“After You Alphonse” – The G20 and Building a “Firewall” Against Eurozone Contagion

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G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bankers have wrapped up their meeting in Mexico.

So what’s the result?

Well the battle has not yet been won to create a significant enough “firewall” to calm the markets and assure them that contagion will not spread beyond Europe.

But it appears to be coming.

The heart of the issue is Germany’s reluctance to add to the bailout fund that had been created – Europe had first built a temporary fund – the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) and then subsequently created a permanent European Stability Mechanism (ESM).  That combination would total about 750 billion euros.  But Germany is not yet ready to do that.  And the G20 – or at least many of the G20 countries – are not prepared to augment the IMF support standing around $358 billion by some $500 to $600 billion – until Europe makes a greater contribution.

The G20 countries have pressed Europe (see the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bankers Communique) – that means principally Germany in this case –  to increase the European contribution.  It is still unclear whether Germany is prepared to commit – it would appear not to be by next week at the European Summit set for March 1 – 2nd.

Where do the G20 countries stand – and why?  Most critical in this discussion is Germany.  And Germany has resisted – and continues to resist though apparently less vociferously the enlargement of the Eurozone’s bailout fund.

Germany appears, in part, to be playing for time.  The German Government faces a crucial vote in its legislature on Monday – a vote to accept a second rescue package. – As a bit of an aside  the Netherlands and Finland also face legislative approval in the coming week.  It also seems that the German government is playing for time to see if the Greek government will be successful in swapping Greek debt held by banks and other investors that propose a significant reduction in the face value of the debt, or drawn out maturity and/or rate reductions – or all three.  And the Merkel government is all too aware that German public opinion is strongly opposed to to further bailout actions for Greece.  In fact in a poll released today,  Sunday, by Bild am Sonntag (quoted in Reuters) showed that 62 percent of Germans oppose further aid for Greece.  Thus, the German government for the moment continues to insist that an enlarged firewall may cause governments to ease up on their fiscal austerity measures and additional economic reform. The strongest views from the German government continues to argue that the ESM is sufficient as it is.  In the meantime, however, Greece, Ireland and Portugal are locked out of debt markets.

Most of the G20 countries – developed and large emerging markets alike – have urged Europe to take further steps to reduce the risk of contagion.  A number of developed countries such as the UK and Japan are prepared to raise further IMF support along with a number of developing and large emerging market countries, most insist that will not act without further actions by Europe.  And the United States has both urged greater European actions but has also made clear that it will not contribute in any instance to the enlargement of the IMF package.

So it is unclear today whether Europe will enlarge the bailout at the March EU Summit or that a complete package – somewhere near $2 trillion including European and IMF funds –  will be ready or concluded by the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bankers when they meet again toward the end of April.  But we can see that the G20 Ministers and Central Bankers meeting has been important in trying to construct a bailout package.  Furthermore in looking at the comments of the ministers and central bankers there is not a simple divide between developed and large emerging market states and developing countries.

Speculation over the legitimacy of the G20 continues apace.  But the legitimacy focus is ill placed (see the Reuters blog – “The Great Debate” and the article by Terra Lawson-Remer, february 24, 2012) .  The current troubles in constructing a bailout package reflect  popular and legislative opposition in a number of countries – Germany most notably – but in other European countries as well and in the United States.  This is not a G20 legitimacy debate at all; it is a political battle in the domestic and international contexts.  That fact that executives and their officials cannot act without calculating legislative dis/approval is not new – remember the “failure” of the Kennedy Round  in the US Congress.  But this says next to nothing about G20 legitimacy.  What it reflects is that global economic negotiating, indeed almost any international negotiating – as we were told long ago by Harvard’s Robert Putnam – requires officials to negotiate in two ways – across the table with other leaders and officials, and backwards and over their shoulders with the legislators and broader publics of the country.  The “high table” of international economic negotiations has never been leaders and officials divorced from domestic politics.  And it isn’t now.

Image Credit:  Chris Skinner – Financial Services Club Blog

 

 

Tackling ‘Peace and Security’ at the G20 – Sort of

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This weekend a number of these foreign ministers – most notably United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Germany’s Guido Westerwelle  – will convene at the invitation of Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa in Los Cabos Mexico (in June the G20 Leaders Summit will meet at Los Cabos). – For the first time these ministers gather under the G20 umbrella to discuss – at least in principal – “foreign and security” policy.

Is this then the final grand leap of the G20? Will the Leaders Summit now include a full global summitry agenda economic, financial, peace and security?  Will G20 Leaders gather to tackle economic and financial regulatory reform and securities crises as well?

Well – not exactly.

Among the G20 there has always been tension, if not outright contention, over the scope of the Leaders Summit agenda.  While some G8 countries have urged tackling at least questions on nuclear non-proliferation, or crisis management and resolution, others, notably non G8 countries such as China and Brazil have resisted any extension which would bring peace and security issues to the G20 agenda and remove it from the UN Security Council.  As Bruce Jones Director of “Managing Global Order Project”   at the Brookings Institution declared

What is left behind is foreign and security policy … In this regard, the G-20 foreign ministers meeting in Los Cabos represents the first real opportunity we’ve had to begin that work.

