Six Guidelines for Enhancing America's Security

Raymond Smith

Security, Americas

America’s ultimate objective should be a stable international order.

What is America’s ultimate objective?

America’s ultimate objective should be a stable international order. This is not a matter of altruism, but of self-interest. In any system, since those at the top secure a disproportionate share of the system’s valuables, their fundamental interest is in maintaining system stability. The challenge is to develop a strategy for achieving that objective in today’s world. This in turn requires questioning some of the assumptions people tend to make about the nature of the international system.

There is a substantial body of theoretical literature, primarily from scholars who describe themselves as realists, that attempts to describe the operation of the international system. Realists come in a variety of flavors, but share the fundamental proposition that the international system is anarchic. That anarchy may be as expressed by Thucydides’ Athenians—the strong do what they can and the weak bear what they must—or in Hobbes’ state of nature—the war of all against all. Unlike Hobbes’ men, however, who trade freedom for security by establishing powerful ruling institutions, states trade security for freedom by refusing to permit the establishment of governing institutions. They accept no bounds on their activity other than those forced on them by stronger states. There is no escape from the state of nature in the world of the realists.

Realists differ among themselves about the consequences of this for the behavior of state actors. Some describe the fundamental objective of state behavior as maximizing actual or relative power; others describe it as maximizing actual or relative security. Others do not accept that states actually behave in ways that maximize power or security but believe that is how they should behave. In any of these views, international stability is not—and should not be—the fundamental objective of state behavior. Instead, it is one possible outcome of striving for increases in real or relative power or security.