Actually, Recent Middle East Developments Are Good for the U.S.

I'm having a difficult time understanding what Stephen Walt means by this:

[Wednesday] we learn that Iran is resupplying the Assad regime in Syria via Iraqi airspace. Hardly surprising, for two reasons. First, Syria is a key Iranian ally, so naturally Iran is doing what it can to keep Assad in power. Second, the al-Maliki government is not nearly as anti-Iranian as Saddam Hussein was, and in some ways is sympathetic to Tehran's position. 

All of which reminds us what dunderheads the neocons were when they dreamed up the idea of invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein. Of course, all those liberal hawks who eventually went along with the idea were nearly as foolish.

No, this is not nostalgia for Saddam Hussein. He was a thug and tyrant with as much blood on his hands as Assad, and I don't mourn either his ouster or his passing. But the negative consequences have been enormous, in lives and money and in geopolitical position, as this latest revelation makes clear.

Emphasis added. The situation that Walt believes indicates that the U.S.'s geopolitical position has been enormously weakened is one in one which its primary rivals in the region (Iraq) has been turned into a weakened neutral state, in which another of its rivals (Iran) has has faced massive internal dissent from the Green Revolution, in which the regime of Iran's chief regional ally is under grave threat from within and without, in which the broader region is undergoing a spasm of democratization, in which the U.S. has been largely successful in working with its allies to build up a strong sanctions regime to hamper Iran, in which the U.S. was able to work with NATO to intervene in Libya (thus preventing the worst of the possible outcomes from occurring), in which nearly all of the terrorist networks that have threatened the U.S. and its allies -- as well as the governments which sponsored or at least tolerated them -- have been dismantled or are in disarray, in which the U.S. is less dependent on the region for energy supply than it has been in decades, and in which the U.S. is able to laugh off a threat from Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz.

How does any of this indicate that the geopolitical position of the U.S. has been weakened? The U.S.'s antagonists are quite literally fighting for their lives, the neocon goal of regional democratization is underway -- albeit not in the way they had expected -- and the broader transformation of the region is proceeding in a direction that is amenable to the U.S.'s long-term interests. The Middle East is less engaged in proliferation than it was a decade ago, Tehran's intransigence notwithstanding. There are fewer security dilemmas in operation than at any point in decades. Moreover, the frictions that many believed had developed between the U.S. and its NATO allies over Iraq appear to have been transitory rather than permanent.


Yet Walt believes that the fact that Iran is cutting through Iraqi airspace in a desperate attempt to keep its primary ally from being decapitated is more telling than all of that. Excuse me?


Put in a way that a realist should understand, it is obvious enough that the relative power gap between the U.S. and its rivals in the Middle East has widened over the past decade, not narrowed. A region of the world that has troubled the U.S. since World War II has now lost enough significance for the U.S. to "pivot" away from it to East Asia. In a short time the U.S. has shown some capacity to work with several newly-democratized governments, laying the groundwork for productive relationships moving forward.

Think back ten years. If you had asked neocons then what the best possible outcome for the next decade of the Middle East, they would probably have listed some of the following: a general process of regional democratization; governments which refuse to democratize face fierce internal opposition movements and strong external pressure from the international community; Hussein, Gaddafi, Mubarak, Saleh and Ben Ali all removed from power, while the grip of Assad and Khameini is tenuous; al-Qaeda dismembered and other terrorist networks contained; Pakistan outed as a basketcase; and where the NATO force has shown a willingness to collaborate in support of political reform throughout the region. Seriously... read the Project for a New American Century's "Statement of Principles" and tell me which recent developments in the Middle East contradict them.

Certainly not everything is wine and roses, but neither was it a decade ago. Certainly things could change for the worse in the future, but at a fundamental level recent developments in the Middle East have a high probability of benefiting the U.S. over the long-run. Perhaps quite a lot. From the perspective of the U.S.'s geopolitical position the current Middle East has been an enormous improvement over the status quo ante.

None of this, or at the very least not all of it, can be attributed to the U.S.'s decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power. But neither can it be said that the Iraq invasion hamstrung the U.S.'s geopolitical ambitions in the Middle East. In the end the costs may have out-weighed the gains, but the final accounting is far from finished and the further out we get the more broadly advantageous the U.S.'s position appears to be.

Walt titles his post, snidely, "Another neocon 'success story'". It's entirely possible that the statement is more accurate without the scare quotes.

Poetry, Prose, Propaganda, Policy, & Paradigms: Drezner vs. Drezner (And Me)

A few weeks ago Dan Drezner called me "curiously lazy" for writing that we shouldn't pay much attention to what presidential candidates say about foreign policy during campaigns, especially when they say things like this:

At some point Romney will be asked direct questions about foreign policy. When he [is] asked those questions he will say things like "I will get tough with China to make sure they play by the rules and stop stealing American jobs" and "I will not let terrorists kill American citizens, and I will do whatever is necessary to keep Americans safe" and "I will keep America strong by not cutting our military budget" and "Screw Russia".

