America's Liberal illiberalism the ideological origins of overreaction in U.S. Foreign Policy

International Security

Volumn 32, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 7-43

  Desch, Michael C ^a,b  

^a Department of Intelligence and National Security Decision Making ^*

^b TEXAS A AND M UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 38349176260     PISSN: 01622889     EISSN: 15314804     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/isec.2008.32.3.7     Document Type: Article

References (277)

1. For two classic articulations of the argument that war restricts domestic liberty, see Otto Hintze, "Military Organization in the Organization of the State," in Felix Gilbert, ed., The Historical Essays of Otto Hintze (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 178-215;
2. and Harold D. Lasswell, "The Garrison State," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 46, No. 4 (January 1941), pp. 455-468.
3. For more recent discussions, see Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987);
4. Bruce D. Porter, War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations of Politics (New York: Free Press, 1994);
5. and Michael C. Desch, "War and Strong States, Peace and Weak States?" International Organization, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Spring 1996), pp. 237-268.
6. A new literature that challenges the conventional wisdom about the inverse relationship between war and liberty is summarized in Paul Starr, Freedom's Power: The True Force of Liberalism (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
7. See American Civil Liberties Union, http://www.acluct.org/issues/ nationalsecurity.
8. Ted Galen Carpenter, "Protecting Liberty in a Permanent War" (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, June 21, 2002), http://www.cato.org/dailys/ 06-21-02.html.
9. This argument builds on, but ultimately goes well beyond, Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1955).
10. Christopher Layne suggests that Liberalism, as embodied in what some diplomatic historians refer to as the "Open Door," explains U.S. grand strategy since World War II. Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006), chap. 7.
11. Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1957), p. 155.
12. Ibid., p. 32; and Robert A. Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World: Political Development Ideas in Foreign Aid and Social Science (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 316.
13. Other scholars who suggest that U.S. hegemony makes U.S. domestic political culture more salient are Stephen D. Krasner, Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 340-342;
14. Colin Dueck, Reluctant Crusaders: Power, Culture, and Change in American Grand Strategy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006);
15. Lawrence Freedman, "The Age of Liberal Wars," in David Armstrong, Theo Farrell, and Bice Maiguashca, eds., Force and Legitimacy in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 97;
16. and Robert Jervis, "The Compulsive Empire," Foreign Policy, No. 137 (July/August 2003), pp. 83-87.
17. Stuart Gerry Brown, Freedom Limited: An Essay on Democracy; the Individual and the Nezv World; and The Liberal Tradition in America, book review, Ethics, Vol. 65, No. 4 (July 1955), p. 313;
18. Marvin Meyers, "Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America: An Appraisal," Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, No. 3 (April 1963), p. 263;
19. and Michael W. Doyle, Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism (New York: WW. Norton, 1997), pp. 206-207."
20. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949).
21. Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, pp. 176-177.
22. Hartz is building on Alexis de Tocqueville's famous observation in Democracy in America, Vol. 1 (New York: Vintage, 1945), p. 30.
23. Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World, chap. 3.
24. See Robert A. Divine, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000).
25. Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, pp. 12, 285.
26. Eric L. McKittrick, "Is There an American Political Philosophy?" New Republic, April 11, 1955, p. 23.
27. Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World, p. 173.
28. Pierre Hassner, "Immanuel Kant," in Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), pp. 554, 567.
29. Nathan Tarcov, "Principle and Prudence in Foreign Policy: The Founders' Perspective," Public Interest, No. 76 (Summer 1984), p. 57.
30. Thomas L. Pangle and Peter J. Ahrensdorf, Justice among Nations: On the Moral Basis of Power and Peace (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999), p. 217. Of course, Kant actually advocated a "republican peace" and was a skeptic of democracy.
31. See Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), pp. 113-115.
32. A.C. Armstrong, "Kant's Philosophy of Peace and War," Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 28, No. 8 (April 9, 1931), p. 198.
33. I could not find any direct evidence that Wilson read Kant's "Perpetual Peace," though he did learn German and read a great deal of nineteenth-century German philosophy during his academic years, including G.W.F. Hegel's Philosophy of Right, which offers an extended critique of "Perpetual Peace."
34. See "Wilson's Working Bibliography, 1883-90," in Arthur S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Vol. 6 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 586.
