On Foreign Policy

Unfinished Business

Alexander L. George

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317255208
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

"This book sets out ideas on how the international community can better detect and act on the warning signs of genocide. It is a timely and welcome contribution to the debate on what may be the most pressing moral issue of our time." Kofi A. Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations "This slim volume is full of fascinating insights at the intersection of scholarship and policymaking." Graham Allison, Harvard University Alexander L. George-a leading light in U.S. foreign affairs-has written a reflection on what he calls the "puzzles and gaps" he has discovered in his study and practice of foreign policy over the past fifty years. In the process, he not only covers his own areas of expertise- such as his pioneering use of the case study method-but also manages to outline the major debates and dilemmas within foreign policy circles that persist to this day. Also included is a preview of new work on genocide and early warning that Alex George is developing with David A. Hamburg, former president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

CHAPTER ONE

IDEOLOGY, NATIONAL INTEREST, AND NATIONAL VALUES

For any hopeful advocate of social “science” a dip in the cold and murky waters of the literature on “ideology” is a shocking and disillusioning experience. Few concepts in social analysis have inspired such a flood of commentaries, yet few have stimulated the production of so little cumulative knowledge about society and politics.

—Robert Putnam

The difficulty of offering a definition of “ideology” is notorious, and one does so with trepidation. After searching for many years I finally found one that regards political ideology as a set of fundamental beliefs. Ideology is best viewed as a belief system that explains and justifies a preferred political order for society, either one that already exists or one that is proposed.¹ Ideology also offers at least a sketchy notion of strategy (processes, institutional arrangements, programs) for its maintenance or attainment of ideological values. Ideology thus refers in the first instance to a preferred domestic political order, but by extension it may imply or even articulate the notion of a preferred international order as well. This is true particularly, of course, of ideologies that are universalistic rather than particularistic in scope.

It is useful to note that ideology, so defined, is multidimensional: it is essentially a normative concept, but it also contains explanatory and prescriptive dimensions and sometimes also a predictive one. The normative component consists of the identification and justification of the preferred order; it sketches but does not develop in detail the features of this preferred order. Coupled with this is an idealized image of the self, actual or potential, with which proponents of the ideology can identify.

The explanatory or analytical component consists of an authoritative diagnosis of the ills and evils of the present political order that is to be replaced by the preferred one (or of a previous political order that has been replaced by the preferred one and/or of an alternative political order that competes with the preferred one). An important feature of the authoritative explanatory-analytical component of ideology is the identification of the enemy.

The prescriptive dimension derives from the fact that ideology is an action-related system of ideas; thus ideology implies a commitment to action and contains some notion of a program and at least a general strategy for its realization. In its most virulent form and for those who subscribe to it wholeheartedly, ideology provides a sense of mission and, in foreign policy, an imperative commitment to action.

Finally, when a predictive dimension is also present in ideology, it says or implies something about the prospects for the eventual realization of one’s fundamental political values and ideological goals.

It is useful to note that as defined here ideology differs from “political philosophy,” which is a disinterested search for the principles of the good state and the good society, and also from “political theory,” which is a disinterested search for knowledge of political and social reality.

Having defined political ideology, I shall now discuss the extent to which we can expect “national interest” to discipline and control the impact of ideology on foreign policy in the modern era (as against its ability to have done so in the era of classical European diplomacy).

The Concept of National Interest

Is the concept of national interest robust enough to enable policymakers, if they are so inclined, to exclude ideological considerations from influencing their foreign policy decisions?² Is it possible to discipline the conduct of foreign policy in the modern era in the same way statesmen of the era of classical diplomacy did by adhering to the guidelines of Realpolitik? The answers to these questions are negative, and we shall explore why this is so.

The Realist Approach

Some writers have indeed insisted that national interest is and ought to be separable from ideology. According to this view, it should be possible as well as highly desirable to conduct foreign policy strictly on the basis of sober calculations of the national interest, excluding the “distorting” influence of ideological values, sentiments, and aspirations. This point of view appealed particularly to adherents of the classical Realist approach in the past. For Hans Morgenthau, for example, the national interest was an objective criterion that could and should be applied by statesmen in conducting foreign policy. Moreover, it was asserted that the objective criterion of national interest could also be employed in a “scientific” manner by nongovernment specialists in order to give advice to statesmen and to subject their actions to critical evaluation.

For classical Realists, therefore, national interest was both a normative and a prescriptive concept. In addition, it was employed—for example, via Morgenthau’s “rational hypothesis”—for purposes of explaining foreign policy behavior.

The surpassing need to find and use a superordinate criterion such as the national interest is evident. Foreign policy issues typically engage a multiplicity of values and interests that are often difficult to harmonize. Not only is much at stake, but also the various values embedded in the policy problem often pull the decision in different directions. In addition, uncertainty clouds the decisionmaker’s judgment as to the benefits to be expected and the likely costs/risks of each of the options he or she is considering.³

Under these circumstances it is understandable that the decisionmaker should seek to apply the criterion of national interest in an attempt to cut through the problem of complexity and to cope with the uncertainties affecting choice among alternative policies. A conscientious effort to consider the overall national interest can help to alleviate the psychological malaise an executive experiences in making difficult decisions of this kind. He or she can justify the ensuing decision as one based on careful consideration of the national interest. However, the intellectual guidance the national interest criterion actually gives the decisionmaker in dealing with complex issues is another matter. It is of some importance to understand why this is so.

In the first place, national interest has the characteristics of what decision theorists refer to as a nonoperational goal;⁴ it does not provide a measuring rod for comparing policies. National interest is similar in this respect to concepts such as the general welfare and the public interest. Such concepts cannot be employed as a utility function in rigorous policy analysis. They can be related to specific choices of action only through consideration of the subgoals to which they are presumably related. Thus, national interest encompasses subgoals that compete for influence in the conduct of foreign policy. What is lacking is an operational common denominator for dealing with these subgoals. Hence, the relative weight to be given to various subgoals is a matter left to the authoritative (but subjective) judgment of top-level officials.

The limitations of the national interest concept were obscured in an earlier era by simplistic but influential arguments to the effect that national power is the supreme goal of national action. But Realist thinkers who argued this point confused ends and means. However important the acquisition of power, it is in truth a means to an end—security and support for foreign policy goals—and not an end in and of itself. The preoccupation with power, which persists even today, tended to distort the concept of national security, making it appear a simple derivative of power and thereby diverting attention from other prerequisites and strategies for enhancing security and other foreign policy goals.

Further limitations of the national interest concept as a criterion of policy will emerge more clearly if we recall the historical transformation through which the international system has passed. The concept of national interest is associated with the emergence of the nation-state in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The idea of national interest, or raison d’etat as it was called, appears to have played a significant role at times in the determination of policy in the classical system of diplomacy before the French Revolution. In this period the national interest was identified with the person of the sovereign, and therefore was unitary and relatively simple to determine.

With the “democratization” of nationalism in the nineteenth century, however, the relative simplicity of the concept of raison d’état was eroded, and the state itself came to be seen as composed of different interests. In the era of liberal democracy, “L’état c’est moi” was no longer an acceptable answer to the question of sovereign legitimacy. The national interest came to reflect a weighing of various diverse interests within the state, held together, somewhat tenuously at times, by the doctrine of nationalism. It therefore became a more amorphous concept, as different groups within the polity competed to claim it as a legitimizing symbol for their interests and aspirations, which might by no means be shared by many of their compatriots.

With the transition from the laissez-faire to the social service state, the character of the national interest changed further. More groups saw their interests affected by foreign policy, as foreign policy expanded much more deeply and explicitly into the realm of economics. Increasing numbers of individuals and groups asserted interests in, and claims upon, what foreign policy should be. It became more difficult to speak of the state as possessing superior interests of its own that were largely independent of, and transcending, those of its subjects. Thus the scope of national interest was broadened appreciably, in contrast to the situation that prevailed during the nineteenth century.

Moreover, the traditional distinction between “foreign” and “domestic” policy has badly eroded during the past several decades. It has become commonplace now to observe that the most important problems of national policy, such as those having to do with energy, food, inflation, and trade, have both domestic and foreign implications. As a result, the concept of national interest, since it continues to be utilized in determining foreign policy, must encompass the interface between the domestic and foreign sides of the policy issue in question.

Thus, the calculation of national interest has become far more complicated and more unpredictable than it was in the simpler system of classical diplomacy.

If the criterion of national interest has lost much of its earlier utility in providing guidance for policymakers, it has become more useful to them in modern times for justification of their foreign policy decisions.

Was the foreign policy of a country such as the Soviet Union (or, indeed, that of many other countries) influenced more by policymakers’ conceptions of national interest, by their ideology, or by some combination of the two? This question aroused intense controversy among specialists and was not resolved. This would be a difficult question to resolve at best, even if everyone agreed on the definition of these two concepts, because it poses a challenging task for those undertaking rigorous empirical analysis of the motivations contributing to the foreign policy of states.

The Relation of National Interest to Ideology and National Values

The preceding question along with much of the controversy it generated, it may be noted, presumed that “national interest” and “ideology” are distinct and separable from each other. This assumption, however, is rejected here. To begin with, “national interest” is a misnomer; “national values” would be a better way of describing what “national interest” refers to. The distinction between values and interests is fundamental. “Vital national interests” refer to three fundamental or irreducible national values: (1) the security and physical survival of the state (which does not necessarily entail the preservation of all of its territory); (2) the sovereign independence and liberty of the state (which includes the freedom of its inhabitants to choose their own way of life and type of government so as to retain a significant degree of autonomy within the state system); and (3) the maintenance of economic subsistence for the populace of the state (i.e., not economic prosperity but, as is fitting for a definition of irreducible national values, a minimal notion of economic well-being.⁵

Given these irreducible national values, “interests” properly defined identify the more specific requirements for preserving these values in different historical contexts and circumstances. Hence, whereas national values can be regarded as permanent and unchanging, unaffected by changes in historical circumstances, interests are in fact context dependent; they can and do change.

To preserve one or another of the fundamental national values, policymakers must decide what interests are relevant and ought to be pursued in foreign and domestic policies. If correctly identified and achieved in reasonable measure, interests are expected to contribute to the three fundamental national values: maintenance of security and physical survival, sovereignty, and economic subsistence. In other words, “interests” are the means to an end and not an end in and of themselves.

The distinction as well as the relationship between a state’s fundamental values and possible variations in its foreign policy interests can be easily illustrated. At a certain point in time, given the various historical circumstances that then exist, State A may judge that the preservation of country B’s independence is necessary for its own security and physical well-being. The defense of that country is then regarded by State A as among its “vital interests.” What this means is that the defense of country B is regarded under present circumstances as a means of contributing to State A’s fundamental values of security, sovereignty, and/or economic subsistence. The judgment that preservation of another country is in one’s own vital interest may indeed persist for some time, but it is essentially context dependent. If a change in circumstances has the effect of reducing the importance of that country to the security of State A and/or of raising the expected costs of defending it to an excessive level, then State A may decide that defense of that country is no longer a vital interest, that other means of ensuring its own security can or should be found.

We can now look more closely at the relationship between ideology and irreducible national values. Ideology (which we have defined as comprising the identification and justification of a preferred political order) is not wholly distinct and separable from fundamental national values. Instead the two are linked in that the preferred political order is part of the way of life that makes sovereign independence and liberty one of the irreducible national values.

However, one need not proceed on the assumption that one’s own security, way of life, and/or economic subsistence necessarily require that other states share one’s ideology, that it is part of one’s vital national interests to persuade or coerce other states to adopt a political order and way of life similar to one’s own. But that is not to deny that under certain circumstances one’s security and/or the safeguarding of one’s way of life may be substantially enhanced if other ...