I appreciate Law & Liberty providing space for a review of my book and inviting me to offer a response to Jakub Grygiel in these pages.
As Grygiel accurately points out, “there is so much to think through in foreign policy, the topic of Emma Ashford’s First Among Equals. The last twenty years of US foreign policy seem to have been a blip of mistaken visions, many of which ended tragically.” On this we can wholeheartedly agree: America has spent much of the last 30 years engaged in fruitless crusades and attempts to reshape the world in our own image, from the Balkans to the Middle East and beyond. As the balance of power shifts globally, however, we can no longer afford to fritter our scarce resources away on such unachievable goals.
First Among Equals offers my vision for the reform of US foreign policy along realist lines. I argue that it is time to reposition ourselves to better compete in the emerging world, a choice that will inevitably involve some retrenchment and re-equilibration. In the book, I propose a dialing down of US commitments in Europe and the Middle East, in order to prioritize engagement with Asia and Latin America. This should be coupled with a willingness to reframe our economic engagement with the world.
The United States faces clear challenges in the coming decades. Indeed, these challenges—most notably from China—are a major reason why the United States must learn to prioritize. I argue that a slimmed-down US foreign policy that focuses our resources on the most compelling challenges is by far the best way to ensure that Americans can thrive in the emerging world.
To do this, the book builds on a long tradition of realist theorizing and thinking about the world. More importantly, I also try to engage with each of the core alternative theories of foreign policy—from liberal internationalism to the emerging “America First” worldview—on their own terms. If America faces challenges, then open debate on how best to meet them is a valuable tool in our arsenal, and one that differentiates us from illiberal societies like Russia or China.
It is thus unfortunate that Grygiel’s review of First Among Equals does not engage the foreign policy debate in this manner. As the very title of his review—“The Allure of Foreign Policy Weakness”—might suggest, he fails to seriously treat the book’s central arguments and instead paints them as inaccurate strawmen.
This is particularly ironic given his core criticism of the book: that First Among Equals is merely “a doctrine based on several articles of faith.” In this, I plead guilty as charged. Yet this is not perhaps as damning a criticism as one might think. All grand strategies are supported by assumptions and articles of faith, whether they are made explicit or kept implicit. Grygiel himself brings biases and assumptions to his review—from the notion that significant American forward presence is necessary to constrain other states to the idea that retrenchment is inherently risky. In the book, I try to make my assumptions explicit—the best that any scholar can do—and to back them with evidence wherever possible.
Our own recent history suggests that targeted retrenchment can work; would America have fared so well in the Cold War, if Nixon had not extricated us from Vietnam?
Much of his review hinges on general criticisms of realism or restraint in US foreign policy, rather than the contents of the book itself. Grygiel, for example, elides the fact that significant space is devoted in the book to discussing many of the criticisms of a realist foreign policy that he raises.
Consider his points about offshore balancing. Though he restates a well-known criticism of offshore balancing—that it can require future US intervention—he ignores the several pages of the book devoted to addressing this criticism explicitly. To quote it briefly: “There are undoubtedly risks inherent in this strategy, as in any strategy the United States might fail to adequately respond to threats from China or other states; the United States might be forced to come back onshore under less favorable conditions. But though possible, these outcomes do not seem likely, and the trade-offs are worth the risk.”
Indeed, Grygiel’s heavy reliance on generic criticism of realism or restraint offers little in the way of genuine engagement with the book’s specific arguments and evidence. On the question of US interests, for example, he points out that my narrow definition of American interests is something with which everyone agrees. But while this may be true, the book itself makes the point that it is not the novelty of interests that matters. Instead, it is the absence of an entire basket of other purported US interests, from human rights to democracy promotion. If a grand strategy can truly only be novel or useful by adding new US interests to existing ones, then no coherent strategy for the United States will be possible ever again.
Likewise, he suggests that the book is rigid, and that it argues for a “doctrinally prescribed” path which prescribes a “doctrine of retrenchment” that is “untested in history.” Yet it is simply not true that retrenchment is always bad, nor that it is an “untested” strategy during changes in the balance of power. One historical study of great power retrenchment found that great powers that successfully retrench and reprioritize do better than those that don’t; fifteen of the eighteen cases discussed by the authors didn’t result in war. Our own recent history also suggests that targeted retrenchment can work; would America have fared so well in the Cold War, for example, if Nixon had not extricated us from Vietnam?
Ultimately, Grygiel argues for a continuation of existing policies and dismisses the alternative offered in the book, pointing to the risks it may create. Yet all strategies have risks and costs. The continuation of the status quo that Grygiel endorses would itself require America to sustain a significant military presence throughout the world, to provide security for many other states at the expense of the US taxpayer, and to sustain the world’s largest military force. As others have persuasively argued, this would require a substantial increase in our already significant defense budget; it also risks overstretch and unintentional conflict with China, Russia, and other states.
In First among Equals, I try to offer a good-faith argument for how America can adequately bring means and ends into alignment in foreign policy while avoiding that overstretch. I firmly believe that a more modest and sustainable foreign policy is the best option to allow Americans to prosper and be secure well into the twenty-first century—without spending and arming ourselves into a garrison state. Grygiel’s view is that this is a weakness. But any reader who harbors doubts about the sustainability of America’s present course—or who disagrees with his characterization of prioritization and strategic realignment as “weakness”—should consider picking up First Among Equals and decide for yourself if the argument holds up to scrutiny.