Which Foreign Policy Tribe Do You Belong To?
Quick! In foreign affairs do you consider yourself to be an “American Skeptic”; a “Come Home American”; a “Truman Democrat”; or a “Globalist?” Inquiring minds want to know. For explanations read Campbell and Chollet’s ‘tell all’ piece in the current Washington Quarterly. But also consider this.
What these two think tank-based authors do is to parse the Democratic and Republic foreign policy communities looking for cliques and ‘tribes’ that share certain common attitudes and policy preferences toward the use of force, the role of diplomacy, the likelihood of international threats, democracy-promotion and so forth. They found such cliques, four in each party. Kurt Campbell and Derek Chollet conclude by inviting a kind of trans-clique dialogue on the big issues of the day. ..”the current political moment offers a unique opportunity…for [r]esponsible public leaders….to encourage dialogue among the cliques….during a period in which important ideas will have significant consequences.” They got that right.
But no one can give an unambiguous plug on an americaabroad.tpmcafe blog, so here’s my stack of questions. Are there really this many sub-divisions that actually count for something? Campbell and Chollet minimize some genuinely distinctive, fundamental and politically divisive fault lines to make their simplifying assumptions about cliques. They risk creating distinctions without differences, of overcomplicating. At some level, for example, the distinctions between the blue and the red do matter; just as it matters that hard power culture and soft power culture in the foreign policy communities clash. At the core of lots (maybe most) of the cliques lurk the realists and hard-power believers, who seem to fare better in Washington corridors than the soft power advocates.
Are these categories real, or just inside-the-beltway confections of the cognoscenti? Do they really portray accurately the pillars of foreign policy power brokers? Or are these people just really good conversationalists? That is for you to judge. (To be fair, Campbell and Chollet anticipate most of these questions in their essay.) But it’s worth taking a look at their lists; they remind us that foreign policy is a contact sport with teams, fans and backers. It’s not just debated in senior common rooms and specialty foreign affairs journals. And hey, maybe these guys are right, and cliques and networks do matter for the design and conduct of foreign policy. If I wanted to teach how Washington works, I would certainly assign this to my students. (Actually I have assigned it to my students this semester in my 'hard power/soft power' class at USC.)
To remind ourselves of the political successes of disciplined foreign policy tribes – and their potentials for disastrous foreign policy failure - one has only to read The Rise of the Vulcans, James Mann’s excellent account of the tribe currently dominating imperial power in Washington. Too little tribal certainty is a bad thing, as Democrats know all too well; but so is too much certainty.
I hope somebody, maybe Campbell and Chollet, stay tuned to these groups and report regularly over the next 24 months. Let’s see how the cliques form and re-form; let’s see how exclusive or inclusive they are of a variety of perspectives and expertise. Let’s see if they really do engage in principled dialogue. As war is too important to be left to generals, so the cliques are too important to be left to themselves. Stay tuned.
"Are these categories real, or just inside-the-beltway confections of the cognoscenti?" Certainly the whole concept of cliques or tribes suggests the latter, even if they weren't so out of touch with ordinary liberal values.
I can speculate on what Truman would do if he were alive today in a world without those nation states as enemies that haunt the Neocons, on exactly what we should be skeptical about, on how a concern for America at home could guide its responses abroad, and on how my beliefs should best adapt to a world that might make us all best considered globalists. But those are debates worth having, not positions to stake out with phony excuses for American hegemony, as with the Concert of Democracies. Let's have guests in America Abroad who are not interested in the Beltway.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
December 28, 2006 9:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Would it were so; but aren't the "inside-the-beltway" "cognoscenti" the only people who really count?
December 28, 2006 9:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
It would seem that an issues that none of the tribes may be in a position to fit in their views is the fraying of the Treaty of Westphalis, the nation states. Whether Nasser's Pan-Arabism or the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, The Iranian Revolution, Hazbollah and Hamas the Middle East, if not other areas, are filled with groups that do not respect the nation state. How do any of these tribes cope with this force?
Adding to this force is Tom Friedman's generally correct view of the flattening of the world. technology, communications and businesses, and to a lesser extent labor are all ignoring national borders. Capital, good, work and ideas all transcend anyone nation. What do foreign policy tribes have to say when what is foreign is shrinking?
Daniel A. Greenbaum
December 28, 2006 10:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
I guess I would have to count myself a reluctant Globalist.
Of all the positions outlined in the Campbell & Chollet article, it is at once pragmatic and idealistic. Rather than fruitlessly pursuing global disengagement as the "American Skeptics" might, the Globalist recognizes that we cannot hide from the world or hope that other competing forces cannot unite nations to our distinct disadvantage. Furthermore, I do believe we have much to offer the rest of the world as a model of a functioning (albeit imperfect) democracy.
I tend to prefer the use of diplomacy and economic carrots to the heavy reliance upon the stick, with a much higher threshold for determining when the stick is appropriate than Teddy Roosvelt or the Truman Democrats might. You win some, you lose some, but force is something that requires more than a pile of circumstantial evidence. And economic "threats" almost never justify military action. We have an unsurpassed position of strength and have many economic tools at our disposal.
Finally, I'd like to offer a different take on Daniel Greenbaum's assertion that
I realize that you are speaking in terms of global capitalism, but that is only one slice of the pie. I would argue that what is foreign will merely be determined by other factors and that a global economy actually means far more contact with what we consider foreign. The only way it becomes less so is if we are open to re-evaluate what foreignness means so that it appears less menacing.As a brief example, a few years ago Google launched their own virtual community service which was dominated by English speakers. When a large contingent of Brazilians started communicating in Portugese, the English speakers (mostly American) were immediately suspicious and hostile, declaring that this space was English-only. That kind of mentality (held by many more people on this globe than just mono-lingual Americans) justifies every suspicion about American intentions in the conduct of Foreign Policy. The global genie is not going back into the bottle, so we might as well reimagine what Realpolitik means in the 21st Century.
December 28, 2006 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
You may be correct that reluctant Globalist is the only real option, but I'd take off the idealistic glasses if I were you. I heard a phrase the other day that ties in with my hunch about globalization - "globalization of grievance". Most globalists fixate on the economic aspects but as we've seen both domestically and abroad, religion and culture are enormously powerful and great drivers of mass movements. As nation states become weaker, how do we harness those forces?
December 28, 2006 4:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wasn't able to find my own clique in the yearbook.
You would never know from Campbell and Chollet's piece that there is actually a global movement of the left, and that some substantial body of Democrats either self-consciously think of themselves as parts of this movement, or at least share its aims. The aims of the global left differ from those of both the neoliberal Globalists and the Truman Democrats; and they go well beyond those of the American Skeptics and the Come Home Americans. These latter two cliques are described in limited, America-fixated terms.
December 28, 2006 10:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hello Again,
In answer to your stated question I consider myself a member of the exceedingly lonely tribe of Abashed Imperialist. I'm not fond of the concept of the nation-state to begin with in large part because my country is not a nation-state and trying to divide up the lands within the United States by ethnic group would be a disaster. The United States, China and Russia are all empires and most of the places we've been having difficulties with (Kosovo, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq) were once relatively stable provinces of the Ottoman Empire, at least when it was strong.
Certainly the highly exploitative and non-inclusive empires of Europe and Japan (and the U.S. as well) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have left the concept of imperialism heavily tainted but large empires do historically provide fertile environments for innovation and prosperity by providing peace within its borders and measurement standards and common laws.
Having said all of this I am not advocating that we or anybody else take over the world or any parts of it (although I do think the American Territories ought to decide whether they are in or out). But I do think that places that are divided into ethnic and religious and racial "countries" are ill-served by that arrangement and that our foreign policies should promote inclusiveness and equality in large countries rather than separation and purity in little ones.
Also Mr. Greenbaum's points about economic interests becoming bigger than countries reinforces, in my mind at least, my position that large strong governments are necessary to keep entities who view people merely as tools of production under control. One of the best tell-tale signs of the end of an empire and the beginning of general misery is the success of the wealthy when it comes to isolating their wealth from tax rolls. Governments have historically felt compelled to represent the needs of the people (some have been better at this than others) against the aristocracy. When an imperial government fails to do this, the people tend to rise up and overthrow it. The emperors are now presidents and premiers and the aristocracy is now the Fortune 500 but the concepts are the same. If the governments fail to control the companies and exploitation gets completely out of hand the revolution can be just as global as the economy. And if you think chaos is annoying in Iraq, wait 'til it's on your doorstep. I digress.
Question 2, are these categories real? The fact that I just made up my own category suggests not. There certainly are factions within the parties and some of these factions have established foreign policy outlooks. This is natural to any system that does not have 287 stupid little parties. There are definitely factions in the Democratic Party that share some foreign policy outlooks with factions in the Republican Party but have differences in other areas which keep them politically separated and have them supporting different politicians. After all, no matter how much I have in common with a Republican office seeker, I'll never vote for him. This is because when the votes get tight he's going to align with his leadership. Our common planks won't threaten his party platform, otherwise he wouldn't be a Republican. Others on the right can argue the same from their point of view.
What can happen is that strengths and weaknesses in those factions can guide the direction on a particular field of the party on the whole. Whereas today popular sentiment is strengthening the less-hawkish factions of the Republican Party and may move that party away from the neocon directive, they're still not going to embrace any kind of sane revenue policy. Democrats will still be Democrats and Republicans will still be Republicans. Where the factions become important is in the possession of the mantel of leadership within the parties. If hawks have control of the leadership than those less committed or willing to negotiate will cast their votes for aggressive policy. If the Doves have control then the center within the party will follow their lead. What goes on across the aisle will by-and-large be immaterial. At least that is my take.
December 28, 2006 10:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Any time one embraces an ideology, however reluctantly, one risks being labelled an idealist. Meanwhile, I see you haven't picked a category for yourself. Do you see one you can embrace, even reluctantly, or are you a foreign policy curmudgeon who seeks faults without finding something to stand for?
Some forces might not be for us to "harness" like wind for creating electricity; others might require a more direct approach with more stick than carrot. I was always in support of our activities in Afghanistan and my objections to action against Iraq were in part based on a fear that we hadn't finished the job. Obviously Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al. believed that merely displacing a totalitarian government while supplying a skeleton crew for holding elections was all that was necessary to transform the Middle East. If anyone was idealistic and naive, it was them. Iraq, meanwhile, posed no demonstrable threat and most of the threat identified was based upon speculation in a great deal of uncertainty. Once the threat of further action got inspectors back into Iraq, we actually had better intelligence than the Bush Administration was willing to admit. Their failure to recognize that was error #1.
Finally, I have no illusions about the limitless power of economic forces. In early 2003 I argued with a neo-con colleague of mine that action in Iraq was doomed to splinter the country. He insisted that economic prosperity would galvinize the sects into working together. I pointed out that the Kurds already had a relative amount of financial success thanks to the no-fly zone, but they wanted something else--a country of their own. Nothing that they've done since then has convinced me that the objective of a homeland has changed; they're more patient than we give them credit for.
December 30, 2006 7:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Really thoughtful comments...
I liked the term 'reluctant globalist', but maybe there's another tag that builds in some of the considerations raised in these discussions. What about the 'progressive globalist'?
Of the 4 tribes described so far by C&C, none seems to capture the continuing powerful appeal of nationalism; someone used the term 'the globalization of grievances'. American observers have a hard time understanding those dynamics of local grievances transformed into anti-American, anti-globalization nationalism.
Nor do they adequately get the de-statization of the world, as several people pointed out here. But it's a double challenge because trans-national networks are indeed growing, but so are various forms of state-based nationalism.
Finally, the tribes as described aren't linked firmsly with the US domestic reform agenda, which should be a big part of a progressive foreign policy.
December 30, 2006 9:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
My position was staked out relative to the C&C article of the original blog. The idea of a "Progressive Globalist" or "Global Progressive" has potential, though I might want to know more about what you're suggesting by it. Do you mean a foreign policy that engages more than nation states, even to the extremes of corporatism and tribalism? I think I would then want to know what kind of specific policies would be implemented and to what objectives.
But I'm always ready to listen to an idea that might nudge me from a position of reluctance.
December 30, 2006 10:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe because the U.S. unlike most other democracies are unthreatened?
January 6, 2007 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink