Does one right make a realist? conservatism, neoconservatism, and isolationism in the foreign policy ideology of American Elites

Political Science Quarterly

Volumn 123, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 271-299

  Rathbun, Brian C ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 47249159486     PISSN: 00323195     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-165X.2008.tb00625.x     Document Type: Article

References (88)

1. Brian C. Rathbun, Partisan Interventions: European Party Politics and Peace Enforcement in the Balkans (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2004), chap. 7.
2. National Review Editors, "An End to Illusion" in Gary Rosen, The Right War? The Conservative Debate on Iraq (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 54-56;
3. George F. Will, "Time for Bush to See the Realities of Iraq" in Rosen, The Right War, 67-69;
4. Claes G. Ryn, "The Ideology of American Empire," Orbis 47 (Summer 2003): 383-397.
5. E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939 (New York: Harper and Row, 1964).
6. Part of this problem owes to the indeterminacy of realism, but I offer a different answer.
7. Michael J. Mazarr, "George W. Bush, Idealist," International Affairs 79 (May 2004): 503-522.
8. Shoon Kathleen Murray, Jonathan A. Cowden, and Bruce M. Russett, "The Convergence of American Elites' Domestic Beliefs with their Foreign Policy Beliefs," International Interactions 25 (April 1999): 153-180.
9. William O. Chittick, Keith R. Billingsley, and Rick Travis, "A Three-Dimensional Model of American Foreign Policy Beliefs," International Studies Quarterly 39 (June 1995): 313-331;
10. Ole R. Holsti and James N. Rosenau, "The Structure of Foreign Policy Attitudes among American Leaders," Journal of Politics 52 (February 1990): 94-125;
11. Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley, "How Are Foreign Policy Attitudes Structured? A Hierarchical Model," American Political Science Review 81 (December 1987): 1101-1120;
12. Shoon Kathleen Murray, Anchors Against Change: American Opinion Leaders' Beliefs After the Cold War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996);
13. E.R. Wittkopf, Faces of Internationalism: Public Opinion and Foreign Policy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990).
14. Carr, Twenty Years; Robert Endicott Osgood, Ideals and Self-interest in America's Foreign Relations: The Great Transformation of the Twentieth Century (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1953). I should be clear that these are relative differences between left and right. There are very pure self-abnegating altruists, just as there are few extreme sociopathic narcissists. It is a question of degree of emphasis, self-restraint, and trade-offs.
15. Charles Krauthammer, "In Defense of Democratic Realism" in Rosen, The Right War, 186-200; Rathbun, Partisan Interventions.
16. Osgood, Ideals, 4-6.
17. John Gerard Ruggie, "Multilateralism: Anatomy of an Institution," International Organization 46 (Summer 1992): 561-598.
18. G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
19. Rathbun, Partisan Interventions.
20. Hymans uses a similar but not identical concept, what he calls a "solidarity" dimension. Jacques E.C. Hymans, The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions and Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 22-23. Chittick, Billingsley, and Travis (1995) call it an "identity" dimension. It also resembles Holsti and Rosenau's (1990) "cooperative internationalism," although their concept is inductively defined without a firm sense of its meaning.
21. Hymans, The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation. Judging by the choice of indicators, others seem to be capturing the same concept, albeit more inductively, without a firm sense of what holds together the concept. Chittick, Billingsley, and Travis (1995) find a "security" dimension, and Holsti and Rosenau (1990) markers of "militant internationalism."
22. Jack Donnelly, Realism and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000);
23. Osgood, Ideals.
24. Donnelly, Realism.
25. John J. Mearsheimer, "The False Promise of International Institutions," International Security 19 (Winter 1994/1995): 9-49;
26. Carr, Twenty Years.
27. Donnelly, Realism, chap. 6.
28. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Knopf, 1954), 4.
29. Morgenthau notes the parallels with post-modernism! See Hans J. Morgenthau, Scientific Man Versus Power Politics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1965).
