America as a Model for the World?

A Foreign Policy Perspective

Author(s): Kenneth N. Waltz
Reviewed work(s):
Source: PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Dec., 1991), pp. 667-670
Published by: American Political Science Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/419401 .
Accessed: 08/03/2013 05:40
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
.
American Political Science Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
PS: Political Science and Politics.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded on Fri, 8 Mar 2013 05:40:35 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
America as a Model for the World?
8.
My
calculations from World Resources
1990-91: A
Report by The World Resources
Institute
(New
York: Oxford
University Press,
1990),
table 16.3.
9. More than 90% of homicides in the US
are intra-racial. On trends and differentials in
homicide rates see
my
"Historical Trends in
Violent Crime:
Europe
and the United States,"
in T. R. Gurr, ed.,
Violence in America: The
History of Crime (Newbury Park, CA:
Sage,
1989):
21-54.
About the Author
Ted Robert Gurr
Ted Robert
Gurr, who
formerly taught at
Northwestern
University
and the
University
of Colorado, joined
the
University
of
Mary-
land
faculty
in 1989 as
professor
of
govern-
ment and
politics
and
Distinguished
Scholar
of the Center for International
Development
and Conflict
Management. Among
his 15
books and mono-
graphs are Why Men
Rebel, which won
the APSA's Wood-
row Wilson Prize as
the best book of
1970, and the forth-
coming Minorities at
Risk: Dynamics and
Outcomes of Ethno-
political Conflict in
the Contemporary
World.
America as a Model for the World?
A
Foreign Policy Perspective
Kenneth N.
Waltz, University
of
California, Berkeley
If
the United
States,
or if
any
country,
could serve as a model for
the
world,
we would have to believe
that most of the
impetus
behind
foreign policies
is
internally
generated.
But if the
foreign policies
of nations are affected in
important
ways by
the
placement
of countries
in the
international-political system,
or more
simply by
their relative
power,
then no
country
can ade-
quately
serve as a model for others.
I. How the Placement of
States Affects Their Policies
Because
throughout
most of the
years
since the second World War
the United States and the Soviet
Union were
similarly placed by
their
power,
their external behaviors
should have shown
striking
similarities. Did
they? Yes,
more
than has
usually
been realized. The
behavior of states can be
compared
on
many
counts. Their armament
policies
and their interventions
abroad are two of the most
revealing.
On the former
count,
the
United States in the
early
1960s
undertook the
largest strategic
and
conventional
peace-time military
build-up
the world has
yet
seen. We
did so even as Khrushchev was
trying
at once to
carry through
a
major
reduction in the conventional forces
and to follow a
strategy
of minimum
deterrence,
and we did so even
though
the balance of
strategic
weapons greatly
favored the United
States. As one should have
expected,
the Soviet Union soon followed in
America's
footsteps,
thus
restoring
the
symmetry
of
great-power
behavior. And so it was
through
most of the
years
of the Cold War.
Advances made
by
one were
quickly
followed
by
the
other,
with the
United States almost
always leading
the
way. Allowing
for
geographic
differences,
the overall
similarity
of
their forces was
apparent. The
ground
forces of the Soviet Union
were
stronger
than those of the
United States, but in naval forces the
balance of
advantage
was reversed.
The Soviet Union's
largely
coastal
navy gradually
became more of a
blue-water fleet, but one of limited
reach. Its
navy
never had more than
half the
tonnage
of ours. Year after
year,
NATO countries
spent
more on
defense than the Warsaw Treaty
Organization
countries
did, but their
The battle of
Quasinias
near
Santiago,
June 1898.
Lithograph by
Kurz & Allison, 1898.
Library
of
Congress.
December 1991 667
This content downloaded on Fri, 8 Mar 2013 05:40:35 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
In Focus
Decatur's conflict with the
Algerine
at
Tripoli.
Illustration
by Chappel. Library
of
Congress.
troops
remained
roughly equal
in
numbers.
The
military
forces of the United
States and the Soviet Union
remained in
rough balance, and,
as
we should have
expected,
their mili-
tary
doctrines
converged.
We accused
them of
favoring war-fighting
over
deterrent
doctrines,
while we
developed
a
war-fighting
doctrine in
the name of deterrence. From the
1960s
onward,
critics of our
military
policy urged
the United States to
"reconstitute its usable
war-fighting
capability."
