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Containing Communism was the primary goal of American foreign policy for four decades, allowing generations of political leaders to build consensus atop a universally accepted foundation. From Berlin to Baghdad dissects numerous attempts, after communism's collapse, to devise a new grand strategy that could match containment's moral clarity and political efficacy.

In the 1990s, the Bush and Clinton administrations eventually acknowledged that they could not reduce America's multifaceted post-Cold War objectives to a single fundamental precept. After 9/11, George W. Bush promoted the war on terror as America's new global mission, but this potential successor to containment lost much of its strength as conflicts in the Middle East weakened public morale. From Berlin to Baghdad sheds new light on America's search for purpose in the politically volatile new world of the twenty-first century.

Hal Brands, who is completing his doctorate in history at Yale University, is the author of numerous journal articles.

Reviews:

"From Berlin to Baghdad is beautifully written, balanced, and based on nearly all available primary source documents bolstered by the relevant secondary literature."--Steven Metz, author of Armed Conflict in the 21st Century: The Information Revolution and Post-Modern Warfare

"A comprehensive study, From Berlin to Baghdad fills a major gap in literature."--Michael Cox, London School of Economics and Political Science

"Hal Brands has written an excellent overview of US foreign policy from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Iraq War. His study centers on the search for a coherent, overarching US strategy to replace the concept of containment that had dominated US doctrine throughout the Cold War."-Journal of American Studies