US Foreign Policy and Global Standing in the 21st Century: Realities and Perceptions(BESA Studies in International Security)

This book examines US foreign policy and global standing in the 21st Century. The United States is the most powerful actor in world politics today. Against this backdrop, the present volume examines how the foreign policies pursued by Presidents’ George W. Bush and Barack Obama have affected elite and public perceptions of the United States. By examining America’s standing from the perspective of different actors from across various regions, including China, Russia, Latin America and the Middle East, while also assessing how these perceptions interact with America’s own policies, this books presents a fresh interpretation of America’s global standing. In doing so, the volume evaluates how these perceptions affect the realities of US power, and what impact this has on moulding US foreign policy and the policies of other global powers. A number of books address the question of which grand strategy the United States should adopt and the issue of whether or not America is in relative decline as a world power. However, the debate on these issues has largely been set against the policies of the Bush administration. By contrast, this volume argues that while Obama has raised the popularity of America since the low reached by Bush, America’s credibility and overall standing have actually been damaged further under President Obama. This book will be of much interest to students of US foreign policy, US national security, strategic studies, Middle Eastern politics, international relations and security studies generally.

Table of Contents:
Introduction, Jonathan Rynhold and Efraim Inbar PART I: America Today 1. Lessons from Fifteen Years of War, Eliot Cohen 2. The American Foreign Policy Debate: Déjà Vu?, Henry Nau 3. Obama: The Reluctant Realist, Steven David 4. Public Opinion and Obama’s Foreign Policy, Eytan Gilboa PART II: Regional Perceptions 5. America’s Standing in China: Chinese Attitudes towards the United States, Jian Wang 6. Seoul-Washington Alliance: The Beginning of Independence?, Alon Levkowitz 7. Change and Continuity in Russian Perceptions of the Unites States, Dima Adamsky 8. India’s Perspective of American Political Leadership and Foreign Policy, Uday Bhaskar 9. US-Latin American Relations and the Role of the United States in the World: The View from Latin America, Arie Kacowicz PART III: The Middle East 10. Obama and the Middle East: Illusions and Delusions, Efraim Karsh 11. US Counter-Proliferation Policy: The Case of Iran, Emily Landau 12. Erdoğan’s Turkey and Obama’s America, Efrat Aviv 13.US-Egyptian Relations, Yehuda Blanga 14. Israeli Attitudes to the Obama Administration, Yael Bloch-Elkon amd Jonathan Rynhold 15. The Impact of a Transformed US Global Stance on Israel’s National Security Strategy, Shmuel Sandler

About the Author :
Efraim Inbar is Professor in Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University and the Director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies, Israel. He is author/editor of numerous titles, including most recently The Arab Spring, Democracy and Security: Domestic and Regional Ramifications (Routledge, 2013). Jonathan Rynhold is Senior Lecturer of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, Director of the Argov Center for the Study of Israel and the Jewish People, and a senior researcher at the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies. He is author of The Arab-Israeli Conflict in American Political Culture (2015).