Restraining Power
Verso, 2026
Essay at Verso
Trump, America’s Forever Wars, and the Realist Tradition
On Trump, the forever wars, and what the realist tradition actually teaches about power.
The theorists of the law of nature and nations descanted frequently on the dangers of universal empire, a liturgy that also casts a shade over America’s search for world dominance.
We have had occasion to learn of the ways in which ambition might labor for the destruction of the conqueror. We have retraced the ruinous progress of empire, whereby “free nations, under the shew of acquiring dominion, suffer themselves, in the end, to be yoked with the slaves they had conquered.”
We have pursued the vanquished into the most intimate aspects of their existence, after having been fully warned that doing so would lead the natural order of things to take revenge on such an outrage. We have suffered ourselves to be deceived by names and sounds, the balance of power, the liberal world order, a common cause, and many more such expressions, without any other meaning than to exhaust our wealth and load our posterity with intolerable burdens.
America is falling, ruined by the might of the United States.
—David C. Hendrickson, Restraining Power
The Great League of Peace and Power
University Press of Kansas, 2026
Essay at Kansas
Old Principles for a Troubled Foreign Policy
On recovering older American principles of justice, good faith, national independence, and peace.
About
David C. Hendrickson is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Colorado College, where he taught from 1983 to 2020. He is the author of eleven books on international relations and American foreign policy. His work explores the development of American constitutionalism and diplomacy, the history of international thought, and the conditions of international peace.