Andrew L. Ross

Competing Visions for U.S. Grand Strategy

The dramatic events that marked the end of the Cold War and the subsequent early end of the twentieth century require the United States to reconsider its national security policy. What are U.S. interests and objectives? What are the threats to those interests and objectives? What are the appropriate strategic responses to those threats? What principles should guide the development of U.S. policy and strategy? In short, what should be the new grand strategy of the United States? Four grand strategies, relatively discrete and coherent arguments about the U.S. role in the world, now compete in our public discourse. They may be termed neo-isolationism; selective engagement; cooperative security; and primacy (see Table 1 for a summary presentation of the four alternative visions). Below, we describe each of these four strategies in its purest form; we borrow liberally from the academics, government ofacials, journalists, and policy analysts who have contributed to this debate, but on issues where others have kept silent, or been inconsistent, we impose consistency in the interest of clarity. Our purpose is not advocacy; it is transparency. We hope to sharpen the public debate, not settle it. We then offer our characterization and critique of the evolving grand strategy of the Clinton administration, an uneasy amalgam of selective engagement, cooperative security, and primacy. Finally, we speculate on what might cause the United States to make a clearer grand strategy choice. The state of the U.S. economy, the national anances, and persistent social problems largely drove foreign and defense policy out of the 1992 presidential race. The 1996 campaign was little different. The arst months of the arst Clinton administration were characterized by indirection, and later by a nearly singleminded focus on economic issues. Security matters were dealt with sequentially and incrementally; no obvious grand scheme emerged until Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Anthony Lake proposed in Septem-

Growth, Debt, and Military Spending in Southeast Asia

Military spending and its relationship to gross national product (GNP), GNP growth, central government expenditures (CGE), CGE growth, and external indebtedness are examined in six Southeast Asian countries: Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Military spending in the region varies widely and accounts for only a small portion of total developing country military expenditures. Similarly, the defence burden in the region varies greatly but is relatively low compared to the developing countries generally. National economies and central government expenditures in the region have grown faster than mil itary spending. Finally, military spending has been constrained by external indebtedness in the most highly indebted countries in the region (in Indonesia military spending has been curbed by declining oil revenues as well as increased foreign borrowing].

The international arms market: A structural analysis

The conflicting analytical and empirical claims evident in debates about the evolving structure of the international system are also apparent in discussions of the structure of the international arms market. Traditional descriptions of the supply side structure of the international arms market depict it as highly concentrated. Challengers, however, have noted indications of the emergence of a less concentrated, more diffuse market structure. These divergent characterizations of market structure are here subjected to empirical analysis. Examination of the global and Third World markets for arms, and of four sectors of the amis market, reveals that (1) the number of suppliers (including, most importantly, the number of “core” suppliers) has increased; (2) the market remains relatively concentrated, though it is becoming less concentrated and more diffuse; and (3) market structure varies significantly across sectors of the market. Linkages between structural and behavioral changes are explored and suggestion...