Stephen Sestanovich, "American Foreign Policy in Historical Perspective"

pleasure to be here as Lisa noted this is a different kind of lecture from the other ones in conceptual foundations it's about one country but with a good reason I think and that is that that country plays a central role in international politics and it is hard to talk about any odd topics that you're going to be discussing in the course of this semester without some reference to to the United States however because the role of the United States is so charged so controversial I want to begin by turning to a distant and quiet period when its role was vastly different and that period that the episode that I'm going to talk about a little bit by way of introduction is the spanish-american war about which I would hazard the guess that few of you are experts so I have provided you what I call a cheat sheet about the spanish-american war that tells you everything you need to know about it in order to understand American foreign policy in a completely different time a completely different time in which I'm going to go through this very quickly a new Republican administration comes in there's an unprecedented attack on American interests in its first year in office a group of defense intellectuals see this is a big opportunity to turn American foreign policy around two wars result motivated by many different kinds of foreign policy concerns among them very intense concerns of a denial of human rights in the countries that are invaded there's a quick military victory at the outset for the United States but a strong insurgency develops particularly in one of these countries and the question that the United States has to face is how to defend its strategic trysts without having to pay the price of a long occupation this problem is you can imagine becomes central to the next presidential election but it has a lasting impact on America's role now if you've been paying attention at all you get the joke right you can look at a quiet time far in the past and see that American foreign policy looks really similar to the foreign policy of today and at a time when the United States is by far the dominant power in international politics so with that tantalizing introduction I want to spend the rest of the time talking about how to understand these continuities in American foreign policy over time and we're going to look at three themes which I've put on the board here that little part of the black board that was allotted to me while the screen was down and you were all indulging in democracy the three topics are domestic politics the goals of American foreign policy and I'm going to look at two in particular and I didn't write them down because they're long but you can write them down in your notebooks regime change and democracy and section three the exercise of American power now the kinds of questions we're going to be looking at are under domestic politics who really controls American foreign policy whose influence counts in the second section what how do we understand the stated goals of American policy where do they what do they mean and how are they balanced against other goals and finally the exercise of American power will be of particular interest to those of you who know that the key terms of this administration's foreign policy have been words like unilateralism and well in regime change so we're going to we're going to be taking looking at these problems in his store perspective but I think in a way that should illuminate both present and even more this is a bowl boast that political scientists and practitioners make the future okay let's start with domestic politics in American foreign policy now merely to talk about domestic politics is already to put up a red flag that we're not approaching this subject in a way that is completely standard for a realist outlook and I want to make a confession to you at the very beginning of this lecture and that is this my view of realism my view of realism is and take this down it tells you everything you need to know about international relations if you don't want to know very much and I and is Exhibit A for this I always liked to read aloud the entire discussion in the large work by one of our eminent realists John Mearsheimer who you're reading this week in his book the tragedy of great power politics his entire description of America's cold war policy and it goes like this don't think you're going to be here for an hour only the United States had sufficient military power to prevent Soviet hegemony after 1945 so American troops remained in Europe throughout the Cold War that's it that's the whole that's all you need to know if you're John Mearsheimer and a serious realist America had the power needed to deter hegemony stayed in Europe throughout the Cold War you know we could dismiss the class right now but if you want to know more if you want to understand the weirdness of American foreign policy its contradictory character it's you know what makes it so changeable so mysterious you need to dig little deeper and that's what we're going to do here and I want to start that by pointing out to you six dualities about American foreign policy that make you realize that there's more going on in the excess in the conduct of American foreign policy than John Mearsheimer is one sentence might let me lead you to believe first of all duality number one America has the most powerful military by far and the most powerful tradition of civilian control of the military and the biggest cadre in the world of civil civilian defense experts secondly it has the most imperial presidency and the most extensive congressional limitations on presidential power third it has done the most of any country of all countries to create international law and organization and is the most determined to protect itself against unwanted applications of international law and or in the processes of international organizations to itself fourth duality America has what I would consider the most ideas-driven foreign policy and at the same time it is most readily and cynically often taken in by anti ideological pragmatic moderates or authoritarians elsewhere who present themselves as as promising allies they're called our SOPs the comment of a famous American policy maker v the United States is the most committed to free trade as an ideological matter and very heavily influenced by small protectionist lobbies sixth it is deeply influenced American foreign policies and deeply influenced by business interests and yet most likely to upset them by pursuing other goals that don't serve the interests of business so how to explain all of these dualities well together they paint a portrait of a highly pluralist policy process a process for the influence of American foreign policy and not all the participants in this process are committed to the same goal but they don't have to be and they don't have to work out an agreement on the same goals American foreign policy is additive you've got a pluralist process and the result is that most of the goals pursued by the are men a great many of the goals pursued by the participants in that process are implemented and ducked and pursue now I'm not the first to make this discovery in fact there's a long tradition of seeing Democratic foreign policy an American foreign policy in particular as disorderly ineffective even defective John Maynard Keynes who were reflected on his experience negotiating with the United States over international economic issues said that the u.s. organs of government are quote so incredibly inefficient one wonders how decisions are ever reached at all and Winston Churchill also a friend of the United States said you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they've exhausted all the alternatives and it's not just foreigners who say this this tradition of seeing American pluralism as dysfunctional is is an old one Walter Lippman a very famous American public intellectual we used to call them as said that the influence of the American public and interest groups on American foreign policy means that American policy is alternately there's his quote too little too late or too long and too much too pacifist or too bellicose to neutralist to appeasing to intransigent moreover commentators in this vein have found Americans blind to their