Book Recommendation
I just finished reading Surprise, Security and the American Experience by Yale's John Lewis Gaddis, and I strongly recommend anyone interested in an inherently fair-minded account of the historical origins of the Bush Doctrine read it as well.
First, Gaddis is one of my favorite people to read within international relations, primarily because he approaches current problems through a historian's lens, rather than getting so caught with identifying the independent and dependent variables as political scientists are wont to do, focusing on the "science" aspect of their work, that they often miss the point of the question and the hundreds of years of invaluable history at their hands for analysis. (See Gaddis' The Landscape of History for a highly amusing comparison of the historians' tradecraft with that of the social scientist).
In his latest book, however, Gaddis counters the argument that the Bush Doctrine policies of preemption, unilateralism and hegemony have no basis in American history. On the contrary, he argues, these three goals have been, to varying degrees, central to American foreign policy since the Monroe presidency, when they were implemented by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.
Gaddis uses three case studies of how surprise attacks on American terrotiry have provided the catalyst for changing American grand strategy. Following the British invasion of Washington, D.C. in 1814, during which they set fire to the White House, Adams sought to make sure such an event could not happen again. He sought to make America hegemonic in the Western Hemisphere, rejecting the balance of power, multipolar system in Europe. Furthermore, he sought to make sure America did not rely on the goodwill of others to ensure its security. Gaddis argues that Washington got the idea of opposing "entangling alliances" during peacetime from one of Adams' earlier writings. Despite the attempts by the Pat Buchanans of the country to use the "entangling alliances" warning to justify their position of hunkering down and isolating the country from the rest of the world, this was by no means support for isolationism. In fact, Adams was a master treaty-maker, and his goal was an expansion of US power and influence, but not through the means that would make the US reliant on someone else for some aspect of its security.
Finally, and most controversially, Gaddis argues that preemption is rooted in American history. After the British attack on Washington, Adams took the initiative to support preemptive attacks on other states that threatened American security. Great Britain, Spain and Russia still had possessions in North America that posed a potential threat to the United States. For example, Florida, ostensibly under Spanish control, was the 19th century equivalent of a modern day failed-state. Adams supported Andrew Jackson's legally questionable raid into Florida after a series of attacks by Creeks, Seminoles and escaped slaves and authorized the execution of two Englishmen accused of leading the raids.
Preemption continued as part of the American national security strategy throughout the 19th century, with the annexation of Texas, California and the southwestern territories that today make up Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Nevada. Polk's policy of Manifest Destiny, which it is today fashionable to malign in politically-correct circles, was also a policy outcome of this strategy. Preemption also became part of the American strategy when looking overseas, and justified US intervention in Cuba and the Philippines, out of fear that crumbling Spanish authority would allow for these territories to be taken over by hostile powers like Germany and Japan, and in Central America and the Caribbean.
These policies of security through expansion continued following the Pearl Harbor attack, with some aspects being enhanced and others momentarily de-emphasized. Hegemony through expansion remained the ultimate goal during WWII and later during the Cold War. Unilateralist interests, however, were cloaked in a multilateral framework since, for example, Roosevelt's goal was to let the Europeans and Russia do most of the fighting in Europe for the US. The underlying American strategy, however, remained one of security through hegemonic expansion. Out allies were willing to accept this, Gaddis argues, because there always existed the idea of "something worse" than a relatively benign US hegemony. Preemption too remained a policy of the Roosevelt administration, but they found it useful to make it appear as if the Soviet Union "had fired the first shot."
