Less is more.

Historically, in both practical and theoretical debates about American foreign policy, the great divide has been between proponents of liberal internationalism -- sometimes called Wilsonianism -- and realism. But today, although more or less pristine strands of neo-Wilsonian liberal internationalism survive in the foreign policy discourse, the more important intellectual debate is taking place within the realist camp itself. Today's realists are split into "maximalists" and "minimalists," with the latter often caricatured as neo-isolationists. While both camps share fundamental assumptions about the forces that shape world politics, once it comes to specifics the two generate very different views as to what U.S. grand strategy ought to be. One can therefore no longer speak meaningfully about a realist critique of liberal internationalism, for realism today does not offer a unified alternative to liberal internationalist policies.

To complicate things further, while their basic assumptions differ, maximal realists sometimes find themselves in accord with liberal internationalists. To take one important current example, both have tended to favor American military intervention in the Balkans. On the other hand, minimal realists sometimes do find themselves more in accord with isolationists than with maximal realists -- and again the Bosnia debate illustrates the point. Hence, the schism between maximal and minimal realists merits close attention.

The basic difference between the two camps, understood as ideal types, is not hard to state: It is between those who would trust in hegemonism and those who would trust in the balance of power, these being the only two pure models of international stability that scholars have ever gleaned from the study of history. Maximal realists put their money on hegemony -- or as much of it as they can get under specific circumstances -- and assume that, as it will be American, it will be a benign hegemony. They seek U.S. security through the preservation of maximum feasible American military and geopolitical dominance over the international system. Minimalists, on the contrary, advise that the United States should seek security by capitalizing on the dynamics of the balance of power in an emerging multipolar world. They do so because they believe that the United States lacks the resources to sustain its present predominance, and, more fundamentally, because they see hegemony as inherently unstable.

Both maximal and minimal approaches are realist strategies because they embrace the core assumptions of the realist paradigm: anarchy among states requires and justifies self-help; reasons of state predominate over conventional interpersonal standards of moral behavior; and power relationships predominate over internal political characteristics in determining state behavior. But maximal and minimal versions of realism today do not generate equally realistic strategies. The operational differences between them may be demonstrated by considering their respective implications for future U.S. strategy in East Asia, and after first considering the two positions -- maximal and minimal realism -- in general theoretical terms, I shall do this. It will be my contention that minimal realist approaches offer by far the more realistic options for the United States.

Maximal Realism: The Strategy of

Preponderance

Realism can best be understood by contrasting it with the liberal internationalism that represents the prevailing popular approach to world politics among the elites of Western democracies. In its unadulterated form, liberal internationalism boils down to the assumption that a virtuous cycle binds together democracy, economic interdependence, and peace. Its enemies are authoritarianism, narrow nationalism, and excessive reliance on the use of force as a policy instrument. It aspires to apply the rule of law to state interactions, and, while not necessarily utopian, is quick to spot and to advocate potential systemic change, presumably for the better.

Realists see things differently; in particular, they are skeptical of any easy prospect for benign systemic change. If history is "just one damned thing after another", then for realists international politics is the same damned things over and over again. War, great power security and economic competitions, the rise and fall of empires and great states, and the formation and dissolution of alliances are, in this view, ceaseless and changeless at the same time. The number of permutations is virtually infinite, but the rules by which they are generated are fixed by human nature and the hard realities of political life.

The realist paradigm explains why this is so. International politics is an anarchic, self-help realm because there is no central authority to make and enforce rules of behavior on states. The absence of such an authority means that each state is responsible for ensuring its own survival, free to define its own interests and to employ means of its own choosing in pursuit of those interests. International politics is therefore fundamentally competitive. While this competition is not necessarily chaotic or disorderly, states cannot escape the security dilemma, in which the fear and distrust of other states is normal and usually reciprocal. The imperative of survival thus forces states to adopt strategies that maximize their military and economic power relative to their rivals.

Unlike liberal internationalism, realism is not an uplifting approach to international politics. Owen Harries has nicely captured its flavor:

Realism is a dour and pessimistic doctrine, one that stresses the inevitability of conflict, the intractability of interests, the dangers of life in a world of sovereign states. The virtues it most strongly recommends are prudence and vigilance.

On this all realists agree, and therefore conclude that, international politics being the way it is, security must be the overarching goal of American strategy. But that is where agreement ends.

It is a commonplace, but nonetheless true, observation that the Soviet Union's collapse transformed the bipolar post-1945 international system into a unipolar one, with the United States as the sole great power. Maximal realists believe that U.S. post-cold War strategy should aim at perpetuating unipolarity by preventing the rise of new great powers. This is because, they further assume, American hegemony will guarantee a stable international order based on America's power and its liberal values. Maximalists usually combine realist concerns about power with liberal internationalism's core policy agenda. In other words, the stabilizing qualities of the hegemon aside, maximalists assume that other states will accept the leadership of a more or less benign, liberal hegemon such as the United States because of the collective goods -- general security reassurance, predictable "rules of the game", and an open international economic system -- they would receive in exchange. Unlike true liberal internationalists, who believe that liberalism inevitably will triumph of its own accord, maximalists believe that only American power can ensure that liberal principles will prevail. And they view liberal internationalist principles instrumentally rather than ideologically: democracy and free trade are good because they are means to a desirable end -- a high degree of security for the United States in the international system -- not the other way around.

