Richard K. Betts and Michael C. Desch respond separately  to Peter D. Feaver's spring 2011 International Security article, "The Right to Be Right: Civil-Military Relations and the Iraq Surge Decision."

In recent years, Democrats and Republicans have endorsed illiberal policies that include the pursuit of global hegemony, the launching of a preventive war, restrictions on civil liberties, and torture. These policies seem to contradict the Liberal tradition of the United States, but it is precisely this tradition that compels Americans to spread their values around the world and combat terrorism in this way. Only a foreign policy strategy based on realism—a decidedly non-Liberal way of viewing the world—will preserve the domestic virtues of Liberalism while diminishing its negative effects abroad.

Michael Desch argues that “democratic defeatists” considered democracy a “decided liability” in war fighting. More recently, “democratic triumphalists” have argued that democracies, whether because they more carefully select the wars they wage or because they fight more effectively, are more likely to win in war.

In separate letters to the editors, John Duffield, Theo Farrell, and Richard Price take issue with Michael Desch's position that culturalism can at best supplement realism in the study of international relations. Desch responds.

The author offers a critical review of cultural theories in the field of international security studies. He divides the literature on cultural theory into three distinct phases, or “waves”: the World War II, Cold War, and post–Cold War waves.

Desch replies to the critiques of Choi, Lake, Reiter, and Stam.