35. Kant's influence on Wilson's thinking about the post-World War I League of Nations came indirectly through two other sources. First, the idea of forming a league emerged in England early in the war among a group of British Liberals, including G. Lowes Dickinson and Leonard Woolf, who were influenced by Kant. See Martin David Dubin, "Toward the Concept of Collective Security: The Bryce Group's 'Proposals for the Avoidance of War,' 1914-1917," International Organization, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Spring 1970), pp. 288-318;
36. and Caspar Sylvest, "Continuity and Change in British Liberal Internationalism, c. 1900-1930," Review of International Studies, Vol. 31, No. 2 (April 2005), pp. 263-283. Second, Wilson's thinking was shaped by the participation of former Harvard University Presidents A. Lawrence Lowell and Charles W. Eliot in the League to Enforce Peace, an influential prewar peace organization. Lowell and Eliot, in turn, were influenced by Kant indirectly through the Bryce Group in England and directly through their association with Harvard University's heavily Kantian philosophy department. On the influence of the department on both presidents,
37. see Bruce Kuklick, The Rise of American Philosophy, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1860-1930 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 810-811;
38. and Roland N. Stromberg, "Uncertainties and Obscurities About the League of Nations," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 33, No. 1 (January-March 1972), pp. 139-154.
39. For discussions of this objective, see Kenneth N. Waltz, "Kant, Liberalism, and War," American Political Science Review, Vol. 56, No. 2 (June 1962), p. 337;
40. and Louis P. Pojman, "Kant's Perpetual Peace and Cosmopolitanism," Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Spring 2005), p. 64.
41. See Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals, p. 112.
42. See also Immanuel Kant, "The Natural Principle of the Political Order Considered in Connection with the Idea of a Universal Cosmopolitan History," in Kant's Principles of Politics (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004), p. 9, http://oll.libertyfund.org/files/358/Kant_0056.pdf.
43. Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals, pp. 112-113.
44. Waltz, "Kant, Liberalism, and War," p. 337.
45. Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 4.
46. Hassner, "Immanuel Kant," p. 576.
47. Pangle and Ahrensdorf, Justice among Nations, pp. 186, 198-199. For Hobbes's view that life in the state of nature is less dangerous for countries than for individuals, see Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1968), chap. 13. For Locke's view that the state of nature does not inevitably lead to war,
48. see John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952), chaps. 1-3.
49. Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals, p. 116.
50. See also Immanuel Kant, The Philosophy of Law: An Exposition of the Fundamental Principles of Jurisprudence as the Science of Right (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005), p. 76.
51. Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals, p. 115.
52. Hassner, "Immanuel Kant," p. 580.
53. Michael W. Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," American Political Science Review, Vol. 80, No. 4 (December 1986), p. 1160;
54. and Michael W Doyle, "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Pt. 1," Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Summer 1983), p. 213.
55. Kenneth N. Waltz and Michael W Doyle characterize Kant as representing "noninterventionist" Liberalism. Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954), p. 103;
56. and Doyle, "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Pt. 2," Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Autumn 1983), p. 325. Doyle, however, does concede the presence of "ambiguities" in Kant's Liberalism. Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," p. 1160.
57. Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals, p. 108.
58. Freedman, "The Age of Liberal Wars," p. 101.
59. Kant, The Philosophy of Law, p. 78. John Stuart Mill makes a similar argument about international law not applying to "barbarous governments."
60. See Mill, "A Few Words on Non-intervention," in John M. Robson, ed., The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Vol. 21 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), p. 119.
61. See also Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," p. 116.
62. Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals, pp. 136-137.
63. Ibid., p. 117.
64. John Rawls, "The Law of Peoples," Critical Inquiry, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Autumn 1993), p. 61.
65. Ibid., pp. 37, 46-47. Specifically, Rawls, like Kant, posits two conflicting principles - nonintervention and universal respect for human rights-but he ultimately favors the latter.
66. Ira Katznelson, "Review of Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History," Political Theory, Vol. 27, No. 4 (August 1999), p. 568.
67. Doyle, Ways of War and Peace, pp. 265-277; and Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," pp. 1155-1156.
68. The key works that advance the Liberal "democratic peace" thesis are Dean Babst, "A Force for Peace," Industrial Research, Vol. 13 (April 1972), pp. 55-58;
69. Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics"; Doyle, Ways of War and Peace;
70. and Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993).
71. The key works that challenge this thesis are Christopher Layne, "Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Fall 1994), pp. 5-49;
72. David Spiro, "The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Fall 1994), pp. 50-86;
73. Henry S. Farber and Joanne Gowa, "Polities and Peace," International Security, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Fall 1995), pp. 123-146;
74. and Sebastian Rosato, "The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory," American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 4 (November 2003), pp. 585-602.
