Statecraft, Domestic Politics, And Foreign Policy Making

The El Chamizal Dispute

Alan C Lamborn, Stephen P Mumme

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367288761
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000313123
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book discusses the history of the El Chamizal dispute, integrating theories of statecraft with the domestic environment for choice that is built on an analysis of how key factions within policy coalitions react to the policy and political risks attached to the different foreign policy options.

1
Foreign Policy Analysis: The Domestic Politics of Strategic Choice

Statecraft is central to the long history of the El Chamizal dispute. The strategic environment within the Western Hemisphere made the rejection of the 1911 arbitral decision possible; the way in which the United States policy makers reacted to the substance of the decision made rejection attractive. These strategic considerations and policy preferences held through the 1930s. Then, beginning during World War II and accelerating rapidly with the onset of the Cold War, United States policy makers' views about what was at stake strategically in Latin America shifted. An ascendancy within a hostile bipolar system could not afford to be as competitive as an ascendancy in isolation—hence Truman's and, later, Kennedy's attempts to legitimize the United States' hegemonic regional system. But to build a more "legitimate" long term relationship, one had to rely less heavily on what power made possible and pay more attention to Mexican aspirations. The El Chamizal, as the longstanding cause célèbre in Mexico, stood at the front of the foreign policy agenda, the litmus test of American intentions.

Most of the basic considerations of statecraft are visible:

1. The interstate power structure:

a. The distribution of capabilities and alliance structures

b. The stability and/or clarity of that structure.

c. The specific diplomatic environment (or venue) in which bargaining takes place.

2. The interstate issue structure:

a. The degree of shared interest in the particular substantive issues.

b. The linkages with other current issues and values.

3. Judgments about the future effects of different possible outcomes:

a. On the interstate issue structure.

b. On the interstate power structure.

c. On the impact of (a) and (b) on the legitimacy of the overall relationship and, hence, on the extent to which one will need to rely on power versus trust or common interest.

These are classic considerations of statecraft. What may be less readily apparent is that none of these structural considerations can be used to predict choices and outcomes unless one stipulates how policy makers react to different structural situations. One must, therefore, add a fourth set of considerations to any theory of statecraft:

4. The theoretical characteristics of the units of analysis:

a. Assumptions about the structure of decision-making units.

b. Assumptions about the domestic environment within which those decision-making units operate.

c. Assumptions about people and how they react to political situations: norms that affect the uses of power; risk-taking preferences and/or other values that affect choice differentially across units or time; the length of the time horizons on policy and political judgments.

As we shall show later in this chapter, the statecraft that characterizes different political thinkers, both in the classics and in contemporary social science, is logically tied to such assumptions about the units of analysis. But just as the interstate strategic environment cannot predict foreign policy choice independent of the character of the domestic environment, neither can domestic factors predict independent of considerations of statecraft. This interdependency of domestic and interstate strategic considerations pervades classic statecraft. The central role of assumptions about the character of units of analysis in the logic of classic statecraft is, however, often obscured by the similarity of the actual assumptions made. For instance, Thucydides, Machiavelli, de Callères, and E.H. Carr make essentially similar assumptions about the reactions of people and policy makers but vastly different assumptions about the domestic and interstate strategic environments for choice. The common assumptions about people are central to the logical integrity of their different theories of statecraft, but the source of the variation in diplomatic outlook is the variation in strategic context.

Indeed, the strength of this intellectual tradition doubtless contributed to the preoccupation of mainstream American scholars in the decades after World War II with power variables and the structure of the interstate strategic context. After all, the assumptions about people and the domestic politics of strategic choice were usually only implicit in the classics. Their central role in the logic was, consequently, easy to overlook, especially given the apparently concrete nature of the strategic variables on which they focused. Then, in the late 1950s and 1960s, growing professional academic interest in explicit theory building encouraged many foreign policy analysts to stress that aspect of classic statecraft that was most theoretically developed: the strategic implications of variations in the interstate environment. In addition to the relative scarcity of existing theory on domestic/interstate linkages, the effects of values, culture, and domestic political and policy agendas on foreign policy choice were illusive and extremely difficult to measure.

Although there were many isolated critiques of this solely interstate version of statecraft, it took Graham Allison's work on the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the subsequent popularity of the bureaucratic politics idea, to catch the field's attention. Now the most progressive research program on statecraft—Bueno de Mesquita's expected-utility theory of strategic choice—assiduously avoids the old errors. But while it avoids the old errors through theoretical precision and careful research design, the approach pioneered by Bueno de Mesquita has yet to incorporate the domestic variables specified by Allison and others. Instead, the theoretically relevant characteristics of foreign policy makers are derived from an analysis of the strategic context—the interstate power and policy structures. This "endogenous solution" avoids the logical errors that weaken many other contemporary social scientific theories of statecraft, but it leaves out any genuinely domestic sources of variations in the theoretical character of units of analysis. As long as these domestic sources of variation are omitted, the internal validity and generalizability of theories of foreign policy choice will be at substantial risk.

To repeat the fundamental point: what is theoretically significant is not simply the recognition that both domestic and interstate factors influence foreign policy choice and the ability to implement choices effectively. What is significant is the clear assumption that the effect of each is contingent upon the other. Because the effects are contingent, there is no reason to expect either statecraft or domestic politics to provide, in isolation, an adequate explanation of foreign policy choice or diplomatic outcomes.

That is why there is simply no such thing as a structural theory of political choice that can predict independent of the assumptions one makes about policy makers, the internal structure of the units of analysis, and the domestic environment for choice. A simple example of the utter hopelessness of trying to predict the outcomes of an interactive model with only one of the variables goes like this: assume Y is a multiplicative function of X₁ and X₂. What happens if one can only measure X₁? One times zero is zero; ten times zero is zero; one hundred times zero is zero. Until one can measure X₂, knowing X₁ tells one nothing at all about the predicted value of Y. That would not be the case if Y were a function of the independent, additive effects of X₁ and X₂. In an additive model, knowing one of the two independent variables can provide useful, if incomplete and occasionally misleading, information. Not so in an interactive model such as the multiplicative one above. Nor is it the case if the effect of a measured variable is contingent upon the presence or absence of unmeasured variables, such as is the case in reactions to risk and uncertainty. These statistical observations are reinforced by an important philosophy of science consideration: units of analysis have intrinsic theoretical content. Theory building presupposes that the units of analysis are theoretically distinctive in ways that relate to the hypotheses being examined. That being the case, the theoretical propositions are contingent upon the units' theoretical character (Lakatos, 1978; Ernest Nagel, 1961).

To construct a modern theory of foreign policy choice that builds on the substantive sophistication and subtlety of the classic statecraft tradition, the domestic sources, such as those raised by Allison, and the strategic sources, such as those analyzed by Bueno de Mesquita, need to be formulated in a way that makes it possible to bridge them. The majority of this chapter will focus on building that bridge. First, however, we think it important to demonstrate what we have so far only asserted: the contingent, or interactive, nature of assumptions about the theoretical character of units of analysis in classic statecraft's analysis of the strategic implications of the interstate power and issue structures confronting foreign policy makers. Since that literature is immense, we have chosen a brief slice that is especially relevant to the shifting strategic situation in the El Chamizal dispute, a slice that focuses on the mix of competition versus cooperation—the problem of power versus shared interests or common values—in strategic choice.

Classic Statecraft: Power and Shared Values in Strategic Choice

Machiavelli's statecraft ruthlessly pursues the logical implications of his assumptions about how people and policy makers react to a highly unstable domestic and interstate environment, one without predictable structures of power and without norms. Francois de Callières, writing in 1716 after decades of service to Louis XIV, made similar assumptions about people but vastly different assumptions about the interstate and domestic environments for choice. Because the predicted foreign policy result varies with the joint (or interactive) effects, changing only one of the two sets of assumptions produced a substantially different diplomatic outlook. Where Machiavelli emphasized fortune and audacity, de Callières stressed circumspection and caution. Where Machiavelli emphasized force and deceit, de Callières emphasized mutual interest and honesty. But this apparent dissimilarity between de Callières and Machiavelli dissolves once one makes the structure of the interstate and domestic environments variables and then fine tunes for a state's individual position within a particular structure. The mix of competitive and cooperative acts, the value of audacity versus prudence, shift when one moves from the extreme domestic and interstate instability of Renaissance Italy to the relative predictability of even early classical balance of power Europe.

During Machiavelli's lifetime Florence had undergone revolution and remained unstable, buffeted by the absence of agreed upon standards for legitimate rule in Renaissance Italy and threatened externally as well by the foreign armies warring on the Italian Peninsula. Because threats to the security of the country were endemic in such a highly unstable political environment, Machiavelli's basic goal is not surprising: establishing and maintaining the independence of the state.

For where the very safety of the country depends upon the resolution to be taken, no consideration of justice or injustice, humanity or cruelty, nor of glory or of shame, should be allowed to prevail. But putting all other considerations aside, the only question should be: what course will save the life and liberty of the country. (1950:528)

To achieve that goal in such an environment, Machiavelli argued that "a prince should . . . have no other aim or thought, nor take up any other thing for his study, but war and its organization and discipline. . . (1950:53). In addition, a prince needed to adopt the following diplomatic strategy: (1) he could not trust (because of the absence of norms); (2) he had to be acutely sensitive to changes in power (both because of the absence of norms that could mitigate the resort to force and because of the fluidity of the domestic and interstate power structures); and (3) he had to act audaciously to have any chance at all against a fickle and unpredictable fortune. Indeed, Machiavelli's hostility to coalitions reflected a highly sophisticated sense of the dangers created by the redistributive effects of coalition payments in such an environment. He insists that one should never coalesce with the very powerful and never let those with whom one coalesces become more powerful as the result of the coalition's common policies. He understood that the people one needs to worry about in politics are those who have both the desire and the ability to act politically.

The danger to the prince lies in the interactive function of desire and ability. Therefore to be safe the prince must eliminate either the desire or the ability to act politically. Machiavelli's theoretical premises about human nature make the choice between focusing on desire or ability a clear one;

All those who have written upon civil institutions demonstrate (and history is full of examples to support them) that whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and are ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it. If their evil disposition remains concealed for a time, it must be attributed to some unknown reason; and we must assume that it tacked occasion to show itself; but time, which has been said to be the father of all truth, does not fail to bring it to light. (1950:117)

For it must be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger and covetous of gain. . . . And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined. . . . (1950:61)

If motive cannot be trusted, then the prince can never rely on the desire part of the joint function. That is doubly true because Machiavelli is also assuming that the domestic and interstate environments are highly unstable and devoid of any shared values about the sources of legitimate rule. It would be dangerous enough to trust people, given his assumptions about human nature, in a stable environment in which shared values and social pressure constrained people's fickleness and base motives. To trust in the absence of shared norms would be utter folly. Hence the focus on power.

If one did not make this combination of assumptions about people and the domestic and interstate environments, it could occasionally make sense to ally with the powerful. It is the powerful, after all, who have (by definition) access to the resources that are relevant to achieve one's substantive goals. It is also the case that both the powerful and the weak in an ongoing social/political system react with hostility to those who overtly follow purely competitive strategies. Purely competitive strategies are dysfunctional in stable mixed-motive environments.

This examination of Machiavelli's statecraft casts him in a substantially different light, one that is very compatible with Dietz's recent reinterpretation of the philosophical values guiding The Prince (1986). For what one finds so starkly in The Prince is the statecraft appropriate to a state system in both domestic and interstate chaos. In The Discourses he went beyond the preoccupation with state building (though he dealt with that there as well, and in ways completely consistent with The Prince) to discuss the best type of state in an established system. There we find a side of him, well known to political philosophers, but surprising to students of international politics.

[I]t is wonderful to think of the greatness which Athens attained within the space of a hundred years after having freed herself from the tyranny of Pisistratus; and still more wonderful is it to reflect upon the greatness which Rome achieved after she was rid of her kings. The cause of this is manifest, for it is not individual prosperity, but the general good, that makes cities great; and certainly the general good is regarded nowhere but in republics, because whatever they do is for the common benefit. . . . But the very reverse happens where there is a prince whose private interests are generally in opposition to those of the city. . . . This state of things soon leads to tyranny. . . . (1950:282-283)

Once a state is established within a relatively predictable external environment, Machiavelli is a republican. In a stable, secure environment it becomes possible to pursue a mixed-motive strategy, one that places less emphasis on power and pure conflict of interest.

The strategic implications of de Callières' assumptions about the interstate environment are directly analagous to the shift we just saw in Machiavelli. De Callières' assumptions about people are remarkably similar to Machiavelli's but, as mentioned above, the nature of the political environment in de Callières' time was quite different. In the first place, there was a functioning interstate system. Criteria of legitimate rule had been established at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, and the major participants were more predictable and likely to be around for a while. So it was all much more stable. Certainly there was war and competition, but it was more or less within an evolving set of norms and expectations.

To understand the permanent use of diplomacy and the necessity of continual negotiations, we must think of the states of which Europe is composed as being joined together by all kinds of necessary commerce, in such a way that they may be regarded as members of one Republic. . . . (1963:11)

In such an environment it was possible to sustain long term relationships and for a norm of reciprocity to develop within such relationships: "men will do as they are done by: reciprocity is the surest foundation of friendship" (1963:97).

the great secret of negotiation is . . . to harmonize the interests of the parties concerned. . . . [To do that successfully, honesty is necessary.] A lie always leaves a drop of poison behind, and even the most dazzling diplomatic success gained by dishonesty stands on an insecure foundation. . . . Even if a deceit were not as despicable to every right-minded man as it is, the negotiator will bear in mind that he will be engaged throughout life in the affairs of diplomacy, and that it is...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Foreign Policy Analysis: The Domestic Politics of Strategic Choice
• 2 The Conventional Account
• 3 The Truman Rounds from the Perspective of Statecraft
• 4 Coalition Building in the Truman Rounds
• 5 Bridge to Settlement: Domestic and Diplomatic Coalitions Under Eisenhower and Kennedy
• 6 Conclusion
• Appendix A: Maps (Major Disputed Tracts Along the United States-Mexico Border During the El Chamizal Negotiations; Channels of the Rio Grande in El Chamizal; Final Settlement: Convention of 1963)
• Appendix B: Treaties and Conventions
• Appendix C: Principal Participants During the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations
• Appendix D: July 1954 Memorandum on the Chamizal by T.R. Martin
• Appendix E: August 1956 Memorandum on the Chamizal by John M. Cates
• Bibliography
• Index