Although I am responsible for the arguments in this book, I received a great deal of help along the way from a small army of individuals and institutions.
Numerous colleagues were willing to spend their valuable time reading and commenting on the manuscript, and their fingerprints are all over this book. Almost every reader caused me either to abandon a wrongheaded argument, add a new argument, or qualify an existing argument. Indeed, I shudder to think how many foolish ideas and errors of fact would still be in this book were it not for the comments I received. Still, I did not accept all of their suggestions, and I bear full responsibility for any remaining problems.
I owe a profound debt of gratitude to Colin Elman, Michael Desch, Peter Liberman, Karl Mueller, Marc Trachtenberg, and especially Stephen Walt, all of whom not only read and commented on the entire manuscript once but also read and commented on some parts of it more than once. I am also grateful for comments provided by Robert Art, Deborah Avant, Richard Betts, Dale Copeland, Michael Creswell, Michael Doyle, David Edelstein, Benjamin Frankel, Hein Goemans, Jack Goldsmith, Joseph Grieco, Arman Grigorian, David Herrmann, Eric Labs, Karl Lautenschlager, Christopher Layne, Jack Levy, Michael Mandelbaum, Karen Mingst, Takayuki Nishi, Robert Pape, Barry Posen, Daryl Press, Cynthia Roberts, Robert Ross, Brian Schmidt, Jack Snyder, Stephen Van Evera, and Alexander Wendt. My apologies to anyone I forgot.
Thanks are also owed to a host of research assistants who worked for me over the many years it took to write this book. They include Roshna Balasubramanian, David Edelstein, Daniel Ginsberg, Andrea Jett, Seth Jones, Keir Lieber, Daniel Marcinak, Justine Rosenthal, John Schussler, and Steven Weil. A special word of thanks is owed to Alexander Downes, who is largely responsible for producing the charts in this book, and who extensively researched a variety of subjects for me.
As the penultimate draft of the book was being completed, the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City selected me as its Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow for 1998–99. This wonderful fellowship is designed to help authors complete book projects in progress. Toward that end, the Council convened a study group that met three times in New York City to discuss different chapters from the book. Richard Betts did a superb job as chair of the group, which included Robert Jervis, Jack Levy, Gideon Rose, Jack Snyder, Richard Ullman, Kenneth Waltz, and Fareed Zakaria among its members. They were never short of criticism, but almost all of it was invaluable when I wrote the final draft. The Council also arranged for me to present chapters from the book to audiences in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. They, too, provided excellent comments.
After each session in New York with the Council study group, I took a taxicab to Columbia University, where I presented the same chapters to a workshop run by two graduate students, Arman Grigorian and Holger Schmidt. The Columbia students who attended each session offered many excellent comments, which helped me improve my arguments in a variety of ways.
The University of Chicago played a pivotal role in helping me write this book by providing a rich and exacting intellectual environment, as well as generous research support. A scholar could not ask for a better home. I have been especially fortunate at Chicago to have worked with a long list of talented graduate students who not only forced me to sharpen my arguments but taught me a lot about the theory and history of international politics. I also wish to thank the office staff in the Political Science Department (Kathy Anderson, Heidi Parker, and Mimi Walsh) for providing me with logistical support over the years.
I would also like to acknowledge long-standing debts to four individuals who were my principal mentors when I began my career. William Schwartz introduced me to the study of international security when I was an undergraduate at West Point; Charles Powell nurtured me when I was a graduate student at the University of Southern California; and George Quester and Richard Rosecrance were my dissertation advisers at Cornell University. I would not have made it as a scholar, and thus would never have written this book, without their backing and without the support of the institutions where they taught and I studied. For all that help, I am forever grateful.
Roby Harrington, my editor at Norton, came up with the idea for this book and has worked with me on the project for longer than either he or I anticipated. His patience and wisdom are greatly appreciated. Traci Nagle did a splendid job of copy-editing the manuscript, while Avery Johnson and Rob Whiteside did a fine job overseeing the production of the book that is before you.
Finally, I thank my family for providing me with invaluable moral support. Writing a book is usually a protracted and painful process. I liken it to having to get up day after day to wrestle with a bear for hours on end. To finally whip the bear, it helps immensely to have strong support at home as well as in the arena of intellectual combat. I was fortunate to have both. Most important, I thank my wife, Pamela, to whom I owe so much. This book is dedicated to her.