Overview

America's Fatal Leap deconstructs US geopolitics after the end of the Cold War, informed by its author's unsurpassed command of modern history. Paul W. Schroeder, an acclaimed historian of international diplomacy, was a conservative and a natural supporter of American leadership in the world. But he wrote scathing op-eds for the National Interest and the American Conservative about the hubris and moral failings of the War on Terror, warning of damaging long-range effects on the international system. Schroeder compared 9/11 to the assassination in Sarajevo that sparked the First World War, insisting that a great power should never give terrorists a war they wanted. He wrote with extraordinary prescience - months before the US launched its attack on the Taliban - of the 'risks of victory' in Afghanistan, characterised the war in Iraq as a failed bid for informal empire, and called for 'disimperialism' in the Middle East. America's Fatal Leap collects Schroeder's remarkable interventions on America's adventurism in the Middle East, from the 1991 Gulf War to the Surge of 2007. It includes an Introduction by Perry Anderson, author of US Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers and Ever Closer Union?

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9781804295762

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Reviews

Probably the foremost expert on the history of international politics in the world -- Lothar Höbelt * International History Review * [An] essential starting [point] for those wishing to understand and critique American foreign policy today ... Armed with a historical perspective, Schroeder was one of the most perceptive critics of Bush's war on terror. -- Daniel Geary * Irish Times * In America's Fatal Leap, one of the world's greatest international historians brings his unmatched historical and conceptual perspectives on European diplomacy to a critical examination of American foreign policy in the last quarter century. This brilliant and provocative set of essays is essential reading for all who think seriously about the United States and the world. -- Jack S. Levy, Board of Governors Professor, Rutgers University Few might know that the late Paul Schroeder, one of the authentically great diplomatic historians of the last half century, was an inveterate critic of US foreign policy after 1989. This absorbing compilation of his writings on America's wars from a conservative perspective deserves rereading from all perspectives. -- Samuel Moyn, author of <i>Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War</i> In these sparkling essays, Paul Schroeder, the great historian of European diplomacy, gives a riveting critique of the means and objectives of American foreign policy in the unipolar era. A superb compendium. -- David Hendrickson, author of <i>Republic in Peril: American Empire and the Liberal Tradition</i>

Probably the foremost expert on the history of international politics in the world -- Lothar Höbelt * International History Review * [An] essential starting [point] for those wishing to understand and critique American foreign policy today ... Armed with a historical perspective, Schroeder was one of the most perceptive critics of Bush's war on terror. -- Daniel Geary * Irish Times * In America's Fatal Leap, one of the world's greatest international historians brings his unmatched historical and conceptual perspectives on European diplomacy to a critical examination of American foreign policy in the last quarter century. This brilliant and provocative set of essays is essential reading for all who think seriously about the United States and the world. -- Jack S. Levy, Board of Governors Professor, Rutgers University Few might know that the late Paul Schroeder, one of the authentically great diplomatic historians of the last half century, was an inveterate critic of US foreign policy after 1989. This absorbing compilation of his writings on America's wars from a conservative perspective deserves rereading from all perspectives. -- Samuel Moyn, author of <i>Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War</i> In these sparkling essays, Paul Schroeder, the great historian of European diplomacy, gives a riveting critique of the means and objectives of American foreign policy in the unipolar era. A superb compendium. -- David Hendrickson, author of <i>Republic in Peril: American Empire and the Liberal Tradition</i> An unlikely, but unwavering, critic of his country's imperial efforts after the Cold War. -- Mathias Fuelling * Jacobin * Few works provide as perceptive a guide to the past 25 years . reflects the brilliance [of these essays], the breadth of their historical grounding, and Schroeder's ability to strike directly at the heart of misguided policy with blistering clarity. -- Jessica T. Mathews * Foreign Affairs *

Probably the foremost expert on the history of international politics in the world -- Lothar Höbelt * International History Review *

Author Information

Paul W. Schroeder was professor of history and political science at the University of Illinois. His works included Austria, Great Britain and the Crimean War: The Destruction of the European Concert and The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848. He died in 2020 at the age of 93. Verso is publishing two volumes of his writings, America Abroad and Stealing Horses to Great Applause.

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