DUE in 3H

TENTH EDITION 2013–2014 UPDATE

International Relations

Joshua S. Goldstein American University, Washington, D.C. University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Jon C. Pevehouse University of Wisconsin, Madison

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Brief Contents

iii

CHAPTER 1 The Globalization of International Relations 2

CHAPTER 2 Realist Theories 42

CHAPTER 3 Liberal and Social Theories 84

CHAPTER 4 Foreign Policy 126

CHAPTER 5 International Confl ict 152

CHAPTER 6 Military Force and Terrorism 192

CHAPTER 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights 232

CHAPTER 8 International Trade 282

CHAPTER 9 Global Finance and Business 320

CHAPTER 10 International Integration 354

CHAPTER 11 Environment and Population 386

CHAPTER 12 The North-South Gap 424

CHAPTER 13 International Development 460

CHAPTER 14 Postscript 498

iv

Preface ix

To the Student xv

A Note on Nomenclature xvi

Careers in International Relations xvii

Maps xxi

CHAPTER 1

The Globalization of International Relations 2

Globalization, International Relations, and Daily Life 3

Core Principles 4 IR as a Field of Study 10

Actors and Influences 12 State Actors 13 Nonstate Actors 15 Levels of Analysis 17 Globalization 19

Global Geography 21

The Evolving International System 26

The Two World Wars, 1900–1950 26 The Cold War, 1945–1990 29 The Post–Cold War Era, 1990–2012 33

■ Policy Perspectives Overview 11

■ Seeking the Collective Good Introduction 8

■ Let’s Debate the Issue Globalization: Vanishing State Power? 40

CHAPTER 2

Realist Theories 42

Realism 43

Power 45

Contents

Defi ning Power 45 Estimating Power 47 Elements of Power 47

The International System 49 Anarchy and Sovereignty 49 Balance of Power 52 Great Powers and Middle Powers 54 Power Distribution 56 Hegemony 57 The Great Power System, 1500–2000 61

Alliances 63 Purposes of Alliances 63 NATO 65 Other Alliances 67 Regional Alignments 70

Strategy 71 Statecraft 73 Rationality in International

Relations 75 The Prisoner’s Dilemma 76

■ Policy Perspectives Prime Minister of India, Manhoman Singh 72

■ Seeking the Collective Good NATO in Afghanistan 68

■ Let’s Debate the Issue Can the United States and China Peacefully Coexist? 82

CHAPTER 3

Liberal and Social Theories 84

The Waning of War 85

Liberal Theories 86 Kant and Peace 86 Liberal Institutionalism 87 International Regimes 90

Note: Each chapter ends with a summary, key terms, and critical thinking questions.

v

Collective Security 92 The Democratic Peace 94

Social Theories 96 Identities and Ideas Matter 97 Postmodernism 102

Marxism 103

Peace Studies 106

Gender Theories 110 Why Gender Matters 110 The Masculinity of Realism 112 Gender in War and Peace 114 Women in IR 116 Difference Feminism versus Liberal

Feminism? 119 Postmodern Feminism 120

■ Policy Perspectives President of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych 100

■ Seeking the Collective Good Great Nations Pay Their Bills 92

■ Let’s Debate the Issue Legislative Quotas for Women: An Effective Tool for Equality? 124

CHAPTER 4

Foreign Policy 126

Making Foreign Policy 127 Models of Decision Making 127 Individual Decision Makers 129 Group Psychology 132 Crisis Management 134

Domestic Infl uences 136 Bureaucracies 136 Interest Groups 138 The Military-Industrial Complex 139 Public Opinion 141 Legislatures 145 Making Foreign Policy 146

■ Policy Perspectives Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe 143

■ Seeking the Collective Good Israeli- Palestinian Peace Talks 140

■ Let’s Debate the Issue Should Legislatures Play a Role in Deciding Whether to Use Military Force? 150

CHAPTER 5

International Confl ict 152

The Wars of the World 153 Types of War 153 Theories of the Causes of War 157

Confl icts of Ideas 160 Nationalism 160 Ethnic Confl ict 162 Genocide 166 Religious Confl ict 168 Ideological Confl ict 176

Confl icts of Interest 177 Territorial Disputes 177 Control of Governments 184 Economic Confl ict 185

■ Policy Perspectives President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf 165

■ Seeking the Collective Good Peace in Latin America 178

■ Let’s Debate the Issue The United States and Russia: A New Cold War? 190

CHAPTER 6

Military Force and Terrorism 192

Conventional Forces 193 Land Forces: Controlling Territory 194 Naval Forces: Controlling the Seas 197 Air Forces: Controlling the Skies 198 Coordinating Forces: Logistics and

Intelligence 200 Evolving Technologies 201

Terrorism 204

Weapons of Mass Destruction 209

Nuclear Weapons 209 Ballistic Missiles and Other Delivery

Systems 211 Chemical and Biological Weapons 214 Proliferation 216 Nuclear Strategy and Arms Control 219

States and Militaries 222 Military Economics 222

Control of Military Forces 224 Civil-Military Relations 225

■ Policy Perspectives President of the United States, Barack Obama 202

■ Seeking the Collective Good Arms Control 218

■ Let’s Debate the Issue Negotiations with North Korea: Progress Toward Disarmament or Fool’s Errand? 230

CHAPTER 7

International Organization, Law, and Human Rights 232

Roles of International Organizations 233

The United Nations 236 The UN System 236 The Security Council 242 Peacekeeping Forces 245 The Secretariat 249 The General Assembly 250 UN Programs 252 Autonomous Agencies 253

International Law 254 Sources of International Law 254 Enforcement of International Law 255 The World Court 256 International Cases in National

Courts 259

Law and Sovereignty 261 Laws of Diplomacy 261 Just War Doctrine 263

Human Rights 264 Individual Rights versus Sovereignty 265 Human Rights Institutions 266 War Crimes 270 The Evolution of World Order 276

■ Policy Perspectives International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda 275

■ Seeking the Collective Good Responsibility to Protect 270

■ Let’s Debate the Issue Human Rights: A Hollow Promise to the World? 280

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CHAPTER 8

International Trade 282

Theories of Trade 283 Liberalism and Mercantilism 283 Comparative Advantage 288 Political Interference in Markets 289 Protectionism 291

Trade Regimes 294 The World Trade Organization 294 Bilateral and Regional Agreements 298 Cartels 302 Industries and Interest Groups 304 Enforcement of Trade Rules 307

Economic Globalization 309 The Evolving World Economy 309 Resistance to Trade 313

■ Policy Perspectives President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff 301

■ Seeking the Collective Good Freer Trade 298

■ Let’s Debate the Issue Are Free Trade Agreements Good for the Global Economy? 318

CHAPTER 9

Global Finance and Business 320

Globalization and Finance 321

The Currency System 322 About Money 322 International Currency Exchange 322 Why Currencies Rise or Fall 327 Central Banks 330 The World Bank and the IMF 331

State Financial Positions 333 National Accounts 333 International Debt 334 The Position of the United

States 336 The Position of Russia and Eastern

Europe 338 The Position of Asia 339

Multinational Business 341 Multinational Corporations 341 Foreign Direct Investment 343

Host and Home Government Relations 345

■ Policy Perspectives President of China, Xi Jinping 329

■ Seeking the Collective Good Currency Stability 326

■ Let’s Debate the Issue Foreign Direct Investment: Engine of Growth or Tool of Exploitation? 352

CHAPTER 10

International Integration 354

Globalization and Integration 355

Integration Theory 355

The European Union 358 The Vision of a United Europe 358 The Treaty of Rome 359 Structure of the European Union 360 The Single European Act 362 The Maastricht Treaty 263 Monetary Union 364 Expanding the European Union 367 The Lisbon Treaty 369

The Power of Information 370 Connecting the World 370 Information as a Tool of Governments 376 Information as a Tool against

Governments 377 Telecommunications and Global

Culture 379

■ Policy Perspectives Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel 372

■ Seeking the Collective Good Bailing Out Greece 366

■ Let’s Debate the Issue Has European Integration Gone as Far as Possible? 384

CHAPTER 11

Environment and Population 386

Interdependence and the Environment 387

Sustainable Development 389

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Managing the Environment 390 The Atmosphere 390 Biodiversity 396 Forests and Oceans 397 Pollution 400

Natural Resources 403 World Energy 404 Minerals 407 Water Disputes 408

Population 409 The Demographic Transition 410 Population Policies 412 Disease 413

■ Policy Perspectives Prime Minister of Ireland, Enda Kenny 398

■ Seeking the Collective Good Global Warming 394

■ Let’s Debate the Issue Stopping Global Warming: Who Should Pay? 422

CHAPTER 12

The North-South Gap 424

The State of the South 425 Basic Human Needs 426 World Hunger 431 Rural and Urban Populations 432 Women in Development 433 Migration and Refugees 434

Theories of Accumulation 440 Economic Accumulation 440 The World-System 441

Imperialism 443 World Civilizations 443 History of Imperialism,

1500–2000 446 Effects of Colonialism 449 Postcolonial Dependency 451 Revolutionary Movements 454

■ Policy Perspectives President of Botswana, Seretse Khama Ian Khama 437

■ Seeking the Collective Good The Refugee Regime 438

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■ Let’s Debate the Issue Immigration Reform: Should Illegal Immigrants in the United States Have a Path to Citizenship? 458

CHAPTER 13

International Development 460

Experiences 461 The Newly Industrializing Countries 461 The Chinese Experience 464 India Takes Off 467 Other Experiments 469

Lessons 472 Import Substitution and Export-Led

Growth 472 Concentrating Capital for

Manufacturing 473 Corruption 475

North-South Capital Flows 476 Foreign Investment 476 North-South Debt 478 IMF Conditionality 480

The South in International Economic Regimes 481

Foreign Assistance 484 Patterns of Foreign Assistance 484 Types of Foreign Assistance 486 The Politics of Foreign Assistance 489 The Impact of Foreign Assistance 492

■ Policy Perspectives Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan 483

■ Seeking the Collective Good Trick or Treat for UNICEF 490

■ Let’s Debate the Issue Foreign Aid: A Solution to Development or a Source of Problems? 496

CHAPTER 14

Postscript 498

Glossary 501

Photo Credits 517

Name Index 518

Subject Index 529

ix

Preface

We live in an increasingly interconnected world. These connections bring great benefi ts to our everyday lives: the ability to communicate instantaneously around the world and share our cultures and beliefs, the possibility of directly helping a person affected by an earthquake through a global network of charities, the ability to purchase a product made from parts manufactured in a dozen different countries each using its specialized knowl- edge to create a better product—these are some of the potential benefi ts of the intercon- nected world. Yet, these connections may also worsen existing problems: terrorist networks use telecommunications to carry out attacks; global commerce can put undue strain on our natural environment; and millions of people still live with few global connections that are enjoyed by citizens of wealthier countries.

Despite these increasing connections and their implications for everyday life, many students begin college misinformed about basic facts of international relations (IR) such as the extent of poverty and levels of foreign assistance given to the developing world and the trend toward fewer wars over the past two decades. An introductory textbook plays a key role in students’ education about international affairs, and we have worked hard to make this one timely, accurate, visually appealing, and intellectually engaging. We hope this textbook can help a generation develop knowledge and critical thinking in order to fi nd its voice and place in the changing world order.

IR is not only an important topic but also a fascinating one. The rich complexity of international relationships—political, economic, and cultural—provides a puzzle to try to understand. The puzzle is not only an intellectual challenge but also emotionally power- ful. It contains human-scale stories in which the subject’s grand themes—war and peace, intergroup confl ict and community, integration and division, humans and their environ- ment, poverty and development—play out.

New to the Tenth Edition 2013–2014 Update The tenth edition 2012–2013 update includes important revisions throughout to keep the book current in a time of historic changes in the international system. New developments such as the Syrian civil war and the new European recession are featured in text and photos throughout the book.

In international security affairs, this edition gives particular attention to the rapidly changing face of war across the world. The Syrian civil war grinds on, with more than 70,000 lives lost as of early 2013; the Israeli-Palestinian confl ict has heated up, while violence in the Democratic Congo has reignited; Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs hurtle toward a showdown with Western powers; and island disputes threaten to trigger violence in both the East China Sea and the South China Sea. At the same time, the NATO campaign in Afghanistan is winding down; France has routed Islamists from northern Mali, as has the African Union in most of Somalia; and the U.S. defense budget has begun a sharp decline. The spread of democracy continues, with elections (of an Islamist president) in Egypt and civilian rule in Burma. Cyberwarfare, such as the Flame virus and expanding drone attacks, also contributes to the changing international security picture covered in this edition.

In international political economy, as some countries climbed back from the fi nancial upheaval of 2008, the European Union fell into a second recession after debt crises in

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Greece, Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere led to massive street protests, bailouts, and austerity budgets. The euro currency, a successful experiment in its fi rst decade, began to look shaky, and further expansion of the EU was put aside. Meanwhile, telecommunications continued to revolutionize the global economy, with 6 billion cell phone subscribers worldwide. While militants and governments across the world told their stories on Twitter, Chinese citizens used Twitter-like microblogs to bypass their government and have their say. But deep divi- sions of governance of the Internet emerged at an international conference in Dubai tasked with developing a new Internet treaty. On the world health front, tremendous progress has been registered in such areas as fi ghting measles, cutting maternal deaths, and providing access to safe drinking water. The proportion of people living in extreme poverty is quickly falling. But looming over these positive trends is the threat of global warming, marked by stark warning signs such as freakish weather, fl oods, and droughts, while the international community proves incapable (at yet another major conference, in South Africa) of coming to grips with the problem. This update edition discusses all these major development of the past eventful year.

This edition retains the overall fl ow of the theory chapters in the tenth edition: Chap- ter 2 discusses realist theories, while Chapter 3 discusses alternatives to realism, including liberal and social theories. Chapter 4 covers foreign policy, including how domestic politics (traditionally the purview of American and comparative politics scholars) infl uences inter- national relations in both positive and negative ways.

We have updated the tables and fi gures with the most recent available data. This includes new data on GDP, military forces, migration and refugees, debt, remittances, for- eign aid, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and UN peacekeeping operations, to name a few.

This update edition revises the photo program substantially. Dozens of new photos, mostly from 2012 and 2013, draw visual attention to current events while reinforcing key concepts in the text.

Finally, this update includes the new boxed feature introduced in the tenth edition, “Seeking the Collective Good.” This new section emphasizes our core theme of the book: the collective goods problem. Each chapter contains an example of a collective good that states are attempting to achieve. Each box then explores how the three core principles laid out in Chapter 1 —dominance, reciprocity, or identity—have been used by states in an attempt to supply the collective good. We hope these new examples can provide a meaning- ful anchor for students to consider the concept of collective goods problems and the three potential approaches to solving them.

Structure of the Book This book aims to present the current state of knowledge in IR in a comprehensive and accessible way—to provide a map of the subject covering its various research communities in a logical order. This map is organized around the subfi elds of international security and international political economy. These subfi elds, although separated physically in this book, are integrated conceptually and overlap in many ways. Common core principles— dominance, reciprocity, and identity—unify the book by showing how theoretical models apply across the range of topics in international security and political economy.

The overall structure of this book follows substantive topics, fi rst in international secu- rity and then in international political economy. Chapter 1 introduces the study of IR; explains the collective goods problem and the core principles of dominance, reciprocity, and identity; and provides some geographical and historical context for the subject. The histori- cal perspective places recent trends, especially globalization, in the context of the evolution of the international system over the 20th century, while the global orientation refl ects the

xi

diversity of IR experiences for different actors, especially those in the global South. Chapters 2 and 3 lay out the various theoretical approaches to IR: realism, liberal theories, social theories (constructivist, postmodern, and Marxist), peace studies, and gender theories.

Chapter 4 discusses the formulation and implementation of foreign policy including a discussion of the key institutions involved in that process. Chapter 5 introduces the main sources of international confl ict, including ethnic, religious, territorial, and economic con- fl icts. The conditions and manner in which such confl icts lead to the use of violence are discussed in Chapter 6 , on military force and terrorism. Chapter 7 shows how international organizations and law, especially the United Nations, have evolved to become major infl u- ences in security relations, and how human rights have become increasingly important. The study of international organizations also bridges international security topics with those in international political economy.

The remaining chapters move through the various topics that make up the study of international political economy, beginning with microeconomic principles and national economies through trade and fi nance, international integration, the environment, and North-South relations, focusing heavily on development. Chapter 8 introduces theoretical concepts in political economy (showing how theories of international security translate into IPE issue areas) and discusses the most important topic in international political economy, namely, trade relations. Chapter 9 describes the politics of global fi nance and multinational business operations in an era of globalization. Chapter 10 explores the processes of interna- tional integration, telecommunications, and cultural exchange on both a regional scale— the European Union—and a global one. Chapter 11 shows how environmental politics and population growth expand international bargaining and interdependence both regionally and globally. Chapter 12 addresses global North-South relations, with particular attention given to poverty in the global South. Chapter 13 then considers alternatives for economic development in the context of international business, debt, and foreign aid. Chapter 14 —a brief postscript—refl ects on the book’s central themes and encourages critical thinking about the future.

Pedagogical Elements In a subject such as IR, in which knowledge is tentative and empirical developments can overtake theories, critical thinking is a key skill for college students to develop. At various points in the text, conclusions are left open-ended to let students reason their way through an issue, and in addition to the critical thinking questions at the end of each chapter, the boxed features support deeper and more focused critical thinking.

As noted earlier, the “Seeking the Collective Good” boxes focus on the core organiz- ing concept of the textbook: the collective goods problem. Each box discusses a collective good and the problems encountered by states in attempting to achieve cooperation to pro- vide the good. In each example, we highlight how one or more of the core principles (dom- inance, reciprocity, and identity) has been used successfully (or unsuccessfully) in the provision of the good.

The one-page “Policy Perspectives” feature in each chapter places students in the deci- sion-making perspective of a national leader. This feature bridges international relations theory to policy problems while demonstrating the trade-offs often present in political deci- sion-making and highlighting the interconnectedness of foreign and domestic politics.

The “Let’s Debate the Issue” boxes help students think through controversial topics. The topics in each chapter are chosen to pick up on important concepts discussed in that chapter. Thus, this feature deepens the treatment of particular topics, while reinforcing the general themes in each chapter.

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Finally, the “Careers in International Relations” feature at the beginning of the book helps students think about job possibilities in the fi eld. These pages, devoted to careers in nongovernmental organizations, government and diplomacy, international business, and teaching and research, respond to the question “How will this class help me fi nd a job?” and include books and Web sites to further pursue the issue.

Many people fi nd information—especially abstract concepts—easier to grasp when linked with pictures. Thus, the book uses color photographs extensively to illustrate important points. Photo captions reinforce main themes from each section of the text and link them with the scenes pictured, including in this edition many 2012 and 2013 photos.

Students use different learning styles. Students who are visual learners should fi nd not only the photos but also the many color graphics especially useful. The use of quantitative data also encourages critical thinking. Basic data, presented simply and appropriately at a global level, allow students to form their own judgments and to reason through the impli- cations of different policies and theories. The text uses global-level data (showing the whole picture), rounds off numbers to highlight what is important, and conveys informa- tion graphically where appropriate.

IR is a large subject that offers many directions for further exploration. The footnotes in this book, updated for the tenth edition, suggest further reading on various topics. Unless otherwise noted, they are not traditional source notes. (Also, to save space in the notes, publisher locations are omitted and major university or state names refer to their university presses, although this is not a correct research paper style.)

Joshua S. Goldstein Jon C. Pevehouse

MyPoliSciLab™ MyPoliSciLab is a state-of-the-art interactive and instructive solution for the Interna- tional Relations course, designed to be used as a supplement to a traditional lecture course, or to completely administer an online course. MyPoliSciLab provides access to a wealth of resources all geared to meet the individual teaching and learning needs of every instruc- tor and every student.

Highlights of MyPoliSciLab include:

• all the tools you need to engage every student before, during, and after class. An assignment calendar and gradebook allow you to assign specifi c activities with due dates and to measure your students’ progress throughout the semester.

• The Pearson Etext lets students access their textbook anytime, anywhere, and anyway they want, including listening online. The eText for International Relations features integrated videos, simulation activities, and interactive self-quizzes.

• A Personalized Study Plan for each student, based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, arranges activities from those that require less complex thinking—like remembering and understanding—to more complex critical thinking—like applying and analyzing. This layered approach promotes better critical thinking skills, helping students suc- ceed in the course and beyond.

New Feature in MyPoliSciLab A new set of simulations that connect with topics from the text, engaging students with the concepts and dynamics of international relations and decision-making.

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Supplements Pearson is pleased to offer several resources to qualifi ed adopters of International Relations and their students that will make teaching and learning from this book even more effec- tive and enjoyable. Several of the supplements for this book are available at the Instructor Resource Center (IRC), an online hub that allows instructors to quickly download book- specifi c supplements. Please visit the IRC welcome page at www.pearsonhighered.com/ irc to register for access.

Instructor’s Manual/Test Bank This resource includes chapter summaries, learning objectives, lecture outlines, multiple-choice questions, true/false questions, and essay questions for each chapter. Available exclusively on the IRC.

Pearson MyTest This powerful assessment generation program includes all of the items in the instructor’s manual/test bank. Questions and tests can be easily created, custom- ized, saved online, and then printed, allowing fl exibility to manage assessments anytime and anywhere. To learn more, please visit www.mypearsontest.com or contact your Pear- son representative.

PowerPoint Presentation Organized around a lecture outline, these multimedia presen- tations also include photos, fi gures, and tables from each chapter. Available exclusively on the IRC.

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Acknowledgments Many scholars, colleagues, and friends have contributed ideas that ultimately infl uenced the ten editions of this book. The book owes a special debt to the late Robert C. North, who suggested many years ago that the concepts of bargaining and leverage could be used to integrate IR theory across four levels of analysis. For help with military data issues, we thank the late Randall Forsberg. For suggestions, we thank our colleagues, and the stu- dents in our world politics classes. For help with the footnotes and glossary, thanks to Louis Cooper and Peter Howard. For developing earlier versions of the “Let’s Debate the Issue” boxes, we thank Mir Zohair Husain. For help with data research and bibliographic work, we thank Tana Johnson, Felicity Vabulas, Stephanie Dufek, Ben Zimmerman, and Roberta Braga. Thanks to Mark Lilleleht for assistance on the Careers feature. Finally, we appreciate the years of support we received from our late colleague, teacher, and friend Deborah “Misty” Gerner.

The following reviewers made many useful suggestions: Catherine Adams, King’s College London; Karen Adams, University of Montana; Philip Baumann, Minnesota State University Moorhead; Robert G. Blanton, University of Memphis; Robert E. Breckinridge, Mount Aloysius College; Jeff Cavanaugh, Mississippi State University; Brian Champion, Brigham Young University; Gregory A. Cline, Michigan State University; Myles Clowers, San Diego City College; Cynthia Combs, University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Michael Corgan, Boston University; Paul D’Anieri, University of Florida; Patricia Davis, University of Notre Dame; Elizabeth DeSombre, Colby College; June Teufel Dreyer, University of Miami; Larry Elowitz, George College and State University; George Emerson, Miami Dade Community College; Mark Everingham, University of Wisconsin–Green Bay; Jonathan Galloway, Lake Forest College; Marc Genest, University of Rhode Island; the late Deborah J. Gerner, University of Kansas; Emily O. Goldman, University of California, Davis; Vicki Golich, California State University, San Marcos; Robert Gregg, School of International Service, American University; Wolfgang Hirczy, University of Houston; Piper Hodson, Saint Joseph’s College; Steven W. Hook, University of Missouri; Ted Hopf, Ohio State University; Mir Zohair Husain, University of South Alabama; Akira Ichikawa, University of Lethbridge; W. Martin James, Henderson State University; Matthias Kaelberer, Iowa State University; Aaron Karp, Old Dominion University; Joyce Kaufman, University of Maryland at College Park; John Keeler, University of Washington; Michael Kelley, University of Central Arkansas; Jane K. Kramer, University of Oregon; Mark Lagon, Georgetown University; William Lamkin, Glendale Community College; Wei-Chin Lee, Wake Forest University; Christopher Leskin, University of the Cumberlands; Renée Marlin-Bennett, Johns Hopkins University; James Meernick, University of North Texas; Karen Mingst, University of Kentucky; Richard Moore, Lewis-Clark State College; Layna Mosley, University of North Carolina; Mark Mullenbach, University of Central Arkansas; Todd Myers, Grossmont College; John W. Outland, University of Richmond; Salvatore Prisco, Stevens Institute of Technology; David Rapkin, University of Nebraska at Lincoln; Edward Rhodes, Rutgers University; Leonard Riley, Pikes Peak Community College; Trevor Rubenzer, University of South Carolina-Upstate; Richard Rupp, Purdue University–Calumet; Houman Sadri, University of Central Florida; Henry Schockley, Boston University; Keith St. Clair, Grand Rapids Community College; Paul Vasquez, Wabash College; Paul Vicary, Florida International University; Thomas J. Volgy, University of Arizona; and David Wilsford, Institute for American Universities, France. The errors, of course, remain our own responsibility.

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To the Student

The topics studied by scholars are like a landscape with many varied locations and ter- rains. This textbook is a map that can orient you to the main topics, debates, and issue areas in international relations. Scholars use specialized language to talk about their sub- jects. This text is a phrase book that can translate such lingo and explain the terms and concepts that scholars use to talk about international relations. However, IR is fi lled with many voices speaking many tongues. The text translates some of those voices—of presi- dents and professors, free traders and feminists—to help you sort out the contours of the subject and the state of knowledge about its various topics. In this tenth edition, we have especially tried to streamline and clarify this complex subject to help you not just understand but deeply understand international relations. But ultimately, the synthesis presented in this book is that of the authors. Both you and your professor may disagree with many points. Thus, this book is only a starting point for conversations and debates.

With map and phrase book in hand, you are ready to explore a fascinating world. The great changes taking place in world politics have made the writing of this textbook an exciting project. May you enjoy your own explorations of this realm.

J. S. G. J. C. P.

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A Note on Nomenclature

In international relations, names are politically sensitive; different actors may call a territory or an event by different names. This book cannot resolve such confl icts; it has adopted the fol- lowing naming conventions for the sake of consistency. The United Kingdom of Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales) and Northern Ireland is called Britain. Burma, renamed Myanmar by its military government, is referred to as Burma. The country of Bosnia and Herzegovina is generally shortened to Bosnia (with apologies to Herzegovinians). The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is called Macedonia. The People’s Republic of China is referred to as China. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly called the Belgian Congo and then Zaire) is here called Democratic Congo. We refer to Cote D’Ivoire as Ivory Coast. Elsewhere, country names follow common usage, dropping formal designations such as “Republic of.” We refer to the Sea of Japan, which some call the East Sea, and to the Persian Gulf, which is also called the Arabian Gulf. The 1991 U.S.-led multinational military campaign that retook Kuwait after Iraq’s 1990 invasion is called the Gulf War, and the U.S. war in Iraq after 2003 is called the Iraq War. The war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s is called the Iran-Iraq War.

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and procedures, requiring great patience. Employees often express frustration that initiative and “thinking outside the box” are not rewarded.

SKILLS TO HONE The key to working in IGOs or government is to get your foot in the door. Be fl exible and willing to take entry positions that are not exactly in your area of interest. For example, the State Depart- ment is only one of many parts of the U.S. government that deal with IR. Do not assume that to work in for- eign affairs, one must be a diplomat.

Foreign language training is also important, especially for work in large IGOs with many field offices. The ability to work well in groups and to network within and across organizations is an impor- tant asset. People who can strengthen lines of com- munication can gain support from many places in an organization.

Finally, strong analytical and writing abilities are extremely important. Both IGOs and governments deal with massive amounts of information daily. The ability to analyze information (even including mathematical or computational analysis) and to write clear, concise interpretations will make one invaluable.

RESOURCES Shawn Dorman. Inside a U.S. Embassy: How the

Foreign Service Works for America. 2nd ed. Washington, D.C.: American Foreign Service Assoc., 2003.

Linda Fasulo. An Insider’s Guide to the UN. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

http://jobs.un.org http://careers.state.gov http://jobsearch.usajobs.opm.gov/a9st00.aspx

BENEFITS AND COSTS Both governments and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) play key roles in international relations and employ millions of peo- ple with interests and training in IR.

Despite differences between careers in IGOs and governments, there are numerous similarities. Both are hierarchical organizations, with competitive and highly regulated working environments. Whether in the U.S. State Department or the UN, entrance into and promo- tion in these organizations is regulated by exams, per- formance evaluations, and tenure with the organization.

Another similarity lies in the challenges of being pulled in many directions concerning policies. Govern- ments face competing pressures of public opinion, con- stituencies, and interests groups—each with distinct policy opinions. IGOs also deal with interest groups (such as NGOs), but an IGO’s constituents are states, which in many cases disagree among themselves.

Many employees of IGOs or governments thrive on making decisions that infl uence policies. Both work environments also attract coworkers with deep inter- ests in international affairs, and the resulting networks of contracts can bring professional and intellectual re- wards. Finally, jobs in governments or IGOs may in- volve travel or living abroad, which many enjoy.

However, promotion can be slow and frustrating. Usually, only individuals with advanced degrees or technical specializations achieve non–entry level posi- tions. It can take years to climb within the organization and the process may involve working in departments far from your original interests. In addition, both IGOs and governments are bureaucracies with formal rules

Jobs in Government and Diplomacy

SUMMARY

Jobs in government and diplomacy

offer team players the chance to

affect policy, but require patience

with large bureaucracies.

xviii

school programs will be helpful for all three types of jobs, yet for jobs based abroad, employers often also look for a broader set of skills taught in economics, political science, and communications. Thus, not only traditional business skills, but language and cultural skills, are essential. Employers look for those who have knowledge of a country’s human and economic geog- raphy as well as culture. Experience with study abroad, especially including working abroad, can help show an ability to adapt and function well in other cultures. Strong analytical and especially writing abilities also matter greatly to employers.

Research also helps in landing a job. Employers of- ten look for knowledge of a particular industry or com- pany, in order to make best use of an employee’s lan- guage and cultural skills. Of course, while experience in non-international business never hurts, be mindful that the practices, customs, and models of business in one country may not apply well abroad. Cross-cultural skills combined with substantive business knowledge in order to translate the operational needs of compa- nies from the business world to the global realm are highly valued.

RESOURCES Edward J. Halloran. Careers in International Busi-

ness. 2nd ed. NY: McGraw-Hill, 2003. Deborah Penrith, ed. The Directory of Jobs and

Careers Abroad. 12th ed. Oxford, UK: Vacation Work Publications, 2005.

http://www.rileyguide.com/internat.html http://www.jobsabroad.com/search.cfm http://www.transitionsabroad.com/listings/work/

careers/index.shtml

BENEFITS AND COSTS As the pace and scope of globalization have accelerated, opportunities to work in international business have blossomed. For many large companies, the domestic/global distinction has ceased to exist. This new context provides opportunities and challenges for potential employees.

Careers in international business offer many ad- vantages. Business jobs can pay substantially more than those in governments or NGOs and can open oppor- tunities to travel extensively and network globally. Foreign-based jobs mean relocation to another country to work and immerse oneself in another culture.

However, such a career choice also has potential costs. Many jobs require extensive hours, grueling trav- el, and frequent relocation. As with any job, promotion and advancement may fall victim to external circum- stances such as global business cycles. And these jobs can be especially hard on families.

International opportunities arise in many business sectors. Banking, marketing (public relations), sales, and computing/telecommunications have seen tremendous growth in recent years. These jobs fall into three broad categories: (1) those located domestically, yet involving signifi cant interactions with fi rms abroad; (2) domestic jobs working for foreign-based companies; and (3) those based abroad, for foreign or domestic fi rms.

SKILLS TO HONE One key to landing in the in- ternational business world is to develop two families of skills: those related to international relations and those related to business operations. Traditional MBA (Masters in Business Administration) and business

Jobs in International Business

SUMMARY

Jobs in international business offer

high pay, interesting work, and

demanding hours for those with

language and cultural skills.

xix

training. Basic offi ce skills (e.g., computer expertise) are essential, but employees also need to cover a range of duties every day. Anything and everything is in your job description. Writing and communication skills are key, especially when fundraising is part of the job. Foreign language skills also matter since many NGOs maintain or work with fi eld offi ces abroad.

Often, NGOs ask potential employees to volunteer for a period while they train, before being hired. In- creasingly, some companies place workers in an NGO or volunteer opportunity for a price. By paying to work, you can gain a probationary period to develop your skills and familiarize yourself with the operation so as to become effi cient before going on the payroll.

Finally, in cities where NGOs cluster (e.g., Washington, D.C.), personal networks play an important role in fi nding good opportunities. Work- ers often move from one organization to another. For this reason, many volunteer or accept jobs with NGOs not in their immediate area of interest to gain experience and contacts, which can help future ca- reer advancement.

RESOURCES Sherry Mueller. Careers in Nonprofi t and Educa-

tional Organizations. In Careers in International Affairs. 7th ed. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown School of For- eign Service, 2003.

Richard M. King. From Making a Profi t to Making a Difference: How to Launch Your New Career in Nonprof- its. River Forest, IL: Planning/Communications, 2000.

http://www.ngo.org/links/index.htm http://www.idealist.org http://www.wango.org/resources.aspx?section=ngodir

BENEFITS AND COSTS Nearly 30,000 NGOs ex- ist, and that number grows daily. Thousands of indi- viduals are interested in working in these organizations. Although all NGOs are different, many perform multi- ple functions: working in developing countries regard- ing a variety of issues; public outreach at home and abroad; lobbying governments to change their policies; designing projects to solve problems and attempting to fi nd funding for their implementation.

Working for an NGO has many benefi ts. Workers often fi nd themselves surrounded by others concerned about the same issues: improving the environment, protecting human rights, advancing economic devel- opment, or promoting better health care. The spirit of camaraderie can be exhilarating and rewarding.

While working for an NGO can be extremely re- warding personally, it is rarely rewarding fi nancially. Most NGOs are nonprofi t operations that pay workers meagerly for long hours. Moreover, many smaller NGOs engage in a constant fi ght for funding from govern- ments, think tanks, private foundations, or individuals. The process of fundraising can be quite time consuming.

Despite the large number of NGOs, relatively low pay, and long hours, fi nding a job with an NGO can be diffi cult. One key is to be specifi c. Try to narrow down your interests in terms of substantive areas (e.g., human rights, environment) and/or geographic region. Also think about whether you want to work in your own country or abroad. Positions abroad may be more rewarding but are in lower supply and higher demand.

SKILLS TO HONE NGOs are looking for self- starters. Most have little time and few resources for

Jobs in Nongovernmental Organizations

SUMMARY

Jobs in NGOs provide personally

rewarding experiences for those

willing to work hard for a cause, but

pay poorly and are hard to obtain.

xx

your own time schedule, balancing other duties (such as work as a teaching or research assistant) that can eas- ily crowd out your own work. Many who complete the coursework for an advanced degree do not fi nish their thesis or take many years to do so.

SKILLS TO HONE Whether one wants to pursue an ad- vanced degree for the purposes of teaching in an academic setting or engaging in applied research, there are impor- tant skill sets to develop. First and foremost is critical thinking. Scholars and researchers must consider many alternatives as answers to questions, while being able to evaluate the validity or importance of those alternatives. Second is writing. Before, during, and after producing a thesis, writing is a key skill for academics and researchers. Finally, think about developing a set of applied skills to use as a toolbox while analyzing questions. The contents of this toolbox might include other languages to facili- tate fi eldwork abroad. It could include statistics and data skills to facilitate quantitative analysis. Or it could include mathematics to use game theoretic models. No matter which tools you emphasize, specialized skills will help you answer research questions, whether as part of the academy or in a private or governmental research organization.

RESOURCES The Chronicle of Higher Education (weekly). Online at chronicle.com/

American Political Science Assoc. Earning a PhD in Political Science. 4th ed. Washington, D.C., 2004.

Ernest J. Wilson. Is There Really a Scholar- Practitioner Gap? An Institutional Analysis. PS: Political Science and Politics, January 2007.

http://www.apsanet.org http://www.apsia.org http://www.isanet.org

BENEFITS AND COSTS People follow various paths to an interest in teaching and researching in the fi eld of international relations. Your own professor or instructor is likely to have a unique story about how he or she became interested in international affairs.

One advantage of an academic and research career, whether at a teaching-oriented institution or a large re- search university, is intellectual freedom. One can spend a career approaching a variety of topics that are inter- esting and constantly evolving, that may involve travel abroad for fi eldwork, and that may let you network with hundreds of colleagues interested in similar topics.

Most research positions (e.g., in think tanks) are different in two respects. First, these jobs often give more direction to an individual in terms of the research to be performed. Second, there is little or no teaching involved. Still, for those interested in IR research, such jobs can result in a wider dissemination of one’s work to a broader audience that often includes policy makers.

To teach IR at an advanced level or to perform research for think tanks and government agencies usually requires an advanced degree—nearly always a masters degree, often a doctorate (Ph.D.). Masters de- gree programs often take between one and two years, while a Ph.D. in international relations usually takes a minimum of fi ve years. Often, students take time off between their undergraduate and graduate educations to travel internationally or get work experience to hone their interests. Of course, many students never return to extend their education if they fi nd a job that allows them to achieve their personal and career goals.

Finally, in completing most advanced degrees, a large amount of self-direction is necessary. Coursework is only one part of masters or Ph.D. programs: a thesis is also required. Writing a thesis requires you to work on

Jobs in Education and Research

SUMMARY

Jobs in teaching and research offer

freedom to pursue ideas and work

with colleagues, but require years

of schooling.

xxi

Maps

xxii

COLOMBIA

MEXICO

CUBA

U.S.A.

VENEZUELA PANAMA

COSTA RICA

NICARAGUA

HONDURAS

BAHAMAS

HAITI

TRINIDAD AND

TOBAGO

PUERTO RICO

VIRGIN ISLANDS

BARBUDA ANTIGUA

ST. KITTS AND NEVIS DOMINICA

MARTINIQUE

NETHERLANDS ANTILLES

BARBADOS

ST. LUCIA

GRENADA

ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

BELIZE JAMAICA

GUATEMALA

EL SALVADOR

CAMEROON

DEM. CONGO

BURKINA FASO

GHANA BENIN

NIGERIA

MALI NIGER

ANGOLA

GABON

CONGO

NAMIBIA

EQUATORIAL GUINEA

SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE

TOGO

CÔTE D'IVOIRE

U.S.

GREENLAND (DANISH)

CANADA

UNITED STATES

MEXICO

COLOMBIA

GUYANA

SURINAME

BERMUDA

FRENCH GUIANA

BRAZIL

ECUADOR

PERU

BOLIVIA

PARAGUAY

URUGUAY ARGENTINA

CHILE

ICELAND

WESTERN SAHARA

SOUTH AFRICA SWAZILA

LESOTHO

BOTSWANA

ZIM

ZAMBIA

TANZANIA

RWANDA BURUNDI

KENYA UGANDA

ERITRE

ETHI

SUDAN

SOUTH SUDAN

DEM. CONGO

CENTRAL AFRICAN

REP.

EGYPT LIBYA

CHAD

ALGERIA

MOROCCO

NIGERMALIMAURITANIA SENEGAL

GAMBIA

CAPE VERDE

GUINEA BISSAU GUINEA

SIERRA LEONE LIBERIA

ANGOLA

NAMIBIA

IR SYRIA

TURKEY

CYPRUS

JORDAISRAEL

LEBANON

GEORG

ARMENIA

TUNISIA

BA

PACIFIC OCEAN

ARCTIC OCEAN

ATLANTIC OCEAN

ATLANTIC OCEAN

PACIFIC OCEAN

World States and Territories

xxiii

INDONESIA

TURKEY

RUSSIA

FRANCE

SPAIN

GERMANY

ITALY

PORTUGAL

POLAND

ROMANIA

UKRAINE

NORWAY

SWEDEN

FINLAND

BRITAIN

IRELAND

LITHUANIA

LATVIA

ESTONIA

RUSSIA

GREECE

BULGARIA

MOLDOVA

MACEDONIA

ALBANIA

SLOVENIA CROATIA

BOSNIA- HERZEGOVINA

SERBIA

MALTA

BELARUS

HUNGARY

SLOVAKIA

AUSTRIA

DENMARK

NETHERLANDS

BELGIUM

LUXEMBOURG

SWITZERLAND

ANDORRA MONACO

SAN MARINO

LIECHTENSTEIN

CZECH REPUBLIC

WE OZAMBIQUE

MADAGASCAR

NEW ZEALAND

MALAWI

A

OMALIA

EMEN

DI ARABIA

AZERBAIJAN

UZBEKISTAN RKMENISTAN

N

PALAU

HONG KONG MACAU

VIETNAM LAOS

PHILIPPINES

SEYCHELLES

COMOROS ISLANDS

DJIBOUTI

OM AN

UNITED ARAB

EMIRATES

QATAR

IRAN AFGHANISTAN

PAKISTAN

KAZAKHSTAN

INDIA

C H I N A

NEPAL BHUTAN

BANGLADESH

SRI LANKA

MALDIVES

THAILAND

BURMA (MYANMAR)

CAMBODIA

MALAYSIA

EAST TIMOR

TAIWAN

SOUTH KOREA

NORTH KOREA

JAPAN

MONGOLIA

AUSTRALIA

TARCTICA

MAURITIUS

R U S S I A

BRUNEI

SINGAPORE

TAJIKISTAN KYRGYZSTAN

GUAM/MARIANAS

PAPUA NEW GUINEA

SOLOMON ISLANDS

MICRONESIA

MARSHALL ISLANDS

FIJI

VANUATU

KIRIBATI

TONGA

SAMOA

AMERICAN SAMOA

NAURU

TUVALU

KUWAIT

INDIAN OCEAN

PACIFIC OCEAN

ARCTIC OCEAN

MONTENEGRO

xxiv

North America

xxv

Central America and the Caribbean

xxvi

South America

xxvii

SOUTH SUDAN

Africa

xxviii

Northern Africa and the Middle East

xxix

Europe

xxx

Asia

International Relations

The Globalization of International Relations

International Space Station, 2010.

CHAPTER 1 Listen to Chapter 1 at MyPoliSciLab

Watch the Video ‘’Authors’ Chapter Introduction’’ at MyPoliSciLab

3

Globalization, International Relations, and Daily Life International relations is a fascinating topic because it concerns peoples and cultures throughout the world. The scope and complexity of the interactions among these groups make international relations a challenging subject to master. There is always more to learn. This book is only the beginning of the story.

Narrowly defi ned, the fi eld of international relations (IR) concerns the relation- ships among the world’s governments. But these relationships cannot be understood in isolation. They are closely connected with other actors (such as international organiza- tions, multinational corporations, and individuals); with other social structures and processes (including economics, culture, and domestic politics); and with geographical and historical infl uences. These elements together power the central trend in IR today—globalization.

Indeed, two key events of recent years refl ect globalization. The young protesters of the Arab Spring who overthrew several governments in 2011–2012 used Facebook and cell phones to plan and coordinate their revolutions. And the global economic recession of 2008–2009, which began with a collapse of the U.S. home mortgage mar- ket, spread quickly to other nations. Highly integrated global fi nancial markets created a ripple effect across the globe that is still being felt today. Thus, two hallmarks of globalization—expanding communications technology and integrated markets— propelled events that impacted our daily lives.

Not only large-scale events infl uence our lives. The prospects for getting jobs after graduation depend on the global economy and international economic competition. Those jobs also are more likely than ever to entail international travel, sales, or com- munication. And the rules of the world trading system affect the goods that students consume every day, such as electronics, clothes, and gasoline.

Globalization has distinct positive impacts on our daily lives as well. As technol- ogy advances, the world is shrinking year by year. Better communication and transpor- tation capabilities constantly expand the ordinary person’s contact with people, products, and ideas from other countries. Globalization is internationalizing us.

In addition to feeling the infl uence of globalization and international relations on our daily lives, individual citizens can infl uence the world as well. Often, international relations is portrayed as a distant and abstract ritual conducted by a small group of peo- ple such as presidents, generals, and diplomats. Although leaders do play a major role in international affairs, many other people participate. College students and other citi- zens participate in international relations every time they vote in an election or work on a political campaign, buy a product or service traded on world markets, and watch the news. The choices we make in our daily lives ultimately affect the world we live in. Through those choices, every person makes a unique contribution, however small, to the world of international relations.

The purpose of this book is to introduce the fi eld of IR, to organize what is known and theorized about IR, and to convey the key concepts used by political scientists to discuss relations among nations. This fi rst chapter defi nes IR as a fi eld of study, intro- duces the actors of interest, and reviews the geographical and historical aspects of glo- balization within which IR occurs.

Globalization, International Relations, and Daily Life

■ Core Principles ■ IR as a Field of Study

Actors and Infl uences ■ State Actors ■ Nonstate Actors ■ Levels of Analysis ■ Globalization

Global Geography

The Evolving International System

■ The Two World Wars, 1900–1950

■ The Cold War, 1945–1990 ■ The Post–Cold War Era,

1990–2013

CHAPTER OUTLINE

Study and Review the Pre-Test & Flashcards at MyPoliSciLab

4 Chapter 1 The Globalization of International Relations

Core Principles The field of IR reflects the world’s complexity, and IR scholars use many theories, concepts, and buzzwords in trying to describe and explain it. Underneath this complex- ity, however, lie a few basic principles that shape the fi eld. We will lay out the range of theories and approaches in Chapters 2 through 4 , but here we will present the most central ideas as free from jar- gon as possible.

IR revolves around one key problem: How can a group—such as two or more countries—serve its collective interests when doing so requires its members to forgo their individual interests? For example, every country has an interest in stopping global warming, a goal that can be achieved only by many coun- tries acting together. Yet each country also has an individual

interest in burning fossil fuels to keep its economy going. Similarly, all members of a mili- tary alliance benefi t from the strength of the alliance, but each member separately has an interest in minimizing its own contributions in troops and money. Individual nations can advance their own short-term interests by seizing territory militarily, cheating on trade agreements, and refusing to contribute to international efforts such as peacekeeping or vaccination campaigns. But if all nations acted this way, they would fi nd themselves worse off, in a chaotic and vicious environment where mutual gains from cooperating on issues of security and trade would disappear.

This problem of shared interests versus confl icting interests among members of a group goes by various names in various contexts—the problem of “collective action,” “free riding,” “burden sharing,” the “tragedy of the commons,” or the “prisoner’s dilemma.” We will refer to the general case as the collective goods problem , that is, the problem of how to provide some- thing that benefi ts all members of a group regardless of what each member contributes to it. 1

In general, collective goods are easier to provide in small groups than in large ones. In a small group, the cheating (or free riding) of one member is harder to conceal, has a greater impact on the overall collective good, and is easier to punish. The advantage of small groups helps explain the importance of the great power system in international security affairs and of the G20 (Group of Twenty) industrialized countries in economic matters. 2

IR affects our lives in many ways. This woman’s boyfriend died in Iraq in 2006.

TOUCHED BY WAR

Explore the Simulation

“Why Study International

Relations” at MyPoliSciLab

1 Olson, Mancur. The Logic of Collective Action. Harvard, 1971 [1965]. 2 At the G20 meeting in 2009, leaders of the major industrial countries announced that the G20 would replace the G8 as the key group coordinating global fi nancial matters.

Globalization, International Relations, and Daily Life 5

The collective goods problem occurs in all groups and societies, but is particularly acute in international affairs because each nation is sovereign, with no central authority such as a world government to enforce on individual nations the necessary measures to provide for the common good. By contrast, in domestic politics within countries, a government can force individuals to contribute in ways that do not serve their individual self-interest, such as by paying taxes or paying to install antipollution equipment on vehicles and factories. If individuals do not comply, the government can punish them. Although this solution is far from perfect—cheaters and criminals sometimes are not caught, and governments some- times abuse their power—it mostly works well enough to keep societies going.

Three basic principles—which we call dominance, reciprocity, and identity—offer possible solutions to the core problem of getting individuals to cooperate for the common good without a central authority to make them do so (see Table 1.1 on p. 8 ). These three principles are fundamental across the social sciences and recur in such disciplines as the study of animal societies, child development, social psychology, anthropology, and eco- nomics, as well as political science. To explain each principle, we will apply the three principles to a small-scale human example and an IR example.

Dominance The principle of dominance solves the collective goods problem by estab- lishing a power hierarchy in which those at the top control those below—a bit like a government but without an actual government. Instead of fi ghting constantly over who gets scarce resources, the members of a group can just fi ght occasionally over position in the “status hierarchy.” Then social confl icts such as who gets resources are resolved auto- matically in favor of the higher-ranking actor. Fights over the dominance position have scripted rules that minimize, to some extent, the harm infl icted on the group members. Symbolic acts of submission and dominance reinforce an ever-present status hierarchy. Staying on top of a status hierarchy does not depend on strength alone, though it helps. Rather, the top actor may be the one most adept at forming and maintaining alliances among the group’s more capable members. Dominance is complex, and not just a matter of brute force.

In international relations, the principle of dominance underlies the great power sys- tem, in which a handful of countries dictate the rules for all the others. Sometimes a so- called hegemon or superpower stands atop the great powers as the dominant nation. The UN Security Council, in which the world’s fi ve strongest military powers hold a veto, refl ects the dominance principle.

The advantage of the dominance solution to the collective goods problem is that, like a government, it forces members of a group to contribute to the common good. It also minimizes open confl ict within the group. However, the disadvantage is that this stability comes at a cost of constant oppression of, and resentment by, the lower-ranking members in the status hierarchy. Also, confl icts over position in the hierarchy can occasionally harm the group’s stability and well-being, such as when challenges to the top position lead to serious fi ghts. In the case of international relations, the great power system and the hegemony of a superpower can provide relative peace and stability for decades on end but then can break down into costly wars among the great powers.

Reciprocity The principle of reciprocity solves the collective goods problem by reward- ing behavior that contributes to the group and punishing behavior that pursues self- interest at the expense of the group. Reciprocity is very easy to understand and can be “enforced” without any central authority, making it a robust way to get individuals to cooperate for the common good.

But reciprocity operates in both the positive realm (“You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”) and the negative (“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”). A disadvantage

6 Chapter 1 The Globalization of International Relations

of reciprocity as a solution to the collective goods problem is that it can lead to a down- ward spiral as each side pun- ishes what it believes to be negative acts by the other. Psychologically, most people overestimate their own good intentions and underestimate the value of the actions of their opponents or rivals. To avoid tit-for-tat escalations of confl ict, one or both parties must act generously to get the relationship moving in a good direction.