failings George Kennan was one of the most distinguished American diplomats and diplomatic historians got sick of diplomacy he said history does not forgive us our national mistakes because they are explicable in terms of our domestic politics a nation which excuses its own failures by the sacred untouchable nosov its own habits can excuse itself into complete disaster so harsh words some realists try to make sense of this disorderliness and see the ways in which american political institutions have changed over time to produce better results Fareed Zakaria I think one could call a public intellectual too has went before became one when he was a mere political scientist wrote a book called for wealth to power in which he talked about how the wealth of the United States and created potential power but it's institutions weren't suited to the effective exercise of foreign policy and so he describes the way in which those institutions were improved streamlined centralized with greater resources available for foreign policy with more presidential control and that at the end of his story this happened in the late 19th century and early 20th century at the end of his story you've got an asset of national institutions styled for a realist ready to exercise power in the world the way a realist would want the only problem is the American people in the American political process didn't stick with that approach instead what do you have right after the end of farid story you have the reassertion of congressional power challenging overriding President Wilson and virtually destroying his presidency by refusing to ratify the treaty he negotiated the Paris at the end of World War one we see examples of the manipulation of American foreign policy in ways that outraged and confound realists every day my favorite one is the case of the Gulf Coast shrimp farmers who were so alarmed by imports of shrimp from Vietnam and Thailand that they got the US government to declare their shrimp a special a separate species but you can any bet you Joe Stiglitz and Jeff Sachs when they talk certainly Joe Stiglitz are going to you know echo this kind of this kind of complaint but but pluralism extends far beyond the manipulation of American foreign policy by business interests in the 1990s one of the biggest disputes between the United States and the EU can involve the so-called helms-burton Act which was an American law which essentially the purpose of which was to get Europe to adopt America's policy toward Cuba which Europe resisted and the reason that the United States Congress did this was because of the decisive factor in it was the Cuban American community and the electoral votes of Florida I guess I should say and it reflected the in fear the influence on American foreign policy of something that I would say is even greater than business in general and that's ethnicity this subject is often commented on these days especially with back to the American Jewish community but and especially by foreign analysts who don't understand American politics very well but I think they often look at it too narrowly my proposition for you about the role of ethnicity in American foreign policy is this any organized American ethnic group usually gets the policy at wants on the issue it cares about if it is organized enough to care and there are many examples of this that one could give the failure of the British government for example to persuade the US government to stop the flow of money and guns to Irish terrorist groups you know our closest ally asked us to crack down on terrorism and what the United States going to do said no you might think it had something to do with ethnicity turkey another close American ally has often found its interests challenged by Armenian Americans I'll tell you a story about a conversation I had with Nancy Pelosi at dinner about almost 10 years ago I had just taken on a position at the in the State Department where I was responsible for Armenia and Azerbaijan and there by someone who directed Turkey and I said to her you know I'd like to come and talk to you about section 907 which was a provision of US law that banned aid to Azerbaijan because the Armenian American community objected to it and she looked at me she's a congressman from California now Speaker of the House and had represents many Armenians in California and she said you must have a lot of time on your hands what was she saying to me you can't talk to me I do what I think serves the interests of my constituents we don't have a rational discussion on this coal in the Cold War one country in Eastern Europe had a special status in American policy toward the Soviet bloc it got trade credits assistance visits from American presidents even at the height of the Cold War and the reason for it was this country's Poland was partly strategic calculation and partly domestic political calculation this country was the first country to enter NATO at the impact of the end of the Cold War and I'll tell you national strategy might have been enough to create that result but if it hadn't been enough might have happened anyway now realists are critical of all such influences I remember hearing John Mearsheimer give a presentation in which he said he was really glad the Cold War was over because this would diminish the influence of East European foreign policy experts think remember that when you read Mearsheimer in Walt today this debate focuses on to Israel and it's very appropriate that the critique of the influence of Israel of the Israel lobby is led by two of the most influential realist experts on international relations you will I wager discuss this article in that is asked to ask you to read in section and I hope you'll use the very excellent review of it by les Gelb in the Sunday Times last week but let me add a few quick words about it myself to show you the significance of the fact that Mir Sharon Walter realists not experts on other things they are not experts on American politics because they don't seem to know that lobbies focus on the Congress above all else they don't particularly want to understand the influence of the lobbies on Congress because they want it to be a little weirder than that they want it to be about Neo conservatives and evangelicals exercising influence on the White House not Democratic members of Congress who are you know their meat and potatoes of the work of any everyday lobbyist secondly they're not experts on ethnicity because they say were they would know that the diasporas of of American ethnic groups are always more radical than those in the home and the government and public opinion in the old country they're not experts on the Middle East or experts on the evolution of American foreign policy they're where do they think the relationship with Israel came from well they don't really tell you much about that it comes in fact in a really interesting way out of a Stratego land ambitious policy effort by the Kennedy administration to innovate where they felt that the Eisenhower administration had failed and to build relations with the major all the major powers of the Middle East Israel Egypt Saudi Arabia those were going to be the three pillars of policy and that failed and the residue of it actually is the be in the in the residue of that failure is the American Israeli relationship now I want to close this section you'll talk more about Mearsheimer Walton section I want to close this first part of my lecture by focusing again on the question of whether or not pluralism tends to produce successful policy the liberal answer to this liberal theorists answer is yes the realist as I said Creek I mentioned and Churchill and Lippmann and Kenan is not the realist that you're the Liberals that you're reading or analysts of liberal influences in American policy include I can bury and mean and I can bury makes an argument in after victory about the open and penetrated character of American democracy and which he says it's a good thing it's good for foreign powers to be able to influence American policy why because it means that the foreign policy of the largest power reflects more interests than just its own think about that Walter Meade who's a short article on Jacksonian ISM you're going to read or a larger book about this about all of the schools of American foreign policy Jacksonian ism is one of them