American Foreign Policy in a New Era

Robert Jervis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780415951005
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135425234
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

To say that the world changed drastically on 9/11 has become a truism and even a cliché. But the incontestable fact is that a new era for both the world and US foreign policy began on that infamous day and the ramifications for international politics have been monumental.

In this book, one of the leading thinkers in international relations, Robert Jervis, provides us with several snapshots of world politics over the past few years. Jervis brings his acute analysis of international politics to bear on several recent developments that have transformed international politics and American foreign policy including the War on Terrorism; the Bush Doctrine and its policies of preventive war and unilateral action; and the promotion of democracy in the Middle East (including the Iraq War) and around the world. Taken together, Jervis argues, these policies constitute a blueprint for American hegemony, if not American empire. All of these events and policies have taken place against a backdrop equally important, but less frequently discussed: the fact that most developed nations, states that have been bitter rivals, now constitute a "security community" within which war is unthinkable.

American Foreign Policy in a New Era is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the policies and events that have shaped and are shaping US foreign policy in a rapidly changing and still very dangerous world.

1

THEORIES OF WAR IN AN ERA OF LEADING-POWER PEACE

From the most remote ages onward, the peoples have perpetually assailed one another for the satisfaction of their appetites and their egotistical interests [and their fears]. I have not made this history, and neither have you. It is.

Georges Clemenceau, December 29, 1918¹

[Although it was] quite right in the interests of peace to go on talking about war with the United States being “unthinkable,” everyone knows that this is not true.

Winston Churchill, July 20, 1927²

A new science of politics is needed for a new world.

Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835³

Throughout history, war and the possibility of war among the great powers has been the motor of international politics, not only strongly influencing the boundaries and distribution of values among them, but also deeply affecting their internal arrangements and shaping the fates of smaller states. Being seen as an ever-present possibility produced by deeply rooted factors such as human nature and the lack of world government, this force was expected to continue indefinitely. But I would argue that war among the leading great powers—the most developed states of the United States, western Europe, and Japan—will not occur in the future, and indeed is no longer a source of concern for them.⁴ The absence of war among these states would itself be a development of enormous proportions, but the change goes even further because war is not even contemplated. During the Cold War peace was maintained, but this was due to the fear that if the superpowers did not take care, they would indeed fight.

Now, however, the leading states form what Karl Deutsch called a pluralistic security community, a group among whom war is literally unthinkable—that is, neither the publics nor the political elites nor even the military establishments expect war with each other.⁵ No official in the community would advocate a policy on the grounds that it would improve the state's position in the event of war with other members. Although no state can move away from the reliance on war by itself, lest it become a victim, the collectivity can do so if each member forsakes the resort to force. Perhaps the best indicator of a security community is the lack of official war plans. Laymen might think this benchmark is easy to reach, but it is not, because militaries plan for almost everything, in part simply to hone their skills. Thus the absence of plans is rare and significant, as is indicated by the fact that in the 1920s one of Canada's top generals spent his spare time reconnoitering the routes by which American forces might invade.⁶

Security communities are not unprecedented. But what is unprecedented is that the states that constitute this one are the leading members of the international system, and so are natural rivals who in the past were central to the violent struggle for security, power, and contested values. Winston Churchill exaggerated only slightly when he declared that “people talked a lot of nonsense when they said nothing was ever settled by war. Nothing in history was ever settled except by wars.”⁷ Even cases of major change without war, such as Britain yielding hegemony in the Western Hemisphere to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, were strongly influenced by security calculations. Threatening war, preparing for it, and trying to avoid it have permeated all aspects of politics, and so a world in which war among the most developed states is unthinkable will be a new one. The subsequent chapters will analyze the changes in world politics produced by the attack of September 11 and by the U.S. response to it. As important as these are, however, they are less of a shift than the establishment of the Security Community, which, as I will discuss in the final chapter, conditions current American policy. We—and especially the younger generations—take the Security Community for granted. This should not blind us to the importance of the change, however. To paraphrase and extend a claim made by Evan Luard, given the scale and frequency of war among the great powers in the preceding millennia, this is a change of spectacular proportions, perhaps the single most striking discontinuity that the history of international politics has anywhere provided.⁸

