JM Book Blog
10/31/2006
  Zakaria: State-centered Realism
Fareed Zakaria: From Wealth to Power - The Unusual Origins of America's World Role

Hardcover: 200 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press 1998
ISBN: 0-691-04496-1

In From Wealth to Power, Zakaria examines America's lagged expansion - the period between 1865 and 1908, when America had the power and the will to expand her interests abroad but didn't. Zakaria finds the explanation in the domestic political structure which resulted in the inability to transform national power into state power. Result for IR theory is state-centered realism; one form of neoclassical realism.
"Once the plans for expansion were set, threats appeared without fail." 85
Zakaria's book is a critique of defensive realist assumption that states expand to counter threats. State-centered realism keeps with classical realism in assuming that states expand when they have the power to.
"Great Powers have the luxury of defining their interests in ways that far exceed minimal security requirements; the United States proved no exception to this rule." 182

"The United States did not expand against strong states that posed a great threat to its security but largely against areas that were weak and in which expansion would entail a small cost." 184
Zakaria ends his book with "a good cheer" or a reserved promise of a more peaceful world: states today are not as autonomous or powerful than before.

Second Opinion: Robert Higgs / Independent Institute
  10/31/2006 07:24:00 ap.
10/25/2006
  Dueck: Reluctant Crusaders
Colin Dueck: Reluctant Crusaders - Power, Culture, and Change in American Grand Strategy

Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press 2006
ISBN: 0-691-12463-9
"To pursue a global grand strategy without providing the means - military, political, and economic - for it is to invite not only humiliation, but disaster. The United States, together with allies, can either take up the burden of truly acting on its own internationalist rhetoric, or it can keep the costs and risks of foreign policy to a minimum. It cannot do both. That is the U.S. strategic dilemma." 171
Dueck analyses 3 periods of strategic adjustment in American grand strategy: 1) 1918-1921 with Wilson and the League of Nations initiative, 2) 1945-1951 with the birth of containment and 3) 1992-2000 the post-Cold War American hegemony.

His findings: crusading spirit to advance liberal world order + limited liability consitute the cultural elements of American grand strategy.

"Americans have often been 'crusaders' - crusaders in the promotion of a more liberal international order. But Americans have also frequently been 'reluctant' to admit the full costs of promoting this liberal international vision. In this sense, the history of American grand strategy is a history of 'reluctant crusaders'." 2

Buzzword: Neoclassical realism
Balance of power: US the hegemon

Neoclassical realism -theory combines systemic pressures (power) and specific strategic cultures to analyze chosen policies. It is a combination of realism and social contructivism. The picture is realist in the understanding of the international anarchy and competition but more analytical in understanding that material reality of power is translated through decisionmakers' perceptions into political estimates and then constructed into policy through their actions.

Second Opinion: Jack Snyder / Foreign Affairs
  10/25/2006 12:05:00 ap.
10/20/2006
  Fukuyama: Realistic Wilsonianism
Francis Fukuyama: America at the Crossroads - Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy

Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Yale University Press 2006
ISBN: 0300 11 3994

Foreign policy wisdom fluctuates between two poles: universalism and realism. The universalism of this unipolar world is global democratization.
"There is simply no other legitimating set of ideas besides liberal democracy that is broadly accepted in the world today." 130
Fukuyama, disillusioned by the war in Iraq and obviously distraught by the Bush administration spoiling the neocon ideology is jumping the ship and calling for a "more realistic" foreign policy for the U.S.

Fukuyama details the neocon legacy - not from the past five but fifty years - and shows how the missteps of excessive unilateralism and stress on military power (reaching its prime in the Iraq War) has done this legacy no good.

"The existence of the United Nations is in a way a huge distraction that prevents people on both right and left from thinking clearly about global governance and international institutions." 157
Fukuyama succeeds in showing the naivity and arrogance of the Bush administration. Maybe it was hubris, or "having a hammer making everything look like a nail" or maybe it was just pure ignorance and not understanding how the world works. Balancing, rather than bandwagoning seems to be the underlying logic of international politics.

Well, Fukuyama offers an alternative: realistic Wilsonianism.
"…What is needed is not a return to a narrow realism but rather a realistic Wilsonianism that recoqnizes the importance to world order of what goes inside states and that better matches the available tools to the achievement of democratic ends.” 184

"What I have labeled realistic Wilsonianism could be alternatively described as hard-headed liberal internationalism. This is distinguished from the soft-headed version by several characteristics: first, the United States should work toward a multi-multilateral world, not give special emphasis to the United Nations, second, the goal of foreign policy is not the transcendence of sovereignty and power politics but its regulation through intstitutional constraints; and finally, democratic legitimacy embedded in real institutions ought to guide the design of the system overall." 215
Fukyama also asserts the (enormous!) possibility of CD - Community of Democracies.
"A broader organization of democracies actually exists, in the form of a group called the Community of Democracies, founded in Warsaw in 2000 with backing from the Clinton administration."
This would be a really welcomed initiative. To trust the UN is unefficient and dangerous, to let someone do it alone raises concerns about ultimate motives and is viewed by many as illegitimate. To do it with democracies might be both efficient and legitimate.

