Understanding the End of the Cold War
By · CommentsThe end of the Cold War is arguably the most important event to hit the discipline of international relations since the first chair in the subject was created at Aberystwyth in 1919. Academics in the field almost universally failed to predict it and our theories didn’t appear to explain it, and this spawned both heated debate and new thinking within the field. What follows is a brief sketch with pointers to resources on the topic – some well known, others less so.
John Gaddis’ “International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War” is a good place to start. Gaddis places the blame for IR failing to predict the Cold War ending as it did squarely with the deterministic social-science approach to the discipline that failed to accept indeterminacy, even as the sciences themselves were embracing unpredictability. Ted Hopf’s response and their correspondence the next volume is worth reading too, particularly for his more fundamental critique that it was not so much the theories themselves as the sociology of the discipline that prevented scholars asking the right questions.
Michael Cox, in contrast, focuses his contribution for Volume 3 of Sage’s Twentieth Century International Relations on the empirical reasons for the failure. The implication of Cox’s argument is that it was poor information rather than poor theory that lay at the heart of IR’s inability to forsee peaceful Soviet collapse.
Of course, some scholars did get close to predicting the way in which the Cold War would end, notably the macro-sociologist Randall Collins. In his “What Theories Predicted the State Breakdowns and Revolutions of the Soviet Bloc?” Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Vol. 14 (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1992) he critically evaluates the quality of both his own and others’ predictions.
Of course, in assessing the causes of failure to predict the end of the Cold War, a great proletarian spanner is thrown in the works by the degree of disagreement as to the direct causes of that event itself. Was it Reagan’s policies, as Patman contends? The effects of the Afghanistan War, and not anything intrinsic to the Cold War itself, that precipitated a collapse of empire, a thesis advanced by Reuveney and Prakash? A shift in ideas within Soviet elites, as per Matthew Evangelista among others, or shifts in the external environment as proposed by Deudney and Ikenberry? Indeed, such is the complexity of the event that Ned Lebow and Stein resort to ‘non-linear confluence’ as their preferred model of causation to explain the events of 1989-91 in Richard Hermann’s volume ‘Ending the Cold War’. Such is the confusion that James Lee Ray and Bruce Russet feel the need to reassure us that despite appearances, the end of the Cold War doesn’t render scientific prediction in international politics obsolete.
The main target of this plethora of explanations and acknowledgement of complexity is neorealist theory. The classic hatchet-job is done by Richard Ned Lebow in his “The Long Peace, the end of the Cold War and the failure of Realism”. Constructivist explanations, such as those from Koslowski and Kratochwil and Tuomas Forsberg, reflect the boom in this post-positivist approach. Innepolitik is back in vogue in Matthew Evangelista’s “Paradox of State Strength”.
However, it is not for nothing that realism has been the dominant paradigm of international relations since the Peloponnesian War. Despite having taken quite a beating, realism fights back off the ropes. Stephen Walt provides a strong defense of realism in light of the end of the Cold War and Brooks and Wohlforth first reevaluate the supposed ‘landmark case for ideas’ and later emphasise the role of economic constraints in Wohlforth’s edited volume Cold War Endgame. However, perhaps the most perceptive of all the realist defences is Wohlforth’s first attempt in 1995-6, which despite constructing a realist account chides realists for thinking that because such an explanation is possible that somehow realism stands unbowed.
The end of the Cold War ensures that IR theory is a more plural and epistemologically varied place. Risse-Kappen and Grunberry therefore accurately call the end of the Cold War “A Time of Reckoning” in Allan and Goldmann’s edited volume, and for Wohlforth it was certainly a “Reality Check”. Hopmann’s review essay provides excellent coverage of recent theoretical developments.
International Relations is surely a better place for these developments and the debate that produced them. The ‘neo-neo’ debate that obsessed the discipline for so long now seems as irrelevant and obscure as it surely was. Whether IR theory is in any better prediction to predict major events in international politics is debateable, probably doubtful, but that International Relations is better equipped to explain those events when they happen is indisputable.
Historical Revisionism and George W. Bush
By · CommentsReading today Mark Tractenberg’s typically thorough piece on Preventative War and US Foreign Policy, (Security Studies 16. 1) I was struck by just how much scholarship there now is that revises the initial assessments of the Bush Doctrine – that it was a radical (and unwelcome) departure from the American Foreign Policy tradition.