Bruce has gathered a number of experts and former ministers from around the G20 to reflect on this upcoming meeting at the Brookings Institution website. In general Bruce and his colleagues support the calling of this meeting.  Among those is Celso Amorim, former Foreign Minister of Brazil, who writes:

Without exaggerating the scope of the changes that may begin with the February meeting of Foreign Ministers in Mexico, one is allowed to hope that it can at least initiate a process which someday will impact on the formal institutions that deal with political and security matters.  In order that such a process may take place, it is essential that the FM meeting focuses on concrete questions – such as the ones mentioned here [Arab Spring, the Iranian nuclear program, a broader-based approach to Africa] – and does not lose much time and energy on more abstract issues of institutional nature Nor should it bother too much with other subjects – important as they may be – which have already found an appropriate locus for debate, such as climate change.

So support for sure, but also demands for greater precision as well on the agenda.  And the reality matches the commentary.  Clearly there was no unanimity on the need – desire for – this meeting.  The Mexican foreign minister, the host, has made clear this meeting is “informal” and not a Summit – meaning no summit declaration.  In addition 8 countries have not sent foreign ministers but rather lower ranking officials including France, China, Brazil and India.

So it appears that there are a number of questions that ‘dog’ the question of G20 foreign ministers meetings.  Key among those is the agenda.  The Mexican foreign minister has suggested that the meeting will tackle “pressing issues” including food safety, strengthening the rule of law and providing efficient and coherent leadership to tackle global challenges.  He also made clear that the the group would discuss but rule out statements on critical crisis issues such as Syria.  So less on crisis management – at least formally – and more on issues that Lee Dong-hwi of IFANS in Korea, another of the Brookings invited experts,  calls “hybrid issues” – issues where economic and security issues are inextricably linked.  This indeed may be the incremental way to extend the agenda to more “peace and security-like” issues.  But food security and climate change might best be discussed by others – rather than the foreign ministers.  The foreign ministers after all represent a more traditional conception of diplomacy.  Once foreign ministers were the only officials that  dealt with international matters in global settings.  But that is long gone.

In the “Iceberg Theory” of global summitry (see my June  2011 blog post “The Iceberg Theory of Global Governance – Seeing it Work”), of which I am a strong advocate, obviously,  significant ministerial, working party and transgovernmental regulatory networks (TRNs) including a wide variety of intergovernmental, ministerial, regulatory and administrative institutions, are tasked  – by Leaders and Ministers – with developing standards and policy reforms that then need to be implemented by national authorities. Leaders Summits are but the “tip of the iceberg” of global summitry.

So, it is not at all clear that foreign ministers are the best at dealing with many of these not really policy subjects for foreign ministers. But if it is “crisis management” that will occupy the agenda, then the China’s, Brazil’s and others will insist that the discussions need to be at the UNSC.

Nevertheless it may be that the foreign ministers may best tackle crisis prevention matters and at least publicly limit, at least for the moment, the immediate crisis situations – though it is a setting where at least countries avoid the distorting impact of the “all mighty Security Council veto”.  And I think Bruce Jones has picked up on this crisis prevention agenda and the “speak softly approach”  for crisis management:

Far more important is relationship building, building shared perspectives on key security issues, nd an informal space for back room negotiations.  I suspect that Secretary Clinton will use quite a lot of her time in Los Cabos cornering her Chinese and Russian colleagues on the Syria question – and that’s very much to the good.

So let’s urge a crisis prevention  approach and a discussion of current security crises – even if those aspects of the discussion are left to the back room for now.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

 

All about Tragedy and Offensive Realism – the Life and Times of John Mearsheimer

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Well I was on my way to examine “offshore balancing” when I encountered this fascinating piece by Robert D Kaplan – subject my colleague John Mearsheimer at political science at the University of Chicago. The article on John is contained in the latest Atlantic Monthly entitled, “Why John J. Mearsheimer is Right (About Some Things)” and with several great pictures of John – one especially at the end of the article identifiably at the University of Chicago.  This piece does raise offshore balancing but that is not reason enough to target it.  Nor is the fact that Dan Drezner also took the opportunity to blog on John, see his piece at his foreignpolicy.com following the Kaplan piece – though clearly he beat me to the punch – drat!

 

The idea for detouring to the subject of this piece really is two-fold.  One is to use the article to examine again US perceptions on China and the China-US relationship.  The second, to mull over – if just briefly – the interrelationship of Kaplan to Mearsheimer.  For in the end the piece on Mearsheimer is, in my view, about Kaplan and his framing of international relations and US grand strategy – and far less, in a number of respects, about Mearsheimer.  And indeed Mearsheimer poses a conundrum for Kaplan – hence the contingently phrased title. While Mearsheimer’s “offensive realism” is ‘right up Kaplan’s alley’ the controversy that Mearsheimer has raised in his attack on America’s Israel lobby – is not.  For Kaplan the article is an exercise of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  As Kaplan writes in the piece:

The real tragedy – [no pun intended I assume for The Tragedy of Great Power Politics – John’s most powerful IR book] of such controversies, as lamentable as they are, is that they threaten to obscure the urgent and enduring message of Mearsheimer’s life work, which topples conventional foreign policy shibboleths and provides an unblinking guide to the course the United States should follow in the coming decades.  Indeed, with the most critical part of the world, East Asia, in the midst of an unprecedented arms race fed by acquisitions of missiles and submarines (especially in the South China Sea region, where states are motivated by old-fashioned nationalism rather than universal values), and with the Middle East undergoing less a democratic revolution than a crisis in central authority, we ignore Mearsheimer’s larger message at our peril.

So read the above as Kaplan urging us to: “come on folks let’s forget about all those nasty Israeli-Jewish-Palestinian debates – with more than a whiff of some nastiness, and let’s focus on the rise of China, US grand strategy, Realism Offensive Realism and Samuel Huntington.”  But even Kaplan must admit:

The Israeli Lobby has delegitimized Mearsheimer.  Inside the service academy where I taught for two years, in the think-tank world where i work, and in various government circles with which I am acquainted, Mearsheimer is quietly held in higher regard because of the familiarity with his other books, but the controversy (and its echoes last fall) has surely hurt him (emphasis added).

