Still Ours to Lead: America, Rising Powers, and the Tension between Rivalry and Restraint - Hardcover

Jones, Bruce D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0815725124 ISBN 13: 9780815725121

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press, 2014

Synopsis

Is the United States still a "superpower"? How are the rising powers establishing themselves in international politics and security? What is the future of global stability?

For over a decade, Bruce Jones has had a front-row seat as the emerging powers―principally China, India, and Brazil, but also Turkey, Indonesia, Korea, and others―thrust themselves onto the global stage. From Delhi to Doha to Beijing to Brasilia, he's met with the politicians, diplomats, business leaders, and scholars of those powers as they craft their strategies for rising influence―and with senior American officials as they forge their response.

In Still Ours to Lead, Jones tells a nuanced story of American leadership. He artfully examines the tension between the impulse to rival the United States and the incentives for restraint and cooperation among the rising powers. That balance of rivalry and restraint provides the United States with a continued ability to solve problems and to manage crises at roughly the same rate as when American dominance was unquestioned. Maintaining the balance is central to the question of whether we will live in a stable or unstable system in the period to come. But it just so happens that this challenge plays to America's unique strength―its unparalleled ability to pull together broad and disparate coalitions for action. To succeed, America must adapt its leadership to new realities.

About this title

About the Author

Bruce Jones is a senior fellow and director of the International Order and Strategy project at Brookings, and a consulting professor at Stanford University. He has past experience in Middle East peace negotiations, crisis management in the Balkans, and intergovernmental negotiations on security and transnational threats. He is also chair of the New York University Center on International Cooperation.

His other books include Shaping the Emerging World (Brookings 2013), Power & Responsibility (Brookings 2009) and the forthcoming Risk Pivot (Brookings 2014).

Review

"An indispensable antidote both to boosterish America-first-ism and to doomy Asia-first-ism. Jones demonstrates that the 'rise of the rest' need not be a zero-sum game for the U.S., because new powers like China depend on the international system that the U.S. leads. Jones shows us that optimism can be based, not on ideology or blind faith, but on a hard-headed understanding of global trends."―James Traub, columnist at Foreign Policy and author of The Freedom Agenda

"Bruce Jones's analysis is persuasive; better still, he provides a detailed manual for American coalitional diplomacy to address problems from climate change to maritime security. Still Ours to Lead accepts the reality of rising powers while reminding established powers, above all the United States, of just how much they stand to lose if they fail to lead."―Anne-Marie Slaughter, president and CEO, New America Foundation, and Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University

"This smart and important book provides a blueprint for American global leadership in the coming decades. With all the hype about American decline, following a period of what some have called American hubris, Bruce Jones offers a clear-eyed assessment of the true state of the international order and a realistic path ahead for the U.S. His analysis and his prescriptions offer wisdom for all sides in the debate."―Robert Kagan, historian and author of The World America Made

Edition details

• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0815725124
• ISBN 13: 9780815725121
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 263