This new contributed volume from Steven Hook and James Scott introduces students to the conduct of foreign policy under the Obama administration. Its twelve original essays, written by a stellar cast of experts in the field, address whether the Obama administration’s strategy represents a “renewal” of U.S. engagement. To what extent has this administration succeeded in building both the domestic and international constituencies needed to implement its foreign policy goals? How exactly have Obama’s policies regarding drone strikes, prisoner abuse, extraordinary rendition, and climate change differed from Bush-era policies? Contributors provide detailed assessments of these and many other key questions.

Designed to fit easily into courses on U.S. foreign policy, the volume’s first part looks at policy formulation, while the second part tackles policy domains. An extensive bibliography makes a great student resource for further research.

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Preface

1. Seeking Renewal: American Foreign Policy in the Obama Era
Steven W. Hook and James M. Scott

I. Policy FormulatIon
2. Presidents, Advisers, and Future Directions of American Foreign Policy
Glenn Hastedt
3. Striking a Balance: Congress and U.S. Foreign Policy
Ralph G. Carter and James M. Scott
4.  Vox Populi as a Foundation for Foreign Policy Renewal? Unity and Division in Post-Bush Administration Public opinion
Douglas C. Foyle
5. Ethnic Lobbying in the Obama Administration
Patrick J. Haney

II. Policy Domains
6. Renewing U.S. National Security Policy: Something Old, Something New
Peter Dombrowski
7. Change and Continuity in America’s Counterterrorism Strategy under Obama
Stuart Gottlieb
8. U.S. Intelligence Policy: Where Do We Stand? 
Jennifer Sims
9. Conducting Diplomacy
Christopher M. Jones and Kevin P. Marsh
10. Protecting Human Rights
David P. Forsythe
11. “First, Do No Harm”: Foreign Economic Policy Making under Barack Obama
I. M. Destler
12. U.S. Global Environmental Policy in the Post-Bush Era
Michael E. Kraft

This book arrives at a time when the U.S. is reassessing its role in the world after the optimism of the 1990s, the shock of 9/11, and the ongoing challenges of a global economic downturn and two lingering wars. Its well-selected contributors assess not only the key foreign policy actors and issues two years into the Obama Presidency, but the enduring institutional, political, and international constraints that make it difficult for any President to carry out foreign policies that enjoy bipartisan support at home and success abroad. In so doing it provides a valuable resource for courses on the policy-making processes and substantive issues of contemporary American foreign policy.

Not since Abraham Lincoln entered the White House in 1861 has an incoming president inherited such a daunting agenda as Barack Obama: Two costly wars and an economy beset by the worst crisis since the Depression. The thoughtful essays in this excellent volume guide the reader through the domestic constraints his “renewal agenda” has confronted and provide an interim report on his achievements in various policy domains. This is essential background reading for understanding foreign policy during the second half of Obama’s term.

This anthology by Hook and Scott is as fine a collection of original articles on foreign policy during the initial years of the Obama Administration as one can find. The authors are an all-star line up of foreign and security policy experts, and the topics cover the waterfront. The set would serve as an excellent complement to a foreign policy text, or could stand on its own, for courses on this subject. Among the anthology's many virtues is a premium on lucid prose and the presence of a theme—an evaluation of America's relations abroad in the last few years under President Obama—that bind the essays together.

US Foreign Policy Today brings together leading scholars to puzzle through whether Obama can achieve the improbable renewal of American liberal internationalism. This is an indispensable guidebook for understanding the obstacles and opportunities in the American political system that work against the lofty and traditional foreign policy goals articulated so well by Obama. This volume arrives in the nick of time to help us make sense of foreign policy in this age of sharp domestic disunity.

Steven Hook, James Scott and a collection of top-notch analysts have given us a careful, balanced assessment of Obama Administration foreign policy at mid-term. Required reading for those analyzing foreign policy in a divided America.

Steven W. Hook is a professor at Kent State University. He is author of U.S. Foreign Policy: The Paradox of World Power, (3rd ed., 2011) and National Interest and Foreign Aid (1995). He has edited many anthologies, including most recently the Routledge Handbook of American Foreign Policy (2012, with Christopher Jones) and U.S. Foreign Policy Today: American Renewal? (2011, with James M. Scott). His articles have appeared in such journals as World Politics, International Studies Quarterly, European Security, International Interactions, Foreign Policy Analysis, and Asian Survey. Hook is a past president of the Foreign Policy Analysis sections of the International Studies Association and the American Political Science Association.

James M. Scott is professor and head of the Department of Political Science at Oklahoma State University. He is the co-author of Choosing to Lead: Understanding Congressional Foreign Policy Entrepreneurs (2009 with Ralph G. Carter), and the author, co-author or editor of five other books. His publications have appeared in such journals as International Studies Quarterly, Foreign Policy Analysis, Democratization, Political Science Quarterly, Presidential Studies Quarterly, International Studies Perspectives, Congress and the Presidency, and the Social Science Journal, among others. He has served on the governing boards, as conference program chair, and as president of both the International Studies Association – Midwest (2000) and the Foreign Policy Analysis Section (2001) of the International Studies Association. He began a six-year term as associate editor of the International Studies Association journal Foreign Policy Analysis in Fall 2009. Since 2004, he has directed the NSF-funded Democracy and World Politics Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates Program.