In 2020, America will elect a president, deciding not just the trajectory of its national politics but the future of American foreign policy. Will the Alt-Right, nationalist, and mercantilist approaches to international trade that characterized Donald Trump’s rise to power maintain its hold? Or will the “national security establishment” ultimately prevail, continuing the illusion of the indispensable nation? In A Democratic Foreign Policy, renowned IR scholar Ned Lebow draws upon decades of research and government experience to reject both options and set forth an alternative vision of American foreign policy, one based on a tragic understanding of life and politics. Lebow challenges the assumptions of establishment voices on both sides of the aisle, and offers a probing rethinking of America’s role in the world to disrupt the inertia of a bipartisan ideology that has dominated foreign policymaking since the days of Truman. Emphasizing the importance of America’s core values for shaping domestic and foreign policies, A Democratic Foreign Policy provides a vision and blueprint for a new congress and president to reorient America’s relationship with the world

US foreign policy
National Interest
national security
hegemony
military spending
tragedy
deterrence
authoritarianism
maximalism
Rule of Law
China
nationalism
democracy
failed state
Trump administration
realism
liberalism
NATO
Alt-right
left-wing

• Introduction

• The Indispensable Nation?

• Starve the Beast

• Deterrence and Compellence

• China

• Democracy and the Rule of Law

• The National Interest

King’s College, London, UK
Richard Ned Lebow

Book Title
A Democratic Foreign Policy

Book Subtitle
Regaining American Influence Abroad

Authors
Richard Ned Lebow

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21519-4

Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan Cham

eBook Packages
Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)

Copyright Information
The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

Softcover ISBN
978-3-030-21518-7
Published: 07 August 2019

eBook ISBN
978-3-030-21519-4
Published: 26 July 2019

Edition Number
1

Number of Pages
XIII, 220

Number of Illustrations
1 b/w illustrations

Topics
Popular Science in Political Science and International Relations, US Politics, Foreign Policy, Governance and Government