Maximalism's contemporary intellectual framework can be parsed from both the writings of its leading proponents and from official policy statements penned during the Bush and Clinton administrations. Perhaps the strongest statement of the key premise -- that American strategy should aim to preserve the United States as the sole great power -- comes from the leaked and subsequently notorious draft of the FY 1994-9 Defense Planning Guidance, prepared in 1992. That document stated that the United States "must account sufficiently for the interests of the large industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political or economic order," and that the United States must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."(1) Maximalists believe that, having emerged from the Cold War in a pre-eminent geopolitical position, America's security requires maintenance of that position. As Samuel P. Huntington puts it: "States pursue primacy in order to be able to insure their security, promote their interests, and shape the international environment in ways that will reflect their interests and values."(2)

Maximalists generally prescribe a two-pronged strategy to maintain American dominance: Geopolitically, the United States should maintain, and if necessary extend, security guarantees to Europe and East Asia in order to negate the incentives that might push eligible states to become great powers; and ideologically, it should encourage the spread of democracy and the preservation (and expansion) of an open international economy because democracy and interdependence conduce to peace.

As to the first part of this strategy, maximalists favor U.S. geostrategic predominance because they believe that the rise of new great powers would destabilize the international order. "U.S. leadership," former Pentagon official Zalmay Khalilzad typically argues, "would be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system."(3) Maximalists appear to believe that the alternative to U.S. predominance is a return to a mechanistic eighteenth/nineteenth century balance of power system, a system which they see as flawed because it requires subtle diplomatic calculations and compromises to function effectively. The current debilities of operating such a balance, as maximalists see it, are many. The main fear is that any diminution of American power or retraction of U.S. security guarantees would result in the "renationalization" of foreign and security policies, notably in the cases of Japan and Germany.(4) If these states ever doubted the U.S. capacity to defend them, the argument goes, they would act unilaterally to ensure their security, in turn fueling their neighbors' insecurity and triggering destabilizing regional security competitions. Widespread nuclear proliferation would be the inevitable consequence of multipolarity and concomitant renationalization.

The adverse consequences of multipolarity can be averted, maximalists believe, if the United States maintains intact in the post-Cold War era the Cold War system of alliance arrangements that provided credible security guarantees to Japan and Germany. Official U.S. government documents make the same argument. As the 1992 Regional Defense Strategy document states: "It is not in our interest ... to return to earlier periods in which multiple military powers balanced one against another in what passed for security structures, while regional, or even global peace hung in the balance."(5)

As to the ideological dimension of maximalist thinking, its proponents see a synergy between liberal values and American primacy. American primacy, they believe, creates the kind of stable international system conducive to the spread of democracy and free trade. And, in turn, as democracy and free trade expand abroad -- "enlarging the zone of peace" -- America,s security is thereby increased. Maximalists thus embrace a broad conception of American interests because they see U.S. strategic, political, economic, and ideological aspirations as inextricably linked.

This view has found ample official expression. As President Bush said in his January 1992 State of the Union address: "[T]he world trusts us with power -- and the world is right. They trust us to be fair and restrained; they trust us to be on the right side of decency. They trust us to do what's right." The Regional Defense Strategy sings the same song: "Our fundamental belief in democracy and human rights gives other nations confidence that our significant military power threatens no one's aspirations for peaceful democratic progress." The Clinton administration carries on the tradition. Although it emphasizes the liberal internationalist component of U.S. strategy more than did the Bush administration, there is substantial congruence in the two administrations' declaratory policies. As the Clinton administration's National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement states:

We believe that our goals of enhancing our security, bolstering our economic prosperity, and promoting democracy are mutually supportive. Secure nations are more likely to support free trade and maintain democratic structures. Nations with growing economies and strong trade ties are more likely to feel secure and to work toward freedom. And democratic states are less likely to threaten our interests and more likely to cooperate with the U.S. to meet security threats and promote free trade and sustainable development.(6)

The Minimalist Alternative

Clearly, many people -- officials and scholars alike -- agree with the premises of the maximalist argument. Nevertheless, that argument is wrong. The maximalist strategy of preponderance raises several questions. Three are central.

First, even if it is desirable in the abstract, is such a strategy viable? In other words, can U.S. unipolarity be preserved? The strategy of preponderance is the geopolitical analog to the hegemonic stability theory favored by many international political economists. Minimalist realists, however, suggest that international politics is shaped strategically by what could be called the hegemonic instability theory. In a unipolar world, systemic factors -- anarchy, reciprocal security fears, concerns about the distribution of relative power -- should impel states that can do so to act to counterbalance a hegemon. A hegemon's attempt to perpetuate unipolarity thus will have the paradoxical effect of accelerating the emergence of new great power challenges to it.

Second, in its security dimension, the strategy of preponderance could require an ambitious expansion of U.S. extended deterrence strategy. But can the preconditions that allowed for successful deterrence in Central Europe during the Cold War be replicated in the post-cold War world? What are the costs and risks of a post-cold War extended deterrence strategy? It is not at all clear that the United States can -- or should wish to -- maintain the sort of security guarantees to Japan and Germany required to prevent renationalization and multipolarity.

Third, do liberal values really contribute as much to American security as maximalists suggest? In particular, is American liberalism so powerful as to inculcate a widespread belief in American exceptionalism abroad? If not, American power will not be seen as benign by significant others. Moreover, the liberal internationalist component of maximal realism may blind policymakers to the possibility that other democratic states may threaten American interests, if not through war than through other forms of competition. And, because they are committed to promoting economic interdependence, maximalists may overlook the importance of relative power.

In contrast to maximalism, a minimalist grand strategy would cast the United States in the role of an offshore balancer. Rather than attempting to suppress the rise of new great powers, a minimalist strategy would navigate multipolarity to maintain U.S. security by: (1) exploiting the U.S. position as a secure, relatively powerful, insular great power: (2) relying on global and regional power balances to contain newly emerging powers: and (3) increasing America's relative power position by taking advantage of the economically debilitating security competitions that newly emerging powers (who are America's economic rivals) must undertake, and by devising a more assertive national economic strategy designed to revitalize America's relative economic power.

Maximalism in Practice -- East Asia

Having set out the two realist positions in theoretical terms, I now turn to how they differ in practice by contrasting their views on several specific issues in the East Asian context: unipolarity; extended nuclear deterrence and selective nuclear proliferation; economic interdependence and the importance of relative power relations; and the role of ideals in U.S. policy.

Current U.s.-East Asia strategy, conveniently set out in a February 1995 Pentagon document, rests on the premise that U.S. vital interests, increasingly defined in economic terms ("the stability and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region is a matter of vital national interest affecting the well-being of all Americans") require a strong American military presence in East Asia. Absent that presence, the destabilizing things maximalists predict of multipolarity will happen:

If the United States does not provide the central visible, stabilizing force in the Asia and Pacific region, it is quite possible that another nation might -- but not necessarily in a way that meets America's fundamental interests and those of our friends and allies. Insecure nations will build up their armaments. Arms races could in turn foster fear and instability.(7)

Extended nuclear deterrence is a key part of the strategy. Stating that the United States is "reconfirming the nuclear umbrella it extends to its allies," the Pentagon aims to avert the renationalization of Japanese foreign and security policy. Thus the U.S.-Japan security treaty is lauded because "it contributes to overall regional security. The United States-Japan alliance, while mutually beneficial, has far-reaching benefits extending to the maintenance of peace and stability of the entire international community."

To round out the maximalist panoply, the Pentagon's East Asia strategy paper stresses the linkage between America's security and its values:

United States interests in the region are

mutually-reinforcing: security is necessary for

economic growth, security and growth make it

more likely ... that democracy will emerge,

and democratization makes international

conflict less likely because democracies are

unlikely to fight one another.

So much for the official line. What are the realities of contemporary East Asia, and how have maximalist realists interpreted them?

Over the past several years, many U.S. observers have begun to focus on the strategic implications of China's rise to great power status. Several incidents have strained Sino-American relations and suggest to many that China is becoming a more assertive power in East Asian geopolitics. These include: an October 1994 Yellow Sea incident involving USS Kitty Hawk and a Chinese nuclear attack submarine; China's January 1995 seizure of some of the disputed Spratly Islands; Beijing's expulsion of two U.S. military attaches on espionage charges; the arrest of human rights activists Harry Wu and Wei Jingsheng; and especially the growing tension between Beijing and Washington over Taiwan. China is also engaged in a significant military build-up and has undertaken a domestic campaign to bolster nationalist sentiment by playing on memories of the 1937-45 war against Japan. China's leadership now views the United States as unremittingly hostile, and, in a major policy reversal, for the first time in a quarter century China no longer welcomes the U.S. military role in East Asia. Rejecting the American portrayal of itself as an impartial balancer in East Asia, Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen declared in August 1995: "We do not recognize the United States as a power which claims to maintain the peace and stability of Asia."

