AN ANALYSIS OF POST-COLD WAR CONCEPTS IN AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY:
CONTINUITY OR CHANGE?
by
Ana Maria Venegas
A thesis submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Global Security Studies
Baltimore, Maryland
December 2014
© 2014 Ana Maria Venegas
All Rights Reserved
Abstract
This thesis investigates post-Cold War concepts in US foreign policy. At the end of the Cold War, prominent political scientists and commentators argued, for various reasons, that the strategic environment was so dramatically different that the United States would no longer be able to engage the world as it had in the past. In an attempt to understand the ramifications of the evolution of the strategic environment, this thesis asked the question: Have the three post-Cold War presidents, William J. Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack H. Obama, continued to engage the world in ways consistent with previous administrations or have the broken from traditional concepts in American foreign policy? To answer this question, declaratory foreign policy as articulated in national security strategy documents and key foreign policy engagements were analyzed and compared to nine traditional concepts in American foreign policy identified by prominent historians and political scientists. The post-Cold War administrations continued to develop foreign policy consistent with the concepts identified by historians and political scientists suggesting a measure of consistency in the way the United States engages the world. Additionally, each president developed foreign policy that exhibited unique characteristics inconsistent with the traditional concepts. These policies were characterized by the importance placed on multilateral consensus; an emphasis on multilateral agreements and alliances to foster a stable international order; and the reliance on international organizations to address regional and global issues. This emerging concept in US foreign policy, termed multilateralism, supports both Kenneth Waltz’s argument that a unipolar environment incentivizes other states to attempt to challenge a polar state and Robert Pape’s assertion that soft balancing against the United States has begun to emerge. The emergence of multilateralism in all three post-Cold War administrations examined also supports the argument that despite ideological polarization in the American political system, administrations draw upon similar means of engagement to address similar situations or crises suggesting a measure of consistency across administrations.
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Thesis Committee Members:
••••
Dr. Mark Stout—Defense Committee, Chair Dr. Sarah O’Byrne—Defense Committee Dr. Thomas Blau—Reader Dr. John A. Gans Jr.—Reader
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................1
Methodology...............................................................................................................................................4 Definitions...................................................................................................................................................6
Declaratory Policy; Employment Policy ..............................................................................................7 Interests.................................................................................................................................................7 Multilateralism .....................................................................................................................................8
Literature Review........................................................................................................................................8
Defensive Expansionism ......................................................................................................................8 Exceptionalism .....................................................................................................................................9 Maximalism........................................................................................................................................10 Regional Hegemony ...........................................................................................................................10 Progressive Imperialism .....................................................................................................................11 Liberal Internationalism .....................................................................................................................12 Smart Power .......................................................................................................................................12 Global Meliorism................................................................................................................................14 American Realism ..............................................................................................................................14
Paper Structure..........................................................................................................................................15
CHAPTER TWO: WILLIAM J. CLINTON............................................................................................16
Declaratory Policy.....................................................................................................................................16
Interests...............................................................................................................................................17 Engagement ........................................................................................................................................18 Enlargement........................................................................................................................................20 Dual Containment...............................................................................................................................21
Employment Policy...................................................................................................................................23
Defensive Expansionism ....................................................................................................................24 Maximalism........................................................................................................................................26 Smart Power .......................................................................................................................................29 American Realism ..............................................................................................................................33 Multilateralism ...................................................................................................................................34
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................44
CHAPTER THREE: GEORGE W. BUSH...............................................................................................46
Declaratory Policy.....................................................................................................................................47
Interests...............................................................................................................................................47
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Preemption..........................................................................................................................................49 Multilateralism ...................................................................................................................................50 Unilateralism ......................................................................................................................................51
Employment Policy...................................................................................................................................52
