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

• Author: Coyne, Christopher J.
• Position: War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft - Book review

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

By Eliot A. Cohen

New York: Basic Books, 2016.

Pp. XV, 285. $27.99 hardcover.

War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft

By Robert D. Blackwill and Jennifer M. Harris

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2016.

Pp. viii, 366. $29.95 hardcover.

James L. Payne is research fellow at the Independent Institute and director of Lytton Research and Analysis. He taught political science at Yale, Wesleyan, Johns Hopkins, and Texas A&M Universities. (1.) Another writer of yesteryear who had no trouble recognizing government's connection to violence was the German social theorist Max Weber. In a talk given in 1918 titled "Politics as a Vocation," he offered this definition of the state: "[A] state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory" ([1918] 2009, 78). Weber was quite frank in connecting force to the role of government--for example, "Whoever wants to engage in politics at all ... lets himself in for the diabolical forces lurking in all violence" (125-26), or, "Whoever contracts with violent means for whatever ends--and every politician does--is exposed to its specific consequences" (124). On May 25,1936, William E. Rappard delivered the eighth Richard Cobden Lecture at the Royal Society of Arts in Adelphi, London. In his lecture, titled "The Common Menace of Economic and Military Armaments," Rappard argued that military and economic armaments are related and pose a grave threat to international peace and prosperity. Military armaments are tools of brute force that can be used for both defensive and offensive purposes. The accumulation of military armaments reduce global safety by making other, lesser-armed countries feel less secure. Economic armaments, in contrast, refer to "all those legislative and administrative devices intended to restrict imports" and to manipulate economic activity between those living in different states (William E. Rappard, The Common Menace of Economic and Military Armaments [London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1936], p. 10). These armaments increase the chance of conflict by preventing positive-sum exchanges between parties and fostering isolation, nationalism, and a sense of "us" against "them." Together, military and economic armaments, according to Rappard, threaten global well-being by undermining the growth and stability produced by the free movement of goods, services, and people.

Eight decades after Rappard's lecture, military and economic armaments remain at the forefront of foreign-policy discussions, as illustrated by two recent books. In The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force, Eliot Cohen argues for a renewed commitment by the U.S. government not only to invest in its military armaments but also to use this substantial force around the globe proactively to promote American security and ideals. In War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft, Robert Blackwill and Jennifer Harris argue that the U.S. government should be more willing to engage in "geoeconomics," their term for using economic power to accomplish geopolitical goals. From their perspective, a rebalancing of the U.S. government's foreign-policy tools is needed in which geoeconomics is elevated to the same level as hard power and diplomacy.

The relevance of Rappard's lecture should be evident. Whereas Rappard saw military and economic armaments as a "common menace" threatening global peace and prosperity, the authors of these two books see them as tools for enhancing peace and prosperity. Are Rappard's concerns antiquated? I do not believe so. But before explaining why, I summarize the case for military armaments put forth by Cohen and the case for economic armaments put forth by Blackwill and Harris.

The Case for Military Armaments

The Big Stick is broken into eight chapters, in between a brief introduction and epilogue. In the opening lines of the introduction, Cohen tells his readers that Americans must take on the responsibility for maintaining world order because "[t]o do otherwise would mean not only to acquiesce in civilization-threatening horrors, but to jeopardize their own prosperity and freedoms" (p. 1). The rest of the book attempts to explain why.

Cohen first explores the past fifteen years of war by the U.S. government in Afghanistan and Iraq (chapter 2). He lays out what he considers to be the successes and failures of each intervention, finally admitting at the end of the chapter that "the Iraq War was a mistake" (p. 59) and that "as of 2015 the success achieved [in Afghanistan] seemed fragile" (p. 60). In doing so, he warns that although reflection on these wars is necessary, it is important "not to be overwhelmed by these experiences, or to read too much into them" (p. 61). Doing so runs the risk of neglecting present-day threats, which he believes are significant.

Next, Cohen considers the overall health of the U.S. military through a review of military expenditures by the U.S. government and the personnel and equipment it has purchased (chapter 3). He expresses concern about the overly bureaucratic and cumbersome procurement process and the general inertia of the U.S. military apparatus. Nonetheless, there is reason for future optimism due to America's economic strength, its alliances, and its demographics, which are among the most favorable of any of the current powerful states.

The book then turns to a discussion of what Cohen considers to be the four vital threats to U.S. security and ideals. China (chapter 4) threatens to establish "hegemony over its neighbors" while "attempting to reshape the international order...