but he discusses others as well Hamiltonian ISM focuses on trade will Jeffersonian ISM which focuses on keeping the military and and other commitments of the United States abroad small Jacksonian ISM which focuses on honor and American power and Wilsonian ISM which focuses on the spread of democracy and he says that American foreign policy is always a coalition of schools never there's never domination by one school totally there's always a melding of their interests and the result is a stronger and more effective policy and I think thinking about how well democracy produces foreign policies one of the issues challenges raised by any study of American foreign policy on this I want to give liberalism I mean realism the last word however you could argue that the pluralism of American foreign policy is a kind of indulgence a luxury that only a powerful country can enjoy that less powerful countries have to folk what their real priorities are they can't pursue every interest groups pet obsession pluralism has this character of not requiring a priority prioritization of among policy goals failure however tends to shut down pluralism to challenge the lack of priorities and in to assert and to elevate the role of realism in American foreign policy we've seen one period when the role of realism was really at its peak and that was after the Vietnam War maybe we will see that again that would be one argument that you could consider for the future of American foreign policy now let me turn to the second part of my lecture which is to discussion of Americans goals for the foreign policies of different countries can be and looked very different because of the particularities of history culture geography economic development military technology and so forth what realism tries to do is to strip foreign policies down to their essentials to see regularities and continuities but we've already seen a challenge to realism in the process by which foreign policy has been made in the United States it seems as though American foreign policy is the product of pluralism now I want to take this a step further does this lead does this process lead to distinctive goals are there discs Eric turistic goals of American foreign policy that we can identify and here I want to look at the particular goals of the Bush administration that have excited the most debate over the past several years and those were were regime change and democracy the Bush administration made the argument that the threat faced by the United States and other countries in in the two cases where it went to war in that is Afghanistan and Iraq that that threat was directly related to the character of the regime ruling those countries and that the right kind of internal transformation moreover would solve the problem but they didn't limit this analysis to Afghanistan and in Iran they extended it to the entire Middle East they they saw obstacles to agreement between Israel and the Palestinians for example that had to do with the character of the political structure of the Palestinian Authority this the nature of the threat that they saw from Iran had to do with the fact that it was a theocracy a theocratic dictatorship is their view the the promise that they saw in the democratic transformation in Lebanon had to do with this conviction that internal change would produce the Democratic Change would produce positive foreign policy results and they had the same view although you hear a little less about that these days about Egypt and Saudi Arabia moreover I'd go beyond this and say there this view was not restricted to the Middle East it's the way in which this administration viewed its problems with North Korea but it's the nature of its relations with China and Russia I don't want to overstate this the policy of the United States is not always to promote regime change in an active way and certainly not always by military means but the analysis of what's wrong in America's relations with another country when those relations are bad and when there are problems generally kin is based on an analysis of the internal regime of that country it explains and and generally the solution is seen to be democratic transformation this explains why there's so many comparisons made between George Bush and Woodrow Wilson and it's important to understand that care the nature of this connection Woodrow Wilson is now generally regarded as the most influential American president of the 20th century foreign policy terms someone who shaped the American outlook on the world a source of inspiration I'll come back to this in a moment not only for George Bush but for Bill Clinton and the core idea of wilsonian ISM is conversion its origins go well beyond Wilson Walter Mead in his description of the Wilsonian school in American foreign policy sees the founders of this school not as Woodrow Wilson himself but as a 19th century American missionaries now the irony is that Woodrow Wilson himself is generally seen as a president with a failed foreign policy and maybe that irony won't surprise so many people who've studied the record of the Bush administration but there and there's an implication of the for the Bush administration that is this approach was not really suited this is what many academic theorists would say not suited to the real world leaders who pursue it for a while end up having to give it up and certainly in a successor American administration is likely to drop it that's a common view it's possible that this episode of real intense fascination with democratic transformation in other countries as a solution to American foreign policy problems it may be that that will pass but I want to argue against it I want to argue that we're likely to see the persistence of this approach with admittedly with fits and starts retreats and advances and I give you as the text to bear in mind here that comment by a famous Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter who said our fate as is not to have ideologies but to be one what he meant was that the idea of improving the world by remaking it in America's image is not just embedded in American values but in American foreign policy I think it's easy to make this case at least on a superficial level if you look at the history of the past 60 years containment which was supposed to be a realist strategy after all saw as its goal what the internal transformation of the Soviet regime it was announced by Harry Truman in the first step that he took toward it was what was called the Truman Doctrine which said that it must be the commitment of the United States as a universal matter to assist countries being threatened by armed communist insurgency John Kennedy carried this further he said that the United States would pay any price support any friend bear any burden remember you you know you've heard you were born too late but you know that rhetoric pay any price and bear any burden to do what you know the sentence does finish at the end of the sentence he says to assure the survival and the success of Liberty moreover throughout the Cold War the NATO alliance which was the key American instrument power instrument was seen as an alliance of democracies and at the end of the Cold War it was seen to have succeeded because it was an alliance of democracies and let me tell you that the vocabulary of the presidents who who came after the end of the Cold War the first George Bush and Bill Clinton picked up these theme in a very very strong way that would make you think some of their statements were those of the current administration Bill Clinton's vocabulary whether he was talking about globalization or genocide in Balkans was very much about regime change and democratization so the interest in Wilson predates Bush and is it's the story that American foreign policy makers have told themselves for a long time about what they're doing by the way you you may be interested in a really quite sophisticated historical a bit of this history that is in a speech by defense secretary Bob gates you may find this hard to believe but two weeks ago Bob Gates gave a speech at William and Mary a historical look at American foreign policy in the place of democracy in it you'll find it on their website WWF NC gov go to click on speeches and you'll find September 17th really interesting speech now there are two objections that get