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Hegemony and strategic culture: American power projection and alliance defence politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Bradley S. Klein
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Extract

The whole field of Strategic Studies bears the crippling legacy of having abstracted question of war and peace from their embeddedness in historically produced relations of social movements, political economy and culture. The very objects of strategic analysis—states and their mutual security alliances—are presumed to have been there from the start. And the principles underpinning their interactions are likewise construed as consistent with the rules governing a state system first made evident in Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , April 1988 , pp. 133 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1988

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References

1. Weber, Max, ‘Politics as a Vocation’, in From Max Weber, edited and translated by Gerth, Hans and Wright Mills, C. (New York, 1946), p. 78.Google Scholar

2. The clearest statement of the strategic point of view is Howard, Michael, The Causes of Wars, 2nd edn (Cambridge, MA, 1984)Google Scholar.

3. For unqualified examples of this, see Gilpin, Robert, War and Change in World Politics (Princeton, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Tucker, Robert W., The Inequality of Nations (New York, 1977)Google Scholar. Keohane, Robert O., After Hegemony (Princeton, 1984)Google Scholar, relaxes this dichotomy somewhat, but falls clearly—and self-consciously—under the rubric of realism in adhering to the distinction between domestic and foreign along these lines. The best single critique of these spatial/political boundaries is Walker, R. B. J., ‘Realism, Change, and International Political Theory’, in International Studies Quarterly, 31 (March 1987), pp. 65–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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5. Cox, ‘Gramsci, Hegegiony and International Relations’, p. 169.

6. Ibid., p. 171.

7. Even the most sophisticated of recent efforts in this genre, such as that of Pijl, Kees Van der, The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class (London, 1984)Google Scholar, has little to say on matters of military force and strategy.

8. See Lord, Carnes, ‘American Strategic Culture’, Comparative Strategy, 5 (1985), pp. 269–294CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Summers, Colonel Harry G., Jr., On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (Novato, CA, 1982)Google Scholar.

9. Indispensable along these lines is Luckham, Robin, ‘Armament Culture’, Alternatives, X (Summer 1984), pp. 1–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Luckham's focus is primarily on the domestic inculcation of quotidian militarization.

10. Diplomatic historians have long disputed President James K. Polk’ s claims in 1846 that Mexico committed aggression upon US territory and that it posed a threat to the homeland. Indeed, there was at the time enormous domestic opposition to Polk's spurious arguments and to the ensuing war. Moreover, America's spectacular military success, coupled with the subsequent annexation of vast lands stretching to well up the Pacific coast, confirm that the Mexican military threat to the United States was non-existent. See Merck, Frederick, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History (New York, 1963)Google Scholar.

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12. Lipset, Seymour Martin, The First New Nation (New York, 1963)Google Scholar, draws upon a liberal, consensualist view to explain the domestic politics of American exceptionalism. For radically divergent interpretations of exceptionalism and US diplomacy, compare the conservatism of Gilbert, The Beginnings of American Foreign Policy with the radical critique of ‘Open Door’ liberal imperialism presented by Williams, William Appelman, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, 2nd edn (New York, 1972)Google Scholar; and Williams, , Empire as a Way of Life (New York, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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15. Douhet, Guilio, The Command of the Air, trans. Ferrari, Dino D. (New York, 1942).Google Scholar The case for Douhet's centrality to subsequent theories of strategic nuclear bombing is made by Brodie, Bernard, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, 1959).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. Major De Seversky, Alexander P., Victory Through Air Power (New York, 1942)Google Scholar. This volume was the June 1942 Book-of-the-Month-Club selection.

17. The distinction here between ‘declaratory policy’ and ‘action policy’ follows Nitze, Paul, ‘Atoms, Strategy and Policy’, Foreign Affairs, 34 (January 1956), pp. 187–198CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ball, Desmond, ‘U.S. Strategic Forces: How Would They Be Used?’ International Security, 7 (Winter 1982/1983), pp. 31–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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19. Two best-selling books did bring these issues before the public, but their emphasis was largely upon the need to expand the Europea n arsenal so as to include more flexible nuclear-tactical options on the Continent, as well as to expand America's ability to fight ‘small scale, regional wars’ in the Third World. See Kissinger, Henry A., Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York, 1957)Google Scholar; and Taylor, Maxwell D., The Uncertain Trumpet (New York, 1960)Google Scholar, where the concept ‘flexible response’ first entered the public lexicon. Kaufmann, William W. (ed.), Military Policy and National Security (Princeton, 1956)Google Scholar was an influential contribution to transcending ‘massive retaliation’ through the development of war-fighting doctrines. The volume, however, was scarcely well known, certainly not as accessible to the public as the works of Herman Kahn, whose writings generated widespread controversy and much public disapproval—and always, it must be said, a wide readership. See Kahn, Herman, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, 1960)Google Scholar; and Kahn, , Thinking About the Unthinkable (New York, 1962)Google Scholar.

