Description:
The United States, Barry R. Posen argues, has grown incapable of moderating its ambitions in international politics. In contrast to the failures and unexpected problems that have stemmed from America's consistent overreaching, Posen makes an urgent argument for restraint in the future use of U.S. military strength.
Brief description: Barry R. Posen is Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the Security Studies Program at MIT. He is the author of Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (winner of the Furniss Award and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award) and Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks, all from Cornell.
Review Quotes:
In his deeply wise new book Restraint: A New Foundation for US Grand Strategy, MIT professor Barry Posen agrees that powers that have the might will always believe they have the right. That China is climbing closer to the US on the power ladder requires us to understand that it figures it's in the right no matter what anyone says. Yet the US will stay in Asia as long as China thinks it shouldn't. Even Posen, who wants the chore list of the US military substantially downsized (now in the network: some 800 extraterritorial bases, ports and airfields in more than 80 countries), puts it this way: 'Asia is a more difficult case [than other issues for the US].... China may reach a point where it has sufficient power to bid for hegemony.'But, speaking directly to Beijing, the professor notes that China 'does not yet possess much offensive capability; it can punish and harass, but not crush or conquer. Its options are limited.'
--Tom Plate "South China Morning Post"