The unipolar illusion revisited the coming end of the United States' unipolar moment

International Security

Volumn 31, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 7-41

  Layne, Christopher ^a  

^a TEXAS A AND M UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 33750691324     PISSN: 01622889     EISSN: 15314804     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/isec.2006.31.2.7     Document Type: Review

References (225)

1. For arguments that the United States can be a successful hegemon, see 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), especially chaps. 1, 5;
2. Joseph S. Nye Jr., Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990);
3. Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004);
4. Stephen M. Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005);
5. and William C. Wohlforth, "The Stability of a Unipolar World," International Security, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Summer 1999), pp. 5-41.
6. See also Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, "American Primacy in Perspective," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, No. 4 (July/August 2002), pp. 20-33;
7. Michael Mastanduno, "Preserving the Unipolar Moment: Realist Theories and U.S. Grand Strategy," International Security, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Spring 1997), pp. 49-88;
8. and G. John Ikenberry, "Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Persistence of Postwar Order," International Security, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Winter 1998/99), pp. 43-78.
9. Following the Soviet Union's demise, Kenneth N. Waltz and I predicted that unipolarity would quickly give way to multipolarity by stimulating the rise of new great powers. See Christopher Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise," International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Spring 1993), pp. 5-51;
10. and Waltz, "The Emerging Structure of International Politics," International Security, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Fall 1994), pp. 44-79.
11. Obviously, these predictions were wrong. I still believe, however, that the analytical case made to support the prediction that unipolarity would cause new great powers to emerge as counterweights was correct. Indeed, with China's rise we gradually may be seeing the fulfillment of that prediction. For extended discussion, see Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006).
12. For discussions of soft balancing, see Walt, Taming American Power, pp. 126-132;
13. Robert A. Pape, "Soft Balancing against the United States," International Security, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Summer 2005), pp. 7-45;
14. and T.V. Paul, "Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy," International Security, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Summer 2005), pp. 46-71.
15. For counterarguments, see Keir A. Lieber and Gerard Alexander, "Waiting for Balancing: Why the World Is Not Pushing Back," International Security, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Summer 2005), pp. 109-139;
16. and Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, "Hard Times for Soft Balancing," International Security, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Summer 2005), pp. 72-108.
17. China is following an economic prebalancing strategy. Beijing's attempt to spin its great power emergence as a "peaceful rise" is strong evidence that Chinese leaders fear that the United States could act preventively against them before they can develop China's full economic potential and convert it into hard military power. See Mark Brawley, "The Political Economy of Balance of Power Theory," in T.V. Paul, James J. Wirtz, and Michel Fortmann, eds., Balance of Power: Theory and Practice in the Twenty-first Century (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 110-111.
18. For my views on these two forms of balancing, see Layne, The Peace of Illusions, chap. 7.
19. I thank Michael Desch for suggesting this term.
20. As Barry R. Posen states, not only does balance of power theory suggest that "expanding hegemons will be opposed and stopped," but there is "ample historical evidence that this is the case." Posen, The Sources of Military Conduct: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 68-69.
21. The phrase "duality of American power" is borrowed from Michel Fortmann, T.V. Paul, and James J. Wirtz, "Conclusions," in Paul, Wirtz, and Fortmann, Balance of Power, p. 366.
22. Kenneth N. Waltz, "Structural Realism after the Cold War," International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Summer 2000), p. 30.
23. Balance of power theory is good at predicting that power balances eventually will form whenever too much power is concentrated in the hands of a single great power, but it cannot predict how long it will take for this to happen. Kenneth N. Waltz, "Structural Realism after the Cold War," International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2000), p. 30. Ibid.
24. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), p. 40.
25. Andrew Gamble, "Hegemony and Decline: Britain and the United States," in Patrick Karl O'Brien and Armand Clesse, eds., Two Hegemonies: Britain, 1846-1914, and the United States, 1941-2001 (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2002), p. 130;
26. and Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 32.
27. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 29-30, 144.
28. International political economy scholars claim that one of the attributes of hegemony is the provision of public, or collective, goods to the international system. See Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929-1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).
29. By supplying collective goods, hegemons give "other states an interest in following their lead." Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics, p. 30.
30. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, p. 40.
