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The major U.S. allies seem to be content to let the United States shoulder the burden associated with assuring the security of the West and promoting freedom and democracy around the world, passively free-riding on the security provided by the U.S. taxpayer. A different explanation is available, if rarely discussed: Perhaps the Europeans and Japanese are not merely passive consumers of free US security guarantees; perhaps instead the decisions they have made with regard to their own defense are instead part of active, coherent, logical, rational grand strategies. Perhaps the choice to pursue strategic restraint on part of Europe and Japan is not merely due to the stability provided by U.S. hegemony - which is largely illusory - but also a conscious response to declining threat. This paper seeks to explain the grand strategies of most of the great and potentially great powers of the post-Cold War world. Far from being irresponsible international actors, our allies are acting quite rationally in a world virtually absent of serious threat. Most of the rest of the world is following a clearly recognizable path of restraint. We dismiss their strategic perspective at our peril. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout most of human history, the desire - or obsession - to be �number one,� the need to improve one's status and prestige, has been ubiquitous. Though the pursuit of glory is one of the classic motivations for state behavior, it is not a major independent variable in modern models of international relations. It is not only unmeasurable and subjective but archaic and anachronistic, seemingly more appropriate to ancient Greece than the twenty-first century United States. Still, glory lingers; direct reference might today be confined to dictatorial strongmen on the fringes of the international order, but its impulses are present in every country, and especially the United States. This paper explores the continuing importance of the competition for glory in modern U.S. foreign policy. Irrespective of one's view of the value of competitiveness in other aspects of life, in matters of foreign policy it is often a selfdestructive impulse. The belief that it is important to be �the best,� the number one state in the international hierarchy in whatever category is being discussed, often leads to counterproductive policies that waste assets in pursuit of irrational goals. It is, therefore, deeply pathological. In an era when the United States may soon face challengers to its status that put its prestige in peril, it is a particularly important pathology to understand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though the United States is not the first state to have suffered from the effects of hubris, it suffers the most. No other country believes that it is the "indispensible nation," established by God to bring freedom, democracy and open trading systems to the rest of the world. The rhetoric of the exceptionalism narrative sells with the public, and is a sine qua non for high leadership posts. If hubris only led to an inflated sense of self-worth, it would not be pathological; unfortunately, it has more pernicious effects. Leaders under its spell tend to overestimate their capabilities, and those of their country. They engage in counterproductive interventions as well as quixotic adventures in nationbuilding and public diplomacy; they also are rendered averse to apology and tend to believe that their power is vital to world peace and security. This paper is a discussion of the beliefs spawned by hubris and narcissism in U.S. foreign policy. Where does this pathology come from? What are its effects? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few leaders worry about the status of their honor; they do worry, at times obsessively, about their credibility. The "credibility imperative" has occupied a central position in every major U.S. foreign policy debate in the last fifty years. It affects discourse and decisions in predictable - and deeply pathological - ways. This paper examines the continuing importance of honor in modern U.S. foreign policy. It first discusses the traditional importance of honor in international and interpersonal politics, and explains of the central role it plays in the construction of security in any system that lacks a central authority. Second, it describes the predictable, consistent effects that honor has on state behavior in general, and U.S. foreign policy in particular. Third, it argues that the lingering concern for honor is pathological, for a couple of reasons: There is no evidence that it helps states attain their goals, and it certainly has no relevance in those systems (like today's international) where no existential threats to member security exist. The paper then speculates about the genesis of the honor pathology, and why it continues to have such salience in the new century. Honor as a motivation for action seems as anachronistic today as horse-drawn carriages, alchemy and the duel. But it persists, if under different guises; and to the extent that it persists, it pathologizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]