In international rela- tions, reciprocity forms the basis of most of the norms (habits; expectations) and institutions in the interna- tional system. Many central arrangements in IR, such as World Trade Organization agreements, explicitly recog- nize reciprocity as the linch- pin of cooperation. For instance, if one country opens its markets to another’s goods, the other opens its markets in return. On the negative side, reciprocity fuels arms races as

each side responds to the other’s buildup of weapons. But it also allows arms control agree- ments and other step-by-step confl ict-resolution measures, as two sides match each other’s actions in backing away from the brink of war.

Identity A third potential solution to the collective goods problem lies in the identities of participants as members of a community. Although the dominance and reciprocity principles act on the idea of achieving individual self-interest (by taking what you can, or by mutually benefi cial arrangements), the identity principle does not rely on self-interest. On the con- trary, members of an identity community care about the interests of others in that commu- nity enough to sacrifi ce their own interests to benefi t others. The roots of this principle lie in the family, the extended family, and the kinship group. But this potential is not limited to the close family; it can be generalized to any identity community that one feels a part of. As members of a family care about each other, so do members of an ethnic group, a gender group, a nation, or the world’s scientists. In each case, individual members will accept solu- tions to collective goods problems that do not give them the best deal as individuals, because the benefi ts are “all in the family,” so to speak. A biologist retiring at a rich American univer- sity may give away lab equipment to a biologist in a poor country because they share an identity as scientists. A European Jew may give money to Israel because of a shared Jewish identity, or a computer scientist from India may return home to work for lower pay after receiving training in Canada, in order to help the community he or she cares about. Millions

Collective goods are provided to all members of a group regardless of their individual con- tributions, just as these migrant workers crossing the Sahara desert in Niger in 2006 all depend on the truck’s progress even while perhaps jostling for position among them- selves. In many issue areas, such as global warming, the international community of nations is similarly interdependent. However, the provision of collective goods presents diffi cult dilemmas as players seek to maximize their own share of benefi ts.

TRAVEL COMPANIONS

Globalization, International Relations, and Daily Life 7

of people contribute to international disaster relief funds after tsunamis, earthquakes, or hur- ricanes because of a shared identity as members of the community of human beings.

In IR, identity communities play important roles in overcoming diffi cult collective goods problems, including the issue of who contributes to development assistance, world health, and UN peacekeeping missions. The relatively large foreign aid contributions of Scandinavian countries, or the high Canadian participation in peacekeeping, cannot be explained well by self-interest, but arise from these countries’ self-defi ned identities as members of the international community. Even in military forces and diplomacy (where dominance and reciprocity, respectively, rule the day), the shared identities of military professionals and of diplomats—each with shared traditions and expectations—can take the edge off confl icts. And military alliances also mix identity politics with raw self- interest, as shown by the unusual strength of the U.S.-British alliance, which shared inter- ests alone cannot explain as well as shared identity does.

Nonstate actors, such as nongovernmental organizations or terrorist networks, also rely on identity politics to a great extent. The increasing roles of these actors—feminist organizations, churches, jihadists, and multinational corporations, for example—have brought the identity principle to greater prominence in IR theory in recent years.

An Everyday Example To sum up the three core principles, imagine that you have two good friends, a man and a woman, who are in a romantic relationship. They love each other and enjoy the other’s company, but they come to you for help with a problem: When they go out together, the man likes to go to the opera, whereas the woman enjoys going to boxing matches. 3 Because of your training in international relations, you quickly recognize this as a collective goods problem, in which the shared interest is spending time together and the confl icting individual interests are watching opera and watching boxing. (Of course, you know that the behavior of states is more complicated than that of individuals, but put that aside for a moment.) You might approach this problem in any of three ways.

First, you could say, “Traditionally, relationships work best when the man wears the pants. For thousands of years the man has made the decision and the woman has followed it. I suggest you do the same, and buy season tickets to the opera.” This would be a dominance solution. It could be a very stable solution, if the woman cares more about spending time with her true love than she cares about opera or boxing. It would be a simple solution that would settle all future confl icts. It would give one party everything he wants, and the other party some of what she wants (love, company, a stable relationship). This might be better for both of them than spending all their evenings arguing about where to go out. On the other hand, this solution might leave the woman permanently resentful at the unequal nature of the out- come. She might feel her love for her partner diminish, over time, by a longing for respect and a nostalgia for boxing. She might even meet another man who likes her and likes boxing.

Second, you could say, “Look, instead of fi ghting all the time, why don’t you establish a pattern and trade off going to boxing one time and opera the next.” This would be a reciprocity solution. You could help the couple set up agreements, accounting systems, and shared expectations to govern the implementation of this seemingly simple solution. For example, they could go to boxing on Friday nights and opera on Saturday nights. But what if opera season is shorter than boxing season? Then perhaps they would go to opera more often during its season and boxing more often when opera is out of season. What if one of them is out of town on a Friday night? Does that night count anyway or does it earn a credit for later? Or does the one who is in town go out alone? What if the man hates box- ing but the woman only mildly dislikes opera? Do you set up a schedule of two operas for each boxing match to keep each side equally happy or unhappy? Clearly, reciprocity solu- tions can become very complicated (just look at the world trade rules in Chapter 8 , for

3 This scenario is adopted from the game theory example “Battle of the Sexes.”

8 Chapter 1 The Globalization of International Relations

example), and they require constant monitoring to see if obligations are being met and cheating avoided. Your friends might fi nd it an irritant in their relationship to keep close track of who owes whom a night at the opera or at a boxing match.

Third, you could say, “Who cares about opera or boxing? The point is that you love each other and want to be together. Get past the superfi cial issues and strengthen the core feelings that brought you together. Then it won’t matter where you go or what you’re watching.” This would be an identity solution. This approach could powerfully resolve your friends’ confl ict and leave them both much happier. Over time, one partner might actually begin to prefer the other’s favorite activity after more exposure—leading to a change in identity. On the other hand, after a while self-interest could creep back in, because that loving feeling might seem even happier with a boxing match (or opera) to watch. Indeed, one partner can subtly exploit the other’s commitment to get past the superfi cial confl icts. “What’s it matter as long as we’re together,” she says, “and oh, look, there’s a good boxing match tonight!” Sometimes the identity principle operates more powerfully in the short term than the long term: the soldier who volunteers to defend the homeland might begin to feel taken advantage of after months or years on the front line, and the American college student who gives money once to tsunami victims may not want to keep giving year after year to malaria victims.

SEEKING THE COLLECTIVE GOOD

Introduction In explaining how countries behave in IR, a central con- cept is the “collective goods problem” (p. 4 ) . This recur- ring problem results when two or more members of a group share an interest in some outcome of value to them all, but have confl icting individual interests when it comes to achieving that valued outcome. For example, the world’s countries share a desire to avoid global warm- ing, but each one benefi ts from burning fossil fuels to run its economy. If a few members of a group fail to contribute to a collective good, the others will still provide it and the few can “free ride.” But if too many do so, then the collec- tive good will not be provided for anyone. For instance, if too many countries burn too much fossil fuel, then the

whole world will suffer the effects of glo- bal warming.

Within domestic societies, govern- ments solve collective goods problems by forcing the members of society to contribute to common goals, such as by paying taxes. In international affairs, no such world government exists. Three core principles—dominance, reciproc- ity, and identity—offer different solu- tions to the collective goods problem. These principles underlie the actions and outcomes that make up IR.

Principle Advantages Drawbacks

Dominance Order, Stability,

Predictability Oppression,

Resentment

Reciprocity Incentives for

Mutual Cooperation Downward Spirals;

Complex Accounting

Sacrifice for Group, Redefine Interests

Identity Demonizing an

Out-Group

TABLE 1.1 Core Principles for Solving Collective Goods Problems

Globalization, International Relations, and Daily Life 9

An IR Example Now consider the problem of nuclear proliferation. All countries share an interest in the collective good of peace and stability, which is hard to achieve in a world where more and more countries make more and more nuclear weapons. Within a society, if individuals acquire dangerous weapons, the government can take them away to keep everyone safe. But in the society of nations, no such central authority exists. In 2006, North Korea tested its fi rst nuclear bomb and Iran continues uranium enrichment that could lead to a nuclear bomb—defying UN resolutions in both cases.

One approach to nuclear proliferation legitimizes these weapons’ ownership by just the few most powerful countries. The “big fi ve” with the largest nuclear arsenals hold veto power on the UN Security Council. Through agreements like the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Proliferation Security Initiative, the existing nuclear powers actively try to keep their exclusive hold on these weapons and prevent smaller nations from getting them. This is a dominance approach. In 2003, when the United States thought Iraq’s Saddam Hussein might have an active nuclear weapons program, as he had a decade earlier, it invaded Iraq and overthrew its government. Similarly, in 1982, when Iraq had begun working toward a nuclear bomb, Israel sent jets to bomb Iraq’s nuclear facility, setting back the program by years. One drawback to these dominance solutions is the resentment they create among the smaller countries. Those countries point to an unenforced provision of the NPT stating that existing nuclear powers should get rid of their own bombs as other countries refrain from making new ones. And they ask what gives Israel the right to bomb another country, or the United States the right to invade one. They speak of a “double standard” for the powerful and the weak.

Reciprocity offers a different avenue for preventing proliferation. It is the basis of the provision in the NPT about the existing nuclear powers’ obligation to disarm in exchange for smaller countries’ agreement to stay nonnuclear. Reciprocity also underlies arms con- trol agreements, used extensively in the Cold War to manage the buildup of nuclear bombs by the superpowers, and used currently to manage the mutual reduction of their arsenals. Deterrence also relies on reciprocity. The United States warned North Korea in 2006 against selling its bombs (an action that would be in North Korea’s short-term self- interest), threatening to retaliate against North Korea if any other actor used such a bomb

To help tie together a central topic in a chapter with the core principles used throughout the book, each chapter contains a Seeking the Collective Good box. Each box will discuss how the world’s states deal with an important issue in IR using one (or more) of the core principles. Examples include stopping geno- cide ( Chapter 7 ), enhancing world trade ( Chapter 8 ), and slowing global warming ( Chapter 11 ).

Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, New Jersey, 2012. Global climate stability is a collective good.

10 Chapter 1 The Globalization of International Relations

against the United States. And when Libya gave up its nuclear weapons program in 2003, the international community gave it various rewards, including the ending of economic sanctions, in exchange.

The identity principle has proven equally effective against nuclear proliferation, if less newsworthy. Many nations that have the technical ability to make nuclear weapons have chosen not to do so. They have constructed their national identities in ways that shape their self-interests so as to make nuclear bombs undesirable. Some, like Sweden, do not intend to fi ght wars. Others, like Germany, belong to alliances in which they come under another nation’s nuclear “umbrella” and do not need their own bomb. South Africa actually developed nuclear weapons in secret but then dismantled the program before apartheid ended, keeping the bomb out of the hands of the new majority-rule govern- ment. Nobody forced South Africa to do this (as in dominance), nor did it respond to rewards and punishments (reciprocity). Rather, South Africa’s identity shifted. Similarly, Japan’s experience of the catastrophic results of militarism, culminating in the destruction of two of its cities by nuclear bombs in 1945, continues generations later to shape Japan’s identity as a country that does not want nuclear weapons, even though it has the know- how and even the stockpile of plutonium to make them.

Collective goods problems fascinate social scientists, and especially scholars of IR, precisely because they have no easy solutions. In later chapters, we will see how these three core principles shape the responses of the international community to various col- lective goods problems across the whole range of IR issues.

IR as a Field of Study IR is a rather practical discipline. There is a close connection between scholars in col- leges, universities, and think tanks and the policy-making community working in the government—especially in the United States. Some professors serve in the government (for instance, Professor Condoleezza Rice became national security advisor in 2001 and secretary of state in 2005 under President George W. Bush), and sometimes professors publicize their ideas about foreign policy through newspaper columns or TV interviews. Infl uencing their government’s foreign policy gives these scholars a laboratory in which to test their ideas in practice. Diplomats, bureaucrats, and politicians can benefi t from the knowledge produced by IR scholars. 4

Theoretical debates in the fi eld of IR are fundamental, but unresolved. 5 It will be up to the next generation of IR scholars—today’s college students—to achieve a better understanding of how world politics works. The goal of this book is to lay out the current state of knowledge without exaggerating the successes of the discipline.

As a part of political science, IR is about international politics —the decisions of gov- ernments about foreign actors, especially other governments. 6 To some extent, however,

4 Walt, Stephen M. The Relationship between Theory and Policy in International Relations. Annual Review of Political Science 8, 2005: 23–48. 5 Art, Robert J., and Robert Jervis, eds. International Politics: Enduring Concepts and Contemporary Issues. 8th ed. Longman, 2006. Dougherty, James E., Jr., and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff. Contending Theories of International Rela- tions: A Comprehensive Survey. 5th ed. Longman, 2001. Doyle, Michael W. Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism. Norton, 1997. 6 Carlsnaes, Walter, Thomas Risse, and Beth Simmons, eds. Handbook of International Relations. Sage, 2002. Waever, Ole. The Sociology of a Not So International Discipline: American and European Developments in International Relations. International Organization 52 (4), 1998: 687–727.

11

the fi eld is interdisciplinary, relating international politics to economics, history, sociol- ogy, and other disciplines. Some universities offer separate degrees or departments for IR. Most, however, teach IR in political science classes, in which the focus is on the politics of economic relationships, or the politics of environmental management to take two exam- ples. (The domestic politics of foreign countries, although overlapping with IR, generally make up the separate fi eld of comparative politics. )

Political relations among nations cover a range of activities—diplomacy, war, trade relations, alliances, cultural exchanges, participation in international organizations, and so forth. Particular activities within one of these spheres make up distinct issue areas on which scholars and foreign policy makers focus attention. Examples of issue areas include global trade, the environment, and specifi c confl icts such as the Arab-Israeli confl ict. Within each issue area, and across the range of issues of concern in any international relationship, policy makers of one nation can behave in a cooperative manner or a con- fl ictual manner—extending either friendly or hostile behavior toward the other nation. IR scholars often look at international relations in terms of the mix of confl ict and coop- eration in relationships among nations.

The scope of the fi eld of IR may also be defi ned by the subfi elds it encompasses. Some scholars treat topics such as this book’s chapters (for example, international law or

POLICY PERSPECTIVES

Overview International policy makers confront a variety of problems every day. Solving these problems requires diffi cult deci- sions and choices. “Policy Perspectives” is a box feature in each chapter that places you in a particular decision- making perspective (for example, the prime minister of Great Britain) and asks you to make choices concerning an important international relations issue.

Each box contains four sections. The first, “Back- ground,” provides information about a political problem faced by the leader. This background information is factual and refl ects real situations faced by these decision makers.

The second section, “Domestic Considerations,” refl ects on the implications of the situation for domestic politics within the leader’s government and society. How will the lives of ordinary citizens be affected?

The third section, “Scenario,” suggests a new problem or crisis confronting the leader. Although these crises are hypothetical, all are within the realm of possibility and would require diffi cult decisions by the leaders and their countries.

The fourth section, “Choose Your Policy,” asks you to make a choice responding to the Scenario. With each

decision, think about the trade-offs between your options. What are the risks and rewards in choosing one policy over another? Do alternative options exist that could effectively address the problem within the given con- straints? Does one option pose bigger costs in the short term, but fewer in the long term? Can you defend your decision to colleagues, the public, and other world lead- ers? How will your choice affect your citizens’ lives and your own political survival?

As you consider each problem faced by the decision maker, try to refl ect on the process and logic by which you have reached the decision. Which factors seem more important and why? Are domestic or international factors more important in shaping your decision? Are the con- straints you face based on limited capability (for example, money or military power), or do international law or norms infl uence your decision as well? How do factors such as lack of time infl uence your decision?

You will quickly discover that there are often no “right” answers. At times, it is diffi cult to choose between two good options; at other times, one has to decide which is the least bad option.

Explore the Simulation “You are a U.S. Senator” at MyPoliSciLab

12 Chapter 1 The Globalization of International Relations

international development ) as subfi elds, but here we will reserve the term for two macro level topics. Traditionally, the study of IR has focused on questions of war and peace— the subfi eld of international security studies. The movements of armies and of diplo- mats, the crafting of treaties and alliances, the development and deployment of military capabilities—these are the subjects that dominated the study of IR in the past, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, and they continue to hold a central position in the fi eld. Since the Cold War, regional confl icts and ethnic violence have received more attention, while interdisciplinary peace studies programs and feminist scholarship have sought to broaden concepts of “security” further. 7

The subfi eld of international political economy (IPE) , a second main subfi eld of IR, concerns trade and fi nancial relations among nations and focuses on how nations have cooperated politically to create and maintain institutions that regulate the fl ow of international economic and fi nancial transactions. Although these topics previously centered on relations among the world’s richer nations, the widening of globalization and multilateral economic institutions such as the World Trade Organization has pushed IPE scholars to focus on developing states as well. In addition, they pay growing attention to relations between developed and developing nations (often labeled North-South relations), including such topics as economic dependency, debt, foreign aid, and technology transfer. Also newly important are problems of international envi- ronmental management and of global telecommunications. The subfi eld of IPE is expanding accordingly. 8

The same principles and theories that help us understand international security (dis- cussed in the fi rst half of this book) also help us understand IPE (discussed in the second half) . Economics is important in security affairs, and vice versa.

Theoretical knowledge accumulates by a repeated cycle of generalizing and then test- ing. For a given puzzle, various theories can explain the result (though none perfectly) as a case of a more general principle. Each theory also logically predicts other outcomes, and these can be tested empirically. A laboratory science, controlling all but one variable, can test theoretical predictions effi ciently. IR does not have this luxury, because many varia- bles operate simultaneously. Thus, it is especially important to think critically about IR events and consider several different theoretical explanations before deciding which (if any) provides the best explanation.

Actors and Infl uences The principal actors in IR are the world’s governments. Scholars of IR traditionally study the decisions and acts of those governments in relation to other governments. The inter- national stage is crowded with actors large and small that are intimately interwoven with the decisions of governments. These actors are individual leaders and citizens. They are bureaucratic agencies in foreign ministries. They are multinational corporations and ter- rorist groups. But the most important actors in IR are states.

7 Neack, Laura. Elusive Security: States First, People Last. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2007. Booth, Ken, ed. Critical Security Studies and World Politics. Rienner, 2005. Buzan, Barry, Ole Waever, and Jaap de Wilde. Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Rienner, 1997. 8 Cohen, Benjamin J. International Political Economy: An Intellectual History. Princeton, 2008. Gilpin, Robert. Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order. Princeton, 2001. Keohane, Robert O., and Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Power and Interdependence. 3rd ed. Longman, 2001.

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Process” at MyPoliSciLab

Actors and Infl uences 13

State Actors A state is a territorial entity controlled by a government and inhabited by a population . The locations of the world’s states and territories are shown in the reference map at the front of this book, after the Careers section. Regional maps with greater detail appear there as well.

A state government answers to no higher authority; it exercises sovereignty over its territory—to make and enforce laws, to collect taxes, and so forth. This sovereignty is recog- nized (acknowledged) by other states through diplomatic relations and usually by membership in the United Nations (UN). The population inhabiting a state forms a civil society to the extent that it has developed institutions to participate in political or social life. All or part of the population that shares a group identity may consider itself a nation (see “Nationalism” on pp. 160 – 161 ) . The state’s government is a democracy to the extent that the government is controlled by the members of the population. In political life, and to some extent in IR scholarship, the terms state, nation, and country are used imprecisely, usually to refer to state governments. (Note that the word state in IR does not mean a state in the United States.)

With few exceptions, each state has a capital city—the seat of government from which it administers its territory— and often a single individual who acts in the name of the state. We will refer to this person simply as the “state leader.” Often he or she is the head of government (such as a prime minister) or the head of state (such as a president, or a king or queen). In some countries, such as the United States, the same person is head of state and government. In other countries, the positions of the president or royalty, or even the prime minister, are symbolic. In any case, the most powerful political fi gure is the one we mean by “state leader,” and these fi gures are the key individual actors in IR, regardless of whether these leaders are democratically elected or dictators. The state actor includes the individual leader as well as bureaucratic organizations such as foreign ministries that act in the name of the state. (What the United States calls departments are usually called minis- tries elsewhere. U.S. secretaries are ministers and the State Department corresponds with a foreign ministry. )

The international system is the set of relationships among the world’s states, struc- tured according to certain rules and patterns of interaction. Some such rules are explicit, some implicit. They include who is considered a member of the system, what rights and responsibilities the members have, and what kinds of actions and responses normally occur between states.

The modern international system has existed for only 500 years. Before then, people were organized into more mixed and overlapping political units such as city-states, empires, and feudal fi efs. In the past 200 years the idea has spread that nations —groups of people who share a sense of national identity, usually including a language and culture— should have their own states. Most large states today are such nation-states . But since World War II, the decolonization process in much of Asia and Africa has added many new states, some not at all nation-states. A major source of confl ict and war at present is the frequent mismatch between perceived nations and actual state borders. When people identify with a nationality that their state government does not represent, they may fi ght

POWERS THAT BE

States are the most important actors in IR. A handful of states are considered great powers and one a “super- power.” Here, leaders of Britain, the United States, and Germany watch a British-German soccer game (overtime shootout) together during a G8 summit at Camp David, 2012.

14 Chapter 1 The Globalization of International Relations

to form their own state and thus to gain sovereignty over their territory and affairs. This substate nationalism is only one of several trends that undermine the present system of states. Others include the globalization of economic processes, the power of telecommuni- cations, and the proliferation of ballistic missiles.

The independence of former colonies and, more recently, the breakup into smaller states of large multinational states (the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia) have increased the number of states in the world. The exact total depends on the status of a number of quasi-state political entities, and it keeps changing as political units split apart or merge. The UN had 193 members in 2013.

The population of the world’s states varies dramatically, from China and India with more than 1 billion people each, to microstates such as San Marino with 32,000. With the creation of many small states in recent decades, the majority of states have fewer than 10  million people each, and more than half of the rest have 10 to 50 million each. But the 17 states with populations of more than 80 million people together contain about two-thirds of the world’s population.

States also differ tremendously in the size of their total annual economic activity— Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 9 —from the $15 trillion U.S. economy to the econo- mies of tiny states such as the Pacifi c island of Tuvalu ($36 million). The world economy is dominated by a few states, just as world population is. Figure 1.1 lists the 15 largest countries by population and by economy. Each is an important actor in world affairs, especially the nine in the center that are largest in both population and economy.

A few of these large states possess especially great military and economic strength and infl uence, and are called great powers. They are defi ned and discussed in Chapter 2 . The most powerful of great powers, those with truly global infl uence, have been called super- powers. This term generally meant the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and now refers to the United States alone.

Some other political entities are often referred to as states or countries although they are not formally recognized as states. Taiwan is the most important of these. It operates independently in practice but is claimed by China (a claim recognized formally by outside powers) and is not a UN member. Formal colonies and possessions still exist; their status may change in the future. They include Puerto Rico (U.S.), Bermuda (British), Martinique (French), French Guiana, the Netherlands Antilles (Dutch), the Falkland Islands (British), and Guam (U.S.). Hong Kong reverted from British to Chinese rule in 1997 and retains a somewhat separate identity under China’s “one country, two systems” formula. The status of the Vatican (Holy See) in Rome is ambig- uous, as is Palestine, which in 2012 joined the Vatican as the UN’s only nonmember observer states . Including such territorial entities with states brings the world total to about 200 state or quasi-state actors. Other would-be states such as Kurdistan (Iraq), Abkhazia (Georgia), and Somaliland (Somalia) may fully control the territory they claim but are not internationally recognized.

9 GDP is the total of goods and services produced by a nation; it is very similar to the Gross National Product (GNP). Such data are diffi cult to compare across nations with different currencies, economic systems, and levels of development. In particular, comparisons of GDP in capitalist and socialist economies, or in rich and poor countries, should be treated cautiously. GDP data used in this book are mostly from the World Bank. GDP data are adjusted through time and across countries for “purchasing-power parity” (how much a given amount of money can buy). See Summers, Robert, and Alan Heston. The Penn World Table (Mark 5): An Expanded Set of International Comparisons, 1950–1988. Quarterly Journal of Economics 106 (2), 1991: 327–68. GDP and population data are for 2008 unless otherwise noted.

Actors and Infl uences 15

Nonstate Actors National governments may be the most important actors in IR, but they are strongly infl u- enced by a variety of nonstate actors (see Table 1.2 ). These actors are also called transna- tional actors when they operate across international borders.

First, states often take actions through, within, or in the context of intergovernmen- tal organizations (IGOs) —organizations whose members are national governments. IGOs fulfi ll a variety of functions and vary in size from just a few states to virtually the whole UN membership. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the World Trade Organization (WTO), military alliances such as NATO, and political groupings such as the African Union (AU) are all IGOs.

Another type of transnational actor, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) , are private organizations, some of considerable size and resources. Increasingly NGOs are being recognized, in the UN and other forums, as legitimate actors along with states, though not equal to them. Some of these groups have a political purpose, some a humani- tarian one, some an economic or technical one. Sometimes NGOs combine efforts through transnational advocacy networks. 10 There is no single pattern to NGOs.

Both

China

India

United States

Indonesia

Brazil

Russia

Japan

Mexico

Germany

Largest Economy

Britain

France

Italy

South Korea

Canada

Spain

Largest Population

Pakistan

Nigeria

Bangladesh

Philippines

Vietnam

Ethiopia

Note: Left and center columns listed in population order, right column in GDP order. GDP calculated by purchasing parity.

FIGURE 1.1 Largest Countries, 2011– 2012

Source: Central Intelligence Agency. World Factbook. GDP estimates for 2011, population 2012.

10 Keck, Margaret E., and Kathryn Sikkink. Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Cornell, 1998. Batliwala, Srilatha, and L. David Brown. Transnational Civil Society: An Introduction. Kumarian, 2006.

16 Chapter 1 The Globalization of International Relations

Together, IGOs and NGOs are referred to as international organizations (IOs). 11 By one count there are more than 25,000 NGOs and 5,000 IGOs. IOs are discussed in detail in Chapters 7 and 10 .

Multinational corporations (MNCs) are companies that span multiple coun- tries. The interests of a large company doing business globally do not correspond with any one state’s interests. MNCs often control greater resources, and operate internationally with greater efficiency, than many small states. They may prop up (or even create) friendly foreign govern- ments, as the United Fruit Company did in the “banana republics” of Central America a century ago. But MNCs also provide poor states with much-needed foreign invest- ment and tax revenues. MNCs in turn depend on states to provide protection, well-regulated markets, and a stable politi- cal environment. MNCs as international actors receive special attention in Chapters 9 and 13 .

Various other nonstate actors interact with states, IOs, and MNCs. For example, the terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001, have demonstrated the increasing power that technology gives terrorists as

nonstate actors. Just as Greenpeace can travel to a remote location and then beam video of its environmental actions there to the world, so too can al Qaeda place suicide bombers in world cities, coordinate their operations and fi nances through the Internet and the

IN THE ACTION

Nonstate actors participate in IR alongside states, although generally in less central roles. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are becoming increasingly active in IR. Here the singer and activist Bono helps present an Amnesty International award to Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi, 2012.

11 Armstrong, David, Lorna Lloyd, and John Redmond. International Organization in World Politics . Palgrave, 2003.

Type Who Are They? Examples

IGOsa Intergovernmental Organizations

Members are national governments

United Nations, NATO, Arab League

individuals and groups NGOsa Nongovernmental

Organizations Members are Amnesty International,

Lions Clubs, Red Cross

MNCs Multinational Corporations

Companies that span borders

ExxonMobil, Toyota, Wal-Mart

Others Individuals, Cities, Constituencies, etc.

Bono, Iraqi Kurdistan, al Qaeda

aNote: IGOs and NGOs together make up International Organizations (IOs).

TABLE 1.2 Types of Nonstate Actors

Source: IGO and NGO. Copyrighted by Joshua S. Goldstein and Jon C. Pevehouse, Published by Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, NJ

Actors and Infl uences 17

global banking system, and reach a global audience with videotaped appeals. “Global reach,” once an exclusive capability of great powers, now is available to many others, for better or worse.

Some nonstate actors are substate actors: they exist within one country but either infl uence that country’s foreign policy or operate internationally, or both. For instance, the state of Ohio is entirely a U.S. entity but operates an International Trade Division to promote exports and foreign investment, with offi ces in Belgium, Japan, China, Canada, Israel, India, Australia, and Mexico. The actions of substate economic actors— companies, consumers, workers, investors—help create the context of economic activity against which international political events play out, and within which governments must operate.

In this world of globalization, of substate actors and transnational actors, states are still important. But to some extent they are being gradually pushed aside as companies, groups, and individuals deal ever more directly with each other across borders, and as the world economy becomes globally integrated. Now more than ever, IR extends beyond the interactions of national governments.

Both state and nonstate actors are strongly affected by the revolution in information technologies now under way. The new information-intensive world promises to reshape international relations profoundly. Technological change dramatically affects actors’ rela- tive capabilities and even preferences. Telecommunications and computerization allow economics, politics, and culture alike to operate on a global scale as never before. The ramifi cations of information technology for various facets of IR will be developed in each chapter of this book.

Levels of Analysis The many actors involved in IR contribute to the complexity of competing explanations and theories. One way scholars of IR have sorted out this multiplicity of infl uences, actors, and processes is to categorize them into different levels of analysis (see Table 1.3 ). A level of analysis is a perspective on IR based on a set of similar actors or processes that suggests pos- sible explanations to “why” questions. IR scholars have proposed various level-of-analysis schemes, most often with three main levels (and sometimes a few sublevels between). 12

The individual level of analysis concerns the perceptions, choices, and actions of individual human beings. Great leaders infl uence the course of history, as do individual citizens, thinkers, soldiers, and voters. Without Lenin, it is said, there might well have been no Soviet Union. If a few more college students had voted for Nixon rather than Kennedy in the razor-close 1960 election, the Cuban Missile Crisis might have ended differently. The study of foreign policy decision making , discussed in Chapter 3 , pays special attention to individual-level explanations of IR outcomes because of the impor- tance of psychological factors in the decision-making process.

The domestic (or state or societal ) level of analysis concerns the aggregations of individuals within states that infl uence state actions in the international arena. Such aggregations include interest groups, political organizations, and government agencies. These groups operate differently (with different international effects) in different kinds of societies and states. For instance, democracies and dictatorships may act dif- ferently from one another, and democracies may act differently in an election year

12 Singer, J. David. The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations. World Politics 14 (1), 1961: 77–92. Waltz, Kenneth. Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis. Rev. ed. Columbia, 2001.

18 Chapter 1 The Globalization of International Relations

from the way they act at other times. The politics of ethnic confl ict and nationalism, bubbling up from within states, plays an increasingly important role in the relations among states. Within governments, foreign policy agencies often fi ght bureaucratic battles over policy decisions.

The interstate (or international or systemic ) level of analysis concerns the infl uence of the international system upon outcomes. This level of analysis therefore focuses on the interactions of states themselves, without regard to their internal makeup or the particular individuals who lead them. This level pays attention to states’ relative power positions in the international system and the interactions (trade, for example) among them. It has been traditionally the most important of the levels of analysis.

To these three levels can be added a fourth, the global level of analysis, which seeks to explain international outcomes in terms of global trends and forces that transcend the interactions of states themselves. 13 The evolution of human technology, of certain world- wide beliefs, and of humans’ relationship to the natural environment are all processes at

13 North, Robert C. War, Peace, Survival: Global Politics and Conceptual Synthesis. Westview, 1990. Dower, Nigel. An Introduction to Global Citizenship. Edinburgh, 2003.

Many influences affect the course of international relations. Levels of analysis provide a framework for categorizing these in- fluences and thus for suggesting various explanations of international events. Examples include:

Global Level

North-South gap World regions European imperialism Norms

Religious fundamentalism Terrorism World environment Technological change

Information revolution Global telecommunications Worldwide scientific and

business communities

Interstate Level

Power Balance of power Alliance formation

and dissolution

Wars Treaties Trade agreements IGOs

Diplomacy Summit meetings Bargaining Reciprocity

Domestic Level

Nationalism Ethnic conflict Type of government Democracy

Dictatorship Domestic coalitions Political parties and elections Public opinion

Gender Economic sectors and industries Military-industrial complex Foreign policy bureaucracies

Psychology of perception and decision Learning Assassinations, accidents of history

Citizens’ participation (voting, rebelling, going to war, etc.)

Individual Level

Great leaders Crazy leaders Decision making in crises

TABLE 1.3 Levels of Analysis

Actors and Infl uences 19

the global level that reach down to infl uence international relations. The global level is also increasingly the focus of IR scholars studying transnational integration through worldwide scientifi c, technical, and business communities (see Chapter 10 ) . Another per- vasive global infl uence is the lingering effect of historical European imperialism—Europe’s conquest of Latin America, Asia, and Africa (see “History of Imperialism, 1500–2000” in Chapter 12 ) .

Levels of analysis offer different sorts of explanations for international events. For example, many possible explanations exist for the 2003 U.S.-led war against Iraq. At the individual level, the war could be attributed to Saddam Hussein’s gamble that he could defeat the forces arrayed against him, or to President Bush’s desire to remove a leader he personally deemed threatening. At the domestic level, the war could be attributed to the rise of the powerful neoconservative faction that convinced the Bush administration and Americans that Saddam was a threat to U.S. security in a post–September 11 world. At the interstate level, the war might be attributed to the predominance of U.S. power. With no state willing to back Iraq militarily, the United States (as the largest global military power) was free to attack Iraq without fear of a large-scale military response. Finally, at the global level, the war might be attributable to a global fear of terrorism, or even a clash between Islam and the West.

Although IR scholars often focus their study mainly on one level of analysis, other levels bear on a problem simultaneously. There is no single correct level for a given “why” question. Rather, levels of analysis help suggest multiple explanations and approaches to consider in explaining an event. They remind scholars and students to look beyond the immediate and superfi cial aspects of an event to explore the possible infl uences of more distant causes. Note that the processes at higher levels tend to operate more slowly than those on the lower levels. Individuals go in and out of offi ce often; the structure of the international system changes rarely.

Globalization Globalization encompasses many trends, including expanded international trade, tele- communications, monetary coordination, multinational corporations, technical and scientifi c cooperation, cultural exchanges of new types and scales, migration and refu- gee fl ows, and relations between the world’s rich and poor countries. Although globali- zation clearly is very important, it is also rather vaguely defi ned and not well explained by any one theory. One popular conception of globalization is as “the widening, deep- ening and speeding up of worldwide interconnectedness in all aspects of contemporary social life. . . .” 14 But at least three conceptions of this process compete. 15

One view sees globalization as the fruition of liberal economic principles. A global marketplace has brought growth and prosperity (not to all countries but to those most integrated with the global market). This economic process has made traditional states

14 Held, David, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt, and Jonathan Perraton. Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture. Stanford, 1999: 2. Held, David, and Anthony McGrew. Globalization/Anti-Globalization: Beyond the Great Divide. Polity, 2007. 15 Friedman, Thomas L. The World Is Flat. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007. Stiglitz, Joseph E. Globalization and Its Discontents. Norton, 2002. Drezner, Daniel W. All Politics Is Global. Princeton, 2008. Rudra, Nita. Globaliza- tion and the Race to the Bottom in Developing Countries: Who Really Gets Hurt? Cambridge, 2008. Kapstein, Ethan B. Economic Justice in an Unfair World: Toward a Normal Playing Field. Princeton, 2007. Cusimano, Maryann K. Beyond Sovereignty: Issues for a Global Agenda. Palgrave, 1999.

20 Chapter 1 The Globalization of International Relations

obsolete as economic units. States are thus losing authority to supranational institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Euro- pean Union (EU), and to transnational actors such as MNCs and NGOs. The values of technocrats and elite, edu- cated citizens in liberal democracies are becoming global values, refl ecting an emerging global civilization. The old North-South division is seen as less important, because the global South is moving in divergent directions depend- ing on countries’ and regions’ integra- tion with world markets.

A second perspective is skeptical of these claims about globalization. These skeptics note that the world’s major economies are no more integrated today than before World War I (when British hegemony provided a common set of expectations and institutions). The skeptics also doubt that regional and geographic distinctions such as the North-South divide are disappearing in favor of a single global market. Rather, they see the North-South gap as increas-

ing with globalization. Also, the economic integration of states may be leading not to a single world free trade zone, but to distinct and rival regional blocs in America, Europe, and Asia. The supposed emerging world civilization is disproved by the fragmenting of larger units (such as the Soviet Union) into smaller ones along lines of language, religion, and other such cultural factors.

A third school of thought sees globalization as more profound than the skeptics believe, yet more uncertain than the view of supporters of liberal economics. 16 These “transformationalists” see state sovereignty as being eroded by the EU, the WTO, and other new institutions, so that sovereignty is no longer an absolute but just one of a spec- trum of bargaining leverages held by states. The bargaining itself increasingly involves nonstate actors. Thus globalization diffuses authority. State power is not so much strengthened or weakened by globalization, but transformed to operate in new contexts with new tools.

While scholars debate these conceptions of globalization, popular debates focus on the growing power of large corporations operating globally, the disruptive costs associ- ated with joining world markets (for example, job loss and environmental impacts), the perception of growing disparities between the rich and the poor, and the collusion of national governments in these wrongs through their participation in IOs such as the

16 Rosenau, James N. Distant Proximities: Dynamics beyond Globalization. Princeton, 2003.

THINK GLOBALLY

As the world economy becomes more integrated, markets and production are becoming global in scope. This Hong Kong container port ships goods to and from all over the world, 2008.

Global Geography 21

WTO and the IMF. 17 Policies to expand free trade are a central focus of antiglobalization protesters (see pp. 313 – 314 ) . Street protests have turned host cities into besieged for- tresses in Seattle (1999); Washington, D.C. (2000 IMF and World Bank meetings); Quebec (2001 summit working toward a Free Trade Area of the Americas); and Genoa, Italy (2001 G8 summit), where protesters engaged police in battles that killed one per- son. The key 2001 WTO meeting to launch a new trade round was held in Qatar, where protesters had little access. At the 2003 WTO meeting in Cancun, Mexico, thousands of protesters marched against the talks and the economic elites conducting them, but were kept away from the WTO conference center. At the 2005 Hong Kong WTO meeting, protesters blocked nearby roads and some even tried to swim across Hong Kong harbor to disrupt the meeting.

Just as scholars disagree on conceptions of globalization, so do protesters disagree on their goals and tactics. Union members from the global North want to stop globalization from shipping their jobs south. But workers in impoverished countries in the global South may desperately want those jobs as a fi rst step toward decent wages and working condi- tions (relative to other options in their countries). Window-smashing anarchists mean- while steal media attention from environmentalists seeking to amend the trade agenda. Thus, neither globalization nor the backlash to it is simple.

Globalization is changing both international security and IPE, as we will see in the coming chapters, but it is changing IPE more quickly and profoundly than security. The coming chapters address a broad range of topics, each affected by globalization. Chapter 4 shows how nonstate actors infl uence foreign policies of states. Chapter 7 discusses global institutions, international law, and human rights, all of growing impor- tance as globalization continues. Chapters 8 and 9 look at economic globalization in trade, fi nance, and business, where globalization’s infl uences are most apparent. Chap- ter 10 considers the information technology side of globalization, as the world becomes wired in new ways. Chapter 11 discusses the global environment and examines how increasing interaction through globalization infl uences our physical environment. Chapters 12 and 13 cover the global North-South divide, which is central to the con- cept of globalization.

The rest of this chapter takes up two contextual aspects of globalization that shape the issue areas discussed in subsequent chapters —(1) the relations among the world’s major regions, especially the rich North and poor South; and (2) the evolution of the international system over the past century.

Global Geography To highlight the insights afforded by a global level of analysis, this book divides the world into nine regions. These world regions differ from each other in the number of states they contain and in each region’s particular mix of cultures, geographical realities, and lan- guages. But each represents a geographical corner of the world, and together they refl ect the overall larger divisions of the world.

The global North-South gap between the relatively rich industrialized countries of the North and the relatively poor countries of the South is the most important

17 Broad, Robin. Citizen Backlash to Economic Globalization. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2002. Milani, Brian. Design- ing the Green Economy: The Post-Industrial Alternative to Corporate Globalization. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2000.

Watch the Video “Global Food Prices and Changing Diets” at MyPoliSciLab

2000 Kilometers

2000 Miles

0

0

North

America

Latin America

Africa

Middle East

Europe Russia / CIS

China

South Asia

Japan / Pacific

"The North"

"The South"

FIGURE 1.2 Nine Regions of the World

22

Global Geography 23

geographical element at the global level of analysis. The regions used in this book have been drawn so as to separate (with a few exceptions) the rich countries from the poor ones. The North includes both the West (the rich countries of North America, Europe, and Japan) and the old East, including the former Soviet Union (now Russia) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a loose confederation of former Soviet repub- lics excluding the Baltic states. 18 The South includes Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and much of Asia. The South is often called the third world (third after the West and East)—a term that is still widely used despite the second world’s collapse. Countries in the South are also referred to as “developing” countries or “less-developed” countries (LDCs), in contrast to the “developed” countries of the North. The world regions are shown in Figure 1.2 .

Several criteria beyond income levels help distinguish major geographically con- tiguous regions. Countries with similar economic levels, cultures, and languages have been kept together where possible. States with a history of interaction, including his- torical empires or trading zones, are also placed together in a region. Finally, countries that might possibly unify in the future—notably South Korea with North Korea, and China with Taiwan—are kept in the same region. Of course, no scheme works per- fectly, and some states, such as Turkey, are pulled toward two regions.

Most of these regions correspond with commonly used geographical names, but a few notes may help. East Asia refers to China, Japan, and Korea. Southeast Asia refers to countries from Burma through Indonesia and the Philippines. Russia is considered a European state although a large section (Siberia) is in Asia. The Pacifi c Rim usually means East and Southeast Asia, Siberia, and the Pacifi c coast of North America and Latin America. 19 South Asia only sometimes includes parts of Southeast Asia. Narrow defi nitions of the Middle East exclude both North Africa and Turkey. The Balkans are the states of southeastern Europe, bounded by Slovenia, Romania, and Greece.

Table 1.4 shows GDP for each of the world’s countries, organized by region. Table  1.5 shows the approximate population and economic size (GDP) of each region in relation to the world as a whole. As the table indicates, income levels per capita are, overall, more than fi ve times as high in the North as in the South. The North contains only 20 percent of the world’s people but 55 percent of its goods and services. The other 80 percent of the world’s people, in the South, have only 45 percent of the goods and services.

Within the global North, Russia and the CIS states lag behind in income levels, having suffered declines in the 1990s. In the global South, the Middle East, Latin America, and (more recently) China have achieved somewhat higher income levels than have Africa and South Asia, which remain extremely poor. Even in the somewhat higher-income regions, income is distributed quite unevenly and many people remain very poor. Note that more than half of the world’s population lives in the densely popu- lated (and poor) regions of South Asia and China. IR scholars have no single explana- tion of the huge North-South income gap (see Chapter 12 ) .

19 Ikenberry, G. John, and Michael Mastanduno. International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacifi c. Columbia, 2003. Pempel, T. J. Remapping East Asia. Cornell, 2005.

18 Note that geographical designations such as the “West” and the “Middle East” are European-centered. From Korea, for example, China and Russia are to the west, and Japan and the United States are to the east. On world-level geography, see Kidron, Michael, Ronald Segal, and Angela Wilson. The State of the World Atlas. 5th ed. Penguin, 1995. Boyd, Andrew, and Joshua Comenetz. An Atlas of World Affairs. McGraw-Hill, 2007.

North America United States 15,000 Canada 1,400 Bahamas 10

Japan/Pacific Japan 4,500 Fiji 4 Nauru 0 South Korea 1,600 Guam/Marianasb 3 Marshall Islands 0 Australia 900 Solomon Islands 1 Palau 0 New Zealand 100 Samoa 1 Kiribati 0 North Korea 40 Vanuatu 1 Tuvalu 0 Papua New Guinea 20 Tonga 1 Micronesia 0

Russia/CIS Russia 2,400 Tajikistan 20 Ukraine 300

Turkmenistan 50 Kyrgyzstan 10

Kazakhstan 200 Armenia 20

Moldova 10 Belarus 100

Georgia 20 Mongolia 10

Azerbaijan 100 Uzbekistan 90

China China 11,000 Hong Kongb 400 Macaub 30 Taiwanb 900

Middle East Turkey 1,000 Morocco/W. Sahara 200 Oman 80 Iran 900

Iraq 100

Yemen 60 Saudi Arabia 700 Kuwait 100 Lebanon 60 Egypt 500 Libya 50

Jordan 40United Arab Emirates 400 Syria 100 Bahrain 30

Israel/Palestine 200

Qatar 200

Algeria 300 Tunisia 100

Europe Germanya 3,300 Britaina 2,400

Czech Republica 300

Francea 2,300 Estoniaa

30 Italya 1,900

Bosnia and Herzegovina 30

Spaina 1,400

Albania 30

Netherlandsa 800

Norway 300

Cyprusa 20 Polanda

700 Macedonia 20

Belgiuma 400 Iceland 10

Greecea 300

Maltaa 10

Swedena 400

Montenegro 7

Switzerland 300

Liechtenstein 4

Romaniaa 300

Andorra 4

Austriaa 300

Monaco 1 San Marino 1

Portugala 200

Luxembourg 40

Latvia 30

Denmarka 200 Finlanda 200 Hungarya 200 Irelanda 200 Slovakiaa 100 Bulgariaa 100 Serbia 80 Croatia 80 Lithuaniaa 60 Sloveniaa 60

TABLE 1.4 States and Territories with Estimated Total GDP, 2011 (In Billions of 2012 U.S. Dollars)

24

25

Latin America Brazil 2,300

El Salvador

50 Suriname

5Mexico 1,700 Uruguay

60

Argentina 700 40

Guyana 5

Colombia 500

Bolivia Panama

50 Belize 3

Venezuela 400 Paraguay 40 Virgin Islandsb 2

Chile 300 Honduras 30 French Guianab 2

Peru 300 Trinidad & Tobago 30 St. Lucia 2

Cuba 100 Jamaica 20 Antigua & Barbuda 2

Ecuador 100 Nicaragua 20 Grenada 1

Puerto Ricob 60

Haiti 10 St. Vincent & Grenadines 1

Dominican Republic 100 Martiniqueb 7

St. Kitts & Nevis 1 Guatemala 70

Barbados 7 Dominica 1

Costa Rica 60 Bermudab 5

South Asia India 4,500

Vietnam 300

Brunei 20 Indonesia 1,100 Singapore 300 Laos 20 Thailand 600 Sri Lanka 100 Bhutan 4 Pakistan 500 Burma (Myanmar) 70 Maldives 3 Malaysia 500 Nepal 40 East Timor 2 Philippines 400 Cambodia 30

Bangladesh 300

Afghanistan 30

Africa South Africa 600 Mauritius 20 Somalia 6 Nigeria 400 Gabon 20 Sierra Leone 5 Angola 100 Burkina Faso 20

Central African Republic 4 Sudan 90 Zambia 20

Lesotho 4 Ethiopia 90 Chad 20

Eritea 3 Kenya 70 Mali 20

Burundi 5

Tanzania 60 Congo Republic 20 Reunionb 3Cameroon 50

Niger 10 Cape Verde

3 Rwanda 10

Djibouti 2

Namibia 10

Gambia

2

Equatorial Guinea 30

Ghana 50 Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) 40

Benin 10 Liberia 2

Uganda 50

Zimbabwe 5

Seychelles 2

Democratic Congo 20 Comoros Islands

2 Mozambique 20

Guinea-Bissau 1

Botswana 30

São Tomé & Principe 0Senegal 20 Madagascar 20

Guinea 10 Malawi 10

20

Mauritania 8

South Sudan

Swaziland 7 Togo 7

aEuropean Union. bNonmember of UN.

Note: GDP data are inexact by nature. Estimates for Russia, CIS, China, and other nonmarket or transitional economies are particularly suspect and should be used cautiously. Numbers below 0.5 are listed as 0. Sources: Data are authors’ estimates based on World Bank. Data are at purchasing-power parity. See footnote 9 on p. 14.

Source: Data are author’s estimates based on World Bank.

26 Chapter 1 The Globalization of International Relations

The Evolving International System The basic structures and principles of international relations are deeply rooted in histori- cal developments. Throughout this book, we will review the history that bears on topics such as the great power system ( Chapter 2 ), imperialism ( Chapter 12 ), and nationalism ( Chapter 5 ). Here we will review briefl y the key events of the 20th century and focus in particular on the post–Cold War era since 1990.

The Two World Wars, 1900–1950 World War I (1914–1918) and World War II (1939–1945) occupied only ten years of the 20th century (see Figure 1.3 ). But they shaped the character of the century. 20 Nothing like those wars has happened since, and they remain a key reference point for the world in which we live today. With perhaps just two other cases in history—the Thirty Years’ War and the Napoleonic Wars—the two world wars were global or hegemonic wars in which almost all major states participated in an all-out struggle over the future of the interna- tional system. 21

For many people, World War I symbolizes the tragic irrationality of war. It fascinates scholars of IR because it was a catastrophic war that seems unnecessary and perhaps even

Watch the Video

“August 1991: The Collapse of the

Soviet Union” at MyPoliSciLab

20 Ferguson, Niall. The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Confl ict and the Descent of the West. Penguin, 2006. 21 Dockrill, Michael. Atlas of Twentieth Century World History. HarperCollins, 1991. Ferguson, Niall. The Pity of War: Explaining World War I. Basic Books, 1999. Keegan, John, ed. The Times Atlas of the Second World War. HarperCollins, 1989. Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge, 1994.

Population GDP GDP per Capita Region (Millions) (Trillion $) (Dollars)

The North North America 350 $16 $45,000 Europe 530 17 31,000 Japan/Pacific 240 7 29,000 Russia/CIS 280 3 10,700

The South China 1,400 12 8,000 Middle East 480 5 10,000 Latin America 600 7 11,000 South Asia 2,250 9 4,000 Africa 870 2 2,300

Total North 1,400 (20%) 43 (55%) 30,500

Total South 5,600 (80%) 35 (45%) 6,200

World Total 7,000 $78 $11,100

Note: Data adjusted for purchasing-power parity. 2011 GDP estimates (in 2012 dollars) are from Table 1.4; those for Russia, CIS, and China should be treated especially cautiously.

