Strategic Restraint

Ezra Klein reads Roger Cohen's interview/column with Barack Obama and hears shades of John Ikenberry in Obama's thought. Due to the nature of the format it's a little hard for me to know exactly what Obama was trying to say, since it's impossible to see what Cohen was asking. But there really are some resonances with Ikenberry's concept of "strategic restraint." If you don't want to slog through After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars, you might want to check out something shorter like Ikenberry's brief rejoinder to Barry Posen in The National Interest or his Democracy article on the "Security Trap".

The basic point of all of this is that it won't really do for the United States to simply "do less" in the world. But as we've seen during the Bush years, the manic pursuit of "doing more" not only carries enormous costs, it actually fails to do any of the things it was supposed to do. The reason is that as we claim a wider-and-wider scope for unilateral action, efficacious American power becomes more and more threatening to more and more people. What's needed is a way to make American power something a critical mass of foreigners can welcome, and that means strategic restraint -- especially in the form of institutions that can become foci for international cooperation.

UPDATE: PS, Ezra's blog has a new URL as an official TAP Online product.

Comments

"The basic point of all of this is that it won't really do for the United States to simply "do less" in the world. But as we've seen during the Bush years, the manic pursuit of "doing more" not only carries enormous costs, it actually fails to do any of the things it was supposed to do. The reason is that as we claim a wider-and-wider scope for unilateral action, efficacious American power becomes more and more threatening to more and more people. What's needed is a way to make American power something a critical mass of foreigners can welcome, and that means strategic restraint -- especially in the form of institutions that can become foci for international cooperation."

Does anyone actually disagree with this?

I mean, I understand the yahoos of the other party disagree, but does anyone in the, for lack of a better term, reality based community question this basic idea?

Posted by Petey | December 10, 2007 10:59 AM

"The masters of the Roman world surrounded their throne with darkness, concealed their irresistible strength, and humbly professed themselves the accountable ministers of the senate, whose supreme decrees they dictated and obeyed." -- Gibbon

Strategic restraint is the only sound option for a great power in our current position. Our largest threat is not terrorism, but adverse coalitionism brought about by rocking the boat we profess to captain.

The next disturbance to the system should not come from us. That should be our pledge to the world.

Posted by JA | December 10, 2007 11:32 AM

"Does anyone actually disagree with this?"

Not only the yahoos, but much of the world. It's an interesting article of faith among liberals that the general world opinion of America was positive during the Clinton administration. Unfortunately, polls taken at the time reveal this not to be so. It's true that America's diplomatic relations were better 10 years ago, but the behavior of heads of state aren't really adequate reflections of the opinions of their countrymen.

Posted by Mark | December 10, 2007 11:35 AM

"The basic point of all of this is that it won't really do for the United States to simply "do less" in the world."

"Does anyone actually disagree with this?"

I don't understand what it means for the USA to "do less" in this context, but if it means what the clear meaning of the words appears to be, then yes, I disagree. I think it makes a lot of sense for the USA to "do less". A series of books, such as Chalmers Johnston's Blowback, have detailed many cases where US involvement in other countries has been in no-one's interest. I think the US should -- for its own safety, as well as the safety of the region -- be looking to dismantle its military bases in Europe, disentangle itself strategically from the Middle East as much as possible, and in general stop thinking that it's America's responsibility to solve every problem.

So yes, I think it really will do for the US to simply do less. And I think it should.

Posted by william | December 10, 2007 11:46 AM

To be pithier:

The basic point of all of this is that it won't really do for the United States to simply "do less" in the world.

I disagree: it will really do.

What's needed is a way to make American power something a critical mass of foreigners can welcome

Why? Why not just use it less?

The statement has it backwards, and I suppose what got my hackles up is the suggestion that having foreigners welcome American power is an end in itself. I'd prefer to put it as: what's needed is a way to ensure that American power is deployed only because it would be genuinely useful, not simply because it's there.

Posted by william | December 10, 2007 12:40 PM

"Strategic restraint" is actually Posen's term, and characterizes the position Ikenberry is criticizing. Ikenberry's idea is that the US must still lead the world, but lead by the the "provisioning" of rules and institutions. The difference between Ikenberry's form of liberal internationalism and neoconservatism comes down, I think, to this:

NEOCON: Do X or we'll blast you. Real men don't need no stinking badges.

