Historically, in both practical and theoretical debates about American foreign policy, the great divide has been between proponents of liberal internationalism--sometimes called Wilsonianism--and realism. But today, although more or less pristine strands of
neo-Wilsonian liberal internationalism survive in the foreign policy discourse, the more important intellectual debate is taking place
within the realist camp itself. Today's realists are split into "maximalists" and "minimalists", with the latter often caricatured as
neo-isolationists. While both camps share fundamental assumptions about the forces that shape world politics, once it comes to
specifics the two generate very different views as to what U.S. grand strategy ought to be. One can therefore no longer speak meaningfully about a realist critique of liberal internationalism, for realism today does not offer a unified alternative to liberal internationalist policies.

To complicate things further, while their basic assumptions differ, maximal realists sometimes find themselves in accord with liberal
internationalists. To take one important current example, both have tended to favor American military intervention in the Balkans. On the other hand, minimal realists sometimes do find themselves more in accord with isolationists than with maximal realists--and again the Bosnia debate illustrates the point. Hence, the schism between maximal and minimal realists merits close attention.

The basic difference between the two camps, understood as ideal types, is not hard to state: It is between those who would trust in
hegemonism and those who would trust in the balance of power, these being the only two pure models of international stability that
scholars have ever gleaned from the study of history. Maximal realists put their money on hegemony--or as much of it as they can
get under specific circumstances--and assume that, as it will be American, it will be a benign hegemony. They seek U.S. security
through the preservation of maximum feasible American military and geopolitical dominance over the international system. Minimalists, on the contrary, advise that the United States should seek security by capitalizing on the dynamics of the balance of power in an emerging multipolar world. They do so because they believe that the United States lacks the resources to sustain its present predominance, and, more fundamentally, because they see hegemony as inherently unstable.

Both maximal and minimal approaches are realist strategies because they embrace the core assumptions of the realist paradigm: anarchy among states requires and justifies self-help; reasons of state predominate over conventional interpersonal standards of moral behavior; and power relationships predominate over internal political characteristics in determining state behavior. But maximal and minimal versions of realism today do not generate equally realistic strategies. The operational differences between them may be
demonstrated by considering their respective implications for future U.S. strategy in East Asia, and after first considering the two
positions--maximal and minimal realism--in general theoretical terms, I shall do this. It will be my contention that minimal realist
approaches offer by far the more realistic options for the United States.

Maximal Realism: The Strategy of Preponderance

Realism can best be understood by contrasting it with the liberal internationalism that represents the prevailing popular approach to
world politics among the elites of Western democracies. In its unadulterated form, liberal internationalism boils down to the
assumption that a virtuous cycle binds together democracy, economic interdependence, and peace. Its enemies are authoritarianism, narrow nationalism, and excessive reliance on the use of force as a policy instrument. It aspires to apply the rule of law to state interactions, and, while not necessarily utopian, is quick to spot and to advocate potential systemic change, presumably for the better.

Realists see things differently; in particular, they are skeptical of any easy prospect for benign systemic change. If history is "just one
damned thing after another", then for realists international politics is the same damned things over and over again. War, great power
security and economic competitions, the rise and fall of empires and great states, and the formation and dissolution of alliances are, in
this view, ceaseless and changeless at the same time. The number of permutations is virtually infinite, but the rules by which they are
generated are fixed by human nature and the hard realities of political life.

The realist paradigm explains why this is so. International politics is an anarchic, self-help realm because there is no central authority
to make and enforce rules of behavior on states. The absence of such an authority means that each state is responsible for ensuring its
own survival, free to define its own interests and to employ means of its own choosing in pursuit of those interests. International
politics is therefore fundamentally competitive. While this competition is not necessarily chaotic or disorderly, states cannot
escape the security dilemma, in which the fear and distrust of other states is normal and usually reciprocal. The imperative of survival
thus forces states to adopt strategies that maximize their military and economic power relative to their rivals.

Unlike liberal internationalism, realism is not an uplifting approach to international politics. Owen Harries has nicely captured its flavor:

"Realism is a dour and pessimistic doctrine, one that stresses the inevitability of conflict, the intractability of interests, the dangers of life in a world of sovereign states. The virtues it most strongly recommends are prudence and vigilance."

On this all realists agree, and therefore conclude that, international politics being the way it is, security must be the overarching goal of American strategy. But that is where agreement ends.

It is a commonplace, but nonetheless true, observation that the Soviet Union's collapse transformed the bipolar post-1945
international system into a unipolar one, with the United States as the sole great power. Maximal realists believe that U.S. post-Cold
War strategy should aim at perpetuating unipolarity by preventing the rise of new great powers. This is because, they further assume,
American hegemony will guarantee a stable international order based on America's power and its liberal values. Maximalists usually
combine realist concerns about power with liberal internationalism's core policy agenda. In other words, the stabilizing qualities of the
hegemon aside, maximalists assume that other states will accept the leadership of a more or less benign, liberal hegemon such as the
United States because of the collective goods--general security reassurance, predictable "rules of the game", and an open
international economic system--they would receive in exchange. Unlike true liberal internationalists, who believe that liberalism
inevitably will triumph of its own accord, maximalists believe that only American power can ensure that liberal principles will prevail.
And they view liberal internationalist principles instrumentally rather than ideologically: democracy and free trade are good because they are means to a desirable end--a high degree of security for the United States in the international system--not the other way around.

Maximalism's contemporary intellectual framework can be parsed from both the writings of its leading proponents and from official policy statements penned during the Bush and Clinton administrations. Perhaps the strongest statement of the key premise--that American strategy should aim to preserve the United States as the sole great power--comes from the leaked and subsequently notorious draft of the FY 1994-9 Defense Planning Guidance, prepared in 1992. That document stated that the United States "must account sufficiently for the interests of the large industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political or economic order", and that the United States "must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." Maximalists believe that, having emerged from the Cold War in a pre-eminent geopolitical position, America's security requires maintenance of that position. As Samuel P. Huntington puts it: "States pursue primacy in order to be able to insure their security, promote their interests, and shape the international environment in ways that will reflect their interests and values."

Maximalists generally prescribe a two-pronged strategy to maintain American dominance: Geopolitically, the United States should
maintain, and if necessary extend, security guarantees to Europe and East Asia in order to negate the incentives that might push eligible
states to become great powers; and ideologically, it should encourage the spread of democracy and the preservation (and expansion) of an open international economy because democracy and interdependence conduce to peace.

As to the first part of this strategy, maximalists favor U.S. geostrategic predominance because they believe that the rise of new
great powers would destabilize the international order. "U.S. leadership", former Pentagon official Zalmay Khalilzad typically
argues, "would be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system." Maximalists appear to
believe that the alternative to U.S. predominance is a return to a mechanistic eighteenth/nineteenth century balance of power system, a
system which they see as flawed because it requires subtle diplomatic calculations and compromises to function effectively. The current debilities of operating such a balance, as maximalists see it, are many. The main fear is that any diminution of American power or retraction of U.S. security guarantees would result in the "renationalization" of foreign and security policies, notably in the
cases of Japan and Germany. If these states ever doubted the U.S. capacity to defend them, the argument goes, they would act
unilaterally to ensure their security, in turn fueling their neighbors' insecurity and triggering destabilizing regional security
competitions. Widespread nuclear proliferation would be the inevitable consequence of multipolarity and concomitant renationalization.

The adverse consequences of multipolarity can be averted, maximalists believe, if the United States maintains intact in the post-Cold War era the Cold War system of alliance arrangements that provided credible security guarantees to Japan and Germany. Official U.S. government documents make the same argument. As the 1992 Regional Defense Strategy document states: "It is not in our interest . . . to return to earlier periods in which multiple military powers balanced one against another in what passed for security structures, while regional, or even global peace hung in the balance."

As to the ideological dimension of maximalist thinking, its proponents see a synergy between liberal values and American primacy.
American primacy, they believe, creates the kind of stable international system conducive to the spread of democracy and free
trade. And, in turn, as democracy and free trade expand abroad--"enlarging the zone of peace"--America's security is thereby
increased. Maximalists thus embrace a broad conception of American interests because they see U.S. strategic, political, economic, and ideological aspirations as inextricably linked.

This view has found ample official expression. As President Bush said in his January 1992 State of the Union address: "[T]he world trusts us with power--and the world is right. They trust us to be fair and restrained; they trust us to be on the right side of decency. They trust us to do what's right." The Regional Defense Strategy sings the same song: "Our fundamental belief in democracy and human rights gives other nations confidence that our significant military power threatens no one's aspirations for peaceful democratic progress." The Clinton administration carries on the tradition. Although it emphasizes the liberal internationalist component of U.S. strategy more than did the Bush administration, there is substantial congruence in the two administrations' declaratory policies. As the
Clinton administration's National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement states:

"We believe that our goals of enhancing our security, bolstering our economic prosperity, and promoting democracy are mutually supportive. Secure nations are more likely to support free trade and maintain democratic structures. Nations with growing economies and strong trade ties are more likely to feel secure and to work toward freedom. And democratic states are less likely to threaten our interests and more likely to cooperate with the U.S. to meet security threats and promote free trade and sustainable development."

