Alliances, Threats, and U.S. Grand Strategy: A Reply to Kaufman and Labs

Security Studies

Volumn 1, Issue 3, 1992, Pages 448-482

  Walt, Stephen M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

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EID: 84972809405     PISSN: 09636412     EISSN: 15561852     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09636419209347478     Document Type: Article

References (180)

1. See Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987);
2. idem, “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power,” International Security 9, no. 4 (Spring 1985): 3-43;
3. and idem, “Testing Theories of Alliance Formation: The Case of Southwest Asia,” International Organization 43, no. 2 (Spring 1988): 275-316.
4. In Kaufman's words, “further progress toward a policy-relevant theory of alliances, … will require many more case studies which strive to devise a more rigorous linkage between variables drawn from all three levels of analysis: the system, domestic politics, and the perceptions of individual statesmen.” Elsewhere in his article, he also refers to the offense-defense balance, the outlook of key states, and the alliance bargaining process as potentially important factors. See Kaufman, “To Balance or Bandwagon,” 419, 439, 421.
5. See Stephen M. Walt, “The Case for Finite Containment: Analyzing U.S. Grand Strategy,” International Security 14, no. 1 (Summer 1989): 5—49.
6. Similar works by other scholars include Stephen Van Evera, “Why Europe Matters, Why the Third World Doesn’t: American Grand Strategy after the Cold War,” Journal of Strategic Studies 13, no. 2 (June 1990): 1-51;
7. and Robert J. Art, “A Defensible Defense: American Grand Strategy after the Cold War,” International Security 15, no. 4 (Spring 1991): 5-53.
8. See Kaufman, “To Balance or To Bandwagon,” 420, 439.
9. E.g., see Walt, Origins of Alliances, 29–32;
10. John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Europe after the Cold War,” International Security 15, no. 1 (Summer 1990): 15-16;
11. and Stephen Van Evera, “Primed for Peace: Europe after the Cold War,” International Security 15, no. 2 (Fall 1990): 36-37.
12. Readers should be aware that Kaufman's essay contains some factual errors and confusing citations. On p. 434, for example, he confuses Italy's invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 with its invasion of Albania in 1939. He has a penchant for citing excessively lengthy portions of secondary works, where the cited material often does not support the claims made in his text. To note a few examples: (1) On page 423, he writes that“[Britain] considered France's eastern European alliance system provocative and unnecessary” and cites an entire chapter of Robert Young's In Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning. 1933–1940. The pages he cites (pp. 33-51) in note 29 contain a description of French strategy and disarmament policy but make no reference to British views on French alliance policy. (2) On the same page, he supports a series of sweeping statements about French domestic politics with a single footnote, citing in note 31 Nathanael Greene's From Versailles to Vichy, 200 pages of Jacques Nere's The Foreign Policy of France and over 250 pages of Joel Colton's Leon Blum. The specific passages supporting his various claims are not identified, however. (3) On page 430, Kaufman supports his criticisms of Neville Chamberlain's policies as Chancellor of the Exchequer by citing in note 71 pages 92–158 of Robert Shay's British Rearmament in the 1930s. Pages 92–133
13. of this book deal with other issues, and the subsequent pages generally support Chamberlain's effort to limit the rate of rearmament to what Britain could afford. The source is thus at odds with Kaufman's criticism. (4) On page 431, Kaufman writes that Chamberlain and Baldwin's “reassuring assessments of Nazi intentions and military preparations delayed and diluted public support…,” and he cites in note 78 A. L. Rowse's polemical Appeasement: A Study in Political Decline and pages 549–1062 of Martin Gilbert's official biography of Winston Churchill. This blanket approach to documentation leaves the reader in the dark regarding the specific evidence being used to support each claim. Moreover, this characterization of Chamberlain is questionable; as D. C. Watt points out, Chamberlain “had been at the centre of the British rearmament effort since its inception in 1934,… expressly relating it to the threat from Germany_There is abundant evidence to show he doubted and distrusted Hitler's sincerity at every turn.” See Donald Cameron Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War (New York: Pantheon, 1989), 77-78.
