How does regional interdependence influence the prospects for conflict, integration, and democratization? Some researchers look at the international system at large and disregard the enormous regional variations. Others take the concept of sovereignty literally and treat each nation-state as fully independent. Kristian Skrede Gleditsch looks at disparate zones in the international system to see how conflict, integration, and democracy have clustered over time and space. He argues that the most interesting aspects of international politics are regional rather than fully global or exclusively national. Differences in the local context of interaction influence states' international behavior as well as their domestic attributes. In All International Politics Is Local, Gleditsch clarifies that isolating the domestic processes within countries cannot account for the observed variation in distribution of political democracy over time and space, and that the likelihood of transitions is strongly related to changes in neighboring countries and the prior history of the regional context. Finally, he demonstrates how spatial and statistical techniques can be used to address regional interdependence among actors and its implications. Kristian Skrede Gleditsch is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego.

In Alliance Curse, Hilton Root illustrates that recent U.S. foreign policy is too often misguided, resulting in misdirected foreign aid and alliances that stunt political and economic development among partner regimes, leaving America on the wrong side of change. Many alliances with third world dictators, ostensibly of mutual benefit, reduce incentives to govern for prosperity and produce instead political and social instability and economic failure. Yet again, in the war on terror and in the name of preserving global stability, America is backing authoritarian regimes that practice repression and plunder. It is as if the cold war never ended. While espousing freedom and democracy, the U.S. contradicts itself by aiding governments that do not share those values. In addition to undercutting its own stated goal of promoting freedom, America makes the developing world even more wary of its intentions. Yes, the democracy we preach arouses aspirations and attracts immigrants, but those same individuals become our sternest critics; having learned to admire American values, they end up deploring U.S. policies toward their own countries. Long-term U.S. security is jeopardized by a legacy of resentment and distrust. A lliance Curse proposes an analytical foundation for national security that challenges long-held assumptions about foreign affairs. It questions the wisdom of diplomacy that depends on questionable linkages or outdated suppositions. The end of the Soviet Union did not portend the demise of communism, for example. Democracy and socialism are not incompatible systems. Promoting democracy by linking it with free trade risks overemphasizing the latter goal at the expense of the former. The growing tendency to play China against India in an effort to retain American global supremacy will hamper relations with both —an intolerable situation in today's interdependent world. Root buttresses his analysis with case studies of American foreign policy toward developing countries (e.g., Vietnam), efforts at state building, and nations growing in importance, such as China. He concludes with a series of recommendations designed to close the gap between security and economic development.

Ambassador Ortiz's memoir is as fascinating as has been his career over four decades in the United States Foreign Service. An Air Force veteran of World War II, Ambassador Ortiz's first assignments were in the Middle East and Ethiopia. His most significant diplomatic work was done in Latin America. There, he took on missions in Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, the Caribbean, Panama, Guatemala, and Argentina. He held posts in Washington, D. C. at the very center of U.S. power.

America at Risk gathers original essays by a distinguished and bipartisan group of writers and intellectuals to address a question that matters to Americans of every political persuasion: what are some of the greatest dangers facing America today? The answers, which range from dwindling political participation to rising poverty, and religion to empire, add up to a valuable and timely portrait of a particular moment in the history of American ideas. While the opinions are many, there is a central theme in the book: the corrosion of the liberal constitutional order that has long guided the country at home and abroad. The authors write about the demonstrably important dangers the United States faces while also breaking the usual academic boundaries: there are chapters on the family, religious polarization, immigration, and the economy, as well as on governmental and partisan issues. America at Risk is required reading for all Americans alarmed about the future of their country. Contributors • Traci Burch • James W. Ceaser • Robert Faulkner • Niall Ferguson • William A. Galston • Hugh Heclo • Pierre Manent • Harvey C. Mansfield • Peter Rodriguez • Kay Lehman Schlozman • Susan Shell • Peter Skerry • James Q. Wilson • Alan Wolfe Robert Faulkner is Professor of Political Science at Boston College. Susan Shell is Professor of Political Science at Boston College. "America at Risk goes well beyond the usual diagnoses of issues debated in public life like immigration, war, and debt, to consider the Republic’s founding principles, and the ways in which they have been displaced by newer thoughts and habits in contemporary America. A critical book for understanding our present condition." —Francis Fukuyama, Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies "In this penetrating book, the nation’s finest social and political thinkers from across the spectrum take a careful and no-holds-barred look at the dangers facing the American political system. The conclusions are more unsettling than reassuring---but that is because they are honest and real." —Norm Ornstein, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute "In the midst of overwrought pundits, irate soccer moms, and outraged bloggers, it is difficult to distinguish genuine dangers from false alarms and special pleading. This book enables us to do so, in a way that helps us to actually think about, not just feel anxious about, threats to those features of American society that are worth cherishing. The authors range in ideology and expertise, but they are uniformly judicious, incisive, and informative. This is a fascinating book about issues that the political system usually ignores or exaggerates." —Jennifer L. Hochschild, Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government and Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard University

