Correspondence: U.S.

Grand Strategy

Correspondence Peter D. Feaver and

Hal Brands
The Establishment and U.S. Rebecca Friedman
Grand Strategy Lissner
Patrick Porter

To the Editors (Peter D. Feaver and Hal Brands write):

In his article “Why America’s Grand Strategy Has Not Changed: Power, Habit, and the
U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment,” Patrick Porter argues that the continuity of U.S.
grand strategy since World War II has resulted from a group-think mentality fostered
by a powerful foreign policy elite—“the Blob”—that stiºes debate and prevents needed
course corrections.1 Porter’s provocative argument is ultimately unpersuasive, because
it overstates the degree of conformity and consensus in U.S. strategy while slighting the
most obvious explanations for the strategy’s endurance. Below we highlight several
problems with his argument.
First, Porter exaggerates the degree of consensus in U.S. foreign policy since World
War II. In fact, despite a bipartisan consensus on the necessity of U.S. global leadership
in support of a congenial international order (what Porter calls “primacy”), intense de-
bates about how that strategy should be operationalized have been common in U.S. for-
eign policy circles. Policymakers, elected ofªcials, and policy commentators argued
heatedly over such fundamental issues as whether to pursue a Europe-ªrst or Asia-ªrst
strategy in the 1950s, whether and how aggressively to combat Soviet and communist
inºuence in the developing world, whether to make or avoid defense commitments
on the Asian mainland, whether to pursue détente or confrontation with the Soviet
Union in the 1970s, whether to use force to reverse Saddam Hussein’s invasion of
Kuwait in 1990–91, whether to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after the
Cold War, and whether to invade Iraq in 2003. These debates reºected genuine intellec-
tual disagreements that pitted members of the Blob against one another. Porter would
likely respond that such debates were essentially about tactics, but the fact that the for-
eign policy community has engaged in knock-down, drag-out debates over issues of
such enormous strategic importance shows that it is not as uniªed, and the marketplace
of ideas not as limited, as Porter claims.

Peter D. Feaver is a professor of political science and public policy at Duke University, where he heads the
Program in American Grand Strategy and the Triangle Institute for Security Studies. Hal Brands is the
Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. His newest book is The Lessons
of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order, written with Charles Edel.

Rebecca Friedman Lissner is an assistant professor in the Strategic and Operational Research Department at
the U.S. Naval War College. The views expressed here are exclusively those of the author.

Patrick Porter is Professor of International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham.

1. Patrick Porter, “Why America’s Grand Strategy Has Not Changed: Power, Habit, and the U.S.
Foreign Policy Establishment,” International Security, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Spring 2018), pp. 9–46,
doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00311 .

International Security, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Spring 2019), pp. 197–204, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_c_00347
© 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

197
 International Security 43:4 198

Second, although Porter argues that dissenting foreign policy views advocating an
approach he calls “restraint” tend to be marginalized, departures from a strategy of
U.S. leadership have time and again received a hearing at the highest levels of govern-
ment. In the 1950s and 1960s, Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy repeat-
edly considered withdrawing U.S. troops from Europe.2 Similar debates occurred in
Congress in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When Jimmy Carter took ofªce, he strongly
favored withdrawing U.S. troops from South Korea.3 In the early 1990s, the George
H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations initially delegated management of the crisis
in the former Yugoslavia to the European NATO allies. In 2011, Barack Obama with-
drew U.S. troops from Iraq as part of a broader move toward an offshore balancing
strategy in the Middle East.4 In other words, presidents and other political leaders in
the United States have often been willing to consider signiªcant changes in U.S. strat-
egy, and they have sometimes even implemented policies that represented a meaning-
ful shift toward retrenchment and restraint.
Third, the reason that many of these departures were not ultimately undertaken—or
proved ºeeting—is not because policymakers denied them a fair, open hearing. It is be-
cause they were judged—or later shown—to be substantively inferior to more assertive
policies. Eisenhower never withdrew U.S. troops from Europe, because he understood
that doing so would have threatened to destabilize the interlocking series of arrange-
ments that deterred the Soviet Union while pacifying Germany and Western Europe.5
Carter never withdrew U.S. troops from South Korea, for fear that doing so would have
risked incentivizing South Korean nuclear proliferation and destabilizing the fragile
balance in a critical part of the world.6 The United States ultimately took the lead in ad-
dressing the crackup of Yugoslavia when the inability of the Europeans to deal with the
crisis had become clear. Obama did draw down U.S. forces in Iraq, but large swaths of
that country (and Syria) were subsequently overrun by the Islamic State, compelling a
reassertion of U.S. military and diplomatic engagement.7 In these and other cases, an
emphasis on U.S. leadership has persisted, because that approach has been deemed—
after signiªcant debate or hard experience—superior to the alternatives.
Fourth, and related, Porter slights the simplest explanation for why there has
been substantial consistency in U.S. strategy: because it works. As scholars have dem-
onstrated, the past seventy years have been among the best in human history in terms

