Stephen Walt

Harvard University | Harvard · Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

This chapter examines the transatlantic partnership between Europe and the United States. It first considers US strategic interests and how they are now changing, along with the implications of this shift for US foreign and defence policy priorities. It then describes some of the fundamental challenges faced by the European Union, including over-ex...

This article uses realism to explain past US grand strategy and prescribe what it should be today. Throughout its history, the United States has generally acted as realism depicts. The end of the Cold War reduced the structural constraints that states normally face in anarchy, and a bipartisan coalition of foreign policy elites attempted to use thi...

For the first time in recent memory, large numbers of Americans are openly questioning their country's grand strategy. Such a distaste should come as no surprise, given its abysmal record over the past quarter century. By pursuing a strategy of « offshore balancing », Washington would forgo ambitious efforts to remake other societies and concentrat...

For realist theory, major shifts in the balance of power are a potent source of conflict and war. The main exception, which does not disprove the rule, is the United States. Realists believe China’s continued rise will lead to greater security competition between the United States and China and a heightened danger of war. China will try to reduce t...

Comment on Michael Desch, “Technique Trumps Relevance” - Volume 13 Issue 2 - Stephen M. Walt

Theory creating and hypothesis testing are both critical components of social science, but the former is ultimately more important. Yet, in recent years, International Relations scholars have devoted less effort to creating and refining theories or using theory to guide empirical research. Instead, they increasingly focus on ‘simplistic hypothesis...

O artigo discute as diversas relações existentes entre teoria e política, sobretudo no imbricamento de seus campos profissionais. Analisa o baixo impacto da teoria das Relações Internacionais nas decisões de política externa, as tensões metodológicas existentes entre os dois campos e discute os motivos pelos quais estes processos ocorrem. Ao final,...

Explaining the Iraq War: Counterfactual Theory, Logic and Evidence. By Frank P. Harvey. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 360p. $103.00 cloth, $29.99 paper. The Iraq War initiated by the Bush administration in 2003 was and perhaps continues to be an important episode in world politics, US politics, and the politics of the Middle East. The...

Special Responsibilities: Global Problems and American Power, MladaBukovansky, IanClark, RobynEckersley, RichardPrice, ChristianReus-Smit, and NicholasWheeler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 290 pp., $29.99 paper. - Volume 27 Issue 4 - Stephen M. Walt

Most social scientists would like to believe that their profession contributes to solving pressing global problems. There is today no shortage of global problems that social scientists should study in depth: ethnic and religious conflict within and between states, the challenge of economic development, terrorism, the management of a fragile world e...

BRUCE G. TRIGGER. Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xiii, 757. $50.00 (US). Reviewed by Robert McC. Adams

Robert Lieberman's critique of our work on the Israel lobby is at odds with an abundance of evidence and prior scholarship describing the powerful influence that pro-Israel groups exert on U.S. Middle East policy. In addition to mischaracterizing our arguments, Lieberman claims that our methodology and research design are flawed and that our work c...

In The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, we argued that the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel is due largely to the influence of a domestic interest group—comprised of Jews as well as non-Jews—and that this unusual situation is harmful to both the United States and Israel. Jerome Slater's thoughtful review endorses man...

Unipolarity is a novel condition in world politics, and its effects on international alliances have yet to receive sustained theoretical attention. Tracing its impact requires a careful distinction between the purely structural features common to any unipolar system and the unique characteristics of the current unipole (the United States) or the po...

In this paper, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago's Department of Political Science and Stephen M.Walt of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government contend that the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy is its intimate relationship with Israel. The authors argue that although often justified as reflecting shared strategic int...

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, policy-makers and scholars attempting to fashion a grand strategy for U.S. foreign policy have struggled to reconcile competing objectives. On the one hand, grave dangers abound, especially potential nuclear proliferation to terrorist groups or rogue states. For the most part, these problems do not len...

U.S. policymakers debate how to wield American power; foreigners debate how to deal with it. Some make their peace with Washington and try to manipulate it; others try to oppose and undercut U.S. interests. The challenge for the United States is how to turn its material dominance into legitimate authority.

Policy makers pay relatively little attention to the vast theoretical liter-ature in IR, and many scholars seem uninterested in doing policy-relevant work. These tendencies are unfortunate because theory is an essential tool of statecraft. Many pol-icy debates ultimately rest on competing theoretical visions, and relying on a false or flawed theory...

Should the United States invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein? Over the past few months, advocates of war have advanced a number of reasons why toppling Saddam is desirable. He is a bloodthirsty tyrant. He has defied the United Nations on numerous occasions. He has backed terrorists in the past. Removing him will reinforce respect for American pow...

