American grand strategy

The style of this piece deviates from what I usually put up here. By way of explanation: I wrote this after some initial indications of interest by Foreign Policy in running a response. But they've got a lot on their plate and they no longer seem intrigued. Frankly, that's for the best; this is now about as long as Tom's initial piece. So I'm posting it at the Duck. Full disclosure: I served on Tom's dissertation committee and co-authored an article, "What's at Stake in the American Empire Debate," with him. So this should be viewed as a friendly, if spirited, rejoinder. For another reaction, see David Schorr's piece at Democracy Arsenal.

Thomas Wright's "Neocons vs. Realists is so 2008" gets a lot right about the emerging grand-strategic debate in the United States. He argues that it stretches between  two poles. One is composed of "restrainers" who "believe that the United States is overcommitted in the world" and seek some kind of retrenchment combining "nation-building at home" with a reduced emphasis on shaping the global environment. The other is occupied by "shapers" who advocate a continued--or even expanded--American commitment to ordering international affairs. He contends that Obama's second term will likely be dominated by a specific breed of "restrainer," one that "want[s] to preserve America's core alliances" but also "to avoid any new entanglements that go beyond core commitments" and relies on allies to shoulder a greater burden in future interventions. Although the administration has "been a shaper in East Asia and a restrainer in the Middle East," the impulse for restraint looks poised to dominate future foreign-policy decisions.

Wright paints a plausible picture of the current ideological balance in the Obama Administration. It clearly prefers to "invest" in long-neglected capital projects over maintaining current levels of defense expenditures. Given the current fiscal-political environment, pursuing such a preference will require continuing efforts to convince allies and partners to accept a greater share of the military burden. Wright also offers an important corrective to the assumptions of some of the "restrainers." We should not over-interpret the long-term implications of current US economic performance and the general fatigue created by the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts. India, Brazil, China, and the rest of the rising-powers crowd face their own challenges. Some of these may prove more intractable than the self-inflicted wounds created by Washington's current dysfunctions.

Moreover, the odds suggest the formation of the kinds of foreign-policy coalitions Wright anticipates--including the increasing alignment of liberal and conservative "shapers." This entails situational alliances among neoconservatives, primacy realists, and muscular liberal-internationalists. All three camps fit within the "shaper" rubric insofar as they believe that the United States can, and should, maintain international primacy--what scholars call "hegemony"--for as long as possible. However, they disagree about many things. Primacy realists are constitutionally skeptical of placing the maintenance and expansion of liberal order at the center of American foreign policy. When they conflict, the argument goes, realpolitik considerations should always trump the promotion of liberal values--whether human rights, democracy, or multilateral international governance.

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