Before he became Secre-
tary
of
Defense,
Melvin R. Laird
wrote that "American
strategy
must
aim at
fighting, winning,
and
recovering,"
a
strategy
that
requires
the
ability
to
wage
nuclear war and
the
willingness
to strike first. One
can
multiply military
and civilian
statements to similar effect over the
decades.
Especially
in the 1970s and
1980s,
we accused the Soviet Union
of
striving
for
military superiority.
In
turn,
the
Republican platform
of
1980
pledged
that a
Republican
administration would reestablish
American
strategic "superiority."'
Ronald
Reagan
as
president
softened
the
aspiration
without
eliminating
it
by making
it his
goal
to establish a
"margin
of
safety"
for the United
States
militarily. Military competi-
tion between the two countries
produced
its
expected
result: the
similarity
of forces and doctrines.
Comparison
on the second
count,
interventionist
behavior, requires
some discussion because our convic-
tion that the United States has been
the status
quo,
and the Soviet Union
the
interventionist, country
distorts
our view of
reality.
The United
States,
like the Soviet
Union,
has
often intervened in others' affairs
and has
spent
a fair amount of time
fighting peripheral
wars. Most
Americans saw little need to
explain
our
actions,
assumed to have been in
the
pursuit
of
legitimate
national
interests and of international
justice,
and little
difficulty
in
explaining
the
Soviet
Union's,
assumed to have
been aimed at
spreading
communism
across the
globe by any
means avail-
able. Americans
usually interpreted
the Soviet Union's behavior in terms
of its
presumed intentions. Intentions
aside,
our and their actions have
been similar. The United
States,
for
example,
intervened
militarily
to
defend client states and
supported
their ambitions to
expand
in
China,
Korea,
and Vietnam. The Soviet
Union,
for
example,
acted in
Afghanistan
as we did in Vietnam
and intervened
directly
or
indirectly
in
Angola, Mozambique,
and
Ethiopia.
Before World War
II,
both the
United States and the Soviet Union
had
developed ideologies
that could
easily propel
them to unilateral
action in the name of international
duty:
interventionist liberalism in the
one
country,
international
communism in the other. Neither,
however, widely exported
its
ideology
earlier. The
post
war
foreign policies
of neither
country
can be understood
aside from the
changed
structure of
international
politics, exercising
its
pressures
and
providing
its
oppor-
tunities. More so than the Soviet
Union, the United States has acted
all over the
globe
in the name of its
own
security
and the world's well-
being. Thus, Blechman and
Kaplan
found that in
roughly
30
years
following
1946 the
government
of the
United States used military means in
one
way
or another to intervene in
the affairs of other countries about
twice as often as did the Soviet
Union.2
II. The
Implications
of
Unbalanced Power
Francoise
Fen6lon,
who lived
from 1651 to
1715,
was a French
theologian
and
political
adviser and
one of the first to understand
balance of
power
as a
general
phenomenon
rather than as
merely
a
particular
condition. He
argued
that
a
country disposing
of
greater power
than others do cannot
long
be
expected
to behave with
decency
and
moderation.3 His theorem has been
Vietnam 1967:
Operation
Baker. Photo
by
SSG.
Breedlove, USAPA.
668 PS: Political Science & Politics
This content downloaded on Fri, 8 Mar 2013 05:40:35 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
America as a Model for the World?
well illustrated
by
such
powerful
rulers as Charles
V,
Louis
XIV,
Napoleon,
and Kaiser Wilhelm II.
There was not
necessarily something
wrong
with the character of those
rulers or of their countries. At a
minimum,
it was a
surplus
of
power
that
tempted
them to
arbitrary
and
arrogant
behavior.
So
long
as the world was
bipolar,
the United States and the Soviet
Union held each other in check.
With the
crumbling
of the Soviet
Union,
no
country
or set of countries
can
presently
restore a balance. One
expects
two results to follow.
Despite
abundant
good intentions,
the United
States will often act in accordance
with
F6n6lon's
theorem. Balance of
power theory
leads one to
predict
that other
states,
if
they
have a
choice,
will flock to the weaker
side,
for it is the
stronger
side that
threatens them.
In recent
years
have we seen what
theory
leads us to
expect?
A few
examples
will
help
to answer the
question.
President
Reagan,
when
asked at a
press
conference how
long
we would continue to
support
the
Contra's effort to overthrow the
Nicaraguan government, began
to
give
a
fumbling
answer.
Then,
impatient
with
himself,
he said: Oh
well,
until
they say
"uncle." Vice
President Bush in
February
of 1985
explained
the
meaning
of "uncle."
He laid seven
stipulations upon
the
Nicaraguan government,
which in
sum amounted to
saying
that until
Nicaragua developed
a
government
and
society
much like ours we would
continue to
support
the
opposition.4
Senior officials in the
Reagan
administration elevated the
right
to
intervene to the level of
general
principle.
As one of them
said,
we
"debated whether we had the right
to dictate the form of another
country's government. The bottom
line was yes, that some rights are
more fundamental than the right of
nations to nonintervention, like the
rights of individual people
....
[W]e
don't have the right to subvert a
democratic government but we do
have the right against an undemo-
cratic
one."5
In
managing so much
of the world's business for so long,
the United States developed a rage to
rule, which our position in the world
now enables us to
indtulge.
Thus,
Charles Krauthammer looks forward
to an
overwhelmingly powerful
America
"unashamedly laying
down
the rules of world order and
being
prepared
to enforce them."6
Seeming
to reflect the same
spirit,
President
Bush,
in a
speech
of
August 2, 1990,
a
speech
lost in the excitement of
Iraq's
invasion of
Kuwait,
announced that we would
prepare
for
regional
threats "in whatever
corner of the
globe they may
occur."
But how do threats
arising
in odd
corners of the
globe
constitute
dangers
for
us,
and how
many
threats of what sort would we need
to
prepare
to meet if our concern
were to
protect only
our vital
interests?
With
benign intent, the
United States has
behaved,
and until its
power
is
brought
into a
semblance
of balance,
will
continue to behave in
ways
that
annoy
and
frighten
others.
The
powerful
state
may,
and the
United States
does,
think of itself as
acting
for the sake of
peace, justice,
and
well-being
in the world. But
these terms will be defined to the
liking
of the
powerful,
which
may
conflict with the
preferences
and the
interests of others. In international
politics, overwhelming power repels
and leads others to
try
to balance
against
it. With
benign intent,
the
United States has
behaved,
and until
its
power
is
brought
into a semblance
of
balance,
will continue to behave in
ways
that
annoy
and
frighten
others.
America's
management
of the war
against Iraq,
and the
subsequent
reaction of
others, provide telling
examples.
The United States
skillfully
forged
a wide coalition of states in
opposition
to
Iraq's
invasion of
Kuwait, but the United States
opposed
the efforts of France and
others to find a
peaceful
settlement
along
the
way.
The United States
pressed
other states to
agree
that the
embargo
would
expire
on
January
15,
unless
Iraq complied
with the
United Nations' resolutions, when
many
other states
preferred to
give
the embargo more time to work. The
United States chose the day when the
war should
begin
and determined
how it should be
fought, raining
well
more destruction from the air than
immediate
military objectives
required.
Many
states reacted as one would
expect to America's
making the
decisions. I
give only
a few
examples.
Philippine foreign
minister Raul
Manglapus
called the United States
"constable of the world" and
wondered whether "it was
necessary
or even if it is just" for America to
impose
a new world order. Professor
Sakuji
Yoshimura of Waseda Univer-
sity expressed
his distress this
way:
"America is a
mighty country-and
a
frightening
one . .. for better or
worse the Gulf war built a new world
order with America at the head ...
this will be fine as
long
as the rest of
the world
accepts
its role as
America's
underlings."
An
opposi-
tion member of the
Diet, Masao
Kunihiro,
observed that the
"feeling
that America is a fiercesome
country
is
growing
in
Japan."'7
In
France,
fears of American
imperialism
were
widely expressed
and debated. In
early September
of 1991
foreign
minister Roland Dumas remarked
that "American
might reigns
without
balancing weight,"
and
Jacques
Delors, president
of the
European
Community Commission, cautioned
that the United States must not take
charge
of the world. Both of them
called on the United Nations and the
European Community
to counter-
balance American influence."
Professor Michael
Doyle
has
shown that
rarely
do democracies
fight democracies,
but adds
rightly
that
they fight plenty
of wars
against
undemocratic states. The first
generalization is not as strong as
many have thought it to be. Not only
was Germany a
democracy in 1914
but also its being a democracy helped
to explain the outbreak of war. As
Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg
lamented before the event, interests
supporting the ruling majority
pushed for policies sure to
accumulate enemies for Germany.