31. According to Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye Jr., hegemony prevails in the international system when "one state is powerful enough to maintain the essential rules governing interstate relations, and willing to do so." Keohane and Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), p. 44.
32. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, p. 34 n. 13.
33. Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics, p. 28.
34. For the argument that the United States established hegemony over Western Europe following World War II, see Layne, The Peace of Illusions.
35. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979), pp. 191-192.
36. The points made in this and the next three paragraphs are developed at length in Layne, The Peace, of Elusions,
37. My argument differs from John Mearsheimer's claim in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics that the purported "stopping power of water" prevents great powers from attaining hegemony beyond their own region.
38. For more on how Mearsheimer and I differ, see Christopher Layne, "The 'Poster Child' for Offensive Realism: America as Global Hegemon," Security Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Winter 2002), pp. 120-164.
39. The George W. Bush administration has declared that the United States will use its hegemonic power to ensure that other states have no "hope of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States." George W. Bush, The National Security Strategy of the United States (Washington, D.C.: White House, September 2002).
40. The first overt expression of the United States' post-Cold War hegemonic grand strategy was embodied in the 1992 classified document "Defense Planning Guidance" for fiscal years 1994-97, prepared by the Pentagon during the George H.W. Bush ad ministration. Patrick E. Tyler, "U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop," New York Times, March 8, 1992.
41. The document stated that the objective of U.S. grand strategy henceforth would be to maintain U.S. hegemony by preventing the emergence of new great power rivals in Europe and East Asia. Although the Clinton administration toned down the rhetoric about unipolarity, it accepted this strategy. I disagree with those who have argued that the George W. Bush administration's approach to U.S. grand strategy-its determination to maintain over-whelming U.S. geopolitical dominance and its muscular idealism-breaks sharply with the principles and assumptions that guided U.S. policymakers from the 1940s through 2000. For the argument that the administration turned its back on the United States' post-1945 grand strategy, see Jim Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004);
42. and Ivo H. Daadler and James M. Lindsay, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 2003).
43. For an excellent rebuttal, see Melvyn P. Leffler, "Bush's Foreign Policy," Foreign Policy, No. 144 (September/October 2004), pp. 22-28.
44. Quoted in Robert B. Strassler, ed., The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War (New York: Basic Books, 1996), p. 372.
45. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987).
46. William C. Wohlforth, "U.S. Strategy in a Unipolar World," in G. John Ikenberry, ed., America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 103-104.
47. See also Wohlforth, "The Stability of a Unipolar World"; and
48. Brooks and Wohlforth, "American Primacy in Perspective."
49. For an explanation of the factors that may prevent timely and efficient counterhegemonic balancing, see Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 341-344;
50. Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 123-128;
51. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, pp. 164-170, 196-198;
52. and Mancur Olson and Richard Zeckhauser, "An Economic Theory of Alliances," Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 48, No. 3 (August 1966), pp. 266-279.
53. This concept of a coalition magnet is suggested by the observation that one of the conditions likely to trigger a hard-balancing coalition against the United States in the future is "when one or more of the major powers gains sufficient capabilities to challenge U.S. power." Fortmann, Paul, and Wirtz, "Conclusions," p. 372.
54. The seminal work on balance of threat theory is Walt, The Origins of Alliances,
55. See also Walt, Taming American Power, pp. 123-124.
56. As Walt puts it, "The United States is by far the world's most powerful state, but it does not pose a significant threat to the vital interests of the major powers." Stephen M. Walt, "Keeping the World 'Off-Balance': Self-Restraint and U.S. Foreign Policy," in Ikenberry, America Unrivaled, p. 139 (emphasis in original).
57. Walt, The Origins of Alliances, pp. 22-26.
58. This claim parallels Mearsheimer's assertion about the "stopping power of water."
59. Walt, "Keeping the World 'Off-Balance,'" p. 137.
60. For a similar argument, see Wohlforth, "U.S. Strategy in a Unipolar World," p. 107;
61. and Walt, Taming American Power, pp. 124, 187-191.
62. Jack S. Levy argues that counterbalancing coalitions were unlikely to form against Britain, the nineteenth century's preponderant offshore power, and are unlikely to do so against the United States today, because offshore powers "have fewer capabilities for imposing their will on major continental states, fewer incentives for doing so, and a greater range of strategies for increasing their influence by other means." Levy, "What Do Great Powers Balance Against and When?" in Paul, Wirtz, and Fortmann, Balance of Power, p. 42.
