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New Perspectives on American Grand Strategy New Perspectives on Colin Dueck American Grand Strategy a Review Essay New Perspectives on American Grand Strategy New Perspectives on Colin Dueck American Grand Strategy A Review Essay Robert J. Art, A Grand Strategy for America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003) G. John Ikenberry, ed., America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002) Charles A. Kupchan, The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-ªrst Century (New York: Knopf, 2002) Henry R. Nau, At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002) Joseph S. Nye Jr., The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) Shortly after the end of the Cold War, a number of leading structural realists such as Kenneth Waltz, John Mearsheimer, and Christopher Layne predicted that America’s “unipolar moment” was likely to be short lived.1 Drawing on traditional balance of power theory, they suggested that America’s unparalleled status as the world’s only superpower would soon trigger widespread counterbalancing on the part of other major states. The policy implication was that Americans ought to play down their hegemonic pretensions and accommodate the inevitable transition toward a multipolar world order. Not only was a certain degree of strategic disengagement a policy prescription: It was the structural realist prediction for American grand strategy in the post–Cold War era. One decade later, a multipolar world order has yet to appear. Granted, American foreign policy is widely resented abroad, and other countries are de- Colin Dueck is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. 1. Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise,” International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Spring 1993), pp. 5–51; John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,” International Security, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Summer 1990), pp. 5–56; and Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Emerging Structure of International Politics,” International Security, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Fall 1993), pp. 44–79. International Security, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Spring 2004), pp. 197–216 © 2004 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 197 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0162288041588287 by guest on 02 October 2021 International Security 28:4 198 veloping new techniques with which to frustrate American preponderance.2 Yet great power balancing, in the traditional sense, has not occurred since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and neither has the United States disengaged from its forward presence overseas. Instead, American forces are engaged in a remarkably ambitious project of nation building in Iraq, and the George W. Bush administration has openly adopted a national security strategy that cen- ters on the assumption of American primacy. Clearly, structural realist predictions of American decline or disengagement were premature. But the basic issue of an appropriate grand strategy for the United States remains unsettled. For more than ten years now, America has oc- cupied a unique position in the international system as the world’s predomi- nant power. There is simply no precedent in the modern era for the successful exercise of worldwide, comprehensive, hegemonic inºuence on the part of any single state. Some observers feel that the United States cannot sustain such a role without either provoking great resistance or overextending its own re- sources.3 Others argue that this is precisely the moment to lock in a stable, lib- eral international order through the vigorous assertion of American power.4 The question arises as to how the United States can best promote its interests, as well as its values, internationally, without falling into the self-defeating be- havior of so many previous would-be hegemons. A cluster of recent books take up this question, shedding light on three inter- related conceptual issues. First, how can we use international relations theory to explain and predict patterns of adjustment in American grand strategy? Can realist variables such as the international distribution of power account for the basic outlines? Or are variables such as national identity and the density of in- ternational institutions actually a crucial inºuence on U.S. strategic behavior? Second, beyond the current war on terror, what sort of grand strategy would best serve American interests? What strategy would best serve American val- ues? And third, is there something about America’s distinctive use of liberal norms and institutions that allows the United States immunity from balance of 2. See, for example, Thomas J. Christensen, “Posing Problems without Catching Up: China’s Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy,” International Security, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Spring 2001), pp. 5– 40. 3. Christopher Layne, “Offshore Balancing Revisited,” Washington Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Spring 2002), pp. 233–248; and Jack Snyder, “Imperial Temptations,” National Interest, No. 71 (Spring 2003), pp. 29–40. 4. Zalmay Khalilzad, “Losing the Moment? The United States and the World after the Cold War,” Washington Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Spring 1995), pp. 87–107; and Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment Revisited,” National Interest, No. 70 (Winter 2002/03), pp. 5–17. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0162288041588287 by guest on 02 October 2021 New Perspectives on American Grand Strategy 199 power logic? Might the United States, through a liberal internationalist grand strategy, avoid the fate of previous empires? Or is such a strategy an exercise in self-delusion? In this essay, I compare and contrast a number of recent books on American grand strategy and evaluate their collective contribution to the ªeld. In doing so, I suggest that there has been a signiªcant shift in our understanding of America’s strategic options, for among these authors, realists and liberals alike agree that great power counterbalancing against the United States is by no means inevitable and can in fact be prevented through the use of careful strate- gic choices. At the same time, I suggest some dangers in this new consensus. I also suggest that in spite of a rich offering of policy prescriptions, we still have only a very incomplete sense of how and why American grand strategy actu- ally changes. The Liberal Superpower The structural realist post–Cold War prediction was that other major powers would arise and form counterbalancing coalitions against the United States. America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power is a collection of essays, ed- ited by John Ikenberry, on the subject of how and why this prediction has failed to come true.5 The essays fall into two broad schools of thought, liberal and realist, although there are important differences within each camp. The liberal view, as articulated by Ikenberry himself, is that American he- gemony has persisted—at least until now—because of the distinctly restrained and institutionalized nature of American diplomacy. Ikenberry fears that the Bush administration has departed from this tradition of self-restraint. But he suggests that insofar as America has avoided the fate of other hegemons, it has been because of the multilateral and self-binding nature of its foreign policy.6 According to Ikenberry, the United States has traditionally been a reluctant he- gemon, uninterested in playing the role of empire. Its political system is open and transparent, offering other nations a direct voice in the formation of for- eign policy. And the postwar, American-led order has been highly institution- alized. The global institutions created by Americans in the 1940s helped to 5. G. John Ikenberry, ed., America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002). 6. Ikenberry, “Democracy, Institutions, and American Restraint,” in Ikenberry, America Unrivaled, pp. 213–238. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0162288041588287 by guest on 02 October 2021 International Security 28:4 200 encourage cooperation and overcome the fear of exploitation on the part of other countries. These institutions have bound not only America’s allies, but the United States itself; thus, other nations have had less reason to fear Ameri- can power.7 Similar arguments are laid out in essays by John Owen and Thomas Risse. According to Owen, transnational liberal elites worldwide iden- tify with the United States and view it as essentially benign.8 Where these elites hold ofªce, as in Western Europe and Japan, governments see no reason to counterbalance American hegemony. Only in China is there a clear case of a major power in which the forces of political liberalism are weak. For Risse, the roots of great power peace go even deeper. Certainly within the Western world, and even beyond it, conditions of deep interdependence, together with a profound sense of shared values, have created a security community in which war has become quite literally unthinkable.9 The realist authors in America Unrivaled, predictably, look to international conditions rather than America’s domestic norms or institutions for clues as to the future of American hegemony. But interestingly, the realists reach radically different conclusions from one another. For Kenneth Waltz, the answer is es- sentially the same as it was ten years ago: Unipolarity is untenable, other great powers will soon begin to balance against the United States, and it is only a matter of time.10 A very different and more convincing realist perspective comes from the essay by William Wohlforth. According to Wohlforth, it is pre- cisely international conditions that prevent any balance of power from forming against the United States, because the United States is simply too powerful to be balanced. Other nations realize the futility of attempting to do so and in- stead jump on the bandwagon of American hegemony.
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