It seems to be something of a buyers market when it comes to American grand strategies -- because an awful lot of people are hawking them. Even as we're debating the relative merits of the Princeton Project's Forging a World of Liberty under Law here at TPM's Book Club, Anne-Marie and John's compatriots at America Abroad are debating Anatol Lieven, who proposes an "ethical realism" solution. Then there's Frank Fukuyama's "realistic Wilsonianism," Robert Wright's "progressive realism," Michael Mandelbaum's case for the American Goliath, and Lord knows how many others. Even the Bush administration felt the need to update its National Security Strategy this year.

In such a crowded market, Forging a World of Liberty under Law (I'll borrow from Stephen Walt's critique and call it FWLL) would appear to have three things going for it:

• An emphasis on not having an emphasis -- that is to say, rejecting the notion that there is any single overarching threat that should be the focus of U.S. national security efforts.
• Renewing the call for more international law and international institutions to channel and potentially augment U.S. power and influence at the global level; and
• Advocating the continued, peaceful promotion of the rule of law and democratic institutions in other countries at the domestic level.

There are some interesting and compelling ideas contained within FWLL -- but agreement is boring, so let's get to the fun part. I fear that each of these advantages generate their own drawbacks:

1) A lack of prioritization: As John Ikenberry puts it, "the United States faces a kaleidoscopic array of threats in the 21st century – diffuse, shifting, and uncertain." Well, yes, but this is always the case. Immediately after World War II, some American policymakers were more concerned about a renascent British empire than they were about the Soviet Union. During the eighties, some policymakers asserted that beyond the Soviet Union, the United States needed to focus on the economic threat of Japan and Germany.

The point of a grand strategy is to prioritize, and FWLL simply refuses to do that.

What's odd about this is that prioritizing among the myriad issues contained in FWLL is relatively straightforward. FWLL quotes George Kennan's definition of national security as, "the continued ability of the country to pursue the development of its internal life without serious interference, or threat of interference, from foreign powers."

If that's the definition, then it seems pretty clear that the problems of global terror networks and energy independence merit priority status. Those are the two issues that have the capacity to immediately hamper the development of American society. The other issues raised in the report -- the rise of China, global pandemics, etc. -- are certainly serious. But in a worrld of scarce foreign policy resources, energy and terror are the problems that really hit home.

Intriguingly enough, Americans intuitively know this already -- if you look at the Chicago Council surveys of foreign policy attitudes among Americans, energy independence and combating terrorism always come in at the top of the priority list. Americans are far less interested in either democratization or the rise of China. Even North Korea's recent nuclear test, disconcerting as it was, does not rise to the level of these other threats (indeed, with every "test" of their missile or nuclear capabilities, the North Koreans demonstrate more flaws in their WMD program than strengths). Prioritizing energy independence and combating global terror networks would have the added advantage of developing a grand strategy that resonates with the American public, instead of force-feeding Americans additional policies that look to them like the foreign policy equivalent of spinach.

An additional concern with your multi-pronged, multi-faceted approach is how it would actually be executed. Three years after Operation Iraqi Freedom, the best critique that can be leveled against neoconservatism is that even if it sounds compelling on paper, the downsides are huge unless the policy is executed flawlessly. And no foreign policy is ever executed flawlessly. The downsides of not prioritizing among different foreign policy concerns might not be quite as disastrous as Iraq -- but they are troubling.

2) The trouble with international institutions. FWLL presents a compelling narrative of how the multilateral institutions created after Wolrd War II helped to buttress the American-led liberal order. Let me offer a somewhat different narrative. Many of these ballyhooed institutions -- the UN, the IMF, the World Bank -- were not terrible effective in their assigned tasks during most of the Cold War era. Indeed, they were so dysfunctional that the U.S. had to resort to a second wave of unilateral and minilateral initiatives -- the Marshall Plan, the Dodge Line, NATO, the G-7, even the Peace Corps -- to support the liberal order. My concern is that your brand of institutionalization will create more dysfunctional institutions, not more effective ones.

FWLL's counter might be that if institutions like the UN don't work out, then there's always the concert of democracies. What's fascinating about the "Concert of Democracies" idea is how many times it's been flagged since Francis Fukuyama's The End Of History and The Last Man -- and how many times the idea has gone nowhere in policy terms. Why do you believe your proposal will succeed when others have failed?

In FWLL, you stress the need to find common interests and institutions between the U.S. and China on issues such as energy, the environment, and avian flu. OK, focusing on common interests and all is great. The problem is that, as Steve Krasner pointed out 15 years ago, there will always be distributional concerns even in situation where there are commonality of interests. I can already envision China explaining that its status as a developing country prevents it from investing in pollution abatement, even as it persuades another African kleptocracy to allow Chinese state-owned enterprises a majority stake in some offshore drilling venture. It's not clear to me that FWLL has a contingency plan for what happens when institutions don't work -- except to create even more institutions.

Another point on this -- it's worth observing that the fastest-growing region on the planet also has the fewest international institutions. The East Asian disdain for formal international organizations and legally binding agreements raises a question for FWLL -- how does the United States get its East Asian partners to buy into the idea that more institutions and networks are a good thing? Culturally, won't this look like an intrusion of a Western-inspired order?

3) PAR is not up to par: FWLL says that:

In a world of Popular, Accountable, and Rights-regarding governments, the United States would have many more, and more effective, partners in our efforts to fight terrorism, nuclear proliferation, pandemic disease, economic crises, and a host of other threats.

I would love it if this statement was true, but I have my doubts. I'm currently reading Andrew Kohut and Bruce Stokes' America Against the World, and the key message in that book is that publics in other countries do not necessarily view the United States as a friendly or trusted partner.

The emphasis on popular government in a post-Iraq world is problematic for U.S. interests, because empowering public opinion in other countries encourages the formation of anti-American governments.

I have no doubt that Anne-Marie, John and TPM readers will counter that this is an ephemeral phenomenon due to the policies of George W. Bush. After perusing America Against the World, I'm less sanguine. Foreigners resented the United States in the nineties as the leading architect of economic globalization, and they resent Americans today not just because of our foreign policy, but because of our way of life.

Anti-Americanism did not start with Bush 43 and it won't end with him either. Why, as a matter of advancing the national interest, should the U.S. pursue policies that will empower the very groups that are most opposed to us?

There is a lot more to discuss -- but these are my priority issues.