Containing Global Terror

Four years ago, the Bush administration concluded that containment as a foreign policy strategy had become obsolete and that pre-emptive, unilateral military action was warranted, even necessary.

Yale professor of political science Ian Shapiro disagrees. In his book, Containment: Rebuilding a Strategy against Global Terror (Princeton University Press, 2007), Shapiro argues for containment as a pragmatic idea for dealing with the nation’s post September 11 threats and critiques the current policy of military pre-emption.

On April 13, Shapiro joined Daniel Benjamin, Brookings senior fellow and former National Security Council director for counterterrorism, in a discussion of containment policy. Brookings President Strobe Talbott provided the introduction. The discussion is part of the “Governing Ideas” series, moderated by Brookings senior fellow William A. Galston. The series, hosted by Brookings’s Governance Studies program, intended to broaden the discussion of governance issues through forums on timely and relevant books on history, culture, legal norms and practices, values and religion. After the program, participants will take audience questions.