A very interesting book. With the apparent return of Great Power Politics in international relations (Russia's resurgence and the Rise of China, etc.), Wright offers an intelligent and cogent examination of international relations today. With interesting and well-written observations, conclusions and prescriptions, it's a very good read. Certain to spark debate and help you make sense of the world as international power shifts and changes. Interesting also to look back on this at the end of the Trump era.

Since Trump’s upset victory last November, there’s been more public fretting about the liberal international order than at an time since the beginning of the Cold War. However, as Thomas Wright notes, the international order was under considerable pressure even before Trump (indeed, much of the book was written when many assumed Hillary Clinton would win). “All Measures Short of War” proposes a blueprint for how we should respond.

Wright’s first contribution is to lay out the nature of the threat to the liberal international order. This is actually more difficult than it might seem. Although Russia and China clearly do challenge that order, Wright notes that their challenges tend to focus on regional rather than global issues. China and Russia (less so) cooperate on global issues, like the Paris Climate Agreement, but are much more aggressive about attempting to create spheres of influence in their respective neighborhoods.

However, Wright argues that a stable international order depends upon stable regional orders, so the two are connected. As such, the first few chapters proceed to examine threats from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Wright is eminently fair in ascribing blame to Obama, Bush, and all of their predecessors.

Second, Wright proposes “responsible competition” as a framework for dealing with these threats. Wright argues that the U.S. should indeed compete with Russia and China in order to protect the international order, but should also circumscribe that competition narrowly so as to not undermine cooperation. The U.S. should take a more active leadership role in the world. In short, despite the new terminology, his actual policies are a fairly standard set of policies straight out of the DC foreign policy establishment.

Herein lies my first concern with Wright’s argument. He treats states as rational actors and believes their responses will be predictable and containable. However, history is far more complicated. Even the examples Wright cites don’t fully support his argument. For example, Wright - like many in the foreign policy establishment - places a lot of faith in economic sanctions. He claims that sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine helped deter further aggression. Yet, sanctions . were one of the factors that led Moscow to pursue the bold - and extremely successful - strategy of using cyberattacks to interfere in the 2016 election. This was an unforeseen and unprecedented escalation. Had U.S. policymakers known in 2014 that the result of our sanctions would be a Trump presidency, I suspect many would have hesitated. Likewise, Japans response to our oil embargo during World War II was to bomb Pearl Harbor - not a measured response at all. Ultimately, I worry Wright needs to reread Tuchman’s “Guns of August” as a reminder of just how easy it is for great powers to stumble into war.

Another concern I have with Wright’s argument is that he focuses on international relations rather than domestic politics. I understand that the book can’t delve too deeply into the domestic politics of Russia or China or America, but ultimately domestic politics and foreign strength are inextricably linked. For example, I was initially puzzled by Wright’s optimism regarding American strength, but soon realized that this was because Wright was only looking at macroeconomic indicators and overall military strength. In ignoring domestic politics, he also ignores the fact that partisan gridlock greatly constrains what presidents can do abroad, the credibility of their commitments, etc. China, by contrast, would have a much easier time mobilizing its citizens on behalf of its policies (nationalism is a potent force there).

Finally, I was a bit struck by the fact that the book barely mentions Latin America or Africa. Wright is right to suggest that Europe and Asia were the keystones of the Cold War international order, but I would think that a book about the international order would at least address those regions. Central America and Mexico are particularly important to U.S. peace and security given that those countries actually lie close to our border.

Despite my disagreements with him, Wright’s book is a serious piece of scholarship and possibly the most sophisticated proposal for the defense of the liberal international order I have come across. I recommend this book to students of foreign policy and government officials.

Thinking about the scenario laid out for our Global Challenge wargame next week, this is Wright's explanation for how, despite expectations of convergence into a US led liberal international order, we instead find ourselves in a period increasingly similar to the early cold war--powers pushing and testing one another through crises to determine how far they can go "short of war" to get what they want in an arena in which cooperation, convergence and integration have been thrown over for weaponized interdependence, brinksmanship and land grabs.