The Minimalist Alternative

Clearly, many people--officials and scholars alike--agree with the premises of the maximalist argument. Nevertheless, that argument is
wrong. The maximalist strategy of preponderance raises several questions. Three are central.

First, even if it is desirable in the abstract, is such a strategy viable? In other words, can U.S. unipolarity be preserved? The strategy of preponderance is the geopolitical analog to the hegemonic stability theory favored by many international political economists.
Minimalist realists, however, suggest that international politics is shaped strategically by what could be called the hegemonic
instability theory. In a unipolar world, systemic factors--anarchy, reciprocal security fears, concerns about the distribution of
relative power--should impel states that can do so to act to counterbalance a hegemon. A hegemon's attempt to perpetuate unipolarity thus will have the paradoxical effect of accelerating the emergence of new great power challenges to it.

Second, in its security dimension, the strategy of preponderance could require an ambitious expansion of U.S. extended deterrence
strategy. But can the preconditions that allowed for successful deterrence in Central Europe during the Cold War be replicated in the
post-Cold War world? What are the costs and risks of a post-Cold War extended deterrence strategy? It is not at all clear that the United States can--or should wish to--maintain the sort of security guarantees to Japan and Germany required to prevent renationalization and multipolarity.

Third, do liberal values really contribute as much to American security as maximalists suggest? In particular, is American
liberalism so powerful as to inculcate a widespread belief in American exceptionalism abroad? If not, American power will not be
seen as benign by significant others. Moreover, the liberal internationalist component of maximal realism may blind policymakers
to the possibility that other democratic states may threaten American interests, if not through war than through other forms of
competition. And, because they are committed to promoting economic interdependence, maximalists may overlook the importance of relative power.

In contrast to maximalism, a minimalist grand strategy would cast the United States in the role of an offshore balancer. Rather than
attempting to suppress the rise of new great powers, a minimalist strategy would navigate multipolarity to maintain U.S. security by:
(1) exploiting the U.S. position as a secure, relatively powerful, insular great power; (2) relying on global and regional power
balances to contain newly emerging powers; and (3) increasing America's relative power position by taking advantage of the
economically debilitating security competitions that newly emerging powers (who are America's economic rivals) must undertake, and by devising a more assertive national economic strategy designed to revitalize America's relative economic power.

Maximalism in Practice--East Asia

Having set out the two realist positions in theoretical terms, I now turn to how they differ in practice by contrasting their views on
several specific issues in the East Asian context: unipolarity; extended nuclear deterrence and selective nuclear proliferation;
economic interdependence and the importance of relative power relations; and the role of ideals in U.S. policy.

Current U.S.-East Asia strategy, conveniently set out in a February 1995 Pentagon document, rests on the premise that U.S. vital
interests, increasingly defined in economic terms ("the stability and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region is a matter of vital national interest affecting the well-being of all Americans") require a strong American military presence in East Asia. Absent that presence, the destabilizing things maximalists predict of multipolarity will happen:

If the United States does not provide the central visible, stabilizing force in the Asia and Pacific region, it is quite possible that another nation might--but not necessarily in a way that meets America's fundamental interests and those of our friends and allies. Insecure nations will build up their armaments. Arms races could in turn foster fear and instability.

Extended nuclear deterrence is a key part of the strategy. Stating that the United States is "reconfirming the nuclear umbrella it
extends to its allies", the Pentagon aims to avert the renationalization of Japanese foreign and security policy. Thus the
U.S.-Japan security treaty is lauded because "it contributes to overall regional security. The United States-Japan alliance, while
mutually beneficial, has far-reaching benefits extending to the maintenance of peace and stability of the entire international community."

To round out the maximalist panoply, the Pentagon's East Asia strategy paper stresses the linkage between America's security and its values:

"United States interests in the region are mutually-reinforcing: security is necessary for economic growth, security and growth make
it more likely . . . that democracy will emerge, and democratization makes international conflict less likely because democracies are unlikely to fight one another."

So much for the official line. What are the realities of contemporary East Asia, and how have maximalist realists interpreted them?

