Powers and Principles

What if the major global and regional powers of todayOs world came into closer alignment to build a stronger international community and shared approaches to twenty-first century threats and challenges? The Stanley Foundation posed that question to thirty-three top foreign policy analysts in Powers and Principles: International Leadership in a Shrinking World. Contributing writers were asked to describe the paths that nine powerful nations, a regional union of twenty-seven states, and a multinational corporation could take as constructive stakeholders in a strengthened rules-based international order. Each chapter is an assessment of what is politically possible (and impossible)with a description of the associated pressures and reference to the countryOs geostrategic position, economy, society, history, and political system and culture. To provide a perspective from the inside and counterweight, each essay is accompanied by a critical reaction by a prominent analyst commentator from the given country. Powers and Principles is aimed at both reflective practitioners of policy and policy-relevant scholars.

The distinct lack of agreement among major powers today contradicts the idea of an international community bound by a common moral code. International norms nonetheless exert a degree of moral and political force as powerful nations vie for status and influence. Powers and Principles uses a novel and illuminating approach to examine the role of benevolent impulses in international affairs., If the world of the 21st century is to be governed, and its daunting challenges addressed, the great powers will need to step forward to provide collective leadership. At the same time, this modern concert of powers must also be expanded to including rising states and new global stakeholders. Powers and Principles provides one of the best glimpses of these major players and their agendas. It offers an illuminating survey of the competing visions of global order and the terms upon which constructiveorder building might be baseddd, If the world of the 21st century is to be governed, and its daunting challenges addressed, the great powers will need to step forward to provide collective leadership. At the same time, this modern concert of powers must also be expanded to including rising states and new global stakeholders. Powers and Principles provides one of the best glimpses of these major players and their agendas. It offers an illuminating survey of the competing visions of global order and the terms upon which constructive order building might be based

Michael Schiffer was, from 2006-2009, a program officer in policy analysis and dialogue at the Stanley Foundation and a fellow at the Center for Asia and Pacific Studies at the University of Iowa. David Shorr is a program officer at the Stanley Foundation. His last co-edited volume, a collection of bipartisan essays, was Bridging the Foreign Policy Divide.