And that is, I suspect what Kaplan believes is a tragedy of sorts – pun intended. My sense is that John cannot help himself.  Just recently I was with him and others at Harvard at a US-China policy workshop.  There, John played a significant role in discussion and debate.  But at various moments John would express himself, or ask a question, stated in the most incendiary fashion – only to pull back after serious reaction, pushback and debate.  There is a problem with judgment in my opinion that has not aided John and left him not so much as the enfant terrible, as expressed by Kaplan, but just, at times, terrible.

So let’s leave the personal and focus on the ideas.  Dan in his post, “Intellectual clean-up in the realist aisle, please!” focused in part on the Realists.  There he takes Kaplan – and the Realists – to task for always acting the victim and declaring that realism is alien to American foreign policy thinking.  As Dan urges:

Cut it out already.  There is a long intellectual lineage in the American academy – starting with Hans Morgenthau and continuing with Mearsheimer and his students – that evinces realist principles.

Dan having so clearly taken the Realists to task for victimhood, I’ll leave it at that.  But let me focus on John’s primary foreign policy view – the rise of China and what the US must/should do.  While I won’t debate the practical value of IR theory in foreign policy action – though I think the track record is pretty dismal, and not surprisingly given that much of IR theory, including realism, operates principally at the 30,000 foot level – John’s judgments, indeed predictions – are dead wrong when it comes to understanding the rise of China and US action in response.   John’s lens is offensive realism that sees great powers, driven by uncertainty, striving for dominance and hegemony – all of them all the time:

Mearsheimer, who is not modest, believes it is a reliance on theory that invigorates his thinking.  Returning to his principal passion, China, he tells me: “I have people all the time telling me that they’ve just returned from China and met with all these Chinese who want a peaceful relationship.  I tell them that these Chinese will not be in power in 20 or 30 years, when circumstances may be very different.  Because we cannot know the future, all we have to rely upon is theory.  If a theory can explain the past in many instances, as my theory of offensive realism can, it might be able to say something useful about the future.” … If China implodes from socioeconomic crisis, or evolves in some other way that eliminates the potential threat, Mearsheimer’s theory will be in serious trouble because of its dismissal of domestic politics.  But if China goes on to become a great military power, reshaping the balance of forces in Asia, then Mearsheimer’s Tragedy will live on as a classic.

But China will reshape Asia.  It is already doing so.  The question really is will this power transformation with the rise of China and the relative decline of the United States result in not just competition and rivalry but in conflict between the United States and China and others.  Historically, most other power transformations of this sort have led to conflict.  The question in Asia is – will China and the US come to blows?  And to understand that offensive realism is inutile.  Conflict or its absence depends on both US and Chinese leadership.  And it also depends on diplomatic strategy.  Elsewhere I have argued that the US – and China as well – need to exhibit more “Bismarckian diplomacy – and here I mean after 1871, and less Wilhelmine behavior.  The China Threat School and offensive realists behind offer a brand of US diplomacy that will heighten tensions and make the necessary adjustments between the two great powers more difficult not less.   It will raise the prospects of conflict and increase the possibility for misjudgment and mistakes by the two sides.

There is no inevitability of a certain ‘hard type’ of Chinese leadership.  Just as there is none in the United States.  What is needed is smart leadership employing strategic military/political/economic behavior – on both sides.  Within the structure of the international system is leadership behavior and decision-making.  These leaders need to get it right.  John’s views it seems to me tells us nothing about getting it right.

Image Credit: The University of Chicago: permission from John Mearsheimer

Steve Clemons and the Revisionist Liberal American Foreign Policy Voice

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So returning to Steve Clemons’s and his review of grand strategy approaches in the Atlantic with his “Rebuilding America’s Stock of Power” which itself is a lead in for Steve to lead an  Atlantic Live session that will be streamed live on January 11th.  Well, I hope to get there but meanwhile let me attempt a partial review of Steve and his review of various ‘in the beltway’ types in the most recent issue (Issue 23, Winter 2012) of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.

Steve has an outsized personality that is a Washington and New York presence.  Now Steve is a realist – a ‘happy realist’ – but a realist nevertheless.  The ‘bug-a-boo’ for Steve is the rise of China.  As Steve points to:

China is driving realities in the global economic sphere today; not the United States – and America, to revive its economy, needs to figure out how to drive Chinese-held dollars (along with German and Arab state held reserves) into productive capacity inside the United States while not giving away everything.

America must knock back Chinese predatory behaviors by becoming more shrewdly predatory and defensive of America’s core economic capacities.  Without a shift in America’s economic stewardship – which also means a shift in the macro-focused, neoliberal oriented, market fundamentalist staff of the current Obama team – the US economy will flounder and on a relative basis, sink compared to the rise of the rest.

For these experts, and for Steve I suspect, it is all about finding restraint in a new US grand strategy.   With the end of the Iraq War for the US and a growing intensity to end their military involvement in Afghanistan, there is a loud and growing chorus of voices in Washington to husband US resources.  Turn down the urge to go abroad to slay dragons.  The attack is on against unrestrained US interventionism which Steve argues is, as he calls it, “the dominant personality” of both US political parties.  So for the Democrats you have the humanitarian interventionists – read that as Libya – and for the Republicans you have the neoconservatives’ regime change – read that as Iraq.  The critique from Steve:

Neoconservatives and liberal interventionists put a premium on morality, on reacting and moving in the world along lines determined by an emotional and sentimental commitment to the basic human rights of other citizens – with little regard to the stock of means and resources the US has to achieve the great moral ends they seek.