63. See Paul, "Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy."
64. Paul, "Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy." Ibid., p. 56. Paul subscribes to balance of threat theory. Although U.S. policies are not sufficiently threatening to prompt others to engage in hard balancing, that could change: "As long as the United States abstains from empire building that challenges the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a large number of states, a hard-balancing coalition is unlikely to emerge either regionally or globally. If, however, it pursues empire building, it woud no longer be a status quo power, but a revisionist state bent on forcefully altering the international order. The constraints on the United States against an overt imperial strategy are many, but the war on terrorism and the need for oil could yet push it further in this direction. An overt imperial strategy, if adopted, would eventually cause great friction in the international system, built around the independent existence of sovereign states, especially major power actors."
65. Paul, "Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy.", Ibid., p. 71.
66. Keir Lieber and Gerard Alexander argue, on the other hand, that the second-tier major powers have the material capabilities to form a hard-balancing coalition against the United States but have no reason to do so because U.S. enmity is focused not at them but at terrorist groups such as al-Qaida and rogue states such as Iran, North Korea, Syria, and (before March 2003) Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Lieber and Alexander, "Waiting for Balancing."
67. See Nye, The. Paradox of American Power, especially chaps. 1, 5;
68. G. John Ikenberry, "Democracy, Institutions, and American Restraint," in Ikenberry, America Unrivaled, pp. 213-238;
69. Ikenberry, "Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Persistence of the Postwar Order";
70. Mastanduno, "Preserving the Unipolar Moment";
71. Walt, "Keeping the World 'Off-Balance,'" pp. 121-154;
72. and Stephen M. Walt, "Beyond bin Laden: Reshaping U.S. Foreign Policy" International Security, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Winter 2001/02), pp. 59-62, 56.
73. G. John Ikenberry, "Strategic Reactions to American Preeminence: Great Power Politics in the Age of Unipolarity," report to the National Intelligence Council, July 28, 2003, http://www.dni.gov/nic/ confreports_stratreact.html.
74. To ensure that the United States is regarded as a benevolent hegemon, analysts recommend a number of measures that it can take to "be nice" to other states, including using force with restraint; avoiding unilateral military action; adopting a defensive realist military posture; acting multilaterally and allowing others to have a voice in how the United States exercises its power; and making concessions to others' interests to secure their cooperation (e.g., by ratifying the Kyoto treaty on climate change and joining the International Criminal Court). See, for example, Walt, Taming American Power, pp. 223-232;
75. and Walt, "Keeping the World 'Off-Balance,'" pp. 141-152.
76. On hegemonic stability theory, see Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics;
77. Robert Gilpin, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation: The Political Economy of U.S. Foreign Direct Investment (New York: Basic Books, 1975);
78. and Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929-1939.
79. Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics, pp. 144-145.
80. Ikenberry, "Strategic Reactions to American Preeminence," p. 35.
81. The discussion in the remainder of this section is based on Paul, "Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy";
82. Lieber and Alexander, "Waiting for Balancing";
83. Michael Mastanduno and Ethan B. Kapstein, "Realism and State Strategies after the Cold War," in Kapstein and Mastanduno, eds., Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies after the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), pp. 1-27;
84. Ethan B. Kapstein, "Does Unipolarity Have a Future?" in Kapstein and Mastanduno, Unipolar Politics, pp. 464-490;
85. T.V. Paul, "Introduction: The Enduring Axioms of Balance of Power Theory," in Paul, Wirtz, and Fortmann, Balance of Power, pp. 1-25;
86. and Fortmann, Paul, and Wirtz, "Conclusions."
87. Walt, Taming American Power, pp. 187-191.
88. Ikenberry contends that most of the other potential counterbalancers to the United States are in a "security box," and need U.S. protection against actual or potential regional rivals. Ikenberry, "Strategic Reactions to American Preeminence," p. 10.
89. Barry R. Posen, "Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of American Hegemony," International Security, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Summer 2003), pp. 5-46.