Many American realists have identified China as a major emerging threat to several important U.S. security interests and are asking whether Washington's best response is to "engage" China or to "contain" it. The Clinton administration's policy, as set out in the Pentagon document, is to "engage China and support its constructive integration into the international community. . . ." Arthur Waldron has stated the opposing view:

From now on the Asian security situation will

increasingly resemble that of inter-war Europe: a

society of strong nation-states, increasingly

well- armed and in possession of conflicting visions of

the future, and in the shadow of an erratic and

sometimes menacing power. . . . [U]nless the

United States begins to see things as they are,

and to play an active role in deterring China and

shaping Asian affairs, it will pay the eventual and

possibly catastrophic price.(8)

Waldron also delicately alludes to the likely renationalization of Japanese policy if the U.S. fails to contain China: "Japan . . . will reconsider its role." Just in case worse comes to worst, the American national security establishment already is conducting war games that simulate a Sino-American war in 2010.

In truth, however, the United States faces not one great power challenge in East Asia but two. While China's great power emergence has attracted intense discussion, far less attention has been focused on Japan's even more stunning rise to the threshold of great power status. Few Americans think of Japan as a military power, but it is on the verge of becoming one just the same. Japan has the world's third largest defense budget, very well-equipped and trained forces, and a sophisticated high-tech defense industry. It is already a virtual nuclear power, a point dramatized in 1992-3 by Japan's importation of large amounts of plutonium. Japan could, if it wished, build warheads and mount them on intercontinental-range delivery vehicles (the H-2 missile, ostensibly developed for launching satellites) in a matter of weeks. Unwilling to remain dependent on the United States, Japan is now developing an independent capability to gather and analyze politico-military and economic intelligence.

Japan's great power emergence is reflected most dramatically and obviously, however, in its economic prowess. When the dollar reached its most recent (mid-April 1995) nadir in relation to the yen, Japan's GNP was just two-tenths of a percent less than America's -- a remarkable accomplishment for a country with few natural resources and half of America's population. This comparison of respective economic power is somewhat exaggerated because it reflects an overvalued yen and undervalued dollar, but even before the yen's 1995 appreciation, respected international economists were forecasting that sometime in the next century's first decade Japan's GNP would exceed America's. If Japan does surpass the United States as the world's leading economic power it would be a fact of enormous strategic, not merely economic, importance. As Paul Kennedy has noted, throughout international history "economic shifts heralded the rise of new Great Powers which one day would have a decisive impact on the military/territorial order."(9) It is impressive testimony to the power of liberal internationalist beliefs that Washington remains largely oblivious to the emergence of Japan as a great power rival. After all, according to that doctrine a supposed free-market democracy such as Japan cannot be a geopolitical rival.

As for the maximalists, their views of Japan are ambivalent. Most of them, most of the time -- Huntington being a notable exception -- are unconcerned about the ongoing shift in economic power between the United States and Japan because they see economic interdependence as mutually beneficial. At the same time they stress the danger of Japan becoming an active great power should the United States withdraw Its security umbrella. Thus, they worry about atmospherics -- the fear that trade frictions could erode U.S. public support for maintaining the security relationship with Japan, a relationship they would not jeopardize by pressing Tokyo too hard on bilateral economic issues. Some maximalists are so frightened by the prospect of Japan as a great power that they would even abjure pressing it for a greater degree of strategic reciprocity and increased military burden sharing.(10) For all maximalists, however, the U.S. security guarantee to Japan is vital because it prevents the emergence of the dreaded condition of East Asian multipolarity. Multipolarity challenges strategic planners because a state can be threatened by more than one adversary, it is often unclear which potential rival constitutes the most salient threat, and complex judgments must be made about the interplay of rivals' power, intentions, and the time-frames in which power and intentions may intersect.

Over time, China could emerge as a very formidable adversary, but such a possibility hinges on three highly-problematical assumptions: that China maintains its domestic political cohesion; that it can sustain for a prolonged period its current high (approximately 12 percent per year) growth rates; and that it can equal or surpass the United States in military technology, organization, and doctrine. In contrast to China, Japan has already established leadership in key high-technology sectors, possesses tremendous financial and manufacturing clout, has highly advanced actual and latent military capabilities, and has a GNP that is closing in on America's. And unlike China, Japan's underlying political stability and internal cohesion are not in doubt.

China may become a threat over time; Japan will become a great power rival in the short term. For that eventuality the United States needs a realistic strategy. Neither global internationalism nor maximalist realism can provide one because their assumptions blind them to the challenge Japan poses. Minimalist realism, however, can provide a realistic strategy.

Impractical, Costly, and Dangerous

Maximal realism has obvious appeal because its arguments are emotionally attractive and intuitively plausible. It is not hard for Americans to believe that a benignly motivated America is good for the world, and that America itself would be safer -- strategically and ideologically -- in a world where its primacy is unchallenged by other great powers. Maximal realists are almost certainly correct in assuming that international politics will revert to more traditional patterns of behavior if the United States is unable to stymie the rise of new great powers. A maximalist strategy is also attractive because it promises to dampen incentives for nuclear proliferation and may therefore contribute to avoiding nuclear war in East Asia. Who could oppose that?

