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Title details for The Lessons of Tragedy by Hal Brands - Available

The Lessons of Tragedy

Statecraft and World Order

by Hal Brands
Charles Edel
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A "brilliant" examination of American complacency and how it puts the nation's—and the world's—security at risk (The Wall Street Journal).
The ancient Greeks hard-wired a tragic sensibility into their culture. By looking disaster squarely in the face, by understanding just how badly things could spiral out of control, they sought to create a communal sense of responsibility and courage—to spur citizens and their leaders to take the difficult actions necessary to avert such a fate. Today, after more than seventy years of great-power peace and a quarter-century of unrivaled global leadership, Americans have lost their sense of tragedy. They have forgotten that the descent into violence and war has been all too common throughout human history. This amnesia has become most pronounced just as Americans and the global order they created are coming under graver threat than at any time in decades.
In a forceful argument that brims with historical sensibility and policy insights, two distinguished historians argue that a tragic sensibility is necessary if America and its allies are to address the dangers that menace the international order today. Tragedy may be commonplace, Brands and Edel argue, but it is not inevitable—so long as we regain an appreciation of the world's tragic nature before it is too late.
"Literate and lucid—sure to interest to readers of Fukuyama, Huntington, and similar authors as well as students of modern realpolitik." —Kirkus Reviews

  • Creators

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  • Release date

    June 24, 2022

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780300244922

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780300244922
      • File size: 481 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      Americans are "serial amnesiacs" who have forgotten the hardest of hard times--which will serve us poorly when the hard times return. The ancient Greeks made the dramatic form of tragedy central to their cultural expression, write Brands (Global Affairs/Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies; American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump, 2018, etc.) and Edel (United States Studies Centre, Univ. of Sydney; Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic, 2014, etc.), as both admonition and inspiration. "An understanding of tragedy," they note, "remains indispensable--as it always has been--to the conduct of statecraft and the preservation of world order." One central facet of tragedy is that hubris will get a person in trouble; another is that it's never correct to assume you're in control of any situation. Given receding memories of the Cold War and the world wars, many ordinary Americans and policymakers alike have lost the awareness that, in the authors' view, the story of international relations over the centuries "has been one of recurring geopolitical cataclysms in which peace is ruptured, nations are shattered, countless lives are lost or disrupted, and golden eras come crashing to an end." It's the stuff of Aeschylus and Thucydides but also of the current headlines, in which the American assumption that democracies are allies and autocracies and authoritarian states suspect is giving way to global illiberalism and the competing geopolitical demands of states such as Russia and China. A properly formed tragic sense, the authors hold, instructs that rivalries between great powers can easily lead to war between them, "a prospect that seemed to have followed the Soviet empire onto the ash heap of history." Other aspects of the tragic sense include recognizing the need for personal sacrifice and communal action and seeing clearly the world for what it is, "especially when the outlook is ominous." Literate and lucid--sure to interest to readers of Fukuyama, Huntington, and similar authors as well as students of modern realpolitik.

      COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)

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