I am deeply grateful to a large number of people for making this book possible. I have been very fortunate to have The Brookings Institution as my intellectual and professional home since December 2011. Brookings is a wonderful place to work and a melting pot of ideas and expertise. Given the broad nature of my topic, I benefited hugely from talking with my colleagues, and their work is widely referenced in the text that follows. In particular, I would like to thank Jeff Bader, Richard Bush, Philippe Le Corre, Shadi Hamid, Tanvi Madan, Will McCants, Theodore Piccone, Steven Pifer, Jonathan Pollack, Bruce Riedel, Javier Solana, Constanze Stelzenmueller, and Harold Trinkunas.
Several of my colleagues read and commented on various drafts of the book and influenced my thinking on particular parts: Fiona Hill on Vladimir Putin and his foreign policy; Tamara Wittes on the Middle East; and Michael O’Hanlon on defense policy. Michael, who is also our director of research, oversaw a smooth review and approval process and provided wise counsel and support.
Bruce Jones was responsible for my joining Brookings in 2011. He has been an incredible colleague and has had an enormous impact on my thinking. Bob Kagan is someone whose work I admired for many years. His grasp of history, strategy, the role of the American public, and the constraints of domestic politics are quite remarkable, and I learned a great deal from him. Martin Indyk, our executive vice president, has always been incredibly supportive of my work. I was very fortunate to spend a week in the Middle East with Martin in the final stages of drafting the book, and many of the ideas we discussed there are reflected here. I would also like to thank the president of Brookings, Strobe Talbott, for his support, both for me as a fellow and for having a project dedicated to international order and strategy at Brookings.
My friend Jeremy Shapiro may not disagree with every word in this book, but it is a safe bet that he disagrees with every second word. Jeremy is the smartest contrarian thinker I know on U.S. foreign policy, and he has made my arguments much sharper, and hopefully more robust, through continuous, collegial, and entertaining disagreements over the past five years, for which I am very grateful. There have even been occasions where he has changed my mind.
My writing of this book coincided with my involvement with another project at Brookings on the same topic. The bipartisan Order from Chaos study group met for eighteen months from mid-2015 until February 2017 and produced a national security strategy for the United States for which I was the lead drafter. I am indebted to the members of that task force—Derek Chollet, Eric Edelman, Michele Flournoy, Stephen Hadley, Kristen Silverberg, and Jake Sullivan, as well as the three other Brookings members, Bruce, Bob, and Martin—for many stimulating conversations.
I owe a particular debt of gratitude to my research assistants who have helped on this book: Laura Daniels, Rob Keane, and Will Moreland. All three provided invaluable research assistance as well as ensuring that our day-to-day work ran smoothly despite long writing sessions. Will played a crucial role in finalizing the manuscript.
I benefited greatly from advice from friends and colleagues on various ideas in this book. I would like to thank Misha Auslin, William Burke-White, Joshua Busby, Jon Caverley, Zack Cooper, Samuel Charap, Jackie Deal, Abraham Denmark, Daniel Drezner, Heather Hurlburt, Hans Kundnani, Niamh King, Alexander Lennon, Edward Luce, Evan Medeiros, Jonathan Monten, Nirav Patel, Ely Ratner, Iskander Rehman, Kori Schake, Randy Scheunemann, Erin Simpson, Vikram Singh, Matthew Spence, and Ashley Tellis.
A number of people read the manuscript from beginning to end and provided comments and edits, which were indis-pensable. These are Mathew Burrows, Daniel Blumenthal, Geoff Dyer, Michael Green, Emile Hokayem, Siddharth Mohandas, Natan Sachs, Elizabeth Saunders, Andrew Small, and Torrey Tausig. Two people merit a special mention for reading the draft multiple times and for spending many hours talking through different aspects of it with me—my good friends David Gordon and Andrew Shearer. The book, whatever its flaws, is immeasurably stronger because of their wise counsel and sharp editing skills.
A number of institutions and individuals provided financial support for this project: the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Danny Abraham, Jonathan Colby, Raj Fernando, Ben Jacobs, Ned Lamont, and Haim Saban. I thank them all for their generous support of the Order from Chaos project at Brookings, of which this is a part. The governments of Denmark, Sweden, and Finland provided support for international consultations that helped inform my research.
A special thanks to my literary agent, Bridget Matzie. Bridget taught me an enormous amount about the publishing process and how to position this book for a general audience. The book would not be what it is without her advice and help. I would also like to thank Jaya Chatterjee and Mary Pasti, my editors at Yale University Press, and Julie Carlson, my manuscript editor, all of whom have been terrific to work with—and very patient!
My greatest debts are to my family. To my parents and my siblings—Peter, Bernard, John, and Catherine—for giving me early experience in world affairs with lively conversations around the dinner table in Dublin. And to the love of my life, my wonderful wife, Karen McMonagle. Karen has been a tremendous source of support throughout, and I am extraordinarily lucky to have her as a partner in life.