These appear to be compelling arguments, but appearances can be deceiving. Minimal realists reject the maximalist strategy because it is impractical, costly, and dangerous.

The strategy of preponderance is an impractical strategy because, over time, the United States cannot successfully perpetuate unipolarity by thwarting the emergence of new great powers. America's post-Cold War "unipolar moment" is an ephemeral geopolitical aberration. The emergence of these new powers is a recurring feature in international politics that reflects both the impact of differential growth rates among states and the logic of the system. The relative distribution of power among states is constantly, if slowly, changing; Japan's closing in on the United States in terms of GNP provides a concrete example. And the structural effects of anarchy compel states that possess the requisite capabilities to become great powers. States have virtually irresistible incentives to acquire the same kinds of capabilities that their rivals (actual or potential) possess, even in cases, such as Japan's, where historical memory militates against it.

Another key structural effect is the tendency of states to balance against others who are too strong or threatening. The pressure to balance is especially strong in a unipolar system, as modern international history amply confirms. Maximal realists, however, assuming that their own belief in American exceptionalism is shared by the rest of the world, believe that this will not apply in the case of the United States. Instead of challenging America's hegemony, they argue, other states welcome it because they trust the United States to exercise its power fairly and wisely.

This is an illusory view of how others perceive American hegemony. Hegemons may love themselves but others neither love nor trust them; other states are concerned more with a hegemon's fixed capabilities than its ephemeral intentions. Thus, any strategy aimed at suppressing the emergence of new great powers will instead stimulate the rise of challengers. It may be true, as Huntington argues, that a "state such as the United States that has achieved international primacy has every reason to attempt to maintain that primacy", but it is equally true that other states with the capabilities to do so will work to create counterweights to American overbearing power.

The strategy of preponderance is also a costly strategy because the balancing and reassurance roles prescribed require the United States to remain the leading military power in East Asia -- and, Indeed, in the world. Maximalist realists focus on the benefits of U.S. unipolarity, but they overlook the costs. As Robert Gilpin has pointed out, the "overhead costs" of empire are high, and the basic dynamic is familiar enough. Over time, hegemons decline from dominance because the costs of sustaining preeminence erodes the hegemon's economic strength. The hegemon's presence abroad also results in the diffusion of economic, technological, and organizational skills to other states, eventually reducing its comparative advantage over them. Invariably, some of these other states will emerge as rivals.

A strategy of benign hegemony does not change the equation appreciably. Such a strategy enables other states to "free ride" militarily and economically, allowing them to shift resources into economically productive investments. The net result is the same: the decline in the hegemon's relative power. Hence, by providing regional security -- for the express purpose of obviating the need for others to provide for themselves -- the U.S. strategy of preponderance will accelerate the decline in America's relative power position vis-a-vis Japan, which will continue to exploit the U.S. security umbrella to follow its aggressive, politically motivated "trading state" policies.

Finally, as the post-Cold War strategy of preponderance calls for the United States to reprise in East Asia its Cold War extended nuclear deterrence policy, it is dangerous.

Extended nuclear deterrence has always been a difficult strategy to implement successfully because deterring an attack on one's allies is harder than deterring an attack on oneself. This is doubly true when the potential aggressor is a nuclear power because, as Charles de Gaulle reasoned well, rational states will not risk suicide to save their allies. For both protector and protected, extended nuclear deterrence raises constant and ultimately insoluble dilemmas of credibility and reassurance.

The conditions that contributed to successful extended nuclear deterrence in Cold War Europe do not exist in post-Cold War East Asia. Unlike the situation that prevailed in Europe between 1948 and 1990 -- which was fundamentally stable and static -- East Asia is a volatile region in which all the major players -- Japan, China, Korea, Russia, Vietnam -- are candidates to become involved in large-scale war. There is no clear and inviolable status quo. The lines of demarcation between spheres of influence are already blurred and may well become more so as Chinese and Japanese influence expand simultaneously, increasing the number and unpredictability of regional rivalries. The status of Taiwan, tension along the 38th Parallel in Korea, conflicting claims to ownership of the Spratly Islands, and the Sino-Japanese territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands are only a few of the flash-points that could ignite a great power war in East Asia. Washington will clearly exercise far less control over the policies of East Asian powers than it exercised over America's European allies during the Cold War. Hence, the risk of being chain-ganged into a nuclear conflict are much higher for the United States in post-Cold War East Asia if it maintains or extends nuclear guarantees to any of the region's major states.

