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Reluctant Crusaders: Power, Culture, and Change in American Grand StrategyColin DueckPrinceton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006. 224pp, $29.97 (ISBN-10 0691124639)

Published inInternational Journal, 63, 1 (2007-2008), 221-225.

The United States responded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks by embarking on an expansive globalwar against terrorism. This has resulted in, among other things, the promulgation of the BushDoctrine on pre-emptive and preventive wars, the renewed willingness to project Americanprimacy to democratize the Middle East, the military invasion and reconstruction ofAfghanistan and Iraq, and the infusion of significant financial and material resources into allareas of national security, including the often neglected domain of homeland security.

It is difficult to deny the scope and sheer ambition of this approach to strategic affairs. Potentialnear-peer rivals are to be dissuaded from even contemplating military competition. Anaggressive counter-terrorist and counter-proliferation campaign will meanwhile contain, mitigate

and/or eliminate the threat posed by global terrorist organizations, rogue state adversaries andthe proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Commentators have either applaudedor decried these unapologetically unilateral policies. But few have thought to question therevolutionary basis of the Bush administrations grand strategy. And fewer still have writtenaccounts that provide an adequate explanation for this particular case of strategic adjustment orto situate it within the larger debate on American grand strategy.

InReluctant Crusader, Colin Dueck has done an admirable job at filling in some of the morenoticeable theoretical and empirical gaps in the grand strategy literature. The first quarter of thebook provides a conceptual basis for understanding grand strategy. The following chapters use aprocess-tracing method to test this explanatory model against four cases of American strategicadjustment the periods following World War I, World War II, the Cold War and the 9/11attacks. A central theme of the book is that the resultant grand strategy is neither foreordained bystrategic culture nor entirely dependent on structural conditions.

The first chapter settles on a definition of grand strategy as calculated relationship of ends andmeans (10) that involves the identification and prioritization of national interests, potentialthreats and resources and/or means to meet these threats. This definition constitutes a valuable ifuncontroversial understanding of grand strategy as a conceptual road map and a set of policyprescriptions (11). Strategic adjustments or instances of fundamental first-order shifts in grandstrategy can be empirically measured and verified by changes in strategic capabilities andcommitments. Dueck is clearly unsatisfied with the debate between culture- and power-basedexplanations for strategic adjustment, and offers a more flexible explanatory model that is opento domestic and ideational factors and is firmly rooted in the more holistic ontology of neo-classical realist theory.

Duecks identifies two persistent features of US strategic thinking.Liberalism is associated withthe crusading desire to spread democratic ideas and governments. The Iraq War, with its explicitgoal of military-imposed democratization, is one the most recent and perhaps aggressive examples of this liberal crusade.Limited liability, in contrast, refers to the culturally shaped

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preference for avoiding costs and commitments in grand strategy (26). The ambition ofliberalism is therefore balanced by an equal emphasis on limited means, which was clearlydemonstrated by the abject American failure to allocate sufficient resources for the post-conflictreconstruction of Iraq.

The following chapters and conclusion test the neo-classical realist explanatory model againstfour instances of US strategic adjustment. Structural conditions provide an important startingpoint for any explanation of grand strategy. Material capabilities clearly delimit and ultimatelyconstrain the states strategic choices. But cultural factors are also shown to be an importantfilter or permissive cause that helps to specify and explain the final choices made by foreignpolicymakers (19).

Chapter three deals with the failure of President Wilsons overly ambitious League of Nationsstrategy, which sought to leverage incipient American hegemony to develop a preponderance ofpower on the part of democratic states (53). Dueck correctly identifies the difficulties withstructural realist explanations of the US disengagement from Europe. He also does an excellent

job at disentangling the competing cultural tendencies that made the League of Nations such anambitious if ultimately unsuccessful attempt at collective security. But perhaps the mostinsightful comment is on the hypothetical alliance with Britain and France that, while ideal froma realist perspective, would prove to be largely incompatible with American strategic culture.

