Power, Terror, Peace, and War : America's Grand Strategy in a World at Risk

Rating:
Summary: The American Project
Review: Walter Russell Mead is the Henry A Kissinger Senior Fellow on US Foreign Policy at the Council of Foreign Relations and the intellectual power that he brings to bear on the issues of foreign policy are as impressive as his job title. He marshals the disciplines of politics, economics, sociology, history and religion to produce a provocative and compelling analysis of America and its role in the world.

This important book describes what Mead calls the "American Project...to protect our own domestic security while building a peaceful world order of peaceful states linked by common values and sharing a common prosperity." This project is rooted in American history and tradition. (This work should be read in tandem with Surprise, Security, and the American Experience by John Lewis Gaddis.)

Mead identifies four schools of thought that animate our way of thinking about foreign policy. 1)Wilsonians are idealistic internationalists who believe the spread of democracy abroad will give us security at home - many of the neoconservatives are of this persuasion. Present-day Wilsonians are notable for their lack of confidence in international institutions. 2)Jeffersonians adhere to isolationism, even less of an option today than it was in the 19th century. 3)Hamiltonians are the business class that promote enterprise at home and abroad; they believe that globalization contributes to peace and security. 4)Jacksonians are described as "populist nationalists." They have the individualist's suspicion of government. And, oh yeh, they like to fight. In foreign policy that translates into overwhelming force and total victory.

The Bush administration's war on terror has been, according to Mead, a combination of Revival Wilsonianism and Jacksonianism. The internal conflict between these two approaches are never more obvious than in the present occupation of Iraq. While the Wilsonians are delicately trying to plant the seeds of democracy, the Jacksonians want victory over the evildoers regardless of the consequences.

Another trend that Mead describes is the shift from managed capitalism ("Fordism") which is a cooperative arrangement among the managers of state, business, and labor to a global capitalism ("millenial capitalism") which is less regulated and less equitable in its distribution of winners and losers. The Hamiltonians are promoters of millenial capitalism. It is a worldwide phenomenon that the state elites dislike because it diminishes their control over the economy. One more reason they hate us. The poor also liked the old system because it brought government subsidies. Alas, they too hate us.

Mead's prescription for helping the poor is of course in tune with millenial capitalism. The money for old style foreign aid is no longer there since Western governments are all running huge deficits already. He advocates private banks lending money in the form of microloans. This has been done succussfully in Bangladesh and elsewhere. (Read Banker to the Poor:Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty by Muhammad Yunus.) Outreach to the poor is not only a good in and of itself but it also provides fewer soldiers for international terrorism.

The Revival Wilsonianism of the Bush administration also has a religious element. Mead believes that the religious aspect of the foreign policy agenda should be embraced by us and the rest of the world as a basis for action since international institutions are not providing us with the proper values necessary to guarantee our security. This is where I part company with Mead. Even though international institutions have failed on many occassions, I still have more confidence in the United Nations than evangelicals in charge of foreign policy. We must guard against becoming like the enemy; trying to fight Islamic fanaticism or fascism with evangelical Christianity is not the proper course. The proper solution would be reforming existing international institutions to reflect new realities. Long live the separation of church and international governance.

This book is very good at identifying the domestic sources of our search for solutions to our international problems. The goal of this book was to offer important discussion on securing America domestically within a network of states that share our values and it achieves that goal reasonably well.

Rating:
Summary: Pax America, elegantly distilled
Review: Walter Russell Mead's greatest talent may be his ability to distill remarkably complex issues into useful and easily remembered paradigms. Moreover, his paradigms invariably improve on or expand popular ways of things about complex issues. So, for example, in "Special Providence," Mead broke down the standard binary concepts for foreign policy schools such as "hawk vs dove," and "realist vs idealist," and replaced them with four traditions named after presidents (Jacksonian, Hamiltonian, Wilsonian, and Jeffersonian). This paradigm is a more useful prism to think about how Americans conceive foreign policy.

In "Power, Terror, Peace, and War" Mead again suceeds in retooling popular abstractions for a better understanding of US foreign policy. The book devotes itself to explaining the transition of American foreign policy grand strategy, from Cold War era policies to the present.

Mead begins this effort by finessing Joseph Nye's popular concept of "hard" vs "soft" power, further dissecting them into "sharp" (military),"sticky"(economic), "sweet"(values, culture, ideas), and hegemonic (the collective geopolitical effect the three have in creating a global order). These concepts are explored in lively, insightful prose, and the reader will easily carry the concepts with them long after reading the book.

Next, Mead engages in an engrossing discussion of the economic/political transition of America from a more standardized, centrally regulated "Fordist" system, to the highly decentralized, mobile and fluid system of "millenial" capitalism. The opportunites and resistance that the shift offers the world is explored, but Mead sees the revolutionary impact America has stirred as unavoidable for the rest of the planet. Understanding this tranistion, argues Mead, offers a valuable prism through which to interpret the highly charged and often contradictory attitudes many foreign societies harbor to the US.

The main body of the book, in fact, is devoted to explaining how the breakdown of "Fordism" and the revolutionary effect of "millenial" capitalism at once both strengthens and weakens America's position in the world, as well as destabilizing political/economic orders in foreign nations while also offering potential gains for the world. Here, Mead is generally optimistic, but says the waters will prove challenging to navigate.

The closing chapters assess the Bush administration's response to the challenges laid out in previous chapters, along with a discussion of the unique challenge posed by al Qaeda. Due to the highly charged politics today, it is within these chapters that many will either applaud or decry Mead's argument. His take? He believes that strategically, Bush has made the right decisions, but often botched the public diplomacy. What will further ruffle feathers, however, is Mead's easy acceptance of both the "Jacksonian" zeal and rise of evangelical populism as defacto forces that are ascendant, inevitable, and even healthy for our republic, a cocktail of politics Mead describes as "American Revivalism." Liberals, secular warriors, and those who believe in global governance will have great difficulty with these chapters.