Even more important, post-Cold War East Asia simply does not have the same degree of strategic importance to the United States as did Europe during the Cold War. Would the United States risk a nuclear confrontation to defend Taiwan, the Spratlys, or Senkaku? Knowing that they would not constitute the same kind of threat to U.S. interests that the Soviet Union did, future revisionist East Asian powers would probably be more willing to discount America's credibility and test its resolve. The presence of American forces in the region may indeed have the perverse effect of failing to preserve peace while simultaneously ensuring the United States would be drawn automatically into a future East Asian war. They could constitute the wrong sort of tripwire, tripping us rather than deterring them. Notwithstanding current conventional wisdom, the United States should encourage East Asian states -- including Japan -- to resolve their own security dilemmas, even if it means acquiring great power, including nuclear, military capabilities.

Reconfiguring American security policies anywhere in the world in ways that, in effect, encourage nuclear proliferation is widely seen as irresponsible and risky. This is not necessarily the case. Nuclear proliferation and extended deterrence are generally believed to be flip sides of the same coin, in the sense that providing the latter is seen to discourage the former. Nearly all maximalists are simultaneously proliferation pessimists (believing that any proliferation will have negative security implications) and extended nuclear deterrence optimists (believing that extended nuclear deterrence "works"). But this formulation comes apart from both ends in East Asia: Potential nuclear powers in the region are unlikely to act irresponsibly and, as suggested above, the U.S. nuclear umbrella is of uncertain credibility in post-Cold War circumstances in which the Soviet Union no longer exists and strains in the U.S.-Japanese relationship are manifest.

Even selective proliferation by stable, non-rogue states admittedly raises important political, strategic, organizational, and doctrinal issues. But so does relying on America's nuclear extended deterrence strategy in changed circumstances. The need at hand is to weigh the dangers imbedded in an extended deterrence strategy against those posed by the possibility of nuclear proliferation, and here the Japanese case provides the most important and sobering illustration.

Clearly, most of the concerns about proliferation that maximalists hold are inapplicable to Japan. Japan is not a rogue state, but a highly stable political system with a firm pattern of civil-military relations in which civilian primacy is unchallenged. On the technical side, Japan has both the technology and the resources to build an invulnerable, second strike deterrent force, thus contributing to crisis stability by muting a potential adversary's incentives to pre-empt in crisis. No one seriously doubts that Japan could develop command-and-control systems at least as sophisticated as our own to ensure against accidents, unauthorized use, or terrorism. And while the dangers of japanese proliferation are more modest than commonly supposed, the risks to the United States of maintaining its nuclear umbrella are greater.

In short, for the United States, some nuclear proliferation may be preferable to pledges of extended deterrence in circumstances in which credibility would be low compared to the dangers of catalytic war. Retracting the nuclear umbrella from Japan would, it is true, set off a chain of foreseeable -- and unforeseeable -- events. But if the guarantee is left in place and deterrence should fail, that, too, would lead to a chain of unforeseeable -- and all-too-foreseeable -- consequences. On balance then, the risks to East Asians might rise even as the dangers for the United States shrink. It is not a simple matter, but inasmuch as the preeminent goal of U.S. foreign policy is the security of the United States, the choice in such circumstances is clear.

Off-Shore Balancing -- A Minimalist

Strategy

The best strategic response to both the near and longer-term threats in East Asia is a minimalist grand strategy having two components: an off-shore balancing strategy that relies on the natural dynamics of the balance of power to maintain basic geopolitical equilibrium in the region; and a vigorous U.S. economic policy that focuses on the relative power relationship among the United States and its actual or potential competitors.

Offshore balancing is the military strategic component of the minimalist program. It is the classic response for insular great powers confronting two potential peer competitors in the same region. Because of its relative immunity from external threat, the United States could rationally adopt buck-passing strategies that force others to assume the risks and costs of "going first" in East Asian security affairs.

Maximalists argue that the United States is incapable of playing this kind of balancing role. However, they conflate the unusually explicit diplomatic practices of eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe with the operation of a more historically normal balance of power system. In international politics, power balances tend to form naturally because states are highly motivated to ensure their survival. The United States need not engage in politico-military micro-management, or enter into constantly shifting alliances, for balancing to work effectively in East Asia. The East Asian powers are located In an area with many potentially powerful actors, including "middle powers" such as Korea and Vietnam in addition to emerging great powers. These states are likely to be kept in check by their own rivalries. It is true that timely and effective power balancing sometimes fails to emerge. For that reason, the United States must be ready to step in if necessary. But there is a big difference between being the balancer of first resort and the balancer of last resort, and insular great powers like the United States have the luxury of choosing the latter strategy.

The United States would benefit strategically from East Asian multipolarity in two ways. First, forcing others to channel resources from economic development to national security would enhance America's relative economic power. A Japan that internalized its security costs would no longer be able to concentrate as intently on the trading state strategy that gives Tokyo the upper hand in the U.S.-Japan economic competition. As well, Japan and China -- America's East Asian geopolitical rivals -- would be contained without the United States having to risk direct confrontation with either.

