Publications

The events of September 11, 2001, radically reshaped relations between the United States and the rest of the world. Overnight, an unexpected war on terror became the highest priority of the world's sole superpower, upending the traditional set of interests that governed its bilateral relations. America's new agenda offered opportunities for some countries to strengthen ties by pursuing new counterterror initiatives. Over time, however, as the war on terror came to include an invasion of Iraq, some nations began to see untrammeled U.S. power as a threat to their own interests. Thus arose a complex unfolding of events as some "bandwagoned" with Washington while others sought partners to "balance" against what they saw as a dangerous dominance.

This volume demonstrates the multiplicity of factors that shaped policymakers' decisions and points to bedrock concerns that must be addressed as the war on terror continues. The contributing authors provide a fascinating tableau of America's bilateral relations with a group of key countries--China, Georgia, Germany, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, and Saudi Arabia--at a time of extraordinary change and great unpredictability.

Daniel Benjamin is a former senior fellow in the CSIS International Security Program and coauthor of The Age of Sacred Terror (Random House, 2002). He is the former director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council staff and was special assistant and foreign policy speechwriter for President Bill Clinton. Benjamin is a former Berlin bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal and was a foreign correspondent for Time.