Skip to main content
May/June 2022 cover
Foreign Affairs Magazine Homepage
Subscribe
Explore Subscribe
  • All Articles
  • Books & Reviews
  • Anthologies
  • Author Directory
  • This Day in History
  • Events
  • Biden Administration
  • War in Ukraine
  • Coronavirus
  • Climate Change
  • Cybersecurity
  • Nationalism
  • Democratization
  • Economics
  • Globalization
  • Migration
  • U.S. Foreign Policy
  • War & Military Strategy
  • United States
  • Ukraine
  • Russia
  • China
  • Iran
  • North Korea
  • United Kingdom
  • India
  • Afghanistan
  • Ethiopia
  • Essays
  • Snapshots
  • Articles with Audio
  • Capsule Reviews
  • Review Essays
  • Ask the Experts
  • Reading Lists
  • Interviews
  • Responses
  • 1920s
  • 1930s
  • 1940s
  • 1950s
  • 1960s
  • 1970s
  • 1980s
  • 1990s
  • 2000s
  • 2010s
  • 2020s
  • Newsletters
  • Customer Service
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Subscriber Resources
  • Feedback
  • Institutional Subscriptions
  • Gift a Subscription
  • Centennial
  • Contact
  • Advertise

Follow Us

Foreign Affairs Magazine Homepage
Explore
My Account Sign In

  • Current Issue
  • Archive
  • Books & Reviews
  • Anthologies
  • Newsletters
Search
Subscribe
Subscribe Sign in
Subscribe to newsletter
No, thanks
May/June 2019 Issue

Searching for a Strategy

Searching for a Strategy
  • May/June 2019
  • 01 This Time Is Different
  • 02 The Open World
  • 03 The End of Hubris
  • 04 Back to Basics

What’s Inside

Four experts stage an intervention to rescue U.S. grand strategy.

May/June 2019
Sign in and save to read later
Share
Print this article
Save
Share on Twitter
Share on Facebook
Send by email
Get a link
Request Reprint Permissions

This package has the feel of an intervention—a group attempt to deliver a sobering message to someone in real trouble who refuses to admit it.

Daniel Drezner explains why we are all here. The time has come to face facts. American hegemony is not coming back, at least not in a form recognizable to those who knew it when. (Talleyrand said that only those who came of age before the revolution could understand how sweet life could be.) U.S. hard power is in relative decline, U.S. soft power has taken a huge hit, and from now on, American foreign policy is likely to be a plaything kicked around in the nursery of American domestic politics. So the managers of the empire need to wake up. Things have to change.

Mira Rapp-Hooper and Rebecca Friedman Lissner then offer some tough love. Washington has to abandon its post–Cold War fantasies of liberalism marching inexorably forward to certain global triumph. It should temper its ambitions, lower its sights, and focus on promoting freedom and openness within the international system where it can.

Stephen Walt can’t resist gloating. Realists have been warning about overreach for a generation, but nobody listened. Now the warnings seem prescient. And frankly, the loss of hegemony shouldn’t be mourned, because it was never the right strategy for the country anyway. Offshore balancing always made more sense than global domination, even when the United States could afford to try the latter. Now it can’t, so the choice should be obvious.

Kori Schake closes on a more supportive note. The situation may not be as irreversibly dire as all of this suggests. There’s still a chance for the United States to regain its footing, shore up the liberal international order, and get the world back on track. But it’s only a chance, and even that has to start with an honest assessment of just how bad things have gotten.

Interventions are never pleasant. But sometimes the message gets through. And the first step is acknowledging the problem.

More:
Politics & Society

Most-Read Articles

A Fight Over Taiwan Could Go Nuclear

War-Gaming Reveals How a U.S.-Chinese Conflict Might Escalate

Stacie L. Pettyjohn and Becca Wasser

Foreign Affairs: 100 Years

The Clash of Civilizations?

Samuel P. Huntington

The Russian Military’s People Problem

It’s Hard for Moscow to Win While Mistreating Its Soldiers

Dara Massicot

What Is China Learning From Russia’s War in Ukraine?

America and Taiwan Need to Grasp—and Influence—Chinese Views of the Conflict

David Sacks

Get the Magazine

Save up to 55%

on Foreign Affairs magazine!
Subscribe

Foreign Affairs

Weekly Newsletter

Get in-depth analysis delivered right to your inbox

About

About Us Staff Events Work at Foreign Affairs

Contact

Customer Service Contact Us Submissions Permissions Advertise Press Center Leave Us Feedback Frequently Asked Questions

Subscription

Subscriptions Group Subscriptions My Account Give a Gift Donate Download iOS App Newsletters Download Android App

Follow

Graduate School Forum

Council on Foreign Relations

From the
publishers of
Foreign Affairs

The Most:

Recent Shared Viewed

Women This Week: UN Says Ukrainian Refugees in Poland Need Abortion Access

Cyber Week in Review: May 20, 2022

by Adam Segal

What Lebanon’s Election Results Mean for Ending Its Crisis

by Kali Robinson

The Link Between Foreign Languages and U.S. National Security

Aung San Suu Kyi’s Major Speech on Rakhine State

by Joshua Kurlantzick

Creating a State Department Office for American State and Local Diplomacy

by Alyssa Ayres

Books & Reports

The U.S. War in Afghanistan

by Zachary Laub

The 2020 Election by the Numbers

by James M. Lindsay

Published by the Council on Foreign Relations

Privacy Policy Terms of Use

©2022 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This site uses cookies to improve your user experience. Click here to learn more.

Loading Loading