AMERICA’S RECENT EFFORTS to manage and shape world politics have not made the United States safer or richer, and they have not advanced its core political values. On the contrary, U.S. foreign policy has multiplied enemies and destabilized key regions of the world, wasted thousands of lives and trillions of dollars in failed wars, led to serious human rights abuses abroad, and compromised important civil liberties.
This book has sought to explain why. These failures occurred and persisted because both Democrats and Republicans have pursued a misguided strategy of liberal hegemony. The strategy has repeatedly failed to deliver as promised, yet the foreign policy establishment remains deeply committed to it.
Donald Trump challenged this consensus when he ran for office and tried—however haphazardly—to change course. But he lacked the acumen, discipline, and political support to pull off a judicious revision in U.S. foreign policy, and his inept handling of these issues has undermined U.S. influence without lightening America’s burdens. Trump may have been largely correct when he called U.S. foreign policy “a complete and total disaster,” but he failed to develop a coherent alternative to liberal hegemony, and his errors in judgment, poor personnel choices, and ill-advised decisions only made things worse.
COUNTERARGUMENTS
Even those who recognize that U.S. foreign policy has been less than perfect might object to my indictment of America’s recent efforts and my explanation for these failings. One could argue, for example, that U.S. foreign policy is no worse today than it was in the past. The United States was slow to recognize the dangers of fascism in the 1940s, and then it overreacted to the threat of communism after World War II. The “best and the brightest” in the old Eastern establishment led the country into a futile war in Indochina and stayed there far too long, simultaneously mismanaging events in the Middle East and backing assorted unsavory dictators solely because they claimed to be anticommunist. From this perspective, U.S. foreign policy is as good (or bad) as it ever was, and its recent missteps have little to do with America’s dominant position or the foreign policy community’s commitment to liberal hegemony.
There is an element of truth in this position, insofar as past U.S. leaders made their own share of blunders. But the overall performance of some previous administrations was still impressive, especially when one considers that they were dealing either with formidable expansionist powers (Germany or Japan in the two world wars) or confronting a continent-size, nuclear-armed superpower whose revolutionary ideology attracted considerable support around the globe. U.S. leaders may have exaggerated the danger that international communism posed, but the threat was hardly imaginary. For more than forty years, both Republicans and Democrats focused laserlike on containing and eliminating the Soviet rival while avoiding all-out war, and they used a combination of economic, military, and diplomatic tools to achieve a peaceful victory. They made their full share of mistakes—of which Vietnam was the worst—but they also got many big things right. For all their failings, the record is better than the parade of missed opportunities and self-inflicted wounds recorded by the four post–Cold War presidents.
Defenders of U.S. foreign policy might also argue that other countries have done even worse. U.S. officials may have mishandled the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, walked open-eyed into quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq, and failed to build constructive relations with Russia, etc., but they still did a lot better than Muammar Gaddafi of Libya (who was overthrown by a foreign intervention and eventually killed), Saddam Hussein of Iraq (who lost three wars and was eventually executed by his successors), or Recep Erdogan of Turkey (whose country went from “zero problems with neighbors” a decade ago to problems with virtually all of them today). America’s foreign policy mandarins may stumble with some frequency, but maybe that is because they keep trying to solve so many difficult problems.
This line of argument sounds compelling at first, but it does not stand up to close scrutiny. If a nation’s foreign policy is judged by whether it makes that country safer and richer, and whether it promotes certain core values, then there are plenty of countries that have been doing at least as well as the United States and some that have done considerably better. By remaining aloof from most quarrels and concentrating on economic development, for example, China has improved the lives of its people dramatically and gained substantially more international influence than it had thirty years ago. Iran is hardly the regional colossus depicted in some hard-liners’ alarmist fantasies, but it has taken full advantage of America’s missteps to shore up its regional position, even in the face of powerful opposition from the United States and others. Russia may be a declining power for both economic and demographic reasons, but it is not the basket case it was in the 1990s, and Vladimir Putin has played a weak hand well over the past fifteen years.1
Similarly, America’s many wealthy allies have enjoyed considerable “free” security over the past few decades, largely because Washington bore a disproportionate share of global security burdens and allowed its allies to spend their money on other goals. Nor should we forget the thousands of foreign and American lives lost as a result of Washington’s recent missteps. A few states have caused more harm to others in recent years than the United States has, but not very many.
Moreover, even if U.S. foreign policy had consistently outperformed all other countries, that is not the real issue. The real question is whether U.S. foreign policy is as good as one might reasonably expect, or whether the choices U.S. leaders have made forced the American people to bear costs or run risks they could have avoided. Being better than some other countries is not a compelling defense when there’s still enormous room for improvement.
Skeptics might also concede that key foreign policy institutions were not performing very well yet still maintain that military, diplomatic corps, intelligence services, and other parts of the foreign policy community outperform other public policy sectors. U.S. foreign policy might be inept, but does the government do a better job of educating the public, preventing crime, managing the economy, or maintaining the nation’s public infrastructure? If not, perhaps the indictment offered in this book is too harsh and we should judge those responsible for America’s relations with the outside world more gently.
This excuse misses the point as well. There are no benchmarks or performance measures available to rank different government sectors, making precise comparisons among them largely meaningless. But it is not hard to identify areas of public policy—such as Social Security, Medicare, inoculation campaigns, or federal support for scientific research—that are more successful and popular than many recent foreign policy initiatives.2 And even if the federal government was in fact better at conducting foreign policy than it was at maintaining infrastructure, policing, or controlling firearms, it might still be pursuing the wrong goals and thus failing to make Americans as safe or as prosperous as they could be.
Lastly, one could argue that my indictment of recent U.S. foreign policy depends on a small number of events—especially the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan—and that the overall record is actually quite positive. Were it not for those missteps, some defenders of liberal hegemony now argue, U.S. global leadership would be looking pretty darn good. For them, the obvious lesson is to maintain U.S. “deep engagement” and continue to pursue liberal hegemony while avoiding stupid blunders such as the Iraq War.3
There are two obvious problems with this line of defense. First, the failures of liberal hegemony are not confined to Iraq, but also include the fallout from NATO expansion, the consequences of regime change in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere, the open-ended “war on terror,” the mismanagement of the Middle East peace process, the continuing spread of weapons of mass destruction, and the antidemocratic backlash that has occurred since the 2008 financial crisis. The United States would undoubtedly be in a better position today if it had “kept Saddam in a box” in 2003 and after, but other aspects of U.S. foreign policy would still have been disappointing.
Second, pinning the blame on the Iraq War overlooks how liberal hegemony makes mistakes of this sort far more likely. Once the United States is committed to spreading its values, turning dictatorships into democracies, and disarming autocrats who seek WMD, and once it declares itself to be the “indispensable power” whose leadership is essential for international stability, it will inevitably be drawn toward the use of force whenever other tools fail to achieve these ends.4 Americans may be reluctant to repeat the Iraq experience at the moment, but as we saw in chapter 5, that lesson is already being challenged by those who now defend the decision to invade and maintain that the United States should simply have stayed there longer.
In sum, none of these alibis can absolve recent U.S. leaders from responsibility for the recent parade of foreign policy failures or vindicate the strategy of liberal hegemony that Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama all pursued, albeit in slightly different ways, and that Donald Trump has been unable to abandon. U.S. foreign policy is unlikely to improve, therefore, until U.S. leaders adopt a new approach—a new grand strategy—for dealing with the outside world. What should that strategy be, and what might convince the country to adopt it?
