What Americans Will Vote for on Foreign Policy
Two of the most frequent criticisms or concerns that John and I hear when we present the Princeton Project final report are ones raised by Dan and Peter in their thoughtful and helpful posts. First is the charge that a multidimensional national security policy will have too many dimensions for the American people to swallow; that it will be trumped every time by the appealing simplicity of the war on terror with Islamo-Fascism as the enemy. That was the appeal of containment, the argument goes: it was wonderfully simple. We can argue all we want that we face multiple threats, but voters simply won't buy a national security strategy with too many moving parts. Second, as Peter argues particularly, the votes just aren't there for engagement with international institutions on any basis, a strategy that he characterizes as "substituting international partnership for national power."
Not surprisingly, we disagree on both counts.
The best counter-argument comes from a review of some striking recent findings about the mood of the electorate on foreign policy and partnership. A recent poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes and WorldPublicOpinion.Org finds that 7 in 10 Americans want a "sea-change in American foreign policy," away from a reliance on military force and toward "diplomacy, multilateral cooperation, and homeland security." Consider the following:
"Americans show a strong preference for Congressional candidates who would seek to increase multilateral cooperation. Seventy-two percent say they would prefer candidates who believe that "the U.S. should do its share in efforts to solve international problems together with other countries." Much less popular are candidates who want the United States to "continue to be the preeminent world leader" (9% support) or to "withdraw from most efforts to solve international problems" (16%)."
The White House Project, which supports women candidates across the political spectrum, has found in its polling that the message that resonates the most strongly with security-minded voters is a message focused on international cooperation: "Real security for our communities, our nation, and our world requires a new kind of leadership--women and men who realize that we can't solve the world's problems alone." And finally, consider the finding of the most recent poll conducted by Public Agenda together with Foreign Affairs, which introduced a new "anxiety indicator" to track the country's overall level of anxiety about foreign affairs. The indicator stands at 130, well over the neutral baseline of 100. According to Public Agenda Chairman Daniel Yankelovich. "It's not just one event or one specific policy that is worrying people-it's Iraq, it's the danger of a terrorist attack, it's energy dependence, it's our diminished reputation around the world, it's the rise of violent Muslim extremism. People see the country in trouble on multiple fronts."
All of that says that voters are not only ready for, but that they want an approach to national security that goes well beyond the war on terror. They see Iraq as a huge issue, but not the only issue. It also says that they are ready for a message that says we have to address all the threats we face in cooperation with other nations. They understand that international institutions are not traps that are going to constrain our sovereignty and force us to take on all the world's problems, but rather engines of cooperation and burden-sharing in taking on the global challenges we can't avoid. As long as those institutions work.
That is exactly the prescription of the Princeton Project. The U.S. has to build an infrastructure of capacity and cooperation, one capable of taking on many threats and once and harnessing the energies of as many nations as possible, together with the private and the citizens sectors, to face these threats together. That framework is captured in the one overarching concept of liberty under law - a concept that has two more words than containment, true, but is nevertheless simple enough and powerful enough to communicate to voters.
Liberty under law is woven into the fabric of our own history. Bruce Jentleson just sent me the following quote from an article by Robert Conquest in the 2005/2006 winter issue of The National Interest:"'Democracy' did not develop or become viable in the West until quite a time after a law-and-liberty polity had emerged. Habeas corpus, the jury system and the rule of law were not products of 'democracy,' but of a long effort, from medieval times, to curb the power of the English exec. And democracy can only be seen in any positive or laudable sense if it emerges from and is an aspect of the law-and-liberty tradition."
That is the way we should be trying to build strong, prosperous societies abroad under the rule of law. Equally important, liberty under law was the key to our success as an effective global leader in the 20th century. As our presidents knew from FDR to George H.W. Bush, for America to establish order and liberty among nations, we had to accept that international law applied to us as well as to our allies and rivals.
President Bush's campaign slogan in 2004 was "freedom is on the march." What the world has seen since is that freedom without order is chaos. And order without law is tyranny. America cannot stand for liberty without also standing for law, both at home and abroad. And we can't stand for law without obeying it ourselves, both at home and abroad. But if we take liberty under law as our standard, and mean what we say, we can once again stand tall in the world and find many partners in helping reform and build institutions that will make us both stronger and safer.
I appreciate this response to the critiques that have been offered. But I wonder, does supporting a foreign policy that relies on diplomacy and multilateralism the same as supporting engagement with international institutions? That seems to be the assumption that this article makes. However, that cannot be taken for granted.
There's a small town in southern Utah by the name of LaVerken. It has voted to secede from the United Nations and has ratified that vote for the past decade and a half. Okay, it's a small town and it cannot really secede from the U.N. Such instances, though, make me skeptical that the U.S. public really desires a more institution-based foreign policy -- or even that the public is ready for that.
The only way that international institutions will work and will legitimately promote liberty under law is if all the member states give some of their sovereignty over to the institution. And that is something that would not poll well in the United States.
October 23, 2006 10:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
“Americans show a strong preference for Congressional candidates who would . . . ."
Which demonstrates that Americans have no idea of what the duties of their Congress(person), under the Constitution, actually are.
October 23, 2006 11:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Once again conflating objectives with tactics. We get it, you want to place nice and not bomb the **** out of prospective partners. To what aim?
You refuse to acknowledge that it isn't our place in the world to bring democracy and "western values" to anyone. This assumption is just the latest variation of neo-colonialism and the white man's burden. The US is engaged in maintaining its standard of living and doing this cheaply implies taking advantage of weaker states. Perhaps they want to keep their raw materials for themselves or sell to China. Perhaps they don't want to replace local agricultural crops with ones designed for our needs. Perhaps they have found that there are other things in life than owning stuff and they would really prefer not working in sweat shops for the privilege of buying stuff they don't really need.
You can sugar coat this all you want with talk of democracy, but what happens when the weaker states don't wish to play by our rules?
Get real, that's when we send in the Marines. We have been doing it for 108 years and we aren't about to stop now, even as our success rate continues to drop to almost zero.
Your blindness over what your true assumptions are makes you good candidates to join the present administration when they "change course". Just what they need - new tactics, same objectives - cheap oil.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
October 23, 2006 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I believe that polls have shown fairly consitently for many years that Americans want other countries to assume more responsibility for the world's security problems and crises, so that the US will be burdened with less of that responsibility. They consitently say that the US should not be "the world's policeman." They believe that other countries free ride on US military powers and security provisions. They want those countries to pull more of their own weight.
Consequently, they want more US cooperation with other countries, because cooperation means sharing burdens. They want to cooperate on solving global problems so that the US doesn't have to solve those problems all by itself. (That the US does work constructively to "solve problems" all by itself - as opposed to making those problems worse - is a matter for debate, but I believe that's the way the public sees it.)
But what Americans do not want is a commitment to massive national projects, whether alone or in conjunction with others, that require substantially more expenditures of national resources, more US soldiers suffering and dying in foreign lands, and more budensome entanglements and obligations, without clear and obvious benefits for Americans commensurate with the cost.
So if you want to convince Americans to support an innovative internationalist agenda, you are going to have to convince them that accomplishing this agenda will make our own lives easier - that we will get more out of it than we put in.
My sense is that Americans are not at all in the mood to create a powerful new alliance - i.e. the Concert of Democracies with a powerful new NATO bacstop - which will call on the United States to assume more national burdens, and put their sons and daughters lives in hock to an entirely new round of mutual foreign security commitments, when there is no clear and urgent mission for this alliance, and when the threats it is designed to combat are vague, speculative or non-existent.
People form alliances, and pledge themselves to the weighty obligations those alliances require, when they perceive some grave, common external threat that makes the costs of failure to band together clearly greater than the costs of the mutual pledge. I don't think we have such a situation today.
October 23, 2006 2:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder if there are rivers of chocolate now flowing through bucolic Princeton with gumdrop trees blooming on their banks.
At some point, this simply boils down to the idealism of Slaughter and Ikenberry juxtaposed to the realism suggested by their myriad critics. One can wish all one wants for a cooperative, peaceful world in which international institutions are effective stabilizers of the international system. Many have had that wish before. Others recognize that while this wish may be a noble one, it's unlikely to be realized in international politics anytime soon. If that's the case, then all countries, including the United States, are better advised to pursue a prudent policy that is ever cognizant of the threats posed to them by others' capabilities and the threats posed by their own capbabilities to others.
This realist prescription does not, of course, preclude cooperation as a way of addressing threats (alliances, after all, are at the core of realism). It does, however, warn against having unwarranted faith in international institutions that are constituted by and comprised of self-interested nation-states.
October 23, 2006 3:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
[attempting to type with cat using the keyboard, or my left hand, as a pillow]
Somehow, I am reminded of a wine snob (the scene is from Trevanian's Shibumi) saying "ah, there are Tavels...and Tavels", and his host, who knows what they are drinking, says "ummm...yes."
"ah, there are institution...and institutions". We may smile when Takoma Park, MD, declared itself a nuclear-free zone, although I took the Seminole Nation's declaration of war on the Axis more seriously.
Institutions grow unwieldy to useless when their scope is too wide. C. Northcote Parkinson had several relevant laws, such as one that tracked the size of national cabinets before they would spawn an "inner cabinet". Organizations might well learn from bees, who know, somehow, when it is time to swarm and form a new hive.
I find that the UN agencies that have a reasonable techical, measurable scope do the best work. Perhaps many have never heard of the World Administrative Radio Conference, but it does a very necessary job of allocating radio frequencies around the globe. The International Telecommunications Union does some good work, but is less agile than voluntary organizations such as the Internet Engineering Task Force.
When I've looked at operational reports out of Darfur, the World Food Programme, which is the UN operational agency for the area, does extremely well with limited resources. It tends to impress me that one of their first steps was getting in a radio communications network and teaching local staff how to use it.
One of the most effective is the World Health Organization, in part because it now seems to thrive on a coordinating role for largely regional programs, and making use of various national centers of excellence, such as the South African Institute of Virology, the Institut Pasteur, the US Centers for Disease Control, etc.
While I am not a total supporter of Thomas Barnett, I think he has something with the idea that peace enforcement/nation building is a regional problem. He calls that function "system administrator", to connect developing countries to the core nations. He also identifies "Leviathan" as the first-world military that can get in, knock down the major opposition, and then back up the regional force as it deploys.
Not staying with US examples, this worked fairly well in Sierra Leone, where a British seaborne group took down Foday Sankoh's militia, then withdrew to their ships as the ECOMOG force moved in, and sailed off once ECOMOG and the local government were working again.
I ask, now, that you contrast these focused efforts with the General Assembly, or, at times, the Security Council. Having no operational resources, I wonder how they ever get anything done -- or, in the case of the GA, if they do get anything done.
If anyone is familiar with the deliberative mechanism of the medieval Polish seym, you may see parallels of organizations too unwieldy to act.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 23, 2006 4:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
If I look at my local paper, I see the latest state kid killed in Iraq. Any of you wonks ever been to Beardsley, MN? Me neither. Had to Google it. Population 262 on the SD/MN border -- about as far away from any conceivable foreign policy threat as you could go.
What's our foreign policy got to do with Beardsley other than reducing its population to 261?
I'd suggest that the only dimension that really matters is how your foreign policy impacts Beardsley.
October 23, 2006 5:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good points raised about need for complexity and integration in US foreign policy, AND about the need for clarity and simplicity in our conversations with other Americans about the basis for a Democratic foreign policy. The two should not be counterposed to one another. We also need to add a new word..empathy.
Anyone who has held a foreign policy position, or any administrative managerial position for that matter, knows that one lacks the luxury of deciding which issue to deal with in what order. The world comes at us too fast, and policy makers and managers need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. The Bushies proved unable or unwilling to do that. The PPNS insistence on the complexity of the world, and our need to deal with it, was a useful, forceful statement.
At the same time, Democrats desperately need to simplify the message they convey to their fellow citizens about foreign policy. Beardsley, MN is a good place to start. What do the people in Beardsly care about, day to day? Let's start a conversation there, and then work back to DuPont Circle think tanks.
Just complexity, or just simplicity, is simply insufficient. Posing the challenge as either-or will not move us very far forward.
October 24, 2006 7:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is a great reminder Bluebell. Lately I've had to do a lot of travelling in this country by car, and am struck by the many flags and "Welcome Home" signs that dot the fences lining highway overpasses around the country. These displays, of course, lead one to wonder also about the many soldiers who are not coming home, and the ones who are coming home as damaged semblances of the people they once were.
These sights, and the daily carnage reports from Iraq, have left me heartsick. I have trouble even sustaining my anger, because anger just seems like a selfish and totally inadequate response to the horror.
October 24, 2006 8:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
I do not know where Beardsley, MN is but I know the idea prevalent on the far Left that the rest of the world can be left to its own led to almost 3,000 New Yorkers to be murdered. The notion that we can pretend the rest of the world can go its merry way while naively amusing is dangerous.
The United States is not going to be Sweden or Switzerland no matter how much the Left would like it. It is one of the more interesting things about the upcoming election that it is not about the wrongness of the war in Iraq but Bush's inept conduct of that war. One reson why the Democrats are one the verge of winning is precising because they are not running on a peace blank.
However, an effort to expand the liberalizing global institutions, complete with the United States full backing would make the most sense. Overtime there can be a greater intergration of different nations and economies. With that said the Left, the Right and Islamists will all oppose a system that puts the rights and interests of the individual ahead of groups rights and interests.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
October 24, 2006 11:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
The United States isn't Sweden, but it is New York AND South Dakota and AND New Mexico AND Arkansas AND Ohio AND Oregon and a whole lot of other places full of people with a diversity of perspectives and interests right here at home. It wouldn't hurt you to get out a little more, Daniel and visit your own country.
But for that matter you could do that in New York. Most of New York is Beardsley too. Those firemen at the WTC didn't devise our foreign policy either and who asked what it would cost them?
October 24, 2006 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink