The Long Game ─ How Obama Defied Washington and Redefined America's Role in the World

Authoritative and original, The Long Game is a controversial assessment of President Obama’s foreign policy legacy. Too often, critical discussions concerning American foreign policy are divorced from the political reality in which leaders face choices and make decisions. Here, consummate White House insider Derek Chollet corrects common misperceptions to show how President Obama has done more to alter American foreign policy than any Democratic president since Kennedy.

Ten years after 9/11 and three years into his presidency, President Obama was ready to shelve the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and shift his foreign-policy focus to bolstering the power of America’s presence in the international community. his foreign-policy strategy was to be founded on economic strength and global authoritybut history intruded. Instead, in the coming years, Syria disintegrated; ISIS emerged; Egypt, Ukraine, and post-Qaddafi Libya erupted. Russia has resurfaced as a military threat to Europe, and America has inexorably declined. The world order today is as complicated as it was at the end of the Cold War. President Obama is not to blame.

With new and surprising insights, Derek Chollet reveals that Obama has largely remained true to the policies he outlined before taking office: extracting US forces from Iraq and Afghanistan; deemphasizing military force as the primary tool of American power; rebalancing toward Asia; involving Congress into decisions about the use of force; and pursuing bold policy goals on issues like climate change, trade, and nuclear disarmament. Ultimately, Obama’s policies at home and abroad have been restoring American power, not squandering it. And by redefining American foreign policy, Obama has defied official Washington.The Long Game boldly sums up the core tenets and names Obama’s highly successful doctrine: to position the US to win the long game.”

Derek Chollet is counselor and senior advisor for security and defense policy at The German Marshall Fund of the United States, an advisor to Beacon Global Strategies, and an Adjunct Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. From 2012 - 2015, Chollet was the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, where he managed U.S. defense policy toward Europe (including NATO), the Middle East, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere. Chollet has also been a fellow at The Center for a New American Security (CNAS), the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and the American Academy in Berlin. He has been a visiting scholar and adjunct professor at The George Washington University and an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University.

Derek Chollet is the author, co-author or co-editor of six books on American foreign policy, includingThe Unquiet American: Richard Holbrooke in the World with Samantha Power (PublicAffairs, 2011) andAmerica Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11 with James Goldgeier (PublicAffairs, 2008). His commentaries and reviews on U.S. foreign policy and politics have appeared in many other books and publications.