Empire

Richard Betts: ‘The dominant force’

The academic and defence specialist elaborates on the US’ role and rising scepticism among Americans about war.

”US

by ”Richard

has been the dominant force, the leader supplying the principle sorts of security guarantees, dominating economic rules of the game and so on.”]

Richard Betts is the director of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies and the international security policy programme at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.

He is also an adjunct senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he specialises in US defence policy, international conflict, military strategy, political and military intelligence, and terrorism.

Betts has written several books, including Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises. He is the editor of Conflict After the Cold War, and co-editor of Paradoxes of Strategic Intelligence.

He won the Woodrow Wilson Award of the American Political Science Association for the best book in political science.

Betts spoke to Empire about the US role as the world’s only remaining superpower, and how many Americans have turned sceptical about going to war after Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

 

 

 

 

Empire can be seen from the last Sunday of every month at 2000GMT, and is re-aired during the following week at these times GMT: Monday: 1200GMT; Tuesday: 0100GMT; Wednesday: 0600GMT.

Click here for more Empire.