TABLE 1.5 Comparison of World Regions, 2011

Source: 2010 GDP estimates (in 2011 dollars)

27

1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950

mobilization plans developed

Balkan crises

naval arms race with Britain

Russo- Japanese

War

U. S.

in P

hi lip

pi ne

s

Hague Peace Conferences

destroyers submarines

tanks

chemical weapons

trench warfare

Versailles treaty

Japan neutral in WW I

USSR formed

Russian Revolution

(civil war)

De fe

at

U.S. enters

war

Sarajevo World War I

Weimar Republic

hyperinflation

League of Nations

Washington Naval Treaty

mechanized armor

U.S. isolationism

Japan quits League of Nations

Japan occupies

Manchuria (China)

Japan invades China

(industrialization)

pact with Hitler

rearma- ment

occupation of Austria, Czech.

invasion of Poland

Hitler wins

power

occupation of Europe

Munich Agreement

Italy invades Ethiopia

U.S. enters

war D-Day

World War II

The Holocaust strategic bombing

occupied by Allied

forces

De fe

at

German invasion

Vi ct

or y

Pearl Harbor

island battles

Japan occupies S.E. Asia

Occupied by U.S.

Hi ro

sh im

a

Nuremberg Tribunal

United Nations

air war

radar

nuclear weapons

Europe

Germany

Russia

Asia

Inter- national Norms &

Law

Tech- nology

FIGURE 1.3 The Two World Wars, 1900–1950

Source: U.S. Defense Department

28 Chapter 1 The Globalization of International Relations

accidental. After a century of relative peace, the great powers marched off to battle for no good reason. There was even a popular feeling that Europe would be uplifted and reinvig- orated by a war—that young men could once again prove their manhood on the battle- fi eld in a glorious adventure. Such ideas were soon crushed by the immense pain and evident pointlessness of the war.

The previous major war had been the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, when Ger- many executed a swift offensive using railroads to rush forces to the front. That war had ended quickly, decisively, and with a clear winner (Germany). People expected that a new war would follow the same pattern. All the great powers made plans for a quick rail- road-borne offensive and rapid victory—what has been called the cult of the offensive. They believed that the one to strike fi rst would win. Under these doctrines, one country’s mobilization for war virtually forced its enemies to mobilize as well. Thus, when a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Ferdinand of Austria in 1914 in Sarajevo, a minor crisis escalated and the mobilization plans pushed Europe to all-out war. 22

Contrary to expectations, the war was neither short nor decisive, and certainly not glorious. It bogged down in trench warfare along a fi xed front. For example, in 1917 at the Battle of Passchendaele (Belgium), the British in three months fi red fi ve tons of artillery shells per yard of front line, over an 11-mile-wide front, and then lost 400,000 men in a failed ground attack. The horrifi c conditions were worsened by chemical weapons and by the attempts of Britain and Germany to starve each other’s population into surrender.

Russia was the fi rst state to crumble. Revolution at home removed Russia from the war in 1917 (and led to the founding of the Soviet Union). But the entry of the United States into the war on the anti-German side that year quickly turned the tide. In the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, Germany was forced to give up territory, pay reparations, limit its future armaments, and admit guilt for the war. German resentment against the harsh terms of Versailles would contribute to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s. After World War I, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson led the effort to create the League of Nations , a forerunner of today’s United Nations. But the U.S. Senate would not approve U.S. participation, and the League did not prove effective. U.S. isolationism between the world wars, along with declining Brit- ish power and a Russia crippled by its own revolution, left a power vacuum in world politics.

In the 1930s, Germany and Japan stepped into that vacuum, embarking on aggressive expansionism that ultimately led to World War II. Japan had already occupied Taiwan and Korea after defeating China in 1895 and Russia in 1905. In World War I, Japan gained some German colonies in Asia. In 1931, Japan occupied Manchuria (northeast China) and set up a puppet regime there. In 1937, Japan invaded the rest of China and began a brutal occupation that continues to haunt Chinese-Japanese relations.

Meanwhile, in Europe in the 1930s, Nazi Germany under Hitler had re-armed, inter- vened to help fascists win the Spanish Civil War, and grabbed territory from its neighbors under the rationale of reuniting ethnic Germans in those territories with their homeland. Hitler was emboldened by the weak response of the international community and the League of Nations to aggression by fascist regimes in Italy and Spain. In an effort to appease German ambitions, Britain and France agreed in the Munich Agreement of 1938 to let Germany occupy part of Czechoslovakia (known as the Sudetenland). Appease- ment has since had a negative connotation in IR, because the Munich Agreement seemed only to encourage Hitler’s further conquests.

In 1939, Germany invaded Poland, leading Britain and France to join the war against Germany. Hitler signed a nonaggression pact with his archenemy, Joseph Stalin of the

22 Van Evera, Stephen. The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War. International Security 9 (1), 1984: 58–107. Snyder, Jack L. The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914. Cornell, 1984.

The Evolving International System 29

Soviet Union, and threw his full army against France, occupying most of it quickly. Hitler then double-crossed Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. This offensive ulti- mately bogged down and was turned back after several years. But the Soviet Union took the brunt of the German attack and suffered by far the greatest share of the 60 million deaths caused by World War II. This trauma continues to be a powerful memory that shapes views of IR in Russia and Eastern Europe.

The United States joined World War II against Germany in 1942. The U.S. economy produced critically important weapons and supplies for allied armies. The United States played an important role with Britain in the strategic bombing of German cities—includ- ing the fi rebombing of Dresden in February 1945, which caused 100,000 civilian deaths. In 1944, after crossing the English Channel on June 6 ( D-Day ), British-American forces pushed into Germany from the west while the Soviets pushed from the east. A ruined Ger- many surrendered and was occupied by the allied powers. At its peak, Nazi Germany and its allies had occupied virtually all of Europe, except Britain and part of Russia.

While the war in Europe was raging, Japan fought a war over control of Southeast Asia with the United States and its allies. Japan’s expansionism in the 1930s had only under- scored the dependence on foreign resources that the expansionism was intended to solve: the United States punished Japan by cutting off U.S. oil exports. Japan then destroyed much of the U.S. Navy in a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor (Hawaii) in 1941 and seized desired territories (including Indonesia, whose oil replaced that of the United States). The United States, however, built vast new military forces and retook a series of Pacifi c islands in subsequent years. The strategic bombing of Japanese cities by the United States culmi- nated in the only historical use of nuclear weapons in war—the destruction of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945—which triggered Japan’s quick surrender.

The lessons of the two world wars seem contradictory. From the failure of the Munich Agreement in 1938 to appease Hitler, many people have concluded that only a hardline foreign policy with preparedness for war will deter aggression and prevent war. Yet in 1914 it was just such hardline policies that apparently led Europe into a disastrous war, which might have been avoided by more conciliatory policies. Evidently the best policy would be sometimes harsh and at other times conciliatory, but IR scholars have not discovered a simple formula for choosing (see “Causes of War” in Chapter 5 ) .

The Cold War, 1945–1990 The United States and the Soviet Union became the two superpowers of the post–World War II era (see Figure 1.4 ). 23 Each had its ideological mission (capitalist democracy versus communism), its networks of alliances and clients, and its deadly arsenal of nuclear weapons. Europe was divided, with massive military forces of the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies on one side and massive military forces of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies on the other. Germany itself was split, with three-quarters of the country—and three-quarters of the capital city of Berlin—occupied by the United States, Britain, and France. The remainder, surrounding West Berlin, was occupied by the Soviet Union. Crises in Berlin in 1947–1948 and 1961 led to armed confrontations but not war. In 1961, East Germany built the Berlin Wall separating East from West Berlin. It sym- bolized the division of Europe by what Winston Churchill had called the “iron curtain.”

23 Gaddis, John Lewis. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Oxford, 1997. Zubok, Vladislav, and Constantine Pleshakov. Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev. Harvard, 1996. Garthoff, Raymond. Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan. Brookings, 1985. Larson, Deborah Welch. Anatomy of Mistrust: U.S.-Soviet Relations During the Cold War. Cornell, 1997. Trachtenberg, Marc. A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963. Princeton, 1999.

30

Soviet Union

United States

China

Confron- tations

Proxy Wars

Co- operation

détente

SALT I SALT II

Stalin Khrushchev Brezhnev Gorbachev

A-bomb Sputnik nuclear parity with U.S.

An dr

op ov

Ch er

ne nk

o

reforms (perestroika,

glasnost) (W

W II

a lli

an ce

)

NATO

Warsaw Pact

nuclear arms race human rights

military buildup

“Star Wars” (SDI)(Iran crisis)

(nuclear superiority over USSR)containment policy

F. D. Roosevelt Truman Eisenhower Kennedy Johnson Nixon Ford Carter Reagan Bush

student protests

civil war

(Nationalists- Communists)

People’s Republic (Taiwan nationalist)

Sino-Soviet alliance

Taiwan Straits crises

(vs. U.S.)

Sino-Soviet split

A-bomb

Soviet border clashes

Cultural Revolution

joins UN

U.S.-China rapprochement

death of

Mao

neutral to pro-U.S.

U.S. invasion of Grenada

Afghanistan WarVietnam War

USSR invades

Czechoslovakia

Berlin Wall

Berlin crisis

Cuban Missile Crisis

U-2 incident

Soviet invasion

of Hungary

Korean War

Berlin crisis

Greek civil war

Suez crisis

Cuban revo- lution

Indonesia Arab-Israeli wars

Chile coup

Somalia vs.

Ethiopia

Cambodia Angola

Nicaragua

El Salvador

Yalta summit

Geneva summit

Limited Test Ban

Treaty

Non- Proliferation

Treaty

START talks

Paris summit (CFE)

INF treaty

1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990

FIGURE 1.4 The Cold War, 1945–1990

Source: Gaddis, John Lewis. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Oxford, 1997. Zubok, Vladislav, and Constantine Pleshakov. Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev. Harvard, 1996. Garthoff, Raymond. Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan. Brookings, 1985. Larson, Deborah Welch. Anatomy of Mistrust: U.S.-Soviet Relations During the Cold War. Cornell, 1997. Trachtenberg, Marc. A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963. Princeton, 1999.

The Evolving International System 31

Despite the hostility of East-West relations during the Cold War , a relatively stable framework of relations emerged, and confl icts never escalated to all-out war between the largest states. At a U.S.-Soviet-British meeting at Yalta in 1945, when the defeat of Germany was imminent, the Western powers acknowledged the fact of the Soviet army’s presence in Eastern Europe, allowing that area to remain under Soviet infl uence. Although the Soviet bloc did not join Western economic institutions such as the IMF, all the world’s major states joined the UN. The United Nations (unlike the ill-fated League of Nations) managed to maintain almost universal membership and adherence to basic structures and rules throughout the Cold War era.

The central concern of the West during the Cold War was that the Soviet Union might gain control of Western Europe—either through outright invasion or through com- munists’ taking power in war-weary and impoverished countries of Western Europe. This could have put the entire industrial base of the Eurasian landmass (from Europe to Sibe- ria) under one state. The Marshall Plan —U.S. fi nancial aid to rebuild European econo- mies—responded to these fears, as did the creation of the NATO alliance. Half of the entire world’s military spending was devoted to the European standoff. Much spending was also devoted to a superpower nuclear arms race, in which each superpower produced tens of thousands of nuclear weapons (see pp. 221 – 222 ) .

Through the policy of containment , adopted in the late 1940s, the United States sought to halt the expansion of Soviet infl uence globally on several levels at once— military, political, ideological, economic. The United States maintained an extensive network of military bases and alliances worldwide. Virtually all of U.S. foreign policy in subsequent decades, from foreign aid and technology transfer to military intervention and diplomacy, came to serve the goal of containment.

The Chinese communist revolution in 1949 led to a Sino-Soviet alliance ( Sino means “Chinese”). But China became fi ercely independent in the 1960s following the Sino-Soviet split , when China opposed Soviet moves toward peaceful coexistence with the United States. 24 In the late 1960s, young radicals, opposed to both superpowers, ran China during the chaotic and destructive Cultural Revolution. But feeling threatened by Soviet power, China’s leaders developed a growing affi liation with the United States during the 1970s, starting with a dra- matic visit to China by U.S. president Richard Nixon in 1972. This visit led to U.S.-Chinese diplomatic relations in 1979. During the Cold War, China generally tried to play a balancer role against whichever superpower seemed most threatening at the time.

In 1950, the Korean War broke out when communist North Korea attacked and over- ran most of U.S.-allied South Korea. The United States and its allies (under UN authority obtained after the Soviets walked out of the Security Council in protest) counterattacked and overran most of North Korea. China sent masses of “volunteers” to help North Korea, and the war bogged down near the original border until a 1953 truce ended the fi ghting. The Korean War hardened U.S. attitudes toward communism and set a negative tone for future East-West relations, especially for U.S.-Chinese relations in the 1950s.

The Cold War thawed temporarily after Stalin died in 1953. The fi rst summit meet- ing between superpower leaders took place in Geneva in 1955. This thaw in relations led both sides to agree to reconstitute Austria, which had been split into four pieces like Ger- many. But the Soviet Union sent tanks to crush a popular uprising in Hungary in 1956 (an action it repeated in 1968 in Czechoslovakia), and the Soviet missile program that orbited Sputnik in 1957 alarmed the United States. The shooting down of a U.S. spy plane (the U-2 ) over the Soviet Union in 1960 scuttled a summit meeting between superpower

24 Zhang, Shu. Economic Cold War: America’s Embargo Against China and the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1949–1963. Stanford, 2002.

32 Chapter 1 The Globalization of International Relations

leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Dwight D. Eisen- hower. Meanwhile in Cuba, after Fidel Castro’s communist revolution in 1959, the United States attempted a counterrevolution in the botched 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

These hostilities culminated in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the Soviet Union installed medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba. The Soviet aims were to reduce the Soviet Union’s strategic nuclear inferiority, to counter the deployment of U.S. missiles on Soviet borders in Turkey, and to deter another U.S. invasion of Cuba. U.S. leaders, however, considered the mis- siles threatening and provocative. As historical documents revealed years later, nuclear war was quite possible. Some U.S. policy makers favored military strikes before the missiles became opera- tional, when in fact some nuclear weapons in Cuba were already operational and commanders were authorized to use them in the event of a U.S. attack. 25 Instead, President John F. Kennedy imposed a naval blockade to force their removal. The Soviet Union backed down on the missiles, and the United States promised not to invade Cuba in the future. Leaders on both sides were shaken, however, by the possibility of nuclear war. They signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, prohibiting atmospheric nuclear tests, and began to cooperate in cultural exchanges, space exploration, aviation, and other areas.

The two superpowers often jockeyed for position in the global South, supporting proxy wars in which they typically supplied and advised opposing factions in civil wars. The alignments were often arbitrary. For instance, the United

States backed the Ethiopian government and the Soviets backed next-door rival Somalia in the 1970s; however, when an Ethiopian revolution caused the new government to seek Soviet help, the United States switched its support to Somalia instead.

One fl aw of U.S. policy in the Cold War period was to see all regional confl icts through East-West lenses. Its preoccupation with communism led the United States to support unpopular pro-Western governments in a number of poor countries, nowhere more disastrously than during the Vietnam War in the 1960s. The war in Vietnam divided U.S. citizens and ultimately failed to prevent a communist takeover. The fall of South Vietnam in 1975 appeared to signal U.S. weakness, especially combined with U.S. set- backs in the Middle East—the 1973 Arab oil embargo against the United States and the 1979 overthrow of the U.S.-backed shah of Iran by Islamic fundamentalists.

In this period of apparent U.S. weakness, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. But, like the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union could not suppress rebel

IRON CURTAIN

During the Cold War, the U.S. and Soviet sides sought spheres of infl uence. Europe was divided, and Germany itself was split, with its capital, Berlin, also divided. In 1961 the communist side built the Ber- lin Wall, seen here in 1962, to keep its population from leaving. It was dismantled as the Cold War ended in 1989.

25 May, Ernest, and Philip Zelikow, eds. The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Harvard, 1997. Munton, Don, and David A. Welch. The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Concise History. Oxford, 2006.

The Evolving International System 33

armies supplied by the opposing superpower. The Soviets ultimately withdrew after almost a decade of war that considerably weakened the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, President Ronald Reagan built up U.S. military forces to record levels and supported rebel armies in the Soviet-allied states of Nicaragua and Angola (and one faction in Cambodia) as well as Afghanistan. Superpower relations slowly improved after Mikhail Gorbachev, a reformer, took power in the Soviet Union in 1985. But some of the battlegrounds of the global South (notably Afghanistan and Angola) continued to suffer from brutal civil wars (fought with leftover Cold War arms) into the new century.

In retrospect, it seems that both superpowers exaggerated Soviet strength. In the early years of the nuclear arms race, U.S. military superiority was absolute, especially in nuclear weapons. The Soviets managed to match the United States over time, from A-bombs to H-bombs to multiple-warhead missiles. By the 1970s the Soviets had achieved strategic parity, meaning that neither side could prevent its own destruction in a nuclear war. But behind this military parity lay a Soviet Union lagging far behind the West in everything else—wealth, technology, infrastructure, and citizen/worker motivation.

In June 1989, massive pro-democracy demonstrations in China’s capital of Beijing (Tiananmen Square) were put down violently by the communist government. Hundreds were shot dead in the streets. Later that year, as the Soviet Union stood by, one Eastern European country after another replaced its communist government under pressure of mass demonstra- tions. The toppling of the Berlin Wall in late 1989 symbolized the end of the Cold War divi- sion of Europe. Germany formally reunifi ed in 1990. The Soviet leader, Gorbachev, allowed these losses of external power (and more) in hopes of concentrating on Soviet domestic restructuring under his policies of perestroika (economic reform) and glasnost (openness in political discussion). China remained a communist, authoritarian government but liberalized its economy and avoided military confl icts. In contrast to the Cold War era, China developed close ties with both the United States and Russia and joined the world’s liberal trading regime.

Scholars do not agree on the important question of why the Cold War ended. 26 One view is that U.S. military strength under President Reagan forced the Soviet Union into bankruptcy as it tried to keep up in the arms race. A different position is that the Soviet Union suffered from internal stagnation over decades and ultimately imploded because of weaknesses that had little to do with external pressure. Indeed, some scholars think the Soviet Union might have fallen apart earlier without the United States as a foreign enemy to bolster the Soviet government’s legitimacy with its own people.

The Post–Cold War Era, 1990–2013 The post–Cold War era began with a bang while the Soviet Union was still disintegrating. In 1990, perhaps believing that the end of the Cold War had left a power vacuum in its region, Iraq occupied its neighbor Kuwait in an aggressive grab for control of Middle East oil. Western powers were alarmed—both about the example that unpunished aggression could set in a new era and about the direct threat to energy supplies for the world econ- omy. The United States mobilized a coalition of the world’s major countries (with almost no opposition) to counter Iraq. Working through the UN, the U.S.-led coalition applied escalating sanctions against Iraq.

When Iraq did not withdraw from Kuwait by the UN’s deadline, the United States and its allies easily smashed Iraq’s military and evicted its army from Kuwait in the Gulf War. But the coalition did not occupy Iraq or overthrow its government. The costs of the Gulf War were shared among the participants in the coalition, with Britain and France making

26 Herrmann, Richard K., and R. Ned Lebow. Ending the Cold War: Interpretations, Causation, and the Study of International Relations. Palgrave, 2004. Brooks, Stephen G., and William C. Wohlforth. Clarifying the End of the Cold War Debate. Cold War History 7 (3), 2007: 447–54.

34 Chapter 1 The Globalization of International Relations

military commitments while Japan and Germany made substantial fi nancial contributions. The pass-the-hat fi nancing for this war was an innovation, one that worked fairly well. 27

The fi nal collapse of the Soviet Union followed only months after the Gulf War. 28 The 15 republics of the Soviet Union—of which Russia was just one—had begun taking power from a weakened central government, declaring themselves sovereign states. This process raised complex problems ranging from issues of national self-determination to the reallocation of property. Russia and the other former republics struggled throughout the 1990s against economic and fi nancial collapse, infl ation, corruption, war, and military weakness, although they remained political democracies. A failed Russian military coup attempt in 1991—and the prominent role of Russian president Boris Yeltsin in opposing it—accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union. 29 Soon both capitalism and democracy were adopted as the basis of the economies and political systems of the former Soviet states. The republics became independent states and formed the CIS. Of the former Soviet republics, only the three small Baltic states and Georgia are nonmembers.

Western relations with Russia and the other republics have been mixed since the 1990s. Because of their own economic problems, and because of a sense that Russia needed internal reform more than external aid, Western countries provided only limited aid for the region’s harsh economic transition, which had drastically reduced living standards. Russia’s brutal suppression of its secessionist province of Chechnya in 1995 and 1999 pro- voked Western fears of an expansionist, aggressive Russian nationalism. Russian leaders feared NATO expansion into Eastern Europe that placed threatening Western military forces on Russia’s borders. Meanwhile, Japan and Russia could not resolve a lingering, mostly symbolic, territorial dispute. 30

Despite these problems, the world’s great powers overall increased their cooperation after the Cold War. Russia was accepted as the successor state to the Soviet Union and took its seat on the Security Council. Russia and the United States agreed to major reduc- tions in their nuclear weapons, and carried them out in the 1990s.

Just after the Gulf War in 1991, the former Yugoslavia broke apart, with several of its republics declaring independence. Ethnic Serbs, who were minorities in Croatia and Bos- nia, seized territory to form a “Greater Serbia.” With help from Serbia, which controlled the Yugoslav army, they killed hundreds of thousands of non-Serb Bosnians and Croatians and expelled millions more, to create an ethnically pure state.

The international community recognized the independence of Croatia and Bosnia, admitting them to the UN and passing dozens of Security Council resolutions to protect their territorial integrity and their civilian populations. But in contrast to the Gulf War, the great powers showed no willingness to bear major costs to protect Bosnia. Instead they tried to contain the confl ict by assuming a neutral role as peacekeeper and intermediary. 31 In 1995, Serbian forces overran two UN-designated “safe areas” in eastern Bosnia, expel- ling the women and slaughtering thousands of the men. Finally, two weeks of NATO airstrikes (the alliance’s fi rst-ever military engagement), along with losses to Croatia on the ground, induced Serbian forces to come to terms. The treaty to end the war (authored by U.S. negotiators) formally held Bosnia together but granted Serbian forces autonomy on half of their territory, while placing about 60,000 heavily armed (mostly NATO) troops on the ground to maintain a cease-fi re. Meanwhile, Serbian strongman Slobodan

30 Ikenberry, G. John. After Victory. Princeton, 2000. 31 Gow, James. Triumph of the Lack of Will: International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War. Columbia, 1997. Rieff, David. Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West. Simon & Schuster, 1995. Malcolm, Noel. Bosnia: A Short History. New York University, 1994.

27 Freedman, Lawrence, and Efraim Karsh. The Gulf Confl ict: 1990–1991. Princeton, 1993. 28 Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. Free Press, 1992. 29 McFaul, Michael. Russia’s Unfi nished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. Cornell, 2001.

The Evolving International System 35

Milosevic was indicted for war crimes by the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, was delivered to the tribunal in 2001, and died in 2006 near the end of a lengthy trial.

In contrast to their indecision early in the Bosnia crisis, the Western powers acted deci- sively in 1999 when Serbian forces carried out “ethnic cleansing” in the Serbian province of Kosovo, predominantly populated by ethnic Albanians. NATO launched an air war that esca- lated over ten weeks. NATO came under criticism from Russia and China for acting without explicit UN authorization and for interfering in Serbia’s internal affairs. (The international community and the UN considered Kosovo, unlike Bosnia, to be a part of Serbia.) In the end, Serbian forces withdrew from Kosovo and NATO has controlled the province ever since. 32 In 2008, with the UN Security Council still deadlocked over its status, Kosovo declared inde- pendence, bringing protests from Serbia and its allies. In 2010, the World Court declared Kosovo’s declaration of independence legal, although its substantive status remains in dispute.

Other Western military intervention decisions since 1990 were less effective. In Somalia, a U.S.-led coalition sent tens of thousands of troops to suppress factional fi ghting and deliver relief supplies to a large population that was starving. However, when those forces were drawn into the fi ghting and sustained casualties, the United States abruptly pulled out. 33 In Rwanda in 1994, the genocide of more than half a million civilians in a matter of weeks was virtually ignored by the international community. The great powers, burned by failures in Somalia and Bosnia, decided that their vital interests were not at stake. In 1997, the Rwanda confl ict spilled into neighboring Zaire (now Democratic Congo), where rebels overthrew a corrupt dictator. Neighboring countries were drawn into the fi ghting, but the international commu- nity steered clear even as millions of civilians died of hunger and disease. The U.S. military intervened in Haiti to restore the elected president, but Haiti remains mired in poverty.

New rifts opened in 2001 between the United States and both China and Europe— possibly signaling a realignment against U.S. predominance in world affairs—on issues ranging from global warming to the proposed International Criminal Court. Russia and China signed a treaty of friendship in 2001, and European countries helped vote the United States off two important UN commissions.

These divisive issues receded when the United States was attacked by terrorists on September 11, 2001. The attack destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and a wing of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., killing thousands of Americans and citizens of about 60 other countries. The attacks mobilized support for the United States by a very broad coalition of states. President Bush declared a “war on terrorism” that lasted for years and spanned continents, employing both conventional and unconventional means. In late 2001, U.S. and British forces and their Afghan allies ousted the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which had harbored the al Qaeda network (led by Osama bin Laden).

The great power divisions reappeared, however, as the United States and Britain tried to assemble a coalition to oust Iraq’s Saddam Hussein by force in early 2003. France and Germany (along with Russia and China) bitterly opposed the war, as did millions of protesters around the world. The dispute disrupted the Atlantic alliance for several years and weakened the UN’s role as the U.S.-led coalition went forward despite its failure to win Security Council authorization for war.

The invasion itself was brief and decisive. A U.S. military force of 250,000 troops with advanced technology overpowered the Iraqi army in three weeks. Many Iraqis welcomed the end of a dictatorial regime, as had most Afghans in late 2001, but the war

32 Bacevich, Andrew J., and Eliot A. Cohen. War over Kosovo. Columbia, 2002. Mertus, Julie A. Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War. California, 1999. Vickers, Miranda. Between Serb and Albanian: A History of Kosovo. Columbia, 1998. 33 Clarke, Walter S., and Jeffrey I. Herbst, eds. Learning from Somalia: The Lessons of Armed Humanitarian Inter- vention. Westview, 1997. Rutherford, Kenneth R. Humanitarianism Under Fire: The U.S. and UN Intervention in Somalia. Kumarian, 2008.

36 Chapter 1 The Globalization of International Relations

infl amed anti-American sentiment, especially in Muslim countries. Insurgent forces in Iraq gained strength as the U.S. occupation stretched on for years, and within several years U.S. public opinion had turned against the protracted war. After a U.S. troop surge in 2007 and the arming of Sunni communities fed up with foreign Islamist radicals, vio- lence in Iraq fell. 34 U.S. forces withdrew from Iraq in 2009–2011, although some violence continued. Estimates of Iraqi deaths caused by the war range from tens of thousands to more than 600,000. Elections in 2010 were relatively peaceful, but left the country divided along ethnic lines.

In Afghanistan, fi ghting worsened beginning in 2007 as the Taliban ran an insur- gency campaign from bases in Pakistan. Disputed elections, corruption, and “insider” attacks by members of Afghan security forces on NATO troops all made the foreigners’ jobs diffi cult. NATO sent in tens of thousands of additional troops in 2009, but then began a withdrawal set to conclude in 2014. One goal of the Afghan intervention was accomplished in 2011, when U.S. special forces killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. U.S. drone attacks on other militants inside Pakistan and elsewhere weakened al Qaeda but raised thorny legal and political issues.

Meanwhile, nuclear weapons programs in North Korea and Iran raised alarms. North Korea produced possibly a half-dozen nuclear bombs and tested three in 2006, 2009, and 2013. In 2012, it successfully tested an advanced long-range missile in defi ance of a UN Security Council ban. Starting in 2004, Iran made and broke several agreements to suspend the enrichment of uranium that could be used to build nuclear weapons. In response, the UN Security Council passed a series of sanctions against Iran, demanding that it stop its enrichment program. In 2010, centrifuges key to its enrichment program began mysteriously destroying themselves, and investigation pinned the problem on the sophisticated Stuxnet computer virus, evidently a creation of Israeli and American defense scientists. It set back Iran’s program by a year or more.

The Arab Spring uprisings in 2011–2012 began with nonviolent protests in Tunisia and Egypt, both resulting in the overthrow of dictators and the holding of free elections. Egypt elected a leader of the long-banned Muslim Brotherhood as president. In Libya and Syria, violent repression against protesters sparked violent uprisings, leading to the bloody overthrow of Libya’s dictator with NATO air support, and a prolonged and agonizing civil war in Syria with a divided international community unable to respond effectively. Yemen had its own revolution—a mix of peaceful protest, violent repression, ethnic confl ict, and political compromise leading to a transitional government. And far away in Burma (Myan- mar), a longstanding military regime fi nally made a concerted move toward democracy.

The post–Cold War era may seem a confl ict-prone period in which savage wars fl are up with unexpected intensity around the world, in places such as Rwanda and Syria— even New York City. Yet, the post–Cold War era has been more peaceful than the Cold War (see p. 85 ) . Old wars have ended faster than new ones have begun. 35 Latin America and Russia/CIS have nearly extinguished wars in their regions, joining a zone of peace already encompassing North America, Europe, Japan/Pacifi c, and China.

Warfare is diminishing even in the arc of confl ict from Africa through the Middle East to South Asia. Since 1990, long, bloody wars have ended in South Africa, Mozambique, Angola, southern Sudan, and Ethiopia-Eritrea, as did the various confl icts in Central America and the civil war in Sri Lanka. Wars in West Africa, Rwanda, and Indonesia have

34 Woodward, Bob. State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III. Simon & Schuster, 2006. Gordon, Michael R., and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor. Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq. Pantheon, 2006. Ricks, Thomas E. The Gamble: General David Patraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006–2008. Penguin, 2009. 35 Human Security Centre. Human Security Report 2005: War and Peace in the 21st Century. Oxford, 2006.

The Evolving International System 37

also wound down. After the Cold War, world order did not spiral out of control with rampant aggression and war.

However, the Israeli-Palestinian con- fl ict, which saw rising expectations of peace in the 1990s, worsened after a proposed deal fell through in 2000. With the 2006 Pales- tinian election victory of the militant Islam- ist party Hamas, responsible for many violent attacks on Israel, hopes for a durable peace faded. In 2006, Israel fought a brief but intense war with Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon, while violent clashes between Israel and Hamas continued from 2009 to 2012. Israel deployed a new “Iron Dome” missile defense system against Hamas missiles in a 2012 clash. 36

In international economic relations, the post–Cold War era is one of globaliza- tion. New hubs of economic growth are emerging, notably in parts of Asia with remarkable economic growth. Globalization has created backlashes among people who are adversely affected or who believe their identities are threatened by foreign infl u- ences. The resurgence of nationalism and ethnic-religious conflict—occasionally in brutal form—results partly from that back- lash. So does the signifi cant protest move- ment against capitalist-led globalization.

With increasing globalization, transna- tional concerns such as environmental degradation and disease have become more promi- nent as well. Global warming looms as an ever more present danger, underscored in 2005 by the toll of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and the accelerating melting of arctic ice. In 2008–2009, a virulent swine fl u (known as H1N1) spread worldwide, triggering efforts to control the virus through quarantines and a new vaccine. Major oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico and China in 2010 refocused international attention on the issue of pollution and the environment, especially in the context of the global race for natural resources.

China is becoming more central to world politics as the 21st century begins. Its size and rapid growth make China a rising power—a situation that some scholars liken to Germany’s rise a century earlier. Historically, such shifts in power relations have caused instability in the international system. China is the only great power that is not a democ- racy. Its poor record on human rights makes it a frequent target of Western criticism from both governments and NGOs.

China holds (but seldom uses) veto power in the UN Security Council, and it has a credible nuclear arsenal. China adjoins several regional confl ict areas and affects the glo- bal proliferation of missiles and nuclear weapons. It claims disputed territory in the resource-rich South China Sea and disputes ownership of islands with Japan in the East

FRUITS OF SPRING

Peaceful trends mark the post–Cold War era, though war and terrorism continue. The Arab Spring popular uprisings in 2011–2013 brought the world’s latest wave of democracy to the Middle East. They overthrew gov- ernments in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen; sparked civil war in Syria; and reshaped the region’s international dynamics. Here, supporters of newly elected Islamist president Mohammed Morsi celebrate in Tahrir Square—in the capital of Egypt, at the heart of the Arab world—in 2012.

36 Booth, Ken, and Tim Dunne, eds. Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order. Palgrave, 2002.

38 Chapter 1 The Globalization of International Relations

China Sea, but it has not fought a military battle in 25 years. With the transfer of Hong Kong from Britain in 1997, China acquired a valuable asset and turned to hopes of some- day reintegrating Taiwan as well, under the Hong Kong formula of “one country, two systems.” China is the only great power from the global South. Its population size and rapid industrialization from a low starting point make China a big factor in the future of global environmental trends such as global warming. All these elements make China an important actor in the coming decades.

It remains to be seen whether, in the coming years, the international system can provide China with appropriate status and respect to refl ect its rising power and historical impor- tance, and whether China in turn can come to conform with international rules and norms. So will the Chinese leadership’s decisions about whether to encourage or discourage the ris- ing tide of nationalism among China’s young people as communist ideology loses its hold.

The transition into the post–Cold War era has been a turbulent time, full of changes and new possibilities both good and bad. It is likely, however, that the basic rules and principles of IR—those that scholars have long struggled to understand—will continue to apply, though their contexts and outcomes may change. Most central to those rules and principles is the concept of power , to which we now turn .

Study and Review

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CHAPTER REVIEW

SUMMARY ■ IR affects daily life profoundly; we all participate in IR. ■ IR is a fi eld of political science concerned mainly with explaining political out-

comes in international security affairs and international political economy. ■ Theories complement descriptive narratives in explaining international events and

outcomes, and although scholars do not agree on a single set of theories or methods, three core principles shape various solutions to collective goods problems in IR.

■ States are the most important actors in IR; the international system is based on the sovereignty of about 200 independent territorial states of varying size.

■ Nonstate actors such as intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and multinational corporations (MNCs) exert a growing infl uence on international relations.

■ Four levels of analysis—individual, domestic, interstate, and global—suggest multi- ple explanations (operating simultaneously) for outcomes in IR.

■ Globalization is conceived differently by various scholars, but generally refers to the growing scope, speed, and intensity of connectedness worldwide. The process may be weakening, strengthening, or transforming the power of states. Antiglobalization activists oppose growing corporate power but disagree on goals and tactics.

■ World Wars I and II dominated the 20th century, yet they seem to offer contradic- tory lessons about the utility of hardline or conciliatory foreign policies.

■ For nearly 50 years after World War II, world politics revolved around the East- West rivalry of the Cold War. This bipolar standoff created stability and avoided great power wars, including nuclear war, but turned states in the global South into proxy battlegrounds.

■ The post–Cold War era holds hope of growing peace and great-power cooperation despite the appearance of new ethnic and regional confl icts.

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Chapter Review 39

■ The U.S. military campaign in Iraq overthrew a dictator, but divided the great pow- ers, heightened anti-Americanism worldwide, and led to years of insurgency and sectarian violence.

■ The NATO campaign in Afghanistan against Taliban infl uence is to end in 2014. In 2011, U.S. Special Forces killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, where drone attacks targeted other militants.

■ The Arab Spring uprisings in 2011–2013 overthrew governments in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, and sparked a brutal civil war in Syria.

KEY TERMS international relations

(IR) 3 collective goods

problem 4 dominance 5 reciprocity 5 identity 6 issue areas 11 confl ict and

cooperation 11 international

security 12 international political

economy (IPE) 12

League of Nations 27 Munich Agreement 27 Cold War 31 containment 31 Sino-Soviet split 31 summit meeting 31 Cuban Missile

Crisis 32 proxy wars 32

state 13 international system 13 nation-states 13 Gross Domestic Product

(GDP) 14 nonstate actors 15 intergovernmental

organization (IGO) 15

nongovernmental organization (NGO) 15

globalization 19 North-South gap 21

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS 1. Pick a current area in which interesting international events are taking place. Can

you think of possible explanations for those events from each of the four levels of analysis? (See Table 1.3 , p. 18 .) Do explanations from different levels provide insights into different aspects of the events?

2. The Cold War is long over, but its infl uences linger. Can you think of three exam- ples in which the Cold War experience continues to shape the foreign policies of today’s states?

3. In what ways does international economics affect our daily lives? Is this true for all people in all places? Or do economic processes such as globalization affect some regions more than others?

4. Given the contradictory lessons of World Wars I and II, can you think of situations in today’s world in which appeasement (a conciliatory policy) would be the best course? Situations in which hardline containment policies would be best? Why?

5. What do you expect will be the character of the 21st century? Peaceful? War-prone? Orderly? Chaotic? Why do you have the expectations you do, and what clues from the unfolding of events in the world might tell you whether your guesses are correct?

Globalization: Vanishing State Power?

Overview For over 300 years, the nation-state has been the main organizing principle in the world. State gov- ernments fi ght wars, protect their citizens, collect taxes, and provide services for everyday life (from running transit systems to collecting garbage). The idea of the state as a key organizing principle dates back hundreds of years. Political philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes saw governments as providing individuals protection from the state of nature (where life without the state was “nasty, brutish, and short”) and from other groups of individuals.

The idea of a nation-state was European in ori- gin. Prior to colonization, large portions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America were organized in different ways: either by families, clans, or other group units. Yet, as Europeans spread throughout the world in efforts to colonize and settle new lands, they brought the idea of a nation-state with them. In a relatively short period of time, the world was organ- ized as a set of states interacting on the world stage. States became the central actors providing services to individuals, while coming into confl ict or cooperating with one another.

Yet in the era of globalization, the power of the state is being challenged. With globalization has come the rise of technology, nonstate actors, fl uid state borders, and intergovernmental organiza- tions, all of which are eroding the state’s ability to control what goes on within and across its borders. Could we be seeing the beginning of the end of the nation-state as an organizing principle in interna- tional relations?

LET’S DEBATE THE ISSUE

ARGUMENT 1

State Power Is on the Decline

Nonstate actors are now as impor- tant as the state. Whether they are non- governmental organizations (NGOs) or multinational corporations (MNCs), nonstate actors play an increasingly important part in world politics. NGOs pressure governments to change human rights practices, MNCs compel states to adapt laws to suit their businesses, and terrorist groups undermine state security. These challenges to state power have grown in the past decade and will continue to grow as globalization allows citizens more access to one another.

States are no longer the key economic actors. Except for the economically largest states such as the United States and Japan, MNCs and private investors control more resources and capital than many nation-states. Add to this list the powerful IGOs such as the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund, and states are but one category of player in the global economic game.

Many substitutes for nationalism have emerged. While nationalism was a powerful force supporting the state in the past, other ideas have emerged to challenge it. Reli- gion has replaced allegiance to the state for some, and strong ethnic ties also challenge loy- alty to the state. If more individuals’ primary loy- alty is to something besides their nation-state, state power will continue to decline.

ARGUMENT 2

States Are Down, but Not Out

States have always been challenged, but they have always persevered. States have been under threat for centuries. Whether the threat was from nonstate actors (pirates), from NGOs (the antislavery movement), or from MNCs (the British East India Tea Company), the state has emerged as the central power in international rela- tions. No successful replacement for the state has yet arisen.

States still perform functions that cannot be handed off to other actors. Despite the rise of nonstate actors, certain functions will always fall to states, such as collecting taxes, making laws, and protecting citizens from external threats. States will always need help to perform these duties, but no other entity can perform them outright.

Nationalism will remain a powerful ideological force for the foreseeable future. While alternatives to nationalism exist, none are as widely accepted. Individuals still have strong allegiances to their countries. Wit- ness the number of separatist groups that still try to achieve their independence as a state. If the state did not still have distinct advantages, why would people go to such lengths to achieve statehood?

Questions ■ How has globalization played a role in challeng-

ing the power of the state? In other words, which of the challenges are attributable to glo- balization and which are attributable to forces that may run counter to globalization, such as religion?

■ Is there an alternative to the nation-state? Are there more natural ways to organize politics? Think about alternatives that are smaller (ethnic groups, tribes, regions) and larger (multistate coalitions like the European Union or world government).

■ One way to think about the European Union is as a natural progression into larger political units. Centuries ago, Europe was a series of city- states, then slightly larger kingdoms, then larger principalities, then nation-states, and now a larger union. Can you foresee a similar evolution in any other geographic region, such as Latin America or Africa?

For Further Reading Zakaria, Fareed. The Post American World. Norton,

2008. Cameron, David. Globalization and Self-

Determination: Is the Nation-State Under Siege? Routledge, 2006.

Bhagwati, Jagdish. In Defense of Globalization. Oxford, 2007.

Stiglitz, Joseph E. Globalization and Its Discontents. Norton, 2003.

French forces intervene in Mali, 2013.

Realist Theories CHAPTER 2 Listen to Chapter 2 at MyPoliSciLab

Watch the Video ‘’Authors’ Chapter Introduction’’ at MyPoliSciLab

43

CHAPTER OUTLINE Realism No single theory reliably explains the wide range of international interactions, but one theoretical framework has historically held a central position in the study of IR. This approach, called realism, is favored by some IR scholars and vigorously contested by others, but almost all take it into account.

Realism (or political realism ) is a school of thought that explains international rela- tions in terms of power. The exercise of power by states toward each other is sometimes called realpolitik, or just power politics.

Modern realist theory developed in reaction to a liberal tradition that realists called idealism (of course, idealists themselves do not consider their approach unrealistic). Ideal- ism emphasizes international law, morality, and international organizations, rather than power alone, as key infl uences on international events. 1 Idealists think that human nature is basically good. They see the international system as one based on a community of states that have the potential to work together to overcome mutual problems (see Chapter 3 ) . For idealists, the principles of IR must fl ow from morality. Idealists were particularly active between World War I and World War II, following the painful experience of World War I. U.S. president Woodrow Wilson and other idealists placed their hopes for peace in the League of Nations as a formal structure for the community of nations.

Those hopes were dashed when that structure proved helpless to stop German, Italian, and Japanese aggression in the 1930s. Since World War II, realists have blamed idealists for looking too much at how the world ought to be instead of how it really is. Sobered by the experiences of World War II, realists set out to understand the princi- ples of power politics without succumbing to wishful thinking. Realism provided a theoretical foundation for the Cold War policy of containment and the determination of U.S. policy makers not to appease the Soviet Union and China as the West had appeased Hitler at Munich in 1938.

Realists ground themselves in a long tradition. The Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, who lived 2,000 years ago, advised the rulers of states how to survive in an era when war had become a systematic instrument of power for the fi rst time (the “warring states” period). Sun Tzu argued that moral reasoning was not very useful to the state rulers of the day, faced with armed and dangerous neighbors. He showed rulers how to use power to advance their interests and protect their survival. 2

At roughly the same time, in Greece, Thucydides wrote an account of the Pelopon- nesian War (431–404 b.c.) focusing on relative power among the Greek city-states. He stated that “the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.” 3 Much later, in Renaissance Italy (around 1500), Niccolò Machi- avelli urged princes to concentrate on expedient actions to stay in power, including the manipulation of the public and military alliances. Today the adjective Machiavellian refers to excessively manipulative power maneuvers. 4

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century discussed the free- for-all that exists when government is absent and people seek their own self-interests.

Realism

Power ■ Defi ning Power ■ Estimating Power ■ Elements of Power

The International System ■ Anarchy and Sovereignty ■ Balance of Power ■ Great Powers and Middle

Powers ■ Power Distribution ■ Hegemony ■ The Great Power System,

1500–2000

Alliances ■ Purposes of Alliances ■ NATO ■ Other Alliances ■ Regional Alignments

Strategy ■ Statecraft ■ Rationality ■ The Prisoner’s Dilemma

Study and Review the Pre-Test & Flashcards at MyPoliSciLab

1 Nardin, Terry, and David R. Mapel, eds. Traditions of International Ethics. Cambridge, 1992. Long, David, and Peter Wilson, eds. Thinkers of the Twenty Years’ Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed. Oxford, 1995. 2 Sun Tzu. The Art of War. Translated by Samuel B. Griffi th. Oxford, 1963. 3 Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by R. Warner. Penguin, 1972, p. 402 . 4 Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince, and the Discourses. Translated by Luigi Ricci. Revised by E. R. P. Vincent. NY: Modern Library, 1950. Meinecke, Friedrich. Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d’État and Its Place in Modern History. Translated by D. Scott. Yale, 1957.

44 Chapter 2 Realist Theories

He called it the “state of nature” or “state of war”—what we would now call the “law of the jungle” in contrast to the rule of law. Hobbes favored a strong monarchy (which he labeled a Leviathan ) to tame this condition—essentially advocating a dominance approach to solve the collective goods problem in domestic societies. Realists see in these historical fi gures evidence that the importance of power politics is timeless and cross-cultural.

After World War II, scholar Hans Morgenthau argued that international politics is governed by objective, universal laws based on national interests defi ned in terms of power (not psychological motives of decision makers). He reasoned that no nation had “God on its side” (a universal morality) and that all nations had to base their actions on prudence and practicality. He opposed the Vietnam War, arguing in 1965 that a communist Viet- nam would not harm U.S. national interests.

Similarly, in 2002, before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, leading realists fi gured prominently among the 33 IR scholars signing a New York Times advertisement warning that “war with Iraq is not in America’s national interest.” 5 Thus, realists do not always favor using military power, although they recognize the necessity of doing so at times. The target of the IR schol- ars’ ad was the group of foreign policy makers in the Bush administration known as neocon- servatives, who advocated more energetic use of American power, especially military force, to accomplish ambitious and moralistic goals such as democratizing the Middle East.

Thus, realism’s foundation is the principle of dominance ; alternatives based on reci- procity and identity will be reviewed in Chapter 3 . Figure 2.1 lays out the various theo- retical approaches to the study of IR we discuss here and in Chapter 3 .

Realists tend to treat political power as separate from, and predominant over, moral- ity, ideology, and other social and economic aspects of life. For realists, ideologies do not

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5 Morgenthau, Hans. We Are Deluding Ourselves in Vietnam. New York Times Magazine, April 18, 1965. Advertisement, New York Times, September 26, 2002.

Levels of Analysis

GlobalInterstateDomesticIndividual

Realism

Neorealism

Liberal Theories (Kant)

Liberal Institutionalism (Neoliberalism)

Democratic Peace

SOC

IAL THEO RIES

Constructivist Theories

Postmodernist Theories

Peace Studies

Marxism (Imperialism)

Gender Theories

FIGURE 2.1 Theories of IR

Power 45

matter much, nor do religions or other cultural factors with which states may justify their actions. Realists see states with very different religions, ideologies, or economic systems as quite similar in their actions with regard to national power. 6 Thus, realists assume that IR can be best (although not exclusively) explained by the choices of states operating as autonomous actors rationally pursuing their own interests in an international system of sovereign states without a central authority. 7

Table 2.1 summarizes some major differences between the assumptions of realism and idealism.

Power Power is a central concept in international relations—the central one for realists—but it is surprisingly diffi cult to defi ne or measure. 8

Defi ning Power Power is often defi ned as the ability to get another actor to do what it would not otherwise have done (or not to do what it would have done). A variation on this idea is that actors are powerful to the extent that they affect others more than others affect them. These defi nitions treat power as infl uence. If actors get their way a lot, they must be powerful.

One problem with this defi nition is that we seldom know what a second actor would have done in the absence of the fi rst actor’s power. There is a danger of circular logic: power explains infl uence, and infl uence measures power.

Power is not infl uence itself, however, but the ability or potential to infl uence others. Many IR scholars believe that such potential is based on specifi c (tangible and intangible) characteristics or possessions of states—such as their sizes, levels of income, and armed forces. This is power as capability. Capabilities are easier to measure than infl uence and are less circular in logic.

Measuring capabilities to explain how one state infl uences another is not simple, however. It requires summing up various kinds of potentials. States possess varying amounts of population, territory, military forces, and so forth. The best single indicator of a

Issue Realism Idealism

Human Nature Selfish Altruistic Most Important Actors States States and others including individuals Causes of State Behavior Rational pursuit of self-interest Psychological motives of decision makers Nature of International System Anarchy Community

TABLE 2.1 Assumptions of Realism and Idealism

6 Morgenthau, Hans J., and Kenneth W. Thompson. Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace. 6th ed. Knopf, 1985. Carr, Edward Hallett. The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations. Macmillan, 1974 [1939]. Aron, Raymond. Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations. Translated by R. Howard and A. B. Fox. Doubleday, 1966. 7 Waltz, Kenneth. Theory of International Politics. Addison-Wesley, 1979. 8 Barnett, Michael, and Raymond Duvall. Power in International Politics. International Organization 59 (1), 2005: 1–37. Baldwin, David. Power in International Relations. In Carlsnaes, Walter, Thomas Risse, and Beth Simmons, eds. Handbook of International Relations. Sage, 2002, pp. 177 – 91 .

46 Chapter 2 Realist Theories

state’s power may be its total GDP, which combines overall size, techno- logical level, and wealth. But even GDP is at best a rough indicator, and economists do not even agree how to measure it. The method followed in this book adjusts for price differences among countries, but an alternative method gives GDP estimates that are, on average, about 50 percent higher for countries in the global North and about 50 percent lower for the global South including China (see footnote 9 on p. 14 ). So GDP is a useful estimator of material capa- bilities but not a precise one.

Power also depends on nonma- terial elements. Capabilities give a state the potential to infl uence oth- ers only to the extent that political leaders can mobilize and deploy these capabilities effectively and strategically. This depends on national will, diplomatic skill, pop- ular support for the government (its legitimacy), and so forth. Some scholars emphasize the power of ideas —the ability to maximize the infl uence of capabilities through a psychological process. This process includes the domestic mobilization of capabilities—often through reli- gion, ideology, or (especially) nationalism. International influ-

ence is also gained by forming the rules of behavior to change how others see their own national interests. If a state’s own values become widely shared among other states, it will easily infl uence others. This has been called soft power. 9 For example, the United States has infl uenced many other states to accept the value of free markets and free trade.

As the concept of soft power illustrates, dominance is not the only way to exert power (infl uence others). The core principles of reciprocity and (in the case of soft power) iden- tity can also work. For example, a father who wants his toddler to stop screaming in a supermarket might threaten or actually administer a spanking (dominance); he might promise a candy bar at the checkout as a reward for good behavior (reciprocity); or he could invoke such themes as “Be a big boy/girl” or “You want to help Daddy, don’t you?” (identity). Although realists emphasize dominance approaches, they acknowledge that

POWER AS INFLUENCE

Power is the ability to infl uence the behavior of others. Military force and eco- nomic sanctions are among the various means that states and nonstate actors use to try to infl uence each other. Russia’s position as a major energy supplier to Europe has increased its power in recent years even though its military threat to Europe has decreased. In 2009, Russia shut off natural gas supplies during a price dispute with Ukraine, a dispute shadowed by Russian anger at Ukraine’s efforts to join NATO. The shutoff, visible here in a pressure gauge reading zero, left custom- ers across Europe without heat. In 2010, Ukrainians elected a new president more friendly toward Russia.

