Social Sciences

National security affairs analyst Ehud Eilam examines the strategy of containment in the Middle East as it is currently pursued. For the United States, containment is a way to avoid war with Iran and thwart its nuclear weapons program. For Israel it has been a way to prevent a confrontation with the Palestinians in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Containment was also part of the war in Syria, though it cost the civilian population there dearly. Ultimately the author provides important and timely insights into the Middle East’s perennially fluid and volatile political environment.

In this authoritative history of the politics of international trade in America from the Revolution to the Trump era, the author asks whether America is better off under a liberal trade regime, or if protectionism has been more beneficial. After World War II, America was the primary architect of the liberal free-trade economic order that ended up dominating the globe for over half a century. Recent years, however, have seen a swelling anti-free trade movement that casts the postwar liberal regime as anti-worker, pro-capital, and - in Donald Trump's view - even anti-American. The author argues that among other benefits the postwar free trade regime has helped American workers.