Offshore balancing
 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification.(November 2018) |
Offshore balancingis a strategic concept used inrealistanalysis ininternational relations.It describes a strategy in which agreat poweruses favored regional powers to check the rise of potentially-hostile powers. This strategy stands in contrast to the dominant grand strategy in the United States,liberal hegemony.Offshore balancing calls for the United States to withdraw from onshore positions and focus its offshore capabilities on the three key geopolitical regions of the world:Europe,thePersian Gulf,andNortheast Asia.
History
[edit]Christopher Layne[1]attributes the introduction of the term "offshore balancing" to himself in his 1997 article.[2]Several experts on strategy, such asJohn Mearsheimer,[3]Stephen Walt,[4]Robert Pape,[5]Andrew Latham,[6]Patrick Porter,[7]andAndrew Bacevich,have embraced the approach. They argue that offshore balancing has its historical roots inBritishgrand strategy regarding Europe, which was eventually adopted and pursued by theUnited StatesandJapanat various points in their history.[8]
According to political scientist John Mearsheimer, in his University of Chicago "American Grand Strategy" class, offshore balancing was the strategy used by the United States in the 1930s and also in the 1980–1988Iran–Iraq War.Mearsheimer argues that when the United States gave Lend-Lease aid to Britain in the 1940s, the United States engaged in offshore balancing by being the arsenal of democracy, not the fighter for it.
That is consistent with offshore balancing because the United States initially did not want to commit American lives to the European conflict. The United States supported the losing side (Iraq) in the Iran–Iraq War to prevent the development of aregional hegemon,which could ultimately threaten American influence. Furthermore, offshore balancing can seem likeisolationismwhen a roughbalance of power in international relationsexists, which was the case in the 1930s. It was also the strategy used during the Cold War between the United States andSoviet Union.
Theory
[edit]The grand strategy of "offshore balancing" arguably permits a great power to maintain its power without the costs of large military deployments around the world. It can be seen as the informal-empire analogue tofederalismin formal ones (for instance the proposal for theImperial Federationin the lateBritish Empire). Offshore balancing, as its name implies, is a grand strategy that can be pursued by the only non-Eurasiangreat power,the United States.
The strategy calls for this state to maintain a rough balance of power in the three key geopolitical regions of the world:Europe,thePersian Gulf,andNortheast Asia.The three regions are the focus, since Europe and Northeast Asia are the major industrial centers of the world, which contain all of the other great powers and the Persian Gulf for its importance to the global oil market. Outside of these regions, an offshore balancer should not worry about developments. Also, the state pursuing offshore balancing should first seek to pass the buck to local powers and intervene only if the threat is too great for the other powers in the region to handle.[9]
Notable thinkers associated with offshore balancing
[edit]- Christopher Layne
- John Mearsheimer
- Stephen Walt
- Robert Pape
- Barry Posen
- Michael Lind
- Andrew Bacevich
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^Layne, Christopher (2012-04-26)."The End of Pax Americana: How Western Decline Became Inevitable".The Atlantic.Retrieved2020-10-18.
- ^Layne, Christopher (1997)."From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing: America's Future Grand Strategy".International Security.22(1): 86–124.doi:10.1162/isec.22.1.86.hdl:10945/43144.ISSN0162-2889.S2CID57560143.
- ^Mearsheimer, John J. (2010-12-16)."Imperial by Design".The National Interest.Retrieved2020-10-18.
- ^Mearsheimer, John J.; Walt, Stephen M. (2019-08-14)."The Case for Offshore Balancing".Foreign Affairs: America and the World.ISSN0015-7120.Retrieved2020-10-18.
- ^Pape, Robert Anthony (2012).Cutting the fuse: the explosion of global suicide terrorism and how to stop it.Feldman, James K. (James Kendrick), Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism. (Pbk. ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.ISBN978-0-226-64565-0.OCLC793208206.
- ^Latham, Andrew (October 2021)."The U.S. Grand Strategy of Liberal Internationalism Is Dead".
- ^"Losing Struggle".Losing Struggle.Retrieved2020-10-18.
- ^Kennan, George (2012).American Diplomacy Sixtieth-Anniversary Expanded Edition.Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. pp. xi–xvi.
- ^Mearsheimer, John J.; Walt, Stephen M. (2019-08-14)."The Case for Offshore Balancing".Foreign Affairs: America and the World.ISSN0015-7120.Retrieved2020-10-18.
Sources
[edit]- Christopher Layne (1997)."From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing: America's Future Grand Strategy".International Security.
- John J. Mearsheimer (December 2008)."A Return to Offshore Balancing".Newsweek.
- Stephen Walt (November 2011)."Offshore Balancing: An idea whose time has come".Foreign Policy.
- Zachary Keck (February 2014)."Stephen Walt is Not Obama's George Kennan".The Diplomat.
- Hal Brands (September 2015)."The Limits of Offshore Balancing".Strategic Studies Institute.Archived fromthe originalon 2017-04-28.
- Mearsheimer, Walt (June 2016)."The Case for Offshore Balancing"(PDF).Foreign Affairs.
Further reading
[edit]Books
[edit]- Walt, Stephen (2018).The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. PrimacyISBN978-0374280031
- Walt, Stephen (2005).Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. PrimacyISBN978-0393052039
- Mearsheimer, John (2014).The Tragedy of Great Power Politics,Chapter 6, The Offshore BalancersISBN978-0-393-34927-6
- Layne, Christopher (2007).The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the PresentISBN978-0-393-34927-6
Articles
[edit]- Layne, Christopher (2002).Offshore Balancing Revisited(The Washington Quarterly,Spring 2002)