14. Kaufman seems confused on this point. He repeatedly describes my theory as “struc-tural,” overlooking my explicit criticisms of purely structural approaches and my inclusion of non-structural elements such as geography, offensive advantages, and perceived intentions. See “To Balance or To Bandwagon,” 418—419, 423, 439,441.
15. For my own views, see especially Origins of Alliances, 21–26, 263–66.
16. For a neutral assessment of my work that supports this interpretation, see Stephan Haggard, “Structuralism and Its Critics,” in Emanuel Adler and Beverly Crawford, eds., Progress in Postwar International Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 420-22.
17. See Walt, Origins of Alliances, 21–26, 263-66;
18. and idem, “Testing Theories of Alliance Formation,” 279–82, 311–13.
19. Kaufman claims I argued that “ideological affinity, superpower penetration of small powers, foreign aid, or the global balance of power [do not] affect significantly patterns of alignment and alliance.” See “To Balance or Bandwagon,” 418.
20. This statement is potentially misleading, depending on how one interprets the word “significant.” Although external threats are the main cause of alliance formation, my own analysis of Middle East diplomacy showed that these other factors can play a role in some circumstances. See Walt, Origins of Alliances, 35–36, 182–84, 200–203, 206–12, 231, 243, 253–61, 266, 268–69.
21. See Walt, Origins of Alliances, 29–31.
22. See Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 63-64 and passim;
23. and Jack Snyder and Thomas Christensen, “Chained Gangs and Passed Bucks: Explaining Alliance Formation in Multipolarity,” International Organization 44, no. 2 (Spring 1990): 137-68.
24. See Walt, “Case for Finite Containment”
25. and also Van Evera, “Why Europe Matters”
26. Art, “A Defensible Defense”
27. and Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future.”
28. See Walt, “Case for Finite Containment” idem, Origins of Alliances, chap. 8;
29. and idem, “Two Cheers for Containment: Probable Allied Responses to U.S. Isolationism,” in Ted Galen Carpenter, ed., Collective Security or Strategic Independence? Alternative Strategies for the Future (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1989), 227-52.
30. Nor is this position a “concession” on my part, as Kaufman seems to believe. See Kaufman, “To Balance or to Bandwagon,” 418, and my discussion below.
31. To note one example from my book, Saudi Arabia briefly aligned with Egypt in 1954, partly to appease it but also in response to a dispute between the Kingdom and Great Britain. When it became clear that Egypt posed the real threat to Saudi interests, they moved closer to the United States and formed the “Kings’ Alliance” with Jordan and Iraq. See Walt, Origins of Alliances, 59–60, 68–69.
32. Although Kaufman suggests that Realism slights the problem of miscalculation, it is in fact central to the Realist explanation of war. See Kaufman, “To Balance or Bandwagon,” 419–20, 431.
33. For Realist discussions of the role of miscalculation, see Kenneth Waltz, “The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory,” in Robert Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb, eds., The Origins and Prevention of Major War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 47;
34. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future,” 16-17;
35. and Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War (New York: Free Press, 1989).
36. Kaufman, “To Balance or Bandwagon,” 437, 439, 441.
37. See Ian Kershaw, The “Hitler Myth”: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 123-24;
38. and Norman Rich, Hitler's War Aims: Ideology, the Nazi State, and the Course of Expansion (New York: Norton, 1973), 82-87.
39. These quotations, which are but a small sample of Hitler's peaceful declarations, are drawn from John Mueller, “Is War Still Becoming Obsolete?” (paper presented at the American Political Science Association annual meeting, Sept. 1991), 31-32.
40. See Holger Herwig, “Clio Deceived: Patriotic Self-censorship in Germany After the Great War” International Security 12, no. 2 (Fall 1986): 5-44.
41. He also states that “Many Britons sympathized with Hitler's claim that the Treaty of Versailles had treated Germany unfairly.” See “To Balance or Bandwagon,” 429, 427.
42. As Robert Jervis notes, “the widespread misperception of Hitler's intentions is largely explained by the fact that others believed that any defeated, proud, and powerful state would try to alter the enforced peace settlement to regain a legitimate, but not commanding place in the world. Indeed, Nazi behavior was designed to conform closely to the policies that such a state would follow.” See Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 193;
43. and also William Rock, British Appeasement in the 1930s (New York: Norton, 1977), 42-43.
