The Triple Standard; Problems with the Use of Force

I recently read Robert Cooper's book The Breaking of Nations. In it, he grouped all of the world's countries into three categories:
The premodern- states which do not satisfy Max Weber's basic requirement of having a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. This can include the presence of insurgent groups, rampant criminality, tribal warlords, or secessionist movements; all of which prevent the government from exercising its most basic functions and influence every aspect of its domestic and foreign behavior. Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Colombia and the other "narco-states," and most of Central Africa fall into this category.
The modern- these are states which are best understood in the context of the nineteenth-century European model. They have a centralized government (of whatever form, be in monarchist, democratic, authoritarian, etc), and are the principle actors on the international stage. They are states in the traditional sense, existing in an anarchic system, prone to the whims of nationalism, distrustful and suspicious of other states, as there is no way to be certain of anyone else's intentions.
The postmodern- Cooper can only point to Western Europe as an example of postmodern states. These are states which are tightly fitted into a global market, and are interdependent in political and economic means. Their militaries are small, efficient, and integrated, and they possess a high degree of transparency, reducing the uncertainty factor in their foreign relations.

The point of Cooper's book was that the United States is currently in the process of deciding whether to remain a modern state or to make the transition to the postmodern. This dilemma is essentially just another way of phrasing Brzezinski's "global dominance or global leadership" question, as well as Chomsky's titular "hegemony or survival." I want to take the analysis a step further, away from the specifics of the decision facing America at this particular time and place, and look instead at the general context of all rising states.

I think Cooper's analysis is an especially useful one. States in each general category, it seems to me, can be relied on to behave in broadly predictable ways. The needs and interests of premodern states are radically different from those of postmodern, or even modern states, and they will behave accordingly on the international stage. They will also be the site of the bitter, chronic, ethnic, sectarian, and tribal conflict which is likely to be ongoing in the twenty-first century. These are the poorest of the poor, the "failed states," the states most in need of international attention, as they are also a source of destabilization in their respective regions, (not to mention the likely source of future terrorist groups) and are thus a wider security and humanitarian concern, as Kennedy and Kaplan's theory I discussed earlier pointed out.

The modern states are governed by the logic of realism. They are, and will continue to be, aggressive and insecure by nature, and their foreign policy will always be based on the underlying threat of the use of force, which is the ultimate denominator of realist philosophy. And it also brings me to the second issue I want to address.

(So that it's clear I haven't forgotten the postmodern, Cooper seems to think that such states will largely base their foreign relations on international law, supranational organizations like the EU and the UN, and will be very integrated in their politics, economics, and military affairs. As I've already discussed in previous posts, that remains to be seen.)

I would suggest that the American experience in Vietnam, the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, and now the new war in Iraq are evidence that war is no longer an acceptable option in foreign relations. The techniques and tactics of asymmetric warfare have become too widely available, too easily replicated, and too durably sustainable for conventional warfare to be practical. This should require a significant paradigm shift in policymakers and diplomats, although there seems to be no sign of there being one.
While previously, occupation of territory was of essential interest to a state, for strategic as well as economic reasons, now foreign occupation is a nightmare. Conquering another nation is no longer an option--the costs are simply too great. It is an enormous drain on resources (according to Harper's Index in 2005, the United States spent more money in the month of March of that year guarding oil refineries than was produced by the sale of the oil refined there), not to mention on manpower and morale. It is virtually impossible to sustain in a democratic system for very long, as the idealist advocates of the Democratic Peace Theory never tire of pointing out. With the possibility and ease of terrorist strikes on the homeland of an occupying power, in addition to guerrilla war in the occupied territory and the ease with which supply lines, infrastructure, and communications can be disrupted by small but highly motivated groups, conquest is apparently something to be avoided at all costs.
That should deal with warfare between postmodern or modern states and premodern states, which really pose little to no conventional military threat. In the case of warfare between modern states, however, there is one of two cases: either the states in question are nuclear powers, or they are not.
In the first instance, war is no longer an acceptable option by any means. Campbell Craig's Glimmer of a New Leviathan does an excellent job of tracing the impact (or lack thereof) of this stark truth on realist theory, though he does not reach any practical conclusions. Essentially, if states are rational actors, there can be no war between nuclear powers. The idea of a "limited nuclear war" is a myth, since there would be no way for one state to recognize a "limited" strike rather than a massive one, and thus would be much more likely to engage in massive retaliation. There is no practical way to quickly overpower and disable an enemy nuclear state, since no government would rationally surrender to an enemy while it still possessed the power to easily annihilate that enemy. (This is not to advocate widespread nuclear proliferation to act as a deterrent against war, as Mearsheimer suggests, mind you).
In the case of non-nuclear powers, the two World Wars (or, more to the point, the long Iran-Iraq war of the 1980's) have clearly proven that conventional military technology has advanced well past the point where anyone stands anything to gain from engaging in total armed conflict. According to realist theory, states only begin wars because they think they can win (or, preemptively because they think they have no choice, but that implies the aggressor they are responding to thinks they can win) but it is exceptionally rare for anyone to genuinely win a modern war. It is for this reason that I consider realism to be a highly effective framework in terms of explanation and prediction, but extremely dangerous in terms of dictating policy. It's very good for figuring out what will happen and what has happened, but it is not something you want to base what should happen or what you want to happen on. The time of realpolitik and splendid little wars for small, specific gains which could be definitively begun and ended by governments ended in 1914, and to continue that philosophy in the modern era is, in my estimation, well beyond the foolhardy and into the suicidal.
This, of course, does not begin to address the diplomatic fallout of engaging in open war in the ineternational community, which obviously has virtually never stopped any state from doing so, but which is definitely a consideration.