Junkers in the east demanded a tariff
against Russian grain. Industrial
interests in the northwest supported
the Berlin to Baghdad railroad and
December 1991 669
This content downloaded on Fri, 8 Mar 2013 05:40:35 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
In Focus
the
building
of a battlefleet that
could
challenge
the British
navy.
Russia and Britain were
annoyed
and
frightened by
German
policies
that
helped
to
forge
and
strengthen
the
Triple Entente,
which in turn made
German
political
and
military
leaders
entertain
thoughts
of
fighting
a
preventive
war before the enemies of
Germany
would become still
stronger.
One
might
add that in 1812
the United States chose to
fight
a
war
against
the
only
other
country
that could then be called
democratic,
and that later in the
century
the
northern American
democracy
fought
the southern one.
Still, peace
has
prevailed
much
more
reliably among
democratic
countries than elsewhere. On external
as well as on internal
grounds,
I
hope
that more countries will become
democratic.
III. Conclusion
Yet for all of the reasons
given
above,
we cannot take America or
any
other
country
as a model for the
world. We
might
remind ourselves
that in the
past
decade alone we have
initiated three wars
beginning
with
the one
against
Grenada and
ending
with the one
against Iraq.
In the
intervening
war
against Panama,
we
not
only
violated international law
but we violated laws that we had
largely
written:
namely,
the charter
of the
Organization
of American
States. I believe that America is
better than most
nations,
I fear that
it is not as much better as
many
Americans believe. In international
politics,
unbalanced
power
consti-
tutes a
danger
even when it is
American
power
that is out of
balance.
Notes
1. Melvin R. Laird,
A House Divided:
America's
Strategy Gap (Chicago: Henery
Regney, 1962), pp. 53, 78-79.
2.
Barry
Blechman and
Stephen
S.
Kaplan,
Force without War: U.S. Armed Forces as a
Political Instrument
(Washington: Brookings
Institution, 1978).
3. Herbert Butterfield,
"The Balance of
Power,"
in Butterfield and Martin
Wight,
eds., Diplomatic Investigations (London:
George
Allen & Unwin, 1966), p.
140.
4.
"Excerpts
from Remarks
by
Vice Presi-
dent
George Bush," Press Release, Austin,
Texas, February 18, 1985.
5.
Quoted
in Robert W.
Tucker,
Interven-
tion and the
Reagan Doctrine, (New
York:
Council on
Religion
and International
Affairs,
1985), p. 5.
6. In
Christopher Layne,
"The
Unipolar
Illusion: American
Foreign Policy
in the Post
Cold War World." Presented to the
Washington Strategy Seminar, April 25, 1991,
p.
21.
7. Quotations are from ibid., pp. 21-22.
8. New York Times, "France to U.S.: Don't
Rule," September 3, 1991, p. A8 (no byline).
About the Author
Kenneth N. Waltz
Kenneth N. Waltz
is the Ford Professor
of International
Relations at the Uni-
versity
of California
at
Berkeley.
He was
the
president
of
APSA,
1987-88.
Politics,
Political Science and the
Public Interest
Norton E.
Long, University of
Missouri-St. Louis
Editor's Note: Norton E.
Long,
Professor Emeritus, University of
Missouri,
St.
Louis,
was awarded the
1991 John Gaus Award
honoring
a
lifetime of exemplary scholarship
in
the
joint
tradition
of political
science
and,
more
generally,
to
recognize
achievement and
encourage
scholar-
ship
in
public
administration.
The award committee was chaired
by
John A.
Rohr, Virginia Poly-
technic Institute and State
University,
and included
Harry Bailey, Temple
University;
Jeane J.
Kirkpatrick,
American
Enterprise
Institute and
Georgetown University.
The
following
is the annual Gaus
lecture
presented by
Norton E.
Long
during
the 87th Annual
Meeting.
Marx said
up
to now the
philoso-
phers
have
merely interpreted
the
world. The
important thing
is to
change
it. We think
politics
and
political
institutions are
important
and
worthy
of
study
because to an
important degree they
can for
good
or ill
change
the world we live in.
The
study
of
politics
one
might hope
would
yield knowledge
that
might
permit
and
encourage change
in the
practice
of
politics
that would
improve
the human condition.
In the twenties the
study
of
politics
and
political
institutions was
just
emerging
as a
separate discipline
from
history,
law and
philosophy.
The
departments
at Columbia and
Harvard were named
public
law and
Norton E. Long
670
PS: Political Science & Politics
This content downloaded on Fri, 8 Mar 2013 05:40:35 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions