Ukrainian President Yanukovych abandoned his office on Saturday, his regime has collapsed, the protestors have won, and it looks like there's two responses to these events: uncertainty or "so what else is on?" Ukraine has dropped off CNN.com's front page and "trending" banner, and the last I saw of it was a side feature next to Samsung's new phone and the end of the "Got Milk?" ads the other night.
Meanwhile more scholarly websites are trying to make sense of recent events: the Council for Foreign Relations have a transcript of a teleconference on that topic, and Foreign Affairs has a letter from Kiev that mentions protestors staying put in case their discontent is needed again. An analysis from Slate makes me glad I didn't try to comment on Ukraine over the weekend, since the author ended up updating it every few hours as the situation went from "the president signed a power sharing deal" to "the president has legged it" to "so who's in charge right now?"
As for me, I'm curious how this will be presented in future international relations textbooks.
For my Peace and Conflict Resolution class I got to read Chenoweth and Stephan's Why Civil Resistance Works, which argues that nonviolent campaigns are more effective than violent insurgencies. The main point is that it's easier for your average oppressed citizen to take to the streets in a demonstration for a few days than it is for him to run off to the hills and join a guerrilla movement, and the revolution that results from such mass, popular efforts will be more durable, more democratic and more peaceful than what results from a revolutionary war.
There are issues with data - the authors admit that they can't measure the revolutions that never got going for one reason for another, while some from my class raised dubious eyebrows at the graphs and charts used to support the central argument - but I think the book's worth reading just for the case studies. Four are presented to illustrate the ways nonviolence can work, or not work.
Their best example is the Philippines' "People Power" movement, where the nonviolent demonstrators mobilized the middle class, thus negating their oppressors' claims that the revolutionaries were a communist minority. The movement also courted defectors from the army or security forces, protecting rebel barracks with praying human shields, while keeping the demonstrations nonviolent. Ultimately the People Power revolution succeeded in ousting Ferdinand Marcos from power, something Marxist and Islamic guerrillas had been failing to do for years.
That is the only case study where everything went right, however: the Iranian Revolution is listed as an example where the "mass mobilization" and "capture the country's military" went according to plan, only for a lack of cohesion among the resistance to allow an Islamist minority to hijack the revolution and introduce a new kind of tyranny. The First Intifada shows how such a hijacking can occur even before the revolution happens, where initially successful and sympathetic nonviolent protests were derailed when the PLO ran in and tried to turn it into an armed uprising. And then there's the failed Burmese uprising, where not only was the regime able to successfully quash any cohesion among the resistance, but a would-be rebel leader explicitly told her followers not to try and recruit the military to their cause, and continued to praise the armed forces butchering her countrymen.
Ukraine doesn't quite fit any of these molds, and it's probably a stretch to call the recent revolution "nonviolent," what with the riots and burning buildings and battles between police and protesters. The Ukrainian military didn't get involved, and eventually the police withdrew and went home, so I suppose that might count as the revolution "capturing" the security forces of the regime - it's more important that they not fire on protestors than it is that they take part in the marches, I'd wager.
Russia eventually withdrew its support from the Yanukovych regime when it became clear that it was losing control of the country, much like how increasing international pressure and Marcos' dwindling supports forced America to tell its former champion of democracy to give up power in the Philippines. But Marcos and Yanukovych left power a little differently - the former defiantly renewed his oath of office even while the opposition was setting up a parallel government, but when the last state-controlled TV station fell to rebels, that combined with US pressure and Marcos' hemorrhaging support drove the dictator to negotiate for his flight from the country.
In Ukraine's case, Yanukovych actually signed a power-sharing deal that would have let him stay in power, only to be threatened with an "armed surge" from the protestors unless he resigned, which led to his flight. This doesn't fit the narrative of "dictator bows to overwhelming nonviolent pressure," plus we don't know where the guy is, and he's still vowed to keep fighting somehow.
There is an element of mass mobilization in that even Yanukovych's party turned on him, declaring him and his cronies to be corrupt criminals, but this of course raises concerns about the unity of the post-revolutionary government, or that extremists might be able to hijack the revolution. Already there's a couple of factions among Ukraine's would-be reformers, and though Russia loves to throw around the word "fascist" without a trace of irony, one of the Ukrainian minority parties is descended from Nazi-aligned partisans and has talked about a "Jewish-Russian mafia" controlling their country. And of course, discontent with the former president notwithstanding, Ukraine is hardly united when it comes to deciding where to go from here. Plenty of people would be happy to have an authoritarian Russian puppet if he were less corrupt than the last guy.
So a qualitative comparison to historical cases isn't exceptionally useful, in other words. The most we can say is that the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution is sort of like a couple of past revolutions that ended up going in very different directions. The good news is that Ukraine gets to make its own path, the bad news is that we don't know where that path is going.
I'm not sure if this is better or worse than something quantitative, where I'd stick a bunch of variables into STATA and say with "confidence" that there's a 45.992% chance of enduring democracy and an ERROR percent chance that things will get worse.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Countries, Lost and Found
This isn't how you do a truce, guys. On the other hand, since this isn't the first time the sides have declared a truce and then continued killing each other, we probably shouldn't be surprised by this outcome. Russia's response hasn't been surprising either: the West is behind everything, Washington is arming the rebels, this is part of an attempted coup, etc.
But some of the stuff from the West has been interesting. I'd always considered sanctions to be a way to kill hundreds of thousands of a nation's most vulnerable citizens in hopes that the dictator ruling them suddenly develops a conscience and change his policy, and don't think doing that to a country already undergoing economic hardship is going to make things better. Except the US and EU are talking about "targeted" sanctions going after Ukraine's leadership, freezing assets and visas. Now, I'd worry that putting economic pressure on a group already leaning towards Russian handouts might at best do nothing and at worst drive them further away, but I'm sure these policymakers know what they're doing.
There's also John McCain's reaction; he likes the sanctions idea, but he's also finding time to criticize the president for I guess not doing enough against Russia and Putin? He says that Putin's "played" us, and that Russia's leader is "amoral, he’s cold, he’s distant, he’s tough,” and all of that I can agree with. But calling Obama naive is unfair - the guy orders drone strike assassinations of targets regardless of the cooperation of the country whose airspace he's violating, for crying out loud. It's better to say that Obama is simply unwilling to commit much to certain situations, such as Ukraine or Syria, where he either doesn't seen an American interest or a chance of getting a cost-effective positive outcome. If anything, I'd call him a cynic.
The most surprising thing I found was from the Council on Foreign Relations' neat Ukrainian issue guide, not so much due to the linked article's content, but its subject. It was short commentary from someone complaining that we - the US, the EU, the West - are "losing" Ukraine. This is a bit of an odd notion to think about, as we - the west, the EU, the US - never really "had" Ukraine at any point, did we? So why should we care if Putin "takes" it?
The Cold War is over, thank the deity of your choice. The great debate of whether democracy or communism is better for a country's people has been decided through the military-industrial complex and horrific proxy wars. We've reached the "end of history," where the big political debate isn't between one or more ideologies, but to what extent you can fit the Western liberal capitalist model with your country; there isn't a globally-viable alternative anymore, no great philosophy offering a different world model.
