Freedom Isn't Free: The Conflicts and Costs for World Order and National Interests

Freedom Isn’t Free takes an analytical look at political, economic, social and moral trade-offs in a world in flux. Highly readable and very accessible, the volume’s collected foreign affairs essays are wide-ranging and engaging―from manageable regional issues to dramatic geopolitical tensions―presented not as distant complexities, but as relatable events. Freedom Isn’t Free provides a strategic guide to some of the most important―sometimes intractable―issues of the day. It pays special attention to superpower America's role in contemporary geopolitics and her shifting policy options given leadership, competition, domestic governing challenges and self-inflicted nativism. Unlike most International Relations texts, Freedom Isn’t Free investigates actual, contemporary themes that nest political theory within the arguments and analyses of the collected essays, privileging liberal state systems and citizens’ individual liberties.

Markos Kounalakis is an award-winning author, scholar and journalist. He is a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.