1 Wolfers, Arnold, Discord and Collaboration (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), p. 147.Google Scholar

2 I am assuming that the international interest is considered no more valid a guide to the national interest than are parochial interests.

3 See Hare, R. M., The Language of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), especially chap. 1, pp. 5–8.Google Scholar

4 Beard, Charles A., The Idea of the National Interest: An Analytic Study in American Foreign Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1934), p. 22.Google Scholar

5 Benn, Stanley I. and Peters, Richard, Social Principles and the Democratic State (London: Allen and Unwin, 1959), p. 358.Google Scholar

6 For example, Schubert, Glendon, The Public Interest: A Critique of a Political Concept (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1960), p. 17.Google Scholar

7 For example, attempts (generally associated with religious fundamentalism) to equate the national interest with a theological tenet. Or else, various forms of the claim, attributed by misquotation to former Secretary of Defense Edwin Wilson, that “what is good for General Motors is good for the United States”.

8 Although the contemporary form of political realism in the United States is largely rooted in the work of Kennan, George F., Morgenthau, Hans J., Niebuhr, Reinhold, and Lippmann, Walter, its historical roots are best traced in Friedrich Meinecke's classical work, Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d'Etat and Its Place in Modern History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957).Google Scholar

9 Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 6th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), p. 5.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., p. 37.

11 Schuman, Frederick L., International Politics: The Western State System in Transition (New York: The Free Press, 1941), pp. 261, 265.Google Scholar

12 See, for example, Veroff, Joseph and Verrof, Joanne B., Social Incentives: A Life-Span Approach (New York: Academic Press, 1980), especially chap. 3.Google Scholar

13 Winter, David G., The Power Motive (New York: The Free Press, 1973), especially pp. 11–17.Google Scholar

14 Lichteim, George, The Concept of Ideology and Other Essays (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 150.Google Scholar

15 See, for example, Phillips, Warren R. and Crain, R. C., “Dynamic Foreign Policy Interactions: Reciprocity and Uncertainty in Foreign Policy”, in Sage International Yearbook of Foreign Policy Studies, ed. McGowan, Patrick J. (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1974)Google Scholar, and Kegley, Charles W. Jr, “Neo-ldealism: A Practical Matter”, Ethics and International Affairs 2 (1988): 173–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Wolfers, Arnold, “The Pole of Power and the Pole of Indifference”, in International Politics and Foreign Policy, ed. Rosenau, James N. (New York: The Free Press, 1969), p. 175–81.Google Scholar

17 In a related vein, see Waltz, Kenneth N., Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979), pp. 103–104Google Scholar, and Aron, Raymond, Peace and War: Theory of International Relations (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1966), p. 595.Google Scholar

18 Waltz, Kenneth N., Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), p. 238.Google Scholar

19 Milner, Helen, “The Assumption of Anarchy in International Relations Theory: A Critique”, Review of International Studies 17 (01 1991): 67–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Masters, Roger D., “World Politics as a Primitive International System”, World Politics 16 (1964): 595–619.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984).Google Scholar

22 See also, Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S., Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little Brown, 1977), especially pp. 11–19Google Scholar; and Beitz, Charles R., Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 35–50.Google Scholar

23 Especially Keohane, Robert O., After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

24 Vasquez, John A., The Power of Power Politics: A Critique (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1983), p. 216Google Scholar. Particularly successful applications of some variant of the realpolitik paradigm to the study of the relation between war and power redistributions, are Gilpin, Robert, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Cusack, Thomas and Stoll, Richard, Exploring Realpolitik (Boulder, CO: Lynn Reiner, 1990).Google Scholar

25 On this, see Burton, John W., International Relations: A General Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), pp. 49–51.Google Scholar

26 Kennan, George F., “Lectures on Foreign Policy”, Illinois Law Review 45 (1951): 730.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., p. 723.

28 Waltz, Theory of International Politics.

29 Ibid., p. 105.

30 Grieco, Joseph H., “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism”, International Organization 42 (08 1988): 498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Waltz, , Theory of International Politics, p. 134.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., p. 94 (emphasis added).