44. See Kaufman, “To Balance or Bandwagon,” 427.
45. See Gerald L. Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany: Diplomatic Revolution in Europe, 1933–36 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 63-74.
46. As Paul Kennedy remarks, “If the conclusion [that Hitler was unappeasable] became clear by 1939 … it was not evident either to the British or even the French government in the crisis year of 1938. The takeover of Austria … was an unpleasant instance of Hitler's fondness for unannounced moves, but could one really object to the principle of joining Germans with Germans?” See Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987), 338;
47. and Rich, Hitler's War Aims, 82–87.
48. In an essay written in 1935 and published in August 1937, Churchill wrote that “We cannot tell whether Hitler will be the man who will once again let loose upon the world another war … or whether he will go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the great Germanic nation and brought it back serene, helpful and strong, to the forefront of the European family circle.” See Winston S. Churchill, Great Contemporaries (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1937), 261.
49. The difficulty of gauging where the greatest threat lay is nicely revealed in a memoran-dum on British foreign policy issued by the Treasury Department in August 1937: “Is it not most unfair to regard Germany in the same sense as [Japan and Italy] as an 'aggressive power’ whose aims are 'inimical to British interests’? … For all the bitterness left by the war and the not always fortunate treatment of German minorities under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany has committed no aggression since the war unless the reoccupation of her own territory can be so described.” Quoted in Robert Shay, British Rearmament in the 1930s, Politics and Profit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 177. By this time, of course, Japan was at war with China and Italy had conquered Ethiopia.
50. On this general point, see Walt, “Testing Theories of Alliance Formation,” 282.
51. These efforts are recounted in Shay, British Rearmament in the 1930s, esp. 39–41, 44, 52, 80–83, 215-16;
52. G. C. Peden, British Rearmament and the Treasury (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1979);
53. and N. H. Gibbs, Grand Strategy, vol. 1: Reatvnament Policy (London: HMSO, 1976).
54. See Shay, British Rearmament, 45-46;
55. and Gibbs, Grand Strategy, 170–71. As Shay notes, this was the “only time … that the Treasury was so abruptly overridden.”
56. See Robert Young, In Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning, 1933–1940 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 187 and passim;
57. and also Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 311–12.
58. French industrial production increased by roughly 30 percent between 1932 and 1937, while German industry grew by nearly 300 percent in the same period. Germany controlled approximately II percent of world manufacturing output in 1937, France a mere 4.5 percent. According to a survey of total “war potential,” Germany possessed 14.4 percent of the global total in 1937 while France control led only 4.2 percent. These figures are from Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 311–12, 330, 332.
59. On British defense expenditures, see the figures in Shay, British Rearmamenty app., 297. On the decision to abandon the strategy of “limited liability” and prepare the army for war in Europe, see Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defence Policy in the Era of the Two World Wars (London: Ash field Press, 1989 repr. of 1972 ed.), 125–29;
60. and Gibbs, Grand Strategy, 491–92 and passim.
61. In 1937, for example, “the services had been unable to spend thirty-four out of the eighty million [pounds] that had been borrowed for defence … because the defence industries lacked sufficient plant to absorb that much capital.” See Shay, British Reaimament, 194.
62. See Howard, Continental Commitment, 135-36;
63. and Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 319–20.
64. See Watt, How War Came, 164—69, 176–78, 185-87;
65. and Howard, Continental Commitment, 126–29.
66. See Peden, British Rearmament and the Treasury, 148-49;
67. Gibbs, Grand Strategy, 516–18.
68. See Williamson Murray, The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938-39: The Path to Ruin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 362.
69. Peden, British Rearmament and the Treasury, 184.
70. See also Gibbs, Grand Strategy, 600.
71. See John J. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), 100 and passim;
72. R. H. S. Stolfi, “Equipment for Victory in France in 1940,” History 52, no. 1 (Feb. 1970): 1-20;
73. R. A. C. Parker, Europe 1919–445 (New York: Delacorte Press, 1970), 339-41;
74. and A. Goutard, The Battle of France, 1940, trans. A. D. P. Burgess (London: F. Muller, 1958).