In the full-court press for war with Iraq, the Bush administration deems Saddam Hussein reckless, ruthless, and not fully rational. Such a man, when mixed with nuclear weapons, is too unpredictable to be prevented from threatening the United States, the hawks say. But scrutiny of his past dealings with the world shows that Saddam, though cruel and...

Richard Ned Lebow and Thomas W. Risse–Kappen, eds. International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War

International Security 26.3 (2002) 56-78 The terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon triggered the most rapid and dramatic change in the history of U.S. foreign policy. On September 10, 2001, there was not the slightest hint that the United States was about to embark on an all-out campaign against "global te...

Over the past quarter-century, Fred Halliday has distinguished himself as a prolific and insightful scholar of international affairs. He has imbibed a generous dose of Marxist theory without being intoxicated by it, and one might say the same for his consumption of other types of theory as well. Not content to be an armchair academic, Halliday is p...

We live in a contagious world. Financial panic in Thailand sweeps across Asia and engulfs Russia. HIV infects more than 34 million people worldwide. But what impact is globalization having on the spread of political ideas ? As interconnected as today's world is, national borders remain surprisingly solid barriers against political contagion.

The United States now enjoys a position of preponderance unseen since the Roman Empire. Not surprisingly, the past decade has produced a lively debate on U.S. grand strategy, with different authors offering sharply contrasting advice on how the United States should respond to its position as the sole remaining superpower. This paper considers one e...

Bill Clinton's foreign policy record leaves room for improvement, but he did quite well under the post--Cold War circumstances. Even faced with a partisan, isolationist Republican Congress and a disinterested American public, Clinton managed to engage Russia and China, fight nuclear proliferation, liberalize world trade, and save lives in Haiti, Bo...

Stephen M. Walt is the Evron M. and Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. 1. Stephen M. Walt, "Rigor or Rigor Mortis? Rational Choice and Security Studies," International Security, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Spring 1999), pp. 5-48. Further references appear parenthetically in t...

Stephen M. Walt is Professor of Political Science and Master of the Social Science Collegiate Division at the University of Chicago. He will join the faculty of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in July 1999. I thank the following individuals for their comments on earlier drafts of this article: Graham Allison, Robert A...

Spencer R. Weart's new book insists that democracies will never fight one another, but his slanted reading of the past is of little help in crafting a future without wars.

Is NATO expansion an effort to extend Western influence at Russia's expense or to support nascent democracies? The answer depends on whether you are a "realist" or "liberal" thinker. Find out where you fall on the theoretical spectrum and how ideas can become self-fulfilling realities.

John Vasquez's assessment of realism suffers from three serious flaws. First, his reliance on Imre Lakatos's (1970) model of scientific progress is problematic, because the Lakatosian model has been largely rejected by contemporary historians and philosophers of science. Second, Vasquez understates the range and diversity of the realist research pr...

Revolutions are watershed events in international politics, yet the existing literature on revolutions focuses primarily on the causes of revolution or its effects on domestic politics. Revolutions are also a potent cause of instability and war, because they alter the “balance of threats” between the revolutionary state and the other members of the...

This article examines the evolution of security studies, focusing on recent developments in the field. It provides a survey of the field, a guide to the current research agenda, and some practical lessons for managing the field in the years ahead. Security studies remains an interdisciplinary enterprise, but its earlier preoccupation with nuclear i...

Stephen M. Walt is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and the author of The Origins of Alliances (Cornell University Press, 1987). This article was written while he was a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. A slightly different version of this essay will appear in Daniel Kaufman, David...

The question remains a basic issue in international relations theory. Moreover, competing hypotheses about alliance formation underlie many recurring policy debates. Balance-of-power theory predicts states will ally to oppose the strongest state; the predicts that alignment with the stronger side is more likely. These two hypotheses are usually fra...

Stephen M. Walt is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, and is presently a Resident Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I would like to thank the following individuals for their comments on earlier versions of this essay: Joshua Epstein, Robert Johnson, Helene Madonick, John Mea...

Stephen M. Walt is an Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. I would like to thank Robert Art, George Breslauer, Lynn Eden, Charles Glaser, Lori Gronich, Fen Hampson, John Mearsheimer, Kenneth Oye, Glenn Snyder, Jack Snyder, Marc Trachtenberg, an...

Aux Etats-Unis, depuis 1986 et la loi Goldwater-Nicols sur la réorga-nisation de la Défense, chaque administration présidentielle est tenue de faire une déclaration officielle sur sa « Stratégie nationale de sécurité » (National Security Strategy). En septembre 2002, l'Administration Bush prit cette obligation comme une opportunité de présenter une...

Incluye índice Incluye bibliografía Contenido: Introducción. Una teoría de la revolución y la guerra. La Revolución Francesa. La Revolución Rusa. La Revolución Iraní. Las revoluciones americana, mexicana, turca y china. Conclusión.