Christopher Layne
Biographic Data
| ID | 1132290 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher Layne |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher |
| FAMILY NAME | Layne |
| SIGNATURE | LAYNE C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Mitchell Institute |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9431-0223 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 42 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 526 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1977 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Preventing the China-U.S. Cold War from Turning Hot
During the Trump administration, Sino-American relations have deteriorated to the point where the new consensus in the U.S. foreign policy establishment is that a new Cold War has begun between the U.S. and China. This article looks at the origins of the “first Cold War” for insight into how a second Cold War might be avoided. There is a danger of the Cold War turning hot because of power transition dynamics. This article also invokes the pre-191…
US decline or primacy? A debate
This chapter presents two opposing views on the question of whether US power is in decline, and if so, what would be the best grand strategy that the United States need to pursue. According to Christopher Layne, the United States is now in inexorable decline and that this process of decline has been hastened by the pursuit of global primacy in the post-Cold War era. He also contends that primacy engenders balancing by other great powers as well a…
The US-Chinese power shift and the end of the Pax Americana
In this article, I show that far from consenting to be bound by institutions and rules of the Pax Americana, China is already working to recast the international order in ways that favour its interests, not those of the United States. The US foreign policy establishment does not grasp this, and, instead, has invested the idea of a ‘rules-based, institutionalized’ international order with a talismanic quality. It claims that rules and institutions…
The US foreign policy establishment and grand strategy: How American elites obstruct strategic adjustment
This Time It’s Real: The End of Unipolarity and the Pax Americana
Before the Great Recession's foreshocks in fall 2007, most American security studies scholars believed that unipolarity—and perforce American hegemony—would be enduring features of international politics far into the future. However, in the Great Recession's aftermath, it is apparent that much has changed since 2007. Predictions of continuing unipolarity have been superseded by premonitions of American decline and geopolitical transformation. The…
The unipolar exit: Beyond the Pax Americana
In this article I show that the unipolar era already is drawing to a close. Three main drivers explain the impending end of the Pax Americana. First, the rise of new great powers—especially China—is transforming the international system from unipolarity to multipolarity. Second, the United States is becoming the poster child for strategic over-extension, or as Paul Kennedy dubbed it, imperial overstretch. Third, the United States' relative econom…
The Waning of U.S. Hegemony—Myth or Reality? A Review Essay
Over the next two decades, international politics will be shaped by whether the international system remains unipolar or is transformed into a multipolar system. Can the United States sustain its primacy? Or will the emergence of new great powers reorder the distribution of power in the international system? If U.S. power is waning, will power transition dynamics result in security competitions and an increased possibility of war? In particular, …
US Hegemony in a Unipolar World: Here to Stay or Sic Transit Gloria
Unipolarity has preoccupied American international relations (IR) scholars, policymakers, and foreign policy analysts since the Cold War ended and the “unipolar moment” was proclaimed (Krauthammer 1990/1991). Since the Cold War's end IR scholars of various stripes—especially balance-of-power realists—have warned that unipolarity would boomerang against the United States (Layne 1993, 2006a,b; Waltz 1993). The United States’ post-9/11 policies—espe…
America’s Middle East grand strategy after Iraq: The moment for offshore balancing has arrived
In this paper, I argue that there is an emerging consensus among realists that the US should abandon its hegemonic strategy and adopt an offshore balancing strategy. Here, Iraq and the so called war on terrorism (or ‘long war’, or ‘global counter-insurgency’, as some American officials sometimes refer to it) have been the catalysts. Increasingly, it is recognised that US aims in the Persian Gulf/Middle East – and the American military presence in…
China's Challenge to US Hegemony
If the United States tries to maintain its current dominance in East Asia, Sino-American conflict is virtually certain
It's Over, Over There: The Coming Crack-up in Transatlantic Relations
Security Studies and the Use of History: Neville Chamberlain's Grand Strategy Revisited
In The Gathering Storm, Winston S. Churchill claimed that during the 1930s British leaders were willfully blind to the German threat and failed to meet it by rearming. Accepting the Churchillian narrative, leading IR scholars regard British grand strategy during the 1930s as glaring example of strategic adjustment failure. This article reappraises British grand strategy during the 1930s and rejects both the Churchillian narrative, and the scholar…
Regime Change: U.S. Strategy Through the Prism of 9/11