AN ALTERNATIVE: OFFSHORE BALANCING
Given the repeated failures of the past two decades, it is hardly surprising that Americans are more receptive to the idea of a different grand strategy than at any time in recent memory.5 As noted at the beginning of this book, Trump’s triumph in November 2016 was itself evidence of considerable discontent. The American people want their country to maintain a “shared leadership” role, but far fewer want it to be a “dominant” world power, and there is only modest support for using military force in a wide array of scenarios.6 Indeed, a survey in early 2018 found that more than 70 percent of Americans would support legislation that required “clearly defined goals to authorize military action overseas, including what constitutes victory or success, and a clear timeline.”7
Furthermore, the “millennial” generation now entering active political life sees engagement with the outside world very differently than prior generations did. Millennials perceive fewer foreign dangers, are less reflexively patriotic, and are decidedly less supportive of military solutions to contemporary global problems.8 In the 2016 campaign, both Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left found receptive audiences on the campaign trail whenever they questioned the U.S. penchant for promoting democracy, subsidizing its allies’ defense, and intervening with military force, leaving only Hillary Clinton—whose foreign policy “brain trust” was the living embodiment of the mainstream foreign policy community—to defend the status quo.9
Fortunately, a superior alternative is available—offshore balancing—which is America’s traditional grand strategy. Instead of trying to remake the world in America’s image, offshore balancing is principally concerned with America’s position in the global balance of power and focuses on preventing other states from projecting power in ways that might threaten the United States. Accordingly, it calls for the United States to deploy its power abroad only when there are direct threats to vital U.S. interests.
In particular, offshore balancers believe that only a few areas of the globe are of vital importance to U.S. security or prosperity and thus worth sending Americans to fight and die for. The first vital region is the Western Hemisphere itself, where America’s dominant position ensures that no neighbor can pose a serious threat to the U.S. homeland. This fortuitous situation is a luxury no other major power has ever enjoyed.10
But unlike isolationists, offshore balancers believe that three distant regions also matter to the United States: Europe, Northeast Asia, and the Persian Gulf. Europe and Asia are vital because they contain key centers of industrial power and military potential. The Persian Gulf is also important—at least for now—because the area produces roughly 30 percent of the world’s oil and holds about 55 percent of its proven reserves, and oil and gas are still critical for the world economy.
For offshore balancers, the primary concern would be the rise of a local hegemon that dominated one of these regions in the same way that the United States now dominates the Western Hemisphere. Such a state in Europe or Northeast Asia would have considerable economic clout, the ability to develop sophisticated weaponry, and the potential to project power and influence around the globe. It might eventually control greater economic resources than the United States and be able to outspend it in an arms race. If it wished, such a state could even ally with countries in the Western Hemisphere and interfere close to American soil, as its own homeland would not be in serious danger from its immediate neighbors.
Thus, America’s principal aim in Europe and Northeast Asia should be to maintain the local balance of power so that the strongest state in these regions has to worry about one or more of its neighbors and is not free to roam into the Western Hemisphere, or any other area deemed vital to the United States. A hegemon in the Persian Gulf would be undesirable, for example, because it might interfere with the flow of oil from that region, thereby damaging the world economy and threatening U.S. prosperity. The United States does not need to control any of these regions directly, however; it can achieve its core strategic aims merely by helping to ensure that these regions do not fall under the control of another major power, especially not a peer competitor.
HOW WOULD OFFSHORE BALANCING WORK?
Under a strategy of offshore balancing, the proper role and size of the U.S. national security establishment depends on the distribution of power in the key regions. If there is no potential hegemon in sight in Europe, Northeast Asia, or the Gulf, there is little reason to deploy U.S. ground or air forces there and little need for a national security establishment that dwarfs those of the major powers.
If a potential hegemon does appear, the United States should turn to local forces as the first line of defense. It should expect them to uphold the regional balance of power out of their own self-interest and to deal with local security challenges themselves. Washington might provide material assistance and pledge to support certain regional powers if they were in danger of being conquered, but it should refrain from deploying significant U.S. forces under most conditions. In some circumstances it might be prudent to maintain small military contingents, intelligence-gathering facilities, or pre-positioned equipment overseas, but in general Washington would “pass the buck” to local powers because they have a greater interest in preventing any state from dominating their region.
If local actors cannot contain a potential hegemon on their own, however, the United States must deploy enough military force to the region to shift the local balance in its favor. American forces might be needed before war broke out, if the local actors could not uphold the balance by themselves. The United States kept large ground and air forces in Europe throughout the Cold War, for example, because U.S. leaders believed the countries of Western Europe could not contain the Soviet Union on their own.11
At other times, the United States might intervene after a war starts if one side seems likely to emerge as a regional hegemon. American intervention in both world wars fits this pattern. The United States came in late both times, when it appeared that Germany might win and end up dominating Europe.
In essence, this strategy aims to keep U.S. forces “offshore” for as long as possible while recognizing that sometimes the United States will have to come onshore even before a conflict starts. If that happens, the United States should get its allies in the region to do as much of the heavy lifting as possible and go back offshore once the threat has been defeated.
THE VIRTUES OF OFFSHORE BALANCING
Offshore balancing has a number of obvious benefits. First and foremost, it reduces the resources Washington must devote to defending distant regions and allows for greater investment and consumption at home. And by limiting the areas of the world the United States is committed to defend, this strategy puts fewer Americans in harm’s way.
Second, offshore balancing would prolong America’s current position of primacy, as it avoids costly and counterproductive crusades and allows for greater investment in the long-term ingredients of power and prosperity: education, infrastructure, and research and development. The United States became a great power in the nineteenth century by staying out of distant wars and building the world’s largest and most advanced economy, much as China has been attempting to do over the past three decades. And as China has built power at home, the United States has wasted trillions of dollars pursuing liberal hegemony, placing its position of primacy at risk. Returning to offshore balancing would help remedy that problem.
Offshore balancing would also reduce the tendency for other states to “free-ride” on U.S. protection, a problem that has grown in scope since the end of the Cold War. U.S. GDP is less than 50 percent of NATO’s total, for example, yet it accounts for about 75 percent of the alliance’s military spending.12 In Asia, local efforts to strengthen defense capabilities remain modest, with key U.S. allies such as Japan—the world’s third largest economy—and Australia spending less than 2 percent of GDP on defense. As MIT’s Barry Posen observes, America’s willingness to subsidize its allies’ defense often amounts to “welfare for the rich.”13
America’s terrorism problem would be less worrisome under offshore balancing as well. Liberal hegemony commits the United States to spreading democracy in unfamiliar places, which sometimes requires military occupation and always involves trying to dictate local political arrangements. Such efforts invariably foster nationalist resentment in these societies and sometimes trigger violent resistance, including terrorism.14 At the same time, trying to spread American values via regime change undermines local institutions and creates ungoverned spaces where violent extremists can operate. Thus, liberal hegemony both inspires terrorists and facilitates their operations.
