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Derek S. Reveron - US Foreign Policy and Defense Strategy: The Evolution of an Incidental Superpower

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Book:
US Foreign Policy and Defense Strategy: The Evolution of an Incidental Superpower
Author:
Derek S Reveron / Nikolas K Gvosdev / Mackubin Thomas Owens
Publisher:
Georgetown University Press
Genre:
Science / Politics
Year:
2014
City:
Washington, D.C.
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4 / 5
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Safe from the battlefields of Europe and Asia, the United States led the postWorld War II global economic recovery through international assistance and foreign direct investment. With an ardent decolonization agenda and a postwar legitimacy, the United States attempted to construct a world characterized by cooperation. When American optimism clashed with Soviet expansionism, the United States started on a path to global hegemony.
In US Foreign Policy and Defense Strategy, the authors analyze the strategic underpinnings of hegemony, assess the national security establishment that sustains dominance, consider the impact on civil-military relations, and explore the intertwining relationships between foreign policy, defense strategy, and commercial activities. Eschewing conventional analyses, the volume not only identifies drivers and continuities in foreign policy, but it also examines how the legacy of the last sixty-five years will influence future national security policy that will be characterized by US leadership in an increasingly competitive world.
From civil-military relations to finance, and from competing visions of how America should make war to its philosophy of securing peace through reconstruction and reconciliation, US Foreign Policy and Defense Strategy offers unique insights into the links between military and commercial power as it charts the rise of a historical rarity: the incidental superpower. This accessibly written book is suitable for students and general readers as well as scholars.

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US Foreign Policy and Defense Strategy

The Evolution of an Incidental Superpower

Derek S. Reveron, Nikolas K. Gvosdev, and Mackubin Thomas Owens

2015 Georgetown University Press All rights reserved No part of this book may - photo 1

2015 Georgetown University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information- storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

16 15 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 First printing

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reveron, Derek S., author.
US foreign policy and defense strategy : the evolution of an incidental superpower / Derek S. Reveron, Nikolas K. Gvosdev, and Mackubin Thomas Owens.
pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Summary: This work analyzes the strategic underpinnings of US defense strategy and foreign policy since 1945. Primarily intended to be a supplemental textbook, it explains how the United States became a superpower, examines the formation of the national security establishment, and explores the inter-relationship between foreign policy, defense strategy, and commercial interests. It differs from most of the existing teaching texts because its emphasis is not on narrating the history of US foreign policy or explaining the policymaking process. Instead, the emphasis is on identifying drivers and continuities in US national security interests and policy, and it has a special emphasis on developing a greater understanding of the intertwined nature of foreign and defense policies. The book will conclude by examining how the legacy of the last sixty-five years impacts future developments, the prospect for change, and what US national security policy may look like in the future.

ISBN 978-1-62616-158-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-62616-091-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-62616-159-7 (ebook)
1. United StatesMilitary policy. 2. National securityUnited States. 3. United StatesForeign relations19451989. 4. United StatesForeign relations1989 I. Gvosdev, Nikolas K., 1969 author. II. Owens, Mackubin Thomas, author. III. Title. IV. Title: United States foreign policy and defense strategy.
UA23.R464 2015
327.73--dc23

2014013043

Cover: Gore Studio Design
Cover Image: iStock/Gettey Images/earth maps courtesy of NASA: visibleearth.nasa.gov

Contents

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Tables

Acknowledgments

A project like this is a product of many years of teaching, researching, and writing about foreign policy and defense issues. We each owe gratitude to past editors and colleagues at the Atlantic Council, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, The National Interest, National Review, Orbis, and World Politics Review. The short pieces we published there gave rise to deeper understanding of international security issues represented in this book.

While we proved invaluable to each other during the writing and editing process, we are also grateful to several colleagues who reviewed early versions of these chapters. They include Tom Nichols and Dean Zezeus of the Naval War College and Chris Fettweis of Tulane University.

The staff of Georgetown University Press impressed us with the attention they provided us and the care they exercised during the editing process. In particular we thank Don Jacobs for his guidance and patience as we worked through the complexity of understanding US national security.

Finally, we are grateful to our colleagues and students at the Naval War College. Successive leaders of the college value our ability to think and write objectively, without outside pressure. They continue to reaffirm the importance of academic freedom and its support in the colleges role as the US Navys home of thought. While we wrote this book on our own time and do not represent any official position, we hope this book contributes to the public debate of national security issues.

Introduction

Shall we protect our interest by defense on this side of the water or by active participation in the lands across the ocean?

Nicholas Spykman, Americas Strategy in World Politics (1942)

Even though the United States possesses the worlds largest economy, its third largest population, and a very capable military, it has sometimes been described as an accidental superpower, as if its rise to a position of global leadership could not have been anticipated. According to this narrative, while other nations had a conscious desire to gain power in the international system, Americans preferred to be left alone and only reluctantly became involved in world affairs.

The reality is somewhat more complex. Because the American nation has been formed largely from continuous waves of immigration, there is no country in the world that does not touch us. We are a country of countries with a citizen in our ranks from every land. We are attached by a thousand cords to the world at large. It seems the spirit of self-reliance and risk-taking moved from the North American frontier farther afield, to many parts of the world. Historically the United States may not have been an interventionist power, but by the end of the nineteenth century it possessed a network of global economic and security interests and was very much connected to world affairs.

By then, the United States had already assumed the role of the regional hegemon throughout the Western Hemisphere and developed a military infrastructure sufficient to intervene throughout the region to defend American interests. Americas navy opened trade with Japan in 1855 and displaced the Spanish in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines in 1898. President Theodore Roosevelt brokered peace between the Russians and the Japanese in 1905, and President Woodrow Wilson laid the groundwork for the contemporary international system in 1918.

Incidental, not Accidental

While the US government itself was not structured to play a decisive and leading role in world affairs, American business and society were very active on the global stage. This meant that American involvement in international relations was usually a more informal process occurring through trade and political influence rather than through direct state action of territorial annexation through invasion.

By the start of the twentieth century, American political leaders recognized that the United States would have to play a growing role in the emerging international system. Both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson conceived of the United States as a great power that ought to take a leadership position in world affairs.

The failure of the US Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World War and created the League of Nations, has often been interpreted as the definitive resurgence of isolationism in US political thinking. Instead, as Bear F. Braumoeller has argued, the fight over the treaty should be understood

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