Regime Change: U.S. Strategy Through the Prism of 9/11. By Robert S. Litwak. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. 424p. $65.00 cloth, $25.00 paper. Robert Litwak focuses his book on how the United States should respond to the potential post–Cold War proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)—especially nuclear weapons—to so-called rogue states and nonstate actors like Al Qaeda. Litwak makes three central arguments: 9/11 t…
The Unipolar Illusion Revisited: The Coming End of the United States' Unipolar Moment
The conventional wisdom among U.S. grand strategists is that U.S. hegemony is exceptional—that the United States need not worry about other states engaging in counterhegemonic balancing against it. The case for U.S. hegemonic exceptionalism, however, is weak. Contrary to the predictions of Waltzian balance of power theorists, no new great powers have emerged since the end of the Cold War to restore equilibrium to the balance of power by engaging …
A Matter of Historical Debate
The Crusade of Illusions
American Empire: A Debate
The “Poster Child for offensive realism”: America as a global hegemon
(2002). The “Poster Child for offensive realism”: America as a global hegemon. Security Studies: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 120-164
Offshore balancing revisited
The "Through the Looking Glass" contributors reveal that U.S. hegemony is a double‐edged sword. As the debate about future U.S. grand strategy unfolds after September 11, offshore balancing should become the successor strategy to primacy
The “Poster Child for Offensive Realism: America as a Global Hegemon
Shell Games, Shallow Gains, and the Democratic Peace
(2001). Shell Games, Shallow Gains, and the Democratic Peace. The International History Review: Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 799-813
Measuring National Power in the Postindustrial Age
US hegemony and the perpetuation of Nato
(2000). US hegemony and the perpetuation of NATO. Journal of Strategic Studies: Vol. 23, NATO Enters the 21st Century, pp. 59-91
Measuring National Power in the Postindustrial Age: Analyst's Handbook
This handbook is designed to complement the main report (MR-1110-A). It is intended to provide the analyst the substance of the concepts and metrics for assessing national power without presenting extensive background or the analytic underpinning contained in the main document
Sex and the Barnum Effect: Rationality versus Helpfulness
In 1998 Piper-Terry and Downey found that women accepted friends' bogus test interpretations more readily than did men and the researchers attributed this to women's helpfulness. Layne countered that women are more open and thus rationally expected their friends' interpretations to be more accurate. Later Downey asked participants how accurately they believed their friends could describe their personalities. Although this pilot study's sensitivit…
This Time It’s Real: The End of Unipolarity and the Pax Americana
Before the Great Recession's foreshocks in fall 2007, most American security studies scholars believed that unipolarity—and perforce American hegemony—would be enduring features of international politics far into the future. However, in the Great Recession's aftermath, it is apparent that much has changed since 2007. Predictions of continuing unipolarity have been superseded by premonitions of American decline and geopolitical transformation. The…
Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace
The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise
The Democratic Peace
The Unipolar Illusion Revisited: The Coming End of the United States' Unipolar Moment
The conventional wisdom among U.S. grand strategists is that U.S. hegemony is exceptional—that the United States need not worry about other states engaging in counterhegemonic balancing against it. The case for U.S. hegemonic exceptionalism, however, is weak. Contrary to the predictions of Waltzian balance of power theorists, no new great powers have emerged since the end of the Cold War to restore equilibrium to the balance of power by engaging …
From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing: America's Future Grand Strategy
The Soviet Union's collapse transformed the international system dramatically, but there has been no corresponding change in U.S. grand strategy. In terms of ambitions, interests, and alliances, the United States is following the same grand strategy it pursued from 1945 until 1991: that of preponderance.' Whether this strategy will serve U.S. interests in the early twenty-first century is problematic. Hence, in this article my purpose is to stimu…
The US-Chinese power shift and the end of the Pax Americana
In this article, I show that far from consenting to be bound by institutions and rules of the Pax Americana, China is already working to recast the international order in ways that favour its interests, not those of the United States. The US foreign policy establishment does not grasp this, and, instead, has invested the idea of a ‘rules-based, institutionalized’ international order with a talismanic quality. It claims that rules and institutions…
The unipolar exit: Beyond the Pax Americana
In this article I show that the unipolar era already is drawing to a close. Three main drivers explain the impending end of the Pax Americana. First, the rise of new great powers—especially China—is transforming the international system from unipolarity to multipolarity. Second, the United States is becoming the poster child for strategic over-extension, or as Paul Kennedy dubbed it, imperial overstretch. Third, the United States' relative econom…