30. Barry R. Posen, "Nationalism, the Mass Army and Military Power," International Security 18 (Summer 1993): 80-124;
31. Thomas J. Christensen, Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization and Sino-American Conflict, 1947-1958 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996);
32. Jack Levy, Myths of Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991);
33. Stephen Van Evera, "Why Cooperation Failed in 1914," World Politics 38 (October 1985): 80-117.
34. Osgood, Ideals, 13.
35. Mazarr, "George W. Bush."
36. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001);
37. Robert Jervis, "Cooperation under the Security Dilemma," World Politics 30 (January 1978): 167-214; Mazarr, "George W. Bush."
38. Mazarr (2003) and Legro and Moravcsik make this mistake. Jeffrey W. Legro and Andrew Moravcsik, "Faux Realism," Foreign Policy 125 (July/August 2001): 80-82.
39. Jonathan Mercer, "Anarchy and Identity," International Organization 49 (Spring 1995): 229-252.
40. Hymans, Psychology, 33. This conflates the realist separation between absolute and relative gains. Concerns about relative gains are the result of the intensity of egoism, which is usually thought of as falling under the rubric of absolute gains. Defining interests in relative terms in vertical egoism is borne of identity rather than the structural situation, driven by disposition rather than the strategic nature of the interaction.
41. Levy, Myths; Stephen Walt, Revolution and War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996).
42. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976). Ironically, these concepts are generally associated with the cold, unemotional approach of rationalism. Yet empirically, they are associated with groups that do not exhibit those traits but rather the romantic notions of nation and spirit. I should note that nationalism is not the same as "offensive realism," which argues that states are power maximizers, rather than security maximizers. Rank in nationalism is not driven solely by fear as it is in these approaches, but also by pride. Power in nationalism is partly accumulated for its own sake as part of a general search for prestige. Offensive realism believes power is accumulated because the environment is extremely dangerous, more so than in "defensive" realism.
43. Hymans, Psychology, 34; Rathbun, Partisan Interventions, chap. 6.
44. Osgood, Ideals, 5.
45. Hurwitz and Peffley, "How Are Foreign Policy Attitudes Structured?" 1108.
46. Charles W. Kegley and Eugene Wittkopf, American Foreign Policy: Patterns and Processes (New York: St. Martin's, 1982).
47. Osgood, Ideals; Anatol Lieven, America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
48. Gary Rosen, "Introduction" in Rosen, The Right War, 1-6; Kim R. Holmes and John Hillen, "Misreading Reagan's Legacy: A Truly Conservative Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs 75 (September/October 1996): 162-167; Will, "Time."
49. Condoleezza Rice, "Promoting the National Interest," Foreign Affairs 79 (January/February 2000): 47.
50. Rice, "Promoting"; Mazaar, "George W. Bush"; Legro and Moravcsik, "Faux Realism"; James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy towards Russia After the Cold War (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003).
51. Samuel P. Huntington, "Robust Nationalism," National Interest 58 (Winter 1999/2000): 31-40;
52. Michael C. Williams, "What is the National Interest? The Neoconservative Challenge in IR Theory," European Journal of International Relations 11 (September 2005): 307-337; Holmes and Hillen, "Misreading"; Mazarr, "George W. Bush," 513.
53. Stefan A. Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 13;
54. Gideon Rose, "Present Laughter or Utopian Bliss," The National Interest 58 (Winter 1999/2000): 41-46.
55. Quoted in Williams, "What is," 324; Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 42; Krauthammer, "In Defense."
56. Quoted in Williams, "What is," 317.
57. William Kristol and Robert Kagan, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs 75 (July/August 1996): 18-32;
58. Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 56-57;
59. Holmes and Hillen, "Misreading." I should note that many have criticized neoconservatives in foreign policy for departing from the key principles of its intellectual advocates and progenitors, but I do not concern myself with that here, choosing to focus instead on what it has meant in practice. See Fukuyama, America. One might call it "pop neoconservatism."