75. Kaufman admits that “British defense spending did increase after 1936.” This is something of an understatement; British spending increased 35 percent between 1935 and 1936, 38 percent the following year and 55 percent the year after that! See note 37 above. He also admits that Baldwin and Chamberlain “were no pacifists,” and that “their late defense programs also began the development of many of the innovative weapons and technologies crucial to Great Britain's Second World War effort_” Overall, however, he claims that “British 1930s balancing behavior was extremely weak.” See Kaufman, “To Balance or Bandwagon,” 431.
76. This is the central theme of Howard, Continental Commitment, chap. 5, esp. 99–103, 113–17. See also Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 316;
77. Donald Cameron Watt, Too Serious a Business: European Armed Forces and the Approach to the Second World War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 95-103;
78. and Malcolm S. Smith, “Rearmament and Deterrence in Britain in the 1930s,” Journal of Strategic Studies, no. 3 (Dec. 1978): 313-37. Britain's decision to favor homeland and imperial defense over a continental commitment was a mistake, but one arising from an erroneous faith in defense dominance and the presence of multiple threats, not from an unwillingness to balance.
79. As Minister for the Coordination of Defence Sir Thomas Inskip wrote in 1938, “the plain fact which cannot be obscured is that it is beyond the resources of this country to make proper provision in peace for the defence of the British Empire against three different powers in three different theatres of war.” Quoted in Shay, British Rearmament, 192.
80. See also 18, 31–33, 174-75; and Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 318–19.
81. Kaufman, “To Balance or To Bandwagon,” 437.
82. Quoted in Howard, Continental Commitment, 102.
83. Geography also played a role in Stalin's decision to ally with Germany in 1939. He did so only after trying repeatedly to forge a stronger link with Britain and France. Their reluctance to respond to his entreaties was due in part to ideological antipathy, but also to the fact that a meaningful and militarily effective alliance with the Soviet Union would have required Britain and France to persuade their Eastern European allies to permit Soviet forces to cross their territory in a crisis or war, in effect abandoning them to Stalin's tender mercies. Their reluctance to do this left the Soviets without effective alliance partners, and their own efforts to balance and their guarantees to Poland gave Stalin the apparent latitude to pursue his own deal with Hitler. See Howard, Continental Commitment, 132;
84. Gibbs, Grand Strategy, 804;
85. and Barry Posen, “Competing Images of the Soviet Union,” World Politics 39, no. 4 (July 1987): 586-90.
86. As I wrote in 1988, this is an important point, because “the real issue is the relative propensity for states to balance or bandwagon_If balancing is the preferred choice, then even modest allied support should convince others to oppose an aggressor.” See “Testing Theories of Alliance Formation,” 283. Part of the tragedy of the 1930s lay in the fact that although these weak states usually wanted to balance, they could not decide who the main threat was and could not obtain reliable allied support. Thus, the fact that some chose neutralism is consistent with balance-of-threat theory.
87. See Smith, “Rearmament and Deterrence in Britain,” 315 and passim;
88. and Gibbs, Grand Strategy, 283–85.
89. Kaufman seems aware that the desire to prepare for a long war influenced British strategy, but he does not to take it into account in his analysis. See “To Balance or Bandwagon,” 427–28, 438.
90. Quoted in Peden, British Rearmament and the Treasury, 66.
91. These strategic assumptions reinforced each other. Expectations of a long war reinforced the perceived value of seapower, which could be used to blockade Germany and bleed them white over a lengthy period of attrition. Similarly, the belief the Britain could win a long war of attrition was used to justify investment in a large bomber force, intended to deter Germany from attempting a “knock-out” blow from the air. See Howard, Continental Commitment, 108-09;
92. and Smith, “Rearmament and Deterrence in Britain,”.
93. See Snyder and Christensen, “Chained Gangs and Passed Bucks,” 159–65.
94. Stalin also seems to have believed that Britain and France were stronger than Germany, which is consistent with the interpretation of the Nazi-Soviet Pact as an example of buck-passing. As he stated in a speech in March 1939, “the non-aggressive, democratic states are unquestionably stronger … both economically and militarily” than Germany. Quoted in Snyder and Christensen, “Chained Gangs and Passed Bucks,” 157.
95. The United States began to rearm in the late 1930s. Aircraft production doubled between 1937 and 1938, and Congress authorized a naval construction program designed to produce a navy “second to none.” See Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 331.
