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Both Gideon Rose's neoclassical realism and Andrew Moravcsik's liberalism attempt to solve the problem of how to incorporate domestic factors into international relations theory. They do so in very different ways, however. Liberalism is a "bottom-up" perspective that accords analytic priority to societal preferences; neoclassical realism is a "top-down" perspective that accords analytic priority to systemic pressures and treats domestic factors as intervening variables. These two approaches are not equivalent, and the choice between them has high stakes. Although it has gained rapidly in popularity, neoclassical realism is fundamentally flawed. Its intellectual justification is weak; it is logically incoherent; and it induces the commission of methodological errors. Realism can incorporate certain domestic factors without losing its theoretical integrity, but it does not need and should not use neoclassical realism to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large literature assumes that alliances entangle the United States in military conflicts that it might otherwise avoid. Since 1945, however, there have been only five cases of what might be characterized as U.S. entanglement--the 1954 and 1995-96 Taiwan Strait crises, the Vietnam War, and the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s--and even these cases are far from clear-cut. U.S. entanglement is rare because the United States, as a superpower with many allies, is capable of exploiting loopholes in alliance agreements, sidestepping commitments that seriously imperil U.S. interests, playing the demands of various allies off of each other, and using alliances to deter adversaries and allies from initiating or escalating conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States has maintained international hierarchies over the Western Hemisphere for more than a century and over Western Europe for nearly seven decades. More recently, it has extended similar hierarchies over states in the Middle East. How does the United States exercise authority over other countries? In a world of juridically sovereign states, how is U.S. rule rendered legitimate? Hierarchy has interstate and intrastate distributional consequences for domestic ruling coalitions and regime types. When the gains from hierarchy are large or when subordinate societies share policy preferences similar to those of the United States, as in Europe, international hierarchy is possible and compatible with democracy. When the gains from hierarchy are small and the median citizen has policy preferences distant from those of the United States, as in Central America, international hierarchy requires autocracy, and the benefits of foreign rule will be concentrated within the governing elite. In the Middle East, the gains from hierarchy also appear small, and policy preferences are distant from those of the United States. As a result, the United States has backed sympathetic authoritarian rulers. Although a global counterinsurgency strategy might be viable over the long term, the costs of establishing effective hierarchies in the region imply that the United States is better off retrenching "East of Suez." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In East Asia the United States cultivated a "hub and spokes" system of discrete, exclusive alliances with the Republic of Korea, the Republic of China, and Japan, a system that was distinct from the multilateral security alliances it preferred in Europe. Bilateralism emerged in East Asia as the dominant security structure because of the "powerplay" rationale behind U.S. postwar planning in the region. "Powerplay" refers to the construction of an asymmetric alliance designed to exert maximum control over the smaller ally's actions. The United States created a series of bilateral alliances in East Asia to contain the Soviet threat, but a congruent rationale was to constrain "rogue allies"--that is, rabidly anticommunist dictators who might start wars for reasons of domestic legitimacy and entrap the United States in an unwanted larger war. Underscoring the U.S. desire to avoid such an outcome was a belief in the domino theory, which held that the fall of one small country in Asia could trigger a chain of countries falling to communism. The administrations of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower calculated that they could best restrain East Asia's pro-West dictators through tight bilateral alliances rather than through a regionwide multilateral mechanism. East Asia's security bilateralism today is therefore a historical artifact of this choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article "Escape from the State of Nature: Authority and Hierarchy in World Politics," by David Lake in the summer 2007 issue of "International Security."

The article proposes that international relations are often determined by a hierarchical relationship between states rather than the traditional theory that states exist as equals and that anarchy is the systemic condition of world politics. The confusion in the debate over whether the U.S. has become a new world empire since the end of the Cold War is seen as an example of how scholars of international relations are reluctant to acknowledge hierarchy as a governing principle. Lesser powers can and do turn over aspects of their sovereignty to stronger powers for their own self-interests. The U.S. has been extremely successful at creating hierarchical relations with other states since World War II, but the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 without the backing of lesser states has weakened the network of implicit authority on which U.S. dominance rested.

Assesses the effects of security institutions by examining the behaviors of member states. Range of security institutions in world politics; Role of institutions in the Cold War; Proper role of security institutions in the 21st century.

Reports that Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union have ameliorated the residual asset problem by adopting a set of unconventional governance structures. Economic inefficiencies stemming from split property rights; Political efficiencies stemming from post-imperial spaces; Typology of property rights configurations and security outcomes.

Britain to support France proved decisive.(134) It is apparent that before World War I, the most important and consequential grand strategic decisions made by both Paris (on the Russian alliance) [...]

When empires collapse, they leave a host of institutional legacies, fragments, and assets in their former peripheries. [1] The question of who will control this 'imperial wreckage' becomes of paramount [...]

President John F. Kennedy's assassination, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) Director William Foster told a historian that Kennedy had been willing to 'consider politically dangerous moves' to coerce the [...]

Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999 Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999 As [...]