Two major states, Russia and China, might fight one another or a member of the Security Community.⁹ But, as I will discuss below, such a conflict would be different from traditional wars between great powers. Furthermore, these countries lack many of the attributes of great powers: their internal regimes are shaky, they are not at the forefront of any advanced forms of technology or economic organization, they can pose challenges only regionally, and they have no attraction as models for others. They are not among the most developed states, and I think it would be fair to put them outside the ranks of the great powers as well. But their military potential, their possession of nuclear weapons, and the size of their economies render that judgment easily debatable. Thus I will not press it and, rather will argue that the set of states that form the Security Community are not all the great powers, but only the most developed ones.

CENTRAL QUESTIONS

Five questions arise. First, does the existence of the Security Community mean the end of security threats to its members, and more specifically to the United States? Second, will the Community endure? Third, what are the causes of its construction and maintenance? Fourth, what are the implications of this transformation for the conduct of international affairs? Finally, what does this say about theories of the causes of war?

Continued Threats

The fact that the United States is not menaced by the most developed countries obviously does not mean that it does not face any military threats at all. Indeed, even before September 11 some analysts saw the United States as no more secure than it was during the Cold War, being imperiled by terrorists and “rogue” states as well as by Russia and China. But I do not believe that even the war on terror has the potential to drive world politics the way that clashes among the leading powers did in the past. Neither this conflict nor the fear of war with Russia or China permeates all facets of international politics and structures state-society relations; they do not represent a struggle for dominance in the international system.

Even the fiercest foes of Russia, China, or the rogues do not see them as ready to launch unprovoked attacks against the United States or other members of the Security Community, let alone as out to control the world. Russia and China are not seeking to replace the United States; any clash will come out of these countries' desire for a sphere of influence and the American belief that such arrangements are inappropriate in today's world—at least for others. Thus, while there are reasons why the United States might fight with China to protect Taiwan or with Russia to protect the Baltic republics, these disputes are not like those that characterized great-power conflicts over the past three centuries. The United States is not defending traditional national interests, let alone vital ones, but is seeking what Arnold Wolfers called “milieu goals”:¹⁰ upholding values like democracy, self-determination, and rejection of coercion as a means of changing the status quo. These may be deeply held both for their intrinsic value and for their role in maintaining America's worldwide reach, but they are more akin to the concerns of imperial powers than to sources of conflict between equal major powers.

Will the Security Community Last?

Predictions about the maintenance of the Security Community are obviously disputable (indeed, limitations on people's ability to predict could undermine it), but nothing in the short period since the end of the Cold War points to an unraveling. Despite many disputes within the Community, even analysts who stress the continuation of the struggle for world primacy and great-power rivalries do not expect fighting.¹¹ If the United States is still concerned with maintaining its advantages over its allies, the reason is not that it believes that it may have to fight them, but that it worries that rivalry could make managing world problems more difficult.¹² The European efforts to establish an independent security force are aimed at permitting intervention when the United States chooses not to intervene (or, perhaps more likely, at threatening such action in order to trigger American intervention), not at fighting the United States.¹³ Even in the unlikely event that Europe were to unite and the world were to become bipolar again, it is very doubtful that suspicions, fears for the future, and conflicts of interest would be severe enough to break the Community.

A greater threat would be the failure of Europe to unite coupled with an American withdrawal of forces, which could lead to security competition within Europe.¹⁴ The fears would focus on Germany, but their magnitude is hard to gauge and it is difficult to estimate what external shocks or kinds of German behavior would activate them. The fact that Britain's Thatcher and France's Mitterrand opposed German unification is surely not forgotten in Germany, and is an indication that concerns remain. But this danger is likely to constitute a self-denying prophecy in two ways. First, many Germans are aware of the need not only to reassure others by tying themselves closely to Europe, but also to seek to make it unlikely that future generations of Germans would want to break these bonds even if they could. Second, Americans who worry about the residual danger will favor keeping some troops in Europe as the ultimate intra-European security guarantee.

