Waiting for Balancing: Why the World Is Not Pushing Back

2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keir A. Lieber ◽  
Gerard Alexander
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
Much Ado About Nothing ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soft Balancing ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many observers predicted a rise in balancing against the United States. More recently, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 has generated renewed warnings of an incipient global backlash. Indeed, some analysts claim that signs of traditional hard balancing can already be detected, while others argue that in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. grand strategy has generated a new phenomenon known as soft balancing, in which states seek to undermine and restrain U.S. power in ways that fall short of classic measures. There is little credible evidence, however, that major powers are engaging in either hard or soft balancing against the United States. The absence of hard balancing is explained by the lack of underlying motivation to compete strategically with the United States under current conditions. Soft balancing is much ado about nothing: the concept is difficult to define or operationalize; the behavior seems identical to traditional diplomatic friction; and, regardless, specific predictions of soft balancing are not supported by the evidence. Balancing against the United States is not occurring because contemporary U.S. grand strategy, despite widespread criticism, poses a threat to only a very limited number of regimes and terrorist groups. Most countries either share U.S. strategic interests in the war on terrorism or do not have a direct stake in the confict. As such, balancing behavior is likely only among a narrowly circumscribed list of states and actors being targeted by the United States.

Attaining Primacy

2018 ◽  
pp. 183-208
Author(s):  
William O. Walker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World Order ◽  
Smithsonian Institution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Soviet Union

This chapter explores Richard Nixon’s and Henry Kissinger’s disdain for hegemony and search for primacy as they sought to refurbish America’s tarnished reputation. Through their pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union and China, their resort to the Nixon Doctrine (to exit as gracefully as possible from Indochina), and the meeting at the Smithsonian Institution in December 1971 to restore America’s global economic stature, they attempted to achieve U.S. primacy in world affairs. Their efforts to implement the novel grand strategy of strategic globalism fell short, as seen in the difficulty of extricating the United States from Vietnam, Nixon’s Watergate imbroglio, and the presence of competing visions of world order among allies, most notably in West Germany’s pursuit of Ostpolitik.

“New Cold Wars Have Begun”

2021 ◽  
pp. 47-67
Author(s):  
Rush Doshi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
American Power ◽  
Tiananmen Square ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Balance Of Forces ◽  
The Cold War

Chapter 3 uses Party texts to explore China’s changing view of the United States at the end of the Cold War and the ends, ways, and means of its subsequent grand strategy to blunt American power. It demonstrates how China went from seeing the United States as a quasi-ally against the Soviet Union to seeing it as China’s greatest threat and “main adversary” in the wake of three events: the traumatic trifecta of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Gulf War, and the Soviet collapse. It traces how Beijing launched its blunting strategy under the Party guideline of “hiding capabilities and biding time,” which it tied to perceptions of US power captured in phrases like the “international balance of forces” and “multipolarity.” The chapter also introduces China’s effort to asymmetrically weaken American power in Asia across military, economic, and political instruments, which are discussed in greater detail in subsequent chapters.

The Long Game

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rush Doshi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Imperial Japan ◽  
The Cold War

For more than a century, no US adversary or coalition of adversaries—not Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or even the Soviet Union—has ever reached 60 percent of US GDP. China is the sole exception, and it is fast emerging into a global superpower that could rival, if not eclipse, the United States. What does China want, does it have a grand strategy to achieve it, and what should the United States do about it? The Long Game draws from a rich base of Chinese primary sources, including decades’ worth of party documents, leaked materials, memoirs by party leaders, as well as careful analysis of China's conduct, to provide a history of China’s grand strategy since the end of the Cold War. Taking readers behind the Party’s closed doors, this book uncovers Beijing’s long, methodical game to displace America from the regional and global order through three sequential “strategies of displacement.” The book shows how China’s strategy is profoundly shaped by key events that change its perception of American power—the end of the Cold War, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the populist elections of 2016, and the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. Finally, the book offers a comprehensive yet “asymmetric” plan for an effective US response to the China challenge. Ironically, the proposed approach takes a page from Beijing’s own strategic playbook to undermine China’s ambitions and strengthen American order without competing dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-ship, or loan-for-loan.

The United States and the Arab-Israeli Conflict

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-23
Author(s):  
Jerome Slater
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Political Values ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
The Cold War

With rare exceptions, since 1948 and the onset of the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, the United States has provided near unconditional support of Israel. The downside of that support is that it has enabled Israel to spurn repeated opportunities for peace settlements of those conflicts, for even when US governments have disagreed with hard-line Israeli policies, they have only rarely been willing to press for changes. A number of factors that explain these US policies are examined: the belief that support of Israel is morally required; shared religious and political values; public opinion; strong congressional and presidential support of Israel; the strategic and national interests of the United States, particularly concerning Middle East oil and the containment of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and the “war on terrorism” afterward; and the power of the Israel lobby. Particular attention is paid to the dispute over how much power the lobby has over US Mideast policies.

Forging the Grand Alliance

2020 ◽  
pp. 140-169
Author(s):  
David F. Schmitz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Grand Alliance ◽  
Second Chance

Roosevelt's grand strategy of ensuring the survival of Great Britain and the Soviet Union was based on the understanding that Germany was the most dangerous enemy and Berlin defeated first. It was also predicated on the idea that World War II provided the United States a second chance to take up its rightful place as a world leader. As the nation fully mobilized in 1942, the Grand Alliance struggled with question of the best strategy for defeating Germany with the Soviet Union seeking an immediate second front and Great Britain wanting to attack Germany in the Mediterranean. Roosevelt ultimately sided with the British. As the course of the war started to turn in favor of the Allies with the victory at Midway over Japan's navy, the successful attack on North Africa, and the Russians victory at Stalingrad, Roosevelt met with Churchill in Casablanca and sought to solidify Grand Alliance with the declaration of unconditional surrender.

Utopias of One

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Kotin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War I ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Original Research ◽  
The Soviet Union

This book is a new account of utopian writing. It examines how eight writers—Henry David Thoreau, W. E. B. Du Bois, Osip and Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Anna Akhmatova, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and J. H. Prynne—construct utopias of one within and against modernity's two large-scale attempts to harmonize individual and collective interests: liberalism and communism. The book begins in the United States between the buildup to the Civil War and the end of Jim Crow; continues in the Soviet Union between Stalinism and the late Soviet period; and concludes in England and the United States between World War I and the end of the Cold War. In this way it captures how writers from disparate geopolitical contexts resist state and normative power to construct perfect worlds—for themselves alone. The book contributes to debates about literature and politics, presenting innovative arguments about aesthetic difficulty, personal autonomy, and complicity and dissent. It models a new approach to transnational and comparative scholarship, combining original research in English and Russian to illuminate more than a century and a half of literary and political history.

Trust, but Verify

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

This book uses trust—with its emotional and predictive aspects—to explore international relations in the second half of the Cold War, beginning with the late 1960s. The détente of the 1970s led to the development of some limited trust between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lessened international tensions and enabled advances in areas such as arms control. However, it also created uncertainty in other areas, especially on the part of smaller states that depended on their alliance leaders for protection. The chapters in this volume look at how the “emotional” side of the conflict affected the dynamics of various Cold War relations: between the superpowers, within the two ideological blocs, and inside individual countries on the margins of the East–West confrontation.

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