90. Other states may benefit from the collective goods provided by U.S. hegemony, but they worry about the relative distribution of power in the international system, because today's ally (or benevolent hegemon) can always become tomorrow's rival. Joseph M. Grieco, "Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism," International Organization, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Summer 1988), p. 500 (emphasis in original).
91. Ikenberry, "Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Persistence of the Postwar Order," p. 77.
92. G. John Ikenberrry, "Introduction," in Ikenberry, America Unrivaled, p. 10.
93. G. John Ikenberry and Charles A. Kupchan, "The Legitimation of Hegemonic Power," in David P. Rapkin, ed., World Leadership and Hegemony (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1990), p. 52.
94. Samuel R. Berger, "American Power: Hegemony, Isolationism, or Engagement," remarks prepared for delivery, Council on Foreign Relations, October 21, 1991, http://www.cfr.org/publication/3600/american_power/html.
95. George W. Bush, "State of the Union Address," January 21, 2004, http://www.whitehouse/gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040120-7.html.
96. George W. Bush, "Introduction," in Bush, The National Security Strategy of the United States, p. i.
97. "State of the Union: Transcript of President Bush's Address on the State of the Union," New York Times, January 29, 1992.
98. Walt, The Origins of Alliances, pp. 28-29.
99. Walt does not downplay the importance of power as a factor in inducing balancing behavior; he simply says it is not the only factor. Walt, The Origins of Alliances, Ibid., p. 21.
100. Walt, Taming American Power, p. 61.
101. In his classic work on the origins of World War II in Europe, A.J.P. Taylor argued that the key issue confronting British policymakers during the 1930s was ascertaining Hitler's intentions: Was he a traditional German statesman who could be appeased, or a megalomaniac with dangerously revisionist aims who had to be opposed? See Taylor, Origins of the Second World War (New York: Atheneum, 1983).
102. The geopolitical events of 1938-the Anschluss and the Munich crisis-did not resolve this question in London; the November 1938 Kristallnacht, however, caused key policymakers to conclude that Nazi Germany's nefarious domestic policies meant that its foreign policy intentions were malign. On the other hand, between 1945 and 1948, U.S. policymakers contributed to the intensification of the Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union by wrongly concluding that its domestic system and ideology signaled that the Kremlin was committed to an aggressive external policy in Europe, even though they knew that Soviet military and economic capabilities were limited. For critical assessments of the United States' Soviet policy from 1945 to 1949, see Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1996 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997);
103. Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992);
104. and Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978).
105. For the neo-orthodox counterargument that the Soviet Union was a threat because of its ideology, see John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
106. On U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union during the early Cold War years, see also Layne, The Peace of Illusions, chap. 3.
107. Colin Elman, "Introduction," in John A. Vasquez and Elman, eds., Realism and the Balancing of Power: A New Debate (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 2003), p. 16.
108. Walt concedes that the very fact of U.S. hard power creates difficulty for the United States in persuading others that it is not a threat to them. The United States "may" convince others that it is not a threat if it "acts wisely." Walt, Taming American Power, p. 61. On the other hand, it may not succeed in altering their perceptions of a U.S. threat no matter how much wisdom informs its diplomacy.
109. I am grateful to Michael Desch for suggesting this point to me.
110. For extended discussion, see Layne, The Peace of Illusions.
111. Immediately after World War II, West European elites were more concerned with domestic balances of power (keeping the communist parties out of power) than with the external balance of power. Hence, instead of being driven by the need to balance against the Soviet Union, their foreign policies were driven primarily by the need to bandwagon with the United States, which allowed them to receive U.S. economic aid that helped consolidate their political positions.
112. Walt makes a similar point: "As the world's most powerful country, the United States will inevitably face greater suspicion and resentment than it did when it was one of several Great Powers (as it was from 1900 to 1945), or even when it was one of two superpowers (as it was from 1945 to 1989)." Walt, Taming American Power, pp. 60-61.
113. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, p. 33.
114. Waltz, "Structural Realism after the Cold War," p. 28.
115. As Robert Jervis notes, a hegemon's capabilities are more important to other states than its intentions because "minds can be changed, new leaders can come to power, values can shift, new opportunities and dangers can arise." Jervis, "Cooperation under the Security Dilemma," World Politics, Vol. 30, No. 2 (January 1978) p. 105.
