Council on Foreign Relations

Winner of the 2010 Hayek Book Prize given by the Manhattan Institute "Money, Markets and Sovereignty is a surprisingly easy read, given the complicated issues covered. In it, Mr. Steil and Mr. Hinds consistently challenge today's statist nostrums."-Doug Bandow, The Washington Times In this keenly argued book, Benn Steil and Manuel Hinds offer the most powerful defense of economic liberalism since F. A. Hayek published The Road to Serfdom more than sixty years ago. The authors present a fascinating intellectual history of monetary nationalism from the ancient world to the present and explore why, in its modern incarnation, it represents the single greatest threat to globalization. Steil and Hinds describe the current state of international economic relations as both unusual and precarious. Eras of economic protectionism have historically coincided with monetary nationalism, while eras of liberal trade have been accompanied by a universal monetary standard. But today, the authors show, an unprecedentedly liberal global trade regime operates side by side with the most extreme doctrine of monetary nationalism ever contrived-a situation bound to trigger periodic crises. Steil and Hinds call for a revival of the political and economic thinking that underlay earlier great periods of globalization, thinking that is increasingly under threat by more recent ideas about what sovereignty means.

A case for why regionalization, not globalization, has been the biggest economic trend of the past forty years The conventional wisdom about globalization is wrong. Over the past forty years as companies, money, ideas, and people went abroad more often than not, they looked regional rather than globally. O'Neil details this transformation and the rise of three major regional hubs in Asia, Europe, and North America. Current technological, demographic, and geopolitical trends look only to deepen these regional ties. O'Neil argues that this has urgent implications for the United States. Regionalization has enhanced economic competitiveness and prosperity in Europe and Asia. It could do the same for the United States, if only it would embrace its neighbors.

When confronted with a persistent foreign policy problem that threatens U.S. interests, and that cannot be adequately addressed through economic or political pressure, American policymakers and opinion formers have increasingly resorted to recommending the use of limited military force: that is, enough force to attempt to resolve the problem while minimizing U.S. military deaths, local civilian casualties, and collateral damage. These recommendations have ranged from the bizarre-such as a Predator missile strike to kill Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, or the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez-to the unwise-the preemptive bombing of North Korean ballistic missile sites-to the demonstrably practical-air raids into Bosnia and Somalia, and drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. However, even though they have been a regular feature of America's uses of military force through four successive administrations, the efficacy of these "Discrete Military Operations" (DMOs) remains largely unanalyzed, leaving unanswered the important question of whether or not they have succeeded in achieving their intended military and political objectives. In response, Micah Zenko examines the thirty-six DMOs undertaken by the US over the past 20 years, in order to discern why they were used, if they achieved their objectives, and what determined their success or failure. In the process, he both evaluates U.S. policy choices and recommends ways in which limited military force can be better used in the future. The insights and recommendations made by Zenko will be increasingly relevant to making decisions and predictions about the development of American grand strategy and future military policy.

The surprising story of Iran's transformation from America's ally in the Middle East into one of its staunchest adversaries Offering a new view of one of America's most important, infamously strained, and widely misunderstood relationships of the postwar era, this book tells the history of America and Iran from the time the last shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was placed on the throne in 1941 to the 1979 revolution that brought the present Islamist government to power. This revolution was not, as many believe, the popular overthrow of a powerful and ruthless puppet of the United States; rather, it followed decades of corrosion of Iran's political establishment by an autocratic ruler who demanded fealty but lacked the personal strength to make hard decisions and, ultimately, lost the support of every sector of Iranian society. Esteemed Middle East scholar Ray Takeyh provides new interpretations of many key events-including the 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq and the rise of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini-significantly revising our understanding of America and Iran's complex and difficult history.