So restraint and husbanding resources – economic and military – is the new objective.  And each of the experts, in their own way, urge it.  Thus Charlie Kupchan declares that in order to rebuild American leadership the US must:

  • restore the American consensus  on foreign policy and the rebuilding of its economy;
  • work with the newly emerging market powers to create a new global order and protect a liberal international order;
  • revitalize the transatlantic relationship; and then
  • judiciously retrench and deal with the overextension of US global commitments.

In a similar vein  a quick look at this recent press release at the CFR website for Richard Betts’s  new book entitled,  American Force: Dangers, Delusions, and Dilemmas in National Security, Betts too recommends, “the United States exercise greater caution and restraint, using force less frequently (“stay out”) but more decisively (“all-in”)”.

Bruce Jentleson performs a reprise of his and Steve Weber’s approach in The End of Arrogance.  In the journal article Bruce narrates a Ptolemaic versus Copernican world, where the central image is the displacement of the US from the center of the universe.  Now contrary to more realist interpretations, this diffusion of power as described by Bruce, anticipates that China too – the new rising power – will be unable to exert hegemonic power in this new 21st century global system.  As Jentleson declares,”Peaceful rise is one thing, assertive dominance quite another.” The Copernican world, according to Jentleson, is a disorderly place, but a global order that, “… means demonstrating the capacity to implement policies that reduce our vulnerabilities, enhance our competitiveness, and cultivate a shared sense of purpose.”

Diffusion of power, the end of hegemony or at least the enlargement of leadership with the inclusion of the rising powers like Brazil, India and China, and a requirement that the United States husband its resources – economic and military.

Steve argues that he holds a line similar to the Kupchan approach though he criticizes Kupchan for holding to such neatly drawn pillars of action for the US.  But it seems to me that constraint has been the mantra of the US before – back to the 1970’s and the end of Vietnam.  It is not a strategy and it is apt to be forgotten, or ignored, by a new political leadership especially across the political divide that exists in the US.  The dilemma that exists today is not a search to enunciate some new grand strategy, but an effort, and here I tend to agree with Bruce Jentleson, to ‘lead’ in initiating collective behavior – the impetus for collective action.  And there needs to be a concerted to avoid the China Threat syndrome that is embedded in Washington.  Restraint will evaporate unless US policy makers find a way to open a political space for China. This is the overwhelming need in US foreign policy.  In the coming years, according to the review of Richard Betts’s book

China is the main potential problem because it poses a choice Americans are reluctant to face. Washington can strive to control the strategic equation in Asia, or it can reduce the odds of conflict with China. But it will be a historically unusual achievement if it manages to do both,” notes Betts. Although conflict with China is not inevitable, “the United States is more likely to go to war with China than with any other major power.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Not For Me! No Yearend Predictions

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Though I appreciated all the list of international relations 2011 horrors – or the 2012 predicted horrors, I shall avoid the feeble speculation indulged in by many of blog colleagues.  No crystal ball for me.

Instead I shall look at two approaches  – both designated as part of US grand strategy.  The first is a series of articles brought together by my good friend Steve Clemons, the Washington Editor of the Atlantic in a piece called “Rebuilding America’s Stock of Power“.  In this piece  – besides bringing his own unique insights to American foreign policy, Clemons responds to various Washington beltway folk including Charlie Kupchan from Georgetown University, Rosa Brooks of the Georgetown University and Law Center and the New America Foundation, Rachael Kleinfeld of the Truman National Security Project, Tom Perriello a former Virginia Congressman and Duke University Professor, Bruce Jentleson.

The second grand strategy analysis will focus on the concept of “offshore balancing” and I shall use Steven Walt of Harvard University has the locus for this examination of a long established international relations perspective that has come back into vogue as the United States struggles to deal with the the end of one conflict – Iraq, the almost end of another – Afghanistan, and the emergence possibly of another – the Rise of China.

Stay tuned.

 

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

A Certain Uncertainty – From Seoul

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It was a slight distraction – around noon.  My panel on G20 global governance survivability had just ended.  The next panel on international monetary policy had begun, chaired by the President of KDI, Oh-Seok Hyun.

Here we are in downtown Seoul at a conference organized jointly by the Korean Ministry of Finance and Strategy and the Korean Development Institute.  The Conference “World Economy in 2012 & Global Economic Cooperation: Issues for the Mexican G20 Ahead” had opened with ministerial comment and weight and was proceeding in a fairly calm and deliberate way.

Anyway back to President Hyun.  A note was carried to the dais by one of KDI’s many assistants and passed to the President.  President Hyun showed  momentary surprise and then it passed and he seemed to go back to chairing the panel.  I didn’t think much of it.

Then I felt the buzz of my iPhone.  Distracted, I pulled the phone from pouch and gazed at a rather startlingly news message – Kim Jong-il was dead.   Yikes.  Now that was surprising as here I was sitting in a plush conference room in downtown – Seoul – yep Seoul!  I passed on the news message to a Korean colleague who quickly scrambled out of the room to contact colleagues back at KDI. To learn more – maybe.  As it turned out they had not been alerted to the great leader’s death.  But the news was spreading fast.

