Debating grand strategy

Diplomatic History is “the sole journal devoted to the history of U.S. diplomacy, foreign relations, and national security,” according to both its publisher and its editor. In a laudable attempt to generate topical scholarship, the journal has recently asked eminent historians to write about current American grand strategy from a historical perspective. The June 2005 issue has a roundtable on “The Bush Administration?s Foreign Policy in Historical Perspective,” led off by Melvyn Leffler. His thesis:

My argument is that there is more continuity than change in the policies of the Bush administration. Bush?s rhetoric and actions have deep roots in the history of American foreign policy. Understanding these roots is important because they help to illuminate the different trajectories that inhere in the American diplomatic experience. The possession of immense power and the belief in a universal mission have the potential to produce great good and great harm. Given this dynamic mix of power and ideals, there is no substitute for the exercise of good judgment. While stressing continuities, there has also been important change. Change, however, does not constitute a revolution. The change I see constitutes a recalibration in the complicated interaction between the assessment of threat, the calculation of interest, the enunciation of values, and the mobilization of power. In the history of U.S. foreign policy, threats, interests, ideals, and power always have had a dynamic and changing relationship with one another. At times of heightened threat perception, the assertion of values mounts and subsumes careful calculation of interests. Values and ideals are asserted to help evoke public support for the mobilization of power; power, then, tempts the government to overreach far beyond what careful calculations of interest might dictate. The genius of American foreign policy is the capacity to recalibrate the relationships between these variables; the nightmare of American foreign policy is that the relationships forever remain unstable, subject, as they should be, to changing perceptions of threat.

The editors of Diplomatic History then did something really provocative — they asked non-historians to comment on Leffler’s hypothesis. This is a longwinded way of saying you can read my take on Leffler’s hypothesis by reading my rejoinder, “Values, Interests, and American Grand Strategy.” If you’re pressed for time, here’s the gist of it:

First, it is far from clear that the dichotomy of ideas and interests is as stark as Leffler presents. Second, time is a powerful constraint on the push for value-heavy foreign policies. American grand strategies are constantly revised over time?and even during periods of heightened threat perception, the power of ideational factors in determining grand strategy wanes as uncertainty about the state of the world decreases. Third, the distinction between rhetoric and action needs to be stressed?and on the latter account, it is unclear just how value laden the Bush administration?s foreign policy really is.

Click here for a summary of the issue — other contributors include Robert Kagan, Walter L. Hixson, Carolyn Eisenberg, Arnold A. Offner, and Anna Kasten Nelson (plus a final reply from Leffler). More importantly, congratulations to Diplomatic History for generating a useful and policy relevant debate — and for giving me the guilty pleasure of publishing outside my disciplinary boundaries.