An Economist Biggest Book of the Year How commerce determines whether America preserves the peace or goes to war When the Cold War ended, many believed that expanding trade would usher in an era of peace. Yet today the United States finds itself confronting not just Russia in Europe but China in the Indo-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. Shedding new light on how trade both reduces and increases the risks of international crisis, A World Safe for Commerce traces how, since the nation’s founding, the United States has consistently moved from peace to conflict when the commerce needed for national security is under threat. Dale Copeland shows how commerce pushes the United States and its rivals to expand their spheres of influence for access to goods even as they worry about provoking a breakdown in trade relations that could spiral into military conflict. Taking readers from the wars with Britain in 1776 and 1812 to World War II and the Cold War, he describes how America’s leaders have grappled with this inherent tension, and why they have shifted, sometimes dramatically, from peaceful, mutually beneficial policies to coercion and force in order to increase control over vital trade and prevent economic decline. A World Safe for Commerce reveals how trade competition could lead the United States and China into full-scale confrontation. But it also offers hope that both sides can work to improve their overall trade expectations and foster the confidence needed for long-term peace and stability.

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Trump's Foreign Policy, Explained

Trump has been making some foreign policy moves I didn’t entirely expect. He seems determined to get a nuclear deal with Iran. He’s been public about his disagreements with Benjamin Netanyahu. He called Vladimir Putin “crazy.” And he keeps talking about wanting his legacy to be that of a peacemaker. So what, at this point, can we say about Trump’s foreign policy? What is he trying to do, and how well is it working? If he succeeds, what might his legacy be? Emma Ashford is a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a foreign policy think tank, and the author of the forthcoming book “First Among Equals.” She comes from a school of thought that’s more sympathetic to the “America First” agenda than I typically am. But she’s also cleareyed about what is and isn’t working and the ways that Trump is an idiosyncratic foreign policy maker who isn’t always following an “America First” agenda himself.

Books recommended:

• 📕  A World Safe for Commerce: American Foreign Policy from the Revolution to the Rise of China (Princeton Studies in International History and Politics) by Dale C. Copeland
• 📘  A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s by Daniel J. Sargent
• 📗  The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict by Elbridge A. Colby

Emma Ashford June 3, 2025 3 books recommended

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