Offshore balancing alleviates this problem by eschewing large-scale social engineering and minimizing the U.S. military footprint. U.S. troops would be stationed on foreign soil only when a given state is in a vital region and threatened by a potential hegemon. Under these conditions, the potential victim will be grateful for U.S. protection and will not view its military forces as occupiers. And once the threat is gone, U.S. military forces would go back over the horizon and not stay behind to meddle in local politics. By respecting the sovereignty of other states, offshore balancing is less likely to foster the nationalist anger that is a powerful source of anti-American extremism. It would not eliminate the terrorism problem overnight, but it would almost certainly reduce it over time.
A REASSURING HISTORY
Offshore balancing may seem like a radical idea today, but it provided the guiding logic for U.S. foreign policy for many decades. During the nineteenth century, the U.S. government was preoccupied with building a powerful state and establishing hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. It achieved these goals around 1900 but continued to let the great powers check each other, and Washington intervened militarily only when the balance of power broke down in one or more of the key strategic regions, as it did during the two world wars.
The same logic drove U.S. policy during the Cold War, but circumstances required a different response. Because its allies in Europe and Northeast Asia could not contain the Soviet Union by themselves, the United States had no choice but to go “onshore” in Europe and Northeast Asia. Accordingly, Washington forged alliances and stationed significant military forces in both regions, and it entered the Korean War to preserve the balance of power in Northeast Asia and prevent the Soviet Union from posing a greater threat to Japan.
In the Persian Gulf, however, the United States stayed offshore. Until 1968, Washington relied on Great Britain to prevent any state from dominating that oil-rich region. As Britain withdrew, America turned to the shah of Iran and to Saudi Arabia to achieve that same end. When the shah fell in 1979, Washington built the Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) to keep Iran or the Soviet Union from dominating the Gulf. The Reagan administration also helped thwart an Iranian victory in the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) by giving Saddam Hussein military intelligence and other forms of assistance.
The United States kept the RDF offshore until 1990, when Saddam Hussein’s seizure of Kuwait threatened to increase Iraq’s power and place Saudi Arabia and other Gulf oil producers at risk. Consistent with offshore balancing, the Bush administration assembled a large coalition and sent a powerful expeditionary force to liberate Kuwait and smash Saddam’s military machine.
For nearly a century, in short, offshore balancing prevented the emergence of dangerous regional hegemons and preserved a global balance of power that maximized U.S. security. Moreover, whenever Washington abandoned that strategy and tried a different approach, the result was a costly failure. The Vietnam War was a clear violation of offshore balancing, for example, as Indochina was not a vital strategic interest and Vietnam’s fate had no impact on the global balance of power.15
As we have seen throughout this book, events since the end of the Cold War offer a similar warning. In Europe, open-ended NATO expansion poisoned relations with Russia, helped spark the frozen conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine, and drove Moscow closer to China. In the Middle East, “dual containment” kept thousands of U.S. troops in the Gulf after the 1991 Gulf War, where their presence helped inspire the September 11 attacks. Subsequent U.S. efforts at regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya led to costly debacles as well, and U.S. support for antigovernment forces in Yemen and Syria failed to produce stable, pro-American governments. None of these wars were fought to uphold the balance of power in a vital region; instead, each involved trying to topple an unsavory regime and replace it with one more to America’s liking. None of these efforts were successful. Abandoning offshore balancing after the Cold War has been a recipe for disaster.
Indeed, imagine how the world might look today had the United States embraced offshore balancing when the Cold War ended. For starters, there would have been no NATO expansion; instead, the United States would have pursued its original idea—the so-called Partnership for Peace—and done more to integrate Russia into a pan-European security framework. With no state threatening to become a hegemon in Europe, the U.S. role in European security would have decreased steadily and Washington could have actively supported Anglo-French efforts to build a common foreign and security policy.
In fairness, this approach might have prolonged the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s and left leaders such as Slobodan Milosevic in power. That outcome would have been objectionable on moral grounds, but it would not have affected U.S. security or prosperity very much, if at all. Nor should we forget that the Rube Goldberg solutions devised at Dayton in 1995 and after the Kosovo War in 2000 are far from ideal and remain fragile.
More important, reducing the U.S. role and eschewing NATO expansion would have avoided triggering long-term Russian security fears, thereby removing its incentive to maintain “frozen conflicts” in Georgia, seize Crimea, and destabilize Ukraine. Nor would the United States now be committed to defending weak and vulnerable allies in the Baltic region. The European security environment would likely still be tranquil, and relations with Russia—a declining but still influential regional power—would be much better than they are today.
In the Persian Gulf, a Clinton administration that embraced offshore balancing would have recognized the folly of dual containment and let Iran and Iraq continue to check each other. If U.S. forces had left Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War, as offshore balancing would have prescribed, Osama bin Laden might never have decided to attack the “far enemy.” One cannot be sure that 9/11 (or something like it) would not have occurred, but it would have been substantially less likely.
Needless to say, there would have been no Iraq War had offshore balancing prevailed. Instead of trying to “transform” the region into a sea of pro-American democracies, Washington would have intervened with military force only if Iran or Iraq (or some other state) attacked a U.S. ally or seemed likely to dominate the Gulf. This policy would have saved the United States trillions of dollars and spared the lives of thousands of U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis. Iran’s influence in the region would be substantially less today.
Moreover, an offshore balancer would have responded more sensibly to Iran’s repeated efforts to pursue some sort of détente with the United States. Tehran reached out to Washington on several occasions after the 1990s but was ultimately spurned each time.16 A hateful buffoon such as Mahmoud Ahmedinejad would have less likely been chosen as Iran’s president, and Iran would probably have agreed to cap its nuclear enrichment capacity earlier and at even lower levels. It is impossible to know for certain if U.S.-Iranian relations would be significantly better today had a different strategy been adopted, but the odds favor it.
Offshore balancing is not a miracle drug, so it might have failed to overcome the many obstacles to a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians. But eschewing the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel in favor of a normal one would have forced Israeli leaders to think more carefully about the long-term consequences of continued settlement growth. A lasting final status agreement might still have proved elusive, but a different U.S. strategy would have made it more likely.
Offshore balancing would have also left the United States better prepared to deal with a rising China. Instead of being distracted by conflicts in Central Asia and Iraq, U.S. leaders would have devoted more time and attention to managing relations with Beijing and reinforcing America’s Asian alliances. The money squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan would have been available to enhance the U.S. force posture, maintain its technological edge, and invest in key regional partnerships. In retrospect, the failed pursuit of liberal hegemony was one of the greatest gifts Beijing has received in recent decades.
Finally, and more speculatively, offshore balancing would have been better for the U.S. economy. The United States could have enjoyed a longer and larger “peace dividend,” rebuilt its eroding infrastructure, kept the federal budget balanced, and avoided the burgeoning deficits and easy-money policies that followed 9/11 and fueled the pre-2008 housing bubble and the subsequent financial crisis. Wall Street might have gone off the rails anyway, but a different grand strategy might have made it less likely.
Counterfactuals such as these cannot be proved, of course, and a strategy of offshore balancing might have produced a few unintended consequences that policymakers would have been forced to address. Nonetheless, it is hard to imagine that it would have performed worse than liberal hegemony did, and there are good reasons to think it would have done substantially better.