American Hegemony: Without an Enemy
The US foreign policy establishment and grand strategy: How American elites obstruct strategic adjustment
Regime Change: U.S. Strategy Through the Prism of 9/11
Regime Change: U.S. Strategy Through the Prism of 9/11. By Robert S. Litwak. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. 424p. $65.00 cloth, $25.00 paper. Robert Litwak focuses his book on how the United States should respond to the potential post–Cold War proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)—especially nuclear weapons—to so-called rogue states and nonstate actors like Al Qaeda. Litwak makes three central arguments: 9/11 t…
Offshore balancing revisited
The "Through the Looking Glass" contributors reveal that U.S. hegemony is a double‐edged sword. As the debate about future U.S. grand strategy unfolds after September 11, offshore balancing should become the successor strategy to primacy
Atlanticism without Nato
The “Poster Child for Offensive Realism: America as a Global Hegemon
Measuring National Power in the Postindustrial Age
Security Studies and the Use of History: Neville Chamberlain's Grand Strategy Revisited
In The Gathering Storm, Winston S. Churchill claimed that during the 1930s British leaders were willfully blind to the German threat and failed to meet it by rearming. Accepting the Churchillian narrative, leading IR scholars regard British grand strategy during the 1930s as glaring example of strategic adjustment failure. This article reappraises British grand strategy during the 1930s and rejects both the Churchillian narrative, and the scholar…
US hegemony and the perpetuation of Nato
(2000). US hegemony and the perpetuation of NATO. Journal of Strategic Studies: Vol. 23, NATO Enters the 21st Century, pp. 59-91
Preventing the China-U.S. Cold War from Turning Hot
During the Trump administration, Sino-American relations have deteriorated to the point where the new consensus in the U.S. foreign policy establishment is that a new Cold War has begun between the U.S. and China. This article looks at the origins of the “first Cold War” for insight into how a second Cold War might be avoided. There is a danger of the Cold War turning hot because of power transition dynamics. This article also invokes the pre-191…
America’s Middle East grand strategy after Iraq: The moment for offshore balancing has arrived
In this paper, I argue that there is an emerging consensus among realists that the US should abandon its hegemonic strategy and adopt an offshore balancing strategy. Here, Iraq and the so called war on terrorism (or ‘long war’, or ‘global counter-insurgency’, as some American officials sometimes refer to it) have been the catalysts. Increasingly, it is recognised that US aims in the Persian Gulf/Middle East – and the American military presence in…
The Crusade of Illusions
Shell Games, Shallow Gains, and the Democratic Peace
(2001). Shell Games, Shallow Gains, and the Democratic Peace. The International History Review: Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 799-813
Superpower Disengagement
It's Over, Over There: The Coming Crack-up in Transatlantic Relations
American Empire: A Debate
The Real Conservative Agenda
Effects of Manipulation of Examination Grades on Locus of Control Beliefs
Subjects enrolled in three classes of a lower level psychology course, all taught by the same instructor, were administered Rotter's Locus of Control questionnaire. Approximately 1 mo. later the subjects took a regularly scheduled examination over course material. At the first class session after the examination, the instructor informed one class that all had performed very poorly on the examination and another class that they had all done very w…
Comprehensive Assessment of Assertion Training in Controlled Single-Case Studies
This study illustrates how assertion training effects can be assessed comprehensively within a single-case design. An underassertive female undergraduate client received 5 weekly training sessions. Measures consisted of a personality inventory, a self-rating scale, and video tapes of role playing. All were brief and unobtrusive. Simple prerequisites for assertiveness improved first, followed by improvements in increasingly more complex areas of f…
British grand strategy, 1900–1939: Theory and practice in international politics
Undergraduates' Absolute Values for Monetary and Social Outcomes and Correctness
Many theories assume that outcomes from the same class possess similar values or aversions. The present experiments test two interpretations of this notion. Both experiments measured undergraduates' ( ns = 146 and 154, respectively) values and aversions on ratio scales. Both experiments found that rewards and punishers in the same class do not share similar absolute impacts. However, both experiments found that rewards and punishers from the same…
The Real Conservative Agenda
Atlanticism without Nato
Requiem for the Reagan Doctrine
REQUIEM FOR THE_ REAGAN DOCTRINE Christopher Layne redictably, the Reagan Doctrine led the administration into a political and moral morass. Far more than a set of specific policy prescriptions, the Reagan Doctrine provided the intellectual framework— the Weltanschauung— that shaped the administration's external policies. As events proved, the Reagan Doctrine was an unsuitable basis for a viable post-Vietnam foreign policy because it failed to mo…
Superpower Disengagement
Gender and conflict structure in marital interaction: A replication and extension.