In chapter four, Dueck challenges the notion that a containment grand strategy was theinevitable outcome of structural conditions after World War II. True, strategic preponderance didall but assure the US rejection of a neo-isolationist grand strategy. And limitations of Americanpower in the face of Soviet strategic depth did make rollback an equally infeasible option.Dueck, however, goes on to describe an alternative sphere of influence option this wouldentail the American acceptance of the Soviet political system and predominance in EasternEurope. Containment may have eventually resulted in de facto spheres of influence, but it alsoinvolved an aggressive liberal impulse to transform the Soviet system and a fervent anti-communist stand that obviated the need for diplomacy.

Yet Dueck is also quick to explain that the sphere of influence option was rejected on largelycultural grounds. The United States simply could not accept a closed Soviet sphere in EasternEurope that was subject to an unusually invasive form of imperial control (95). Such coldrealist logic was considered anathema to American strategic planners. As Dueck notes,Containment was selectedbecause it was the only strategy that matched internationalconditions as well as domestic cultural concerns (113).

The fifth chapter examines American strategic adjustment in the post-Cold War period. Dueckbegins by outlining four strategic choices for American planners. Strategic disengagemententails a significant American retrenchment from the world, while balance of power seeks tosupport a geopolitical balance between the major powers (117). Both options are rooted inrealist theory and, with their emphasis on scarce American strategic power, are keen to adopt alimited liability approach to strategic affairs. In contrast, liberal internationalism openly seeks theexpansion of an Americanized and multilateral world order. The fourth strategic choice,

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primacy, combines the ambitions and goals of liberalism with the more pessimist and security-conscious outlook of realism.

This typology of grand strategy options is heavily indebted to an insightful article by BarryPosen and Andrew Ross (Competing Visions for US Grand Strategy,International Security,

21, 3 1996/97). However, Dueck offers an important and complementary contribution by seekingto explain, and not simply to describe, the resultant American grand strategy. Cultural factorsplayed a particularly strong role in shaping the Clinton administrations choice of liberalinternationalism. Liberalism may have informed the Clinton administrations globalistengagement and enlargement agenda, but it was concerns over limited liability that resulted inshrinking international expenditure and the penchant for half-hearted use of military force inplaces like Bosnia, Somalia, Sudan and Afghanistan.

The book closes with a brief overview of the current American grand strategy. The 9/11 attacks,while not necessitating any particular grand strategy, did create a window of opportunity forneo-conservatives to build support for a new strategy of American primacy (153). This

strategic option was imbued with an attractive dose of liberalism and was no longer asconstrained by pre-9/11 considerations of limited liability. Indeed, Dueck makes clear thatneither strategic disengagement nor balance of power is likely to match the structural andcultural criteria for a suitable grand strategy. As the author somberly concludes, the US willlikely oscillate between various forms of globalism, and to press for a more open anddemocratic international system without willing the means to sustain it (170)

Dueck is an astute observer of strategic affairs, and he clearly touches upon the fundamentaldilemma facing US grand strategy that disproportionately limited means will be used to pursueoverly ambitious liberal goals. The books steady theoretical argumentation and welldocumented case studies nicely illustrate this American strategic dilemma. To be sure, the bookwould benefit from a more clearly delineated selection of strategic options. The strong similaritybetween primacy and liberal internationalism raises questions on the true extent of post-ColdWar strategic adjustments. The relationship between the cases and grand strategy optionsthemselves could have also been further clarified. Yet these criticisms are very minor indeed toan otherwise worthy addition to the grand strategy literature.

Reluctant Crusaders serves as a very useful reminder that strategic adjustments may require asevere exogenous shock like 9/11 to open American decision-makers to new strategic ideas.The US presidential election in 2008, while raising the possibility of a significant strategic shift,could easily (and more likely) result in second-order changes that leave current strategiccommitments largely untouched. If so, future US administrations would do well to heed ColinDuecks warning that To pursue a global grand strategy without providing the means military,political, and economic for it is to invite not only humiliation, but disaster (171).

David S. McDonough/Dalhousie University