Peter Trubowitz

Dead Center: The Demise of Liberal Internationalism in the United States

According to mainstream opinion, the George W. Bush administrations assertive unilateralism represents a temporary departure from the traditional foreign policy of the United States, one that will be rectified by a change of personnel in the White House in 2009. This interpretation of recent trends in U.S. policy is illusory. The Bush administrations foreign policy, far from representing an aberration, marks the end of an era; it is a symptom, as much as a cause, of the unraveling of the liberal internationalist compact that guided the United States for more than half a century. The geopolitical and domestic conditions that gave rise to liberal internationalism have disappeared, eroding its bipartisan political foundations. In todays partisan landscape, the challenge is devising a grand strategy that not only meets the countrys geopolitical needs but also is politically sustainable. A strategy that is as judicious and selective as it is purposeful offers the best hope for moving the United States toward a more stable and solvent political equilibrium.

Sectionalism and American Foreign Policy: The Political Geography of Consensus and Conflict

For over two decades American foreign policy has been the subject of protracted conflict. Deep divisions exist over the uses of American power. This study argues that this conflict is regional in nature and is part of a larger struggle over national priorities between the nations oldest and newest industrializing regions. Using Congress as a proxy for the national polity, I employ a spatial model to describe and analyze the regional bases of legislative voting over foreign policy. I show that since the late 1960s conflicts over foreign policy matters have pitted the “manufacturing belt” against the “sunbelt.” I argue that this regional conflict goes a long way in explaining the difficulty Americas political leaders have experienced in articulating a vision of the national interest that inspires broad domestic support.

The Illusion of Liberal Internationalism's Revival

Over the past two decades, political polarization has shaken the domestic foundations of U.S. grand strategy, sorely testing bipartisan support for liberal internationalism. Stephen Chaudoin, Helen Milner, and Dustin Tingley take issue with this interpretation, contending that liberal internationalism in the United States is alive and well. Their arguments, however, do not stand up to careful scrutiny. Their analysis of congressional voting and public opinion fails to demonstrate the persistence of bipartisanship on foreign policy. Indeed, the partisan gap that widened during George W. Bushs administration has continued during the presidency of Barack Obama, confirming that a structural change has taken place in the domestic bases of U.S. foreign policy. President Obama now faces the unenviable challenge of conducting U.S. statecraft during an era when consensus will be as elusive at home as it is globally.

Regional Interests and the Reagan Military Buildup

TRUBOWITZ P. and ROBERTS B. E. (1992) Regional interests and the Reagan military buildup, Reg. Studies 26, 555–567. This paper examines the political geography of American defence policy and its implications for regional studies. Previous studies have examined the impact of military spending on regional economic growth and development. How regional political interests shape national decisions over defence policy has received far less attention. In this paper, we examine the political sources of regional competition over defence policy. We claim that politicians judge defence policies in terms of their consequences for their states economic growth, social stability and commercial competitiveness. We test our model through a cross-sectional analysis of House roll call voting on national security issues during the Reagan years. The analysis reveals that political support for the military buildup in the 1980s varied geographically and that local economic considerations were an important factor in determining...

Of polarity and polarization

Charles Kupchan and Peter Trubowitz argue that bipartisan support for liberal internationalism in U.S. foreign policy is gone for the foreseeable future, and that the United States should trim its grand strategic ambitions accordingly.1 Their article is timely and insightful, but has three major oaws: (1) claims that are unsupported by the evidence, (2) endogeneity issues that obscure causal relationships, and (3) pessimistic conclusions that do not follow from the analysis. First, Kupchan and Trubowitz’s claims exceed the evidence with respect to economic forces and gerrymandering. They contend that the rise of foreign policy moderates was caused by economic growth, which acted as a balm to ease tensions, and the economic downturn of the 1970s dealt a heavy blow to moderates (pp. 19, 23).2 Contrary to their logic, however, the remarkable economic rallies in the 1980s and 1990s correlate with serious weakening of moderates. So, too, blaming partisan polarization on gerrymandering lacks support. Unaided by redistricting, the Senate has polarized just as the House of Representatives has. Although the number of competitive congressional districts declined in the mid-1960s and generally stayed low in the 1970s and 1980s, this number actually increased in the 1990s, an era of pronounced partisanship.3 Second, the independent variables in the article may be less independent than they Correspondence: Of Polarity and Polarization

When states appease: British appeasement in the 1930s

When do states appease their foes? In this article, we argue that governments are most likely to favour appeasing a foreign threat when their top leaders are severely cross–pressured: when the demands for increased security conflict sharply with their domestic political priorities. We develop the deductive argument through a detailed analysis of British appeasement in the 1930s. We show that Neville Chamberlain grappled with a classic dilemma of statecraft: how to reduce the risk of German expansionism while facing acute partisan and electoral incentives to invest resources at home. For Chamberlain, appeasement was a means to reconcile the demands for increased security with what he and his co-partisans were trying to achieve domestically. We conclude by discussing implications of the analysis for theorising about appeasement and about how leaders make grand strategy more generally.

American Statecraft in an Era of Domestic Polarisation

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, American foreign policy was guided by the principles of liberal internationalism.1 Liberal internationalism, which rested on bipartisan political foundations, maintained that US leadership in global affairs should rely on a combination of military power and international partnership. The presidency of George W. Bush, in terms of both its polarising impact on US politics and its assertive unilateralism, appeared to bring the era of liberal internationalism to an end. Most analysts, however, viewed the Bush presidency as an aberration and expected the election of Barack Obama to restore bipartisan support for liberal internationalist principles and values.

Political conflict and foreign policy in the United States: A geographical interpretation

Abstract Since the early 1970s, Americas leaders have experienced great difficulty in mobilizing broad national support for their foreign policies. Deep and persistent conflict has been the norm, hampering national leaders capacity to advance coherent and programmatic foreign policy. Most analysts identify ideological or institutional cleavages at the national level as the source of domestic political competition and conflict over foreign policy. This study offers an alternative, geographically-based interpretation. An analysis of voting in the Congress reveals that conflicts over the ends and means of American power have split the nation along regional lines, pitting the Northeast against the South. It is argued that these conflicts have revolved around the uneven costs and benefits of policies that were associated with the Pax Americana of the Cold War era. Like other periods in American history when there was little consensus over ‘the national interest’, todays conflicts are grounded in inter-regional struggles for political and economic advantage.