Power, the State, and Sovereignty

Essays on International Relations

Stephen D. Krasner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781135974763
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Economy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Stephen Krasner has been one of the most influential theorists within international relations and international political economy over the past few decades. Power, the State, and Sovereignty is a collection of his key scholarly works. The book includes both a framing introduction written for this volume, and a concluding essay examining the relationship between academic research and the actual making of foreign policy.

Drawing on both his extensive academic work and his experiences during his recent role within the Bush administration (as Director for Policy Planning at the US State department) Krasner has revised and updated all of the essays in the collection to provide a coherent discussion of the importance of power, ideas, and domestic structures in world politics.

Progressing through a carefully structured evaluation of US domestic politics and foreign policy, international politics and finally sovereignty, this volume is essential reading for all serious scholars of international politics.

Part I
Domestic politics and foreign policy

1 Defending the national interest

For at least a decade students of foreign policy have had to deal with a discomforting problem: most used a conceptual approach that treated the state as a unified rational actor, yet many felt uncomfortable with its assumptions. While the conventional model yielded many interesting findings, its analytic categories did not appear to represent actual institutions faithfully. The notion of the state seemed merely a shorthand for a complex set of bureaucratic institutions and roles. No modern country is run by a prince. Officials in Washington, who spend a good part of their time at interdepartmental meetings, play bureaucratic politics even if they do not know the proper label, just as Molière’s Monsieur Jourdan spoke prose. It has become commonplace to think of the American government as a large blundering bureaucratic mass incapable of sustained action and rational behavior. The greatest problems of public policy are described not in terms of goals but in terms of management skills. Decision making is seen as a morass of conflicting interests extending from the society through the ostensibly hierarchically ordered central bureaucracy of the state.

In addition, the state-centric model used in international relations has seemed at odds with the most prevalent approaches to domestic politics. At least in the United States, a pluralist image has dominated the analysis of politics. The behavior of the state is seen as a product of societal pressures. A liberal perspective may grant that the state is one interest among many (indeed, the bureaucratic politics model extends interest-group politics into the bureaucracy), but it rejects the notion of a national interest that is not a product of the aggregation of particularistic societal goals. Interest-group analysis has not been applied to high politics because it could be assumed that all groups in the society would support the preservation of territorial and political integrity; but in the area of international economic relations there is, a priori, no such clear societal consensus. Tariff levels, exchange rates, and foreign investment all benefit some groups and harm others.

Marxist theories have offered a clear alternative to the realist model. This approach has an integrated view of domestic and international politics. In both spheres state behavior is seen as a product of societal needs. For instrumental Marxists, government officials are the handmaiden of particular societal groups.

There is a more sophisticated version of the Marxist position, structural Marxism, which views the state as an autonomous institution whose task is to preserve the coherence of capitalist society as a whole. This may mean acting against the preferences voiced by particular capitalist groups. For both liberals and Marxists, however, the state is, in the final analysis, an epiphenomenon: its behavior reflects disaggregated societal needs, either directly for interest group and instrumental Marxist analyses or more circumspectly for structural Marxist ones. The concept of the national interest has no meaning except as a summation of particularistic preferences.

This study has tried to demonstrate that neither a liberal nor a Marxist conception is adequate. Its micro-theoretic task has been to elaborate a statist approach by inductively investigating the national interest and policy-making processes in the United States. This investigation has shown that the state has purposes of its own. The national interest does have empirical reality if it is defined as a consistent set of objectives sought by central decision makers. The cases analyzed in this book suggest that there has been a clear rank ordering of goals for American policy related to foreign raw material investments. In order of increasing importance the ranking has been: (1) maximize the competitive structure of the market and thereby reduce prices; (2) increase security of supply; (3) secure general foreign policy objectives.

This is not to say that the policies actually implemented by the United States have been coherent. Looking at what the American government actually did, as opposed to what central decision makers preferred, presents a complicated picture. The fragmentation of power in the political system has allowed powerful private groups to block many state initiatives. This has been most evident when achieving state aims required positive action from private firms. This situation existed in all of the cases involving the promotion of foreign investment. To get oil investment in Iraq in the 1920s and Iran in the 1950s, central decision makers had to compromise their desire for greater competition by sanctioning the Red Line Agreement and downgrading the oil antitrust suit from a criminal to a civil action. While government officials were successful in getting Firestone into Liberia during the 1920s, other US rubber firms were not responsive to the government’s call for new investments in non-British areas. Private actors were also able to block public initiatives when decisions could not be held within the executive branch. During the 1940s, efforts to buy Aramco, construct an oil pipeline, and sign an agreement with the United Kingdom were frustrated because they needed Congressional approval.

In contrast, cases requiring positive action by the state rather than the private sector present a different picture of power relationships. This category includes almost all issues concerning the protection of foreign investment. Companies usually wanted more support than central decision makers were willing to give. Even the largest and most powerful private corporations were not able to turn instruments of state power to private purposes when this would violate the national interest, the aims sought by central decision makers. Such instruments, particularly the use of force, were controlled by public institutions that have been well insulated from private pressures. The White House and the State Department were concerned with broader foreign policy goals.

The cases are not equally useful in contributing to the macro-theoretic aim of this study—distinguishing among statist, Marxist, and liberal interpretations of foreign policy. Some are more or less compatible with all three theories. These include all of the examples of investments actively promoted by the state—rubber in Liberia, oil in the Middle East and the Dutch East Indies during the 1920s, and oil in Iran in the 1950s. In these instances public and private preferences were fairly closely aligned and were associated with general societal goals. Although the assertive role played by the state here cannot be as readily understood from a pluralist or instrumental Marxist position, nevertheless the evidence these cases provide for preferring one competing interpretation over another is not very decisive.

Cases that show a clear divergence between corporate and state preferences are more analytically useful; they support statist and structural Marxist positions over interest group and instrumental Marxist ones. Such divergences arose most frequently from disputes involving the takeover of US firms. In 1919, Woodrow Wilson rejected private appeals that troops be used to protect American interests in Mexico. Before World War II American central decision makers turned a deaf ear to oil company entreaties for more vigorous official backing in Peru and Mexico. In 1966 Assistant Secretary of State Lincoln Gordon relaxed economic sanctions against Peru while Exxon officials continued to prefer strong pressure. At the Teheran negotiations in January 1971, US policy makers undermined oil company bargaining strategy by endorsing separate negotiations for the Persian Gulf, the procedure favored by Saudi Arabia and Iran. Examples such as these weigh heavily against any interpretation that views state behavior as a function of direct private pressure. The strongest conclusion that emerges from the evidence presented in the case studies is that instrumental Marxist and liberal arguments are inadequate.

The two approaches whose relative merits are most difficult to assess are structural Marxism and statism. Both see the state as an autonomous actor concerned with long-term objectives. The difference lies in the type of aims that are sought. For a statist paradigm, the state has its own needs and goals, which cannot be reduced to specific societal interests. For a structural Marxist paradigm, state behavior is ultimately related to preserving a set of exploitative economic relationships that benefit a particular class. It is not easy to find empirical evidence that can separate the two. Here the argument that a statist paradigm is more powerful rests upon two examples. The first is the effort of the American government to buy Aramco during the Second World War. A violation of the basic norm of capitalism—private property—in a situation in which there was neither immediate pressure from the working class nor a clearly demonstrable long-term need cannot fit easily with a structural Marxist interpretation. Nevertheless, the state failed, and this case could be explained away, albeit with some sacrifice of elegance, as an aberration based upon individual peculiarities. The second set of empirical cases that support a statist perspective are drawn from instances where the United States was prepared to use either covert or overt force. After 1945 all of these were clearly associated with the goal of preventing communist regimes from assuming or holding power. This aim can be comprehended from a structural Marxist perspective: communism does not enhance capitalism’s long-term prospects. It can also be understood from a statist perspective: the United States wanted to remake the world in its own Lockean liberal image. However, the nonlogical manner in which American leaders pursued their anticommunism is not compatible with a structural Marxist position. The absence of means–ends calculations, coupled with misperception, led to policies that undermined the coherence of American domestic society, particularly in Vietnam. This is the very opposite result from the one predicted by a structural Marxist argument, but it is compatible with a statist view that sees the state as capable of defining its own autonomous goals.

Interest and ideology in US foreign policy

The final piece of the puzzle that must be fit into place is to relate more precisely the broad foreign policy goals pursued by US leaders to a statist interpretation of American foreign policy. It is all well and good to create a catchall category for any apparently noneconomic objective sought by policy makers, but this is hardly a convincing defense of a statist interpretation of American behavior. If these aims changed from one day to the next, or even from one year to the next, because of bureaucratic battles, or private pressures, or the transitory moods of presidents, then a statist approach would not be adequate. This study has not tried to identify the national interest with some divinely or logically ordained goal for the state, nor has it viewed it as an analytic assumption that can be used to derive propositions about the international system. Instead, this has been an inductive enterprise. What this study demonstrates is that the general aims of American policy have moved from a concern with territorial and political integrity and with security of supply before World War II (with the exception of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency) to an emphasis on ideological goals after 1945.

In The Logic of World Power Franz Schurmann posits a fundamental distinction between interests and ideology, between expansionism on the one hand and imperialism on the other. Interests involve material aims and the social and physical quality of life. Ideology is concerned with order, security, and justice. Imperialism is a manifestation of ideology, a vision of how the world should be ordered on a global basis. It has a “total world-wide quality,” whereas expansionism is incremental and concerned with material interests (Schurmann 1974: 6).

The broad foreign policy aims implicit in US policy toward foreign raw materials investments must be seen as both expansionist and imperialist. The division between the two is largely chronological. Before the Second World War the United States was an expansionist but not an imperialist nation. With the exception of Wilson’s policies in Mexico, American behavior can be understood in terms of interests—that is, specific economic aims or the preservation of territorial and political integrity (the core goals of any state). US policy after the Second World War must be understood in terms of ideology: leaders were driven by a vision of what the global order should be like. Covert or overt force was used only when policy makers saw their vision threatened. This politics of vision had been foreshadowed by Woodrow Wilson’s actions toward Mexico. The vision itself was a manifestation of American liberalism, what Louis Hartz has called the totalitarian hold of a Lockean worldview on American life (Hartz 1955).

The use of force by the American government cannot be explained without reference to America’s ideological commitments. After the Second World War the one thing that all of the cases associated with the use of force shared was that policy makers feared a communist takeover. Vietnam and even Korea make it clear that American policy makers were willing to bear heavy costs to prevent communist regimes from coming to power. It is not possible to explain this behavior in terms of strategic interests, that is, protecting the territorial and political integrity of the United States. It is not possible to explain it in terms of the goal of strengthening ties with major allies, the Western European states and Japan, with the possible exception of the relationship between Japanese concerns and Korea. It is not possible to explain these interventions in terms of economic interests. One must look to the realm of ideology, of vision, for a persuasive explanation of American policy.

As Louis Hartz has argued, the intensity of this reaction is best understood as a result of the exclusive dominance of Lockean liberalism within the United States. In the United States this political vision has never been effectively challenged from either the left or the right. The application of America’s worldview to the Third World has been most fully articulated by Robert Packenham. Packenham argues that the attitudes of American policy makers were dominated by four basic assumptions: change and development are easy, all good things go together, radicalism and revolution are bad, and distributing power is more important than accumulating power. All of these assumptions reflect liberal commitments to individualism and democracy, or the American historical experience of rapid growth without revolutionary upheaval (Packenham 1973: Ch. 3).

Communism was antithetical to this set of beliefs. It had grown out of a socialist perspective that had never taken root in the United States. It emphasized basic disharmonies within society. It advocated violent change. It rejected individualism. In practice, communist societies had given the state great power. Communism was more threatening to US leaders than any other ideology they encountered.

I do not mean to argue that American policy makers were immaculate liberals who sought nothing but Lockean ideals. In the period after the Second World War the United States supported many authoritarian regimes of the right. In part this practice resulted from constrained choice. US leaders in the 1950s and 1960s were not quite as naive as Woodrow Wilson about the prospects for instant democracy; to paraphrase President Kennedy, the United States preferred democratic regimes, but when this alternative was unrealistic, they favored right-wing over left-wing dictatorships. This choice is consistent with a Lockean belief structure. First, right-wing regimes were more prone to recognize the legitimacy of a private sphere of action; they rarely made the same totalitarian, that is total, state claims on the society that were typical of the left. In addition, the right was less of a threat because it lacked the external support that a communist regime might be able to draw from the Soviet bloc. Soviet assistance could bolster such regimes, making it less likely that they could be transformed along lines that more closely followed the contours of America’s vision.

But why has ideology only become important at a certain period in the nation’s history? Basic beliefs are not variable: they are constant over time. Why do they affect policy during some periods but not others? The answer is basically found in the international distribution of power among states. Ideological goals can be pursued only by the very powerful and perhaps also the very weak, by those who can make things happen and those who cannot change what happens. For most states it must be interests, and not visions, that count. A state whose core objectives are threatened can rarely engage in creating a global order. Political culture or ideology will affect perceptions and therefore policy, but the objectives of policy will be in the realm of interests. Even when core objectives are not at stake, most states are likely to seek identifiable, usually material, objectives. Small and medium-size states do not have the resources to change domestic regimes in other countries or create new international structures. Even quite large states are likely to be expansionist rather than imperialist, to impose their will on others to secure specific goals, to act in terms of a calculus in which costs are weighed against benefits. Only states whose resources are very large, both absolutely and relatively, can engage in imperial policies, can attempt to impose their vision on other countries and the global system. And it is only here that ideology becomes a critical determinant of the objectives of foreign policy. Great power removes the usual restraints on central decision makers. Very powerful states escape some of the consequences of the inherently anarchic nature of the international system. For them it is not a Hobbesian world because there is no opponent that can threaten their core interests. Policy makers have at their disposal resources that are not committed to preserving identifiable economic aims or territorial and political integrity. They can enter the realm of vision (although it has rarely turned out to be the kingdom of God).

Perhaps two analogies will make this argument clearer. The association of an ideological foreign policy with a hegemonic state is based implicitly upon an assumption of a hierarchy of goals. The state can only move on to higher things (structuring foreign regimes and the international system in its own image) if more fundamental aims (protecting territorial and political integrity) have been satisfied. In Sociobiology Edward O. Wilson offers a similar explanation for the diversity of human cultures. He argues that humans display an extremely wide set of cultural variations. The behavioral range of other animals is much narrower. Humans are able to establish more diverse social habits only because they have so thoroughly dominated their environment. Basic needs are no longer the determinant of social organization. “No species of ant or termite enjoys such freedom. … In short, animal species tend to be tightly packed in the ecosystem with little room for experimentation or play. Man has temporarily escaped the constraint of interspecies competition” (Wilson 1975: 550). Just as man in the biosphere can engage in many activities not directly related to the survival of the species, hegemonic states can pursue ideological goals because more basic needs are not threatened.

A second analogy is offered in the work of the psychologist Abraham Maslow, who makes an argument explicitly based on a hierarchy of needs. When more basic individual needs are satisfied, he sees new ones emerging to motivate human activity. Physiological necessities are the most fundamental. If food, clothing, and shelter are available, then safety, love and affection, esteem (including freedom, competence, prestige, recognition, and dominance), and finally self-actualization become, in that order, the most important driving forces. An individual only moves on to a higher need when more basic ones are satisfied. Maslow summarizes his argument in the following terms:

We have seen that the chief principle of organization in human motivational life is the arrangement of needs in a hierarchy of lesser or greater priority or potency. The chief dynamic principle animating this organization is the emergence of less potent needs upon the gratification of more potent ones.

(Maslow 1954: 107)

Just as the human species in the biosphere, and individual men in their quest for fulfillment, can move on to less pressing goals only after more basic ones (the survival of the species or the individual) have been satisfied, so hegemonic states can indulge in ideological foreign policies because their core objectives are not in jeopardy.

The historical evolution of US policy

Writers who have emphasized the importance of ideology have generally argued that there has been a cyclical tendency in American foreign policy. Periods of external expansion have alternated with periods of insularity. Americans move in one generation to remake the outside world, encounter failure and frustration, and turn away from external involvement in the next generation. The argument here suggests that there has been a more linear development in American foreign policy. The basic determinant of the goals sought by American central decision makers has not been generational experience but America’s place in the international political system—that is, its power in relation to other states.

Until the last decade of the nineteenth century the country was insular and isolationist. The Monroe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of illustrations
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Introduction: actors and institutions in the study of international politics
• PART I Domestic politics and foreign policy
• PART II International politics
• PART III Sovereignty
• Conclusion: garbage cans and policy streams: how academic research might affect foreign policy
• Bibliography