WASHINGTON, April 23, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Anne R. Pierce's book, A Perilous Path: The Misguided Foreign Policy of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, is now available in paperback, with a new introduction assessing the early foreign policy of the Trump administration. 

Originally published in 2016, A Perilous Path is a thorough and scholarly examination of recent US foreign policy. Pierce emphasizes the urgent task the United States faces now that hostilities, atrocities, weapons programs and national security threats have escalated around the globe. She demonstrates that as the Obama administration downgraded American defenses, de-emphasized American ideals, and made enabling deals with dictators, hostile forces gained momentum and threats to democracies grew. In a chapter on "forgotten history and lessons of World War II and the Cold War" and in following chapters on Russia, Iran, Syria, China, North Korea and Egypt, Pierce calls for renewal of our best foreign policy traditions, which emphasize peace through strength and human rights. In the new introduction, she critically assesses the extent to which the new administration is doing just that.

Pierce asserts: "People in the world's worst regimes still need America's voice. Struggling democracies still need our support. Totalitarian and communist powers are still unwilling to respond in kind to our outreach. America at its best asserts moral authority. America has no choice but to maintain the geopolitical upper hand."

• Clifford May, founder and president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, calls A Perilous Path "essential reading for understanding the grave global challenges facing the United States today" and says it is "critical to understanding the firestorm that the Trump foreign policy team inherited."
• Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard, describes Pierce's assessment the Trump administration's early efforts to "rebuild America's [global] role" as "especially impressive." Praising Pierce's understanding of how America's decline happened, Barnes intones, "Decline is a choice, and not an accident."
• Aaron Rhodes, author of The Debasement of Human Rights, says A Perilous Path is a "must-read for anyone trying to understand the devastating impact of Obama's post-modern cultural relativism and globalism."
• Joshua Mitchell, Professor of Political Theory at Georgetown University, credits the "unrelenting detail" with which Pierce exposes "the Obama Administration's dreamy and dangerous foreign policy experiment" which "diminished America's influence abroad" and made the world "less stable and more hospitable to tyranny." Mitchell concludes, "At a moment when the future direction of American foreign policy is unclear, A Perilous Path reminds us that America can neither withdraw from the world stage nor forget the sober lessons of the 20th century."

With its attention to both the big picture and policy specifics, A Perilous Path provides invaluable information, historical background and thought-provoking analysis for anyone interested in foreign policy, human rights, national security and global stability.

Pierce warns: "Jihadist forces and bellicose, atrocity-committing regimes are still capitalizing on the vacuum created by the equivocation and weakness of the United States during the Obama years. Every additional instance of moral and strategic indifference, wishful thinking and debility, or lack of compassion for the oppressed, gives hostile forces further momentum, and more fuel for their propaganda. In a world 'exploding all over' with extremist ideologies and existential threats, we should strengthen our defenses, prioritize our alliances, and stand up for universal human rights. Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis asserted in Congressional testimony that 'the world order is under the biggest threat since World War II.' We should resist narrow-mindedness and rise to the occasion."

With a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, Pierce is an appointed member of Princeton University's James Madison Society, and was previously Political Science Series Editor for Transaction Publishers. Pierce has written three books, and contributed to three others. Her articles have been published in USA Today, US News, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, FoxNews.com, Providence, Society, USEmbassy.gov, Ricochet.com, WorldandIJournal.com, and elsewhere.

The paperback edition of A Perilous Path can be found on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and elsewhere. You can visit her website for information about her articles and books. Her twitter profile can be found here.

SOURCE Anne R. Pierce

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