Restraint and International Relations: a proposal Brent J. Steele University of Utah Brent.steele@utah.edu Paper Presented at the annual meeting of the ISA-South, Shepherdstown, West Virginia, October 2016 Restraint is back and at times front-and-center in discussions of global politics, with discussions focusing specifically about the United States’ role on the world stage. This is especially true after a whirlwind decade and a half that saw the United States fully embrace its aspirations for hegemonic control of the middle east following the September 11 attacks, and reversed into ‘retrenchment’ or ‘offshore balancing’ following the disastrous policies in that same region, as well as the devastating effects from the 2008-9 Global Financial Crisis. Politically, there has been a small but significant movement by many libertarians and others taking advantage of that moment to articulate what a reconstructed US foreign policy that is based on restraint would look like (CATO 2016; Friedman and Preble 2013). And then those moves have been followed by increasing concerns in a number of nooks both within the United States, and throughout the world, that with the destabilized and chaotic areas of the Middle East and now North Africa (following the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011) – with the rise of ISIS and the migrant crisis, the world is quite simply spinning out of control and perhaps this is all the result of the US’s ‘retrenchment’. A good example of this back and forth can be found in the debates over Barry Posen’s (2014) ambitious recent book, Restraint: A New Foundation for US Grand Strategy. Posen argued that after the 2000s, the US has two possible grand strategies to pursue where it once had (following the Cold War), four. ‘Cooperative Security’ and ‘Primacy’ were fused following especially September 11 (but even before then) into ‘Liberal Hegemony’. Restraint is the by-product of a merging of ‘Selective Engagement’ and ‘Isolationism’ (2014, 5-11). Liberal Hegemony, according to Posen, has had three major flaws in the wake of the 2000s: (1) it generated push-back from adversaries and free-riding from allies; (2) it is getting more costly to maintain and (3) anti-Americanism is on the rise due to the global trend of identities (including ethnic and religious) being 1 politicized and mobilized. Posen argues that a reduction in defense spending to 2.5% of the US’s GDP would still meet the core threats and challenges to the US national interest while also allowing the United States to withdraw and thus focus on more parochial concerns. Further, and perhaps most controversially, Posen argues that the US should turn Europe’s defense over to the Europeans, moving from a US-led NATO alliance to a European-led force. What the US would seek to do is ‘command the commons’ – or maintain a naval supremacy (over the ocean ‘commons’) that could still project force while otherwise reducing the costs of land occupation and bases. As Posen summarizes it, his grand strategy involves ‘a phased reduction in US political commitments and military deployments. The ultimate goal is to place the responsibility for the security of major and minor US allies squarely on their shoulders’ (2014, 71). While others have focused - mainly on the margins - with the difficulties or shortcomings to Posen’s proposal (Ruger 2014; MacDonald and Parent 2016), the main, diametrically opposed riposte comes from a liberal hegemonist – Robert Lieber. Lieber does so both in a roundtable engagement of the book (2016a) and in his own booklength study (2016b), the latter ominously titled Retreat and its Consequences. Lieber’s concern is with ‘realism’ more broadly, a ‘tradition’ where he places not only Posen’s book and work but also other calls for the ‘Retreat’ of US power and influence. Lieber argues that realism undervalues ‘agency’ and the importance of the ‘causal influences of ideologies, beliefs, history and interests in shaping the behavior of foreign actors’. Lieber’s own ‘causal’ understanding of world politics leads him to suggest that it has been precisely the US’s ‘retreat’ during the Obama administration that has led to increased terrorism (the rise of ISIS), US allies ‘feel[ing] abandoned’, ‘adversaries’ being ‘emboldened’, and the Middle East (and even Europe, by extension) becoming ‘more dangerous and unstable’ (2016a, 11). What both views have in common is, for lack of a better phrase, causal narcissism – that when it comes to the recent past, present, and projecting into the future, one can link global disorder and the actions of others (benevolent, conflicted, or malicious) to the (in)actions of the US Self. Yet both views also share a tendency that 2 one finds in recent discussions over restraint – a focus on policy and recent developments that occludes a deeper investigation of the processes shaping a turn to either liberal hegemony, or restraint. These opposing views I will, in this paper, title ‘restraint’ versus ‘vitalism’, as it allows one to more deeply engage the philosophical and theoretical distinctions between their views not only on US foreign policy or even global politics today – but of the human subject historically. My goal is ultimately to critique Lieber’s position and provide a deeper defense of Posen’s position but in a way that also acknowledges the shortcomings and limitations of Restraint not only as a grand strategy but as a sensibility in late modern global politics. Before delineating the structure of the paper, let me provide a bit of brushclearing. First and more parochially, the paper is part of a book-length investigation into restraint, and thus it is a sort of mish-mash of different parts of that book while pursuing a ‘concluding’ defense of restraint. Second, while my take on restraint gets further developed in what follows, let me provide a brief, cursory, definition of it here: Restraint is the going against or resisting something we would otherwise expect to prevail. There is still movement within a restrained body. This ‘going against’ is both directional and situational (against a particular external stimulus) and dispositional (residing in the agent). Note even in Posen’s military and state-centric understanding of restraint noted so far, we can see that while he is advocating a pulling back of US commitments, there is still a ‘movement’ of US power in the form of establishing naval superiority to ‘command the commons’. The key is whether, and for how long, the restrained body can stay that way, a sustained restraint. What’s needed is not just a ‘grand strategy’ of restraint, but a better, deeper story about it. Thus, I suggest moving from a ‘grand strategy’ (Posen’s purpose), to a ‘strategic narrative’ of restraint (Miskimmon et al 2013). This paper begins by situating Posen and Lieber’s views within two broader ‘complexes’ or frameworks – a binary of restraint versus vitalism, and then reviewing the challenges for restraint and why it is a difficult grand strategy to advocate for in contemporary politics. The strongest case for restraint begins by appreciating the 3 myriad of factors that make it so difficult to realize today – and even historically. To do so, I posit a constructivist understanding of restraint via three elements or themes that acknowledge how restraint involves … (1) both agents and structures; (2) a mixed ontology of mind and body and/or materials and ideas, and, finally; (3) a moral quality. This more comprehensive understanding of restraint discloses the challenges that make it difficult, but not impossible, to materialize. I add two further, contemporary temporal contexts that complicate a politics of restraint. From this, I focus on some of the common resources for restraint – both domestically and internationally – and then pivot to a case for restraint today, not only for the US, but its citizens, and within global politics more broadly. I propose three meta-normative reasons for favoring restraint over vitalism, and a model for a ‘strategic narrative’ of restraint: (1) restraint is less subject to manipulation than vitalism; (2) restraint produces ‘real’ or more grounded results and a more precise delineation of causal claims, and it (3) prevents community fragmentation and perhaps even promotes community re-vitalization. These are brought to bear towards an outline or beginning sketch of a ‘strategic narrative’ of restraint that can maintain more clarity of judgment and foster a ‘politics of limits’. The model for such a strategic narrative is Reinhold Niebuhr’s ‘Serenity Prayer’ from 