9 Nye, Joseph S., Jr. Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. Basic Books, 1990.

Power 47

states often achieve their interests in other ways. Furthermore, even realists recognize that power provides only a general understanding of outcomes. Real-world outcomes depend on many other elements, including accidents or luck.

Because power is a relational concept, a state can have power only relative to other states’ power. Relative power is the ratio of the power that two states can bring to bear against each other. It matters little to realists whether a state’s capabilities are rising or declining in absolute terms, only whether they are falling behind or overtaking the capa- bilities of rival states.

Estimating Power The logic of power suggests that in wars, the more powerful state will generally prevail. Thus, estimates of the relative power of the two antagonists should help explain out- comes. These estimates could take into account the nations’ relative military capabilities and the popular support for each one’s government, among other factors. But most impor- tant is the total size of each nation’s economy—the GDP—which refl ects both population size and income per person. With a healthy enough economy, a state can buy a large army, popular support (by providing consumer goods), and even allies.

For example, the Libyan revolutionaries fi ghting against dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 had passion and determination but could not defeat the government with its heavy weaponry. Then, with the government poised to crush the rebels with tanks, the United States and NATO allies began an air campaign that decisively turned the tide. The rebels made gains and, several months later, claimed victory. The power disparity was striking. In GDP, NATO held an advantage of about 300:1, and NATO forces were much more capable technologically. They also enjoyed the legitimacy conferred by the UN Security Council. In the end, Gaddafi lay dead, his supporters routed, and NATO had not suffered a single casualty.

Despite the decisive outcome of this lopsided confl ict, the exercise of power always carries risks of unintended consequences. In 2012, an armed Islamic faction that Gaddafi had previously kept in check attacked a U.S. consulate in Libya and killed the U.S. ambassador. Other ethnic fi ghters and Islamic militants who had fought for Gaddafi took large quantities of weapons and crossed the desert to northern Mali, where they seized control of half the country. In early 2013, France had to intervene militarily in Mali to stop them, and the Islamist militants crossed into Algeria, where they seized hundreds of foreign hostages at a gas facility and killed dozens of them when the Algerian army attacked. Thus, a big GDP may help a country win a war, but does not eliminate the ele- ments of complexity and luck as situations evolve over the longer term.

Elements of Power State power is a mix of many ingredients. Elements that an actor can draw on over the long term include total GDP, population, territory, geography, and natural resources. These attributes change only slowly. Less tangible long-term power resources include political culture, patriotism, education of the population, and strength of the scientifi c and technological base. The credibility of its commitments (reputation for keeping its word) is also a long-term power base for a state. So is the ability of one state’s culture and values to consistently shape the thinking of other states (the power of ideas).

The importance of long-term power resources was illustrated after the Japanese sur- prise attack on the U.S. fl eet at Pearl Harbor in 1941, which decimated U.S. naval

48 Chapter 2 Realist Theories

capabilities in the Pacifi c. In the short term, Japan had superior military power and was able to occupy territories in Southeast Asia while driving U.S. forces from the region. In the longer term, the United States had greater power resources due to its underlying economic potential. It built up military capabilities over the next few years that gradually matched and then overwhelmed those of Japan.

Other capabilities allow actors to exercise infl uence in the short term. Military forces are such a capability—perhaps the most important kind. The size, composition, and preparedness of two states’ military forces matter more in a short-term military confrontation than their respective econ- omies or natural resources. Another capability is the military- industrial capacity to quickly produce weapons. The quality of a state’s bureaucracy is another type of capability, allowing the state to gather information, regulate international trade, or participate in international conferences. Less tangibly, the support and legitimacy that an actor commands in the short term from constituents and

allies are capabilities that the actor can use to gain infl uence. So is the loyalty of a nation’s army and politicians to their leader.

Given the limited resources that any actor commands, trade-offs among possible capabilities always exist. Building up military forces diverts resources that might be put into foreign aid, for instance. Or buying a population’s loyalty with consumer goods reduces resources available for building up military capabilities. To the extent that one element of power can be converted into another, it is fungible. Generally, money is the most fungible capability because it can buy other capabilities.

Realists tend to see military force as the most important element of national power in the short term, and other elements such as economic strength, diplomatic skill, or moral legitimacy as being important to the extent that they are fungible into military power. Yet, depending on the nature of the confl ict in question, military power may be only one of many elements of power. Robert Gates, as U.S. secretary of defense, called for a “dramatic increase” in spending on diplomacy and economic aid, noting that despite very high military spending, these “other elements of national power” have lagged behind in an era of asymmetric warfare (for example, counterterrorism) in which confl icts are “fundamentally political in nature” and not simply military. Secretary Gates went on to point out that the United States has more members of military march- ing bands than foreign service offi cers. In 2009, the top U.S. military offi cer added that although U.S. leaders had “reached for the military hammer in the toolbox of foreign policy fairly often” in recent years, “armed forces may not always be the best choice” to achieve foreign policy goals. 10 Consistent with this thinking, U.S. spending on foreign

THE ECONOMICS OF POWER

Military power such as tanks rests on economic strength, roughly measured by GDP. The large U.S. economy supports U.S. military predominance. In the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the United States could afford to send a large and technologically advanced military force to the Middle East. Here, U.S. forces enter Iraq, March 2003.

10 Sanger, David. A Handpicked Team for a Sweeping Shift in Foreign Policy. New York Times, December 1, 2008. Shanker, Thom. Top Offi cer Urges Limit on Mission of Military. New York Times, January 13, 2009: A9.

The International System 49

aid has increased dramatically (along with military spending) since the attacks of 9/11 (see pp.  35 – 36 ) .

Morality can contribute to power by increasing the will to use power and by attract- ing allies. States have long clothed their actions, however aggressive, in rhetoric about their peaceful and defensive intentions. For instance, the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama was named “Operation Just Cause.” Of course, if a state uses moralistic rhetoric to cloak self-interest too often, it loses credibility even with its own population.

The use of geography as an element of power is called geopolitics . It is often tied to the logistical requirements of military forces. In geopolitics, as in real estate, the three most important considerations are location, location, location. States increase their power to the extent they can use geography to enhance their military capabili- ties, such as by securing allies and bases close to a rival power or along strategic trade routes, or by controlling key natural resources. Today, control of oil pipeline routes, especially in Central Asia, is a major geopolitical issue. Military strategists have also pointed out that the melting of the continental ice shelf (see Chapter 11 ) has opened new shipping routes for military purposes, creating new a geopolitical issue for Russia and the United States.

The International System States interact within a set of long-established “rules of the game” governing what is con- sidered a state and how states treat each other. Together these rules shape the interna- tional system. 11

Anarchy and Sovereignty Realists believe that the international system exists in a state of anarchy —a term that implies not complete chaos or absence of structure and rules, but rather the lack of a cen- tral government that can enforce rules. 12 In domestic society within states, governments can enforce contracts, deter citizens from breaking rules, and use their monopoly on legally sanctioned violence to enforce a system of law. Both democracies and dictatorships provide central government enforcement of a system of rules. Realists contend that no such central authority exists to enforce rules and ensure compliance with norms of con- duct. This makes collective goods problems especially acute in IR. The power of one state is countered only by the power of other states. States must therefore rely on self-help, which they supplement with allies and the (sometimes) constraining power of interna- tional norms.

Some people think that only a world government can solve this problem. Others think that adequate order, short of world government, can be provided by international organizations and agreements (see Chapter 7 ) . But most realists think that IR cannot

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11 Dehio, Ludwig. The Precarious Balance: Four Centuries of the European Power Struggle. Translated by Charles Fullman. Vintage Books, 1962 [from the German version of 1948]. Luard, Evan. Confl ict and Peace in the Modern International System: A Study of the Principles of International Order. Macmillan, 1988. Wight, Martin. Systems of States. Leicester, 1977. 12 Bull, Hedley. The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. Columbia, 2002 [1977]. Taylor, Michael. Anarchy and Cooperation. Wiley, 1976. Starr, Harvey. Anarchy, Order, and Integration: How to Manage Interdependence? Michigan, 1997.

50 Chapter 2 Realist Theories

escape from a state of anarchy and will continue to be dangerous as a result. 13 In this anarchic world, realists emphasize prudence as a great virtue in foreign policy. Thus states should pay attention not to the intentions of other states but rather to their capabilities.

Despite its anarchy, the international system is far from chaotic. The great majority of state interactions closely adhere to norms of behavior—shared expecta- tions about what behavior is considered proper. 14 Norms change over time, slowly, but the most basic norms of the international system have changed little in recent centuries.

Sovereignty —traditionally the most important norm—means that a government has the right, in principle, to do whatever it wants in its own territory. States are sepa- rate and autonomous and answer to no higher authority. In principle, all states are equal in status, if not in power. Sovereignty also means that states are not supposed to inter- fere in the internal affairs of other states. Although states do try to infl uence each other (exert power) on matters of trade, alliances, war, and so on, they are not supposed to meddle in the internal politics and decision processes of other states. More controver- sially, some states claim that sovereignty gives them the right to treat their own people in any fashion, including behavior that other states call genocide.

The lack of a “world police” to punish states if they break an agreement makes enforcement of international agreements diffi cult. For example, in the 1990s, North Korea announced it would no longer allow inspections of its nuclear facilities by other states, which put it in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The interna- tional community used a mix of positive incentives and threats to persuade North Korea to stop producing nuclear material. But in 2002 North Korea withdrew from the NPT and built perhaps a half-dozen nuclear bombs, one of which it exploded in 2006 (the world’s fi rst nuclear test in a decade). After reaching an agreement with the United States to stop producing nuclear weapons in 2008, North Korea refused to allow physi- cal inspection of some of its nuclear facilities, noting that “it is an act of infringing upon sovereignty.” 15 These examples show the diffi culty of enforcing international norms in the sovereignty-based international system.

In practice, most states have a harder and harder time warding off interference in their affairs. Such “internal” matters as human rights or self-determination are, increas- ingly, concerns for the international community. For example, election monitors increasingly watch internal elections for fraud, while international organizations moni- tor ethnic confl icts for genocide. 16 Also, the integration of global economic markets and telecommunications (such as the Internet) makes it easier than ever for ideas to penetrate state borders. 17

States are based on territory. Respect for the territorial integrity of all states, within recognized borders, is an important principle of IR. Many of today’s borders are the result of past wars (in which winners took territory from losers) or were imposed arbitrarily by colonizers.

14 Franck, Thomas M. The Power of Legitimacy among Nations. Oxford, 1990. 15 BBC News Online. North Korea Rejects Nuclear Sampling. November 2, 2008. 16 Alvarez, R. Michael, Thad E. Hall, and Susan D. Hyde. Election Fraud: Detecting and Deterring Electoral Manipulation. Brookings, 2008. 17 Krasner, Stephen D. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton, 1999.

13 Mearsheimer, John J. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. Norton, 2001.

The International System 51

The territorial nature of the interstate system developed long ago when agrarian societies relied on agriculture to generate wealth. In today’s world, in which trade and technology rather than land create wealth, the territorial state may be less important. Information-based economies are linked across borders instantly, and the idea that the state has a hard shell seems archaic. The accelerating revolution in informa- tion technologies may dramatically affect the territorial state system in the coming years.

States have developed norms of diplomacy to facilitate their interac- tions. An embassy is treated as though it were the territory of the home state, not the country where it is located (see pp. 261 – 263 ) . For instance, in 2012–2013, when Ecua- dor’s embassy in Britain harbored the founder of Wikileaks, who had been ordered extradited to Sweden, British authorities did not simply come in and take him away. To do so would have violated Ecuador’s territorial integrity. Yet in 1979, Iranian stu- dents took over the U.S. embassy in Iran, holding many of its diplomats hostage for 444 days—an episode that has soured U.S.-Iranian relations ever since.

Diplomatic norms recognize that states try to spy on each other. Each state is respon- sible for keeping other states from spying on it. In 2002, China discovered that its new presidential aircraft—a Boeing 767 refurbished in Texas—was riddled with sophisticated listening devices. But China did not make an issue of it (the plane had not gone into ser- vice), and a U.S.-China summit the next month went forward. In the post–Cold War era, spying continues, even between friendly states.

Realists acknowledge that the rules of IR often create a security dilemma —a situa- tion in which states’ actions taken to ensure their own security (such as deploying more military forces) threaten the security of other states. 18 The responses of those other states, such as deploying more of their own military forces, in turn threaten the fi rst state. The dilemma is a prime cause of arms races in which states spend large sums of money on mutually threatening weapons that do not ultimately provide security.

The security dilemma is a negative consequence of anarchy in the international system. If a world government could reliably detect and punish aggressors who arm

PASSPORT PLEASE

Sovereignty and territorial integrity are central norms governing the behavior of states. Terrorism and secessionist movements present two challenges to these norms, but the world’s mostly stable borders uphold them. Every day, millions of people cross international borders, mostly legally and peacefully, respecting states’ territorial integrity. Here, tightrope walker Nik Wallenda crosses the U.S.- Canadian border at Niagara Falls, 2012.

18 Herz, John. Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma. World Politics 2 (2), 1950: 157–80. Jervis, Robert. Cooperation under the Security Dilemma. World Politics 30 (2), 1978: 167–214.

52 Chapter 2 Realist Theories

themselves, states would not need to guard against this possibility. Yet the self-help system requires that states prepare for the worst. Realists tend to see the dilemma as unsolvable, whereas liberals think it can be solved through the development of institutions (see Chap- ters 3 and 7 ).

As we shall see in later chapters, changes in technology and in norms are undermin- ing the traditional principles of territorial integrity and state autonomy in IR. Some IR scholars fi nd states practically obsolete as the main actors in world politics, as some inte- grate into larger entities and others fragment into smaller units. 19 Other scholars fi nd the international system quite enduring in its structure and state units. 20 One of its most enduring features is the balance of power.

Balance of Power In the anarchy of the international system, the most reliable brake on the power of one state is the power of other states. The term balance of power refers to the general concept of one or more states’ power being used to balance that of another state or group of states. Balance of power can refer to any ratio of power capabilities between states or alliances, or it can mean only a relatively equal ratio. Alternatively, balance of power can refer to the process by which counterbalancing coalitions have repeatedly formed in history to prevent one state from conquering an entire region. 21

The theory of balance of power argues that such counterbalancing occurs regularly and maintains the stability of the international system. The system is stable in that its rules and principles stay the same: state sovereignty does not collapse into a universal empire. This stability does not, however, imply peace; it is rather a stability maintained by means of recurring wars that adjust power relations.

Alliances (to be discussed shortly) play a key role in the balance of power. Building up one’s own capabilities against a rival is a form of power balancing, but forming an alli- ance against a threatening state is often quicker, cheaper, and more effective. In the Cold War, the United States encircled the Soviet Union with military and political alliances to prevent Soviet territorial expansion. Sometimes a particular state deliberately becomes a balancer (in its region or the world), shifting its support to oppose whatever state or alli- ance is strongest at the moment. Britain played this role on the European continent for centuries, and China played it in the Cold War.

But states do not always balance against the strongest actor. Sometimes smaller states “jump on the bandwagon” of the most powerful state; this has been called bandwagoning as opposed to balancing. For instance, after World War II, a broad coalition did not form to contain U.S. power; rather, most major states joined the U.S. bloc. States may seek to balance threats rather than raw power; U.S. power was greater than Soviet power but was less threatening to Europe and Japan (and later to China as well). 22 Furthermore, small states create variations on power-balancing themes when they play off rival great powers

19 Aydinli, Ersel, and James N. Rosenau, eds. Globalization, Security, and the Nation State: Paradigms in Transition. SUNY, 2005. Rosenau, James N. Distant Proximities: Dynamics beyond Globalization. Princeton, 2003. 20 Weiss, Linda. The Myth of the Powerless State. Cornell, 1998. 21 Gulick, Edward V. Europe’s Classical Balance of Power. Cornell, 1955. Niou, Emerson M. S., Peter C. Ordeshook, and Gregory F. Rose. The Balance of Power: Stability and Instability in International Systems. Cambridge, 1989. Vasquez, John, and Colin Elman, eds. Realism and the Balance of Power: A New Debate. Prentice Hall, 2002. 22 Walt, Stephen M. The Origins of Alliances. Cornell, 1987.

The International System 53

against each other. For instance, Cuba during the Cold War received massive Soviet subsidies by putting itself in the middle of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. Other small states may, for domestic reasons, fail to mobilize to balance against threats. 23

In the post–Cold War era of U.S. dominance, balance-of-power theory would predict closer relations among Russia, China, and even Europe to balance U.S. power. And indeed, Russian-Chinese relations improved dramatically in such areas as arms trade and demilitarization of the border. French leaders have even criticized U.S. “hyperpower.” But in recent years, with U.S. power seemingly stretched thin in Afghanistan and Iraq, its economy also weak, and Chinese power on the rise, more countries are balancing against China and fewer against the United States. In 2012–2013, Japan struck military agree- ments with former enemies South Korea and the Philippines and reaffi rmed its U.S. ties, in response to China’s growing power.

World public opinion also refl ects shifts in the balance of power. In 2003, as the Iraq war began, widespread anti-American sentiment revealed itself in Muslim countries. In Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, and Nigeria—containing half of the world’s Muslims—more than 70 percent worried that the United States could become a threat to their own coun- tries, a worry shared by 71 percent of Russians. A survey of 38,000 people in 44 nations showed a dramatic drop in support for the United States from 2002 to 2003. As Figure 2.2

23 Schweller, Randall L. Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power. Princeton, 2006.

100%

80

60

40

20

0 2000 2001 20032002 20052004 2007 200920082006

Indonesia Britain

Japan

Russia

Jordan Pakistan

Turkey

France

India

2010 20122011

FIGURE 2.2 Views of the United States in Nine Countries, 2000–2012 (Percent favorable view in public opinion polls)

Source: New York Times from data of Pew Global Attitudes Project. 2000 data from State Department surveys.

54 Chapter 2 Realist Theories

illustrates, this decline in favorable views of the United States worldwide continued through 2007. Then after 2008, with the United States seeking to exit its wars and exert its power less forcefully around the world, opinions turned upward. These shifts in public opinion make the governments in those countries more or less likely to cooperate with, or oppose, the United States on the world stage. 24

Great Powers and Middle Powers The most powerful states in the world exert most of the infl uence on international events and therefore get the most attention from IR scholars. By almost any measure of power, a handful of states possess the majority of the world’s power resources. At most a few dozen states have any real infl uence beyond their immediate locality. These are called the great powers and middle powers in the international system.

Although there is no fi rm dividing line, great powers are generally considered the half-dozen or so most powerful states. Until the past century, the great power club was exclusively European. Sometimes great powers’ status is formally recognized in an interna- tional structure such as the 19th-century Concert of Europe or today’s UN Security Coun- cil. In general, great powers are often defi ned as states that can be defeated militarily only by another great power. Great powers also tend to share a global outlook based on national interests far from their home territories.

The great powers generally have the world’s strongest military forces—and the strongest economies to pay for them—and other power capabilities. These large econ- omies in turn rest on some combination of large populations, plentiful natural resources, advanced technology, and educated labor forces. Because power is based on these underlying resources, membership in the great power system changes slowly. Only rarely does a great power—even one defeated in a massive war—lose its status as a great power, because its size and long-term economic potential change slowly. Thus Germany and Japan, decimated in World War II, are powerful today, and Russia, after gaining and then losing the rest of the Soviet Union, is still considered a great power. 25

What states are great powers today? Although defi nitions vary, seven states appear to meet the criteria: the United States, China, Russia, Japan, Germany, France, and Britain. Together they account for more than half of the world’s total GDP and two-thirds of its military spending (see Figure 2.3 ). They include the fi ve permanent members of the UN Security Council, which are also the members of the “club” openly possessing large nuclear weapons arsenals.

Notable on this list are the United States and China. The United States is consid- ered the world’s only superpower because of its historical role of world leadership (espe- cially in and after World War II) and its predominant military might. China has the world’s largest population, rapid economic growth (8–10 percent annually over 30 years), and a large and modernizing military, including a credible nuclear arsenal. Indeed, in 2008, the U.S. National Intelligence Council’s long-range planning report noted that China is poised to have a profound effect on the world over the next

25 Levy, Jack S. War in the Modern Great Power System, 1495–1975. Kentucky, 1983.

24 Walt, Stephen M. Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy. Norton, 2005. Sweig, Julia E. Friendly Fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century. Public Affairs, 2006. Katzenstein, Peter J., and Robert O. Keohane, eds. Anti-Americanisms in World Politics. Cornell, 2008.

The International System 55

20 years—perhaps more than any other state. 26 Japan and Germany are economically great powers, but both countries have played constrained roles in international security affairs since World War II. Nonetheless, both have large and capable military forces, which they have begun to deploy abroad, especially in peacekeeping operations. Russia, France, and Britain were winners in World War II and have been active military powers since then. Although much reduced in stature from their colonial heydays, they still qualify as great powers.

Middle powers rank somewhat below the great powers in terms of their infl uence on world affairs. Some are large but not highly industrialized; others have specialized capa- bilities but are small. Some aspire to regional dominance, and many have considerable infl uence in their regions.

A list of middle powers (not everyone would agree on it) might include midsized countries of the global North such as Canada, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, Ukraine, South Korea, and Australia. It could also include large or infl uential countries in the global South such as India, Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Israel, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan. Middle powers have not received as much attention in IR as have great powers. 27

26 Shane, Scott. Global Forecast by American Intelligence Expects al Qaeda’s Appeal to Falter. New York Times, November 21, 2008: A1. Rosecrance, Richard. Power and International Relations: The Rise of China and Its Effects. International Studies Perspectives 7 (1), 2006: 31–35. 27 Cohen, Stephen P. India: Emerging Power. Brookings, 2001.

Rest of the World

Rest of the World

United StatesUnited

States

China

Russia

Britain France

GermanyJapan

Note: GDP calculated by purchasing-power method. China’s GDP using alternate method would be about half as large.

Military ExpendituresGDP

Japan

China

Russia

Britain

France

Germany

FIGURE 2.3 Great Power Shares of World GDP and Military Expenditures, 2011

Source: World Bank Development Indicators, 2009; SIPRI Yearbook, 2009.

56 Chapter 2 Realist Theories

Power Distribution With each state’s power balanced by other states, the most important characteristic of the international system in the view of some realists is the distribution of power among states. Power distribution as a concept can apply to all the states in the world or just the states in one region, but most often it refers to the great power system.

Neorealism , sometimes called structural realism, is a 1990s adaptation of realism. It explains patterns of international events in terms of the system structure—the interna- tional distribution of power—rather than in terms of the internal makeup of individual states. 28 Compared to traditional realism, neorealism is more “scientifi c” in the sense of proposing general laws to explain events, but neorealism has lost some of the richness of traditional realism, which took account of many complex elements (geography, political will, diplomacy, etc.). 29 Recently, neoclassical realists have sought to restore some of these lost aspects. 30

The polarity of an international power distribution (world or regional) refers to the number of independent power centers in the system. This concept encompasses both the underlying power of various participants and their alliance groupings. Figure 2.4 illustrates several potential confi gurations of great powers.

Unipolar (Hegemony)

BipolarMultipolar System

Steep hierarchy More dominance

More stable?

(side view)

(top view)

Split hierarchies Dominance within blocs,

Reciprocity between blocs

Stable

Flat hierarchy More reciprocity

Less stable?

FIGURE 2.4 Power Distribution in the International System

29 Keohane, Robert O., ed. Neorealism and Its Critics. Columbia, 1986. Buzan, Barry, Charles Jones, and Richard Little. The Logic of Anarchy: Neorealism to Structural Realism. Columbia, 1993. 30 Vasquez, John A. The Power of Power Politics: From Classical Realism to Neotraditionalism. Cambridge, 1999.

28 Waltz, Theory of International Politics (see footnote 7 in this chapter).

The International System 57

A multipolar system typically has fi ve or six centers of power, which are not grouped into alliances. Each state participates independently and on relatively equal terms with the others. In the classical multipolar balance of power, the great power system itself was stable but wars occurred frequently to adjust power relations.

Tripolar systems, with three great centers of power, are fairly rare, owing to the ten- dency for a two-against-one alliance to form. Aspects of tripolarity colored the “strategic triangle” of the United States, the Soviet Union, and China during the 1960s and 1970s. Some scholars imagine a future tripolar world with rival power centers in North America, Europe, and East Asia. A bipolar system has two predominant states or two great rival alli- ance blocs. IR scholars do not agree about whether bipolar systems are relatively peaceful or warlike. The U.S.-Soviet standoff seemed to provide stability and peace to great power relations, but rival blocs in Europe before World War I did not. At the far extreme, a uni- polar system has a single center of power around which all others revolve. This is called hegemony, and will be discussed shortly.

Some might argue that peace is best preserved by a relatively equal power distribution (multipolarity) because then no country has an opportunity to win easily. The empirical evidence for this theory, however, is not strong. In fact, the opposite proposition has more support: peace is best preserved by hegemony (unipolarity), and next best by bipolarity.

Power transition theory holds that the largest wars result from challenges to the top position in the status hierarchy, when a rising power is surpassing (or threatening to sur- pass) the most powerful state. 31 At such times, power is relatively equally distributed, and these are the most dangerous times for major wars. Status quo powers that are doing well under the old rules will try to maintain them, whereas challengers that feel locked out by the old rules may try to change them. If a challenger does not start a war to displace the top power, the latter may provoke a “preventive” war to stop the rise of the challenger before it becomes too great a threat. 32

When a rising power’s status (formal position in the hierarchy) diverges from its actual power, the rising power may suffer from relative deprivation: its people may feel they are not doing as well as others or as they deserve, even though their position may be improving in absolute terms. Germany’s rise in the 19th century gave it great power capa- bilities even though it was left out of colonial territories and other signs of status; this tension may have contributed to the two world wars.

It is possible China and the United States may face a similar dynamic in the future. China may increasingly bristle at international rules and norms that it feels serves the interests of the United States. For its part, the United States may fear that growing Chinese economic and military power will be used to challenge U.S. power. In 2010, the U.S. mili- tary’s strategic review questioned China’s “long-term intentions,” raising new questions about future power transitions (see “Let’s Debate the Issue” at the end of this chapter).

According to power transition theory, then, peace among great powers results when one state is fi rmly in the top position and the positions of the others in the hierarchy are clearly defi ned and correspond with their actual underlying power.

Hegemony Hegemony is one state’s holding a preponderance of power in the international sys- tem, allowing it to single-handedly dominate the rules and arrangements by which

31 Organski, A. F. K. World Politics. Knopf, 1958. Kugler, Jacek, and Douglas Lemke, eds. Parity and War: Evaluations and Extensions of the War Ledger. Michigan, 1996. 32 Levy, Jack S. Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War. World Politics 40 (1), 1987: 82–107.

58 Chapter 2 Realist Theories

international political and eco- nomic relations are conducted. 33

Such a state is called a hegemon. (Usually, hegemony means domina- tion of the world, but sometimes it refers to regional domination.) The Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci used the term hegemony to refer to the complex of ideas that rulers use to gain consent for their legitimacy and keep subjects in line, reducing the need to use force to accomplish the same goal. 34 By extension, such a meaning in IR refers to the hegemony of ideas such as democracy and capitalism, and to the global predominance of U.S. culture (see pp.  379 – 380 ) .

Most studies of hegemony point to two examples: Britain in the 19th century and the United States after World War II. Britain’s predomi- nance followed the defeat of its archrival France in the Napoleonic Wars. Both world trade and naval capabilities were firmly in British hands, as “Britannia ruled the waves.” U.S. predominance followed the defeat of Germany and Japan (and the exhaustion of the Soviet Union, France, Britain, and China in the

effort). In the late 1940s, the U.S. GDP was more than half the world’s total; U.S. vessels carried the majority of the world’s shipping; the U.S. military could single-handedly defeat any other state or combination of states; and only the United States had nuclear weapons. U.S. industry led the world in technology and productivity, and U.S. citizens enjoyed the world’s highest standard of living.

As the extreme power disparities resulting from major wars slowly diminish (states rebuild over years and decades), hegemonic decline may occur, particularly when hege- mons have overextended themselves with costly military commitments. IR scholars do not agree about how far or fast U.S. hegemonic decline has proceeded, if at all, and whether international instability will result from such a decline. 35

CHINA RISING

Realists emphasize relative power as an explanation of war and peace. The mod- ernization of China’s military—in conjunction with China’s rapidly growing economy—will increase China’s power over the coming decades. Some observers fear instability in Asia if the overall balance of power among states in the region shifts rapidly. Here, a nuclear-powered submarine sails near China’s coast, 2009.

35 Kennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Confl ict from 1500–2000. Random House, 1987. Posen, Barry R. Command of the Commons: The Military Foundations of U.S. Hegemony. International Security 28 (1), 2003: 5–46. Ikenberry, G. John, ed. America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power. Cornell, 2002.

34 Gramsci, Antonio. The Modern Prince and Other Writings. International Publishers, 1959. Gill, Stephen, ed. Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations. Cambridge, 1993. Cox, Robert W. Production, Power, and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History. Columbia, 1987.

33 Kapstein, Ethan B., and Michael Mastanduno. Unipolar Politics. Columbia, 1999. Rupert, Mark. Producing Hegemony: The Politics of Mass Production and American Global Power. Cambridge, 1995. Nye, Joseph S. Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone. Oxford, 2002.

The International System 59

Hegemonic stability theory holds that hegemony provides some order similar to a central government in the international system: reducing anarchy, deterring aggression, promoting free trade, and providing a hard currency that can be used as a world standard. Hegemons can help resolve or at least keep in check confl icts among middle powers or small states. 36 When one state’s power dominates the world, that state can enforce rules and norms unilaterally, avoiding the collective goods problem. In particular, hegemons can maintain global free trade and promote world economic growth, in this view.

This theory attributes the peace and prosperity of the decades after World War II to U.S. hegemony, which created and maintained a global framework of economic relations supporting relatively stable and free international trade, as well as a security framework that prevented great power wars. By contrast, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the outbreak of World War II have been attributed to the power vacuum in the international system at that time—Britain was no longer able to act as hegemon, and the United States was unwilling to begin doing so. 37

Why should a hegemon care about enforcing rules for the international economy that are in the common good? According to hegemonic stability theory, hegemons as the largest international traders have an inherent interest in the promotion of inte- grated world markets (where the hegemons will tend to dominate). As the most advanced state in productivity and technology, a hegemon does not fear competition from industries in other states; it fears only that its own superior goods will be excluded from competing in other states. Thus, hegemons use their power to achieve free trade and the political stability that supports free trade. Hegemony, then, provides both the ability and the motivation to provide a stable political framework for free international trade, according to hegemonic stability theory. This theory is not, however, accepted by all IR scholars. 38

From the perspective of less powerful states, of course, hegemony may seem an infringement of state sovereignty, and the order it creates may seem unjust or illegitimate. For instance, China chafed under U.S.-imposed economic sanctions for 20 years after 1949, at the height of U.S. power, when China was encircled by U.S. military bases and hostile alliances led by the United States. To this day, Chinese leaders use the term hegemony as an insult, and the theory of hegemonic stability does not impress them.

Even in the United States there is considerable ambivalence about U.S. hegemony. U.S. foreign policy has historically alternated between internationalist and isolationist moods. 39 It was founded as a breakaway from the European-based international system, and its growth in the 19th century was based on industrialization and expansion within North America. The United States acquired overseas colonies in the Philippines and Puerto Rico but did not relish a role as an imperial power. In World War I, the country waited three years to weigh in and refused to join the League of Nations afterward. U.S. isolationism peaked in the late 1930s when polls showed 95  percent of the public opposed to participation in a future European war, and about 70 percent against joining the League of Nations or joining with other nations to stop aggression. 40

36 Keohane, Robert O. The Theory of Hegemonic Stability and Change in International Economic Regimes, 1967–1977. In Holsti, Ole R., R. M. Siverson, and A. L. George, eds. Change in the International System. Westview, 1980. 37 Kindleberger, Charles P. The World in Depression, 1929–1939. California, 1973. Lake, David A. Power, Protection, and Free Trade: International Sources of U.S. Commercial Strategy, 1887–1939. Cornell, 1988. 38 Snidal, Duncan. The Limits of Hegemonic Stability Theory. International Organization 39 (4), 1985: 579–614. Gruber, Lloyd. Ruling the World: Power Politics and the Rise of Supernational Institutions. Princeton, 2000.

40 Free, Lloyd A., and Hadley Cantril. The Political Beliefs of Americans. Rutgers, 1967. 39 Zakaria, Fareed. From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role. Princeton, 1998.

60 Chapter 2 Realist Theories

Internationalists, such as Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, favored U.S. leadership and activism in world affairs. These views seemed vindicated by the failure of iso- lationism to prevent or avoid World War II. U.S. leaders after that war feared Soviet (and then Chinese) communism and pushed U.S. public opinion toward a strong internationalism during the Cold War. The United States became an activist, global superpower. In the post–Cold War era, U.S. international- ism was tempered by a new cost con- sciousness, and by the emergence of a new isolationist camp born in reaction to the displacements caused by globali- zation and free trade. 41 However, the terrorist attacks of September 2001 renewed public support for U.S. inter- ventionism in distant confl icts that no longer seemed so distant. Recently, though, opposition to the Iraq War, a protracted confl ict in Afghanistan, and diffi cult economic times at home have spurred a new isolationist trend in the United States.

A second area of U.S. ambivalence is unilateralism versus multilateralism

when the United States does engage internationally. Multilateral approaches—working through international institutions—augment U.S. power and reduce costs, but limit U.S. freedom of action. For example, the United States cannot always get the UN to do what it wants. Polls show that a majority of U.S. citizens support working through the UN and other multilateral institutions, as did the fi rst Bush administration. 42 However, members of the U.S. Congress since the 1990s, and the second Bush administration, expressed skepticism of the UN and of international agencies, generally favoring a more unilateral- ist approach. 43

In the 1990s, the United States slipped more than $1 billion behind in its dues to the UN, and since 2001 it has declined to participate in such international efforts as a treaty on global warming (see pp. 390 – 394 ) , a conference on racism, and an International Crim- inal Court (see p. 275 ) . The 2003 U.S.-led war in Iraq, with few allies and no UN stamp of approval, marked a peak of U.S. unilateralism. Since then the NATO alliance has assumed new importance, in Afghanistan and in the 2011 Libya campaign, and UN dues have been repaid.

41 Haass, Richard N. The Reluctant Sheriff: The United States after the Cold War. Brookings, 1997. Lieber, Robert J. Eagle Rules? Foreign Policy and American Primacy in the 21st Century. Prentice Hall, 2002.

43 Ferguson, Niall. Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire. Penguin, 2004. Daalder, Ivo H., and James M. Lindsay. America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy. Wiley, 2005.

42 Kull, Steven, and I. M. Destler. Misreading the Public: The Myth of a New Isolationism. Brookings, 1999.

PRICE OF HEGEMONY

The United States is the world’s most powerful single actor. Its ability and will- ingness to resume a role as hegemon—as after World War II—are important factors that will shape world order, but the U.S. role is still uncertain. America’s willingness to absorb casualties will affect its role. Here, soldiers return from Afghanistan, 2009.

The International System 61

The Great Power System, 1500–2000 To illustrate how these concepts such as the balance of power, power transition, and hegemony have operated historically, we briefl y review the origins of the modern interna- tional system. Noted by the presence of great powers, sovereignty, balance of power, and periods of hegemony, the modern great power system is often dated from the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which established the principles of independent, sovereign states that continue to shape the international system today (see Figure 2.5 ). These rules of state rela- tions did not, however, originate at Westphalia; they took form in Europe in the 16th century. Key to this system was the ability of one state, or a coalition, to balance the power of another state so that it could not gobble up smaller units and create a universal empire.

This power-balancing system placed special importance on the handful of great powers with strong military capabilities, global interests and outlooks, and intense interactions with each other. (Great powers are defi ned and discussed on pp. 54 – 55 .) A system of great power relations has existed since around a.d. 1500, and the structure and rules of that sys- tem have remained fairly stable through time, although the particular members change. The structure is a balance of power among the six or so most powerful states, which form and break alliances, fi ght wars, and make peace, letting no single state conquer the others.

The most powerful states in 16th-century Europe were Britain (England), France, Austria-Hungary, and Spain. The Ottoman Empire (Turkey) recurrently fought with the European powers, especially with Austria-Hungary. Today, that historic confl ict between the (Islamic) Ottoman Empire and (Christian) Austria-Hungary is a source of ethnic con- fl ict in the former Yugoslavia (the edge of the old Ottoman Empire).

Within Europe, Austria-Hungary and Spain were allied under the control of the Hapsburg family, which also owned the territory of the Netherlands. The Hapsburg coun- tries (which were Catholic) were defeated by mostly Protestant countries in northern Europe—France, Britain, Sweden, and the newly independent Netherlands—in the Thirty Years’ War of 1618–1648. 44 The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia established the basic rules that have defi ned the international system ever since—the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states as equal and independent members of an international system. Since then, states defeated in war might have been stripped of some territories but were generally allowed to continue as independent states rather than being subsumed into the victorious state.

In the 18th century, the power of Britain increased as it industrialized, and Britain’s great rival was France. Sweden, the Netherlands, and the Ottoman Empire all declined in power, but Russia and later Prussia (the forerunner of modern Germany) emerged as major players. In the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), which followed the French Revolution, France was defeated by a coalition of Britain, the Netherlands, Austria-Hungary, Spain, Russia, and Prussia. The Congress of Vienna (1815) ending that war reasserted the princi- ples of state sovereignty in reaction to the challenges of the French Revolution and Napo- leon’s empire. 45 In the Concert of Europe that dominated the following decades, the fi ve most powerful states tried, with some success, to cooperate on major issues to prevent war—a possible precedent for today’s UN Security Council. In this period, Britain became a balancer, joining alliances against whatever state emerged as the most powerful in Europe.

By the outset of the 20th century, three new rising powers had appeared on the scene: the United States (which had become the world’s largest economy), Japan, and Italy. The great power system became globalized instead of European. Powerful states were industri- alizing, extending the scope of their world activities and the might of their militaries. After Prussia defeated Austria and France in wars, a larger Germany emerged to challenge

44 Rabb, Theodore K., ed. The Thirty Years’ War. University Press of America, 1981. 45 Kissinger, Henry A. A World Restored. Houghton Miffl in, 1973 [1957].

Wars

Major Alliances

Rules & Norms

Rising Powers

Declining Powers

Spanish Armada

Spain conquers Portugal

Turkey (Muslim)

vs. Europe

(Christian)

Hapsburgs (Austria-Spain) vs.

France, Britain, Netherlands, Sweden

Nation-states (France, Austria)

Dutch independence

Grotius on int’l law

Britain France

Netherlands

Venice

1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000

30 Years’ War

Treaty of Westphalia

1648

Netherlands hegemony

Napoleonic Wars

British hegemony U.S. hegemony

World War I World

War II

Russia

Spain

War of the

Spanish Succession

France vs.

Britain, Spain

Treaty of Utrecht

1713

Netherlands

Sweden

Ottoman Empire

7 Years’ War

France vs.

Britain, Netherlands

Congress of Vienna

1815

Kant on

peace Concert of Europe

Prussia

Franco- Prussian

War

United States Germany

Japan Italy

Cold War

Germany (& Japan) vs.

Britain, France, Russia,

United States, China

Russia vs.

U.S., W. Eur., Japan

League of

Nations

UN Security Council

1945-Geneva conventions

Communism Human rights

China

Britain France Austria

Italy

Russia

FIGURE 2.5 The Great Power System, 1500–2000

62

Alliances 63

Britain’s position. 46 In World War I (1914–1918), Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire were defeated by a coalition that included Britain, France, Russia, Italy, and the United States. After a 20-year lull, Germany, Italy, and Japan were defeated in World War II (1939–1945) by a coalition of the United States, Britain, France, Russia (the Soviet Union), and China. Those fi ve winners of World War II make up the perma- nent membership of today’s UN Security Council.

After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union, which had been allies in the war against Germany, became adversaries for 40 years in the Cold War. Europe was split into rival blocs—East and West—with Germany split into two states. The rest of the world became contested terrain where each bloc tried to gain allies or infl uence, often by sponsoring opposing sides in regional and civil wars. The end of the Cold War around 1990, when the Soviet Union collapsed, returned the international system to a more cooperative arrangement of the great powers somewhat similar to the Concert of Europe in the 19th century.

Alliances An alliance is a coalition of states that coordinate their actions to accomplish some end. Most alliances are formalized in written treaties, concern a common threat and related issues of international security, and endure across a range of issues and a period of time. Shorter-term arrangements, such as the U.S.-led forces in Iraq, may be called a coalition. But these terms are somewhat ambiguous. Two countries may have a formal alliance and yet be bitter enemies, such as the Soviet Union and China in the 1960s or NATO mem- bers Greece and Turkey today. Or, two countries may create the practical equivalent of an alliance without a formal treaty.

Purposes of Alliances Alliances generally have the purpose of augmenting their members’ power by pooling capabilities. For smaller states, alliances can be their most important power element, and for great powers the structure of alliances shapes the confi guration of power in the system. Of all the elements of power, none can change as quickly and decisively as alliances. Most alliances form in response to a perceived threat. When a state’s power grows and threatens that of its rivals, the latter often form an alliance to limit that power. This happened to Iraq when it invaded Kuwait in 1990, as it had to Hitler’s Germany in the 1940s and to Napoleon’s France in the 1800s.

Realists emphasize the fl uidity of alliances. They are not marriages of love, but mar- riages of convenience. Alliances are based on national interests, and can shift as national interests change. This fl uidity helps the balance-of-power process operate effectively. Still, it is not simple or costless to break an alliance: one’s reputation may suffer and future alliances may be harder to establish. So states often adhere to alliance terms even when it is not in their short-term interest to do so. Nonetheless, because of the nature of interna- tional anarchy, the possibility of turning against a friend is always present. Realists would agree with the British statesman Lord Palmerston, who told Parliament in 1848, “We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are perpetual and eternal and those interests it is our duty to follow.” 47

Watch the Video “Normalizing Sino-Japanese Relations” at MyPoliSciLab

47 Remarks in the House of Commons, March 1, 1848. 46 Langer, William L. European Alliances and Alignments, 1871–1890. Knopf, 1931.

64 Chapter 2 Realist Theories

Examples of fl uid alliances are many. Anticommunist Richard Nixon could cooperate with com- munist Mao Zedong in 1972. Joseph Stalin could sign a nonag- gression pact with a fascist, Adolf Hitler, and then cooperate with the capitalist West against Hitler. The United States could back Islamic militants in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, then attack them in 2001. Every time history brings another such reversal in international alignments, many people are sur- prised. Realists are not so surprised.

The fl uidity of alliances deep- ens the security dilemma (see p. 51 ) . If there were only two states, each could match capabilities to have adequate defense but an ina- bility to attack successfully. But if a third state is free to ally with either side, then each state has to build adequate defenses against the potential alliance of its enemy with the third state. The threat is greater and the security dilemma is harder to escape.

Alliance cohesion is the ease with which the members hold together an alliance. Cohesion tends to be high when national interests converge and when cooperation within the alliance becomes institutionalized and habitual. When states with divergent interests form an alliance against a common enemy, the alliance may come apart if the threat sub- sides (as with the U.S.-Soviet alliance in World War II, for instance). Even when alliance cohesion is high, as in NATO during the Cold War, confl icts may arise over who bears the costs of the alliance ( burden sharing ). 48

Great powers often form alliances (or less formal commitments) with smaller states, sometimes called client states. Extended deterrence refers to a strong state’s use of threats to deter attacks on weaker clients—such as the U.S. threat to attack the Soviet Union if it invaded Western Europe. Great powers face a real danger of being dragged into wars with each other over relatively unimportant regional issues if their respective clients go to war. If the great powers do not come to their clients’ protection, they may lose credi- bility with other clients, but if they do, they may end up fi ghting a costly war. 49 The Soviet Union worried that its commitments to China in the 1950s, to Cuba in the 1960s,

MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE

Alliances generally result from a convergence of practical interests, not sentimental or ideological reasons. Here, a U.S. general gets rival Afghan warlords to patch up relations, 2002.

48 Martin, Pierre, and Mark R. Brawley, eds. Alliance Politics, Kosovo, and NATO’s War: Allied Force or Forced Allies? Palgrave, 2000. 49 Snyder, Glenn H. Alliance Politics. Cornell, 1997. Leeds, Brett Ashley. Do Alliances Deter Aggression? The Infl uence of Military Alliances on the Initiation of Militarized Interstate Disputes. American Journal of Political Science 47 (3), 2003: 427–40. Menon, Rajan. The End of Alliances. Oxford, 2008.

Alliances 65

and to Syria and Egypt in the 1970s (among others) could result in a disastrous war with the United States.

NATO At present, two important formal alliances dominate the international security scene. By far the more powerful is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) , which encompasses Western Europe and North America. (The second is the U.S.-Japanese alli- ance.) Using GDP as a measure of power, the 28 NATO members possess nearly half the world total. Members are the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, and Croatia. At NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, military staffs from the member countries coordinate plans and periodi- cally direct exercises in the fi eld. The NATO allied supreme commander has always been a U.S. general. In NATO, each state contributes its own military units—with its own national culture, language, and equipment specifi cations.

NATO was founded in 1949 to oppose and deter Soviet power in Europe. Its coun- terpart in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact , was founded in 1955 and disbanded in 1991. During the Cold War, the United States maintained more than 300,000 troops in Europe, with advanced planes, tanks, and other equipment. After the Cold War ended, these forces were cut to about 100,000. But NATO stayed together because its members believed that NATO provided useful stability even though its mission was unclear. 50 Article V, considered the heart of NATO, asks members to come to the defense of a fellow member under attack. It was envisioned as a U.S. com- mitment to help defend Western Europe against the Soviet Union, but instead was invoked for the fi rst time when Europe came to the defense of the United States after the terrorist attacks in 2001.

The fi rst actual use of force by NATO was in Bosnia in 1994, in support of the UN mis- sion there. A “dual key” arrangement gave the UN control of NATO’s actions in Bosnia, and the UN feared retaliation against its lightly armed peacekeepers if NATO attacked the Ser- bian forces to protect Bosnian civilians. As a result, NATO made threats, underlined by symbolic airstrikes, but then backed down after UN qualms; this waffl ing undermined NATO’s credibility. Later, NATO actions in the Balkans (the air war for Kosovo in 1999 and peacekeeping in Macedonia in 2001) went more smoothly in terms of alliance cohesion.

NATO’s intervention in Libya in 2011 also proved effective, as air power turned the tide of the rebel war that overthrew Libya’s dictator. With UN Security Council and Arab League backing for a no-fl y zone, and European countries providing most of the combat planes, NATO rated the operation a great success.

Currently, NATO troops from a number of member countries are fi ghting Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Since 2006, these forces, known as the International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF), have been under NATO leadership. Over 100,000 troops serve in the ISAF, with NATO states providing the bulk of the forces. Non-NATO states, such as Australia, New Zealand, and Jordan, have also contributed troops to ISAF. Interna- tional combat forces are scheduled to withdraw by 2014.

The European Union has formed its own rapid deployment force, outside NATO. The decision grew in part from European military weaknesses demonstrated in the 1999 Kosovo war, in which the United States contributed the most power by far. Although this

50 Goldgeier, James M. Not Whether But When: The Decision to Enlarge NATO. Brookings, 1999.

66 Chapter 2 Realist Theories

Eurocorps generally works with NATO, it also gives Europe more independence from the United States. In 2003, the European Union sent military forces as peacekeepers to Dem- ocratic Congo—the fi rst multinational European military operation to occur outside NATO. In 2004, NATO and U.S. forces withdrew from Bosnia after nine years, turning over peacekeeping there to the European Union (as they had in Macedonia). But NATO forces including U.S. soldiers remain next door in Kosovo.

The biggest issue for NATO is its recent eastward expansion, beyond the East-West Cold War dividing line (see Figure 2.6 ). In 1999, former Soviet-bloc countries Poland,

30 20 10 0 10 20 30 40

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50

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Arctic Circle ICELAND

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Note: All countries on map are members of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program.

NATO members, pre–1999

Joined NATO, 1999

Joined in 2004

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Boundary of former USSR

Boundary of former Warsaw Pact

400 Kilometers

400 Miles200

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0

FIGURE 2.6 NATO Expansion

Alliances 67

the Czech Republic, and Hungary joined the alliance. Joining in 2004 were Estonia, Latvia, Lithua- nia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, and Bulgaria. In 2009, Albania and Croatia accepted membership in NATO, bringing the total number of members to 28. Making the new members’ militaries com- patible with NATO was a major undertaking, requiring increased military spending by existing and new NATO members. NATO expansion was justifi ed as both a way to solidify new democracies and as protection against possible future Russian aggression. Yet, the 2003 Iraq War bypassed and divided NATO members. Long- time members France and Ger- many strongly opposed the war, and Turkey refused to let U.S. ground forces cross into Iraq. At the same time, U.S. leaders began shifting some operations (and money) to new members in East- ern Europe such as Romania—with lower prices and a location closer to the Middle East—while drawing down forces based in Germany.

Russian leaders oppose NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe as aggressive and anti-Russian. They view NATO expansion as reasserting dividing lines on the map of Europe, but pushed closer to Russia’s borders. These fears strengthen nationalist and anti-Western political forces in Russia. To mitigate the problems, NATO created a cat- egory of symbolic membership—the Partnership for Peace—which almost all Eastern European and former Soviet states including Russia joined. However, the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia heightened Russian fears regarding NATO’s eastward expansion, as has NATO cooperation with Ukraine and Georgia, the latter of which fought a short war against Russia in 2008. 51 In response to NATO expansion, Russia has attempted to expand its own military cooperation with states such as Venezuela, a government critical of U.S. foreign policy, and China, with whom it has conducted dozens of joint military exercises recently.

Other Alliances The second most important alliance is the U.S.-Japanese Security Treaty , a bilateral alliance. Under this alliance, the United States maintains nearly 35,000 troops in Japan

51 Moens, Alexander, Lenard J. Cohen, and Allen G. Sens, eds. NATO and European Security: Alliance Politics from the End of the Cold War to the Age of Terrorism. Praeger, 2003.

ALLIANCE OF THE STRONG

The NATO alliance has been the world’s strongest military force since 1949; its mis- sion in the post–Cold War era is somewhat uncertain. Here, President Kennedy reviews U.S. forces in Germany, 1963.

