Are We Facing Diplomacy’s Enfeeblement?

I was wandering through the pages of a volume on the approach to war in August 1914.  And the reason.  We are now closing in on 100 years since the outbreak of World War I.

A significant number of historians and international relations specialists are casting their gaze back to this conflict that opens major war in the 20th century.  My particular focus in examining these diplomatic volumes was an effort to cast a critical eye on the diplomacy of the period – or more precisely really the complex great power behavior – what was styled after the War as the ‘old diplomacy’.  This diplomatic behavior emerged, so it seems, with Germany’s Bismarck and his diplomatic contemporaries in the early 1870s and continued through the alliances and alignments of this largely European diplomatic period that continued right up to its fateful end in August 1914.

Now I look back and am struck by intricacies and balancing in this classical period of balance of power diplomacy.  My old LSE International History mentor James Joll, better than most, captured the complexity of this diplomacy in his co-edited volume with Gordon Martell:

The theory, if that is not too grand a term, by which contemporaries justified the alliance system was that it would maintain the balance of power.  This phrase, which had been common in diplomatic language since the eighteenth century, could be interpreted both as an objective assessment of the actual military and economic strength of the powers and as a subjective evaluation by statesmen of where their own national interest lay.  The idea was expressed by Sir Eyre Crowe of the British Foreign Office in a famous memorandum of 1907: “the only check on the abuse of political predominance has always consisted in the opposition of an equally formidable rival, or of a combination of several countries forming leagues of defence.  The equilibrium established by such groupings of forces is technically known as the balance of power.” …  Many statesmen and diplomats believed that the maintenance of the balance of power would itself prevent war by deterring an aggressor, either directly or by providing machinery by which, as Bismarck himself believed, one power could control its allies and stop them doing anything to upset the balance.

Now I am not suggesting that the classic balance of power diplomacy is what is needed today.  I am not looking for something equivalent to a twenty-first century balance of power diplomacy, but the current diplomatic void is all too apparent. And I say that in reflecting primarily on US diplomatic leadership, or the absence thereof.  So whether I am looking at global summitry, or Syria, Afghanistan or Pakistan, or the Asian pivot, I keep looking for US diplomatic leadership but find it largely missing.

Now that might be acceptable if others were stepping up to the plate – whether the large emerging market states, or others but there is faint evidence of that either. US leaders are quick to confirm that there is no substitute for US leadership – but the means and US efforts seem pretty hard to discern unless we are talking about US military actions.

I raise this in the context of having just read President Obama’s National Defense University speech on counterterrorism delivered on May 23, 2013.   I  also acknowledge what may prove to be rather too optimistic presumptions on my part in early posts (“Determining Who’s on First“) where I mused on the US Asian pivot and in particular then Secretary Clinton’s assertion that this pivot was more about economic diplomacy.  At the time I pressed the hope that we were likely to see a “more nuanced and sophisticated foreign policy”.  As I said then:

US policy has been so militarized over the last decades and in particular by the initiatives in Iraq and Afghanistan that many officials fail to recognize today the critical nature of economic diplomacy.

Whether US leadership does, or can do anything about it, is unclear.  The explosion of the national security state following 9/11 may have been slowed by Obama rethinking over counterterrorism strategy, but diplomacy remains the “90 pound weakling” to America’s military muscle-bound leadership.

The President acknowledges the insubstantial provision of just one foreign policy – foreign aid:

Moreover, foreign assistance is a tiny fraction of what we spend fighting wars that our assistance might ultimately prevent.  For what we spent in a month in Iraq at the height of the war, we could be training security forces in Libya, maintaining peace agreements between Israel and its neighbors, feeding the hungry in Yemen, building schools in Pakistan, and creating reservoirs of goodwill that marginalize extremists.  That has to be part of our strategy.

Well Obama is right but what is the likelihood of that? And as for greater diplomatic engagement, here is the sum total of the President’s thinking:

Targeted action against terrorists, effective partnerships, diplomatic engagement and assistance – through such a comprehensive strategy we can significantly reduce the chances of large-scale attacks on the the homeland and mitigate threats to American overseas.

