The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force.

• Author: Preble, Christopher
• Position: Book review

The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force

Eliot A. Cohen

New York: Basic Books, 2017, 304 pp.

In the spring and early summer of 2017, Republicans and Democrats alike reacted angrily when President Donald Trump called for deep cuts in nearly every government department in order to offset large increases planned for the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. The State Department took a particularly big hit--a nearly 30 percent reduction from the year before. When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations committee in June, Chairman Bob Corker explained that he had stopped considering the administration's budget request after five minutes. "This is a total waste of time," Corker concluded. Sen. John McCain agreed. Trump's budget was "dead on arrival."

Such criticisms appear to have had no effect on Donald Trump's determination to expand U.S. military power. It was as though he had been paying attention only to part of his high school history lecture on Teddy Roosevelt's presidency: he heard the "big stick" part of TR's quotable axiom, but missed the "speak softly" aspect. Although the U.S. military stick is already big--and certainly far more intimidating than anything Teddy Roosevelt could have ever imagined--it isn't big enough as far as Donald Trump is concerned. The headline of an early assessment of Donald Trump's foreign policy vision succinctly summarized how his approach would differ from his predecessor's: "Trump to focus on 'peace through strength' over Obama's 'soft power' approach."

Many serious national security professionals agree that this is precisely what is needed. For example, in his book, The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power Lr the Necessity of Military Force, Eliot Cohen explains "America needs a substantially larger military than the one it now has." And we must be willing to use it. Cohen, the Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, concedes that the "magnetism of the United States has real political consequences," but "soft power ... also has its limits." As such, we must rely much more heavily on hard power.

Despite the fact that Americans have grown weary from a decade and a half of protracted conflict, Cohen explains that the nation must remain ready to wage--not merely deter--more wars. He is particularly dismissive of past attempts to limit the use of...