Psychology of a Superpower is unlike any other book currently written on US hegemony. Christopher Fettweis diverges from how we typically study the concept of unipolarity and, particularly, US primacy. Whereas most books on this topic deal with questions such as the source of unipolarity, its likely stability over time, and its distinct features compared to other systems, Fettweis’s book explores the psychological dynamics of the unipolar order. Rather than probing the sources of US primacy, Fettweis is more concerned with how insights from the laboratory can shed light on how unipolarity affects both the psychology and behavior of states within such a system.
Fettweis’s book is distinct from most literature on this topic not only in what it studies but also in how it studies it. Indeed, by Fettweis’s own admission, Psychology of a Superpower is not a traditional scholarly work in international relations. The book does not offer a new theory; it does not engage in systematic hypothesis testing; and the evidence it brings is more anecdotal, rather than grounded in full-fledged case studies. As a result, readers are unlikely to find useful answers in this book for questions on how to measure power; whether other powers have, in fact, engaged in balancing against the United States; or how long unipolarity will last. But readers who are interested in gaining a deeper understanding of why unipolarity has a unique effect on the psychology, perceptions, and strategy of states should certainly read this book.
The core argument of the book cannot be summarized succinctly. There is no one bumper sticker message to encapsulate its main takeaway, or at least I have not been able to find one. Rather, the book is filled with insights drawn from the field of psychology that are applied to explaining patterns of behavior. Some of those insights will be familiar to students of psychology, but other insights from psychology are less intuitive because of the way Fettweis applies them to the context of unipolarity. As such, the book offers a set of novel explanations for the behavior of states under unipolarity because it deals with the effect of power, or the perception of power, on both which biases are likely to become salient and why the process of unbiasing might be more difficult to pursue under conditions of unipolarity compared to other systemic structures. For example, in a chapter titled “Unipolarity and the System,” Fettweis explains why egocentrism and self-serving bias are particularly harder for the unipole United States to resist. In another chapter, he explores why power disparities guarantee that pathological US images of its rivals will be far more common and will have more meaningful consequences. Elsewhere he argues that relative power heightens attention deficit, obstacles to exercising empathy, and reliance on stereotypes in decision making.
The consequences of such biases that stem from structural conditions are explored in chapters 5 and 6, which deal with the evolution in US strategic thought, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the grand strategy of the United States and its allies in the present day. Here, Fettweis offers a set of observations about the behavior of the United States and its allies during and after the Cold War. He delves into the sources of divergence between the United States and its allies in threat perceptions and why US allies should be in a better position to view threats from a less skewed perspective and to adjust to them accordingly. The concluding chapter is likely to be of most interest to those who wish to explore the twin questions of the durability of unipolarity and the prospect of a US decline. Its main takeaways are refreshing and far from intuitive. For example, he claims that the unipolar structure of the system and US dominance are secure at least in the short run, that fears of decline in the United States have both psychological and cultural roots, and that the United States has nothing to fear from decline because the world is “remarkably peaceful and stable and is likely to remain so for quite some time” (p. 173).
This book should be required reading for students of unipolarity and US foreign policy. Psychology of a Superpower forces the reader to rethink the sources of US behavior and to wrestle with the consequences of psychological biases that stem from and are enhanced by relative power. Due to the structure, style, and goal of this book, however, readers might also find the analysis unsatisfactory in some places. For example, the book is rich in anecdotes and examples, but it stops short of engaging in a systematic and fair assessment of empirical evidence. It makes many assertions about the state of unipolarity, US strategy in the present moment, and the trajectory of unipolarity in the short run. And yet, there is very little systematic evidence to support those assertions. The book, by its own admission, does not seek to engage in hypothesis testing. This makes it easier to access (especially for lay readers), but it could make academic readers question the foundation of its premises and predictions.
A second issue that emerges from this choice of style is that the author fails to delve deeply enough into the psychology literature. The results from the relevant laboratory experiments are not presented, and the overall insights from psychology we are asked to rely on are not given with a sufficient level of contextual detail. As a result, it remains unclear whether the insights and conclusions we are borrowing from the psychology literature can really travel to these political situations. To his credit, Fettweis aptly acknowledges the by now familiar hurdles that accompany the importation of insights from the laboratory into the field of international politics. These include not only concerns about the external validity of those studies, but also the need to move between levels of analysis and extrapolate from the psychological studies implications for the field of politics and for elite individuals who may differ in important ways from the public. These are no trivial issues: they are ones for all interdisciplinary researchers to seriously consider and are ones that make this book, and other cross-disciplinary research, interesting and innovative. But they also require scholars to expose, unpack, and educate readers about the findings from the psychology literature in ways that an unfamiliar political science audience can use and understand. This is why I wished the book presented the background, evidence, and context for its claims so as to be more informative to students who are interested in the psychological microfoundations of this argument.
Finally, although each chapter features many subsections, the book is easy to follow overall. Yet, it remains confusing when it shifts between describing or explaining behaviors to prescribing policies. Especially in the second half of the book, the reader is left wondering whether the author is still in the realm of describing unipolar pathologies or whether he has shifted to describing strategies for changing those pathologies. For instance, Fettweis’s claim, cited earlier—“The world is remarkably peaceful and stable and is likely to remain so far for quite some time”—raises the question of whether this prediction hinges on US behavior. If so, this statement belongs in the realm of prescription. Alternatively, if this statement is meant to be the case no matter what the United States does, this statement belongs in the description category. This is just one example. At the same time, it is worth noting that the vast majority of the book deals with describing behaviors and pathologies, rather than prescribing policies.
A related source of confusion is whether the insights of this book apply to the general psychological pathologies of great powers or are limited to superpowers or even to the particular culture, history, and domestic politics of the United States. Most of the book deals with pathologies of a superpower in general, but the book does mention several examples of particular tendencies that are more specific to the United States. And yet, it is not entirely clear how Fettweis’s theory weights the structural material variables compared to the US-specific variables. Again, this type of hypothesis testing is not what this book sets out to do, and as such, it is unfair to expect the author to delve into this. But for students seeking to understand the scope conditions of the insights offered, and hence their generalizability beyond this case, the answer to this question is crucial.
Notwithstanding these quibbles, this book offers many interesting, novel, and important insights for scholars of US foreign policy to digest and contemplate. It should appeal to a large and diverse audience, and it offers students of international relations an opportunity to build on the useful insights of psychology and study them more formally and systematically.
