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WORK TITLE: American Pendulum
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
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http://www.fpri.org/contributor/christopher-hemmer/ * http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100981770 * http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/tf_biographies.aspx
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: nr 98038966
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/nr98038966
HEADING: Hemmer, Christopher M. (Christopher Michael), 1969-
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100 1_ |a Hemmer, Christopher M. |q (Christopher Michael), |d 1969-
370 __ |a Staten Island (New York, N.Y.) |2 naf
372 __ |a United States–Foreign relations |2 lcsh
375 __ |a male
377 __ |a eng
400 1_ |a Hemmer, Christopher Michael, |d 1969-
670 __ |a Which lessons matter? … c1998: |b t.p. (Christopher M. Hemmer; Thesis (Ph.D.)–Cornell Univ., May, 1998) approval slip (Christopher Michael Hemmer) p. iii (b. 5-16-69, Staten Island, N.Y.)
670 __ |a Which lessons matter?, 2000: |b CIP t.p. (Christopher Hemmer) datasheet (b. 5-16-69; Cornell Univ., Dept. of Govt.)
953 __ |a xx00 |b yh81
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PERSONAL
Born May 16, 1969, in Staten Island, NY.
EDUCATION:State University of New York, B.A.; Cornell University, Ph.D., 1988.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Taught at Cornell University and Colgate University; Air War College, dean and professor of international security.
WRITINGS
Contributor to journals, including Political Science Quarterly, Parameters, Mediterranean Quarterly, and Comparative Strategy.
SIDELIGHTS
Born May 16, 1969, in Staten Island, New York, Christopher Hemmer taught at Cornell University and Colgate University before becoming dean of the Air War College and professor of international security. His teaching and research interests include American foreign policy, political psychology, and Middle East politics. Hemmer earned a bachelor’s degree from State University of New York at Albany, where he majored in political science and minored in psychology. He also earned a Ph.D. in 1998 from the Department of Government at Cornell University with a specialty in international relations.
Which Lessons Matter?
In 2000 Hemmer published Which Lessons Matter? American Foreign Policy Decision Making in the Middle East, 1979-1987. In the book, he offers a model of the reasoning process that U.S. decision makers use when considering the lessons of history as they make policy decisions concerning the Middle East. Hemmer contends that policy makers see relevance in some historical analogies yet ignore others. These analogies can advance preexisting interests as well as determine the interests policy makers already want to pursue.
As an example of how this approach has consequences on history, Hemmer examines how policy makers use historical analogies to support choices and decisions for very different reasons. As evidenced by foreign policy decisions of two presidential administrations, he examines the different approaches toward Iran concerning American hostages between 1979 and 1987, by analyzing the Carter administration’s policy during the hostage crisis compared to the Reagan administration’s policy that resulted in the Iran-Contra Affair.
American Pendulum
Hemmer next wrote American Pendulum: Recurring Debates in U.S. Grand Strategy in 2015. In the book, he explains how foreign policy strategies swing as each new presidential administration comes into power. While each administration adopts some of the policies of the one before it, it nevertheless endeavors to make its own mark, ensuring that foreign policy is never identical between administrations. Writing on the Page 99 Test Web site, Hemmer tells the story that when he says his book is about the U.S. grand strategy, “a typical response is, ‘I did not know we had one.’ American Pendulum argues that such skepticism is often based on a misunderstanding of what grand strategy is or should be.”
Hemmer declares that U.S. foreign policy is not solely a battle between global engagement and isolationism. Rather, he chronicles foreign policy debate and questions about America’s role in the international system by examining four recurring themes in American politics between 1914 and 2014. These questions are the following: how should the United States consider the trade-offs of adopting a unilateral approach compared with a multilateral approach with other states and international organizations; what is the role of American values in foreign policy decisions; to what parts of the world does the strategic perimeter of the United States extend that are of concern to U.S. security; and does the future belong to the United States or its enemies?
Hemmer begins by explaining how the United States became a great power between the Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt administrations. Then he examines the foreign policies of the Wilson, Truman, Nixon, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama administrations, highlighting their debates, disagreements, and contentions over whether or not U.S. grand strategy is beneficial, and how foreign policy changed dramatically during the Cold War and after September 11, 2001. Hemmer discusses whether American uncertainties and inconsistencies in foreign policy present confusion to the rest of the world. He does, however, declare that American foreign policy is in the most danger when the weight of opinion crushes dissent. Throughout foreign policy debate, Hemmer argues that “U.S. foreign policy is at its best when it is subjected to rigorous debate and compromise,” wrote M.L. Keck in Choice.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, April, 2016, M.L. Keck, review of American Pendulum: Recurring Debates in U.S. Grand Strategy, p. 1241.
ONLINE
Air War College Web site, http://www.au.af.mil/ (April 25, 2017), author faculty profile.
