Hard Line: The Republican Party and U.S. Foreign Policy since World War II

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS While the views presented in this book are my own, I am grateful to many people who helped me in the writing of it. A set of conferences at Princeton University in – on the subject of conservatism and U.S. foreign policy, attended by a number of distinguished foreign policy experts , helped sharpen my ideas. Special thanks to the conference coorganizers , Aaron Friedberg and Jakub Grygiel, for exchanging views with me, reading pieces I sent them, and contributing to my understanding of the subject. Thanks are owed to the archivists at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, and the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, for their crucial assistance with documents from the Reagan and Nixon years, respectively. My appreciation goes to David Frum, Francis Fukuyama, Richard Haass, Kim Holmes, William Kristol, Rich Lowry, Joshua Muravchik, Grover Norquist, Mitchell Reiss, Dimitri Simes, and George Will for agreeing to be interviewed for this book—interviews that gave me useful insights into recent Republican foreign policies from a variety of perspectives. Peter Beinart, Ben Fordham , James Kurth, Paul Lettow, Brian Rathbun, Gideon Rose, and Peter Trubowitz all read and commented on various chapters or essays drawn from this manuscript—my thanks to each of them. I’ve also learned a great deal from conversations on this subject over the years with Nick Gvosdev, Mark Lagon, Chris Layne, Daniel Markey, Henry Nau, and Ray Takeyh. Thanks to the anonymous reviewers at Princeton University Press for their very helpful suggestions on the manuscript. Particular credit goes to my remarkably congenial editor, Chuck Myers, for keeping me on track and for being so supportive of this project from the start. Sincere thanks to my fellow faculty at George Mason University’s Department of Public and International Affairs, especially Bob Dudley, for providing a collegial environment conducive to research. Finally, my greatest gratitude is to my wife Kirsten, who provided loving, irreplaceable intellectual and practical support over the lengthy period of time that it took me to write this book. The result is dedicated to our son, Jack. HARD LINE ...