The Unquiet Frontier: Rising Rivals, Vulnerable Allies, and the Crisis of American Power.

• Author: Stapleton, Brad
• Position: Book review

The Unquiet Frontier: Rising Rivals, Vulnerable Allies, and the Crisis of American Power

Jakub J. Grygiel and A. Wess Mitchell

Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016, 240 pp.

In The Unquiet Frontier, Jakub Grygiel and A. Wess Mitchell have articulated a provocative justification for a revitalized strategy of containment focused on China, Iran, and Russia. That strategy is based on what they call the "rimland imperative"--the notion that U.S. security and prosperity are vitally dependent upon supporting allies against the encroachment by "revisionist" states (those intent upon overturning the established geopolitical order) on the periphery of Eurasia, stretching "from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea in Europe, through the Levant and Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean and up through the littoral Asia to the Sea of Japan."

In many ways, The Unquiet Frontier is unduly alarmist. The contention that "the U.S.-led global alliance network could unravel in coming years" is certainly hyperbolic. Over the past decade, a number of prominent analysts have voiced trenchant arguments in favor of U.S. retrenchment. But that perspective has failed to exert much (if any) influence over U.S. foreign policy. In fact, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have prompted the Obama administration to place renewed emphasis on maintaining strong alliances--largely as a means of distributing the burden for addressing threats to international security. In his FY2017 budget proposal, President Obama recommended increasing funding for the European Reassurance Initiative by nearly 350 percent to $3.4 billion. Reports of the death of the American alliance system have thus been greatly exaggerated.

Nevertheless, Grygiel and Mitchell provide a thorough and interesting explication of the general benefits of alliances. They can deter revisionist states by increasing the expected costs and reducing the expected gains of aggression--and in so doing temper the ambitions of U.S. rivals. In the event that deterrence fails, alliances also extend the reach of the U.S. military by securing access to overseas bases. And by reassuring smaller states, U.S. alliances can prevent them from pursuing independent security initiatives that could be destabilizing--most notably, developing their own nuclear weapons. Given those benefits, Grygiel and Mitchell view alliances as essential for preventing "the emergence of a power or combination of powers within the Eurasian landmass that could...