Sestanovich Discusses Cycles in U.S. Foreign Policy

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Current discussions about American foreign policy seem to be riddled with “lots of finger-pointing and confusion,” said Professor Stephen Sestanovich in a March 26 talk about his new book, Maximalist: America in the World from Truman to Obama. Meanwhile, he said, we tend to think of the United States as leading successful and unified alliances in the years after the Second World War and enjoying domestic consensus from one decade to the next. That’s because we tend to idealize the past, he said.

Sestanovich, who is currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in addition to his position at SIPA as the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor for the Practice of International Diplomacy, has had a long career in and out of the U.S. government, advising and coordinating Russian and post-Soviet policy programs.

He argued that the history of American foreign policy since the beginnings of the Cold War is relevant to the present because it was actually chaotic, confused, and full of discord. “Our alliances were regularly in crisis, the American domestic scene was full of intense recriminations and scapegoating… and policies have changed from administration to administration,” Sestanovich said. “We are able to see our controversies about Syria and Ukraine in a more meaningful historical context if we understand what a mess the past was.”

Maximalist argues that U.S. foreign policy has operated in two alternating modes over a span of about 70 years since World War II and, furthermore, that this pattern is useful in understanding what makes American policy tick today. Sestanovich calls the two modes “maximalism” and “retrenchment,” each one adopted when the previous one does not seem to be working.

The maximalist mode pushed policies based on the principle of “doing more” after a period of under-commitment, and these policies involved committing new resources to an emerging problem that was producing frenzied foreign policy debates. This was the response of American presidents to every Cold War crisis, Sestanovich said.

Meanwhile, retrenchment, which is a mode based on the principle of  doing less after a phase of over-commitment, could be seen following maximalist policy in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and more recently the end of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This involved slowing down actions and taking the time for more rumination.

Sestanovich explained that maximalist presidents tend to have “the conviction that the status quo is inadequate, and an existing crisis needs to be met more vigorously.” He went on to enumerate five characteristics of the maximalist attitude. These included the belief in the weakness of other states leading to the belief that the United States must play a strong leadership role in solving problems, belief in the incompetency of international organizations, concern about the risk of leaving problems not fully solved, belief in the short attention span of the U.S. public leading to the need for quick activist solutions, and finally a guilty conscience about “doing too little.”

In contrast, retrenchment phases, which tend to last longer than maximalist phases, were characterized by stronger presidential control over the implementation of policies and efforts to find sustainable, long-term policies, which were often met with criticism that those policies are not doing enough for the present. Sestanovich added that retrenchment presidents have so far shown poor rhetorical leadership that resulted in difficulties for creating public support for their policies.

He concluded that crises resulting in strong public dissatisfaction with a status quo propelled the switching pattern between the two modes of American foreign policy. This pattern would help us to better understand the current president’s retrenchment policies after active U.S. involvement in major wars abroad under the previous president.

To an audience member asking whether the current crisis in Crimea would affect a shift to a more maximalist President Obama, Professor Sestanovich responded that there might be refocused attention on Europe and American allies, but retrenchment would not be phased out so quickly. At the same time, he said he would be cautious about forecasts, as there was always a possibility of unexpected turns of events, as has been the case with Crimea.

— Doyeun Kim MIA ’14

Watch full program on C-SPAN2's Book TV: April 19, 8:45 p.m. More