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Realism Redux: Strategic Independence in a Multipolar World
- SAIS Review
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 9, Number 2, Summer-Fall 1989
- pp. 19-44
- 10.1353/sais.1989.0001
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
REALISM REDUX:__________ STRATEGIC INDEPENDENCE IN A MULTIPOLAR WORLD Christopher Layne N,otwithstanding often sharp disagreements about specific policies and tactics, since the late 1940s U.S. national strategy— usually described as cold war internationalism or containment—has been remarkably consistent in both its underlying assumptions and its objectives. Throughout the postwar era, the United States has sought to contain not only the expansion of Soviet power but also to create and institutionalize an ideologically congenial international milieu. The superstructures of postwar U.S. foreign policy—NATO, the multilateral free trade system, and the global network of bilateral U.S. security commitments— have been familiar features of the international landscape for some 45 years. The 1990s will be a watershed decade for U.S. foreign policy. The political, military, and economic balance of world forces is shifting dramatically and a comprehensive review of U.S. foreign policy is long overdue . The threshold question facing American policymakers is whether the United States' postwar national strategy has outlived its usefulness. If so, the next, more difficult question is what will replace it? In broad terms, there are four alternatives to a cold war internationalist strategy: (1) strategic independence; (2) reform; (3) liberal multilateralism; and (4) strategic disengagement. Christopher Layne is an attorney with Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays and Handler in Los Angeles and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the West Point Senior Conference XXVI ("U.S. National Strategy in the 1990s") inJune 1988. Mr. Layne gratefully acknowledges the comments and criticisms of the following: Ted Galen Carpenter (Cato Institute ), Benjamin Frankel (American Enterprise Institute), David Kanin, and Alan Tonelson (Twentieth Century Fund). 19 20 SAIS REVIEW American Interests In A Changing World Strategic independence builds on the realist tradition in U.S. foreign policy exemplified in the early postwar years by scholar-diplomat George F. Kennan, commentator-analyst Walter Lippmann, political scientist Hans Morgenthau, and political figures like President Dwight Eisenhower, Secretary of State George C. Marshall, and Ohio Republican Senator Robert A. Taft. Like their predecessors, today's successor generation realists understand that U.S. power is finite and that the world is not infinitely malleable . Now, as then, realists believe that the purpose of foreign policy is, in Lippmann's now familiar formulation, to bring "into balance with a comfortable surplus ofpower in reserve, the nation's commitments and the nation's power." Now, as then, realists believe an ideologically driven policy ofcontaining communism and promoting U.S. liberal democratic values worldwide will lead to the open-ended expansion of U.S. commitments abroad, thereby straining America's economy and its domestic political institutions. Now, as then, realists eschew a foreign policy that defines U.S. interests in terms of world order aspirations in favor of a strategy that delineates U.S. interests within the traditional realpolitik framework of the balance of power. Now, as then, realists believe this approach best reconciles the twin imperatives of protecting America from external threats to its security while simultaneously preserving the strength and vitality of its economy and domestic political system. The successor generation realists' view of U.S. interests in the 1990s is easily stated. First, the nation's core security (national survival, independence , and territorial integrity) must be maintained. This means that the United States must be able to: deter (and perhaps defend against) a nuclear attack on the American homeland; ensure that no hostile power achieves hegemony over Eurasia; and uphold its geostrategic interests in the Western Hemisphere. Second, for both strategic and domestic reasons , the United States must put its economic house in order. Third, the social and political fabric of American society must be preserved. Successor generation realists believe America's cold war internationalist strategy no longer is the best vehicle for pursuing U.S. interests. On the contrary, as the postwar realists predicted would be the case, in crucial respects cold war internationalism has undermined, rather than promoted, U.S. interests. This has been especially true in the economic realm. The causes of America's deepening economic predicament are manifold and complex but two stand out: the United States has been overstretched by its worldwide strategic...