By More than Providence

An ambitious diplomatic history, By More than Providence provides policy makers and scholars with a comprehensive survey of U.S. relations with the Asia Pacific region since the late eighteenth century. Michael J. Green, a practitioner of diplomacy as well as history, served as an Asia Pacific expert on the U.S. National Security Council staff (2001–2005). Thus he shifts occasionally to first-person narration and an insider's account in the book's penultimate chapter, on the administration of President George W. Bush. Green is straightforward about his participation in policy making in these years and notes his possible subjectivity. Upon returning to academia in 2006, he recognized the need for a broad synthesis in the historiography of U.S.–Asia Pacific relations. Green contends that U.S. grand strategy toward the region has been “effective” despite being “episodic and inefficient” (p. 541). Presidential administrations have come and gone, but their recurring strategic objective has been to prevent a rival power from achieving hegemony in the Asia Pacific. American leaders have consistently regarded the Pacific Ocean as “a conduit for American ideas and goods to flow westward, and not for threats to flow eastward toward the homeland” (p. 5). Green characterizes this strategy as “defensive realism,” a concept he borrows from international relations theory and defines as “the perceived need to expand because of expansion by others” (p. 76). Offering a relatively benign view of the design and execution of U.S. strategy, he brushes aside critical studies that have emphasized the roles of economic imperialism and racism in policy making. Hence, he tends to lean rightward in his analysis, likely leading some readers to disagree with some of his conclusions

China · Diplomacy · Foreign policy · Grand strategy · Great power · Hegemony · Historiography · International relations · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law