What Price Empire? A Study of Costs and Benefits of American Involvement in Zaire During the Mobutu Era

To ask whether or not one country has benefitted, overall, from its relations with another over a thirty-two-year period reveals extremely difficult methodological problems. First, one might suppose that each country has an objective interest vis a` vis one another, particularly with regard to security, that make their needs clear. This was essentially the approach of post-World War II realism: the proverbial rational actor could figure out what security needs her state had in a given international environment, and she could calculate what alliances would be necessary. To put it only slightly differently, one could discover objective national interests that states must inevitably defend (Morgenthau 1982). In this regard, neo-realism is close to the older variety, though neo-realism proposes an even simpler formula, one that allows the national interest calculus to be made from the structure of the system alone. As Morgenthau’s 1950 work demonstrates, however, rational individuals frequently disagree over what specific policies in fact serve the national interests of states.