August 9, 2021
U.S. Foreign Policy Restraint—What It Is, What It’s Not
Those who favor restraint are neither pacifists nor isolationists (the latter label is another common calumny). They understand that there are genuine threats to national security and that some may necessitate the use of force. What merits debate, however, isn’t whether force should be a means of statecraft but the purposes for which it should be used and not used.
by Rajan Menon Andrew Bacevich
Restraint, a conception of statecraft, challenges principles that have shaped U.S. foreign policy for decades. Counterattacks are therefore unsurprising. They may even be a compliment, however inadvertent. The latest critique, by John Ikenberry and Daniel Deudney, two prominent self-declared liberal internationalists, appears in Survival, a global politics and strategy magazine published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Their analysis misunderstands and misrepresents restraint. Also, it exemplifies liberal internationalism’s obsolescence.
Deudney and Ikenberry tout liberal internationalism’s unmatched acuity and utility for the twenty-first-century world. The theory’s devotees, they aver, have exposed the superficiality of reducing international politics to state-centered balance of power competition. They have revealed the value of international law and institutions and human rights. They have discerned that interdependence reduces sovereign states’ freedom of action. Thanks to them, people are aware that global problems—like pandemics and climate change—necessitate collective action. For these blinding insights, the unenlightened owe them a debt.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/us-foreign-policy-restraint%E2%80%94what-it-what-its-not-191370
