A decisive analytic critique of US foreign policy by one of America's greatest historians

America's Fatal Leap deconstructs US geopolitics after the end of the Cold War, informed by its author's unsurpassed command of modern history. Paul W. Schroeder, an acclaimed historian of international diplomacy, was a conservative and a natural supporter of American leadership in the world. But he wrote scathing op-eds for the National Interest and the American Conservative about the hubris and moral failings of the War on Terror, warning of damaging long-range effects on the international system. Schroeder compared 9/11 to the assassination in Sarajevo that sparked the First World War, insisting that a great power should never give terrorists a war they wanted. He wrote with extraordinary prescience - months before the US launched its attack on the Taliban - of the 'risks of victory' in Afghanistan, characterised the war in Iraq as a failed bid for informal empire, and called for 'disimperialism' in the Middle East.

America's Fatal Leap collects Schroeder's remarkable interventions on America's adventurism in the Middle East, from the 1991 Gulf War to the Surge of 2007. It includes an Introduction by Perry Anderson, author of US Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers and Ever Closer Union?

"Probably the foremost expert on the history of international politics in the world" - International History Review

"[An] essential starting [point] for those wishing to understand and critique American foreign policy today ... Armed with a historical perspective, Schroeder was one of the most perceptive critics of Bush's war on terror." - Irish Times

"An unlikely, but unwavering, critic of his country's imperial efforts after the Cold War." - Jacobin

"Few works provide as perceptive a guide to the past 25 years . reflects the brilliance [of these essays], the breadth of their historical grounding, and Schroeder's ability to strike directly at the heart of misguided policy with blistering clarity." - Foreign Affairs

"Draws upon wide and deep historical knowledge. The most personal, and moving, feature is the evolution of Schroeder's feelings about his own country and its relationship to the international system." - International Security Studies Forum