Soft Balancing Against the United States Soft Balancing Against

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resident George W.Bush and his administration are pursuing a profoundly new U.S. national se-curity strategy. Since January 2001 the United States has unilaterally aban-doned the Kyoto accords on global warming, rejected participation in theInternational Criminal Court, and withdrawn from the Antiballistic Missile(ABM) treaty, among other unilateralist foreign policies. Although the UnitedStates gained considerable international sympathy following the terrorist at-tacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration chose to conduct militaryoperations against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan with the aid of only onecountry: Great Britain.

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In 2002 the administration announced that it would re-place the Baathist regime in Iraq, a country that posed no observable threat toattack the United States, and to do so with military force “unilaterally if neces-sary.”

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The United States went on to conquer Iraq in early 2003 despite vigor-ous efforts by many of the world’s major powers to delay, frustrate, and evenundermine war plans and reduce the number of countries that would ªghtalongside the United States. Since then, the United States has threatened Iranand Syria, reafªrmed its commitment to build an ambitious ballistic missiledefense system, and taken few steps to mend fences with the internationalcommunity.The Bush strategy is one of the most aggressively unilateral U.S. national se-curity strategies ever, and it is likely to produce important international conse-quences. So far, the debate has focused almost exclusively on the immediate

Robert A. Pape is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

The author would like to thank the following individuals for offering valuable comments: Ken-neth Abbott, Karen Alter, Robert Art, Richard Betts, Risa Brooks, Michael Desch, AlexanderDownes, Daniel Drezner, Charles Glaser, Elizabeth Hurd, Ian Hurd, Chaim Kaufmann, CharlesLipson, Michael Loriaux, John Mearsheimer, Jeremy Pressman, Sebastian Rosato, Duncan Snidal, Jack Snyder, Hendrik Spruyt, Kenneth Waltz, and Alexander Wendt. He is also grateful to themembers of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago and to par-ticipants in the conference on preemption held by the Triangle Institute on Security Studies atDuke University on January 17, 2003.1. As an unnamed senior Bush administration ofªcial said, “The fewer people you have to rely on,the fewer permissions you have to get.” Quoted in Elaine Sciolino and Steven Lee Meyers, “U.S.Plans to Act Largely Alone,”

New York Times,

October 7, 2001.2. “In Cheney’s Words: The Administration’s Case for Replacing Saddam Hussein,”

New YorkTimes,

August 27, 2002; and George W. Bush,

The National Security Strategy of the United States

(Washington, D.C.: White House, September 2002).

International Security,

Soft Balancing against the United States

Soft Balancing againstthe United States

Robert A. Pape

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consequences of individual elements of the Bush foreign policy—on abandon-ing the ABM treaty, conquering Iraq, or failing to accept international limits onthe use of force embodied in the United Nations.

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Despite the signiªcance ofthese issues, however, the long-term consequences of aggressive unilateralismand the Bush strategy as a whole are likely to be even more momentous.Throughout history, states that have pursued aggressive unilateral militarypolicies have paid a heavy price. In fact, major powers have often balanc-ed against such states, though few analysts think that this will happen tothe United States.

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Historically, major powers have rarely balanced against theUnited States and not at all since the 1990s when it has been the sole super-power. The conventional wisdom among policymakers is that Europe, Russia,China, Japan, and other important regional actors such as Turkey and Brazilmay grumble, but they will not stand in the way of U.S. military policies andwill quickly seek to mend fences once the United States imposes its will by im-plementing these policies.Recent international relations scholarship has promoted the view that theUnited States, as a unipolar leader, can act without fear of serious oppositionin the international system. In the early 1990s a number of scholars argued thatmajor powers would rise to challenge U.S. preponderance after the collapse ofthe Soviet Union and that unipolarity was largely an “illusion” that will notlast long.

