The Twilight Struggle
What the Cold War Teaches Us About Great-Power Rivalry Today
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The Twilight Struggle
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Narrated by:
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Tom Parks
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By:
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Hal Brands
About this listen
A leading historian's guide to great-power competition, as told through America's successes and failures in the Cold War
The United States is entering an era of great-power competition with China and Russia. Such global struggles happen in a geopolitical twilight, between the sunshine of peace and the darkness of war. In this innovative and illuminating book, Hal Brands, a leading historian and former Pentagon adviser, argues that America should look to the history of the Cold War for lessons in how to succeed in great-power rivalry today. Although the threat posed by authoritarian powers is growing, America's muscle memory for dealing with dangerous foes has atrophied in the thirty years since the Cold War ended. In long-term competitions where the diplomatic jockeying is intense and the threat of violence is omnipresent, the United States will need all the historical insight it can get. Exploring how America won a previous twilight struggle is the starting point for determining how America can successfully prosecute another high-stakes rivalry today.
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- The Future of Twenty-First-Century Great Power Competition and Conflict
- By: Mick Ryan
- Narrated by: Grant Cartwright
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
War Transformed provides insights for those involved in the design of military strategy, and the forces that must execute that strategy. Emphasizing the impacts of technology, strategic competition, demography, and climate change, Mick Ryan uses historical and contemporary anecdotes to highlight key challenges faced by nations in a new era of great power rivalry. Just as previous industrial revolutions have advanced societies, the nascent fourth industrial revolution will have a similar impact on how humans fight, compete, and build military power in the twenty-first century.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good but is quickly becoming dated
- By howiepalms on 06-12-23
By: Mick Ryan
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The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy
- Weak Power, Great Power, Superpower, Hyperpower
- By: Michael Mandelbaum
- Narrated by: Lyle Blaker
- Length: 18 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 8
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 7
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6
In The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy, Michael Mandelbaum offers a new framework for understanding the evolution of the foreign policy of the United States. He divides that evolution into four distinct periods, with each defined by the consistent increase in American power relative to other countries. His history of the four periods features engaging accounts of the major events and important personalities in the foreign policy of each era.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Expectations are everything
- By Patristics Guy on 08-07-23
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The Lessons of Tragedy
- Statecraft and World Order
- By: Hal Brands, Charles Edel
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 20
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 16
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 16
The ancient Greeks hard-wired a tragic sensibility into their culture. By looking disaster squarely in the face, by understanding just how badly things could spiral out of control, they sought to create a communal sense of responsibility and courage - to spur citizens and their leaders to take the difficult actions necessary to avert such a fate. Today, after more than 70 years of great-power peace, Americans have lost their sense of tragedy. They have forgotten that the descent into violence and war has been all too common throughout human history.
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1 out of 5 stars
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The authors should read Oedipus Rex and Aristotle
- By Jeffrey D on 05-23-19
By: Hal Brands, and others
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Strategic Vision
- America and the Crisis of Global Power
- By: Zbigniew Brzezinski
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 192
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 163
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Story4 out of 5 stars 164
In 1991, the United States was the only global superpower. It seemed that the 21st century, like the 20th, would belong to America. Then came the stock market bubble, the costly foreign unilateralism of the younger Bush presidency, and the financial catastrophe of 2008. Meanwhile, China was rising and the Middle East was awakening politically. Today it is clear that America is vulnerable - to domestic and international decline and unregulated greed.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Insightfull and imforming
- By Roy on 02-15-12
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In Europe's Shadow
- Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 145
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 128
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Story4 out of 5 stars 129
In Bucharest, Romania's capital, Kaplan discovered that few Westerners were reporting on the country - one of the darkest corners of Europe during the Cold War. In an intense and cinematic travelogue, Kaplan explores the history and culture of the only country in the West where the leading intellectuals have been right-wing rather than left-wing; a country that gave rise to the dictator Ion Antonescu, Hitler's chief foreign accomplice during WWII; a country where the Latin West mixes with the Greek East, producing a fascinating fusion of cultures.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Wrestling with History
- By David on 03-07-16
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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The Cold War
- A World History
- By: Odd Arne Westad
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 22 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 428
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 370
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 369
In The Cold War, Odd Arne Westad offers a new perspective on a century when a superpower rivalry and an ideological war transformed every corner of our globe. We traditionally think of the Cold War as a post-World War II diplomatic and military conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. But in this major new work, Westad argues that the conflict must be understood as a global ideological confrontation with roots in the industrial revolution and with continuing implications for the world today.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A lenghy treatise on the Cold War
- By Donald Hill on 11-21-17
By: Odd Arne Westad
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The Revenge of Geography
- What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 763
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 660
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Story4 out of 5 stars 659
In The Revenge of Geography, Robert D. Kaplan builds on the insights, discoveries, and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene. Kaplan traces the history of the world's hot spots by examining their climates, topographies, and proximities to other embattled lands.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Painful to listen to
- By Bookworm on 12-27-13
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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What Good Is Grand Strategy?
- Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush
- By: Hal Brands
- Narrated by: Todd Belcher
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
"Grand strategy" is one of the most widely used and abused concepts in the foreign policy lexicon. In this important book, Hal Brands explains why grand strategy is a concept that is so alluring - and so elusive - to those who make American statecraft. He explores what grand strategy is, why it is so essential, and why it is so hard to get right amid the turbulence of global affairs and the chaos of domestic politics.
By: Hal Brands
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The Fall of the Ottomans
- The Great War in the Middle East
- By: Eugene Rogan
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 17 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,528
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,336
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,324
In The Fall of the Ottomans, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region's crucial role in the conflict.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Book About A Little Known Part of WWI
- By Nostromo on 06-08-15
By: Eugene Rogan
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The Cold War
- A New History
- By: John Lewis Gaddis
- Narrated by: Jay Gregory, Alan Sklar
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 986
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 712
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 707
Drawing on new and often startling information from newly opened Soviet, Eastern European, and Chinese archives, this thrilling account explores the strategic dynamics that drove the Cold War, provides illuminating portraits of its major personalities, and offers much fresh insight into its most crucial events. Riveting, revelatory, and wise, it tells a story whose lessons it is vitally necessary to understand as America once more faces an implacable ideological enemy.
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5 out of 5 stars
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WOW
- By Cordell eddings on 10-13-07
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The Button
- The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump
- By: William J. Perry, Tom Z. Collina
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4 out of 5 stars 54
Written in an accessible and authoritative voice, The Button reveals the shocking tales and sobering facts of nuclear executive authority throughout the atomic age, delivering a powerful condemnation against ever leaving explosive power this devastating under any one person's thumb.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Garbage political tripe
- By Bryan Beaty on 03-15-21
By: William J. Perry, and others
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China as a Twenty-First-Century Naval Power
- Theory Practice and Implications
- By: Michael A. McDevitt
- Narrated by: Ian Putnam
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 21
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Story4 out of 5 stars 20
Xi Jinping has made his ambitions for the People's Liberation Army (PLA) perfectly clear, first, that China should become a "great maritime power" and secondly, that the PLA "become a world-class armed force by 2050." China as a Twenty-First-Century Naval Power focuses on China's navy and how it is being transformed to satisfy the "world class" goal.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent, well-organized overview
- By WLC on 05-27-23
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Not One Inch
- America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate
- By: M.E. Sarotte
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 15 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 223
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 192
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 192
Based on over a hundred interviews and on secret records of White House-Kremlin contacts, Not One Inch shows how the United States successfully overcame Russian resistance in the 1990s to expand NATO to more than 900 million people. But it also reveals how Washington's hardball tactics transformed the era between the Cold War and the present day, undermining what could have become a lasting partnership.
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5 out of 5 stars
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America's NATO problem
- By Jeffrey D on 03-24-22
By: M.E. Sarotte
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Democracy: The God That Failed
- The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy and Natural Order (Perspectives on Democratic Practice)
- By: Hans-Hermann Hoppe
- Narrated by: Paul Strikwerda
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 266
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 228
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 228
This sweeping book is a systematic treatment of the historic transformation of the West from limited monarchy to unlimited democracy. Revisionist in nature, it reaches the conclusion that monarchy, with all its failings, is a lesser evil than mass democracy but outlines deficiencies in both as systems of guarding liberty.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Audiobook Chapter 11 is actually a repeat of Chapter 9
- By Anonymous User on 08-23-21
What listeners say about The Twilight Struggle
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Stormchaser
- 12-06-23
one word
Soviette..not sure who she is.other then that is was good information and more to add to my knowledge.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 05-15-22
Prescient
Inights from the past to inform the present and future era of competition from the perspective of the United States. Attempted to capture leadership level experiences to describe societal level actions. perhaps most importantly, the book challenges that we are in a new cold war, a term popularly used but not well contextualized.
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