There has been a fair discussion of the diffusion of power away from the United States and the rise of new leadership – creating the conditions for a “G-Zero World” according to Ian Bremmer or “No One’s World” by Charlie Kupchan.  But I’d say it’s far less the structural changes but the inordinate US focus on war and counterterrorism that is leaving international politics without leadership.

There is clearly a strategic gap.  Let’s see if Obama can shift to a more nimble strategic leadership.  The first test may well come when Obama sits down with China’s new President Xi Jinping in California at the Sunnylands Estate  on June 7th and 8th.  Let’s look closely.

Image Credit: NDU.edu

Caucuses, Counterweights or Leadership – The Evolution of the G20

A quick trip to London enabled me to enjoy the valuable discussion at a small gathering brought together at Chatham House.  The conference sponsored by Chatham House and the Australian Lowy Institute spent the good part of a day examining “From the G8 to the G20 and Beyond: Setting a Course for Economic Global Governance.”  Presentations by officials, former officials and policy experts produced a rich context for informal discussion.

My own view was that the most intriguing discussion of the day was a back and forth over the evolving summitry structure. Now I know there will be an immediate chorus of sighs – oh geez architecture again – but the summitry structure has important implications for the global economy and the conduct and stability of international relations.  So back to the discussion.

I think there was a general consensus in the room that the large emerging market powers – frequently labelled  as the BRICS countries – were failing to take up leadership at the G20.  This view was aptly described recently by Harvard’s Dani Rodrik.  In a piece first posted at his blog and then slightly enlarged upon at Project Syndicate – my favorite economics blog site – Rodrik examined the recent efforts of the BRICS, most notably at the BRICS Leaders Summit at Durban.

Rodrik in these posts took the opportunity to first express disappointment in what is at the moment the signature initiative of the BRICS – the effort to launch a development bank, which Rodrik described rather disparagingly in the following terms:

This approach [infrastructure financing] represents a 1950’s view of economic development, which has long been superseded by a more variegated perspective that recognizes a multiplicity of constraints – …

But Rodrik did not stop there.  In a criticism that was reflected in various comments at the conference,  Rodrik argued:

What the world needs from the BRICS is not another development bank, but greater leadership on today’s great global issues.  … If the international community fails to confront its most serious challenges … they are the ones that will pay the highest price.  Yet these countries have so far played a rather unimaginative and timid role, in international forums such as the G-20  or the World Trade Organization.  When they have asserted themselves, it has been largely in pursuit of narrow national interests.  Do they really have nothing new to offer?

One of the conference participants took direct aim at this tepid leadership. He suggested that the premature death predicted for the G7 and now arguably countered by revival and renewed energy evidenced by the G8 or more precisely the G7, might conceivably pressure the large emerging market countries to step up to take greater leadership in the G20.  It might indeed be true that the G7 efforts especially on economic questions might give the BRICS the kind of fillip that might cause them to step up in the G20.  But equally possibly these countries, the BRICS especially, might view the G7 activism as isolating the BRICS  – not to mention the non-G7, non-BRICS countries like Australia, Korea or Turkey – and give impetus to those who see the BRICS as a conscious counterweight to G7 and its economic statements.

Certainly circumstances conspired to show the economic efforts of the G7.  For the day following the conference the G7 finance ministers and central bankers met outside London at Aylesbury. In a statement by the UK Chancellor George Osborne the Chancellor targeted the vital economic questions of the day, “monetary activism, fiscal responsibility and structural reforms.” There certainly wasn’t consensus on these difficult issues but you coud see the rising image of the established powers working on these key economic issues as they have for decades before the emergence of the G20.

It would be a terrible waste, not to mention a destabilizing step were the G20 to lose momentum and to fail to serve as the common setting for the established and rising economic powers.  Certainly the meeting of these groups at the margins of various G20 meetings can be seen to be helpful – indeed they already have – but the focus on separate coalitions is overall in my estimation unhealthy for global summitry.  The G7 needs to be sensitive, more sensitive then they appear to be currently, over their gatherings and the absence of colleagues from the rest of the G20.

Let’s not throw away the first and best setting for collaborative efforts between established and rising states.  Both form and substance are required.

