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Books by Timothy J Lynch

This book offers a bold reinterpretation of the prevailing narrative that U.S. foreign policy aft... more This book offers a bold reinterpretation of the prevailing narrative that U.S. foreign policy after the Cold War was a failure. In chapters that retell and reargue the key episodes of the post-Cold War years, Lynch argues that the Cold War cast a shadow on the presidents that came after it and that success came more from adapting to that shadow than in attempts to escape it. When strategic lessons of the Cold War were applied, presidents fared better; when they were forgotten, they fared worse. This book tells the story not of a revolution in American foreign policy but of its essentially continuous character from one era to the next. While there were many setbacks between the fall of Soviet communism and the opening years of the Trump administration, from Rwanda to 9/11 and Iraq to Syria, Lynch demonstrates how and why the U.S. remained the world's dominant power. 'Lynch has written a cogent, graceful, provocative account of American foreign policy in the wake of-but, he argues, still powerfully influenced by-the Cold War.

Book chapters by Timothy J Lynch

Journal articles by Timothy J Lynch

_________________________________________________________________________________________________... more ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ John Dumbrell (2012) Rethinking the Vietnam War, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, ISBN: 978 0 333 98490 1 (hardback) and 978 0 333 98491 8 (paperback) (£70 hardback and £25.99 paperback) International Politics Reviews (2013) 1, 37-48.

International Affairs, 2012

Kill or capture: the war on terror and the soul of the Obama presidency. By Daniel Klaidman. New ... more Kill or capture: the war on terror and the soul of the Obama presidency. By Daniel Klaidman. New York: Houghton Mifflin. 2012. 288pp. Index. £17.90. isbn 978 0 54754 789 3. Confront and conceal: Obama's secret wars and surprising use of American power. By David E. Sanger. New York: Crown. 2012. 476pp. Index. $28.00. isbn 978 0 30771 802 0. Available as e-book. Bending history: Barack Obama's foreign policy. By Martin S. Indyk, Kenneth G. Lieberthal and Michael E. O'Hanlon. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press. 2012. 342pp. Index. £18.99. isbn 978 0 81572 182 6. Available as e-book. A single roll of the dice: Obama's diplomacy with Iran. By Trita Parsi. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2012. 284pp. Index. £18.99. isbn 978 0 30016 936 2. Available as e-book. Overreach: leadership in the Obama presidency. By George C. Edwards III. Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press. 2012. 231pp. Index. £19.95. isbn 978 0 69115 368 1. Available as e-book.

Political Studies Review, 2010

Irish Studies in International Affairs, 2003

Book Reviews by Timothy J Lynch

Drafts by Timothy J Lynch

opening pages only – please do not cite – publication pending

Papers by Timothy J Lynch

International Affairs, 2012

Political Studies Review, 2010

Irish Studies in International Affairs, 2003

opening pages only – please do not cite – publication pending

In the Shadow of the Cold War

Journal of American Studies

Thank you for reading the oxford encyclopedia of american military and diplomatic history. Maybe ... more Thank you for reading the oxford encyclopedia of american military and diplomatic history. Maybe you have knowledge that, people have look numerous times for their chosen novels like this the oxford encyclopedia of american military and diplomatic history, but end up in infectious downloads. Rather than enjoying a good book with a cup of coffee in the afternoon, instead they are facing with some harmful virus inside their desktop computer.

Assessing George W. Bush's Legacy, 2010

When Michelle Obama met Sarah Brown, the wife of the British prime minister, the First Lady gave,... more When Michelle Obama met Sarah Brown, the wife of the British prime minister, the First Lady gave, as a gift to Sarah’s two sons, a $15 model of Marine One, the presidential helicopter. According to one commentator, better tokens of esteem would have been “Action man models of her husband smiting the evil forces of neoconservatism.”1 The advent of the Obama presidency in January 2009 was widely expected to be a repudiation of the foreign policy of his predecessor. There was widespread anticipation in America and abroad that Bush’s failures, which were conventionally attributed to neoconservative influence, would be put right; the United States would “reset” relationships “crashed” by Bush’s war on terror; multilateralism would replace unilateralism; international law would be taken seriously again; extraordinary rendition would end and Guantanamo Bay would be closed; climate change would be prioritized; and ideology and idealism in foreign policy would be swapped for realism and pragmatism. In sum the deneoconization of foreign policy would restore America’s legitimacy as a force for good in the world.

... Thomas Hachey, Donald Hafrier, Kirstin Howgate, Adrian Hyde-Price, Marc Landy, Elizabeth, Hea... more ... Thomas Hachey, Donald Hafrier, Kirstin Howgate, Adrian Hyde-Price, Marc Landy, Elizabeth, Heather, Michael, and Peerson Lynch, Gary McDowell ... 6 See O'Clery, Daring Diplomacy; Arthur, Special Relationships; Deaglan de Breadiin, The Far Side of Revenge: Making Peace ...