Maximalists object to an off-shore balancing strategy because it would renationalize Japanese foreign policy and amount to a "pre-emptive surrender" of U.S. primacy. There may be a grain of truth here, but it is by no means the whole story. Clearly, by persevering with the maximalist strategy the United States could delay Japan's rise to great power status. Maximalists and minimalists disagree, however, about the issues of timing and cost: How long could the United States retard Japan's great power emergence, and at what harm to America's relative power position in international politics?

In fact, the maximalist strategy will not ultimately prevent the emergence of a militarily self-reliant Japan, and it is even doubtful that American efforts can slow down significantly the process of great power emergence -- which, in many respects, was well advanced even before the Cold War's end. Rather, the maximalist approach would leave the United States less well placed to deal with Japan as a great power because it unwittingly accelerates America's relative power decline.

Minimalists see multipolarity as inevitable and, seeking to make the best of it, aim to capitalize on it strategically. Because the clear purpose of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty is to suppress Japan's reemergence as a great power, minimalists would phase out this arrangement. The United States would neither attempt to hold Japan back militarily nor to push it forward. The message would be simple: As a normal great power Japan must confront the realities of its status, assess its security environment, and decide for itself what its military policies should be.

Maximalists criticize such a course because of the geopolitical "instability" that could accompany retraction of U.S. security guarantees, an instability that could lead to the disruption of important U.S. economic links with East Asia. This fear, which pervades maximalist analyses, is succinctly expressed by RAND analyst Thomas E. McNaugher:

The United States has ... acquired an

enormous economic stake in the region.... It

needs sufficient stability in East Asia to

encourage further economic growth, continued access

to the region's markets and technology, and

security for its investments and assets in the

region.(11)

But this argument stands the conventional approach to interdependence on its head. Instead of maintaining that open commerce leads to greater security, it holds that security arrangements are necessary and justified because they ensure greater commerce. Thus too former Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph S. Nye, Jr.:

Political order is not sufficient to explain

economic prosperity, but it is necessary.

Analysts who ignore the importance of this

political order are like people who forget the

importance of the oxygen they breathe.

Security is like oxygen -- you tend not to notice

it until you begin to lose it, but once that

occurs there is nothing else that you will think

about.(12)

Either way, the idea that economic links forged by interdependence foster peace is a myth. Far more often, interdependence of the sort that requires military forces to preserve it generates costly and dangerous strategic commitments. Such commitments do not shrink but expand the frontiers of American insecurity.

Given both its power-political configuration and the rapid changes occurring within individual countries, East Asia is bound to be turbulent in coming years, even if a new regional balance of power mitigates the prospect of major warfare. Any great power that allows its economic fortunes to be tied to a distant and unpredictable region is asking for trouble. Whatever benefits flow from American preponderance and from interdependence must be weighed against the risks of a policy that would make the United States responsible for maintaining peace and security in post-cold War East Asia. It is irresponsible to consider only the benefits of commitment and ignore virtually all potential costs.

Pursuing Relative Gains

The second component of The minimalist grand strategy is economic. For minimal realists there is no "global economy." International politics is a world divided into competing sovereign states in which the only economies that matter are those of individual states. Although the theoretical world of "economic man" may favor free trade, the real world of international politics is fundamentally mercantilist. Economics does not and cannot exist in an independent realm divorced from politics because wealth is the foundation of a state's strategic power. Viewing economics from a strategic perspective, calculations of relative power are at the heart of grand strategy. Because today's ally can be tomorrow's rival, from a strategic perspective the key question about international economic policy is not "Will everyone gain something?" but rather "Who will gain the most?"

In economics as much as in the domain of national security, great powers -- if they wish to prosper geopolilitically -- are constrained to emulate the successful strategies of their rivals. Japan's approach to economic strategy is clearly different from America's. In part, this reflects the two nations, different historical experiences, political cultures, and social traditions. But it would be unwise to overemphasize national peculiarities because, from the standpoint of international political history, it is the United States that is the oddball. By definition, great powers are powerful states organized for war and trade. Like Japan, history's great powers have always pursued essentially mercantilist international economic policies. Post-1945 America and Victorian Britain stand as important and conspicuous exceptions to this rule, but exceptions nonetheless.

Many analysts of Japan believe that Tokyo's mercantilist policies are intended to enable Japan to supplant the United States as the world's dominant economic power. Japanese economic ascendancy threatens America's national security on several fronts. The U.S. defense industry increasingly depends on Japan for machine tools and high technology items. Issues bearing on American prosperity are increasingly decided by corporate boards and bureaucrats in Tokyo. Indeed, U.S. domestic economic sovereignty has eroded because the United States has become dependent on Japanese capital inflows to finance the deficit.