While Drezner acknowledged in that post that campaign rhetoric is just campaign rhetoric, he suggested that Romney still needed to talk more about foreign policy in order to "demonstrat[e] leadership" over his campaign, whatever that means. Now Drezner says:

So, does it matter for policy? Well.... no. 

Mario Cuomo once said "You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose." Now, Mario Cuomo was clearly the world's worst poetry connoisseur. Still, to update his observation for our current needs, we can say, "You campaign as a mercantilist; you govern as a free-trader." The reason that Romney has seemed so discombobulated by the Bain attacks is that he's been China-bashing since Day One ofhis campaign, so it's tough to then flip-flop pivot to a free trade stance. ... 

As stomach-churning as I find this kind of ad, I must reluctantly agree with Yglesias and Brooks that it doesn't matter all that much for governing. ... 

I don't think the mercantilist campaign rhetoric will amount to much.

Right. So: Romney's gonna say nationalist stuff, he's gonna say mercantilist stuff, and you shouldn't pay attention to any of it because it won't have an effect on policy or the election. Same for Obama. This is pretty much exactly what I said in my "lazy" post, which concluded thusly:

This is not meant to say that Romney's foreign policy decisions will not be important. They will be. It's just that we won't learn much about what they will be from any campaign statements.

Drezner is so chagrined by all this foreign policy talk (which he asked for) that he anticipates the next few months of the campaign will be "nauseating". Perhaps. If so, and assuming he's not a masochist, he might be well-served to take my initial advice: just don't pay attention to it. It's not lazy; it might even be wise.

(The only other similarity between our two posts? Drezner refers to "campaign bluster" where I write "campaign blather". I also refer to "bloviating". I prefer my choice of 'b'-words, but I suppose that's a matter of preference.)

(One last little thing: Drezner argued, contra me in my "lazy" post, that Romney -- being a smart guy -- surely knows the difference between neoconservatism and realpolitik. I know of no reason to believe this is true. Certainly Romney himself has given us no reason to believe this is true. James Joyner sees Romney's foreign policy as "realist". Jacob Heilbrunn sees it as neoconservative. Romney talks about a "new American Century" -- neocon -- but thinks we'll bring that about by balancing against the rise of China and Russia (!) -- realist. Mostly he seems to think that the U.S. should be strong, which is congruent with both neoconservatism and realpolitik. So you tell me.)

Campaign Blather

Dan Drezner offers some unsolicited advice to Mitt Romney. Well he calls it advice, but it amounts to a request: "Please tell us what you think about foreign policy before the election [so that we can pick it apart]". Romney may choose to acquiesce or not -- hint: at some point he will -- but I'm here to tell you not to pay any attention to it.

Why? Well, why not? We know that foreign policy plays a very small part in electoral outcomes in most cases so almost all campaign rhetoric is bloviating. Moreover, foreign policy decision-making is inherently more prone to post-election recalculation than other policy areas if only because there is so much information that is not known to the candidate until after the election. This is doubly true for candidates who have never held national office: both Clinton and Dubya made notable departures from their campaign rhetoric once they actually held office*; neither was punished at the polls for it.

At some point Romney will be asked direct questions about foreign policy. When he asked those questions he will say things like "I will get tough with China to make sure they play by the rules and stop stealing American jobs" and "I will not let terrorists kill American citizens, and I will do whatever is necessary to keep Americans safe" and "I will keep America strong by not cutting our military budget" and "Screw Russia". He will not say whether he favors neoconservatism or realpolitik because he does not know what those things are. Neither does any of the people who will be asking him questions (unless Fareed Zakaria gets a crack, which he won't), nor will 99.9% of the people who will hear his answers.

His actual foreign policy will be run by the bureaucracy, which will be highly constrained by structural factors, and will be reactive to events yet to occur.

This is not meant to say that Romney's foreign policy decisions will not be important. They will be. It's just that we won't learn much about what they will be from any campaign statements.

*Obama, on the other hand, seems to have no foreign policy at all besides "kill people with drones" and "try to not be as embarrassing as the last guy". This was basically his campaign strategy as well.

The Importance of Actors in Networks

(Apologies for the light posting. Real work plus a family emergency has gotten in the way. Normal posting should continue for most of the rest of the summer.)

Ben O'Laughlin recently attended a talk given by Anne-Marie Slaughter to the British Parliament that focused on how the Clinton State Department is trying to lay the groundwork for perpetuating the U.S.-led liberal order. For those who have followed Slaughter's career, both as an academic and as a former senior advisor in Clinton's State Dept, the basics should not surprise. She's a strong advocate of leveraging networks to embed the U.S. at the center of the global system. She believes that one way to do that is via "smart power", a term coined by Joe Nye* and popularized by Sec. Clinton, that emphasizes persuasion as a complement to capabilities. What I found interesting, however, was the way that the State Dept is going about this:

Slaughter began by saying that structures are being put in place whose effects won’t be visible for some years. The structures the US is building are informed by the assumption that the biggest development in international relations is not the rise of the BRICs but the rise of society – “the people” – both within individual countries and across countries. The US must build structures that harness societies as agents in the international system. Slaughter returned to Putnam’s (1988) two-level game, the proposition that it is in the interaction of international and domestic politics that governments can play constituencies off against one another to find solutions to diplomatic and policy dilemmas. Slaughter took up this framework: the US administration must see a country as comprised of both its government and its society, work with both, and enable US society to engage other countries’ governments and societies. The latter involves the US acting not as “do-er” but as “convenor”, using social media and organising face-to-face platforms for citizens, civil society groups and companies to form intra- and international networks.