News stories remind us almost daily that anti-American opinion is rampant in every corner of the globe. Journalists, scholars, and politicians alike reinforce the perception that anti-Americanism is an entrenched sentiment in many foreign countries. Political scientist Giacomo Chiozza challenges this conventional wisdom, arguing that foreign public opinion about the U.S. is much more diverse and nuanced than is generally believed. Chiozza examines the character, source, and persistence of foreign attitudes toward the United States. His findings are based on worldwide public opinion databases that surveyed anti-American sentiment in Islamic countries, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and East Asia. Data compiled from responses in a wide range of categories—including politics, wealth, science and technology, popular culture, and education—indicate that anti-American sentiments vary widely across these geographic regions. Through careful analyses, Chiozza shows how foreign publics balance the political, social, and cultural dimensions of the U.S. in their own perceptions of the country. He finds that popular anti-Americanism is mostly benign and shallow; deep-seated ideological opposition to the U.S. is usually held among a minority of groups. More often, Chiozza explains, foreigners have conflicting attitudes toward the U.S. He finds that while anti-Americanism certainly exists, the United States is equally praised as a symbol of democracy and freedom, its ideals of liberty, equality, and opportunity applauded. Chiozza clearly demonstrates that what is reported as undisputed fact—that various groups abhor American values—is in reality a complex story.

Spanning 20 years of history, the achievements of APEC may seem uneventful in the eyes of some observers.Yet careful deliberation will point to APEC's many remarkable high points as well as some of the challenges. The foundations of APEC were set in place about 40 years ago based on the achievements of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC).One of the cornerstones of APEC's vision is to achieve a free and open trade area among its member economies. This vision is anchored in the Bogor Goals that remain the centrepiece of the APEC process. The Bogor Goals represent a cause for celebration as well as angst. Celebration because the region has moved towards achieving a much more liberalized environment of trading and investment since 1989, angst because the deadlines for achieving the goals have not yet been fully realized.Today, APEC embraces many of the world's dynamic developed and developing economies that are better poised to meet the new challenges of this century. For those seeking to get a quick sweep of APEC, this book recalls, reflects and provides enough food for thought on the possible remake of APEC. The chapters are carefully written by experts who have been directly involved in the APEC process one way or another. The invaluable insights serve to place the whole APEC process in a balanced perspective, yet with candid deliberations.

Apocalypse Never illuminates why we must abolish nuclear weapons, how we can, and what the world will look like after we do. Tad Daley has written a book for the general reader about this most crucial of contemporary challenges. On the wings of a brand new era in American history, Apocalypse Never makes the case that a comprehensive nuclear policy agenda from President Obama, one that fully integrates nonproliferation with disarmament, can both eliminate immediate nuclear dangers and set us irreversibly on the road to abolition. In jargon-free language, Daley explores the possible verification measures, enforcement mechanisms, and governance structures of a nuclear weapon-free world. Most importantly, he decisively argues that universal nuclear disarmament is something we can transform from a utopian fantasy into a concrete political goal.

For every pithy conceptualization of complex events, there are additional lenses through which to examine them. One of the several virtues of this book is precisely that it brings different perspectives to bear on the complexity, diversity, and uncertainty of recent and current events in the Arab world. The thirteen authors concentrate on the critical social forces shaping the region —demography, religion, gender, telecommunication connectivity, and economic structures —and they are painstakingly analyzed and evaluated. —from the foreword by Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution

The Arab Spring will be remembered as a period of great change for the Arab states of North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Facing fundamental transitions in governance, these countries are also undergoing profound social, cultural, and religious changes. The European Union and the United States, caught unprepared by the uprisings, now must address the inescapable challenges of those changes. How will the West respond to these new realities, particularly in light of international economic uncertainty, EU ambivalence toward a "cohesive foreign policy," and declining U.S. influence abroad? Arab Society in Revolt explains and interprets the societal transformations occurring in the Arab Muslim world, their ramifications for the West, and possible policy options for dealing with this new world.

Arab Society in Revolt examines areas of change particularly relevant in the southern Mediterranean: demography and migration, Islamic revival and democracy, rapidly changing roles of women in Arab society, the Internet in Arab societies, commercial and social entrepreneurship as change factors, and the economics of Arab transitions. The book then looks at those cultural and religious as well as political and economic factors that have influenced the Western response, or lack of it, to the Arab Spring as well as the policy options that remain open.

Makes the perhaps surprising argument that in the last quarter of the twentieth century the Arab-Israeli conflict has been winding down. The Middle East conflict, be it between the state of Israel and Arab states or between Jews and Palestinians, is a staple of international news. Utilizing both theoretical approaches and empirical evidence, Hemda Ben-Yehuda and Shmuel Sandler argue that despite the recent upswing in violence, particularly over the Palestinian issue, conflict has gradually been giving way, since the 1970s, to a more orderly regime of conflict management. By integrating ethnonational theoretical literature into their analysis, the authors move beyond the current International Relations debate over the relative merits of realist/neo-realist approaches versus neo-liberal-institutional approaches. Ethnic-state disputes are the primary source for failing to terminate the Arab-Israeli conflict.