Journal of International Studies

Offshore engagement presents a middle ground between offshore balancing and deep commitment.

In applying a football metaphor to the Indo-Pacific the US Navy ought to ask itself some hard questions.

Could the much-maligned cuts to defense spending actually be a good thing for American strategy? That’s the case that historian Melvyn Leffler  makes  in the most recent issue of  Foreign Affairs . Responding to those who argue that past retrenchments have left the military ill prepared to respond to future dangers and stress the need to avoid doing the same today, Leffler argues that these fears are overblown. In his words: Contrary to such conventional wisdom, the consequences of past U.S. defense cuts were not bad. In fact, a look at five such periods over the past century—following World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War—shows that austerity can be useful in forcing Washington to think strategically, something it rarely does when times are flush. The argument, in a nutshell, is that when the government is operating under constrained resources, it is forced to make more difficult choices and prioritize more effectively, lea...

AS IF a global financial-market meltdown, the deepest U.S. recession in seventy years, an existential crisis in the euro zone and upheaval in the Middle East hadn’t already created enough trouble for one decade, now the unrest and anxiety have extended to some of the world’s most attractive emerging markets. Just in the past few months, we’ve seen a rough ride for India’s currency, furious nationwide protests in Turkey and Brazil, antigovernment demonstrations in Russia, strikes and violence in South Africa, and an ominous economic slowdown in all these countries. Adding to the uncertainty, as the carnage and confusion in Syria remind us, is the fact that there is no longer a single country or durable alliance of countries both willing and able to exercise consistent global leadership. The Obama administration and congressional Republicans don’t want to alienate a war-weary U.S. public by spending blood in the Middle East or treasure in Europe. Europe’s leaders have their hands ...

America has some substantial advantages over its nearest rivals, which won’t quickly be eroded by Washington dysfunction. How Darkness Sheds Light: India’s Democratic Dysfunction China’s Premature Great Power Label The Great Potash Power Play Pacific Power India’s Central Asia Soft Power The  emerging conventional wisdom  that  China  and  Russia  are somehow getting a leg up on the U.S. because of Putin’s gimmicky Syrian deal, President Barack Obama’s cancelled trip to Asia, and the U.S. government shutdown is misguided. The United States has substantial structural resources of power and influence its would-be rivals cannot match – without changing their political forms so much as to be unrecognizable. That is, the only way China and Russia might seriously contend with U.S. power over the medium- and long-term would require the end of the Putinist and Chinese Communist Party oligarchies. Headlines about Obama’s stumbles or GOP intransigenc...

The U.S. Navy may be the most powerful military force on the planet, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t subject to a scam now and then. After a series of suspicions for the past four years that something was awry, Navy officials and federal prosecutors have figured out  how one Malaysian businessman  was swindling the Navy for millions of dollars in lucrative contracts. What’s worrisome is how easy it was for him to glean classified and sensitive information through bribery. Glenn Francis Leonard – known within the navy as “Fat Leonard” – and his Singapore-based firm,  Glenn Defense Marine Asia  (GDMA), not only managed to scam the U.S. Navy during a time of relative defense austerity, but did so by recruiting senior naval officials as moles. The controversy is thus being reported widely as an episode of corruption rather than mere incompetence. According to the  Wapo , "The informants allegedly leaked sensitive information about contracts as well as closely ...

“No legal issue arises when the United States responds to a challenge to its power,  position, and prestige.”  — Dean Acheson , 1962, speaking to the American Society of International Law. Dean Acheson declared 51 years ago that power, position, and prestige are the ingredients of national security and that national security trumps law.  In the United States, democracy takes a back seat to “national security,”  a prerogative of the executive branch of government. National security is where the executive branch hides its crimes against law, both domestic and international, its crimes against the Constitution, its crimes against innocent citizens both at home and abroad, and its secret agendas that it knows that the American public would never support. “National security” is the cloak that the executive branch uses to make certain that the US government is unaccountable. Without accountable government, there is no civil liberty and no democracy except for th...