116. Walt, Taming American Power, p. 23.
117. For another important argument that from 1945 until 2001 U.S. administrations pursued-often unilaterally-a non-status quo grand strategy, see Stephen Sestanovich, "American Maximalism," National Interest, No. 79 (Spring 2005), pp. 13-23.
118. A related charge against the administration is that it blundered when, immediately after September 11, President Bush told the rest of the world that it had only two choices: they could either support the United States unquestioningly or oppose it and incur its wrath. Blunder or not, the administration hardly was the first to engage in such bullying tactics. During the height of the Cold War, for example, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles argued that it was "immoral" for the nonaligned bloc to remain neutral in the contest between the United States and the Soviet Union.
119. Anyone who has delved into the primary sources of American post-World War II diplomacy knows that when U.S. diplomats speak of "consulting" with allies, they really mean that Washington will inform them of the policies it already has decided to pursue. Even during the 1950s-the supposed high-water mark of U.S. multilaterialism-key American policymakers made no secret of their unilateralist preferences. Belying NATO's mythical image as the institutional acme of multilateralism, U.S. unilateralism was very much on display in relations with the West Europeans. When consulting the West Europeans, Secretary of State Dean Acheson said the trick was to find a way to communicate with them "without limiting U.S. freedom of action unduly." Acheson to Bruce, September 19, 1952, FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States), 1952-54, Vol. 5, p. 325.
120. Similarly, Secretary of State Dulles told West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer that Washington could not commit to a prior consultation formula that would tie its hands. Dulles to Adenauer, November 29, 1957, FRUS, 1955-57, Vol. 4, p. 212.
121. As Dulles told the National Security Council, "It was harder for the United States than for other NATO nations to agree to full consultation on all policy matters, because of the world-wide commitments and interests of the United States.... We do not want to be in a position where we are unable to act promptly if necessary for the reason that we are obliged to consult with the NATO Council before taking action." Memorandum of discussion, 348th meeting of the National Security Council, December 12, 1957, FRUS, 1955-57, Vol. 4, p. 216.
122. Sestanovich, "American Maximalism," p. 13.
123. As Sestanovich says of the George H.W. Bush administration's "consultation" of U.S. allies during the negotiations on German reunification: "From the president on down, it usually amounted to respectful listening, followed by actions that paid little or no attention to what other governments said." Sestanovich, "American Maximalism," Ibid., p. 17.
124. Walt, Taming American Power, p. 46.
125. The important objection to the Bush administration's Iraq policy is not that it was unilateral, but that it was unwise (and would have been just as unwise even if pursued "multilaterally").
126. See Christopher Layne, "Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Fall 1994), pp. 5-49.
127. For the argument that World War I in the West was a war among democracies, see Christopher Layne, "Shell Games, Shallow Gains, and the Democratic Peace," International History Review, Vol. 23, No. 4 (December 2001), pp. 799-813.
128. For a supporting argument, see Ido Oren, "The Subjectivity of the 'Democratic' Peace: Changing U.S. Perceptions of Imperial Germany," International Security, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Fall 1995), pp. 147-185.
129. Of course, the fact that the United States purportedly is a democratic hegemon does nothing to cause nondemocratic states (either second-tier major powers or lesser-ranking regional powers) to regard U.S. primacy as benevolent. On the contrary, because the United States seeks to export its domestic institutions and values abroad-often by seeking regime change-and categorizes other states as "threats" because of their domestic political systems and ideologies, it is perceived by such states as a threat. Given that states and regimes want to survive, it is unsurprising that states perceiving a U.S. threat to their interests and to regime survival seek to defend themselves-often by adopting asymmetric strategies, including acquiring weapons of mass destruction and supporting terrorism.
130. David Collier and Stephen Levitsky, "Research Note: Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research," World Politics, Vol. 49, No. 3 (April 1997), pp. 430-451.
131. See also Oren, "The Subjectivity of the 'Democratic' Peace."
132. Glen Frankel, "Opposition to U.S. Policy Grows in Europe," Washington Post, September 4, 2004.
133. See also Craig Kennedy and Marshall M. Bouton, "The Real Trans-Atlantic Gap," Foreign Policy, No. 133 (November/December 2002), pp. 64-74;
134. Daniel M. Nelson, "Transatlantic Transmutations," Washington Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Autumn 2002), pp. 51-66;
135. and "American Values: Living with a Superpower," Economist, January 4, 2002, pp. 18-20.
