Maximalist

American foreign policy since World War II has long been seen primarily as a story of strong and successful alliances, domestic consensus, and continuity from one adminstration to the next. Why then have so many presidents left office condemned for their foreign policy record?

In his fresh and compelling history of America's rise to dominance, Stephen Sestanovich makes clear that U.S. diplomacy has always stirred controversy, both at home and abroad. He shows how successive adminstrations have struggled to find new solutions, alternating between bold "maximalist" strategies and retrenchment efforts to downsize America's role. Almost all our presidents emerge from this vivid retelling in a sharp and unexpected light.

Stephen Sestanovich served as U.S. ambassador-at-large to the former Soviet Union during the Clinton administration, as a senior staff member at the National Security Council and the State Department during the Reagan administration, and as senior legislative assistant to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He is currently the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Diplomacy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and the George F. Kennan Senior Fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Prologue: “We Do Big Things”

Part One: 1947–1960
1. Truman at the Creation: “The United States Must Run This Show”
2. Truman at War: “Victory Is a Strong Magnet”
3. “Enough Is Enough”: Eisenhower and Retrenchment

Part Two: 1961–1980
4. “Boy Commandos” of the New Frontier: Kennedy’s Anxious Activism
5. “Mainly Violins, with Touches of Brass”:Johnson Against His Advisers
6. “We Have Not Been Divided”: Johnson at War
7. Retrenchment and Vietnam: “Get Going, Take Risks, Be Exciting”
8. Retrenchment and Détente: “A Nihilistic Nightmare”

Part Three: 1981 to the Present
9. “Outspend Them Forever”: Reagan and the End of the Cold War
10. “No One Else Can Do This”: Bush, Clinton, and the Retrenchment That Wasn’t
11. “Things Related and Not”: Bush and September 11
12. “No Wiggle Room”: Obama and Retrenchment

Epilogue: “If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Overdoing”

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index