This volume joins a cottage industry of books on the proper American role in a post-9/11 world. In it, Robert J. Lieber advocates an active U.S. foreign policy based on American primacy.

Lieber writes that September 11, 2001, fundamentally changed the international threat environment by making clear that Islamist terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) pose an imminent threat to the United States. The United States cannot respond to this threat with a policy of deterrence because anti-American transnational terrorist organizations are not rational and thus cannot be deterred. Instead, Washington must maintain American primacy and, when necessary, use preemptive military force. American primacy “rests on preponderance across all the realms—military, economic, technological, wealth, and size—by which we measure power” (p. 17). The United States is the only superpower and, according to the author, will not face a peer competitor in the coming years.

Being the world's only superpower inevitably draws opposition, however. A major source of anti-Americanism is the mere fact that the United States is so powerful; U.S. dominance, not the particular U.S. policy adopted or the party or personality of the president, leads to “envy,” “resentment,” and “alienation” (p. 183). When combined with terrorism and WMD, this resentment has the potential to kill many Americans. In response, the United States must often act quickly and forcefully, as the Bush administration has argued. The United States must “be prepared for self-reliance, preemption, and even prevention when necessary” (p. 148). While critics claim that this stance is a break with past American policy, Lieber notes past examples, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the first Gulf War (p. 44).

Lieber discredits other putative U.S. options to respond to the terrorist threat. The United States cannot press the international community to do more because the United Nations and international community “are mostly incapable of acting or inadequate to the task” (p. 4; also pp. 35–36). The United States cannot withdraw from world affairs because most foreign states want American involvement, the nation provides many public goods, and the defense of U.S. national interests requires international engagement. After describing his grand strategy, the author looks at four cases that allow him to illustrate and expand his overall argument. In Chapters 3–6, he covers Europe, the spread of American culture, the Middle East, and Asia. The European Union will not emerge as a superpower rival, and the American-European “legacy of common values remains fundamental” (p. 65). U.S. culture, such as Hollywood films, is dominant, but reactions against globalization and the spread of American culture are used to mask internal problems. Iraq was “a serious strategic threat to the region” and its leader was “a reckless expansionist” (p. 137; also p. 141). On the WMD and terror threat after Iraq, Lieber renders a “positive,” if somewhat tentative, verdict (p. 144). In Asia, nearly everyone wants the United States to stay in order to dampen regional rivalries.

Lieber ends with an assessment of anti-Americanism and attributes its growth to globalization, American primacy, and tensions between identity and modernization (pp. 182–84). He considers various flavors of anti-Americanism. While he concludes that U.S. policy implementation and public diplomacy need improvement, he emphasizes that the country's policies are not “chiefly responsible for triggering hostility.” Rather, such reactions are “inevitable” given America's superpower status (p. 202).

The American Era bridges the policy and scholarly worlds and sits comfortably with similar efforts of greatly varied perspectives by Robert Art, Noam Chomsky, Niall Ferguson, Michael Mandelbaum, Stephen Walt, and the like. Lieber's work would have benefited from a more systematic presentation of existing viewpoints on the question of U.S. direction in a post-9/11 world. He puts most other thinkers into three categories: anti-Americanists (my term for p. 27, note 30), realists, and liberals. The first do “not warrant serious attention here,” which seems like a problematic decision given that Lieber later notes that these thinkers “are commonly read and cited as explanations of U.S. policy” (p. 33). He includes realists of many different stripes, making it difficult to accept his broad characterizations of realism. The differences, for instance, among Hans Morgenthau, James Baker, Kenneth Waltz, and William Wohlforth are as important as the similarities. Since Lieber is defining his grand strategy for the United States, his argument would have been better served by framing other thinkers by their preferred U.S. grand strategy, rather than by the simple realist/liberal dichotomy.

The book enters several long-running arguments in international relations. Lieber does a good job of explaining why he thinks primacy is a viable long-term strategy, in contrast with balance-of-power theorists who foresee the inevitable rise of a counterbalancing coalition. Yet why he claims a great power (the United States) is more effective than the international community (the United Nations) is less clear. Most of the UN failings were also U.S. ones (pp. 4, 35). He also draws much attention to the rapid U.S. military victories in Afghanistan and Iraq. But he concedes that postwar Iraq “proved to be vastly more difficult and costly than American policymakers had anticipated” (p. 130). While he derides the UN performance on Iraq, he says that the agency has a “significant role to play, not least in burden-sharing and in contributing to the perceived legitimacy of collective action” (p. 4). Though he concludes otherwise, his own argument suggests that a UN/U.S. combination is the best option. One wanted more from Lieber on the China question. He expects liberal integration to pacify China (p. 171). Could Chinese resentment over U.S. primacy and preemption ever bubble over?

Finally, the sections on the Iraq war are a restatement of the discredited Bush case for war without much added. Lieber, like Bush, juxtaposes 9/11 (or Al Qaeda) and Iraq despite the fact that there was no meaningful connection (e.g., pp. 24, 140). He makes the case on the basis of security and human rights without setting Iraq in a comparative context; Saddam Hussein is far from alone. North Korea and Iran are largely absent from this book even though both have become greater security threats under Bush. With one exception, relevant sections avoid mentioning North Korea (pp. 164, 174, 200–201). At best, one can say that critics of the Bush case for war will be disappointed, while supporters of the war will hear a familiar tune.