Unipolarity: A structural perspective

World Politics

Volumn 61, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 188-213

  Jervis, Robert ^a  

^a NONE

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POLITICAL IDEOLOGY;

EID: 69249136294     PISSN: 00438871     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0043887109000070     Document Type: Article

References (129)

1. He did not use the term but referred to "universal" and "hierarchical" systems; Morton Kaplan, System and Process in International Politics (New York: Wiley, 1957), 45-50.
2. See Waltz, "The Politics of Peace," International Studies Quarterly 11 (September 1967).
3. See Snyder, Shapiro, and Bloch-Elkon, in this issue.
4. For related definitions of unipolarity, see Ikenberry, Mastanduno, and Wohlforth, in this issue; William C. Wohlforth, "The Stability of a Unipolar World," International Security 21 (Summer 1999);
5. Robert Pape, "Soft Balancing against the United States," International Security 30 (Summer 2005), 11-13.
6. Joseph Nye, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
7. See the classic set of essays by David. Baldwin, Paradoxes of Power (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989).
8. Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View (New York: Macmillan, 1974);
9. John Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980). The dependencia literature argues that in the postcolonial era the developed countries maintained their control by influencing the social structure of the Third World states and the interests and values of their elites, and today many scholars stress the actual or potential role of legitimacy in unipolarity: see Finnemore, in this issue.
10. For the argument that attempts by Germany to secure dominance in the twentieth century were fatally flawed because it was unwilling or unable to contemplate a world that provided a place for diversity and others' interests, see David Calleo, The German Problem Reconsidered Germany and the World Order, 1870 to the Present (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978). By contrast, a major source of ancient Rome's power was its willingness to incorporate other units and elites into its polity;
11. see Arthur Eckstein, Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 244-57.
12. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981);
13. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987);
14. Arthur Stein, "The Hegemon's Dilemma, "International'Organization 38 (Spring 1984).
15. For examples, see Kaplan (fn. 1); Alexander Wendt and Daniel Friedheim, "Hierarchy under Anarchy: Informal Empire and the East German State," International Organization 49 (Autumn 1995);
16. Katja Weber, Hierarchy amidst Anarchy: Transaction Costs and Institutional Choice (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000);
17. David Lake, Entangling Relations: American Foreign Policy and Its Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999);
18. Paul Macdonald, "Hierarchic Realism and Imperial Rule in International Politics" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2006).
19. Robert Jervis, System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 94-102;
20. Kenneth Waltz, "The Emerging Structure of International Politics," International Security 18 (Fall 1993), 45.
21. The best statement is John Mueller, The Remnants of War (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 2004).
22. See Ikenberry, Mastanduno, and Wohlforth, in this issue (pp. 13-15).
23. Duncan Snidal, "The Limits of Hegemonic Stability Theory," International Organization 25 (Autumn 1985).
24. For a related discussion, see G.John Ikenberry and Charles Kupchan, "Socialization and Hegemonic Power," International Organization 44 (Summer 1990).
25. Psychological grounding for this argument is provided by Daryl Bern's self-perception theory; Bem, "Self-Perception Theory," in Leonard Berkowitz, ed., Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 6 (New York: Academic Press, 1972);
26. for an application to IR, see Deborah Larson, Origins of Containment: A Psychological Explanation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).
27. This was true during the cold war, and American leaders annoyed their European counterparts by pointing it out, as when Kissinger declared: "The United States has global interests and responsibilities. Our European allies have regional, interests"; quoted in Jussi Hanhimaki, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 276.
28. Waltz, "Structural Realism after the Cold War," International Security 25 (Summer 2000), 13.
29. Interview with Dan Rather, "Clinton Cheated 'Because I Could,'" June 17, 2004, at http://www .cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/16/eveningnews/ printable.
30. This discussion is drawn from Jervis, American Foreign Policy in a New Era (New York: Routledge, 2005), chap. 4.
