Review: Shadi Hamid's The Case for American Power

or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Hegemon

Full disclosure: I’ve contributed before to Wisdom of Crowds, which

Shadi Hamid

co-founded, and been on more than one podcast with him, plus I like the guy. Normally I would consider this disqualifying for a reviewer and mentioned as much when he asked me to review it. This is mitigated, however, by the fact that we’ve never actually met in person and have fairly substantial disagreements in both theoretical and policy terms, as will be made clear below.

No one quite seems to know what to make of the present geopolitical moment. There is not even agreement about whether it is still a post-Cold War era or a post-post-Cold War one. One of the hallmarks of this uncertainty is disagreement about the status of American preeminence. Whereas there was much debate about U.S. policies, particularly during the War on Terror, there was greater consensus about America’s status.

Today, the epistemological situation is murkier. Are we still the hegemon, or has the international system shifted to bipolarity? Has China in fact already eclipsed the United States in important metrics? Are our alliance system and existing international commitments a source of strength or weakness? Are we a fundamentally wealthy country with too much evidence of poverty, or a fundamentally poor one with an excess of billionaires? And so on.

But there has been a normative shift as well. The Right has largely abandoned the high-minded appeals of the Dubya era in favor of the language of “America First” and the national interest, despite having devoted relatively little attention to defining just what those interests are. The progressive Left has if anything become more pessimistic about the country, not to say its conduct abroad, since Barack Obama left office.

Into this breach steps Shadi Hamid, with a new book, the title of which minces no words: The Case for American Power. This title has something of a double meaning—viz. it argues both that American power is indeed quite real and durable and also that we should be glad for it.

Shadi is an interesting candidate to have written a book on this theme. He is a self-declared left-liberal and far from a booster of American foreign policy, particularly over the past two years. Don’t shoot me if I have this wrong, but I believe he may have been the first writer to refer to Israel’s war in Gaza as a “genocide” in a mainstream periodical, and he has been fiercely critical of U.S. support for Israel during that time.¹ And as he himself acknowledges, much of this book was composed under the shadow of that conflict.

I should say at the outset that I am not really the target audience for this book. This book it seems to me is very much the work of a liberal writing to other liberals—even progressives—many of whom have grown disenchanted with the United States’ exercise of authority around the world and perhaps with the United States itself, or who take it as axiomatic that we have entered an era of American decline anyway, or both.

At the same time, I found it fascinating to read through the looking glass, as it were. We are approximately the same age, and the 9/11 attacks were an intellectually formative event for both of us. We experienced them quite differently of course. Though we’re both Americans, he is, as he announces near the outset, an Arab Muslim. This is particularly noteworthy, because despite his vocal dismay with much of our post-9/11 foreign policy (a dismay I largely share, for what it’s worth), Shadi’s own outlook ends up replicating many of neoconservatism’s central tenets.

Reverse engineering neoconservatism

In an ironic sense—particularly given his sharp criticisms of U.S. policy toward Israel—Shadi may be one of the last true neoconservatives.² Though one still hears the term tossed around as an epithet, nearly all of the fin de siècle neocons have either died, retired, turned their attention primarily to anti-Trumpism, or weren’t really neocons to begin with.

But insofar as it referred to a coherent (or semi-coherent) foreign policy persuasion, Shadi adopts most of its core precepts.

First, whereas his fellow liberals have consistently evinced a kind of distrust (if not distaste) for actual democratic practices, preferring to work through government bureaucracies and non-governmental organizations, Shadi remains committed to democracy as such. That is, he retains both the belief that democratic decision-making is preferable to the alternatives, and the belief that our own democratic decisions should at all times favor the fostering of democracy elsewhere in the world.

Second, he is an unabashed proponent of American power (it is not incidental that “Power” is the title of his first chapter). Interestingly, he is arguing not just for American power in a generic sense but for American primacy. His case has both descriptive and normative elements. That is, as a matter of analysis, U.S. primacy is here to stay—even in the face of China’s challenge—and furthermore this is a good and desirable outcome. He even uses the term “Pax Americana” as one of approbation.