75. David Hume, "Of the Balance of Power," in J.H. Green and T.H. Grose, eds., David Hume: Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary (London: Longman, 1889), p. 354.
76. Hume is also quoted in Doyle, Ways of War and Peace, p. 265;
77. and in Doyle, "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Pt. 2," pp. 323-324.
78. Melvin Small and J. David Singer, "The War Proneness of Democratic Regimes, 1816-1965," Jerusalem Journal of International Relations, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1976), pp. 67-68;
79. and Steve Chan, "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall ... Are the Freer Countries More Pacific?" Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 28, No. 4 (December 1984), p. 632.
80. There is a growing literature and concomitant wave of interest among scholars on this topic. See, for example, Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999);
81. and Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005). For useful discussions of this renewed interest in Liberal imperialism,
82. see Bhikhu Parekh, "Superior People: The Narrowness of Liberalism from Mills to Rawls," Times Literary Supplement, February 25, 1994, pp. 11-13;
83. and David Glenn, "Liberalism: The Fuel of Empires?" Chronicle of Higher Education, September 2, 2005, p. 19.
84. For a discussion of the role that putative altruism played in Liberal imperialism in nineteenth-century Britain, see Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, p. 81. The most vociferous advocates of "benign" or "benevolent" hegemony as the objective of contemporary U.S. foreign policy are neoconservatives such as Robert Kagan and William Kristol.
85. See Kagan and Kristol, "The Present Danger," National Interest, No. 59 (Spring 2000), p. 58;
86. and Kagan and Kristol, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 75, No. 4 (July/August 1996), p. 20.
87. Office of the Press Secretary, "Dr. Condoleezza Rice Discusses Foreign Policy" (Washington, D.C.: White House, August 7, 2003), http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/08/20030807-1.html.
88. "Doctrine of the Community," speech by Prime Minister Tony Blair to the Economic Club of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, April 22, 1999, http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/politics/blair/htm.
89. Robert Cooper, "Why We Still Need Empires," Observer, April 7, 2002, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/story/0,80117,00.html.
90. See also Andrew Grice, "Blair Flies to Bush's Side to Mount Strong Defence of Iraq Invasion," Independent, May 22, 2006.
91. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, p. 238.
92. Woodrow Wilson, War Messages, 65th Cong., 1st sess., Senate Doc. No. 5, Serial No. 7264, 1917, p. 3.
93. See also Harry M. Clor, "Woodrow Wilson," in Morton J. Frisch and Richard G. Stevens, eds., American Political Thought: The Philosophic Dimension of American Statecraft (New York: FE. Peacock, 1983), p. 286.
94. Quoted in John Ehrman, The Rise of Neoconservativism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1994 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 80.
95. George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900-1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 46.
96. Tony Smith, America's Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 9.
97. Louis Hartz, "Conflicts within the Idea of the Liberal Tradition: Comment," Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, No. 3 (April 1963), p. 283.
98. Robert Kagan, "Power and Weakness: Why the United States and Europe See the World Differently," Policy Review, No. 113 (June/July 2002), pp. 3-28, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3460246.html.
99. Kagan continues this theme in "Cowboy Nation," New Republic, October 23, 2006, pp. 20-23.
100. See also Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World, p. 7; and Freedman, "The Age of Liberal Wars," p. 94.
101. Jonathan Monten, "The Roots of the Bush Doctrine: Power, Nationalism, and Democracy Promotion in U.S. Strategy," International Security, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Spring 2005), pp. 112-156. This argument is developed historically and at greater length in Pitts, A Turn to Empire.
102. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, p. 20.
103. Jennifer Pitts also highlights the Liberal imperialism of early nineteenth-century France, particularly in the work of Alexis de Tocqueville on the Algerian question. Pitts, A Turn to Empire, pp. 204-239.
104. See the contrasts drawn between Sparta and Athens by the Corinthians in Robert B. Strassler, ed., The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, Bk. 1 (New York: Free Press, 1996). On the moderation of Bismarck's Germany,
105. see Josef Joffe, "'Bismarck' or 'Britain'? Toward an American Grand Strategy after Bipolarity," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Spring 1995), pp. 105-108.
106. Wolfgang J. Mommsen highlights the Liberal roots of late nineteenth-century German Machtpolitik in his Max Weber and German Politics: 1890-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 84-90.
107. Smith, America's Mission, p. 62.
108. Ibid., pp. 60-83. For a chronology of U.S. military operations, see GlobalSecurity.org, "Early 20th-century Operations," http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/early20cent-ops.htm.