136. am grateful to Gabriela Marin Thornton for calling my attention to both the Washington Post story and the Nelson article. A recent Harris survey found that Europeans see the United States as a greater threat to international stability than either China or Iran. John Thornhill, David Dombey, and Edward Allen, "Europeans See U.S. as Greater Threat to Stability than Iran," Financial Times (London), June 19, 2006.
137. Paul Sharp, "Virtue Unrestrained: Herbert Butterfield and the Problem of American Power," International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 5, No. 3 (August 2004), pp. 300-315.
138. Although balancing is the most common strategy to deal with the rise of a too-powerful rival, great powers can follow other strategies, including bandwagoning, buck-passing, bait-and-bleed, and hiding. For discussions, see Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 153-162;
139. Walt, The Origins of Alliances, pp. 18-31;
140. Paul Schroeder, "Historical Reality vs. Neo-Realist Theory," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer 1994), pp. 108-148;
141. and Randall L. Schweller, "Unanswered Threats: A Neoclassical Realist Theory of Underbalancing," International Security, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Fall 2004), pp. 167-168.
142. Schweller, "Unanswered Threats," p. 166.
143. Jack S. Levy, "Balances and Balancing: Concepts, Propositions, and Research Design," in Vasquez and Elman, Realism and the Balancing of Power, pp. 129-130.
144. Elman, "Introduction," p. 8.
145. See, for example, Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, p. 139;
146. Elman, "Introduction," p. 8;
147. Paul "Introduction";
148. and Schweller, "Unanswered Threats," p. 166.
149. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, pp. 118, 168;
150. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 156-157;
151. and Levy, "What Do Great Powers Balance Against and When?" p. 35.
152. Barry R. Posen, "ESDP and the Structure of World Power," International Spectator, Vol. 39, No. 1 (January-March 2004), p. 9.
153. As Posen states, "Though the U.S. may be a benign hegemon today, there is no reason to assume it will always be so." Barry R. Posen, "ESDP and the Structure of World Power," International Spectator, Vol. 39, No. 1 (2004), p. 9. Ibid.
154. Robert J. Art, "Europe Hedges Its Security Bets," in Paul, Wirtz, and Fortmann, Balance of Power, p. 180.
155. Sean Greenwood, Britain and the Cold War, 1945-91 (New York: St. Martin's, 2000), p. 73.
156. Robert M. Hathaway writes, "Everywhere Britain saw its position challenged, perhaps its very safety threatened, by the two parvenus on the international scene, Soviet Russia and the United States."
157. Hathaway, Ambiguous Partnership: Britain and America, 1944-47 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), p. 49.
158. As soon-to-be British Prime Minister Anthony Eden accurately observed of the Americans in 1954, "They want to run the world." Quoted in David Dimbleby and David Reynolds, An Ocean Apart: The Relationship between Britain and America in the Twentieth Century (New York: Random House, 1988), p. 215.
159. See, for example, the comments of U.S. Ambassador Lewis Douglas (1948) and Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskill (1952), quoted in Dimbleby and Reynolds, An Ocean Apart, pp. 195, 205.
160. John Kent, British Imperial Strategy and the Origins of the Cold War, 1944-1949 (Leicester, U.K.: Leicester University Press, 1983), pp. 66-67.
161. The literature on the wartime Anglo-American rivalry on economic and colonial issues-and the U.S. goal of displacing Britain as the dominant world power-is extensive. For useful accounts, see Hathaway, Ambiguous Partnership;
162. Warren Kimball, The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991);
163. Wm. Roger Louis, Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941-45 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978);
164. and Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War against Japan, 1941-1945 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978).
165. Quoted in Kent, British Imperial Strategy and the Origins of the Cold War, 1944-1949, pp. 55-56.
166. The standard work on Bevin is Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary (London: Heineman, 1983).
167. Bullock's orthodox interpretation of Bevin's diplomacy-that his goal was not to create a third force, but rather to draw the United States into a long-term peacetime military commitment to Western Europe-has been challenged by more recent scholarship. See, for example, Sean Greenwood, The Alternative Alliance: Anglo-French Relations before the Coming of NATO, 1944-1948 (London: Minerva, 1996).
