Chapter One: Power and restraint in American history

Abstract

The struggle not just to define but also to preserve American power is no modern phenomenon: questions of intervention and projection have dominated the nation's politics from the days of the Founding Fathers. Then, as now, the old centres of power were shifting. Nor is economic stress an unfamiliar factor for policymakers. As another presidential election looms, America's role in global affairs and security has emerged as one of the campaign's great battle lines.

But in 2012, domestic political and economic problems are compounded by the ongoing financial crisis in Europe, which, together with the overstretch and fatigue from two wars, has sapped the strength of America's chief allies. While it may urge its NATO partners to shoulder more of the security burden, the US finds them less willing and occasionally unable to share the strain. This Adelphi examines the myriad challenges America must confront if it is to uphold and spread its values and interests.

Notes

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (London: Penguin Books, 2009), pp. 120–22.

John L. Harper, ‘Anatomy of a Habit: America's Unnecessary Wars’, Survival, vol. 47, no. 2, Summer 2005, pp. 47–86 (2005).

Robert Kagan, Dangerous Nation: American and the World, 1600–1898 (London: Atlantic Books, 2006), pp. 224–5.

Ibid., p. 42.

Gary Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992). The Gettysburg Address was part of a dedication ceremony for the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The cemetery was the final resting place for up to 51,000 soldiers from both the Union and the Confederate armies, who had fallen four months earlier in the Battle of Gettysburg, when Lincoln's generals halted the Confederates' invasion of the north and began to turn the tide of the war.

From a speech by John Quincy Adams, to mark Independence Day in 1821, available at http://www.fff.org/comment/AdamsPolicy.asp.

Our thinking on the geopolitical importance of a unified United States has been influenced by conversations with a number of colleagues including, notably, Steven Simon.

Kagan, Dangerous Nation, p. 226.

Robert Kagan, ‘The World and President Bush’, Survival, vol. 43, no. 1, Spring 2001, p. 8.

John L. Harper, American Visions of Europe: Franklin D. Roosevelt, George F. Kennan, and Dean G. Acheson (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 35.

John L. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 11.

Harper, American visions of Europe, p. 60.

Ibid., pp. 245, 262, 269.

Ibid., pp. 275, 276.

Harry S. Truman, speech delivered 12 March 1947 before a Joint Session of Congress, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/harrystrumantrumandoctrine.html.

George F. Kennan, Memoirs 1925–50 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), p. 326.

Ibid., p. 322.

Fredrik Stanton, Great Negotiations: Agreements That Changed the Modern World (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2010), pp. 23–44.

John L. Harper, American Machiavelli: Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of U.S. Foreign Policy (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 75–87.

Speech by James Madison at the Constitutional Convention, 29 June 1787, from Max Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 1 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1911), p. 465.

Whether brave or foolhardy, Taft's devotion to principle made a favourable impression on at least one major figure from the opposing party; see John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage (New York: Pocket Edition, 1961), p. 185.

Kennan, Memoirs 1925–50, p. 50.

Telegram from The Chargé in the Soviet Union to the Secretary of State, 22 February 1946, quoted in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946, vol. vi (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1969), p. 706.

Kennan, Memoirs 1925–50, p. 411.

Harper, American Visions of Europe, p. 337.

David P. Calleo, Beyond American Hegemony: the Future of the Western Alliance (New York: Perseus, 1989), p. 33.

‘Gallic logic often tempted him to carry his postulates to extremes unnecessarily wounding to Americans’, Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston, MA and Toronto, ON: Little, Brown & Company, 1979), p. 104.

After the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, for example, Berlin's SocialDemocratic mayor Willy Brandt wrote to Kennedy, saying: ‘Inaction or merely defensive action could provoke a crisis of confidence in the Western powers.’ Later, Brandt summarised the episode acidly: ‘The Soviet Union had defied the major power in the Western world and effectively humiliated it.’ See Dana H. Allin, Cold War Illusions: America, Europe and Soviet Power, 1969–1989 (New York: St. Martin's, 1997) p. 20.

Dana H. Allin, ‘De Gaulle and American Power’, in Benjamin M. Rowland (ed.), Charles de Gaulle's Legacy of Ideas (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011), p. 100.

Remarks by Dr Condoleezza Rice, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, 26 June 2003, available at http://www.iiss.org/recent-key-addresses/condoleezza-rice-address/.

William Pfaff, ‘The American Mission?’, New York Review of Books, vol. 51, no.6, 8 April 2004; David P. Calleo, ‘The Broken West’, Survival, vol. 46, no.3, Autmn 2004, p. 33.

De Gaulle, cited in David P. Calleo, Europe's Future: The Grand Alternatives (New York: Horizon Press, 1965), p. 117

Charles de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, 1940–46, Vol. 2: Unity (New York: Simon & Schuster 1964), pp. 573–4.

John L. Harper, ‘The Road to Phnom Penh – De Gaulle, The Americans and Vietnam 1944– 1966’, in Rowland (ed.), Charles de Gaulle's Legacy of Ideas, p. 54.

Richard M. Nixon, ‘U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970s: A New Strategy for Peace’, Report to Congress, 18 February 1970 , p. 7.