109. For more evidence of the links between neoconservativism and Liberalism, see Irving Kristol, "The Neoconservative Persuasion," Weekly Standard, August 25, 2003, pp. 23-27;
110. and Ehrman, The Rise of Neoconservativism, pp. viii, 40, 186. Many "Old Right" conservatives were suspicious of the Liberal tenets of neoconservativism.
111. See Murray Friedman, The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 134-135. For a related discussion of the similarities between Liberalism and neoconservativism,
112. see Monten, "The Roots of the Bush Doctrine," p. 116. Finally, Uday Singh Meta points to clear parallels in the philosophies of Liberal imperialism and neoconservativism. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, p. 214.
113. Lawrence F. Kaplan, "Regime Change: Bush, Closet Liberal," New Republic, March 3, 2003, p. 21.
114. See also David M. Kennedy, "What 'W' Owes to 'WW,'" Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 295, No. 2 (March 2005), pp. 36-40; and Freedman, "The Age of Liberal Wars," p. 99.
115. Ronald Steel, "The Missionary," New York Review of Books, Vol. 50, No. 18 (November 20, 2003), http://www.nybooks.com/articles/ 16797. For an extended discussion of these similarities,
116. see Michael C. Desch, "Liberals, Neocons, and Realcons," Orbis, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Fall 2001), pp. 520-522, 526-531.
117. Many Liberals, however, still think that U.S. hegemony is vital for the establishment of multilateral institutions and to ensure they continue to provide necessary public goods. See Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984);
118. and Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965).
119. Friedman, The Neoconservative Revolution, p. 134.
120. Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World, pp. 62-63.
121. George W. Bush, National Security Strategy of the United States (Washington, D.C.: White House, September 2002), p. 17.
122. Samuel P. Huntington treats "development" almost exclusively in terms of government institutions. Huntington, Political Order and Changing Societies (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1965), pp. 1-9.
123. In contrast, Packenham defines development as also involving democratization. Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World, pp. 114, 127, 130, 137, 148, 156, 288-294, 317.
124. Office of the Press Secretary, "President Bush Presses for Peace in the Middle East," remarks by the president at the University of South Carolina's commencement address, Columbia, South Carolina, May 9, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/print/20030509-11.html.
125. Office of the Press Secretary, "President Discusses the Future of Iraq," remarks by the president at the Hilton Hotel, Washington, D.C., February 26, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/print/ 20030226-11.html.
126. Office of the Vice President, "Interview of the Vice President by Wolf Blitzer, CNN," Washington, D.C., June 23, 2005, http://www.whitehouse. gov/news/releases/2005/06/print/20050623-8.html.
127. For a critique of this widely embraced assumption, see Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 6.
128. Office of the Press Secretary, "President Bush Sworn-In to Second Term," January 20, 2005, http://www.whitehouse.gov/inaugural/index.html.
129. Quoted in Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), p. 88 (emphasis in original).
130. Office of the Press Secretary, "President Discusses Progress in Iraq," Washington, D.C., July 23, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/ releases/2003/07/print/20030723-1.html.
131. Quoted in Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin, 2006), p. 17.
132. William J. Clinton, A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement (Washington, D.C.: White House, February 1996), chap. 2, http://www.fas.org/spp/military/docops/national/1996stra.htm#II.
133. George W. Bush, "State of the Union Address," Washington, D.C., January 20, 2004, http://www.whitehouse.gov.news/releases/2004/01/print/ 20040120-7.html.
134. Office of the Press Secretary, "National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice Discusses War on Terror at McConnell Center for Political Leadership," University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, March 8, 2004, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/03/print/20040308-15.html.
135. Quoted in Samuel Flagg Bemis, The Latin American Policy of the United States: An Historical Interpretation (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1943), p. 175.
136. Office of the Press Secretary, "President Bush Delivers Graduation Speech at West Point," United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, June 1, 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020601-3. html. This view of radicalism is shared by liberals as well.
137. See G. John Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter, Forging a World of Liberty under Law: U.S. National Security in the 21st Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Project on National Security, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, September 2006), pp. 38-39, http://www.wws.princeton.edu/ppns/report/FinalReport.pdf.
138. Bush, National Security Strategy of the United States, p. 15.
139. Donald Rumsfeld, "Beyond Nation Building," speech given at the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, New York, New York, February 14, 2003, http://www.dod.gov/speeches/2003/sp20030214-secdef0024.html.
140. This attitude was roundly and famously criticized in Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, "Dictatorships and Double Standards," Commentary, Vol. 68, No. 5 (November 1979), pp. 34-45. This is but one example of how the earlier generation of neoconservatives was much less optimistic about the prospects for democratization than was the later generation that influenced George W Bush.