Expectations of peace close off important routes to war. The main reason for Japanese aggression in the 1930s was the desire for a self sufficient sphere of influence that would permit Japan to fight the war with the Western powers that was seen as inevitable, not because of particular conflicts but because it was believed that great powers always fight each other. By contrast, if states believe that a security community will last, they will not be hypersensitive to threats from within it and will not feel the need to undertake precautionary measures that could undermine the security of other members. Thus the United States is not disturbed that British and French nuclear missiles could destroy American cities, and while France objects to American missile defense, it does not feel the need to increase its forces in response. As long as peace is believed to be very likely, the chance of inadvertent spirals of tension and threat is low.

Nevertheless, the point with which I began this section is unavoidable. World politics can change rapidly, and saying that nothing foreseeable will dissolve the Security Community is not the same as saying that it will not dissolve.¹⁵ To the extent that it rests on democracy and prosperity (see below), anything that would undermine these would also undermine the Community. Drastic climate change could also shake the foundations of much that we have come to take for granted. But it is hard to see how dynamics at the international level (i.e., the normal trajectory of fears, disputes, and rivalries) could produce war among the leading states. In other words, the Community does not have within it the seeds of its own destruction.

Our faith in the continuation of this peace is increased to the extent that we think we understand its causes and have reason to believe that they will continue. This is my next topic.

Explanations for the Security Community

There are social constructivist, liberal, and realist explanations for the Security Community that, although proceeding from different assumptions, invoke overlapping factors.¹⁶

Constructivism Constructivism points to the norm of nonviolence and the shared identities that have led the advanced democracies to assume the role of each other's friend through the interaction of behavior and expectations.¹⁷ In contradistinction to the liberal and realist explanations, constructivism downplays the importance of material factors and elevates ideas, images of oneself and others, and conceptions of appropriate conduct. The roots of the changes that have produced this enormous shift in international politics among some countries but not others are not specified in detail, but the process is a self-reinforcing one—a benign cycle of behavior, beliefs, and expectations.

People become socialized into attitudes, beliefs, and values that are conducive to peace. Individuals in the Security Community may see their own country as strong and good—and even better than others— but they do not espouse the virulent nationalism that was common in the past. Before World War I, one German figure proclaimed that the Germans were “the greatest civilized people known to history,” while another declared that the Germans were “the chosen people of this century,” which explained “why other people hate us. They do not understand us but they fear our tremendous spiritual superiority.” Thomas Macaulay similarly wrote that the British were “the greatest and most highly civilized people that ever the world saw” and were “the acknowledged leaders of the human race in the causes of political improvement.” Senator Albert Beveridge proclaimed that “God has made us the master organizers of the world.”¹⁸ These sentiments are shocking today because they are so at variance with what we have been taught to think about others and ourselves. We could not adopt these views without rejecting a broad set of beliefs and values. An understanding of the effects of such conceptions led the Europeans, and to an unfortunately lesser extent the Japanese, to denationalize and harmonize their textbooks after World War II, and has similarly led countries with remaining enemies to follow a different path: the goals for the education of a twelve-year-old child in Pakistan include the “ability to know all about India's evil designs about Pakistan; acknowledge and identify forces that may be working against Pakistan; understand the Kashmir problem.”¹⁹

For constructivists, the fact that all members of the Security Community are democracies is important, not so much for the reasons given by liberals (see below) as for the sense of common identity that the similarity in regime has generated.²⁰ The formation of common identities has been central to national integration, and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Theories of War in an Era of Leading-Power Peace
• Chapter 2 September 11: How Has It Changed the World?
• Chapter 3 The Confrontation between Iraq and the United States: Implications for the Theory and Practice of Deterrence
• Chapter 4 Understanding the Bush Doctrine
• Chapter 5 Where Do We Go from Here?
• Notes
• Index