100 books like U.S. Naval Power in the 21st Century

Bill Hayton’s book helped guide me into this theme of the significant value and importance of the South China Sea. He offered a comprehensive historical narrative of the region from ancient times to the early 2010s while scrupulously outlining the territorial disputes and power struggles it has fostered.

His use of academic sources and journalistic articles was most readable. As a journalist, I welcomed his non-wonkish writing style and digressions on key actors in the unfolding dramas playing out in real-time on the ocean. I also met the author at several South China Sea conferences, and his open style and manner reflected in person were also present in his narrative. 

In this book, Gregory B. Poling delves into the intricate and perilous maritime conflicts across the globe, particularly in the South China Sea, to assess US interests.

I like that his analysis spans over a century of American engagement in the region, spotlighting the convergence of these disputes with the enduring US advocacy for freedom of navigation and its evolving Asian alliance network. This sweeping historical narrative informs readers why this ocean matters to all Americans.

The author’s first-hand interviews with the subjects, naval officers, crews, sailors, and naval pilots offered a front-row seat for me as a reader. Li brings China’s naval operations into a clear view and offers an insightful perspective on their navy’s operations in the South China Sea.

In short, he brings China’s naval history alive and offers us a better understanding of the current standoff between Washington and Beijing. I recommend it to anyone who wants a clear and unwavering picture of the evolving military balance in the Indo-Pacific region.

I recently finished reading this insightful book, which has helped me better understand the blue economy, how the US and China can both realize the potential of the ocean, and the geopolitical ramifications.

The competition between these two superpowers is deeply entrenched in ocean matters. Indeed, our planet is predominantly ocean, with more than two-thirds of its surface covered by the sea that serves as vital hubs for economic development, transportation, and resource extraction, as evident in the current race for seabed critical minerals and of course, seafood to feed the world population now approaching 9 billion. This book is an excellent textbook on the blue economy. 

Bob Woodward spares no president his unvarnished critique.

I found the most interesting part of the book not about Obama, per se, but the circumstances that led to Senator Hillary Clinton’s appointment as his Secretary of State, despite her known and strong disagreements with him on foreign policy.

In one part, Woodward relates a conversation between Clinton and a senior campaign advisor, in which she expresses deep concern that by accepting the position she might someday be caught between loyalty to the President and a hard place.

Fast forward to the 2012 Benghazi attack, which Republicans used to scuttle her 2016 Presidential bid, and in turn, allowed Donald Trump to dismantle much of Obama’s hoped-for legacy.

Known critically as the School of Dictators, Gill has written the first in-depth anthropological account of US military training for Latin American officers at the School of the Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) in Fort Benning, Georgia. She discusses the way that Latin American military officers sent to the school are attracted to the “American way of life,” how the courses enhance officers’ ability to exercise indiscriminate violence, their enduring ties to the global U.S. military mission, and downplay of human rights violations, which School officials attribute to “a few bad apples.” Carefully researched, thoughtfully structured, and exceptionally well-written, Gill shows that foreign training of Latin American military officers plays an important role in U.S. imperialism. 

In this book, the closest thing we have to a traditional work of national security on this list, the brilliant (and funny) iconoclast John Mueller asks a simple question: Why don’t more people realize just how stupid war is?

Why, for instance, as Greek soldiers loaded into boats to attack Troy because of a kidnapping, did no one comment on the sheer stupidity of the whole operation? Mueller reviews the history of this stupidity and recommends that his country give more consideration to steering clear of them in the future.

All wars the United States fights are, to use the common parlance, “wars of choice.” We always have the option to not engage, a choice that would usually leave us better off.

There is a consensus among Western elites that the post-Cold War order is over and that a new order is emerging. Richard Sakwa’s book, with an intellectually rich yet accessible writing style, helps readers understand how, in only three decades–nothing in the whole history of the world and a short time from an international order perspective–we have moved from the announcement of the end of history and a new world order to the unraveling of it.

Sakwa argues that the years following the end of the Cold War did not represent a lasting accord between great powers and that the causes of these have to be found in the underlining intolerance of the West’s ideology of “democratic internationalism.”

This meant that after the Cold War there simply was a tactical pause that eventually ushered in the ‘Second Cold War’ we currently find ourselves in. Sakwa wrote a courageous account of… show more.

Gilbert Achcar has written one of the most complete recent studies from a global geostrategic and political-economic perspective. It explains the genesis of the “Second” Cold War between the US, Russia, and China, which stemmed in large part from the NATO air war “over” Kosovo with Serbia in 1999, which alienated both Moscow and Beijing.

Much as I have likewise warned in my later books, a major power war could be provoked by the Ukraine-Russia war since 2022 or by perceived Chinese threats to unify with Taiwan, among other conflicts―if diplomacy cannot achieve peace.

Too often, Russia is seen through Euro-Atlantic eyes and in European terms. But the Russian leadership has long spoken of a shift in global power, the emergence of a “post-West” world—and of the 21st Century being a “Pacific Century.” China has long been at the heart of this view, and an important priority in Russian foreign policy—and this book by a prominent Russian expert traces a Russian view of the emergent Sino-Russian rapprochement. Not everyone will agree with his analysis, but I like thinking about things from different angles, and the intellectual challenge he poses becomes ever more important as sanctions take hold of the Russian economy and as the Sino-Russian partnership becomes one of the central questions of international affairs today.