In August 2016, the Aspen Strategy Group examined how to reform America’s national security decision-making process. The papers in this volume provide practical solutions to repair the key functions of Washington’s executive departments, agencies, and advisory bodies responsible for shaping U.S. foreign policy and national security.

**From the scholar who coined the term “soft power,” a bracing examination of what it means to lead in the digital age“Nye is a master of his field at the height of his powers.” —The Washington Post**Power evolves. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, unsurpassed in military strength and ownership of world resources, the United States was indisputably the most powerful nation in the world. But the information age is creating new opportunities for developin...

The #1 New York Times bestseller about putting America back in the lead by the former US senator and presidential candidate.In No Apology, Mitt Romney asserts that American strength is essential—not just for our own well-being, but for the world's. Nations such as China and a resurgent Russia threaten to overtake us on many fronts, and violent Islamism continues to be a threat. In the face of such challenges, America need not apologize for its libe...

The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States was a defining moment in American history. After years of failed policies, Barack Obama was given the chance to reclaim the American dream. He proved himself to be a new kind of leader – one who could bring people together, be honest about the challenges we all face and move his nation forward. Change We Can Believe In outlines his vision for America and its standing in the world.

From one of the pioneers in the field of leadership studies comes a provocative reassessment of how people lead in the digital age: in The End of Leadership, Barbara Kellerman reveals a new way of thinking about leadership—and followership—in the twenty-first century. Building off of the strengths and insights of her work as a scholar and a teacher, Kellerman critically reexamines our most strongly-held assumptions about the role of leadership in driving success. Revealing which of our bel...

America has a huge problem. It faces four major challenges, on which its future depends, and it is failing to meet them. In What's Wrong with America?, Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum analyze those challenges - globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation's chronic deficits, and its pattern of energy consumption - and spell out what needs to be done now to rediscover America's power and prowess.They explain how the end of the cold war blinded the na...

From the former secretary of defense and author of the acclaimed #1 best-selling memoir Duty, a characteristically direct, informed, and urgent assessment of why big institutions are failing us and how smart, committed leadership can effect real improvement regardless of scale.Across the realms of civic and private enterprise alike, bureaucracies vitally impact our security, freedoms, and everyday life. With so much at stake, competence, efficiency, and fiscal prudence are...

The American people are frustrated with their government-dismayed by a series of high-profile failures (Iraq, Katrina, the financial meltdown) that seems to just keep getting longer. Yet our nation has a proud history of great achievements: victory in World War II, our national highway system, welfare reform, the moon landing.We need more successes like these to reclaim government's legacy of competence. In If We Can Put a Man on the Moon, William Eggers and John O'Leary explain ho...

It can feel like we're swimming in a sea of corruption. It's unclear who exactly is in charge and what role they play. The same influential people seem to reappear time after time in different professional guises, pressing their own agendas in one venue after another. According to award-winning public policy scholar and anthropologist Janine Wedel, these are the powerful "shadow elite," the main players in a vexing new system of power and influence.In this groundbreaking book, Wede...

For philanthropists of the past, charity was often a matter of simply giving money away. For the philanthrocapitalists-the new generation of billionaires who are reshaping the way they give-it's like business. Largely trained in the corporate world, these "social investors" are using big-business-style strategies and expecting results and accountability to match. Bill Gates, the world's richest man, is leading the way: he has promised his entire fortune to finding a cure for the diseases t...

Globalization and the shifting tectonic plates of the international system have led to an increasingly competitive world. If Canada hopes to gain advantage from the dramatic developments underway it will have to aggressively adapt its foreign and domestic policies and priorities under the clear direction of the federal government or accept being left behind.In Brave New Canada, Derek Burney and Fen Hampson identify the key trends that are reshaping the world's geopolitics ...

Since the end of the Cold War, America's national security establishment has been searching for a new operating theory to explain how this seemingly "chaotic" world actually works. Gone is the clash of blocs, but replaced by what?Thomas Barnett has the answers. A senior military analyst with the U.S. Naval War College, he has given a constant stream of briefings over the past few years, and particularly since 9/11, to the highest of high-level civilian and military...