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Abstract

American foreign policy is the subject of extensive debate. Many look to domestic factors as the driving forces of bad policies. Benjamin Miller instead seeks to account for changes in US international strategy by developing a theory of grand strategy that captures the key security approaches available to US decision-makers in times of war and peace. Grand Strategy from Truman to Trump makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of competing grand strategies that accounts for objectives and means of security policy. Miller puts forward a model that is widely applicable, based on empirical evidence from post-WWII to today, and shows that external factors—rather than internal concerns—are the most determinative.

Bios

Benjamin Miller is Professor of International Relations at the School of Political Sciences, and the Head of the National Security Center, The University of Haifa. Miller’s current book project, Grand Strategy from Truman to Trump (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, October 2020) focuses on explaining changes in US grand strategy. His other book project focuses on explaining war and peace in the 21st century (under contract with Oxford University Press). Among his other publications: When Opponents Cooperate: Great Power Conflict and Collaboration in World Politics (Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2nd ed., 2002); States, Nations and Great Powers: The Sources of Regional War and Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Regional Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution (Routledge, 2015; co-edited with Carmela Lutmar; the volume is based on Miller’s theory); and International and Regional Security: The Sources of War and Peace – a collection of Miller’s essays over the years and also new research (Routledge, 2017). He received a Ph. D. from the University of California at Berkeley and has held Research Fellowships at Harvard University, MIT, Princeton University (Center for International Studies), McGill University and at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS). He has taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Duke University, the University of Colorado, Boulder, Princeton University and Dartmouth College. He also served for many years as the President of the Israeli Association for International Studies (IAIS).

Jack Snyder is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations in the political science department and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. His books include Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance (co-editor with Alexander Cooley; Cambridge University Press, 2015); Power and Progress: International Politics in Transition (Routledge, 2012); Religion and International Relations Theory (Columbia, 2011); Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War (MIT Press, 2005), co-authored with Edward D. Mansfield; From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (Norton 2000); Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Cornell, 1991); and Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention, co-editor with Barbara Walter (Columbia, 1999).

His articles on such topics as democratization and war, imperial overstretch, war crimes tribunals versus amnesties as strategies for preventing atrocities, and international relations theory after September 11 have appeared in The American Political Science Review, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Organization, International Security, and World Politics.

A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Snyder received a B.A. in government from Harvard University in 1973, a Certificate from Columbia’s Russian Institute in 1978, and a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia in 1981.