How the US Can Get its Multilateral Groove Back

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My guest today, Paul Stares, is the author of the new book Preventative Engagement. How America Can Avoid War, Stay Strong, and Keep the Peace.

The book identifies what Stares calls "the American predicament" in which United States remains the principal guarantor of global peace and security, but that in the process of maintaining global peace and security the United States becomes overly extended and prone to costly military entanglements.

Stares offers a way out of this trap that does not involve retreating from the world, but rather embraces what he calls "preventative engagement." We discuss what that concept entails and why even the Trump administration might be willing to implement it.

This is a good, high minded conversation about US foreign policy and about the value of the United Nations and multilateral engagement to US national security i…