Those who favor restraint are neither pacifists nor isolationists (the latter label is another common calumny). They understand that there are genuine threats to national security and that some may necessitate the use of force. What merits debate, however, isn’t whether force should be a means of statecraft but the purposes for which it should be used and not used.
Restraint, a conception of statecraft, challenges principles that have shaped U.S. foreign policy for decades. Counterattacks are therefore unsurprising. They may even be a compliment, however inadvertent. The latest critique, by John Ikenberry and Daniel Deudney, two prominent self-declared liberal internationalists, appears in Survival, a global politics and strategy magazine published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Their analysis misunderstands and misrepresents restraint. Also, it exemplifies liberal internationalism’s obsolescence. Läs artikel