Off the top of my head, as well as Tractenberg’s demonstration of the prevalence of preventative war discussion within US elites during the Cold War (he could have gone back to the very founding of the American republic and found the same trends), there is also Adam Quinn’s excellent “The Deal” (International Studies Perspectives 9.1) and of course, Rob Singh and Tim Lynch’s After Bush.
There is a real case to be made that the Bush administration’s foreign policy has much in keeping with the general traditions of US diplomacy. Indeed, I have argued myself that American foreign policy is continually balancing itslef between two schools of thought – those who believe that American liberty at home (and so American identity) can be best protected by avoiding the foreign entanglements that may pervert it; and those who believe that for America not to internationalise its liberal principles is to betray them, and therefore to undermine the very notion of America itself.
However, the existence of such enduring ideological debate should not lead us down the road of a historical revisionism that would justify the Bush Administration by reference to similarities with previous presidents. The Bush Doctrine as set out in the 2002 National Security Strategy actually amounted to little in terms of actual policy. It can hardly be said that the Afghan War was preventative, it was punitive, designed to remove the Taliban and leave a stable government. The 2003 Iraq invasion was not a preventative war either, no matter how much leeway we are prepared to allow for the beliefs that all Western governments held that Saddam was continuing to develop WMD. It was a war to remake the Middle East into a region more ameliorable to America’s interests (not incidentally, an oil grab, but more to reduce US dependence on problematic relationships with Saudi Arabia and Israel for oil and democracy respectively).
The Bush administration’s actual foreign policy, at least until 2005, was one that simultaneously combined withdrawal from the world, and a determined undermining of the institutions of the American system, with imperial world-making. The nearest one can come to a similar kind of policy is the progressive imperialism around the time of the Spanish-American War, but there are no correlates of this type of isolationist-imperialism since the United States became a great power.
President Obama is attempting to return the United States to an internationalist position that is coherent with American diplomatic traditions. The fact that he has to move so far, and convince so many people that the United States is indeed prepared to return to the table, shows that the initial assessment of Bush Administration was correct – an outlier in the American diplomatic tradition. The revisionists have it wrong.
UPDATE: A couple of days after I wrote this piece Christopher Fettweis published ‘Dangerous Revisionism: On the Founders, ‘Neocons’ and the Importance of History’ in Orbis which makes – in a more substantive, peer-reviewed kind of way – the same point, rightly emphasising the dangers to future American strategy from a revisionist history of George W. Bush
One Hundred days, but is it the President?
By · CommentsYou pretty much can’t move for assessments of President Obama’s first hundred days, a ‘milestone’ that the American media have obsessed over since FDR turned around a New Deal in the space of three months (even if his second hundred days were arguably more significant). Most of the coverage has been complimentary, and the polls certainly suggest that the public at large agrees, despite the ridiculously high expectations this administration came to power with. The rightwing has continued its hysterical reaction, led, somewhat counter-productively for the reorganistaion and rehabilitation of the GOP, by the unapologetic torturer-in-chief former Vice-President. Amongst it though, an impressive piece of conservative commentary from the Heritage Foundation arguing that in foreign policy, for all his overtures, handshakes and offers of a new partnership, the world has not really met Obama halfway.
There is much to this. Europe didn’t produce, in addition to its typical list of demands, a list of provisions, such as a significant and coordinated commitment to Afghanistan (and Pakistan), a situation which threatens European security interests far more than it threatens the United States. Nor were the Chinese or the Europeans prepared to go along with all of the Brown-Obama plan for recapitalising and stimulating the global economy, realising perhaps that the UK and the US need it more than anyone else. But it is not true that the test of leadership is how you get people to come along when they don’t want to. That’s the test of bullying. Leadership is long-term, it’s about commanding respect and willing acquiescence because the utility of your leadership is appreciated as an asset and others act accordingly. So let us not be too swift to judge Obama’s diplomacy as a failure, or the Europeans as intransigent, or the Chinese as opportunistic. Legitimacy and authority are all too easily squandered for the time and effort they take to build.