raised when people say you know the United States is committed to the spread of democracy and to the ideology you know to end-uses democratic democratizing rhetoric one is let's take let's think about these objections for a little bit first that it's just a kind of point-scoring against adversaries that it's not really sincere that's true in a way but what you should understand is that it turns out to be very effective point-scoring and American policymakers internalize the effectiveness of it moreover they were prepared to pursue it in ways that weren't always what they what were intent what was intended Ronald Reagan probably raised this kind of rhetoric to a new level in the early 80s but the first government that was brought down as a consequence of this rhetoric was that of an ally President Marcos in the Philippines secondly second objection to this idea that democracy is part of the genetic code of American foreign policy is this isn't it always really subordinated to other goals in the end you know when the United States has to choose between this goal and other more practical ones in a military security economic well-being it always chooses the other yes also true one would not want to deny the rich history I referred to it earlier when I use the phrase our SOPs of pragmatism and cynicism in American foreign policy but I think even so you should not underestimate its staying power I think it's hard to understand the evolution even in Iraq of American policy without seeing the commitment of the administration and the analytical conviction to the idea that making an internal transformation work was the test of success what's the what's the test of success that even the president's opponents except in in Iraq political reconciliation is to say internal transformation is the solution to foreign policy problems and I think that's a consensus that over many decades has spanned the political spectrum you might give you one further data point ask yourselves why John Kerry spent so much time during the night 2004 presidential campaign ragging on the Saudi royal family because the idea of a monarchy as a as an appropriate Ally for the United States that the United States could count on is prima facie suspect in American political rhetoric let me conclude this session section by giving this question of ideological goals a little comparative perspective I would not want to suggest that the United States is alone in pursuing ideological goals you see other countries doing the same thing whether their secular goals like revolutionary France or both of ik Russia or religious goals have in mind Iran since the Shah but also 19th century Britain which often had a kind of low Church agenda for its foreign policy that led it to a moralistic opposition to human rights abuses in the Balkans and that's why Tony Blair's policies in the Balkans and in Iraq have to be seen as part of a long historical tradition in British foreign policy before they became poodles of the United States but note this important difference between the United States and the other some of the other countries that I've mentioned revolutionary powers are usually most committed to the export of ideology in the immediate aftermath of a revolution generally there's a loss of zeal and enthusiasm over time the policy makers of diplomats representing that country discover that it's kind of inconvenient to have to pursue those goals in relations with other countries which generally don't like to hear about your religious goals or your ideological fervor and so they take the sharp edges off they lose a real commitment to those goals they favor a traditional security or economic agenda they adjust to the international environment they get with the program now I think American the American evolution has been almost the opposite our founders were very prudent men the you may know a quote from Tom Paine revolutionary polemicist who said that our relations America's relations with Europe will always be positive as long as eating is the practice of Europe by which he meant we'll sell them grain and they won't give us any trouble ok over time American policy has become more ideological so that the United States now 200 years after its revolution is seen as a revisionist power why is that let me conclude here by giving the last word to constructivism dominant powers need a set of concepts that help to preserve the system they have built you all know the terms soft power soft power is a constructivist idea it means getting others to want what you want it legitimizes your goals it's the realist policies shortcut to accommodation with other with other countries American foreign policy has long been premise taun the idea that having other countries become democratic is the most effective way to increase the soft power of the United States and I believe it will continue to reflect that belief okay let me turn then to the third question that was suggested to me at least by their comparison between contemporary American foreign policy and the spanish-american war and that is the exercise of American power how it's done how the u.s. views --is its enormous capabilities whether its economic power military power this is related to but still separate from the goals that it pursues and it's been one of the most discussed questions of international politics in recent years not just among academics but in public forums by the public at large and to do that to think about present a model of how the United States uses its power I want to start with the picture that is provided for you in the assignment that you have from John ikenberry who provides the most developed and interesting and sophisticated historical analysis that basically reflects not just his own offenses and actually predate some of the current controversies what is I can Barry say about how the United States since the Second World War has used its power well here's here's what it is in a nutshell he says American leaders have sought enduring cooperation with other countries particularly the European allies through a what he calls a negotiated compact a deal and the deal is the pledge of American commitment to their security in exchange for a pledge of restraint or in parallel with a pledge of restraint a promise not to you abuse American power which is so dominant and could easily be abused and he says the formula of American power is to pledge to use power for others and not in in ways that serve the interest of the United States to be sure and at the same time not to abuse it he says the result of this is that American power is regarded as legitimate because it's subject to what he calls strategic restraint this is a kind of core principle of American foreign policy as the sees it it's a formula for managing American primacy and I understand that Professor Luck is assigned an article a couple of weeks down the road that is on this same theme making hegemony work it I can Mary's analysis of World War two and the end of the Cold War is how to make American primacy accepted and effective over time he says this principle is constitutional this compact is negotiated compact has acquired what he calls constitutional characteristics meaning it's widely accepted by all the parties to the compact and it has it there's almost a constitution of international politics as he sees it and what that Constitution does he says is two things it limits returns to power and he increases returns to institutions now what are those those are somewhat abstract terms what do they mean it means you don't benefit by pushing others around even better if you don't have to push others around you have a consensual process in which the United States is able to get much of what it wants by playing by the rules this is this extraordinary construct consent and moderation are the core of the relations between the United States and less powerful countries as he sees them as they developed over over decades after the end of World War two and among the many benefits to the United States of this compact is that others feel no need to create counterweights to American power remember I said the constructivists have this idea that soft power having others be Democrats means that the United States doesn't have to use hard power as much liberal analysis of how an orderly international system that serves American