2. See Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999); and Francis J. Gavin, Gold, Dollars, and Power:
The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958–1971 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2004).
3. See, for instance, Don Oberdorfer and Robert Carlin, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History,
3rd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2014), pp. 67–70.
4. See Christopher Layne, “The (Almost) Triumph of Offshore Balancing,” National Interest, Janu-
ary 27, 2012, https://nationalinterest.org/commentary/almost-triumph-offshore-balancing-6405.
5. Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace.
6. Oberdorfer and Carlin, The Two Koreas, pp. 80–82; and Kang Choi and Joon-Sung Park, “South
Korea: Fears of Abandonment and Entrapment,” in Muthiah Alagappa, ed., The Long Shadow: Nu-
clear Weapons and Security in 21st Century Asia (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008),
p. 377.
7. See Ash Carter, “A Lasting Defeat: The Campaign to Destroy ISIS” (Cambridge, Mass.: Belfer
Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
University, October 2017), https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/lasting-defeat-campaign-
destroy-isis.
 Correspondence: U.S. Grand Strategy 199

of rising global and U.S. prosperity, the spread of democracy and human rights, the
avoidance of great power war, and the decline of war in general.8 It has also been a pe-
riod when the world’s leading power consistently pursued a grand strategy geared ex-
plicitly toward achieving those goals. To prove that U.S. grand strategy persists for
reasons other than utility, Porter would have to show that U.S. leadership has not been
necessary to those outcomes or that it is no longer necessary. But he does not do so (or
even really try to do so), and his article does not engage the relevant social science
scholarship and historical literature establishing a causal connection between U.S. en-
gagements and key aspects of the relatively benign global order.9
Finally, critics of primacy consistently argue, as Porter does, that their ideas are cen-
sored or excluded from policy debates. Yet, critics of U.S. grand strategy are prominent
within the academy, including at prestigious institutions such as the University of
Chicago, Harvard, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their op-eds and es-
says appear in the New York Times, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs, among other
prominent “mainstream” outlets, and their work receives generous funding. Leading
critics of primacy are regular participants in U.S. government–sponsored outreach ini-
tiatives such as the National Intelligence Council’s Intelligence Associates program.
Not least, although Porter and many other realists in the academy deplore key aspects
of the current president’s foreign policy, that president’s own core critique of the for-
eign policy elite echoes those made by academic realists.10 If this is censorship, it is a re-
markably ineffective form of censorship. Perhaps the reason primacy endures is not
that the marketplace of ideas is broken, but that it is working fairly well.
—Peter D. Feaver
Durham, North Carolina
—Hal Brands
Washington, D.C.

To the Editors (Rebecca Friedman Lissner writes):

In “Why America’s Grand Strategy Has Not Changed: Power, Habit, and the U.S.
Foreign Policy Establishment,” Patrick Porter investigates why the United States has
pursued a continuous grand strategy of primacy since the end of the Cold War.1
Although vast endowments of material power enable such a grand strategy, Porter con-
tends that capabilities alone cannot explain this choice. Rather, it is the habitual think-

8. Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking,
2011). See also Robert Kagan, The World America Made (New York: Vintage, 2011).
9. See, for instance, Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, America Abroad: The United
States’ Global Role in the 21st Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Tony Smith, Amer-
ica’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 2012); and Hal Brands, Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the
Rise of the Post–Cold War Order (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2016).
10. On this point, see Hal Brands and Peter D. Feaver, “Saving Realism from the So-Called Real-
ists,” Commentary, September 2017, pp. 23–29.

1. Patrick Porter, “Why America’s Grand Strategy Has Not Changed: Power, Habit, and the U.S.
Foreign Policy Establishment,” International Security, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Spring 2018), pp. 9–46, doi
.org/10.1162/isec_a_00311. Further references to this article appear parenthetically in the text.
 International Security 43:4 200

ing of the U.S. foreign policy establishment—or “the Blob”—that has ossiªed an
imprudent primacy strategy and precluded serious consideration of alternatives.
Porter’s study is an important contribution to debates about post–Cold War U.S. for-
eign policy; nonetheless, two problems hinder its ability to advance the debate on the
sources of grand-strategic continuity and change.
First, the article does not adequately specify the threshold for grand-strategic
change. Porter outlines four constant elements of post–World War II U.S. grand strat-
egy: preponderance, reassurance, integration, and nonproliferation. Left unstated,
however, are the criteria for change. Would rejection or relaxation of any one of these
principles constitute change? Must all four be rejected? What about major foreign
policy pivots within each of these grand-strategic pillars?
These questions go entirely unaddressed and undermine attempts at theory testing
in the article’s empirical sections. For instance, in describing the potential for retrench-
ment under President Bill Clinton, Porter states: “Clinton could have reallocated re-
sources by lowering defense spending, shifting burdens to allies, or reducing foreign
commitments in some combination” (p. 24). The article then goes on to concede that the
Clinton administration “oversaw some military retrenchment, making initial cuts of
25 percent” to the defense budget. The administration also reduced the share of gross
domestic product devoted to defense expenditures by 1.2 percent (p. 25). Yet, Porter ul-
timately dismisses these reductions as insufªcient to constitute “revision and retrench-
ment,” without clarifying how much of a diminution in spending—in absolute or
relative terms—would have qualiªed as discontinuity.
This analytical shortcoming is not unique to Porter’s article. Rather, the lack of clear
criteria for measuring change is endemic in the grand strategy literature.2 Because
scholars disagree about its meaning,3 they operationalize the concept of grand strategy
in widely divergent ways.4 A corollary to this problem is ongoing disagreement regard-
ing the threshold for grand-strategic change: some, like Porter, see post–World War II
U.S. grand strategy as basically continuous,5 whereas others identify substantial dis-
continuities, typically associated with the end of the Cold War or the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001.6 Until the literature converges on a common means of conceptual-
izing, operationalizing, and ultimately measuring grand strategy, ad hoc approaches
will prevail and knowledge will not accumulate.7
Second, the article’s speciªcation of its central concept—the U.S. foreign policy estab-
lishment, or Blob—renders the theoretical argument unfalsiªable. In short, Porter’s the-
ory deªnes the independent variable (membership in the Blob) with its dependent

2. Rebecca Friedman Lissner, “Rethinking Grand-Strategic Change: Overhauls versus Adjust-

ments,” working paper, University of Pennsylvania, 2019.
3. Nina Silove, “Beyond the Buzzword: The Three Meanings of ‘Grand Strategy,’” Security Studies,
Vol. 27, No. 1 (2018), pp. 27–57, doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2017.1360073.
4. Rebecca Friedman Lissner, “What Is Grand Strategy? Sweeping a Conceptual Mineªeld,” Texas
National Security Review, Vol. 2 No. 1 (November 2018), https://tnsr.org/2018/11/what-is-grand-
strategy-sweeping-a-conceptual-mineªeld/.
5. See, for example, Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to
the Present (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007).
6. See, for example, William C. Martel, Grand Strategy in Theory and Practice: The Need for an Effec-
tive American Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); and Benjamin Miller,
“Explaining Changes in U.S. Grand Strategy: 9/11, the Rise of Offensive Liberalism, and the War
in Iraq,” Security Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (2010), pp. 26–65, doi.org/10.1080/09636410903546426.
7. Imre Lakatos, “Falsiªcation and the Methodology of Scientiªc Research Programmes,” in Criti-
cism and the Growth of Knowledge, Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1970), pp. 91–195.
 Correspondence: U.S. Grand Strategy 201

variable (primacist views). Although the article describes characteristics and names
personiªcations of the U.S. foreign policy establishment at several points, it does not
deªne criteria for inclusion.8 Instead, it conºates membership with the set of primacist
ideas ascribed to it (pp. 14–16): the establishment is deªned by its investment in “pri-
macy as the only viable, legitimate grand strategy” (p. 15).
This conºation poses several theoretical problems. Most importantly, it renders the
theory’s independent and dependent variables necessarily invariant. Short of a dis-
placement of the establishment itself, which the article does not theorize, Porter’s argu-
ment cannot account for grand-strategic change. Moreover, the theory of habit relies on
a circular logic: any individual who dissents from primacy—whether a member of
the foreign policy commentariat, an international relations scholar, or president of the
United States—can be dismissed as outside the foreign policy establishment. It is there-
fore impossible to falsify the article’s claim that habit-driven decisionmaking makes
members of the Blob incapable of critically evaluating primacy’s core assumptions
(p. 46).
In an empirical illustration of this problem, the article cites President Richard Nixon
and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s embrace of multipolarity as the sole instance
of post–World War II grand-strategic discontinuity. To be consistent with the article’s
theory, it should follow that Nixon and Kissinger were capable of acting as “deter-
mined agents of change” because they were not captured by the primacist habit of
thinking characteristic of the foreign policy establishment (p. 17). It is hardly credible,
however, to classify Nixon, an avid Cold Warrior and former vice president, and
Kissinger, a Harvard professor and prominent Council on Foreign Relations member, as
outside the Blob of their day.
Ultimately, these theoretical and empirical shortcomings suggest that Porter did not
adequately consider the simplest alternative explanation: primacy persisted because it
was preferable to the United States’ other grand-strategic options, despite its ºaws and
excesses. Just as primacy’s “excellence . . . is not self-evident” (p. 46), neither is its infe-
riority, and continuity may have in fact resulted from the presence, rather than absence,
of strategic reºection. This proposition suggests that the puzzle motivating the article is
not a puzzle at all.
—Rebecca Friedman Lissner
Newport, Rhode Island

Patrick Porter Replies:

I am grateful to Peter Feaver and Hal Brands, and Rebecca Lissner, for their replies to
my article “Why America’s Grand Strategy Has Not Changed.”1 In the article, I argued
that the habitual ideas of the American foreign policy establishment (“the Blob”) make

8. The central attribute of the Blob, according to Porter, is “security expertise,” though it also has
certain demographic traits and institutional anchors, such as “foundations, think tanks, universi-
ties, and bodies from the Council on Foreign Relations to the Trilateral Commission” (pp. 11, 15,
16). Government service may also induct individuals into the Blob, as “career ofªcials” are mem-
bers, but it is not a prerequisite. Porter, “Why America’s Grand Strategy Has Not Changed,” p. 16.

