Reluctant Crusaders: Power, Culture, and Change in American Grand Strategy

CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN AMERICAN GRAND STRATEGY

EVER SINCE THE terrorist attacks of September 2001, a wide-ranging debate has opened up regarding the proper course of American national security policy. Some critics have advocated a retrenchment of America's international commitments, while others have called for a more multilateral approach; still others, including the Bush administration itself, have embraced the aggressive promotion of American primacy overseas. The immediate focus has been on counterterrorism. But the broader question at stake has been the future of American "grand strategy."

Grand strategy involves the prioritization of foreign policy goals, the identification of existing and potential resources, and the selection of a plan or road map that uses those resources to meet those goals. Whenever foreign policy officials are faced with the task of reconciling foreign policy goals with limited resources, under the prospect of potential armed conflict, they are engaging in grand strategy. Levels of defense spending, foreign aid, alliance behavior, troop deployments, and diplomatic activity are all influenced by grand strategic assumptions. Whether implicitly or explicitly, leading officials in every nation-state have a sense of their country's interests, of the threats that exist to those interests, and of the resources that can be brought to bear against those threats. Grand strategy is the inevitable process of ranking and assessing those interests, threats, and resources. And any nation's grand strategy can sometimes change dramatically.

One of the conventional criticisms of the Bush administration's grand strategy is that it is excessively and even disastrously unilateralist in approach. According to the critics, the Bush administration has turned its back on a long-standing and admirable American tradition of liberal internationalism in foreign affairs, and in doing so has provoked resentment worldwide. But these criticisms misinterpret both the foreign policy of George W. Bush, as well as America's liberal internationalist tradition. In reality, Bush's foreign policies since 9/11 have been heavily influenced by traditional liberal internationalist, or Wilsonian, assumptions--assumptions that all along have had a troubling impact on U.S. foreign policy behavior and have fed into the current situation in Iraq.

The conduct of American grand strategy has long been shaped, to a greater or lesser extent, by a set of beliefs that can only be called "liberal." These assumptions specify that the United States should promote, wherever practical and possible, an international system characterized by democratic governments and open markets. President Bush reiterated these classical liberal assumptions in his November 6, 2003, speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, when he outlined what he called "a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East." In that speech, Bush argued that "as long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export." In this sense, he suggested, the United States has a vital strategic interest in the democratization of that region. But Bush also added that "the advance of freedom leads to peace," and that democracy is "the only path to national success and dignity," providing as it does certain "essential principles common to every successful society, in every culture." These words could just as easily have been spoken by Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt--or Bill Clinton. They are well within the mainstream American tradition of liberal internationalism. Of course, U.S. foreign policy officials have never promoted a liberal world order simply out of altruism. They have done so out of the belief that such a system would serve American interests, by making the United States more prosperous, influential, and secure. Americans have also frequently disagreed over how to best promote liberal goals overseas. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that liberal goals and liberal assumptions, broadly conceived, have had a powerful impact on American foreign policy, especially since the presidency of Woodrow Wilson.

The problem with the liberal, or Wilsonian, approach, however, has been that it tends to encourage very ambitious goals and commitments abroad, while assuming that these goals can be met without commensurate cost or expenditure on the part of the United States. Liberal internationalists, that is, tend to define American interests in broad, expansive, and idealistic terms, without always admitting the necessary costs and risks of such an expansive vision. The result is that sweeping and ambitious goals are announced, but then pursued by disproportionately limited means, thus creating an outright invitation to failure. Indeed, this pattern of disjuncture between ends and means has been so common in the history of American twentieth-century diplomacy that it seems to be a direct consequence of the nation's distinctly liberal approach to international relations.

Americans have often been "crusaders"--crusaders in the promotion of a more liberal international order. But Americans have also frequently been "reluctant"--reluctant to admit the full costs of promoting this liberal international vision. These two strains within the American foreign policy tradition have not only operated cyclically; they have operated simultaneously. In this sense, the history of American grand strategy is a history of "reluctant crusaders."

The Bush administration's present difficulties in Iraq are therefore not an isolated event. Nor are they really the result of the president's supposed preference for unilateralism. On the contrary, the administration's difficulties in Iraq are actually the result of an excessive reliance on classically liberal or Wilsonian assumptions regarding foreign affairs. The administration willed the end--and a very ambitious end--in Iraq, but it did not, initially, will the necessary means. In this sense, the Bush administration is heir to a long liberal internationalist tradition that runs from Woodrow Wilson through Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman to William Jefferson Clinton. And Bush inherits not only the strengths of that tradition, but also its weaknesses and flaws.

When and why might we expect further changes in American grand strategy? When and why does grand strategy change? Are the causes of change in U.S. grand strategy the same as in other countries, or are there patterns of strategic adjustment that are distinctly American? In all of the recommendations for one policy course or another, these are questions that are rarely asked. Yet the United States has been through such periods of strategic adjustment before--notably, in the immediate aftermath of each world war. By examining and comparing these historical periods, together with the post--Cold War period, we can begin to answer the question of how and why grand strategy actually changes. Those insights can then be applied to current conditions, allowing us to predict future changes in American strategic behavior.

POWER AND CULTURE: EXPLAINING CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN AMERICAN GRAND STRATEGY

The study of grand strategy--and of international relations--has undergone dramatic changes over time. The "classical" realist authors of the 1940s, such as Walter Lippmann (from whose writings this book's epigraph is drawn) and George Kennan, understood that cultural factors can have a profound effect on the strategic behavior of nations. Indeed, in the case of the United States, these same classical realists pointed to the impact of a liberal and idealistic political culture precisely to condemn its impact on American foreign policy. At the same time, classical realists took it for granted that any country's grand strategy must eventually reflect international pressures. Authors like Lippmann and Kennan were as much interested in history, policy, and prescription as in scientific explanation. Contemporary realism, on the other hand--known as "structural" realism, for its emphasis on the structure of the international system--in its search for theoretical rigor and parsimony tends to downplay, ignore, or even deny the influence upon grand strategy of nationally distinctive cultural factors. This tendency in contemporary realism has only encouraged the creation and growth of an alternative, "constructivist" school of thought, which in turn emphasizes culture at the expense of international pressures.