In Search of a New Grand Strategy

The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-First Century, by Charles A. Kupchan. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002). 336 pp. $28.

U.S. global leadership failed in 2003. President George W. Bush is widely distrusted and, in many parts of the world, hated. While this may be no surprise when it comes to the nations of the Middle East, it marks a fundamental change in Europe. Even in the light of the initial outcome of the war in Iraq, the United States will find itself more isolated than at any time since it emerged on the world scene as a major power in 1898 following its success in the Spanish-American War. Since that time, and with fits and starts, the United States blended its growing power with a broad sense of international legitimacy. It advanced its national interests broadly, creating not only expansive coalitions of allies, but lasting international institutions that formed the architecture for a global society. It was able to do this because leaders had a sense of proportion and a vision of public purpose. As Thomas Friedman told a SAIS audience at the 2003 Rostov lecture on the United States in the post-September 11 world, ¹ when King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia met with President Franklin Roosevelt near the end of World War II, he asked him two questions: did he believe in God, and did he have colonies? FDR was able to reassure him by answering in the affirmative to the former and in the negative to the latter. This lack of an imperial tradition or imperial ambition paved the way for the acceptance of U.S. power and hegemony.

It was in part out of appreciation for the United States's constructive use of its power that so many in the world sympathized with it on September 11, when even the now derided French could claim that "we are all Americans." Within a year, all of that goodwill had been squandered by a leadership driven by fear, anger, and a sense of mission. In contrast to the generation of Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, and John McCloy, who were, as Acheson put it in his memoir, "present at the creation," the current crop of U.S. leaders have been "present at the destruction" ² of the post-World War II order.

The U.S.-led war in Iraq has generated serious questions regarding how the United States will wield power in the confusing and dangerous world left in the wake of its stunning success in defeating the challenge of the Soviet Union. Charles Kupchan's stimulating and insightful new book The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century makes the case that the United States needs a new grand strategy to deal with this new world. He argues persuasively that a great power needs a sound grand strategy in order to prioritize and make the choices needed to direct its resources and efforts. Faced with a stark new world in which it possesses unparalleled power, Kupchan contends, "America is squandering the moment," and is "a great power adrift." By making terrorism the new axial principle of its post-September 11 strategy, the Bush administration has lost its sense of priorities and has squandered its great power and prestige in a one-dimensional pursuit of absolute security. The Bush foreign policy team, he argues, is operating with an outmoded conceptual map, and is led by people shaped by the Cold War world.

Kupchan provides a concise survey of five alternative conceptual maps offered to explain the world that emerged from the ruins of the Berlin Wall. He offers a critique of Francis Fukuyama's "end of history," John Mearsheimer's structural realism, Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations," Paul Kennedy and Robert Kaplan's emphasis upon the anarchy of the less developed world, and...