Critically, these two levels are flat. This took me by surprise. At the society level, citizens, civil society groups and companies are connected horizontally. No particular group or individual is afforded a priori centrality. Why is this a surprise? Public diplomacy experts have spent the last few years trying to target ‘influencers’ in societies. Influencers are political, religious or cultural figures who are listened to by others. This idea is informed by network analysis, marketing, and the idea that State Department messages are more credible in different parts of the world when mediated and delivered by a local influential figure than by Hillary Clinton on TV. Slaughter was not convinced by reliance on influencers, empirically or normatively. She argued that all the millions marketers have spent still hasn’t generated any clear knowledge about how influencers can be identified and utilised. Not only that, but it is surely preferable to try to engage whole societies and treat all individuals equally. That would flourish a greater democratic ethos than appealing to amenable clerics, companies, journalists and intellectuals in the hope they might spread the word downwards.

The bold is added and it's the part that I'm not sure about. A few lines up Slaughter says (via O'Laughlin) that she is "not convinced" on the empirical evidence that influencers are, erm, influential. I wonder why, because it as far as I can tell it's a pretty robust finding across many differential fields that use network analysis.** In network terms, "influencers" generally have a high "degree", meaning that they are at the center of the network and many other actors in the network are linked to them. In many cases, non-central actors are not linked in any way but through the central actor. So if you want to gain influence in the network you get the most bang for the buck by influencing the influencer.

Moreover, once established influencers tend to remain influential. This is because they are already influential. And influencers tend to become influential because of some intrinsic quality. Let's take an example. Bill Gates became influential because of his ability to make personal computing user-friendly and accessible, an intrinsic attribute. But once he gained an initial influence advantage he was able to gain even greater influence simply because he was already influential. This is not an intrinsic attribute of Gates', but rather what is called a "network externality". That is, one advantage of using Gates' products is that many other people are using Gates' products. So Gates attracts new followers largely because he has already attracted followers. In fact, Gates has been able to continue doing this despite the fact that his new products have arguably been inferior, relative to its competitors' products, than his early products. At this point Gates' position as an influencer is almost solely due to his position as an incumbent influencer.

How does this relate to Slaughter's program? It's all fine and good to engage everyone in the world with the U.S.'s message, to encourage everyone to think like stakeholders, and to try to build large coalitions that are broadly supportive of the U.S.'s interests (or at least are not reflexively against them). But this is a very high-cost, low-yield strategy. As O'Laughlin goes on to note, this is a very long-term plan with no guarantee of success. I'd add that if the U.S. cannot simultaneously get the influencers on its side then it is very likely not to succeed in buttressing the liberal order. And if the U.S. can get the influencers on its side then it is very likely to succeed whether it appeals directly to each individual in the world or not.

There's no reason not to do both, but a tactical change from targeting influencers to targeting everyone is misguided, in my view.

What I find interesting about this is contrasting Slaughter's approach with someone like John Ikenberry's. They have both spent their careers theorizing about the liberal order and the U.S.'s hegemonic relationship with it, and have co-authored a bunch of pieces on the subject, but seem now to have diverged in what they think about what needs to be done for it to persist. Ikenberry continues to stress the importance of international institutions, particularly formal institutions. Slaughter has also emphasized formal institutions in the past, particularly legal institutions, but seems not to be shifting focus. There is nothing contradictory about the contemporary work of Ikenberry and Slaughter, but they have diverged a bit in the points they've chosen to emphasize.

*I can use the diminutive because I met him once. That's all it takes, right?

**For one recent study in international relations relating specifically to advocacy networks, see this piece by Charli Carpenter.

Cain's Foreign Policy Statements Aren't About Foreign Policy Either

At least I hope they aren't:

Cain replied, “I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions and they’re already starting to come. And when they ask me, ‘Who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan?’ I’m going to say you know, ‘I don’t know. Do you know?’ And then I’m going to say, ‘How’s that going to create one job?’ I want to focus on the top priorities of this country. That’s what leaders do.  

“They make sure that the nation is focused on the critical issues with critical solutions,” Cain said. “Knowing who is the head of some of these small insignificant states around the world, I don’t think that is something that is critical to focusing on national security and getting this economy going. When I get ready to go visit that country, I’ll know who it is, but until then, I want to focus on the big issues that we need to solve.”

