American Grand Strategy and National Security

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Frontmatter

2. Chapter 1. National Security and American Grand Strategy

   Michael Clarke

   Abstract

   Since President Barack Obama’s reelection in 2012, there has been a growing perception in the United States and abroad that American primacy in the international system is under threat from multiple fronts.

3. Chapter 2. Power, Ideas, and Choice: Explaining Change in American Grand Strategy

   Michael Clarke

   Abstract

   This chapter argues that a neoclassical realist theoretical framework provides us greater explanatory power in the analysis of grand strategic adjustment and change over time than purely structural theories of grand strategy. In contrast to structural realist frameworks that emphasize the primacy of the structure and architecture of the international system in determining state behavior, neoclassical realists define their research agendas by distinguishing between “relative power” as the primary independent variable, and unit-level factors as intervening variables such as decision-makers’ perceptions, domestic state structures, and political ideologies. This approach is particularly well suited to the examination of American grand strategy as it permits us to account for the role of what I term the competing political cultures of statecraft that have long been evident in the United States. I define these political cultures of statecraft following Walter Russell Mead’s typology of Hamiltonian, Wilsonian, Jeffersonian, and Jacksonian and argue that each presents a “historical repertoire” that provides multiple narratives for leaders or strategists to draw upon to guide particular grand strategy choices. The chapter concludes that the interplay between the various strands within this “historical repertoire” has played a major role in shaping not only how the United States sets its external objectives and how it goes about pursuing them but also providing justifications as to why it exercises its power.

4. Chapter 3. Before Primacy: American Grand Strategy from the Founding to “Manifest Destiny”

   Michael Clarke

   Abstract

   This chapter explores the evolution of what could be termed the “historical repertoire” of American foreign policy and grand strategy through an examination of the interaction between systemic change and American political culture from the Founding of the Republic to the Polk administration (1844–1849). In particular, this chapter highlights the early dominance of “exemplarist” traditions of statecraft (particularly those associated with Washington and Jefferson) from the Founding to the middle of the nineteenth century. I argue that the core policy preferences of “exemplarist” statecraft (e.g. aloofness from the great power politics of Europe, claims to hegemony in the western hemisphere, and rhetorical championing of republicanism) were not sui generis but were the product of efforts to mediate between the systemic realities confronting the new republic—notably geographic isolation/insularity and the threat posed by British hegemony—and the Whig anti-statism and republicanism that had guided the Revolution and the construction of the Republic’s architecture of limited government.

5. Chapter 4. Priming for Primacy: Building an “Empire of Principles” in the Progressive Era

   Michael Clarke

   Abstract

   This chapter provides an analysis of the transition away from the “exemplarist” statecraft of the Founders’ era toward the “progressive imperialism” of the late nineteenth century. It identifies the consolidation of the power of the federal government and westward expansion at the expense of both Native Americans and the territorial claims of number of European powers (e.g. Spain, Britain) as major contributing factors in the development of “vindicationist” forms of statecraft that posited crucial linkages between domestic political and economic stability and well-being and geopolitical dynamics beyond the Western hemisphere. By the first decade of the twentieth century the ascent of such vindicationism embedded the notion in elite discourse that American prosperity and national security required that it be actively engaged in core regions of the globe.

6. Chapter 5. Primacy Unrequited: American Grand Strategy Under Wilson

   Michael Clarke

   Abstract

   This chapter demonstrates that the development of the Wilsonian political culture of statecraft overlay three core beliefs or assumptions—the immutability of morality and principles; belief in the capacity and right of people to self-government; and belief in the unique mission of the United States to promote liberty at home and abroad—onto those of the preceding era of “progressive imperialism”. Understood in this context, Wilson’s “crusade” to “make the world safe for democracy” during the First World War constituted a logical evolution of the leitmotifs of “progressive imperialism” in the context of heightened American power. Especially noteworthy here was that Wilson’s objective of reforming international order would, if successful, overcome the long-standing exemplarist taboos against “entanglement” with European power politics. His envisioned “league of peace” after the war would not be based on an alliance of some states against others but rather on American leadership of a “universal cooperative” effort to preserve order. Wilson’s solution to insecurity of international politics was thus distinctly primacist in nature as it sought to overcome the “evils” of traditional great power politics through the imposition of American values and principles.

7. Chapter 6. Primacy Deferred: American Grand Strategy in the 1920s and the Illusion of the “Empire Without Tears”

   Michael Clarke

   Abstract

   The rejection of Wilson’s design did not mean the rejection of American engagement with the world. Rather, as this chapter demonstrates, it signposted a broader argument about how the United States could maintain and extend its power in a fundamentally altered world. This period constituted a transitional one in which political leaders, intellectuals, and public opinion attempted to navigate between honoring long-established principles of statecraft (e.g. Washington’s “non-entanglement” doctrine) and the new realities of the country’s now undeniably global strategic and economic interests and interconnections. Of particular note was the manner in which some of the “isolationist” arguments of the period drew on the “exemplarist” traditions and practices of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian statecraft to justify their calls for a focus on resolving domestic problems and warnings against the strategic, material and moral costs of imperial expansion and over-reach abroad.

8. Chapter 7. Primacy in Sight: FDR and the Transition from Neutrality to a “New Deal” for the World

   Michael Clarke

   Abstract

   This chapter focuses on the evolution of American grand strategy throughout Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR) unprecedented four terms in the White House. It demonstrates the influence of long-standing introverted and “non-entanglement” postures in Congress but also the relative weight of the competing political cultures of statecraft in FDRs own calculations. While FDR shared the crusading fervor for the extension of American ideas and ideals this was tempered by a Hamiltionian appreciation of the security benefits of a stable balance of power and the economic benefits of free trade, a Jeffersonian commitment to anti-colonialism and self-sufficiency, and a certain Jacksonian unilateralism. Prior to the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, FDR’s political pragmatism demanded that he carefully navigate between the continued resonance of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian opinion in both the Congress, and the public at large, and his recognition of the United States’ global interests. That the shape of FDR’s ultimate vision for the post-1945 world blended the key assumptions and insights of the two extroverted political cultures of statecraft (i.e. Hamiltonian and Wilsonian) is perhaps no coincidence. In doing so, FDR exorcised the ghost of Woodrow Wilson by fusing the geopolitical and ideological conceptions of security inherent to each into a new discourse of “national security” based on the balancing role of American military power and the extension of the principles of the political (Wilsonian) and economic “open door” (Hamiltonian).

9. Chapter 8. Primacy in the Pursuit of National Security: American Grand Strategy from Truman to Johnson

   Michael Clarke

   Abstract

   This chapter explores the development of American grand strategy from 1945 to Johnson administration (1964–1968) with a particular focus on the interplay and tension between the “exemplarist” and “vindicationist” faces of American power. It argues that systemic pressure posed by the threat of Soviet expansion on the Eurasian continent combined with the domestic politics of anti-statism and liberal political culture to forge the grand strategic synthesis of containment characterized by American geopolitical/security expansion into Western Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia and construction of liberal political and economic institutions. It is the major argument of this and the subsequent chapter that it was the interaction between “ideologically induced proactive behaviour” and “structurally induced reactive behaviour” that formed the fulcrum of grand strategy debates and grand strategy adjustment during the Cold War. These debates were from 1945 onward ultimately about the means and not the ends of American grand strategy and demonstrated the manner in which the political cultures of statecraft acted as permissive filters to make certain strategic choices more likely than others. Crucially, due to the consolidation of FDR’s Wilsonian-Hamiltonian synthesis during World War Two, the objective of the US grand strategy of “containment” after 1947 was not simply to ensure an indefinite “balance of power” between the United States and the Soviet Union but rather to “win” the Cold War and achieve the full extension of the political and economic Open Door worlds as the best means of ensuring American national security.

10. Chapter 9. Primacy in Peril: American Grand Strategy Under Détente

    Michael Clarke

    Abstract

    The previous chapter demonstrated how the US grand strategy of “containment” after 1945 was not simply designed to ensure an indefinite “balance of power” between the United States and the Soviet Union but rather to “win” the Cold War and achieve the full extension of the political and economic Open Door worlds as the best means of ensuring American national security. Under the Kennedy and Johnson administration’s this had resulted in American misadventure and over-commitment in Vietnam. The Nixon administration sought means to extricate the United States from Vietnam without undue damage to both its position in the competition with the Soviet Union and its credibility with allies. The chapter argues that Nixon and his National Security Advisor (and from 1973 Secretary of State), Henry Kissinger, conceived of détente as a means of withdrawing the United States from over-exposed positions geopolitically and militarily and establishing a new equilibrium that protected the country’s international position. As such it shared much with George F. Kennan’s original formulation of “containment” through its preeminent focus on US–Soviet relations, a “strong point” defence of American interests and desire for a stable international order.

11. Chapter 10. Primacy in Superpower Confrontation: From Détente to “Peace Through Strength”

    Michael Clarke

    Abstract

    This chapter begins by noting the manner which détente provoked the re-emergence of exemplarist forms of statecraft. In particular, it demonstrates that Carter mounted a Jeffersonian critique of détente, and of containment more broadly, by arguing that the means of grand strategy had in fact corrupted its ends whereby the “inordinate fear of communism” had encouraged the United States to forgo its principles to support unsavoury but “anti-communist” regimes and undertake secretive, morally repugnant and ultimately short-sighted “regime change” and assassinations of foreign leaders. Carter thus sought an exemplarist version of containment that would not only be consistent with American morality and principles but also serve American interests in an era where the superpower confrontation was joined by intensifying economic interdependence, energy, resource and environmental crises, and global inequality as key drivers of international politics. Ronald Reagan’s approach to American grand strategy, in turn, was a reaction to the perceived errors of détente and the failure of the Carter administration to harness its quest for a moral foreign policy to the pursuit of American strategic and security interests. Reagan’s alternative, especially during his first term (1981–1985), returned to the “rollback” rhetoric of the Eisenhower-Dulles years in concert with a (re)commitment to the fundamental objective of containment as enunciated by George F. Kennan in 1947 “to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate” in order to force upon it “a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection”. This was to be achieved through a concerted effort to out-spend and out-compete Moscow’s in the arms race, increased rhetorical and material support for dissidents in the Eastern bloc, and covert operations to combat Soviet expansion in the Middle East and Latin America.

12. Chapter 11. Primacy in the Service of (Inter)national Security: The Promises and Pitfalls of the “Unipolar Moment”

    Michael Clarke

    Abstract

    This chapter explores the opportunities and dilemmas created by the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War for American grand strategy. It notes that the end of the Cold War presented the United States with a grand strategic dilemma: would it use this opportunity to achieve, in Walter Lippman’s phrase, a “solvent” grand strategy that brought into balance “the nation’s commitments and the nation’s power” or would it seek to embed its preeminent international position indefinitely? The chapter demonstrates that the administrations of Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush ultimately abjured a more limited or “solvent” grand strategy in favor of an explicitly primacist ones that sought, in the words of President George H. W. Bush, to harness the “moral and material resources” of the United States to construct “a new world order…compatible with our values an congenial to our interests”. While the events of 9/11 served to intensify the George W. Bush administration’s pursuit of primacy, the precise shape of that strategy was clearly informed by an aspect of domestic political culture: the influence of the Wilsonian and Jacksonian political cultures of statecraft both within the administration and the wider foreign policy elite in Washington. Ultimately, this chapter concludes that the permissive systemic characteristic of unipolarity enabled the United States a wide latitude in foreign policy choices animated not by pressing security threats but rather by domestically-informed and framed ambitions.

13. Chapter 12. Primacy Constrained: Barack Obama and the National Security Dilemmas of Grand Strategic Under-Reach

    Michael Clarke

    Abstract

    This chapter argues that the Obama administration’s grand strategy was defined by principles consistent with the Jeffersonian political culture of statecraft: caution, restraint, and a consciousness of the limits of American power. This is demonstrated through an analysis of the administrations’ response to three defining issues of its time in office: the rise of China, the intervention against Muammar Qaddafi in Libya and the Syrian crisis. It concludes that such “under-reach” is ultimately as problematic for American national security as the “over-reach” of the preceding Bush administration. In this regard, the Obama administration was confronted with what Paul Kennedy suggests is “the usual dilemma” of all hegemonic states of choosing “between buying military security, at a time of real or perceived danger, which then became a burden upon the national economy” or keeping such security commitments low “but finding one’s interests…threatened by the actions of other states”. Its attempts to grapple with this dilemma not only created opportunities for adversaries such as China and Russia to exploit but fundamentally weakened domestic political support for the maintenance of a primacist grand strategy.

14. Chapter 13. Power Without Primacy: Donald Trump and the Future of American Grand Strategy

    Michael Clarke

    Abstract

    Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in the 2016 Presidential election represented a watershed moment in the evolution of American grand strategy and foreign policy as it is the first time since the 1940s that the nation has elevated to the White House someone who so overtly questioned the central tenets of the “vindicationist” face of American power. The chapter argues that Trump’s “America First” foreign policy channels contradictory “exemplarist” tendencies encompassed by the Jacksonian political culture of statecraft. In particular, “America First” encapsulates long-standing tendencies toward unilateralism and disengagement which challenge the central primacist argument that American global engagement is necessary for the protection of American national security. The chapter then concludes by providing a synthesis of the book’s major arguments and explores a number of potential lessons for the future of American grand strategy drawn from the “long view” of its development and evolution undertaken in the book’s preceding chapters.

15. Backmatter