US Grand Strategy in the 21st Century: The Case For Restraint (Routledge Global Security Studies)

This book challenges the dominant strategic culture and makes the case for restraint in US grand strategy in the 21st century. Grand strategy, meaning a state's theory about how it can achieve national security for itself, is elusive. That is particularly true in the United States, where the division of federal power and the lack of direct security threats limit consensus about how to manage danger. This book seeks to spur more vigorous debate on US grand strategy. To do so, the first half of the volume assembles the most recent academic critiques of primacy, the dominant strategic perspective in the United States today. The contributors challenge the notion that US national security requires a massive military, huge defense spending, and frequent military intervention around the world. The second half of the volume makes the positive case for a more restrained foreign policy by excavating the historical roots of restraint in the United States and illustrating how restraint might work in practice in the Middle East and elsewhere. The volume concludes with assessments of the political viability of foreign policy restraint in the United States today. This book will be of much interest to students of US foreign policy, grand strategy, national security, and International Relations in general. National interests, grand strategy, and the case for restraint / Benjamin H. Friedman and A. Trevor Thrall -- It's a trap! : security commitments and the risks of entrapment / Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson and David M. Edelstein -- Primacy and proliferation : why security commitments don't prevent nuclear weapons' spread / Brendan Rittenhouse Green -- Restraint and oil security / Eugene Gholz -- Does spreading democracy by force have a place in U.S. grand strategy? : a skeptical view / Alexander B. Downes and Jonathan Monten -- The tyrannies of distance : maritime Asia and the barriers to conquest / Patrick Porter -- Not so dangerous nation : U.S. foreign policy from the founding to the Spanish-American War / William Ruger -- The search for monsters to destroy : Theodore Roosevelt, Republican virtue, and the challenges of liberal democracy in an industrial society / Edward Rhodes -- Better balancing the Middle East / Emma Ashford -- Embracing threatlessness : U.S. military spending, Newt Gingrich, and the Costa Rica option / John Mueller -- Unrestrained : the politics of America's primacist foreign policy / Benjamin Friedman and Harvey Sapolsky -- Identifying the restraint constituency / A. Trevor Thrall