POS 304404: Great Power Politics 04012004

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POS 304/404 Great Power Politics04/01/2004

• Course Agenda Today
• Website http//faculty.roosevelt.edu/erickson/cou
  rses/pos304-404.
• Lecture.
• Annotated Bibliography/Paper Description
  Assignment Due.
• Follow-up re Haiti.
• 9/11 Commission Hearings.
• Washington Post,9/11 Commission.
• Infrastructure of 21st Century American Hegemony?
• Hypersonic Aircraft Test.
• United States as test of offensive realism and
  its limits.
• Revolutionary State?
• Civil War as delayed post-revolutionary regime
  consolidation.
• Counter-Revolutionary or Anti-Militarist/Totalitar
  ian State 20th Century?
• Nazi regime, Cold War as additional tests of
  offensive realism.
• Walt chapter in Ikenberry.

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POS 304/404 Great Power Politics04/01/2004

• Follow-up re Haiti.
• Caribbean States refusing to recognize interim
  government.
• CARICOM Meeting resists US pressure.
• Calls for UN investigation re removal.
• US wants larger multinational force.
• Currently 1940 US Troops 825 French 435
  Canadians 330 Chileans.
• US wants to pull troops in 60 days to be replaced
  by UN.
• Minor skirmishes/resistance to multinational
  peacekeeping force.
• Aid flows resume after suspension following 2000
  elections.
• Aristide remains in Jamaica as guest of
  government.

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POS 304/404 Great Power Politics04/01/2004

• 9/11 Commission Hearings.
• Washington Post Re Rice Testimony, 9/11
  Commission.
• Domestic institutions and inter-elite conflict.
• Infrastructure of 21st Century American Hegemony?
• Hypersonic Aircraft Test.
• NASA tests X-43A successfully.
• Tops 5,000mph, Mach 7 (speed of sound 760mph).
• One more test, Mach 10, or 7,600mph.
• Scramjet engine.
• Military applications.
• BBC story re hypersonic bomber.
• DARPA FALCON.

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POS 304/404 Great Power Politics04/01/2004
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POS 304/404 Great Power Politics04/01/2004
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POS 304/404 Great Power Politics04/01/2004

• Ideology and Race Slavery and Civil War to
  present.
• Mearsheimer does not discuss domestic impact of
  Civil War.
• Massive expansion of military capability.
• Gurr War, Revolution and the Growth of the
  Coercive State.
• Internal war (revolution/civil war) lays
  foundation for military-industrial-research
  complex for great power status.
• Race and ethnic conflict.
• Pre- and post- Civil War US race relations and
  ethnic conflict define US power and
  vulnerabilities.
• FBI RACON project during WWII.
• Fear of Soviet use of disorders and instability
  from civil rights and black nationalist black
  power movement.
• Hunt - Ideology and US Foreign Policy (1987 -
  Yale Univ. Press).
• Racial Hierarchy.
• Founders and racism/slave system/limits of
  citizen.
• Indians, Mexicans, Filipino, Germans, Russians,
  French, Islamist terrorists, Arab
  authoritarianism.

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POS 304/404 Great Power Politics04/01/2004

• Post-Revolutionary Consolidation.
• Civil War decides dominant/hegemonic
  faction/network of elites.
• Displacement/genocide of indigenous population.
• Lebensraum American style.
• Ethnic cleansing - racialist ideologies.
• Example of limited conception of human rights
  19th/20th centuries.
• Massive immigration and settlement of conquered
  territory.
• Rapid industrialization and economic expansion.
• Monroe Doctrine and attempt at isolating Western
  Hemisphere from penetration by other great
  powers.
• France attempted Mexico.
• Germany - World War I and World War II - Mexico
  and Latin America.
• Soviet Union - Cuba and interaction with and
  support for other Marxist and national liberation
  movements.

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POS 304/404 Great Power Politics04/01/2004

• United States Strategic Imperative.
• Realist motivations only?
• Realism and ideological infrastructure for
  revolutionary/anti-colonial, national liberation
  movements.
• American Revolution.
• France and United Kingdom rivalry.
• Analogies to US and Soviet rivalry.
• War of 1812.
• United Kingdom partially motivated to prevent US
  from becoming even more powerful through
  acquisition of Canada.
• England and Spain provide military assistance to
  indigenous.
• Manifest destiny.
• Acquisition of territory from France.
• Acquisition of territory through war with Mexico
  and Spain.
• Philippine occupation.

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POS 304/404 Great Power Politics04/01/2004

• United States Military Interventions.
• Europe.
• Period One 1900-1917.
• US buck-passing relying on Triple Entente.
• Period 2 1917-1923.
• World War I, post-War occupation, containment of
  Soviet Union.
• Period 3 1923-1940.
• Buck-passing/isolation.
• Period 4 1940-1945.
• World War II - Germany.
• Period 5 1940-1990.
• Cold War - Soviet Union.
• Period 6 1991-2001.
• Enlargement of NATO, Humanitarian Intervention.
• Period 7 2001-?
• War on Terror - Anti-Proliferation.

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POS 304/404 Great Power Politics04/01/2004

• United States Interventions.
• Asia.
• Period 1 1900-early 1930s.
• Minor deployments of troops.
• No systematic intervention - no potential
  regional hegemon.
• Period 2 1930s-1940.
• Japan ascendant but balanced by UK and China.
• Period 3 1940-1945.
• Japan potential hegemon.
• US flows troop to region before Pearl Harbor.
• Period 4 1945-1990.
• Cold War.
• Period 5 1991-2001.
• PRC as potential hegemon.
• Period 6 2001-?
• War on Terror, WMD, PRC.

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POS 304/404 Great Power Politics04/01/2004

• United Kingdom.
• Offshore balancer to Continental Europe.
• Period 1 1792-1815 Containment of France.
• Period 2 1816-1904 - Splendid Isolation.
• Period 3 1905-1930 - Containment of Germany.
• Period 4 1930-1939 - Limited Liability.
• Period 5 1939-1945 - World War II.
• Period 6 1945-1990 - Cold War containment.
• Period 7 1991-2001 - NATO/EU enlargement,
  humanitarian intervention.
• Period 8 2001-? - War on Terror, EU, cooperation
  with US.

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POS 304/404 Great Power Politics04/01/2004

• Nazi Germany and World War II.
• Little mention of Nazi ideology and impetus for
  militarization.
• Critical omission of Mearsheimers.
• Can German rearmament be understood w/o reference
  to Nazi ideology?
• Cold War and US/Soviet Rivalry.
• Little mention of clash between competing
  ideological systems.
• United States long running hostility to Soviet
  regime.
• NSC-68 and cosmic struggle.
• Balance of Power vs. Balance of Threat.
• Walt elaborates on balance of threat versus
  balance of power.
• Dimensions of threat.
• Power.
• Proximity.
• Offensive power.
• Offensive intentions.

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POS 304/404 Great Power Politics04/01/2004

• Walt Recommendations.
• Strategy of Self-Restraint.
• Maintain US capabilities.
• Mailed Fist, Velvet Glove.
• Random Acts of Self-Abnegation.
• Keep Clients Under Control.
• Israeli, anti-Castro Cuban lobbies.
• Adversaries not monolith.
• Defense not offense.
• Defend legitimacy of US preponderance.