His opposition to many of our post-9/11 Middle Eastern adventures (up to and including our recent support for Israel’s conduct in Gaza) might seem to point him in a realist direction, but he never discusses political realism as such, and he emphatically disputes what has increasingly become a hallmark of realist analysis: claims for the rise of multipolarity in the international system. I happen to think he’s mostly right on the merits; with the partial exception of China, the international system is not tending toward the kind of balancing that true multipolarity would suggest.³

Also like the neoconservatives, and unlike so many liberals, he does not put much faith in the liberalizing powers of markets or international institutions. This is not to say he has really abandoned liberalism. His chapter on “Progress” makes no bones about his belief in its goodness and desirability—just not its inevitability.

He is, after all, writing from the standpoint of several decades into China’s economic liberalization, recalling the wildly optimistic projections of future political liberalization that accompanied its receiving “Most Favored Nation” status at the tail-end of the Clinton era.

Alongside this, he adopts a number of quintessentially neoconservative critiques of what might be called “weak Wilsonianism”—e.g., he takes both Barack Obama and John Kerry to task for their diffident reactions to Russia’s invasion of Crimea and Syria’s bloody civil war. As he concludes at the end of the book’s introduction: “a more just global order, is impossible without power. And as it turns out, it’s not only impossible without power; it’s impossible without American power.” This could easily have been penned by Robert Kagan or Paul Wolfowitz two decades ago.

At the same time, he accepts the basically Wilsonian—or really Kantian—premise that regime type matters: America’s benevolence (such as it is) is a function of its being a liberal democracy; conversely, Russia and China are viewed with much greater wariness due to their non-democratic governments.

While I appreciated Shadi’s democratism and think it sets him apart from many nominal liberals, I do think it somewhat relies on rhetoric over analysis. By way of counter-arguments, he marshals a number of classic criticisms of democracy—Alexis de Tocqueville, John Adams, et al.—but I’m not sure he fully INTERROGATES his own presuppositions (to use a term that everyone loves too much now, and I love to hate). That is, he mostly just disagrees with them.

He also ends up combining several related but different arguments for democracy: its capacity for generating wealth, its comparative resilience in the face of adversity, and its ability to satisfy our human need for public association and self-rule. This last strikes me as the least persuasive, not because I disagree with it, but because I’m not certain how much modern democracies meet this standard. The mechanisms of the modern state substantially interrupt the sort of direct political engagement that we associate with the classical world. It might even be said, that it is the peculiar relationship between democracy and the modern state that is doing much of the work here overall. That is to say, what we call “democracies” are the purest illustrations of the link between the power of the state and the resources of the population under its control, without the distortions that various forms of authoritarianism tend to introduce.

Relatedly, he has a good discussion on the distinctiveness of modern state structures in the eponymous chapter on “Autocracy,” and particularly how they have vastly enhanced the power of modern despotism.⁴ But one is nonetheless struck by how much of this discussion applies as well to democracies, and how limited are elections in most mass democracies to redirect the mechanisms of surveillance and control.

The other problem here is an overly linear account of the relationship between regime type and state behavior. Like Shadi, I am not particularly sanguine about a Chinese-led world order—or even one in which the PRC were more dominant than it is at present—but honesty compels me to acknowledge that its actual foreign and military policies have not been especially immoderate, even during the periods of greatest domestic insanity under Mao.

Conversely, there is no small irony in that the case that most incensed him in recent years involved democratic Israel’s pummeling of Gaza with the backing of democratic America. Now one can issue all kinds of caveats about limits to actual democratic consensus in these and other instances, but it pretty quickly lands us in “no true Scotsman” territory.

In any case, I think the strongest case Shadi makes comes from that ambivalent observer, Tocqueville: “democracy does not give the most skillful government to the people, but it does what the most skillful government is powerless to create; it spreads a restive activity through the whole social body, a superabundant force.” I think this gets more fully at the strengths of democracy and of American democracy specifically. It also holds up for consideration the American regime in the broadest sense of the word—that is to say, ours is a fundamentally democratic way of life that finds expression in all manner of civic activity rather than being limited to a set of formal processes (e.g., elections).

Contingency, irony, solidarity

As above, Shadi actually likes his country and dislikes expressions of national self-abasement. This frankly distinguishes him from a great many commentators of whichever political persuasion. He has a nice discussion of Roger Scruton’s term “oikophobia,” i.e., the fear or hatred of one’s own society: a tendency commonly found among the Left for as long as I’ve known it and increasingly on the Right as well.

He is also very good on the partiality of soi-disant independent critics of the United States, like Chris Hedges, whose exclusive focus on the sins of one country betrays a moralism that is not itself moral. I quite like Shadi’s use of David Runciman’s phrase: “‘hypocrisy about hypocrisy itself”—viz the motivated denial that hypocrisy is inherent in political life. This typically takes the form of accusing others of hypocrisy so as to draw attention away from one’s own inevitable reliance upon it. China makes good use of this form of misdirection, as did the Soviets before them.

Indeed, it is probably this, more than anything else, that places him firmly outside of the contemporary political left, which generally views the United States (often among other developed capitalist countries) as essentially unredeemable, and further holds that accepting this reality is a sine qua non for any kind of political maturity.

At the same time, not being a realist, he can’t simply default to saying, to quote the great Hyman Roth: “this is the business we’ve chosen.” Hence, he has to either avoid the United States’ evident legacy of nastiness abroad or deal with the problem of hypocrisy.

Fortunately, his chapter on “Hypocrisy” is strong—indeed essential to his overall argument, given how he accepts a certain enduring American righteousness despite so much apparent evidence to the contrary. (Further disclosure, he also cites me in this chapter, though it is my essay on hypocrisy in sexual politics rather than hypocrisy in world politics.) No Anne Applebaum he. This surely makes for a sturdier brief for American power that one that simply constructs a falsely flattering historical record.

I appreciated Shadi’s discussions of how his post-9/11 self found Noam Chomsky’s moralistic denunciations of American hypocrisy bracing but came over time to find this same moralism failed to do justice to the reality of political motivations (he does a nice job of introducing autobiographical details as a way of indicating his own intellectual trajectory without getting self-indulgent about it). I generally find this account convincing—viz. that political wisdom begins with the recognition of the limitations of moralism. And part of that recognition entails a certain acceptance of hypocrisy in public affairs, and particularly the recognition that there are worse things in life than hypocrisy (this is Judith Shklar’s métier).

At the same time, part of Shadi’s argument is not just that a nation that acts hypocritically may also be less cruel than one that is direct about its motivations (cf. the Athenian position in the Melian Dialogue). It is also that a nation that participates in hypocrisy is a better candidate for progressive improvement than one that doesn’t. In other words, the defense of hypocrisy is not entirely stable, insofar as it rests upon a certain expectation that a hypocritical country may over time become un-hypocritically good (as opposed to unhypocritically evil). This is what I take his final chapter (“Progress”) to be pointing to, but he is too honest an observer to treat it as a given. And, in any case, it’s not entirely clear what his metric is, especially given how he allows that the dangerous realities of world politics will punish a purely benign power.

Consequently, the reader is left wondering what exactly is his standard for distinguishing between necessary evil and, well, plain evil.

What is to be done?

In the end, I am persuaded by many of his core claims (though some of this may be a case of preaching to the converted). I think American preeminence likely isn’t going anywhere, and that this is on balance the best of probable alternatives. Moreover, it is certainly the best of alternatives for actual Americans, who are already implicated in the fortunes of their country and vice versa.

On this point, it is interesting how much of the book seems to be addressed to a kind of disinterested audience, whose members can confer or withdraw their allegiance as far as they feel their country merits it. I actually think this is a fairly accurate psychological picture of much of its readership; I just think there’s something false in their self-understanding.