Via Nathan Hamm, who adds:

I’ll give most people a pass for being ignorant about Central Asia. It doesn’t even surprise me that someone aspiring to be the US President would be ignorant of the region. But to be so epically ill-informed about a supply route that that both the Bush and Obama administrations thought important that runs right through a country he so bluntly calls “small” and “insignificant,” well… that’s just funny. (And not for nothin’ but surely at least one American job has to have been created by GM’s factory in Uzbekistan.)

Smirking aside, I actually think Cain's pretty much correct about this. There is a supply route that runs through Uzbekistan, but it's hardly essential for the US to pursue its geopolitical interests. And while the GM factory may have created a job or two, the total number won't be much higher than that. In any case, that sort of "gotcha" question has no bearing on the presidential race.

Cain is obviously all but irrelevant, but its more worrying is that no major political candidate seems to have much understanding of, or interest in, international political and economic dynamics. Secretary Clinton may be the furthest along the curve, and she has a new article in Foreign Policy that looks like it's dedicated to the topic. I haven't had time to read it in full yet, so perhaps I'll have more to say later. But if it contains sense it will be the exception.

Romney's Foreign Policy Statements Aren't About Foreign Policy

I don't disagree with any of Drezner's critiques of Romney's white paper, nor with his overall grade. But I think that it's mostly irrelevant. Here's what Drezner says:

Similarly, for someone who says that, the Obama administration is "undermining one’s allies (p. 3)" in contrast to you, who will "reassure our allies (p. 13)", you don't actually talk about America's treaty allies much at all. True, you do talk about expanding America's allies to include India and Indonesia. Mexico gets some face time. Israel gets a lot of face time. On the other hand, NATO is not mentioned once in this entire document. Neither is the European Union. Japan and South Korea get perfunctory treamtment at best. Turkey is a major treaty ally but you treat it like a pariah state. For someone who's claiming that the U.S. will reassure its major allies, you didn't talk about them much at all. This is a really important problem, because Japan and Europe have been crucial allies in a lot of major American initiatives -- and they're getting weaker. Even in discussing new possible allies, I'm kind of gobsmacked that Brazil is never discussed. 

Another big problem is that your approach to China is so shot full of contradictions that I don't know where to begin. ... 

If the section on China is contradictory, then your discussion of Pakistan is worse. ... 

One final point, should you choose to revise this draft strategy -- you need to prioritize the threats you discuss in the paper. You list a bunch of them -- rising authoritarian states, transnational violence, failing states, and rogue states. If you have to prioritize, which threats merit greater attention? This should actually be pretty easy, since you absurdly overhype the threats posed by some of these countries (Venezuela, Cuba and Russia in particular).

But I suspect that these inconsistencies are exactly the message that Romney intended to convey. After all, he's not trying to convince the FP wonkosphere that he's got a consistent grand strategy that would get an exceptional grade in a graduate class. He's trying to convince GOP voters to nominate him for the presidency. And what do those voters want to hear? It seems likely that they want hyped-up threats from Cold War baddies, a blank check for Israel, and mixed feelings on China. I doubt they care much about Brazil, and they take Japan and Europe for granted. And, as Drezner noted previously, they (presumably) want someone who has thought about foreign policy for more than 15 seconds and has some coherent vision for how it should be conducted. Unlike Perry. Romney's tossing them the red meat that he hopes will convince primary voters that he's more serious and knowledgable about foreign policy than his competitors.

In other words, the audience matters. Romney's audience is the contemporary GOP, which is endlessly hawkish but only in some directions. He's signaling to them as hard as he can that he's hawkish in those directions too, but no others. Everything in the document makes sense when viewed in that light, even if it doesn't make sense as actual policy platform.

I'm not trying to knock Drezner at all; his job is to take these kinds of policy statements at face value and evaluate them. He is obviously aware of Romney's motivations. But it's worth remembering the context.

Known Knowns

Wow. Fred Kaplan goes full-bore on Rumsfeld, in a review of his new memoir and legacy. I'm not going to excerpt it; you really need to read the whole thing.

A Millenial's Perspective On International Politics

Drezner asks what today's twenty-somethings think about international politics:

As I think about it, here are the Millennials' foundational foreign policy experiences:

1) An early childhood of peace and prosperity -- a.k.a., the Nineties;

2) The September 11th attacks;

3) Two Very Long Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq;

4) One Financial Panic/Great Recession;

5) The ascent of China under the shadow of U.S. hegemony.

From these experiences, I would have to conclude that this generation should be anti-interventionist to the point of isolationism.

I still belong to this group of people, albeit near the upper-bound, so I guess it's my blog-duty to share some thoughts. First of all, here's how I'd describe my foundational foreign policy experiences:

1) An early childhood of the end of the Cold War. Unlike my students, I can remember when the Berlin Wall still stood, when Gorbachev was placed under house arrest, and when Bush 41 repelled Iraq from Kuwait. Even earlier, I remember Reagan's Star Wars being discussed on the nightly news. I wouldn't say that I was very politically aware at the time, but there was a palpable sense of Beacon of Light vs. Evil Empire in my youth.

