Power and Restraint : Liberal Foreign Policy Theory and America's Rise: 1904-1912
Between the 1898 and 1941 American foreign policy was much more restrained than other great powers and rising powers of this era despite the fact that the USA had the largest economy and highest rate of economic growth among the great powers. Therein lies a puzzle of considerable historical and theoretical significance. Classical/neoclassical and offensive realists would expect a rising power to be especially expansionist in its foreign policy, and yet the U.S. never even matched the imperialism of tiny Belgium. Defensive realists expect states to expand to meet emerging threats, yet the U.S. retrenched in the face of great power aggression. Constructivists would expect an emerging power to conform to the norms of the system, in this case great power imperialism, but clearly the U.S. did not. Liberal theories focusing on economic interests fail to convincingly demonstrate that American foreign policy conforms to the interests of any specific economic group. The anomalous behavior of the United States from 1898 to 1941 suggests the need for greater attention to variables not included in the dominant approaches to international relations. To explain this anomaly, I utilize a liberal-institutional theory of foreign policy, which argues that a fragmented, decentralized, “liberal” state structure will tend to pursue a policy of relative strategic restraint. More specific to the case under study, separation of powers and a geographically decentralized electoral system restrained American expansion during the initial drive for imperialism and fostered rollback of the limited expansion that did occur. This essay shows that domestic institutions and liberal norms fostered strategic restraint in American foreign policy during the height of American imperialism from 1904 to 1912
Year of publication: |
2010
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Authors: | Meiser, Jeffrey W. |
Publisher: |
[2010]: [S.l.] : SSRN |
Subject: | Außenpolitik | Foreign policy | Internationale Beziehungen | International relations |
Saved in:
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