Over the past several years, many U.S. observers have begun to focus on the strategic implications of China's rise to great power status. Several incidents have strained Sino-American relations and suggest to many that China is becoming a more assertive power in East Asian geopolitics. These include: an October 1994 Yellow Sea incident involving USS Kitty Hawk and a Chinese nuclear attack submarine; China's January 1995 seizure of some of the disputed Spratly Islands; Beijing's expulsion of two U.S. military attachés on espionage charges; the arrest of human rights activists Harry Wu and Wei Jingsheng; and especially the growing tension between Beijing and Washington over Taiwan. China is also engaged in a significant military build-up and has undertaken a domestic campaign to bolster nationalist sentiment by playing on memories of the 1937-45 war against Japan. China's leadership now views the United States as unremittingly hostile, and, in a major policy reversal, for the first time in a quarter century China no longer welcomes the U.S. military role in East Asia. Rejecting the American portrayal of itself as an impartial balancer in East Asia, Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen declared in August 1995: "We do not recognize the United States as a power which claims to maintain the peace and stability of Asia."

Many American realists have identified China as a major emerging threat to several important U.S. security interests and are asking
whether Washington's best response is to "engage" China or to "contain" it. The Clinton administration's policy, as set out in the
Pentagon document, is to "engage China and support its constructive integration into the international community. . . ." Arthur Waldron
has stated the opposing view:

"From now on the Asian security situation will increasingly resemble that of inter-war Europe: a society of strong nation-states,
increasingly well-armed and in possession of conflicting visions of the future, and in the shadow of an erratic and sometimes menacing
power. . . .[U]nless the United States begins to see things as they are, and to play an active role in deterring China and shaping Asian affairs, it will pay the eventual and possibly catastrophic price."

Waldron also delicately alludes to the likely renationalization of Japanese policy if the U.S. fails to contain China: "Japan . . . will reconsider its role." Just in case worse comes to worst, the American national security establishment already is conducting war games that simulate a Sino-American war in 2010.

In truth, however, the United States faces not one great power challenge in East Asia but two. While China's great power emergence
has attracted intense discussion, far less attention has been focused on Japan's even more stunning rise to the threshold of great power
status. Few Americans think of Japan as a military power, but it is on the verge of becoming one just the same. Japan has the world's
third largest defense budget, very well-equipped and trained forces, and a sophisticated high-tech defense industry. It is already a
virtual nuclear power, a point dramatized in 1992-3 by Japan's importation of large amounts of plutonium. Japan could, if it wished,
build warheads and mount them on intercontinental-range delivery vehicles (the H-2 missile, ostensibly developed for launching
satellites) in a matter of weeks. Unwilling to remain dependent on the United States, Japan is now developing an independent capability to gather and analyze politico-military and economic intelligence.

Japan's great power emergence is reflected most dramatically and obviously, however, in its economic prowess. When the dollar reached its most recent (mid-April 1995) nadir in relation to the yen, Japan's GNP was just two-tenths of a percent less than America's--a remarkable accomplishment for a country with few natural resources and half of America's population. This comparison of respective economic power is somewhat exaggerated because it reflects an overvalued yen and undervalued dollar, but even before the yen's 1995 appreciation, respected international economists were forecasting that sometime in the next century's first decade Japan's GNP would exceed America's. If Japan does surpass the United States as the world's leading economic power it would be a fact of enormous strategic, not merely economic, importance. As Paul Kennedy has noted, throughout international history "economic shifts heralded the rise of new Great Powers which one day would have a decisive impact on the military/territorial order." It is impressive testimony to the power of liberal internationalist beliefs that Washington remains largely oblivious to the emergence of Japan as a great power rival. After all, according to that doctrine a supposed free-market democracy such as Japan cannot be a geopolitical rival.

As for the maximalists, their views of Japan are ambivalent. Most of them, most of the time--Huntington being a notable exception--are unconcerned about the ongoing shift in economic power between the United States and Japan because they see economic interdependence as mutually beneficial. At the same time they stress the danger of Japan becoming an active great power should the United States withdraw its security umbrella. Thus, they worry about atmospherics--the fear that trade frictions could erode U.S. public support for maintaining the security relationship with Japan, a relationship they would not jeopardize by pressing Tokyo too hard on bilateral economic issues. Some maximalists are so frightened by the prospect of Japan as a great power that they would even abjure pressing it for a greater degree of strategic reciprocity and increased military burden sharing. For all maximalists, however, the U.S. security guarantee to Japan is vital because it prevents the emergence of the dreaded condition of East Asian multipolarity. Multipolarity challenges strategic planners because a state can be threatened by more than one adversary, it is often unclear which potential rival constitutes the most salient threat, and complex judgments must be made about the interplay of rivals' power, intentions, and the timeframes in which power and intentions may intersect.