60. Williams, "What is"; Lieven, America; Ryn, "Ideology."
61. Rose, "Present Laughter"; Williams, "What is," 308; Mazarr, "George W. Bush"; Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 35.
62. Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 11; Rosen, "Introduction, " 3; Fukuyama, America, 48.
63. Kristol and Kagan, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite," 27. See also Halper and Clarke, America Alone; 17; Ryn, "Ideology," 395.
64. Fukuyama, America, 102; Krauthammer, "In Defense."
65. Ken Jowitt, "Rage, Hubris and Regime Change: The Urge to Speed History Along," Policy Review 118 (April/May 2003): 33-42.
66. Rose, "Present Laughter"; Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 11-12.
67. Rose, "Present Laughter"; Fukuyama, America, 61-63;
68. Michael Desch, "Liberals, Neocons and Realcons: The Politics of Humanitarian Intervention," Orbis 46 (Fall 2001): 519-533;
69. Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 4, 26.
70. Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 43;
71. Rosen, "Introduction," 3; Fukuyama, America, 50.
72. Kristol and Kagan, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite"; Ryn, "Ideology," 392.
73. Kristol and Kagan, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite"; Rose, "Present Laughter"; Max Boot, "Think Again: Neocons," Foreign Policy 83 (January/February 2004): 20-28; Williams, "What is."
74. Kristol and Kagan, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite"; Huntington, "Robust."
75. Mazarr, "George W. Bush"; Norman Podhoretz, "World War IV: How it Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win" in Rosen, The Right War, 102-169.
76. Rose, "Present Laughter"; Mazarr, "George W. Bush"; Fukuyama, America, 41.
77. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, "Dictatorships and Double Standards," Commentary 68 (November 1979): 34-46.
78. Osgood, Ideals.
79. Lieven, America: Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World (New York: Knopf, 2001).
80. Levy, Myths. My conceptualization overlaps with but nevertheless differs from Mead's well-known typology of four American traditions in foreign policy (Special Providence). The Jacksonian tradition, in particular, seems to straddle neoconservatism and isolationism. It is neoconservative in its emphasis on American will and resolve, the utility of power, moralizing in international affairs, endorsement of patriotism, and contempt for international organizations. However, it veers toward isolationism in that it embraces the idea of a "folk community" and does not necessarily define grand goals for American foreign policy beyond security and prosperity, even though this requires international engagement. The analysis that follows does not find evidence of a distinct Jacksonian dimension, perhaps because it tends to be anti-elitist and might not find significant representation in the study. Although this falls outside of the rubric of this paper, one possibility is that Jacksonianism, if it exists, provides a basis of support for either neoconservatism or isolationism, depending on the strategic situation. When faced with threats, Jacksonians might move easily from isolationism to neoconservatism, awakened by patriotism, as both of the former are driven by a notion of American superiority. It could also be conjectured that neoconservatism provides an intellectual apparatus for what are to Jacksonians gut instincts and common sense. This might explain the transformation of President Bush's personal views, which are, after all, not the result of a careful reading of Irving Kristol or neoconservative theorists.
81. Ralph A. Stone, The Irreconcilables: The Fight Against the League of Nations (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970); Rathbun, Partisan Interventions.
82. Stone, Irreconcilables; Osgood, Ideals; John Gerard Ruggie, "The Past as Prologue: Interests, Identity and American Foreign Policy," International Security 21 (Spring 1997): 89-125;
83. Jeffrey W. Legro, "Whence American Internationalism," International Organization 54 (Spring 2000): 253-289;
84. Nicholas John Spykman, America's Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1942).
85. Rosen, "Introduction"; Michael P. Noonan, "Conservative Opinions on U.S. Foreign Policy," Orbis 44 (Fall 1999): 621-632;
86. Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 100;
87. Patrick J. Buchanan, "'Stay the Course!' Is Not Enough" in Rosen, The Right War, 201-203.
88. Murray, Anchors.