Defensive Expansionism ....................................................................................................................52 Maximalism........................................................................................................................................56 Liberal Internationalism .....................................................................................................................59 Global Meliorism................................................................................................................................62 American Realism ..............................................................................................................................65 Multilateralism ...................................................................................................................................68
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................72
CHAPTER FOUR: BARACK H. OBAMA ..............................................................................................74
Declaratory Policy.................................................................................................................................... 74
Interests...............................................................................................................................................75 Primacy...............................................................................................................................................77 Collective Action................................................................................................................................78 International Order .............................................................................................................................79
Employment Policy.................................................................................................................................. 80
Defensive Expansionism ....................................................................................................................80 Liberal Internationalism .....................................................................................................................83 Smart Power .......................................................................................................................................85 American Realism ..............................................................................................................................93 Multilateralism ...................................................................................................................................95
Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................................100
CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUDING REMARKS................................................................................... 103
Findings ................................................................................................................................................. 103 Implications............................................................................................................................................ 107 Future Research ..................................................................................................................................... 112
APPENDIX A: REFERENCES .............................................................................................................. 114 APPENDIX B: LIST OF ACRONYMS ................................................................................................. 133 APPENDIX C: PERSONAL STATEMENT ......................................................................................... 135 APPENDIX D: CURRICULM VITAE .................................................................................................. 137
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List of Tables
Table 1. President Clinton’s Declaratory Policies.........................................................................................44 Table 2. President Clinton’s Employment Policies.......................................................................................45 Table 3. President Bush’s Declaratory Policies.............................................................................................73 Table 4. President Bush’s Employment Policies...........................................................................................73 Table 5. President Obama’s Declaratory Policies .......................................................................................101 Table 6. President Obama’s Employment Policies......................................................................................102 Table 7. Aggregated Policies by Administration.........................................................................................104 Table 8. Summary of Cross-Case Analyses ................................................................................................108
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Chapter 1: Introduction
Nineteen eighty-nine marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War: Communist regimes fell in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania; the Berlin Wall became, for the first time, a permeable border. Two years later, Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost resulted in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, marking what most leading commentators deemed the end of the Cold War.1 The end of the Cold War brought significant changes in the security environment: a reinvigorated United Nations (UN); an economically strong reunified Germany; a lifting of the Cold War patterns of alliances; the emergence of a non-communist Russian ally; and a reduced incentive for superpower intervention.2 The United States was uniquely positioned to shape the course of events.3 George H.W. Bush sought to establish a new world order based on collective security, open economic and political systems, and rule of law, while leaving the vestiges of allied containment and American global hegemony in place.4
Foreign policy experts argued that the United States (US) had entered an era of “unprecedented absolute and relative power” and was considered a nation “first among unequals.”5 According to Theodore Sorensen, “the touchstone for our nation’s security concept—the containment of Soviet military and ideological power—is gone.”6 To many, this time of uncertainty afforded an opportunity to define a new strategic vision for American foreign policy unencumbered by the constraints of super-power competition and to define a new role for the United States in a changed world.7 The still unsettled policy debates of the post-Cold War era have centered less on whether and more on how the United States should engage the world. Before a new strategic vision could be created, US policy-makers had to wrestle with key issues that had not been seriously debated since before the Cold War. Debates centered around defining how and to what extent the United States would commit its newly expanded power and significant resources to secure
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Events leading to and during the Cold War are not directly addressed in this thesis. Instead, the effects of the end of the Cold War, which drove scholarly and political discussions about the future of US engagement, are summarized. Bruce Cumings, "Trilateralism and the New World Order," World Policy Journal 8, no. 2 (1991): 195; Andrew Hurrell, "Latin
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America in the New World Order: A Regional Bloc of the Americas?," International Affairs 68, no. 1 (1992): 121. Alvin Z. Rubinstein, "New World Order or Hollow Victory?," Foreign Affairs 70, no. 4 (1991): 53. Cumings, "Trilateralism and the New World Order," 195; Bruce Russett, James S. Sutterlin, "The U.N. in a New World Order,"
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Foreign Affairs 70, no. 2 (1991): 69.
Richard N. Haass, "The Irony of American Strategy," Foreign Affairs 92, no. 3 (2013): 57. Theodore C. Sorensen, "Rethinking National Security," Foreign Affairs 69, no. 3 (1990): 1. Jeane J. Kirpatrick, "Beyond the Cold War," Foreign Affairs 69, no. 1 (1989/1990): 1; Charles Krauthammer, "The Unipolar
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Moment," Foreign Affairs 70, no. 1 (1990/1991): 23; Haass, "The Irony of American Strategy," 57.