Second Opinion: Michoko Kakutani /The New York Times
  10/20/2006 01:44:00 ap.
10/11/2006
  Preeble: Exit 2005
Christopher Preble: Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War Against Al-Qaeda
Paperback: 82 pages
Publisher: CATO Institute 2004
ISBN: 1-930865-64-3

Christopher Preble, the man behind the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy and the director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, gathered a special task force to argue against the occupation of Iraq. The result - Exiting Iraq - shows how the ambitious plan (read chimera) of democratizing the Middle East is harming the U.S. interests.

The costly nation-building project seems doomed, costs a lot, and most importantly for the free world is counterproductive in combating terrorism. Iraq is a new breeding ground for a future generation of terror grads
"The United States already spend more on its military than all of the leading developed nations of the world, combined. If current trends continue, the United States will spend more than all of the rest of the planet by 2007."
Military power, the most important thing in international relations is at its best when not used. The easiness of the military campaign does not translate into easiness of occupation. This can be witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. and global interests would be best served if the utopianism were to remain in universities. Oddly enough, the imperial designs in the administration are countered by the sane voice of realism from the universities. Power corrupts.
"Iraq will be the political guinea pig for a new era of U.S.-led democratization and regime change."
  10/11/2006 12:35:00 ap.
10/04/2006
  Murray: Against Relativism
Douglas Murray: Neoconservatism: Why We Need It
Hardcover: 245 pages
Publisher: Encounter Books 2006
ISBN: 1594031479

Rarely is a book so illuminating in countering the prevailing image of its topic. Neoconservativism, without doubt, is seen by the general public as an arrogant, disastrous school of thought. In international relations, neoconservatism is equated with the Bush administration and the foul occupation of and nationbuilding project in Iraq.

As a philosophical argument, however, neoconservatism is very powerful. The relativism of accepting corrupt regimes, hateful anti-Semitism, medieval treatment of women - antiliberalism in general is nasty. As articulated by Charles Krauthammer in his Democratic Realism, US national interest defined as realistic and freedom promoting is, for the US and for the world, a good thing.

First thing one has to criticize is the readiness of the neconservatives to use unliteral military power as a policy tool. But this is what International Relations, Realism and grand strategy is all about; fitting means and ambitions?

Secondly, and most importantly, what makes neoconservative thinking unrealistic, however, is the way they perceive the world to react to Americans using military power to advance these values. Realist expect balancing, neocons bandwagoning. The readiness to use force, to advance 'good intentions' seems from the perspective of the receiving end imperialistic.

There is no doubt that there is evil in the world today as there has been evil in the world always. But to criticize socialists for trying to perfect humanity and at the same time wage war which inevitably leads to large numbers of civilian victims is hollow. Sure, the world is happier without Saddam, but the unnecessary war in Iraq has killed tens of thousands. Realists, disillusioned idealists, see war as an avoidable evil in itself.

Murray has written a powerful and emotional defense of neoconservative thinking. Targeting nihilism and treachery at home and sending shocks to dictators (and welcomed news to terrorists) abroad, Murray might just be writing the manuscript for the 21 st century epic struggle. And battle is what Murray is looking for. For Murray, moral clarity - in the need for a fight against barbarism (like witnessed in New York 9/11) gives courage. For realists, superpower with moral clarity sounds like war. And that is exactly what the neoconservatives are arguing for.

I wonder if anyone of us can live through life without being mugged by reality. For neoconservatives the option is a life-or-death, black n' white issue, to either give in on your ideals or fight back. They accuse conventional liberalism of giving in - they are taking action. The results, unfortunately seem to come out as Realism predicts.

Second Opinion: Amir Taheri / Benador Associates
  10/04/2006 01:47:00 ap.
10/02/2006
  Joffe: Uberpower
Josef Joffe: Uberpower - The Imperial Temptation of America

Hardcover: 271 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company 2006
ISBN: 978-0-393-06135-2

Americas military superiority creates opportunites but more importantly it stresses responsibility. Realist theory of IR predicts that US power will be, sooner or later, balanced. Joffe offers in his book, Uberpower counterarguments why American hegemony will not be challenged. In short, in creating IPGs (international public goods) US is a special kind of great power.

Joffe reviews two historical options: balancing a la Britain and bonding a la Bismarck; then offers a synthesis of both as the future grand strategy for Gulliver. Bonding and balancing will be needed to duck the future bullets of counterbalancing.

Underneath the power calculus of (great) power politics exists the shared understanding of the best possible way of governing nations. The United States, the security lender of last resort, is also the world's oldest democracy.
"EU will stick to its cozy post-Cold War posture"
Second Opinion: Benjamin Zimmer / Harvard International Review
  10/02/2006 04:19:00 ap.