This thought-provoking and timely book analyzes America’s unprecedented power within the international arenas of politics, economics, demographics, education, science, and culture, arguing that the major threat to this unique empire is not a rising rival power center but ineffective U.S. leadership.“At a time when explications of American strengths are often dismissed as ethnocentric and ‘triumphalist,’ this provocative book needs and deserves to be taken very seriously, even—or especially—by those who disagree. It is a valuable contribution to the public dialogue.”—Robert Jervis, Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University“This book will be a significant intellectual marker in the ongoing debate about American national strategy in the post–Cold War era. Odom and Dujarric make a persuasive case that American primacy will last a long time.”—Stephen Peter Rosen, Olin Institute of Strategic Studies, Harvard University“America’s Inadvertent Empire should help American decision makers to better understand the origin and growth of the assets they are privileged to manage and the tragedies for our country that could come from bad decisions based on inadequate comprehension.”—Senator Richard Lugar, U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Read Less