96. See David Reynolds, “1940: Fulcrum of the Twentieth Century?” International Affairs 66, no. 2 (Spring 1990): 334. In addition to intensifying the rearmament program begun in 1937–38, the United States inaugurated the Lend-Lease program to supply war materiel to Britain and was soon waging an undeclared naval war against German naval forces in the Atlantic.
97. See Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence, 102–3 and passim;
98. and Mueller, “Is War Still Becoming Obsolete?” 30–34.
99. See Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence, 122–33;
100. and Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine, 205—215.
101. See Gerhard L. Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany: Starting World War II, 1937–39 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 664.
102. D.C. Watt writes, “What is so extraordinary in the events which led up to the outbreak of the Second World War is that Hitler's will for war was able to overcome the reluctance with which virtually everybody else approached it. Hitler willed, desired, lusted after war_No one else wanted it_” See Watt, How War Came, 610.
103. For a careful and persuasive argument to this effect, see Mueller, “Is War Still Becoming Obsolete?” 23–44.
104. According to Jervis, “Had Hitler not come to power, many of the Englishmen who now seem wise would have been dangerous warmongers.” Perception and Misperception, 180.
105. As Kennedy notes, “Whatever the deficiencies and follies of any particular 'appeaser’ in the unhappy 1930s,… it is as well to bear in mind the unprecedented complexities with which the statesmen of that decade had to grapple.” See Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 291.
106. Kaufman, “To Balance or Bandwagon,” 423, 436, 438.
107. For a brief summary of the Axis powers’ poor decision-making, see Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 349–51.
108. Shay, British Rearmament in the 1930s, 281.
109. See Peden, British Rearmament and the Treasury, 184.
110. Kaufman, “To Balance or Bandwagon?”, 423.
111. According to Young, “The framework of modern rearmament, to such a great extent hammered out by the Popular Front regimes, was both sound and ultimately effective. Without the creation of the new coordinating ministry for war and national defense, without the fourteen billion franc program, and without a revitalized war industry more actively controlled by the state, it is doubtful whether France could have rearmed as quickly and as well as it did.” See Young, In Command of France, 187.
112. See Martin S. Alexander, “The French Officer Corps and Leftist Governments, 1935—1937,” in idem and Helen Graham, eds., The French and Spanish Popular Fronts: Comparative Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 75. Alexander adds that “the Popular Front's readiness to undertake a defence effort of fourteen billion francs [in 1936] dwarfed anything previously contemplated by conservative governments.”
113. Kennedy puts it well: “the British in the 1930s found themselves engaged in a global diplomatic and strategical dilemma to which there was no satisfactory solution_The basic problems affecting British grand strategy were not soluble merely by a change of attitude or even of prime ministers.” Rise and Fall of Great Powers, 319.
114. Kaufman, “To Balance or Bandwagon,” 423–24 (emphasis added).
115. In an article arguing that democracies do not initiate preventive wars, Randall L. Schweller claims that democratic constraints prevented France from waging a preventive war against Germany in the mid-1930s. There are two main problems with Schweller's otherwise impressive analysis. First, as Stephen A. Schuker has shown, France's military capacity for a preventive war in 1936 was extremely limited, even had public support for such a step been strong. See Stephen A. Schuker, “France and the Remilitarization of the Rhineland,” French Historical Studies 14, no. 3 (Spring 1986): 299-338.
116. Second, although a successful preventive war would have postponed a German challenge to French security, it could not not eliminate the problem permanently. For France, the real problems were Germany's greater military potential and the inherent weakness of France's Eastern European alliance network. Even if a successful war had temporarily restored France's military superiority, it would have also reinforced the resentments and revisionism that had brought Hitler to power in the first place. Such a step would have also increased the widespread perception that France was the aggressor and Germany was the victim, leaving France even more isolated in the long run. Thus, the decision not to fight a preventive war had a rational strategic basis. Finally, even if Schweller's arguments about democracy and preventive war are correct, they do not imply that democracies are unwilling or unable to balance. Indeed, he argues that balancing is a democratic state's most likely response to the rising power of potential enemies. See Randall L. Schweller, “Domestic Structure and Preventive War: Are Democracies More Pacific?” World Politics 44, no. 1 (Jan. 1992): 235—69.
