More powerful and affluent today than ever, the United States has promising opportunities to influence the course of history. Yet these prospects are shadowed by significant perils and burdens. In this visionary book, leading scholars from the Brookings Institution and other prominent research organizations and universities analyze the major domestic and foreign policy problems facing the nation over the next five to ten years. The challenges on the domestic front are formidable: assuring fair but affordable access to health care, shoring up retirement income for an aging population, encouraging long-term economic growth, easing the growing pains of an increasingly diverse society, and reconciling energy policies with environmental concerns. In international affairs the central task is to use Americas unprecedented power wisely and to protect a homeland that has been revealed as surprisingly vulnerable. Yet efforts must also focus on improving the economic fortunes of poorer countries, expanding trade, and reforming the rules that regulate the flows of capital across national borders. Is the United States government capable of rising to these vast and varied challenges? The concluding chapters of this book offer cautious optimism. While it is often criticized, the American political system is fundamentally resilient and flexible. Ambitious in scope, Agenda for the Nation provides thoughtful, constructive answers to questions of how the U.S. government can effectively serve its citizens and meet its global responsibilities in a world of opportunity and uncertainty.

A splendidly illuminating book.
--"The New York Times"

Like it or not, George W. Bush has launched a revolution in American foreign policy. He has redefined how America engages the world, shedding the constraints that friends, allies, and international institutions once imposed on its freedom of action. In "America Unbound, " Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay caution that the Bush revolution comes with serious risks-and, at some point, we may find that America's friends and allies will refuse to follow his lead, leaving the U.S. unable to achieve its goals. This edition has been extensively revised and updated to include major policy changes and developments since the book's original publication.

Winner of the 2003 Lionel Gelber Prize

A Foreign Affairs Bestseller

"The commentary is judicious, the language sober, and given that both Daalder and Lindsay served in the Clinton White House--and that Daalder was recently an advisor to Howard Dean--the measured tone invests the book with that much more credibility."
--The Washington Post

"America Unbound deserves the closest attention. The research is admirable, the arguments are well marshaled, and the absence of stridency adds considerable authority to the portrayal of Bush as a president whose worldview simply made no allowance for others' doubting the purity of American motives."
--Serge Schmemann, The New York Times Book Review

"A provocative and original thesis--and also a caution to those who have underestimated George W. Bush's decisive and historic impact on the course of American foreign policy."
--Robert Kagan, author, Of Paradise and Power

"It is doubtful that another book will come along soon that covers all the important points of the administration's foreign policy with more clarity and evenhandedness."
--Joshua Micah Marshall, Foreign Affairs

"For those seeking to understand the Bush foreign policy and not merely to denounce it, this informative book will be highly useful."
--Ronald Steel, The Nation

"A useful analysis. . . . Their emphasis is less on the shift to preventive war than on the administration's doctrinaire analysis and its moralistic arrogance."
--Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The New York Review of Books

"America Unbound is refreshingly original and it makes the case for President Bush as the master of his own unilateralist revolution. Future examinations of Bushforeign policy will be measured against this authoritative book."
--Daniel Schorr, National Public Radio

A Brookings Institution Book

American foreign policy is adrift. For seventy years, the world order that the United States fashioned out of the ruins of World War II produced unprecedented global stability, prosperity, and democratic consensus. Critics argue that Donald Trump's America First policy threatens this world order. What Trump's staunchest critics fail to realize, though, is this order has been fraying for years. Ivo Daalder, former ambassador to NATO and the president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and James Lindsay, a senior vice president at the Council of Foreign Relations, give us a chilling account of why things are worse than they seem. At its core the U.S.-led world order has been a victim of its own success, well before Trump even campaigned for office. The unprecedented period of peace at the end of the 20th century produced record economic growth. Once poor countries like China, India, and Brazil prospered, and as they grew richer, they increasingly contested both the rules and America's privileged position within the order. At the same time, as the costs grew, many Americans soured on the benefits of global leadership, especially as their own prospects for a better life dimmed. Now that Trump sits in the Oval Office, optimists hope that his advisers will curb Trump's taste for foreign policy disruption. But even if this does occur, neither Trump nor his advisers have a strategy for addressing the fundamental challenge for American foreign policy: how to revitalize the world order on which America's security and prosperity rests. Daalder and Lindsay are sure Trump will damage that order; he may well finish it off for good.

" The authors provide a sound critique of the standard positions and hyperboles of both advocates and opponents, as well as an accessible primer on the types, advantages, and limitations of various systems and architectures.... Defending America provides as good a 'few years out' unclassified guide as you're likely to find." - The Washington Times " Even those readers who have made up their minds should find this book a useful compendium of information and analysis on an old topic." - Foreign Affairs