Abstract
Since the end of the Second World War and the brief unipolar moment that followed, the U.S. has assumed (and claimed) leadership over the world—at least over the “free world.” Sometimes analyzed as hegemony or as empire, this work offers a definition of leadership that is related to, but distinct from these concepts. It relies on the full range of American power in foreign affairs, including attractive “soft” power and traditional military and economic might. The ongoing discussion of leadership by American policymakers confronts a world that is ever-changing and in which this leadership is increasingly challenged. That U.S. leadership is weaker today in many ways than after the Cold War or after the Second World War is only further reason to explore the complexities of American foreign policy that in many ways is facing limits, new and old, but continues to retain special advantages. In an uncertain and crisis-filled world, assessing U.S. leadership is critical for understanding American policy, and global international relations.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Acheson, Dean. 1969. Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department. New York: Norton.
Albright, Madeleine K. 1998. Interview on NBC-TV “The Today Show” with Matt Lauer Columbus, Ohio, February 19. https://1997-2001.state.gov/statements/1998/980219a.html. Accessed 21 April 2021.
Bacevich, Andrew J. 2002. American Empire: The Reality and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bacevich, Andrew J. 2009. Tragedy Renewed: William Appleman Williams. World Affairs 171 (3): 62–72.
Badie, Bertrand. 2020. Introduction. Comment l’hégémonie américaine s’est faite, puis défaite. In Fin du leadership américain ? L’état du monde 2020, ed. Bertrand Badie and Dominique Vidal, 9–19. Paris: La Découverte.
Baker, James and George Shultz. 2020. The Strategic Case for U.S. Climate Leadership. Foreign Affairs 9 (3).
Bell, David A. 2010. Political Columnists Think America is in Decline. Big Surprise. The New Republic, October 7.
Biden, Joseph R. 2020. Why America Must Lead Again. Foreign Affairs 99 (2).
Biden, Joseph R. 2021. Address to a Joint Session of Congress, April 28. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/04/28/remarks-as-prepared-for-delivery-by-president-biden-address-to-a-joint-session-of-congress/. Accessed 12 January 2022.
Brzezinski, Zigniew, and Brent Scowcroft. 2008. America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy. New York: Basic Books.
CNN. 2017. Trump Defends Putin: ‘You Think Our Country’s So Innocent?’. https://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/04/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin/index.html. Accessed 20 April 2021.
Cooley, Alexander, and Daniel Nexon. 2020. Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order. New York: Oxford University Press.
Cox, Robert W. 1993 (first published 1983). Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method. In Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations, ed. Stephen Gill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cumings, Bruce. 2009. Dominion from Sea to Sea: Americas Pacific Ascendancy. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Daalder, Ivo H., and James M. Lindsay. 2018. The Empty Throne: America’s Abdication of Global Leadership. New York: Public Affairs.
Dalby, Simon. 2008. Imperialism, Domination, Culture: The Continued Relevance of Critical Geopolitics. Geopolitics 13 (3): 413–436.
Edmondson, Catie. 2022. Transcript: Zelensky’s Speech to Congress. New York Times, 16 March. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/transcript-zelensky-speech.html. Accessed 21 April 2022.
Eisenhower, Dwight. 1953. Inaugural Address. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/231580. Accessed 21 April 2021.
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957. Volume XIX. National Security Policy. Document 41. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v19/d41. Accessed 21 April 2021.
Friedman, Thomas L., and Michael Mandelbaum. 2011. That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back. New York: Little, Brown.
Gillem, Mark L. 2007. America Town: Building the Outposts of Empire. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Gordon, Philip. 2020. U.S. Global Leadership Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic. Council on Foreign Relations, April 28. https://www.cfr.org/podcasts/us-global-leadership-amid-coronavirus-pandemic-philip-h-gordon. Accessed 20 May 2022.
Harriman, W. Averell. 1954. Leadership in World Affairs. Foreign Affairs 32 (4).
Höhn, Maria, and Seungsook Moon, eds. 2010. Over There: Living with the U.S. Military Empire from World War Two to the Present. Durham: Duke University Press.
Hurd, Ian. 1999. Legitimacy and Authority in International Politics. International Organization 53 (2): 379–408.
Ikenberry, G. John., Wang Jisi, and Zhu Feng, eds. 2015. America, China, and the Struggle for World Order: Ideas, Traditions, Historical Legacies and Global Visions. New York: Palgrave.
Kagan, Robert. 2012. The World America Made. New York: Vintage Books.
Kennedy, Paul. 1988. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. New York: Unwin Hyman.
Keohane, Robert O. 1984. After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kissinger, Henry. 1994. Diplomacy. New York: Touchstone.
Krauthammer, Charles. 1990/1991. The Unipolar Moment. Foreign Affairs 70 (1): 23–33.
Lake, David A. 2003. The New Sovereignty in International Relations. International Studies Review 5 (3): 303–323.
Lindsay, James M. 2020. Restoring U.S. Leadership. Council on Foreign Relations. 24 January. https://www.cfr.org/blog/campaign-foreign-policy-roundup-restoring-us-leadership. Accessed 15 April 2021.
Lundestad, Geir. 1986. Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945–1952. Journal of Peace Research 23 (3): 263–277.
Lutz, Catherine, ed. 2009. The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle Against U.S. Military Posts. New York: NYU Press.
MacGregor Burns, James. 1978. Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.
Mead, Walter Russell. 2002. Special Providence. American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World. New York: Routledge.
Norloff, Carla. 2010. America’s Global Advantage: U.S. Hegemony and International Cooperation. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Nye, Joseph S. 2004. Soft Power. The Means to Success in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs.
Nye, Joseph S. 2008. The Powers to Lead. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.
Obama, Barack. 2007. Renewing American Leadership. Foreign Affairs 86 (4): 2–16.
Obama, Barack. 2011. Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on Libya. National Defense University. March 28. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/03/28/remarks-president-address-nation-libya. Accessed 20 April 2021.
Obama, Barack. 2017. in Kevin Liptak. Exclusive: Read the Inauguration Day letter Obama left for Trump. CNN, September 5. https://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/03/politics/obama-trump-letter-inauguration-day/index.html. Accessed 20 April 2021.
Patrick, Stewart M. 2020. How Biden can Prove that ‘America is Back’ at the United Nations. World Politics Review, November 23. https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/29242/how-biden-can-prove-that-america-is-back-at-the-united-nations. Accessed 10 May 2022.
Rhodes, Ben. 2020. The Democratic Renewal: What it Will Take to Fix U.S. Foreign Policy. Foreign Affairs 99 (5): 46–56.
Sandars, Christopher. 2000. America’s Overseas Garrisons: The Leasehold Empire. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.
Sestanovich, Stephen. 2014. Maximalist: America in the World from Truman to Obama. New York: Knopf.
Steffek, Jens. 2007. Legitimacy in International Relations: From State Compliance to Citizen Consensus. In Legitimacy in an Age of Global Politics: Transformations of the State, ed. Achim Hurrelmann, Steffen Schneider, and Jens Steffek, 175–192. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Vine, David. 2015. Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World. New York: Metropolitan Books.
Williams, William Appleman. 1972. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. 2nd ed. rev. New York: Dell.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Vagnoux, I., Stricof, M. (2022). Introduction. In: Stricof, M., Vagnoux, I. (eds) U.S. Leadership in a World of Uncertainties. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10260-8_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10260-8_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-10259-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-10260-8
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)