US Statecraft Research Articles

Fighting for Oxford and Cambridge: National Security and Imperial Ambition in the ‘Transition of Power’

ABSTRACT This article uses the rise of the doctrine of ‘national security’ in US statecraft and strategy to re-examine Brian McKercher’s work on the ‘transition of power’ from Britain to the United States. World War II marked the great watershed in American foreign relations, in particular the ability, and more specifically the willingness, of Americans to project power beyond the western hemisphere. Not coincidentally, the war also marked another crucial turning point in American war and diplomacy: the transition from concepts like ‘national self-defence’ and ‘the national interest’ to a strategic doctrine that blended the blunt necessity of defence with the capacious ambition of interests. This new doctrine of ‘national security’ conceived of self-defence in a new way, not just as the protection of territorial sovereignty but as the protection of values, morals, and political norms. This much more capacious idea of defence was designed to be the bastion of a new liberal order to safeguard Western civilisation. In this light, American internationalists conceived of US power as the rightful heir to the mandate of the British Empire, albeit in ways that privileged command of the global commons over direct control of foreign territory. This article investigates the construction of ‘national security’ and the nature of Anglo-American empire in a new light.

Hybrid Threats and the Erosion of Democracy from Within: US Surveillance and European Security

Democratic governments have argued that their ability to counter hybrid threats—threats that come from irregular agents such as violent extremists, criminal networks, and cyber attackers—depends on their ability to monitor all forms of online communication. This presents a conundrum for democratic citizens: either governments surveil their communications or they risk endangering the security of their societies. To assess the tradeoffs people make between freedom, privacy, and security, we analyze survey data from seven NATO countries in Europe to assess whether, to what extent, and why European citizens are willing to trade privacy for security. We find that women (rather than men) and the internationalists (rather than the nationalists) are the people who most sharply draw a distinction between targeted surveillance, which is acceptable to them, and blanket surveillance, which is not. We also find that favorable views of the United States and confidence in President Obama make European citizens more willing to support US surveillance programs targeting not only terrorist suspects but also ordinary people and their political leaders. Pro-US attitudes may ease US statecraft, but they do not necessarily foster a healthy balance between freedom and security in the age of asymmetric threats.

Outsourced Empire: How Militias, Mercenaries, and Contractors Support US Statecraft. By Andrew Thomson. London: Pluto Press, 2018. 256p. $99.00 cloth, $29.00 paper.

Outsourced Empire: How Militias, Mercenaries, and Contractors Support US Statecraft. By Andrew Thomson. London: Pluto Press, 2018. 256p. $99.00 cloth, $29.00 paper.

Meteorological Frontiers: Climate Knowledge, the West, and US Statecraft, 1800–50

This article advances an analytic framework for studying climate knowledge, arguing that the dynamics of how scientists construct the category of climate articulate with practices of government by a process I theorize as “meteorological government.” Using diverse primary print sources, analysis in the present article employs this theorization to reconstruct elements of US statecraft in the period from 1800 to 1850 by tracing the governmental significance of meteorological statistics, military-medical meteorology, and what I term “racial climatology.” Historical analysis shows how these components of climate knowledge were coproduced with state efforts to evaluate, calculate, and monitor (1) the military body in a context of bureaucratization of the US Army; (2) western territories in a context of territorial acquisition and providential nationalism; and (3) a stratified population “legible” by biological understandings of racial hierarchy. The analytic framework I employ draws from and informs existing literature, which challenges assumptions that the dynamics of climate knowledge can be separated from developments in social power. I conclude by discussing the implications of the analysis for how we understand science-state coproduction, both in the case of US meteorology throughout the 1800–50 period and for climate knowledge and the state in other contexts and in recent decades.

Book Review: International Relations: Channels of Power: The UN Security Council and US Statecraft in Iraq

Book Review: International Relations: Channels of Power: The UN Security Council and US Statecraft in Iraq

The Incapacitation of US Statecraft and Diplomacy

After the Second World War, the United States led the world in the reform of global governance. It also articulated and implemented a grand strategy to cope with the bipolar order that the war had brought into being. Confronted at present with a comparable crisis in global governance amid massive shifts in the global distribution of wealth and power, the United States has yet to articulate a vision, lead reform efforts, or reformulate its global strategy. This lapse from leadership reflects changes in the US political system that reinforce a militarized approach to foreign policy and make it difficult, if not impossible, for the United States to formulate strategic initiatives or to implement them through diplomacy and other measures short of war.

Global energy security and American hegemony

This analysis of the United States and energy security examines the close relationship between US military supremacy in oil-rich regions and America's maintenance of global power. Energy security generally evokes thoughts of American intervention in the Middle East to protect US interests in that region's oil-rich fields. Doug Stokes and Sam Raphael move beyond that framework to consider US actions in Latin America, Central Asia, and Africa. Drawing on State and Defense Department records and other primary sources and previous scholarship, they show how US foreign policy since World War II has sought to maintain a global energy security regime that supports the nation's allies while maintaining American hegemony. Stokes and Raphael explain how US intervention in energy-rich states insulates and stabilizes those nations' transnationally oriented actors and political economies and why American oil diversification strategy strengthens the country's position against rivals in the global capitalist system. They argue that counterinsurgency aid and other types of coercive US statecraft protect the recipient states from an array of potentially revolutionary armed and unarmed internal social forces, thereby securing the energy supplies of nations deemed strategically important to the United States or its allies. Clear and accessible, this cutting-edge contemporary policy analysis will engage scholars of US foreign policy and international relations as well as policymakers grappling with the importance of energy security in today's world.

Twenty–first century United States governance: statecraft as reform craft and the peculiar governing paradox it perpetuates

The United States is commonly referred to as the last global superpower, exercising unrivalled political, economic, military and social influence. Yet, paradoxically, unlike any other nation, Americans were – and remain – radically antistatist. Until roughly the twentieth century the United States did not want, need, nor create a powerful administrative state to govern itself, let alone others abroad. This essay explores that peculiar paradox, namely how Americans govern as the last global superpower today, yet retain an inherently fierce hostility to government. The thesis that is developed argues that it is a deep–rooted reformist faith which ultimately shapes US statecraft as a unique style of reformcraft, with both benign and not–sobenign consequences.