31. See also Christopher Layne, "The War on Terrorism, and the Balance of Power: The Paradoxes of American Hegemony," in T V Paul, James Wirtz, and Michel Fortmann, eds., Balance of Power: Theory and Practice in the 21st Century (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004), 109-15;
32. and idem, "The 'Poster Child for Offensive Realism': America as a Global Hegemon," Security Studies 12 (Winter 2002-3).
33. For realists who describe America similarly but evaluate it positively, see Robert Lieber, The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005);
34. Robert Kaufman, In Defense of the Bush Doctrine (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007);
35. Stanley Renshon, The Bush Doctrine and the Future of American Foreign Policy (forthcoming).
36. The Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, U.K.: Penguin, 1954), 363.I should note that this generalization, although apparently secure, rests to a considerable extent on our searching on the dependent variable. That is, we are drawn to cases of such expansion because they are dramatic, especially when they come to grief but we lack a systematic way of looking for instances in which a state had the ability to expand its sphere of influence but declined to do so.
37. Quoted in Hans Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 5th ed. rev. (New York: Knopf, 1978), 169-70, emphasis in original;
38. see also Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), 121.
39. Kenneth Waltz, "America as a Model for the World? A Foreign Policy Perspective," PS: Political Science and Politics 24 (December 1991), 69;
40. for Waltz's discussion of the Gulf War in these terms, see Waltz, "A Necessary War?" in Harry Kriesler, ed., Confrontation in the Gulf (Berkeley, Calif.: Institute of International Studies, 1992), 59-65.
41. See also Bruce Cronin, "Paradoxes of Hegemony: America's Ambiguous Relationship with the United Nations," European Journal of International Relations 7 (March. 2001).
42. Charles Krauthammer expected this kind of behavior but believed that it would serve world interests as well American interests; Krauthammer, "The Unipolar Moment," Foreign Affairs, America and the World, 1990 91 70, no. 1 (1971).
43. See, for example, Fareed Zakaria, "Realism and Domestic Politics: A Review Essay," International Security (Summer 1992);
44. Robert Tucker, The Radical Left and American Foreign Policy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), 69-70, 74-77, 106-11;
45. Stephen Van Evera, Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1999), 86;
46. Nicholas Spykman, America's Strategy in World Politics (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1942), 25. This process is also fed by the psychological resistance to giving up any position once it is gained;
47. see Jeffrey Taliaferro, Balancing Risks: Great Power Intervention in the Periphery (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004).
48. For a discussion of alternative possibilities suggested by American history, see Edward Rhodes, "The Imperial Logic of Bush's Liberal Agenda," Survival 45 (Spring 2003).
49. Wolfers (fn. 21), chap. 5.
50. John Mueller, "The Catastrophe Quota: Trouble after the Cold War," journal of Conflict Resolution 38 (September 1994);
51. see also Frederick Hartmann, The Conservation of Enemies: A Study in Enmity (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982).
52. And see the classic essay by Arnold Wolfers, "National Security as Ambiguous Symbol," in Wolfers (fn. 21).
53. John S. Galbraith, "The 'Turbulent Frontier' as a Factor in British Expansion," Comparative Studies in Society and History 2 (January 1960);
54. idem, Reluctant Empire: British Policy on the South African Frontier, 1834-1854 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963).
55. See also Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher with. Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism (London: Macmillan, 1961);
56. John LeDonne, The Grand Strategy of the Russian Empire, 1650-1831 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). A related imperial dynamic that is likely to recur is that turning a previously recalcitrant state into a client usually weakens it internally and requires further intervention.
57. For three excellent collections of essays on the current unipolar system, see G. John Ikenberry, ed., America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002);
58. Ethan Kapstein and Michael Mastanduno, eds., Unipolar Politics: Realem and State Strategies after the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999);
59. Paul, Wirtz, and Fortmann (fn. 19).
60. For imperial China, see John Fairbanks, ed., The Chinese World Order: Traditional China's Foreign Relations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968);
61. Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995);
62. Mark Mancall, China at the Center: 300 Years of Foreign Policy (New York: Free Press, 1984).
63. For Rome, Eckstein (fn. 8);
64. Edward Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976);
65. Andrew Lintott, Imperium Romanum: Politics and Administration (New York: Routledge, 1993).