1943, that has been re-appropriated and used for a variety of purposes (including, most famously, as a mantra in Alcoholics Anonymous). Restraint, I assert, helps us cope with our late/post-modern predicament. While it can be rendered passive, for these reasons it should also be considered a form of power, as it conditions us to resist other actors and environments getting ‘us’ to ‘do what we otherwise would not do’. Short of being an inspiring sensibility, in an era where few devices remain to control, cajole, contain, or routinize human, corporate, and technological impulses in productive ways, restraint may be the ‘best’ of all the worst options we have. 4 The Challenge of Restraint in Contemporary Global Politics My key concern with proposals like Posen’s is that they do not examine some of the deeper challenges with a politics (rather than just ‘policy’) of restraint. A more comprehensive account of restraint can be organized through three ‘precepts’ and how restraint involves: (1) both agents and structures; (2) a mixed ontology of both mind and body and/or materials and ideas, and, finally; (3) a moral quality. These three precepts, all comfortably situated within an Onufian-inspired constructivist approach to politics (Onuf 1989), provide us general guidance about the challenge for restraint. Agents and Structures of Restraint What do I mean by restraint involving both agents and structures? This precept may make sense to those familiar with these terms in IR (as a ‘debate’, see Wendt 1987), and broader social theory, but it also requires some grounding for the current topic. Sometimes agents can also be structures, and vice versa. For instance, agents can and often are articulated as states (units) acting within the ‘structure’ of the international system (whether that system is understood as anarchic, heteronomic, hierarchic, or something else like an international society with a ‘rule structure’).1 Yet sometimes states are the structure, and within those, the elites, leaders, or ‘decisionmakers’ whose policies and discourses bear our notice are the agents for the state (Wheeler 2000, 22; Steele 2008). ‘The state’ as a structure is not only limited to its space (and, when it comes into existence, its time), but more specifically its structure is societal, it includes the feedback provided by the public – as citizens or subjects of the state – that helps to shape, enable, and restrain the elites. Generations are agents, embedded within but also transforming the national society they inherit from previous generations. Yet generations are also structures, serving as a societal ‘check’ on particular actions and policies of elites. 1 Structural realism, as evidenced by Waltz, focuses on international political structures. A major assumption of English School theory is that international society ‘socializes’ structurally the actions, discourses, and behaviors of states and their agents (Bull 1977; Wheeler 2000). 5 Thus, this precept guides our methods as well as our prescriptive arguments for restraint. For the former, it means that we cannot only locate the struggles over restraint within agents, or structures, but in both simultaneously. Restraint is incentivized or made possible by the interactions between the two. For the latter, it may be comforting to place the responsibility for restraint upon elite agents – more directly, upon the leaders or elites of political communities for restraining their actions in international affairs.2 For this implies that we can transform the (in)activist foreign policy of a country by changing the agents in charge of it. But, ‘structure can affect agents. We are often affected by phenomena, natural and social, that we do not or cannot see’ (Onuf 1998, 62). Structures incentivize (or overwhelm) the restraint of units/agents within an international environment (international society),3 but also within a polity (via public opinion, for instance). Even processes ‘internal’ to agents (including neuro and biological processes) also ‘structure’ their actions, at times overwhelming any abilities or willingness to restrain.4 Structures are also constituted through the routines and habits of an agent’s activities, including collectives (Giddens 1984). These routines set up expectations about ‘commitments’, and (even) the burdens an agent maintains for themselves and others. We might think here of the US’s ‘role’ as a hegemonic leader since the post-Cold War era (and perhaps stretching back before that), and how difficult such a structured routine would be to break even in spite of needing to do so. This is because routines, or habits, are a key to identity – or the ‘ontological security’ of agents (Steele 2008; Mitzen 2006; Kinnvall 2004). The literature on ontological security also suggests that even ‘harmful’ habits may be difficult to break. Even if the US, then, sought a more restrained 2 And indeed this is another point in common Waltz’s ‘defensive realism’ incentivizing ‘satisficing’ behavior of units, more restrained behaviors that seek out survival, whereas the more ‘maximizing’ behaviors of units assumed in the offensive realism of Randall Schweller sees structure as promoting more aggressive, power-seeking behavior. 4 Insights from recent studies in neuro and cognitive science have investigated the areas of the brain that help in self-restraint. Most of these studies use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain to assess the differences between ‘inhibited’ (restrained) versus ‘executed’ actions (Brass and Haggard 2007). 3 6 posture in the world, there are identity costs to that – and those identity costs may be too emotionally and habitually difficult to bear for the US public and its elites. Since there can be political incentives that favor restraint, but also (following traumatic and violent events) contexts predisposed against it as well, the important point is that for both methodological and normative reasons, we cannot simply situate our focus on just an agent or a structure. We must assess both to understand the challenge of restraint, and that is somewhat lost by those who call for restraint as a policy without recognizing the politics embedded in both agents and structures. The Mixed Ontology of Restraint Restraint breaks down some of the binaries we have in International Relations, whether those are materials versus ideas (Wendt 1999, 25-29) or body versus mind. The latter is a dualism that goes back to the Enlightenment purpose of developing reason outside of bodily practices, needs, and urges. The challenge for the earliest Enlightenment thinkers, and especially Locke, was how to configure “reason” so that the body could be transcended altogether. While Alexander Wendt tried to thread this needle, more recent constructivist interventions have noted that contra Wendt (who gives causal priority to ideas), we cannot privilege mind over body in International Relations (Kessler 2007). This is something that combines first and post-second generation constructivists, who, like Onuf, utilize Giddens’ (1984) ‘bridgework’ in showing how ‘Material conditions matter. The relations of rules to resources presupposes at least some control over material conditions’ (Onuf 1989, 60). In short, while there are ideational components to restraint in international politics, there are also material-bodily ones as well, from the (already referenced) physiological processes of individuals studied by neuroscientists, to particular ‘urges’ that can be understood via concepts like the libido. Carl Jung, following Freud but going past the latter’s understanding of libido, consistently referred to the movement of libido as a ‘psychic energy’ via natural metaphors, and specifically as a running stream of water. The halted progression of the libido leads to a ‘damming up’ making it ‘ripe for 7 explosion’ (Jung 1928, 38). The human psyche, in order to develop, must figure out ways to manage this progression through the process of ‘canalization’. Such channeling or transformation of the libido happens in a variety of ways. The environment, being involved in an individual’s progression, provides one resource for such transformation. Specifically, an individual’s culture helps to transform this energy through education and socialization, including cultural practices. People also transfer their psychic energy ‘towards an analogue’ (42). This transformation is constant because libidinal psychic energy is always there, always flowing, or when backed up, always looking for an outlet. Yet on occasion, it explodes out – and not only in individuals but, according to Jung and Jungian scholars, in collectives as well. The result is that periods of ‘rebellion’ or licentiousness are followed by periods of asceticism or restraint.5 For Jung, it is a ‘fundamental fact that man’s instinctual nature is always coming up against the checks imposed by civilization’ (Jung 1942, 20). It is not a coincidence that Reinhold Niebuhr would specifically reference Jung’s insights on the libido in his magnum opus of Moral Man, Immoral Society (1932, 26). Not only had humans not given up their ‘anarchic lusts’ (1932, 93). Their insecurity over these drives forced them in their moral communities to use language and rationalization (derived from ‘rational’ and ‘religious’ resources, chapters 2 and 3 of Moral Man respectively) to justify those drives based on moral frameworks. For the combination of body and mind, materials and ideas in the context of recent restraint debates, consider the titles of some articles regarding US foreign policy, They often foreground the physicality of restraint (or not restraint). For instance, the US is advised by Stephen Brooks, G. John Ikenbeery, and William Wohlforth (2013) to ‘Lean Forward’, and conversely to ‘Pull Back’ by Posen (2013). The importance here is that restraint involves physical as well as ideational and dispositional features. Restraining a polity involves not only a policy change, but the removal of forces and the withdrawal of 5 Note in some Christian cultures how the Oktoberfest occurs right before Advent, or Mardi Gras and Carnivale, which include the consumption of rich foods, alcohol, and revelry, all right before Lent. This pattern expressed itself not only in particular seasons, but in historical epochs, ‘such as that of the Hellenistic period culminating in the Stoic and Christian ideals …the Renaissance followed by the Reformation …the Romantic era followed by Victorianism’ (Odjanyk 1973, 146; Jung 1942, 19-20). 8 force ‘postures’ that such a polity may have become otherwise used to in its recent (or historic) past. (Im)Moral Restraint A third precept regarding restraint is its moral quality – but one that is subject to multiple (competing) meanings. For some, restraint is part of a moral framework for a Self, or corporate entity, for recognizing and thus working within the political and material limits of what’s possible, to promote the ‘limits of power’ (Bacevich 2008). Or even if we don’t wish to be restrained, we may be responsive to the moral arguments for restraining others, groups that fail to practice restraining themselves (fiscally, socially, militarily, etc.). We may not need to practice restraint, but we have to restrain them so that their habits and practices don’t impact us. Others may find restraint problematic altogether – can one afford to practice it in an ever-more dangerous and chaotic world? Can our political community allow ourselves to be restrained when others are not, do not play by the same rules as us, and threaten us and our way of life? The emotional and visceral connections to these polyvalent understandings regarding the morality of restraint make ‘rational’ and measured deliberations over restraint difficult, if not impossible. Vitalism versus Restraint The preceding discussion indicates that restraint can generate deep disagreement, and be politically difficult to realize. But we need an even deeper understanding of what restraint is up against historically and generally, what resources exist for realizing restraint, but (also) to take further stock of the particular contemporary contexts – or temporalities – that confound the politics of restraint. What Posen titles ‘liberal hegemony’, others have simply titled the more ‘interventionist’ paradigms or ‘moods’ of US foreign policy (Roskin 1974; Klingberg 1952), and still others like Muravchik titles the ‘Wilsonian’ approach (1992), I prefer to categorize all of these within the philosophical view of vitalism. A dictionary definition 9 of it refers to vitalism as ‘a doctrine that the processes of life are not explicable by the laws of physics and chemistry alone and that life is in some part self-determining’.6 Vitalism has a long and varied history, perhaps dating back to the work of Aristotle, and extending into both the life sciences as well as the humanities and arts (Driesch 2010), permeating and sometimes embodied through the work of a variety of modern thinkers from Bergson (Burwick and Douglass 2010) to Nietzsche (Reichert 1964). Few of us would deny that human forces are at work in helping to shape (if not determine, let alone self-determine) global politics. But ‘vitalist’ views tend to take this assumption to another level, asserting that particular decisions or forceful events can overwhelm the agency of others and that these decisions can help shape history. Richard Wolin, for instance, understands political vitalists as those who assume a political action as having the potential for a ‘magical omnipotence’ which helps to bridge the ‘gulf between the abstract and concrete’ (Wolin 1990: 298). Vitalism also focuses on how such action re-vitalizes a particular community behind a common cause. To return to Wolfers’s distinction (1962), as opposed to states that have ‘possession’ goals that are national and for survival, vitalist states have ‘milieu’ goals to transform the international enivironment itself, and thus transcend anarchy into hierarchy. One unifying theme across vitalist perspectives, then, as they have been appropriated in and for international politics, is a noted concern with modernity, including the routines derived from it and the decadent values it fosters. Such concerns about the debilitating impact of modernity are found especially in the neoconservative tradition in the United States, perhaps the vitalist perspective par excellence in its influence upon US foreign policy. Although its origins date back to the early twentieth century, and its influence on US foreign policy and its narration of a US ‘Self’ went into full bloom in the late 1960s and early 1970s, IR theory lagged in its confrontation with neoconservatism as an intellectual movement well into the 2000s. Indeed, it was not until Michael C. Williams’s seminal study (2005), coinciding with the policies of the Bush administration, that 6 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vitalism, emphasis added. 10 international political scholars began to critically engage neoconservatism. Williams’s study concluded with the following suggestion going forward, namely that ‘IR possesses resources within its theoretical traditions that provide a basis for a direct and critical engagement with neoconservatism at its very foundations’ (2005a: 327). Noted especially in the other work of Williams (2007), but taken up in a variety of studies thereafter (see Debrix 2007; Owens 2007; Kampmark 2011; Solomon 2013), scholars have brought a variety of theoretical and philosophical resources to bear in seeking to understand the intellectual purposes and attractions of this neoconservative movement. The focus to date has been primarily to assess its responsibility for some of the more forceful, and damaging, US foreign policies in global politics to date. Some studies have critically foregrounded the role of the Self in neoconservative thought, using Foucault’s aesthetics (Steele 2010), or Lacan’s theme of the ‘lack’ (Solomon 2013). These studies also assess how neoconservatism creates so much mass appeal. For Solomon (2013: 3) it’s because: ‘Neoconservatism . . . evokes a variety of images and narratives of what many Americans would count as being “American”, and much of its appeal, or its resonance with audiences, is based upon how it mobilizes those elements of national identity’. The discussion so far has highlighted vitalism, but how does it more broadly contrast with perspectives that theorize and even valorize restraint in international politics? Roskin (1974) and Klingberg (1952) call the more restrained moods or generations in the US ‘non-interventionist’, and Muravchik (1992) would likely title these as following the ‘Washingtonian’ tradition. Whereas in the vitalist approaches emotions are a resource and a necessary one, restrained perspectives promote the resistance of visible emotions. Restraint may seem elitist, aloof, or indifferent – or it may even seem arrogant. In light of an unfolding crisis restrain may appear as cruel or mocking. But more than anything, it seeks out a politics that is chastened, and circumspect about the benefits of action. While we may be tempted to chalk up this vitalist/restraint binary of complexes to US foreign policy debates, one can find the two throughout International Relations 11 more broadly. Within the English School, for instance, we can articulate each present in the debates between pluralism and solidarism, or order and justice (Wheeler and Dunne 1996; Bull 1977; Wheeler 1992; 2000). Pluralists call for a more restrained international society, valuing order even in the face of problematic practices within sovereign states. Solidarists see some benefit to interventions if they can provide a more well-ordered, legitimate and just, international society of sovereign states (Wheeler 2000). Margaret Kohn (2010; 2013) has demonstrated what seems to be the same binary in an appraisal of postcolonial ethics. She identifies differences between a Fanonian call to action and celebration of the liberation of killing the colonist (acting out – moving forward against the colonist), and the Gandhian perspective, which seeks ways of expressing resistance through the restraint of emotion, and even an indifferent type of ‘love’ in the form of agape. And although ‘realism’ (which is, admittedly, not a uniform perspective by any means) seems to valorize restraint more than vitalist perspectives like liberal internationalism (hence Lieber’s critique of Posen via his criticisms of a totalized ‘realism’), there is a similar set of distinctions within realism. This appears, for instance, if one compares Randall Schweller’s (2004; 2010) take on the sources for restraint (and whether those are a problem or not), with Hans Morgenthau’s (2006). Both ‘realists’ focus on domestic factors influencing the abilities of states to react to threats perceived or real, and both focus specifically on the dynamics at work in democracies during times of crisis. But whereas Morgenthau saw democratic and nationalistic politics as leading to the destruction of international morality because citizens in such countries tended towards overzealous reactions (2006, 255-257), Schweller sees certain democratic states as underbalancing in the face of threats due to fragmentation and disagreement (2010, Chapter 1). Thus, while Morgenthau’s concern is the vitalist complex that can be enacted by elites (or enact itself on occasion), Schweller sees underbalancing an overlooked and dangerous phenomenon that results from societies where in-fighting, disagreement, but also deliberation and caution proliferate. Accordingly, Morgenthau’s prescriptive political assertions tend to favor restraint, prudence, and caution, and 12 Schweller’s vitalism (which at times borders on admiration for the ‘fascism’ of Schmitt) functioning as a corrective to the ‘mistake’ of the restraint of underbalancing (2004, esp. 21). Resources for Restraint Armed with this broader binary, we can also appraise the typical resources exist for restraint’s realization. Scholars have long pointed to democratic institutions and norms that promote restraint (see Meiser 2015). Institutional sources of restraint are found – in the US case at least – through three components or practices. First, the separation of powers entails a numbers game, whereby decisions and actions are more difficult to execute the greater number of actors – or (following Tsebelis 2002) veto players – that are involved. Practices such as the ‘disappearing quorum’ in the late 19th Century, or the filibuster used so often by the Republican opposition to the Obama administration in the 2010s, are examples of additional veto points that restrain action. Second, elections and public opinion provide punishment and rewards for policymakers, and represent a check on the latter’s decision-making. Further, public opinion is also shaped and therefore restrains and conditions policy because of the role of an independent media (Meiser 2015, 12-15). Third, the principle of federalism diffuses decision-making through geographically fragmented differences in interests. Normative resources for restraint are found in the ‘culture’ of a democratic society, specifically the ‘strategic culture’ that prevails at any one time. The two main strategic cultures of restraint Meiser identifies as ‘antistatism’ and ‘anti-expansionism’ (2015, 19). These are found, to varying degrees, through the ‘personal values of leaders’ in the United States as well as in the consistent cultural beliefs indexed by public opinion. More broadly, as the aforementioned work of Klingberg (1952), and Roskin (1974) has demonstrated, there are alternating ‘moods’ or generational ‘paradigms’ that prove to be more restraining in reaction to a vitalist/interventionist period of foreign policy activity – sometimes termed ‘war weariness’ (Garnham 1986). Branching 13 out from these societal or historical sources of restraint, there is also the role of institutions (Ikenberry 1998), and alliances (Pressman 2008), in fostering restraint. Central banks (‘fiscal restraint’) and international organizations (‘institutional restraint) play a role in coordinating and binding polities with others in the international community to prevent untoward or quick changes in policy and practice. Yet all of these sources for restraint also become problematized and overwhelmed in the US especially, because of the concurrent presence of vitalism within each. Certain periods of time find less institutional and normative restraint in the US, and even the world. A more nuanced typology of generations, for instance, would recognize how more ‘vitalist’ and pro-interventionist generations – like the Baby Boomer or GI (‘Greatest’) generation tend to overwhelm more ‘restrained’ generations (like Gen X), because they are more ‘dominant’ in US society. In fact, following specifically from William Howe and Neil Strauss’s four-part typology of generations (1991; 1997), the infrequency of restraint in at least American settings over the three centuries they explore can be explained because (1) reactive or ‘restrained’ generations are only one of four generations to emerge in US political settings and (2) reactive generations are ‘recessive’ (as opposed to dominant) and play a prominent role in the political, social, and cultural institutional settings of a polity for only brief (roughly one or two decades) periods of time. Thus, for every restrained Lost generation (of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Reinhold Niebuhr), or Generation X (of Obama), we have three other accompanying generations that promote (or accede to) vitalist US foreign policy – and for a period of a half century or more to boot. International institutions, too, may not only serve to ‘restrain’. They may promote more activism and intervention by members by giving an action a veneer of international, multilateral legitimacy. And for all their ability to bind member states together and check their excesses, alliances can also promote vitalism. Thus Posen’s (2014) concern about the ‘moral hazard’ and ‘reckless driving’ of long-term allies and even non-state actors, who know with the security guarantees of their big brother ally, 14 they can get away with a bit more aggressive policies. These, in turn, can pull the US into more conflicts. Three contextual Challenges for Restraint But the challenges presented so far for restraint are general ones we find in democracies and in global politics, and specifically with the US’s place within the latter. We need to further acknowledge how the current political and social contexts present even more difficulties for realizing a policy of restraint. A first temporal context focuses on the importance of what many title the era of ‘globalization’, others title ‘late modernity’ or Giddens refers to as ‘high modernity’. The speed and insecurity generated by late modernity (Glezos 2013) presents challenges for restraint that, if not unique from previous eras of global politics, definitely require additional attention. Institutionally, many of the checks on executive power typically found in democracies are frequently imperiled during states of ‘emergency’ like one finds following terrorist attacks – as illustrated by the United States following 9/11 or France in the wake of the 2015 ISIS attacks in Paris. But these political transformations have occurred in-tandem with some of the broader challenges of contemporary global politics. Late modernity’s key distinguishing feature (from earlier epochs of modernity), according to Giddens, Bourdieu, Beck, and others, is reflexivity. Reflexivity involves the tendency of ‘social practices’ to be ‘reformed in light of