2) To me, the Nineties were less about peace and prosperity and more about a serious of political, economic, and military interventions all over the world. First the political-economic reorganization of post-communist regimes, in which the U.S. played a fairly large role. Then the military interventions in Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Add to that diplomatic actions in Iraq, Palestine, Northern Ireland, and elsewhere. Plus the expansion of trade through the shift from GATT to the WTO and the passage of NAFTA. Not all of these were profoundly successful, but none of them were devastating failures, at least for the U.S. The pattern seems to be that the U.S. should maintain a host of relationships along many dimensions in the world.

3) The venomous domestic political discourse, peaking with the 2000 recount.

4) 9/11. To me, this had a couple of effects. It was a jarring experience of course, but for some reason not especially surprising to me. The way the political lines were drawn did surprise me some. In the '90s the goal of foreign policy was to promote a secure, prosperous world through multilateral engagement. In a flash that gave way to a "let's unilaterally punish the evildoers" mentality. Multilateralism was fine... as long as that was defined as "other countries helping us do whatever we want". The "with us or against", "Axis of evil", "freedom fries" rhetoric was a marked departure from the '90s.

5) A series of financial shocks, culminating with the Great Recession but presaged by the LTCM, the Asian crisis, Enron/Worldcom, etc. These revealed that the Great Moderation was something of a myth, but also demonstrated a pretty amazing resilience of political institutions in the face of crisis. No trade wars, few "beggar thy neighbor" policies, no break-up of the EU, no military conflicts, etc. Domestic and coordinated international government interventions have been pretty successful in stopping the downturn and beginning the recovery. There are still worries of course, but compare the response to this shock -- which, in many ways was worse than the Great Depression -- to the responses to previous crises. We seem to have prevented a political crisis even though we had an economic crisis, which certainly bucks the historical trend.

Is it surprising what is not on this list? No BRICs, and little war. Why? Because the rise of the BRICs hasn't fundamentally changed much about American foreign policy. This could change in the future, but so far there have not been many instances in which China has appeared willing to directly challenge the U.S. in a major way. Yes, the Copenhagen climate change conference was held up by China, but it was very unlikely that any meaningful agreement would have come from that anyway. Even less likely that it would have been approved by the Senate. China gets scapegoated for almost everything bad that happens in the U.S., but that doesn't mean it has yet handcuffed the U.S. in any significant way.

Similarly, while the Afghan/Iraq wars have been unsuccessful by almost any reasonable definition, they have not been as draining as, say, the Vietnam war was. My generation never faced even the hint of a draft, and relatively few of our friends, classmates, and family members actually saw any combat. War is much more abstract concept to us than it was to our parents' and grandparents' generations.

I don't think my generation is isolationist. I do think it wants to see a more careful discussion of costs and benefits when considering international engagement, military or otherwise. I should probably only speak for myself, but I do not see isolationism as an option. One of the lessons from the '90s is that neglect of troubled regions is not likely to be benign. Meanwhile, the biggest perceived challenges of the near future -- environmental pressures, demographic shifts/immigration, financial and economic integration -- all require engagement. I don't think my generation is gung-ho about starting a war with Iran, say, but that's a far cry from being isolationist.

I should also note that my generation doesn't have many ideological alternatives to a broadly liberal political orientation. We all view Marxism as pretty thoroughly discredited in all the forms it has actually manifest itself. We view technocratic institutions as having a generally positive effect. We generally believe that dynamic labor and capital markets are good so long as there is a fairly robust safety net. We understand that trade is on net a good thing in most circumstances, but we don't have a utopian attitude towards cross-national exchange, often think that the first world can do more to support poorer countries, and are willing to pay some premium to make that happen. We generally view the economic crisis as something less than a transformative event, requiring marginal but not radical reforms.

Again, I'll reiterate that these are my thoughts. I'm really not sure if there is such a thing as a coherent generational attitude towards these questions. But there are some signs. Obama was hugely popular among my generation, and he campaigned on anything but an isolationist platform. (Counterpoint: Ron Paul also garnered large support on college campuses by pushing a more isolationist line, but Paul's numbers were obviously much smaller.) My generation seems to be fairly cosmopolitan in general. They travel, learn languages, watch foreign films, and love ethnic foods. Attitudes towards immigrants seem to be laxer among the youth than the elderly. They are concerned with how first world externalities affect others.

Obviously these are generalizations, and therefore imperfect. They are also subjective impressions, which are always dangerous. But I don't think it's fair to categorize today's twenty-somethings as isolationist.

Politics Everywhere, Even Where It's Supposedly Not Allowed

A few days ago Yglesias wrote that China's domestic politics isn't as simple as many outsiders think:

Chinese political institutions aren’t the same as American ones, but what you can see here is that they’re not totally different either. This is not at all dissimilar to the debate playing out over the EPA’s Clean Air Act mandate to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Public officials, whether in China or West Virginia or Ohio, often see it as their job to defend the interests of local employers and businessmen.