68 Chapter 2 Realist Theories

(with weapons, equipment, and logistical support). Japan pays the United States several billion dollars annually to offset about half the cost of maintaining these troops. The alliance was created in 1951 (during the Korean War) against the potential Soviet threat to Japan.

Because of its roots in the U.S. military occupation of Japan after World War II, the alliance is very asymmetrical. The United States is committed to defend Japan if it is attacked, but Japan is not similarly obligated to defend the United States. The United States maintains troops in Japan, but not vice versa. The United States belongs to several other alliances, but Japan’s only major alliance is with the United States. The U.S. share of the total military power in this alliance is also far greater than its share in NATO.

Japan’s constitution (written by U.S. General Douglas MacArthur after World War  II) renounces the right to make war and maintain military forces, although interpretation has loosened this prohibition over time. Japan maintains military forces, called the Self-Defense Forces, strong enough for territorial defense but not for aggression. It is a powerful army by world standards but much smaller than Japan’s economic strength could support. Japanese public opinion restrains militarism in general and precludes the development of nuclear weapons in particular after Japanese cities were destroyed by nuclear weapons in World War II. Nonetheless, some Japanese leaders believe that Japan’s formal security role should expand commensurate with its economic power. Japanese troops participated in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2004 (though not in combat roles), and Japan seeks a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The UN in turn is press- ing Japan to participate fully in peace keeping missions.

SEEKING THE COLLECTIVE GOOD

NATO in Afghanistan COLLECTIVE GOOD: Defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan

BACKGROUND: After the terrorist attacks in 2001, NATO member states pledged their assistance in fi ght- ing the forces of al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors in Afghanistan. Countries formed the multinational International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF), made up of mostly NATO troops deployed in Afghanistan. The forces are trying to provide security for the fl edg- ling Afghan government, train a new military, and build political institutions to prevent the Taliban from retaking power.

Getting an adequate force to prevail in Afghani- stan is a collective good. Providing troops and equip- ment for ISAF is voluntary on the part of NATO members. Regardless of how many troops the different countries send, they share equally the benefi t of defeat- ing al Qaeda. But if too many countries are too stingy

in contributing, the overall force will be too small and the goal will not be achieved.

CHALLENGE: After nearly ten years, the war in Afghanistan is as active as ever. The war has become a controversial political issue in nearly every country contributing troops to ISAF. Pro-Taliban forces con- tinue to carry out widespread attacks and threaten to undermine the progress made to date.

NATO members have been stingy in commit- ting troops. Both the Bush and Obama administra- tions pressured allies to send more troops and money, but with limited results. In the 2010 “surge,” America added 30,000 troops and other NATO members only 10,000. The allies face

Alliances 69

For its part, the United States has used the alliance with Japan as a base to project U.S. power in Asia, especially during the wars in Korea (1950–1953) and Vietnam (1965–1975), when Japan was a key staging area. The continued U.S. military presence in Japan (as in Europe) symbolizes the U.S. commitment to remain engaged in Asian security affairs.

However, these U.S. forces have been drawn down somewhat in the past decade in response to high costs, reduced threats, and more American focus on the Middle East. In 2010, the alliance became a major political issue in Japan as its prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, resigned after reneging on his promise to force the United States to renegoti- ate certain aspects of the treaty.

Parallel with the U.S.-Japan treaty, the United States maintains military alliances with several other states, including Australia and South Korea, where 25,000 troops are stationed under a bilateral alliance dating to the Korean War. Close U.S. collaboration with militaries in other states such as Israel make them de facto U.S. allies.

The 11 members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) comprise the former Soviet republics except the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). Russia, the offi cial successor state to the Soviet Union, is the leading member and Ukraine the second largest. Although some military coordination takes place through the CIS, initial plans for a joint military force did not succeed. Among the largest CIS members, Kazakhstan and Belarus are the most closely aligned with Russia, while Ukraine is the most independent (and in fact never offi cially ratifi ed the CIS agreement). In 2009, Georgia withdrew from the CIS, due to its 2008 military confl ict with Russia.

limits because of the war’s growing unpopularity, budget pressures due to the global recession, and uncertain prospects for victory. In 2010, the Dutch government lost power when it tried to keep Dutch troops in Afghanistan.

SOLUTION: In theory, NATO operates on reci- procity—its members are equals with all contributing to the common good. The members also share an identity as Western democracies fighting violent religious terrorists. But in the hard currency of boots on the ground and fl ag-draped coffi ns coming home, not enough NATO members found these reasons compelling.

The solution to the collective goods problem in this case was for the dominant power to provide the good. NATO is not really a club of equals, but a hierarchy with one member having more military might than the others combined. Being on top of a dominance hierarchy does not just mean ordering

Funeral of two Spanish soldiers killed in Afghanistan, 2010.

around underlings. Often the actors best able to stay on top of a hierarchy are those who form alliances well and use power and wealth to keep other mem- bers loyal.

70 Chapter 2 Realist Theories

Regional Alignments Beyond the alliances just discussed and the regional IGOs, most international alignments and coalitions are not formalized in alliances. Among the great powers, a close relation- ship has developed, but with China and Russia somewhat independent.

In the global South, many states joined a nonaligned movement during the Cold War, standing apart from the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. This movement, led by India and Yugo- slavia, was undermined by the membership of states such as Cuba that were clearly clients of one of the superpowers.

At the turn of the century, the 53-member Organization of African Unity, an IGO with few powers, re-formed as the African Union (AU), a stronger organization with a continent-wide parliament, central bank, and court. The African Union’s fi rst real test came with allegations of genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan in 2004. In response, the AU deployed 3,000 troops, joined by a much larger force of UN peacekeepers. The AU has also deployed forces, mostly Ugandan, in Somalia, where they routed Islamist militants from most of the country in 2012.

In Asia, China has long been loosely aligned with Pakistan in opposition to India (which was aligned with the Soviet Union). The United States tended to favor the Pakistani side as well, but both U.S.-Indian and U.S.-Chinese relations have improved since the Cold War ended. 52 China also has a loose alliance with North Korea, whom it values as a counterweight to South Korea. Yet, China maintains concerns about the North’s political and economic stability.

Long-standing U.S. friends in Asia include Japan, South Korea, the Philippines (where joint antiterrorist operations began in 2002), the Chinese Nationalists on Taiwan (only informally since the 1970s), Singapore, and Thailand.

In the Middle East, the Arab-Israeli confl ict created a general anti-Israel align- ment of the Arab countries for decades, but that alignment broke down as Egypt in 1978 and then Jordan in 1994 made peace with Israel. As the Israeli-Palestinian peace process moves forward and backward year by year, Arab countries continue to express varying degrees of solidarity with each other and opposition to Israel. Troughs in Israeli-Arab relations came in 2006, when Israel fought a month-long war with Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon and in 2008 and 2012, when it fought Hamas militants in Gaza. Meanwhile, Israel and Turkey formed a close military relationship that amplifi ed Israeli power, but relations deteriorated after Israel killed Turkish pro- testers on a ship trying to break the blockade of Gaza in 2009. As the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011–2013 threw the region into turmoil, Israeli-Palestinian relations went into a deep freeze. The main confl ict dynamic in the Middle East became the opposition of Shi’ite and Sunni countries, centered on Iran and Saudi Arabia, with the civil war in Syria embodying that split. 53

The United States has close relations with Egypt (since 1978) and cooperates closely with Turkey (a NATO member), Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco. U.S.-Iranian rela- tions remain chilled 30 years after the 1979 revolution. But, oddly, Iran, with its Shi’ite population, has close ties with Iraq’s new U.S.-backed government, which is dominated by Shi’ite religious parties. The United States had very hostile relations with Iraq before

52 Hemmer, Christopher, and Peter Katzenstein. Why Is There No NATO in Asia? Collective Identity, Regionalism, and the Origins of Multilateralism. International Organization 56 (3), 2002: 575–607. 53 Fawcett, Louise, ed. International Relations of the Middle East. Oxford, 2004. Telhami, Shibley. The Stakes: America and the Middle East. Westview, 2002.

Strategy 71

the 2003 war, and has faced stronger antipathy in the region thereafter. U.S. relations with Libya were also hostile for decades until a 2003 agreement, and became very friendly after Libya’s U.S.-backed revolution in 2011.

It is unclear what new international alignments may emerge in the years to come. The fl uidity of alliances makes them a wild card for scholars to understand and for policy makers to anticipate. For the present, international alignments—both military alliances and trade relationships—center on the United States (see Figure 2.7 ). Although several independent-minded states such as China, Russia, and France keep U.S. hegemony in check, little evidence exists of a coherent or formal rival power alignment emerging to challenge the United States.

Strategy Actors use strategy to pursue good outcomes in bargaining with one or more other actors. States deploy power capabilities as leverage to infl uence each other’s actions. 54 Bargaining is interactive, and requires an actor to take account of other actors’ interests even while pursuing its own. 55

55 Snyder, Glenn H., and Paul Diesing. Confl ict among Nations: Bargaining, Decision Making, and System Structure in International Crises. Princeton, 1977. Starkey, Brigid, Mark A. Boyer, and Jonathan Wilkenfeld. Negotiating a Complex World: An Introduction to International Negotiation. 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2005. Telhami, Shibley. Power and Leadership in International Bargaining: The Path to the Camp David Accords. Columbia, 1990.

54 North, Robert C. War, Peace, Survival: Global Politics and Conceptual Synthesis. Westview, 1990.

Explore the Simulation “The Prisoner’s Dilemma: You Are a Presidential Advisor” at MyPoliSciLab

South Korea

India

AustraliaIsraelTurkeyItalyCanada

JapanChinaRussiaFranceGermanyBritain

United States

BrazilMexico IndonesiaPakistanIran

EU

NATO

M id

dl e

Po w

er s

Gr ea

t Po

w er

s He

ge m

on

Major trading relationshipsClose military cooperationMilitary alliance

FIGURE 2.7 Current Alignment of Great and Middle Powers

Source: U.S. Department of Defense

72

POLICY PERSPECTIVES

Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh

PROBLEM How do you confront a fluid

security environment by managing current and

formal rivals?

BACKGROUND As the world’s largest democracy, your country faces many challenges both at home and abroad. In particular, in the past 50 years, you have fought wars against your two largest neighbors, China and Paki- stan. Both states possess nuclear weapons, as do you. China and Pakistan have cooperated with each other in the past, including on sales of high technology military goods such as missiles.

Your generally hostile relationship with Pakistan grows from a territorial dispute over half of the region of Kash- mir, which both of you claim, but India maintains control over. The territory is coveted not only by your respective governments but by the publics in each country as well. While there has been some cooperation between each country, tensions still run high over Kashmir. In the after- math of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, many in your country blamed Pakistan since it is home to Islamic militant groups.

Your hostilities with China have cooled over the years, but China remains a major rival in the region and you still maintain competing claims over territory. Like your own country, China is large economically as well as militarily, and it attempts to exert strong leadership in your region. In the past two years, however, you have increased ties with China and you personally visited China at the beginning of 2008 to open discussions on future trade and military coop- eration. In December 2007, your armies (the two largest in the world) held joint training exercises.

DOMESTIC CONSIDERATIONS Within your coun- try, neither Pakistan nor China is a popular choice for allies. Your population is still angered by the Chinese victory in the 1962 Sino-Indian war and the disputed border territory that gave rise to the confl ict. Yet your largely Hindu popula- tion is also angry at repeated attempts by Muslim Pakistan to gain control of Kashmir. Your advisors also remind you

that China still has a healthy relationship with Pakistan, selling large numbers of weapons and giving military assistance to Pakistan. Indeed the main political opposition parties argue that you have been too “soft” on both Paki- stan and China in your time as Prime Minister. Any public backlash against your foreign policy on these issues could be widespread and bring calls for new elections that could unseat your government.

SCENARIO Imagine the government of Pakistan begins to suffer from large-scale instability. Islamist militants are close to overthrowing the government there, giving them control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. They are also call- ing for Muslims in Kashmir to rise up against Indian control, promising to openly assist a rebellion in that province by providing weapons and intelligence. Your own intelligence service considers the collapse of the current Pakistani government “likely.”

CHOOSE YOUR POLICY Do you push for closer rela- tions with China as a result of instability in Pakistan? Can you trust China to support you in a dispute with Pakistan, given those countries’ close relationship? Do you ask China to help mediate between your government and Pakistan in the event of hostilities? Or do you continue your course as independently as possible, not trusting Chinese intentions toward your country?

Explore the Simulation “You are the Prime Minister of India” at MyPoliSciLab

Strategy 73

Statecraft Classical realists emphasize statecraft —the art of managing state affairs and effectively maneuvering in a world of power politics among sovereign states. Power strategies are plans actors use to develop and deploy power capabilities to achieve their goals.

A key aspect of strategy is choosing the kinds of capabilities to develop, given limited resources, in order to maximize international infl uence. This requires foresight because the capabilities required to manage a situation may need to be developed years before that situation presents itself. Yet the capabilities chosen often will not be fungible in the short term. Central to this dilemma is what kind of standing military forces to maintain in peacetime—enough to prevent a quick defeat if war breaks out, but not so much as to overburden one’s economy (see pp. 223 – 224 ) .

Strategies also shape policies for when a state is willing to use its power capabilities. The will of a nation or leader is hard to estimate. Even if leaders make explicit their inten- tion to fi ght over an issue, they might be bluffi ng.

The strategic actions of China in recent years exemplify the concept of strategy as rational deployment of power capabilities. China’s central foreign policy goal is to prevent the independence of Taiwan, which China considers an integral part of its territory (as does the United Nations and, at least in theory, the United States). Taiwan’s government was set up to represent all of China in 1949, when the nationalists took refuge there after losing to the communists in China’s civil war. Since the international community’s recognition of the Beijing government as “China,” however, Taiwan has attempted to operate more and more independently, with many Taiwanese favoring independence. China may not have the military power to invade Taiwan successfully, but it has declared repeatedly that it will go to war if Taiwan declares independence. So far, even though such a war might be irra- tional on China’s part, the threat has deterred Taiwan from formally declaring independ- ence. China might lose such a war, but would certainly infl ict immense damage on Taiwan. In 1996, China held war games near Taiwan, fi ring missiles over the sea. The United States sent two aircraft carriers to signal to China that its exercises must not go too far.

Not risking war by declaring independence, Taiwan instead has engaged in diplo- macy to gain infl uence in the world. It lobbies the U.S. Congress, asks for admission to the UN and other world organizations, and grants foreign aid to countries that recognize Tai- wan’s government (23 mostly small, poor countries worldwide as of 2011).

China has used its own diplomacy to counter these moves. It breaks diplomatic rela- tions with countries that recognize Taiwan, and it punishes any moves in the direction of Taiwanese independence. Half the countries that recognize Taiwan are in the Caribbean and Central America, leading to a competition for infl uence in the region. China has tried to counter Taiwanese ties with those countries by manipulating various positive and negative leverages. For example, in Panama, where China is a major user of the Panama Canal (which reverted to Panama from U.S. ownership in 1999), Taiwan has cultivated close relations, invested in a container port, and suggested hiring guest workers from Pan- ama in Taiwan. But China has implicitly threatened to restrict Panama’s access to Hong Kong, or to reregister China’s many Panamanian-registered ships in the Bahamas instead. (The Bahamas broke with Taiwan in 1997 after a Hong Kong conglomerate, now part of China, promised to invest in a Bahamian container port.) Similarly, when the Pacifi c microstate of Kiribati recognized Taiwan in late 2003 to gain Taiwanese aid, China broke off relations and removed a Chinese satellite-tracking station from Kiribati. Because the tracking station played a vital role in China’s military reconnaissance and growing space program—which had recently launched its fi rst astronaut—its dismantling underscored China’s determination to give Taiwan priority even at a cost to other key national goals.

Two of the seven vetoes China has used in the UN Security Council were to block peacekeeping forces in countries that extended recognition to Taiwan. These vetoes

74 Chapter 2 Realist Theories

demonstrate that if China believes its Taiwan interests are threatened, it can play a spoiler role on the Security Council. When the former Yugo- slav republic of Macedonia recognized Taiwan in 1999 (in exchange for $1 billion in aid), China vetoed a UN peacekeeping mission there at a time of great instability in next-door Kosovo (by 2001, Macedonia had switched its diplomatic recognition to China). By contrast, when its Tai- wan interests are secure, China cooperates on issues of world order. For example, although China opposed the 1991 Gulf War, it did not veto the UN resolution authorizing it.

These Chinese strategies mobilize various capabilities, including missiles, diplomats, and industrial conglomerates, in a coherent effort to infl uence the outcome of China’s most important international issue. Strategy thus amplifies China’s power. 56

The strategy of deterrence uses a threat to punish another actor if it takes a certain negative action (especially attacking one’s own state or one’s allies). If deterrence works, its effects are almost invisible; its success is measured in attacks that did not occur. 57

Generally, advocates of deterrence believe that confl icts are more likely to escalate into war when one party to the confl ict is weak. In this view, building up military capabilities usu- ally convinces the stronger party that a resort to military leverage would not succeed, so confl icts are less likely to escalate into violence. A strat- egy of compellence , sometimes used after deter- rence fails, refers to the threat of force to make another actor take some action (rather than refrain from taking an action). 58 Generally, it is harder to get another state to change course

(the purpose of compellence) than it is to get it to refrain from changing course (the purpose of deterrence).

56 Rohter, Larry. Taiwan and Beijing Duel for Recognition in Central America. New York Times, August 5, 1997: A7. Zhao, Quansheng. Interpreting Chinese Foreign Policy: The Micro-Macro Linkage Approach. Oxford, 1996. Swaine, Michael, and Ashley Tellis. Interpreting China’s Grand Strategy: Past, Present, and Future. Rand, 2000. 57 Zagare, Frank C. Perfect Deterrence. Cambridge, 2000. Goldstein, Avery. Deterrence and Security in the 21st Century. Stanford, 2000. Morgan, Patrick. Deterrence Now. Cambridge, 2003. Huth, Paul K. Extended Deterrence and the Prevention of War. Yale, 1988. Jervis, Robert, Richard Ned Lebow, and Janice Gross Stein. Psychology and Deterrence. Johns Hopkins, 1985. George, Alexander L., and Richard Smoke. Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice. Columbia, 1974. 58 Schelling, Thomas C. The Strategy of Confl ict. Harvard, 1960. Art, Robert J., and Patrick M. Cronin, eds. The United States and Coercive Diplomacy. U.S. Institute of Peace, 2003.

AMPLIFYING POWER

Coherent strategy can help a state make the most of its power. China’s foreign policy is generally directed toward its most important regional interests, above all preventing Taiwan’s formal independ- ence. Despite confl icts with a number of its neighbors, China has had no military engagements for 25 years. Here, China uses its veto in the UN Security Council for only the fi fth time ever, to end a peacekeep- ing mission in Macedonia, which had just established ties with Tai- wan, 1999.

Strategy 75

One strategy used to try to compel compliance by another state is escala- tion —a series of negative sanctions of increasing severity applied in order to induce another actor to take some action. In theory, the less severe actions establish credibility—showing the fi rst actor’s willingness to exert its power on the issue—and the pattern of escalation establishes the high costs of future sanc- tions if the second actor does not cooper- ate. These actions should induce the second actor to comply, assuming that it fi nds the potential costs of the escalating punishments greater than the costs of compliance. But escalation can be quite dangerous. During the Cold War, many IR scholars worried that a conventional war could lead to nuclear war if the superpowers tried to apply escalation strategies.

An arms race is a reciprocal proc- ess in which two (or more) states build up military capabilities in response to each other. Because each wants to act prudently against a threat, the attempt to reciprocate leads to a runaway pro- duction of weapons by both sides. The mutual escalation of threats erodes confi dence, reduces cooperation, and makes it more likely that a crisis (or accident) could cause one side to strike fi rst and start a war rather than wait for the other side to strike. The arms race process was illustrated vividly in the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race, which created arsenals of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons on each side. 59

Rationality in International Relations Most realists (and many nonrealists) assume that those who wield power while engaging in statecraft behave as rational actors in their efforts to infl uence others. 60 This view has two implications for IR.

INTERNAL DIVISIONS

The unitary actor assumption holds that states make important decisions as though they were single individuals able to act in the national interest. In truth, factions and organizations with differing interests put confl icting pressures on state leaders. In extreme cases, weak states do not control the armed factions within them. These Somali pirates being captured by Turkish commandos in 2009 are just one of the internal groups, ranging from autonomous territories to Islamist militants, that operate with impunity within Somalia.

59 Isard, Walter, and Charles H. Anderton. Arms Race Models: A Survey and Synthesis. Confl ict Management and Peace Science 8, 1985: 27–98. Glaser, Charles. When Are Arms Races Dangerous? Rational versus Suboptimal Arming. International Security 28 (4), 2004: 44–84. 60 Brown, Michael E., Owen R. Cote, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, eds. Rational Choice and Security Studies. MIT, 2000. Lake, David A., and Robert Powell, eds. Strategic Choice and International Relations. Princeton, 1999. Fearon, James. Rationalist Explanations for War. International Organization 49 (3), 1995: 379–414. Friedman, Jeffrey, ed. The Rational Choice Controversy: Economic Models of Politics Reconsidered. Yale, 1996.

76 Chapter 2 Realist Theories

First, the assumption of rationality implies that states and other international actors can identify their interests and put priorities on various interests: A state’s actions seek to advance its interests. Many realists assume that the actor (usually a state) exercising power is a single entity that can “think” about its actions coherently and make choices. This is called the unitary actor assumption, or sometimes the strong leader assumption. The assumption is a simplifi cation, because the interests of particu- lar politicians, parties, economic sectors, or regions of a country often confl ict. Yet realists assume that the exercise of power attempts to advance the national interest — the interests of the state itself.

But what are the interests of a state? Are they the interests of a particular agency within the government? Are they the interests of domestic groups? The need to prevail in confl icts with other states (see Chapter 5 ) ? The ability to cooperate with the interna- tional community for mutual benefi t (see Chapter 7 ) ? There is no simple answer. Some realists simply defi ne the national interest as maximizing material power—a debatable assumption. 61 Others compare power in IR with money in economics—a universal meas- ure. In this view, just as fi rms compete for money in economic markets, states compete for power in the international system. 62

Second, rationality implies that actors are able to perform a cost-benefi t analysis — calculating the costs incurred by a possible action and the benefi ts it is likely to bring. Applying power incurs costs and should produce commensurate gains. As in the prob- lem of estimating power, one has to add up different dimensions in such a calculation. For instance, states presumably do not initiate wars that they expect to lose, except when they stand to gain political benefi ts, domestic or international, that outweigh the costs of losing the war. But it is not easy to tally intangible political benefi ts against the tangible costs of a war. Even victory in a war may not be worth the costs paid. Rational actors can miscalculate costs and benefi ts, especially when using faulty information (although this does not mean they are irrational). Finally, human behavior and luck can be unpredictable.

These assumptions about rationality and the actors in IR are simplifi cations that not all IR scholars accept. But realists consider these simplifi cations useful because they allow scholars to explain in a general way the actions of diverse actors.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma Game theory is a branch of mathematics concerned with predicting bargaining outcomes. A game is a setting in which two or more players choose among alternative moves, either once or repeatedly. Each combination of moves (by all players) results in a set of payoffs (utility) to each player. The payoffs can be tangible items such as money or any intangible items of value. Game theory aims to deduce likely outcomes (what moves players will make), given the players’ preferences and the possible moves open to them. Games are sometimes called formal models.

Game theory was fi rst used extensively in IR in the 1950s and 1960s by scholars trying to understand U.S.-Soviet nuclear war contingencies. Moves were decisions to use nuclear weapons in certain ways, and payoffs were outcomes of the war. The use of game theory to study international interactions has become more extensive among IR scholars in recent

61 Waltz, Theory of International Politics (see footnote 7 in this chapter). 62 Morgenthau and Thompson, Politics among Nations (see footnote 6 in this chapter). Mearsheimer, The Trag- edy of Great Power Politics (see footnote 13 in this chapter).

Strategy 77

years, especially among realists, who accept the assumptions about rationality. To analyze a game mathematically, one assumes that each player chooses a move rationally, to maximize its payoff.

Different kinds of situations are represented by different classes of games, as defi ned by the number of players and the structure of the payoffs. One basic distinction is between zero-sum games , in which one player’s gain is by defi nition equal to the other’s loss, and non-zero-sum games, in which it is possible for both players to gain (or lose). In a zero-sum game there is no point in communication or cooperation between the players because their interests are diametrically opposed. But in a non-zero-sum game, coordination of moves can maximize the total payoff to the players, although each may still maneuver to gain a greater share of that total payoff. 63

The game called Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) captures the kind of collective goods problem common to IR. In this situation, rational players choose moves that produce an outcome in which all players are worse off than under a different set of moves. They all could do better, but as individual rational actors, they are unable to achieve this outcome. How can this be?

The original story tells of two prisoners questioned separately by a prosecutor. The prosecutor knows they committed a bank robbery but has only enough evidence to convict them of illegal possession of a gun unless one of them confesses. The pros- ecutor tells each prisoner that if he confesses and his partner doesn’t confess, he will go free. If his partner confesses and he doesn’t, he will get a long prison term for bank robbery (while the partner goes free). If both confess, they will get a somewhat reduced term. If neither confesses, they will be convicted on the gun charge and serve a short sentence. The story assumes that neither prisoner will have a chance to retali- ate later, that only the immediate outcomes matter, and that each prisoner cares only about himself.

This game has a single solution: both prisoners will confess. Each will reason as fol- lows: “If my partner is going to confess, then I should confess too, because I will get a slightly shorter sentence that way. If my partner is not going to confess, then I should still confess because I will go free that way instead of serving a short sentence.” The other prisoner follows the same reasoning. The dilemma is that by following their individually rational choices, both prisoners end up serving a fairly long sentence—when they could have both served a short one by cooperating (keeping their mouths shut).

PD-type situations occur frequently in IR. One good example is an arms race. Consider the decisions of India and Pakistan about whether to build sizable nuclear weapons arsenals. Both have the ability to do so. Neither side can know whether the other is secretly building up an arsenal unless they reach an arms control agreement with strict verifi cation provisions. To analyze the game, we assign values to each possible outcome—often called a preference ordering —for each player. This is not simple: If we misjudge the value a player puts on a particular outcome, we may draw wrong conclu- sions from the game.

The following preferences regarding possible outcomes are plausible: the best out- come would be that oneself but not the other player had a nuclear arsenal (the expense of building nuclear weapons would be worth it because one could then use them as leverage);

63 O’Neill, Barry. A Survey of Game Theory Models on Peace and War. In Aumann, R., and S. Hart, eds. Handbook of Game Theory. Vol. 2. North-Holland, 1994. Powell, Robert. In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Politics. Princeton, 1999. Morrow, James D. Game Theory for Political Scientists. Princeton, 1995.

78 Chapter 2 Realist Theories

second best would be for neither to go nuclear (no leverage, but no expense); third best would be for both to develop nuclear arsenals (a major expense without gaining leverage); worst would be to forgo nuclear weapons oneself while the other player developed them (and thus be subject to blackmail).

The game can be summarized in a payoff matrix (see Figure 2.8 ). The fi rst number in each cell is India’s payoff, and the second number is Pakistan’s. To keep things simple, 4 indicates the highest payoff, and 1 the lowest. As is conventional, a decision to refrain from building nuclear weapons is called cooperation, and a decision to proceed with nuclear weapons is called defection. The dilemma here parallels that of the prisoners—each state’s leader reasons: “If they go nuclear, we must; if they don’t, we’d be crazy not to.” The model seems to predict an inevitable Indian-Pakistani nuclear arms race, although both states would do better to avoid one.

In 1998, India detonated underground nuclear explosions to test weapons designs, and Pakistan promptly followed suit. In 2002, the two states nearly went to war, with projected war deaths of up to 12 million. A costly and dangerous arms race continues, and each side now has dozens of nuclear missiles, and counting. Avoiding an arms race would benefi t both sides as a collective good, but the IR system, without strong central authority, does not allow them to realize this potential benefi t. This example illustrates why realists tend to be pessimistic about cooperative solutions to collective goods problems such as the one that the PD game embodies.

IR scholars have analyzed many other games beyond PD. For example, Chicken repre- sents two male teenagers speeding toward a head-on collision. The fi rst to swerve is “chicken.” Each reasons: “If he doesn’t swerve, I must; but if he swerves, I won’t.” The player who fi rst commits irrevocably not to swerve (for example, by throwing away the steering wheel or putting on a blindfold while behind the wheel) will win. Similarly, in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, some scholars argued that President John F. Kennedy “won” by seeming ready to risk nuclear war if Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev did not back down and remove Soviet missiles from Cuba. (There are, however, alternative expla- nations of the outcome of the crisis.)

Chicken sheds light on the concept of deterrence (see p. 74 ) . Deterrence involves convincing another actor not to undertake an action it otherwise would. Just as in the game of Chicken, when one driver commits to not swerving, state leaders attempt to con- vince others that they will respond harshly if they (or an ally) are attacked. But because not swerving risks disaster for both sides, it is diffi cult for one side to convince the other that he or she will risk crashing (fi ghting a war) if the other side decides not to swerve. 64

64 Goldstein, Joshua S. Dilemmas: Crossing the Road to Cooperation. In Zartman, I. William, and Saadia Touval, eds. International Cooperation: The Extents and Limits of Multilateralism. Cambridge, 2010.

Pakistan

Cooperate Defect

Cooperate (3,3) (1,4) India

Defect (4,1) (2,2)

Note: First number in each group is India’s payoff, second is Pakistan’s. The number 4 is highest payoff, 1 lowest.

FIGURE 2.8 Payoff Matrix in India-Pakistan PD Game

Game theory often studies interdependent decisions —the outcome for each player depends on the actions of the other.

This chapter has focused on the concerns of realists—the interests of states, distribu- tion of power among states, bargaining between states, and alliances of states. The chapter has treated states as unitary actors, much as one would analyze the interactions of indi- vidual people. The actions of state leaders have been treated as concerned with maximiz- ing power through pursuing defi nable interests through coherent bargaining strategies. But realism is not the only way to frame the major issues of international relations. Chap- ter 3 reexamines these themes critically, relying less on the core principle of dominance and more on reciprocity and identity.

Chapter Review 79

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SUMMARY ■ Realism explains international relations in terms of power. ■ Realists and idealists differ in their assumptions about human nature, international

order, and the potential for peace. ■ Power can be conceptualized as infl uence or as capabilities that can create infl uence. ■ The most important single indicator of a state’s power is its GDP. ■ Short-term power capabilities depend on long-term resources, both tangible and

intangible. ■ Realists consider military force the most important power capability. ■ International anarchy—the absence of world government—means that each state is

a sovereign and autonomous actor pursuing its own national interests. ■ The international system traditionally places great emphasis on the sovereignty of

states, their right to control affairs in their own territory, and their responsibility to respect internationally recognized borders.

■ Seven great powers account for half of the world’s GDP as well as the great majority of military forces and other power capabilities.

■ Power transition theory says that wars often result from shifts in relative power dis- tribution in the international system.

■ Hegemony—the predominance of one state in the international system—can help provide stability and peace in international relations, but with some drawbacks.

■ The great power system is made up of about half a dozen states (with membership changing over time as state power rises and falls).

■ States form alliances to increase their effective power relative to that of another state or alliance.

■ Alliances can shift rapidly, with major effects on power relations.

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80 Chapter 2 Realist Theories

■ The world’s main alliances, including NATO and the U.S.-Japanese alliance, face uncertain roles in a changing world order.

■ International affairs can be seen as a series of bargaining interactions in which states use their power capabilities as leverage to infl uence the outcomes. But bargaining outcomes also depend on strategies and luck.

■ Rational-actor approaches treat states as though they were individuals acting to maximize their own interests. These simplifi cations are debatable but allow realists to develop concise and general models and explanations.

■ Game theory draws insights from simplifi ed models of bargaining situations. The Prisoner’s Dilemma game embodies a diffi cult collective goods problem.

KEY TERMS realism 43 idealism 43 power 45 geopolitics 49 anarchy 49 norms 50 sovereignty 50 security dilemma 51 balance of power 52 great powers 54 middle powers 55 neorealism 56 multipolar system 57

nonaligned movement 70

deterrence 74 compellence 74 arms race 75 rational actors 75 national interest 76 cost-benefi t analysis 76 game theory 76 zero-sum games 77 Prisoner’s Dilemma

(PD) 77

power transition theory 57

hegemony 57 hegemonic stability

theory 59 alliance cohesion 64 burden sharing 64 North Atlantic Treaty

Organization (NATO) 65

Warsaw Pact 65 U.S.-Japanese Security

Treaty 67

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS 1. Using Table 1.4 on pp. 24 – 25 (with GDP as a measure of power) and the maps

at the back of the book, pick a state and speculate about what coalition of nearby states might form with suffi cient power to oppose the state if it became aggressive.

2. Choose a recent international event and list the power capabilities that participants used as leverage in the episode. Which capabilities were effective, and which were not? Why?

3. The modern international system came into being at a time when agrarian socie- ties relied primarily on farmland to create wealth. Now that most wealth is no longer created through farming, is the territorial nature of states obsolete? How might the diminishing economic value of territory change the ways in which states interact?

Chapter Review 81

4. If you were the leader of a small state in Africa, bargaining with a great power about an issue where your interests diverged, what leverage and strategies could you bring into play to improve the outcome for your state?

5. Given the distinction between zero-sum and non-zero-sum games, can you think of a current international situation that is a zero-sum conflict? One that is non-zero-sum?

Can the United States and China Peacefully Coexist?

LET’S DEBATE THE ISSUE

ARGUMENT 1

The United States and China Will Find It Diffi cult to Peacefully Coexist

U.S. and Chinese allies create con- fl icts between them. China’s ties to North Korea, Iran, and Sudan have strengthened in the past fi ve years. The United States considers each of these states to be hostile, while China has courted each for economic or strategic reasons. On the U.S. side, although there is no formal alli- ance, American friendliness to Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province, also cre- ates tensions.

China already promotes its interests in confl ict with the United States. China currently pegs its currency to keep its goods cheap in the United States. Despite many protests against this policy, China persists in pegging its currency, which harms domestic manufacturers in the United States.

China is already attempting to com- pete with the United States as a glo- bal superpower. China has expanded foreign aid to Africa (even to states sanctioned by the United States). China has increased weapons sales around the world. China is also courting states with hostile relationships to the United States such as Venezuela and Iran. All signs point to China attempting to compete with the United States for global supremacy.

Overview In this chapter, we noted that realists emphasize the idea of the balance of power—states may ally with one another to prevent another state from becoming too dominant. Yet, in the current system, the United States is clearly unparalleled in military and economic power. Some scholars argue that China will be the state that challenges the leader- ship position of the United States in the future.

Historically, the relationship between China and the United States has been rocky. During the Cold War, after the United States opened the relation- ship with China, the two great powers cooperated against a common enemy, the Soviet Union. After the Cold War, that cooperation has varied signifi - cantly as China has expanded economically and militarily, fi lling the global power vacuum left by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Although China is still smaller economically and less powerful militarily than the United States, if current growth continues, it will eventually surpass the United States in economic might. Armed with such a large economy, it will not take long for China to then catch the United States militarily. These changes are referred to as power transitions (see p. 57 ) . While sometimes these transitions between powerful states are peaceful (the United States replacing Great Britain, for example), oftentimes they are not (Germany’s attempts to overtake Great Britain in World Wars I and II). Should China grow to challenge the United States, what does the future hold for these two great powers? Will their relationship be one of peace or hostility?

ARGUMENT 2

The United States and China Can Peacefully Coexist

The United States and China agree on many important issues. On issues such as terrorism and nuclear proliferation, China sees eye-to-eye with the United States. As with the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, there is room for agreement on issues of strategic importance that will allow for coop- eration between the two great powers. In addi- tion, China’s “peaceful rise” strategy has avoided direct confl ict with the United States for 30 years.

Nuclear deterrence will keep rela- tions stable. Both states have large, credible nuclear forces that can deter the opponent from attacking. While this may not rule out proxy wars (as in the Cold War), it does suggest that relations will remain civil and stable between the United States and China.

Economic interdependence will keep relations peaceful. The United States and China depend on one another economically. America depends on Chinese goods fl owing in at reasonable prices, while China depends on the U.S. market for its export-led growth strategy. This situation of mutual dependence will keep relations warm, since hostility would threaten to undermine these trade relationships.

Questions ■ Is confl ict inevitable between the United States

and China? If China were to become a democ- racy, would confl ict be more or less likely?

■ If confl icts occur in the future, are there ways to discourage them? Or are these confl icts just part of global politics between great powers? Can international organizations (such as the United Nations) help to ameliorate the potential for great power confl ict?

■ Taiwan is an important source of friction between the United States and China. Although the United States does not formally recognize Taiwan, American has signed a friendship treaty with the island. Should the United States risk its relation- ship with China over honoring its commitments to Taiwan? If China forces the United States to choose between Taiwan and lower tensions, which should the United States choose?

For Further Reading Kynge, James. China Shakes the World: A Titan’s

Rise and Troubled Future—and the Challenge for America. Houghton Miffl in, 2007.

Mearsheimer, John J. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. Norton, 2003.

Shirk, Susan L. China: Fragile Superpower. Oxford, 2008.

Bergsten, C. Fred, Charles Freeman, Nicholas R. Lardy, and Derek J. Mitchell. China’s Rise: Challenges and Opportunities. Peterson Institute, 2008.

Anti-government protester in Bahrain, 2011.

Liberal and Social Theories

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85

CHAPTER OUTLINE The Waning of War In recent years, a strong trend toward fewer and smaller wars has become evident. 1 To many Americans, the world seems more war-prone and violent than ever, because the country is at war on a scale not seen since Vietnam. Yet for the world as a whole, the current period is one of the least warlike ever.

First consider the long-term trend. In the fi rst half of the 20th century, world wars killed tens of millions and left whole continents in ruin. In the second half of that century, during the Cold War, proxy wars killed millions, and the world feared a nuclear war that could have wiped out our species. Now, in the early 21st century, wars like those in Afghanistan and Syria kill tens or even hundreds of thousands. We fear terrorist attacks that could destroy a city, but not life on the planet. Generation by generation, the world has moved forward, unevenly but inexorably, from tens of mil- lions killed, to millions, to hundreds of thousands. This is still a large number and the impacts of war are still catastrophic. Perhaps most important, if we could understand and sustain this trend, major wars might fade away altogether, though minor wars and terrorist attacks may continue to kill thousands of people.

Events in the post–Cold War era continue this long-term trend toward smaller wars. The late 1990s and early 21st century saw the termination of lingering Cold War–era confl icts such as in Angola, Northern Ireland, Guatemala, and southern Sudan (following South Africa and Mozambique earlier in the 1990s). Most of the wars that fl ared up after the Cold War ended, such as in Bosnia, Kosovo, Algeria, Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda, have also come to an end. This waning of war continues in recent years. Liberia and Ivory Coast established power-sharing governments and brought in international peacekeepers—following in the path of Sierra Leone (which in 2003 held democratic elections). In 2005, the Irish Republican Army fi nished per- manently dismantling its weaponry. India and Pakistan began their fi rst cease-fi re in a decade, as did Burma’s government and its largest rebel militia.

Today’s most serious confl icts consist mainly of skirmishing rather than all-out battles. The last battles between heavily armed forces on both sides (with, for example, artillery, tanks, and airplanes) were the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2008 Russian- Georgian war, both short and one-sided affairs. The last sustained interstate war, between Ethiopia and Eritrea, ended in 2000. The last great power war (with great powers fi ghting each other) ended more than 50 years ago.

In 2012, the world’s most destructive war was in Syria, where a rebellion and the government’s brutal suppression of it cost 60,000 lives over two years. In Afghanistan the long war dragged on, and in Democratic Congo fi ghting fl ared again in the unstable east. African Union troops drove Islamist militants out of much of Somalia, and in early 2013, French forces were trying to do the same in northern Mali. By historical standards, these are all small wars.

Deaths caused by all types of war, including actions such as shelling, car bombs, and airstrikes (but not including indirect deaths from disease), have fallen quite dra- matically over the past 60 years. Figure 3.1 charts the decline in war-related fatalities since the end of World War II. While some years are higher or lower than others, there is a consistent trend downward in this graph over recent decades, suggesting an overall movement toward less war in the international system.

The Waning of War

Liberal Theories ■ Kant and Peace ■ Liberal Institutionalism ■ International Regimes ■ Collective Security ■ The Democratic Peace

Social Theories ■ Identities and Ideas

Matter ■ Postmodernism

Marxism

Peace Studies

Gender Theories ■ Why Gender Matters ■ The Masculinity of

Realism ■ Gender in War and

Peace ■ Women in IR ■ Difference Feminism

versus Liberal Feminism? ■ Postmodern Feminism

1 Human Security Centre. Human Security Report 2009: Shrinking Costs of War. Human Security Centre, 2009.

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86 Chapter 3 Liberal and Social Theories

Liberal Theories If realism offers mostly dominance solutions to the collective goods problems of IR, several alternative theoretical approaches discussed in this chapter draw mostly on the reciprocity and identity principles (recall Figure 2.1 in Chapter 2 ) . Among other common elements, these approaches generally are more optimistic than realism about the prospects for peace.

Although realists see the laws of power politics as relatively timeless and unchanging, liberal theorists generally see the rules of IR as slowly, incrementally evolving through time and becoming more and more peaceful. This evolution results primarily from the gradual buildup of international organizations and mutual cooperation (reciprocity) and secondarily from changes in norms and public opinion (identity). The main theories dis- cussed in this and the following chapter all hold that we are not doomed to a world of recurring war but can achieve a more peaceful world. In addition, this chapter reviews liberal theories of domestic politics and foreign policy making that, unlike realism, place importance on the domestic and individual levels of analysis in explaining state behavior.

Kant and Peace Liberal theories of IR try to explain how peace and cooperation are possible. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant 200 years ago gave three answers. 2 The fi rst, based on the

De at

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sa nd

s

0 1945 19551950 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

100

200

300

400

500

600

FIGURE 3.1 Battle-Related Deaths in War, 1946–2011

Source: Human Security Report Project. Human Security Brief 2007. Vancouver: HSRP, 2008.

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2 Kant, Immanuel. Perpetual Peace. Edited by Lewis White Beck. Bobbs-Merrill, 1957 [1795]. Russett, Bruce, and John Oneal. Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations. Norton, 2000.

Liberal Theories 87

reciprocity principle, was that states could develop the organizations and rules to facilitate cooperation, specifi cally by forming a world federation resembling today’s United Nations. This answer forms the foundation of present-day liberal institutionalism, discussed shortly.

Kant’s second answer, operating at a lower level of analysis, was that peace depends on the internal character of governments. He reasoned that republics, with a legislative branch that can hold the monarch in check, will be more peaceful than autocracies. This answer, along with Kant’s related point that citizens of any country deserve hospitality in any other country, is consistent with the reciprocity principle, but also relies on the iden- tity principle. Like the social theories discussed later in this chapter, it explains states’ preferences based on the social interactions within the state. A variation on Kant’s answer, namely that democracies do not fi ght each other, is the basis of present demo- cratic peace theory, also discussed later in this chapter. (Kant himself distrusted democra- cies as subjecting policy to mob rule rather than rationality, a view infl uenced by witnessing the French Revolution.)

Kant’s third answer, that trade promotes peace, relies on the presumption that trade increases wealth, cooperation, and global well-being—all while making confl ict less likely in the long term because governments will not want to disrupt any process that adds to the wealth of their state. 3 Moreover, as trade between states increases, they will fi nd that they become mutually dependent on one other for goods. This mutual depend- ence between states is referred to as economic interdependence . Scholars often differen- tiate situations of sensitivity, where one state relies on another to provide an important good but can fi nd alternate suppliers, with vulnerability, where there are few or no alter- native suppliers. 4

Realists are skeptical of the peace-promotes-trade argument, however, arguing that one state’s reliance on another creates more tensions in the short term because states are nervous that another actor has an important source of leverage over them. 5 In particular, states worry about their reliance on other states for strategic minerals needed for military purposes, such as special minerals or alloys for aircraft production and uranium for atomic weapons. Leaders worry about vulnerability giving other countries leverage over them in instances of confl ict. Realists point to the fact that arguments about interdependence and peace were common prior to World War I, yet war occurred anyway.

Liberal Institutionalism Now let us return to Kant’s fi rst answer to the question of how peace can evolve, namely the ability of states to develop and follow mutually advantageous rules, with international institutions to monitor and enforce them. Liberal theories treat rational actors as capable of forgoing short-term individual interests in order to further the long-term well-being of a community to which they belong—and hence indirectly their own well-being. The core principle of reciprocity lies at the heart of this approach, because international institu- tions operate by reciprocal contributions and concessions among formally equal members (peers). Indeed, in several important institutions, such as the World Trade Organization and the European Union, decisions require consensus among all members, making them all equal in governance.

3 Angell, Norman. The Foundations of International Polity. Heinemann, 1914. Ward, Michael D., Randolph M. Siverson, and Xun Cao. Disputes, Democracies, and Dependencies: A Reexamination of the Kantian Peace. American Journal of Political Science 51 (3), 2007: 583–601. 4 Keohane, Robert O., and Joseph S. Nye. Power and Interdependence. 3rd ed. Longman, 2001. 5 Mansfi eld, Edward D., and Brian M. Pollins. Economic Interdependence and International Confl ict: New Perspectives on an Enduring Debate. Michigan, 2003. McDonald, Patrick. The Invisible Hand of Peace. Cambridge, 2009.

88 Chapter 3 Liberal and Social Theories

Kant argued that states, although autonomous, could join a worldwide federation like today’s UN and respect its principles even at the cost of forgoing certain short-term individual gains. To Kant, international cooperation was a more rational option for states than resorting to war. Thus, in realist conceptions of rationality, war and violence appear rational (because they often advance short-term state interests), but in liberal theories, war and violence appear as irrational deviations that result from defective reasoning and that harm the (collective, long-term) inter- ests of warring states.

The neoliberal approach differs from earlier liberal approaches in that it concedes to realism several important assumptions—among them, that states are unitary actors rationally pursuing their self-interests in a system of anarchy. Neoliberals say to realists, “Even if we grant your assumptions about the nature of states and their motives, your pessimistic conclusions do not follow.” States achieve cooperation fairly often because it is in their interest to do so, and they can learn to use institutions to ease the pursuit of mutual gains and the reduction of possibilities for cheating or taking advantage of another state. 6

Despite the many sources of confl ict in IR, states cooper- ate most of the time. Neoliberal scholars try to show that even in a world of unitary rational states, the neorealists’ pes- simism about international cooperation is not valid. States can create mutual rules, expectations, and institutions to pro- mote behavior that enhances cooperation.

In particular, reciprocity in IR helps international coop- eration emerge despite the absence of central authority. Through reciprocity, not a world government, norms and rules are enforced. In international security, reciprocity underlies the gradual improvement of relations sought by arms control agreements and peacekeeping missions. In

international political economy (IPE), in which cooperation can create great benefi ts through trade, the threat to restrict trade in retaliation for unfair practices is a strong incentive to comply with rules and norms. The World Trade Organization (WTO) and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), function on this principle—states that defect on their obligations by increasing tariffs must suffer punish- ment by allowing other states to place tariffs on their goods.

Neoliberals argue that reciprocity can be an effective strategy for achieving coopera- tion in a situation of confl icting interests. 7 If one side expresses willingness to cooperate

HAPPY FAMILY

Liberal theories emphasize the potential for rivalries to evolve into cooperative relationships as states recog- nize that achieving mutual benefi ts is most cost effective in the long run. For example, the U.S. and Soviet/Russian space programs began cooperating in the 1960s and continue today, with other countries. Here, astronauts from the United States, Russia, Germany, and Sweden share the International Space Station, 2006.

6 Baldwin, David A., ed. Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate. Columbia, 1993. Nye, Joseph S., Jr., Neorealism and Neoliberalism. World Politics 40 (2), 1988: 235–51. Milner, Helen. International Theories of Cooperation among Nations: Strengths and Weaknesses [review article]. World Politics 44 (3), 1992: 466–94. Oye, Kenneth A., ed. Cooperation under Anarchy. Princeton, 1986. Keohane, Robert O., and Lisa Martin. The Promise of Institutionalist Theory. International Security 20 (1), 1995: 39–51. 7 Keohane, Robert O. Reciprocity in International Relations. International Organization 40 (1), 1986: 1–27. Downs, George W., and David M. Rocke. Optimal Imperfection? Domestic Uncertainty and Institutions in International Relations. Princeton, 1995.

Liberal Theories 89

and promises to reciprocate the other’s cooperative and confl ictual actions, the other side has an incentive to work out a cooperative bargain. Because reciprocity is relatively easy to interpret, the vow of future reciprocity often need not be stated explicitly. For example, in 1969, China’s relations with the United States had been on ice for 20 years. A U.S. economic embargo against China was holding back the latter’s economic development. China’s support of North Vietnam was costing American lives. The two states were not on speaking terms. President Nixon (and his advisor Henry Kissinger) decided to slightly relax the U.S. trade embargo against China. Three days later, China released three U.S. citizens whose boat had earlier drifted into Chinese waters. 8 China reciprocated other U.S. initiatives, and in 1972, Nixon visited China in a spirit of rapprochement.

Similarly, in 2009, the Obama administration announced it would stop building a missile defense system in Europe that Russia considered provocative. Some saw this as a move to gain Russian support for sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program. And indeed, in the spring of 2010, the UN Security Council approved tighter sanctions on Iran, with the Russians voting in favor.

