In Defense of Prudent American Realism - Dr. Mackubin Owens

In Defense of Prudent American Realism - Dr. Mackubin Owens

U.S. foreign policy is in shambles, characterized by drift and incoherence. It is, at best, a-strategic and, at worst, non-strategic, lacking any concept of how to apply limited resources to obtain our foreign policy goals because this administration appears to lack clear goals or objectives. The foreign policy failures of the Biden Administration are legion: the disgraceful withdrawal from Afghanistan; the lack of a firm strategy regarding Ukraine; the treatment of Israel in the wake of last year’s Hamas atrocities; and a policy toward Iran that enables it to continue to stir up mischief in the Greater Middle East. Such weakness invites adventurism on the part of global troublemakers.  

Observers disagree about the causes of Biden’s failures in foreign policy. Some attribute them to indifference, others to incompetence—although the two are not unrelated. Still others contend that the results we are seeing represent the desired outcomes of more insidious motivations. But no matter the cause of Biden’s dysfunctional foreign policy, the result is the same: weakness that opens the way for those who wish America ill. Winston Churchill’s 1936 characterization of the Stanley Baldwin government as Hitler gained strength on the Continent echoes ominously today: it was, said Churchill, “decided only to be undecided, resolved to irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.”

To the extent that it has any intellectual foundation, Biden’s foreign policy represents a species of “liberal internationalism,” which holds that the actors in the international political system (IPS) tend towards cooperation rather than competition. Liberal internationalists contend that the goals of actors within the IPS transcend power and security; they also see an important role for actors in the IPS other than states, including international institutions such as the United Nations.

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

It is easy to criticize the foreign policy of the Biden Administration, but what are the alternatives? In today’s partisan political climate, many Trump supporters and congressional Republicans, citing cost and war weariness, have succumbed to the siren call of strategic disengagement. This approach is as dangerous to the security of the United States as the current muddling.

I have argued that the United States has been most successful when it has followed a foreign policy of “prudent American realism,” an approach that links American principles with Aristotelian prudence. This approach is based on the recognition that prudent American realism differs from the realism taught as part of academic international relations courses, fusing as it does the features of traditional realism—power and security—with prosperity and the preservation of American principles.

Aristotle called prudence the virtue most characteristic of the statesman. Prudence requires the statesman to always maintain a clear vision of what needs to be achieved—the ends of policy—while maintaining flexibility regarding the means. Successful American foreign policy, for example that pursued by Ronald Reagan, combined American power and American principles.

Unlike the realism of academic international relations course, prudent American realism recognizes that the internal character of regimes matters and that foreign policy must reflect the fundamental principles of liberal democracy. And unlike liberal internationalism, which holds that international law and institutions alone are sufficient to achieve peace, prudent American realism understands that there are certain problems that can be addressed only through the prudent exercise of power.  Thus, the strategic objective of prudent American realism is to maintain a liberal world order characterized by freedom and prosperity.

Prudent American realism represents a species of primacy. Primacy is based on hegemonic stability theory, which holds that a “liberal world order” does not arise spontaneously as the result of some global “invisible hand.”  Instead, such a system requires, in the words of Robert Gilpin, “a hegemonic power, a state willing and able to provide the world with the collective goods of economic stability and international security.”  The United States, as Great Britain before it, took up the role of hegemon not out of altruism but because it is in its national interest to do so.

Prudent American realism fuses the liberal political tradition of the United States with the recognition that the world is a dangerous place in which a just peace is maintained only by the strong. The desired outcome is not motivated by altruism but by the recognition that the United States can be fully secure, free, and prosperous only in a world where everyone else is also secure, free and prosperous. The mere existence of liberal institutions is not sufficient. As recent events have illustrated, a liberal world order is possible only if the United States is willing and able to maintain it

The alternative to US leadership based on prudent American realism is a world with more violence and disorder and less democracy and economic growth than a world where the United States continues to have more influence than China and Russia in shaping global affairs. The sustained international primacy of the United States is central to the welfare and security of Americans and to the future of freedom, democracy, open economies, and international order in the world.