Power Politics

Through Political Theory Daily Review I discovered this very interesting essay by British academic John Gray on America’s role in the 21st century. More specifically, Gray discusses whether the United States can accurately be considered a contemporary empire and the extent to which its posture toward the rest of the world is structured under a coherent imperial framework. Although I often find myself in disagreement with Professor Gray (I take particular issue with some of the philosophical writing he publishes in British periodicals), I’ve found that he has a particular aptitude for taking fashionable modern theories and placing them within the context of historical events and broader reality. His critique of Thomas Friedman’s economic determinism, for instance, was both well-reasoned and well-informed. I’ve yet to read a more intelligent analysis of the limits of the deterministic–and very much technocentrically idealistic–vision espoused by Friedman and others (Gray’s discussion also holds as an effective criticism of the theories of Thomas Barnett, which, while quite popular, are also deeply flawed).

Gray is highly critical of America’s current grand strategy, such as it is, which he rightly views as both ineffective and poorly executed. The most fundamental deficiency, he points out, is that the United States has embarked on an imperial mission (spreading liberal democracy) without a willingness to use imperial tactics. American policymakers have tried to use the short-term application of overwhelming military force in order to accomplish the long-term objective of building new nations with new political characters. Unlike the British of the 19th and 20th centuries, Washington is unwilling to engage in long-term nation and state building. The United States wants to both actively build stable democratic states and not commit to long-term imperialism; these two priorities are simply contradictory.

The comparison between British imperialism and America’s role in the world is also wide of the mark. American bases span the globe, often serving goals similar in kind to those pursued by European colonial powers, but the US is nowhere engaged in colonial rule of the sort that Britain and other European powers established throughout much of the world. European imperialists made a long-term commitment to the territories they annexed. They spent large parts of their lives immersed in the cultures of the countries they had colonized, learning the languages and often forging enduring alliances with local rulers. As well as subjugating and exploiting their colonies they also ruled and lived in them. […]

However, America’s relations with most of the countries in which it stations troops are not long-term relationships of the kind cultivated by the Romans and the Persians. America’s presence is conditional on the shifting pattern of American interests and the contingencies of American politics. When any American overseas military involvement becomes too costly or unpopular it is likely to be abruptly terminated. As a result of this fact, which is taken as axiomatic in both Washington and the countries concerned, long-term alliances with local ruling classes of the kind that enabled empires to endure for centuries in the past are seldom possible.

More succinctly, Gray explains the intrinsic strategic dilemma brought on by current American policy as follows:

There is a larger difference between the role of the American military today and that of European armed forces in the colonial era. European imperialism was an exercise in state-building, and the military forces of the colonial powers usually worked within guidelines framed with the aim of advancing long-term political objectives. In contrast, US forces view themselves and are seen by others as transients and they often act without well-defined political goals. Kaplan reports a National Guardsman in Afghanistan describing his tour of duty: “You get to see places tourists never do. We’re like tourists with guns.” The assumption is that US forces are charged with a one-time mission, and once it is completed they can move on or return home.

The United States is trying to achieve difficult, long-term goals with short-term, ill-advised measures. The use of military force is merely one tool in the greater foreign policy toolkit, and must by necessity be subsumed under a broader grand strategy. For an imperial project to succeed at all, all of the instruments of national power must be used in service of a coherent imperial project, and not relied on individually as ends to themselves. Military force is but one potential component of enforced democratization; economic assistance and nation- and state-building are of equal or greater importance. By decoupling means from both each other and grander ends, rather than crafting a policy of means working in tandem toward ends, the Bush administration has undermined its own program of imperial democratization.

Which is not, of course, to suggest that an imperial project is at all worth pursuing. As Gray wisely concludes, the entire idea of a benevolent imperial America spreading (bungled or not) liberal democracy around the globe through coercion is a dangerously utopian fantasy.

The United States will continue to be pivotal, but it cannot expect its interests or its values to be accepted as paramount. We are moving into a world in which peace will depend on concerted action by several great powers. In these circumstances a revival of realist thinking is overdue. Global security is not served by launching messianic campaigns to export democracy. Nor is it advanced by pursuing a mirage of empire, which even now is melting away.

There is a great much more in the article, and I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

A new poll from Pew suggests that Americans have become more isolationist since the Iraq war.

Forty-two percent of Americans think the United States should ‘’mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own,'’ according to the survey, which was conducted by the Pew Research Center in association with the Council on Foreign Relations.

That is an increase of 40 percent since a poll taken in December 2002, before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq; at that time only 30 percent of Americans said the country should mind its own business internationally.

Take the results with a grain of salt. Public policy polls are always unreliable to some degree, since much of the American public has only a tangential knowledge of the issues at hand. Respondents often answer without meaningful comprehension or true feeling. Public opinion is, furthermore, ephemeral and variable; transitory foreign events can play a significant role in shaping short-term public perceptions.

Nevertheless, the sentiment highlighted by this poll appears to be entrenched and durable. The American public have turned against the President on his Iraq war policy and have become quite dissatisfied with his management of the reconstruction. This is logical; the president’s policies have been manifestly unimpressive, and his incompetence has cost the United States lives, money, materiel, and prestige. The question is, of what consequence will this be to the conduct of US foreign policy.

To some extent, the answer is “not much.” Foreign policy, aside from perhaps war policy, is well insulated from public pressures. The public, again aside from wars, doesn’t feel strongly about the conduct of foreign policy and is often uninterested in even broad foreign policy issues. Complexity, opacity, and seeming irrelevance to daily life are the hallmarks of diplomacy and foreign relations, and thus it is difficult for the public to become energized about the subject, let alone develop a sophisticated understanding. Where national opinion on foreign policy does matter is in directly affecting the president’s approval ratings.

That appears to make it very relevant in this case, however. President Bush’s approval ratings are very low, owing in part to his mishandling of the Iraq war; extreme public dissatisfaction over war policy has been translated into poor voter approval ratings. That is significant because it reduces the president’s political leverage tremendously. The president depends on public support to advance his agenda through and get his policies enacted by Congress and the bureaucracy. Without this support, Congressional representatives can and will rise in opposition. This is precisely what’s happening today. Both in the foreign and domestic spheres, the President is on the defensive and weak. He is forced to focus his political capital and attention on domestic issues to shore up support, which takes away a lot of what already reduced leverage over foreign relations he has left. Foreign leaders recognize this, and are often able to exploit it.

That is the central foreign policy dilemma of a weak president, and it’s a very difficult obstacle to overcome. Most presidents have not been able to implement a successful foreign policy program under these conditions (Truman, of course, is a prominent exception); I suspect that Bush will suffer a similar fate.

I have been a long-time critic of many aspects of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, particularly in relation to its endorsement of unothodox policy theories that are more flagrantly ineffective than visionary. Its commitment to neoconservatism and the invasion of Iraq, for instance, have been disasters for American power and resources. Its single-minded devotion to an unworkable national missile defense shield has been a waste of time and capital that unnecessarily strained relations with Moscow. An unwillingness to compromise over democratic ideals has cost the United States leverage and influence in strategically crucial Central Asia, while the mishandled reconstruction effort in Afghanistan threatens to leave the country in its traditional state of ruin. And so on.

Which is not to say that current administration has not had its share of successes. Its promotion of free trade agreements has been laudable. The Millenium Challenge Account and other forward-looking aid programs are a welcome addition to America’s effort in international development. The White House has also done a relatively good job at managing diplomacy in Asia; it has successfully strengthened ties with Australia, Japan, Singapore, and Indonesia. By adopting a reasoned and sensible posture toward Taiwan, the administration has averted conflict and laid the groundwork for future stability. With respect to the Middle East, the administration’s tactful diplomacy succeeded in forcing Syria to susbstantially reduce its control over Lebanaon. And so on.

Two articles in the Washington Times today boost the latter case considerably. The first is a report that the United States is ready to normalize ambassadorial relations with Libya. The second is a report that Washington is willing to work with the leaders of a recent Mauritanian coup. While neither of these stories is new, both offer potent examples of how traditional diplomacy is often more effective than the blunt club Mr. Bush has sometimes preferred.

Libya is perhaps the more clearcut case. In the 1980s, Tripoli was ardently anti-American, seeking to advance its interests in direct opposition to those of the United States. It sponsored terrorism, sought backing from the Soviet Union, and adopted a system of pan-African socialism. It was rightly considered an enemy, and President Reagan even ordered an aerial attack on the country after one of the terrorist attacks it had sponsored killed three American soldiers. Diplomatic relations were severed, and Libya became an international pariah. After its patron collapsed in 1990, Libya languished under strictly maintained international sanctions. With the disfunctional economy stagnating, military dictator Muammar Qaddafi decided to reverse his previous anti-Westernism and seek improved relations with the United States in the mid-1990s. Because his country contained significant deposits of both oil and natural gas, his diplomatic overtures received considerable attention in Washington.

President Clinton, in consulation with London, decided to conduct diplomatic negotiations aimed at normalizing relations. These proceeded apace for some time, and the Bush administration wisely decided to continue the policy when it arrived in office. The process finally brought results in 2003, when the two countries agreed to incrementally normalize relations. In exchange for Western investment and support, Qaddafi agreed to open up Libya’s hydrocarbon deposits and give American firms preferential access. He further acquiesced to paying generous punitive damages to the victims of the Lockerbie bombings, which he had sponsored. He also sought future business ties with the West, both to invigorate the Libyan economy and to modernize Tripoli’s decaying military. Parallel to this, though, Libya was quietly developing nuclear weaponry. When President Bush’s newly developed anti-proliferation regime successfully caught Libya importing nuclear materials redhanded, Qaddafi agreed to completely disarm and hand over all relevant information and resources to Washington. By using a combination of incentives, coercion, and multilateral security cooperation, the United States benefitted substantially. It gained access to a new and valuable source of hydrocarbons, brought an international pariah back into the international order, opened up a lucrative new market for sales and investment, prevented the emergence of a new nuclear power, and uncovered the AQ Khan nuclear proliferation network (which threatened to destabilize the world). This is the type of flexible and wise policy that produces results.

In Mauritania, another oil producing state, the United States had until quite recently support the leadership of President Taya. Taya was quite willing to act as a client of the US, and vigorously supported the war on terrorism (although he mostly used it as an excuse to jail Islamic dissidents). More importantly, his country was strategically located in West Africa, a part of the world that America will be increasingly dependent upon as a source of oil. Washington’s alliance with Nouakchott not only allowed it to exploit Mauritania’s indigenous reserves, but put it in an opportune position to secure and protect West Africa’s other deposits. Earlier this month, President Taya was ousted by a military coup. The officers released the Islamic dissidents and declared that they would hold democratic elections within two years. Although the freedom and governance of their country was likely indeed an important motive behind the coup (many military leaders are surprisingly supportive of wise governance), there is no doubt that petroleum was involved. The officers are likely hoping to be able to acquire a portion of the revenue that’s produced as the oil fields begin pumping. Yet the men are pragmatists, and were fully willing to resume cooperation with the United States. Although initially opposed to the ousting of Taya, the White House has been surprisingly flexible in dealing with the situation. Realizing that Taya was not coming back to power, the administration decided to drop its opposition to the new leaders and deal with them at face value. Instead of adhering to a destructive policy of refusing to cooperate with the new government, Washington has wisely come to terms with it. As with Libya, this pragmatism will yield significant strategic benefits.

Diplomacy, pragmatism, and the traditional tools of statecraft have served as the essential elements of successful foreign policy for centuries. This did not come to an end after the Cold War. As the neoconservative grand strategy unravels, it behooves the White House to return to the fundamental, and still superior, tools of foreign relations. Unsurprisingly, it seems that President Bush is wisely doing just that. And as the examples of Libya and Mauritania demonstrate, the administration can do it quite successfully.

One of the most enduring features of American foreign policy has been the constant interplay between the executive, legislative, and even judicial branches in defining, shaping, and conducting Washington’s policy’s toward the rest of the world. From the time of George Washington onward to the present day, Congress and the President have clashed over foreign relations, the balance of power between them continually shifting in responsive to a complex web of extrinsic and intrinsic pressures. The Supreme Court, for its part, has seen fit to dispute the constitutionality of measures promulgated by both. Yet one facet of this tripartite struggle has remained curiously stable: the power to make and control war has been firmly and perpetually placed under the authority of the executive branch. Emily Bazelon, a senior editor at Slate, has written an essay in the New York Times Book Review analyzing the phenomenon in the context of American law.

The focus of her essay is on political scientist Peter Irons’s latest book, War Powers, in which he seeks to demonstrate that the executive branch of the US government has made unconstitutionally strengthening its war powers a central policy aim throughout history. The author further believes that this policy was enacted in service of American empire and aggressive militaristic expansion. He casts blame for this across the entire spectrum of American democratic institutions. The courts have been unwilling to challenge Presidential war policy, Congress has allowed its authority to be supplanted, and the electorate has not pressured “their elected representatives to reclaim their power,” Dr. Irons contends.

He provides ample evidence of this, some of which Bazelon cites.

Since James Polk’s unilateral initiation of war with Mexico in 1845, American presidents have sent troops abroad on dozens of occasions, though Congress has declared war only five times in the nation’s history. […]

The first suggestion that Congress wasn’t up to playing its intended role came in 1815, when pirate raids of American ships by the Barbary States prompted Madison, now president, to ask Congress for a declaration of war against Algiers. Instead, he got a bill authorizing him to employ ‘’such of the armed vessels of the United States as may be judged requisite.'’ Irons rightly points out that this authorization was much like the blank checks Congress handed to presidents during the Vietnam War, without the full debate that’s expected to precede a declaration of war. Already, the legislature was abdicating.

The 19th-century presidents differ from their successors not because they took care to remain within the Constitution’s framework, but because they admitted doubts about the legality of straying from it. The best example is Lincoln. A week after Confederate troops attacked Fort Sumter in April 1861, 20,000 secessionists in Baltimore tried to block Union troops from switching trains on their way to protect the capital. Congress was out of session. Fearing that there would be no more federal government in Washington if Maryland were to fall, Lincoln ordered Union officers to arrest and detain the secessionists and suspended the writ of habeas corpus — cutting off the detainees’ access to the courts despite the Constitution’s clear directive that only Congress had such authority.

Yet after the House and Senate returned to session, Lincoln reminded Congress that it had the power to impeach him, asked for a vote affirming his course of action and won an after-the-fact majority in both houses. Contrast that with Harry Truman’s claim that he could commit troops in Korea without Congress’s say-so, and that he had the inherent power to take possession of the nation’s steel mills once war had begun.

One could add America’s numerous military interventions in Latin America to the list as well. Or the wars of expansion in the 19th century. After the coming of the imperial Presidency under McKinley and Roosevelt, independent executive military action become commonplace. Though perhaps war is too strong a term, such endeavors were clearly an expression of the strength of executive branch war powers.

As far as constitutional law is concerned, Bazelon aptly notes that “Irons is on well-charted and fairly unassailable ground in arguing that American presidents have enlarged the war powers of their office far beyond the framers’ vision.” As she writes earlier,

Take the text’s division of war powers between the president and Congress. The framers made the president commander in chief but, determined not to create a despot, gave Congress the power ‘’to declare war. . . . To raise and support armies. . . . To provide and maintain a navy'’ and to send private ships to mount limited reprisals against other nations. Executive powers ‘’do not include the rights of war and peace,'’ James Madison argued at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, ‘’but should be confined and defined — if large we should have the evils of elected monarchies.'’ The hawks in the executive branch were to be kept caged.

Based on a literal (or rather an original intent) intepretation of the Constitution, Presidential war powers have far exceeded their constitutional bounds for much of the nation’s history. Even taking a more expansive view of the Constitution, and looking at the war powers clauses as being elastic, it is hard to argue that the executive branch has not increased the scope and spread of its powers to level beyond constitutional tolerance. Scholar Joseph Story wrote a particularly insightful commentary on the views of the founders in crafting the war powers provisions of the Constitution.

In any case, an expanded definition of executive branch war powers has become ingrained in the American political system. Whether or not this contentious authority is constitutional, it has attained legal and political legitimacy. The more interesting question, as the reviewer notes, is “why […] the framers’ notion of a president and Congress equal in war powers so regularly failed to materialize.” Bazelon offers several explanations.

In his forthcoming book ‘’America’s Constitution: A Biography,'’ the Yale Law School professor Akhil Reed Amar points to three features of the presidency that Congress lacks. The executive branch is always open for business (unlike Congress and the courts, it was designed to remain permanently in session). The president has only his own mind to make up. And he has access to intelligence that most members of Congress don’t. This helps explain why the legislature often acts like the president’s sidekick rather than his partner.

Professor Amar’s theory is interesting, but only marginally explains the presidency’s enduring war powers. He notes that the executive branch is always operating, while Congress is often not in session; presumably, his point is that this allows the president to react quickly and efficiently, while Congress is sometimes bogged down and unavailable. This is weak at best. War is not a decision taken lightly or quickly, especially not in the United States. After the September 11th attacks, for instance, it took months for the nation to finally go to war against Afghanistan. There was extensive debate, discussion, and consideration in all quarters (including the Congress) before the decision was made. Even in other cases, from American intervention in Latin America to 19th century expansion to 20th century imperialism, Congress has had plenty of time to review the situation and pass judgement. In fact, I don’t think there was ever a war that was materially shaped by Congress being out of session.

Second, Amar says that the president’s authority is much more concentrated and responsive; this is true. Congress is a deliberative body designed to act slowly and cautiously. No doubt the executive branch is able to exploit this sluggishness to advance its own war policies before Congress can rise in opposition. Yet this is a minor factor. Congress can summon the authority to act when it wants to, and in most cases has an opportunity to do so. It has the power of the purse, so to speak, and the ability to cut off funding fairly quickly for a war that it’s dissatisfied with.

Finally, in the matter of intelligence, it is again a marginal factor. Congress, or at least its foreign relations committees, is not uninformed. It may give the president some leeway on the issue of intelligence assessments and threats, but that does not prevent it from overseeing the president’s warmaking powers; at best, it would make the legislature slightly more likely to give the president the authority to go to war.

Instead, I believe, the chasm between the Constitution and reality flows from a more fundamental source. In most other nation-states, even democratic states, the executive branch is given great authority over the matter of war. Giving the legislature such a tight grip over war powers, as the founders sought to do, was a unique experiment. It was also bound to fail. In the 18th and 19th centuries, war was an indispensible foreign policy instrument that the new republic was forced to rely on time and again. Employing this instrument decisively and effectively was a requisite for success, and the bifurcated system envisioned in 1789 was too unresponsive and inefficient to work well. War powers, being so essential, were thus almost predestined to devolve to a single authority. The executive branch, designed to be responsive and action-oriented, already played a dominant role in the nation’s foreign policy, and was naturally poised to take over the role; it did so. Thus, the true reason that the executive branch assumed such expansive war powers was a result of the nature of the international system, not really because of the peculiarities of American governance. As the United States became a great power, and then a superpower, military force became increasingly important; that increasing importance was what solidified executive control over the initiation and conduct of war.

Addendum: The author of War Powers, Dr. Peter Irons, has notified me that the book review cited above misrepresented his analysis of the causes of the erosion of oversight of executive war powers. In particular, Bazelon suggested that Dr. Irons did not discuss the issue. In fact, though the author confined this matter to his conclusion, he definitely did treat it; he refers the reader especially to pages 260 through 265.