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At Home Abroad : Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy / Henry R. Nau.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextSeries: Cornell Studies in Political EconomyPublisher: Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]Copyright date: ©2002Description: 1 online resource (336 p.) : 8 line drawings, 9 tablesContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780801439315
  • 9781501729119
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 327.73
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Foreword -- Preface -- Introduction. At Home Abroad: Overcoming America's Separatist Self-Image -- 1. Identity and Power: The Sources of National Interest -- 2. Trade-Offs: America's Foreign Policy Traditions -- 3. National Identity: Consequences for Foreign Policy -- 4. Permanent Partnership: America and the Other Industrial Democracies -- 5. Winning the Peace: America and the Formerly Communist States of Europe -- 6. From Bilateralism to Multilateralism: American Policy in Asia -- 7. Beyond Indifference: American Relations with the Developing World -- Conclusion. American Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century -- Notes -- Index
Summary: The United States has never felt at home abroad. The reason for this unease, even after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, is not frequent threats to American security. It is America's identity. The United States, its citizens believe, is a different country, a New World of divided institutions and individualistic markets surviving in an Old World of nationalistic governments and statist economies. In this Old World, the United States finds no comfort and alternately tries to withdraw from it and reform it. America cycles between ambitious internationalist efforts to impose democracy and world order, and more nationalist appeals to trim multilateral commitments and demand that the European and Japanese allies do more.In At Home Abroad, Henry R. Nau explains that America is still unique but no longer so very different. All the industrial great powers in western Europe (and, arguably, also Japan) are now strong liberal democracies. A powerful and peaceful new world exists beyond America's borders and anchors America's identity, easing its discomfort and ending the cycle of withdrawal and reform.Nau draws on constructivist and realist perspectives to show how relative national identities interact with relative national power to define U.S. national interests. He provides fresh insights for U.S. grand strategy toward various countries. In Europe, the identity and power perspective advocates U.S. support for both NATO expansion to consolidate democratic identities in eastern Europe and concurrent, but separate, great-power cooperation with Russia in the United Nations. In Asia, this perspective recommends a shift of U.S. strategy from bilateralism to concentric multilateralism, starting with an emerging democratic security community among the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Taiwan, and progressively widening this community to include reforming ASEAN states and, if it democratizes, China. In the developing world, Nau's approach calls for balancing U.S. moral (identity) and material (power) commitments, avoiding military intervention for purely moral reasons, as in Somalia, but undertaking such intervention when material threats are immediate, as in Afghanistan, or material and moral stakes coincide, as in Kosovo.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Foreword -- Preface -- Introduction. At Home Abroad: Overcoming America's Separatist Self-Image -- 1. Identity and Power: The Sources of National Interest -- 2. Trade-Offs: America's Foreign Policy Traditions -- 3. National Identity: Consequences for Foreign Policy -- 4. Permanent Partnership: America and the Other Industrial Democracies -- 5. Winning the Peace: America and the Formerly Communist States of Europe -- 6. From Bilateralism to Multilateralism: American Policy in Asia -- 7. Beyond Indifference: American Relations with the Developing World -- Conclusion. American Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century -- Notes -- Index

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The United States has never felt at home abroad. The reason for this unease, even after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, is not frequent threats to American security. It is America's identity. The United States, its citizens believe, is a different country, a New World of divided institutions and individualistic markets surviving in an Old World of nationalistic governments and statist economies. In this Old World, the United States finds no comfort and alternately tries to withdraw from it and reform it. America cycles between ambitious internationalist efforts to impose democracy and world order, and more nationalist appeals to trim multilateral commitments and demand that the European and Japanese allies do more.In At Home Abroad, Henry R. Nau explains that America is still unique but no longer so very different. All the industrial great powers in western Europe (and, arguably, also Japan) are now strong liberal democracies. A powerful and peaceful new world exists beyond America's borders and anchors America's identity, easing its discomfort and ending the cycle of withdrawal and reform.Nau draws on constructivist and realist perspectives to show how relative national identities interact with relative national power to define U.S. national interests. He provides fresh insights for U.S. grand strategy toward various countries. In Europe, the identity and power perspective advocates U.S. support for both NATO expansion to consolidate democratic identities in eastern Europe and concurrent, but separate, great-power cooperation with Russia in the United Nations. In Asia, this perspective recommends a shift of U.S. strategy from bilateralism to concentric multilateralism, starting with an emerging democratic security community among the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Taiwan, and progressively widening this community to include reforming ASEAN states and, if it democratizes, China. In the developing world, Nau's approach calls for balancing U.S. moral (identity) and material (power) commitments, avoiding military intervention for purely moral reasons, as in Somalia, but undertaking such intervention when material threats are immediate, as in Afghanistan, or material and moral stakes coincide, as in Kosovo.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 02. Mrz 2022)