This chapter analyzes the effects of two important foreign policy traditions, isolationism and moral principle, as policy guides since the beginning of the Republic, and their continuing influence today.

This chapter discusses the way international law aims to help protect the environment (or does not), by focusing on relevant legal instruments and relevant instances

One of Waltz’s major contributions was the idea that political structures can be specified, in a rough first approximation, by ordering principle, functional differentiation, and distribution of capabilities – an understanding that remains largely taken-for-granted in contemporary IR. This chapter shows, however, that this tripartite conception can neither accurately nor fruitfully depict the structure of three simple anarchic systems: the Hobbesian state of nature, immediate-return forager societies, and great power states systems. In fact, Waltz’s depiction of great power states systems, his implicit model of a generic international system, is wildly inaccurate on all three of his dimensions of structure. Great power states systems, rather than lack hierarchy, are structured by the hierarchical superiority of states and great powers. Great powers, states, and nonstate actors perform different political functions. And the standard Waltzian account of the distribution of capabilities as a matter of the number of great powers (“polarity”) is about as useful as depicting the distribution of wealth in a society by the number of billionaires.

Why are progressives often critical of US foreign policy and the national security state? What would a statecraft that pulls ideas from the American left look like? Grand Strategies of the Left brings the progressive worldview into conversation with security studies and foreign policy practice. It argues that American progressives think durable security will only come by prioritizing the interconnected conditions of peace, democracy, and equality. By conceiving of grand strategy as worldmaking, progressives see multiple ways of using foreign policy to make a more just and stable world. US statecraft – including defense policy – should be retooled not for primacy, endless power accumulation, or a political status quo that privileges elites, but rather to shape the context that gives rise to perpetual insecurity. Progressive worldmaking has its own risks and dilemmas but expands how we imagine what the world is and could be.

The chapter discusses the mechanisms international alw has at its disposal to stimulate compliance with its rules: sanctions, counter-measures, colelctive action

IR typically understands levels as levels of analysis that produce analytic/reductionist (rather than systemic/relational) explanations. Causes, separated by levels, are looked at as independent variables understood as distinct sources of explanation. Systemic explanations rely instead on related elements and levels of organization that are (understood to be) in the world (not just convenient epistemic devices). Systems approaches claim that parts on one level are organized into higher-level wholes that are themselves structured parts of still-higher-level wholes. (For example, subatomic particles, atoms, elements, chemical compounds.) The chapter concludes by examining the implications of a levels of organization framing for four important metatheoretical issues: micro–macro relations, the agent–structure problem, the natures of individual human beings and social groups, and the natures of individual and group identities.

This chapter discusses international criminal law (fighting political crimes) and transboundary police cooperation (fighting common crimes), though mechanisms such as the ICC, but also extradition and abduction

This chapter addresses what states can do, and what powers international organizations can have

Why are progressives often critical of US foreign policy and the national security state? What would a statecraft that pulls ideas from the American left look like? Grand Strategies of the Left brings the progressive worldview into conversation with security studies and foreign policy practice. It argues that American progressives think durable security will only come by prioritizing the interconnected conditions of peace, democracy, and equality. By conceiving of grand strategy as worldmaking, progressives see multiple ways of using foreign policy to make a more just and stable world. US statecraft – including defense policy – should be retooled not for primacy, endless power accumulation, or a political status quo that privileges elites, but rather to shape the context that gives rise to perpetual insecurity. Progressive worldmaking has its own risks and dilemmas but expands how we imagine what the world is and could be.

This chapter discusses international law in context: how it relates to its political environment as well as to ethical concerns, and how the ethics of individual agents may be of relevance