Sean Kay's America's Search for Security is a deeply insightful, often brilliant, analysis of recent U.S. foreign policy making.   With keen historical insight Kay tackles everything from the relevancy of NATO, Middle East wars, and the realist vs. human rights debate.  His range of intellect is beyond impressive.  Highly Recommended!
Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University and ... Read moreauthor of Cronkite If you want to know why the conduct of US foreign policy has been so consistently flawed in the post-Cold War period, read Sean Kay's important new book. Using basic international relations theory as a framework, he shows how America's powerful liberal inclinations were kept in check by realist calculations before 1989, which produced a foreign policy that served the country well for over two centuries. However, he also shows in exquisite detail how unbounded liberalism over the past twenty-five years has helped get the United States into one mess after another. One can only hope US policymakers read America's Search for Security and recognize the error of their ways.
John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago America's Search for Security captures brilliantly the tension between crusaders in foreign policy who charge at every injustice and problem in the world with little regard to America's stock of power and those who prioritize America's causes and purposes by what is doable and what maintains America's strength. The struggle between these camps has vital consequences for a nation that was king of the hill and then proceeded to be a king kicking down its own hill. Today, the Obama administration is trying to rebuild US power in order to do great things in the world
a very tough challenge that Sean Kay explicates with valuable insights throughout his terrific book.
Steven Clemons, Washington Editor-at-Large, The Atlantic "[A] superb realist account of US foreign policy history and, as such, is a must for US foreign policy reading lists, as well as the bookshelf of any foreign policy academic."
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