168. See also Michael Hogan, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-1952 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 45-48;
169. and Kent, British Imperial Strategy and the Origins of the Cold War, 1944-1949, pp. 118-125.
170. Hogan, The Marshall Plan, p. 109.
171. Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943-1945 (New York: Random House, 1968), pp. 72-75.
172. Zara Steiner, "The Fall of Great Britain: Peace, Stability, and Legitimacy," in Geir Lundestad, ed., The Fall of Great Powers: Peace, Stability, and Legitimacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 73.
173. Hathaway, Ambiguous Partnership, p. 227.
174. Quoted in Hogan, The Marshall Plan, p. 113. Jebb further observed that unless the third-force strategy succeeded, "we shall eventually have to make the choice between becoming a Soviet satellite state or the poor dependency of an American pluto-democracy."
175. Hogan, The Marshall Plan, p. 113, Ibid.
176. Quoted in Hogan, The Marshall Plan, p. 113, ibid.
177. Alan S. Milward, The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945-1951 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 242.
178. Robin Edmonds, Setting the Mould: The United States and Great Britain, 1949-1950 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), p. 203.
179. Quoted in Edward A. Kolodziej, French International Policy under de Gaulle and Pompidou: The Politics of Grandeur (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974), p. 91.
180. Edward A. Kolodziej, French International Policy under de Gaulle and Pompidou: The Politics of Grandeur, Ibid., pp. 90-91.
181. LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, p. 227.
182. For two excellent discussions of de Gaulle's strategy vis-à-vis the United States, see Frederic Boro, trans. Susan Emanuel, Tivo Strategies for Europe (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001);
183. and Jeffrey Glen Giauque, Grand Designs and Visions of Unity: The Atlantic Powers and the Reorganization of Western Europe, 1955-1963 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
184. Remarks of President Kennedy to the National Security Council, January 22, 1963, FRUS, 1961-63, Vol. 13, p. 486.
185. Bozo, Two Strategies for Europe, p. 81.
186. Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 375-376.
187. Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963, Ibid., p. 376.
188. Jolyon Howorth and John T.S. Keeler, "The EU, NATO, and the Quest for European Autonomy," in Howorth and Keeler, eds., Defending Europe: The EU, NATO, and the Quest for European Autonomy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 7.
189. For background information on how ESDP evolved from the European Security and Defense Initiative, which was a "classic transatlantic burden-sharing exercise designed to strengthen the Alliance's European pillar," see Stuart Croft, Jolyon Howorth, Terry Teriff, and Mark Webber, "NATO's Triple Challenge," International Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 3 (July 2000), pp. 495-518;
190. Howorth and Keeler, "The EU, NATO, and the Quest for European Autonomy";
191. and Frederic Bozo, "The Effects of Kosovo and the Danger of Decoupling," in
192. Howorth and Keeler, Defending Europe, pp. 61-77.
193. Posen, "ESDP and the Structure of World Power," p. 15.
194. Posen, "ESDP and the Structure of World Power,", Ibid., p. 15.
195. Philip Webster, Richard Beeston, and Martin Fletcher, "French Trigger NATO Furore," Times (London), December 8, 2000;
196. Michael Evans, "Chirac Blows Cover of New European Army," Times (London), December 8, 2000;
197. and Anton La Guardia and Michael Smith, "France Snubs America over European Army," Daily Telegraph, December 7, 2000.
198. Quoted in Douglas Hamilton and Charles Aldinger, "EU Force Could Spell NATO's End, Cohen Says," Washington Post, December 6, 2000.
199. Madeleine Albright, "Albright Press Conference at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium, February 19, 1997." The Three D's-the nondiminishment and especially the nonduplication proscriptions-effectively would foreclose the EU from ever achieving strategic autonomy and would ensure its continuing security dependency on the United States, given the latter's virtual monopoly on NATO military capabilities in such key areas as intelligence, advanced surveillance and reconnaissance systems, power projection, and precision-guided munitions.
200. Judy Dempsey, "EU Leaders Unveil Plan for Central Military HQ," Financial Times (London), April 30, 2003.
201. Quoted in Judy Dempsey, "EU Leaders Unveil Plan for Central Military HQ," Financial Times, 2003, ibid.
202. Quoted in Robert Graham and Gary Dinmore, "Paris Plays Down Threats from Washington," Financial Times (London), April 24, 2003.
