Join the Hoover Book Club for engaging discussions with leading authors on the hottest policy issues of the day. Hoover scholars explore the latest books that delve into some of the most vexing policy issues facing the United States and the world. Find out what makes these authors tick and how they think we should approach our most difficult challenges.

In our latest installment, watch a discussion between Matt Pottinger is a distinguished visiting fellow and Sean Mirski a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution on Sean's book We May Dominate The World: Ambition, Anxiety, And The Rise Of The American Colossus.

Thursday, July 27, 2023 | 10:00 am PT / 1:00pm ET

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sean A. Mirski is a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution. Mirski is a lawyer and U.S. foreign policy scholar who has worked on national security issues across multiple U.S. presidential administrations. A term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he currently practices national security, foreign relations, and appellate law at Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP. He previously served in the U.S. Department of Defense under both Republican and Democratic administrations as Special Counsel to the General Counsel, where he earned the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Award for Outstanding Achievement.

Mirski has written extensively on American history, international relations, law, and politics, including as editor of the book Crux of Asia: China, India, and the Emerging Global Order (CEIP 2013). Earlier in his career, he clerked for two U.S. Supreme Court justices and served as a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Named one of Forbes magazine’s “30 Under 30,” he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and holds a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Chicago.

ABOUT THE BOOK

What did it take for the United States to become a global superpower? The answer lies in a missing chapter of American foreign policy with stark lessons for today.

The cutthroat world of international politics has always been dominated by great powers. Yet no great power in the modern era has ever managed to achieve the kind of invulnerability that comes from being completely supreme in its own neighborhood. No great power, that is, except one—the United States.

In We May Dominate the World, Sean A. Mirski tells the riveting story of how the United States became a regional hegemon in the century following the Civil War. By turns reluctant and ruthless, Americans squeezed their European rivals out of the hemisphere while landing forces on their neighbors’ soil with dizzying frequency. Mirski reveals the surprising reasons behind this muscular foreign policy in a narrative full of twists, colorful characters, and original accounts of the palace coups and bloody interventions that turned the fledgling republic into a global superpower.

Today, as China makes its own run at regional hegemony and nations like Russia and Iran grow more menacing, Mirski’s fresh look at the rise of the American colossus offers indispensable lessons for how to meet the challenges of our own century.

Nathalie Léger

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