Numerous polls (click here) show that Americans want to reduce our military presence
abroad, allowing our allies and other nations to assume greater
responsibility both for their own defense and for enforcing security in
their respective regions. In The Power Problem, Christopher A.
Preble explores the aims, costs, and limitations of the use of this
nation’s military power; throughout, he makes the case that the majority
of Americans are right, and the foreign policy experts who disdain the
public’s perspective are wrong. Preble is a keen and skeptical observer
of recent U.S. foreign policy experiences,
which have been marked by the promiscuous use of armed intervention. He
documents how the possession of vast military strength runs contrary to
the original intent of the Founders, and has, as they feared, shifted
the balance of power away from individual citizens and toward the
central government, and from the legislative and judicial branches of
government to the executive....
