Meghan L. O'Sullivan – författare

Policymakers will need all the tools at their disposal to craft an effective response to international terrorism and to protect and promote other U.S. interests in the coming decades. In this quest to shape the right strategies for the challenges ahead, economic instruments will play a central role. O'Sullivan, an expert on the use of positive and negative tools of economic statecraft, argues that in the post-September 11th international climate, the United States will be even more willing to use its economic power to advance its foreign policy goals than it has in the past. This impulse, she argues, can lead to a more effective foreign policy given the many ways in which sanctions and incentives can forcefully advance U.S. interests. But a recalibration of these tools—sanctions in particular—is necessary in order for them to live up to their potential. Critical to such a reassessment is a thorough understanding of how the post-cold war international environment—globalization and American primacy in particular—has influenced how sanctions work. O'Sullivan addresses this issue in a thorough examination of sanctions-dominated policies in place against Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Sudan. Her findings not only highlight the many ways in which sanctions have often been poorly suited to achieve their goals in the past, but also suggest how policymakers might use these tools to better effect in the future. This book will provide a valuable resource for policymakers groping to find the right set of instruments to address both the old and the new challenges facing the United States. It will also serve as an important resource to those interested in U.S. policy toward 'rogue' states and in the status of the sanctions debate between policymakers and scholars.

Buttressed by input from scholars, diplomats, and observers with an intimate knowledge of U.S. foreign policy, Honey and Vinegar examines ""engagement""—strategies that primarily involve the use of positive incentives. The book contends that although engagement has received little scrutiny relative to other, more punitive foreign policy approaches, it has great potential as a tool for modifying the behavior of regimes with which the United States has significant disagreements.Heightened awareness of the costs associated with the use of sanctions or military force has catalyzed a search for policy alternatives. In this quest to find other appropriate policy options for pursuing foreign policy goals, strategies of engagement warrant serious consideration. As argued in these pages, the use of incentives, rather than penalties, may be particularly well suited to the post–Cold War world, where globalization has made the economic isolation of any country difficult to achieve. At the same time, the collapse of the Soviet Union has meant that American carrots may be especially savory to many regimes once reliant on Soviet support. Paradoxically, engagement can be a good choice, even when it fails, in that it can open the door for other policy options. For instance, the two years in which America tried to engage Saddam Hussein before the Gulf War worked to the advantage of the United States later. After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, American efforts to build a military coalition to oppose Iraq were facilitated by the sense in the region that the United States had earlier pursued a conciliatory policy, but to no avail.Contributors to this volume have provided seven cases exploring episodes of engagement: relations between the United States and China; Europe's ""Critical Dialogue"" with Iran; U.S. engagement with Iraq from 1988 to 1990; U.S. efforts to engage North Korea; the combination of U.S. persuasion and coercion toward South Africa in the apartheid era; the les

Hand-Off details the Bush administration’s national security and foreign policy as described at the time in then-classified Transition Memoranda prepared by the National Security Council experts who advised President Bush. Thirty of these Transition Memoranda, newly declassified and here made public for the first time, provide a detailed, comprehensive, and first-hand look at the foreign policy the Bush administration turned over to President Obama. In a postscript to each memorandum, these same experts now in hindsight take a remarkably self- critical look at that Bush foreign policy legacy after more than a dozen years of watching subsequent administrations attempt to deal with the same vexing agenda of threats and opportunities-- China, Russia, Iran, the Middle East, terrorism, proliferation, cyber, pandemics, and climate change—an agenda that still dominates America’s national security and foreign policy.Hand-Off will be an invaluable resource for scholars, students, policy analysts, and general readers seeking to understand afresh the Bush administration’s foreign policy, particularly in view of the records of the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.