So within hours the news was all over the conference and beyond.  It was passingly odd.  To be so close to North Korea (DPRK) – at this critical juncture.  So what was the reaction in Seoul.  Well, I suppose uncertainty was the most palpable sense felt.  The South – Korea – with its almost 50 million people – had for many years longed for reunification.  But that was no longer the case.  Korea had grown wary of the aggressiveness, the nuclear weaponry – of living next to ‘the crazy’ cousin – 22 million people – largely starving – but for the military and the elites – isolated from the world – and super-nationalist about the Kim ruling dynasty.

So the transition was underway – presumably – with the ‘great successor’ Kim Jong-eun – the youngest son of Kim Jong-il – moving the pieces in an elaborate dance to solidify his shaky control of the government, party and military.

Uncertainty was the watchword all around.  While Kim Jong-il had died Saturday, the announcement was held back till – as I said – around noon on Monday.  Immediately meetings around the region began.  The Korean President Lee Myung-bak reassured his people to go about their business calmly.  While the Korean military heightened vigilance, unlike 1994 (when Kim Jong-il’s father died),  the government did not place the Korean military on high alert.

So here we were in Seoul in a country that had achieved remarkable success – great economic growth and prosperity, heightened international status and a member of the G20 – waiting for events from the ‘hermit state’ – it was weird.

And I was on my way back to North America.

Image credit:  Alan Alexandroff looking toward the DPRK

 

 

 

 

More ‘Bismarck’ and less ‘Kaiser Wilhelm’, Please

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[Ed. Note:  This is the third piece in a continuing effort to understand the US-China relationship and suggest means to avoid conflict in the power transition currently underway.  In each blog post I have referenced Harvard colleagues or the Harvard conference setting of our recent conference: “Chinese Strategy and the US Response – How Far is Adjustment Possible” – so I suppose these posts can reflect –  ‘Tales from Harvard’.]

I must be still recovering my sojourn down to Harvard.  Images of ‘grand strategy’ are still dancing in my head.  I found my self trying to untangle the recent actions of the US administration in Asia.  What do these statements and actions from President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton  – and even more recently Michèle Flournoy the Undersecretary of Defense visiting China  for the 12th round of Defense Consultative Talks – about US foreign policy and what does it suggest about the tenor of the near future of the US-China relationship?

The Obama Administration apparently is  determined to pivot its foreign policy thinking, and presumably actions, in the Asia-Pacific region.  Now whether these statements are the prelude to tangible actions and reconfiguring of US foreign policy is not yet clear but the intent is clearly there – to make Asia the heart of US foreign policy again.

It was almost impossible for a foreign policy expert to ignore the coordinated “full court press” of the US Administration- and President Obama in particular, and the push back in Asia on display at: APEC, the Australian state visit and then finally at the Bali East Asian Summit (EAS).

As an expert among experts Fareed Zakaria examined the recent US moves in the Asia Pacific in his Times column saying:

At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit on Nov. 12-13, many leaders echoed Singapore’s Prime Minister when he said the U.S. was welcome in the region and that its ­presence would “do good.” The U.S. announced on Nov. 16th that it would for the first time establish a formal military presence in ­Australia—a base in all but name.

The Obama Administration is now ­quietly re-engaging in Asia, reversing the troop cutbacks of the Bush Administration, which was more focused on Iraq and the Middle East. Asian diplomats had often complained that U.S. participation at regional summits was too low-level. Obama’s attendance at the APEC summit marks a shift in that approach.

So how are we to interpret this re engagement?  What does it suggest about Obama foreign policy?  Minxin Pei a long term observer – and yes critic – of China suggested the following in a post at The Diplomat:

However, equating recent moves by Washington, consequential as they are, as decisive steps toward “containing” China would be exaggerating their importance, reading too much animosity into US intentions, and ignoring the Obama administration’s careful balancing act. (Chinese leaders should note that Barack Obama reiterated, at the East Asia Summit, the US policy of engagement  with China.) … So, as China’s ascendance and America’s relative decline continue, these two great powers, though economically interdependent, will continue to compete for geopolitical influence.  Managing this competition, rather than denying it, is the most challenging task for both Washington and Beijing in the coming decade.

While many Realists and the ‘China Threat’ crew in Washington and in Asia applauded Obama actions and the push back they implied concluding in many instances that such behavior was required to construct an active containment of China – I believe – or at least hope – seconded it appears by Minxin Pei – that this policy is in reality more ‘Bismarck and less Kaiser Wilhelm’.

Now what do I mean by this all too esoteric reference to 19th century international diplomacy?  First our Harvard colleagues have analogized the contemporary US-China relationship to the competitive sharp relationship between Great Britain and Imperial Germany in the 1907 to 1914 period.  In particular a number of historians suggested parallels between the bilateral relations of the two sets of great powers. Several experts raised the views of Eyre Crowe, a British official of the time.   As our rapporteurs report described this description:

In light of his concerns about German threat to Europe’s balance of power and Britain’s imperial dominance, Crowe made several recommendations, which might with some context, apply aptly to American considerations in the face of rising China.  Crowe rejected appeasement as a strategy for Britain in its dealings with Germany.  He instead recommended that Britain build two ships for every Germany ship, and respond sternly to any transgression of British national interests, which he suggested might forestall German ambitions before they grew out of hand.

Thus the British strategy should be, according to Crowe, to meet Germany at every aggressive point offered by the Kaiser and his officials.  Though the Kaiser’s control slowly slipped to his military officials it remained forward and aggressive.  In turn it was to be met, and in many respects was met with British opposition.  Neither I nor my colleagues wanted to carry the analogy too far, but still there was great attention to appropriate air and naval strategy – and much discussion of the newly unveiled Air Sea Battle doctrine.

