The End of Alliances / Edition 1

by Rajan Menon

Overview

Why should the United States cling to military alliances established during the Cold War when the circumstances are now fundamentally different? In The End of Alliances, Rajan Menon argues that our alliances in Europe and Asia have become irrelevant to the challenges we face today. The United States must be actively involved beyond its borders, but by relying on coalitions whose membership varies depending on the issue at hand. While a strategy that ceases to rely on alliances will mark a dramatic shift in American foreign policy, he reminds us that states routinely reassess and reorient their strategies. The United States, which studiously avoided alliances for much of its history only to embrace them during the Cold War, is no exception. The End of Alliances predicts that the coming change in American strategy will force our traditional allies to rethink their choices and create new patterns in world politics. The controversial argument advanced by Menon will provoke debate among foreign policy specialists and the general public.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195189278
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/22/2007
Edition description:	ANN
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.36(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Rajan Menon is Monroe J. Rathbone Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University and a Fellow at the New America Foundation.

Table of Contents

Preface1. The Impermanence of Paradigms2. Alliances and America's Grand Strategy3. Whither the Atlantic Alliance4. A Japan That Can—and Will—Do More56. Conclusionof AgeNotesIndex

Editorial Reviews

"Menon offers a clear picture of the global shifts that have thrown the role of alliances into question."—G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs

"Rajan Menon's book is indispensable reading for anyone interested in understanding America's position in the world in the decades to come."—Hendrik Spruyt, Norman Dwight Harris Professor of International Relations, Northwestern University

"In this book, Rajan Menon has accomplished something that many people call for but almost no one actually does. He has thought originally, from the bottom up, about how the United States should conduct its foreign policy—and proposes a major shift in the way America spends money, makes promises, and commits troops. A change like the one he outlines is coming sooner or later, and it will turn out better for America and the world if his argument gets the attention it deserves."—James Fallows, national correspondent of The Atlantic Monthly and author of Blind into Baghdad

"In this powerfully argued and elegantly written book, Rajan Menon makes the case that the American foreign policy of the future will differ dramatically, and in ways not yet fully appreciated, from the international role of the United States to which the world, and Americans, became accustomed in the second half of the twentieth century. The End of Alliances will be widely discussed and debated both in the United States and in the rest of the world."—Michael Mandelbaum, author of The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World's Government in the Twenty-first Century

"This is a book worthy of attention and debate, particularly from those whose responsibility it will be to repair US global influence. It is a very smart book that makes a fundamental argument—that a US grand strategy grounded in multilateral or bilateral alliances (NATO, or with Japan and Korea) has become a brittle, dispensable relic of the containment era....What Menon does extraordinarily well is write about all of this in a marvelously erudite style, while maintaining a succinct delivery....Highly recommended."—CHOICE

"Menon makes a compelling case that Washington's foreign policy is at a critical juncture: if the United States alters its policy with a maximum of speed and grace, it can preserve—even strengthen—its political and economic relationships with long-standing allies; if American leaders stubbornly attempt to preserve obsolete security arrangements, they risk permanently damaging those important relationships. This is an important book on U.S. foreign policy in the twenty-first century."—Ted Galen Carpenter, Vice President, Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute

"With elegance and wisdom, Rajan Menon shows why America's Cold War alliances make little sense, and why they need to be jettisoned in order to deal more effectively with the fundamental realities of the contemporary world. Whether one agrees or disagrees, this book both illuminates and stimulates. The End of Alliances is an outstanding contribution to the ongoing debate about America's role in the world."—Melvyn P. Leffler, Stettinius Professor of American History, University of Virginia

"Menon shows that the role of traditional alliances is fated to diminish even if America shifts to a more restrained global stance. Menon's astute analysis is a warning against relying on these allies to be the linchpin of a new, post-Bush foreign policy."—Jack Snyder, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations, Columbia University

From the Publisher

…Menon is a level-headed analyst, and though his prescription for an updated grand strategy is tentative, his diagnosis of the ills besetting the current one is persuasive.
—The New York Times

Mick Sussman

Alliances have been the cornerstone of U.S. foreign relationssince the 1940s. Even now, they remain the foundation for global security cooperation. But in this provocative book, Menon asserts that such formal military ties are destined to fade away. It is not a return to isolationism that will drive the dissolution of alliances but rather a slow -- and, to Menon's mind, welcome -- strategic reorientation of the United States' global position, with more informal and shifting alignments of states. Menon's thesis is based partly on his reading of the past: the United States has always been ambivalent about security commitments and maintaining a long-term overseas military presence, a national orientation only temporarily overcome by the Cold War. The new security environment, Menon goes on to argue, marked by the rise of terrorism and the absence of threatening great powers, makes alliances dispensable. Moreover, Washington's European and Asian allies are now economically revived and able to provide for their own security. In the end, Menon offers a clear picture of the global shifts that have thrown the role of alliances into question, but his argument that the costs of alliances are rising relative to their benefits is less convincing. Nor does he explore the role of the U.S. alliance system in facilitating cooperation among the advanced democracies. Today's alliances may have outlived their historical causes, but their usefulness remains.

Foreign Affairs