new information about’ these same practices (Tucker 1998, 144). This new information surrounds us, we are swamped by it, so part of this reflexivity involves a turn, and even deference by, democratic citizens towards experts (including ‘policy’ experts and ‘Beltway’ advisors) to help aid and order their increasingly stressful and unpredictable environment. In an age of globalization the lack of certainty for agents – in themselves, and in their environments has generated profound anxiety and unease. Catarina Kinnvall notes that a ‘globalized world is for many a world devoid of certainty, of knowing what tomorrow holds. It is a world where many people feel intensified levels of insecurity as the life they once led is 15 being contested and changed at the same time’ (2004: 742). This is especially the case when interdependence refers not only to the complex channels transnationally linking individuals within states (Keohane and Nye 1977), but also to ‘violent’ practices that occur in a ‘bounded’ global realm (Deudney, 2007). A further feature of this era is one of visuality and aesthetics (Bleiker 2001), in that the technology that has brought us ‘closer together’ also overwhelms us with images that can generate the basis for interventions (as the image itself intervenes upon us). The quickly disseminated images of crisis also appear during a time of perceived US decline. Thus, a second temporal context is the perceived end of US primacy and leadership. While commentators and analysts disagree over not only the cause for this decline (a lack of ‘will’ by Barack Obama versus the precise vitalist policies of the 2000s that sunk US power with little return investment), and how it can be reversed (or if it can), most seem to agree at least with the perception that the US has less ability to determine or at least shape outcomes than it did before. Thus, the temptation here remains one of typical declining hegemons and great powers – to keep using military force on the world stage in order to regain that ‘lost’ feeling of control (Lebow 2008, 440). A third temporal context is not only the present, but the envisioned future that a policy of restraint has difficulty in narrating or predicting. Vitalism in this case finds its strength as a critical discourse that can promise something better than the status quo, a better tomorrow and a better place for the political community within a world order that itself will also be ‘better’. This is why, for John Herz, ‘Political Idealism … has its time of greatness when its ideals are unfulfilled, when it is in opposition to out-dated political systems’ (Herz 1950, 159). With chaos seemingly swamping us, restraint appears as that already out-of-date approach to global politics. Towards A Strategic Narrative of Restraint Recognizing these drawbacks and challenges to restraint does not mean that its cause is hopeless. But we have to do a bit better than simply positing through a largely 16 rational choice framework why restraint is a good ‘grand strategy’ for the US to pursue. Posen’s (2014) argument is a starting point, but the defenses for restraint that are out there largely overlook the preceding general and contextual challenges for it. For instance, in addition to the virtual roundtable it led to, Posen’s book inspired a conference this summer at the CATO Institute, titled quite succinctly ‘The Case for Restraint’ (2016). It provided a number of austere voices advocating for the logic behind a more restrained US foreign policy. Collectively, the conference performed an admirable job diagnosing the presence and arguments for vitalism. But it also failed to recognize the reasons for the recurrence of vitalism (which participants labeled ‘primacy’ or using Posen’s chosen term, ‘liberal hegemony’). Most of the participants are (very accomplished) neopositivist scholars, and most of theme are realists. As a result of the former, they spoke openly about the ‘causality’ of primacy or liberal hegemony, or the ‘causality’ that is at work with public opinion. Causality proves useful for analyzing some of the forces at work in foreign policy, but it proves susceptible to the problems Morgenthau posited regarding the ‘method of the single cause’ (2006, chapter 3). None of these elements (the US, the world, public opinion about the former’s place and purpose in the latter) are static. Yes, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may prove that liberal hegemony and its interventionism (especially in the Middle East) doesn’t work. But the meanings for an event or set of events ‘out there’ are not univalent. They are constructed via images (especially) as well as discourses that intervene to make those meanings tangible to audiences, and transform their previous understandings. And that process never ends. The 2014 ISIS beheadings are notable in this vein for their quick transformation of US public opinion and US policy regarding ISIS, as well as the role of technology and speed in creating at an everyday level a sense of anxiety and disturbance. Even after the group gained large Iraqi cities in Fallujah (in January of 2014) and Mosul (in June 2014), the US public remained skeptical of US involvement, with 55% surveyed in July of 2014 agreeing with the statement that the US had ‘no responsibility’ to intervene in Iraq.7 But 7 http://www.people-press.org/2014/07/18/most-think-the-u-s-has-no-responsibility-to-act-in-iraq/ 17 by September of 2014, commentators and analysts would note that it was: ‘Only after the release of videos capturing the barbaric murders of two American journalists James Foley on August 20 and Steven Sotloff on September 9, did American public opinion shift significantly’. And, in an encapsulation of the switch from restraint to vitalism sweeping over the US public, ‘most interestingly Americans now seems more concerned that the Obama administration will not do “enough” to address the ISIS threat through military means, as opposed to doing “too much.” (Kearn 2014). Public opinion is thus much more malleable, and formed by more complex forces, than advocates of restraint like those at the CATO conference seem to acknowledge and appreciate. One further aspect of the CATO conference and ‘case’ for restraint is that it does not seem to acknowledge the masculine forces at work in both vitalism and restraint, the libidinal or psychic energic flows that seem to ‘burst out’ from a polity from time to time.8 The point is that the postures and forces we acknowledge are ‘out there’, when normalized as gender neutral, closes us off from investigating some sociobiological prospects that may be at work in a more gendered reading of restraint or vitalism. Yet make no mistake, the restrained is, like the vitalist complex (but in a different form), a masculine ideal type as well, one via stoicism that has fostered a restraining of those same forces that vitalism. Thus two obstacles present themselves for a policy of restraint. The first is that the aforementioned existing (re)sources for restraint have not been utilized or have been weakened so much that they are no longer as useful for realizing it. Within the US this challenge results from a decadent and debilitated democratic order; outside of it, a global order where institutions and alliances seem to be unraveling and/or even promoting a vitalism facilitating (rather than restraining) further action. A resolution to these obstacles is beyond the scope of this paper, although a number of studies have proposed ways to re-vitalize democratic culture and institutions (Button 2016; Johnston 8 Although I think it’s a much more complex dynamic that must be captured with analysis outside simply ‘counting’ the gender of the participants (my core concern with the ‘All Male Panel’ shaming craze that is sweeping international studies today), one could still note that the symposium included 14 male scholars and thinkers, and just two female scholars. Program available at: http://www.cato.org/events/caserestraint-us-foreign-policy 18 2015) as well as global institutions in the wake of the 2000s (Ikenberry 2012). Although these institutions and cultures can prove to work in either direction (vitalism or restraint), without them we have less ‘speed bumps’ to slow down political communities when they are activated towards a particular object or event. A second obstacle for the politics of restraint in contemporary global politics, has been the inability to plot restraint as a story about the US within that world. In short, there are plenty of narratives linked to vitalism – attractive