So then what about this ‘Bismarck-Wilhelm’  reference.  Well there is no question that Bismarck in his early years was more than willing to apply force waging battles with many of his neighbors as he restructured Europe and creating Imperial Germany.  But thereafter Bismarck was more than cautious. Diplomacy gained a place of prominence and the military waging of war in Europe’s heart faded.  He accomplished what seemed impossible – allying of Germany with Russia and its great power rival Austro-Hungary – and even toyed with France.  As I suggested in an April Blog post ” Not Required to Choose” – A Strategy for US-China Relations,”

The genius of Bismarck was to hold opposites together.  I am not thinking here of his revolutionary early career, forging a Germany – beating both Austria and France in quick but decisive conflicts – but in his diplomatic legerdemain in generating alliances with Germany at the center and antagonists especially Austria-Hungary and Russia circling around this new and newly created European “heavy weight”.  As Kissinger characterized Bismarck’s diplomatic efforts:

He sought to counter it [hostile coalitions] by involving Germany in a dizzying series of partly overlapping, partly conflicting alliances with the aim of giving the other great powers – except the irreconcilable France – a greater interest to work with Germany than to coalesce against it.

This was diplomacy at its best – and holding little similarity with the Germany of the early 20th century.  Does it reflect an Obama-Clinton strategy?  Well the Chinese certainly don’t think so – or at rhetorically suggest.  The Chinese Defense Ministry suggested that the actions by the President and Secretary of State Clinton were denounced as a a product of “Cold War thinking.”  And there is a strong streak in Chinese foreign policy thinking that argues that US policy is designed to contain and hem in China.

If the Administration isn’t intent on containment, the what is this Asian pivot all about.  On that I shall look to my colleagues who applaud an Administration now that it has adopted apparently a policy of “offshore balancing”.

 

 

 

 

Asia Pacific Leadership – So Crowded – A Scorecard to Tell the Players Apart

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Global summitry was on full display at the early part of the week.   It is again as the week ends.  Many of the Leaders who had just been to the G20 Leaders Summit at Cannes basically turned around and headed to Honolulu for the 19th Leaders Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting.  And by the end of this week a number of these same leaders have gathered again in Bali for the 6th East Asia Summit (EAS).  This Bali gathering is notable for including for the first time the President of the United States and the President of Russia thus making it a first time meeting of 18 leaders.  As a final gesture of global summitry, the US President stopped on his way to Bail in Australia for a long postponed state visit by this President to the continent.

With the US (re)engagement in the Asia Pacific  – more on that in our next blog post – we saw significant attention placed by the President on the APEC meeting – it is his sorta home state – except for Illinois of course – which is other home state.  President Obama spent some time touting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) framework – a next-generation trade and investment agreement, as the APEC Leaders have referred to it, including currently nine Asian and Pacific countries and the new/old attention paid to joining these negotiations by the Prime Ministers of Japan and Canada and the President of Mexico.

APEC is an unusual organization that was first proposed by Australia in the late 1980s.  The 21 current members represent separate economies which allows Chinese Taipei – Taiwan and Hong Kong to members though they are not states or not readily acknowledged ones (it is one of the few organizations where both Taiwan and China are members)  The US organized the first Leaders level meeting (note Taiwan sends a ministerial level official) in 1993.

In the Honolulu Declaration, the communique ending the leaders’ meeting, the countries repeated the voluntary trade liberalization mantra of this forum:  trade and investment liberalization, business facilitation and economic and technical cooperation:

APEC’s core mission continues to be further integration of our economies and expansion of trade among us. We come together in APEC to pursue these goals, recognizing that trade and investment are critical to job creation and greater economic prosperity for all our economies.  We further recognize that strengthening regional economic integration also plays a key role in promoting regional peace and stability.

The reliance on consensus and voluntarism has always raised questions over the effectiveness of the organization.  These limitations remain to this day.

The EAS is a leaders summit that focuses on regional trade but also security issues.  The first leaders’ meeting was held in Kuala Lumpur in December 2005 and is held always at the conclusion of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders’ meetings.  Thus President Obama is holding bilaterals as The ASEAN leadership meets today in Bali.  ASEAN includes the core 10 countries of southeast Asia and is committed to the acceleration of economic growth, social progress, cultural development among its members, the protection of regional peace and stability, and to providing opportunities for member countries to discuss differences peacefully.  It is the core institution for Southeast Asia containing not only the economically vibrant members such as Singapore and Malaysia and newly vibrant Vietnam but also the large and now G20 member Indonesia.  The EAS was promoted by ASEAN plus three – the three being China, Japan and Korea – though there is confusion over whether members prefer the ASEAN plus three or the EAS.

In any case it would appears that this year’s EAS meeting will follow up on trade and investment liberalization discussed at APEC but additionally add discussion on making the region a nuclear free zone, easing tensions on the Korean peninsula and continuing efforts to develop a code of conduct acceptable to all states to facilitate disputes in the South China Sea.  The latter will very likely raise serious hackles among China officials where they have insisted that they do not wish discuss these matters and insist on resolving South China Sea disputes bilaterally and not – as the US and others insist – on a multilateral – basis.

The multiplicity of regional organizations in the Asia Pacific is striking.  As international legal scholar Sungjoon Cho of Chicago-Kent College of Law wrote some years in his examination of APEC (“Making A Better Dispute Settlement Mechanism for Regional  Trade Agreements: Lessons of Integration Efforts in East Asia” in Mitsuo Matsushita & Dukgeun Ahn (Cameron May: London, 2004):

This region is characterized by deeply rooted heterogeneity or, to use a more benign term, “diversity”.  As a result it lacks the glue of homogeneity needed to bond different states together to create a formal institution.  First the existence of many states in this region is based on ethnic identity.  The different countries speak different languages.  Their cultural underpinnings – customs, ways of life and thinking and moral system – are quite different.  Their religions also vary.  Second, colonial experiences in some states may have politically blocked formal institutionalization in this region.  Third, the lack of a single dominant leadership, in particular after the Cold War, may explain the difficulty of forming an official regional arrangement. Fourth, the payoff matrix, geopolitical or economic, of Asia Pacific states may in fact be too complex to bind them with a single formal tie.

So where do the countries go with this summitry spaghetti.  Tan See Seng, the deputy director and head of research at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies Nanyang Technological University Singapore in his post for  RSIS Commentaries entitled “Visions at War? EAS in the Regional Architecture Debate”  argues that there are three contending summitry models in Asia.  The first, what he refers to as the “Canberra School” model promotes a “command” or centralized brand of regionalism – an overarching institution.  Australia’s former Prime Minister and currently the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kevin Rudd, promoted what he called Asia-Pacific Community model (I was fortunate enough to attend the Sydney gathering in 2009 where Australia pushed for the creation of the APc). Many of the smaller countries especially Singapore but also Vietnam and Cambodia expressed strong reservations over the creation of the this large institution.  Many representatives saw this institution as a threat to ASEAN and its continued existence.  While the initiative did pose a threat to the continued influence of the small states in Asia the primary purpose was to create an overarching security community – to date no such institution exists in Asia.  The Australian hope was to create under one umbrella a security community that could act as a platform for dialogue and discussion for China, US, India and the other powers in the region. But for the time being – that initiative is not possible.

The second approach referenced by Tan See Seng was what he called the “Washington School”.  This approach promotes a functional or results-based approach to regional governance.  The US calls for effectiveness and suggests ending the functional overlap that currently exists in the summitry in Asia.  Thus the ASEAN+3 and all of the ASEAN plus organizations should work on trade and investment liberalization while the EAS focuses on security.

Finally Tan See Seng identifies the “Singapore School”.  This approach accepts the current system – in particular acknowledging the centrality of the ASEAN – in other words the small country core of Asian regionalism – and promotes the continuation even augmentation of the institutional  system of ASEAN + settings. It permits the continuing membership diversity.

Whatever the future the Summitry diversity is a reality for now.  The burning question is: can these institutional settings help US-China manage their relations in Asia?  Or is all this beside the point.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Reconciling with the Rise of China

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I was fortunate to join colleagues from Harvard, but as well from other US academic institutions  – and colleagues from China as well – in a fascinating discussion here at the Kennedy School over this past weekend.  The workshop was filled with great US China specialists of all stripes – Susan Shirk from UCSD, Tony Saich and Iain Johnston from Harvard as well as a number of IR theorists including Etel Solingen UC Irvine, John Mueller from Ohio State, John Mearsheimer from Chicago and Stephen Walt from Harvard.   The session was organized by my old mentor Dick Rosecrance – lately of Harvard and the Belfer Center there but also Graham Allison and Joesph Nye former Kennedy deans, Ezra Vogel a China-Japan scholar who has gained a recent note of fame for his just released book on Deng Xiaoping and a host of economists, ‘guns and rocket’ folks and IR types.

As my wife always argues these kinds of meetings, are as she says “just an excuse to schmooze with old friends.” “Yes, I say, and what’s wrong with that.”  But the weekend workshop had a more serious objective. The workshop was titled, “Chinese Strategy and the US Response: How Far is Adjustment Possible?” This is the first of several sessions possibly looking at how the US and China can survive the power transition – that is the rise of China and relatively speaking, the decline of the United States – likely exhibiting competition and rivalry, but avoiding  outright conflict.

Inevitably there was much circumlocution – arguing around the point, near the point but not quite on the point. But over the day and half the group did make progress in sketching out a scenario or framework for this relationship – though we are not so far along so to be able to elaborate the behaviors and structures that would guarantee a successful power transition between these most crucial great powers.

The discussions were very rich and stretched over a wide variety of issues from the territorial, to the economic and political, the strategic and the military.  Let me just draw out a few choice items.

My good friend Arthur Stein, and a long established presence at UCLA, probably had the best insight – this toward the end of the workshop – that of framing the relationship as a ‘couple’. Thus, there is an existent ongoing relationship but one that must be managed.  Dick Rosecrance picked up on this framing  at the end to suggest that the US-China relationship is like a ‘common law couple’ – not formally married but in a relationship nonetheless.  What is critical in describing the relationship this way is to establish that there is a preexisting relationship that must be worked on.  And in that reference frame there was a reminder that to be successful it was important to act to adapt yourself to your spouse rather than to try and change your spouse. The basic need for both – avoid stupidity, manage the relationship and avoid divorce.

Well I suspect these views reflect words of wisdom for marital relations.  But we will see if it holds for the US-China relationship and what structures and behaviors it suggests for IR as opposed to marital counseling.  But as a starting point – not bad.

But there was more.  Our friendly ‘guns and rocket’ types including Bob Ross from BC and the Fairbanks Center at Harvard, Taylor Fravel and and Barry Posen from MIT, gave us a perspective in the regional competition and the military modernization and build up that in the end – given geography and capability  – leads to both being able to box the other in  and giving advantage to the defense over the offense.  Now the likely advantage of the defensive suggests at first glance that these powers would be better off where they restrain spending and offensive deployment.