66. For a comparison of the current system and others that are arguably unipolar, see William Thompson, "Systemic Leadership, Evolutionary Processes, and International. Relations Theory: The Unipolar Question," International Studies Review 8 (March 2006);
67. and David Wilkinson, "Unipolarity without Hegemony," International Studies Review 1 (Summer 1999).
68. Karl Deutsch, Sidney Burrell, Robert Kann, Maurice Lee, Jr., Martin Lichterman, Raymond Lindgren, Fancis Loewenheim, Richard Van Wagenen, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957);
69. for a further discussion, see Jervis (fn. 19), chap. 1; for a more radical view, see Mueller (fn. 12).
70. For further discussion, see Walt, in this issue.
71. White House, "The National Security Strategy of the United States" (Washington, D.C.: September 2002), i, 1. Bush's West Point speech similarly declared: "Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, and in every place---We are in a conflict between good and evil." "When it comes to the common rights and needs of men and women, there is no clash of civilizations"; "Remarks by the President at 2002 Graduation Exercise of the United States Military Academy," White House Press Release, June 1, 2002, 3. After a standard recitation of American values, Colin Powell similarly declaimed: "These ideals aren't ours alone. They are born of the experience of all mankind, and so they are the endowment of all mankind. These ideals are cherished on each and every continent. . . . These ideals are a blueprint for the brotherhood of man." In an irony that he probably missed, he said this in a speech commemorating George Kennan's one hundredth birthday, from which Kennan was fortunately absent; Powell, "Remarks on the Occasion of George Kennan's Centenary Birthday," Princeton, February 20,2004, at http:www.princeton.edu/robertson/documents/docs/Sec-Colin -Powell-speech-2-20-04.pdf.
72. For the changing American perspective, see Scott Silverstone, Preventive War and American Democracy (New York: Routledge, 2007);
73. see also George Quester, "Two Hundred Years of Preemption," Naval War College Review 60 (Autumn 2007).
74. For a strong argument to this effect, see John Mueller, Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them (New York: Free Press, 2006).
75. Richard Betts, "The Soft Underbelly of American Primacy: Tactical Advantages of Terror," Political Science Quarterly 117 (Spring 2002).
76. For a more detailed discussion, see Robert Jervis, "The Remaking of a Unipolar World," Washington Quarterly 29 (Summer 2006).
77. For the best analysis of alternative American approaches, see Robert Art, A Grand Strategy for America (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 2003).
78. Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959);
79. Wolfers (fn. 21), chap. 15;
80. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1955). More recently,Tony Smith has traced the Bush Doctrine not only to the neoconservatives, but also to liberal thinking about the importance of democracy for a state's foreign policy and of the possibilities for making other countries democratic;
81. Smith, A Pact with the Devil (New York: Routledge, 2007).
82. Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1991).
83. For discussions of heterogeneous and homogeneous systems, see Raymond Aron, Peace and War, trans.
84. Richard Howard and Annette Baker Fox (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1966), 99-114, 373-403;
85. Stanley Hoffmann, "International Systems and International Law," in Klaus Knorr and Sidney Verba, eds., The International System (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 207-9;
86. Henry Kissinger, "Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy," Daedalus 95 (Spring 1966), 503-6.
87. For critiques, see Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1979), 43-49;
88. and Jervis (fn. 11), 99-102. During the cold war, international politics scholars and American policymakers vacillated between believing that the U.S. could be secure and the international system could be stable despite being composed of heterogeneous units and believing that only homogeneity would bring with it safety. Homogeneity was generally sought, but heterogeneity was accepted, albeit often grudgingly.
89. Quoted in Frank Bruni, "For President, a Mission and a Role in History," New York Times, September 22, 2001;
90. see also "President Thanks World Coalition for Anti-Terrorism. Efforts," White House Press Release, March 11, 2002, 3-4;
91. "President Bush, Prime Minister Koizumi Hold Press Conference," White House Press Release, February 18, 2002, 6.
92. Hans Morgenthau, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946).
93. For the role that religion plays, see Bruni (fn. 38);
94. Steve Erickson, "George Bush and the Treacherous Country," LA Weekly, February 13, 2004, 28-33.
95. For a discussion of the utopian strain in Bush's thinking, see Michael Boyle, "Utopianism and the Bush Foreign Policy," Cambridge Review of International Affairs 17 (April. 2004) ;