141. Quoted in Sean Loughlin, "Rumsfeld on Looting in Iraq: 'Stuff Happens,'" CNN.com, April 12, 2003, http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/04/ 11/sprj.irq.pentagon/.
142. United States Department of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, "Council on Foreign Relations (Transcript)," remarks by Donald Rumsfeld, New York, New York, May 27, 2003, http://www.dod.gov/speeches/ 2003/sp20030527-secdef0245.html.
143. Quoted in Ricks, Fiasco, p. 96.
144. Office of the Press Secretary, "President Bush Calls for New Palestinian Leadership," Washington, D.C., June 24, 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020624-3.html.
145. Condoleezza Rice, "Interview with Arab Journalists," London, March 1, 2005, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2005/42853.htm.
146. Steven R. Weisman, "Rice Admits U.S. Underestimated Hamas Strength," Neiv York Times, January 30, 2006.
147. Condoleezza Rice, "Special Briefing on Travel to the Middle East and Europe," Washington, D.C., July 21, 2006, http://www.state.gov/secretary/ rm/2006/69331.htm.
148. Office of the Press Secretary, "President Discusses War on Terror at Naval Academy Commencement," Annapolis, Maryland, May 27, 2005, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050527.html.
149. Office of the Press Secretary, "President Outlines Steps to Help Iraq Achieve Democracy and Freedom," remarks by the president of the United States, Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, May 24, 2004, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/05/20040524-10.html.
150. Bush, National Security Strategy of the United States, p. 15.
151. Ibid., p. i.
152. Ikenberry and Slaughter, Forging a World of Liberty under Law, p. 11.
153. Office of the Press Secretary, "President Discusses War on Terror at Naval Academy Commencement."
154. White House, "Remarks by the Vice President to the Council on Foreign Relations," Washington, D.C., February 15, 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20020215.html.
155. Colin Powell, "Interview by Hemi Shalev of Ma'ariv Newspaper," July 30, 2003, http://www.state.gov/secretary/former/powell/ remarks/2003/22965.htm.
156. Office of the Press Secretary, "President Sworn-In to Second Term."
157. Ibid.
158. Office of the Press Secretary, "President Discusses the Future of Iraq."
159. Clinton, A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement.
160. Jane Perlez, "The World: Command Performance; America Talks and (Some) Others Listen," New York Times, September 12, 1999.
161. Thomas L. Friedman, "Brussels Sprouts," New York Times, May 11, 2005;
162. and Michael Mandelbaum, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World's Government in the Twenty-first Century (New York: PublicAffairs, 2005).
163. Office of the Press Secretary, "National Security Advisor Speaks at Texas A&M," remarks by Condoleezza Rice at the William Waldo Cameron Forum on Public Affairs, College Station, Texas, April 8, 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/04/print/20020408-6.html.
164. "Remarks of Senator Barack Obama to Chicago Global Affairs Council," Chicago, Illinois, April 23, 2007, http://my.barackobama.com/ page/content/fpccga; and Ikenberry and Slaughter, Forging a World of Liberty under Law, pp. 7, 16, 18, 22, 29, 30, 59.
165. David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals (New York: Scribner, 2001), pp. 130-131, 307. For an explicit liberal link between a "duty to intervene" in the face humanitarian crises and a "duty to prevent" nondemocratic regimes from acquiring weapons of mass destruction,
166. see Lee Feinstein and Anne-Marie Slaughter, "A Duty to Prevent," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 83, No. 1 (January/February 2004), pp. 136-150.
167. Harry Kriesler, "Humanitarianism, the Human Rights Movement, and U.S. Foreign Policy: Conversation with David Rieff," Conversations with History series, Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, March 11, 2003, http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people3/Rieff/rieff- con0.html. See also Stephen Holmes, "Looking Away," London Review of Books, Vol. 24, No. 22 (November 14, 2002), http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n22/ print/holm01_.html;
168. and Adrian Kreye, "American Liberals Torn," World Press Review, Vol. 50, No. 3 (March 2003), http://worldpress.org/article_model. cfm?article_id?1048&dont?yes.
169. Office of the Press Secretary, "President Bush Delivers Graduation Speech at West Point."
170. Office of the Press Secretary, "President Discusses War on Terror at Naval Academy Commencement."
171. Bush, National Security Strategy of the United States, p. 15.
172. Marc Trachtenberg, "Preventive War and U.S. Foreign Policy," Security Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1 (January-March 2007), pp. 1-31.
