John Mearsheimer is a Professor at the University of Chicago who has attracted a great deal of attention in the blogosphere recently for a paper he co-authored about the role of the Israeli lobby and its influence on the policy of the United States towards the middle-east region. I think it fair to say that, at the very least, the paper was not his finest hour.
But it attracted me towards some of his other work, and the estimable Winterspeak, posting at Jane Galt’s blog, recently went to a speech where he outlined some of his views on his theory of international relations. Winterspeak was not entirely convinced.
Of course, political science is even more of a ‘black art’ then economic science. A scientific theory in the natural world can be demonstrated or refuted by scientific verification. In the social ‘sciences’ such verification is much harder. Therefore, making predictions about the future is hard. But one I still a worthwhile exercise. Readers can judge for themselves.
One of the aspects of Professor Mearsheimer’s work that has drawn particular attention is his view that the internal composition of states does not matter, democracy or dictatorship, theocracy or monarchy, they will have the same foreign policy goals. Given that in the United States, democracy is seen as a sacred cow, this is bound to be a provocative stance.
In considering this point of view, it may be helpful to make a distinction between ‘strategic’ foreign policy thinking, and ‘tactical’ foreign policy thinking, just as a chess-player does. Strategic is ‘this is what we want’ and tactical is ‘this is how we are going to get it’. If you view Professor Mearsheimer’s work in that light, I understand why he thinks that way. Take, for example, his recent debate with Zbigniew Brzezinski on the future of China’s policy. It seems to me that the internal composition of China’s government will not make a great deal of difference towards China’s desire to regain Taiwan.
It does of course make a great deal of difference about how they go about getting it, though. I am not very knowledgeable about China or its people, so I am not at all sure about how a future Chinese democracy would go about trying to reclaim Taiwan from the mainland. It may be thought that a democratic Chinese government would be sensible enough to eschew war, but given what the Chinese people seem to think about their neighbours, and watching other Asian democracies in action, gives me reason to doubt the good sense of a Chinese democracy.
It does seem to me that the tactics a state employs though are extremely important, and have massive and wide-ranging implications. Therefore, if one may be critical of Professor Mearsheimer’s theory, it is that he under-rates the importance of tactical moves in foreign policy goal setting. The classic example of this would be the transformation of Prussia into Imperial Germany in the late 19th century, and its effects on France and Russia. A more contemporary one, and more pointed given his latest academic effort, is that vital one of United States support for Israel. This policy is effected precisely because the United States is a democracy and, like it or not, the American public opinion is far more favourable towards Israel. This expression of American opinion thus translates into a massively different policy position towards the Middle East then would be the case if United States foreign policy was principally conducted with the interest of the government only in mind, as would be the case if the United States was a dictatorship.
And that support has a huge bearing on the foreign policy strategies of Arab states. So in the long run, democracy matters.
That does not mean that a democracy is likely to pursue more sensible or rational foreign policies. Democracy is no guarantee of good government. It simply means that governments in democracies have different political considerations to bear in mind when they make diplomatic decisions. I would welcome readers views on this matter.
I think democracies do make us safer. Leaders of countries want to increase thier own power and prestige whereas populations want to improve their own prosperity. Since wars expand prestige but destroy prosperity, democracies are less likely to go to war than dictatorships.
At last someone with some credible authority has spoken out against the apalling record of US politics in relation to Israel starting with Harry Truman’s recognition of the State of Israel in order to help secure his re-election.(and against the advice of that greatest of US Secretaries of State George Marshall).
The only major point I would disagree with Mearsheimer is his assertion that the Jews had a moral right to establish Israel after the holocaust in Europe. That they had the right to do this involving the rape, pillage, massacre of thousands to secure the flight of nearly a million Palestinians by invading a land totally foreign to virtually all of them is a really monstrous assertion. MORAL right?? Lets have a mini holocaust with these Arabs so we can occupy their land. What sort of definition of MORAL is that?
The immense power of the ‘LOBBY’ is something which everyone should be standing back and saying ‘Just what is going on here and how are they doing it?’
The facile answer that you have to support the democracies – the good guys – and not the BAD guys is also dealt with pretty well by Mearsheimer. Another subtle prop of the LOBBY.
This foreign policy has us all stuck with the justifiable hatred of a people perpetually humiliated.
Scott, I spent more time reading the first part of your blog and the Mearsheim paper. Now I have had a look at the latter part of your blog. To say that because the US is a democracy therefore their foreign policy favours it, and you quote Israel, is really the most total bollocks I have read in a long time. The history of US foreign policy notably in central and south America is of supporting dictatators and pretty right wing corrupt ones too. Never mind what they say, it’s what they do.
John this post is asking for readers views about the wider thesis about the importance of the internal composition of states with regard to the theory that Mearsheimer advances. If you wish to advance your views on US foreign policy, you are welcome to do so on posts that relate to them. The example I gave involving Israel is germaine to my point, because there is a domestic consituency in the United States that cares about Israel. There are similar constituencies that exist, notably the Cuban exile lobby that care deeply about the Communist regime and wish to see the end of Castro.
If you merely wish to spout about the immorality of Israel and the United States you are kindly invited to do so elsewhere.
Scott, as a recovering academic I am touched, truly touched that you take this jumped up sack of potatoes seriously.
It is astonishing to me that those outside the groves of academe show the kind of deference to the professoriat which in most cases especially when it comes to the social sciences is completely undeserved. My observation of most tenured men in the soft subject racket is that a spell of ditch digging would do them a power of good. The testosterone laden beast needs some muscle flexing time and should not devote his life entirely to the bad works of speculating on the modern day equivalents of how many angels can dance on the point of a pin.
This guy is a fuzzy headed wussy and having seen him pontificating on the idiot box he looks as though he was a big time loser in the dating game.
Move along there, Scott, this chappy has no message worth listening to for you or anyone else.
Sorry about the double posts. I get a message that the site is not responding and to retry with a different code. Those fraudster messages!
Anyway I admit to being a female chauvinist sow when it comes to colleagues who are not in pure and applied science and/or doing knowledge enhancing research.
Scott-
I found your post far more compelling, on so many levels, than Messrs Mearsheim and Walt’s pathetic drivel. Mark Adams sums it up succinctly above.
Since Harvard has been accepting endowed professorships from whacked out trust funders and inbred Saudi princes, the KSG has strayed from it’s original intent, to become a play pen for intellectual navel gazers and thumb suckers. I give you Mearsheimer’s co-author, KSG prof. Steven Walt.
To your question, I agree with you that democracies do indeed have more *voter* input to their foreign policy than a dictatorship, monarchy or theocracy. One need only look at the ongoing debates in the west as to whether we should unite to destroy Islamist expansionism in a long contest of wills, or stick our heads up our butts.
In the last US election, inspite of the haughty French looking candidate voting for the war before voting against it, having a better plan that was so good it was never revealed, etc., etc., the plurality still threw in with Bush’s strategery for another round.
It should be no mystery that US voters favor Isreal.
Most of us live or work with Jews. Many of us have Jewish doctors, teachers, etc.. One need only look at the substantial contributions of Jews to the USA on a multitude of levels and it is no mystery we would be supportive of Isreal. Add to that the fact of legitmate Jewish claim to their historic home land, the fact that Isreal is a democracy surrounded by a cesspool of islamist oppression and despair, and it would be striking if we did not support them.
So until Isrealis start flying planes into our skyscrapers,
and American Jews support them or remain mute, I believe American voters and thus our foreign policy will favor our Israeli friends.
Millie, I’ve deleted the double entry.
I must say I think you are being a ‘bit’ harsh on our esteemed friends in academia. There are those people in this world that need to study International Relations for their work- diplomats and international businessmen, mostly. And while I sometimes wistfully think about the merits of ditch-digging for some of the more daft academics out there, the last regime to do this (the Khmer Rouge) was unfortunately genocidal.
I do have a lot of time on my hands so I can indulge somewhat in pondering academic questions like this one.
Scott, I couldn’t agree with you more that practical knowledge in such areas as International Relations is worthwhile but this fellow is involved in speculation of the if this then that variety when neither he nor anyone else has any idea of the consequences of if this. I repeat that taking these folks seriously is a mug’s game.
I think part of the problem you’ve noted Scott is that Mearsheimer only considers part of the strategic “formula”. Strategic science is the guiding interest at our blog and we contend that the principles of strategy can be expressed as a mathematical formula, though that thesis remains a work in progress.
Basically, this can be stated as: philosophy guides mission which determines strategy which dictates tactics, with the understanding that opportunity to advance your position is a product of other’s actions (or lack thereof) and largely not a product of your own making.
In the Mearsheimer example, he entirely dismisses philosophy by denying the relevance of political form to strategy. While it is entirely true to say that the mission of all groups and individuals is to advance their strategic position through chosen tactical means, it is the accepted philosophy (of which politics is a part) that guides the group or person in the options permissable to be chosen from and the mission to be persued. The strength (I prefer the engineering concept robustness) of the philsophy is critical to the success of a given strategy. It is the degree of conflict between your and another’s philosophy that determines the extent and nature of the alliances that each can form. As demonstrated up-tread, options chosen in the immediacy of the moment can have some extremely nasty longer-term effects.
Thanks for an interesting read and the opportunity to ride my hobbyhorse around your backroom.
Millie-
Re; touring code issues;
I have found that if your commnet post hangs, hit F5.
At least on my PC, it seems to reset and then if you check the postings, 9/10 times your comment gets posted.
I have read several very critical analyses of the Mearsheimer et al paper, and some of his earlier work, and tend to agree with Millie above that this is a poor effort. The assertion that there is an Israeli lobby which effectively strangles any anti-Israel commentary or policy is suspect, when the academic departments of Mid-eastern studies around the country are rabidly anti-Israel, and in some cases, markedly anti-semitic.
Members of the hard left, of course, as well as garden variety Jew haters, have welcomed this supposedly hard hitting revelation, but a closer examination finds the level of scholarship is third rate, and the argumentation is more like an old Von Dannekon book about UFO’s building the pyramids than serious scholarship.
Islamicists are in a constant state of apoplexy about Israel, of course, but their concern never seems to extend to finding workable solutions, or getting the everlasting Palestinian refugees out of the camps their own clerics told them to go to when the Arab forces invaded Israel in 1948, and where they have languished as impoverished, stateless “poster children” ever since.
As for Mearsheimer’s other contention, I would be interested in his explanation for the radical change in the foreign policy of Russia and the other parts of the former Soviet Union since the fall of the communist party and its replacement by a more open political system, albeit one with less than adequate democratic processes.
Suddenly, Cuba, as one example, is no longer a critical ally of Russia. If internal politics are meaningless, that transformation should not have taken place.
The movement away from socialism and toward a market economy has also afected the foreign policy of India, as the recent warm reception given to the POTUS demonstrated. Such an alliance was unthinkable a few decades ago.
I once heard the democratic process in the US described as a filtration process, akin to a distillation. Policies and proposals which seem eminently sensible and necessary to the political types in DC must be brought out to the home districts of the Congress every few years and discussed with the ordinary people who show up at political caucuses, local campaign appearences, and other venues.
In those locales, the “big ideas” of the policy wonks start getting some hard headed analysis by the teachers, drug store owners, farmers, truck drivers, and others who know how to run businesses, who fill out all the forms, and battle with all the red tape.
These are the people who have little time for BS, and ask some very pointed questions if they think they’re getting the shaft. An example of this process was the disastrous luxury boat tax of several years ago. After exactly the negative results that many people predicted, the chagrined politicos were forced to rescind it.
Ordinary people are relentlessly maligned by those who believe that only the select have been annointed, and only the annointed should decide how things should be. The genius of representative governance is that it accords respect to those who make everything else possible—men and women who work for a living, raise families, think about those things that affect their lives, and value liberty and resposibility as complimentary aspects of citizenship.
Mearsheimer says this doesn’t matter. I wonder who annointed him?
This is the first time in a long while I’ve been interested enough to comment on a samizdata thread. The thesis matters to me because I now live in Taiwan and intend to stay here for a few more years yet.
Of course the cross-strait issue of independence vs reunification is the overarching political issue in Taiwan. The majority view among the public seems to be a desire to continue the status quo (i.e. a self-governing Taiwan lacking diplomatic recognition) rather than pursue either direction. The politicians in Taipei accept this as their premise and merely argue about the best ways of ‘managing’ relations with Beijing and ‘encouraging’ democracy in China.
Yet the problem is that Beijing is not interested in ‘managing’ the status quo. They are relentless in their attempts to thwart the efforts of the Taiwanese President to get even a sniff of diplomatic recognition from other countries. And we’re not talking about the US or the EU either – we’re talking about little places like the Soloman Islands! Along with the diplomatic (and of course, trade related) bullying, China is also building up its’ military capacity whilst Taiwan has been stalling on arms procurement.
I doubt that it is the Beijing government alone in China that wants to pursue the goal of reunification. I suspect that there is a strong nationalist streak in the political culture of mainland China – after a century of nationalism and communism, how could there not be?
Moreover, I doubt such strong nationalist sentiment as evidenced in the anti-Japan protests of 2005 would disappear with the introduction of democratic or liberal reforms – at least, not in the short-term.
So IMO even a democratic Beijing would still probably be inclined to pursue the goal of Taiwan reunification.
And that is most certainly not something I want!
The United States and Israel, separately, are living proof that “democracy” does nothing…absolutely zero….to make a government’s foreign policy less evil.
Our government, counting only stuff that’s either officially acknowledged or widely accepted by historians, has supported the overthrow of democratically elected governments. It has supported the most brutal dictators on the planet. It has been responsible for the butchering of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians through the use of weapons of mass destruction. It regularly forces other countries into making /domestic/ policy decisions, and influences which governments are even elected…all of the above being things we would never tolerate any foreign country doing to us.
Our government officially and openly supported Saddam Hussein’s government for years, including selling him nuclear, biological, and chemical WMD technology. We did so AFTER acknowledging that he was using them on both his own people and those of Iran. That famous picture of Rumsfeld shaking Hussein’s hand was taken shortly after such an acknowledgement, and while he was over there signing off on more WMD technology transfer. The reason we successfully cleaned out his WMD tech in the mid nineties is that we simply used the records of where American contractors had delivered the goods we sent him.
Even after reversing positions over the course of mere weeks and declaring are beloved ally Saddam Hussein to be our enemy, and invading him in 1991, AND telling both the Kurds and Shi’ites that we’d support his overthrow, which they proceeded to attempt to accomplish, our government decided that Iraq would be too unstable if Hussein were out of power, and SPECIFICALLY withdrew from Iraq so that he could butcher hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shi’ites, so their revolts would fail.
After helping Hussein butcher hundreds of thousands of civilians twice, we imposed “sanctions” on his country which cut it off from food and medicine it could not produce internally, taking one of the most prosperous countries with the highest standards of living in the region down to third world status, causing the deaths of over a million women and children, actually HELPING, once again, Hussein stay in power by keeping the Shi’ites and Kurds too weak (and dead) to fight him.
Ironically, we were also supporting Hussein’s mortal enemies in other countries:
Our government CREATED Al Qaeda. We equipped, trained, and supplied the Majahadeen, specifically so they would fight the Soviet occupation force in Afghanistan with EXACTLY the same terrorist tactics that are being against OUR occupation force in Iraq.
After the Soviets pulled out, our government supported Pakistan’s effort to overthrow the Northern Alliance government of Afghanistan, replacing it with the foreign Taliban government.
BEFORE the Taliban existed, our government supported Saudi Arabia’s brutal monarchy, which rules exactly like the Taliban did, both internally and in its efforts to establish the very Wahabi hate schools which trained the Taliban, and many others like them.
All of this is consistent with its policies even before the Terror War:
Our government has send billions per year to Hosni Mubarak, the brutal dictator of Egypt. He’s as bad as Hussein, yet in measuring by dollars he’s our closest ally in the world.
It has sent, and sends, millions to the brutal dictator of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, who overthrew the democratically elected government, AND put the Taliban in place in Afghanistan, and yet has our support.
Our government supported the Shaw of Iran, a source of evil who is why Iran, wisely, distrusts the US to this day.
Our government fought to keep Stalin in power, the biggest butcher in history, a man who murdered five times as many of his own civilians as Hitler did.
Our government, when Japan’s government was BEGGING to negotiate its own surrender in WWII, refused its offers and insisted on total conquest of Japan, THEN…long after Japan’s offer to negotiate surrender, mind you…dropped nuclear bombs on two CITIES. Not factories…cities full of women, children, and infants just like your own family. It claimed that this was necessary, because invasion of Japan would have cost millions of lives, but meanwhile it was refusing to negotiate their surrender. It did not need to kill a single one of those babies.
Likewise, when Germany’s power had fallen and it was simply a matter of how long it would take to disassemble them, our government intentionally created “firestorm” WMD destruction by sending huge masses of bombers to drop kilotons of conventional bombs simultaneously on /civilian/ cities…not military forces and bases…killing tens or hundreds of thousands of civilians, including women, children, and babies, per city. Targeting, as with Japan, civilians.
This is aside from routinely and openly trying to control the outcome of elections in other countries…yet being outraged simply because the Communist Chinese government gave a couple million dollars in campaign contributions to a president who shared their collectivist philosophies, Bill Clinton.
There are only a few governments, other than our own, on the planet which do more foreign policy things which WE would consider evil if done to us.
Stupid middleware code.
Each time I tried to post the above, the web server came back saying it had been rejected because the anti-spam code was missing.
I was, of course, carefully typing in the code each time.
Anyway, it seems that this is a bug, and I was getting the error message while the post was actually going through.
Anyone with administration powers is welcome to remove all but one copy of my above post.
Seems like KAZ has as much trouble with spam codes as he does with reality. Pity.
Everything I posted is a matter of record…as I noted, I was only citing things agreed upon by historians and the like.
If you disagree, itemize where I was wrong. By just vaguely blowing off my details, you are essentially admitting that I am correct and you cannot refute the specifics.
Are you actually unaware that we trained and financed the Mujahadeen in their terrorist fight in Afghanistan? That Japan was asking to negotiate a surrender for months before we nuked cities full of civilians? Have you never seen the famous pic of Rumsfeld shaking Hussein’s hand during our arms sales negotiations with him? Which parts are you ACTUALLY willing to stick your neck out and admit you don’t think happened?
Or is it just going to be vague non-denials, because that’s all that you have? Your retort was as nonsensical about my clearly explained issue with a false error message as it was with your non-refutation of my point.
My dear, deluded KAZ,
You have uncritically swallowed every collectivist talking point of the last century or so and, swollen with your indignation, now invite those of us who have already graduated high school to join you in condemning everthing and anything to do with the US.
Imagine a world in which the enemies of the US had triumphed, and the evil US had lost. Start anywhere, from the revolution or Civil War to the Cold War or the current conflict.
Tell us, O wise one, how the world would be so much better off if we had lost WW2, or if Saddam was still in power, or the Soviets had established a world wide marxist community that overwhelmed the West.
Refuting little bits and pieces of factoids bereft of any context or meaning is the game you play with the other kids in the student union. C’mon, play a real game. Let’s hear how everything would be so much better if our opponents had won, and we had lost.
That should be easy for someone with your encyclopedic grasp of history and international affairs.
Maybe you could even turn it into a term paper for your course in Sophomoric Wisdom 101.
I would certainly like to see some evidence that Japan was actually trying to surrender unconditionally for months before the bomb was dropped. Preferably not from a website that suggests that FDR knew about Pearl Harbour beforehand, though.
I have to say I find a great deal of Kaz’s thinking to be shoddy and misguided in the way he interprets historical events. It’s only the impotent that can afford to be pure, you know.
John Rippengal. You need to do your homework as you seem to have swallowed anti-Israel propaganda hook line and sinker. Firstly, the poor Palestinians were in league with the Nazis and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was a long time friend of Hitler who wanted to do away with the ‘Jewish problem’. Such a nice, peace loving man.
You are also totally wrong about most Israelis being “totally foreign to virtually all of them”. Over 1 million Jews were kicked out of Arab lands that had been their home for centruries, their property and land stolen. In Israel these ‘arab-Jews’ are called Mizrahim or Sephardim. You are obviously very badly educated if you believe that most Jews came from Europe. If you actually ever bother to do research rather than reading The Guardian to get your information then you wouldn’t look like such an ignorant idiot. And if you ever bother to actually go to Israel rather than ranting about it from the sidelines you would see that it is literally full of dark, swarthy Jews who came from Iraq, Iran, Syrian and Yemen. Those are the ones who survived. Many were subject to a genocide by their fellow arab countrymen that is never discussed.
Actually, refusing to examine the facts or principles of a situation is a standard collectivist ploy, so that it’s not surprising at all to see you using it, since you’re defending what are, in practice, the American version of collectivism, espoused by guys like Bush who are as Liberal as any Clinton.
I’m no collectivist, unlike the thugs you defend; I’m a Reaganite, disgusted by the corruption, dishonesty, and advocacy of Big Brotherment of Bush and the “neocons”, and their utter dismissal of every good principle of Conservatism or liberty ever conceived.
There’s nothing “collectivist” about demanding principles be adhered to. In fact, it’s standard socialist dogma that the end justifies the means, exactly like YOU are trying to argue.
But you are ejaculating a false dichotomy with this “what if the US lost, and its enemies won” nonsense. The US /created/ the animosity between itself and its “enemies”, in the cases I cited, and was more often than not picking even more evil “friends”.
It didn’t have to treat the evil tyrants of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan as beloved friends whose regimes needed to be defended, any more than it needed to make enemies of the other, no worse, nations it most grossly wronged.
We didn’t do better to save the vile, collectivist Stalin, butcher of 60,000,000 of his own people, from vile, collectivist Hitler, butcher of 12,000,000 of his own people. We could as easily have let the two destroy each other, and then not be left with the Cold War and Iron Curtain for another 45 years thereafter.
Our “enemies”…meaning anyone who does not have liberty as their primary governmental goal…won BECAUSE of our foreign policy. We tramped across the world committing one anti-American evil after another, and you want to justify it by pretending that not doing so would mean our enemies somehow won?
I say again: ANYTHING we would not tolerate another country doing to the US, it is EXACTLY as evil for us to do to another country.
And your crypto-marxist “end justifies the means” nonsense would not be valid even if those policies HAD helped the US, which they never did.
In fact, look at the sequences…WE created our enemies, then WE reaped the consequences. We trained TERRORISTS to do evil things in Afghanistan, and then they turned around and did them to us. WE gave Hussein biological, chemical, and nuclear technologies, and then we (supposedly) had to go clean up after him. WE propped up the evil Shaw of Iran, and then when he was overthrown we had the most powerful state in that region as a justified enemy. WE supported the overthrow of the Northern Alliance with the Taliban, and then after they helped slaughter thousands of our people on 9-11, we had to go in and RESTORE the Northern Alliance to power.
Your sociopathic foreign policies have created a domino effect of evil AGAINST the United States, consistently.
—
Words of the Sentient:
In the end we beat them with Levi 501 jeans. Seventy-two years of Communist
indoctrination and propaganda was drowned out by a three-ounce Sony Walkman. A
huge totalitarian system…has been brought to its knees because nobody wants
to wear Bulgarian shoes…Now they’re lunch, and we’re number one on the
planet. — P. J. O’Rourke
Thank you for your contributions, KAZ. You have made your position on how evil Amerikka is abundantly clear.
I’ve deleted your self-promotion bits, and I’ll delete any more posts you make on this thread.
Note to KAZ-
P.J. O’Rourke is a comedic commentator (hint, hint).
But then again, so are much of the West’s pampered academics and talking heads, although they seem to be blissfully unaware.
If you would like to actually do some reading, you’ll find that the evil empire just did not have the economic horsepower (captive nations and all) to provide goods for the worker’s paradise *and* buy a first world military.
I always get a laugh out of commenters who rave on about how America kept Saddam in power when the vast majority of his weapons came from France and Russia. I also marvel at how the fact Saddam could build palaces during sanctions and yet somehow the fact the common people were suffering was the fault of the evil old USA.
You’d have though the images NOT showing thousands of blown up Phantoms, F-16’s, M-60 tanks etc. but rather all those trashed Migs, Mirages and T-62’s would have given the game away as to what was the basis of baathist power but I guess people see what they want to see.
Perry,
Spot on.
Interesting side-light on Saddam’s palaces… Because he was brought up dirt poor in the God-awful dive that is Tikrit – if not the arsehole of the Universe, certainly within farting distance – his palaces were built very shonkily. There was massive corruption amongst the contractors and amongst other things a lot of his gold-plated bathrooms weren’t actually properly plumbed in. Because of his background Saddam had never learned to use indoor “facilities” and (charmingly) prefered to shit on the floor.
Quite why they’re giving him a trial rather than hanging him by his scrotum from the nearest lamp-post is beyond me.
It is a matter of observation that dramatic changes in the internal power structure of a nation do not always entail a drastic modification of foreign policy.
Stalin followed traditional 19th century Tsarist objectives: buffer states to the west against Germany, a partion of Poland, influence in the Balkans, an outlet to the Indian Ocean (the ultimate dream of the ‘Great Game’ against the Raj) and a firm resistance to oriental incursions into Siberia. (Today Putin follows these broad lines.) The vaunted internationalism of the USSR, its supposed status as a launch pad for global revolution, was more a matter of words than deeds. In practice, Stalin’s ‘socialism in one country’ precluded risking the Revolution’s gains by sending forces all over the place, as France did after 1789.
Hitler, as AJP Taylor, pointed out 40 years ago, likewise followed a Bismarckian and Wilhelmine lust for ‘lebensraum’, the subjection of France, links with the Nordic peoples of Scandinavia, a truce with the British Empire and a free hand for a showdown with Russia in SE Europe. Hitler’s only major break was in disdaining the restoration of further-flung colonies as douceurs for ceasing to menace European states.
Post-war Japan, though demilitarised, did not stop trying to build up an area of dominant economic influence in the Far East, and is now resuming its ancient belligerence towards China. The Labour governments which first took power in Britain in the 1920s were anxious to demonstrate their adherence to Empire unity and integrity, and Attlee’s allegiance to the ‘special relationship’ with the USA was as firm as Churchill’s.
Today a change of government in the UK would not modify greatly the drift of foreign policy since the 1970s: critical, semi-detached EU membership, a leading role in NATO, support (sometimes backed by troops) for America’s international ventures, maintenance of the Commonwealth.
France, although its internal politics are far more bitter and class-based than Britain’s, has clung to the Gaullist model of qualified independence, opportunism and shoring up of francophone ex-colonies and overseas possessions. Neither has Germany changed its diplomatic ways much since it was reunified and began to be allowed to swagger a little on the international stage– though its politics are so anaemic and artificial that it is harder to tell.
From all this continuity one can see the force of the realist school of thought which Kissinger– the modern Metternich– put into practice and which Prof. Mearsheimer finds at odds with the US/Israel relationship since the Yom Kippur War.
An open chequebook for one particular little state, a long way from home and with some very un-American features (socialistic, racially particularist), is unprecedented in the history of US international relations. So is the reluctance of American academics and media to ventilate its pros and cons, given how large Israel looms in America’s calculations. It is a cliche to say that Israelis are readier to hold the alliance up to the light than Americans. Even the summary version of Mearsheimer’s and Walt’s paper had to be published in the LRB after the Atlantic and other American journals of opinion rejected it on unknown grounds. But in the internet age the gatekeepers can be circumvented.
So KAZ’s arguments, being upsetting, must be deleted.
That proves he’s wrong. Like when the Samizdata writers were deleted. That proved them wrong.
So much for freedom of thought.
(Tho’ KAZ is surely wrong about Japan wanting peace before Hiro.)