Gaddis then looks at the Bush Doctrine following September 11th, and sees policies that are rooted in American history. He does not, however, finish without criticism of the Bush administration. He argues:
Furthermore, it has been a habit in the public sphere to characterize Bush and the neo-conservatives' policy of democracy promotion as simply "something to do" (my words, not Gaddis') since we have no better way to pass the time. The policy of democracy promotion actually ties in quite nicely with Gaddis' favorable review of security through expansion. It is not the idea of the democratic peace, that democracies do not fight one another, that underlies the Bush doctrine, regardless of what he says in his speeches. We are not reshaping our security strategy to prevent a war between, say, Ghana and one of its democratic neighbors, to name a random hypothetical. Rather, the Bush Doctrine calls for security through expansion to ensure that states that could potentially threaten American security under a rogue regime are, more or less, like us. Democratic principles obviously play an important role, since the Soviet Union was not able to count on peace and unconditional support in states on which it imposed its system of government, but of central importance is that states support the same principles and have the same goals we do. In this sense, the first 110 pages of Gaddis' book hold a stronger opinion, that the Bush Doctrine is the logical extension of Adams' national security strategy.
Nevertheless, Gaddis does raise a strong point that a requirement to ensure other states don't try to balance against US hegemony is that the "possibility of something worse" continue to exist. While Gaddis may be a bit alarmist in suggesting that some states are considering that the Islamic fundamentalists might not be as bad as US hegemony, his is the best argument thus far for explaining the need for allies. We must continue to ensure that an alliance does not hinder or decrease American security, but we do have to maintain a sort of propaganda campaign, asserting that benign US hegemony is the best option for the world.
Read Gaddis' book.
First, Gaddis is one of my favorite people to read within international relations, primarily because he approaches current problems through a historian's lens, rather than getting so caught with identifying the independent and dependent variables as political scientists are wont to do, focusing on the "science" aspect of their work, that they often miss the point of the question and the hundreds of years of invaluable history at their hands for analysis. (See Gaddis' The Landscape of History for a highly amusing comparison of the historians' tradecraft with that of the social scientist).
In his latest book, however, Gaddis counters the argument that the Bush Doctrine policies of preemption, unilateralism and hegemony have no basis in American history. On the contrary, he argues, these three goals have been, to varying degrees, central to American foreign policy since the Monroe presidency, when they were implemented by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.
Gaddis uses three case studies of how surprise attacks on American terrotiry have provided the catalyst for changing American grand strategy. Following the British invasion of Washington, D.C. in 1814, during which they set fire to the White House, Adams sought to make sure such an event could not happen again. He sought to make America hegemonic in the Western Hemisphere, rejecting the balance of power, multipolar system in Europe. Furthermore, he sought to make sure America did not rely on the goodwill of others to ensure its security. Gaddis argues that Washington got the idea of opposing "entangling alliances" during peacetime from one of Adams' earlier writings. Despite the attempts by the Pat Buchanans of the country to use the "entangling alliances" warning to justify their position of hunkering down and isolating the country from the rest of the world, this was by no means support for isolationism. In fact, Adams was a master treaty-maker, and his goal was an expansion of US power and influence, but not through the means that would make the US reliant on someone else for some aspect of its security.
Finally, and most controversially, Gaddis argues that preemption is rooted in American history. After the British attack on Washington, Adams took the initiative to support preemptive attacks on other states that threatened American security. Great Britain, Spain and Russia still had possessions in North America that posed a potential threat to the United States. For example, Florida, ostensibly under Spanish control, was the 19th century equivalent of a modern day failed-state. Adams supported Andrew Jackson's legally questionable raid into Florida after a series of attacks by Creeks, Seminoles and escaped slaves and authorized the execution of two Englishmen accused of leading the raids.
Preemption continued as part of the American national security strategy throughout the 19th century, with the annexation of Texas, California and the southwestern territories that today make up Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Nevada. Polk's policy of Manifest Destiny, which it is today fashionable to malign in politically-correct circles, was also a policy outcome of this strategy. Preemption also became part of the American strategy when looking overseas, and justified US intervention in Cuba and the Philippines, out of fear that crumbling Spanish authority would allow for these territories to be taken over by hostile powers like Germany and Japan, and in Central America and the Caribbean.
