New Books In National Security

In our interview, I spoke with Donald Stoker about the changes in American grand strategy over the past 250 years and the major themes from his new book: Purpose and Power: US Grand Strategy from the Revolutionary Era to the Present (Cambridge UP, 2024). Across the full span of the nation’s history, Stoker challenges our understanding of the purposes and uses of American power. From the struggle for independence to the era of renewed competition with China and Russia, he reveals the grand strategies underpinning the nation’s pursuit of sovereignty, security, expansion, and democracy abroad. He shows how successive administrations have projected diplomatic, military, and economic power, and mobilized ideas and information to preserve American freedoms at home and secure US aims abroad. He exposes the myth of American isolationism, the good and ill of America’s quest for democracy overseas, and how too often its administrations have lacked clear political aims or a concrete vision for where they want to go. Und