America as a Model for the World? A Foreign Policy Perspective
Overview
Kenneth N. Waltz argues that the United States cannot serve as a universal template for other states’ foreign policy because a country’s external behavior is shaped less by its domestic character than by its relative position in the international system. During the Cold War the superpowers’ comparable power produced parallel patterns of arming and intervening; with the Soviet Union gone, America’s unmatched capabilities tempt it—however benign its intentions—to act arbitrarily, provoking balancing efforts by others. Waltz concludes that unbalanced U.S. power is a structural danger and that no single polity, however admirable, can be a reliable model for the world.
Context and Purpose
Written in 1991, just after the Cold War, the article cautions American policymakers against triumphalist claims that liberal democracy and U.S. practices should be exported wholesale. Waltz, the leading structural realist, frames his critique of the emerging “unipolar moment” debate (e.g., Charles Krauthammer) by re‑asserting balance‑of‑power logic.
Argument Structure and Major Points
International Structure Overrides Domestic Virtue
States similarly situated in the system behave similarly. Despite ideological disparities, the United States and the Soviet Union mirrored one another’s arms races and doctrines: the U.S. 1960s conventional–strategic build‑up was soon matched by the USSR, and both evolved toward “war‑fighting” nuclear doctrines.
Interventions followed the same pattern. Waltz cites Blechman & Kaplan’s tally showing the U.S. used military force roughly twice as often as the USSR between 1946‑76, undercutting the self‑image of America as purely status‑quo while Moscow was revisionist.
Fenelon’s Theorem: Surplus Power Breeds Arrogance
Drawing on the 17th‑century cleric Fénelon, Waltz asserts that any state wielding superior power for long will abandon “decency and moderation.” Bipolarity muted that temptation; unipolarity removes the check.
Post‑Cold‑War Illustrations of U.S. Overreach
Central America – Reagan and Bush demanded Nicaragua transform its regime or face indefinite Contra war, a policy articulated candidly as supporting democracy by force if needed.
Doctrine of Conditional Sovereignty – Administration officials claimed a moral right to subvert “undemocratic” governments, elevating intervention above non‑intervention as a principle.
Gulf War Management – Washington fixed the embargo deadline, chose the start date of hostilities, and executed an air campaign that exceeded immediate battlefield necessity. Reactions from Manila, Tokyo, and Paris (quoted by Waltz) reveal growing unease with a “constable of the world.”
Democratic Peace, Qualifiers and Exceptions
Waltz acknowledges Michael Doyle’s finding that democracies rarely fight one another but stresses exceptions—Germany in 1914, the U.S. wars of 1812 and 1861—to show regime type is not an absolute brake on conflict once power disparities and domestic coalitions align.
Conclusion: No Country Is a Model
In the single decade prior to publication, the U.S. initiated wars in Grenada, Panama (violating the OAS Charter the U.S. itself wrote), and Iraq—hardly an unequivocal moral exemplar. Balanced power, not American preponderance, is the safer foundation for world order.
Use of Visual Material
The illustrations on pages 2‑3—ranging from the 1898 Battle of Quasinias lithograph to a Vietnam War photograph—operate as symbolic reminders of a long U.S. interventionist tradition, visually reinforcing Waltz’s textual claim that American force projection is historically routine rather than exceptional.
Critical Evaluation
Strengths
Structural Clarity: By grounding his thesis in systemic pressures, Waltz provides a parsimonious explanation that travels beyond the immediate post‑Cold‑War moment.
Empirical Balance: He punctures the myth of uniquely Soviet belligerence, obliging readers to scrutinize U.S. behavior with the same metrics.
Prescience: Waltz anticipates later debates on American primacy, preventive war, and anti‑hegemonic balancing that would shape scholarship and policy through the 2000s.
Limitations
Agency Underplayed: The analysis discounts how domestic institutions, public opinion, or ideology sometimes restrain great‑power hubris (e.g., congressional pushback after Vietnam).
Scope of Evidence: Case selection leans heavily on militarized interventions; non‑military forms of hegemony (trade leadership, institution‑building) receive little attention, leaving out ways primacy might be stabilizing.
Democratic Peace Treatment: Citing historical anomalies without systematic data somewhat weakens the rebuttal to the broader statistical record supporting the proposition.
Implications
Waltz’s warning resonates whenever unipolar confidence resurfaces—whether in 2003 Iraq or contemporary debates on “great‑power competition.” His core lesson is not anti‑American but anti‑hubris: sustainable order depends less on exporting a single country’s model than on reconstructing constraining balances—regional, institutional, or ideological—that keep even well‑intentioned giants from mistaking power for universal right.