At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy (Cornell Studies in Political Economy) - Hardcover

Nau, Henry R.; Leone, Richard C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801439310 ISBN 13: 9780801439315

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2002

Synopsis

The United States has never felt at home abroad. The reason for this unease, even after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, is not frequent threats to American security. It is America's identity. The United States, its citizens believe, is a different country, a New World of divided institutions and individualistic markets surviving in an Old World of nationalistic governments and statist economies. In this Old World, the United States finds no comfort and alternately tries to withdraw from it and reform it. America cycles between ambitious internationalist efforts to impose democracy and world order, and more nationalist appeals to trim multilateral commitments and demand that the European and Japanese allies do more.

In At Home Abroad, Henry R. Nau explains that America is still unique but no longer so very different. All the industrial great powers in western Europe (and, arguably, also Japan) are now strong liberal democracies. A powerful and peaceful new world exists beyond America's borders and anchors America's identity, easing its discomfort and ending the cycle of withdrawal and reform.

Nau draws on constructivist and realist perspectives to show how relative national identities interact with relative national power to define U.S. national interests. He provides fresh insights for U.S. grand strategy toward various countries.

In Europe, the identity and power perspective advocates U.S. support for both NATO expansion to consolidate democratic identities in eastern Europe and concurrent, but separate, great-power cooperation with Russia in the United Nations. In Asia, this perspective recommends a shift of U.S. strategy from bilateralism to concentric multilateralism, starting with an emerging democratic security community among the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Taiwan, and progressively widening this community to include reforming ASEAN states and, if it democratizes, China. In the developing world, Nau's approach calls for balancing U.S. moral (identity) and material (power) commitments, avoiding military intervention for purely moral reasons, as in Somalia, but undertaking such intervention when material threats are immediate, as in Afghanistan, or material and moral stakes coincide, as in Kosovo.

About this title

About the Author:

Henry R. Nau is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University. He is the author of The Myth of America's Decline and the coeditor of Divided Diplomacy and the Next Administration.

Review:

"The war on terrorism has made it increasingly clear that the United States must rethink its long-term strategy in international affairs. Henry Nau makes an admirable start here, arguing that an America strong and self-confident first recognize it no longer represents a New World, separate and apart. European nations as well as Japan have become mature democracies, too, and the U.S. can best find security through building a community with them. Nau's theoretical framework is original and fresh, meriting the attention of academics and practitioners alike."

(David Gergen)

"Henry Nau combines realism and constructivism in showing that ideas are as important as mere possession of power in determining the national interest. He has produced a creative and original roadmap for American foreign policy in the global information age that has succeeded the Cold War."

(Joseph Nye, Dean, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University)

"The realities underlying U.S. foreign policy are shifting, so we all need ideas on how to think through opportunities and problems. Henry Nau provides a carefully thought framework of ideas and shows us how to use that framework. This volume is not just for reading, but even more for studying and thinking."

(George P. Shultz)

"Power is a means to an end, and those ends are heavily influenced by a state's identity. In this important, interesting, and timely book, Nau uses a states' views about the legitimate use of force to define a state's identity and the distribution of identities across states. Combining the distributions of identities and power, At Home Abroad then provides a very thoughtful and thought-provoking analysis of American foreign policy and some of the challenges ahead."

(Robert Powell, University of California at Berkeley)

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0801439310
• ISBN 13: 9780801439315
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336