Putin doesn't like this. He sees himself - or I've read various works characterizing him this way - as the leader of a bloc providing an alternative to the West, a bloc built upon principles of... well, it looks like Putin's club is all about being able to stay in power indefinitely, thwart popular sovereignty, and crush protesting citizens without anyone else being judgmental about it. As such, this has led him to align with Syria and Iran, and is part of the reason why he's leaning so hard on Ukraine's regime. The other reason is that he doesn't consider "Little Russia" an independent state.
Competing with Russia over Ukraine's future, then, runs the risk of playing into Putin's hands, validating his worldview as the leader of nondemocratic Russia facing off against the West in Cold War II. But like I said it isn't the same situation, no fringe political scientists are arguing in favor of Putinism, and nobody outside the ruling regimes of Kiev and Damascus particularly wants that style of government. The West isn't competing with Russia to see who can control the most puppet regimes, and doesn't need to "have" Ukraine for that reason.
But that doesn't mean we should do nothing, or feel comfortable if Ukraine "goes" to Russia instead of the West, like so many of its people want. If the Cold War was about paying lip service to democracy while ignoring the piles of bodies, maybe now we can ignore the political angle and focus on helping people. Because the problem isn't that the Ukraine is building close ties to Russia; the two countries have a long history, and while it's been less amiable than relations between, say, Canada and Great Britain, it's only natural for countries to feel a bond due to their shared past.
The problem is that Ukraine is building close ties to an autocratic, oligarchic Russia. The problem is that if Kiev severs ties with the West and becomes Moscow's puppet, a lot of Ukrainians are going to suffer. And there's enough suffering going on in the world that the West isn't acting upon, so maybe we should put forth a bit more effort into at least preventing more from occurring.
Really, we shouldn't be beating ourselves up for losing Ukraine, we should be lamenting that we lost Russia. If we had come up with a better transition strategy than "shock therapy," if we had been a bit more outspoken when Yeltsin was shelling the Russian parliament, if we had helped Russia rebuild itself into a liberal, functional state instead of a combination of the worst parts of capitalism and pre-Soviet authoritarianism, Ukraine wouldn't be an issue. And we could be continuing to do nothing about Syria instead.
But some of the stuff from the West has been interesting. I'd always considered sanctions to be a way to kill hundreds of thousands of a nation's most vulnerable citizens in hopes that the dictator ruling them suddenly develops a conscience and change his policy, and don't think doing that to a country already undergoing economic hardship is going to make things better. Except the US and EU are talking about "targeted" sanctions going after Ukraine's leadership, freezing assets and visas. Now, I'd worry that putting economic pressure on a group already leaning towards Russian handouts might at best do nothing and at worst drive them further away, but I'm sure these policymakers know what they're doing.
There's also John McCain's reaction; he likes the sanctions idea, but he's also finding time to criticize the president for I guess not doing enough against Russia and Putin? He says that Putin's "played" us, and that Russia's leader is "amoral, he’s cold, he’s distant, he’s tough,” and all of that I can agree with. But calling Obama naive is unfair - the guy orders drone strike assassinations of targets regardless of the cooperation of the country whose airspace he's violating, for crying out loud. It's better to say that Obama is simply unwilling to commit much to certain situations, such as Ukraine or Syria, where he either doesn't seen an American interest or a chance of getting a cost-effective positive outcome. If anything, I'd call him a cynic.
The most surprising thing I found was from the Council on Foreign Relations' neat Ukrainian issue guide, not so much due to the linked article's content, but its subject. It was short commentary from someone complaining that we - the US, the EU, the West - are "losing" Ukraine. This is a bit of an odd notion to think about, as we - the west, the EU, the US - never really "had" Ukraine at any point, did we? So why should we care if Putin "takes" it?
The Cold War is over, thank the deity of your choice. The great debate of whether democracy or communism is better for a country's people has been decided through the military-industrial complex and horrific proxy wars. We've reached the "end of history," where the big political debate isn't between one or more ideologies, but to what extent you can fit the Western liberal capitalist model with your country; there isn't a globally-viable alternative anymore, no great philosophy offering a different world model.
Putin doesn't like this. He sees himself - or I've read various works characterizing him this way - as the leader of a bloc providing an alternative to the West, a bloc built upon principles of... well, it looks like Putin's club is all about being able to stay in power indefinitely, thwart popular sovereignty, and crush protesting citizens without anyone else being judgmental about it. As such, this has led him to align with Syria and Iran, and is part of the reason why he's leaning so hard on Ukraine's regime. The other reason is that he doesn't consider "Little Russia" an independent state.
Competing with Russia over Ukraine's future, then, runs the risk of playing into Putin's hands, validating his worldview as the leader of nondemocratic Russia facing off against the West in Cold War II. But like I said it isn't the same situation, no fringe political scientists are arguing in favor of Putinism, and nobody outside the ruling regimes of Kiev and Damascus particularly wants that style of government. The West isn't competing with Russia to see who can control the most puppet regimes, and doesn't need to "have" Ukraine for that reason.
But that doesn't mean we should do nothing, or feel comfortable if Ukraine "goes" to Russia instead of the West, like so many of its people want. If the Cold War was about paying lip service to democracy while ignoring the piles of bodies, maybe now we can ignore the political angle and focus on helping people. Because the problem isn't that the Ukraine is building close ties to Russia; the two countries have a long history, and while it's been less amiable than relations between, say, Canada and Great Britain, it's only natural for countries to feel a bond due to their shared past.
The problem is that Ukraine is building close ties to an autocratic, oligarchic Russia. The problem is that if Kiev severs ties with the West and becomes Moscow's puppet, a lot of Ukrainians are going to suffer. And there's enough suffering going on in the world that the West isn't acting upon, so maybe we should put forth a bit more effort into at least preventing more from occurring.
Really, we shouldn't be beating ourselves up for losing Ukraine, we should be lamenting that we lost Russia. If we had come up with a better transition strategy than "shock therapy," if we had been a bit more outspoken when Yeltsin was shelling the Russian parliament, if we had helped Russia rebuild itself into a liberal, functional state instead of a combination of the worst parts of capitalism and pre-Soviet authoritarianism, Ukraine wouldn't be an issue. And we could be continuing to do nothing about Syria instead.
Monday, February 17, 2014
Ironically Also the Name of a Pagan Goddess
Today I was pleasantly surprised to find that the TV set hanging nearest my treadmill at the gym was displaying not Olympic figure skating or the mentally-exhausting noise of Fox's The Five, but some actual news! Happy as I was to have something worth watching while I worked off some french fries, I was soon depressed by CNN's big story.
