 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL
ARTICLE EXTRACTS: Hegemony on the Cheap: One of the conventional criticisms of the Bush administration’s foreign policy is that it is excessively and even disastrously unilateralist in approach. According to the critics, the administration has turned its back on a longstanding and admirable American tradition of liberal internationalism in foreign affairs, and in doing so has provoked resentment worldwide. But these criticisms misinterpret both the foreign policy of George W. Bush, as well as America’s liberal internationalist tradition. In reality, Bush’s foreign policy since 9/11 has been heavily influenced by traditional liberal internationalist assumptions–assumptions that all along have had a troubling impact on U.S. foreign policy behavior and fed into the current situation in Iraq. The conduct of America’s foreign relations has–for more than a hundred years, going back at least to the days of John Hay’s “Open Door” Notes and McKinley’s hand-wringing over the annexation of the Philippines–been shaped, to a greater or lesser extent, by a set of beliefs that can only be called liberal. These assumptions specify that the United States should promote, wherever practical and possible, an international system characterized by democratic governments and open markets. President Bush reiterated these classical liberal assumptions recently, in his speech last November to the National Endowment for Democracy, when he outlined what he called “a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East.” In that speech, Bush argued that “as long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export.” In this sense, he suggested, the United States has a vital strategic interest in the democratization of the region. But Bush also added that “the advance of freedom leads to peace,” and that democracy is “the only path to national success and dignity,” providing as it does certain “essential principles common to every successful society, in every culture.” These words could just as easily have been spoken by Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt–or Bill Clinton. They are well within the mainstream American tradition of liberal internationalism. Of course, U.S. foreign policy officials have never promoted a liberal world order simply out of altruism. They have done so out of the belief that such a system would serve American interests, by making the United States more prosperous, influential, and secure. Americans have also frequently disagreed over how to best promote liberal goals overseas. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that liberal goals and assumptions, broadly conceived, have had a powerful impact on American foreign The problem with the liberal or Wilsonian approach, however, has been that it tends to encourage very ambitious foreign policy goals and commitments, while assuming that these goals can be met without commensurate cost or expenditure on the part of the United States. *Colin Dueck is assistant professor of political science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The Strange Persistence of Latin American Democracy In September 2001, while Americans were preoccupied with the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, a remarkable economic and political story began to unfold in the southern cone of South America. That month, Argentina’s economy, once praised by Wall Street, Washington, and international financial organizations as a model for the developing world, virtually imploded, sending the country into the worst economic crisis of its tumultuous history. The shocks to the economic system were severe: the collapse of an insolvent banking system, a default on international loans, a nearly 75 percent devaluation of the currency, and an economic contraction that drove the country’s gdp back to 1993 levels. This economic meltdown proved devastating to what only a year previously had been Latin America’s most prosperous nation. Most shocking was a poverty rate that swelled to 50 percent of the population, beggaring more than one and a half million people in just six months. Equally dramatic was the toll the economic crisis took on the political system. Angered Argentines stormed banks and government offices in Buenos Aires and other urban centers, precipitating a rash of riots that claimed 21 lives. During this turmoil, no fewer than four different presidents sought to bring order to the nation between December 19, 2001, and January 2, 2002. Amid the chaos, there was a silver lining. The breakdown of democracy through a military coup–what we have come to expect in Argentina whenever civilian leaders are unable to cope with downturns in the economy and popular discontent–did not materialize. Indeed, the resilience of democracy was the most remarkable aspect of the economic crash in Argentina and a hopeful sign of “democratic consolidation.” Notwithstanding the disruptions prompted by multiple presidential resignations and hasty inaugurations, civilian leaders were able to keep the political system afloat. More importantly, people’s faith in democracy did not falter. According to the polling data available from Latinobaró-metro, a Santiago-based organization that has tracked political attitudes in Latin America since 1996, support for democracy in Argentina actually grew between 2001 and 2002. The percentage of Argentines that responded in the affirmative to the question “Is democracy preferable to any other kind of government?” increased from 58 percent in 2001 to 65 percent in 2002. The survival of Argentine democracy is the most dramatic example of the remarkable persistence of constitutional rule in Latin America since the region began to shed its authoritarian regimes three decades ago, but it is not the only one. *Omar G. Encarnación is associate professor of political studies at Bard College and the author, most recently, of The Myth of Civil Society: Social Capital and Democratic Consolidation in Spain and Brazil (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). India’s Foreign Policy Grows Up The end of the Cold War and of the Soviet experiment shattered the long-cherished assumptions of India’s foreign policy establishment and forced a radical realignment of its foreign policy. During much of the Cold War, India had professed a nonaligned foreign policy. Contrary to popular belief, this did not mean that it would steer a course equidistant from the two superpowers. Rather, it meant that New Delhi asserted the right to pursue its own interests, free from external domination. This policy enabled India to stand back from the ideological fray between the two superpowers and to play a global role disproportionate to its military might and economic prowess. India’s ostensible strength lay in the power of moral suasion. It spoke for the recently decolonized world, most of which was composed of nonindustrialized countries. It sought to promote global disarmament, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and economic development. Nonetheless, India did not pursue its policy of nonalignment in complete good faith. In practice, New Delhi rarely followed an independent foreign policy. The principal architect of India’s foreign policy, Jawaharlal Nehru, who was prime minister from independence in 1947 until 1964, was far more prone to criticize the shortcomings of the United States and the Atlantic Alliance than the malfeasances of the Soviet bloc. Nehru’s propensity to overlook the many shortcomings of the Soviet Union stemmed from his strong anticolonial sentiments. And the Soviets, in his view, were sympathetic to the aspirations of the Third World. He also had profound misgivings about unbridled, American-style capitalism as an appropriate mode of economic development for the recently decolonized world. His successors, while still professing nonalignment, openly collaborated with the Soviet Union on a range of global issues. They were reluctant to criticize the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, allowed Cuba to become a member of the nonaligned movement, even though it was firmly in Moscow’s embrace, and were unwilling to admit that the Soviet military presence in Eastern Europe posed a real threat to the West. As one of the principal exponents of the nonaligned movement, India portrayed itself as a champion of the world’s poor and dispossessed. To this end, Indian leaders called for a global foreign aid regime designed to redistribute the world’s wealth, an international trading order that favored the needs of the developing world, and the restructuring of such global institutions as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund so as to give the weaker states a greater voice. These efforts produced little of substance. Moreover, India’s self-imposed isolation from the global trading order (it pursued a strategy of import-substituting industrialization, which discouraged foreign investment) levied severe costs in terms of economic growth. *Sumit Ganguly is the Rabindranath Tagore Professor of Indian Cultures and Civilizations, and the director of the India Studies Program, at Indiana University, Bloomington. Fairness Matters: Equity and the Transition to Democracy The postcommunist transitions in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have been remarkably successful. While the pace of change differs widely from north to south and from west to east, overall the transitions have been both faster and smoother than almost anyone expected, either inside the region or out. Most of the 27 countries that emerged from the former Communist bloc have largely privatized their economies and elected democratic governments, and most have a semblance, at least, of competing political parties and a free press. By the end of this year, ten East European states will be members of nato, and eight will belong to the European Union. Nobody expected such rapid change when communism imploded a dozen years ago. Despite these successes, citizens of the postcommunist states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union remain discontented, dissatisfied with the economy, and cynical about politics, and are increasingly staying away from the polls on election day. Opinion surveys in these countries reveal that large percentages of the population in every country, and majorities in many, believe that they were better off in the Communist era than they are now.1 Both academic analysts and political pundits have tended to see economic decline and the dislocations of the transition period as the reasons why people have soured on both the new politics and the new economy. With renewed economic growth and employment, they say, the citizens of these states will increasingly support the governments and political parties. Much of the academic debate on this subject has revolved around the “egocentric” vs. “sociotropic” dimensions of public opinion, that is, whether support for governments or for a political system are due more to an individual’s personal economic experiences (egocentric) or to that individual’s sense of how the economy as a whole is doing (sociotropic). There is, however, another factor that seems to account for popular assessments of the postcommunist transitions: the perceived fairness of the transition process. Yet the question of fairness has barely been addressed in academic discussions of the democratic transitions. There is increasing evidence, both survey-based and qualitative, that suggests that fairness evaluations (popular assessments of the fairness of political and economic systems) are a more powerful determinant of support for the new systems than either egocentric or sociotropic assessments. If this is so, it suggests that we ought to take a different approach to economic and social development in the region, one that focuses more on an equitable sharing of the costs and benefits of transition than on straightforward economic growth and privatization. *David S. Mason is a professor of political science at Butler University, Indianapolis. He is the coauthor, with James R. Kluegel, of Marketing Democracy: Changing Opinion About Inequality and Politics in East Central Europe (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000). ADVOCACY Weapons Scientists as Whistle Blowers On January 23, 2003, as United Nations inspectors combed Iraq for weapons of mass destruction (WMD), a bipartisan group of six U.S. senators introduced the Iraqi Scientists Immigration Act of 2003. Weapons inspectors had long argued that testimony from Iraqi scientists was key to penetrating the regime’s wmd programs. But with the potential for retribution from Saddam Hussein looming over their heads, the scientists were unwilling to talk. The bill sought to remedy that situation by establishing a fast-track immigration procedure for Iraqi weapons scientists willing to aid the inspectors. The bill passed the Senate unanimously on March 24–a day too late. The night before, frustrated by the failure of the U.N. inspectors to penetrate Iraq’s weapons programs, President Bush had ordered the U.S. military to commence operations to disarm Saddam Hussein and remove him from power. The plodding pace of American lawmaking had been outmatched by the speed with which military operations could be launched. Yet rather than discrediting the principles underlying the bill, the Iraq experience suggests the need for their more robust–and timely–implementation in the future. Washington clearly views the proliferation of wmd as among the most serious threats to U.S. security and the maintenance of international order, and experts broadly agree that defector accounts are essential for early detection of hidden wmd programs. The United States should therefore establish a permanent program to encourage and provide protection for scientist-whistle blowers, not just from Iraq, but from any suspect regime. To prevent such an initiative from being seen as merely an instrument of U.S. intelligence agencies and to secure the cooperation of international organizations, Washington should also pursue agreements aimed at affording whistle blowers protections under international law. *Michael A. Levi is a fellow for science and technology in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. REPORTAGE Tigers in the Alps On the outskirts of the ancient Swiss town of Bern lies an open space traditionally used as an allmend, or collective pasture; acres and acres of grass set against a dramatic backdrop of rocky hills. Every year, in August, this Swiss field is colonized for a weekend by a crowd of Tamils. Some are resident in Bern, others come from Zurich and Lucerne, still others from the Netherlands, Germany, and England. But they all came, originally, from the northern districts of Sri Lanka, and many still hope one day to return there. That, the civil war in their island does not yet permit; hence this annual get-together in Bern, where four or five thousand Tamils gather to underline and affirm their spirit of community. When I went to the Bern allmend two summers ago, the weather was wet, but the celebrations were unaffected. The food, the music, the exuberant colors that the people wore and which also adorned the shops: to collectively describe these the English word “festival” seems somewhat antiseptic. Indeed, so completely Tamil was the atmosphere that a Swiss friend who accompanied me to the allmend quietly left after half an hour. It was here that I began my encounter with a remarkable and little-known exile community. In the cities and cantons of Switzerland, I met and interviewed people of great charm yet possessed of a resolute, even chilling, commitment to their violent struggle for liberation. It is far from clear how, or whether, Sri Lanka’s civil ordeal will end, but talking with these Tigers in the Alps provides a cautionary sense of the abyss that has to be bridged. There are 45,000 Tamils in Switzerland, a number more significant than it might at first appear. For there are less than 3.5 million Tamils in Sri Lanka. And there are only about 6 million Swiss. Thus, one in every 80 Sri Lankan Tamils lives in Switzerland. Some live in isolated villages, but most in the cities of the north. In parts of Zurich and Bern one in every 20 residents is Tamil. How did so many Tamils get so far? They came, in the first instance, fleeing the civil war in Sri Lanka. This is a conflict as bloody and brutal, and as apparently incapable of resolution, as the troubles in Palestine and in the Kashmir valley. In 20 years of war, an estimated 70,000 people have lost their lives. Perhaps five times that number have fled, seeking refuge in India, Australia, Canada, and the countries of Western Europe. *Ramachandra Guha is a historian and columnist living in Bangalore. His books include Environmentalism: A Global History and The Picador Book of Cricket. BOOKS Russia and America: How Close an Embrace?
The United States is currently engaged in a debate about the democratization of the Middle East: Is it a moral imperative or a matter of national interest? Is it either feasible or desirable, given the uncertainty over what might follow competitive elections and greater freedom of expression in that unstable region? A decade ago, there was a similar controversy about the democratization of postcommunist Russia during its first turbulent decade. Indeed, during the 2000 U.S. election campaign, “Who lost Russia?” was one of the few foreign policy issues on which the presidential candidates sparred. Russia will likely play much less of a role in the 2004 campaign, but Iraq surely will. The protagonists in those debates would do well to heed the lessons from U.S. participation in the difficult and only partially successful experience in democracy building in Russia in the 1990s. These lessons are important not only for U.S.-Russian relations but for understanding the evolution of future policy in other areas, including the Middle East. Power and Purpose illuminates both the successes and failures of America’s attempts at democratic regime transformation. James Goldgeier of George Washington University and Michael McFaul of Stanford University have done an admirable job chronicling the Russia policies of the first Bush, Clinton, and second Bush administrations. Their book covers many of the events recounted in former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott’s memoir of the Clinton administration, The Russia Hand. However, the authors provide a more critical view of these policies and compare them more explicitly to those of the two Bush administrations. A major theme of their book is that ideas matter in foreign policy and that “the worldviews of key decision-makers play a central role in the making of American foreign policy.” They contrast what they describe as the realpolitik approach of Bush père et fils, both of whom believed that it was not America’s business to become involved in refashioning Russia’s domestic political and economic system, and the Clintonian commitment to a Wilsonian vision: that the United States had a moral duty to become actively involved in constructing a new, democratic polity on the ashes of communism. *Angela E. Stent is professor of government and foreign service, and director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University. She served on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff from 1999 to 2001. Supping with the Devil
It was not an auspicious debut for the new secretary of state. Briefing Washington reporters on the contentious North Korea problem in the early weeks of George W. Bush’s presidency, Colin Powell noted that some “promising elements were left on the table” by the Clinton administration. The Bush team, the secretary asserted, planned “to engage with North Korea to pick up where President Clinton and his administration left off.” The unfortunate Powell might as well have announced he was a pedophile. It took the enraged neocons surrounding Bush less than 24 hours to elicit a public retraction from the secretary. “There was some suggestion that imminent negotiations are about to begin–that is not the case,” an embarrassed Powell told reporters the following day. The administration would undertake a full review of relations with North Korea, with “policies unique to the [Bush] administration.” The Clinton approach with its “promising elements” was effectively derailed. Three years later, the Bush administration is still struggling to fashion a coherent North Korea policy. Permutations of the debate within the administration have been endless. To talk with the North Koreans, or not? Talk, but not negotiate? With preconditions, or without? One-on-one with the North Koreans, or only in a multilateral setting? Engage or isolate, bargain or coerce? Deterrence or preemption? Regime change or security guarantees? Until recently, the administration has seemed to expect that North Korea, cowed by America’s military muscle and by a president willing to employ that might, would unilaterally abandon its nuclear weapons program and, as a precondition for talks with the United States, accept a highly intrusive verification regime designed to preclude the possibility that in some corner of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name), a clandestine nuclear weapons program might be under way. Not until October 2002, nearly midway into Bush’s term, did a senior U.S. official visit the North or actually get down to dealing substantively with Pyongyang. Even then, instructions for the American diplomat were so tightly drawn as to give him little scope for anything other than reading his talking points and making nonnegotiable demands on the North. *Robert M. Hathaway is director of the Asia program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
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