OFFSHORE BALANCING TODAY
What would offshore balancing look like today? The good news is that a serious challenge to American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere is unlikely and there are presently no potential hegemons in Europe or the Persian Gulf. Now for the bad news: if China’s impressive rise continues, it is likely to seek a dominant position in Asia. The United States should make a major effort to prevent it from succeeding, for Chinese hegemony in Asia would give Beijing the latitude to project power around the world—much as the United States does today—including in the Western Hemisphere. From the standpoint of U.S. national security, it is better if China has to focus its attention and effort closer to home.
In an ideal world, Washington would rely on local powers to contain China, but that strategy may not work. Not only is China likely to be much more powerful than its neighbors, but these states are located far from each other and do not always get along, making it more difficult for them to maintain an effective balancing coalition. The United States will almost certainly have to coordinate their efforts and may have to throw its considerable weight behind them. In the years ahead, Asia may be the one place where U.S. leadership is indeed “indispensable.”17
In Europe, the United States should gradually draw down its military presence and turn NATO over to the Europeans. The United States entered both world wars in good part to keep Germany from controlling the continent, but there is no prospect of something similar happening today. Germany and Russia are going to get relatively weaker over time because their populations are gradually declining and becoming considerably older, and no other potential hegemon is in sight. Leaving European security to the local powers could increase the potential for trouble somewhat, but a conflict there, while obviously undesirable, would not lead to one state dominating all of Europe and thus would not pose a serious threat to vital U.S. interests. The United States should use its good offices to help resolve disagreements among the European powers and to encourage them to cooperate on a variety of issues, but there is no compelling strategic need for the United States to spend billions each year (and pledge its own citizens’ lives) to keep the peace there.
Regarding the Persian Gulf, the United States should return to the strategy that served it well from 1945 to 1993. No local power is presently able to dominate the region, so the United States can keep most of its forces offshore and over the horizon. U.S. leaders should respect the principle of state sovereignty when dealing with the Middle East and should abandon its misguided efforts at regime change and social engineering. The Middle East will remain unstable for many years to come, and the United States has neither the need nor the ability to resolve the complex conflicts now roiling the region.
For the present, Washington should also pursue better relations with Iran. It is not in America’s interest for Iran to abandon, or not renew, the current nuclear agreement and to race for the bomb. Iran is more likely to do so if it fears an American attack, which is why Washington should try to mend fences with Tehran in the interim. Moreover, China is likely to want allies in the Gulf in the future, and Iran will probably be at the top of its list.18 The United States has an obvious interest in discouraging Sino-Iranian security cooperation, and that requires détente with Iran. Talking to Tehran is also a good way to remind America’s other Middle East allies that Washington has many options, thereby giving them an incentive to act in ways that will secure U.S. backing if needed.
Iran has a significantly larger population and greater economic potential than its Persian Gulf neighbors, and it may eventually be in a position to dominate the region.19 If Iran begins to move in this direction, the United States should help the other local powers balance Tehran, calibrating its own efforts and local military presence to the magnitude of the danger.
Taken together, these steps would allow the United States to reduce its national security expenditures to a percentage of GDP similar to that of the other major powers.20 U.S. policymakers would focus primarily on Asia, curtail spending on counterterrorism, end the Afghanistan war, and cease most of its other overseas interventions. The United States would maintain substantial naval and air assets along with modest but capable ground forces and would spend enough to ensure that its military technology and personnel are the best in the world. It should also be prepared to expand its capabilities should circumstances require. For the foreseeable future, however, the U.S. government could spend more money on urgent domestic needs or leave it in the taxpayers’ pockets.
BRINGING DIPLOMACY BACK IN
By design and by necessity, offshore balancing would shift the focus of U.S. foreign policy away from its present emphasis on military power and coercion and back toward diplomacy. Over the past two decades Washington has repeatedly tried to compel weaker powers to do its bidding by issuing threats, imposing sanctions, and, if necessary, unleashing its unmatched armada of drones, Special Forces, cruise missiles, stealthy aircraft, and conventional ground forces. At the same time, the Defense Department’s vastly greater resources allowed it to usurp many functions previously performed by other government agencies.21
As noted repeatedly in previous chapters, these efforts have mostly failed to achieve the stated objectives. Even so, whenever some new problem arises—a civil war in Syria, fighting in Ukraine, a ballistic missile test by North Korea or Iran, or new Chinese efforts to “reclaim” shoals and reefs in the South China Sea—the reflexive U.S. response is to sell arms to local allies, ramp up economic sanctions, send an aircraft carrier, ship weapons and trainers to indigenous forces, issue threats and warnings, create a “no-fly” zone, or launch air strikes by manned aircraft, cruise missiles, and drones. Foreign policy pundits endlessly debate the merits of these (and other) initiatives, rarely asking what the United States could do to ameliorate or remove the underlying causes of the problem through persuasion and accommodation. Diplomacy has not disappeared entirely from the nation’s foreign policy tool kit, but it routinely takes a back seat to the use of force and coercion.
Yet as former ambassador and assistant secretary of defense Chas W. Freeman reminds us, “diplomacy is how a nation advances its interests and resolves problems with foreigners with minimal violence.”22 Putting diplomacy first does not eliminate the need for military power, but sees it as the last resort rather than the first, and as a tool of statecraft rather than an end in itself. Prioritizing diplomacy means striving to reach mutually acceptable solutions with others rather than simply dictating to them. A nation that privileges diplomacy empowers its representatives to listen carefully to others, seeks to understand their views even when they are at odds with ours, tries to empathize with others’ perspectives though we do not share them, and searches for creative agreements that can advance our interests along with theirs, ideally making a resort to force unnecessary.23
Under offshore balancing, diplomacy takes center stage. To implement the strategy successfully, U.S. leaders need a sophisticated understanding of strategic trends and must be familiar with the interests, goals, and likely responses of key regional states. Washington has to spot potential hegemons as they emerge and coordinate responses with the rising power’s local rivals. Far from encouraging isolationism or disengagement, offshore balancing depends first and foremost on intelligent and adroit diplomacy in the service of America’s broader strategic objectives.
It also places a premium on flexibility. Like Great Britain, the original “offshore balancer,” the United States has “no eternal friends or enemies,” but rather interests that are “eternal and perpetual.”24 Because its overriding goal is to maintain local balances of power in the key regions, the United States must have the agility to shift sides as needed. Flexibility of alignment can also help contain dangerous regional rivalries, as local actors will be less inclined to challenge the status quo if they know that doing so could lead the United States to bring its considerable power to bear against them.
When there is no potential hegemon in sight, however, Washington should strive to be on cordial terms with as many local states as possible. Cultivating businesslike relations with all states makes it easier to cooperate where interests overlap and would enhance U.S. diplomatic leverage. In short, instead of having “special relationships” with some countries and treating others as pariahs, offshore balancers keep the lines of communication open with everyone.
Among other benefits, this approach reminds current partners not to take U.S. support for granted, discourages free-riding, and gives both rivals and partners an incentive to compete for Washington’s attention and support. The United States will be very powerful for many years to come, its support is still an enormous asset, and other states will be more attentive to U.S. concerns if they know that Washington has a decent working relationship with them but also with their rivals. Rather than bending over backward to convince local allies that its pledges are 100 percent reliable, the United States would take advantage of its favorable geopolitical position and play “hard to get” instead.