173. Al Gore, "Defeating Hussein, Once and for AU," New York Times, September 26, 1991.
174. Thomas L. Friedman, "Head Shot," New York Times, November 6, 1997;
175. and George Stephanopoulos, "Why We Should Kill Saddam," Newsweek, December 1,1997, p. 34.
176. See Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, H.R. 4655, 105th Cong., 2d sess., October 31, 1998, http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/Legislation/ILA.htm.
177. Leon Wieseltier, "Against Innocence: A Liberal's War, Too" New Republic, March 3, 2003, p. 28. For evidence that this reasoning was more widespread among liberals than it was among realists,
178. see Michael Massing, "Hawks at the Washington Post," Nation, November 11, 2002, pp. 20-23;
179. Michael Massing, "The Moral Quandary: Anti-Imperialism vs. Humanitarianism," Nation, January 6, 2003, pp. 17-22;
180. and Marc Sandalow, "Stance on War Splits Two Top Democrats," San Francisco Chronicle, March 16, 2003.
181. USA Today/Gallup poll, reported at http://www.pollingreport.com.
182. "Remarks by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton," Council on Foreign Relations, New York, New York, December 15, 2003, http://www.cfr.org/ publication/6600/remarks_by_senator_hillary_rodham_clinton_transcript.html. See also Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., "Hillary's War," New York Times Magazine, May 29, 2007, pp. 38-45, 60, 66-67;
183. Michael Crowley, "Hillary's War," New Republic, April 2, 2007, pp. 19-25;
184. and Michael Kinsley, "The Troop Funding Trap," Washington Post, June 2, 2007.
185. Joseph R. Biden Jr., "Getting It Right in Iraq," speech given at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C., April 15, 2004, http://biden/senate.gov/newsroom/details.cfm?id?220471.
186. "Trying to Contain the Iraq Disaster," New York Times, October 24, 2006.
187. Ikenberry and Slaughter, Forging a World of Liberty under Law, pp. 37, 63.
188. Michael Tomasky, "Beyond Iraq: Toward a New Liberal Internationalism," in Neil Jumonville and Kevin Mattson, eds., Liberalism for a New Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), pp. 209-219.
189. George Packer, "The Liberal Quandary over Iraq," New York Times Magazine, December 8, 2002, pp. 104-107, 156;
190. James Atlas, "What It Takes to Be a Neoconservative," October 19, 2003;
191. Massing, "Hawks at the Washington Post"; Scott McConnell, "How They Get Away with It," American Conservative, July 4, 2005, http://www.amconmag.com/2005_07_04/article.html; and Freedman, "The Age of Liberal Wars," p. 100.
192. Tony Judt, "Bush's Useful Idiots," London Review of Books, Vol. 28, No. 18 (September 21, 2006), http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/nl8/ print/judt01_.html.
193. "Testimony of Attorney General John Ashcroft before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 107th Cong., 1st sess., December, 6, 2001, http://www.usdoj.gov/archive/ag/testimony/2001/ 1206transcriptsenatejudiciarycommittee.htm.
194. Alan M. Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 11.
195. Quoted in Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 41.
196. Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, p. 58.
197. Tim Weiner, "J.F.K. Turns to the C.I.A. to Plug a Leak," New York Times, July 1, 2007. On the CIA "family jewels,"
198. see Mark Mazzetti and Tim Weiner, "Files on Illegal Spying Show CLA. Skeletons from Cold War," New York Times, June 27, 2007.
199. Quoted in Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel, eds., The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 963.
200. Quoted in Dana Priest and Barton Gellman, "U.S. Decries Abuse but Defends Interrogations: Stress and Duress Tactics Used on Terrorism Suspects Held in Overseas Facilities," Washington Post, December 26, 2002.
201. Quoted in Sanford Levinson, "Contemplating Torture: An Introduction," in Levinson, ed., Torture: A Collection (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 27.
202. Quoted in Steven Kull, "Americans on Detention, Torture, and the War on Terrorism," PIPA/Knowledge Networks poll, July 22, 2004, p. 1.
203. "The United States in the World-Just Wars and Just Societies: An Interview with Michael Walzer," Imprints: A Journal of Analytical Socialism, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2003), http://eis.bris.ac.uk/?plcdib/imprints/ michaelwalzerinterview.html;
204. and Sanford Levinson, "The Debate on Torture: War against Virtual States," Dissent, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Summer 2003), p. 83.
205. Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works, p. 144.
206. Michael Walzer, "Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands," Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Winter 1973), p. 168. Walzer is, of course, merely echoing Niccolò Machiavelli's famous dictum that political leaders need to learn how "not to be good."