These policies of security through expansion continued following the Pearl Harbor attack, with some aspects being enhanced and others momentarily de-emphasized. Hegemony through expansion remained the ultimate goal during WWII and later during the Cold War. Unilateralist interests, however, were cloaked in a multilateral framework since, for example, Roosevelt's goal was to let the Europeans and Russia do most of the fighting in Europe for the US. The underlying American strategy, however, remained one of security through hegemonic expansion. Out allies were willing to accept this, Gaddis argues, because there always existed the idea of "something worse" than a relatively benign US hegemony. Preemption too remained a policy of the Roosevelt administration, but they found it useful to make it appear as if the Soviet Union "had fired the first shot."
Gaddis then looks at the Bush Doctrine following September 11th, and sees policies that are rooted in American history. He does not, however, finish without criticism of the Bush administration. He argues:
The third and most recent surprise attack - that of September 11, 2001 - made it clear that surviving authoritarian regimes, even if feeble or falling, can breed terrorists capable of attacking the United States with devastating results on its own soil. The Bush administration, therefore, has called for yet another expansion of the empire of legitimacy: it can no longer respect the sovereignty of any state that harbors terrorists; it must preempt such threats wherever they appear; it will extend democracy everywhere. The precedent John Quincy Adams set has at last produced what he warned against: an American government that deliberately goes abroad in search of monsters to destroy - lest those monsters attempt to destroy it. It's here, then, that the Adams legacy and the Bush strategy part company, for such a quest, Adams feared, would make the United States the "dictatress of the world." Bush, in contrast, sees the United States as securing liberty throughout the world.Coming after the previous 110 pages of the book, this argument seems to be a somewhat narrow analysis of Adams warning about monsters. The United States, in Adams' day, occupied a fraction of the North American landmass. It was not the most powerful nation in the world, and it had enemies attacking it over land from the north, south and west. The only power truly capable of launching a sea-based attack were the British and, as Gaddis pointed out earlier, they were just as interested to keep other Europeans out of the Western Hemsiphere as we were, and we were thus able to rely on British naval power to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. As a result, the clearest threats to American security were coming from land, and it would be a strategic mistake to then look for additional enemies to fight across the seas. As Gaddis also points out earlier in the book, we cannot count of the stopping power of the oceans anymore to protect our security. While looking overseas for enemies would seem incomprehensible in Adams' time, as September 11th proved, it is the next logical source from whence our enemies will seek to attack us. Adams' legacy of preemption, unilateral interests and hegemony are still quite relevant, but his warning against looking overseas for enemies no longer is.
Furthermore, it has been a habit in the public sphere to characterize Bush and the neo-conservatives' policy of democracy promotion as simply "something to do" (my words, not Gaddis') since we have no better way to pass the time. The policy of democracy promotion actually ties in quite nicely with Gaddis' favorable review of security through expansion. It is not the idea of the democratic peace, that democracies do not fight one another, that underlies the Bush doctrine, regardless of what he says in his speeches. We are not reshaping our security strategy to prevent a war between, say, Ghana and one of its democratic neighbors, to name a random hypothetical. Rather, the Bush Doctrine calls for security through expansion to ensure that states that could potentially threaten American security under a rogue regime are, more or less, like us. Democratic principles obviously play an important role, since the Soviet Union was not able to count on peace and unconditional support in states on which it imposed its system of government, but of central importance is that states support the same principles and have the same goals we do. In this sense, the first 110 pages of Gaddis' book hold a stronger opinion, that the Bush Doctrine is the logical extension of Adams' national security strategy.
Nevertheless, Gaddis does raise a strong point that a requirement to ensure other states don't try to balance against US hegemony is that the "possibility of something worse" continue to exist. While Gaddis may be a bit alarmist in suggesting that some states are considering that the Islamic fundamentalists might not be as bad as US hegemony, his is the best argument thus far for explaining the need for allies. We must continue to ensure that an alliance does not hinder or decrease American security, but we do have to maintain a sort of propaganda campaign, asserting that benign US hegemony is the best option for the world.
Read Gaddis' book.
posted by Freedom to Belarus at 7:04 PM
1 Comments:
That is a terrific review. I really enjoyed your analysis.
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