Interview with Robert W. Tucker

INTERVIEW WITH ___ ROBERT W. TUCKER On December 4, 1980, Robert W. Tucker, Professor ofPolitical Science at The Johns Hopkins University, was interviewed by the SAIS Review. Professor Tucker, who also teaches at SAIS, was questioned on his recent writings about the role ofAmericanpower in the Persian Gulf, and on other aspects of U.S. foreign policy—past, present, and future. The interview was conducted by editors Paul Fekete and Erik Peterson, and staffmembers Lisa Buttenheim and Nancy Savage. SAIS Review: It appears from your writing that your thinking over the past 15years has developed in three stages. The first stage is represented by your book, A New Isolationism,1 written in 1971. The second stage might be represented by your position favoring intervention in the Persian Gulfin your 1975 Commentary article.2Finally, it seems thatyour recent Foreign Affairs article3 cautions against policies of intervention. Would you agree with this assessment ofyour thinking, and could you elaborate? TUCKER: We all like to think that we're consistent, and I too like to think I have been consistent. That requires an explanation because, on the face of it, there seems to be an inconsistency between the writings from, say 1968-71, beginning withiVaft'o/i orEmpire4 and then the little book about the radical left in American foreign policy,5 and culminating with the essay on A New Isolationism. There seems to be an inconsistency between that and the mid-70s. My objection to Vietnam and my objection to much of what I saw as American policy toward the Third World stemmed from the conviction that it was in large measure a frittering away of American energy and resources over interests that were, for the most part, no more than peripheral; and that in doing so, ? New Isolationism: Threat or Promise? (New York: Universe Books, 1972). 2"Oil: The Issue ofAmerican Intervention," Commentary, 59 (Jan. 1975), 21-31. 3"The Purposes of American Power," Foreign Affairs, 52 (Winter 1980/81), 241-74. ^Nation or Empire? The Debate over American Foreign Policy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1968). 5TAe Radical Leß and American Foreign Policy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1971). 83 84 SAIS REVIEW we ran the risk of jeopardizing more central interests. This is what happened in the 1970s. That general point made by way ofintroduction, we can discuss the thesis advanced in A New Isolationism. In many important respects I was clearly wrong when I wrote that essay. It proceeded on a number of assumptions, two of which were crucial, and which proved to be wrong. One assumption was that Western Europe and Japan would play a more active role in the world than they in fact did in the 1970s. I still entertain the belief that they will eventually do so: the great question is when. But at that time, I thought they would do so—and I wanted them to do so. I still think that a more normal political world is a world in which those that have great power potential and that have been great states in the past should once again occupy their former roles. I see no reason why Western Europe (the nucleus being France and Germany), and Japan in the East, should not occupy a much more important political—and, if you will, politicalmilitary —role than they have played in the postwar era. I assumed that could and would occur, and I was wrong. It hasn't happened yet. On the second assumption, which is even more striking in retrospect , I did not foresee in any real way the energy crisis. On the contrary , I practically dismissed it. Those were the two great errors, and those errors—particularly the latter one—concerned developments that have largely determined the course of the 1970s. If the Western Europeans and the Japanese had played the kind of role they might have played, and ifthe problem ofthe Persian Gulfhad not arisen in the acute form it did, then the United States might have played— and could still play today—a more modest role in the world. The essence of the essay on A New Isolationism was not literally to call for an isolationist America à la the...