interest is created is through this negotiated compact we don't abuse our power we support you the United States tells other countries and in exchange our primacy is is accepted the unite the other countries don't have to balance or check the United States or didn't because of their confidence that American power would not be abused you will read a similar argument with interesting nuances by other analysts and scholars I'd recommend you look at a book by Evo dollar and Jim Lindsey called America bound book by Charles cup chin called the end of the American era various writings by William wolf forth they have different views but a lot of them a lot of them kind of have an analysis that heads in this direction now they all recommend an American policy that most of us would argue makes sense for the United States and for the rest of the world it's a prudent responsible farsighted means of managing a position of premise but that those are our might be our preferences but let's put our preferences aside there's one problem with this historical picture and that is it's not very good history it isn't really the whole story of how the Cold War and the end of the Cold War unfolded in fact I think there's not much basis not much historical evidentiary basis for the compact that he describes look at the early Cold War look at the at his telling of it is there any concrete evidence of anybody of any Americans saying to any European let's have this negotiated compact I think there what you see is an overwhelming US desire to close off opportunities for Soviet expansionism even if it means increased tension risk risk to be born often by American allies not by the United States itself and increase confrontation in a footnote I think I can vary quotes George Kennan saying that the US goal is to preserve current disparities of power between itself and other countries that's something that you will come across those of you who study American foreign policy in another famous document signed by Dick Cheney American policy in this period often overrules allies that doesn't negotiate with them it overrules them because their views are often seen as retrograde política and their political systems as dysfunctional incidentally what's particularly seen is retrograde about them is there Loney ilysm now when American policy tries to get others involved in the at the end of the coat at the beginning of the Cold War at the end the Cold War and afterwards it's because it believes they won't do their part on their own the Marshall Plan for example is a case in which the United States seeks to get others to plan so as to avoid dependency on American assistance they see others as helpless and taking American aid and not following through to increase their own defense capabilities or even their own economic strength so the real continuity of American policy over many decades is a suspicion that Europeans will not be able to contribute very effectively to common interests what do you see if you look at European policy in this period you see a preoccupation to guarantee that the United States will not abandon that it will use its power to defend them if necessary the idea in the early Cold War that the United States would abuse its power oppress other countries hardly occurs to anyone now I think you see this same pattern if you look at the later period the 80s and 90s which Eikenberry also describes in his book at the end of the Cold War at that time the u.s. is particularly worried by the European by the inability of its European allies to act effectively against common friends so its response is to push the envelope to box allies in so they have no choice but to go along with American policy confident that success will justify American unilateralism and you see this approach in three episodes that I've asked you to that you'll read about in the article of mine that I've asked you to read on American maximalism you see it in the American handling of the so-called Euro Missile Crisis in the nineteen ATS you see it in the American handling of German reunification at the end of the Cold War and you see it in the Balkans crisis in the 90s where the Clinton administration was dealing with the genocide in in the breakup of the of Yugoslavia now what were the conclusions that American policymakers took away from all of these cases I think they're not what I can very says or they're not only what I can bear says and maybe there's a coexistence of these that one has to understand in order to come to a sophisticated complete understanding first of all the conclusion was allies cannot usually be counted on to help effectively an American policy therefore has to develop its own goals and pursue them firmly in single-mindedly secondly policies of this kind are generally successful policies based on consensus on bargaining are often so compromised that they can't work and finally third although allies cannot be counted on to help they can be counted on to go along after the fact and so the United States tries to exercise leadership in a way that does not create lasting antagonisms very important so as to avoid conflict and need for balancing as an expression of these principles I would I would refer you to a statement in George Bush's State of the Union from the 2003 he said America's purpose is more than to follow a process it is to achieve a result what he's saying is he disagrees that I can very he says if you pay too much attention to process you won't get the results you need he's meaning just to I don't think he's read I can read his book just a wild guess is but his meaning and I can bear his terms is it's risky to agree to limit the returns to power it's risky to increase the returns to institutions you may get paralysis now as I said this is true has been true of others before the current administration it was true I would argue conspicuously and often infuriatingly for other governments during the Clinton administration that's why Chancellor schröder who was Chancellor of Germany in the late 90s until recently complained of the Clinton administration's policy of unilateralism it's why my old boss secretary Albright used to set other governments teeth on edge when she spoke of America as the indispensable nation and they always used to quote her as saying that even though she was herself only quoting President Clinton it was easier to beat up on her than on President Clinton but it didn't the irritation did not stop American policies from becoming more ambitious during the 1990s it didn't stop President Clinton from talking the language of multilateralism but acting differently why and why have other presidents done the same thing well one suggestion comes from two very thoughtful American political scientists Barry Posen and Andrew Ross in an article the citation to which Hashem will distribute to the class he if I ask him nicely afterwards and they analyzed American grand strategy and came to this conclusion that administration's that start with the goal of cooperative security often get meaning multilateral consensual negotiated compact style I can bury foreign policies often get pushed towards strategies that are more like primacy and the reason is that because they have ambitious goals they see in frustration with the results that they get by working with others they see that the only way to achieve them is to push as hard as possible to overcome the objections of others now today the policies the problems that American foreign policy faces are so broad and the international uproar over American unilateralism so deep-seated and so angry that you can't ignore it and just say well this is how the United States always tries to get things done that doesn't work so well and so it's a legitimate question to ask how the United States will respond in the future given that its tradition is to push the envelope of multilateralism and go beyond it toward policies of primacy in order to achieve remember President Bush's line achieve a result not just follow a process well I can't I don't think it's it mean it's an interesting question I can't speculate at length about it but I would say you already as an indication of where future administration's will go you already have the example of the adjustment made by this administration you could say that the Bush administration is taking the advice of liberal