There is of course a second dimension. If we take the charge at face-value, and Obama really is unable to get what he wants from his foreign policy leadership, is that really the fault of his particular brand of diplomacy? America’s authority declined every time the Bush administration ignored others; America’s military power has been shown up as an expensive blend of Cold War era fireworks that can’t get the jobs it needs to do done in Iraq and Afghanistan; and most spectacularly, the American economy has imploded. America, in short, is in decline, and Europe, China and the rest are simply acting in accordance with the structure of the international system that now confronts them.
Aspects of this analysis may well be true, but at the same time the structural aspects of American power make American leadership a genuine public good in the international system. Obama can restore this leadership, but it will take time and it will be of a different nature to the imperial pretensions of the last fifteen years. It will be leadership that is collaborative in nature, in which America sets the agenda, but doesn’t necessarily determine the policy or the resources that are put in pursuit of it. It will take time to establish, and may well be forged in response to crisis. But fail to recognise that the new American leadership will rest on authority rather than coercion and the realities of American decline may override the utility of American leadership. A new kind of American century then, or none at all. Obama is making the right choice.
What now for America’s AfPak Strategy?
By · CommentsAs the Taliban make new inroads into Pakistan, America is left trying to rebuild one failed states as another state fails next door. But Pakistan has a democratically elected government, and a population whose anti-Americanism grows stronger with every drone attack along the frontier.
Whilst Hilary Clinton may rail against the Pakistan government ‘abdicating’ to the Taliban, the basic political fact is that the government’s survival depends on not being seen to be an Amreican pawn. Despite the billions of dollars of US aid, the government has never been in a position to dictate to many of the western provinces, where feudal landowners had been dominant until the Taliban produced the force – often backed by local communities – to challenge the system.
What realistically can America and its European allies do? Long-term, Obama’s inclusive appracah to international relations may – may – difuse the more popular anti-Americanism that allows Talibanisation-by-invitation. But in the shorter term the United States has to focuse on holding what the Afghan and Pakistan governments have and strenthening the role of government in those regions, in particular by facilitating development and infrastructure.
The idea should be to isolate the Taliban, to draw back to a secure border on either side, implement a no-fly zone and then undermine the Taliban by making the grass greener on the other side. This is emporer Hadrian meets West Berlin, and in some ways it sounds like a negative strategy, and is it certainly not a quick fix. But it may well be the only option left that doesn’t run the very real risk of the collapse of the democratic government in Pakistan and its replacement with an Taliban state, in charge of nuclear weapons, next-door to India. And that really is too terrible to contemplate.
Some interesting thoughts from Henry Kissinger in the Washington Post today. He sees the potential collapse of any homogenous world order if the great powers, currently acting like a global Concert of Europe, fail to ensure that neither North Korea nor Iran gain nuclear weapons capability in the next few (and as he points out, it is literally a few) years.
First, to take issue with the Concert of Europe analogy. Yes, the Concert acted cooperatively to solve challenges to the existing balance. But they did not have an agenda-setter, or indeed an agenda: the sole point was the prevention of a European war. Today, the United States seeks to lead – and in most cases, the other members of the Concert – the EU, Russia, China, Japan – either lobby for leadership or seek to prevent it, depending on the area. And the areas are multiple – climate change, economic crisis, statebuilding, counter-terrorism, and of course, weapons proliferation.
There is, frankly, little that even a united concert of great powers can do to prevent states such as N Korea and Iran going nuclear, if that is really their goal. The technology is available, as are the materials. It’s not an easy process, it takes time and money, but where there’s a will there’s definitely a way. The task then, is to find the way to extinguish the will.
We have a successful case in Libya. But here Gaddaffi simply had to be convinced that his regime was not being actively threatened by the West, and a few sweeteners to the deal thrown in. North Korea and Iran are very different. Whilst in the latter case it may be possible (though far harder than the Libyan case) to pursue a grand bargain, the strategic situation on the Korean peninsula cannot be up for discussion, and Kim Jung-Il is unlikely to ever be convinced that his regime is not threatened so long as American troops guard the demilitarised zone.
So what options are left? There is one that has been gaining ground in Washington and Brussels over the last eighteen months – disarmament. The US and Russia are proceeding with nuclear reduction talks, and though this can only be a good thing, both Cold War superpowers could make massive reductions in their arsenals and still be able to send each other – and everyone else – the way of the dinosaurs.
Russia and the US talking disarmament is a start. But if the Kissinger’s concert is to convince startups like Iran and N Korea to abandon their nuclear programs then the United States needs to lead a universal process, which means adding Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel to the list.
American leadership is essential to get such a process off-the-ground, but given the likely fragmentation of world-order that Kissinger envisages it may well be directly in America’s – and the other powers – interests to do so. Iran and North Korea won’t be the last, so the need is to avert the time where we’ll be worrying more about fallout than fragmentation.
The Sources of an Obama Doctrine
By · CommentsThree pieces I’ve read this week caught my attention: the first on Barack Obama’s response to being asked to describe the ‘Obama Doctrine’ in foreign policy; the second on the rise of progressivism in American domestic politics and the third about the ‘insane’ reaction of the American right to all things Obama.
What struck me here is that whilst the Obama doctrine may differ from the Bush Doctrine in the admission that other countries have interests and potentially worthwhile things to say, that hardly makes it progressive, let alone liberal (and judging by the polling cited in Halpin and Teixeira’s American Prospect article the American public are somewhat confused by the relation of those two terms). Which makes one wonder, why is the American right so enraged by it?
At very first impressions, the Obama Doctrine has three elements. First, a revival of American leadership based on American values; second, offering a sense of input into that leadership wherever possible; and third, recognising that American leadership depends upon others’ acquiesence, and that means understanding that other states have legitimate interests. This represents a repudiation of American doctrine from 2001-2005, which could be summed up as ‘our values are universal and we are the domiant superpower, so we can do what we like and everyone else will fall in line (and if they don’t what do we care)’.
But how significant is this change in tone? The American right have reacted to it as a sign of Obama’s weakness, reflecting the nationalism that Anatol Lieven analyses in America, Right or Wrong. It’s weak to engage Cuba and Venezuela, it’s weak to involve China in planning for economic recovery, it’s weak to use international institutions. And all of this weakness isdangerous because it threatens America’s ability to act in its own interests, and a lack of international freedom of action will soon translate into a loss of individual political liberty at home.
Yet Obama has already wielded unilateral military power in an operation against Somali pirates, something that could easily have resulted, as one commentator noted, in those same right-wingers throwing the Book of Handy Jimmy Carter Epithets at him. The change in tone that to date is the most salient feature of Obama’s foreign policy reflects a combination of political detente with a measure of American decline, and attempt to use the former to arrest the latter. It recognises that the sources of challenges to American power are asymmetric, and it is the way in which that power is exercised that determines whether it is met with acquiesence or resistance. In doing so, Obama hopes to reassert American hegemony through a public good model rather than an imperial model.
Whether the United States can continue to play the role of hegemon, however, depends on more than the willingness of others to accept America as the provider of global public goods. It also depends on America’s ability to provide them, and on the American public’s willingness to pay for them. Given the ‘tea bag’ tax protests last week, whether that willingness will remain in bad economic times is unclear. But what is clear is that the right can’t have it both ways – leadership, whether by means of assertive nationalism or interest-based corporatism, costs.
IDEAS Special Report: The World Crisis
By · CommentsA quick plug for a
report I edited, available as a pdf here
“Comment peut-on réguler le capitalisme”
Howard Davies
Director, London School of Economics
Global Financial Governance: Principles for Reform
David Held
Graham Wallas Professor of Political Science, LSE
Kevin Young
LSE Fellow in Global Politics
The Implications of Globalised Finance
Danny Quah
Professor of Economics, London School of Economics
IDEAS Strategic Update: Afghanistan
By · CommentsA quick plug for a report I edited, available as a pdf here
Afghanistan: Now You See Me?
NATO Strategy – Building the Comprehensive Approach
Jamie Shea
Director of Policy Planning, NATO
The Pygmy who turned into a Giant: The Afghan Taliban in 2009
Antonio Giustozzi
Research Fellow, Crisis States Research Centre
Opium in Afghanistan: a reality check
Fabrice Pothier
Director, Carnegie Europe
Afghanistan – The Regional Dimension
Amalendu Misra
Senior Lecturer, Lancaster University