ones that mobilize individuals and groups behind a more active role for a polity for the reasons already noted. But restraint lacks a good story that can resonate (again) with both agents (elites) and ‘structures’ (the public), one that not only presents a reasonable argument, but one that can persuade others behind a broader sensibility – (even ethos) of restraint. In short, restraint needs to develop a strategic narrative going forward against vitalism – a terrain of resonance that is usually left to the latter alone to occupy. Strategic narratives have been developed in International Relations by a number of scholars (Freedman 2006; Miskimmon et al 2013). They appear in global politics in usually ‘three forms’ as narratives about the international system, narratives intended to develop policies, and narratives of identity (Miskimmon et al 2017). Further, strategic narratives incorporate five elements characters (agent), settings (scene), action, behavior (agency), and resolution (purpose) (Miskimmon et al 2017). The following three reasons for restraint can be utilized to develop some core features of a strategic narrative. And a strategic narrative for restraint, I argue, can be fostered from the sensibilities of the Serenity Prayer. First, vitalism’s supposed strength is also its weakness - it is more easily manipulated from within (in its political mobilization of collective emotions), and from without. Although not the major factor explaining the US’s Iraq policy leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, we might recall the role of Iraqi dissidents such as Ahmad Chalabi, and Kanan Makiya (now a professor at Brandeis University). According to George Packer’s account, they were able to speak ‘the language of liberal hawks’, to provide them ‘an image of their own ideals’ in order to justify and thus stimulate an 19 intervention (Packer 2002; see also Steele 2010, chapter 2), especially by playing up the US’s humanitarian impulses. Or we might consider how Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda’s communiqués served to taunt the United States in the 1990s and 2000s as part of a weak and decadent West, and in so doing, helped to cajole the US into trying to demonstrate otherwise (Steele 2010, chapter 3). The point here is that while vitalist discourses’ ‘resonate’ with the broader public, they also often do so through a Manichean view of the world, what Morgenthau once titled the ‘demonological approach’ to foreign policy (2006, 8-10), that makes it ripe to be manipulated. Second, and related, despite vitalism’s intended ability to unify a polity – mobilizing it to face threats from abroad, it can instead lead to disunity and societal fragmentation. In otherwise appraising the resonance and power of neoconservatism, Williams noted via Morgenthau the concern with vitalist discourses that: declarations of national virtue could readily become barriers to criticism, a powerful weapon with which to attack critics at home for being insufficiently virtuous, decadently weak and lacking heroic zeal and fortitude, or even as harboring a suspiciously weak commitment to the American ideal itself (Williams 2005, 326). Has neoconservatism as it was practiced in the 2000s unified the US? The US electorate has never been more polarized in its modern history (Doherty 2014). Whether neoconservatism bears responsibility for this is not my concern, but rather it is safe to say that while neoconservative ‘American greatness’ rhetoric remains, a unified US polity seems impossible to imagine. A policy of restraint calls attention to the public’s responsibilities to their local communities, institutions, and micropolitical surroundings, rather than mobilizing a polity in asymmetric ways to an ambiguous set of enemies ‘abroad’. Third, restraint produces more immediately tangible, and qualifiedly tangible results, ones that can be narrated via a more precise causal story. For instance, consider the claims like the following from a couple of inspired and unrepentant democratic peace scholars, in the following passage regarding Syria (and Libya): 20 The fiasco over Syria demonstrates how wise the West was to act decisively in Libya. The rate of civilian casualties in Syria today is far higher than in Iraq at its worst point after the US intervention. The situation in Syria parallels the Spanish Civil War, where isolationist polices of the Western powers forced the Republicans into the hands of extremists (Harrison and Mitchell 2013, 56) We see the causal narrative of vitalism, of a conventional security history, at work in vivid color here, with references to both a historically relevant past conflict, brought forth, in turn, to the recent past. I presume Harrison and Mitchell mean that if the US, and the Obama administration, had intervened in Syria back at a certain point, presumably around the beginning stages of the revolution or at the very least following the chemical weapons attack, Syria would be as ‘peaceful’ as Libya is today (setting aside the very contestable assumption regarding Libya being ‘peaceful’). Lieber also notes the Syria case as a missed opportunity for the Obama administration. Following John Kerry’s ‘gaffe’ at a September 2013 press conference stating the US would stop short of strikes in exchange for the removal of Assad’s weapons. A Russian proposal thereafter led to a deal that prevented strikes, and led to the removal and destruction of a large quantity of Syria’s chemical stockpiles. But Lieber argues that this didn’t stop the Syrian regime from using other forms of chemical weapons – like chlorine barrel bombs – on civilian areas in rebel-held territory thereafter. Lieber notes: [Syria] did so, however, at a time of other crises for US policymakers, involving Russia in Ukraine, ISIS in Syria and Iraq, China in the East and South China Seas and – most importantly for the Obama administration – nuclear negotiations with Iran. As a result, the Obama administration largely sidestepped the Syria chemical weapons issue (Lieber 2016, 117-118) But let’s say the UK and the US would have followed through with strikes, especially following the ‘Red Line’ securitization move by Obama. What would the result have been? We should be chastened about any counterfactuals of our own (or at least more chastened than the confident conventional ones we find with liberal interventionists like Harrison and Mitchell), but it seems probable that the agreement brokered by the Russians and implemented by the US and other great powers that led 21 to that elimination of Syria’s vast chemical weapons stockpile would have never come to pass. And that means – yes, that those weapons would have been there for the taking of the insurgent groups, and, considering their quick capture of vast amounts of Syrian territory, by ISIS itself. Further, would the United States have been able to focus as it did (diplomatically, albeit) on those other ‘crises’ throughout 2014 and 2015 if it had been in a war against Assad? Restraint, I would argue, likely prevented an even worse outcome in an area where the outcomes - evidenced by the migration crisis and the continuation of the bloody Syrian civil war - seem to be nothing short of catastrophe. But often, preventing worse outcomes – rather than producing heroic, Hollywood ones – is the best we can hope for with political actors who have all kinds of motives, impulses, and sensibilities that run counter to the ones we hope to see implemented in global politics. How can we marshal these arguments into a flexible story for restraint? Recall that in vitalist perspectives emotions are a resource and a necessary one, the restrained complex resists or seeks to conceal emotion. This is done in order to present a front of calm, valorizing the action of not reacting. To the extent that emotions not only color, but warp, the judgments of all kinds of agents – collectives as well as individuals – then restraint provides us more clarity in how we see the world and our place within it. While it is not easy, there is a more grounded basis for restraint and our views of ourselves and our interactions with others. Reinhold Niebuhr – not only a theologian but also a realist who praised selfrestraint in his work – provided a model for fostering a sustainable sensibility of restraint from one of his sermons issued in the early 1940s. This resulted in the so-called ‘Serenity Prayer’: God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other (Sifton 1998, 16). The Prayer recognizes what we can do for ourselves, what we might be able to do for ourselves and others, but also that we have limits – both for what we can 22 accomplish ourselves and what we can do to transform the world around us. As a mantra for restraint over vitalism, the prayer instructs us to focus on the here and now because to the extent that ‘control’ is possible, we can only control ourselves and our immediate others. The second line provides further instruction – akin to John Quincy Adams’s counsel early in the US’s history to not seek out ‘monsters to destroy’ through its foreign policies: Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time. Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace. Taking, as He did, the sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.9 Niebuhr’s daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, wrote a study in 1998 (republished and expanded as a book in 2003), analyzing the context and then uses of her father’s prayer during the time it was developed (in 1943) throughout the Second World War, and thereafter. The community within which he wrote and delivered it for one of his sermons in Heath, Massachusetts, a village where she, her father, and their family spent their summers and long holidays (1998, 17). It was a community of pastors, professionals, professors, and intellectuals. Sifton describes the various Heath clergy as ‘unusual’ in their ‘sturdy broadmindedness, how atypical their devout modesty. I grew up well insulated from the barbarous, self-congratulatory sloth of what journalism now calls Mainstream American Protestantism, and it took me decades to realize this’ (1998, 25). Indeed, Sifton quotes her father as noting what we have to fear in global politics: ‘If the world will go down, it will go down not by the hands of criminals, but by the hands of those that were so conscious of their righteousness’ (35). In addition to the war clouds that were developing during the 1930s, Sifton credits Niebuhr’s work on his Gifford Lectures delivered in the fall of 1939 as being the basis for the Serenity Prayer. Republished in 1943 as two volumes in The Nature and Destiny of Man (Niebuhr 1943), the lectures included passages similar to what would be the Serenity Prayer, such as ‘wisdom about our destiny is dependent upon a humble 9 This second line and the final third line are much less frequently noted. The third line in the prayer is as follows: ‘Trusting that he will make all things right if I surrender to His will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him forever.’, accessed at: http://www.catholic.org/prayers/prayer.php?p=2176 23 recognition of the limits of our knowledge and our power’. This humble recognition provides the basis for a strategic narrative of restraint, distilled through the five features of a strategic narrative noted by Miskimmon et al (2017), again they are: agent, settings or scene, action, behavior, and resolution or purpose. The agent in this narrative seems obvious - the United States as a collective actor. But one should unpack the reification of the state in this case to include the power elites of a society as well as US citizens. Sifton notes about her father’s prayer that its ‘postwar life in America has been so bound up with the Twelve-Step Program that most people construe its hopes … [for us] to aim for in our personal selfimprovement projects … But there is more to it than that.’ The ‘first-person plural Is … intended to go to the heart of the possibilities and impossibilities of collective action for collective betterment’ (1998, 29, emphasis original). Thus, the agent in this narrative relates to the set of actions and behaviors that prove possible. For a restrained US, this means accepting certain things that can’t be changed (always) through action, recognizing a few others that can be changed, and structuring behaviors accordingly. Thus, a strategic narrative of restraint also recognizes a setting – international politics in late modernity – that will always feel chaotic, one that will generate anxiety. This perceived chaos is not an anomaly but our base expectation for global politics going forward. The Serenity Prayer grounds actors to recognize that there are other agents and actors out there who are part of this chaos, regardless of what we do to facilitate them (through our inaction) or stop them (through our actions). Taken on a case-bycase basis (‘one day at a time’), a strategic narrative of restraint evaluates each situation with the assumption that not all actions and behaviors practiced by the United States will lead to a different outcome in the future. And that’s ok. The resolution or purpose is a sustained sense of restraint through time – it takes effort, constant effort, to realize restraint. The population of events that could overwhelm restraint – for the reasons and contexts already noted – are infinite. This strategic narrative is thus one that never concludes – it’s an open-ended story that must be repeated and revisited constantly. 24 What policies might follow from this strategic narrative, and what are its benefits compared to other cases for restraint (like Posen’s)? First, the strategic narrative of restraint recognizes the agency of others in global politics - that the world is not always the way it is because the US willed it that way. The agency of other actors in global politics can and will shape our environment no matter what we do to alter it (and them). Thus, the narrative would articulate how the dynamics between the Shia and Sunni in the Middle East will play out in ways that will prove problematic regardless of US policy in the region, or that genocides may occur in contexts where there is no clear aggressor and thus (conversely) no clear innocent party to protect. As difficult as that is to take, it is a clear recognition both that there are tragic outcomes in global politics, but ones that (at the same time) cannot necessarily be stopped by one actor alone – no matter how powerful it (and its citizens) see/s itself. The narrative also acknowledges that both secular and faith-based influences upon US identity have created a set of expectations about the United States being an active, and ‘humanitarian’ country in the world. Thus, the narrative attends to the ‘identity costs’ a full-fledged break with liberal hegemony (referenced earlier) would entail. The Prayer concedes this ‘habit’ of US identity, and thus proposes and valorizes other ways for the US to ‘change’ the world and make a real difference without sacrificing lives and deploying violent means. We might consider here the impact in the 2000s and 2010s of the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR), or how many lives were saved with the quick distribution of US aid to areas affected by the Boxing Day / Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, or the aforementioned destruction of chemical weapons in Syria. All of these policies reflected the ethos of doing something and practicing an agency in global politics to effect change, without committing whole-hog to a vitalist politics of intervention that entails far larger costs. Conclusion In this paper, I have mainly pursued three goals. First, I sought to more deeply treat recent discussions of restraint, going past the policy proposals that have been 25 central to these discussions, and into some of the complex processes that condition (and overwhelm) restraint. The purpose here was to reveal the difficulties of restraint, a variety of conditions and a politics that challenges individuals, groups, and political communities from practicing restraint through time. Second, the paper sought to situate restraint alongside its opposite – what I collectively termed ‘vitalism’. The purpose for that goal was to further explore how vitalism and restraint filter through a variety of IR perspectives. Third, I proposed an argument for restraint vis-à-vis vitalism, and then proffered the Serenity Prayer as the basis for a ‘strategic narrative’ of restraint. This paper and the cases I have made are not of course without their shortcomings. Restraint as a narrative may prove to be attractive for only short periods of time, only to be overwhelmed by all of the challenging contexts and events mentioned in this paper (and several that have yet to be stated). And the Serenity Prayer, considering its history and uses in a variety of contexts, may and likely will not be a popular model for a strategic narrative for restraint. The Prayer may seem hokey, or too vague and general, to be of use. It may seem aloof and too modest and uninspiring. The policies it may lead to and justify will seem too measured in a world that, for especially US citizens, seemed to previously bend to our will. This has been, then, a restrained case for restraint. But perhaps the best that can be said for such a case is not its ability to counsel citizens and elites about the place of the US in the world. Rather, it’s that it can console us in a world that appears to be ever more violent everyday. And that’s a start. 