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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.
In this new study of the lead-up to the Great War, David G. Morgan-Owen deals with an aspect of the war seldom discussed for the simple reason that it never actually came to pass: a German invasion of the United Kingdom. Morgan-Owen makes the case that this fear of invasion played a central role in the formation of British strategy.
A richly detailed history of Britain at its imperial zenith, revealing the simmering tensions and explosive rivalries beneath the opulent surface of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. The popular memory of Britain in the years before the Great War is of a powerful, contented, orderly, and thriving country. Britain commanded a vast empire: she bestrode international commerce. Her citizens were living longer, profiting from civil liberties their grandparents only dreamed of and enjoying an expanding range of comforts and pastimes. The mood of pride and self-confidence can be seen in Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance marches, newsreels of George V’s coronation, and London’s great Edwardian palaces. Yet beneath the surface things were very different In The Age of Decadence, Simon Heffer exposes the contradictions of late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain. He explains how, despite the nation’s massive power, a mismanaged war against the Boers in South Africa created profound doubts about her imperial destiny. He shows how attempts to secure vital social reforms prompted the twentieth century’s gravest constitutional crisis—and coincided with the worst industrial unrest in British history. He describes how politicians who conceded the vote to millions more men disregarded women so utterly that female suffragists’ public protest bordered on terrorism. He depicts a ruling class that fell prey to degeneracy and scandal. He analyses a national psyche that embraced the motor-car, the sensationalist press, and the science fiction of H. G. Wells, but also the nostalgia of A. E. Housman.
Admiral John "Black Jack" Geary may have saved the Alliance only to destroy it, in this thrilling and eagerly awaited continuation of the New York Times bestselling series. Geary believed in the Alliance. Even when he uncovered overwhelming evidence that the highest echelons of the government and fleet command were involved in secret programs and prison camps, he believed it was worth saving. And that his duty was to see that justice was served even though some factions feared that revealing the truth would cause the Alliance to crumble. But after narrowly surviving two assassination attempts when he brings evidence of the misdeeds to the capital star system, Geary realizes that some have decided the easiest way to make the Alliance's problems go away is to get rid of him. He finds himself ordered to undertake a perilous new mission outside of the reaches of human-occupied space while the Senate clashes over the evidence. Geary's warships must escort a diplomatic and scientific mission across the dangerous, disintegrating remnants of the Syndicate Worlds empire. But even if he can make it to Midway Star System, the gateway to alien-controlled space, Geary will face former Syndicate officials who have rebelled and regard the Alliance with deep suspicion. And that will be the easy part. . . .
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.
There are worse men than John D Rockefeller,' Arena magazine observed at the turn of the century. 'There is probably not one, however, who in the public mind so typifies the grave and startling menace to social order.' The son of a flamboyant bigamist and pedlar of patent medicine, Rockefeller was by then America's richest man, the mastermind and creator of the country's first and most powerful monopoly: the Standard Oil Company. Reaching into every household across America, Standard Oil controlled 90% of all oil refined in the US, as well as its production, transportation, marketing and distribution. The story of Rockefeller is the story of a pivotal moment in modern history: the shift, after the American Civil War, from small-scale business to economy of scale, and the development of the first modern corporation. In Ron Chernow's magisterial work we see this transition in all of its nuances - accompanied by the rise in labour militancy, the tabloid press and large-scale philanthropy. TITAN is a business epic that, by illuminating the past, teaches us much about where we are today.
Colonial hierarchy and race fueled rapid militarization in the British Empire that shaped the violent course of the twentieth century. This innovative study reveals the colonial backstory of a century that witnessed total war, resulting in new political norms that enthrone 'national security' as the dominating feature of contemporary politics.