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By the late 1990s, however, as it became increasingly evident that

International Security 30:1 8

3. On the debate over Bush’s policies on national missile defense, see Charles L. Glaser and SteveFetter, “National Missile Defense and the Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy,”

International Se-curity,

Vol. 26, No. 1 (Summer 2001), pp. 40–92; Heritage Commission on Missile Defense,

De- fending America: A Plan to Meet the Urgent Missile Threat

(Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation,1999); and Philip H. Gordon, “Bush, Missile Defense, and the Atlantic Alliance,”

Survival,

Vol. 43,No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 17–36. On Iraq, see Kenneth M. Pollack, “Next Stop Baghdad,”

Foreign Af- fairs,

Vol. 81, No. 1 (March/April 2002), pp. 32–48; John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, “AnUnnecessary War,”

Foreign Policy,

No. 134 (January/February 2003), pp. 51–61; and Robert A.Pape, “The World Pushes Back,”

Boston Globe,

March 23, 2003. On the UN, see Michael J. Glennon,“Why the Security Council Failed,

Foreign Affairs,

Vol. 82, No. 3 (May/June 2003), pp. 16–35.4. Although most critics of the United States’ unilateralist diplomatic policies present a compel-ling case that these policies are increasing anti-Americanism around the world, they generally stopshort of outlining the full long-term risks of aggressively unilateral military policies for the posi-tion of the United States in the world. On U.S. unilateral diplomacy, see Joseph S. Nye Jr.,

The Para-dox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone

(New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 2002); Yu Zhou, “American Unilateral Approach Threatens International Rela-tions,”

Beijing Review,

August 16, 2001, pp. 8–10; Peter W. Rodman, “The World’s Resentment,”

Na-tional Interest,

No. 60 (Summer 2000), pp. 8–10; Robert J. Art,

A Grand Strategy for America

(Ithaca,N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003); and Stephen M. Walt, “Beyond bin Laden: Reshaping U.S.Foreign Policy,”

International Security,

Vol. 26, No. 3 (Winter 2001/02), pp. 56–78.5. Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise,”

International Se-curity,

Vol. 17, No. 4 (Spring 1993), pp. 5–51; Kenneth N. Waltz, “Evaluating Theories,”

AmericanPolitical Science Review,

Vol. 91, No. 4 (December 1997), pp. 915–916; Aaron L. Friedberg, “Ripe for

unipolarity had not immediately given way to a new round of multipolar poli-tics, the scholarly conventional wisdom began to change. While recognizingthat states have often balanced against superior power in the past, most con-temporary scholars of unipolarity assert that the United States commandssuch a huge margin of superiority that second-class powers cannot balanceagainst its power, either individually or collectively. As William Wohlforthwrites, “The raw power advantage of the United States means that . . . second-tier states face incentives to bandwagon with the unipolar power.”

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This article advances three propositions that challenge the prevailing viewthat major powers cannot balance against the United States. First, the mostconsequential effect of the Bush strategy will be a fundamental transformationin how major states react to future uses of U.S. power. The United States haslong been a remarkable exception to the rule that states balance against supe-rior power. Aside from the Soviet Union, major powers have rarely balancedagainst it. The key reason is not the United States’ overwhelming power rela-tive to that of other major powers, which has varied over time and so cannotexplain this nearly constant pattern. Rather, until recently the United States enjoyed a robust reputation for nonaggressive intentions toward major powersand lesser states beyond its own hemisphere. Although it has fought numer-ous wars, the United States has generally used its power to preserve the estab-lished political order in major regions of the world, seeking to prevent otherpowers from dominating rather than seeking to dominate itself. The Bushstrategy of aggressive unilateralism is changing the United States’ long-enjoyed reputation for benign intent and giving other major powers reason tofear its power.Second, major powers are already engaging in the early stages of balancing behavior against the United States. In the near term, France, Germany, Russia,China, Japan, and other important regional states are unlikely to respond withtraditional hard-balancing measures, such as military buildups, war-ªghtingalliances, and transfers of military technology to U.S. opponents. Directly con-fronting U.S. preponderance is too costly for any individual state and too riskyfor multiple states operating together, at least until major powers becomeconªdent that members of a balancing coalition will act in unison. Instead, ma-

Soft Balancing against the United States 9

Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia,”

International Security,

Vol. 18, No. 3 (Winter1993/94), pp. 5–33; and Charles A. Kupchan, “After Pax Americana: Benign Power, Regional Inte-gration, and the Sources of a Stable Multipolarity,”

International Security,

Vol. 23, No. 2 (Fall 1998),pp. 40–79.6. William C. Wohlforth, “The Stability of a Unipolar World,”

International Security,

Vol. 24, No. 1(Summer 1999), pp. 7–8.

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