Power and Restraint: The Rise of the United States, 1898-1941

At the end of the nineteenth century, the United States emerged as an economic colossus in command of a new empire. Yet for the next forty years the United States eschewed the kind of aggressive grand strategy that had marked other rising imperial powers in favor of a policy of moderation.

In Power and Restraint, Jeffrey W. Meiser explores why the United States—counter to widely accepted wisdom in international relations theory—chose the course it did. Using thirty-four carefully researched ...