Collapse: A World in Crisis and the Urgency of American Leadership

Douglas E. Schoen

Mar 2019 · Encounter Books

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Collapse takes stock of a volatile and threatening international environment by looking at some of the underlying causes and flashpoints—the principal one being the failure of institutions and elites to respond to their constituencies and address the problems of our age. This is a problem spanning the increased polarization that bred nationalist and populist movements, the continued failure of Western leaders to come up with effective strategies for combating authoritarian rivals like Russia and China, and the ongoing Islamist threat.

Schoen makes clear that the indispensable ingredient for any constructive path forward is effective, engaged, and committed American leadership. This is discussed through the lens of the failed models of President Trump’s two recent predecessors, which reflected, respectively, an uncritical embrace of American power—lacking strategic insight and proportion—and an uncritical abandonment of American leadership that suggested an abject view of the U.S. moral example in the world. Instead, Schoen posits assertive democratic idealism—an embrace of U.S. moral leadership around the world but in ways that remain leavened by realism and a guiding understanding of our national interest. Whether President Trump can deliver on such a vision remains to be seen.

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Douglas E. Schoen has been one of the most influential Democratic campaign consultants for more than 40 years. A founding partner and principal strategist for Penn, Schoen & Berland, he is widely recognized as one of the co-inventors of overnight polling. His political clients include former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Bill Clinton, and his corporate clients include AOL Time Warner, Procter & Gamble, and AT&T. Internationally, he has worked for the heads of state of over 15 countries. He is the author of multiple books; his newest, America in the Age of Trump, was published in the summer of 2017. Schoen is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and various other newspaper and online publications, as well as Fox News. He is based in New York City.