The Crusade of Illusions

Layne sees the subsequent Cold War in Europe as having been more about maintaining U.S. economic access and keeping the United States' NATO allies down than it was about keeping the Soviets out. And after the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States continued its quest for hegemony -- proof, according to Layne, that Washington had always had ambitions beyond just keeping Moscow from dominating Eurasia. These ambitions, Layne writes, are what explains the United States' present predicament as well. "Fundamentally, 9/11 was about geopolitics," he declares, "specifically about U.S. hegemony. ... It is American policies -- to be precise, American hegemony -- that make the United States a lightning rod for Muslim anger."

Given the costs, why has the United States worked so hard at maintaining an "open door" around the world? Layne points to a confluence of ideological fears and economic interests. Without presenting much evidence, he asserts that "the United States has pursued hegemony because that grand strategy has served the interests of the dominant elites that have formed the core of the U.S. foreign policy establishment since at least the late 1930s."

His account, however, is far too one-sided to convince, and Layne is wrong on many key issues. In his historical overview, he ignores the fact that the U.S. decision to withdraw from active participation in balancing power in Eurasia in the 1930s was a disaster, and that the U.S. victory in the Cold War came cheap compared to other historic contests for hegemony. Moreover, Stalin would never have accepted a deal to set up a truly independent Germany, because he rightly feared a rerun of World War II. And NATO was created because the Europeans pushed for it; if anyone was ambivalent about it, it was the U.S. Congress, which was reluctant to fund ongoing troop deployments abroad. More generally, Layne is right to worry that U.S. dominance may provoke resistance. But he overlooks the critical fact that during the Cold War, most states balanced against the weaker but more threatening Soviet Union, rather than against the stronger but more attractive United States. The result of such skewed historical judgments is that Layne unfairly dismisses the possibility that a consensual international order based on prudent, liberal American leadership could emerge.

LIBERALS ON THE CHEAP

Dueck's account is more differentiated and better explains the United States' current impasse. He argues that U.S. grand strategy has typically been marked by an ideological commitment to remake the world in the United States's own liberal self-image -- and by a countervailing urge to do it on the cheap. This cheapness, and the habit of what he calls "limiting liability," comes, according to Dueck, from tradition ("no foreign entanglements"), geography (the oceans make it feasible), and institutions (the brake exercised by Congress) -- all of which he lumps together as "culture." Dueck finds examples of this pattern throughout U.S. history: in Wilson's inability to secure U.S. membership in the League of Nations; in Truman's attempt, pre-1950, to contain the Soviet Union with inadequate military forces; in Bill Clinton's Bosnia policy; and in Bush's invasion of Iraq with a small army and no plan for the occupation.

Unlike Layne, Dueck not only expounds his main theme but also explains variations on it. He classifies strategic schools by their degree and type of liberalism and by the extent of their concern with limiting liability. Thus, for example, he considers Progressives (such as Henry Wallace and George McGovern) to be liberal idealists who seek to limit U.S. commitments abroad. Internationalists (Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, and John F. Kennedy) are liberals who expand U.S. commitments. Nationalists (Robert Taft and Jesse Helms) seek to limit liability and the relevance of liberal ideas in foreign affairs. And realists (Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge) also set aside liberal ideals in foreign affairs but are more willing to use force to compete for dominance abroad. According to Dueck, which school prevails at a given moment depends in part on the international situation: rising threats diminish the instinct to limit liability. In practice, this means that rising threats normally play into the hands of liberal internationalists, because realism does not resonate with the United States' liberal political culture.

Although he notes these general patterns, Dueck is not a determinist. He argues that the outcomes of struggles over grand strategy ultimately depend on electoral politics and how presidents shape options and build coalitions. He shows, for example, how Wilson's ideological framing of the peace issue and Republican political tactics in 1919 removed from consideration the perfectly plausible options of a more limited League of Nations or a postwar alliance with the United Kingdom and France, even though the realist Republican establishment favored such options.