Wolfowitz and his critics: why he is right and they are wrong

A familiar debate surfaced on the pages of Foreign Policy Magazine this week - the ongoing one between neoconservatism and its critics. The subject of controversy is Paul Wolfowitz’s latest intervention. In it, Wolfowitz lays out the basis of his position, draws a sharp contrast between his outlook and that of self-styled 'realists', and considers whether the new administration can in any meaningful sense be called realist. Using a distinction between realism as foreign policy doctrine and a more flexible approach to policy based on the consideration of consequences, he concludes that Obama is a pragmatist, rather than any kind of realist.

Four foreign policy specialists - Steve Clemons, Stephen M. Walt, Daniel D. Drezner and David J. Rothkopf - are then invited to respond. The exchange is a useful primer for anybody interested in the byzantine complexities of the American foreign policy debate, throwing into sharp relief some of its most enduring faultlines, and it is worth reading in full. Of all the respondents, for me Steve Clemons makes the killer distinction - which effectively puts him on the same side of the argument as Wolfowitz - between what he calls the 'pure' realism of John Mearsheimer and his followers on the one hand, and 'policy realists' on the other. That is, between mainstream realists in the foreign policy establishment and their ideological counterparts in the academy. Daniel D. Drezner makes the point by way of a simple stylistic device, reserving the lower case ‘r’ for the pragmatic, policy oriented strain of realism and the upper case ‘R’ for the grand theory.

The distinction is not in any way controversial. Each of the four respondees uses some variation of it. On 25 August, in answer to a question from Theory Talks, for exampe, we find the following from Stephen Walt:

"I’m reasonably sure that Obama has never read Mearsheimer, Waltz, Krasner or Morgenthau, and he probably wouldn’t describe himself in those terms, but I do think he is a realist in the sense that he is essentially a pragmatist – he’s not wedded to a powerful ideological agenda"

So everyone is agreeed. Obama is no dogmatic realist. Although Walt is in agreement with the basic point, his use of language leaves a lot to be desired. The problem with his formulation is that, by not fully differentiating between pragmatism and realism, it ends up conflating them. The whole point about today's realists - and it is a point that appears to elude Walt altogether - is that they are wedded to a powerful ideological agenda. The sort of pragmatism he associates with Obama is a million miles away from the realism of the academy, and he just does not make the point forcefully enough. He is clearly using Daniel Drezner's lower case 'r', but by calling Obama a realist he simply shows up the limitations of framing the distinction in this way. For precision, it is much better to follow Wolfowitz and reserve the 'r' word for the grand theory.

However we frame it, the distinction is real and of central importance. Contra Walt, who then goes on to accuse Wolfowitz of erecting a straw man, the version of realism Wolfowitz describes is not “artificial and contrived”. It is neither “caricature” nor figment of his imagination. It is alive and well in the academy. As I have written elsewhere, it is backed up by a voluminous literature, supported by a sophisticated theoretical edifice and powered by passionate advocacy. At the same time, it is a fundamentally flawed doctrine. At the centre of it is a picture of the world that simply no longer exists. The sort of diplomacy it calls for assumes a world of fixed territorial units and conventional forces - the old Westphalian model of secure borders and unitary states. The world we are confronted with is an altogether different beast. Threats no longer appear as concentrations of conventional military power that can be offset by countervailing coalitions, but rather in an altogether more diffuse form. Gangsterism, warlordism, shadowy transnational terrorist networks - these are the principal threats to American interests in the region and so the idea that America can go around the world simply arranging balancing coalitions in some grand eighteenth-century European style is just absurd. The new strategic environment calls for an altogether more nuanced and subtle diplomacy, a different blend of elements, and a different set of capabilities. Quite simple one would think, elementary even, and yet American realism seems institutionally incapable of grasping it.

The major theoretical statement of this sort of realism, of course, is Mearsheimer’s Tragedy of Great Power Politics. I once wrote a review of Tragedy entitled A Tale of Two Mearsheimers. The basic premise was that, although at his best Mearsheimer is a formidable intellect, a profoundly insightful author and theorist of the first rank - at his worst, he is combative, uncompromising and something of an ideologue. I now realise that the argument was mistaken. There really is only one Mearsheimer and he was always an ideologue. It would have been better to have told the tale of two Walts, because in Walt we really do see something of a transformation. The early Walt is someone with whom I remain in substantial agreement. His most telling contribution was The Origins of Alliances, a wonderful book in which he elaborated what he called ‘balance of threat’ theory. Essentially an amendment to classical balance of power theory, the argument of the book was that states do not balance simply against power, but rather against threats and that, when calculating these, they take into consideration factors such as geographic proximity, offensive capabilities and perceived intentions. It was an important concession to the mainstream and placed him squarely in the pragmatic, policy-oriented tradition.

But he now appears, under the influence of Mearsheimer, to have moved away from that nuanced position to some kind of rigid structural determinism. Any suggestion that regime type matters is completely missing from his analysis. The more time Walt spends with Mearsheimer the more strident his position becomes and the effect of his years of friendship and co-authorship with Mearsheimer is now really quite pronounced. I now find myself in sharp disagreement with him on nearly every point of logic, theory, policy and fact. It is a remarkable journey that Walt has made - from sophisticated realist to strident ideologue. And it is not a transtion that produces nuanced policy analysis. Take his opening shot against Wolfowitz:

"On the most significant foreign policy decision since the end of the Cold War - the ill-fated invasion of Iraq in 2003 - the realists who opposed it were right and Wolfowitz and the other architects of the war were dead wrong"

This is an astonishing claim. It is not at all clear that the realists were right and Wolfowitz wrong. In fact, there are good reasons for thinking the opposite. The first thing to understand about the realist argument against the war in Iraq is that it is part of a wider argument in favour of an alternative grand strategy. Effectively realists want America out of the hegemony business. The aim is to unpick the system of Cold War alliances, scale back America’s overseas commitments and concentrate on the defence of what they regards as 'core' interests. Although this choice has the benefit of aligning policy with long-term historical trends, in that it anticipates the coming multipolar order, the way they push the argument one might think that it was a new concept - that the idea was somehow untested. Take Christopher Layne, Robert M. Gates Professor of Intelligence and National security at the Bush School of Government, author of The Peace of Illusions, and an increasingly prominent advocate of offshore balancing, for example. His basic premise is that since 1940, America has pursued a strategy of preponderance, and that this has weakened her strategic position, rather than strengthen it.

The problem is that the analogy between the European states system and the Middle East, which forms the core of his argument, with the US in the role of would-be hegemon, just does not stand up. America has conducted a balance-of-power diplomacy in the Middle East – not a strategy of preponderance - throwing her weight into the mix first against Egypt under Nasser, then Iraq under Saddam and now Iran under the Mullahs. The overriding imperative at all times has been to maintain a balance of power, not upset it – to preserve the independence of states, not overthrow them. America is a status quo power in the region, not any kind of revolutionary power intent on overthrowing the existing order. Seemingly oblivious to this, Layne goes on to observe that

"by being ... ‘offshore’ and non-threatening, an insular great power can deflect the focus of other states’ security policies away from itself. Simply put, if an offshore power stands on the sidelines, other great powers will compete against each other, not against it .... to capitalise on this dynamic, an insular great power must adopt a non-threatening posture, and not pursue hegemonic ambitions”

This is exactly the pattern we have observed in the Middle East. Jordan and Saudi Arabia ally with the US for this very reason: they fear their neighbours more than they do America. America’s allies in the region know they are not at risk of attack by the US. The only states at risk of attack by the US are those that have posed a threat to the equilibrium – Nasser’s Egypt, Saddam’s Iraq and now revolutionary Iran. The truth of the matter is that challenges to the equilibrium in the Middle East largely come from within the region, not without, and so the reading of the diplomatic history at the centre of Layne’s argument, it seems to me, is just plain wrong.

The same is true of Walt and Mearsheimer. They co-authored an article in the January 2003 issue of Foreign Policy called An Unnecessary War. In it, like Layne - who glibly asserts that the “policy of containment and deterrence worked in 1990 – and was still working in 2003” – they argue that Saddam was “eminently deterrable”. The fact of the matter is that these claims are simply false, and demonstrably so. Saddam set his mind to undermining the containment policy from the start and by the end of the Clinton presidency, the policy was in deep trouble. The Iraqi leader waged an effective propaganda campaign to discredit both the sanctions regime and the UN. Pictures of starving children and reports of up to 100,000 civilian deaths from disease and malnutrition were enough to tip the balance of world opinion against the policy. On top of this, the presence of US forces in Saudi Arabia – a key element of the containment policy – was steadily inflaming anti-American sentiment among Islamic radicals, enraged at what they considered the desecration of Islam’s holiest sites.

At the same time, pressure from France, Russia and China for an end to the policy was steadily eroding our position at the UN and undermining the effectiveness of the inspections regime. Similarly Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, all under pressure from their publics, were each lobbying for an end to the policy. So the policy was just not sustainable over the long term. Far from being “eminently deterrable”, Saddam was on the verge of defeating the policy. The truth of the matter is that containment was effectively dead. The measures necessary to contain Saddam were causing deep resentment throughout the region and beyond, straining alliances to the point where our entire strategic position was in danger of unravelling. The crucial point to remember here, for our wider argument, is that none of these measures were part of any grand hegemonic design. They were part of our effort to contain Saddam and so Layne’s argument that it was our departure from sound balance of power principles that produced what he calls ‘the backlash’ is simply false. It is the balancing strategy that led to the backlash because it required us - across six decades - to build up dictators, to support repressive regimes, to tilt first one way, then another – casting us in the role of defender of tyrants against the freedoms of ordinary Arabs and earning for us a reputation for duplicity and double-dealing. And so the lesson we take from the history is not that we need to return to a balance of power diplomacy, but rather the opposite: that we need to go beyond it. We need to go beyond seeking to uphold a precarious balance and find a way to get beyond the destructive rivalries of the past. That is what we attempted with the Iraq war, and that is the reason Wolfowitz is right and his critics are wrong.

Holbrooke heightens concern over Afghanistan

US Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke’s breezy suggestion that we will know what success in Afghanistan is “when we see it” caused something of a stir in the blogsopshere today. The remarks were made at a Centre for American Progress (CFAP) event in Washington yesterday in response to a question from the floor. The event was conceived as an opportunity for Ambassador Holbrooke and his Interagency Team to settle the nerves of a sceptical foreign policy community by laying out the principles underlying their new ‘whole of government’ approach. In view of what has unfolded, the effort now looks to have been largely counterproductive.

To be fair to Holbrooke, America was already turning sour on the mission in Afghanistan. The debate has become increasingly fractious over the last month, with the most persistent questions centring upon the need for an exit strategy. And that mood was widely reflected in the questions from the floor. Rather than allay people’s fears, however, his comments appear to have compounded them, with commentators seizing on the remark as further evidence that the policy is in trouble. Mark Lynch, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations at Harvard University Stephen M. Walt and Katherine Tiedemann over at foreignpolicy.com and Ian Leslie at the excellent Marbury blog between them pretty much capture the mood, each suggesting that the mission lacks strategic focus and warning of the danger of mission creep, with Walt and Lynch in particular striking an increasingly sceptical note.

Alongside this flurry of criticism, we find the more considered objections of committed sceptics Michael Cohen at Democracy Arsenal and Richard North at Defence of the Realm. I am a great admirer of Richard North. He does important work documenting equipment shortages and failures in procurement policy. Where I have problems is when he tries to draw wider strategic conclusions from it. He has amassed a considerable body of evidence pointing to a devastating catalogue of failure and mismanagement at the heart of the British mission in Iraq and his work is vital reading for that reason alone. It does not, however, pose any serious strategic questions. Fundamentally, his observations are confined to the tactical level and part of the normal ‘lessons learned’ post-conflict debate. Nothing in his work supports his wider argument that we have suffered a strategic defeat in Iraq, or that we are likely to in Afghanistan. I simply do not see evidence for that kind of assessment. Similarly Michael Cohen: I consider his never less than excellent analysis essential reading and yet nothing in his work really addresses the core strategic dilemmas.

To get a grip on these we need to turn back to the arguments of Stephen Walt. Walt comes out of the grand tradition of American realism. Centred around the work of theorists such as Morgenthau, Niebuhr and Waltz - although more latterly John Mearsheimer - the tradition of American realism is a venerable one, of long standing. It is supported by a voluminous literature, backed up by a sophisticated theoretical edifice and powered by passionate advocacy, and yet it is a fundamentally flawed doctrine. It regards as axiomatic the idea that the internal characteristics of states do not affect their outward behaviour. From this perspective, behaviour is structurally determined and so it is not to the internal make up of states that policymakers should look when formulating strategy, but rather to structural factors such as the balance of power.

As a major premise, this was always dubious. In the first decade of the 21st century, it is positively reckless. Anywhere we look in what we might call the ‘Greater Middle East’ - that great arc of instability stretching from the Horn of Africa up to the Central Asian Muslim Republics (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan) - we see the same pattern. Alongside a toxic mix of ethnic, tribal and confessional hatreds we find a horribly dysfunctional state system. Wherever we look, politics is played out against the backdrop of a colossal failure of governance. The threats in the region – be it the threat of balkanisation along tribal, ethnic and confessional lines, of gangsterism and warlordism, or the threat from supranational identities like revolutionary Islam and Arab nationalism – all of them emerge out of the millennial failure of the state. And no amount of elegant structural theorising is going to change that.

What does this mean for US grand strategy? Above all, it means that the old diplomacy is no longer enough. We need to go beyond power balancing. In the Middle East it means undercutting the appeal of regional identities like revolutionary Islam and secular Arab nationalism in favour of the nation state without unleashing forces like ethnic and tribal rivalries that threaten to outstrip the pace of reform and engulf it. It is a delicate balance to strike and a high-risk strategy. Of course, it assumes that Western policy is capable of that kind of nuance and means avoiding clumsy interventions like those undertaken in the past in places such as Suez and Iran. Does it mean turning the region into a "high GDP nirvana" and bringing "free wireless" to the entire world as Mark Lynch facetiously put it? No. There is no universal template that can be applied and even if there were, it would not look like that. The AfPak phase of the mission is scheduled to wind down when Afghanistan crosses the threshold into something approximating self-sustaining growth, when the government in Kabul is able to effectively police its own borders, and when movement across the Durand Line no longer poses a threat to the integrity of the Pakistani state.

The same principle applies throughout the Middle East. The current religious awakening is driven in large part by dissatisfaction with the corruption and impotence of the secular authorities and so again, the optimal course is to weaken the grip of confessional identities, bring some measure of representative government to the region, and reinforce the state system. The principle is being applied in a very direct way in Iraq, of course, the intervention there being a crucial test for the new diplomacy. If the new governance mechanisms do not deliver real benefits on the ground in terms of basic security and services, the population will not embrace them and so this is the real test of success, the real set of benchmarks. If commentators are looking to develop a set of metrics they should look to the civilian effort, rather than solely at the military side of the equation. They would be greatly helped in this endeavour if the top US diplomat in the region could manage to bring just a little more eloquance to his advocacy. "We'll know it when we see it" just isn't good enough.

All Eyes on Mousavi

Pity Mr. Mousavi. With the Supreme Leader’s speech this morning, the crisis in Iran has now entered its most critical phase. Until now, opposition forces have stopped short of challenging the legitimacy of the Islamic regime. By declaring for Ahmadinejad, however, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei effectively upped the ante this morning, placing both his leadership and the authority of the Islamic Republic on the line. The question now is just how far the opposition, and Mr. Mousavi in particular, are prepared to go. He and they have a choice; accept Mr. Ahmadinejad as President or plunge into the unknown. It boils down to a simple test of nerves. This was a calculated provocation by the regime and the pressure on Mr. Mousavi now is immense. How he will respond is unclear.

What is clear is that a proud people, an ancient people, a magical civilisation, beaten by this brutal regime into submission, aching for an end to the indignities visited upon them, have finally said ‘Enough!’. And so the siren call at the centre of Ayatollah Khamenei’s speech must be resisted. The turn away from politics to spirituality, towards the consolations of irrationality, unreason, faith, is the very opposite of what the Iranian people need. They have sought comfort in the false certainties of religion for too long. They of all people know that, of all the great pathologies that swirl around the Middle East, this is the most disabling, the most wretched; the most deceitful and wicked of all the great lies. What they want and need now more than ever, above all else, is for their politics to work.

And so what the Iranian people must understand above everything is that this speech was a deeply hostile act - at once a defiant, menacing, thuggish, brutal and yet ultimately self-defeating piece of political positioning, effectively setting regime and people on a collision course. If they understand that, the way forward will become clear. As the regime gathers its forces and the opposition draws breath, the world watches and waits, not knowing which way events will turn. My fervent hope is that the Iranian people will reject the false certainties and failed dogmas of the past, stand up, and assume something like their full height as a people.

A Lament

Some interesting contrasts between the American and British blogospheres have emerged over the course of the last week. In particular on the issue of the disputed Iranian elections. With the fall out from the expenses scandal and the developing argument over public expenditure dominating the conversation on this side of the Atlantic, developments in Iran have generated almost no comment. The American blogosphere, by way of contrast, has seized upon the issue and taken up the cause of the protesters with some relish. Andrew Sullivan has excelled yet again, standing head and shoulders above any other blog or mainstream news source, his grasp of the complexities and ambiguities around the issue a constant source of fresh insight and inspiration. But alongside him, the other big American blogs – Instapundit, Talking Points Memo, The Daily Kos - have all weighed in, contributing to a spirited dialogue.

In contrast, the issue just has not seized the imagination of the British blogosphere in the same way. The big political blogs in Britain have had almost nothing to say on the issue. The always insightful Heresiarch has chipped in here, but he remains something of a lone voice. And so what struck me is just how insular and self-absorbed the British blogosphere has become when compared with the American. Of course, the two countries are at very different points in the electoral cycle: the American response shaped by a newly confident, outward-looking administration, keen to make its mark – ours by a beleaguered, bewildered government, looking for all the world a demoralised and discredited rabble.

But the different reaction also reflects the widely different interests of the two countries. Iran is very much a live foreign policy issue in America and one of the most intractable foreign policy problems for American planners, whereas the Foreign Office is much diminished these days. Though still counted among the three great offices of state, the truth, of course, is that Britain no longer has a foreign policy worthy of the name. There is very little room for manoeuvre or creative thinking in the sphere of foreign policy. Despite our pretensions, the days when Britain conducted a global policy are long gone - the last great gasp of foreign policy activism in Iraq having dampened any residual desire on the part of Britain’s elites to put ourselves at the centre of the world's trouble spots. And so the different reactions to this story in America and Britain are something of an indicator both of how deeply engaged the Americans remain globally and how, at the same time, our interests - and perhaps our horizons - have narrowed; the different treatment of this issue by the respective blogospheres playing very much to the Americans’ credit and our shame, leaving the Americans looking every inch the worldly sophisticates and Britain the insular, parochial cousin.