International Politics Reviews, 2013

The Case for Continuity in American Foreign Policy, 2008

Crisis of Conservatism?, 2011

The Case for Continuity in American Foreign Policy, 2008

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 2007

, xii + 184 pp. 'The statesman', as Fareed Zakaria has observed, 'unlike the academic, cannot wai... more , xii + 184 pp. 'The statesman', as Fareed Zakaria has observed, 'unlike the academic, cannot wait for international relations theory to work itself out. He must have a policy that addresses the perceived power distribution in the world' (Zakaria 1990, 392). How far does the scholarship offered in these books understand and empathise with what post-9/11 statesmen have been up to? David Held and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi offer under one cover an excellent collection-with a very informative introduction-of the dominant arguments about American foreign policy after 9/11. Many readers will have encountered the essays in their original forms but they are helpfully assembled here. Zbigniew Brzezinski offers a sustained disquisition on the problems of having no check on US power save for the US itself. Christian Reus-Smit presents a manifesto-sized bemoaning of the contemporary iniquities of American power. Ralph G. Carter provides an edited textbook collection of case-study essays on, respectively, US intervention, national security and defence, trade and multilateral policies. (This latter work offers a reliable guide to the terrain that the other three books occupy in more normative fashion-and for this reason receives less attention in the typology that follows.) There are four basic, substantively normative, perspectives on offer in these books. Brzezinski, Held and Koenig-Archibugi and Reus-Smit deal in arguments; they are works of persuasion. Drawing on a range of post-9/11 evidence, the authors seek to persuade us of one of four assessments of American power: (1) that it is rising and its rise is to be valued (rising-positive); (2) that it is rising and is to be resisted (rising-negative); (3) that it is failing and falling (or is, at least, unsustainable) and that this is a shame (failing-negative); (4) American power is failing and this is to be welcomed (failing-positive).

Presidential Studies Quarterly, 2013

The Chameleon President: The Curious Case of George W. Bush. By Clarke Rountree. Santa Barbara, C... more The Chameleon President: The Curious Case of George W. Bush. By Clarke Rountree. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012. 287 pp. In this often puzzling book, Clarke Rountree seeks to place President George W. Bush, "one of the most confounding politicians in modern times" (p. ix), into a more accurate and appropriate scholarly frame. A reflexive anti-Bushism has disabled too much of the scholarship about the Texan. The author appears to want to correct this trend and to get beyond simple categories by using them to construct a more integrated and complex picture of the former president. Bush is thus considered against several caricatures (as "Not the Sharpest Tool in the Shed," as "The Callow Frat Boy," as "Born-Again," as "Evil," as "Cheney's Puppet," and so forth--afforded a chapter each) in an effort to transcend these. This interrogation of caricature (and, too often, by caricature) concludes by asking, "Would the Real George W. Bush Please Stand Up?--a question to which Rountree ultimately does not provide an answer, preferring to let his readers decide. Rountree, a professor of Communication Arts, is keen throughout to keep his own position mysterious. This goal would be tenable--if not especially interesting had he not begun the book with an introductory chapter that makes rather plain his distaste for its subject: "the ugly body of work known as George W. Bush's presidency" (p. xi). Later, readers are told that Bush "is callous, greedy, deceptive, heartless, uncaring, a traitor to the public interest, a liar who covers up his true motives, a Machiavelli willing to do anything to get his way.... This bad man was able to do great evil and is rightly characterized an evil president" (p. 173). Elsewhere, Rountree seems to accept the stereotypes of Bush as "just not very bright" (p. 20), as "an old but immature frat boy" (p. 41), and as a "Southern oligarch" (p. 80) who was "raised to be a prince" (p. 99). Bush's "insufferable arrogance and his patent incompetence" (p. 99) are colorfully illustrated and condemned--though hardly proven--throughout. One appreciates that the author is attempting to assume the bias of each construction as a kind of role-play exercise. But one wonders why the author considers this method to be more revealing than simply interrogating each construction on its merits. Instead, the book presents a series of black and white portraits, and compares, contrasts, and analyzes them only minimally. The truism that "people disagree about the facts" (p. 239) is an insufficient excuse for avoiding the judgments that would make Rountree's work potentially very interesting. There are other weaknesses undermining the text. It relies, for example, too much on exclamation marks, while exhibiting a frequent recourse to humor. …

Japanese Journal of Political Science, 2008

The Case for Continuity in American Foreign Policy, 2008