33 As Helen Milner has persuasively argued.

34 For example, Keohane, Robert O., “Institutional Theory and the Realist Challenge After the Cold War”, in Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate, ed. Baldwin, David A. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 269–300.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., p. 275.

36 Furniss, Edgar S. and Snyder, Richard C., An Introduction to American Foreign Policy (New York: Rinehart, 1955), p. 17.Google Scholar

37 Sonderman, Fred A., “The Concept of National Interest”, Orbis 21 (Spring 1977): 133.Google Scholar

38 Krasner, Stephen, Defending the National Interest (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), especially chaps.1–2.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., pp. 11–12.

40 Ibid., p. 43.

41 Osgood, Robert E., Ideals and Self-interest in America's Foreign Relations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 5–7.Google Scholar

42 Ibid., p. 6.

43 Aron, , Peace and War, pp. 73–76.Google Scholar

44 Neuchterlein, Donal E., America Recommitted: United States National Interests in a Restructured World (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1991), p. 17.Google Scholar

45 Kennan, for example, has explicitly excluded ideological goals from his notion of the national interest, for example, “Morality and Foreign Policy”, Foreign Affairs 64 (Winter 1985–1986): 205–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 While it may be less difficult to agree on the “bads” that should be avoided, it seems inherently hard to agree on the “goods” that should be pursued as a matter of high national priority—a reflection of a more general dilemma, very well described by Moore, Barrington Jr, in Reflections on the Causes of Human Misery and Upon Certain Proposals to Eliminate Them (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), chap. 1.Google Scholar

47 George and Keohane, pp.223–25.

48 For example, as discussed in the sociological literature on the effects of status inconsistency. For early examples, see Lenski, Gerhard, “Status Crystallization: A Non–Vertical Dimension of Social Status”, American Sociological Review 19 (1954)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Galtung, John, “A Structural Theory of Aggression”, Journal of Peace Research 2 (1964)Google Scholar; Gerschwender, James A., “Continuities in Theories of Status Inconsistency and Cognitive Dissonance”, Social Forces 46 (12 1967): 160–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 I have discussed the economic consequences of defense spending in, Nincic, Miroslav, The Arms Race: The Political-Economy of Military Growth (New York: Praeger, 1982), especially chap. 3.Google Scholar

50 Russett, Bruce M. and Hanson, Elizabeth C., Interest and Ideology: the Foreign Policy Beliefs of American Businessmen (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1975), pp. 70–72.Google Scholar

51 Reported in “Bosses Favor Trimming Defense But Oppose Any Delay in Tax Cuts”, Wall Street Journal, 13 04 1982.Google Scholar

52 “Business Chiefs See Need to Cut Military Spending to Trim Deficits”, New York Times, 11 October 1982. See also, “Executives Bid Reagan Cut Deficit”, New York Times, 13 March 1982.

53 Accordingly, Charles Beard may have referred with only slight exaggeration to a more general phenomenon when he reported, more than half a century ago, studying thousands of actions justified by the appellation “national interest”, I was tempted to conclude that the conception was simply a telling formula which politicians and private interests employed whenever they wished to accomplish any particular design in the field of foreign policy” (Beard, , The Open Door at Home [New York: Macmillan, 1935], pp. v–vi).Google Scholar

54 Wolin, Sheldon, Politics and Vision (Boston: Little Brown, 1960), p. 336.Google Scholar

55 Mahan, Alfred T., The Problem of Asia and Its Effects Upon International Politics (Boston: Little Brown, 1900), p. 187.Google Scholar

56 Unless one could demonstrate (which is inherently very difficult to do) that the nondemocratic form of government was itself the product of a democratic consensus: that, for example, the society declared itself content to consider whatever its leadership chose to do as being an expression of its own interests.