Ideally, a renewed emphasis on diplomacy would include a major effort to reform and professionalize America’s diplomatic ranks. The United States is the only major power that routinely allows inexperienced amateurs to hold key diplomatic positions and frequently places individuals with little governmental experience in influential foreign policy positions. No president would appoint a wealthy campaign donor to command an armored division or a warship—let alone serve as a regional combatant commander—but roughly a third of U.S. ambassadorial appointments are doled out to campaign contributors rather than to trained professional diplomats, with sometimes embarrassing results.25
When the Ukraine crisis erupted in 2013, for example, the Russian ambassador in Germany, Vladimir Grinin, was in his fourth ambassadorship in a diplomatic career that began in 1971, including seventeen years in Germany itself. He speaks fluent German and English and is intimately acquainted with key German officials. By contrast, the U.S. ambassador in Berlin, John B. Emerson, was a former entertainment lawyer from Los Angeles who had been a major fundraiser for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. He had no prior diplomatic experience and spoke no German. Emerson’s political skills may have been exceptional, but which of these individuals was better prepared to represent his country’s interests and perspective to his German counterparts and to explain their views to his superiors back home?26
America’s diplomats also suffer from a haphazard personnel system and the lack of a systematic and well-funded program of career development. The U.S. military starts by training many of its officers at the three service academies, and career officers routinely receive additional professional training at one of many staff colleges (such as the Naval War College or the Command and General Staff College) or by earning advanced academic degrees at government expense. This commitment to career-long learning creates more effective military leaders and enhances their connection to other key parts of the foreign policy establishment.
By comparison, options for professional career development for U.S. diplomats consist mostly of language training undertaken prior to postings abroad. According to former ambassador Charles Ray, a typical military officer might receive a year or more of advanced training on roughly four occasions in a twenty-year career; a typical Foreign Service officer may be lucky to receive a single full year of training over a similar period.27 The heavy reliance on political appointees also limits avenues for experienced Foreign Service officers to rise within the department and leaves fewer senior diplomats available to mentor their junior colleagues.
These problems are compounded by the peculiar manner in which the United States staffs key positions in the executive branch. When a new president is inaugurated, the transition team must fill several thousand government positions, from cabinet secretaries on down. Hundreds of these posts require Senate confirmation, which often takes months and sometimes more than a year. Some appointees will be serving in government for the first time, and many will remain in their posts for only a year or two. This situation is akin to having Apple, General Electric, or IBM replace their entire senior management team every four years and leaving key positions unfilled for months if not years at a time.
These pathologies would not be a problem if the United States had modest foreign policy goals. Instead, Washington has been trying to conduct a breathtakingly ambitious foreign policy with a combination of amateurs and short-timers and with many key positions unfilled. As Secretary of State John Kerry complained in 2016, “The United States is today more deeply engaged in more parts of the world on more consequential issues than ever before in history all at one time … And it just doesn’t make sense … to leave open for sometimes more than a year vacant, important positions for our nation.”28 No other major power has such vast ambitions yet staffs a vast and complicated foreign policy apparatus in such a haphazard way.
Reforms such as these would also reverse the creeping militarization of U.S. foreign policy that has been under way for many years, and they would restore politics and diplomacy to their rightful place. A wise nation uses all instruments of national power to promote desired political ends, but in recent years politics and diplomacy have frequently been subordinated to narrow military objectives, including the endless “war on terror.”
None of this is to deny the importance of military power. The diplomat and historian George F. Kennan was hardly a reflexive proponent of military solutions, but he once told an audience, “You have no idea how much it contributes to the general politeness and pleasantness of diplomacy when you have a little quiet armed force in the background.”29 Kennan’s reflection also reveals the right way to think about these instruments: military power is a tool that must be harnessed to broader diplomatic and political ends, not the other way around.
Needless to say, the approach just described is the exact opposite of the one Donald Trump has pursued as president. In addition to appointing military officers to positions normally reserved for civilians, Trump has increased the already bloated Pentagon budget while simultaneously gutting the State Department. But this approach makes sense only if one wants to go on fighting lots of protracted wars. Or as Secretary of Defense James Mattis warned, “If you don’t fully fund the State Department, then I need to buy more ammunition.”30
MAKE PEACE A PRIORITY
Returning to offshore balancing would also allow U.S. leaders to focus less on issuing threats, imposing change, or demonstrating credibility and to focus more on promoting peace. Not just for idealistic or moral reasons, but because promoting peace is in the U.S. national interest.
One could argue that the United States has done well from war in the past. Conquering North America involved considerable violence and a “war of choice” with Mexico, and conflicts elsewhere in the world weakened or distracted potential rivals and improved America’s relative position. But that was when the United States was a rising power and the European great powers still held sway in the rest of the world. Today, the United States is in exceptionally good shape: no other power is as strong, as far removed from potential enemies, as immune to violent internal upheaval, or as insulated from other dangers. Its position is not perfect, but it would be hard to ask for much more.
When a country sits atop the global pyramid, as the United States has for decades, the last thing it should do is embark on risky ventures that might dislodge it from its lofty perch. Instead of an exciting, thrill-a-minute foreign policy where glorious victory or shocking defeat may lurk around every corner, a dominant power like the United States should above all seek tranquility. For a power in America’s privileged position, fomenting conflicts overseas will rarely if ever be a good idea, as “the iron dice of war” are inherently unpredictable. The United States has little to gain and much to lose from war, and even campaigns that appear to be smashing successes can easily become costly quagmires. Unless war is forced upon them, Americans should seek peace.
Peace is also good for business. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, United Technologies, and Raytheon may have an obvious commercial interest in international insecurity, but such firms are actually a rather small and declining fraction of America’s $17 trillion-plus economy.31 More important, peace facilitates economic interdependence and thus fosters greater global growth. When peace prevails and security concerns are low, states worry less about being intertwined with potential rivals, and corporations won’t worry about building factories abroad or sending capital off to faraway destinations. By contrast, when rivals abound and war looms on the horizon, states and private investors will worry more about foreign exposure and be less inclined to put their wealth at risk.32
Peace also tends to elevate individuals who are committed to and skilled at promoting human welfare, whether in the form of cool new products, improved health care, better government services, inspiring books, art, and music, or any of the other things that promote broader human well-being. War, by contrast, privileges those who are good at inspiring or using violence and who stand to gain from the hatred of others: the very people who readily become warlords, terrorists, revolutionaries, xenophobes, and the like. Many people who take up arms are motivated by a larger sense of duty and eagerly lay down their swords as soon as they are able, but some of them have a genuine taste for violence and an interest in their own glory and gain. Enduring peace should be a central goal of U.S. foreign policy, with a premium put on leaders who are better at building things than blowing them up.
Lastly, peace is morally preferable. War inevitably creates an enormous amount of death, destruction, and human suffering, and alleviating it when we can is intrinsically desirable. Putting peace at the top of America’s foreign policy agenda is hardly something for which U.S. leaders need apologize.
From a selfish, hardheaded, flag-waving, red-white-and-blue perspective, therefore, peace is a goal to proclaim, to pursue, and to prize. Yet in the threat-driven, credibility-obsessed, overly militarized world of contemporary U.S. foreign policy, one is hard-pressed to find a prominent politician, pundit, or national security expert who will talk unapologetically about their passion for peace, their commitment to pursuing it in office, or the specific strategies they would pursue to further this goal.
This situation is surely odd, for some of America’s greatest foreign policy triumphs were won not by raw military power, but by the persistent, patient, and creative use of diplomatic and other nonmilitary tools. Furthermore, many of these success stories were explicitly guided by a desire to establish and enhance peace. Fear of communism may have inspired the Marshall Plan, for example, but this diplomatic and economic masterstroke did as much to preserve U.S. interests in Europe as the formation of NATO or the Berlin Airlift. It was diplomacy that produced the Egypt-Israeli peace treaty (1979), resolved the 1999 Kargil crisis between India and Pakistan, midwifed the democratic transitions in South Korea, the Philippines, and Myanmar, and made the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland happen. And lest we forget: the reunification of Germany and the peaceful conclusion to the Cold War was a diplomatic achievement, won not by soldiers on the battlefield, but by politicians and diplomats facing one another across a negotiating table.33
THE EMPIRE BUILDERS STRIKE BACK
Needless to say, the bulk of the foreign policy community will be dead set against the more restrained policy of offshore balancing. The interest groups, corporations, and lobbies that have long shaped U.S. foreign policy will oppose such a shift for fear that it would reduce the attention the United States devotes to their particular agendas. Most members of the foreign policy establishment will be similarly skeptical, in part because they hold benevolent views of U.S. leadership but also because their roles, status, and power would diminish were the United States to adopt a less interventionist foreign policy.34
Indeed, an active campaign to discredit offshore balancing is already under way, with a cottage industry of prominent pundits, former U.S. officials, and academics offering up spirited defenses of the status quo and attacking any suggestion that the United States might modify or reduce its global ambitions even slightly.35 Not surprisingly, they invoke all the familiar arguments about the indispensability of America’s current world role and the adverse consequences that will supposedly occur should the United States try a different approach. And whenever Donald Trump even hinted that he might move toward a more restrained approach, a chorus of critics quickly attacked him for ignorantly abandoning America’s supposedly essential leadership role.36
Once again, Americans are being told that they face a world filled with threats both near and far, and that U.S. power must be deployed around the world in order to keep those dangers at bay. If the United States were to shift to offshore balancing, they warn, important allies would lose confidence in U.S. security guarantees, adversaries would be emboldened, and renewed great power competition would erupt, undermining today’s globalized world economy and threatening U.S. prosperity. States accustomed to U.S. protection would be tempted to acquire nuclear weapons, and curtailing active efforts to spread democracy and human rights would imperil freedom around the globe and eliminate hopes for a broader “democratic peace.”
At the same time, defenders of liberal hegemony believe that the United States can forestall these dangers and advance its ideals at little cost or risk. In their view, America’s $17 trillion economy can easily afford the defense and foreign affairs outlays that liberal hegemony requires and has the capacity to spend even more if needed. The risks of this policy are minuscule, they maintain, because spreading democracy and extending U.S. security guarantees around the world will prevent wars from occurring, thereby saving money in the long run. Despite its recent failures, they still see liberal hegemony as an affordable and risk-free insurance policy, and they portray offshore balancing as a dangerous leap in the dark. According to the blue-ribbon CNAS task force discussed in chapter 3, offshore balancing is “a recipe for uncertainty, miscalculation and ultimately more conflict and considerably more expense.”37
As discussed in chapter 4, none of these arguments stand up to close inspection. Deep U.S. engagement does not always produce peace, especially when the United States keeps trying to topple dictators and spread democracy. Policing the world is not as cheap as the defenders of liberal hegemony contend, either in terms of dollars spent or human lives lost. The Iraq and Afghan wars alone cost between four and six trillion dollars, along with nearly seven thousand U.S. soldiers killed and more than fifty thousand wounded. Returning veterans from these conflicts exhibit high rates of suicide and depression, and the United States has little to show for their sacrifices.
As for the problem of proliferation, no grand strategy is likely to be wholly successful at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons or other types of WMD, but offshore balancing would do a better job than liberal hegemony. After all, the latter strategy did not stop India and Pakistan from ramping up their nuclear capabilities, North Korea from testing the bomb in 2006, or Iran from becoming a nuclear threshold state. Countries usually seek nuclear weapons because they fear being attacked and want a powerful deterrent, and U.S. efforts at regime change heighten such fears. By eschewing regime change, limiting U.S. military commitments to three key regions, and reducing America’s military footprint, offshore balancing would give potential proliferators less reason to seek the bomb. The nuclear agreement with Iran shows that coordinated multilateral pressure and tough economic sanctions are a better way to discourage proliferation than preventive war or regime change. This approach, needless to say, is entirely consistent with offshore balancing.
To be sure, reducing U.S. security guarantees might lead a few vulnerable states to seek their own nuclear deterrent. Such a development is not desirable, but all-out efforts to prevent it would also be costly and may not succeed. Moreover, the negative consequences may not be as severe as pessimists fear. Getting the bomb does not transform weak countries into great powers or enable them to attack or blackmail rival states. Ten states have crossed the nuclear threshold since 1945, yet the world was not turned upside down every time some new member joined the nuclear club. Nuclear proliferation will remain a concern no matter what the United States does, but offshore balancing provides a better strategy for dealing with it.
Some foreign policy experts who are skeptical of liberal hegemony nonetheless still believe that the United States should keep large military forces deployed in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East in order to preserve peace. This approach—sometimes termed “selective engagement”—sounds appealing, but it will not work either.38
For starters, this strategy is likely to revert back to liberal hegemony. Once committed to preserving peace in key regions, U.S. leaders will be strongly inclined to spread democracy there too, based on the widespread belief that “democracies don’t fight each other.” NATO expansion illustrates this tendency perfectly, as it sought to create a Europe “whole and free” that would live in peace and harmony forever. When these efforts run into difficulties—as is likely to be the case—Washington will then be tempted to use its powerful military machine to rescue the situation, and all the more so given the importance U.S. leaders typically place on credibility. In the real world, the line between selective engagement and liberal hegemony is easily erased.
The problem with “selective engagement,” in short, is that it is not selective enough. Once Washington takes on full responsibility for preventing conflict all over the world, it invariably gets tempted to solve problems that are not vital to its security or prosperity, or it is drawn toward idealistic missions it does not know how to achieve. Nor does selective engagement solve the problem of free-riding, for as long as Washington continues to protect countries that are capable of defending themselves, the latter will go on letting Uncle Sam shoulder the burden and spend the money they save on themselves.
Lastly, what about the claim that the United States has both a strategic interest and a moral duty to spread democracy, protect human rights, and prevent genocide? In this view, spreading democracy—by force, if necessary—will eventually lead to a “democratic peace” where war is unlikely, human rights violations are rare, and large-scale atrocities are unknown. If Americans can just be convinced to stay the course, liberal hegemony will eventually deliver a world of tranquillity, peace, and prosperity.
In fact, no one knows if a world consisting solely of liberal democracies would be peaceful. We do know, however, that spreading democracy at the point of a gun rarely works and that fledgling democracies are prone to conflict.39 Instead of promoting peace, the United States ends up fighting war after war and gets trapped in open-ended occupations. These conflicts have led it to torture prisoners, conduct targeted killings, expand government secrecy, and undertake vast electronic surveillance of U.S. citizens. Ironically, the attempt to spread liberal values abroad has compromised them at home.
Encouraging the spread of liberal democracy and basic human rights should be a long-term U.S. objective, but the best way to do this is by setting a good example. Other societies are more likely to embrace U.S. values if they believe the United States is a just, prosperous, peaceful, and open society and they decide they want similar things for themselves. It follows that Americans who want to spread liberal values should do more to improve conditions here at home than to manipulate politics abroad. Offshore balancing fits this prescription to a T.