LIBINT: Accept this rule that requires that you, and we, do X - or we'll blast you. (Or at least our military will blast you eventually. Here at Princeton we don't use words like "blast", but leave such talk to the brutes in the Pentagon.)

LIBINT is better. This internationalism is all fine, although the extent to which new and strengthened international rules and institutions that emerge in the next decade will be due to any American "provisioning", or will just be part of a broader process of rule-and-institution creation in which the United States is a participant remains to be seen. But FP intellectuals in America have a emotional need to believe that nothing good will happen in the world unless the US does it, and if we have to indulge these thinkers in their patriotic myths in order to get their support global progress, so be it.

Posted by Dan Kervick | December 10, 2007 1:34 PM

isn't ikenberry on Hillary's team?

Posted by pt | December 10, 2007 1:53 PM

"Accept this rule that requires that you, and we, do X - or we'll blast you."

That's a ridiculous summation of liberal internationalism, the gist of which is a strategy designed to entice countries to join a liberal international order in large part created by and tended to by the US and that consists of international organizations and other forms of mutual restraint. The idea is that you attempt to convince countries such as Russia, China and Iran that they have more to gain by joining the international community and abiding by its rules than in engaging in the policies that we find troubling or threatening. It is not alleged to be a perfect strategy, it may take awhile to effectuate and force never leaves the equation entirely, but it is nothing like the neocon strategy or the summary quoted above.

Posted by Chunche | December 10, 2007 3:44 PM

An interesting and helpful post. Thanks.

It may be true that "FP intellectuals in America have a (sic) emotional need to believe that nothing good will happen in the world unless the US does it". But it is DEFINITELY true that lots of bad things will happen if we determine that we need a "strategic restraint" that begins to behave like isolationism.

Right now "the provisioning of rules and institutions" seems more needed than at any other time since 1945, if not 1918.

Posted by Robert Powell | December 10, 2007 3:49 PM

I totally disagree (big surprise). Matt is an idiot here.

The US needs to do NOTHING. The US government needs to say, "We aren't going to do a damn thing from now on except deal with internal domestic matters. You want something done, go to the UN. If they TELL us to do something, we'll think about it and maybe assist. But we're not leading, we're not unilaterally doing anything, and we're not being the tool of anybody else's screwed up ideas.

Russia wants to be a "world power"? China? France? Britain? Be our guest. You've seen how they work in the past. Make up your own mind. We're staying home. All our troops everywhere in the world are coming home. We'll leave the Navy out there, of course - that's what they do.

But if you think this means you can slip one over on us, remember - threaten us, we'll kick your ass."

The US doesn't need to do a damn thing to "project power", "protect US interests", or any of that other code-word crap that simply means screw over other people for the benefit of our corporations and politicians.

The reality is that NOBODY else in the world is doing ANYTHING even REMOTELY as destabilizing as the US (with the exception of Israel, who is the primary destabilizing force in the ME.) Not Russia, not China, not the EU, not Iran, not anybody. The most any of those clowns do is mess around in some small area of a given region. Only the US is THE global destabilizing force on the planet.

The US needs to seriously go sit in the corner for about the next fifty years.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 10, 2007 7:34 PM

What the US wants to do - or should want to do - and what everyone else wants it to do, is return to its traditional role. Isolationism is out, what with global warming (and other problems) requiring international action that just won't happen without US leadership.

As a foreigner I never quite understood the carping in the US about international conventions (often drafted by the US) which "limited US power". Nor do I understand isolationism. You guys had such a great thing going. Rules were made with your interests taken into account a thousand times more than the interests of anyone else. And that was accepted, as a kind of trade-off, because no other country could assume the leadership role.

Isolationism? Fine with me, on condition that you manage to keep your carbon dioxide and all other pollution inside your own country's borders.

Posted by Hans B | December 10, 2007 8:25 PM

Exactly my point, Hans B. We need to clean up our own act before we can take ANY kind of "leadership" role in cleaning up anyone else's.

In fact, if everybody concerns themselves with cleaning up their own act, global warming won't be a problem. And from what I've read, about the only country that doesn't want to do that IS the US.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 11, 2007 3:19 AM