203. Quoted in Judy Dempsey, "U.S. Seeks Showdown with EU over NATO," Financial Times (London), October 17, 2003.
204. See Joseph Fitchett, "EU Takes Steps to Create a Military Force without Treading on NATO," International Herald Tribune, March 1, 2000;
205. James Kitfield, "European Doughboys," National Journal, February 26, 2000;
206. and Carol J. Williams, "Conference Highlights Flaws of NATO's Kosovo Campaign," Los Angeles Times, February 6, 2000.
207. Bozo, "The Effects of Kosovo and the Danger of Decoupling," pp. 68, 75.
208. Although he is the foremost advocate of the view that the United States is too powerful to be balanced against, William Wohlforth (with Stephen Brooks) argues that the United States "needs to act with magnanimity in the face of temptation" to reassure the rest of the world that U.S. primacy is nonthreatening. That is, he seems to be saying that others can and will balance against the United States if they fear U.S. power. Brooks and Wohlforth, "American Primacy in Perspective," p. 33.
209. National Intelligence Council, Mapping the Global Future: Report of the National Intelligence Council's 2020 Project (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, December 2004), p. 47.
210. The Strategic Assessment Group's analysis of current and projected world-power shares was based on the international futures model developed by Barry Hughes. For a discussion of the methodology and a summary of the group's findings, see Gregory F. Treverton and Seth G. Jones, Measuring National Power (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2005), pp. iii, ix-x.
211. Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion," p. 7.
212. Wohlforth, "The Stability of a Unipolar World," p. 8.
213. For a powerful argument that the entente with France and the continental commitment were ill advised-and that Britain could, and should, have avoided being dragged into World War I-see Niall Ferguson, Pity of War: Explaining World War I (New York: Basic Books, 1999).
214. See also Daniel A. Baugh, "British Strategy during the First World War in the Context of Four Centuries: Blue-Water versus Continental Commitment," in Daniel M. Masterson, ed., Naval History: The Sixth Symposium of the U.S. Naval Academy (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1987), pp. 105-106.
215. On offshore balancing, see Layne, The Peace of Illusions;
216. Christopher Layne, "From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing," International Security, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Summer 1997), pp. 86-124;
217. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics;
218. and Walt, Taming American Power, Mearsheimer contends that the United States already is an offshore balancer. I concur that the United States should be an offshore balancer, but demonstrate that its policy since the early 1940s has been a grand strategy of extraregional hegemony, not offshore balancing.
219. Walt, Taming American Power, p. 226.
220. Walt argues that the United States should not relinquish "the advantages that primacy now provides" and that "the central aim of U.S. grand strategy should be to preserve its current position for as long as possible." Walt, Taming American Power, Ibid., p. 219.
221. In the realm of security, states-even the United States and its allies-tend to have conflicting, rather than convergent, interests. When the members of international institutions disagree with U.S. policies, they will not act to legitimize them, which means that the United States would be left with the choice of abandoning policies it deems important (or even vital) or allowing its interests to be defined by others.
222. Many adherents of defensive realism and of balance of threat theory actually are closet Wilsonian liberal internationalists. Stephen Van Evera is an example of the former, and Walt is an example of the latter. In Taming American Power, Walt asserts that U.S. liberal ideology is a key component of U.S. influence (p. 219). He also says that, as an offshore balancer, "the United States would still be actively engaged around the world, through multilateral institutions such as NATO, the United Nations, and the World Trade Organization, and through close ties with specific regional allies." Ibid., p. 22.
223. Moreover, he speaks approvingly of the Bush and Clinton administrations for promoting the United States' core ideological values (p. 30), and of their efforts to expand U.S. power-albeit, he claims, this was expansion through multilateralism (p. 49). Since Wilson's time, liberal internationalism has been the dominant force driving the United States' quest for extraregional hegemony. For detailed discussion, see Layne, The Peace of Illusions, especially chaps. 1, 6.
224. For detailed discussion of unilateral offshore balancing, see Layne, The Peace of Illusions, especially chap. 8.
225. This theme is developed in Layne, The Peace of Illusions, ibid., especially chaps. 1, 6, 9.