By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia-Pacific Since 1783.

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Author: Gyngell, Allan
• Date: 01 December 2017

By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia-Pacific Since 1783. By Michael J. Green. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. Hardcover: 725pp.

Michael Green's deeply-researched and finely-written history of US strategic policy in Asia, By More Than Providence, could not be timelier. As the Trump administration's international policy positions swing unpredictably, apparently untethered from long traditions of American statecraft, policy thinkers on both sides of the Pacific need more than ever to understand the nature of those traditions and the interests that have driven them.

If a more conventional Republican candidate than Donald Trump had won the November 2016 US presidential election, Michael Green would almost certainly now be occupying a senior national security position in Washington. Instead, he continues to contribute to the policy debate from Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies and Georgetown University.

This history is an essential starting point for that debate. Beginning with the War of Independence and the first trading voyages carrying ginseng from New England to China--well before the United States stretched across the continent--Green records the "threats, commerce, and capacity [that] all went into the soup that became the...