Coercion, Cooperation, and Ethics in International Relations

Richard Ned Lebow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN: 9781135917012
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume brings together the recent essays of Richard Ned Lebow, one of the leading scholars of international relations and US foreign policy.

Lebow's work has centred on the instrumental value of ethics in foreign policy decision making and the disastrous consequences which follow when ethical standards are flouted. Unlike most realists who have considered ethical considerations irrelevant in states' calculations of their national interest, Lebow has argued that self interest, and hence, national interest can only be formulated intelligently within a language of justice and morality. The essays here build on this pervasive theme in Lebow's work by presenting his substantive and compelling critique of strategies of deterrence and compellence, illustrating empirically and normatively how these strategies often produce results counter to those that are intended. The last section of the book, on counterfactuals, brings together another set of related articles which continue to probe the relationship between ethics and policy. They do so by exploring the contingency of events to suggest the subjective, and often self-fulfilling, nature of the frameworks we use to evaluate policy choices.

Part I

Colonialism and its aftermath

1Colonial policies and their payoffs

In the nineteenth century all colonial powers, like Britain in Ireland, were presented with two alternative sets of goals. The traditional conception of empire envisaged colonies as territories to be exploited. A newer conception, not fully articulated until after the French Revolution, was that colonies provided additional land and people whose integration into the political unit would strengthen the nation. The former conception relied upon superior military power to keep the people quiescent; the latter, upon responsiveness to make them loyal.

Unlike many political questions of the nineteenth century, this one did not lend itself to a compromise that would partially fulfill both conceptions. The alternative goals were by their very nature mutually exclusive. If colonial powers desired to maintain their empires, they were compelled to make a choice between the two. An examination of the strategies required to implement the goals will help to illustrate the increasing dilemma faced by metropolitan powers.

A strategy of coercion is dictated by a goal of exploitation. To the extent that the colony is exploited at the expense of the inhabitants the colonizer must rely upon his superior power to preserve control. Such a strategy requires a minimal material commitment, can lead to an immediate “payoff,” but is less likely to result in a stable political connection.

The colonizer's authority depends on his ability to enforce obedience by the subject population. The colonized must be made to realize that rebellion is doomed to failure or entails intolerable cost to the insurgents. The payoff of such a strategy is both material and psychological. The metropolitan power can exact tribute or forced labor, exploit the material wealth and economic resources of the colony and utilize its geographic position for military advantage vis-à-vis other powers. A coercion strategy is also rewarding in the sense that domination gained through force and control exercised through terror enable individuals, classes or societies to give expression to inner frustrations and anxieties.¹

The drawbacks of basing authority on coercion are manifold. The colonizer's authority is likely to be accepted only as long as his power and his will to use it remain unquestioned. Should the metropolitan country suffer a relative decline in power by reason of internal disruption or foreign conflict, or should the colonized territory redress the military imbalance by securing the support of a third power, the danger of rebellion will increase. The Irish, for example, remained poised for rebellion throughout the centuries before the Union. Actual insurgency occurred, however, only when military factors favored the chances of rebellion. In 1640, when Britain was internally divided by civil war, in 1690, when it was threatened by Louis XIV, and again in 1798, when it was locked in a deadly struggle with Napoleon, the Irish capitalized upon Britain's weakness and the opportunity for foreign support and rose in rebellion.

The colonizer's authority is equally likely to be challenged should he grow “soft,” his military spirit dampened by the spoils of success, by the rigor of frequent battle or by changes in the ethics of his society. This was, no doubt, an important calculation of the leaders of the Irish insurrection in 1920–1921.

Colonies ruled by such methods can present the specter of constant rebellion. If the power of the colonizer is called into question for any of the reasons discussed, the cost of preserving domination may become so high as to offset the profit extracted from the colony. In the case of Ireland this probably occurred some time in the middle of the nineteenth century. While maintenance can develop into a costly burden, withdrawal may be perceived as an even more disastrous outcome because of the precedent it could set for other, similar situations—the domino theory—or because it would leave behind a hostile population likely to pose a threat to the former colonizer. Both of these considerations were paramount in the minds of those Englishmen who opposed repeal of the Union.

The rather Machiavellian moral to be learned from this dilemma is that rule based on coercion must never be allowed to be questioned to the extent that a serious threat to domination develops. There are two means which can be employed to prevent such a situation from arising.

The most commonly adopted course is aimed at preserving the colonizer's credibility by terror and violence. This has been the standard technique resorted to by most conquerors. Genghis Khan, for example, was so effective in terrorizing the Russian princes and people during his brief campaigns in Russia that when the hordes retired behind the Asian steppes they considered it unnecessary to leave behind a force of occupation. In the hundred years that followed Russian strength vis-à-vis the Tartars steadily increased but the yearly tribute to Astrakhan was nevertheless dutifully delivered for fear of the consequences should it be withheld.

In the modern world the use of terror and violence as a deterrent has lost much of its efficacy. The maintenance of the colonizer's credibility in the eyes of the native population is in itself no longer effective in preventing rebellion. When struggles take on ideological significance the level of endurance of all the participants is raised. Action is inspired that is frequently suicidal in cost. When people rebel in the name of religious freedom, human liberty or national independence, the extent of their opponent's destructive capacity is no longer the most relevant consideration because the insurgents no longer perceive death as the worst of all possible outcomes. The Russian boyars would have dismissed as absurd the suggestion that they begin a futile rebellion for the sake of national honor. But the Irishmen who calmly faced death in the springtime of their lives in the Easter Rebellion of 1916 did so willingly. The insurgency began with a conscious recognition on their part that it was doomed to failure. The cry of “Give me liberty or give me death”—or the more contemporary “Better dead than redȁ—reflects the transcendent importance ideological principles occupy in the modern individual's value hierarchy.

If the politically relevant population of the colony can no longer be effectively controlled by the destructive capability of the colonizer, the only recourse likely to be effective in preserving domination is a policy designed to prevent the development of an elite capable of leading a revolution. Perhaps the ultimate application of this logic is to be found in Hitler's projected plans for eastern Europe.

The Nazis intended to exterminate a large percentage of the native population, including all those who had received an education. German settlers were to repopulate the land, while the remaining inhabitants were to be reduced to hewers of wood and drawers of water, mere slaves who would carry out necessary but menial agricultural and mechanical labor. Deprived of organizational and military skills, illiterate and uneducated, the population would have been transformed into beasts of burden, human only in their physical form and potential. Such a population—assuming it had no contact with the outside world—would have posed little threat to the German ascendancy.

At the opposite end of the political spectrum from the strategy of coercion is the strategy designed to integrate the colonial population into the national political community. The aim of this strategy is to secure the loyalty of the colonial subjects by legitimizing the colonial connection in their eyes.

A political system develops legitimacy when it is consistently able to meet the needs and fulfill the expectations of the population over which it wields authority. The more often its ability in this regard is demonstrated over time, the more the people come to associate their individual success with the success and survival of the system. As support for the system grows, its authority to make decisions affecting the lives and fortunes of the population is less frequently questioned. Compliance gradually becomes a habit.

A political system derives great advantages from having secured the loyalty of the population. Among other things, it obtains a certain degree of latitude for its actions by reason of the reservoir of support it has built up. This support, a credit that can be drawn upon during times of crisis, enables the system to survive reverses which otherwise might have proved fatal.

Legitimacy, however, is more difficult to achieve than rule based on coercion, and it entails a higher expenditure of resources. A heavy load is placed on the decision-making apparatus of the metropolitan power. Its institutions must develop means to judge the needs of the population and must be capable of bringing the resources of the state to bear where they are required. This in itself requires a considerable expenditure of time, money and effort. In addition, these resources must be expended over a long period of time before any payoff becomes apparent. Scholars who have studied the integration process have found that the advantages the colonized community derives from amalgamation must outweigh the burdens. It is only after the colony's politically relevant population perceives that it is likely to attain a higher degree of wealth, status, honor and security by virtue of integration, and in fact realizes these goals, that it is likely to assume the responsibilities of the relationship.²

Perhaps the most difficult commitment is of a psychological nature. The colonizer cannot preserve his exclusiveness and sense of superiority over the colonized if meaningful social contact and communication are to be established. Without such communication it is impossible to develop the mutual understanding, trust and predictability of behavior that are so essential to responsiveness. No level of administrative capability and material expenditure will compensate for the lack. Unless a high degree of empathy develops, the metropolitan society will most likely be extremely reluctant to consent to the high cost of a strategy of integration and to grant the opportunities for upward mobility so essential to that strategy's success.

Herein lies the danger of the strategy of integration. If for any reason the metropolitan power proves unresponsive to the needs of the colonized or fails to create the mobility that the population has been led to expect, the integration will be unsuccessful. The colonial power will have created expectations that have not been fulfilled and probably will alienate the community it sought to integrate. In such a case, as in Ireland, rebellion or at least agitation for autonomy is likely to develop.

Ironically, the probability for the success of a rebellion is likely to be considerably greater than if the metropolitan power had never attempted integration. Unlike a coercive strategy, which aims to prevent a native elite from developing, a strategy designed to achieve integration encourages mobility and political participation. An unsuccessful attempt at integration, by providing some mobility and some political participation, will create an elite without at the same time securing the loyalties of that elite to the larger political unit. The very cadres necessary to organize and carry out rebellion will be formed. The strategy of integration can therefore be viewed as a gamble with high rewards and equally high risks. If it is successful, the payoff is highly rewarding; if it is unsuccessful, the result is likely to be disaster.

The British policy: a curious amalgam

British policy toward Ireland in the centuries before the Union is accurately characterized as a strategy of coercion. Ireland was a colony whose land and people were ruthlessly exploited to serve British interests. British dominion, exercised by a minority of soldiers, settlers, and administrators ruling over an alien and restless people, rested on the threat and actual application of force and terror. Settlers were encouraged to farm land expropriated from the indigenous inhabitants and were given arbitrary and absolute power over the lives and fortunes of the natives.

Although the British relied principally upon their preponderant military power to guarantee their authority in Ireland, after 1640 they employed the additional tactic of policies designed to prevent a native elite from developing. The Penal Laws, legislated after Cromwell's suppression of the Irish insurgents, forbade Irish Catholics to serve in the army, to enter politics, to own land, to practice a profession, to import or export, to send their children to a Catholic school in Ireland or abroad for an education. Such repressive measures, coupled with a further expropriation of Irish lands (and even a policy of extermination), were consciously designed to reduce the wealth, power and organizational capabilities of the Irish people. Like eastern Europe, Ireland was to be reduced to a productive, untroublesome asset. The interests of the native inhabitants were entirely sacrificed to the interests of the metropolitan power.

In the first 50 years after the Union British policy toward Ireland became a curious amalgam of the two basic strategies that satisfied the conditions of neither but deepened the pitfalls of both. The avowed goal of successive British governments was the integration of the Irish people into the British nation. To some extent policies designed to achieve this goal were implemented. Discriminatory restrictions against Irish Catholics and the Catholic religion were largely removed. The Penal Laws had been struck down in the decades before the Union, and Catholic emancipation was granted several decades afterwards. The Catholic church was allowed to operate without legal interference and was even given some state support. The government allocated more funds for Irish education—both parochial and secular—and actively promoted job mobility within the civil service. The outlay for the development of roads and other transportation facilities, public health, and social services also increased many-fold in the first 50 years of Union.

As a result, there was an increase in literacy and education, an increase in wealth (though not between 1830 and 1850), and a corresponding increase in the store of specialized technical and administrative skills among the Irish people. Although the Ireland of 1850 was still a predominantly agrarian country, the middle class, which had begun to emerge at the beginning of the century, had increased its size and solidified its power. An Irish intelligentsia had emerged that fully participated in the avant-garde political and artistic trends of the European intellectual elite.

There was the other side to the coin. Throughout this period the British continued to exploit Ireland. At the beginning of the century, British industrialists had rigged the commercial clauses of the Union in such a way that they were easily able to destroy infant Irish industry and guarantee a large market in Ireland for finished British goods. British industrialists also exploited the chronic unemployment of Ireland by paying substandard wages to Irish workers imported from that island. The Protestant church continued to receive a substantial part of Irish revenues, even though it did little to contribute to the well-being or spiritual welfare of the majority of the Irish people. The Irish administration, although it became progressively more responsive to Irish interests after 1830, still included many individuals who viewed their jobs as mere sinecures or as rewards for past service. The British parliament continued to legislate differently for Ireland and England and refused to grant the Irish those basic civil liberties all Englishmen believed to be their natural inheritance. Above all, the Irish landed interests, through a notorious abuse of their arbitrary power, mercilessly exploited the Irish peasantry and contributed more than anyone else to the economic malaise of the countryside.

Exploitation and responsiveness were mutually exclusive. Therefore the reforms designed to meet the demands of the Irish people were unsuccessful in promoting reconciliation because they did not redress the core grievances arising from continuing exploitation and oppression. The Irish, for example, were given parliamentary representation, yet it proved ineffectual in guaranteeing the civil liberties of the Irish people. Irishmen were employed by the Br...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I Colonialism and its aftermath
• 1 Colonial policies and their payoffs
• 2 Divided nations and partitioned countries
• PART II Deterrence
• 3 Cognitive closure and crisis politics
• 4 Beyond deterrence
• 5 Nuclear deterrence in retrospect
• PART III Compellence
• 6 Beyond parsimony: rethinking theories of coercive bargaining
• 7 Thomas Schelling and strategic bargaining
• 8 Robert McNamara: Max Weber's worst nightmare
• PART IV Cooperation
• 9 Reason, emotion, and cooperation
• 10 Building international cooperation
• PART V Ancient Greeks and modern international relations
• 11 Thucydides the constructivist
• 12 Power, persuasion, and justice
• 13 Tragedy, politics, and political science
• Conclusions
• 14 The future of international relations theory
• Name Index
• Subject Index