About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

80 Foreign Aff. 46 (2001)
Future of the American Pacifer, The

handle is hein.journals/fora80 and id is 814 raw text is: The Future of the American Pacifier 7ohn 7. Mearsheimer PASSING THE BUCK THE CENTRAL AIM ofAmerican foreign policy has traditionally been to dominate the western hemisphere while not permitting another great power to dominate Europe or Northeast Asia. The United States has not wanted a peer competitor. In the wake of the Cold War, U.S. policymakers remain firmly committed to this goal. An important Pentagon planning document stated in 1992, Our first objective is to prevent the reemergence of a new rival ... that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. ... Our strategy must now refocus on precluding the emergence of any potential future global competitor. In pursuit of this goal, the United States has behaved as an offshore balancer, committing troops to Europe and Northeast Asia only when there was a potential hegemon in those neighbor- hoods that the local powers could not contain by themselves. In effect, the United States has followed a buck-passing strategy- remaining on the sidelines while getting others to bear the burden of deterring or fighting aggressors-until it could no longer do so safely. Unless this realist pattern of behavior changes radically, the future of the U.S. military commitments to Europe and North- east Asia can thus be expected to hinge on whether a potential hegemon emerges in either region that can be contained only JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER is R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. This article is adapted from his forthcoming book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. [46]

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most