The book is intellectually rigorous and, for a work of IR scholarship, refreshingly accessible. Ashford draws on the realist tradition but avoids the jargon that can suffocate that literature. Her writing is sharp and clear-eyed. Free of illusions, she reminds us that power—not institutions, not platitudes about “the rules-based order”—remains the coin of the realm. At the same time, her realism is not the crude kind that reduces international politics to a zero-sum balance of tanks and ships. Instead, Ashford locates the United States’ choices within a broader sweep of history, showing that multipolarity is neither catastrophe nor apocalypse but a recurring rhythm of world politics.
Ashford is at her best when taking aim at the lazy analogies that saturate Washington’s discourse. Thus, she rightly debunks the myth that today’s strategic competition with China is a rerun of the Cold War. Beijing is not the Soviet Union, and the Indo-Pacific is not Europe circa 1949. To frame the rivalry in such terms, Ashford argues, is to risk overextension, squandered resources, and a self-destructive spiral of ideological crusading. Instead, the United States must prioritize ruthlessly, choosing between vital interests and peripheral distractions. That means focusing on maintaining the balance of power in Asia while resisting the temptation to fight ideological battles everywhere.
Europe receives a similar treatment. Ashford forcefully argues that the United States’ current level of commitment to Europe is not sustainable. NATO is not about to wither away, but neither are the days of Washington underwriting Europe’s security at bargain rates. If Europeans fear Russia, Ashford writes, then Europeans must do more to shoulder the burden. This, she insists, is realism, pure and simple, and it will be deeply uncomfortable to those who would rather continue to believe that the United States can remain everywhere, all at once, forever. And yet it is precisely that discomfort that makes Ashford’s argument so welcome and so necessary. By her own account, this is a book aimed at provoking controversy; she certainly succeeds. At a time when Washington is regularly out-promising what it can actually deliver in a multipolar world, Ashford forces her readers to face the gap between the commitments the United States makes and those it can in fact keep.
Be that as it may, there are some limits to the book. Ashford is excellent at telling us what America should not do—cling to unipolar fantasies, spread itself too thin, pretend that ideology trumps power. She is less detailed about the positive contours of a restrained grand strategy. Her argument for prioritization and burden-sharing is compelling but rather light on the mechanics of how to get there. Similarly, while she does acknowledge the ideological element of U.S.–China rivalry, her realist lens causes her to give that dimension less weight than many readers might wish. But these are limits, not fatal flaws. They are, as I said, the inevitable price of a book written to start a conversation rather than to end it.
On balance, this is one of the most important contributions to the grand strategy debate in recent years. It neither flatters its readers with comforting illusions nor indulges in apocalyptic despair. It is, instead, rarer: a work of sober, hard-edged optimism. The United States is no longer the world’s sole superpower, but it is not condemned to decline. It can remain the leading power in the system—but only if it stops pretending it can be everything, everywhere, all the time. That is Ashford’s message. And it is one that both scholars and policymakers need to hear.
