Of Statecraft the Guesswork

MARCH 1, 2018 1, MARCH VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2 ISSUE 1, VOLUME OF STATECRAFT THE GUESSWORK THE ISSN 2576-1021 ISSN 2576-1153 Print: Online: Texas National Security Review THE GUESSWORK OF STATECRAFT Volume 1 Issue 2 MASTHEAD TABLE OF CONTENTS Staff: The Foundation Publisher: Managing Editor: Copy Editors: Ryan Evans Megan G. Oprea, PhD Autumn Brewington 04 Introducing TNSR’s Second Issue: The Guesswork of Statecraft Sara Gebhardt, PhD Frank Gavin Editor-in-Chief: Associate Editors: Katelyn Gough William Inboden, PhD Van Jackson, PhD Stephen Tankel, PhD Celeste Ward Gventer The Scholar 08 Choosing Primacy: U.S. Strategy and Global Order at the Dawn of the Post-Cold War Era Editorial Board: Hal Brands 34 The Meaning of Strategy, Part II: The Objectives Chair, Editorial Board: Editor-in-Chief: Lawrence Freedman Francis J. Gavin, PhD William Inboden, PhD 58 North Korea Defied the Theoretical Odds: What Can We Learn from its Successful Nuclearization? Nicholas L. Miller and Vipin Narang Robert J. Art, PhD Beatrice Heuser, PhD Patrick Porter, PhD 76 Assessing Soviet Economic Performance During the Cold War: A Failure of Intelligence? Richard Betts, PhD Michael C. Horowitz, PhD Thomas Rid, PhD Marc Trachtenberg John Bew, PhD Richard H. Immerman, PhD Joshua Rovner, PhD Nigel Biggar, PhD Robert Jervis, PhD Brent E. Sasley, PhD Philip Bobbitt, JD, PhD Colin Kahl, PhD Elizabeth N. Saunders, PhD The Strategist Hal Brands, PhD Jonathan Kirshner, PhD Kori Schake, PhD Joshua W. Busby, PhD James Kraska, JD Michael N. Schmitt, JD Robert Chesney, JD Stephen D. Krasner, PhD Jacob N. Shapiro, PhD 104 The International Order and Nuclear Negotiations with Iran Eliot Cohen, PhD Sarah Kreps, PhD Sandesh Sivakumaran, PhD Michael Singh Audrey Kurth Cronin, PhD Melvyn P. Leffler, PhD Sarah Snyder, PhD 116 Changing Course: Making the Case (Old and New) for American Seapower Theo Farrell, PhD Fredrik Logevall, PhD Bartholomew Sparrow, PhD Michael Gallagher Peter D. Feaver, PhD Margaret MacMillan, CC, PhD Monica Duffy Toft, PhD 128 U.S. Engagement in the Western Hemisphere Rosemary Foot, PhD, FBA Thomas G. Mahnken, PhD Marc Trachtenberg, PhD Rex Tillerson Taylor Fravel, PhD Rose McDermott, PhD René Värk, JD Sir Lawrence Freedman, PhD Paul D. Miller, PhD Steven Weber, PhD James Goldgeier, PhD Vipin Narang, PhD Amy Zegart, PhD Michael J. Green, PhD Janne E. Nolan, PhD The Roundtable Feature Kelly M. Greenhill, PhD John Owen, PhD 138 Trump’s National Security Strategy: A Critic’s Dream Emma Ashford and Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson Policy and Strategy Advisory Board: Chair: Adm. William McRaven, Ret. Hon. Elliott Abrams, JD Hon. Kathleen Hicks, PhD Dan Runde Stephen E. Biegun Hon. James Jeffrey David Shedd Hon. Brad Carson Paul Lettow, JD, PhD Hon. Kristen Silverberg, JD Hon. Derek Chollet Hon. Michael Lumpkin Michael Singh, MBA Amb. Ryan Crocker Hon. William J. Lynn, JD Adm. James G. Stavridis, Ret., PhD Hon. Eric Edelman, PhD Kelly Magsamen Hon. Christine E. Wormuth Hon. John Hamre, PhD Gen. David Petraeus, Ret. Designed by We are Flint, printed by Linemark 4 The Foundation 5 The academic study of strategy and statecraft dwells Introducing awkwardly in the space between art and science. For decades, if not centuries, analysts have tried to develop general principles TNSR’s Second Issue: about the important activities that surround war and diplomacy, with the hope that we might better anticipate the future and The Guesswork avoid repeating the disasters of the past. As the excellent articles in our second issue of the Texas National Security Review reveal, of Statecraft this is an extraordinarily daunting task. Global policy is made in the face of radical uncertainty about the future, while confronting a multitude of often inscrutable actors who are driven by complex, deeply intertwined, and often indecipherable factors. As the world’s leading scholar on the subject, that the scholarly and intelligence worlds did not Lawrence Freedman reminds us that the very recognize the deep, long-term structural flaws in the meaning of the term strategy has changed over Soviet economy, is flat out wrong. In fact, it was an time. The role of politics and emerging technologies exemplary case of the experts getting it right — a — crucial topics we now take for granted — were history policymakers and the public largely missed. virtually absent from strategic conversations during As always, the Texas National Security Review is the 18th and 19th century in Great Britain. Hal Brands proud to pair original scholarship in international reveals this challenge through the lens of more recent affairs with the thoughts of policymakers. Rep. Mike history, reconstructing the development and role of Gallagher advocates for the renewed importance of the George H.W. Bush administration’s controversial seapower as a critical tool of American strategy and Defense Policy Guidance. Facing a world transformed statecraft, while Michael Singh recounts the George by the end of the Cold War and the decline of the W. administration’s efforts