Made by America

Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance and Why They Fall
Amy Chua
This is a refreshing and extraordinarily contemporary contribution to the field of empire studies that has found great ferment in the years after 9/11. Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, considers the greatest hyperpowers of history — from ancient Persia, through Akbar’s Mughal India, the British empire and the current American dominance — to find a common factor in their growth. She writes, “For all their enormous differences, every single world hyperpower in history — every society that could even arguably be described as having achieved global hegemony — was, at least by the standards of its time, extraordinarily pluralistic and tolerant during its rise to preeminence. Indeed, in every case tolerance was indispensable to the achievement of hegemony. Just as strikingly, the decline of empire has repeatedly coincided with intolerance, xenophobia, and calls for racial, religious, or ethnic ‘purity’. But here’s the catch: it was also tolerance that sowed the seeds of decline. In virtually every case, tolerance eventually hit a tipping point, triggering conflict, hatred, and violence.”

Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America
Cullen Murphy
In this bestselling book, Murphy, who writes for The Atlantic Monthly and Vanity Fair, goes back to the Roman empire to consider the coming collapse of the American empire. One of the main reasons, according to him, is outsourcing of security by the state: “Rome hired barbarian soldiers to make up for its acute manpower shortages (not a good long-run solution, history would show). America is hiring private military companies for the very same reason… Conan the Barbarian has become Conan the Contractor… One of the chief obligations of any government is simply to dispense justice — to resolve disputes, oversee legal business, mete out punishment. These functions were once held in private hands. After a stint as a public responsibility, they are now migrating back. Lawyers and clients increasingly shun the civil courts — congested, expensive, fickle — and instead buy themselves some private arbitration.”

Statecraft: And How to Restore America’s Standing in the World
Dennis Ross
Ross, a longtime diplomat who worked on the Israel-Palestine peace process for the Clinton administration, concentrates on how America can reverse the erosion of its credibility after the mess in Iraq. He writes: “What is missing from the discussion of American foreign policy today is an understanding of statecraft. What is statecraft? It is the use of the assets or the resources and tools (economic, military, intelligence, media) that a state has to pursue its interests and to affect the behavior of others, whether friendly or hostile. It involves making sound assessments and understanding where and on what issues the state is being challenged and can counter a threat or create a potential opportunity or take advantage of one… Statecraft is more difficult than ever in a world of rapid change, and with fewer national boundaries; more actors (states, and non-state actors such as religious groups and terrorist organizations); more diffuse power (at least economically); the smoldering resentments of have-nots and failed states; continuing ethnic or intercommunal conflicts; and interested parties or groups in one state who are determined to try to affect the political and power realities in another.”

The Israel lobby and US foreign policy
John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
As America considers how to conduct its affairs in a world in which it is the preeminent power, Mearsheimer and Walt have started a controversy that refuses to settle: how dominant is the so-called Israel Lobby in setting the foreign policy agenda for the US? Their indictment of the lobby is countered by another bestseller, Abraham H. Foxman’s The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control.