117. Random events - often referred to as “fate” - played a role as well. For instance, British rearmament was delayed for a few months by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin's illness in 1936, though it would be misleading to attribute this to “domestic politics.” See Shay, British Rearmament, 86–89.
118. According to Malcolm Smith, “we may look upon British rearmament in the 1930s not as an aberration but as a crucial phase in the decline of Great Britain as a world power in the 20th century. The real lessons… will be somewhat disguised if we concentrate too much on domestic considerations … they were not the only nor the decisive factors involved.” See his “Rearmament and Deterrence in Britain,” 333 (emphasis added).
119. On this point, see Posen, “Competing Images of the Soviet Union,” 333.
120. In the introduction to his article, Kaufman correctly states that many Realists are “limitationists, … without being isolationists.” The rest of his discussion, however, is laden with the implication that I and other Realists favored abandoning most (if not all) U.S. overseas commitments. See Kaufman, “To Balance or Bandwagon,” 418, 439–40.
121. See Kaufman, “To Balance or Bandwagon,” 420, and note 80.
122. See Walt, Origins of Alliances, 284–85 (emphasis added).
123. See Walt, “Case for Finite Containment,” 39.
124. See Walt, “Testing Theories of Alliance Formation,” 279, 282–83, 310, 315–16.
125. Kaufman, “To Balance or Bandwagon,” 440.
126. Jervis, Perception and Misperception, chap. 3;
127. and also Charles L. Glaser, “Political Consequences of Military Strategy: Expanding and Refining the Spiral and Deterrence Models,” World Politics 44, no. 3 (July 1992).
128. See Steven L. Spiegel, The Other Arab-lsraeli Conflict (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 141—144 and passim;
129. and Michael Brecher, Decisions in Israel's Foreign Policy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1975), 390-93, 412–16, 420.
130. See Walt, Origins of Alliances, 158–61, 163–65, 283. Steven R. David has recently argued that some Third World leaders seek Great Power support primarily to deal with internal threats. This motive also implies that they care little about the global balance of power and are unlikely to contribute very much to their patron's larger strategic objectives.
131. See Steven R. David, Choosing Sides: Third World Alignment and Realignment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).
132. Kaufman, “To Balance or Bandwagon,” 439.
133. In 1979, when many experts were worried about alleged Soviet superiority, the pre-eminent contemporary Realist, Kenneth Waltz, offered a more prescient assessment. According to Waltz, “the question to ask is not whether a third or fourth country will enter the circle of great powers in the foreseeable future but rather whether the Soviet Union can keep up.” See his Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979), 179-80.
134. See also idem, “Faltering Giant,” Inquiry, 23 Feb. 1981, 25–27;
135. Barry R. Posen and Stephen Van Evera, “Reagan Administration Defense Policy: Departure from Containment,” in Kenneth A. Oye, Robert J. Lieber, and Donald Rothchild, eds., Eagle Resurgent?: The Reagan Era in American Foreign Policy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987), 75-114;
136. and Walt, Origins of Alliances, 274–81.
137. See Kaufman, “To Balance or Bandwagon,” 439.
138. Thus, Posen defines grand strategy as “a political-military means-ends chain, a state's theory about how it can best 'cause’ security for itself.” See Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine, 13.
139. For similar conceptions, see Bernard Brodie, “Strategy as a Science,” World Politics 1, no. 4 (July 1949): 467-88;
140. Edward Mead Earle, “Introduction,” in idem, Makers of Modem Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943), vii;
141. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy (New York: Praeger, 1967) 335–36;
142. and Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. and ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 142-44.
143. On this general issue, see the letters by Mearsheimer and Posen in “Correspondence,” International Security 13, no. 4 (Summer 1989): 130-31, 145—47;
144. Stephen M. Walt, “The Search for a Science of Strategy: A Review of Makers of Modem Strategy,” International Security 12, no. 1 (Summer 1987): 141-42 and passim;
145. and also idem, “The Renaissance of Security Studies,” International Studies Quarterly 35, no. 3 (June 1991): 211-39.
