An Interesting and Suggestive but Less-than-Compelling Argument
Princeton University Press • 1998 • 199 pages • $29.95
Throughout history strong nations have often expanded beyond their borders, establishing military or trading outposts, exerting influence on other nations, and sometimes pushing out their own borders by subjugating neighboring peoples. The United States, which began as a union of 13 small states east of the Mississippi River, pushed to the Pacific and ultimately took control of extensive overseas territories, provides a clear example. For a quarter-century after the Civil War, however, the United States exhibited little interest in expansion, and that peaceful interlude seems anomalous to Fareed Zakaria, who finds it “a highly unusual gap between power and interests.”
From Wealth to Power began as Zakaria’s dissertation, and its origins still show, especially in the repetitious commentary on its theoretical underpinnings. Without these trappings, an already short book could have been even shorter with little loss of substance. Still, the author, managing editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, writes well, and readers will have no difficulty understanding his argument.
Zakaria regards his study as a contest between two theories of international relations. “Classical realism” asserts that a nation expands whenever it can. Rich nations have many resources, which they use as the means of expansion—for example, by supporting large armies engaged in foreign conquest. “Defensive realism” asserts that a nation seeks security rather than influence and therefore expands when it perceives an external threat. Rich nations expand only when threatened by potentially powerful aggressors. Zakaria tweaks classical realism to create what he calls “state-centered realism,” positing that rich nations do not necessarily expand but do so only when their central governments have sufficient strength to extract from society the resources required to support the expansion.
From 1865 to 1889, Zakaria argues, the U.S. central government had little strength. The executive branch, where foreign policy initiative normally resides, played second fiddle to Congress; and the state and local governments took responsibility for many more functions and took in much more revenue than the national government. In those circumstances the United States declined to act on numerous opportunities for foreign expansion. Of 22 cases considered by Zakaria, only six resulted in expansion, the most important of those being the acquisition of Alaska in 1867 and the beginning of the construction of a blue-water navy in the 1880s. In other words, our relatively weak government was a hindrance to those who wanted to spread American power globally.
By the 1890s, however, the national executive branch had begun to exert itself more forcefully vis-à-vis Congress and the states. That enhanced power gave rise to greater international expansiveness beginning as early as Benjamin Harrison’s administration (1889–93) and culminating in Theodore Roosevelt’s flaunting of his Great White Fleet. Between 1889 and 1908, of 32 cases considered as opportunities for foreign expansion, 25 resulted in expansion, the most important of those cases being the annexation of Hawaii and the taking of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines from Spain in 1898.
Although Zakaria’s argument is interesting and suggestive, it is less than compelling. Surely, to mention just one piece of conflicting evidence, the robustly expansionist administration of James K. Polk presided over a far weaker national government than did, say, Grover Cleveland (even in his first term, 1885–89). Nor will Zakaria’s shaky command of economic history reassure readers. He makes a number of outright factual or conceptual mistakes, for example, asserting that the Civil War tariffs were reduced or eliminated after the war, and confusing the national government’s debt with its annual budget deficit or surplus.
Zakaria views his study as representative of the “bringing the state back in” school of social studies. “Nations,” he insists, “do not formulate and implement foreign policy and extract resources to those ends; governments do.” He does not seem aware that some of us, backed by generations of intellectual forebears, have appreciated that reality and based our analysis on it for a long time.
Obviously, the ability of a central government to appropriate the requisite resources is a precondition for external expansion. But whether a nation-state will project force abroad depends on the dominant ideology of those who control the government. Classical liberals have always understood that limited government, peace, and free trade form a coherent policy assemblage. To sacrifice any one of those elements is to jeopardize the others.