Page 99 Test, http://page99test.blogspot.com/ (September 29, 2015), Christopher Hemmer, “Christopher Hemmer’s ‘American Pendulum.’”
Christopher Hemmer is an Associate Professor of International Security at the Air War College and the author of Which Lessons Matter? American Foreign Policy Decision Making in the Middle East, 1979–1987 (State University of New York Press, 2000).
Christopher Hemmer is a Professor of International Security Studies and the Dean of the Air War College. Before joining the War College he taught at Cornell University and Colgate University. He received his Ph.D. in 1998 from the Department of Government at Cornell University with a specialty in international relations. He received his BA from the State University of New York at Albany, where he majored in political science and minored in psychology. His principal teaching and research interests are American foreign policy, political psychology, and Middle East politics. He is the author of, Which Lessons Matter? American Foreign Policy Decision Making in the Middle East, 1979-1987 (State University of New York Press, 2000) and his most recent book is entitled American Pendulum: Recurring Debates in U.S. Grand Strategy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015).
Hemmer, Christopher. American pendulum: recurring
debates in U.S. grand strategy
M.L. Keck
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
53.8 (Apr. 2016): p1241.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
Hemmer, Christopher. American pendulum: recurring debates in U.S. grand strategy. Cornell, 2015. 224p index afp ISBN 9780801454240 cloth,
$29.95
(cc) 53-3738
E183
2015-15949 CIP
American Pendulum discusses US foreign policy by examining the recurring debates that shape the discourse surrounding America's role in the
international system. Hemmer pays special attention to the key issues that define present-day US foreign policy decisions, including the trade-offs
of adopting a unilateral or multilateral approach, the role of US values in foreign policy decisions, regions of the world that should cause the US
heightened concern, and whether the future belongs to the US or its enemies. Hemmer begins by providing a narrative detailing the rise of the US
as a great power from the presidencies of Theodore to Franklin Roosevelt. The following chapters examine the success and failure of containment
toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War, as well as the post-containment era, during which the author contends that Bush and Clinton
squandered America's unipolar opportunities. The events of 9/11 fundamentally altered US foreign policy, resulting in the initiation of the war on
terror by George W. Bush and its continuation by Barack Obama. Hemmer concludes by arguing that US foreign policy is at its best when it is
subjected to rigorous debate and compromise. Summing Up: ** Recommended. All readership levels.--M. L. Keck, University of Texas at
Brownsville
3/14/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1489552755940 2/2
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Keck, M.L. "Hemmer, Christopher. American pendulum: recurring debates in U.S. grand strategy." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic
Libraries, Apr. 2016, p. 1241. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA449661869&it=r&asid=276c9f3ab31d3c2e06f82cc45233003d. Accessed 15 Mar.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A449661869
Christopher Hemmer's "American Pendulum"
posted by Marshal Zeringue
Hemmer applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, American Pendulum: Recurring Debates in U.S. Grand Strategy, and reported the following:
When I tell people that my book is about U.S. grand strategy, a typical response is, “I did not know we had one.”American Pendulum argues that such skepticism is often based on a misunderstanding of what grand strategy is and should be. Debates about America’s role or inconsistencies in its approach to different security issues should not automatically be seen as a result of strategic confusion or the lack of a grand strategy. The book examines four recurring debates in U.S. grand strategy (unilateralism versus multilateralism, defining the proper role of U.S. values in its foreign policy, prioritizing threats, and calculating whether time is on the side of the United States) and argues that U.S. foreign policy is most likely to go astray not when these debates are at their most pointed, but when the pendulum of the title swings too far in any one direction.
Page 99 grapples with Ronald Reagan’s approach to U.S. grand strategy, which provides an excellent example of the book’s overall themes. Attempting to capture Reagan’s strategy in a way that avoids the caricature of the left (that he was an amiable cipher who got lucky) and the hagiography of the right (that he was a staunch ideologue who proved the merits of conservative dogmatism), this chapter contends that it was more conciliatory parts of Reagan’s grand strategy, which were met with suspicion by those on the right, that deserve the most praise rather than the more confrontational and ideologically pure parts of Reagan’s program.
Tracing issues of continuity and change in American foreign policy is another theme and page 99 hits this, noting that the “Reagan” buildup started under Carter and that Reagan’s approach to the Soviet Union reflected, but modified, earlier debates between proponents of rollback versus containment over whether time was on the side of the United States, arguing that Reagan took an “optimistic path to rollback” where “it was the advantages of the United States that made limited rollback possible, not its weaknesses that made rollback necessary.”
Finally, the frame for page 99 is John Lewis Gaddis’s distinction between symmetrical versus asymmetrical approaches to containment, which is also an accurate reflection of the impact that his unsurpassed Strategies of Containment had on me and on the overall study of U.S. grand strategy.