1. Patrick Porter, “Why America’s Grand Strategy Has Not Changed: Power, Habit, and the U.S.
Foreign Policy Establishment,” International Security, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Spring 2018), pp. 9–46,
doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00311. Further references to this article appear parenthetically in the text.
 International Security 43:4 202

U.S. grand strategy in its fundamentals hard to change, largely limiting debate within
government to a question of how, not whether, to pursue unrivaled dominance abroad.
Below, I address several of my critics’ complaints.
Overall, the two letters fail to rebut the empirical evidence I offer about the process
of presidential decisionmaking, evidence that demonstrates a habit-driven continuity
in U.S. grand strategy. My critics do not address the evidence I provide about two presi-
dents who promised change—Bill Clinton and Donald Trump—only to be constrained
by the foreign policy establishment into preserving the United States’ prevailing grand
strategy. Under Clinton, there is no evidence of a grand-strategic reassessment within
the executive branch. That lack of evidence is telling, given the volume of reportage
about various White House intrigues. Ofªcials rebuked a colleague who publicly spec-
ulated about alternatives (pp. 30–31). Debate about whether the United States should
maintain overwhelming military preponderance quickly settled on how, not whether,
to retain it (p. 31). The persistence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was as-
sumed to be a good thing, with little wrangling over enlarging its membership. In
Trump’s case, persistent pressure from government ofªcials, Congress, allies, and the
commentariat drove a reluctant president to reinforce alliances with money and troops
(p. 41). It nudged a president who denounced failed wars and alliances to increase U.S.
military commitments in the Middle East—including the small garrison in Syria, de-
spite an earlier announcement of U.S. withdrawal2—and to pursue nuclear counter-
proliferation at the risk of war, despite having once suggested that proliferation was
tolerable (p. 42). The Trump administration has not rigorously debated alternative
grand strategies. In an anonymous op-ed essay published in the New York Times in
September 2018, a White House insider declared that “senior ofªcials,” including the
author of the op-ed, were “working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his
agenda,” because the “national security team knew better” than the president.3 So
much for the “open” marketplace of strategic reºection. Finally, veteran members of the
U.S. foreign policy establishment agree that decisionmaking is constrained, noting a
conformist pressure that imposes restrictive parameters on debate (p. 17).
Turning to Lissner’s critique, she suggests that the concept of grand strategy lacks
utility because it has no agreed meaning. She then deploys that very concept, suggest-
ing that primacy may be the best among the United States’ grand-strategic options.
Lissner suggests that my independent variable (the Blob) collapses into the dependent
variable, which she identiªes as “primacist views.” To the contrary, the dependent vari-
able is the selection of grand strategy, including by reluctant presidents. Moreover,
Lissner suggests that I offer no theory of change, but I do, with historical demonstra-
tions (pp. 17–18). She claims that the case of greatest variation—Nixon and Kissinger’s
attempt to reorganize U.S. statecraft around accepting multipolarity—contradicts my
thesis, because both Nixon and Kissinger were insiders, yet held dissenting views.
Members of the club, like them, can indeed lapse; but when they do, they meet resis-
tance. The weight of orthodoxy makes it difªcult to deviate from the bipartisan consen-

2. Mark Landler and Helene Cooper, “In Latest Shift, Trump Agrees to Leave 400 Troops in Syria,”
New York Times, February 22, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/world/middleeast/
trump-troops-syria-.html.
3. “I Am Part of the Resistance inside the Trump Administration,” New York Times, September 5,
2018, http://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance
.html.
 Correspondence: U.S. Grand Strategy 203