WHY REFORM WILL NOT BE EASY
Offshore balancing is a grand strategy born of confidence in America’s core traditions and recognition of its enduring advantages. It exploits America’s providential geographic position, recognizes the powerful incentives other states have to oppose potential hegemons in their own regions, and passes the buck to other countries whenever possible. It respects the power of nationalism, does not try to impose U.S. values on foreign societies, and focuses on setting an example that others will want to emulate. It would save U.S. taxpayers a significant amount of money, allow for long-term investments in America’s future wealth and power, and limit government incursions on Americans’ individual freedoms. For these reasons, offshore balancing was the right strategy for most of U.S. history and would be the best grand strategy today.
Yet the foreign policy community does not see it this way, thereby making meaningful reform unlikely. Thus, Michael Glennon ends his insightful analysis of the national security establishment on a gloomy note, concluding that the traditional system of “checks and balances” is effectively impotent and that little can be done to arrest the power of the existing “Trumanite network.” In his words, the U.S. government now has “the power to kill and arrest and jail, the power to see and hear and read people’s every word and action, the power to instill fear and suspicion, the power to quash investigations and quell speech, the power to shape public debate or to curtail it, and the power to hide its deeds and evade its weak-kneed overseers. The Trumanite network holds, in short, the power of irreversibility.” 40
Similarly, the longtime congressional staffer Mike Lofgren ends his own critique of America’s “deep state” by enumerating an ambitious program of reforms—eliminating private money from public elections, redirecting the peace dividend to national infrastructure, reforming tax policy, staying out of the Middle East, etc.—only to concede that his proposals are “utopian, even unworldly.” He presents no plan for moving the country in the directions he favors and is left with the wan hope that “the United States has done more surprising things in its history” and might be capable of similar surprises today.41 But as we have seen, the foreign policy community has made little or no effort to rethink its deep commitment to liberal hegemony.42
What might produce such a “surprising” turn? In theory, world events could trigger a serious reconsideration of U.S. grand strategy and a major effort to reform existing foreign policy institutions. A catastrophic foreign policy disaster—such as an actual nuclear attack—might discredit reigning orthodoxies once and for all and create the opportunity for meaningful change. But no patriotic American should wish for such a tragedy to befall the country, and even a major setback might not be sufficient to produce meaningful change. If the failures of the past two decades, a major financial crisis, and the consecutive elections of Barack Obama and Donald Trump did not prompt a systematic rethinking, what could?
To be sure, the emergence of a true peer competitor would probably impose greater discipline over U.S. foreign policy, force the establishment to set clearer priorities, and make it easier to dismiss dangerous or wasteful schemes. If China continues to rise and challenge the U.S. position, the foreign policy establishment might even begin to hold more people more accountable for failures and put a greater premium on effective performance in office.
It is hard to be enthusiastic about this “solution” either, however, because a new great power rivalry entails its own costs and risks.43 In an ideal world, a future peer competitor would be just worrisome enough to encourage meaningful reform yet not too strong for the United States to handle. Alas, there is no guarantee that this convenient “sweet spot” will be realized or that U.S. leaders would make the right choices in response. The tragedy of 9/11 was as loud a wake-up call as a nation ever gets, but the foreign policy establishment responded in ways that made the problem worse.
Given America’s abundant security and the elite consensus behind liberal hegemony, external pressures are unlikely to produce meaningful reform by themselves. Bureaucratic interests are notoriously resistant to change, and far-reaching policy shifts do not occur unless there is strong and sustained political pressure behind them. Absent sustained political action at home, debates on foreign policy will continue to occur within the same familiar echo chamber and stay between the forty-eight-yard lines. And instead of considering alternatives to liberal hegemony, its acolytes will just redouble their efforts to persuade the rest of the country to let them keep searching for a way to make it work.
HOW TO BEAT THE BLOB
What is needed, therefore, is a fairer fight within the existing political system, so that liberal hegemony no longer enjoys pride of place and rival approaches are not confined to the margins of political discourse or a few isolated ramparts inside the Beltway. Defenders of the status quo are already well represented in government, academia, the media, and the intertwined world of think tanks and lobbies, thereby tilting discussion heavily in their favor. The only way to broaden public debate on these topics, therefore, is to create a countervailing set of organizations and institutions that can do battle in the marketplace of ideas.
In particular, those who favor offshore balancing or other more restrained approaches must build a broader political movement and organize a countervailing set of institutions that can actively work to influence public perceptions and bring pressure to bear on politicians and officials who continue to favor policies that simply don’t work. Such a movement would build upon the handful of groups that already favor a different grand strategy, such as the libertarian CATO Institute, the realist Center for the National Interest, or the left-leaning Center for International Policy. At the same time, it would strive to build bridges and form coalitions with other groups whose agendas are compatible.
Needless to say, this effort will require significant financial resources drawn from Americans who worry that continuing to pursue liberal hegemony will do serious long-term damage to the United States.44 In addition to supporting policy-relevant research on critical foreign policy issues, this network should employ the same tactics that proponents of liberal hegemony have used to build influence in Washington. In particular, supporters of offshore balancing should conduct academic research on key issues related to a more restrained U.S. grand strategy, organize conferences designed to refine and disseminate their ideas, lobby politicians and policymakers directly, and engage in a broad array of public outreach activities. It will be especially important to recruit, mentor, and support a cadre of like-minded younger experts and provide them with sustainable career paths so that aspiring foreign policy wonks do not have to embrace the current consensus in order to have successful careers.
Indeed, a movement of the sort just described is probably a necessary condition for significant strategic change. In War and Democratic Constraint: How the Public Influences Foreign Policy, the political scientists Matthew Baum and Philip Potter argue that “two basic conditions must be present for citizens of mass democracies to hold their leaders accountable. First, there must be independent and politically potent opposition partisans that can alert the public when a leader missteps … Second, media and communication institutions must be both in place and accessible sufficiently to transmit messages from these opposition elites to the public.”45
The United States has numerous media outlets and robust laws protecting free speech; the problem has been the absence of a “politically potent” opposition to the reigning doctrine of liberal hegemony. As a result, when mainstream media organizations cover foreign policy topics, they do so within the boundaries of the existing consensus. The sources on which they rely typically include government officials or policy experts who are committed to liberal hegemony, as indeed are most prominent members of mainstream media organizations. Given that marriage of minds, it is hardly surprising that major news organizations such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Times feel little pressure to offer genuinely alternative views to the readers, except on an intermittent basis.
But if advocates of a different grand strategy can establish enduring institutions and achieve critical mass, major media organizations will take notice and provide more space for their views. Over time, debates on key foreign policy topics would feature a wider range of opinion and Americans would be more aware of the deficiencies of their present grand strategy and the virtues of alternative approaches. Should this movement gain momentum, news organizations such as the Times or the Post might even conclude that it was time to add an advocate of greater foreign policy restraint to their current roster of crusading commentators.46
SELLING A SENSIBLE FOREIGN POLICY
It remains to be seen whether a politically potent movement in favor of a more restrained policy can be built and sustained over time. If such a movement were established, how might it gain broad public support? What is the best way to sell a more sensible foreign policy?
