Description
Book SynopsisWhat has standing alone atop the international hierarchy done to the United States?
Psychology of a Superpower examines how unipolarity affects the way U.S. leaders conceive of their role. Combining security, strategy, and psychology, Christopher J. Fettweis investigates how the idea of being number one affects America’s foreign-policy elite.
Trade ReviewIs the United States really the indispensable nation? Has it imposed a Pax Americana on the world? Is it threatened by ISIS, Iran, immigrants, or artificial islands in the South China Sea? These ideas are common among foreign-policy experts, but they have remarkably little evidence behind them. With wit, balance, and a trove of insight from psychological science, Christopher Fettweis diagnoses the current state of America and the world, and presents a picture with a far better resemblance to reality. -- Steven Pinker, Harvard University and author of
The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and ProgressFettweis weaves together a wide range of findings from cognitive and social psychology and some of the newer work in neuroscience to make the case for systematic biases arising from the perception of a unique position of power in the international system. He demonstrates how psychology, and the more specialized field of political psychology, can help us gain leverage over the questions he asks. -- James Davis, University of St. Gallen
“At the summit of foreign policy,” an analyst once noted, “one always finds simplicity and spook.” In this engaging, provocative, and highly readable book, Christopher Fettweis validates that observation. Extensively applying insights from psychology, he finds that, to a considerable degree, American arrogance, self-infatuation, insensitivity to others, threat exaggeration, and illusions about its capacities, indispensability, and essential benevolence derive from the fact that it is (or thinks itself to be) number one. -- John Mueller, Ohio State University and the Cato Institute
Creatively applying research on cognition and perception to the structural condition of US material preeminence in the international system, Fettweis advances novel arguments about how unipolarity warps US threat perception and hamstrings strategy.
Psychology of a Superpower is a bracing intervention in the unipolarity debate. -- William Wohlforth, Dartmouth College
Highly recommended. * Choice *
Interesting and insightful. . . . This is not a traditional international relations book. Fettweis does not develop a central theory or test hypotheses with systematic data. But he provides a thoughtful meditation on how the possession of great power may warp U.S. threat perception, lead U.S. grand strategy astray, and stiffen foreign resistance to U.S. foreign policy. It should be read by scholars and policymakers alike. -- Michael Beckley * Politcal Science Quarterly *
At a time when the U.S. role in the world is influx,
Psychology of a Superpower provides rich insights into the perils and pitfalls of decision-making under the influence of power. * Ethics & International Affairs *
Table of ContentsPreface
Introduction
1. Unipolarity and the System
2. Unipolarity and Nuclear Weapons
3. Unipolarity and Perception
4. Identifying the Enemy Image
5. Unipolarity and Strategy
6. Unipolarity and Grand Strategy
Unipolarity and Its Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