Yesterday, Drezner added that these kinds of misperceptions can have an effect on policy:

It's incumbent upon the American foreign policy community to develop a better appreciation of the domestic politics of other countries. But, damn, it would be good if other countries could get a better working knowledge of the U.S. foreign policy community. It's not like we're all that opaque.

This led Farley to write a post about how the U.S. policy community seems completely uninterested in how politics actually works in other places:

In particularly, I was frustrated by the belief, apparently endemic to the US pundit and strategic class, that authoritarian states don’t operate under domestic constraints, and consequently can do whatever they want. It’s not quite right to say that academy has figured out how to successfully integrate domestic politics into theories of foreign policy behavior, but we’ve certainly worked on the question. The policy community, however, seems almost utterly uninterested in this literature, to the extent that “well, Ahmadinejad/Putin/Chirac/Chavez/Milosevic/Calderon/Netanyahu/Kim could comply with our demands, but his domestic coalition would almost certainly fracture, and it’s tough to expect leaders to do things that will lead to their downfall” becomes a repetitive refrain.

I think that this question is the one that I entered into grad school knowing the least about, or at least that I had the least appreciation for. I've since become persuaded that it is probably the most relevant variable in academic or policy work. I think Farley is absolutely right that the academic community has made greater strides than the policy community in this way. That doesn't mean that anything has been conclusively decided; many of the most discussed/cited works are also the most disdained. But where progress has been made it's been by analyzing how domestic political constraints can cause leaders to act in ways that are, quite frankly, perplexing to outside audiences.

I think that, in IR at least, Yglesias' take is the closest to the median position among academics. Politicians in different countries don't face the exact same structural constraints, but they do face similar ones. Political incentives come from interest groups interacting with structural constraints everywhere. The problem with much policy/punditry advice is that they completely ignore interest groups in other countries, because they have no idea what they are. The botched occupation of Iraq can at least largely be understood in this light. (For a crude example, remember that the coalition forces actually were greeted by liberators in some parts of Iraq, but certainly not everywhere.) Those who argue that China is an unstoppable force that will continue to grow 10% a year because they don't have to deal with messy local politics are wrong and should be ignored. (I'm looking at you, Captain Stache.)

In fact, as Rodrik argues in a well-put op-ed, authoritarian regimes face a very uncertain economic and political future precisely because of their local politics:

Democracies not only out-perform dictatorships when it comes to long-term economic growth, but also outdo them in several other important respects. They provide much greater economic stability, measured by the ups and downs of the business cycle. They are better at adjusting to external economic shocks (such as terms-of-trade declines or sudden stops in capital inflows). They generate more investment in human capital – health and education. And they produce more equitable societies.

Authoritarian regimes, by contrast, ultimately produce economies that are as fragile as their political systems. Their economic potency, when it exists, rests on the strength of individual leaders, or on favorable but temporary circumstances. They cannot aspire to continued economic innovation or to global economic leadership.

At first sight, China seems to be an exception. Since the late 1970’s, following the end of Mao’s disastrous experiments, China has done extremely well, experiencing unparalleled rates of economic growth. Even though it has democratized some of its local decision-making, the Chinese Communist Party maintains a tight grip on national politics and the human-rights picture is marred by frequent abuses.

But China also remains a comparatively poor country. Its future economic progress depends in no small part on whether it manages to open its political system to competition, in much the same way that it has opened up its economy. Without this transformation, the lack of institutionalized mechanisms for voicing and organizing dissent will eventually produce conflicts that will overwhelm the capacity of the regime to suppress. Political stability and economic growth will both suffer.

It's easy to observe the political controversies in the U.S., even if (as Drezner notes) other states don't always do it. It may be a bit harder for us to observe everything that's going on in less-transparent states, but it isn't impossible and it doesn't mean that there isn't any politics. China faces huge local political controversies related to the environment, public health, social welfare, demographics, worker safety and renumeration, immigration, secessionist groups, etc. Pretending that they are a unitary actor is foolish.

I've never felt it was my place to proffer policy advice, even into the seldom-read tubespace that this blog lives in. But the last half-century of American foreign policy reveals, to me, the importance of disaggregating the politics of foreign regimes, of closely examining political structures and constraints in other places, and of crafting nuanced policy that takes those factors into account. This is much harder than blustering, of course, but also much more beneficial.

Brief Thoughts on Israel

This isn't really my area of expertise, but I think George Packer has it right:

The flotilla was bait, and Israel took it—a classic triumph of civil disobedience over state power.

Even if not illegal, and it probably wasn't, Israel's response was incredibly stupid.