to confront Iran’s nuclear Soviet Union, U.S. strategists and statesmen balanced program in the context of an ever-shifting global order. the euphoria surrounding emerging American Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s speech laying out unipolarity with fear and worry about a global order United States interests and policies in Latin America in flux. The legacy of this document remains deeply is also presented here. contested, but thanks to Brands’ scholarship, is now We hope you enjoy and learn from these articles. We far better understood. also urge you to consider writing for us. While the first Few questions vex contemporary international two editions have included familiar, more established relations more than nuclear proliferation, and in names, we are eager to hear new voices and fresh particular, the nuclear weapons program of North scholarly perspectives on the enduring questions of Korea. Nicholas Miller and Vipin Narang confess war, peace, strategy, and statecraft. that, despite an extraordinary renaissance in nuclear studies in recent years, our best theories did a less Francis J. Gavin is the Chairman of the Editorial than stellar job of predicting the speed and breadth of Board of the Texas National Security Review. He is North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Their article the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the is an admirable exercise in humility and stock-taking, inaugural director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for all too rare amongst academics, but crucial if we are Global Affairs at SAIS-Johns Hopkins University. His to do better. writings include Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Of course, even when researchers and analysts Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958- do get hard questions right, they often don’t get the 1971 (University of North Carolina Press, 2004) credit they deserve. Marc Trachtenberg’s revealing and Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in Francis J. Gavin study demonstrates that the conventional wisdom America’s Atomic Age (Cornell University Press, 2012). 6 The Scholar 7 The Scholar This section is dedicated to publishing the work of scholars. Our aim is for articles published in this journal to end up on university syllabi and policy desks from Washington to Tokyo, and to be cited as the foundational research and analysis on world affairs. 8 The Scholar 9 Newly declassified U.S. government records shed some light Choosing Primacy: onto U.S. strategic thinking about the post-Cold War era and the infamous Defense Planning Guidance. In early 1992, the Pentagon’s primary policy office the document as a radical assertion of American U.S. Strategy and 3 — the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense hegemony — “literally a Pax Americana.” Patrick for Policy — prepared a draft classified document Buchanan, a prominent conservative pundit and known as the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG).1 In Republican presidential candidate, alleged that the Global Order at the late February and early March, that document was DPG represented “a formula for endless American leaked to the New York Times and the Washington intervention in quarrels and war when no vital Post, both of which published extensive excerpts. interest of the United States is remotely engaged.”4 Those excerpts, which highlighted the most striking More than a decade later, the episode still Dawn of the Post- language and themes of the document, detailed a smoldered. Writing after the U.S.-led invasion of blueprint for American strategy in the post-Cold Iraq in 2003, journalist Craig Unger described the War era. The United States would not retrench DPG as the product “of a radical political movement dramatically now that its superpower rival had led by a right-wing intellectual vanguard.” Another Cold War Era been vanquished. Instead, it would maintain and assessment labeled the DPG a “disturbing” extend the unchallenged supremacy it had gained manifestation of a “Plan…for the United States to when the Soviet empire collapsed. Washington rule the world.”5 More recently, the DPG has received would cultivate an open, democratic order in less breathless treatment from insightful academic which it remained firmly atop the international observers and former U.S. officials.6 But even from hierarchy. It would discourage any competitor from some scholars, the DPG has continued to draw challenging for global leadership. It would prevent sharp invective. One leading diplomatic historian emerging or resurgent threats from disrupting a has critiqued the DPG as a radical rejection of broadly favorable environment. And to protect this multilateralism and a plan for Washington to serve advantageous global order, America would retain as the world’s policeman.7 Another has termed it unrivaled military power. In essence, the DPG a program to “remake the world,” “exterminate outlined an unabashed program for perpetuating the evil-doers,” and forge “the Second American U.S.

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