29 married couples engaged in 2 videotaped discussions: 1 in which the husband requested a change in the wife and 1 in which the wife requested a change in the husband. Conflict behavior was assessed by self-report and observer ratings. Neither conflict structure (who requested the change) nor gender was associated with the positivity or negativity of spouses' behavior. During discussions of husbands' issues, wives and husbands did not differ in …
The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise
American Hegemony: Without an Enemy
Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace
The Democratic Peace
Reforming post‐cold war US arms sales policy: The crucial link between exports and the defence industrial base
(1995). Reforming post‐cold war US arms sales policy: The crucial link between exports and the defence industrial base. Journal of Strategic Studies: Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 1-32
From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing: America's Future Grand Strategy
The Soviet Union's collapse transformed the international system dramatically, but there has been no corresponding change in U.S. grand strategy. In terms of ambitions, interests, and alliances, the United States is following the same grand strategy it pursued from 1945 until 1991: that of preponderance.' Whether this strategy will serve U.S. interests in the early twenty-first century is problematic. Hence, in this article my purpose is to stimu…
Gender and the Barnum Effect: A Reinterpretation of Piper-Terry and Downey's Results
Gender and the Barnum Effect: A Reinterpretation of Piper-Terry and Downey's Results
The Barnum Effect refers to people's acceptance of high baserate, bogus feedback. Typically, sex is not significantly associated with such acceptance, but recently Piper-Terry and Downey found that undergraduate women accepted such feedback from friends more than men. They concluded that the women in their sample did this because they wanted to help, i.e., avoid embarrassing, their friends; however, this explanation is flawed for two reasons. Fir…
Sex and the Barnum Effect: Rationality versus Helpfulness
In 1998 Piper-Terry and Downey found that women accepted friends' bogus test interpretations more readily than did men and the researchers attributed this to women's helpfulness. Layne countered that women are more open and thus rationally expected their friends' interpretations to be more accurate. Later Downey asked participants how accurately they believed their friends could describe their personalities. Although this pilot study's sensitivit…
US hegemony and the perpetuation of Nato
(2000). US hegemony and the perpetuation of NATO. Journal of Strategic Studies: Vol. 23, NATO Enters the 21st Century, pp. 59-91
Measuring National Power in the Postindustrial Age: Analyst's Handbook
This handbook is designed to complement the main report (MR-1110-A). It is intended to provide the analyst the substance of the concepts and metrics for assessing national power without presenting extensive background or the analytic underpinning contained in the main document
Shell Games, Shallow Gains, and the Democratic Peace
(2001). Shell Games, Shallow Gains, and the Democratic Peace. The International History Review: Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 799-813
Measuring National Power in the Postindustrial Age
The “Poster Child for offensive realism”: America as a global hegemon
(2002). The “Poster Child for offensive realism”: America as a global hegemon. Security Studies: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 120-164
Offshore balancing revisited
The "Through the Looking Glass" contributors reveal that U.S. hegemony is a double‐edged sword. As the debate about future U.S. grand strategy unfolds after September 11, offshore balancing should become the successor strategy to primacy
The “Poster Child for Offensive Realism: America as a Global Hegemon
Political science (35 works) · Law (27 works) · Political economy (25 works) · Politics (25 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Law (20 works) · Economics (19 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (19 works) · Hegemony (15 works) · Economic history (12 works)