A Critique of Deep Engagement, the Social Narrative of US Foreign Policy

Abstract This article offers a critical perspective of the discourse of deep engagement that portrays the United States as the world’s necessary or indispensable power. It describes deep engagement as a social narrative that, like literary narratives, has a story, a plot and an argument. This narrative has persisted in a time of waning hegemony because it makes an apparently appealing moral case for American global leadership. Yet deep engagement remains flawed from a strategic perspective and disregards the history of great-power rise and decline. From a strategic perspective, while hegemons describe their leadership in moral terms, their rhetoric is often betrayed by their actions. From a historical perspective, while hegemons regard their own efforts and values as instrumental to their status, their rise can be credited to a wave of economic and political forces the state cannot control.