Somewhat surprisingly, I haven't yet read anybody say that this could end up being a good thing for the Mideast peace process because it's bad for Israel. If Packer's analogy is right -- he also references the K-9 units used in Birmingham -- this could provide a wedge in the Palestine stalemate, perhaps eventually leading to greater concessions from Israel and a peace agreement. Drezner seems to almost get to this point when he says that Israel shares some things in common with North Korea:

[B]oth countries are diplomatically isolated except for their ties to a great power benefactor. Both countries are pursuing autarkic policies that immiserate millions of people. The majority of the population in both countries seem blithely unaware of what the rest of the world thinks. Both countries face hostile regional environments. Both countries keep getting referred to the United Nations. And, in the past month, the great power benefactor is finding it more and more difficult to defend their behavior to the rest of the world.

If the "great power benefactor" decides to reduce its support for the regime, it may have little choice but to accept some sort of bargain that it would have rejected previously. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but the odds of that have gone up, not down. Avoidable tragedy that the flotilla attack is, it could possibly end up serving a greater purpose.

(Just so we're clear, I'm not suggesting moral equivalence between Israel and American segregationists, or Israel and North Korea, or anything else. I'm thinking in purely strategic terms here.)

What Can We Learn from Politicians' Reading Habits? Not Much, I Hope

I'm always skeptical of fluff pieces about the reading habits of politicians. I find it hard to believe that just because a president read a biography of Teddy Roosevelt, say, he became more resolved to pursue some policy or other. So I draw in my breath sharply when I read that some politician learned some profound lesson from some history book that directly influenced his policy. Perhaps it's because I suspect it's just P.R. leaking through, perhaps it's because I give too much benefit of the doubt to politicians, so I don't expect them to base any policy on any one book. If "book X -> policy Y" then that would be too depressing, especially when the books most politicians are found reading are either biographies of other Great Men or pseudo-intellectual fluff (read: whatever book by a NYT columnist just got published). But maybe I'm just being too charitable.

(Aside: one of my least favorite famous quotes is Santayana's "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it". There's no wisdom in that at all. I'd prefer "Those who confuse history with the present are doomed to catastrophe". Doesn't that nicely say a lot about the story of politics?)

So I met with some cynicism the most recent WaPo fluff piece on presidents' reading habits and how they influenced their policy agendas. Again, I'd certainly hope that presidents are not basing policy on one book, especially if that book is of the Great Man Overcomes Adversity Through Strength of Will variety. Then again, presidents put busts of Churchill and portraits of Lincoln in their offices so one of two things must be true: either politicians take books and history and legacies more seriously than they should, or they just use them as signals of their intelligence, seriousness, or intentions. I lean towards the latter, but there are still some interesting bits from the WaPo piece. Like Truman's incredible hubris:

Truman's support for establishing the country of Israel -- over the objections of his own State Department -- has been credited to his boyhood reading, both of the Bible (which he read at least a dozen times) and of the multivolume history "Great Men and Famous Women," edited by Charles F. Horne. The collection featured Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who let the Jews return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. Shortly after leaving the White House, Truman was introduced to a group of Jewish leaders as having "helped create" the state of Israel. "What do you mean 'helped create?' " Truman bristled. "I am Cyrus."

If that anecdote is true it's astounding. I've read the Bible more than a dozen times too, and I don't remember Cyrus pushing the big red atomic button, but whatever. Still, there's another anecdote in here I do believe:

[Bill] Clinton's reading affected his approach in the early 1990s to the crisis in the Balkans, a fierce and bloody struggle for control of Bosnian territory that had once been part of Yugoslavia. At the time, the president read Robert Kaplan's "Balkan Ghosts" and was struck by Kaplan's description of the region's long-standing ethnic hatreds. The book apparently set him against intervening in Bosnia. A panicky defense secretary, Les Aspin, told national security adviser Anthony Lake that Clinton was "not on board" with their proposals. Years later, journalist Laura Rozen wrote that "some can't hear the name Robert Kaplan without blaming him for the delay in U.S. intervention."

I believe this is at least partially true. I also believe that Clinton's foreign policy was the most brazenly cynical of any president in the post-war period, and did more damage to the U.S. and the burgeoning post-1989 liberal order than is popularly understood, so if Kaplan's transparently crap argument provided him with an excuse to continue to shirk a responsible foreign policy then he'd be happy to appropriate it. But maybe that's my bias.

Still, I can't help but be interested in these kinds of articles, despite myself. I already knew that Bush (claimed to) read Sartre, and that Reagan was a Milton Friedman fan despite enacting almost none of his policy prescriptions, but I did not know that Jefferson's book addiction drove him deep into debt but but later laid the groundwork for the Library of Congress. I did know that Clinton favored Maya Angelou, though I'm not quite sure why, but I didn't know that Obama carved out time for highbrow fiction.

Those anecdotes are interesting to me. I just won't read too much into them.

Trade and Foreign Policy Attitudes

Katja Kleinberg and Benjamin Fordham, two UNC Ph.D.'s and currently Assistant Professor of Political Science and Professor of Political Science respectively, at Binghamton University-SUNY have a new paper "Trade and Foreign Policy Attitudes" in the most recent issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution.