international theorists more seriously the advocates of process and of consensus in moderation they say that the only way out of current difficulties that liberal international theorists is to give cooperative security more respect to become better listeners of earlier difficulties they understand that undisguised arrogance doesn't produce good results if you're isolated you've got no real choice but to follow this path right well this is how the Bush administration has adjusted to failure and it's possible that a successor administration will do only the same and may even push this further we're likely to hear it's quite possible that we'll hear more in under future administration about an Eikenberry style negotiated compact a new deal between the United States and countries around the world maybe but I think the weight of historical evidence is very large and needs to be taken into account I would suggest to limits to other factors that need to be taken into account in predicting this adjustment when one predicts that the United States was by virtue of its bitter experience in this decade going to become better a better listener and a better team player ID two things one bear in mind the dynamic identified by Posen and Ross and I've referred to earlier even cooperative security strategies take can take a lot of quote leadership to work remember that's why American administrations of the past were often pushed against their own inclinations toward primacy and American leaders of the future will also tend to doubt that others because they've internalized this themselves they will doubt that others working on their own can produce workable lasting solutions if you want an echo of this perspective I recommend to you an article in today's New York Times October 1 2007 by Roger Cohen who talks about how to solve the problems of climate change in the future and his proposition is you will of course need a policy of in order to deal with this problem and yet he also says in a very stunning last paragraph he says multilateralism without a global arbiter has been tried what he means is I think he means the United States has to play that extra role the global arbiter knocks heads and makes multilateralism work here's a second reason to be doubtful about the complete adjustment that you've that you might expect in American foreign policy a reversion to and I can very compact and that has more to do I think with American identity and with some of the themes that I discussed earlier in the nation hmm for better and worse America is as close as we get today to among the great powers to being a country with a calling with a sense of mission the president of France made an interesting comment about a week ago in which he was explaining why he found the American example in the world so inspiring and vigor rating and tracted and he said he said essentially friend the French and the Americans are the only two countries that think in universal terms well this is not a lecture about French foreign policy but what he's talking about that calling that sense of mission on the part of American leaders and policy makers is an outgrowth of American history and of domestic politics and it leads the United States to use its power in ways that its leaders and its people regard as noble and at other times or occasionally at the same time to use its power in ways that others find impossible to accept or even to understand today that gap that will gap of misunderstanding is very great we can hope that it will be reduced but we have to recognize the factors that produced it in the first place they have been present in American foreign policy for a long time for most of the last century some would argue for longer than that remember the spanish-american war look over the cheat sheet that I've given you America is calling it's sense of mission is not something new it's not confined to one party for one presidency and is highly unlikely to disappear soon thank you now I remember when I was sitting down here in the front row watching the lecturers in this course scorn in thea in the half hour remaining which i always ask them to leave but i always thought it was one of the most interesting parts of the of the class so fire away yes yeah speak up a little bit you don't have two microphones on you yep I'm sorry you didn't think it was strong huh yeah I do I sort of get the drift okay yeah I got you I got you well sorry um let me let me say this I actually think it's a he's reviewing the book and I haven't read the book to be honest there's only so many 400 page books on reading these days but I compared it to the the article and I think it's it's important you raised two questions if I get you one is about the especially dire consequences of the American alliance with Israel the I said that there are other lobbies that are able to get their goals in American foreign policy and some people might say well those lobbies don't actually have dire consequences but I would disagree with you totally I think that the ability of American ethnic groups to shape an often veto American policy toward its closest allies throughout the Cold War would have to be considered a pretty significant consequence so I think you're not right if you if you think that there's just something really weirdly distinctive about this policy I mean you know you probably are not aware of this but the term the Israel lobby is I think meant to be an evocation of a very powerful lobby that was always spoken of in in kind of demonizing terms in the past in American foreign policy that was called the China Lobby and the idea was that the China Lobby had kind of dictated American policy in a in a very dangerous way by creating a decades-long estrangement between the United States and communist China well you can go into the historical you know how what really produced that estrangement between United States and kind of China and I think it's the China lobbies role is not quite what it is thought to be in popular mythology but you certainly couldn't say that that didn't have dire consequences I mean this is just a reality is that often these policies are very very significant now I haven't seen you mentioned the visit of the President of Iran to Colombia last week about which I've actually read a lot and if you haven't been reading it well I just urge you to get out there and and read the popular press I you know the Washington Post in The New York Times and lots and lots of other media and if they didn't catch all of the nuances of what the speakers were saying you know it seems to me it's incomplete to say the very least to say that this shows the power of the Israel lobby over the American media I think it just shows the defects of the American media if you don't mind my saying so and I'll tell you a little bit as an example of this just a little proof of it I read a couple of articles about what president Bollinger said in introducing the President of Iran and I thought man that's strange and then I read his statement and it struck me is really very different from what was reported in the in the media now I think you know he probably should have anticipated that it would be covered in the way that it was but you know when the American media failed to cover a problem perfectly there are more parsimonious explanations and looking for the influence of an ethnic lobby now other comments yeah well you're easily shocked but I like this I like these sort of is the shocked ability of cephus students see this is this is why we have programs to train people in international politics is make them less easily shot nan I'm teasing I'm teasing you here's what I mean I mean it's a constructivist idea in this sense that it's based on it is based on ideas for one thing soft power is a term that I believe it's a brilliant term and it's a very important concept in international politics and I also think that my good friend Joe Nye has done a lot to have people misunderstand it you know that it's based too much on movies and McDonald's and all that what soft power is is its legitimacy that is it and he defines it this way it's having people want what you want and that gets you into a conceptual range into conceptual territory where it's the I it isn't just your ideas that matter but it is I think their we're talking about a construct a sort of set of concepts