What I mean by this is that, whatever their feelings about specific policies, their relationship to the country in which they hold citizenship is not really voluntary in any meaningful sense. Hirschman-style “exit” is of course available to any number of individuals, but we are not talking about sizable group here. The reality is that for most people one’s citizenship is a given, and any evaluative judgment one makes about the United States as an American has to begin with that reality. We may wish it were freer, or more just, or more equitable, or more pacific, or more conducive to virtue, or take your pick, but we have to do so as citizens—not as disembodied moral judges. There is no Rawlsian original position available to us from which we get to choose our patria.

All of this is to say that we are interested in the fortunes of our country in a literal sense: our personal interests are not entirely separable from the condition of our country (it’s true that insofar as people begin to perceive that they do not share in the common wealth, that poses a serious political problem, and this sense likely contributes to some of the radicalization lately noticed on the right, but this is another matter). The point is that we should care about American power, because we are in fact Americans. And whether America is in fact good (or as good as we might wish it to be), it is still ours. This is something I think Shadi more or less intuitively accepts, though I wonder how much this is so for his intended audience.⁵

In any case, this points to an intrinsic weakness of this particular rhetorical approach, which can only accomplish so much when it comes to persuading people of something they should already feel. Patriotism, after all, is a bit like falling in love: it’s not really something you can reason your way into, no matter how many good arguments there are.

Meanwhile, what should American power be used for? This is really the foreign policy question of the post-Cold War era. As I understand it, Hamid’s position is that a) enduring American power is a reality; b) our motivations are generally more decent than the Left often appreciates; c) even where they are not, our democratic institutions allow for specific corrections and general progress in ways that the regimes of rival powers (Russia, China, etc.) do not. But even if one accepts all three premises, it is not entirely clear what evaluative standard he would have us use to set policies that are both morally guided and still conducive to our interests.

During Bill Clinton’s first administration, there was a famous (or infamous) exchange between Madeleine Albright, then Ambassador to the UN, and Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which (as recounted by Powell):

[Albright] asked me ‘What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?’ I thought I would have an aneurysm.

Coming to the end of the book, I found myself wondering where Shadi would fall on this issue. Does he, following Albright, believe that our powerful capabilities should be put in the service of moral obligations? If so which and to what extent?

Should we intervene militarily in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan? Would he accept a negotiated outcome to the Russia-Ukraine war that kept the peace but left substantial Ukrainian territory in Russian hands? Or less dramatically, does this commitment to enduring American power preclude trying to persuade our European allies to take greater responsibility for collective defense? Would he counsel a more pro-Palestinian policy in the Middle East, even if it ended up compromising U.S. interests there?

To return to the hypocrisy question, are we ultimately to resolve it by simply allowing liberal precepts to dictate more of our actual conduct? Or does this end up being a matter of indefinitely pursuing de facto “realist” policies while maintaining a bad conscience about it? What are the hard limits past which even hypocrisy is no longer acceptable? What are our core interests or obligations against which others, no matter how worthy in principle, might have to be sacrificed?

More broadly, I found myself wondering whether his highly distinctive outlook can serve as an effective guide to action in a manner that furthers the interests of the country while satisfying the moral expectations he raises. Indeed, much of the political instability of the present moment has to do with the fact that there is no real consensus about such expectations. In any case, the devil is in the details—which is appropriate really. Power, after all, has always been one of the devil’s great temptations.

1. This would be one of the places we disagree.

2. I’m speaking strictly of neoconservatism as a foreign policy tendency not a domestic one.

3. On reflection, I would say that one’s analysis of this question is conditioned by one’s preferences: viz. those who see or foresee a more multipolar system are also hoping for such a system to emerge, on the basis that it will constrain the United States’ maximalist impulses. Granted, the reverse is true as well: those who want the United States to act as a global champion will also be more likely to imagine that the global distribution of capabilities will continue to favor such a scenario.

4. Here, I must confess to a pet peeve: that despite its common usage, very few regimes that get labeled “autocracies” really are. Owing to the complex structure of the modern state, it’s quite rare to find a regime that concentrates absolute power in a single person. What we typically find instead are varying shades of authoritarianism.

5. It is, for example, striking how many of those who share Shadi’s outrage over Israel’s conduct and American support for it tend to extend their disapproval to a more comprehensive rejection of the United States as it’s existed at basically any point in its history.