The abstract:

Does trade influence whether individuals view other states as friendly or threatening? Liberal theory implies that it should, but the individual-level implications of the liberal argument are rarely tested. Trade should influence individual attitudes more strongly where trade is more economically important. International trade also creates both winners and losers within the trading states, and the foreign policy attitudes of these winners and losers should differ. The authors test hypotheses drawn from this line of argument using a forty-seven-country survey conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes project. They find some evidence that exports but not imports reduce hostile foreign policy attitudes. They find little support for the claim that the trade interests indicated by factor ownership influence attitudes toward trading partners in this broad cross-national sample. On the other hand, attitudes toward trade and foreign direct investment are correlated with broader foreign policy attitudes in the way liberal theory suggests. The authors conclude that there is reason to believe that trade influences individual foreign policy attitudes but that factor ownership does not provide an adequate account of individual interests in international trade in most cases.

As Tyler Cowen says, the paper is self-recommending.

The Non-End of Influence

Thought I'd toss out this video of Stephen Cohen talking about his book (with Brad DeLong) The End of Influence. The discussion frustrated me, because both discussants kept talking about how important politics was in shaping economic outcomes without ever mentioning how it was important, why it was important, what politics had to do with outcomes, how political incentives shaped history, or really anything substantive about politics. It's difficult to pull out any one wrong thing in it to pick on, mostly because the discussion is too vague to pin down any clear, consistent argument beyond "being in debt is a bad thing for America", but also because there are half-truths and "yeah, but..." moments throughout. And also because it's an hour long and basically everything said in it is incomplete, wrong, or begs a question that it doesn't answer.

For example: the title of the book is The End of Influence, and yet nowhere in the interview does Cohen explain how America has lost its influence or even defend the notion that it has. At the very end he actually says the opposite: that despite the financial crisis nothing much seems to be changing at all. Earlier, he argues that China is unable to use its massive dollar holdings to exert much influence, because that would require domestic political tradeoffs that they are not prepared to make. Umm... if you're giving an interview to promote a book with a provocative title, shouldn't you defend the thesis instead of arguing against it? At least a little bit?

I don't have time these days to actually, you know, read the book (oh summer, come quickly), but if the sentiments expressed by Cohen in this interview (and in the FP book excerpt) are the same as those in the book then I'm with Drezner: I wish they'd talked to some actual political scientists, rather than just pay lip-service to their existence.



(ht: DeLong)

Slaughtering the State Department

Spencer Ackerman sits down with Anne-Marie Slaughter to discuss her efforts (under Sec. Clinton) to reform the State Department, and take some of America's foreign policy back from the Pentagon. Clinton ordered a new planning document for State, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), and put Slaughter in charge of creating the QDDR (along with Deputy SoS Lew and senior USAID official Michael). What is Slaughter hoping to address?

Asked if the QDDR will result in institutional changes at the State Department and USAID, Slaughter answered simply, “Yes.” While she said she could not yet determine would precisely would change, the QDDR’s working groups are asking a fundamental question: “What do we need?”

Three broad conceptual lines will determine the answer. The first, Slaughter explained, is that U.S. foreign policy is beset with “collective problems” — from terrorism to climate change to pandemic disease — that require joint international action, something all the stakeholders at Slaughter’s International Finance Corporation lunch recognized. ...

Accordingly, the second concept is about how State and USAID work with the military to address “the question of civilian operational capacity to crisis.” The widespread inability of the State Department and USAID — with budgets representing a tiny fraction of the half-trillion-per-year Defense Department — to deploy to conflict zones has expanded the military’s role in stabilization and reconstruction duties broadly understood to be civilian tasks. ...

The final overarching construct the QDDR will address goes back to Slaughter’s International Finance Corporation lunch. Powerful states remain “very, very important” in geopolitics,” she said, but “the landscape of nonstate actors is so dramatically different,” requiring State and USAID to think about how to perform diplomacy and and development work in an international environment where investment banks, multinational alliances, private advocacy groups, religious institutions and other players “have the power that once only states had.”

Slaughter does not yet know how the QDDR will answer to those questions. “I think by framing the questions that way, you’re asking people to look at the capabilities that we need” and then identify existing gaps.

The fact that it's nearly 2010 and the U.S. State Dept. is just now starting to look at nonstate actors as important for global governance should scare the bejeezus out of everyone. Seriously? I know it's the "State" department, but given that nonstate actors can greatly affect states you'd think that these things might've come up before.

Another criticism of State is its sclerotic nature. Institutional decay within the department has made it difficult for State to play a proactive role in American diplomacy (Matt Armstrong's recent piece making this case is referenced in Ackerman's article). Slaughter recognizes the difficulties, but she knows that the QDDR is just a report; follow-up actions are necessary too.

I, for one, am cheering for her. She knows what needs to be done, and everyone knows that America is not well-served by having nearly all of its foreign policy run out of the Pentagon. It's an uphill slog, but Obama seems committed to it, Clinton seems committed to it, and the country needs it. So hopefully something good will come out of the QDDR.