Restraint

Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy is a book that was written by Dr. Barry Posen and published in 2014 by Cornell University Press. Posen is the Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Grand strategy Posen defines grand strategy as "a state's 'theory about how to produce security for itself.'" Posen describes the current debate about American grand strategy as being between two main philosophies: liberal hegemony and restraint. The first half of the book addresses liberal hegemony. Liberal hegemony is defined as "an activist grand strategy that aims to assertively maintain U.S. dominance and the 'unipolar moment' in the service of liberalism and national security," Posen argues that liberal hegemony is the grand strategy that the United States has followed since the end of the Cold War and that it has been a failure, calling it "unnecessary, counterproductive, costly, and wasteful."