26 Works Cited Andrew Bacevich, Andrew J. The limits of power: The end of American exceptionalism. Palgrave. Roland Bleiker (2001) The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory, Millennium, 30, 3: 509-533 Marcel Brass and Patrick Haggard (2007) To Do or Not to Do: the neural signature of self-control, The Journal of Neuroscience, 27, (34): 9141-9145. Stephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth (2013). Lean forward: In defense of American engagement. Foreign Aff., 92, 130. Hedley Bull (1977) The anarchical society: a study of order in world politics. Columbia University Press. F Burwick and P Douglass (2010) The Crisis in Modernism: Bergson and the Vitalist Controversy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mark Button (2016). Political Vices. Oxford University Press. The Cato Institute (2016) The Case for Restraint in US Foreign Policy. Conference. June 15. http://www.cato.org/events/case-restraint-us-foreign-policy Francois Debrix (2007) Tabloid Terror. London: Routledge. Daniel Deudney (2007) Bounding Power. Princeton University Press. H Driesch (2010) The History and Theory of Vitalism. Palgrave Carroll Doherty (2014) Polarization in American Politics. June 12, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/12/7-things-to-know-aboutpolarization-in-america/ Benjamin H. Friedman and Christpher Preble (2013) Americans favor not isolationism, but restraint. Los Angeles Times. December 27, http://articles.latimes.com/2013/dec/27/opinion/la-oe-friedman-isolationism-militaryrestraint-20131227 Anthony Giddens (1984) The Constitution of Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. 27 Simon Glezos (2013). The politics of speed: capitalism, the state and war in an accelerating world. Routledge. Ewan Harrison and Sara M Mitchell (2013). The Triumph of Democracy and the Eclipse of the West. Palgrave Macmillan. John H. Herz (1950) Idealist Internationalism and the security dilemma, World Politics, 2, 2: 157-180. Neil Howe, N., and William Strauss (1992). Generations: The history of America's future, 1584 to 2069. Harper Collins. G. John Ikenberry (2012). Liberal Leviathan: The origins, crisis, and transformation of the American world order. Princeton University Press. _______________(1998) Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the persistence of American postwar order, International Security, 23, 3, 43-78. Steven Johnston (2015). American Dionysia: Violence, Tragedy, and Democratic Politics. Cambridge University Press. David Garnham (1986). War-proneness, war-weariness, and regime type: 1816-1980. Journal of Peace Research, 23(3), 279-289. Carl Gustav Jung (1928) The collected works of Carl Jung. ______________(1942) Psychology of the Unconscious. Binoy Kampmark (2011). The first neo-conservative: James Burnham and the origins of a movement. Review of International Studies, 37(04), 1885-1902. David Kearn (2014) Attacking ISIS: Military Force, US Public Opinion and the Long War on Terrorism. Huffington Post, September 23, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-wkearn/attacking-the-islamic-sta_b_5868712.html Robert Keohane and Joseph S. Nye (1977). Power and interdependence: World politics in transition. Boston: Little, Brown. Catarina Kinnvall (2004). Globalization and religious nationalism: Self, identity, and the search for ontological security. Political Psychology, 25(5), 741-767. Frank Klingberg (1952) The Historical Alternation of Moods in American Foreign Policy. World Politics 4, 2: 239–73. 28 Margaret Kohn (2013). Postcolonialism and global justice. Journal of Global Ethics, 9(2), 187-200. ____________ (2010). Post-colonial theory. D. Bell (ed.), Ethics in World Politics, Oxford University Press, 200-218. Robert J. Lieber (2016a) Review of Barry Posen’s Retreat, H-Diplo/ISSF Roundtable Reviews, 8, 16: 10-14. _____________(2016b) Retreat and its Consequences: American Foreign Policy and the Problem of World Order. Cambridge University Press. Paul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent (2016) Review of Barry Posen’s Retreat, HDiplo/ISSF Roundtable Reviews, 8, 16: 15-18. Jeffrey Meiser (2014) Power and Restraint: The Rise of the United States, 1898-1941. Georgetown University Press. Jennifer Mitzen (2006). Ontological security in world politics: state identity and the security dilemma. European Journal of international relations, 12(3), 341-370. Hans Morgenthau (2006) Politics Among Nations McGraw Hill, 7th edition. Miskimmon, A., O'Loughlin, B., & Roselle, L. (2013). Strategic narratives: Communication power and the new world order. Routledge. ____________________________________(2017) Forging the world: strategic narratives and international relations. University of Michigan Press. Richard Ned Lebow (2008). A cultural theory of international relations. Cambridge University Press. Joshua Muravchik (1992). Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America's Destiny (Vol. 513). American Enterprise Institute. Reinhold Niebuhr (1943) Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation. Vol 2. Scribner. _______________(1932) Moral Man, Immoral Society. Scribner. Nicholas Onuf (1998). Constructivism: a user’s manual. In International relations in a constructed world, Kubalkova, Onuf, and Kowert, Editors. ME Sharpe. ____________(1989) World of Our Making. University of South Carolina Press. 29 Patricia Owens (2007). Beyond Strauss, lies, and the war in Iraq: Hannah Arendt’s critique of neoconservatism. Review of International Studies, 33(02), 265-283. George Packer (2002). The liberal quandary over Iraq. New York Times Magazine, 8. Barry Posen (2014) Restraint: A New Foundation for US Grand Strategy. Cornell University Press. __________(2013) Pull back: The case of a less activist foreign policy. Foreign Aff., 92, 116. Jeremy Pressman (2008) Warring Friends: Alliance Restraint in International Politics. Cornell University Press. H. Reichert (1964) ‘Nietzsche and Georg Kaiser’, Studies in Philology 61(4): 85–108. Michael Roskin (1974) From Pearl Harbor to Vietnam: Shifting Generational Para- digms and Foreign Policy. Political Science Quarterly 89, 3: 563–88. Randall Schweller (2010). Unanswered threats: Political constraints on the balance of power. Princeton University Press. _____________ (2004). Unanswered threats: A neoclassical realist theory of underbalancing. International security, 29(2), 159-201. Elisabeth Sifton (1998). The serenity prayer. The Yale Review, 86(1), 16-65. Ty Solomon (2013) ‘Resonances of Neoconservatism’, Cooperation and Conflict 48(1): 100–21. Brent J. Steele (2010) Defacing Power: the aesthetics of insecurity in global politics. University of Michigan Press. ____________(2008) Ontological Security in International Relations. Routledge. George Tsebelis (2002). Veto players: How political institutions work. Princeton University Press. Kenneth Tucker (1998). Anthony Giddens and modern social theory. Sage. Kenneth Waltz (1979) Theory of International Politics Reading: Addison-Wesley. 30 Alexander Wendt (1999) Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge University Press. _______________ (1987). The agent-structure problem in international relations theory. International organization, 41(03), 335-370. Nicholas Wheeler (2000) Saving Strangers. Oxford University Press. _______________(1992) Pluralist or Solidarist Conceptions of International Society: Bull and Vincent on Humanitarian Intervention. Millennium, 21, 3: 463-487. Nicholas Wheeler., and Timothy Dunne (1996). Hedley Bull's Pluralism of the Intellect and Solidarism of the Will. International Affairs 91-107. Michael C. Williams (2005). What Is the National Interest? The Neoconservative Challenge in IR Theory. European Journal of International Relations 11, no. 3 (September): 303–37. ________________ (2007) Realism Reconsidered: The Legacy of Hans Morgenthau inInternational Relations. Oxford University Press. Arnold Wolfers (1962) Discord and Collaboration Johns Hopkins University Press. Richard Wolin (1990) ‘Carl Schmitt, Political Existentialism, and the Total State’, Theory and Society 19(4): 389–416. 31