As John Adams is purported to have said, the methods for conquering nations take two forms: debt and sword. [1] Though Adams said this in 1826, ancient Athenian foreign policy exemplified rule by the sword millennia earlier – as noted in Thucydides’s The History of the Peloponnesian War. By coming to the aid of distant...
Review of Shields of the Republic: The Triumph and Peril of America’s Alliances by Mira Rapp-Hooper (Harvard, 2020). So often do critics pillory this country’s alliance system. And so often do their advocates fail to mount a compelling defense. Mira Rapp-Hooper takes up the challenge and does it with aplomb in Shields of the Republic (Harvard...