Image Credit:  G7 Finance Ministers May 11, 2013 Alyesbury  – google.com

The Strategy of “Restoration” – “Foreign Policy Begins at Home”

 

Richard Haass is one of the most well-known foreign policy experts today in the United States about the United States. He has been on the inside including the head of Policy Planning at the State Department.  Today he is on the outside – but in a critical position – president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

The title here in this blog post is the title of a just released book by Haass.  In the CFR press release the Haass lens on the international system in this new book is described this way:

… Richard Haass describes a twenty-first century in which power is widely diffused, the result of globalization, revolutionary technologies, and power shifts.  It is a “nonpolar” world of American primacy but not domination.  Haass argues for a new foreign policy doctrine of Restoration, in which the United States limits its engagement in foreign wars and humanitarian interventions and instead focuses on restoring the economic foundations of its power.

Now I’ve not been able to complete the book – that’s coming –  but I have gotten a chance to read the CFR enticements, Haass’s own op-eds and the book introduction. But I come away feeling that there is something just not right with this picture, or at least not right given who is presenting the argument.

Haas himself believes that he will be attacked on two fronts. First he believes that he will be condemned as a “defeatist” – as he puts it “… just another apostle of American decline.”  He attempts to rebut that critique but does admit that: “Given its considerable endowments and advantages this country is clearly underperforming.”

But criticism will not just come from those who see the Haass options and foreign policy performance as “defeatist”.   He also anticipates that he will be attacked with the label “isolationist.”  Haass is unwilling to accept this label as well but argues that the domestic situation will, according to Haass, provide this possible situation:

shortcomings here at home directly [will] threaten America’s ability to project power and exert influence overseas, to compete in the global marketplace, to generate the resources needed to promote the full range of US interests abroad, and to set a compelling example that will influence the thinking and behavior of others.

Thus, in the end and at least for this latest version of Haass foreign policy:

The most critical threat facing the United States now and for the foreseeable future is not a rising China, a reckless North Korea, a nuclear Iran, modern terrorism, or climate change. Although all of these constitute potential or actual threats, the biggest challenges facing the US are its burgeoning debt, crumbling infrastructure, second-rate primary and secondary schools, outdated immigration system, and slow economic growth – in short, the domestic foundations of American power.

It just doesn’t ring true in my estimation.  Haass divides the book into three parts and the last, and I suspect the foundation for his restoration thesis and the admittedly most prescriptive part  of the book, is the last part where he focuses on the domestic challenges: budget, energy, education, infrastructure and immigration.

It is possible – but I have to say somewhat difficult to swallow in the end.  And honestly I think Haass has turned the foreign policy threat equation on its head – I would think he should be writing on just those things he identifies but declines to identify as the most critical threat, a rising China, a reckless North Korea, a nuclear Iran, modern terrorism and climate change.  How can the US handle these pressing threats?  Given his foreign policy reputation I am far more likely to dwell on his analysis of these challenges as opposed to his review of internal policy making.  It is not that a foreign policy analyst can’t examine these domestic factors but geez I got to believe that a detailed examination of US behavior and diplomacy including the use of force is what I am most likely to give time to when reading Haass.

And beyond what I’d anticipate I look to Haass to examine, Haass hints at one of the most difficult aspects of contemporary US foreign policy arising from his Haass’s admitted acknowledgement that the US is, or is about to enter a nonpolar world.  So, Richard Haass how will US foreign policy be able to achieve outcomes that advances US interets but also tackles the challenges of the global economy and stability in international relations.  And don’t tell me it is primarily US domestic policy.

Most US politicians today acknowledge the end of US hegemony – but are left bereft in describing US behavior and actions in this new architecture.  Look at former US Vice President Al Gore who this weekend in an interview (see the Globe and Mail, Saturday May 4, 2013 Globe Focus, at F3) expressed the following:

But there is absolutely no alternative to US leadership.  Maybe over time one will emerge, but it has to be values-based and it has to be connected to economic and political and military power, and the United States has been unique in possessing all those characteristics.

Now I am not trying to turn Richard Haass into Al Gore.  But I do think we need to hear more from Haass and others on the shape of US foreign policy in this new potentially more chaotic world.

Image Credit: global.unc.edu