Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) - Hardcover

Posen, Barry R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801452589 ISBN 13: 9780801452581

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2014

Synopsis

The United States, Barry R. Posen argues in Restraint, has grown incapable of moderating its ambitions in international politics. Since the collapse of Soviet power, it has pursued a grand strategy that he calls "liberal hegemony," one that Posen sees as unnecessary, counterproductive, costly, and wasteful. Written for policymakers and observers alike, Restraint explains precisely why this grand strategy works poorly and then provides a carefully designed alternative grand strategy and an associated military strategy and force structure. In contrast to the failures and unexpected problems that have stemmed from America’s consistent overreaching, Posen makes an urgent argument for restraint in the future use of U.S. military strength.

After setting out the political implications of restraint as a guiding principle, Posen sketches the appropriate military forces and posture that would support such a strategy. He works with a deliberately constrained notion of grand strategy and, even more important, of national security (which he defines as including sovereignty, territorial integrity, power position, and safety). His alternative for military strategy, which Posen calls "command of the commons," focuses on protecting U.S. global access through naval, air, and space power, while freeing the United States from most of the relationships that require the permanent stationing of U.S. forces overseas.

About this title

About the Author:

Barry R. Posen is Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the Security Studies Program at MIT. He is the author of The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (winner of the Furniss Award and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award) and Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks, both from Cornell.

Review:

"Unnecessary and exhausting military ventures have flowed from the foreign policy elite's excessive ambition, overconfidence in the appeal of U.S. policies, and facile underestimation of the costs in blood and treasure. Barry R. Posen’s seasoned strategic wisdom and technical expertise put these tragic mistakes in their place and chart a realistic alternative to American overstretch."

(Richard K. Betts, Columbia University Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, author of American Force)

"Since the end of the Cold War, impulse and ideology, generously seasoned with fantasy, have displaced principled strategy as the basis for U. S. policy. In this important and timely volume, Barry R. Posen illuminates the path back toward good sense and sobriety. Restraint is a splendid achievement."

(Andrew J. Bacevich, Boston University, author of Breach of Trust)

"It is fair, balanced, and rigorous. It is also an argument with which this reviewer has a great deal of sympathy. Posen's book will stand for many years as the most cogent, lucid, and compelling argument for a major revision of for a more humble and prudent approach to American foreign policy."

(Paul K. MacDonald & Joseph M. Parent)

"In this thought-provoking book, Barry R. Posen ventures alternatives to―as well as insightful critiques of―current U.S. foreign and defense policies. He provides a brilliant introduction to the concept of grand strategy, uses this to analyze contemporary approaches to sustaining U.S. primacy, shows how these approaches are both failing and unsustainable, puts forward a refreshingly unconventional set of proposals for a new U.S. grand strategy, and demonstrates how the military aspects of this grand strategy could be implemented while reducing the U.S. defense burden to no more than 2.5 percent of GDP. Posen has written a book that deserves a wide readership, full of ideas that should feature prominently in an overdue national debate about affordable national security."

(Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr., former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Ambassador to wartime Saudi Arabia, and author of four books on foreign policy, statecraft, and diplomacy)

"Barry R. Posen is one of America's leading thinkers about grand strategy. He has given us some of the best scholarly analysis of how states use military means to meet foreign policy objectives and cogently described the various strategies America has considered over the years. Now he is wading into the policy debate by planting his intellectual flag on behalf of a new U.S. grand strategy of restraint. In a sharply argued and comprehensive book, Posen shows why the grand strategy of primacy, which has guided America's military strategy for the past twenty years, is no longer economically sustainable nor militarily necessary. He convincingly argues that restraint will provide a sounder basis for ensuring U.S. national security in the years to come."

(Michael C. Desch, University of Notre Dame, author of Power and Military Effectiveness: The Fallacy of Democratic Triumphalism)

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0801452589
• ISBN 13: 9780801452581
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256