Neoliberals use the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game (see pp. 76 – 78 ) to illustrate their argument that cooperation is possible. Each actor can gain by individually defecting, but both lose when both defect. Similarly, in IR, states often have a mix of confl icting and mutual interests. The dilemma can be resolved if the game is played over and over again—an accurate model of IR, in which states deal with each other in repeated inter- actions. In that case, a strategy of strict reciprocity after an initial cooperative move (nicknamed tit-for-tat ) can bring about mutual cooperation in a repeated PD game, because the other player must conclude that any defection will merely provoke a like defection in response. 9

But side by side with the potential for eliciting cooperation, reciprocity contains a danger of runaway hostility. When two sides both reciprocate but never manage to put relations on a cooperative footing, the result can be a drawn-out, nasty, tit-for-tat exchange of punishments. This characterizes Israeli relations with Palestinian militants over the years, for instance. Figure 3.2 charts data tracking the interactions between Israeli and Palestinian actors over a 17-year period. Note that as one actor exhibits con- fl ictual behavior (negative values on the graph), the other matches with negative responses. Likewise, cooperative behavior (positive values on the graph) brings recipro- cated cooperation in the immediate time period. Yet, over time, this reciprocity has done little to keep cooperation high—periods of agreement, even those reciprocated by each side, eventually give way to reciprocated confl ict. 10

Building on the reciprocity principle, many norms mediate states’ interactions. For example, diplomatic practices and participation in international organizations (IOs) are both strongly governed by shared expectations about the rules of correct behavior. As col- lective goods problems crop up in IR, states rely on a context of rules, norms, habits, and institutions that make it rational for all sides to avoid the self-defeating outcomes that would result from pursuing narrow, short-term self-interest. Neoliberals study historical and contemporary cases in IR to see how institutions and norms affect the possibilities for overcoming dilemmas and achieving international cooperation. (As we will soon see,

8 Kissinger, Henry. White House Years. Little, Brown, 1979: 179–80. 9 Axelrod, Robert. The Evolution of Cooperation. Basic, 1984. Goldstein, Joshua S., and Jon C. Pevehouse. Reciprocity, Bullying, and International Cooperation: Time-Series Analysis of the Bosnia Confl ict. American Political Science Review 91 (3), 1997: 515–29. 10 Goldstein, Joshua S., Jon C. Pevehouse, Deborah J. Gerner, and Shibley Telhami. Reciprocity, Triangularity, and Cooperation in the Middle East, 1979–1997. Journal of Confl ict Resolution 45 (5), 2001: 594–620.

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some constructivists emphasize that these norms eventually function without states think- ing about self-interest at all.) Thus, for neoliberals the emergence of international institu- tions is key to understanding how states achieve a superior rational outcome that includes long-term self-interest and not just immediate self-interest.

International Regimes Achieving good outcomes is not simple, though. Because of the contradictory interpreta- tions that parties to a confl ict usually have, it is diffi cult to resolve confl icts without a third party to arbitrate or an overall framework to set common expectations for all parties. These considerations underlie the creation of IOs.

An international regime is a set of rules, norms, and procedures around which the expectations of actors converge in a certain issue area (whether arms control, interna- tional trade, or Antarctic exploration). 11 The convergence of expectations means that participants in the international system have similar ideas about what rules will govern their mutual participation: each expects to play by the same rules. (This meaning of regime is not the same as that referring to the domestic governments of states, especially governments considered illegitimate, as in regime change. )

Regimes can help solve collective goods problems by increasing transparency— because everyone knows what everyone else is doing, cheating is riskier. The current revo- lution in information technologies is strengthening regimes particularly in this aspect.

FIGURE 3.2 Reciprocity in Israeli-Palestinian Confl ict and Cooperation, 1979–1997

11 Krasner, Stephen D., ed. International Regimes. Cornell, 1983. Hasenclever, Andreas, Peter Mayer, and Volker Rittberger. Theories of International Regimes. Cambridge, 1997.

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Also, with better international communication, states can identify confl icts and negotiate solutions through regimes more effectively.

The most common conception of regimes combines elements of realism and liberal- ism. States are seen as autonomous units maximizing their own interests in an anarchic context. Regimes do not play a role in issues in which states can realize their interests directly through unilateral applications of leverage. Rather, regimes come into existence to overcome collective goods dilemmas by coordinating the behaviors of individual states. Although states continue to seek their own interests, they create frameworks to coordi- nate their actions with those of other states if and when such coordination is necessary to realize self-interest (that is, in collective goods dilemmas).

Regimes do not substitute for the basic calculations of costs and benefi ts by states; they just open up new possibilities with more favorable benefi t-cost ratios. Regimes do not constrain states, except in a very narrow and short-term sense. Rather, they facilitate and empower national governments faced with issues in which collective goods or coordina- tion problems would otherwise prevent these governments from achieving their ends. Regimes can be seen as intervening variables between the basic causal forces at work in IR—for realists, the relative power of state actors—and the outcomes such as interna- tional cooperation (or lack thereof). For realists in particular, regimes do not negate the effects of power; more often, they codify and normalize existing power relations in accord- ance with the dominance principle. For example, the nuclear nonproliferation regime protects the status quo in which only a few states have nuclear weapons.

Because regimes depend on state power for their enforcement, some IR scholars argue that regimes are most effective when power in the international system is most concentrated—when there is a hegemon to keep order (see “Hegemony” on pp. 57 – 60 ) . Yet, regimes do not always decline with the power of hegemons that created them. Rather, they may take on a life of their own. Although hegemony may be crucial in establishing regimes, it is not necessary for maintaining them. 12 Once actors’ expectations converge around the rules embodied in a regime, the actors realize that the regime serves their own interests. Working through the regime becomes a habit, and national leaders may not seriously consider breaking out of the established rules. This persistence of regimes was demonstrated in the 1970s, when U.S. power declined following the decades of U.S. hegemony since 1945. The international economic regimes adjusted somewhat and survived.

In part, the survival of regimes rests on their embedding in permanent institutions such as the UN, NATO, and the International Monetary Fund. These institutions become the tangible manifestation of shared expectations as well as the machinery for coordinating international actions

HEALTHY REGIME

International regimes are sets of rules, norms, and procedures, not always codifi ed into institutions, that govern the behavior of actors in IR. The world health regime includes states, IGOs such as the World Health Organization (WHO), nonprofi t organizations such as the Gates Foundation, and others, all working with common expec- tations about activities to improve health and stem epidemics. Here, Cuban doctors give WHO vaccines to children in Haiti, 2010.

12 Keohane, Robert O. After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy. Princeton, 1984.

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based on those expectations. In international security affairs, the UN and other IOs pro- vide a stable framework for resolving disputes ( Chapter 7 ) . IPE is even more institutional- ized, again because of the heavier volume of activity and the wealth that can be realized from cooperation. 13

Institutions gain greater stability and weight than do noninstitutionalized regimes. With a staff and headquarters, an international institution can actively promote adher- ence to the rules in its area of political or economic life. These bureaucracies, however, can also promote policies not intended by the states that created the institutions (a prob- lem noted by constructivist scholars ; see p. 102 ).

Important institutions in international security and IPE are discussed in Chapters 7 and 8 , respectively. Liberal institutionalism also places high value on international law , which receives its own discussion in Chapter 7 . The culmination of liberal institutional- ism to date is the European Union (EU) , which receives in-depth discussion in Chap- ter  10 . After centuries of devastating wars, European states now enjoy a stable peace among themselves with strong international institutions to bind them.

Collective Security The concept of collective security , which grows out of liberal institutionalism, refers to the formation of a broad alliance of most major actors in an international system for the purpose of jointly opposing aggression by any actor. Kant laid out the rationale for this approach. Because past treaties ending great power wars had never lasted per- manently, Kant proposed a federation (league) of the world’s states. Through such a

13 Taylor, Paul, and A. J. R. Groom, eds. International Institutions at Work. St. Martin’s, 1988.

SEEKING THE COLLECTIVE GOOD

Great Nations Pay Their Bills COLLECTIVE GOOD: The UN Budget

BACKGROUND: Since its founding at the end of World War II, the United Nations has performed many valuable services for its members, the countries of the world. Countries use the UN for diplomacy, peace- keeping, and humanitarian assistance, among other things. These services are a collective good for the world’s countries because each country enjoys them regardless of whether it pays more or less of the UN budget. The organization sets dues for its members, and each is supposed to pay on time, but not infrequently, they pay late, or later and later.

CHALLENGE: In the 1980s, the United States got into a series of confl icts with the UN about how much the U.S. dues should be. By the mid-1990s, the UN

members owed billions of dollars in back dues, with the United States alone owing more than a billion dollars and Russia about half a billion. Diplomats met in chilled rooms, as the UN could not afford to heat its headquarters building in New York during the winter. U.S. domestic politics contributed to the problem, as the Republican Congress did not approve of President Clinton’s budget requests for the UN, which they saw as toothless and ineffective at best, corrupt and anti- American at worst.

SOLUTION: Reciprocity governs UN dues in principle, since all countries con- tribute according to a formula based on each individual economy’s size, but in prac-

Liberal Theories 93

federation, Kant proposed, the majority of states could unite to punish any one state that committed aggression, safeguarding the collective interests of all the nations while protecting the self-determination of small nations that all too easily became pawns in great power games. 14

After the horrors of World War I, the League of Nations was formed to promote col- lective security. But it was fl awed in two ways. Its membership did not include all the great powers (including the most powerful one, the United States), and its members proved unwilling to bear the costs of collective action to oppose aggression when it did occur in the 1930s, starting with Japan and Italy. After World War II, the United Nations was cre- ated as the League’s successor to promote collective security (see Chapter 7 ) . Several regional IGOs also currently perform collective security functions (deterring aggression) as well as economic and cultural ones—the Organization of American States (OAS), the Arab League, and the African Union.

The success of collective security depends on two points. First, the members must keep their alliance commitments to the group (that is, members must not free ride on the efforts of other members). When a powerful state commits aggression against a weaker one, it often is not in the immediate interest of other powerful states to go to war over the issue. Suppressing a determined aggressor can be very costly.

A second requisite for collective security is that enough members must agree on what constitutes aggression. The UN Security Council is structured so that aggression is defi ned by what all fi ve permanent members, in addition to at least four of the other ten members, can agree on (see “The Security Council” on pp. 242 – 245 ) . This collective security sys- tem does not work against aggression by a great power. When the Soviet Union invaded

tice, countries defected from that formula to promote their own short-term interests. The dominance princi- ple is of little use since the UN cannot use military force to make a country pay its dues.

The UN Foundation, founded in 1998 with a large contribution by media mogul Ted Turner, started a campaign to use the identity principle to solve the problem of U.S. nonpayment of dues. The campaign had the slogan, “Great nations pay their bills.” The slo- gan subtly portrayed the delinquent United States as a deadbeat Dad who has failed to make his child support payments! This appeal to Americans’ concept of their nation as great changed the tone of debate about the UN dues. The United States began to catch up on arrears, and in 2009, it paid up the last of its back obli- gations. Wanting to be, and seen as, a great nation, America paid its bills.

The UN headquarters in New York, 2007.

14 Kant, Perpetual Peace (see footnote 2 in this chapter).

94 Chapter 3 Liberal and Social Theories

Afghanistan, or the United States mined the harbors of Nicaragua, or France blew up the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, the UN could do nothing—because those states can veto Security Council resolutions. 15

Collective security worked in 1990–1991 to reverse Iraq’s conquest of Kuwait because the aggression brought all the great powers together and because they were willing to bear the costs of confronting Iraq. It was the fi rst time since the founding of the UN that one member state had invaded, occupied, and annexed another—attempting to erase it as a sovereign state. The invasion was so blatant a violation of Kuwaiti sovereignty and terri- torial integrity that the Security Council had little trouble labeling it aggression and authorizing the use of force by a multinational coalition. The threat Iraq posed to the world’s oil supplies provided additional incentive for coalition members to contribute money or troops to solve the problem.

In 2002–2003, by contrast, the Security Council repeatedly debated Iraq’s failure to keep the agreements it had made at the end of the Gulf War, in particular the promise to disclose and destroy all its weapons of mass destruction. But the great powers split, and a proposed U.S.-British resolution authorizing military force was withdrawn after France promised to veto it; Germany, Russia, and China had all strongly opposed it and the war. Public opinion around the world, especially in predominantly Muslim countries, also opposed the war. When the UN did not act, the United States, Britain, and Australia sent military forces and overthrew Saddam Hussein by force, comparing the UN to the tooth- less League of Nations. However, the U.S. forces found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and then found itself in a prolonged counterinsurgency war. In retrospect, although the world’s collective security system is creaky and not always effective, bypassing it to take military action also holds dangers.

The concept of collective security has broadened in recent years. For example, failed states have very weak control of their territory, making them potential havens for drug traffi cking, money laundering, and terrorist bases. Essentially, domestic politics looks rather like international anarchy. Currently, Somalia is such a case. It has an extremely weak government that cannot control large parts of territory, and has become a home to terrorist organizations (see Chapter 5 ) and pirates (see Chapter 6 ) . In these cases, the international community has a duty to intervene, according to some approaches, to restore law and order. 16

The Democratic Peace Kant argued that lasting peace would depend on states’ becoming republics, with legisla- tures to check the power of monarchs (or presidents) to make war. He thought that checks and balances in government would act as a brake on the use of military force—as com- pared to autocratic governments in which a single individual (or small ruling group) could make war without regard for the effect on the population.

Somewhat similarly, IR scholars have linked democracy with a kind of foreign pol- icy fundamentally different from that of authoritarianism. 17 One theory they considered

15 Lepgold, Joseph, and Thomas G. Weiss, eds. Collective Confl ict Management and Changing World Politics. SUNY, 1998. 16 Rotbert, Robert. Failed States in a World of Terror. Foreign Affairs 81 (4), 2002: 127–41. 17 Huth, Paul, and Todd Allee. The Democratic Peace and the Territorial Confl ict in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, 2003. Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, et al. The Logic of Political Survival. MIT, 2003. Reiter, Dan, and Allan C. Stam. Democracies at War. Princeton, 2002. Schultz, Kenneth A. Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy. Cambridge, 2001. Rummel, R. J. Power Kills: Democracy as a Method of Nonviolence. Transaction, 1997. Doyle, Michael W. Liberalism and World Politics. American Political Science Review 80 (4), 1986: 1151–70.

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was that democracies are gen- erally more peaceful than authoritarian governments (fighting fewer, or smaller, wars). This turned out not to be true. Democracies fi ght as many wars as do authoritarian states. Indeed, the three most war-prone states of the past two centuries (according to political scientists who count wars) were France, Russia, and Britain. Britain was a democ- racy throughout, France for part of the period, and Russia not at all.

What is true about democ- racies is that although they fi ght wars against authoritarian states, democracies almost never fi ght each other. No major his- torical cases contradict this generalization, which is known as the democratic peace . Why this is so is not entirely clear. As there have not been many democracies for very long, the generalization could be just a coincidence, though this seems unlikely. It may be that democ- racies do not tend to have severe confl icts with each other, as they tend to be capitalist states whose trade relations create strong interdependence (war would be costly because it would disrupt trade). Or, citizens of democratic societies (whose support is necessary for wars to be waged) may simply not see the citizens of other democracies as enemies. By contrast, authoritarian governments of other states can be seen as enemies. Note that the peace among democra- cies gives empirical support to a long-standing liberal claim that, because it is rooted in the domestic level of analysis, contradicts realism’s claim that the most important expla- nations are at the interstate level.

Over the past two centuries, democracy has become more widespread as a form of government, and this trend is changing the nature of the foreign policy process world- wide. 18 Many states do not yet have democratic governments (the most important of these is China). And existing democracies are imperfect in various ways—from political apathy in the United States and corruption in Japan to autocratic traditions in Russia. 19

Nonetheless, the trend is toward democratization in most of the world’s regions.

DEMOCRATIC TIDE

Upsurges of democratic movements throughout the world in recent years testify to the power of the idea of democracy. Because democracies rarely fi ght each other, world- wide democratization might lead to lasting peace. Here, Tunisia holds its fi rst free elec- tion after leading the Arab Spring and reversing decades of authoritarian rule, 2011.

18 Pevehouse, Jon C. Democracy from Above? Regional Organizations and Democratization. Cambridge, 2005. 19 Zakaria, Fareed. The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. Norton, 2003. Collier, David, and Steven Levitsky. Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research. World Politics 49 (3), 1997: 430–51.

96 Chapter 3 Liberal and Social Theories

In recent decades the trend has accelerated in several ways. New democracies emerged in several (though not all) states of the old Soviet bloc. Military governments gave way to democratically elected civilian ones throughout most of Latin America as well as in sev- eral African and Asian countries. South Africa, the last white-ruled African country, adopted majority rule in 1994. In the late 1990s, democracy replaced long-standing dicta- torships in Indonesia and Nigeria, both regional giants. In 2004–2005, pro-democracy forces won victories in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kyrgyzstan. In 2008, Pakistan’s military-run government stepped down to make way for a democratically elected . And in 2011–2012, the Arab Spring revolutions catalyzed democratic transitions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, with Syria potentially following suit if the government falls there. In 2012, Burma underwent a rapid transition toward democracy after decades of harsh military rule. However, military coups took place in Madagascar and Honduras in 2009, Niger in 2010, and Guinea-Bissau and Mali in 2012. Iran rigged an election in 2009 and brutally cracked down on those protesting it.

We do not know where democratization will lead, but it is now conceivable that someday nearly all of the world’s states will be democratically governed. As Kant envis- aged, an international community based on peaceful relations may emerge.

However, although mature democracies almost never fi ght each other, a period of transition to democracy may be more prone to war than either a stable democracy or a stable authoritarian government. 20 Therefore, the process of democratization does not necessarily bode well for peace in the short term. This theory gained support in early 2006, when Iraqi elections were followed by a rise in sectarian violence, and then Pales- tinian elections brought to power the militant faction Hamas, which rejects Israel’s right to exist.

Finally, it is important to note that while democracy is often associated with peace and cooperation, democratic institutions can make cooperation more diffi cult. For exam- ple, pressures for raising trade tariffs often arise from democratically elected legislatures. Some democratic countries may fail to join international organizations because of domes- tic opposition, as was the case with the United States and the League of Nations after World War I (see Chapter 1 ) . Public opposition can also make attempts to expand exist- ing cooperation diffi cult, as European Union leaders discovered after their proposal for a new EU constitution was defeated in democratic elections (see Chapter 10 ) . Thus, while liberal scholars often extol the virtues of democracy, these same domestic institutions can make the process of international cooperation more complex.

Liberal theories thus provide a host of alternatives to power-based realist theories. Nearly all liberal theories focus on solving the collective action problem using the reci- procity principle. Whether because of international or domestic institutions, states come to expect reciprocal behavior regarding cooperation from other states. In this way, their calculations of interests move from short-term concerns to long-term considerations. Next, we review another set of alternatives to realism that focus on the identity principle.

Social Theories Several distinct approaches in IR theory may be grouped together as social theories, mean- ing that they rely on social interaction to explain individuals’ and states’ preferences. These theories contrast with the assumption of fi xed, timeless preferences in most theories

20 Mansfi eld, Edward D., and Jack Snyder. Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War. MIT, 2005. Snyder, Jack. From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Confl ict. Norton, 2000.

Social Theories 97

based on realism (states want more power) and liberalism (states, interest groups, and individuals want peace and prosperity).

Constructivism , a fast-growing approach in IR, asks how states construct their inter- est through their interactions with one another. It is best described as an approach rather than a theory since, when stripped to its core, it says nothing about IR per se. However, its lessons about the nature of norms, identity, and social interactions can provide powerful insights into the world of IR. In fact, most constructivist explanations draw heavily on the identity principle to explain international behavior.

Identities and Ideas Matter Constructivism is interested in how actors defi ne their national interests, threats to those national interests, and their interests’ relationships to one another. Realists (and neolib- erals) tend to simply take state interests as given. Thus, constructivism puts IR in the context of broader social relations. 21 States decide what they want based not only on material needs, but also on “social” interaction. Just as a shopper may decide to buy a particular mp3 player because it will be perceived as cool (that is, more socially accepta- ble), so states may choose policies based on what they perceive will be “popular” with other states. Yet, just as shoppers may have limits placed on which music player they can afford to buy (limited resources), constructivists also recognize that power is not absent from international relations. 22

Constructivist research has many strands. One prominent line examines how states’ interests and identities are intertwined, as well as how those identities are shaped by inter- actions with other states. 23 For example, why is the United States concerned when North Korea builds nuclear weapons, but not when Great Britain does? Realists would quickly answer that North Korea poses a bigger threat, but from a pure military power perspective, Great Britain is a far superior military force to North Korea. Yet no one would argue that Great Britain is a threat to the United States no matter how many nuclear weapons it builds and no matter how deep disagreements about foreign policy become. Construc- tivist scholars would point out the shared history, shared alliances, and shared norms that tell Americans and the British they are not a threat to one another although they are very powerful militarily.

The identity of the potential adversary matters, not just its military capabilities and interests. This is a rejection of the realist assumption that states always want more rather than less power and wealth as well as the assumption that state interests exist independ- ently of a context of interactions among states. 24 Constructivists hold that these state identities are complex and changing, and arise from interactions with other states—often through a process of socialization. Some constructivist scholars contend that over time, states can conceptualize one another in such a way that there is no danger of a security dilemma, arms races, or the other effects of anarchy. They point to Europe as an

Explore the Simulation “Using Theory: You Are the New Prime Minister” at MyPoliSciLab

21 Legro, Jeffrey W. Rethinking the World: Great Power Strategies and International Order. Cornell, 2005. Hopf, Ted. Social Construction of International Politics: Identities and Foreign Policies, Moscow, 1955 and 1999. Cornell, 2002. Crawford, Neta C. Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention. Cambridge, 2002. Katzenstein, Peter, ed. The Culture of National Security. Columbia, 1996. 22 Barnett, Michael, and Raymond Duvall. Power in Global Governance. Cambridge, 2005. 23 Hall, Rodney Bruce. National Collective Identity: Social Constructs and International Systems. Columbia, 1999. Reus-Smit, Christian. The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations. Princeton, 1999. Barnett, Michael. Dialogues in Arab Politics. Columbia, 1998. 24 Wendt, Alexander. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge, 1999. Guzzini, Stefano, and Anna Leander, eds. Constructivism and International Relations: Alex Wendt and His Critics. Routledge, 2006.

98 Chapter 3 Liberal and Social Theories

example—a continent that was the center of two military confl icts in the fi rst half of the 20th century that killed millions. By the end of that century, war had become unthinkable. European identities are now intertwined with the European Union, not with the violent nationalism that led to two world wars. For constructivists, power politics, anarchy, and military force cannot explain this change. Institutions, regimes, norms, and changes in identity are better explanations. 25

Societies as a whole also change over time in what they consider to be threaten- ing. Two hundred years ago, pirates were the scourge of the high seas. These non- state actors invaded ports, pillaged goods, committed murder, and fl aunted all inter- national authority. It would not be hard to consider such behavior terrorism even though the pirates had no political goals in their violence. Even if not terrorism, no one would doubt the costs associated with piracy. Many states, including the United States, used their navies in attempts to eradicate pirates. Yet, despite the danger and harm historically caused by these actors, today we celebrate pirates by mak- ing them sports mascots, naming amuse- ment rides after them, and glorifying them in movies.

Of course, one could argue that pirates are no longer a threat—even though numerous acts of piracy still occur on the high seas. Even apart from the high-profi le pirate hijackings near Somalia in 2008–

2009, the threat from piracy has remained high for many years. Yet, we fi nd it acceptable to play down the piracy threat by incorporating them into popular culture. No doubt someone from two centuries ago would fi nd such acceptance odd.

How odd? Imagine in 200 years your great-great-grandchildren riding a terrorist- themed ride at Disneyland or watching the latest Terrorists of the Persian Gulf movie. Con- structivists are quick to point out that what societies or states consider dangerous is not universal or timeless. Social norms and conventions change, and these changes can have tremendous implications for foreign policy.

States may also come to value and covet something like status or reputation, which are social, not material, concepts. Switzerland, for example, values its role as a neutral,

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES

Constructivist theories, based on the core principle of identity, see actors’ preferences as constructed by the actors rather than given “objectively.” These theories may do better than realist or liberal approaches in explain- ing major changes in a state’s foreign policy goals and image in the world that arise from internal changes and new self-concepts rather than exter- nal constraints or opportunities. Examples might include the breakup of the Soviet Union and the election of Barack Obama as U.S. president. Iran’s identity as an Islamic revolutionary state affects its foreign policies. Here, the morals police close a barber shop in Iran for giving Western-style hair- cuts, 2008.

25 Checkel, Jeffrey. Social Learning and European Identity Change. International Organization 55 (3), 2000: 553–88.

Social Theories 99

nonaligned state (it belongs to neither the European Union nor NATO, and joined the UN only in 2002). This status as a neutral state gives Switzerland prestige and power— not a material power like money or guns—but a normative power to intervene diplomati- cally in important international affairs. Similarly, Canada’s foreign policy contains its own identity-driven imperatives usually revolving around peacekeeping and humanitar- ian operations.

These identity-based explanations can help to explain the behavior of great powers as well. In 1993, the UN Security Council established a war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Its effectiveness was limited in its fi rst years by inadequacy of funding neces- sary to hire investigators and translators, rent offi ces and phone lines, and so forth. The contributions of the great powers to support the tribunal varied, with the United States providing the most support (though still not adequate to the need) and Great Britain providing very little.

Liberal theorists would quickly recognize a collective goods problem in paying for the tribunal. The world community benefi ts from the work of the tribunal (inasmuch as it deters future aggression and genocide), but each individual state gains this benefi t—how- ever benefi cial it ends up being—regardless of its own contribution. By this logic, Britain was being rational to free-ride because the United States and others were willing to pick up enough of the tab to make the tribunal at least minimally effective.

Realists might well question this explanation. They might see Britain’s lack of sup- port as more straightforward: British leaders may not have wanted the tribunal to succeed because Britain tacitly sided with Serbia (a traditional ally), and Serbia was not cooperat- ing with a tribunal that had indicted the Bosnian Serb leaders as war criminals. The same geopolitical factors that led Britain in the past to side with Serbia (and Russia and France) against Croatia (and Germany, Austria, and Turkey) were still operating. War crimes come and go, by this reasoning, but great power interests remain fairly constant.

Both theories seem to have merit, but sometimes history provides “experiments” that, even though we do not control them, help sort out competing explanations. In this case, in 1997, a liberal government headed by Prime Minister Tony Blair replaced the con- servative government of John Major. This change did not affect the explanatory “varia- bles” of either theory—the nature of the collective goods problem inherent in the tribunal, and the nature of Britain’s strategic and historical interests and alliances in the Balkans. But in fact, Blair’s government shifted its Bosnia policy dramatically, leading a raid to arrest two war crimes suspects and contributing substantial funds for the tribunal to con- struct a second courtroom. The fact that a change in political leadership changed British behavior suggests that identity-based explanations do play some role: Blair’s idea of Brit- ain’s place in the international community drove the outcome of the case.

Another fi eld of constructivist research also relies heavily on international norms and their power to constrain state action. Although realists (and neoliberals) contend that states make decisions based on a logic of consequences (“What will happen to me if I behave a certain way?”), constructivist scholars note that there is a powerful logic of appropriateness (“How should I behave in this situation?”). 26 For example, some cases of humanitarian intervention—military intervention by a state or states to protect citizens or subjects of another state—seem diffi cult to explain in realist or liberal terms. Why, for example, did the United States in 1992 send troops to Somalia—a country of minimal strategic and economic importance to the United States—as Somalia descended into political chaos and faced the possibility of mass starvation (see p. 35 ) ? A constructivist explanation might

26 March, James G., and Johan Olsen. The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders. International Organization 52 (4), 1998: 943–69.

100

POLICY PERSPECTIVES

President of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych

PROBLEM How do you maintain coopera-

tion with international institutions in the face

of pressure from a powerful neighbor?

BACKGROUND After your election in 2010, you halted the process of trying to join NATO. In 2008, your predeces- sor had applied for NATO membership, an application that was rejected. Although NATO left the door open for future membership, the Ukrainian public was angry over the NATO rejection. Yet, you have continued your cooperation with NATO in several political issue areas.

Your predecessor’s desire for stronger NATO ties originated from a more rationalist logic of consequences: tensions between your country and Russia have run high. Russia supplies much of your natural gas and several times has cut off supplies during political disputes, most recently in the winter of 2008–2009. Your country has responded to these cutoffs by closing Russian oil pipelines that pass through your country en route to Western Europe. Entering NATO could provide political support and military protection against any aggressive Russian diplomacy.

You have been much less supportive of NATO member- ship than your predecessor. You have reassured Russia that, in the short term, Ukraine will not reapply for member- ship. You have told leaders of several Western European states that you wish your country to remain neutral in inter- national affairs. Finally, you authored a bill passed by the legislature that removed the phrase “NATO membership” from the list of offi cial national security goals.

DOMESTIC CONSIDERATIONS Historically, a major source of opposition to Ukraine’s entry into NATO comes from your own population. Opinion polls show that your public opposes Ukraine’s membership in NATO by a margin of nearly two to one. Your own party’s electoral base is located near the Russian border and favors better relations with Russia.

The public, while opposing NATO membership, does strongly support Ukraine’s application to the EU. The public also supported Ukraine’s successful application to the World Trade Organization. Public opposition to NATO is not

anti-Western per se, but is rooted in the NATO airstrikes against Serbia in 1999 in the war over Kosovo. There is a gen- eral desire to reorient Ukraine’s foreign policy toward the West, but so far, this desire has excluded NATO membership.

SCENARIO Imagine that Russia again cuts off supplies of natural gas and other resources to your country. The dis- pute is over your continued cooperation with NATO in polit- ical affairs. Russia is demanding that you lessen your cooperation with the NATO alliance or face increasing political pressure and economic pressure. Although NATO membership is not a prerequisite for EU membership, EU members would not look favorably on you abandoning an international regime to which you had committed.

CHOOSE YOUR POLICY Do you lessen ties with NATO, even though coordination with NATO has benefi ted your country greatly? Do you give in to Russia and abandon this cooperation? Do you change your own position on NATO in response to Russia’s bullying and apply for full NATO mem- bership? Can you abandon cooperation with NATO while simultaneously pursuing EU membership?

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Social Theories 101

point to changing norms about which kinds of people are worthy of protection. In the 19th century, European powers occasionally intervened to protect Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire from massacres, but generally ignored non-Christian victims. How- ever, as decolonization enshrined the principle of self-determination and as human rights became widely valued, the scope of humanitarian intervention expanded. Although the international community does not always respond effectively to humanitarian crises, it is no longer acceptable to view only Christians as deserving protection. 27 The United States in this example tried to act in an appropriate fashion rather than according to the dictates of cost-benefi t calculations.

Examples of this identity approach can be found in the developing world as well. Some constructivists have argued that countries in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East have adopted or changed policies in response to international norms—not because it provided large benefi ts, but rather because it was perceived as the appropriate course of action. For example, many developing states have raced to create science bureaucracies and/or begin technological modernization of their militaries. Constructivists point out that the reason developing states choose to spend their limited resources on such projects is their desire to be perceived as “modern” by the international system. “Modern” states have science bureaucracies and advanced militaries. Ironically, many states that build sci- ence bureaucracies have few scientists while many states that build advanced militaries have few enemies. 28 Thus, constructivists emphasize that identities and norms must be used to explain this seemingly puzzling behavior.

How are these international norms spread around the world? In an age of global com- munication and relative ease of transportation, many possibilities exist. Constructivists emphasize different sets of actors who spread norms. Some contend that individuals, labeled norm entrepreneurs, through travel, writing, and meeting with elites change ideas and encourage certain types of norms. Some point to broad-based social movements and nongovernmental organizations, such as the anti-apartheid movement encouraging the development of a global norm of racial equality. Others show how international organiza- tions (such as the UN and NATO) can diffuse norms of what is appropriate and inappro- priate behavior. In each case, however, new ideas and norms, rather than power and self-interest, drive state behavior. 29

Research in the constructivist tradition has expanded rapidly in recent years. 30 Schol- ars have examined the role of the European Union in socializing elites in new member states 31 as well as the role of the United Nations in conferring legitimacy on the use of force as a source of its power. 32 Others have investigated how international organizations

27 Finnemore, Martha. The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force. Cornell, 2004. 28 Finnemore, Martha. International Organizations as Teachers of Norms: The United Nations Education, Scientifi c, and Cultural Organizations and Science Policy. International Organization 47 (4), 1993: 565–97. Eyre, Dana, and Mark Suchman. Status, Norms, and the Proliferation of Conventional Weapons: An Institu- tional Theory Approach. In Katzenstein, Peter, ed. The Culture of National Security. Columbia, 1996. 29 Keck, Margaret, and Kathryn Sikkink. Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Cornell, 1998. Klotz, Audie. Norms in International Relations: The Struggle against Apartheid. Cornell, 1995. Finnemore, Martha. National Interests in International Society. Cornell, 1996. Johnston, Alastair Iain. Treating Institutions as Social Environments. International Studies Quarterly 45 (3), 2001: 487–516. Schimmelfennig, Frank. The Community Trap: Liberal Norms, Rhetorical Action, and the Eastern Enlargement of the European Union. International Organization 55 (1), 2001: 47–80. 30 Klotz, Audie, and Cecelia Lynch. Strategies for Research in Constructivist International Relations. M. E. Sharpe, 2007. 31 Checkel, Jeffrey. International Institutions and Socialization in Europe: Introduction and Framework. International Organization 59 (4), 2005: 801–26. 32 Hurd, Ian. After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power in the United Nations Security Council. Princeton, 2008.

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gain authority through their expertise (for example, the IMF on international fi nancial issues) to make decisions that run counter to what their member states desire. 33 Finally, constructivist scholars have begun to investigate how notions of identity and symbolism are important for understanding terrorist movements and counterterrorism policy. 34

Of course, like any approach or theory of IR, constructivism has its share of critics. Realists suggest that norms are simply covers for state (or personal) interests. Liberals argue that some constructivist scholars pay too little attention to the formal institutions and the politics within them. Moreover, both realists and liberals criticize that it is diffi - cult to tell when a person’s identity is genuine or is adopted strategic reasons to bring material benefi ts (such as more aid, trade, or membership into an exclusive organiza- tion). 35 Despite these criticisms, constructivist thinking and its emphasis on the identity principle will continue to be at the core of IR research for years to come.

Postmodernism Postmodernism is a broad approach to scholarship that has left its mark on various aca- demic disciplines, especially the study of literature. Because of their literary roots, post- modernists pay special attention to texts and to discourses —how people talk and write about their subject (IR). 36 Postmodern critiques of realism thus center on analyzing real- ists’ words and arguments. 37 A central idea of postmodernism is that there is no single, objective reality but a multiplicity of experiences and perspectives that defy easy categori- zation. For this reason, postmodernism itself is diffi cult to present in a simple or categori- cal way. Postmodern scholarship in IR preceded, set the stage for, and has largely been supplanted by constructivism.

From a postmodern perspective, realism cannot justify its claim that states are the central actors in IR and that states operate as unitary actors with coherent sets of objec- tive interests (which they pursue through international power politics). Postmodern crit- ics of realism see nothing objective about state interests, and certainly nothing universal (in that one set of values or interests applies to all states).

More fundamentally, postmodernism calls into question the whole notion of states as actors. States have no tangible reality; they are “fi ctions” that we (as scholars and citi- zens) construct to make sense of the actions of large numbers of individuals. For post- modernists, the stories told about the actions and policies of states are just that—stories. From this perspective, an arbitrary distinction leads bookstores to put spy novels on the fi ction shelf whereas biographies and histories go on the nonfi ction shelf. None of these is an objective reality, and all are fi ltered through an interpretive process that distorts the

34 Leheny, David. Symbols, Strategies, and Choices for International Relations Scholarship after September 11. Dialogue IO 1 (1), 2003: 57–70.

33 Barnett, Michael, and Martha Finnemore. Rules for the World. Cornell, 2004.

35 Hyde-Price, Adrian. “Normative” Power Europe: A Realist Critique. Journal of European Public Policy 13 (2), 2006: 217–34. Zehfuss, Maja. Constructivism in International Relations: The Politics of Reality. Cambridge, 2002. Mercer, Jonathan. Anarchy and Identity. International Organization 49 (2), 1995: 229–52. 36 Burke, Anthony. Postmodernism. In Reus-Smit, Christian, and Duncan Snidal, eds. The Oxford Handbook of International Relations. Oxford, 2008, pp. 359 – 77 . Jarvis, Darryl S. L. International Relations and the “Third Debate”: Postmodernism and Its Critics. Praeger, 2002. 37 Ashley, Richard K., and R. B. J. Walker. Speaking the Language of Exile: Dissident Thought in International Studies [Introduction to special issue]. International Studies Quarterly 34 (3), 1990: 259–68. Lapid, Yosef. The Third Debate: On the Prospects of International Theory in a Post-Positivist Era. International Studies Quarterly 33 (3), 1989: 235–54. Molloy, Sean. The Hidden History of Realism: A Genealogy of Power Politics. Palgrave, 2006.

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actual experiences of those involved. 38 Contrary to realism’s claim that states are unitary actors, postmodernists see multiple realities and experiences lurking below the surface of the fi ctional entities that realists construct (states). The Soviet Union, for example, was treated by realists as a single actor with a single set of objective interests. Indeed, it was considered the second most important actor in the world. Realists were amazed when the Soviet Union split into 15 pieces, each containing its own fractious groups and elements. It became clear that the “unitary state” called the Soviet Union had masked (and let realists ignore) the divergent experiences of constituent republics, ethnic groups, and individuals.

Postmodernists seek to “deconstruct” such constructions as states, the international system, and the associated stories and arguments (texts and discourses) with which realists portray the nature of international relations. To deconstruct a text—a term borrowed from literary criticism—means to tease apart the words in order to reveal hidden meanings, looking for what might be omitted or included only implicitly. The hidden meanings not explicitly addressed in the text are often called the subtext . 39

Omissions are an aspect of subtext, as when realist theories of IR omit women and gender, for example. In its emphasis on states, realism omits the roles of individuals, domestic politics, economic classes, MNCs, and other nonstate actors. In its focus on the great powers, realism omits the experiences of poor countries. In its attention to military forms of leverage, it omits the roles of various nonmilitary forms of leverage.

Realism focuses so narrowly because its aim is to reduce IR to a simple, coherent model. The model is claimed to be objective, universal, and accurate. To postmodernists, the realist model is none of these things; it is a biased model that creates a narrow and one-sided story for the purpose of promoting the interests of powerful actors. Postmodern- ists seek to destroy this model along with any other model (including neoliberalism) that tries to represent IR in simple objective categories. Postmodernists instead want to cele- brate the diversity of experiences that make up IR without needing to make sense of them by simplifying and categorizing. 40

Marxism Historically most important among social theories, Marxist approaches to IR hold that both IR and domestic politics arise from unequal relationships between economic classes . This emphasis on classes—implying that the domestic and economic attributes of socie- ties shape external relations with other states—contrasts with the realist approach to IR with its separation of domestic and international politics. We will discuss Marxist

38 Shapiro, Michael J. Textualizing Global Politics. In Der Derian, James, and Michael J. Shapiro, eds. International/ Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics. Lexington, 1989, pp. 11 – 22 . Shapiro, Michael J., and Hayward R. Alker, eds. Challenging Boundaries: Global Flows, Territorial Identities. Minnesota, 1996. 39 Campbell, David. Politics without Principle: Sovereignty, Ethics, and the Narratives of the Gulf War. Rienner, 1993. Stephanson, Anders. Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy. Harvard, 1989. Chaloupka, William. Knowing Nukes: The Politics and Culture of the Atom. Minnesota, 1992. 40 Walker, R. B. J., and Saul H. Mendlovitz, eds. Contending Sovereignties: Redefi ning Political Community. Rienner, 1990. Walker, R. B. J. Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory. Cambridge, 1993. Weber, Cynthia. Simulating Sovereignty: Intervention, the State and Symbolic Exchange. Cambridge, 1995. Sjolander, Claire Turenne, and Wayne S. Cox, eds. Beyond Positivism: Critical Refl ections on International Relations. Rienner, 1994. George, Jim. Discourses of Global Politics: A Critical (Re)Introduction to International Relations. Rienner, 1994.

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104 Chapter 3 Liberal and Social Theories

theories of IR in Chapter 12 , as they primarily concern the global divi- sions of North and South arising from the history of imperialism. Here we will show, briefl y, how Marxist theories as social theories contrast with the realist paradigm.

Marxism is a branch of social- ism, a theory that holds that the more powerful classes oppress and exploit the less powerful by denying them their fair share of the surplus they create. The oppressed classes try to gain power in order to seize more of the wealth for themselves. This process, called class struggle, is one way of looking at the political rela- tionships between richer and poorer people, and ultimately between richer and poorer world regions.

Marxism includes both commu- nism and other approaches. In the mid-19th century, Karl Marx empha- sized labor as the source of economic surplus. At that time, the Industrial Revolution was accompanied by par- ticular hardship among industrial workers (including children) in Europe. Marxists still believe that the

surplus created by labor should be recaptured by workers through political struggle. Today, Marxism is most infl uential in countries of the global South, where capital is scarce and labor conditions are wretched.

One important class in revolutions during the past century (contrary to Marx’s expec- tations) has been peasants. 41 Marxists traditionally consider peasants backward, ignorant, individualistic, and politically passive as compared to the better-educated and class- conscious proletariat. But in practice, the successful third world revolutions have been peasant rebellions (often led by Marxists talking about the proletariat). The largest was the Chinese revolution in the 1930s and 1940s.

Marx’s theories of class struggle were oriented toward domestic society in the industri- alizing countries of his time, not toward poor countries or international relations. Tradi- tional Marxists looked to the advanced industrialized countries for revolution and socialism, which would grow out of capitalism. In their view, the third world would have to develop through its own stages of accumulation from feudalism to capitalism before taking the revolutionary step to socialism. What actually happened was the opposite. Pro- letarian workers in industrialized countries enjoyed rising standards of living and did not

RICH AND POOR

Disparity of wealth is a central aspect of global North-South relations. Marxists see international relations and domestic politics alike as being shaped by a class struggle between the rich and the poor. In São Paulo, Brazil, rich and poor neigh- borhoods sit side by side.

41 Moore, Barrington. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Beacon, 1993 [1966]. Scott, James C. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. Yale, 1986.

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make revolutions. Meanwhile, in the backward third world countries, oppressed workers and peasants staged a series of revolutions, successful and failed.

Why did revolutions occur in backward rather than advanced countries? The answer largely shapes how one sees North-South relations today. 42 Marxists have mostly (but not exclusively) followed a line of argument developed by V. I. Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union, before the Russian Revolution of 1917. 43 Russia was then a relatively backward state, as the global South is today, and most Marxists considered a revolution there unlikely (looking instead to Germany).

Lenin’s theory of imperialism argued that European capitalists were investing in colo- nies where they could earn big profi ts and then using part of these to buy off the working class at home. But Lenin saw that after the scramble for colonies in the 1890s, few areas of the world remained to be colonized. Imperialist expansion could occur only at the expense of other imperialist states, leading to interimperialist competition and wars such as World War I. Seizing on Russia’s weakness during that war, Lenin led the fi rst successful com- munist revolution there in 1917.

Lenin’s general idea still shapes a major approach to North-South relations—the idea that industrialized states exploit poor countries (through both formal and informal coloni- zation) and buy off their own working classes with the profi ts. Through this globalization of class relations, world accumulation concentrates surplus toward the rich parts of the world and away from the poor ones. Revolutions, then, would be expected in poor regions.

Many third world revolutionaries sought to break loose from exploitation by the European colonizers. After European colonization ended, the United States as the world’s richest country (with large investments in the global South and a global military pres- ence) became the target of revolutionaries agitating against exploitation in poor coun- tries. In a number of countries, imperialists were thrown out (often violently, sometimes not) and revolutionary nationalists took power.

One of the most important such revolutions was in China, where Mao Zedong’s com- munists took power in 1949 on a Leninist platform adapted to the largely peasant-based movement they led. Mao declared that “China has stood up”—on its own feet, throwing off foreign domination and foreign exploitation. In India at the same time, the movement led by Gandhi used a different means (nonviolence) to achieve similar ends—national independence from colonialism. Indonesia threw out the Dutch. Lebanon threw out the French. Cuba threw out the Americans. This pattern was repeated, with variations, in dozens of countries.

According to the revolutionaries in these countries, exploitation of third world coun- tries by rich countries takes away the economic surplus of the global South and concen- trates the accumulation of wealth toward the rich parts of the world. By breaking free of such exploitation, third world states can then retain their own surplus and begin to accu- mulate their own wealth. Eventually they can generate their own self-sustaining cycles of accumulation and lift themselves out of poverty. 44 However, such an approach has not worked well. A policy of self-reliance does not foster growth (see p. 291 ) . And within a single poor country, trade-offs arise between concentrating or distributing wealth. For former colonies, the realities of economic development after independence have been complex. These realities are discussed in Chapter 12 .

42 Brewer, Anthony. Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey. 2nd ed. Routledge, 1990. Kubálková, Vendulka, and Albert Cruickshank. Marxism and International Relations. Clarendon, 1985. 43 Lenin, V. I. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. 1916. 44 Tickner, J. Ann. Self-Reliance versus Power Politics. Columbia, 1987. Amin, Samir. Self-Reliance and the New International Economic Order. Monthly Review 29 (3), 1977: 1–21.

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Not all Marxist approaches favor a policy of self-reliance after revolution. Leon Trot- sky, a Russian revolutionary, believed that after the 1917 revolution, Russia would never be able to build socialism alone and should make its top priority the spreading of revolu- tion to other countries to build a worldwide alliance. Trotsky’s archrival Stalin wanted to build “socialism in one country,” and he prevailed (and had Trotsky killed). 45 Most third world revolutions since then, including China’s, have had a strongly nationalist fl avor.

Marxist theories in IR entered a low-visibility phase after the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s turn toward capitalism—events that seemed to discredit Marxist theo- ries. However, in the past few years, Marxists and former Marxists have taken power in a number of Latin American countries. Venezuela and Bolivia, as a result, have become active allies of Cuba, forming an anti-American coalition. In Nicaragua, the former com- munist leader whom U.S.-organized rebels fought in the 1980s won election as president in 2006. These events, along with China’s continuing formal adherence to Marxism, sug- gest that Marxist theories of IR have ongoing importance in the post–Cold War era.

Peace Studies Peace studies challenges fundamental concepts behind both realism and neoliberalism. 46 In particular, peace studies seeks to shift the focus of IR away from the interstate level of analy- sis and toward a broad conception of social relations at the individual, domestic, and global levels of analysis. Peace studies connects war and peace with individual responsibility, eco- nomic inequality, gender relations, cross-cultural understanding, and other aspects of social relationships. Peace studies also seeks peace not in the transactions of state leaders but in the transformation of entire societies (through social revolution) and in transnational commu- nities (bypassing states and ignoring borders to connect people and groups globally). 47 Another way in which peace studies seeks to broaden the focus of inquiry is to reject the supposed objectivity of traditional (realist and liberal) approaches. Most scholars of peace studies think that a good way to gain knowledge is to participate in action—not just to observe objectively. This lack of objectivity has been criticized as normative bias because scholars impose their personal norms and values on the subject. Scholars in peace studies respond, however, that realism itself has normative biases and makes policy prescriptions.

The development and implementation of peaceful strategies for settling confl icts— using alternatives to violent forms of leverage—are known by the general term confl ict resolution . These methods are at work, competing with violent methods, in virtually all international confl icts. Recently, the use of confl ict resolution has been increasing, becoming more sophisticated, and succeeding more often. 48 Most confl ict resolution uses a third party whose role is mediation between two confl icting parties. 49 Most of today’s

45 Mandel, Ernest. From Stalinism to Eurocommunism: The Bitter Fruits of “Socialism in One Country.” Translated by Jon Rothschild. N. L. B., 1978. Howe, Irving. Leon Trotsky. NY: Viking, 1978. 46 Barash, David P., and Charles P. Webel. Peace and Confl ict Studies. Sage, 2002. Samaddar, Ranabir. Peace Studies: An Introduction to the Concept, Scope, and Themes. Sage, 2004. 47 Cancian, Francesca M., and James William Gibson. Making War/Making Peace: The Social Foundations of Violent Confl ict. Wadsworth, 1990. Rapoport, Anatol. Peace: An Idea Whose Time Has Come. Michigan, 1992. Galtung, Johan. Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Confl ict, Development and Civilization. Sage, 1996. 48 Wallensteen, Peter. Understanding Confl ict Resolution: War, Peace, and the Global System. Sage, 2007. Zartman, I. William, and Guy O. Faure, eds. Escalation and Negotiation in International Confl icts. Cambridge, 2006. Walter, Barbara. Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars. Princeton, 2002. Jeong, Ho-Won. Confl ict Resolution: Dynamics, Process, and Structure. Ashgate, 2000. 49 Bercovitch, Jacob, ed. Resolving International Confl icts: The Theory and Practice of Mediation. Rienner, 1996. Princen, Thomas. Intermediaries in International Confl ict. Princeton, 1992.

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international confl icts have one or more mediating parties working regularly to resolve the confl ict short of violence. No hard-and-fast rule states what kinds of third parties mediate what kinds of confl icts. The UN is the most important mediator on the world scene. Some regional confl icts are mediated through regional organizations, single states, or even private individuals. 50

The involvement of the mediator can vary. Some mediation is strictly technical —a mediator may take an active but strictly neutral role in channeling communication between two states that lack other channels of communication. 51 For example, Pakistan secretly passed messages between China and the United States before the breakthrough in U.S.-Chinese relations in 1971. Such a role is sometimes referred to as offering the media- tor’s good offi ces to a negotiating process. In facilitating communication, a mediator listens to each side’s ideas and presents them in a way the other side can hear. The mediator works to change each side’s view of diffi cult issues. In these roles, the mediator is like the translator between the two sides, or a therapist helping them work out psychological prob- lems in their relationship. 52 Travel and discussion by private individuals and groups can serve as citizen diplomacy, to ease tensions as well. 53

If both sides agree in advance to abide by a solution devised by a mediator, the process is called arbitration. In that case, both sides present their arguments to the arbitrator, who decides on a “fair” solution. For example, when Serbian and Bosnian negotiators could not agree on who should get the city of Brcko, they turned the issue over to arbitration rather than hold up the entire 1995 Dayton Agreement. Arbitration often uses a panel of three people, one chosen by each side unilaterally and a third on whom both sides agree.

Confl icting parties (and mediators) can also use confi dence-building measures to gradu- ally increase trust. By contrast, linkage lumps together diverse issues so that compromises on one can be traded off against another in a grand deal. This was the case, for instance, in the Yalta negotiations of 1945 among the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union. On the table simultaneously were such matters as the terms of occupation of Germany, the Soviet presence in Eastern Europe, the strategy for defeating Japan, and the creation of the United Nations.

Peace studies scholars argue that war is not just a natural expression of power, but one closely tied to militarism in (some) cultures. 54 Militarism is the glorifi cation of war, mili- tary force, and violence through TV, fi lms, books, political speeches, toys, games, sports, and other such avenues. Militarism also refers to the structuring of society around war— for example, the dominant role of a military-industrial complex in a national economy, or the dominance of national security issues in domestic politics. Militarism may underlie the propensity of political leaders to use military force. Historically, militarism has had a profound infl uence on the evolution of societies. War has often been glorifi ed as a “manly” enterprise that ennobles the human spirit (especially before World War I, which changed that perspective). Not only evil acts but also exemplary acts of humanity are brought forth by war—sacrifi ce, honor, courage, altruism on behalf of loved ones, and bonding with a community larger than oneself.

