The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict
by Elbridge A. Colby
ISBN 13: 978-0300268027
Book description

Why and how America’s defense strategy must change in light of China’s power and ambition—A Wall Street Journal best book of 2021 “This is a realist’s book, laser-focused on China’s bid for mastery in Asia as the 21st century’s most important threat.”—Ross Douthat, New York Times “Colby’s well-crafted and insightful Strategy of Denial provides a superb and, one suspects, essential departure point for an urgent and much-needed debate over U.S. defense strategy.”—Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., Foreign Affairs Elbridge A. Colby was the lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the most significant revision of U.S. defense strategy in a generation. Here he lays out how America’s defense must change to address China’s growing power and ambition. Based firmly on the realist tradition but deeply engaged in current policy, this book offers a clear framework for what America’s goals in confronting China must be, how its military strategy must change, and how it must prioritize these goals over its lesser interests. The most informed and in-depth reappraisal of America’s defense strategy in decades, this book outlines a rigorous but practical approach, showing how the United States can prepare to win a war with China that we cannot afford to lose—precisely in order to deter that war from happening.


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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.
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