Strategic horizons.

• Author: Pham, J. Peter
• Position: American Global Strategy and the "War on Terrorism" - New Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy - Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy - The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century - Book review

Hall Gardner, American Global Strategy and the "War on Terrorism" (Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 239 pp., 45 [pounds sterling].

Robert J. Lieber, The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 267 pp., $28.

Ralph Peters, New Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy (New York: Sentinel, 2005), 292 pp., $24.95.

Stephen M. Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 320 pp., $27.95.

AFTER THE collapse of the Soviet Union, some observers were quick to recognize a "unipolar moment" of unprecedented American power and influence. Others were just as quick to predict that the moment would be short lived, with the extraordinary relative status of the U.S. triggering a movement to counter-balance it that would result in the rapid emergence of a multipolar international system. A decade and a half later, despite the wide resentment that American foreign policies--including some quite unnecessary missteps--have engendered abroad, the countervailing trend against the world's predominant power that traditional balance of power theorists had been predicting has yet to Occur.

Notwithstanding the heavy toll that the interrelated challenges of terrorism, the war in Iraq and nuclear proliferation (to say nothing of maladroit public diplomacy) have exacted on its global standing, America will for some time to come continue to occupy its paramount position in the international system because of what Barry Posen of MIT has called the "command of the commons"--command of sea, space and air. What remains to be settled, however, is what the United States does with this primacy.

The sheer number of recent books with "power", "strategy", or whatnot in their titles--including the selection examined in this essay--attests to the fact that policymakers, scholars and others increasingly share the consensus that postCold War America, even after 9/11, lacks a "grand strategy" in the mold of NSC 68's blueprint for the Cold War policy of containment and acts instead on an ad hoc basis. If America is to preserve its standing on the international stage--let alone its commanding pinnacle--it requires an appropriate grand strategy that, beyond the obvious necessity of winning the War on Terror, best advances its interests as well as its values.

Indispensable Gulliver

RETIRED MILITARY intelligence officer and author Ralph Peters is unabashed in his enthusiasm for America's current position in the world and for the opportunity that it presents for developing a new grand strategy that not only preserves that position of power, but expands upon it to create a revolutionary "new world order." While Peters neither refrains from criticizing the shortcomings of U.S. intelligence nor from warning about the dangers of America's overstretched military, New Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy nonetheless outlines an ambitious vision for what its author calls "the greatest--and most virtuous--power in history." Despite its off-putting, strident tone (the just-quoted description of the United States comes in the work's very first paragraph), the book is well worth reading, not so much for its abundance of deliciously wicked one-liners aimed at both sides of the partisan aisle--for example, "in the Clinton years ... diversity was good, even when it was deadly", and, "the Rumsfeld cabal envisioned The Lord of the Rings and delivered Lord of the Flies"--but especially because some of its insights are essential to any American strategy for the 21st century that aims to be both realistic and global.

Unfortunately, the very real flashes of brilliance between the covers of New Glory are obscured almost irremediably by two problems with the work. The first is that the author's delivery is so overburdened with his sense of self-importance that the truths within his message risk being dismissed as the products of delusion. Something is clearly not right if you must tell your reader that you are "a visionary strategist" and "a renowned strategist" who "worked in our intelligence system for two decades, from the grinding tactical level at which intel meant a radio and a map to levels of access whose existence is classified"--and then turn around and piously assure him or her that you "have no ax to grind beyond desiring the sharpest possible blade for our country." The second difficulty flows from the first: Peters tries to weave his clearly important insights into a geopolitical version of grand unification theory. His book's self-declared purpose is no less than to "advance the debate over American strategy" by "addressing, in turn, the non-traditional sources of our power, our recent military endeavors, the deficiencies of our intelligence system and obsolete diplomacy, the challenges and opportunities with which the world presents us and unconventional strategies we might pursue to increase our security and well-being", with a text that "ranges from social revolution and military reform to a plea for a grand strategic realignment." Predictably, the result falls short of the promises.

These shortcomings notwithstanding, New Glory is not without some prescient analyses. While Peters admits that the United States would be better off if it could turn away and ignore the ferment in the Islamic heartlands of the Middle East, he is correct that engagement is now unavoidable, if only because globalization has rendered containment impossible. While there may have been a time when U.S. policymakers might have responsibly entertained a strategy of "offshore balancing", reducing America's direct "footprint" in the Middle East, that moment has long past. Today such a recourse would probably backfire, being interpreted as a retreat likely to embolden America's foes...