All of this is not to say that I don't believe military force has any role in contemporary international relations. My views on the effective use of force are very nuanced, though, and revolve essentially around the principle of containment. I think military assets are best used not as chess pieces to breach enemy lines, take strategic pieces, and ultimately seize or remove the controlling apparatus, but rather like pieces in a game of Go, to be placed strategically in stationary positions for the purposes of isolating rising powers, to reduce the possibility of a local arms race and open hostilities, and to safeguard local national interests. This would mean a much longer, more pateint approach to great-power conflicts, but in answer to that, I would point towards the containment strategy of the Cold War, which to the best of my knowledge was the only instance in which one great power defeated another without engaging in open war.

In terms of concrete policy, I think it would be wise for the foreign policy establishment to take a close look at Cooper's analysis and devise a sort of system of triple-standards, in which states belonging to each category are related to in their own specific ways, tailored to the needs and interests and predictable behavior which accompanies each category. It is irrational to expect a premodern state to be willing or able to behave in the same way as a postmodern state, and that must be taken into account in diplomacy.

Follow-up to last post

Since the book which lead to the last post was written in 2003, I've done a bit of reading to follow up. I will present my findings here as a supplement to those previous thoughts, in what I hope is a more or less coherent order.

The EU has written a constitution, as Kupchan predicted, although it goes nowhere near the creation of a United States of Europe. It has been ratified by 14 of the 25 EU members, but it must be ratified by all in order to be accepted, and France and the Netherlands have definitively rejected it. In fact, all of the signitories are on the periphery of Europe: the core of the EU, which Kupchan expected to be the leaders, the motor which drove the process of integration forward, have in fact been the states which seem least willing to surrender aspects of their sovereignty. Critics from the left fear the constitution would create an unrestrained super-free market system, while critics on the right fear losing control over basic aspects of their own governance. Prospects for the revival of the constitution appear unlikely.
Of course, this doesn't mean there won't be one in the future. It just means that Europe has for the time being put the brakes on political integration.

Another aspect Kupchan overlooks is that the EU as it currently exists is seen and is used less as a way to further European interests and more as a way to further national interests more effectively and peacefully. Rather than speaking and operating with one unified voice to the outside world, the EU seems to spend more of its time debating within itself in pursuit of the goals of its constituent parts. Unless this basic focus of the EU changes, there will be no progress towards Kupchan's vision of a rising, integrated Europe.

The real obstacle, in my opinion, is that Europe has only enjoyed these fifty years of peace and unity because of the stabilizing presence of American troops. I disagree with the idealistic proposition that Europe has somehow evolved beyond the use of force in international politics, that they have learned the hard lessons of history and now just want to live in peace and prosperity. I think that peace and prosperity has been due to the unifying aspect of the mutual Soviet threat, and to the massive American presence on the continent. A post-war Europe with no American troops could easily have been an armed, hostile, militarized Europe, as Germany would probably want to build up sizeable forces to defend against both France and the Soviet Union, which in turn would probably have triggered an even bigger buildup in France to counter the numerical superiority of Germany, and so on and so forth. I think fifty years of pervasive American military presence has forced Europe to work out its problems through diplomacy and transparency.
Should a "rising Europe" cause America to pull its forces out of the continent (and it is extremely unlikely they would go willingly), it is highly doubtful the enlightened system of integration and trust would long outlive their presence. The integration of twenty-four (or twenty-seven, with the latest additions) national armies into one force which cannot be under the command of all of them equally and in which all states could not be equally represented in terms of practicality, assuming it would even be possible, would be a recipe for a quick dissolution of that sense of trust and for the development of extreme feelings of insecurity.
The common complaint in trans-Atlantic affairs is that Europe does not do enough in the realm of security; and conversely, that America does too much. Yet neither side shows any real interest in changing this situation. It is doubtful America would look favorably on pressure to remove its troops, let alone on the development of a military force which could realistically challenge its own, both in terms of a hypothetical clash and in terms of safeguarding global interests. Nor does Europe seem to want to take up the messy burden of stationing its soldiers in harm's way around the globe (consider, for example, the reluctance with which most European powers allow their forces in the NATO coalition in Afghanistan into actual combat). For all its complaints and posturing, Europe seems content to rely on American power to step in to global flashpoints so that they don't have to. Europe, in short, seems to see no benefit in "rising" militarily. Much better to do so economically.
That is not to say it won't happen eventually. It simply means there would have to be some dramatic changes in political will between now and then.

Conflicting Views on American Grand Strategy

I've just finished The End of the American Era by Charles A. Kupchan, former member of Clinton's National Security Council. It spoke to the heart of why I decided to create this blog: the future of what the author calls "grand strategy," which is how the future map of the world is to be drawn, where power is likely to be centralized and where conflicts are likely to occur. In contrast to the well-defined strategy of the Cold War, in which the map was clearly divided into American and Soviet camps, Kupchan laments the complete lack of coherent or practical grand strategy in American foreign policy since the first Bush presidency. He spends some time summarizing the five leading intellectual views on potential grand strategies, before offering his own diagnosis that rising isolationism and unilateralism will bring about the gradual decline of American primacy, to be eclipsed by a rising, integrated Europe. Since it is more or less the purpose of this blog to deal with the same questions these strategy proposals suggest, I think it is worthwhile to deal with each of them in turn before addressing Kupchan's own suggestion.

The first is Francis Fukuyama's extension of the "democratic peace theory." In his view, the world will be divided into democracies and non-democracies, and as the number of the former increases, conflict will become increasingly rare until it ceases altogether and history comes to an end. I intend to address the claim that democracies do not go to war with one another at some length eventually, so I will only say here that I find this possibly the least likely and most idealistic of the proposals offered.

In diametric opposition to Fukuyama's wishful thinking is John Mearsheimer's cold-blooded realism. In his view, the world will return to a multipolar system, rather like Europe before the First World War. He recommends controlled but steady proliferation of nuclear weapons as a deterrent to Great Power war, and predicts that struggles for geopolitical primacy will rule out any meaningful and long-term alliance between any of the emerging powers.
While I'm inclined to agree with Mearsheimer's analysis, since I share his gloomy realist outlook on international politics, I do not agree with his predictions. I find it unlikely that France, Germany, the UK, or Japan will emerge as economic and military rivals to the United States, let alone in stark opposition to one another. As I also intend to write at some length (promises, promises), I think war has become an unacceptable and impractical outcome in international relations--something which has ramifications that could (and I think should) drastically change realist theory, as realism is based inevitably on a willingness to go to war. Mearsheimer's nuclear-riddled hostile world may well be possible; the goal of all reasonable people should be to understand that possibility and work to avoid it.

In a similar vein to Fukuyama, Thomas L. Friedman has offered up a vision of a world based on globalization: with states which liberalize and open their economies on the one hand, and less competitive, more economically protective states on the other. In his view, economic interdependence will work to prevent conflict, and the steady spread of globalization will eventually convert all of the latter type of states into the former, thereby essentially ending history.
Unfortunately for Friedman, theories about the pacifying effects of economic interdependence have a long and sad history. Perhaps the most notorious was the pronouncement in Norman Angell's The Great Illusion that Great Power war was impossible because conquest was no longer economically viable and the states of Europe were too dependent on each other's markets. Angell published his book in 1910.
He had excellent reasons to believe as he did. At that time, Germany's top two trading partners were the United States and Britain; Britain's top trading partner was Germany. The widespread advent of the railroad and industrialization had made the European economy more interconnected than ever before--but that clearly was no hurdle to the creation of the disaster which was the First World War.
Certainly the global economy is far more integrated now than it has ever been. Certainly many people in many countries, from poor migrant workers to CEOs of multinational corporations would stand to lose if conflict broke out between any of the world's developed nations. But that has never been an impediment to such conflicts before--geopolitics (based as it is on the need for survival) always trumps purely economic gain. Economic interdependence didn't stop the Slovaks from splitting with the Czechs, or from the various nationalities in Yugoslavia from pulling apart and immediately trying to exterminate one another. Quite the contrary, in many instances, interdependence is seen by nationalists as a weakness, as shared strengths also come with shared vulnerabilities.
Moreover, gobalization works both ways. Just as it can (and often does, admittedly) spread the benefits of capital around the world, so too does it act as a conduit for economic disaster. For an example, one need look no further than 1997 when an economic meltdown in Thailand (hardly the capital of the world's finances) spread out to the rest of East Asia and eventually even European and American markets. Such patterns are hardly recipes for constant, sustainable global peace and security.

The fourth theory is that of Samuel Huntington in his Clash of Civilizations: that the world is divided into several large religious/ethnic chunks which will ultimately clash on very basic issues, since each culture has radically different values and beliefs. This is plainly a gross oversimplification--the result of Islamist terrorism, for instance, is not the result of a clash with the entire Islamic world, but instead is an expression of political and sectarian differences within the Islamic world, as well as of the extreme economic deprivation which plagues the region. In Huntington's analysis, China and Japan should be the fastest of friends, and the East Asian bloc should ally with the Islamic world against Judeo-Christian Europe and America as well as Orthodox Russia. But nothing of the sort has taken place, nor are there any signs that it will. To believe that "civilizations," which Huntington loosely defines as the largest possible human identification short of species, behave in a coherent and unanmious manner is preposterous. I wish Huntington a great deal of luck explaining to the Shiites and the Sunnis and the Kurds that they really have no reason to fight, since they're all part of the same civilization.

Lastly, and in my opinion, most likely, is the view of Paul Kennedy and Robert Kaplan: that the world will divide along a North/South axis, with the wealthy, industrialized, globalized nations of the Northern hemisphere in one complacent, consuming camp, and the rest of the world starving outside. Kennedy is particularly worried about hordes of immigrants fleeing from destitution in the global South and overwhelming the Northern societies, whereas Kaplan is concerned about important regional states collapsing and destabilizing global security.
I think there is a certain degree of rationality to this. However, I think both authors greatly underestimate the ability of the Northern states to cordon themselves off from the suffering of the global South. Kupchan uses the example of Botswana, where almost 40% of the population is HIV positive, and thus will be dead in a matter of years, condemning the country to complete collapse from a devastated workforce. No First World nation cares, or has to care.
The threat of regional anchors collapsing is a very credible and real one, and one which I think definitely needs to be a focus of any foreign policy. Imagine if Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Thailand, or Mexico collapsed on the scale of Sudan. It would be an economic and security nightmare.
However, as Kupchan astutely notes, that threat is from certain regional powers, not from the global South as a whole. The poor countries of the world do not speak, think, and act with one voice, and even if they did, their combined power would be unlikely to challenge the global primacy of the United States.

Kupchan's own view is that Europe will continue to integrate politically and economically, and once it overtakes the United States, it will raise a stronger military force to take over the internationalist role that the United States will by then no longer want. I admit I dismissed this view out of hand at first, but his argument carried more weight than I expected.
He immediately addressed my four objections to his thoery: the lack of supranational democratic mechanisms, Europe's aging population and consequent declining workforce/bankrupt pension systems, the Eastern expansion diluting common identity and integration, and the simple fact that Europe is likely to remain military weakling.
First, Kupchan suggested that if (BIG if) political will were present, the first objection could be dealt with through the creation of an EU constitution. He claims (and has polls to back it up) that a constitution would be favored by 2/3rds of the EU's population. He notes that in virtually all cases, including the federalization of the American colonies, economic integration happened first, followed by political and then finally military integration. Plainly Europe has taken steps to accomplish the former--75% of the EU's total trade is within Europe, and the continent shares a common currency and a common market. Rudimentary steps exist to accomplish the second task, though at present the EU, like all supranational bodies, doesn't actually have any power.
Kupchan admits that there is no easy answer to the second concern, but protests that steps are being taken to avert the problem. Eastern European populations are generally young, large bodies of workers which should alleviate the decline in the workforce in Western Europe, and various governments are making attempts to attract immigrants. He argues that the Eu is aware of the problem, and has time to fix it.
In Kupchan's view, the third problem is in fact the solution to the first two. Problems of enlargement and dilution of the integration and common identity may cause steps to be taken to deepen the EU's powers. The tiered approach (in which core states lead in implementing policies, while others catch up) may keep the motor of integration going forward, instead of dragging progress down to the slowest member. Enlargement also will mean revamping the budget, which could solve a lot of the other problems, if political will exists.
Fourth, as government centralizes, so will defense. Most European defense spending is on personnel (which they apparently have a lot of), not on logistics and technology. As their economies develop, they will be able to supply this themselves (i.e. Airbus supplying military aircraft for collective security deals in 2001). EU is taking a stronger diplomatic role (stopping Albania and Macedonia in 2001, stepping into Afghanistan now) which will necessitate a stronger military. Kupchan notes that other rising powers moved more slowly in their early stages and the fact that Europe has not yet solved these problems does not mean that they never will.
My principle objection which he does not address is the assertion that Europe thinks and acts as one. What exactly is meant by his "rising Europe"? The EU members? What about the members which haven't adopted the euro and only implement EU policies when they feel like it? Does Italy count, with its chaotic electoral politics and dismal rating on all corruption indexes? Does the UK count, with its extremely ambivalent relationship towards the EU? What if Turkey joins?
I also find his assessment of the decline of American primacy to be unlikely. Certainly America is likely to be increasingly isolationist and unilateralist--especially if the neocons remain in government. But does that mean the United States is likely to voluntarily surrender its military and economic dominance? I somehow find that doubtful.

Whatever the case, Kupchan does an excellent job of summarizing, analyzing, and refuting the other competing claims and offers a surprisingly persuasive argument of his own. I recommend the book, and I'll get around to typing up my own amalgamated suggestion for grand strategy fairly soon.

China's potential economic crisis

Much has been made lately about the impending crisis in the American Social Security system: how when it was first enacted, there were forty-two workers paying in for every person who received benefits, and how in the next ten-to-twenty years, that ratio will be more like two for every one. Dire predictions have been made.

What has been less frequently analyzed is the analgous situation in China which derives from their population control policies. Consider:
Historically speaking, every married Chinese couple would have five children on average. Those five children would get married and have an average of five children each. Since China has no social security system, it falls to relatives to support elderly Chinese--and this was a hardship, but possible when there were thirty-five children and grandchildren for every elderly couple. That gives a ratio of seventeen to one, if you round generously.

With China's new birth rate policies, each married couple has one child. That child then marries the only child of another married couple and this new union in turn produces one grandchild. Now instead of thirty-five offspring supporting two people, you have three offspring supporting four. 17:1 isn't particularly sustainable on its own, let alone 3:4.

Further, China's first "baby boom" generation is currently 30-40 years of age. They will be reaching the point at which they can no longer work ("retirement age" seems like a kind of euphemism when applied to China's state capitalism) in twenty to thirty years. They will be followed ten years later by the second and even larger wave which is followed by an abrupt drop in demographics. These will be people who are used to a modernized China. They will probably have owned their own automobiles, have traveled outside the country, and they will be used to a steady supply of consumer goods. Their retirement demands will be much greater than the means they will have to reach them. This will also mark a precipice in the manpower of Chinese labor and military capacity, as well as buying power. The economic consequences could be catastrophic.

However, twenty years is a long time. The Chinese government could simply drop the birth restrictions in ten years and put the problem off. There is already a policy in place which allows two parents who are single children to have more than one child, in an effort to allay this concern. They could enact a functioning social security system based on contributions, since China's per-capita GDP growth is among the strongest in the world and the current young generation will probably have the extra money to pay into a pension fund. Or they could simply let their population starve to death in the tens of millions. It would hardly be the first time.