Dana H. Allin and Steven Simon, The Sixth Crisis: Iran, Israel, America and the Rumours of War (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 30.

William Greider, Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country (New York: Touchstone, 1989), pp. 396, 397 and 400.

Greider, Secrets of the Temple, pp. 354, 541–2, 574–5.

Dana H. Allin, Cold War Illusions (New York: St Martin's Press, 1995), p. 174.

James M. Goldgeir, Not Whether But When: The U.S. Decision to enlarge NATO (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1999), p. 142.

Martin Indyk, Graham Fuller, Anthony Cordesman and Phebe Marr, ‘Symposium on Dual Containment: US Policy Towards Iran and Iraq’, Middle East Policy, vol.3, no.1, March 1994, pp. 1–26.

‘Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber – a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms – our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.’ George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, 20 September 2001, http://georgewbushwhitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html.

Francis Fukuyama, ‘Invasion of the Isolationists’, New York Times, 31 August 2005.

An American presidential election comprises 50 separate state elections (plus the District of Columbia). Each state has a number of electoral college votes allocated roughly in proportion to its population, and the candidate with the plurality of votes in that state (with two exceptions) wins all its electoral votes. In theory, this means that the loser of the nationwide popular vote can win a majority of electoral votes, and hence the election, as occurred in 2000.

For a brilliant cultural history, see Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribner, 2008).

George McGovern, Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, 14 July 1972, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25967#axzz1to22VRxA.

Total US defence spending (in inflation-adjusted dollars) has reached levels not seen since the Second World War, when the United States had 12 million people under arms and waged wars on three continents. Moreover, the US share of global military expenditure has jumped from about a third to about half since 2000. Some of this growth can be attributed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the baseline or regular defence budget has also increased significantly. It has grown in real terms for an unprecedented 13 straight years, and it is now $100 billion above what the nation spent on average during the Cold War. The fiscal year 2012 budget request of $553bn is approximately the same level as Ronald Reagan's FY 1986 budget. See http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/07/historical_defense_budget.html.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, farewell address, 17 January 1961, at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp.

J.L. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 164; Lawrence J. Korb, Laura Conley and Alex Rothman, ‘A Historical Perspective on Defense Budgets’, Center for American Progress, 6 July 2011, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/07/historical_defense_budget.html.

John F. Kennedy, The Strategy of Peace (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), pp. 37–8.

David P. Calleo, Beyond American Hegemony: The Future of the Western Alliance (New York: Basic Books, 1987), pp. 72–3.

David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Ballantyne Books, [25th anniversary edition], 1992).

Gordon M. Goldstein, Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam (New York: Henry Holt & company, 2008), pp. 229–49.

The ‘security dilemma’ arises when one country takes actions in response to perceived threats to its security that are in turn perceived by a second country as threats to its own security. The second country may then take actions that further threaten the security of the first – whose initial actions thus have the opposite of their intended effect. Yet neither side can afford not to respond to security threats. This can result in arms races or other forms of spiralling insecurity, and in the extreme case, in the outbreak of war.

Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), pp. 305–6.

President John F. Kennedy, Commencement Address at American University, Washington DC, 10 June 1963, http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/JFK-Speeches/CommencementAddress-at-American-UniversityJune-10-1963.aspx.

Allin, Cold War Illusions, pp. 53–8.

Kennan, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 367.

Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, p. 283.

Henry Kissinger, White House Years (London: Little, Brown & Company, 1988), pp. 104–11; Kissinger, ‘Central Issues of American Foreign Policy’, in Kermit Gordon (ed.), Agenda for the Nation (Washington DC: The Brookings Institution, 1968), p. 40.

Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1982), pp. 897–8.

Ibid., p. 460.

The extent of that alignment was impressive, and disquieting: ‘US companies sold Iraq precursors useable for chemical weapons, while Washington helped Baghdad locate third-country sources for the purchase of weapons, such as cluster bombs, that the United States was unable to provide; provided satellite intelligence on the positioning of Iran's forces; and reflagged and protected Kuwaiti oil tankers after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps started to attack the Gulf Arab shipping that was helping to finance Iraq's war effort. Moreover, in an ugly irony, given Washington's later indignation about Saddam's “weapons of mass destruction”, the Reagan administration in effect condoned Iraq's strategically significant use of chemical weapons against Iraq.’ Allin and Simon, The Sixth Crisis, pp. 25–7.

George P. Shultz, ‘Terrorism and the Modern World’, US State Department Bulletin, December 1984, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1079/is_v84/ai_3536847/pg_3/; Charles Krauthammer, ‘Only in Their Dreams’, Time, December 2001, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101011224188565,00.html.

John Harper review of Marvin Kalb and Deborah Kalb, Haunting Legacy: Vietnam and the American Presidency from Ford to Obama, in Survival, vol. 53, no. 6, December 2011–January 2012, p. 209.

Colin Powell, ‘Why Generals Get Nervous’, New York Times, 8 October 1992, Late Edition – Final , p. A 35.

Dana H. Allin, NATO's Balkan Interventions, Adelphi Paper 347 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the IISS, 2002), pp. 36–40.