146. Kaufman, “To Balance or Bandwagon,” 440.
147. Although Kaufman does not do so, it is possible to make a theoretically-informed argument for greater U. S. involvement in the developing world. See Michael C. Desch, “The Keys that Lock Up the World: Identifying American Interests in the Periphery,” International Security 14, no. 1 (Summer 1989): 86-121.
148. Kaufman, “To Balance or Bandwagon?” 000.
149. See William Eckhardt, “Wars and War-Related Deaths, 1500-1980,” in Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures, 1991 (Washington, D.C.: World Priorities, 1991), 22-25.
150. See Kenneth A. Oye, “Beyond Postwar Order and New World Order: American Foreign Policy in Transition,” in idem, Robert J. Lieber, and Donald Rothchild, eds., Eagle in a New World: American Grand Strategy in the Post-Cold War Era (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 3–33.
151. Works supporting U.S. efforts to export democracy include Joshua Muravchik, Exporting Democracy (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute Press, 1991);
152. Gregory Fossedal, The Democratic Imperative: Exporting the American Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1989);
153. and Charles Krauthammer, “The Poverty of Realism,” New Republic, 17 Feb. 1986, 14–22.
154. Opponents or skeptics include Thomas Carothers, In the Name of Democracy: U.S. Policy Toward Latin America in the Reagan Years (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991);
155. Van Evera, “Why Europe Matters”
156. Robert Johnson, “Rollback Revisited - A Reagan Doctrine for Insurgent Wars?” Policy Focus (Washington, D.C.: Overseas Development Council, 1986);
157. and Abraham Lowenthal, ed., Exporting Democracy: The United States and Latin America (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1991).
158. The United States attempted to overthrow or suppress elected governments in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), British Guiana (1953–64), Indonesia (1957), Ecuador (1960–63), Brazil (1964), the Dominican Republic (1965), Costa Rica (1950s) and Chile (1970–73). In two other cases (Greece and Jamaica) U. S. opposition was clear but evidence of U. S. subversion is ambiguous. See Van Evera, “Why Europe Matters,” 27–28 and passim.
159. For early Realist perspectives on U.S. grand strategy, see Nicholas Spykman, America's Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1942);
160. George F. Kennan, Realities of American Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954);
161. and Hans J. Morgenthau, Defense of the National Interest (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1982 repr. of 1951 ed.).
162. More recent treatments include idem, A New Foreign Policy for the United States (New York: Praeger, 1969);
163. Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Politics of Peace,” International Studies Quarterly 11, no. 3 (June 1967): 199-211;
164. idem, “America's European Policy Viewed in Global Perspective,” in Wolfram Hanrieder, ed., The United States and Western Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Winthrop, 1974), 8-36; Posen and Van Evera, “Departure from Containment” Walt, “The Case for Finite Containment” Van Evera, “Why Europe Matters” and Art, “A Defensible Defense.”
165. See Labs, “Do Weak States Bandwagon?”, 406.
166. See Origins of Alliances, 24—25, 29–32.
167. In addition to my own work, Labs bases this view on his reading of Annette Baker Fox, The Power of Small States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957);
168. Michael Handel, Wea States in the International System (London: Frank Cass, 1981);
169. and Robert L. Rothstein, Alliances and Small Powers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968).
170. See Labs, “Do Weak States Bandwagon?”, 394.
171. Labs is correct to claim that “Walt is a little unclear…” and to suggest that “Walt needs to clarify this point further and more directly.” See “Do Weak States Bandwagon?” note 6.
172. See Origins of Alliances, 29, 173;
173. “Testing Theories of Alliance Formation,” 279.
174. See Origins of Alliances, 152.
175. This pattern is especially striking in the cases of Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan, although somewhat less so in the case of India. See Walt, “Testing Theories of Alliance Formation,” esp. 284, 286–88, 293, 305, 308.
176. See Walt, “Testing Theories of Alliance Formation,” 283, 310.
177. See Labs, “Do Weak States Bandwagon?” 408;
178. Walt, Origins of Alliances, preface to paperback ed., vii.
179. For my tentative thoughts on this issue, see Stephen M. Walt, “Revolution and War,” World Politics 44, no. 2 (April 1992), 363—368.
180. For a recent test of balance-of-threat theory that provides additional support for it, see David Garnham, “Explaining Middle Eastern Alignments During the Gulf War,” Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 13, no. 3 (1991): 63–83.