If ever there was a sign that the days of the "axis of evil" and the preemptive belligerence of the 2002 National Security Strategy are drawing to an end, it may be found in this consistently interesting new book Taming American Power by Stephen Walt, the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. A year ago, such a book would have raged at the inadequacies of the administration's policy. Today, the outlook is more forward oriented. Rather than indulging in a head-on confrontation with the "Bush doctrine," Walt implicitly assumes that its failures are now so manifest that its time has passed. The task for mainstream foreign-policy thinkers is thus not to reslay the beast but to design a better policy.

Walt's starting point is the reality of American power. On this, his analysis is conventional. He says that the United States "enjoys an asymmetry of power unseen since the emergence of the modern state system." For many analysts, particularly those attracted to Charles Krauthammer's celebrated "unipolar moment" theory dating from 1990, this is where the debate begins and ends. For them, the question is solely, as Walt puts it, of "what should the United States do with its power?" It is worth pointing out that adherents to this theory are not all conservative, as evidenced by then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's equally celebrated question in 1993 to then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell. "What are saving this superb military for, Colin, if we can't use it?" Walt shows that this approach has produced a debate that is almost exclusively America-centric, military-dependent, and flat-footed.

Walt's great contribution is to turn this debate around. He is as keen as anyone to forward America's national interest, but he shows that to do so, policy makers need to understand that American power is not the only variable in the international arena, and that analysis needs to include the likely reaction of competitors. He thus frames the key question as "what can other states do about American power?" In doing so, he takes direct aim at those (mainly British) romanticists of empire like Niall Ferguson who assert that the only threat to American power comes from the "absence of a will to power."

In refuting this approach (which Walt does with unfailing courtesy), he updates for our time the notion of the "security paradox." Dating back to the competition between Athens and Sparta in the run-up to the Peloponnesian War, the paradox asserts that security investments made by one side provoke equal and countervailing investments by the other. Walt shows that this process is in train again today. Far from being left without options by US. military preeminence, other countries enjoy a surprising array of choices, ranging from strategies of opposition to strategies of accommodation. Either way, such approaches are intended to bend US. foreign policy in the direction of the foreign country's interest.

Thus, reversing the telescope this way can prove highly instructive. Walt provides a taxonomy of the options available to countries less militarily powerful than the United States--that is, the rest of the world. Some of these options are oppositional, what Walt calls North Korean "blackmail" or insurgent use of "asymmetry." Precautionary "soft balancing" against the United States may also be established between countries, for example Russia and China, with which the United States is on good terms. Another option is accommodation, for example "bonding" with the United States to gain advantages that would not otherwise be available. Tony Blair's tight lock onto the United States before the Iraq War enabled him to pressure Washington into seeking U.N. Security Council support, something few inside Bush's inner circle wanted. Another example is India's emerging partnership with the United States, which may enable India to parlay the United States into acting as a counterbalance to China.

Particularly interesting in this context is Walt's examination of "delegitimation" of the United States as a broad option available to the international community. Delegitimation is the broad equivalent of what in American politics is known as "going negative": in this case, the efforts of opponents of the United States to undermine its general image as a benevolent power and to portray it as a sort of rogue elephant. This objective can be pursued not only by out-and-out enemies but also can arise as criticism from people of impeccable moral stature like Nelson Mandela. Exponents of "hard power" tend to dismiss this as of little consequence--"let them hate us so long as they fear us." However, writing as a British official who used to slipstream behind his American big brother during the Cold War and drew upon the undoubted moral authority enjoyed by the United States in those days, I can assure readers that Walt's analysis is spot on. If you are trying to navigate the corridors of international power, it is much easier to walk through an open door than to have to kick it down. As a means of asserting the national interest, legitimacy is a serious asset.

Robert Barnett, a non-union employee of US Airways, Inc., was transferred to a less demanding mail room position after injuring his back while working in a cargo-handling job. When the position he held became open for bidding on the basis of seniority rules unilaterally adopted by the company, US Airways rejected Barnett's request to exempt his position from bidding, and he lost his job to another, more senior employee.

Claiming that US Airways had failed to reasonably accommodate his disability, Barnett filed suit under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court's dismissal of his action and ruled that "a seniority system is not a per se bar to reassigmnent" but should be considered as a factor in deciding whether a proposed accommodation would pose an undue hardship to the employer.

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit's decision. In a 5-4 decision, the Court held that in situations involving a conflict between a requested accommodation and a seniority system, "the seniority system will prevail in the run of cases." However, the disabled employee "remains free to show that special circumstances warrant...that...the requested 'accommodation' is 'reasonable' on the particular facts," since "special circumstances might alter the important expectations" raised by a seniority system.

Impact: Employers may continue to award job assignments on the basis of union and employer non-union seniority systems, with only special circumstances altering their priority when considering a reasonable accommodation for a disabled employee.