Foreign Policy, NOVEMBER 18, 2014
Voice
THE TOP 5 FOREIGN POLICY LESSONS OF THE PAST 20 YEARS
From Russia to China to the United States, from hubris to ultimatums to power plays, the
good, the bad, and the ugly of (recent) world politics.
By Stephen Walt
Tell me, friend: Do you find the current world situation confusing? Are you having trouble
sorting through the bewildering array of alarums, provocations, reassurances, and trite
nostrums offered up by pundits and politicos? Can't tell if the glass is half-full and rising or
half-empty, cracked, and leaking water fast? Not sure if you should go long on precious
metals and stock up on fresh water, ammo, and canned goods, or go big into equities and
assume that everything will work out in the long run?
Today's world is filled with conflicting signals. On the one hand, life expectancy and
education are up, the level of violent conflict is down, and hundreds of millions of people
have been lifted out of poverty over the past several decades. Private businesses are starting to
take human rights seriously. And hey, the euro is still alive! On the other hand, Europe's
economy is still depressed, Russia is suspending nuclear cooperation with the United States,
violent extremists keep multiplying in several regions, the odds of a genuine nuclear deal with
Iran still look like a coin toss, and that much-ballyhooed climate change deal between the
United States and China is probably too little too late and already facing right-wing criticisms.
Given all these conflicting signals, what broader lessons might guide policymakers wrestling
with all this turbulence? Assuming governments are capable of learning from experience (and
please just grant me that one), then what kernels of wisdom should they be drawing on right
now? What do the past 20 years or so reveal about contemporary foreign-policy issues, and
what enduring lessons should we learn from recent experience?
No. 1: Great-power politics still matters. A lot.
When the Cold War ended, a lot of smart people convinced themselves that good oldfashioned power politics was a thing of the past. As Bill Clinton said when he first ran for
president, the "cynical calculus of pure power politics simply does not compute. It is ill-suited
to a new era." Instead of being roiled by power politics, the world was going to be united by
markets, shared democratic values, and the Internet -- and humankind would concentrate on
getting rich and living well (i.e., like Clinton himself).
There's no mystery as to why this outlook appealed to Americans, who assumed this benign
vision would unfold under Washington's benevolent guidance. But the last 20 years teaches us
that this view was, as usual, premature, and great-power politics has come back with a
vengeance.
Of course, the United States never abandoned "power politics," and Clinton, George W. Bush,
and Barack Obama all emphasized the need to preserve the U.S. position as the world's most
powerful country. They understood that their ability to exercise "global leadership" depends
on U.S. primacy and especially America's privileged position as the only major power in the
Western Hemisphere. That position gives U.S. policymakers the freedom to wander around
and meddle in lots of other places -- something they would not be able to do if the United
States were weaker or if it had to worry about defending its own territory against serious
dangers.
But the United States isn't alone. China's increasingly assertive policies toward its immediate
neighborhood shows that Beijing is hardly indifferent to geopolitics, and Russia's assertive
defense of what it sees as vital interests in its "near abroad" (e.g., Ukraine) suggests that
somebody in Moscow didn't get the memo about the benign effects of globalization. And
regional powers like India, Turkey, and Japan are taking traditional geopolitical concerns
more seriously these days. Bottom line: If you thought great-power rivalry was a thing of the
past, think again.
No. 2: A lot of global politics is (still) local.
A related element of the initial post-Cold War optimism was the idea that the world was
gradually being united by globalization and that societies with very different values and
histories would gradually converge on a set of similar institutional forms (i.e., some form of
market-driven democracy). Identity politics would be handled within representative
institutions, and the big political questions would be mostly global in nature (e.g., trade and
investment regimes, labor standards, human rights norms, arms control, macroeconomic
management, etc.). Messy local issues like minority rights or border disputes would gradually
disappear from the global policy agenda and we'd all converge into one big and mostly happy
global family.
But surprise, surprise: Local identities and issues keep reasserting themselves. Israelis and
Palestinians still fight over who gets to pray where in Jerusalem. Catalans, Kurds, and Scots
clamor for independence. Minorities in Myanmar, China, Russia, India, and sub-Saharan
Africa face violent discrimination. Outside efforts to create a centralized state in Afghanistan
and to build effective governments in Iraq and Libya founder over ethnic, sectarian, or tribal
divisions. And opposition to outside interference in distant lands inspires both local and
transnational terrorism.
America's melting-pot mythology tends to blind U.S. leaders to the enduring power of these
local identities, because Americans tend to view such affinities as pre-modern traits that will
get discarded once education, markets, democracy, and modernity take hold.
America's melting-pot mythology tends to blind U.S. leaders to the enduring power of these
local identities, because Americans tend to view such affinities as pre-modern traits that will
get discarded once education, markets, democracy, and modernity take hold. But the past 20
years suggest that this view is dangerously naive, and any foreign-policy initiative that doesn't
take local identities and conditions into account is likely to fail.
No. 3: The only thing worse than a bad state is no state.
U.S. foreign-policy elites routinely blame foreign-policy problems on the supposedly evil or
illegitimate nature of other governments. In this view, international politics isn't a clash of
competing interests; it is a morality play between good states -- America and its allies -- and
bad states, or anyone who disagrees with us. During the Cold War, the problem was
revolutionary communism led by the evil Soviet empire. After the Cold War, the United
States blamed trouble on various "rogue" states such as Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea,
and Serbia. These states were bad because they were dictatorships and had poor human rights
records, revisionist aims, and, in most cases, an appetite for weapons of mass destruction. The
obvious solution to the rogue-state problem, of course, was regime change: get rid of these
very bad rulers and create governments that treat their own populations better and cooperate
with the United States.
But as the sorry results of regime change in Libya and Iraq suggest, getting rid of really awful
leaders isn't an improvement if the result is anarchy or a weak, corrupt, and highly divisive
regime. One might add Yemen and Somalia to the list as well, and that's where Afghanistan is
likely to be once the international community stops propping it up. Creating effective
governments in post-totalitarian societies turns out to be very, very hard, and especially after a
violent overthrow. It is even harder when the society in question is divided and relatively
poor, and the lack of any legitimate or effective authority creates power vacuums in which the
worst sorts of extremism can flourish. What's the lesson for all you unrepentant regimechangers out there? Be careful what you wish for.
No. 4: "Take it or leave it" is bad diplomacy.
Over the past 20 years, the United States has also shown a regrettable tendency to issue
demands and make threats but not to engage in genuine diplomacy, which is properly
understood as the mutual adjustment of competing interests for mutual benefit. Because they
saw their opponents as evil and believed the United States held most if not all of the high
cards, Americans tended to view any concessions on their part as a form of surrender, even if
they ended up getting much of what they wanted. Instead of real bargaining, the United States
tended to tell others what it wanted them to do and then ramped up the pressure if they didn't
comply.
This take-it-or-leave-it approach produced a war over Kosovo in 1999, and it also took us
from zero Iranian centrifuges in 2000 to over 11,000 operating today. It also appears to be
driving the Western response to Ukraine: The basic EU/United States/NATO position is that
Russia should cease all of its activities in Ukraine, withdraw from Crimea, and let Ukraine
join the EU and/or NATO if it ever meets the membership requirements. In other words, we
are asking Moscow to completely abandon every single one of its own interests in Ukraine,
full stop. That outcome might be highly desirable in the abstract, but given Russia's history,
its proximity to Ukraine, and its own long-term security concerns, it is hard to imagine
Russian President Vladimir Putin capitulating to the West's demands without a long and
costly struggle that will do enormous damage to Ukraine itself. Like that infamous village in
Vietnam, both sides appear to be prepared to destroy Ukraine in order to save it.
Of course, the United States isn't the only country that has adopted this approach to key
diplomatic issues. China seems uninterested in genuine diplomacy over the South China Sea,
and Benjamin Netanyahu's government in Israel has made it clear that it is willing to negotiate
with the Palestinians only if the talks never lead to an agreement or if the Palestinians
formally abandon the creation of a viable state of their own.
Unfortunately, diplomacy conducted primarily through threats, ultimatums, and a steadfast
reluctance to compromise rarely produces successful or durable outcomes.
Unfortunately, diplomacy conducted primarily through threats, ultimatums, and a steadfast
reluctance to compromise rarely produces successful or durable outcomes. First, even much
weaker parties usually have some residual bargaining power, which means that even the most
powerful states will have trouble getting absolutely everything they want. Second, when the
weaker side is forced to capitulate under duress, it ends up being resentful and will look for
opportunities to reopen the issue when conditions are more favorable. To make diplomacy
work, you have to give the other side enough of what it wants so that it has an interest in
abiding by the deal over the long term. Finally, failure to negotiate with appropriate flexibility
also allows problems to fester and deepen, which often makes it harder to resolve the problem
later on.
No. 5: Beware hubris.
The ancient Greeks warned about hubris -- that fatal combination of arrogance or
overconfidence that leads foolish mortals to challenge the gods -- and we've seen ample
reminders of its pernicious consequences ever since. It was hubris that drove the United States
to expand NATO with scant regard for its long-term consequences. It was hubris that has led
U.S. diplomats to think their personal charm and powers of persuasion were sufficient to
produce a two-state solution in the Middle East. Hubris took George W. Bush into Iraq, and
hubris convinced European leaders to create a common currency despite ample warnings that
the institutional requirements for a currency union were missing. Hubris lay behind then
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's grandiose hopes that Turkey would become the
linchpin of a new Middle East order while having "zero problems" in foreign policy. There
was even a hint of it in Obama's belief that he could overcome intractable problems with a
single well-delivered speech. It remains to be seen whether Putin has overreached in Ukraine,
but if it ends in disaster for Russia, hubris will have played a role there too.
There's an enduring lesson here. In a world with no central authority and many independent if
unequal centers of power, the realm of foreign policy remains one where competition is
endemic and where even the strongest of actors find it hard to impose their will at little or no
cost. It remains a realm where chance and contingency loom large and where grandiose
schemes and ambitious crusades usually fail. Like with mutual funds, past success is no
guarantee of future performance, and countries riding high at one moment can find
themselves in serious trouble without much warning.
The post-Cold War era proves this beyond all doubt: If the mighty United States could
stumble with such relentless frequency, that was surely a reminder that statecraft should start
with realistic goals and with an eye toward possible pitfalls. And if they are smart, prudent
leaders will always have a Plan B at the ready.
That's my list of top five lessons. What's yours?
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