights into the causes and consequences of nuclear proliferation.Through the development of new datasets and the application of cutting edge research methods, contributors to this volume significantly advance the frontiers of research on nuclear weapons. Essays in this volume address why states acquire nuclear weapons, why they engage in nuclear cooperation, and also explore the relationship between nuclear weapons possession and a variety of security and diplomatic consequences. In addition to accelerating the development of an empirical research agenda, the chapters combine to form a coherent storyline that shows nuclear technology and capabilities have been under appreciated as a cause of proliferation in recent scholarly literature. For scholars and practitioners alike, there is a strategic logic to nuclear assistance that is essential to understand. Moreover, several of the essays show that the consequences of nuclear proliferation are more complex than is conventionally understood. Nuclear weapons can have both stabilizing and destabilizing effects. Nuclear weapons may simultaneously cause their owners to become more influential, more successful in the wars they choose to fight, and to have less intense conflicts, when these conflicts occur. This book will be of much interest to students of arms control and nuclear proliferation, war and conflict studies, security studies and IR.

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 thirty-two items that gauge the legislature's sway over the executive, its institutional autonomy, its authority in specific areas and its institutional capacity. Data were gathered 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 thirty-two survey items, supplemented by expert commentary and relevant excerpts from constitutions.

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 thirty-two items that gauge the legislature's sway over the executive, its institutional autonomy, its authority in specific areas and its institutional capacity. Data were gathered 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 thirty-two survey items, supplemented by expert commentary and relevant excerpts from constitutions.

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.