CISTP Lecture & Book Signing featuring Dr. Leslie Gelb on his book, "Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy".

Dr. Leslie H. Gelb is among America's most prominent foreign policy experts. A Pulitzer Prize winner, former correspondent for The New York Times, and senior official in state and defense departments, he is currently president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, having served as president of the organization from 1993-2003.

Previously, Dr. Gelb established a distinguished career at The New York Times, where he was a columnist from 1991 to 1993, deputy editorial page editor from 1986 to 1990, and editor of the Op-Ed Page from 1988 to 1990. He was national security correspondent for the Times from 1981 to 1986, where he won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism in 1985. He was diplomatic correspondent at the Times from 1973 to 1977.

Dr. Gelb received a B.A. from Tufts University in 1959, and his M.A. in 1961 and Ph.D. in 1964 from Harvard University. He is the author of numerous books including Claiming the Heavens (Star Wars) (1988) and co-author of The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (1980), which won him the American Political Science Association's Woodrow Wilson Award.

In Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy, inspired by Machiavelli's classic The Prince, Dr. Gelb offers illuminating guidelines on how American power actually works and should be wielded in today's tumultuous world, writing with the perspective of four decades of extraordinary access and influence in government, think tanks, and journalism. Gelb persuasively shows that America's future power must be based on the principle of mutual indispensability: Washington is the indispensable leader because it alone can galvanize coalitions to solve major international problems (and all nations know this), while other key nations are indispensable partners in getting the job done. The reality is this: succeed together or fail apart. Washington will also fail if it forgets that power is still, as in the days of Machiavelli, about pressure and coercion, carrots and sticks. Gelb provides an incisive look at the major U.S. foreign policy triumphs and tragedies of the last half century, and offers practical rules on how to effectively exercise power today.

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