1its interests, or how to frame the priorities of a post-containment foreign policy, and which instruments of power would be most effective toward those ends.8
Francis Fukuyama was one of the first scholars in the new era to reframe the strategic issues when he argued that the end of the Cold War ushered in the “end of history.”9 The triumph of Western liberal democracy over communism marked the end of mankind’s “ideological evolution.”10 Fukuyama was not arguing that the world had reached the end of politics, but that the “end of history” validated—after a century of often-bloody struggles—the universal appeal of liberal democracy and the repudiation of communism’s legitimacy. Former National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy put things bluntly: “[i]nternational communism has now plainly lost its missionary appeal” and while “individual communist tyrants can still oppress their own people… communism as a worldwide political movement died in 1989.”11 There were some cautionary voices amid the triumphalism. Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer argued that even if “there is no evil world empire on the loose… the world is in ideological repose… such a time is not necessarily peacetime.” While Fukuyama’s conception of the post-Cold War environment suggested repose from large-scale conflict and permitted a return to historic American quasiisolationism, Krauthammer was convinced that international stability is never guaranteed and thus necessitated continued US engagement.12
Underlying that discussion was a debate as to the very nature of the new strategic environment. For neorealists such as Kenneth Waltz, “any great concentration of power threatens other states and causes them to take action to restore balance,” suggesting the demise of the bipolar system (i.e., global balance of power) would naturally give rise to a multipolar system with the pre-Cold War regional balance of power
8
William G. Hyland, "America's New Course," Foreign Affairs 69, no. 2 (1990): 2.
Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History?," The National Interest (1989); Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man
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(New York, NY: Avon Books, Inc, 1992). Fukuyama, "The End of History?," 2. McGeorge Bundy, "From Cold War toward Trusting Peace," Foreign Affairs 69, no. 1 (1989/1990): 198–199. Krauthammer, "The Unipolar Moment," 29. Contemporary proponents of the unipolar theory included Paul Wolfowitz who, as
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Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, authored a draft version of the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) in 1992. The DPG, according to The New York Times, foresaw “a one-superpower world in which no collection of allies or foes is allowed to become a rival.” Patrick E. Tyler, "Lone Superpower Plan: Ammunition for Critics," New York Times, 10 March 1992. For more on debate surrounding the unipolar moment, see Mark S. Sheetz, Michael Mastanduno, "Debating the Unipolar Moment," International Security 22, no. 3 (1997/1998); Robert Kagan, "The Benevolent Empire," Foreign Policy 111(1998); G. John Ikenberry, "Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Persistence of American Postwar Order," International Security 23, no. 3 (1998/1999); William C. Wohlforth, "The Stability of a Unipolar World," International Security 24, no. 1 (1999); Charles Krauthammer, "The Unipolar Moment Revisited," The National Interest (2002/2003).
2reasserting itself as the key driver in international relations.13 In contrast, Krauthammer asserted that a stable unipolar environment had already succeeded the bipolar environment.14 He argued that a nation’s role in the world could not be “invented” (or chosen, as implied by Fukuyama), but rather, was a natural response to a nation’s perception of the world structure. Given the critics’ concept of a unipolar world structure, Krauthammer saw the United States at “the apex of the industrial west,” a leader that not only led but defined where followers should not go.15 Furthermore, Krauthammer did not envision the United States engaging in “true multilateralism,” which involves a coalition of coequals; rather, he envisioned the United States using “pseudo-multilateralism” to cloak its unilateral action in a domestically acceptable veneer.16 Still while others acknowledged the “unipolar” moment, as described by Krauthammer and others, they predicted it would quickly give rise to new great powers and a multipolar environment.17
Despite the disparate perceptions of the future strategic environment initially described by Waltz et. al. (i.e., a multipolar system) and Krauthammer et. al. (i.e., a unipolar system), proponents of both systems expected the United States to engage the world differently than it did during the Cold War. The real debate at the end of the Cold War focused on how the United States should engage the world. Since 1776, American policy-makers developed concepts that shaped the nation’s foreign engagement. These concepts, discussed in greater detail below, form a framework for understanding how policy-makers harness means and ways when implementing US national security strategy. Understanding the concepts that influence foreign policy is the first step to understanding national security doctrine.
After two-and-a-half decades, it is evident the end of the Cold War did not yield a simple, stable unipolar international structure, but one that has evolved into a far more complex system. Is the strategic environment so dramatically different from the periods during and before the Cold War that the United States can no longer engage the world with the concepts it has in the past? Does the United States profess to or try to engage the world differently than it did in the past? With respect to national security, has