50 Child, Jack. The Central American Peace Process, 1983–1991: Sheathing Swords, Building Confi dence. Rienner, 1992. 51 Stein, Janice Gross, ed. Getting to the Table: The Processes of International Prenegotiation. Johns Hopkins, 1989. 52 Crocker, Chester A., Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall. Taming Intractable Confl icts: Mediation in the Hardest Cases. U.S. Institute of Peace, 2004. Kremenyuk, V. A., ed. International Negotiation: Analysis, Approaches, Issues. 2nd ed. Jossey-Bass, 2002. 53 Agha, Hussein, Shai Feldman, Ahmad Khalidi, and Ze’ev Schiff. Track II Diplomacy: Lessons from the Middle East. MIT, 2003. 54 Bacevich, Andrew J. The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War. Oxford, 2005. Grossman, Dave. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. Little, Brown, 1995.

108 Chapter 3 Liberal and Social Theories

Examples of less milita- rized cultures show that real- ism’s emphasis on military force is not universal or neces- sary. Costa Rica has had no army for 50 years (just lightly armed forces), even during the 1980s when wars occurred in neighboring Nicaragua and Panama. Japanese culture since World War II has developed strong norms against war and violence.

Anthropologists have tried to connect the domestic char- acteristics of hunter-gatherer societies with their external propensity to engage in war- fare. Some evidence shows that war occurs more frequently in societies with internal (espe- cially gender) inequalities, with harsh child-rearing prac- tices, and with fathers who are absent from child rearing. By contrast, relatively peaceful societies are more likely to have open decision-making processes, relative gender equality, and permissive and affectionate child rearing. 55

But all these societal attributes could as well be effects of war as causes. And because all kinds of societies seem to have the potential for warfare under some conditions (see Chapter 5 ) , distinctions such as “war- like” are only relative.

Just as war is seen in peace studies as a pervasive aspect of society as a whole, so can peace be reconceptualized in a broader way. 56 Because realism assumes the normalcy of military confl icts, it recognizes only a negative kind of peace—the temporary absence of war. By contrast, positive peace refers to a peace that resolves the underlying reasons for war—peace that is not just a cease-fi re but a transformation of relationships. Under positive peace, not only do state armies stop fi ghting each other, they stop arming, stop forming death squads against internal protest, and reverse the economic exploitation and political oppression that scholars in peace studies believe are responsible for social con- fl icts that lead to war.

SHADOW OF WAR

Militarism in a culture, or the lack thereof, can infl uence foreign policy. In societies at war, children’s psychological trauma contributes to intergroup confl icts decades later. Generations of Palestinians have grown up in a society affected by violent confl ict. This Palestinian girl, walking between Israeli troops and Palestinian stone-throwers in the West Bank in 2010, has lived around violent confl ict her whole life, as have her parents and grandparents.

55 Ross, Marc Howard. A Cross-Cultural Theory of Political Confl ict and Violence. Political Psychology 7, 1986: 427–69. Caprioli, Mary. Primed for Violence: The Role of Gender Inequality in Predicting International Confl ict. International Studies Quarterly 49 (2), 2005: 161–78. 56 Lipschutz, Ronnie D., and Mary Ann Tétreault. Global Politics as If People Mattered. 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2009. Elias, Robert, and Jennifer Turpin, eds. Rethinking Peace. Rienner, 1994.

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Proponents of this approach see broad social and economic issues—assumed by realists to be relatively unimportant—as inextricably linked with positive peace. Some scholars defi ne poverty, hunger, and oppression as forms of violence—which they call structural violence because it is caused by the structure of social relations rather than by direct actions such as shooting people. Structural violence in this defi - nition kills and harms many more people each year than do war and other forms of direct political violence. Positive peace is usually defi ned to include the elimination of structural violence.

Advocates of positive peace also criticize militaristic culture. The “social construc- tion of war”—a complex system of rules and relations that ultimately supports the exist- ence of war—touches our lives in many ways: from children’s war toys to patriotic rituals in schools; from teenagers’ gender roles to military training for young men; from the taxes we pay to the sports we play. The positive peace approach seeks to change the whole sys- tem, not just one piece of it.

Positive peace encompasses a variety of approaches to social change. These include alternative mechanisms for confl ict resolution to take the place of war; popular pres- sure on governments through peace movements and political activism; the strengthen- ing of norms against the use of violence (including the philosophy of nonviolence); the development of international or global identity transcending national, ethnic, and religious divisions; and egalitarian relations within societies in the economic, social, and political realms (including changes in gen- der roles).

The creation of a world government has long been debated by scholars and pursued by activists. 57 Some scholars believe progress is being made (through the UN) toward the eventual emergence of a world government. Others think the idea is impractical or even undesirable (merely adding another layer of centralized control, when peace demands decentralization and freedom).

Scholars in peace studies also study how to achieve the conditions for positive peace. Most peace studies scholars share a skepticism that state leaders left to themselves would ever achieve positive peace. Rather, they believe the practice of IR will change only as a result of pressures from individuals and groups. The most commonly studied method of exerting such pressure is through peace movements — people taking to the streets in protest against war and militarism. 58 As U.S. president

57 Pojman, Louis P. Terrorism, Human Rights, and the Case for World Government. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2006. Mandelbaum, Michael. The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World’s Government in the 21st Century. Public Affairs, 2006. 58 Breyman, Steve. Why Movements Matter: The West German Peace Movement and U.S. Arms Control Policy. SUNY, 2001. Lynch, Cecelia. Beyond Appeasement: Interpreting Interwar Peace Movements in World Politics. Cornell, 1999. Carter, April. Peace Movements: International Protest and World Politics Since 1945. Longman, 1992.

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

Peace demonstrators play a role in many conflicts. Here, demonstra- tors respond to an outbreak of violence in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2013.

110 Chapter 3 Liberal and Social Theories

Dwight Eisenhower once said, “People want peace so much that one of these days govern- ments had better get out of their way and let them have it.” 59

The philosophy of nonviolence is based on a unilateral commitment to refrain from using any violent forms of leverage in bargaining. No state today follows such a strategy, but substate actors do. 60 Mahatma Gandhi, who led India’s struggle for independence from the British Empire before 1948, emphasized that nonviolence must be active in seeking to prevent violence, to resolve confl icts without violence, and especially to stand up against injustice enforced violently. Gandhi organized Indians to resist the British colonial occupation without resorting to violence, even when British troops shot down unarmed Indian protesters.

Proponents of nonviolence emphasize the practical side of nonviolence in addition to its morality. As a tool of the powerless standing up against injustices by the powerful, nonviolence is often the most cost-effective approach—because the costs of violent resist- ance would be prohibitive. 61 In the United States, the philosophy of nonviolence spread widely in the 1960s in the civil rights movement, especially through the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. Protesters in the Arab Spring movements in 2011 followed Dr. King’s example as well as specifi c strategies recommended by an American, Gene Sharp, whose ideas were taught to young Arab activists at earlier workshops in Europe. These nonvio- lent approaches worked spectacularly in Tunisia and Egypt, ambiguously in Yemen, were swept aside by a violent rebellion in Libya, and gave way to a protracted civil war in Syria that claimed 60,000 lives in 2011–2012.

The dilemma of nonviolence is how to respond to violence. 62 Gandhi believed that there is always a third alternative to passivity or response in kind. Nonviolence does not always succeed when faced with violence, but then neither does violent response. How- ever, political leaders may believe they have done their duty if they respond violently without success, but not if they respond nonviolently without success.

Gender Theories Scholarship on gender has cut a broad swath across academic disciplines, from literature to psychology to history. In recent years, it has made inroads in international relations, once considered one of the fi elds most resistant to gendered arguments. 63

Why Gender Matters Gender scholarship encompasses a variety of strands of work, but all have in common the insight that gender matters in understanding how IR works—especially in issues relating to

59 Eisenhower, Dwight D. Ike’s Letters to a Friend, 1941–1958. Edited by Robert Griffi th. Kansas, 1984. 60 Miller, Richard B. Interpretations of Confl ict: Ethics, Pacifi sm, and the Just-War Tradition. Chicago, 1991. 61 Ackerman, Peter, and Jack DuVall. A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Confl ict. St. Martin’s, 2001. Wehr, Paul, Heidi Burgess, and Guy Burgess, eds. Justice without Violence. Rienner, 1994. 62 Sharp, Gene. Civilian-Based Defense: A Post-Military Weapons System. Princeton, 1990. 63 Peterson, V. Spike, and Anne Sisson Runyan. Global Gender Issues. 2nd ed. Westview, 1999. Tickner, J. Ann. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post–Cold War Era. Columbia, 2001. Meyer, Mary K., and Elisabeth Prügl, eds. Gender Politics in Global Governance. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 1999. Steans, Jill. Gender and International Relations: An Introduction. Rutgers, 1998. Whitworth, Sandra. Feminism and Interna- tional Relations. St. Martin’s, 1994. Tickner, J. Ann. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security. Columbia, 1992.

Gender Theories 111

war and international security. Feminist scholarship in various disciplines seeks to uncover hidden assump- tions about gender in how we study a subject. What scholars traditionally claim to be universal often turns out to be true only of males. Some feminist IR scholars argue that the core assumptions of realism—especially of anarchy and sovereignty—refl ect the ways in which males tend to interact and to see the world. In this view, the realist approach simply assumes male partici- pants when discussing foreign policy decision making, state sovereignty, or the use of military force.

This critique is somewhat complex. Because the vast majority of heads of state, diplomats, and soldiers are male, it may be realistic to study them as males. What the feminist critics then ask is that scholars explicitly recognize the gendered nature of their sub- ject (rather than implicitly assuming all actors are male). In this view, our understanding of male actors in IR can be increased by considering how their gen- der identity affects their views and decision processes. And females also infl uence IR (more often through nonstate channels than males do)—infl uences often ignored by realism. Some feel that women scholars tend to be more interested in these roles and effects than are their male colleagues, who largely ignore gender topics. One list of “fi fty key thinkers” in IR includes four women, three of whom it lists as gender scholars, while none of the 46 males are listed as gender scholars. 64 And when a survey in 2005 listed the 25 most infl uential IR scholars, all 25 were male. 65

Beyond revealing the hidden assumptions about gender in a fi eld of scholarship, fem- inist scholars often challenge traditional concepts of gender as well. In IR, these traditional concepts revolve around the assumptions that males fi ght wars and run states, whereas females are basically irrelevant to IR. Such gender roles are based in the broader construc- tion of masculinity as suitable to public and political spaces, whereas femininity is associ- ated with the sphere of the private and domestic.

Like realists (see p. 43 ) , gender theorists follow a long line of tradition. 66 Not long before Thucydides, the ancient Greek woman poet Sappho wrote love poems to women on the island of Lesbos. Just before Machiavelli, the Italian-born writer Christine de Pisan praised women’s abilities to make peace. A century after Hobbes, Mary Wollstonecraft in Britain argued for equal rights for women. And a century before Morgenthau founded American realism, the American Susan B. Anthony worked tirelessly for pacifi sm, aboli- tionism, and suffragism.

Beyond a basic agreement that gender is important, there is no such thing as “the feminist approach” to IR but several such approaches— strands of scholarship and theory. Although they are interwoven (all paying attention to gender and to the status of women),

A GUY THING

Feminists from various theoretical traditions agree that the gen- der makeup of international summits and national governments matters. Here, China’s old (left) and new (right) ruling group mark the transition of power, 2012.

64 Griffi ths, Martin. Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations. Routledge, 1999. 65 Peterson, Susan, Michael J. Tierney, and Daniel Maliniak. Inside the Ivory Tower. Foreign Policy 151, Nov./Dec. 2005: 58–64. 66 Thanks to Francine D’Amico for these comparisons.

112 Chapter 3 Liberal and Social Theories

they often run in different directions. On some core issues, the different strands of femi- nism have confl icting views, creating interesting debates within feminism.

One strand, difference feminism , focuses on valorizing the feminine—that is, valu- ing the unique contributions of women as women. Difference feminists do not think women do all things as well as men or vice versa. Because of their greater experience with nurturing and human relations, women are seen as potentially more effective than men (on average) in confl ict resolution as well as in group decision making. Difference femi- nists believe there are real differences between the genders that are not just social con- structions and cultural indoctrination (although these contribute to gender roles, too). Some difference feminists believe there is a core biological essence to being male or female (sometimes called essentialism ), but most think women’s difference is more culturally than biologically determined. In either case, feminine perspectives create a standpoint from which to observe, analyze, and criticize the traditional perspectives on IR. 67 Another strand, liberal feminism , rejects these claims as being based on stereotyped gender roles. Liberal feminists see the “essential” differences in men’s and women’s abilities or perspec- tives as trivial or nonexistent—men and women are equal. They deplore the exclusion of women from positions of power in IR but do not believe that including women would change the nature of the international system. Liberal feminists seek to include women more often as subjects of study—such as women state leaders, women soldiers, and other women operating outside the traditional gender roles in IR.

A third approach combines feminism with postmodernism, discussed later in this chapter. Postmodern feminism tends to reject the assumptions about gender made by both difference and liberal feminists. Where difference feminists consider gender differ- ences important and fi xed, and liberal feminists consider those differences trivial, post- modern feminists fi nd them important but arbitrary and fl exible.

The Masculinity of Realism Difference feminism provides a perspective from which to reexamine the core assump- tions of realism—especially the assumption of autonomy, from which fl ow the key real- ist concepts of sovereignty and anarchy. To realists, the international system consists of autonomous actors (states) that control their own territory and have no right to infringe on another’s territory. Some difference feminists have argued that realism emphasizes autonomy and separation because men fi nd separation easier to deal with than interconnection.

This view rests on a psychological theory that boys and girls grow up from a young age with different views of separateness and connection. 68 In this theory, because a child’s primary caretaker is almost always female in the early years, girls form their gender iden- tity around the perception of similarity with their caretaker (and by extension the environ- ment in which they live), but boys perceive their difference from the caretaker. From this experience, boys develop social relations based on individual autonomy, but girls’ relations are based on connection. As a result, women are held to be more likely than men to fear abandonment, whereas men are more likely to fear intimacy.

In moral reasoning, according to this theory, boys tend to apply abstract rules and stress individual rights, but girls pay more attention to the concrete contexts of different situations and to the responsibility of group members for each other. In playing games,

67 Keohane, Robert O. International Relations Theory: Contributions of a Feminist Standpoint. Millennium 18 (2), 1989: 245–53. 68 Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Harvard, 1982. Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering. California, 1978.

Gender Theories 113

boys resolve disputes through arguments about the rules and then keep playing, but girls are more likely to abandon a game rather than argue over the rules and risk the social cohesion of their group. In social relations, boys form and dissolve friendships more readily than girls, who are more likely to stick loyally with friends. (The empirical evidence in psychological research for these theorized gender differences is mixed at best.)

Realism, of course, rests on the concept of states as separate, autonomous actors that make and break alliances freely while pursu- ing their own interests (but not interfering in each other’s internal affairs). Such a conception of autonomy parallels the masculine psyche just described. Thus, some feminist scholars fi nd in realism a hidden assumption of masculinity. Furthermore, the sharp distinction that realists draw between inter- national politics (anarchic) and domestic politics (ordered) paral- lels the distinction in gender roles between the public (masculine) and private (feminine) spheres. Thus, realism constructs IR as a man’s world.

By contrast, an international system based on feminine principles might give greater importance to the interdependence of states than to their autonomy, stressing the respon- sibility of people to care for each other with less regard for states and borders. In the strug- gle between the principles of human rights and of sovereignty (noninterference in internal affairs), human rights would receive priority. In the choice of forms of leverage when con- fl icts arise between states, violence might be less prevalent.

The realist preoccupation with the interstate level of analysis presumes that the logic of war itself is autonomous and can be separated from other social relationships such as eco- nomics, domestic politics, sexism, and racism. Difference feminism, however, reveals the connections of these phenomena with war. It suggests new avenues for understanding war at the domestic and individual levels of analysis—underlying causes that realists largely ignore.

From this difference-feminist perspective, neoliberalism has gone backward from tra- ditional liberalism, by accepting the realist assumption of separate unitary states as the important actors and downplaying substate and transnational actors including women. 69

Neoliberalism’s conception of cooperation as rule-based interactions among autonomous actors also refl ects masculinist assumptions.

ROLE REVERSAL

Feminist scholars emphasize the importance of gender roles in IR, especially the tra- ditional distinction between males in the political-military roles and females in the domestic-family roles. Changing this division could change IR, they think. Here, top U.S. offi cials attend the UN General Assembly, 2010.

69 Moghadam, Valentine M. Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks. Johns Hopkins, 2005.

114 Chapter 3 Liberal and Social Theories

Gender in War and Peace In addition to its emphasis on autonomy and anarchy, realism stresses military force as the key form of leverage in IR. Here, too, many difference feminists see in realism a hidden assumption of masculinity. They see war as not only a male occupation, but also the quin- tessentially male occupation. In this view, men are inherently the more warlike gender, and women the more peaceful. 70 Thus, although realism may accurately portray the impor- tance of war and military force in IR as we now know it, this merely refl ects the male domination of the international sphere to date—not a necessary, eternal, or inescapable logic of relations among states. 71

Difference feminists fi nd much evidence to support the idea of war as a masculine pursuit. Anthropologists have found that in all known cultures, males are the primary (and usually the only) combatants in warfare, despite the enormous diversity of those cultures in so many other ways. (Of course, voting and political leadership were also male domains for most of history, yet feminist scholars would hardly call those activities essen- tially masculine.)

One supposed link between war and masculinity is the male sex hormone testosterone (along with related hormones), which some biologists have connected with aggressive behavior in animals. However, testosterone does not cause aggression. Rather, social inter- actions “feed back” to affect testosterone levels (winners’ testosterone levels rise while los- ers’ levels fall). Thus, testosterone is a link in a complex system of relationships between the organism and the social environment. Complex behaviors such as aggression and war cannot be said to be biologically driven or predetermined, because humanity’s most striking biological capability is fl exibility. Even some feminist scholars who see gender differences as strictly cultural, and not biological at all, view war as a masculine construction. 72

Both biologically and anthropologically, no fi rm evidence connects women’s caregiv- ing functions (pregnancy and nursing) with any particular kinds of behavior such as rec- onciliation or nonviolence—although females have been studied less than males. The role of women varies considerably from one society to another. Although they rarely take part in combat, women sometimes provide logistical support to male warriors and some- times help drive the men into a war frenzy by dancing, shaming nonparticipating males, and other activities supportive of war. Yet in other cultures, women restrain the men from war or play special roles as mediators in bringing wars to an end.

The idea of women as peacemakers has a long history. In ancient Athens, the (male) playwright Aristophanes speculated about how women might end the unpopular Pelopon- nesian War with Sparta, then in progress. (His play Lysistrata was read in 1,000 locations in 56 countries on March 3, 2003, to protest the coming Iraq War.) In the play, a young woman named Lysistrata organizes the Athenian and Spartan women to withhold sex from the men until the latter stop the war (the women also make off with the war treasury). In short order, the men come to their senses and make peace. 73 Women have formed their own organizations to work for peace on many occasions. In 1852, Sisterly Voices was published as

70 Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas. Hogarth, 1977 [1938]. Pierson, Ruth Roach. Women and Peace: Theoretical, Historical and Practical Perspectives. Croom Helm, 1987. Burguieres, M. K. Feminist Approaches to Peace: Another Step for Peace Studies. Millennium 19 (1), 1990: 1–18. Brock-Utne, Birgit. Educating for Peace: A Feminist Perspective. Pergamon, 1985. Reardon, Betty. Sexism and the War System. Teachers College, 1985. 71 Goldstein, Joshua S. War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa. Cambridge, 2001. Lorentzen, Lois Ann, and Jennifer Turpin, eds. The Women and War Reader. New York University, 1998. Elshtain, Jean Bethke, and Sheila Tobias, eds. Women, Militarism, and War: Essays in History, Politics, and Social Theory. University Press of America, 1989. 72 Hartsock, Nancy C. M. Masculinity, Heroism, and the Making of War. In Harris, Adrienne, and Ynestra King, eds. Rocking the Ship of State: Toward a Feminist Peace Politics. Westview, 1989, pp. 133 – 52 . 73 Aristophanes. Lysistrata. Edited by Jeffrey Henderson. Oxford, 1987.

Gender Theories 115

a newsletter for women’s peace societies. Bertha von Suttner in 1892 persuaded Alfred Nobel to create the Nobel Peace Prize (which Suttner won in 1905). Dur- ing World War I, in 1915, Jane Addams and other feminists convened an international women’s peace conference at The Hague. They founded the Wom- en’s Peace Party (now called the Women’s Interna- tional League for Peace and Freedom). 74 After World War I, the suffrage movement won the right for women to vote. Difference feminists thought that women would vote for peace and against war, chang- ing the nature of foreign policy, but women generally voted as their husbands did. Similarly, decades later when women participated in liberation struggles against colonialism in the global South, some femi- nists thought such participation would change foreign policies in the newly independent countries, but in general such changes did not materialize (partly because women were often pushed aside from political power after the revolution).

Nonetheless, U.S. public opinion on foreign pol- icy issues since the 1930s partially vindicates difference feminists. A gender gap in polls shows that women are about ten percentage points lower than men on aver- age in their support for military actions. This gender gap shrinks, however, when broad consensus on a mili- tary action exists, as when U.S. forces attacked terrorist supporters in Afghanistan in late 2001.

Meanwhile, feminists in recent decades have continued to organize women’s peace organizations. 75 In the 1980s, Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND) opposed the nuclear arms buildup, and women encamped for years at Britain’s Greenham Common air base. In 1995, the UN-sponsored Beijing conference on women brought together women activists from around the world, and helped deepen feminists’ engagement with global issues such as North-South inequality.

In 2000, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1325, mandating greater inclu- sion of women and attention to gender in UN peacekeeping and reconstruction. But in several locations, UN peacekeepers participated in local prostitution, rape, and even sex traffi cking. In 2004, Secretary-General Annan called “shameful” the reported behavior of UN troops from several countries serving in Democratic Congo. Investigators there found hundreds of cases of sexual crimes by UN personnel.

As a result of Resolution 1325, “gender advisors” have begun to accompany interna- tional peacekeeping and relief operations to provide practical advice on more effective operations in the context of local cultures’ gender relations. For example, the head of a group of Swedish men sent to build a bridge in Sri Lanka initially said, “Our task is to build a bridge, we don’t need to worry about gender issues.” When asked how it would be

74 Degen, Marie Louise. The History of the Woman’s Peace Party. Burt Franklin Reprints, 1974 [1939]. 75 Swerdlow, Amy. Pure Milk, Not Poison: Women Strike for Peace and the Test Ban Treaty of 1963. In Harris and King, eds. Rocking the Ship of State (see footnote 72 in this chapter), pp. 225 – 37 . Stephenson, Carolyn M. Feminism, Pacifi sm, Nationalism, and the United Nations Decade for Women. In Stiehm, Judith, ed. Women and Men’s Wars. Oxford: Pergamon, 1983, pp. 341 – 48 . Kirk, Gwyn. Our Greenham Common: Feminism and Nonviolence. In Harris and King, eds. Rocking the Ship of State (see footnote 72 in this chapter), pp. 115 – 30 .

WOMAN POWER

Difference feminists see women as inherently less warlike than men and more adept at making peace because of their potential and actual experiences as mothers. In this view, women play dis- tinct roles in wartime and also have distinct needs. During the long civil war in Liberia in the 1990s, women organized mass protests for peace and insisted the male faction leaders end the war. Their leader, Leymah Gbowee, shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011.

116 Chapter 3 Liberal and Social Theories

used, he replied, “By car mostly,” but when asked, “The women too?” he said, “No, they’ll probably walk.” As a result of this gender perspective, the bridge was redesigned to include a pedestrian walkway. 76

Through these various actions, difference feminists began developing a feminist practice of international relations that could provide an alternative to the masculine practice of real- ism. The motto of the UN Educational, Scientifi c, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is, “Since war begins in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the foundations for peace should be sought.” For difference feminists, war does indeed begin in the minds of men, but the foundations for peace would better be sought in the minds of women.

Women in IR Liberal feminists are skeptical of difference-feminist critiques of realism. They believe that when women are allowed to participate in IR, they play the game basically the same way men do, with similar results. They think that women can practice realism—based on autonomy, sovereignty, anarchy, territory, military force, and all the rest—just as well as men can. Liberal feminists therefore tend to reject the critique of realism as masculine. (In practice, many feminist scholars draw on both difference feminists’ and liberal feminists’ views in various proportions.) 77

Liberal feminism focuses on the integration of women into the overwhelmingly male preserves of foreign policy making and the military. In most states, these occupations are typically at least 90 percent male. For instance, in 1995, the world’s diplomatic delega- tions to the UN General Assembly were 80 percent male overall, and the heads of those delegations were 97 percent male. The U.S. military, with one of the highest proportions of women anywhere in the world or in history, is still 85 percent male. 78 For liberal femi- nists, the main effect of this gender imbalance on the nature of IR—that is, apart from effects on the status of women—is to waste talent. Liberal feminists think that women have the same capabilities as men, so the inclusion of women in traditionally male occu- pations (from state leader to foot soldier) would bring additional capable individuals into those areas. Gender equality would thus increase national capabilities by giving the state a better overall pool of diplomats, generals, soldiers, and politicians.

In support of their argument that, on average, women handle power just as men do, liberal feminists point to the many examples of women who have served in such positions. No distinctly feminine feature of their behavior in offi ce distinguishes these leaders from their male counterparts. Rather, they have been diverse in character and policy. Of course, women in traditionally male roles may have been selected (or self-selected) on the basis of their suitability to such roles: they may not act the way “average” women would act. Still, they do show that individuals cannot be judged accurately using group characteristics alone.

Female state leaders do not appear to be any more peaceful, or any less committed to state sovereignty and territorial integrity, than are male leaders (see Table 3.1 ). Some have even suggested that women in power tend to be more warlike to compensate for being females in traditionally male roles. Overall, women state leaders, like men, seem capable of leading in war or in peace as circumstances demand. 79

76 Genderforce: Sweden. From Words to Action. Booklet, circa 2006. 77 Kelly, Rita Mae, et al., eds. Gender, Globalization, and Democratization. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2001. 78 Seager, Joni. The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World. Penguin, 2003. 79 D’Amico, Francine, and Peter R. Beckman, eds. Women in World Politics: An Introduction. Bergin & Garvey, 1995. Nelson, Barbara J., and Najma Chowdhury, eds. Women and Politics Worldwide. Yale, 1994. Genovese, Michael A., ed. Women as National Leaders: The Political Performance of Women as Heads of Government. Sage, 1993. McGlen, Nancy E., and Meredith Reid Sarkees. Women in Foreign Policy: The Insiders. Routledge, 1993.

Gender Theories 117

In the U.S. Congress, it is hard to compare men’s and women’s voting records on foreign policy issues because there have been so few women. The U.S. Senate, which approves treaties and foreign policy appointments, was 98–99 percent male until 1992 (but dropped to 80 percent male in 2013). Women never chaired the key foreign policy committees (Armed Services and Foreign Relations/International Relations) in the Sen- ate or House until 2011—although Rep. Nancy Pelosi was the fi rst woman Speaker of the House, third in line to the presidency, in 2007–2010.

Globally, the number of women serving in legislatures is increasing. A 2008 UN report found that women comprised over 18 percent of members of parliaments across the world, up from 7 percent in 1995. Some nations set aside a certain number of seats for females in parlia- ment. 80 Yet, female candidates often capture more seats than are set aside. In Rwanda, for example, women make up over 50 percent of the lower house of parliament, even though the law requires only 30 percent female representation.

Liberal feminists also believe that women soldiers, like women politicians, have a range of skills and abilities comparable to men’s. Again, the main effect of including more

80 Caul, Miki. Political Parties and the Adoption of Candidate Gender Quotas: A Cross-National Analysis. Journal of Politics 63 (4), 2003: 1214–29. Tripp, Aili M., and Alice Kang. The Global Impact of Quotas. Comparative Political Studies 41 (3), 2008: 338–61.

Leader Country Record in Office Time Frame

Sheikh Hasina Wajed Bangladesh Attempting to consolidate democratic transition 2008–

Rosa Otunbayeya Kyrgyz Republic First woman president of former communist Central Asian state. Calmed ethnic tensions.

2010–2011

Park Geun-hye S. Korea Inherits conflict with N. Korea 2013– Julia Gillard Australia Arranged to host U.S. Marine base 2010– Yingluck Shinawatra Thailand Tensions with military; secessionist war 2011–

Angela Merkel Germany Only current woman leader of a great power; put limits on German troops with NATO forces in Afghanistan

2005–

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf Liberia Struggling to keep country calm after civil war 2006– Margaret Thatcher Britain First woman to lead a great power in a century;

went to war to recover Falkland Islands from Argentina

1982

Indira Gandhi India Led war against Pakistan 1971 Golda Meir Israel Led war against Egypt and Syria 1973 Benazir Bhutto Pakistan Struggled to control own military; assassinated 2007 late 1980s Corazon Aquino Philippines Struggled to control own military late 1980s Tansu Çiller Turkey Led a harsh war to suppress Kurdish rebels mid-1990s Violetta Chamorro Nicaragua Kept the peace between factions after civil war 1980s Chandrika Kumaratunga Sri Lanka Tried to make peace with separatists, but returned to war 1990s and since Megawati Sukarnoputri Indonesia Struggled to keep country calm; lost

re-election bid 2000s

Note: Other states, such as Finland, Norway, New Zealand, Denmark, Brazil, Thailand, and Iceland, have had women leaders when war and peace were not major political issues in those countries.

TABLE 3.1 Notable Women State Leaders of Recent Decades

Source: D’Amico, Francine, and Peter R. Beckman, eds. Women in World Politics: An Introduction. Bergin & Garvey, 1995. Nelson, Barbara J., and Najma Chowdhury, eds. Women and Politics Worldwide. Yale, 1994. Genovese, Michael A., ed. Women as National Leaders: The Political Performance of Women as Heads of Government. Sage, 1993. McGlen, Nancy E., and Meredith Reid Sarkees. Women in Foreign Policy: The Insiders. Routledge, 1993.

118 Chapter 3 Liberal and Social Theories

women would be to improve the overall quality of military forces. 81

About 200,000 women soldiers serve in the U.S. military (15 percent of the total) and nearly 2 million women are veterans. Women perform well in a variety of military roles, including logistical and medical support, train- ing, and command. Women have also had success in other countries that have allowed them into the military (or, in a few cases, drafted them).

Although women have served with distinction in military forces, they have been excluded from combat roles in most of those forces. In some coun- tries, military women are limited to tra- ditional female roles such as nurses and typists. Even when women may hold nontraditional positions such as mechanics and pilots (as in the United States), most women remain in the tra- ditional roles. And certain jobs still remain off-limits; for instance, women cannot serve in U.S. combat infantry units. (U.S. women have, however, played vital roles in combat support in Iraq and Afghanistan.) Thus relatively few cases exist to judge women’s abili- ties in combat.

Those cases include historical examples of individual women who served in combat (sometimes dis- guised as men, sometimes not). In

the 15th century, Joan of Arc rallied French soldiers to defeat England, turning the tide of the Hundred Years’ War. (The English burned her at the stake as a witch after capturing her.) Women have often participated in combat in rebel forces fi ghting guerrilla wars in Vietnam, Nicaragua, and elsewhere, as well as in terrorist or paramilitary units in coun- tries such as Peru, Germany, Italy, and Palestine. Women in Eritrea’s guerrilla forces became part of that country’s regular army after independence and then served in front- line combat units during Eritrea and Ethiopia’s trench warfare in the late 1990s.

In recent years, U.S. women soldiers have found themselves in combat (today’s mobile tactics and fl uid front lines make it hard to separate combat from support roles). During the 1991 Gulf War, tens of thousands of U.S. women served, 13 were killed, and 2 were captured as prisoners of war. In the late 1990s, women began serving on some U.S.

81 De Pauw, Linda Grant. Battle Cries and Lullabies: Women in War from Prehistory to the Present. Oklahoma, 1998. Francke, Linda Bird. Ground Zero: The Gender Wars in the Military. Simon & Schuster, 1997. Stiehm, Judith Hicks, ed. It’s Our Military, Too! Temple, 1996. Fraser, Antonia. The Warrior Queens. Knopf, 1989. Addis, Elisabetta, Valerie E. Russo, and Lorenza Ebesta, eds. Women Soldiers: Images and Realities. St. Martin’s, 1994. Isaksson, Eva, ed. Women and the Military System. St. Martin’s, 1988.

COMBAT HERO

Women soldiers have performed as well as men in military tasks, as predicted by liberal feminists. But in state armies, women are barred from virtually all infantry combat units worldwide. Guerrilla forces more often include women, and female U.S. military police in Iraq often participate in fi ghting. Here, in 2005, a sergeant from the Kentucky National Guard receives the silver star for heroism in combat after fi ghting off an ambush in Iraq.

Gender Theories 119

combat ships and airplanes, but not in ground combat units. In the 2003 Iraq War, women fl ew all types of airplanes and helicopters, and one woman was in the fi rst group of U.S. POWs captured early in the war. During the subsequent years of war in Iraq, U.S. women military police have acquitted themselves well in numerous fi refi ghts. All these cases sug- gest that (at least some) women are able to hold their own in combat.

The main reason that military forces exclude women from combat seems to be fear about what effect their presence might have on the male soldiers, whose discipline and loyalty have traditionally been thought to depend on male bonding and single-minded focus. Liberal feminists reject such arguments and contend that group bonding in military units does not depend on gender segregation. (After all, similar rationales were once given for racial segregation in U.S. military forces.) 82 The effect of war on noncombatant women has also received growing attention. 83 Attacks on women in Algeria, Rwanda, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Democratic Congo, and Sudan pointed to a possible new trend toward women as military targets. Systematic rape was used as a terror tactic in Bosnia and Rwanda, and the Japanese army in World War II operated an international network of sex slaves known as “comfort women.” Rape has long been treated as a normal if regrettable by- product of war, but recently certain instances of rape were declared war crimes (see p. 275 ) .

In sum, liberal feminists reject the argument that women bring uniquely feminine assets or liabilities to foreign and military affairs. They do not critique realism as essen- tially masculine in nature but do criticize state practices that exclude women from par- ticipation in international politics and war.

Difference Feminism versus Liberal Feminism? The arguments of difference feminists and liberal feminists may seem totally at odds. Differ- ence feminists argue that realism refl ects a masculine perception of social relations, whereas liberal feminists think that women can be just as realist as men. Liberal feminists believe that female participation in foreign policy and the military will enhance state capabilities, but dif- ference feminists think women’s unique abilities can be put to better use in transforming (fem- inizing) the entire system of international relations rather than in trying to play men’s games.

The evidence in favor of both positions can be reconciled to some extent by bearing in mind that the character and ability of an individual are not the same as that of his or her group. Rather, the qualities of individuals follow a bell curve distribution, with many people clustered in the middle and fewer people very high or low on a given capability.

Gender differences posited by difference feminists mean that one bell curve is shifted from the other, even though the two may still overlap quite a bit (see Figure 3.3 ). To take a simple example, a few women are physically larger than almost all men, and a few men are smaller than almost all women. But on average, men are somewhat larger than women. On various dimensions of capability, the women’s curve is above or below the men’s on average, but there is still much overlap.

Liberal feminist arguments emphasize the overlap of the two bell curves. They say that individual women— most women on most relevant dimensions—are well within the male curve and thus can perform equally with the men. Indeed, women in nontraditional gender roles may well perform better than their male counterparts, because presumably women who self-select into such roles (such as joining the military) are near the high end of the

82 Katzenstein, Mary Fainsod, and Judith Reppy, eds. Beyond Zero Tolerance: Discrimination in Military Culture. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 1999. 83 Giles, Wenona, and Jennifer Hyndman, eds. Sites of Violence: Gender and Confl ict Zones. California, 2004. Carpenter, R. Charli. Innocent Women and Children: Gender, Norms, and the Protection of Civilians. Ashgate, 2006. Enloe, Cynthia. Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives. California, 2000.

120 Chapter 3 Liberal and Social Theories

female bell curve, whereas the men are closer to the middle of the male curve (because more of them join). Similarly, women who become state leaders are presumably more adept at foreign policy making than most women (or men), because political processes tend to select women at the high end of the curve in terms of their affi nity for realism.

Difference feminists are more interested in the shift in the two bell curves, not their overlap. On average, in this perspective, women tend to see international relations in a somewhat different way than men do. So although individuals selected to participate in foreign policy and the military may not differ from their male counterparts, women as a group differ. Women voters display different concerns regarding IR than men (as shown by the gender gap in opinion polls and voting patterns).

By this logic, then, profound differences in IR—and a shift away from the utility of realism in explaining state behavior—would occur only if many women participated in key foreign policy positions. That is, a few women politicians or women soldiers do not change the masculine foundations of IR. Women foreign policy makers today are surrounded by males (advisors, military offi cers, political leaders, and foreign state leaders). But a world in which most politicians or soldiers were female might be a different story. Then, instead of the selection of women for their ability to fi t into men’s games, the rules of the game might themselves change to refl ect the fact that “average” women would be the main actors in the traditionally important IR roles. Of course, these theories of difference feminists have never been tested, because women have never attained predominance in foreign pol- icy making in any country—much less in the international system as a whole.

In addition to the liberal and difference strands of feminism, the third strand, post- modern feminism, is connected with the rise of postmodernism in the social sciences.

Postmodern Feminism One line of criticism directed at realism combines feminism and postmodernism. 84 Post- modern feminism seeks to deconstruct realism with the specifi c aim of uncovering the

Nu m

be r o

f I nd

iv id

ua ls WomenMen

Capability on some dimension

Average woman

Average man

FIGURE 3.3 Overlapping Bell Curves

Bell curves show that individuals differ in capabilities such as physical strength or peacemaking abil- ity. Although the genders differ on average, for most individuals (in the area of overlap) such differ- ences do not come into play. Liberal feminists emphasize the area where the curves overlap; difference feminists emphasize the overall group differences.

84 Peterson, V. Spike, ed. Gendered States: Feminist (Re)Visions of International Relations Theory. Rienner, 1992. Sylvester, Christine. Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Postmodern Era. Cambridge, 1994.

Gender Theories 121

pervasive hidden infl uences of gender in IR while showing how arbitrary the construction of gender roles is. Feminist postmodernists agree with difference feminists that realism car- ries hidden meanings about gender roles but deny that there is any fi xed inherent meaning in either male or female genders. Rather, feminist postmodernists look at the interplay of gender and power in a more open-ended way. Postmodern feminists criticize liberal femi- nists for trying merely to integrate women into traditional structures of war and foreign policy. They criticize difference feminists as well, for glorifying traditional feminine virtues.

In studying war, postmodern feminists have challenged the archetypes of the (male) “just warrior” and the (female) “beautiful soul.” They argue that women are not just pas- sive bystanders or victims in war, but active participants in a system of warfare tied to both genders. Women act not only as nurses and journalists at the “front” but as mothers, wives, and girlfriends on the “home front.” 85 These scholars believe that stories of military forces should not omit the roles of prostitutes at military bases, nor should stories of diplo- macy omit the roles of diplomats’ wives. 86

Postmodern feminists reject not only realism but also some of the alternative approaches that emphasize the protection of women and other noncombatants. Just-war doctrine (see pp. 263 – 264 ) is considered too abstract—a set of concepts and rules that does not do justice to the richness of each historical context and the varied roles of indi- vidual men and women within it. 87

Postmodern feminists have tried to deconstruct the language of realism, especially when it refl ects infl uences of gender and sex. For instance, the fi rst atomic bombs had male gender (they were named “Fat Man” and “Little Boy”); the coded telegram informing Washington, D.C., that the fi rst hydrogen bomb had worked said simply, “It’s a boy” (presumably, being born a girl would have indicated a failure). The plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (the Enola Gay ) had female gender; it was named after the pilot’s mother. Like- wise the French atom-bomb test sites in the South Pacifi c were all given women’s names. 88 Similarly, pilots have pasted pinup photos of nude women onto conventional bombs before dropping them. In all these cases, postmodern feminists would note that the feminine gen- der of vehicles, targets, or decorations amplifi es the masculinity of the weapon itself.

These efforts fi nd sex and gender throughout the subtext of realism. For example, the terms power and potency refer to both state capability and male virility. Military force depends on phallic objects—weapons designed to shoot projectiles, penetrate targets, and explode. In basic training, men chant: “This is my rifl e [holding up rifl e], this is my gun [pointing to crotch]; one’s for killing, the other’s for fun.” 89 Nuclear weapons are also repeat- edly spoken of in sexual terms, perhaps due to their great “potency.” Female models are hired to market tanks, helicopter missiles, and other “potent” weapons to male procurement offi cers at international military trade shows. 90 The phallic character of weapons has seem- ingly persisted even as technology has evolved from spears to guns to missiles. 91

85 Elshtain, Jean Bethke. Women and War. 2nd ed. Chicago, 1995. Braybon, Gail, and Penny Summerfi eld. Out of the Cage: Women’s Experiences in Two World Wars. Pandora, 1987. 86 Enloe, Cynthia. Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. California, 1989. Pettman, Jan Jindy. Worlding Women: A Feminist International Politics. Routledge, 1996. Moon, Katherine H. S. Sex among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.-Korea Relations. Columbia, 1997. 87 Elshtain, Women and War (see footnote 85 in this chapter). Ruddick, Sara. Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace. Women’s Press, 1989. 88 Cohn, Carol. Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals. Signs 12 (4), 1987: 687–718. 89 Dyer, Gwynne. War. Crown, 1985. 90 Center for Defense Information [Washington, DC]. Weapons Bazaar [slide show]. 1985. 91 Trexler, Richard C. Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas. Cornell, 1995.

122 Chapter 3 Liberal and Social Theories

All three strands of feminist theories provide explanations that often differ from both realist and liberal theories. In the case of response to aggression, feminists might call atten- tion to the importance of gender roles such as the need for state leaders to prove their man- hood by standing up to the bad guys. This is connected with the male role as protector of the orderly domestic sphere (home, family, country) against the dangerous and anarchic outside world. Since 2001, gender roles have become increasingly visible on both sides of the “war on terror,” with both women’s positions in society and men’s concepts of mascu- linity becoming contested territory between the West and armed Islamic groups. Tradi- tional theories of IR that ignore these issues may lack explanatory power as a result.

Whether states’ interests refl ect fi xed assumptions about power and well-being or are constructed by states and substate actors based on ideas and social interactions, those interests do sometimes confl ict with those of other states. Such confl icts are the subject of the next chapter.

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SUMMARY ■ The central claims of realism—regarding anarchy, state actors, rationality, and the

utility of military force—have been challenged on a variety of grounds. ■ Liberals dispute the realist notion that narrow self-interest is more rational than

mutually benefi cial cooperation. ■ Reciprocity can be an effective strategy for reaching cooperation in ongoing rela-

tionships but carries a danger of turning into runaway hostility or arms races. ■ Neoliberalism argues that even in an anarchic system of autonomous rational states,

cooperation can emerge through the building of norms, regimes, and institutions. ■ Collective goods are benefi ts received by all members of a group regardless of their

individual contribution. Shared norms and rules are important in getting members to pay for collective goods.

■ International regimes—convergent expectations of state leaders about the rules for issue areas in IR—help provide stability in the absence of a world government.

■ Hegemonic stability theory suggests that the holding of predominant power by one state lends stability to international relations and helps create regimes.

■ In a collective security arrangement, a group of states agrees to respond together to aggression by any participating state; the UN and other IGOs perform this function.

■ Democracies have historically fought as many wars as authoritarian states, but democracies have almost never fought wars against other democracies. This is called the democratic peace.

■ Constructivists reject realist assumptions about state interests, tracing those inter- ests in part to social interactions and norms.

■ Postmodern critics reject the entire framework and language of realism, with its unitary state actors. Postmodernists argue that no simple categories can capture the multiple realities experienced by participants in IR.

■ Marxists view international relations, including global North-South relations, in terms of a struggle between economic classes (especially workers and owners) that have different roles in society and different access to power.

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Chapter Review 123

■ Peace studies programs are interdisciplinary and seek to broaden the study of inter- national security to include social and economic factors ignored by realism.

■ For scholars in peace studies, militarism in many cultures contributes to states’ pro- pensity to resort to force in international bargaining.

■ Feminist scholars of IR agree that gender is important in understanding IR but diverge into several strands regarding their conception of the role of gender.

■ Difference feminists argue that men are more warlike on average than women. They believe that although individual women participants (such as state leaders) may not refl ect this difference, the participation of large numbers of women would make the international system more peaceful.

■ Liberal feminists disagree that women have substantially different capabilities or tendencies as participants in IR. They argue that women are equivalent to men in virtually all IR roles. As evidence, liberal feminists point to historical and present- day women leaders and women soldiers.

■ Postmodern feminists seek to uncover gender-related subtexts implicit in realist dis- course, including sexual themes connected with the concept of power.

KEY TERMS interdependence 87 neoliberal 88 international regime 90 collective security 92 democratic peace 95 constructivism 97 postmodernism 102 subtext 103

difference feminism 112

liberal feminism 112 postmodern

feminism 112 gender gap 115

economic classes 103 Marxism 104 confl ict resolution 106 mediation 106 militarism 107 positive peace 108 world government 109 peace movements 109

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS 1. U.S.-Canadian relations seem better explained by liberal institutionalism than by

realism. What other (one or more) interstate relationships have this quality? Show how the contrasting tenets of realism and liberal institutionalism each applies to the relationship(s).

2. Inasmuch as democracies almost never fi ght wars against each other, do existing democracies have a national security interest in seeing democratization spread to China and other authoritarian states? If so, how can that interest be reconciled with the long-standing norm of noninterference in the internal affairs of other sovereign states?

3. Can you think of a case in which a state’s actions clearly followed a constructed identity rather than objective national interests? Where did the key ideas in that identity originate and how did they come to infl uence the state’s actions?

4. Would IR operate differently if most leaders of states were women? What would the differences be? What evidence (beyond gender stereotypes) supports your answer?

5. In what ways do the explanations of IR events change if women are considered pri- mary players rather than peripheral ones? Which women, in which roles, would you consider important?

Legislative Quotas for Women: An Effective Tool for Equality?

LET’S DEBATE THE ISSUE

ARGUMENT 1

Legislative Quotas Are Important for Equality and Development

Equal representation is important for democratic government. Women make up half the population of most countries. They should thus have an equal say in the political process. A healthy democracy demands that all citizens feel invested in the political process.

Women will face discrimination and slower political acceptance without quotas. In the United States and Europe, despite having the vote, it took years for women to be represented in signifi cant numbers in legisla- tures. There is no reason to expect the developing world to be different. Quotas will speed the acceptance of women in the political world, giving them more of a say on matters of public policy.

Women’s political empowerment will help economic development. Studies have shown that the empowerment of women can accelerate economic growth in the develop- ing world (see Chapter 12 ) . Quotas can acceler- ate the pace of that empowerment. Moreover, the costs of economic reform often fall dispropor- tionately on women. Giving women more of a say in how that reform takes places is important.

Overview Many countries now use gender quotas when electing legislatures. This is especially true of new democracies in the developing world. As of 2008, 59 countries legally require women to hold some number of seats in at least one house of the national legislature, and 33 countries require women’s rep- resentation at the regional governmental level. The requirements range from a low of 2 percent of seats in Bangladesh (which also elected a woman to be prime minister in 2009), to nearly 50 percent of seats of the lower house in Rwanda.

These quotas vary not only by the number of seats reserved for women, but also by their imple- mentation. Some countries have amended their constitutions to require more equal representation. Other countries pass laws (which are easier to change at a later time than a constitution) to carve out a minimum number of legislative seats for women, while still other countries place the burden on political parties. In these latter cases, parties must nominate a certain percentage of women to run in elections. This method does not guarantee seats to women (since they could lose the election), but does guarantee an opportunity to hold a seat.

This growing phenomenon of gender quotas has often been encouraged by Western states (espe- cially Europe) and human rights organizations. Should these quotas be encouraged (or even required) by Western states that assist with democ- ratization? Do these quotas help or hurt the goal of female equality in the developing world?

Questions ■ Should developing countries be encouraged to

use gender quotas to bring more women into the political process? Does this practice violate the idea of democratic representation? Would a leg- islature made up of predominantly men also vio- late the idea of democratic representation?

■ Do you expect similar or different policies com- ing from a legislature with signifi cant female representation? Recall the views of liberal and difference feminism. What would proponents of those theories predict?

■ What might be other ways to encourage female participation in the political process aside from legislative quotas? Are such steps necessary only in countries with no history of democracy or in older, established democracies as well?

For Further Reading Irving, Helen. Gender and the Constitution: Equity

and Agency in Comparative Constitutional Design. Cambridge, 2008.

Hartmann, Heidi. Gendering Politics and Policy: Recent Developments in Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Routledge, 2006.

Tremblay, Manon. Women and Legislative Representation: Electoral Systems, Political Parties, and Sex Quotas. Palgrave, 2008.

Goetz, Anne Marie. Governing Women: Women’s Political Effectiveness in Contexts of Democratization and Governance Reform. Routledge, 2008.

ARGUMENT 2

Legislative Quotas Will Not Help Equality and Are Undemocratic

Quotas could create animosity toward women. Reserving seats for women in legislatures risks a backlash against women’s rights. Other groups (ethnic, religious, etc.) may push for quotas as well, creating a hostile politi- cal environment. The result could be political instability as various groups press their case for legally protected seats in the legislature.

Quotas are undemocratic. The ideal of democracy is to allow anyone to serve as a repre- sentative regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, or any other personal quality. By their very nature, gender-based quotas violate this idea, reserving certain seats for one group based on a personal quality irrespective of that person’s qualifi cations.

Quotas achieve a gender equality that is Western-oriented in nature. The idea of individual rights is a Western-oriented concept of human rights. Rather than encourag- ing gender quotas, other policies should be pro- moted that are more compatible with local political culture.

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127

CHAPTER OUTLINE Making Foreign Policy

Models of Decision Making The foreign policy process is a process of decision making. States take actions because people in governments— decision makers —choose those actions. 1 Decision making is a steering process in which adjustments are made as a result of feedback from the outside world. Decisions are carried out by actions taken to change the world, and then infor- mation from the world is monitored to evaluate the effects of these actions. These evaluations—along with information about other, independent changes in the environment—go into the next round of decisions (see Figure 4.1 ).

A common starting point for studying the decision-making process is the rational model . 2 In this model, decision makers set goals, evaluate their relative importance, calculate the costs and benefi ts of each possible course of action, then choose the one with the highest benefi ts and lowest costs (see Figure 4.2 ).