96. Michael Mazarr, "George W. Bush, Idealist," International Affairs 79 (May 2003).
97. Ikenberry, Mastanduno, and Wohlforth, in this issue (pp. 23-24).
98. Waltz (fn. 11), 44-79; Waltz (fn. 17), 5-41, but also note the discussion on p. 38;
99. Christopher Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise," International Security 17 (Spring 1993);
100. idem, "The Unipolar Illusion Revisited: The Coming End of the United States' Unipolar Moment," International Security 31 (Fall 2006);
101. idem, "US Hegemony and the Perpetuation of NATO," Journal of Strategic Studies 23 (September 2000);
102. Charles Kupchan, The End of the American Era (New York: Knopf 2002); Walt, in this issue.
103. Quoted in Graham Bowley, "Chirac Issues Call for Strong Europe," International Herald Tribune, November 6, 2004.
104. For discussions of secondary powers supporting the leader in the economic area in previous international systems, see David Lake, Power, Protection, and Free Trade: International Sources of U. S. Commercial Strategy, 1887-1939 (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1988);
105. Richard Rosecrance and Jennifer Taw, "Japan and the Theory of International Leadership," World Politics 42 (January 1990).
106. Jervis (fh. 19), chap. 1.
107. Michael Mandelbaum, The Nuclear Revolution: International Politics before and after Hiroshima (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), chap. 6;
108. Glenn Snyder, Alliance Politics (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1997).
109. Pape (fn. 4); T. V. Paul, "Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy," International Security 30 (Summer 2005).
110. For doubts that such attempts are being made, see Stephen Brooks and William. Wohlforth, "International Relations Theory and the Case against Unilateralism," Perspectives on Politics 3 (September 2005);
111. Brooks and Wohlforth, "Hard Times for Soft Balancing," International Security 30 (Summer 2005);
112. Keir Lieber and Gerard Alexander, "Waiting for Balancing: Why the World Is Not Pushing Back," International Security 30 (Summer 2005).
113. See also the exchange between Robert Art and these authors in International Security 30 (Winter 2005-6).
114. Waltz (fn. 17), 29;
115. see also Waltz, Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics: The American and British Experience (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), 16; Walt, this issue. Note the assumption that threat more than any other stimulus produces constancy of behavior. I believe this is reasonable.
116. For a related view, see Barry Posen, "European Union Security and Defense Policy: Response to Unipolarity?" Security Studies 15 (April-June 2006).
117. Paul Schroeder, "Alliances, 1815-1945: Weapons of Power and Tools of Management," in Schroeder, Systems, Stability, and Statecraft: Essays on the International History of Modern Europe, ed. David. Wetzel, Robert Jervis, and. Jack Levy (New York: Palgrave, 2004), chap. 9;
118. see also Patricia Weitsman, Dangerous Alliances: Proponents of Peace, Weapons of War (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford. University Press, 2004);
119. Jeremy Pressman, Warring Friends: Alliance Restraint in International Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008);
120. and, for the current situation, Galia Press-Barnathan, "Managing the Hegemon: NATO under Unipolarity," Security Studies 15 (April-June 2006).
121. Albert Hirschman's classic analysis can be applied to relations between allies; Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970).
122. For a related argument focused on postwar settlements, see G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
123. See the stories in the New York Times, March 8, and May 24, 1992.
124. See also Zalmay Khalilzad, From Containment to Global Leadership? America and the World after the Cold War (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1995);
125. and Robert Kagan and William. Kristol, eds., Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2000).
126. Although the draft guidance was too bellicose for public taste and had to be modified once it was leaked to the press, it reflected the views of both Bush presidents: see, for example, Condoleezza Rice, "Remarks delivered to the International Institute for Strategic Studies," June 26, 2003, at www.whitehouse.gov/news/ releases/2003/06/20030626.html.
127. For a different but not entirely incompatible approach, see Michael Mastanduno, "Preserving the Unipolar Moment: Realist Theories and U.S. Grand Strategy after the Cold War," in Kapstein and Mastanduno (fn. 27).
128. Barry Posen, "Command of the Commons: The Military Foundations of U.S. Hegemony," Internotional Security 28 (Summer 2003).
129. The 1998 Rumsfeld Commission argued that the spread of missile technology would be greatly contrary to U.S. interests; "Executive Summary of the Report of the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States," at http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/bm-threat.htm.