REVUE : International Security (vol. 37, n°3, Winter 2012/2013)

Catherine MAIA

The latest issue of International Security (Vol. 37, no. 3, Winter 2012/13) is out.

CONTENTS

• Stephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, & William C. Wohlforth, Don't Come Home, America: The Case against Retrenchment
• James K. Sebenius & Michael K. Singh, Is a Nuclear Deal with Iran Possible? An Analytical Framework for the Iran Nuclear Negotiations
• Jeffrey W. Knopf, Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation: Examining the Linkage Argument
• Aaron Rapport, The Long and Short of It: Cognitive Constraints on Leaders' Assessments of “Postwar” Iraq
• Correspondence
• Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson & Michael Beckley, Debating China's Rise and U.S. Decline 

SUMMARIES

7–51
Don’t Come Home, America: The Case against Retrenchment
Stephen G. Brooks, Dartmouth College, G. John Ikenberry, Princeton
University, and William C. Wohlforth, Dartmouth College

After sixty-ªve years of pursuing a grand strategy of global leadership—
nearly a third of which transpired without a peer great power rival—has the
time come for the United States to switch to a strategy of retrenchment? According
to most security studies scholars who write on the future of U.S. grand
strategy, the answer is an unambiguous yes: they argue that the United States
should curtail or eliminate its overseas military presence, abolish or dramatically
reduce its global security commitments, and minimize or eschew efforts
to foster and lead the liberal institutional order. Thus far, the arguments for
retrenchment have gone largely unanswered by international relations scholars.
An evaluation of these arguments requires a systematic analysis that directly
assesses the core claim of retrenchment advocates that the current “deep
engagement” grand strategy is not in the national interests of the United
States. This analysis shows that advocates of retrenchment radically overestimate
the costs of deep engagement and underestimate its beneªts. We conclude
that the fundamental choice to retain a grand strategy of deep
engagement after the ColdWar is just what the preponderance of international
relations scholarship would expect a rational, self-interested leading power in
America’s position to do.

52–91
Is a Nuclear Deal with Iran Possible? An Analytical Framework for
the Iran Nuclear Negotiations
James K. Sebenius, Harvard Business School, and Michael K. Singh,
Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Varied diplomatic approaches by multiple negotiators over the past several
years have failed to conclude a nuclear deal with Iran. Mutual hostility,
misperception, and ºawed diplomacy may be responsible. Yet, more fundamentally,
no mutually acceptable deal may exist. To assess this possibility,
a “negotiation analytic” framework conceptually disentangles two issues:
(1) whether a feasible deal exists; and (2) how to design the most promising
process to achieve one. Focusing on whether a “zone of possible agreement”
exists, a graphical negotiation analysis precisely relates input assumptions
about the parties’ interests, their no-deal options, and possible deals. Under a
plausible, mainstream set of such assumptions, the Iranian regime’s no-deal
options, at least through the fall of 2012, appear superior to potential nuclear
agreements. If so, purely tactical and process-oriented initiatives will fail.
Opening space for a mutually acceptable nuclear deal—one that avoids both
military conºict and a nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable Iran—requires relentlessly
and creatively worsening Iran’s no-deal options while enhancing the
value of a deal to the Iranian regime. Downplaying both coercive options and
upside potential, as international negotiators have often done, works against
this integrated strategy. If this approach opens a zone of possible agreement,
sophisticated negotiation will be key to reaching a worthwhile agreement.

92–132
Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation: Examining the
Linkage Argument
Jeffrey W. Knopf, Monterey Institute of International Studies

Does the extent or lack of progress toward nuclear disarmament affect the
health of the nuclear nonproliferation regime? Commentators have long asserted
both positive and negative responses to this question as if the answer
were self-evident. Given that opposite positions have been advanced with
equal conviction, a more systematic analysis is required. This analysis begins
by attempting to identify all of the potential arguments that can be made both
for and against the hypothesis of a disarmament-nonproliferation linkage. The
arguments are grouped in terms of ªve broader sets of explanatory factors:
security, institutions, norms, domestic politics, and psychology. This approach
clariªes the various causal microfoundations that could underpin different arguments
in the debate as well as the types of empirical tests that would be
most relevant for evaluating the “linkage hypothesis.” Comparative assessment
of the arguments on both sides suggests that signs of commitment to nuclear
disarmament by the nuclear weapon states will tend to enhance support
for nonproliferation. Because of the multitude of other factors that affect state
decisionmaking, however, progress on disarmament will not by itself address
all of the challenges to making the nonproliferation regime effective.

133–171
The Long and Short of It: Cognitive Constraints on Leaders’
Assessments of “Postwar” Iraq
Aaron Rapport, Georgia State University

The George W. Bush administration’s assessments of challenges that might
come after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq were wide of the mark,
but it is unclear why this was the case. Along with the difªculty of anticipating
the future, perhaps the opportunity costs of allocating resources to postconºict
considerations were simply too high. Institutional biases and civil-military
friction may have also led actors to privilege certain information and plans
over others. Although plausible, these hypotheses do not sufªciently explain
strategic assessment prior to the 2003 invasion. They cannot account for
the substance of most senior policymakers’ assessments, especially those of
President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, which was optimistic
when late-stage operations were considered but not when combat plans were
deliberated. An established psychological theory that describes how people
mentally represent distant future actions—as opposed to those that are seen as
impending—explains the nature of strategic assessment in the Iraq case. As individuals
think about actions at the end of a sequence of events, the desirability
of their goals becomes increasingly salient relative to the feasibility of
achieving them. This makes decisionmakers more prone to underestimate the
costs and risks of future actions.