Over time, China could emerge as a very formidable adversary, but such a possibility hinges on three highly-problematical assumptions: that China maintains its domestic political cohesion; that it can sustain for a prolonged period its current high (approximately 12 percent per year) growth rates; and that it can equal or surpass the United States in military technology, organization, and doctrine. In contrast to China, Japan has already established leadership in key high-technology sectors, possesses tremendous financial and manufacturing clout, has highly advanced actual and latent military capabilities, and has a GNP that is closing in on America's. And unlike China, Japan's underlying political stability and internal cohesion are not in doubt.

China may become a threat over time; Japan will become a great power rival in the short term. For that eventuality the United States needs a realistic strategy. Neither global internationalism nor maximalist realism can provide one because their assumptions blind them to the challenge Japan poses. Minimalist realism, however, can provide a realistic strategy.

Impractical, Costly, and Dangerous

Maximal realism has obvious appeal because its arguments are emotionally attractive and intuitively plausible. It is not hard for Americans to believe that a benignly motivated America is good for the world, and that America itself would be safer--strategically and ideologically--in a world where its primacy is unchallenged by other great powers. Maximal realists are almost certainly correct in
assuming that international politics will revert to more traditional patterns of behavior if the United States is unable to stymie the rise of new great powers. A maximalist strategy is also attractive because it promises to dampen incentives for nuclear proliferation and may therefore contribute to avoiding nuclear war in East Asia. Who could oppose that?

These appear to be compelling arguments, but appearances can be deceiving. Minimal realists reject the maximalist strategy because it is impractical, costly, and dangerous.

The strategy of preponderance is an impractical strategy because, over time, the United States cannot successfully perpetuate
unipolarity by thwarting the emergence of new great powers. America's post-Cold War "unipolar moment" is an ephemeral geopolitical aberration. The emergence of these new powers is a recurring feature in international politics that reflects both the impact of differential growth rates among states and the logic of the system. The relative distribution of power among states is constantly, if
slowly, changing; Japan's closing in on the United States in terms of GNP provides a concrete example. And the structural effects of
anarchy compel states that possess the requisite capabilities to become great powers. States have virtually irresistible incentives to acquire the same kinds of capabilities that their rivals (actual or potential) possess, even in cases, such as Japan's, where historical memory militates against it.

Another key structural effect is the tendency of states to balance against others who are too strong or threatening. The pressure to
balance is especially strong in a unipolar system, as modern international history amply confirms. Maximal realists, however, assuming that their own belief in American exceptionalism is shared by the rest of the world, believe that this will not apply in the case of the United States. Instead of challenging America's hegemony, they argue, other states welcome it because they trust the United States to exercise its power fairly and wisely.

This is an illusory view of how others perceive American hegemony. Hegemons may love themselves but others neither love nor trust them; other states are concerned more with a hegemon's fixed capabilities than its ephemeral intentions. Thus, any strategy aimed at suppressing the emergence of new great powers will instead stimulate the rise of challengers. It may be true, as Huntington argues, that a "state such as the United States that has achieved international primacy has every reason to attempt to maintain that primacy", but it
is equally true that other states with the capabilities to do so will work to create counterweights to American overbearing power.

The strategy of preponderance is also a costly strategy because the balancing and reassurance roles prescribed require the United States to remain the leading military power in East Asia--and, indeed, in the world. Maximalist realists focus on the benefits of U.S.
unipolarity, but they overlook the costs. As Robert Gilpin has pointed out, the "overhead costs" of empire are high, and the basic
dynamic is familiar enough. Over time, hegemons decline from dominance because the costs of sustaining preeminence erodes the
hegemon's economic strength. The hegemon's presence abroad also results in the diffusion of economic, technological, and
organizational skills to other states, eventually reducing its comparative advantage over them. Invariably, some of these other states will emerge as rivals.

A strategy of benign hegemony does not change the equation appreciably. Such a strategy enables other states to "free ride" militarily and economically, allowing them to shift resources into economically productive investments. The net result is the same: the
decline in the hegemon's relative power. Hence, by providing regional security--for the express purpose of obviating the need for others to provide for themselves--the U.S. strategy of preponderance will accelerate the decline in America's relative power position vis-a-vis Japan, which will continue to exploit the U.S. security umbrella to follow its aggressive, politically motivated "trading state" policies.

Finally, as the post-Cold War strategy of preponderance calls for the United States to reprise in East Asia its Cold War extended nuclear deterrence policy, it is dangerous.

Extended nuclear deterrence has always been a difficult strategy to implement successfully