Ideologies of American Foreign Policy by John Callaghan, Brendon O'Connor, and Mark Phythian (review)

Ideologies and American Foreign Policy is a welcome contribution to the study of both the international effects of political ideologies and U.S. foreign policies. The book makes two main contributions to these literatures. First, it deepens our understanding of ideologies by demonstrating the ideological foundations of seemingly non-ideological worldviews and decisions, including those consistent with realist international relations theories. Realist and ideology-based foreign policies are typically described as opposites, but the authors demonstrate that this can be a false dichotomy. Their argument is best illustrated by the book's examination of the foreign policies of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who are usually described as arch realists. According to the authors, however, particular ideological convictions were central to these leaders' "realist" preferences. Nixon's extreme form of U.S. exceptionalism, for example, which inclined him to believe that most countries in the developing world were largely incapable of adopting liberal political institutions on the U.S. model, pushed him to believe that international democracy promotion by the United States was a waste of resources. Kissinger's strong ideology-based preference for order over justice led him to the same belief. Opposition to democracy promotion is consistent with realist prescriptions, but prior ideological beliefs helped Nixon and Kissinger hold this position. Realists claim an objective understanding of reality based on how the world "really is". The authors, though, demonstrate that these assertions are frequently false because seemingly realist policies are often rooted in subjective ideological beliefs.

The other major contribution is that the authors convincingly demonstrate the importance of ideologies to many of the most important international decisions made by U.S. leaders since the end of the Second World War, which is the primary period examined. Ideologies were particularly important in determining U.S. leaders' assessments of: (1) which countries were a threat to U.S. interests and to what extent; (2) why these states were threatening (e.g., because U.S. officials believed ideological rivals to be particularly aggressive or because they feared the effects of falling ideological "dominos" abroad or the spread of ideological fifth columns at home); and (3) how to alleviate these threats (the importance of ideological exportation was a common theme by most administrations). Core dimensions of U.S. international relations simply cannot be understood without taking into account the effects of ideology.

Despite these important strengths, the book has some notable weaknesses. Three in particular are worth mentioning. First, the authors are overly ambitious in their claims as they attribute almost all decisions in some way to ideological effects, even when other factors seem to be more prominently at work. Woodrow Wilson's internationalist ideology failed, for example, not primarily because the geographical position of the United States worked against increased commitments to Europe but because Congressional Republicans were dedicated to a competing ideology, that of isolationism. U.S. presidents throughout the Cold War frequently supported dictators not because power-based interests in this area were more important than ideological considerations, but because many U.S. leaders saw freedom abroad as being connected less with democratic institutions and values than with whether a country was anti-Communist.

The impact of ideology on U.S. foreign policies as described in the book is so comprehensive that it is unclear what consistent non-ideological foreign policies would look like. The authors mention or allude to some potential competing explanations for outcomes, including domestic interests, bureaucratic politics, historical analogies, credibility, retrenchment, and political opportunism. But they never indicate whether these other explanations frequently compete with ideology-based interpretations of behavior or instead merely reflect different dimensions of ideologies at work. The book, in other words, does not engage in a systematic testing of competing explanations of U.S. foreign policies. Surely international anarchy, the security dilemma, and geography, to name prominent competing variables from realist arguments, have had some major effects on U.S. international relations independently of ideologies and even at...