Power Problems

Peter Harris critiques America’s grand strategy of primacy and advocates for a move to restraint that necessarily includes wholesale reforms to domestic as well as foreign policy. He explains why primacy has persisted despite the wisdom of retrenchment and how decades of an expansive foreign policy has shaped American politics, culture, and institutions. He also discusses the problems of vested interests, partisanship, and how to make restraint more salable to the public.Show NotesPeter Harris, Why America Can’t Retrench (and How it Might), Polity Press, 2024.

Daniel DePetris and Jennifer Kavanagh of Defense Priorities discuss the latest iteration of the Axis of Evil threat, this time in reference to China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, and argue their relationship is misconstrued and overhyped. They discuss threat inflation, the relationship dynamics among these four powers, including China and Russia’s relationship and how US posture has pushed them together, the state of the Russia-Ukraine war, China’s role in the Middle East, the problem of prioritizing threats and interests under primacy, and how to constructively think about core US national interests, among other issues.Show NotesDaniel DePetris and Jennifer Kavanagh, “The ‘Axis of Evil’ is Overhyped,” Foreign Policy, August 14, 2024.

The Stimson Center’s Senior Fellow Dan Grazier and Research Associate Julia Gledhill analyze U.S. defense spending and explain how the Pentagon is creating “a budgetary time bomb set to explode in the next twenty years.” They discuss several examples of failed over-budget weapons acquisition programs and warn that future such fiascos are now in the making, with unsustainable budgetary implications, unless crucial reforms to U.S. defense and foreign policy are made. Show NotesDan Grazier, Julia Gledhill, Geoff Wilson, “Current Defense Plans Require Unsustainable Future Spending”, Stimson Center Issue Brief, July 16, 2024.

Renanah Joyce, Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, and Brian Blankenship, Assistant Professor at the University of Miami, explain how great power competition for foreign military bases in third-party host countries increases the costs of securing access. They discuss the strategy behind US forward basing over time, expansion into Africa in recent years, different ways of providing compensation to host countries, increasing competition for host country access, the lack of transparency on US overseas presence, and the strategic utility (or lack thereof) of overseas basing. Show Notes:Renanah Miles Joyce & Brian Blankenship (2024) “The Market for Foreign Bases,” Security Studies, 33(2), 194-223.

Charles Glaser, senior fellow at MIT’s Security Studies program and professor emeritus at George Washington University, discusses the dynamics of the security dilemma and international order. He explores how the security dilemma concept provides insights into America’s rivalry with its two great power rivals, Russia and China, and discusses U.S. policy with respect to the war in Ukraine, the dispute over Taiwan, U.S. interests vs commitments in East Asia, how to trim undesirable commitments, and why Washington’s flawed “liberal international order” concept leads to more conflictual foreign policies. Show NotesCharles L. Glaser, “Fear Factor,” Foreign Affairs, June 18, 2024Charles L. Glaser, “Washington is Avoiding the Tough Questions on Taiwan and China,” Foreign Affairs, April 28, 2021Charles L. Glaser “A Flawed Framework: Why the Liberal International Order Concept is Misguided,” International Security, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Spring 2019), pp. 51-87.

Benjamin Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities, argues that the United States should immediately begin withdrawing military forces from Europe to set the stage for European defense autonomy. He discusses the history of NATO, how it’s strategic purposes have evolved over time, what NATO costs America, defensibility problems with some Eastern European members, institutional inertia, differing threat assessments of Russia, and burden-sharing vs burden-dropping, among other topics. Benjamin Friedman, "A New NATO Agenda: Less U.S., Less Dependency," Defense Priorities, July 8, 2024.

Rachel Metz, assistant professor of political science at George Washington University, explains why security assistance, one of the most ubiquitous programs in U.S. foreign policy, so often fails. She argues that bureaucratic interests, organizational processes, and perverse dynamics of civil-military relations discourage conditioning U.S. support for partner militaries. She also discusses the role of norms in the U.S. Army, the need for greater civilian oversight and management, why the policymakers need to be more selective about security assistance, and how U.S. political leaders have expanded the military’s roles and responsibilities to the detriment of an effective U.S. strategy. Show NotesRachel Tecott Metz; “The Cult of the Persuasive: Why U.S. Security Assistance Fails,” International Security 2022/2023; 47 (3): 95–135.

Jonathan Kirshner, professor of political science and international studies at Boston College, discusses his most recent book, An Unwritten Future: Realism and Uncertainty in World Politics. Kirshner provides fundamental critiques of structural realism and offensive realism and argues for classical realism’s greater explanatory power and firmer theoretical underpinnings. He also covers rationalist explanations for war, the role of change and uncertainty in world politics, the rise of China, and why effective grand strategy requires a healthy politics, among other topics.  Show Notes Jonathan Kirshner, An Unwritten Future: Realism and Uncertainty in World Politics, Princeton University Press, 2022.