that I think constructivists actually explained better than than liberals because liberals tend to focus on institutions making things legitimate and I think constructivists have a lot to add in pointing us toward the ideas that create legitimacy as well and I was pointing toward an American idea that democratization adds to soft power in a way that I think has actually probably been more important in the history of American foreign policy than any number of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies or any number of Big Macs yes well I'm saying that the democratization is a goal that you can pursue lots of different ways including through hard power and what the Bush administration has discovered is that you can get into a lot of trouble with the pursuit of this goal through hard hard power the correction I mean in a way what a lot of academic theorists have said to the Bush administration is you don't get it you know this is something that to be effective to serve the interests that you're talking about serving actually can't be done in this way it has to be more a goal served by soft power but that's something one can you know that that that you debate the achievement of regime change is you know many people have argued in Germany and Japan sure wasn't achieved through soft power now we've probably got some questions over here yeah well then you're good corrective to these previous questions I don't I don't want to I don't want to say that the question is yeah well you weren't bellowing as sufficiently because you're right up at the front it's hard to projector at the back the question is it will in the future if American policymakers adopt consensus and soft power and a negotiated compact and an Eikenberry approach you know neoliberalism will that just be for show and I you know I think it will depend on who they are and what the issues are it will I think it would be wrong to doubt but in advance the sincerity of any policy makers particularly when they're going to want to be showing that they're not the Bush administration and I think any successor to to the Bush administration is going to as Roger Cohen says in the times today try to benefit from the contrasts you know new presidents tend to view that did George Bush Senior when he took office emphasized that he was you know pursuing a kinder gentler America so you hear that it and President Clinton certainly said that he was going to be different from from President Bush but the real question isn't so much their commitment to a certain kind of multilateral consensual process and there isn't there you know their rhetoric it's happens when the policy gets stalemated and here I can't predict the future for you so I'll just give you an example from the past which is the Clinton administration's handling of Bosnia policy it came the Clinton ministration came into office thinking that Bosnia that the previous administration and the Europeans had really screwed up Balkans policy very badly and that there from you know tolerating genocide and it tried to come up with a new approach and the Europeans shot it down they said no we don't want that we don't want that we don't want to get involved here and so the clinton ministration back down and things got worse and worse in the balkans and it seemed as though genocide was rafet repeat itself and at that point they became very frustrated with a multilateral process I'm sorry to give you a too long story but it's important to see how it how this can work it's not that there was anything insincere about the Clinton administration's approach to this it's that the frustration level when it saw other countries not reacting in a serious way to dealing with a serious problem that they essentially decided we have to make our own policy because they thought otherwise you're not going to get any result now Mike rather than a forecast I would have a question what is it that American policymakers will think when they find when they rediscover the frustrations of multilateral diplomacy well they may have some of their sober advisors telling them stick with it be patient don't go there don't do what the Bush administration did but some of them will also say now is the time for a little bit more muscle into this policy we've got to indicate to people that this kind of hopeless you know compromising of results out of you know policies and agreements so that they were totally meaningless gives multilateralism a bad and then you get you get people then you will get policymakers saying things like what President Bush said to the UN General Assembly before invading Iraq he said this issue is a test of this institution I can easily imagine a very angry American president giving a talk like that about climate change you know at a certain point there's going to be no solution to climate no international agreement on climate change that does not involve a lot of very very tough bargaining and will it always be done with great you know consensual niceties maybe not yeah it's me we vision yeah the RS over the r sob problem is a really it's a tough problem and you'll you know I really urge you to read secretary gates speech on this because it's thoughtful and in good faith and and he wrestles with this this problem he because he says you know you just you can't understand how America acts in the world if you think it's just realism with just idealism you know Pakistan that's kind of an you know that's one where first of all you have to understand that the you know the council being given by regional specialists is oh my god you don't understand how bad things could be if we leaned too hard on the Pakistan ease with our heavy breathing about democracy think how you know what awful outcomes could result if if things get pushed too too hard the other thing I'd add though about that is I wouldn't take for granted that you know everything that is said in American Pakistani diplomacy you know there was a time when advocates of pursuit of human rights and democracy said it had to be done through quiet diplomacy meaning through dialogue with leaders that was not in full public view and I I don't know I got no insight inside a story about about the American handling of this problem over the past several months et is there is no doubt that say after September 11th the American conviction which was really across the political spectrum was that the for time at least was that and overvaluing stability had actually led American in the Middle East had led American policy in a bad direction that it had you know led American policymakers to be complacent about relations with countries that were very hostile to you know deeply hostile and you know did that produce a reorientation in the short term toward Saudi Arabia answer absolutely not did it lead to putting things on the agenda in us-saudi relations that hadn't been there before absolutely yes the same I would say is true Egypt there's a the you know the Bush administration was I think overconfident for a while about how much you could achieve just with rhetoric it hasn't totally backed down I talked to friends who were an embassy Cairo they say you know we everybody they say every American journalist Twitter and pundit will tell you that the United States has backed away totally from the democracy agenda in Egypt and he said you know we spend all of our time out there on this account so it's a it is a very it's a complicated problem and I you know did not want to oversimplify it with any glib formulations and if I you know went too much one direction or the other I don't want to I don't want to mislead you it is nevertheless a part of the American policy mindset that I think makes it impossible to ignore American policy unless you really keep it front and center yeah do you think that also in democracy promotion is embedded in American foreign policy do you think that will be enough failures of that policy to you know so that it will cease to exist but I don't mean to be flippant but it seems that when we force democracy on countries that we occupy that that democracy doesn't I mean what countries become Democratic our policies are negative to those countries then should enter public expresses they're in both anti-american people into power I mean what do we do will there ever be enough failures to discourage Americans from thinking that this