THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD

A masterful and accessible study of two centuries of American foreign policy.

Donald Trump's accession to the presidency of the United States has illustrated the distress and doubts of the American people. It symbolizes both a national identity crisis and a questioning of the relationship of the United States with the world. The election of Barack Obama had already indicated a double redefinition, of
America's identity and of its foreign policy. These two successive elections reflect the country's profound transformation regarding its relative power on the international scene. A superpower at the end of the 20th century, its number-one economic ranking and world supremacy are increasingly contested, notably by the rise of China.

Both Trump and Obama are the product of the unique history of the United States – the saga of thirteen colonies taking a continent by storm and soon after taking on the world, in only two centuries. This book therefore sets out to re-examine the history of the United States since the country's birth, devoting particular attention to the link between its external actions and internal transformations, and revisiting a number of myths about its foreign policy, for example the so-called isolationism of the United States until the end of the 19th century.

With a doctorate from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, Maya Kandel is specialist on the Congress, foreign policy and defense of the US. She is also a graduate of Columbia University, an associate researcher at the Observatoire de la Politique Américaine at the Sorbonne Nouvelle Université (Paris 3), and a member of the French association of American studies.