57 See, for example, Riker, William H., The Art of Political Manipulation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

58 For a discussion of the possible intransitivity of aggregated preferences, see Arrow, Kenneth J., Social Choice and Individual Values, 2nd ed. (New York: John Wiley, 1963)Google Scholar. Also Brams, Steven, Paradoxes in Politics: An Introduction to the Non—Obvious in Political Science (New York: The Free Press, 1976).Google Scholar

59 Riker, William H. and Ordeshook, Peter C., An Introduction to Positive Political Theory (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973), p. 114.Google Scholar

60 For example, Waltz, Kenneth N., Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics: The American and British Experiences (Boston: Little Brown, 1967).Google Scholar

61 Hans J. Morgenthau, for example, has maintained that “thinking required for the successful conduct of foreign policy can be diametrically opposed to the rhetoric and action by which the masses and their representatives are likely to be moved. The peculiar qualities of the statesman's mind are not always likely to find a favorable response in the popular mind. The statesman must think in terms of the national interest, conceived as power among powers. The popular mind, unaware of the fine distinctions of the statesman's thinking, reasons more often than not in the simple moralistic and legalistic terms of absolute good and absolute evil. The statesman must take the long view, proceeding slowly and by detours, paying with small losses for great advantage; he must be able to temporize, to compromise, to bide his time. The popular mind wants quick results; it will sacrifice tomorrow's real benefit for today's apparent advantage” (Politics Among Nations, p. 168). In George Kennan's opinion: “Democracy is … similar to one of those prehistoric monsters with a body as long as this room and a brain the size of a pin; he lies there in his primeval mud and pays little attention to his environment: he is slow to wrath—in fact, you practically have to whack his tail off to make him aware that his interests are being disturbed; but once he grasps this, he lays about him with such blind determination that he not only destroys his adversary but largely wrecks his native habitat” (American Diplomacy: 1900–1950 [New York: New American Library, 1959], p. 59).Google Scholar

62 Walter Lippmann, inter alia, has argued that “the chief complaint against Congress, and it is well founded, is that it does not succeed in representing the national interest, that its members are preoccupied with their own special interest in re-election, and that to this end, in an effort to placate, cajole, and even to bribe their constituents, they will as a general rule sacrifice every other consideration” (“The Ideal of Representative Government”, in The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy, ed. Rossiter, Clinton [New York: Random House, 1963], p. 255).Google Scholar

63 On this claim, see Nincic, Miroslav, Democracy and Foreign Policy: The Fallacy of Political Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), chap. 4.Google Scholar

64 For example, Dahl, Robert A., Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), chaps. 12,13, 20, and 21.Google Scholar

65 This suggests that a two-tiered conception of the national interest—one defined at the margins of core national needs, the other by democratic agreement— should not be necessary.

66 See, for example, Wittkopf, Eugene R., Faces of Internationalism: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Shapiro, Robert and Page, Benjamin I., “Foreign Policy and the Rational Public”, Journal of Conflict Resolution 32 (1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Russett, Bruce M., Controlling the Sword: the Democratic Governance of National Security (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), especially chaps. 2–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Nincic, Democracy and Foreign Policy, chaps. 2–4. On the more general topic of the average voter's ability to engage in competent political reasoning, see Popkin, Samuel L., The Reasoning Voter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).Google Scholar

67 See for example, Jentleson, Bruce W., “American Diplomacy: Around the World and on Pennsylvania Avenue”, in A Question of Balance: The President, the Congress, and Foreign Policy, ed. Mann, Thomas E. (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1991)Google Scholar; also, Nincic, Democracy and Foreign Policy, chap. 3.

68 Bentley, Arthur F., The Process of Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1908)Google Scholar; Latham, Earl, The Group Basis of Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1952)Google Scholar; Truman, David, The Governmental Process (New York: Knopf, 1964).Google Scholar

69 Bentley, , Process of Government, p. 222.Google Scholar

70 Latham, Earl, “The Group Basis of Politics”, American Political Science Review 46 (06 1952): 390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71 For example, see Nincic, Miroslav, United States Foreign Policy: Choices and Tradeoffs (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1988) chaps.3–5.Google Scholar

72 Benn, and Peters, , Social Principles and the Democratic State, p. 273.Google Scholar

73 Ibid.