207. See Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Luigi Ricci (New York: Mentor, 1952), p. 84.
208. Quoted in Jane Mayer, "Outsourcing Torture," New Yorker, February 14, 2005, pp. 106-123, http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/ 050214fa_fact6.
209. Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works, pp. 24-26.
210. Jean Bethke Elshtain, "Reflection on the Problem of 'Dirty Hands,'" in Levinson, Torture: A Collection, pp. 80-83.
211. Michael Walzer, "Excusing Terror: The Politics of Ideology," American Prospect, October 22, 2001, p. 16.
212. Rogers M. Smith, "Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America," American Political Science Review, Vol. 87, No. 3 (September 1993), pp. 549-566;
213. Daniel T. Rodgers, "Republicanism: The Career of a Concept," Journal of American History, Vol. 79, No. 1 (June 1992), pp. 11-38;
214. Harry Jaffa, "Conflicts within the Idea of the Liberal Tradition," Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, No. 3 (April 1963), pp. 274-278;
215. Judith N. Shklar, "Redeeming American Political Theory," American Political Science Review, Vol. 85, No. 1 (March 1991), pp. 3-15;
216. and Daniel Boorstin, "American Liberalism," Commentary, Vol. 20, No. 7 (July 1955), pp. 99-100.
217. For a compelling defense of the Hartz thesis, see Philip Abbott, "Still Louis Hartz after All These Years: A Defense of the Liberal Society Thesis," Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 3, No. 1 (March 2005), pp. 93-109.
218. For a recent attempt at synthesizing the Liberal and multiple traditions in American political thought, see Stephen Skowronek, "The Reassociation of Ideas and Purposes: Racism, Liberalism, and the American Political Tradition," American Political Science Review, Vol. 100, No. 3 (August 2006), pp. 385-402.
219. Katznelson, "Review of Civic Ideals," p. 568.
220. Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World, pp. 320-321.
221. Illustrative examples include Arthur A. Stein, "Coordination and Collaboration: Regimes in an Anarchic World," in Stephen D. Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 115-140;
222. and Keohane, After Hegemony.
223. For a thorough critique of neoliberal institutionalism, see John J. Mearsheimer, "The False Promise of International Institutions," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Winter 1994/95), pp. 5-49.
224. 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), pp. 485-508.
225. John J. Mearsheimer, "Liberal Talk, Realist Thinking," University of Chicago Magazine, Vol. 94, No. 3 (February 2002), http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0202/features/index.htm.
226. Hans J. Morgenthau, "The Failings of Foreign Policy," New Republic, October 11, 1975, pp. 16-21.
227. See also Michael Joseph Smith, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), pp. 185-188, 231-232.
228. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, "An Unnecessary War," Foreign Policy, No. 134 (January/February 2003), pp. 50-59.
229. Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 63.
230. For evidence that weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaida were "being fixed around the policy" of regime change in Iraq apparently decided on other grounds, see the so-called Downing Street memorandum, quoted in Mark Danner, "The Secret Way of War," New York Review of Books, Vol. 52, No. 10 (June 9, 2005), http://www.nybooks.com/articles/ 18034.
231. Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), p. 340.
232. United States Department of Defense, "Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with Sam Tannenhaus, Vanity Fair," Friday May 9, 2003, http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecaef0223.html.
233. In one editorial leader, the Economist characterized the intellectual orientation of the Bush administration as "offensive realism." "Unprecedented Power, Colliding Ambitions," Economist, September 28, 2002, p. 27.
234. And in his otherwise penetrating book, America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 170, Anatol Lieven identifies both Cheney and Rumsfeld as realists.
235. Spencer Ackerman and Franklin Foer, "The Radical: What Cheney Really Believes," New Republic, December 1, 2003, pp. 17-23.
236. Quoted in Bob Woodward, State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), p. 3.
237. Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor, The Generals' War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995), p. 455.
238. Quoted in Ricks, Fiasco, p. 6.
239. See Project for a New American Century, "Statement of Principles," June 3, 1997, http://www.newamericancentury.org/ statementofprinciples.htm.
240. For a compelling brief against hegemony, see Ian Shapiro, Containment: Rebuilding a Strategy against Global Terror (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007). For evidence that torture is counterproductive,
241. see Intelligence Science Board, Educing Information: Interrogation, Science, and Art, Foundations for the Future, Phase I Report (Washington, D.C.: National Defense Intelligence College, November 2006), http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/educing.pdf.
242. Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon, 2006), p. 64. For evidence that the Bush administration was searching for a victory in the war on terrorism beyond Afghanistan and al-Qaida, see Woodward, Bush at War, pp. 137, 217, 227-228. For evidence that Bush, as well as Rice and other administration supporters (e.g., the president's foreign intelligence advisory board member Phillip Zelikow), doubted that Iraq constituted an imminent threat to the United States,
243. see Woodward, Bush at War, pp. 49, 350;
244. and John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, "Letter," London Review of Books, Vol. 28, No. 10 (May 25, 2006), http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/ n10/letters.html;
245. and Ricks, Fiasco, p. 13, which quotes former CENTCOM Chief Gen. Anthony Zinni as saying, "We didn't see the Iraqis as a formidable force. We saw them as a decaying force."
246. Samantha Power, "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002), p. xxi.
247. Paul Reynolds, "The 'Democratic Domino' Theory," BBC News, April 13, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2935969.stm.
248. Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, pp. 175-176.
249. Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, "The Imperialism of Categories: Situating Knowledge in a Globalizing World," Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 3, No. 1 (March 2005), pp. 7-8;
250. Samuel P. Huntington, "Conservatism as an Ideology," American Political Science Review, Vol. 57, No. 2 (June 1957), pp. 456-461;
251. and Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, p. 21.
252. Samuel P. Huntington, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1981), p. 258.
253. Ryan Singel, "One Million Ways to Die," Wired, September 11, 2006, http://www.wired.com/print/science/discoveries/news/2006/09/71743.
254. This characterization of the global war on terrorism was first offered in Eliot A. Cohen, "World War IV: Let's Call This Conflict What It Is," Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2001, http://www.opinionjournal.com/ editorial/feature.html?id?95001493.
255. John Mueller, "A False Sense of Insecurity?" Regulation, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Fall 2004), pp. 42-46.
256. Robert M. Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2005).
257. Andrew M. Mack, "Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars," World Politics, Vol. 27, No. 2 (January 1975), pp. 175-200.
258. On this case, see Francis J. Gavin, "Blasts from the Past: Proliferation Lessons from the 1960s," International Security, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Winter 2004/05), pp. 100-135.
259. Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 215.
260. Neil A. Lewis, "Military's Opposition to Harsh Interrogation Is Outlined," New York Times, July 28, 2005.
261. Kenneth N. Waltz, "America as a Model for the World: A Foreign Policy Perspective," PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol. 24, No. 4 (December 1991), pp. 667-670;
262. and Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne, "A New Grand Strategy," Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 289, No. 1 (January 2002), pp. 36-42.
263. Kenneth N. Waltz, "The Stability of a Bipolar World," Daedalus, Vol. 93, No. 3 (Summer 1964), pp. 881-909.
264. This theme is further developed and applied in Christopher Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion Revisited: The Coming End of the United States' Unipolar Moment," International Security, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Fall 2006), pp. 7-41;
265. and Stephen M. Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006).
266. Reinhold Niebuhr, "Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist," in Robert Macaffee Brown, ed., The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 114.
267. Waltz, "America as a Model for the World," pp. 667-670; and Schwarz and Layne, "A New Grand Strategy," p. 38.
268. Quoted in Kenneth N. Waltz, "Globalization and American Power," National Interest, No. 59 (Spring 2000), pp. 46-56.
269. See also Christopher Layne, "What's Built Up Must Come Down," Washington Post, November 14, 1999.
270. Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, p. 286.
271. This is most clearly articulated in James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton's The Iraq Study Group Report, which characterizes the "situation in Iraq as grave and deteriorating." Baker and Hamilton, The Iraq Study Group Report (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, December 2006), p. 6.
272. Senator Richard G. Luger, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressed a similar view in a widely discussed Senate floor speech entitled "Connecting Our Iraq Strategy to Our Vital Interests," June 25, 2007, http://lugar.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id? 277751&&year?2007&.
273. Ikenberry and Slaughter, Forging a World of Liberty under Law, p. 12;
274. and Starr, Freedom's Power, pp. 205-218.
275. See, for example, Senator Hillary Clinton's remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations, as reported in Marc Santora, "Senator Clinton Attacks Bush and Iraqi Government," New York Times, November 1, 2006. Two recent books by influential commentators propose a similar agenda.
276. See Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 9-10, which advocates "realistic Wilsonianism";
277. and Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman, Ethical Realism: A Vision for American's Role in the World (New York: Pantheon, 2006), p. xv, which lays out an agenda of "ethical Realism and the Great Capitalist Peace."