To meet the Japanese and potential Chinese challenges, the United States needs to rediscover its own tradition of strategic trade -- a tradition that can be traced back to Alexander Hamilton's Report on Manufactures, and that guided U.S. foreign economic policy for most of this country's history. This means that American fiscal, economic, and trade policies must increase America's relative economic power while simultaneously reducing that of both Japan and China. American economic grand strategy must aim at restoring the United States to the front-runners's position in the race for economic and technological leadership. To work, this strategy must be complemented by macroeconomic policies that create comparative advantages for the United States in the key factors of production. To create comparative advantages, the United States must invest heavily in rebuilding its economy and upgrading its human capital.

Implementing such an economic strategy requires that the United States free itself of the constraining effects of the U.S.-Japan security relationship. Maximalists invoke the purported strategic benefits of that tie as justification for not adopting a more determined economic policy vis-a-vis Japan. This argument was advanced by then-Assistant Secretary Nye, speaking to the Japan Society in New York on May 11, 1995:

Some have suggested that we use our security

ties to twist Japan's arm on trade. Because the

U. S. is doing Japan a favor by providing security,

so the argument goes, we can use our position

for concessions on trade. The tactic may work in

the short term, but after a few episodes, Japan

might decide to alter its long term strategy so

that it could be free from such pressure in the

future.... To try to use the security relationship

for short run tactical gains would only partially

meet some particular American interests at the

price of jeopardizing more broadly held, long

term interests of the American people in a stable

East Asia.(13)

This reasoning (the geopolitical equivalent of committing suicide for fear of death) has an Alice in Wonderland quality about it: By confronting Tokyo now, Washington risks severe tension with Japan; but, if the United States does not act now to uphold its economic interests, Japan will continue to get relatively stronger. Strategic logic suggests that the time to act is now, thereby preventing the relative power relationship between the United States and Japan from deteriorating further.

Although maximalists are realists in the sense that they, acknowledge the overriding importance of power and interests, their view of the future of international politics after the Cold War is, ironically every bit as transcendental -- and unrealistic -- as the most optimistic liberal internationalists. In part, this may be because they buy Into the liberal internationalist beliefs that democracies do not fight each other and that economic interdependence leads to peace. But primarily it is because they believe that the Cold War's stability can be perpetuated by American power notwithstanding the fact that the Cold War has ended. Hence they cling to a desire to keep things as they were, to maintain intact the security and economic relationships of the 1948-90 era. Unfortunately, this nostalgia has produced a certain intellectual close-mindedness and an intolerance of those -- also realists - who suggest that, because the world has changed, American grand strategy must change as well. It is much easier to stifle debate by, characterizing alternative strategies as "neo-isolationists" than it is actually to grapple with the difficult task of formulating new policies that respond to the emerging post-cold War structure of international politics.

Clearly, the 1948-90 period was one of unprecedented stability in America's relations with Japan (and with Western Europe as well). But that stability was a geopolitical fluke, based on a form of bipolarity that induced a state of suspended animation in geopolitical relations among the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. But the unifying effect of a common foe is gone and key Cold War allies are emerging as great powers in their own right. International politics is returning to its normal, multipolar patterns, and America's foreign policy must take account of that. To date, it hasn't. Christopher Layne is a fellow of the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

(1) Quoted in Patrick E. Tyler, "U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop", New York Times, March 8, 1992 p. A1.

(2) Samuel P. Huntington, "Why International Primacy Matters", International Security (Spring 1993), p. 70.

(3) Zalmay Khalilzad, "Losing the Moment? The United States and the World After the Cold War", Washington Quarterly (Spring 1995), p.94.

(4) See Robert Kagan, "A Retreat From Power?" Commentary (July 1995), pp. 23-4.

(5) Regional Defense Strategy, p. 6.

(6) William J. Clinton, A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement (Washington, DC: The White House, 1995), p. i.

(7) United States Security Strategy for the East Asia-Pacific Region (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, Office of International Security Affairs, February 1995). The quotes that follow are from this document. (8) Arthur Waldron, "Deterring China" Commentary (October 1995).

(9) Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict From 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987), p. xxii.

(10) Richard K. Betts, "Wealth, Power and Instability: East Asia and the United States after the Cold War", International Security (Winter 1993/94), pp. 56-64; and Aaron L. Friedberg, "Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia", International Security (Winter 1993/94), pp. 31-2. (11) Thomas E. McNaugher, "U.S. Military Strategy in East Asia: From Balancing to Bargaining", in L. Benjamin Ederington and Michael J. Mazarr, eds., Turning Point: The Gulf War and U.S. Military Strategy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994) p. 236 The official U.S. view is that, "If the American presence in Asia were removed...our markets and our interests would be jeopardized. To benefit from the growth and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region, the United States must remain fully engaged economically, diplomatically, and militarily." U.S. Security Strategy for the East Asia-Pacific Region, p. 9.

(12) Joseph S. Nye, Jr., "The Case for Deep Engagement", Foreign Affairs (July/August 1995), p. 91.

(13) Joseph S. Nye, Jr., "Leadership and Alliances in East Asia", p. 7 (text furnished by OSD/ISA).