How to Make Love to a Despot: An Alternative Foreign Policy for the Twenty-First Century

In the past fifty years, the United States has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in the idea that state-building can make the world safe for democracy, but the return on that investment has been woeful. Witnessing the failure of this utopian vision of a world full of market-oriented democracies, many observers turn to the dystopian view that all investment in undemocratic countries should halt. Yet ignoring these troubled countries risks our safety as nuclear proliferation, environmental devastation, and pandemics threaten all. Drawing on his formidable foreign policy experience, Krasner explains that eliminating corruption or holding free and fair elections is often not possible today in many parts of the world, but negotiated compromises and halting large-scale theft is. Better security and some economic growth are possible everywhere. How to Make Love to a Despot defines a new and pragmatic American foreign policy vision that quells terrorism and leads to good governance around the globe.