Syria's gone to hell, that much is well known, but evidently one of the rebel groups is so fanatical, so vicious, that even al Qaeda thinks they're too spicy and other revolutionaries have had to turn back and retake towns this Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has occupied. Meanwhile the violence in the country has accelerated even as the peace talks failed - turns out the regime willing to bomb, torture or starve its population considers rebel demands for Assad to leave power to be "unrealistic." Assad's supporters, supplemented by seasoned Hezbollah militants from Lebanon, have made some recent gains, but Saudi Arabia has made new offers of anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons for the Syrian opposition (hopefully they won't give any to those ISIS guys).
The whole region's coming together to participate in this event. It's like the Olympics, except 136,000 people have died.
This is exactly what we were worried about when the fighting started, that some of the rebels we could back against Syria's tyrant might turn out like the mujahideen we aided during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which led to the Taliban, and you know the rest. The good news is that not all the rebels are like that, so there'd have to be a further bloodbath, as ISIS killed and terrorized its opposition into submission, before the extremists took power and turned Syria from an authoritarian regime to a theocratic nightmare. Of course, to get that far they still have to defeat Assad's forces. So the good news about Syria is that it could be worse.
Obviously this isn't what the United States wants the Syria situation to look like, but unfortunately is the result of its actions during the civil war. If you want a specific outcome, in this case an Assad-free Syria, you need to be willing to take actions to make that outcome happen. Training and arming the Syrian Free Army is a start, but if that isn't enough, what are you willing to do next? Not provide air support, it turns out, or seriously enforce a "red line" on WMD use. And if a president who is very much willing to ignore the legislature and rule by decree decides in this case to leave military involvement up to a divided Congress, it's probably going to be hard for Assad to feel threatened by America.
So if Obama's handling of Syria has been a bit of a complete failure, what do we do next? Representative Cantor made a speech calling for a strong, interventionist America fighting for freedom and democracy and all that jazz - though the bits in the article don't mention Syria specifically, and seem more about America's greatest national concern, keeping Iran from nuking Israel. Senator McCain just wants Obama to use the intervention plans already drawn up, or presumably the updated version of them, coming "far sort of an Iraq-style invasion." And the op-ed for CFR mentioned no-fly zones and drone strikes against Syrian al Qaeda groups as things we could be doing to help.
I'm sure it'd be less simple than these guys make it sound - I think I remember that Syria has a lot of modern anti-air defenses, unlike most of the countries we've flattened in the past decades - but I'm curious about the options being left off the table. For example, why not an Iraq-style invasion? From what I remember, the actual "war" part of the Iraq War went swimmingly, was a bit of a turkey shoot even. It's only once we had to rebuild and occupy the country that we discovered that our military is a lot better at toppling governments than making new ones. But if we make no commitment to such a rebuilding project, maybe found someone else to do it, we could end the war quickly and skip the sort of misery we went through in Iraq and are wrapping up in Afghanistan.
I guess others aren't suggesting this because they figure without an American occupation, those ISIS guys or someone like them would probably take over. On the other hand, we've got the Taliban poised for a comeback in Afghanistan, and Iraq is hardly the way we'd like it, so just because we occupy a country doesn't mean we'd do it right.
The other omitted option is simple: drone strikes on Assad. Get his house on satellite, blow up his car one fine morning while he drives to work, boom, the major impasse in the peace talks is removed. Maybe the lull that follows would lead to a peaceful resolution, maybe the confusion in the regime's leadership would let the rebels swing the war their way.
But of course we can't treat the leader of a government, no matter how murderous and illegitimate, the same as a common terrorist. And since drone assassinations seem to be the biggest thing in the president's military toolkit, I guess we'll see where Syria's fighters - and the nations willing to get involved - take the conflict next.
Syria's gone to hell, that much is well known, but evidently one of the rebel groups is so fanatical, so vicious, that even al Qaeda thinks they're too spicy and other revolutionaries have had to turn back and retake towns this Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has occupied. Meanwhile the violence in the country has accelerated even as the peace talks failed - turns out the regime willing to bomb, torture or starve its population considers rebel demands for Assad to leave power to be "unrealistic." Assad's supporters, supplemented by seasoned Hezbollah militants from Lebanon, have made some recent gains, but Saudi Arabia has made new offers of anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons for the Syrian opposition (hopefully they won't give any to those ISIS guys).
The whole region's coming together to participate in this event. It's like the Olympics, except 136,000 people have died.
This is exactly what we were worried about when the fighting started, that some of the rebels we could back against Syria's tyrant might turn out like the mujahideen we aided during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which led to the Taliban, and you know the rest. The good news is that not all the rebels are like that, so there'd have to be a further bloodbath, as ISIS killed and terrorized its opposition into submission, before the extremists took power and turned Syria from an authoritarian regime to a theocratic nightmare. Of course, to get that far they still have to defeat Assad's forces. So the good news about Syria is that it could be worse.
Obviously this isn't what the United States wants the Syria situation to look like, but unfortunately is the result of its actions during the civil war. If you want a specific outcome, in this case an Assad-free Syria, you need to be willing to take actions to make that outcome happen. Training and arming the Syrian Free Army is a start, but if that isn't enough, what are you willing to do next? Not provide air support, it turns out, or seriously enforce a "red line" on WMD use. And if a president who is very much willing to ignore the legislature and rule by decree decides in this case to leave military involvement up to a divided Congress, it's probably going to be hard for Assad to feel threatened by America.
So if Obama's handling of Syria has been a bit of a complete failure, what do we do next? Representative Cantor made a speech calling for a strong, interventionist America fighting for freedom and democracy and all that jazz - though the bits in the article don't mention Syria specifically, and seem more about America's greatest national concern, keeping Iran from nuking Israel. Senator McCain just wants Obama to use the intervention plans already drawn up, or presumably the updated version of them, coming "far sort of an Iraq-style invasion." And the op-ed for CFR mentioned no-fly zones and drone strikes against Syrian al Qaeda groups as things we could be doing to help.
I'm sure it'd be less simple than these guys make it sound - I think I remember that Syria has a lot of modern anti-air defenses, unlike most of the countries we've flattened in the past decades - but I'm curious about the options being left off the table. For example, why not an Iraq-style invasion? From what I remember, the actual "war" part of the Iraq War went swimmingly, was a bit of a turkey shoot even. It's only once we had to rebuild and occupy the country that we discovered that our military is a lot better at toppling governments than making new ones. But if we make no commitment to such a rebuilding project, maybe found someone else to do it, we could end the war quickly and skip the sort of misery we went through in Iraq and are wrapping up in Afghanistan.
I guess others aren't suggesting this because they figure without an American occupation, those ISIS guys or someone like them would probably take over. On the other hand, we've got the Taliban poised for a comeback in Afghanistan, and Iraq is hardly the way we'd like it, so just because we occupy a country doesn't mean we'd do it right.
The other omitted option is simple: drone strikes on Assad. Get his house on satellite, blow up his car one fine morning while he drives to work, boom, the major impasse in the peace talks is removed. Maybe the lull that follows would lead to a peaceful resolution, maybe the confusion in the regime's leadership would let the rebels swing the war their way.
But of course we can't treat the leader of a government, no matter how murderous and illegitimate, the same as a common terrorist. And since drone assassinations seem to be the biggest thing in the president's military toolkit, I guess we'll see where Syria's fighters - and the nations willing to get involved - take the conflict next.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
National Psychology, Sochi, and What Comes After
Something my history courses talked about that my political science courses didn't was the notion of a "national psychology." It makes sense that the latter has little to say on the topic: political science has a long history of being concerned more with a country's sovereign than the people in it, while if you break with that tradition and put an emphasis on the unwashed masses, assigning them a collective consciousness is a bit ludicrous.
But national psychology tends to crop up in history, as we try to ascribe a narrative to past events and explain why they happened. World War II was the result of lingering resentment after Germany was given all the blame for World War I. Imperial Japan became increasingly aggressive and contemptuous of the international system after being slighted instead of being recognized as the major power it was, and of course the victorious Americans couldn't charge, much less execute, the emperor for war crimes because the Japanese national psyche couldn't withstand the loss of its royal figurehead.
Now, there might be some glimmers of truth in such tales, but perhaps it would be better to focus on the nationalist psyche of a country's leadership. Better to say that the Nazi leadership was eager to restore lost prestige at the cost of other countries' territory, rather than that every German citizen was willing to start a new war to make up for losing the last one. It's not as sweeping a generalization, and lets us be more specific with the blame.
The reason I bring this up is again, Sochi.
The Council of Foreign Relations put up another good article explaining the potential fallout from the Winter Olympics, not so much due to improperly installed commodes, but rather how the international focus on the country reveals so many of Russia's problems. Ethnic tensions and terrorism, financial waste and corruption, issues that undermine the country's prestige and claims of being a functioning world power, much less an exceptional nation.
If we were to go with the historical narratives, we could worry that Russia, having embarrassed itself (herself?) on the world stage, might attempt to restore its prestige in less constructive ways, falling further back into Soviet habits in an effort to be taken seriously as a superpower again, sort of like how some fundamentalist Islamists assume that restoring the caliphate will automatically return the Middle East to its medieval glory. If we were a little more specific, we might worry what Putin might do if he feels the Olympics have been a less than positive experience for Russia.
On the individual, country-ruler level Sestanovich's article is reassuring: Putin is likely to be distant and coolly antagonistic towards Western leaders after the Olympics because that's how he was acting previously. And on the national level, there are good signs from citizens who would like a "normal" Russia rather than a country that fits Putin's brand of exceptionalism, and opportunities for opposition groups to start taking back political power. More positives come from this CNN piece, where near the bottom the author describes the helpful, friendly attitude of Russian Olympic volunteers as being the equal of London's workers from just a few years ago, regardless of how authoritarian the country's ruler is. So it looks like Russia's national psychology can withstand Sochi without plunging the world into flames, which is good news.
But if Putin's unlikely to change course, and the positive trends in Russia were already ongoing, what does the increased scrutiny the Olympics brought to Russia actually accomplish? More people are talking about Russia's economy, domestic and foreign policy, but experts have known this stuff for years now. We can now talk about how the Sochi glimpses are symptoms of deeper problems in Russia, but what's the next step? What can we do with this increased awareness?
The articles don't have an answer, and I don't think I have one either. Maybe some people convinced that Russia was still a Cold War colossus now can feel less frightened? Pro-democratic non-governmental organizations can swoop in and try to help swing the pendulum back towards democracy, counting on increased world scrutiny to save them if the Russian government decides they're foreign agents after all?
It's disappointing to think that Sochi's political effects will be as fleeting as the games themselves, and hopefully some lasting good will come from all this. If not, we at least got some amusing pictures of poorly-constructed hotel bathrooms out of it.
But national psychology tends to crop up in history, as we try to ascribe a narrative to past events and explain why they happened. World War II was the result of lingering resentment after Germany was given all the blame for World War I. Imperial Japan became increasingly aggressive and contemptuous of the international system after being slighted instead of being recognized as the major power it was, and of course the victorious Americans couldn't charge, much less execute, the emperor for war crimes because the Japanese national psyche couldn't withstand the loss of its royal figurehead.
Now, there might be some glimmers of truth in such tales, but perhaps it would be better to focus on the nationalist psyche of a country's leadership. Better to say that the Nazi leadership was eager to restore lost prestige at the cost of other countries' territory, rather than that every German citizen was willing to start a new war to make up for losing the last one. It's not as sweeping a generalization, and lets us be more specific with the blame.
The reason I bring this up is again, Sochi.
The Council of Foreign Relations put up another good article explaining the potential fallout from the Winter Olympics, not so much due to improperly installed commodes, but rather how the international focus on the country reveals so many of Russia's problems. Ethnic tensions and terrorism, financial waste and corruption, issues that undermine the country's prestige and claims of being a functioning world power, much less an exceptional nation.
If we were to go with the historical narratives, we could worry that Russia, having embarrassed itself (herself?) on the world stage, might attempt to restore its prestige in less constructive ways, falling further back into Soviet habits in an effort to be taken seriously as a superpower again, sort of like how some fundamentalist Islamists assume that restoring the caliphate will automatically return the Middle East to its medieval glory. If we were a little more specific, we might worry what Putin might do if he feels the Olympics have been a less than positive experience for Russia.
On the individual, country-ruler level Sestanovich's article is reassuring: Putin is likely to be distant and coolly antagonistic towards Western leaders after the Olympics because that's how he was acting previously. And on the national level, there are good signs from citizens who would like a "normal" Russia rather than a country that fits Putin's brand of exceptionalism, and opportunities for opposition groups to start taking back political power. More positives come from this CNN piece, where near the bottom the author describes the helpful, friendly attitude of Russian Olympic volunteers as being the equal of London's workers from just a few years ago, regardless of how authoritarian the country's ruler is. So it looks like Russia's national psychology can withstand Sochi without plunging the world into flames, which is good news.
But if Putin's unlikely to change course, and the positive trends in Russia were already ongoing, what does the increased scrutiny the Olympics brought to Russia actually accomplish? More people are talking about Russia's economy, domestic and foreign policy, but experts have known this stuff for years now. We can now talk about how the Sochi glimpses are symptoms of deeper problems in Russia, but what's the next step? What can we do with this increased awareness?
The articles don't have an answer, and I don't think I have one either. Maybe some people convinced that Russia was still a Cold War colossus now can feel less frightened? Pro-democratic non-governmental organizations can swoop in and try to help swing the pendulum back towards democracy, counting on increased world scrutiny to save them if the Russian government decides they're foreign agents after all?
It's disappointing to think that Sochi's political effects will be as fleeting as the games themselves, and hopefully some lasting good will come from all this. If not, we at least got some amusing pictures of poorly-constructed hotel bathrooms out of it.
Monday, February 10, 2014
Who Are We Rooting Against?
I'm not a sports fan, so I've been ignoring the Winter Olympics unless I'm on a treadmill in front of it, but I'm hearing stuff about it. Beer-colored drinking water, grass being spray-painted green by groundskeepers. Tales of toilets with the lid and seat inverted, toilets bundled two to a stall, toilets wholly missing from the restroom. Sochi Fails, in other words.
While most coverage seems to be on the events themselves, there's a lot of buzz about these failures, or why these games are so important to Russia, or more particularly why each malfunction is a blow to Putin - Fox News in particular seemed to focus on that angle. They're not the only critics, of course, and Vanity Fair takes a look at the sort of corruption and danger beneath the games, while a guy on CNN is shocked that Russia didn't feature an apologetic nod towards its totalitarian past during the games' opening ceremonies.
What struck me was the difference between these reports and the controversies surrounding the Beijing Olympics... wow, six years ago already? Perhaps it's a matter of fading memories, but I don't remember quite as much focus on critical coverage. Yes, China has a problem with press freedom. And political freedom. And ethnic or religious minorities' freedoms. And yes, various groups protested all of this during the lead-up to the Beijing games. But I can't recall this sort of schadenfreude we're seeing at Sochi - perhaps because the Chinese did a better job installing toilets? Or maybe the journalists weren't allowed to share the malfunctions?
The Council of Foreign Relations website has a neat retrospective of past Olympics, and how they've almost always been political. States can boycott them as a way of thumbing their nose at the host country, athletes can spark controversy over which country they want to represent, protestors might be massacred outside the stadium, and so forth. Sochi isn't new by any means, but I think it's a bit different.
With China, there wasn't really a face to be attached to the games, no central figure whom everyone had to please or be thrown in the shark tank. The country was - and is - a one-party system ruled by a post-ideological elite. Names rise to prominence and may occasionally be recognized by people who don't study the country for a living, but tend to signify trends in the ruling party's thought. Russia meanwhile is an increasingly illiberal one-party democracy dominated by a political machine in turn dominated by a single man. These developments are recent, unlike the half-century China has spent in its current unfortunate state, and since we have Putin as the focal point for all that is wrong about the New Russia, we can entertain the notion that without him we could see a better New Russia.
So that's one theory, that the Sochi criticism is sharper than the Beijing controversy because the current crop of critics feel a better chance of success. A competing hypothesis would be that it depends on America's relations with the country in question - we're much less reliant on Russian exports or markets than we are on China, obviously, so perhaps economic interests blunted criticisms of China. Or maybe time is the bigger issue, and China being a repressive totalitarian state isn't as newsworthy as Russia's backslide into authoritarianism, which is only a decade or two old.
Might be a research project in there somewhere. Though I still wouldn't end up watching the games themselves, only the world's responses to them, I'd argue that would be more meaningful than who won the gold medal in which event.
While most coverage seems to be on the events themselves, there's a lot of buzz about these failures, or why these games are so important to Russia, or more particularly why each malfunction is a blow to Putin - Fox News in particular seemed to focus on that angle. They're not the only critics, of course, and Vanity Fair takes a look at the sort of corruption and danger beneath the games, while a guy on CNN is shocked that Russia didn't feature an apologetic nod towards its totalitarian past during the games' opening ceremonies.
What struck me was the difference between these reports and the controversies surrounding the Beijing Olympics... wow, six years ago already? Perhaps it's a matter of fading memories, but I don't remember quite as much focus on critical coverage. Yes, China has a problem with press freedom. And political freedom. And ethnic or religious minorities' freedoms. And yes, various groups protested all of this during the lead-up to the Beijing games. But I can't recall this sort of schadenfreude we're seeing at Sochi - perhaps because the Chinese did a better job installing toilets? Or maybe the journalists weren't allowed to share the malfunctions?
The Council of Foreign Relations website has a neat retrospective of past Olympics, and how they've almost always been political. States can boycott them as a way of thumbing their nose at the host country, athletes can spark controversy over which country they want to represent, protestors might be massacred outside the stadium, and so forth. Sochi isn't new by any means, but I think it's a bit different.
With China, there wasn't really a face to be attached to the games, no central figure whom everyone had to please or be thrown in the shark tank. The country was - and is - a one-party system ruled by a post-ideological elite. Names rise to prominence and may occasionally be recognized by people who don't study the country for a living, but tend to signify trends in the ruling party's thought. Russia meanwhile is an increasingly illiberal one-party democracy dominated by a political machine in turn dominated by a single man. These developments are recent, unlike the half-century China has spent in its current unfortunate state, and since we have Putin as the focal point for all that is wrong about the New Russia, we can entertain the notion that without him we could see a better New Russia.
So that's one theory, that the Sochi criticism is sharper than the Beijing controversy because the current crop of critics feel a better chance of success. A competing hypothesis would be that it depends on America's relations with the country in question - we're much less reliant on Russian exports or markets than we are on China, obviously, so perhaps economic interests blunted criticisms of China. Or maybe time is the bigger issue, and China being a repressive totalitarian state isn't as newsworthy as Russia's backslide into authoritarianism, which is only a decade or two old.
Might be a research project in there somewhere. Though I still wouldn't end up watching the games themselves, only the world's responses to them, I'd argue that would be more meaningful than who won the gold medal in which event.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Game Theory - Realism
Marx posited that a society's material development dictated its political system, so back in the bad old days you'd have slave states, and then those would develop and workers would become more productive and skilled and demand an upgrade to vassal status, and so on through industrialization and the great proletariat revolution. I think you could apply the same reasoning to political theories.
After all, you'd have to have something like the Concert of Europe or United Nations happen before coming up with neoliberal institutionalism rather than vice versa, correct? And you could hardly have Marxism without the industrial revolution. So with that reasoning, our oldest theory of international relations would be based on the most primitive society.
The reason I bring this up is because I started a new game of Civ V earlier this week, and quickly realized "Wow, I'm playing this as a realist."
The Civilization series is a much-beloved and lauded turn-based strategy game, in which players take control of one of the world's great nations, leading their civilization through thousands of years of history: war, diplomacy, trade, and all that good stuff. The game ends when you establish your civilization as a cultural hegemon, complete a spaceship capable of reaching Alpha Centauri, become recognized as diplomatic leader of the world, or just kill everyone else.
But that's the late game. You start off with one settler capable of founding your capital, one unit of stone age warriors to scout or defend your territory, and a whole bunch of unexplored map around you. And that's where realism comes in.
Realism is a cynical theory of international relations that can be summed up in one word: power. The world is a dangerous place, filled with jerks out to advance themselves at your expense, and since there's no moral or legal authority that can protect you, the only way to play the game is to do unto others before they do you in. You have to be strong enough to defend yourself, and strong enough to assert yourself, and you can't afford to be squeamish about what you'll need to do.
This is incidentally a pretty good summation of the first two or three thousand years of your average game of Civilization V. The player explores, uncovering new lands for future settlement, or ancient ruins to plunder. Eventually you'll bump into other units, sometimes belonging to other civilizations, sometimes barbarians that will attack you on sight. If you lose your early military, or send it trotting off to the other side of a continent, you face a very real danger of being overwhelmed by barbarians before settling your second city. Even when you've gotten started, barbarians will periodically spawn somewhere you can't see them and come raid your territory.
This isn't to say that you're safe if your neighbors belong to a proper civilization. Your rivals may always try for an early knock-out, and sometimes the only warning you'll get is a declaration of war immediately before their units cross your borders. If your neighbor has a name like "Attila" or "Montezuma," you should know to watch them carefully, but other faction leaders are less transparently aggressive, and therefore less predictable. They may totally ignore you for a millennium only to launch a blitz once they think your guard is down, and have a mean poker face.
The solution, of course, is to play as a realist. Maintain a big enough army to defend yourself, or even better, to launch a counter-invasion if anyone tries something. Expand aggressively, claiming choice lands before your neighbor can, even if this stresses your research or economy - better to have a large but struggling empire rather than a small successful state surrounded by a potential enemy. When someone gets cozy with a nearby independent city-state, drop enough money on it to ensure that it only works with you - or maybe conquer it. If you scatter a barbarian camp and find that the savages have captured a rival's settler, don't return it, keep it for yourself as a worker - otherwise they'll have one more city to their name, in lands you might have wanted for yourself.
Now Civilization is only a game, and in real life there's no handy pop-up designating which group of shaggy armed men in the distance are hostile barbarians and which are not-yet-hostile scouts belonging to a neighboring civilization. But it's easy to see why realism emerged so early in human history, so that a force from Athens explained to the people of Melos that their city-state was being conquered because Athens was stronger, and would look weak if it let Melos remain independent, and wouldn't tolerate the possibility of Melos joining another empire. Even in Classical Greece the world was a dangerous place, where invaders could burst upon you from beyond the borders of the map, and no distant power was going to save you.
The thing is, though, that as a game of Civ goes on, it changes. Unclaimed territories get settled, so there's less land-grabbing (if more coveting of settled lands). Barbarians eventually disappear as your borders expand and the lands around your city are brought under control. More importantly, you start to figure out your neighbors: you realize that the Netherlands is mainly interested in trade, England's too busy with chronic barbarian problems to have a real international agenda, China is a non-issue since they settled in a miserable desert, and Germany is going to spend the entire time bitching about that time you built a city near it back at the start of the game, and will probably try and take it at some point.
More importantly, the world system evolves as well. Civilizations gain the ability to form alliances with each other, making war a riskier option. Nations form blocs based on their shared ideologies. A World Congress emerges with the potential to discipline international troublemakers through trade embargoes and other measures. Technology and other developments can make armed conflict counter-productive, or offer civilizations new avenues for victory that don't involve brute strength. While it's possible to continue playing like a realist, new options will emerge to allow different, less cynical strategies.
And that's how it happened in the real world, with the aforementioned neoliberalism and Marxism and constructivism and so forth emerging as history got increasingly interesting over the last few centuries. We built international regimes, came up with new ways of looking at the world, and some of us decided that maybe you could let morality or values dictate your politics, or work with other states to make the world something other than a zero-sum game.
The thing is, realism still exists. Thucydides wrote "The Melian Dialogue" back in the day, Machiavelli wrote The Prince sometime before 1513, and Morgenthau wrote Politics Among Nations in 1948. Obama, for all his liberal rhetoric at home and abroad, has a firm grasp of realpolitik when it comes to implementing the Obama Not-A-Doctrine. And I think that's the difference between Marxism's view of history and how realism and other theories developed.
Marxism is pretty deterministic, with politics being dictated by economics, and history developing towards a specific goal, after which it will end in an eternal classless paradise. You don't slip up and go from industrialism back to feudalism, or heavens forbid backslide into capitalism from communism. But while political theories emerge based on world developments, they don't supersede each other in the same way - you can be an international institutionalist up until the League of Nations sits on its hands while a foreign empire invades, after which point realism may start to look quite sensible. And even if states are performing similar actions, they may ascribe different reasoning for them - some may say they're working with others based on their shared liberal values, others may bluntly admit that they're balancing a more powerful rival.
Political theories are just ways of conceptualizing the world, play styles. And while it takes a lot of technological advancement to win a Space Race Victory, and you have to create the United Nations before a Diplomatic Victory is possible, a Domination Victory is available from turn one. It'd be nice to know that none of your potential rivals are going for that military victory, but since there's no way of knowing, well... like Morgenthau said, “If the desire for power cannot be abolished everywhere in the world, those who might be cured would simply fall victim to the power of others.”
Might be good to keep some spearmen standing by in your cities, just in case.
After all, you'd have to have something like the Concert of Europe or United Nations happen before coming up with neoliberal institutionalism rather than vice versa, correct? And you could hardly have Marxism without the industrial revolution. So with that reasoning, our oldest theory of international relations would be based on the most primitive society.
The reason I bring this up is because I started a new game of Civ V earlier this week, and quickly realized "Wow, I'm playing this as a realist."
The Civilization series is a much-beloved and lauded turn-based strategy game, in which players take control of one of the world's great nations, leading their civilization through thousands of years of history: war, diplomacy, trade, and all that good stuff. The game ends when you establish your civilization as a cultural hegemon, complete a spaceship capable of reaching Alpha Centauri, become recognized as diplomatic leader of the world, or just kill everyone else.
 |
| There could be anything out there, better pack your club. |
But that's the late game. You start off with one settler capable of founding your capital, one unit of stone age warriors to scout or defend your territory, and a whole bunch of unexplored map around you. And that's where realism comes in.
Realism is a cynical theory of international relations that can be summed up in one word: power. The world is a dangerous place, filled with jerks out to advance themselves at your expense, and since there's no moral or legal authority that can protect you, the only way to play the game is to do unto others before they do you in. You have to be strong enough to defend yourself, and strong enough to assert yourself, and you can't afford to be squeamish about what you'll need to do.
This is incidentally a pretty good summation of the first two or three thousand years of your average game of Civilization V. The player explores, uncovering new lands for future settlement, or ancient ruins to plunder. Eventually you'll bump into other units, sometimes belonging to other civilizations, sometimes barbarians that will attack you on sight. If you lose your early military, or send it trotting off to the other side of a continent, you face a very real danger of being overwhelmed by barbarians before settling your second city. Even when you've gotten started, barbarians will periodically spawn somewhere you can't see them and come raid your territory.
 |
| What's England's angle? |
The solution, of course, is to play as a realist. Maintain a big enough army to defend yourself, or even better, to launch a counter-invasion if anyone tries something. Expand aggressively, claiming choice lands before your neighbor can, even if this stresses your research or economy - better to have a large but struggling empire rather than a small successful state surrounded by a potential enemy. When someone gets cozy with a nearby independent city-state, drop enough money on it to ensure that it only works with you - or maybe conquer it. If you scatter a barbarian camp and find that the savages have captured a rival's settler, don't return it, keep it for yourself as a worker - otherwise they'll have one more city to their name, in lands you might have wanted for yourself.
Now Civilization is only a game, and in real life there's no handy pop-up designating which group of shaggy armed men in the distance are hostile barbarians and which are not-yet-hostile scouts belonging to a neighboring civilization. But it's easy to see why realism emerged so early in human history, so that a force from Athens explained to the people of Melos that their city-state was being conquered because Athens was stronger, and would look weak if it let Melos remain independent, and wouldn't tolerate the possibility of Melos joining another empire. Even in Classical Greece the world was a dangerous place, where invaders could burst upon you from beyond the borders of the map, and no distant power was going to save you.
The thing is, though, that as a game of Civ goes on, it changes. Unclaimed territories get settled, so there's less land-grabbing (if more coveting of settled lands). Barbarians eventually disappear as your borders expand and the lands around your city are brought under control. More importantly, you start to figure out your neighbors: you realize that the Netherlands is mainly interested in trade, England's too busy with chronic barbarian problems to have a real international agenda, China is a non-issue since they settled in a miserable desert, and Germany is going to spend the entire time bitching about that time you built a city near it back at the start of the game, and will probably try and take it at some point.
 |
| Deutsch douche. |
And that's how it happened in the real world, with the aforementioned neoliberalism and Marxism and constructivism and so forth emerging as history got increasingly interesting over the last few centuries. We built international regimes, came up with new ways of looking at the world, and some of us decided that maybe you could let morality or values dictate your politics, or work with other states to make the world something other than a zero-sum game.
The thing is, realism still exists. Thucydides wrote "The Melian Dialogue" back in the day, Machiavelli wrote The Prince sometime before 1513, and Morgenthau wrote Politics Among Nations in 1948. Obama, for all his liberal rhetoric at home and abroad, has a firm grasp of realpolitik when it comes to implementing the Obama Not-A-Doctrine. And I think that's the difference between Marxism's view of history and how realism and other theories developed.
Marxism is pretty deterministic, with politics being dictated by economics, and history developing towards a specific goal, after which it will end in an eternal classless paradise. You don't slip up and go from industrialism back to feudalism, or heavens forbid backslide into capitalism from communism. But while political theories emerge based on world developments, they don't supersede each other in the same way - you can be an international institutionalist up until the League of Nations sits on its hands while a foreign empire invades, after which point realism may start to look quite sensible. And even if states are performing similar actions, they may ascribe different reasoning for them - some may say they're working with others based on their shared liberal values, others may bluntly admit that they're balancing a more powerful rival.
Political theories are just ways of conceptualizing the world, play styles. And while it takes a lot of technological advancement to win a Space Race Victory, and you have to create the United Nations before a Diplomatic Victory is possible, a Domination Victory is available from turn one. It'd be nice to know that none of your potential rivals are going for that military victory, but since there's no way of knowing, well... like Morgenthau said, “If the desire for power cannot be abolished everywhere in the world, those who might be cured would simply fall victim to the power of others.”
Might be good to keep some spearmen standing by in your cities, just in case.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
The Search for the Obama Doctrine
One of the running gags in the US Foreign Policy class I took last semester was our inability to figure out what the deal was with our current president.
Our textbooks could speak at length about the history of the country's foreign policy, from its early isolationism to the Cold War presidents to Bush II. We could break down policymakers based on liberalism and realism, and even had fun with David D. Barber's active-passive, positive-negative matrix of presidential character. And then the professor would ask if we could apply the current topic to President Obama, and the class would fall into an awkward silence nearly as profound as those that occurred when it turned out the undergrads hadn't done the assigned readings.
I'd put the issue out of mind until an unrelated article on Al Jazeera's website had this opinion piece in the sidebar. It's a good critique of Obama's policy for the Middle East and so on, but the interesting thing is that the word "doctrine" doesn't appear anywhere but the title - Bishara speaks of Obama's pragmatism and realism, but can't go further than that. So I did a quick Google search to see what others had to say, and the results were sometimes similar but never quite consistent.
David Rohde of Foreign Policy discusses Obama's unilateral use of drone strikes in his article on the Obama Doctrine, while Noam Chomsky wrote a piece for Truthout that focuses mainly on the isolationism vs interventionism and the awful things America has done since abandoning the former. Bob Burnett of the Huffington Post thinks the Obama Doctrine is limited to preventing WMD proliferation and use as part of America's role as the "anchor of global security," while David Corbin and Matt Parks of The Federalist consider the Obama Policy not "so much a policy as a posture" and then poke at the Obama Administration's penchant for style and perception over substance and performance. They also note that their commentators can identify at least 10 Obama Doctrines, so I'm hardly treading new ground here.
This confusion isn't a recent development, and if you check Wikipedia or trawl through editorials and reports from ever since Obama took office, you can see pundits and analysts struggling to put what they're seeing in words. An obvious conclusion is that there is no coherent Obama Doctrine, which is what my Foreign Policy class could've told you. But something I haven't seen in this quick literature review was an issue raised in that class: is the lack of such a doctrine necessarily a bad thing? Why are we so uncomfortable that there's no codified behavior for our current president?
As described by my class' text and lectures, the early, isolationist period of American foreign policy was characterized by pragmatism and sober realism. The country was a lightweight compared to the great continental powers like England and France, so we didn't want to stir up any trouble. Similarly, we knew Europe's history, and so our interactions with the countries on it were limited to consular duties and other basic diplomatic relations, to avoid getting entangled in the next big continental conflict. We did eventually come up with the Monroe Doctrine, a big "keep out" sign on the Western Hemisphere. If you ask the guys at The Federalist it was a realist desire to avoid the security risk posed by another country's colony or client state sitting on our border, while a more cynical observer might theorize that we wanted all those bananas in Central and South America for ourselves.
It's after we abandoned isolationism and fought in two world wars and came up with a new doctrine that things got difficult and messy. Suddenly we were committed to fighting communism anywhere it reared its head, regardless of whether the regime we were defending was worse than the leftist rebels trying to overthrow it, and regardless of what we had to do to preserve it. Presidents added wrinkles and conditions to this, but that was pretty much the tone of the Cold War, so when it finally ended there were questions of what to do next. Bush I suggested we uphold the New World Order, which didn't quite work out, Clinton thought we could do humanitarian interventions, and ended up ignoring a genocide or two, and then Bush II decided that America could unilaterally, preemptively declare war on a tactic, which has worked about as well as one might expect.
So if the Cold War is over, the New World Order is no longer in fashion, and the War on Terror is being quietly deescalated, why do we need an Obama Doctrine?
We don't have any global dragon to slay anymore, and we've admitted that our hearts may bleed for certain political disasters, but we're not prepared to go to war over them. If we follow doctrines blindly, they can lead us into terrible places that we really ought to know better than to go into; if we declare a doctrine and then make a practical decision to break it, like when Eisenhower decided not to get involved in the '56 Hungarian Revolution despite talk about "rollback," we look bad. So perhaps it's best to not even bother? My professor characterized Obama's terms as a return to America's pre-World War years, when our foreign policy was based on the pragmatic pursuit of our national interests and a desire to avoid foreign entanglements, which sounds a lot like what the Al Jazeera article was talking about.
The problem is that America isn't a second-rate, distant power anymore. The Cold War left us with a network of alliances and entanglements spanning the globe, a military infrastructure capable of projecting power anywhere we needed it. We can argue about whether America's a superpower anymore, and how far other countries are from catching up, but it should be safe to say that we're at least the world's premier power, the force best-situated to maintain the status quo.
In this sort of scenario, a return to the good old days might not be practical. A doctrine at least lets the rest of the world know how you'd think you'll respond if the Reds invade a country. You might of course break it if you decide it's not worth starting World War III over a bunch of dead Hungarians, but it's easier for other countries to work with than having them guesstimate how Obama will react to the latest fiasco in the Middle East. I'm sure the Syrian rebels are curious as to what about Libya made the US willing to intervene militarily to overthrow its dictator, and what they're doing wrong.
On the other hand, if we no longer have any global dragon to slay, do we need a global dragonslaying apparatus? In this case, a return to America's early foreign policy may signal a shift towards if not full isolationism, than perhaps a reduced global presence. It sure would be nice not to have to prop up any non-democratic regimes just to protect a military outpost we're not doing anything with.
Of course there's still a problem with that. If you buy into the theory that wars are started by uncertainty - whether in terms of capability or how a country would react in a situation - then a doctrine would decrease uncertainty and therefore reduce conflict. Combine that with the power vacuum resulting from America moving away from its superpower positioning and things could get turbulent.
Relative certainty that may drag us into unwanted conflicts, or increased uncertainty that could start conflicts we'd have to deal with anyway, take your pick.
Our textbooks could speak at length about the history of the country's foreign policy, from its early isolationism to the Cold War presidents to Bush II. We could break down policymakers based on liberalism and realism, and even had fun with David D. Barber's active-passive, positive-negative matrix of presidential character. And then the professor would ask if we could apply the current topic to President Obama, and the class would fall into an awkward silence nearly as profound as those that occurred when it turned out the undergrads hadn't done the assigned readings.
I'd put the issue out of mind until an unrelated article on Al Jazeera's website had this opinion piece in the sidebar. It's a good critique of Obama's policy for the Middle East and so on, but the interesting thing is that the word "doctrine" doesn't appear anywhere but the title - Bishara speaks of Obama's pragmatism and realism, but can't go further than that. So I did a quick Google search to see what others had to say, and the results were sometimes similar but never quite consistent.
David Rohde of Foreign Policy discusses Obama's unilateral use of drone strikes in his article on the Obama Doctrine, while Noam Chomsky wrote a piece for Truthout that focuses mainly on the isolationism vs interventionism and the awful things America has done since abandoning the former. Bob Burnett of the Huffington Post thinks the Obama Doctrine is limited to preventing WMD proliferation and use as part of America's role as the "anchor of global security," while David Corbin and Matt Parks of The Federalist consider the Obama Policy not "so much a policy as a posture" and then poke at the Obama Administration's penchant for style and perception over substance and performance. They also note that their commentators can identify at least 10 Obama Doctrines, so I'm hardly treading new ground here.
This confusion isn't a recent development, and if you check Wikipedia or trawl through editorials and reports from ever since Obama took office, you can see pundits and analysts struggling to put what they're seeing in words. An obvious conclusion is that there is no coherent Obama Doctrine, which is what my Foreign Policy class could've told you. But something I haven't seen in this quick literature review was an issue raised in that class: is the lack of such a doctrine necessarily a bad thing? Why are we so uncomfortable that there's no codified behavior for our current president?
As described by my class' text and lectures, the early, isolationist period of American foreign policy was characterized by pragmatism and sober realism. The country was a lightweight compared to the great continental powers like England and France, so we didn't want to stir up any trouble. Similarly, we knew Europe's history, and so our interactions with the countries on it were limited to consular duties and other basic diplomatic relations, to avoid getting entangled in the next big continental conflict. We did eventually come up with the Monroe Doctrine, a big "keep out" sign on the Western Hemisphere. If you ask the guys at The Federalist it was a realist desire to avoid the security risk posed by another country's colony or client state sitting on our border, while a more cynical observer might theorize that we wanted all those bananas in Central and South America for ourselves.
It's after we abandoned isolationism and fought in two world wars and came up with a new doctrine that things got difficult and messy. Suddenly we were committed to fighting communism anywhere it reared its head, regardless of whether the regime we were defending was worse than the leftist rebels trying to overthrow it, and regardless of what we had to do to preserve it. Presidents added wrinkles and conditions to this, but that was pretty much the tone of the Cold War, so when it finally ended there were questions of what to do next. Bush I suggested we uphold the New World Order, which didn't quite work out, Clinton thought we could do humanitarian interventions, and ended up ignoring a genocide or two, and then Bush II decided that America could unilaterally, preemptively declare war on a tactic, which has worked about as well as one might expect.
So if the Cold War is over, the New World Order is no longer in fashion, and the War on Terror is being quietly deescalated, why do we need an Obama Doctrine?
We don't have any global dragon to slay anymore, and we've admitted that our hearts may bleed for certain political disasters, but we're not prepared to go to war over them. If we follow doctrines blindly, they can lead us into terrible places that we really ought to know better than to go into; if we declare a doctrine and then make a practical decision to break it, like when Eisenhower decided not to get involved in the '56 Hungarian Revolution despite talk about "rollback," we look bad. So perhaps it's best to not even bother? My professor characterized Obama's terms as a return to America's pre-World War years, when our foreign policy was based on the pragmatic pursuit of our national interests and a desire to avoid foreign entanglements, which sounds a lot like what the Al Jazeera article was talking about.
The problem is that America isn't a second-rate, distant power anymore. The Cold War left us with a network of alliances and entanglements spanning the globe, a military infrastructure capable of projecting power anywhere we needed it. We can argue about whether America's a superpower anymore, and how far other countries are from catching up, but it should be safe to say that we're at least the world's premier power, the force best-situated to maintain the status quo.
In this sort of scenario, a return to the good old days might not be practical. A doctrine at least lets the rest of the world know how you'd think you'll respond if the Reds invade a country. You might of course break it if you decide it's not worth starting World War III over a bunch of dead Hungarians, but it's easier for other countries to work with than having them guesstimate how Obama will react to the latest fiasco in the Middle East. I'm sure the Syrian rebels are curious as to what about Libya made the US willing to intervene militarily to overthrow its dictator, and what they're doing wrong.
On the other hand, if we no longer have any global dragon to slay, do we need a global dragonslaying apparatus? In this case, a return to America's early foreign policy may signal a shift towards if not full isolationism, than perhaps a reduced global presence. It sure would be nice not to have to prop up any non-democratic regimes just to protect a military outpost we're not doing anything with.
Of course there's still a problem with that. If you buy into the theory that wars are started by uncertainty - whether in terms of capability or how a country would react in a situation - then a doctrine would decrease uncertainty and therefore reduce conflict. Combine that with the power vacuum resulting from America moving away from its superpower positioning and things could get turbulent.
Relative certainty that may drag us into unwanted conflicts, or increased uncertainty that could start conflicts we'd have to deal with anyway, take your pick.
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