Mead's book closes with a call for reinvoking the containment policy as both a paradigmaic and public diplomacy tool to define a new counter terrorism policy.

Overall, "Power, Terror, Peace, and War" lives up to Mead's standard for improving a reader's ability to think and talk about US foreign policy. Personally, in my informal conversations about US FP, I cite Mead more often than any other author, and this is testament to the utility of his concepts. This book is not, however, a proscription or road map on specific policies - leave that for Kissinger or the "Brez." I rate the book at 4 stars because it didn't quite match the level of insight of Special Providence, and also because the book was a bit shy on citations. IMHO, in discussions as broad as US grand strategy, it is almost a requirement to streamline prose by frequent reliance on citations, where readers may pursue to verify or dissect an aspect of argument. Mead is a bit a thin here, opening him up to the caricature of "polemic." Despite these quibbles, however, I rank this as one of the more important books on US FP, up there with Kagan and Brez.

Rating:
Summary: Pax America, elegantly distilled
Review: Walter Russell Mead's greatest talent may be his ability to distill remarkably complex issues into useful and easily remembered paradigms. Moreover, his paradigms invariably improve on or expand popular ways of things about complex issues. So, for example, in "Special Providence," Mead broke down the standard binary concepts for foreign policy schools such as "hawk vs dove," and "realist vs idealist," and replaced them with four traditions named after presidents (Jacksonian, Hamiltonian, Wilsonian, and Jeffersonian). This paradigm is a more useful prism to think about how Americans conceive foreign policy.

In "Power, Terror, Peace, and War" Mead again suceeds in retooling popular abstractions for a better understanding of US foreign policy. The book devotes itself to explaining the transition of American foreign policy grand strategy, from Cold War era policies to the present.

Mead begins this effort by finessing Joseph Nye's popular concept of "hard" vs "soft" power, further dissecting them into "sharp" (military),"sticky"(economic), "sweet"(values, culture, ideas), and hegemonic (the collective geopolitical effect the three have in creating a global order). These concepts are explored in lively, insightful prose, and the reader will easily carry the concepts with them long after reading the book.

Next, Mead engages in an engrossing discussion of the economic/political transition of America from a more standardized, centrally regulated "Fordist" system, to the highly decentralized, mobile and fluid system of "millenial" capitalism. The opportunites and resistance that the shift offers the world is explored, but Mead sees the revolutionary impact America has stirred as unavoidable for the rest of the planet. Understanding this tranistion, argues Mead, offers a valuable prism through which to interpret the highly charged and often contradictory attitudes many foreign societies harbor to the US.

The main body of the book, in fact, is devoted to explaining how the breakdown of "Fordism" and the revolutionary effect of "millenial" capitalism at once both strengthens and weakens America's position in the world, as well as destabilizing political/economic orders in foreign nations while also offering potential gains for the world. Here, Mead is generally optimistic, but says the waters will prove challenging to navigate.

The closing chapters assess the Bush administration's response to the challenges laid out in previous chapters, along with a discussion of the unique challenge posed by al Qaeda. Due to the highly charged politics today, it is within these chapters that many will either applaud or decry Mead's argument. His take? He believes that strategically, Bush has made the right decisions, but often botched the public diplomacy. What will further ruffle feathers, however, is Mead's easy acceptance of both the "Jacksonian" zeal and rise of evangelical populism as defacto forces that are ascendant, inevitable, and even healthy for our republic, a cocktail of politics Mead describes as "American Revivalism." Liberals, secular warriors, and those who believe in global governance will have great difficulty with these chapters.

Mead's book closes with a call for reinvoking the containment policy as both a paradigmaic and public diplomacy tool to define a new counter terrorism policy.

Overall, "Power, Terror, Peace, and War" lives up to Mead's standard for improving a reader's ability to think and talk about US foreign policy. Personally, in my informal conversations about US FP, I cite Mead more often than any other author, and this is testament to the utility of his concepts. This book is not, however, a proscription or road map on specific policies - leave that for Kissinger or the "Brez." I rate the book at 4 stars because it didn't quite match the level of insight of Special Providence, and also because the book was a bit shy on citations. IMHO, in discussions as broad as US grand strategy, it is almost a requirement to streamline prose by frequent reliance on citations, where readers may pursue to verify or dissect an aspect of argument. Mead is a bit a thin here, opening him up to the caricature of "polemic." Despite these quibbles, however, I rank this as one of the more important books on US FP, up there with Kagan and Brez.

Rating:
Summary: So Right, And Yet So Wrong
Review: Walter Russell Mead's writings on foreign policy are like that of a skilled anthropologist writing about Martians. He observes well, takes copious notes, spends a lot of time analyzing the data, and then writes books about what he finds. Sometimes, though, at the end of the day, he can't get beyond that he's an Earthling writing about Martians.

This flaw wasn't so evident in his previous, excellent work, "Special Providence," but it rears its every head here. Intellectually, he understands what's going on in the world right now in a way that no one except perhaps John Lewis Gaddis does, but every three pages or so, he gets something important mind-bogglingly wrong. It's an interesting experience, and makes for a somewhat tepid recommendation. An instructor I had once remarked that some works of political philosophy had moments of great brilliance interrupted by moments of tremendous ignorance. I wasn't quite sure what he meant at the time, and Mead doesn't require either quite the same highs or lows, but this is the first time I've really had that experience.