20. On the revised SIOP, see Kaplan, Fred, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York, 1983)Google Scholar. The full text of the Ann Arbor speech is found in Secretary of Defense McNamara, Robert S., ‘Defense Arrangements, of the North Atlantic Community’, Department of State Bulletin, XLVII (9 July 1962), pp. 64–69.Google Scholar

21. For a critique of strategic discourse as a techno-strategic enterprise that itself constitutes a form of violence done to th e world, see Klein, Bradley S., Strategic Discourse, Center on Violence and Human Survival Occasional Paper No. 3, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (New York, 1987)Google Scholar.

22. Nitze, ‘Atoms, Strategy and Policy’, p. 190, draws the analogy for strategic war-fighting. Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, p. 180, discusses tactical nuclear warfare in these terms.

23. Gray, Colin S., ‘National Style in Strategy: The American Example’, International Security, 6 (Fall 1981), pp. 21–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gray, , The Geopolitics of the Nuclear Era (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; and Lord, ‘American Strategic Culture’.

24. The phrase is Fred Kaplan's, from his book of that title.

25. These and other, lower-threshold incidents of American nuclear threat and intimidation are documented in Blechman, Barry M. and Kaplan, Stephen S., Force Without War (Washington, DC, 1978)Google Scholar; George, Alexander L. and Smoke, Richard, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; and Ellsberg, Daniel, ‘Introduction: A Call to Mutiny’, in Protest and Survive, Thompson, E. P. and Smith, Dan, eds (New York, 1981), pp. i–xxviii.Google Scholar

26. The most thoughtful argument s for minimal deterrence necessarily rely upon the assumption that, even if not historically the case, nuclear weapons could in the future be used for a purely retaliatory, second-strike function. See Ferraro, Vincent and FitzGerald, Kathleen, ‘The End of a Strategic Era: A Proposal for Minimal Deterrence’, in World Policy Journal, 1 (Winter 1983/1984), pp. 339–360.Google Scholar

27. An absolutely crucial text which argued that West German and West European security could no longer be guaranteed in the face of these Soviet advances, unless, of course, a more conventionally based, flexible NATO strategy were developed, was Schmidt, Helmut, Verteidigung oder Vergeltung: Ein deutscher Beitrag zum strategischen Problem der NA TO (Stuttgart, 1961)Google Scholar. The effect of the book was to leave behind earlier SPD concerns about NATO strategy—including Schmidt's own opposition i n 1958 to nuclearization on West German soil—and, in the aftermath of Bad Godesberg, to consolidate the Social Democratic acquiescence in American strategic dominance.

28. Turner, Frederick Jackson, The Frontier in American History (New York, 1920)Google Scholar.

29. George F. Kennan's famous article on containment, published as 6Mr. X\ ‘The Sources of. Soviet Conduct’, Foreign Affairs, 25 (July 1947), pp. 566–82, was seminal in marginalizing the USSR as an ominous ‘Other’ which loomed over the Free World. The article's historical importance, in having consolidated for professional and popular consumption the US view of the USSR, can hardly be overemphasized. The essay reifies the psychology of Soviet insecurity by tearing it out of the history of recurrent invasions and encirclements which helped shape Soviet strategic culture. Kennan himself subsequently repudiated the hardline elements of his 1947 argument. See his Memoirs, 1925–1950 (Boston, 1967), pp. 325–500.Google Scholar He then went on to become a prominent—and eloquent—spokesman for disarmament, as in his The Nuclear Dilemma (New York, 1982)Google Scholar. Hardliners, among the ‘hawks’ of the neoconservative Committee on the Present Danger, continue to draw upon Kennan's earlier arguments and hope to mobilize them for the New Cold War. Crucial here is Podhoretz, Norman, The Present Danger (New York, 1980)Google Scholar.

30. The best single source of documentation regarding the militarization of world politics is Sivard, Ruth Leger, World Military and Social Expenditures 1986 (Washington, DC, 1986)Google Scholar.

31. The theory and practice of post-statist critical social movements have recently been accorded thoughtful attention. See Mendlovitz, Saul H. and Walker, R. B. J. (eds.), Towards a Just World Peace (Guildford, Eng., 1987)Google Scholar; Warren Magnusson and R. B. J. Walker, ‘De-Centring the State’, paper presented at the 1987 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Hamilton, Ont.; and R. B. J. Walker, One World/Many Worlds: Struggles for a Just World Peace (manuscript, 1987).

32. Thompson, E. P., ‘Note s on Exterminism, the Last Stage of Civilization’, in Thompson, E. P.et al., Exterminism and Cold War (London, 1982), pp. 1–34.Google Scholar

33. For a critique of SDI which reveals how this programme, even as a research project, promotes tensions within the Alliance and spawns militarized nationalist responses by the West European allies, see Lucas, Michael, ‘SDI and Europe: Militarization or Common Security?’ World Policy Journal, 3 (Spring 1986), pp. 219–249Google Scholar. Characteristically, US analyses of Star Wars focus overwhelmingly on military—technical issues. The best example of this genre is Drell, Sidney D., Finley, Philip J. and Holloway, David, The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative (Cambridge, MA, 1985)Google Scholar.

34. Klein, Strategic Discourse.