EMPHASIZE PATRIOTISM
Although offshore balancers—including this author—are often critical of many past U.S. policies, the strategy itself is deeply patriotic and should always be portrayed in this light. As emphasized throughout this book, it assumes that the primary task of U.S. foreign policy is to protect and promote the interests of the American people and to help them remain secure, prosperous, and free. In other words, offshore balancers are far from “anti-American.” On the contrary, they believe the American people deserve a better foreign policy than the one they have been given over the past two decades.
RESPECT THE MILITARY
Offshore balancers are wary of military intervention—except when necessary to preserve balances of power in key regions—but they are neither pacifists nor hostile to the armed services. The strategy assumes that military power is still necessary and that protecting U.S. interests sometimes requires the use of force. And though offshore balancers are mindful that the foreign policy establishment and the so-called military-industrial complex routinely inflate threats for bureaucratic or budgetary reasons, they respect the sacrifices military personnel make on behalf of the nation. They believe that proponents of liberal hegemony have used America’s armed forces carelessly and with insufficient regard for the human sacrifices involved; by contrast, offshore balancers oppose risking soldiers’ lives for trivial or ill-considered reasons.
Indeed, offshore balancing strives to minimize the burdens borne by men and women in uniform. Instead of viewing the American military as an obedient tool that can be used to pursue unrealistic goals, offshore balancers believe that soldiers, sailors, and pilots should be sent in harm’s way only when vital interests are at stake. In particular, offshore balancers believe that the American military should never be sent to fight wars they are destined to lose, whether because vital interests were not engaged or because the stated mission—such as trying to grow new democracies on unfertile ground—is one that military force cannot accomplish.
NO MORE “UNCLE SUCKER”
Advocates of offshore balancing can enhance its appeal by stressing the need for other states to contribute their fair share to collective security efforts instead of free-riding on Uncle Sam. The foreign policy elite may relish the stature and prestige that “global leadership” gives them, but ordinary Americans rightly resent subsidizing wealthy allies, protecting states that will not or cannot contribute to U.S. security, and tolerating the reckless behavior that some U.S. allies indulge in under the mantle of American protection.
Connecting adventures abroad with conditions at home will strengthen the case for offshore balancing even more. Although the United States is still remarkably well off, the time, resources, and attention devoted to foolish adventures abroad inevitably affect the quality of life back home. It is important to explain to Americans the connection between our foreign and defense policies and the quality of life at home, the level of taxes we are asked to pay, the number of wounded veterans for whom we must care, the intrusiveness of U.S. security agencies, and the state of the federal budget and the overall economy. The more bases we garrison around the world, the fewer roads, bridges, subways, parks, museums, hospitals, schools, fiber-optic cables, and WiFi networks will be available for U.S. citizens, diminishing the quality of life for everyone. Making these connections clearer to more people is critical to winning their support for a smarter strategy.
DEFEND THE MORAL HIGH GROUND
Offshore balancing is a self-interested strategy, but it is not indifferent to moral considerations. Because the United States remains a deeply liberal society, its citizens are unlikely to embrace for long a grand strategy they believe is unethical or indifferent to morality. Accordingly, proponents of offshore balancing must also stress its positive moral qualities and its consistency with core U.S. values.47
In particular, offshore balancing does not preclude using American power to try to prevent wars, halt genocides, or persuade other countries to improve their human rights performance, but it does set a high bar for the use of force. In particular, offshore balancers would willingly endorse disaster relief and other purely humanitarian actions and would even countenance using force to halt mass killings when (1) the danger was imminent, (2) the anticipated costs to the United States were modest, (3) the ratio of foreign lives saved to U.S. lives risked was high, and (4) it was clear that intervention would not make things worse or lead to an open-ended commitment.
Offshore balancing is also more likely to protect these values here at home. As the Founding Fathers understood well, no nation can remain at war for long periods without compromising civil liberties and other liberal institutions. Warfare, after all, is a quintessentially illiberal activity: it is violent, coercive, and hierarchical, and it privileges secrecy and command over transparency and freedom.
In fact, offshore balancers have a powerful moral case in favor of their preferred strategy, and they should not hesitate to make it. Offshore balancing would cause less conflict and human suffering than liberal hegemony has, and the United States is more likely to promote progressive change if it presents an attractive model to others and if it promotes liberal values through patient diplomacy and moral suasion rather than by coercion or military action. Above all, they need not cede the moral high ground to their liberal or neoconservative opponents, especially in light of the considerable human suffering that the latter’s policies have produced.
MIND THE MESSENGER
Last but not least, offshore balancing needs able advocates to make the case for it. In recent years, unfortunately, the public figures whose views on foreign policy most closely approximate the strategy of offshore balancing have been Ron and Rand Paul, Pat Buchanan, and back in 2016, Donald Trump. Although these men have all said some sensible things about the failures of U.S. foreign policy, they also carry considerable negative baggage and hold other beliefs that are foolish, ignorant, or offensive.
In a sense, their mistakes are not surprising. It takes a degree of iconoclasm to see through the clouds of rhetoric and conventional wisdom underpinning liberal hegemony—such as the constant invocation of American “exceptionalism” or the claim that U.S. leadership is the only barrier between civilization and the abyss. It is no accident, therefore, that offshore balancing’s most visible proponents have been outliers within the American political establishment. For it to reemerge as America’s default grand strategy, therefore, it will need champions who are smart, sophisticated, well-informed, articulate, patriotic, and free of embarrassing skeletons.
If such a figure does emerge, however, he or she will find a ready audience. Americans remain willing to bear certain burdens abroad for the sake of their own safety and prosperity, and in some cases to help others. But they are less and less willing to undertake the same quixotic missions that have failed in the past and are doomed to fail in the future, and intelligent politicians who promise not to repeat these errors would almost certainly attract considerable popular support.
FINAL THOUGHTS
“There is a great deal of ruin in a nation,” wrote Adam Smith—all the more so when a country has as many enduring advantages as the United States still enjoys. Good fortune has allowed the country to survive its haphazard, cavalier, and, in recent years, unrealistic approach to foreign policy. For all its recent mistakes, America is still a remarkably lucky country, confirming Bismarck’s alleged quip that “there seems to be a special providence that looks after drunkards, fools, and the United States of America.”
The real danger we face, therefore, is not a well-organized and powerful array of foreign adversaries whose clever strategems will snatch our security, prosperity, and way of life away from us. On the contrary, the problems the United States has faced abroad are mostly of its own making. As the political cartoonist Walt Kelly observed many years ago, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
At what point might America’s good fortune run out? It is by no means clear that the reform movement outlined here will take root, grow and flourish, and eventually help correct some of the follies that have led the United States astray at considerable cost to ourselves and even greater cost to others. It is entirely possible that the United States will continue on its present stumbling course no matter who resides in the White House, who occupies key positions in the executive branch, or which party controls the House or Senate.
As a nation, therefore, we stand at a crossroads. Down one road lies more of the same, with similar disheartening results. Repeating past follies may be endurable but is hardly desirable, and it will pose graver risks as the “unipolar moment” recedes further into the past. Down another road lies a more realistic strategy that has served the country well in the past and would do so again if adopted. It is not the foreign policy that the current occupant of the Oval Office can deliver successfully, but it is the foreign policy most Americans want and deserve. The only question is: How long will it take before they get it?