is an important part of American policy no for two for two reasons one there will always be contrary cases where it looks as though internal transformation has produced a huge new set of benefits and opportunities for the United States I mean the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc is sort of principal in a case of that you had the collapse of a regime that was an ideological grounds hostile to the United States and it seemed to remake the world and not only that it's so inspiring to Americans when you know you have these large crowds in the streets and they're you know invoking American authorities and figures and marching around with you know the Statue of the Statue of Liberty will there ever be enough failures if there are examples of success like that of course not and but I would say the other reason is you know American policies often quite resistance to failure to learning and I don't mean that in a completely flippant way on mean that these goals are understood to be long-term goals and so you don't necessarily pull back entirely from you know one or two setbacks I mean I just think this is a issue that will be will never be pursued in a in a 100 percent leave everything else a sideway or go down to zero that's just not not thinkable in American foreign policy well you had a few had a question anybody over in this side of the room yeah no I mean catapulting off the world stage no you could I suppose you'd argue that American influence at the end of this story has been reduced in ways that you know are important to understand and thinking about the future of of American policy but what's in what I think is really important is that you shouldn't just view either of these episodes in power terms that is a challenge to American power resulting from the you know the sinking of the Maine and of Ann Arbor the burning structure that I refer to in the chi-chi and you know and the exploitation of that or the response by the United States in a way that increases its power and that's all you need to know about it and that doesn't tell you that story it doesn't tell you what the mix of preoccupations and domestic concerns and legitimacy were that surrounded the the war effort for that you really need to dig in a little deeper understand you know my predecessor see if it was a distinguished American diplomat named Warren Zimmerman who wrote a history of American involvement in the spanish-american war which is called first great triumph it's really a good book that you can skip the first half which is all the you know charming personality portraits and read the second half but the second half is a fascinating portrait of the policy process and how Americans who've been strategists pursued strategic goals in a a domestic political context where the main rhetoric was about human rights you know the the spanish-american war was probably the episode that really elevated American human rights concerns to the top of American foreign policy which is something that very few people know and an ambassador Zimmermann describes it in a in a brilliant way more questions over on that side of the room yeah you and then in the suit-and-tie yeah well partly because the editors of the journal told me they don't give me 6,000 word and partly because I don't know as much about that and partly because it is oh it's a less perfect case Oh political interpretation you know as often that base that on that but what I do say is that it's important then that you thank you for for asking the question is that the the Kay the policy German reunification was pursued absolutely to the max to to person to achieve all American goals there was absolutely nothing left out there was no equivalent of you know calling the war off after a hundred hours and the Gulf War was a different case which remained controversial in American policy circles partly because it had been called off early and in that way it represents a kind of contrast to the other policies that I said more maximalist its and then of course there's a long following story the by by saying it was called up early by the way I don't mean the US Army didn't March to Baghdad because there are many things that American policymakers advocated doing nobody wanted to go to Baghdad short of that if you want to read a really good book on the Persian Gulf War there's a another book by journalists by it's called the generals war by trainer and sorry trainer and Gordon it's really fabulous book and particularly the first 50 pages in the last 50 pages on the evolution of American policy yeah last question and will be dismissed at 7 o'clock well you you've you raised a good a really good question because generally the debate about American democracy promotion involves the question of acceptance of non-democratic regimes and a less focus on democratic processes that produce difficult contrary sometimes very undesirable policy results I wouldn't say that it's it's exactly true of American policy that it does not recognize democracy in those in those cases something that I think with there's actually been a rather sober realization on the part of American policymakers that this can be what you get and the response tends to be it divides interestingly you have those people who say well this is what you get and that's why democratic processes are really just - you know we're playing with fire you shouldn't do it and that would be that's a sort of realist view that you know we can't afford to encourage democracy because too many Democrats are hostile to the United States you get a second view which is hold on a second that's the first phase of of democracy and we ought to have the courage of our convictions that in time in a democratic peace Theory produces regimes that will be more friendly toward other democracies I had a conversation once that I'll describe to you even at the risk of going two minutes over with the current president and Prime Minister of Turkey before he was Prime Minister mr. Ayer Dewan who would come to Washington and had a round table with a small number of people and I said to him look how do you react to the debate in America about promoting democracy in the Middle East when a lot of people say that if you had a an election in Saudi Arabia it would produce that the winner would be a sama bin Laden and he gave a very thoughtful and interesting answer I thought which is something that you know American policymakers have to wrestle with he said you should definitely understand that if you have a democratic process in the Middle East that it will not be won by came five it will be who was king at the time I think he said that's not it you're not going to there's nothing that you can do no Constitution no electoral rules no nothing that will lead the people of Saudi Arabia to vote in the king and if the choice is between the king and Osama bin Laden then that's what you'll get but he said that's not democracy democracy in no country produces those two candidates and the real the interesting process that you have to ask yourselves about in in a country like Saudi Arabia or he was you know obviously had Turkey in mind is what does what a democratic political norms do to the people who participated in politics who become the contestants who in Saudi Arabia really would be the candidates for president if it weren't the king and Osama bin Laden well that's an interesting question and if you you know to get there you have to envision these countries several phases of historical development further down the road than most of them are then most of them are now and you have to envision political actors who learn the lesson of Hamas is success in Hezbollah success and figure out what do we have to offer that's better than and that's that's the answer to the long term answer to the question about how American policymakers could think about democracy in the Middle East as a continuing objective because you're absolutely right if if if that is a goal the only reward for which is to you know produce Osama bin Laden significant policy advance does it thank you very much you

Channel: Columbia University

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Keywords: columbiauniversity, sipa, politics

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Length: 95min 17sec (5717 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 24 2009