Joe Nye insightfully and quite pointedly argued that it would be quite wrong for the United States to frame the US reassertion of its regional East Asian presence  with a cold war containment in mind.  He urged that the US maintain its ‘engagement but hedging strategy’ – the hedging being the US reaffirmation of its bilateral Japan strategy.  Containment of China it was suggested could only be provided by China.  In other words, ‘China will contain China’.  And finally and in the circumstance that China fails to contain China over the coming years then ‘pinpoint balancing’ from various states – not a broad and threatening coalition – would suffice to do the trick in the circumstances.

The prime effort – by China but also the United States – as the years of the power transformation tick by – is to find the leadership capacity and will – the means and structures – to reconcile to the other.  Let’s hope this is not too tall an order.

G20 Global Governance is Hard Work, World – Get Used to It!

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[Editor’s Note:  The picture is of the ‘super’ team of experts and media that Digital20 Project from the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and the Stanley Foundation (TSF) gathered together for the Cannes Summit.  From left to right – Don Brean, The Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Netila Demneri, Munk School of Global Affairs, David Shorr, TSF, ‘Yours Truly’ Munk School of Global Affairs , Hugo Dobson, Sheffield University, Sean Harder, TSF and kneeling Yves Tiberghien, University of British Columbia.  You can see more about the Digital 20 Project at its new web portal http://www.digital20project.ca]

I woke up this morning to the media harangue – I expected it actually – that the G20 was irrelevant  – and worse unhelpful in resolving the challenges of global governance.

In this instance it was Wolfgang Münchau, currently the associate editor of the FT – I kinda thought it would be my old colleague Daniel Drezner – but he just linked to Münchau in his most recent foreignpolicy.com blog post and left the rest to Wolfgang.

So here we are again with ringing accusation of G20 irrelevance – and possibly worse:

Yet last week’s summit proved almost comically irrelevant to the future of the global economy. … The actual outcome summit leaves us in a void, with no crisis resolution strategy in place.  In the previous decade, the old Group of Seven failed to prevent various financial crises.  This decade, the G20 is failing to solve them.

And it continues on from there.  But when Wolfgang feels called upon to then come up with a successful strategy for the challenges now facing the global economy,  what do we get:

Unless we are ready to reverse monetary integration and financial globalisation, and accept the economic and political consequences, there is no alternative but to create a new institutional framework, with new rules, both within the eurozone and at the global level.  Our policies have run out of control.

So there it is – our institutions have proved irrelevant so let’s build another set of institutions.  Oh please!

So the media continues to get it wrong.  First there was a collective effort to help protect the global economy from Greek – and presumably – Italian contagion.  Amusingly, the piece disclosing the deal that almost was – and is likely to be in the near future – comes in part from Chris Giles,  Münchau’s colleague.  It is evident from this post that the Leaders were working on a three-part economic package that would at least act as an international firewall around Greece.  It would seem that the deal failed to be announced when the German Bundesbank vetoed one of the three elements.  The G20 leaders hope that G20 finance ministers will meet again soon possibly before Christmas if the German central bank can be reassured over the element that it failed to agree to at the Cannes summit. But as a result of this disagreement, the final communique was rather vague simply saying that the finance ministers were being asked to draw up options for additional fire-fighting resources by their next meeting – see paragraph 11 of the leaders’ communique.

It is a reminder – including a reminder to ‘yours truly’ – that policy solutions  move rather more slowly than we’d like and that the politics of these countries cannot be ignored just because we are working at the international multilateral level.  I have to keep reminding myself that what we see at the G20 leaders level is a prime example of the “Iceberg Theory” of global governance.  Yes, periodically leaders come together but officials are engaged continuously including ministers, Sherpas and Sous-Sherpas, working committees of the G20, representatives from the central banks and national regulators of all stripes brought together in various international governmental institutions, IMF, WTO, World Bank, OECD, etc., international regulatory agencies –  FSB, BCBS, IOSCO and many more.  This “messy” transgovernmental pyramid is what my colleagues in international law refer to as transgovernmental regulatory networks (TRN) and my IR colleagues, especially Dan Drezner at Fletcher and Anne-Marie Slaughter at Princeton, refer to more simply as “networks”.  Tasked work from the leaders proceed a pace – maybe at too slow a pace for many – but a pace.

And if you look at the communique you see that policy is proceeding on many fronts:

  • paragraph 8 and 9 on global imbalances including greater market-determined exchange rates and commitments by the surplus countries;
  • paragraph 10 on strengthening global financial safety nets;
  • paragraph 11 including a commitment to greater IMF resources;
  • paragraph 13 that details the work of the FSB on G-SIFIs (global systematically important financial institutions);
  • paragraph 14 the commitment to regulate and oversee shadow banking”;
  • paragraph 17 that commits the G20 to sign the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters and ‘encourages’ non G20 members to join the Convention;
  • paragraph 18 to endorse the recommendations of IOSCO with respect to regulation and improved supervision of commodity derivatives; and
  • paragraph 19 where the leaders decided to invest and support research in agricultural productivity including the AMIS  and the Rapid Response Forum detailed in the Action Plan on Food Price Volatility and Agriculture from the G20 Ministers of Agriculture that was released in the summer.

There is more.  But the point is that the G20 is, as the international lawyers, declare is, “dialogical, norm-generating and incremental”.  This giant iceberg of global governance is messy and slow but progress is present.  It may seldom contained in dramatic leaders’ announcements in the way that journalists hope for, but the hard work goes on incrementally and progress is made.