sus that the United States should lead the world, even in periods such as the 1970s,
when adverse external circumstances prompted more division than usual.
Lissner claims that I fail to explain why Clinton’s defense budget cuts did not revise
the U.S. commitment to military preponderance. But, again, I do. Clinton deliberately
conªned reductions to a level that still outmatched the combined spending of all the
major powers at the time, with the orthodox rationale that preponderance was neces-
sary to maintain a favorable balance of power and prevent spirals of alarm (p. 25).
Those who proposed alternative force structures and budgets, such as the Center of
Defense Information, were largely ignored. Congressional hearings focused on how
best to maintain the U.S. role as global security provider (p. 31). Even proposals for
modest modiªcations to the “two-war standard” were swiftly outºanked by primacists
who enjoyed privileged media access (p. 30).
In their criticism, Feaver and Brands deny the existence of conformist pressures,
mischaracterizing my argument as a general claim of censorship. I do not argue that so-
ciety at-large censors alternative opinions. To the contrary, there is a vibrant debate in
universities, civil society, and in specialist foreign policy journals. Mainstream media
does not suppress criticism, though it exhibits biases. Rather, the question is why public
discussion hardly penetrates internal decisions on fundamental commitments.
Feaver and Brands note that intensive debates took place over important issues such
as détente with the Soviet Union or humanitarian interventions. It does not follow,
however, that fundamental core commitments were also open to debate. They confuse
debates over fundamental commitments with debates over how to implement primacy.
For instance, they code Barack Obama’s drawdown from Iraq as a shift to offshore bal-
ancing. That is eccentric. Under Obama, the United States maintained a heavy onshore
presence in the region as a whole, averaging more than 50,000 troops, a level well above
the pre-2003 Iraq invasion norm. The United States retained an array of bases, bombed
six countries, increased arms sales, sponsored two insurgencies, and engaged in coer-
cive diplomacy against Iran. If within-theater adjustments can so readily be represented
as offshore retreat, no wonder change is difªcult.
Feaver and Brands are right that President John Kennedy considered withdrawing
U.S. troops from Europe. Such action would have been a retrenchment of grand-
strategic proportions, as garrisoning continental Europe is a core element of primacy. In
my article, I dated the beginning of primacy as a grand strategy to the early 1960s,
which is evidently too early. Nevertheless, the United States established a commitment
to armed supremacy soon after.
Feaver and Brands’s case is weaker with regard to President Jimmy Carter, who gave
up his attempt to withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea. Carter was met not with a
clean debate where options were painstakingly weighed, but with resistance, which
took the form of leaks of revised military estimates and political pressure from allies,
advisers, and diplomats. Carter was unpersuaded, capitulating only because he felt po-
litically “isolated,” his hand having been “forced.”4
Feaver and Brands, and Lissner, assert that the U.S. strategy of primacy endures
because it works. Postwar American statecraft can indeed boast achievements, but
consider also where that strategy has led. U.S. debt stands at a projected $22 trillion,
larger than the U.S. economy, posing “substantial risks” according to the Congressional

4. Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices: Four Critical Years in Managing America’s Foreign Policy (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1983), p. 129.
 International Security 43:4 204

Budget Ofªce.5 The effort to reinforce the commitment to primacy after the terrorist at-
tacks of September 11, 2001, and transform the Middle East led to the strategically illit-
erate, wasteful, and constitutionally damaging “war on terror,” including the United
States’ worst war since Vietnam. Feaver and Brands euphemize these developments as
“setbacks.”6 The attempt to disarm North Korea with coercion failed—almost trigger-
ing a catastrophic conºict on the peninsula on two occasions. The United States is on a
collision course with competitors in Asia, Europe, the Persian Gulf, and Latin America.
The protracted wars of primacy also led to the rise of Trump. Research demon-
strates that wars in the Middle East helped Trump win knife-edge electoral victories in
Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.7
In sum, despite evidence to the contrary, in Washington the belief endures that only
armed supremacy can secure the republic. As was said of King Philip II, “No experi-
ence of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence.”8
—Patrick Porter
Birmingham, United Kingdom

5. Congressional Budget Office, The 2018 Long-Term Budget Outlook (Washington, D.C.: Congres-
sional Budget Office, 2018), p. 1.
6. Hal Brands and Peter D. Feaver, “Should America Retrench? The Battle over Offshore Bal-
ancing,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 95, No. 6 (November/December 2016), pp. 164–169, at p. 168, https://
www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/should-america-retrench.
7. Douglas L. Kriner and Francis X. Shen, “Battlefield Casualties and Ballot Box Defeat:
Did the Bush-Obama Wars Cost Clinton the White House?” Boston University and University of
Minnesota Law School, June 19, 2017, http://www.forschungsnetzwerk.at/downloadpub/2017
_SSRN-id2989040_usa.pdf.
8. Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984),
p. 7.