The choice may be complicated by uncertainty about the costs and benefi ts of vari- ous actions. In such cases, decision makers must attach probabilities to each possible outcome of an action. For example, will pressuring a rival state to give ground in peace talks work or backfi re? Some decision makers are relatively accepting of risk, whereas others are averse to risk. These factors affect the importance that decision makers place on various alternative outcomes that could result from an action.

Of course, one may believe decision makers are rational, but not accept the realist assumption that states may be treated as unitary actors. Governments are made up of individuals, who may rationally pursue their goals. Yet, the goals of different individuals involved in making a decision may diverge, as may the goals of different state agencies.

Making Foreign Policy ■ Models of Decision

Making ■ Individual Decision

Makers ■ Group Psychology ■ Crisis Management

Domestic Infl uences ■ Bureaucracies ■ Interest Groups ■ The Military-Industrial

Complex ■ Public Opinion ■ Legislatures

1 Stein, Janice Gross. Psychological Explanations of International Confl ict. In Carlsnaes, Walter, Thomas Risse, and Beth A. Simmons, eds. Handbook of International Relations. Sage, 2002, pp. 292–308. Snyder, Richard C., H. W. Bruck, and Burton Sapin. Foreign Policy Decision Making (Revisited). Palgrave, 2002. 2 The rational model, along with the organizational process and bureaucratic politics models discussed later, derives from Graham Allison; see Allison, Graham T., and Philip Zelikow. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. 2nd ed. Longman, 1999. Bernstein, Barton J. Understanding Decisionmaking, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Cuban Missile Crisis. International Security 25 (1), 2000: 134–64.

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Implementation

Decision making

Individual and group psychology

Perception (filtering)

actions

effects

situations

monitoring

International and domestic politics

FIGURE 4.1 Decision Making as Steering

128 Chapter 4 Foreign Policy

For example, the U.S. secretary of state may have a different goal than the secretary of defense, just as the Central Intelligence Agency may view a situation differently than the National Security Council does. The rational model of decision making is somewhat com- plicated by uncertainty and the multiple goals of decision makers. Thus, the rational model may imply that decision making is simpler than is actually the case.

An alternative to the rational model of decision making is the organizational process model . In this model, foreign policy decision makers generally skip the labor-intensive process of identifying goals and alternative actions, relying instead for most decisions on standardized responses or standard operating procedures. For example, the U.S. State Depart- ment every day receives more than a thousand reports or inquiries from its embassies around the world and sends out more than a thousand instructions or responses to those embassies. Most of those cables are never seen by the top decision makers (the secretary of state or the president); instead, they are handled by low-level decision makers who apply general principles—or who simply try to make the least controversial, most standardized decision. These low-level decisions may not even refl ect the high-level policies adopted by top leaders, but rather have a life of their own. The organizational process model implies that much of foreign policy results from “management by muddling through.” 3

Another alternative to the rational model is the government bargaining (or bureau- cratic politics) model , in which foreign policy decisions result from the bargaining process among various government agencies with somewhat divergent interests in the outcome. 4 In 1992, the Japanese government had to decide whether to allow sushi from California to be imported—a weakening of Japan’s traditional ban on importing rice (to maintain self- suffi ciency in its staple food). The Japanese Agriculture Ministry, with an interest in the well-being of Japanese farmers, opposed the imports. The Foreign Ministry, with an inter- est in smooth relations with the United States, wanted to allow the imports. The fi nal decision to allow imported sushi resulted from the tug-of-war between the ministries.

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Clarify Your Goals in the situation

Order Them by importance

List the Alternatives for achieving your goals

Investigate the Consequences of each alternative

Choose the alternative that best achieves your goals

FIGURE 4.2 Rational Model of Decision Making

3 Avant, Deborah D. Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral Wars. Cornell, 1995. 4 Welch, David A. The Organizational Process and Bureaucratic Politics Paradigms: Retrospect and Prospect. International Security 17 (2), 1992: 112–46. Christiansen, Eben J., and Steven B. Redd. Bureaucrats Versus the Ballot Box in Foreign Policy Decision Making: An Experimental Analysis of the Bureaucratic Politics Model and Poliheuristic Theory. Journal of Confl ict Resolution 48 (1), 2004: 69–90.

Making Foreign Policy 129

Thus, according to the government bargaining model, foreign policy decisions refl ect (a mix of) the interests of state agencies.

Individual Decision Makers Every international event is the result, intended or unintended, of decisions made by indi- viduals. IR does not just happen. President Harry Truman, who decided to drop U.S. nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities in 1945, had a sign on his desk: “The buck stops here.” As leader of the world’s greatest power, he had nobody to pass the buck to. If he chose to use the bomb (as he did), more than 100,000 civilians would die. If he chose not to, the war might drag on for months with tens of thousands of U.S. casualties. Truman had to choose. Some people applaud his decision; others condemn it. But for better or worse, Truman as an individual had to decide, and to take responsibility for the conse- quences. Similarly, the decisions of individual citizens, although they may not seem important when taken one by one, create the great forces of world history.

The study of individual decision making revolves around the question of rationality. To what extent are national leaders (or citizens) able to make rational decisions in the national interest—if indeed such an interest can be defi ned—and thus to conform to a realist view of IR? Individual rationality is not equivalent to state rationality: states might fi lter individuals’ irrational decisions so as to arrive at rational choices, or states might distort individually rational decisions and end up with irrational state choices. But realists tend to assume that both states and individuals are rational and that the goals or interests of states correlate with those of leaders.

The most simplifi ed rational-actor models assume that interests are the same from one actor to another. If this were so, individuals could be substituted for each other in various roles without changing history very much. And states would all behave similarly to each other (or rather, the differences between them would refl ect different resources and geography, not differences in the nature of national interests). This assumption is at best a great oversimplifi cation; 5 individual decisions refl ect the values and beliefs of the decision maker.

Individual decision makers not only have differing values and beliefs, but also have unique personalities—their personal experiences, intellectual capabilities, and personal styles of making decisions. Some IR scholars study individual psychology to understand how personality affects decision making. Psychoanalytic approaches hold that personali- ties refl ect the subconscious infl uences of childhood experiences. For instance, Bill Clin- ton drew much criticism in his early years as president for a foreign policy that seemed to zigzag. A notable Clinton personality trait was his readiness to compromise. Clinton him- self has noted that his experience of growing up with a violent, alcoholic stepfather shaped him into a “peacemaker, always trying to minimize the disruption.” 6

Beyond individual idiosyncrasies in goals or decision-making processes, individual deci- sion making diverges from the rational model in at least three systematic ways. First, decision makers suffer from misperceptions and selective perceptions (taking in only some kinds of information) when they compile information on the likely consequences of their choices. 7 Decision-making processes must reduce and fi lter the incoming information on which a decision is based; the problem is that such fi ltration often is biased. Information screens are subconscious fi lters through which people put the information coming in about the world

5 Farnham, Barbara. Roosevelt and the Munich Crisis: A Study of Political Decision-Making. Princeton, 1997. 6 Collins, Nancy. A Legacy of Strength and Love [interview with President Clinton]. Good Housekeeping 221 (5), 1995: 113–15. 7 Jervis, Robert. Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Princeton, 1976.

130 Chapter 4 Foreign Policy

around them. Often they simply ignore any information that does not fi t their expectations. Information is also screened out as it passes from one person to another in the decision- making process. For example, prior to the September 2001 terrorist attacks, U.S. intelligence agencies failed to adequately interpret available evi- dence because too few analysts were fluent in Arabic. Similarly, Soviet leaders in 1941 and Israeli leaders in 1973 ignored evidence of pending invasions of their countries.

Misperceptions can affect the implementation of policy by low- level offi cials as well as its formula- tion by high-level officials. For example, in 1988, offi cers on a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf shot down a civilian Iranian jet that they believed to be a military jet attacking them. The officers were trying to carry out policies established by national leaders, but because of mis- perceptions, their actions instead damaged their state’s interests.

Second, the rationality of indi- vidual cost-benefit calculations is undermined by emotions that deci- sion makers feel while thinking about the consequences of their actions—an effect referred to as affective bias. ( Posi- tive and negative affect refer to feelings of liking or disliking someone.) As hard as a decision maker tries to be rational in making a decision, the decision-making process is bound to

be infl uenced by strong feelings held about the person or state toward which a decision is directed. (Affective biases also contribute to information screening, as positive information about disliked people or negative information about liked people is screened out.)

Third, cognitive biases are systematic distortions of rational calculations based not on emotional feelings but simply on the limitations of the human brain in making choices. The most important of these distortions seems to be the attempt to produce cognitive balance —or to reduce cognitive dissonance. These terms refer to the tendency people have to try to maintain mental models of the world that are logically consistent (this seldom succeeds entirely). 8

FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELTS

Foreign policies often deviate from rationality as a result of the misperceptions and biases of decision makers and populations. Here, in 2012, North Korea’s new dictator Kim Jong-Un rides a roller coaster that could symbolize the West’s efforts to curtail his country’s nuclear weapons program. These weapons will pose a much greater threat if Kim, who took over in 2011, is an irrational madman than if he turns out to be a shrewdly rational actor.

8 Vertzberger, Yaacov Y. I. The World in Their Minds: Information Processing, Cognition, and Perception in Foreign Policy Decisionmaking. Stanford, 1990. Sylvan, Donald A., and James F. Voss. Problem Representation in Foreign Policy Decision Making. Cambridge, 1998.

Making Foreign Policy 131

One implication of cognitive balance is that decision makers place greater value on goals that they have put much effort into achieving—the justifi cation of effort. This is espe- cially true in a democracy, in which politicians must face their citizens’ judgment at the polls and so do not want to admit failures. The Vietnam War trapped U.S. decision mak- ers in this way in the 1960s. After sending half a million troops halfway around the world, U.S. leaders found it diffi cult to admit to themselves that the costs of the war were greater than the benefi ts.

Decision makers also achieve cognitive balance through wishful thinking —an overes- timate of the probability of a desired outcome. A variation of wishful thinking is to assume that an event with a low probability of occurring will not occur. This could be a dangerous way to think about catastrophic events such as accidental nuclear war or a terrorist attack.

Cognitive balance often leads decision makers to maintain a hardened image of an enemy and to interpret all of the enemy’s actions in a negative light (because the idea of bad people doing good things would create cognitive dissonance). 9 A mirror image refers to two sides in a confl ict maintaining very similar enemy images of each other (“We are defensive, they are aggressive,” etc.). A decision maker may also experience psychological projection of his or her own feelings onto another actor. For instance, if (hypothetically) Indian leaders wanted to gain nuclear superiority over Pakistan but found that goal incon- sistent with their image of themselves as peaceful and defensive, the resulting cognitive dissonance might be resolved by believing that Pakistan was trying to gain nuclear superi- ority (the example works as well with the states reversed).

Another form of cognitive bias, related to cognitive balance, is the use of historical analogies to structure one’s thinking about a decision. This can be quite useful or quite misleading, depending on whether the analogy is appropriate. 10 Because each historical situation is unique in some way, when a decision maker latches onto an analogy and uses it as a shortcut to a decision, the rational calculation of costs and benefi ts may be cut short as well. In particular, decision makers often assume that a solution that worked in the past will work again—without fully examining how similar the situations really are. For exam- ple, U.S. leaders used the analogy of Munich in 1938 to convince themselves that appease- ment in the Vietnam War would lead to increased communist aggression in Asia. In retrospect, the differences between North Vietnam and Nazi Germany made this a poor analogy (largely because of the civil war nature of the Vietnam confl ict). Vietnam itself then became a potent analogy that helped persuade U.S. leaders to avoid involvement in certain overseas confl icts, such as Bosnia; this was called the “Vietnam syndrome” in U.S. foreign policy.

All of these psychological processes—misperception, affective biases, and cognitive biases—interfere with the rational assessment of costs and benefi ts in making a decision. 11 Two specifi c modifi cations to the rational model of decision making have been proposed to accommodate psychological realities.

First, the model of bounded rationality takes into account the costs of seeking and processing information. Nobody thinks about every single possible course of action when

9 Herrmann, Richard K., and Michael P. Fischerkeller. Beyond the Enemy Image and the Spiral Model: Cogni- tive-Strategic Research after the Cold War. International Organization 49 (3), 1995: 415–50. Mercer, Jonathan L. Reputation and International Politics. Cornell, 1996. O’Reilly, K. P. Perceiving Rogue States: The Use of the “Rogue State” Concept by U.S. Foreign Policy Elites. Foreign Policy Analysis 3 (4), 2007: 295–315. 10 Khong, Yuen Foong. Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965. Princeton, 1992. Neustadt, Richard E., and Ernest R. May. Thinking In Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers. Free Press, 1986. 11 Tuchman, Barbara W. The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. Knopf/Random House, 1984. Parker, Richard B. The Politics of Miscalculation in the Middle East. Indiana, 1993. Bennett, Andrew. Condemned to Repetition? The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military Interventionism, 1973–1996. MIT, 1999.

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making a decision. Instead of optimizing , or picking the very best option, people usually work on the problem until they come up with a “good enough” option that meets some minimal criteria; this is called satisfi cing , or fi nding a satisfactory solution. 12 The time constraints faced by top decision makers in IR—who are constantly besieged with crises requiring their attention—generally preclude their fi nding the very best response to a situation. These time constraints were described by U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen in 1997: “The unrelenting fl ow of information, the need to digest it on a minute- by-minute basis, is quite different from anything I’ve experienced before. . . . There’s little time for contemplation; most of it is action.” 13

Second, prospect theory provides an alternative explanation (rather than simple rational optimization) of decisions made under risk or uncertainty. 14 According to this theory, decision makers go through two phases. In the editing phase, they frame the options available and the probabilities of various outcomes associated with each option. Then, in the evaluation phase, they assess the options and choose one. Prospect theory holds that evaluations take place by comparison with a reference point, which is often the status quo but might be some past or expected situation. The decision maker asks whether he or she can do better than that reference point, but the value placed on outcomes depends on how far from the reference point they are.

Individual decision making thus follows an imperfect and partial kind of rationality at best. Not only do the goals of different individuals vary, but decision makers face a series of obstacles in receiving accurate information, constructing accurate models of the world, and reaching decisions that further their own goals. The rational model is only a simplifi - cation at best and must be supplemented by an understanding of individual psychological processes that affect decision making.

Group Psychology What are the implications of group psychology for foreign policy decision making? In one respect, groups promote rationality by balancing out the blind spots and biases of any individual. Advisors or legislative committees may force a state leader to reconsider a rash decision. And the interactions of different individuals in a group may result in the formu- lation of goals that more closely refl ect state interests rather than individual idiosyncra- sies. However, group dynamics also introduce new sources of irrationality into the decision-making process.

Groupthink refers to the tendency for groups to reach decisions without accurately assessing their consequences, because individual members tend to go along with ideas they think the others support. 15 The basic phenomenon is illustrated by a simple psychol- ogy experiment. A group of six people is asked to compare the lengths of two lines pro- jected onto a screen. When fi ve of the people are secretly instructed to say that line A is longer—even though anyone can see that line B is actually longer—the sixth person is likely to agree with the group rather than believe his or her own eyes.

12 Simon, Herbert A. Models of Bounded Rationality. MIT, 1982. 13 Washington Post, March 5, 1997: A22. 14 Davis, James W. Threats and Promises: The Pursuit of International Infl uence. Johns Hopkins, 2000. McDermott, Rose. Risk-Taking in International Politics: Prospect Theory in American Foreign Policy. Michigan, 1998. Levy, Jack. Prospect Theory, Rational Choice, and International Relations. International Studies Quarterly  41 (1), 1997: 87–112. 15 Janis, Irving L. Victims of Groupthink: A Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions and Fiascoes. Houghton Miffl in, 1972. Hart, Paul, Eric K. Stern, and Bengt Sundelius, eds. Beyond Groupthink: Political Group Dynamics and Foreign Policy-Making. Michigan, 1997.

Making Foreign Policy 133

Unlike individuals, groups tend to be overly optimistic about the chances of success and are thus more willing to take risks. Participants sup- press their doubts about dubious undertakings because everyone else seems to think an idea will work. Also, because the group diffuses responsibility from individuals, nobody feels accountable for actions.

In a spectacular case of group- think, President Ronald Reagan’s close friend and director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) bypassed his own agency and ran cov- ert operations spanning three conti- nents using the National Security Council (NSC) staff in the White House basement. The NSC sold weapons to Iran in exchange for the freedom of U.S. hostages held in Leb- anon, and then used the Iranian pay- ments to illegally fund Nicaraguan Contra rebels. The Iran-Contra scan- dal resulted when these operations, managed by an obscure NSC aide named Oliver North, became public.

The U.S. war in Iraq may also provide cautionary examples to future generations about the risks of misinformation, misperception, wishful thinking, and groupthink in managing a major foreign policy initiative. 16 Some of the problems of individual and group psychology in the policy process—be they in Vietnam, Bosnia, or Iraq—are illus- trated in Figure 4.3 .

The structure of a decision-making process —the rules for who is involved in making the decision, how voting is conducted, and so forth—can affect the outcome, especially when no single alternative appeals to a majority of participants. Experienced participants in foreign policy formation are familiar with the techniques for manipulating decision- making processes to favor outcomes they prefer. A common technique is to control a group’s formal decision rules. These rules include the items of business the group discusses and the order in which proposals are considered (especially important when participants are satis- fi cing). Probably most important is the ability to control the agenda and thereby structure the terms of debate.

State leaders often rely on an inner circle of advisors in making foreign policy deci- sions. The composition and operation of the inner circle vary across governments. For instance, President Lyndon Johnson had “Tuesday lunches” to discuss national security policy with top national security offi cials. Some groups depend heavily on informal

WISHFUL THINKING

Both individual misperception and group psychology encourage overconfi dence and excessive optimism among decision makers. This general tendency in every government especially marked the period of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Here, Presi- dent Bush declares victory on an aircraft carrier, May 2003.

16 Woodward, Bob. State of Denial: Bush at War III. Simon & Schuster, 2006.

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consultations in addition to formal meetings. Some leaders create a “kitchen cabinet”—a trusted group of friends who discuss policy issues with the leader even though they have no formal positions in government. For instance, Israel’s Golda Meir held many such dis- cussions at her home, sometimes literally in the kitchen. Russian president Boris Yeltsin relied on the advice of his bodyguard, who was a trusted friend.

Crisis Management The diffi culties in reaching rational decisions, both for individuals and for groups, are heightened during a crisis. 17 Crises are foreign policy situations in which outcomes are very important and time frames are compressed. Crisis decision making is harder to under- stand and predict than is normal foreign policy making.

In a crisis, decision makers operate under tremendous time constraints. The normal checks on unwise decisions may not operate. Communications become shorter and more stereotyped, and information that does not fi t a decision maker’s expectations is more likely to be discarded, simply because there is no time to consider it. In framing options decision makers tend to restrict the choices, again to save time, and tend to overlook creative options while focusing on the most obvious ones. (In the United States, shifting time constraints are measurable in a doubling or tripling in pizza deliveries to government agencies, as decision makers work through mealtimes.)

Groupthink occurs easily during crises. During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy created a small, closed group of advisors who worked together intensively for days on end, cut off from outside contact and discussion. Even the president’s communi- cation with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was rerouted through Kennedy’s brother Rob- ert and the Soviet ambassador, cutting out the State Department. Recognizing the danger of groupthink, Kennedy left the room from time to time—removing the authority fi gure from the group—to encourage free discussion. Through this and other means, the group managed

Top U.S. Policy Makers

How's our foreign policy for Conflictland* working?

Get me the latest info.

Yes, Sir!

President Cabinet Secretary

Report!

Report!

Yes, ma'am!

Report!

Yes, sir!

Down through the bureaucracy...

*Note: Conflictland could be Vietnam in 1968, Bosnia in 1994, or Iraq in 2006.

FIGURE 4.3 Some Psychological Pitfalls of Decision Making

17 Brecher, Michael, and Jonathan Wilkenfeld. A Study of Crisis. Michigan, 2000. Houghton, David. U.S. Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis. Cambridge, 2001. Gelpi, Christopher. The Power of Legitimacy: Assessing the Role of Norms in International Crisis Bargaining. Princeton, 2003.

Making Foreign Policy 135

to identify an option (a naval blockade) between their fi rst two choices (bombing the mis- sile sites or doing nothing). Sometimes leaders purposefully designate someone in the group (known as a devil’s advocate ) to object to ideas.

Participants in crisis decision making not only are rushed, but experience severe psycho- logical stress, amplifying the biases just dis- cussed. Decision makers tend to overestimate the hostility of adversaries and to underesti- mate their own hostility toward those adversar- ies. Dislike easily turns to hatred, and anxiety to fear. More and more information is screened out in order to come to terms with decisions being made and to restore cognitive balance. Crisis decision making also leads to physical exhaustion. Sleep deprivation sets in within days as decision makers use every hour to stay on top of the crisis. Unless decision makers are careful about getting enough sleep, they may make vital foreign policy decisions under shift- ing perceptual and mood changes.

Because of the importance of sound deci- sion making during crises, voters pay great attention to the psychological stability of their leaders. Before Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin won election in 1992, he faced charges that he had suffered a one-day nervous break- down when he headed the armed forces just before the 1967 war. Not so, he responded; he was just smart enough to realize that the crisis had caused both exhaustion and acute nicotine poisoning, and he needed to rest up for a day in order to go on and make good decisions.

My eyes tell me things are going badly but my brain says my career will advance if I report good news.

. . .To the person at the bottom

Everything's fine!

Everything's fine although I do see flames out the window.

It's terrific, sir!

Something about flames Top Policy Makers

(groupthink)

So we must be right!

We all agree!

Stay the course!

Full speed ahead!

President VP Voters

We don't think so!

(selective perception)

WORKING UNDER STRESS

Crisis management takes a high toll psychologically and physiologi- cally. President Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia seems to show this strain in 1992—just the beginning of years of civil war and perpetual crisis in that country. Shevardnadze, formerly a Soviet foreign minister, had returned to lead his native Georgia when the Soviet Union dis- solved. He left offi ce in 2003 after a popular uprising against corruption.

136 Chapter 4 Foreign Policy

Whether in crisis mode or normal routines, individual decision makers do not operate alone. Their decisions are shaped by the government and society in which they work. Foreign policy is constrained and shaped by substate actors such as government agencies, political interest groups, and industries.

Domestic Infl uences The remainder of this chapter considers other liberal theoretical approaches that, like the democratic peace, operate at the domestic level of analysis. These approaches, in contrast to realism, see international outcomes as the result of processes within states rather than just those among states. The actions of a state in the international arena result from indi- vidual human choices—by citizenry, political leaders, diplomats, and bureaucrats—aggre- gated through the state’s internal structures. The rest of this chapter looks at the state from the inside out, trying to understand the processes and structures within states that make them behave as they do.

Bureaucracies Of the many substate actors that infl uence states’ actions in the international arena, those closest to the action are the bureaucratic agencies that states maintain for developing and carrying out foreign policy. Different states maintain different foreign policy bureaucracies but share some common elements.

Diplomats Virtually all states maintain a foreign service of diplomats working in embassies in foreign capitals (and in consulates located in noncapital foreign cities), as well as diplo- mats who remain at home to help coordinate foreign policy. States appoint ambassadors as their offi cial representatives to other states and to international organizations. Diplomatic activities are organized through a foreign ministry or the equivalent (for example, the U.S. State Department).

In many democracies, some diplomats are political appointees who come and go with changes in government leaders (often as patronage for past political support). Others are career diplomats who come up through the ranks of the foreign service and tend to outlast changes in administration.

Diplomats provide much of the information that goes into making foreign policies, but their main role is to carry out rather than create policies. Nonetheless, foreign minis- try bureaucrats often make foreign relations so routine that top leaders and political appointees can come and go without greatly altering the country’s relations. The national interest is served, the bureaucrats believe, by the stability of overall national goals and positions in international affairs.

Tension is common between state leaders and foreign policy bureaucrats. Career dip- lomats try to orient new leaders and their appointees, and to control the fl ow of informa- tion they receive (creating information screens). Politicians struggle to exercise power over the formal bureaucratic agencies because the latter can be too “bureaucratic” (cumber- some, routinized, conservative) to easily control. Also, these agencies are often staffed (at lower levels) mostly by career offi cials who may not owe loyalty to political leaders.

Size alone does not guarantee power for a bureaucracy. For example, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) and the National Security Council (NSC) each have staffs of only about 200 people, compared with 5,000 people with responsibilities for similar matters in the Commerce and State departments. The power of these agencies is their proximity to

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Domestic Infl uences 137

the U.S. president. The NSC chief traditionally briefs the president every morning on international security issues.

Sometimes state leaders appoint a close friend or key advisor to manage the foreign policy bureaucracy. President George W. Bush did this in his second term with his former NSC chief and confi dante Condoleezza Rice. Chinese leader Mao Zedong put his loyal ally Zhou Enlai in charge of foreign policy. At other times, state leaders may appoint rivals with differing views of foreign policy—as President Barack Obama did with his former political rival Hillary Clinton.

At times, frustration with the bureaucracy leads politicians to bypass normal channels of diplomacy. For example, during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy demanded to be put in direct contact with military personnel in the Caribbean overseeing the blockade of Cuba, bypassing the secretary of defense and high-ranking offi cers.

Interagency Tensions Interagency tension also affects the formulation of foreign policy. Certain agencies traditionally clash, and an endless tug-of-war shapes the foreign policies that emerge. In an extreme example of interagency rivalry, the U.S. State Department and the CIA backed opposite sides in a civil war in Laos in 1960. In the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the defense ministry was usually more hawkish (favoring military strength) and the foreign ministry or State Department more dovish (favoring diplomacy), with the president or premier holding the balance.

In general, bureaucracies promote policies under which their own capabilities will be effective and their power will increase. There is a saying that “where you stand” on an issue “depends on where you sit” (in the bureaucratic structure). One can often predict just from the job titles of participants how they will argue on a policy issue. The govern- ment bargaining model (see p. 128 ) pays special attention to the interagency negotiations that result from confl icts of interest between agencies of the same government. For exam- ple, after Americans were taken hostage in Iran in 1979, military and CIA offi cials pushed President Carter to attempt a military rescue, while the State Department vehemently opposed such a mission. After days of debate, the president decided to go ahead with the rescue mission (which proved disastrous), but did not invite the secretary of state to the meeting where the fi nal decisions were made.

Although representatives of bureaucratic agencies usually promote the interests of their own bureaucracies, sometimes heads of agencies try to appear loyal to the state leader by forgoing the interests of their own agencies. Also, the preferences of leaders of bureau- cratic agencies cannot always be predicted given the goal of their institution. For exam- ple, in the Cuban Missile Crisis, defense offi cials were hesitant to commit to a military solution to the crisis, while some diplomatic offi cials favored a preemptive military strike.

Units within agencies have similar tensions. In many countries, the different military services (army, navy, air force) pull in somewhat different directions, even if they ulti- mately unite to battle the foreign ministry. Bureaucrats working in particular units or projects become attached to them. Offi cials responsible for a new weapon system lose bureaucratic turf, and perhaps their jobs, if the weapon’s development is canceled.

Of special concern in many poor states is the institutional interest that military offi cers have in maintaining a strong military. If civilian state leaders allow offi cers’ sala- ries to fall or the size of the military forces to be cut, they may well face institutional resistance from the military—in the extreme case, a military takeover of the government (see pp. 224 – 225 ) . These issues were factors in attempted military coups in the Philip- pines, Venezuela, and Paraguay in the 1990s. 18

18 Feaver, Peter D., and Christopher Gelpi. Choosing Your Battles: American Civil-Military Relations and the Use of Force. Princeton, 2004.

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In general, bureaucratic rivalry as an infl uence on foreign policy challenges the notion of states as unitary actors in the international system. Such rivalries suggest that a state does not have any single set of goals—a national interest—but that its actions may result from the bargaining of subunits, each with its own set of goals. 19 Furthermore, such a per- spective extends far beyond bureaucratic agencies because other substate actors have their own goals, which they seek to advance by infl uencing foreign policy.

Interest Groups Foreign policy makers operate not in a political vacuum but in the context of the political debates in their society. In all states, societal pressures infl uence foreign policy, although these are aggregated and made effective through different channels in different societies. In pluralistic democracies, interested parties infl uence foreign policy through interest groups and political parties. In dictatorships, similar infl uences occur but less visibly. Thus foreign policies adopted by states generally refl ect some kind of process of domestic coalition for- mation. 20 Of course, international factors also have strong effects on domestic politics. 21

Interest groups are coalitions of people who share a common interest in the outcome of some political issue and who organize themselves to try to infl uence the outcome. For instance, French farmers have a big stake in international negotiations in the European Community (which subsidizes agriculture) and in world trade talks (which set agricultural tariffs). The farmers exert political pressure on the French government through long- established and politically sophisticated associations and organizations. They lobby for desired legislation and contribute to politicians’ campaigns. More dramatically, when their interests have been threatened—as during a U.S.-European trade dispute in 1992— French farmers have turned out in large numbers across the country to block roads, stage violent street demonstrations, and threaten to grind the national economy to a halt unless the government adopts their position. Similarly (but often less dramatically), interest groups form around businesses, labor unions, churches, veterans, senior citizens, members of an occupation, or citizens concerned about an issue such as the environment.

Lobbying is the process of talking with legislators or offi cials to infl uence their deci- sions on some set of issues. Three important elements that go into successful lobbying are the ability to gain a hearing with busy offi cials, the ability to present cogent arguments for one’s case, and the ability to trade favors in return for positive action on an issue. These favors—legal and illegal—range from campaign contributions to dinners at nice restau- rants, trips to golf resorts, securing illicit sexual liaisons, and paying bribes. In many states, corruption is a major problem in governmental decision making (see pp. 475 – 476 ) , and interest groups may induce government offi cials by illegal means to take certain actions.

Ethnic groups within one state often become interest groups concerned about their ancestral nation outside that state. Many members of ethnic groups feel strong emotional ties to their relatives in other countries; because the rest of the population generally does not care about such issues one way or the other, even a small ethnic group can have con- siderable infl uence on policy toward a particular country. Such ethnic ties are emerging as a powerful foreign policy infl uence in various ethnic confl icts in poor regions. The effect

19 Kaarbo, Juliet. Power Politics in Foreign Policy: The Infl uence of Bureaucratic Minorities. European Journal of International Relations 4 (1), 1998: 67–97. 20 Solingen, Etel. Regional Orders at Century’s Dawn: Global and Domestic Infl uences on Grand Strategy. Princeton, 1998. Snyder, Jack. Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition. Cornell, 1991. 21 Gourevitch, Peter. The Second Image Reversed: International Sources of Domestic Politics. International Organization 32 (4), 1978: 881–911. Rogowski, Ronald. Commerce and Coalitions: How Trade Affects Domestic Political Alignments. Princeton, 1989.

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is especially strong in the United States, which is ethnically mixed and has a pluralistic form of democracy. For example, Cuban Americans organize to influence U.S. policy toward Cuba, as do Greek Americans on Greece, Jewish Americans on Israel, and African Americans on Africa. In a 1996 U.S. Senate elec- tion in South Dakota, one candidate raised large contributions from the Pakistani-American community and the other candidate from the rival Indian-American community. But whether or not a foreign country has a large constituency of ethnic nation- als within another country, it can lobby that country’s government. 22

Clearly, interest groups have goals and interests that may or may not coincide with the national inter- est as a whole (if indeed such an interest can be identifi ed). As with bureaucratic agencies, the view of the state as a unitary actor can be questioned. Defenders of interest- group politics argue that various interest groups tend to push and pull in different directions, with the ulti- mate decisions generally refl ecting the interests of society as a whole. But according to Marxist theories of international relations, the key domestic infl uences on foreign policy in capitalist countries are rich owners of big businesses. For instance, European imperial- ism benefi ted banks and big business, which made huge profi ts from exploiting cheap labor and resources in overseas colonies. This is the offi cial view (if not always the opera- tive one) of the Chinese government toward Western industrialized states. During the Cold War, Marxists argued that Western foreign policies were driven by the profi t motive of arms manufacturers. 23

The Military-Industrial Complex A military-industrial complex refers to a huge interlocking network of governmental agencies, industrial corporations, and research institutes, working together to supply a nation’s military forces. The military-industrial complex was a response to the growing importance of technology (nuclear weapons, electronics, and others) and of logistics in Cold War military planning. Because of the domestic political clout of these actors, the

22 Smith, Tony. Foreign Attachments: The Power of Ethnic Groups in the Making of American Foreign Policy. Harvard, 2000. Paul, David M., and Rachel A. Paul. Ethnic Lobbies and U.S. Foreign Policy. Rienner, 2008. 23 Konobeyev, V. The Capitalist Economy and the Arms Race. International Affairs [Moscow] 8, 1982: 28–48.

DOMESTIC BREW

Foreign policies are affected by the pulling and tugging of various domestic inter- est groups. Legislatures respond to these groups, constituencies, lobbyists, and media. These interested parties pack the U.S. Senate confi rmation hearing for the new secretary of state, John Kerry, in 2013.

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complex was a powerful infl uence on foreign policy in both the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

States at war have long harnessed their economic and technological might for the war effort. But during the Cold War, military procurement occurred on a massive scale in “peace- time,” as the superpowers raced to develop new high-technology weapons. This race created a special role for scientists and engineers in addition to the more traditional role of industries that produce war materials. In response to the Soviet satellite Sputnik in 1957, the United States increased spending on research and development and created new science education programs. By 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower warned in his farewell speech that the military-industrial complex (a term he coined) was gaining “unwarranted infl uence” in U.S. society and that militarization could erode democracy in the United States. The size of the complex gave it more political clout than ordinary citizens could muster. Yet its interest in the arms race confl icted with the interest of ordinary citizens in peace.

The complex encompasses a variety of constituencies, each of which has an interest in military spending. Corporations that produce goods for the military profi t from govern- ment contracts. So do military offi cers whose careers advance by building bureaucratic empires around new weapons systems. And so do universities and scientifi c institutes that receive military research contracts—a major source of funding for scientists in Russia and the United States.

Subcontractors and parts suppliers for big U.S. weapons projects are usually spread around many states and congressional districts, so that local citizens and politicians join the list of constituents benefi ting from military spending. Early funding for the Strategic Defense Initiative (or Star Wars) was given to each military service branch, the Depart- ment of Energy, NASA, and hundreds of private contractors. Recently, a similar phenom- enon has emerged in the European Community, where weapons development programs

SEEKING THE COLLECTIVE GOOD

Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks COLLECTIVE GOOD: An End to 60+ Years of Violent Confl ict

BACKGROUND: Since the founding of Israel in 1948 in the wake of World War II, Jews and Arab Pal- estinians have been fi ghting over the land. After sev- eral destructive wars, Israel and its main neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, arrived at a durable (though cold) peace. The Israelis and Palestinians, however, have yet to reach a peace agreement based on a Palestinian state in lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 war—the West Bank and the Gaza Strip—and Palestinian recognition of Israel’s right to exist.

In many rounds of negotiations over the years, the two sides have gotten closer. At the end of 2000, nego- tiators nearly reached agreement on the parameters for a Palestinian state side by side with Israel. The effort fell short, however; new governments took power in both Israel and America, and a new wave of violence ensued. Israeli-Palestinian peace is a collective good

that would benefi t each side regardless of whether it or the other side made the concessions that led to an agreement.

CHALLENGE: In 2010, the U.S. administration launched a new round of Israeli-Palestinian talks to try to reach a comprehensive agreement within a year. These talks faced great challenges as a result of the domestic politics on each side. In Israel, the parliamentary ruling coalition included parties opposed to concessions toward Palestine, so the Israeli govern- ment lacked maneuvering room to make concessions even if it wanted to. In Pal- estine, the militant armed group Hamas controlled Gaza, leaving the Israelis negotiating with a Palestinian Author-

Domestic Infl uences 141

have been parceled out to several European states. A new fi ghter jet is less likely to be can- celed if one country gets the contract for the wings, another for the engines, and so forth.

Executives in military industries, who best understand their industries, are often appointed as government offi cials responsible for military procurement decisions and then return to their companies again—a practice called the revolving door. In democracies, military industries also infl uence public opinion through advertising that ties their prod- ucts to patriotic themes. U.S. military industries also give generous campaign contribu- tions to national politicians who vote on military budgets, and sometimes bribes to Pentagon offi cials as well. 24

Public Opinion Many domestic actors seek to infl uence public opinion —the range of views on foreign policy issues held by the citizens of a state. Public opinion has greater infl uence on foreign policy in democracies than in authoritarian governments. But even dictators must pay attention to what citizens think. No government can rule by force alone: it needs legiti- macy to survive. It must persuade people to accept (if not to like) its policies, because in the end, policies are carried out by ordinary people—soldiers, workers, and bureaucrats.

Because of the need for public support, even authoritarian governments spend great effort on propaganda —the public promotion of their offi cial line—to win support for

ity that did not fully control the territory it hoped to claim as a state. In these ways, foreign policy processes even in democracies can constrain each side’s ability to make peace.

SOLUTION: Reciprocity, a strong norm in Israeli- Palestinian relations over the decades, is basic to the negotiation of peace agreements. Yet it has not suffi ced, in part because domestic constraints make it harder for governments to have cooperation based on reciprocity.

To get around these domestic constraints, the dominance principle helps. Most analysts agree that the peace talks can succeed only if the United States applies strong leadership (including pressure and inducements) to get the two parties to make conces- sions. Opponents on each side can then blame the United States rather than their own leaders, who thus gain maneuvering room to compromise. If an Israeli- Palestinian peace agreement is ever to occur, American leadership of the process will likely play a key role in reaching it.

Israeli prime minister and Palestinian negotiator, 2012.

24 Der Derian, James. Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network. Westview, 2001. Jones, Christopher M. Roles, Politics, and the Survival of the V-22 Osprey. Journal of Political and Military Sociology 29 (1), 2001: 46–72.

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foreign policies. States use television, newspapers, and other information media in this effort. In many countries, the state owns or controls major mass media such as television and newspapers, mediating the fl ow of information to its citizens; however, new informa- tion technologies with multiple channels make this harder to do.

Journalists serve as the gatekeepers of information passing from foreign policy elites to the public. The media and government often confl ict because of the traditional role of the press as a watchdog and critic of government actions and powers. The media try to uncover and publicize what the government wants to hide. Foreign policy decision makers also rely on the media for information about foreign affairs.

Yet the media also depend on government for information; the size and resources of the foreign policy bureaucracies dwarf those of the press. These advantages give the gov- ernment great power to manipulate journalists by feeding them information in order to shape the news and infl uence public opinion. Government decision makers can create dramatic stories in foreign relations—through summit meetings, crises, actions, and so forth. Bureaucrats can also leak secret information to the press in order to support their own point of view and win bureaucratic battles. Finally, the military and the press have a running battle about journalists’ access to military operations, but both sides gained from the open access given to journalists “embedded” with U.S. forces in Iraq in 2003.

In democracies, where governments must stand for election, an unpopular war can force a leader or party from offi ce, as happened to U.S. President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 during the Vietnam War. Or a popular war can help secure a government’s mandate to continue in power, as happened to Margaret Thatcher in Britain after the 1982 Falkland Islands War. A key infl uence on public opinion is the content of scenes appearing on tel- evision: U.S. soldiers were sent to Somalia to assist in relief efforts in 1992 after TV news showed the heartrending results of civil war and famine there. But after TV news showed an American soldier’s body being dragged through the streets by members of a Somali fac- tion after a deadly fi refi ght that killed 18 U.S. soldiers, public opinion shifted quickly against the Somalia operation. During the war in Bosnia, offi cials in the U.S. State Department said privately that the main goal of U.S. policy was often just to keep the confl ict there off the front pages of U.S. newspapers (an elusive goal, as it turned out).

Occasionally a foreign policy issue is decided directly by a referendum of the entire citizenry (the United States lacks such a tradition, which is strong in Switzerland and Denmark, for example). 25 In 2005, referendums in France and the Netherlands rejected a proposed constitution for the European Union, despite the support of major political lead- ers for the change (see pp. 368 – 369 ) .

Even in the most open democracies, states do not merely respond to public opinion. Decision makers enjoy some autonomy to make their own choices, and they are pulled in various directions by bureaucracies and interest groups, whose views often confl ict with the direction favored by public opinion at large. Furthermore, public opinion is seldom unifi ed on any policy, and sophisticated polling can show that particular segments of the population (regions of the country, genders, income groups, races, etc.) often differ in their perceptions of foreign policy issues. So a politician may respond to the opinion of one constituency rather than the whole population. Public opinion varies considerably over time on many foreign policy issues. States use propaganda (in dictatorships) or try to manipulate the media (in democracies) to keep public opinion from diverging too much from state policies.

In democracies, public opinion generally has less effect on foreign policy than on domestic policy. National leaders traditionally have additional latitude to make decisions

25 Rourke, John T., Richard P. Hiskes, and Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh. Direct Democracy and International Politics: Deciding International Issues through Referendums. Rienner, 1992.

143

POLICY PERSPECTIVES

Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe

PROBLEM How do you decide what

foreign policy tools best balance

domestic and international concerns?

BACKGROUND Imagine that you are the prime minister of Japan. Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, relations with your neighbor to the west, North Korea, have been tense. Mili- tary tensions have persisted as North Korea has made and then broken several agreements regarding its nuclear program. North Korea tested nuclear weapons in 2006 and 2009, and it has also test fi red short-range ballistic missiles directly over Japan in an effort to intimidate your country. In late 2012, it also tested a new long-range rocket in defi ance of international warnings. You won election in 2012 on a hawkish platform, calling for large increases in defense spending and the deployment of anti-missile weapons to pro- tect your country from a North Korean launch.

For its part, North Korea has long demanded repara- tions for Japan’s 35-year colonization of the Korean penin- sula (1910–1945) and for Japan’s actions in Korea during World War II. Japan has refused such reparations in the past, but has provided limited aid in an attempt to encour- age North Korea to denuclearize.

In the summer of 2008, the United States removed North Korea from its list of states that sponsor terrorism. This angered many in your country, who see this as giving in to North Korean demands for more aid in exchange for giving up its nuclear program. Your government vehemently pro- tested this move by the United States, which the Japanese government called “extremely regrettable.”

DOMESTIC CONSIDERATIONS Public opinion in Japan is very sensitive to relations with North Korea. In 2002, North Korea admitted to secretly abducting Japanese citi- zens in the 1970s and 1980s, transporting them to North Korea, and using them to train North Korean spies. North Korea claims that all 13 abductees have either returned to Japan or died, but many in Japan are skeptical of this claim. Many in

Japan suspect more than 13 were abducted and have even demanded that North Korea return the bodies of the deceased. These abductions are an extremely sensitive issue in Japanese public opinion, and past Japanese governments have demanded a resolution to the abduction issue before opening formal diplomatic relations with North Korea.

SCENARIO Now imagine that the United States is negoti- ating a new nuclear weapons agreement with North Korea. The United States asks that Japan contribute extensive foreign aid to North Korea to help ensure that a deal is reached. In return, North Korea will agree to allow increased inspections of all key nuclear sites and will rejoin the Non-Proliferation Treaty (see p. 217 ) . The United States is placing extensive pres- sure on your government to provide what it feels is critical aid.

CHOOSE YOUR POLICY How do you respond to U.S. pressure for more foreign aid? Do you risk a backlash from your public by increasing aid without having the abduction issue resolved? Do you resist pressure from the United States, your most important ally, and withhold the requested aid? Can you trust the North Korean government to hold up its end of the bargain after you give the economic aid? How do you balance a sensitive domestic political issue with a delicate set of international negotiations?

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144 Chapter 4 Foreign Policy

in the international realm. This derives from the special need of states to act in a unifi ed way to function effectively in the international system, as well as from the traditions of secrecy and diplomacy that remove IR from the realm of ordinary domestic politics. How- ever, In the case of Japan, public opinion is a major political force restraining the military spending of the government, its commitment of military forces beyond Japan’s borders, and especially the development of nuclear weapons (which is within Japan’s technical abili- ties). The ruling party—under pressure from the United States to share the burden of defense and to shoulder its responsibilities as a great power—has slowly but steadily pushed to increase Japan’s military spending and allow Japanese military forces to expand their role modestly (in the 1980s, to patrol Asian sea lanes vital to Japanese trade; in the 1990s, to participate in UN peacekeeping operations). Repeatedly, these efforts have been slowed or rebuffed by strong public opinion against the military. In Japan, people remember the hor- rible consequences of militarism in the 1930s and World War II, culminating in the nuclear bombings of 1945. They are thus suspicious of any increase in the size or role of military forces, and are set against Japan’s having nuclear weapons. In this case, public opinion constrains the state’s conduct of foreign policy and has slowed the pace of change.

The attentive public in a democracy is the minority of the population that stays informed about international issues. This segment varies somewhat from one issue to another, but there is also a core of people who care in general about foreign affairs and follow them closely. The most active members of the attentive public on foreign affairs constitute a foreign policy elite —people with power and infl uence who affect foreign pol- icy. This elite includes people within governments as well as outsiders such as business- people, journalists, lobbyists, and professors of political science. Public opinion polls show that elite opinions sometimes (but not always) differ considerably from those of the gen- eral population, and sometimes from those of the government as well. 26

Governments sometimes adopt foreign policies for the specifi c purpose of generating public approval and hence gaining domestic legitimacy. 27 This is the case when a govern- ment undertakes a war or foreign military intervention at a time of domestic diffi culty, to distract attention and gain public support—taking advantage of the “rally ’round the fl ag” syndrome (the public’s increased support for government leaders during wartime, at least in the short term). Citizens who would readily criticize their government’s policies on education or health care often refrain from criticism when the government is at war and the lives of the nation’s soldiers are on the line. Policies of this sort are often labeled diversionary foreign policy . Unfortunately, it is always diffi cult to tell whether a state adopts a foreign policy to distract the public, because leaders would never admit to trying to divert public attention.

However, wars that go on too long or are not successful can turn public opinion against the government and even lead to a popular uprising to overthrow the government. In Argentina, the military government in 1982 led the country into war with Britain over the Falkland Islands. At fi rst Argentineans rallied around the fl ag, but after losing the war they rallied around the cause of getting rid of the military government, and they replaced it with a new civilian government that prosecuted the former leaders. In 2006, President Bush’s popularity, which had soared early in the Iraq War, defl ated as the war dragged on

26 Page, Benjamin I., and Marshall M. Bouton. The Foreign Policy Disconnect. Chicago, 2006. Jacobs, Lawrence R., and Benjamin I. Page. Who Infl uences U.S. Foreign Policy? American Political Science Review 99 (1), 2005: 107–23. Sobel, Richard. The Impact of Public Opinion on U.S. Foreign Policy Since Vietnam. Oxford, 2001. Holsti, Ole R. Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy. Rev. ed. Michigan, 2004. 27 Baum, Matthew. The Constituent Foundations of the Rally-Round-the-Flag Phenomenon. International Studies Quarterly 46 (2), 2002: 263–98. Eichenberg, Richard C. Victory Has Many Friends: U.S. Public Opinion and the Use of Military Force, 1981–2005. International Security 30 (1), 2005: 140–77.

Domestic Infl uences 145

(see Figure 4.4 ), and voters threw his party out of power in Congress. By the 2008 elec- tions, his party had lost control of the Senate, House, and presidency—all of which the Republicans had held at the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003.

Legislatures One conduit through which interest groups and public opinion may wield infl uence is legislatures. Some democracies, such as the United States, have presidential systems, in which legislative bodies are elected apart from the president (also referred to as execu- tives ). In these systems, legislatures play a direct role in making foreign policy by passing budgets, regulating bureaucratic rules, creating trade law, even controlling immigration policy. Although executives may attend summits and talks, any agreement they sign must be approved by their domestic legislature. 28

Although few would argue that legislatures in presidential democracies do not infl u- ence foreign policy generally, different rules may apply to the use of military force. Some contend that legislatures, like public opinion, rally around the fl ag during times of inter- national crises. For example, three days after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. Congress voted to give President Bush full authority to prosecute a war in Afghanistan. In October 2002, Congress passed a resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. Thus, legislatures rarely if ever challenge an executive on important military matters.

Others point to a different dynamic in which legislatures do stand up to executive power regarding military force. For example, because legislatures hold the “purse strings” (the ability to approve or reject new spending), they have the ability to stop a war in its

100

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60

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0 2001 2002 20042003 200720062005

War in Afghanistan

9/11 Attack on Iraq

2006 Midterm Election

Pe rc

en t a

pp ro

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f P re

si de

nt B

us h

FIGURE 4.4 The “Rally ’Round the Flag” Syndrome

President Bush’s approval rating demonstrates the “rally ’round the fl ag” syndrome, in which war triggers a short-term boost in public approval. Source: Gallup Poll.

28 Milner, Helen. Interests, Institutions, and Information: Domestic Politics and International Relations. Princeton, 1997. Evans, Peter B., Harold K. Jacobson, and Robert D. Putnam, eds. Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics. California, 1993.

146 Chapter 4 Foreign Policy

tracks. In the United States, the War Powers Act, enacted during the close of the Viet- nam War, requires the president to notify Congress when U.S. troops are deployed for combat. After this notifi cation, the president has 60 days (plus a possible 30-day exten- sion) to recall the troops unless Congress explicitly approves the military action. During the 2011 Libya air campaign, the Obama administration claimed that the War Powers Act did not apply because the action was not a war. Some in Congress disputed this claim but could not prevail. Finally, some evidence from the United States suggests that presidents are more likely to use military force when their own political party is in power in Congress, suggesting that politics does not stop “at the water’s edge.” 29

In parliamentary systems, such as Great Britain, executives (for example, prime min- isters) are chosen by the political parties that hold a dominant position in the legislative bodies. Often parliamentary executives do not need to submit treaties or policies for for- mal approval by the legislature. Yet legislatures in parliamentary systems still hold power regarding foreign policy. In Great Britain, for example, Parliament is not required to vote on international agreements negotiated by the prime minister, but it must approve any change to British laws that such agreements entail. Because most international agree- ments do involve these types of changes, Parliament effectively exercises a right of ratifi - cation over international agreements.

In many parliamentary systems, if a policy is particularly controversial, parties that do not have a majority in the legislature can attempt to call elections—meaning that the country votes again on which parties will hold seats in the legislature. If a different group of parties wins a majority of seats, a new executive is appointed. Thus, in parliamentary systems, legislatures play a key role in designing and implementing foreign policy.

Making Foreign Policy Foreign policies are the strategies governments use to guide their actions in the interna- tional arena. Foreign policies spell out the objectives state leaders have decided to pur- sue in a given relationship or situation. But in general, IR scholars are less interested in specifi c policies than in the foreign policy process —how policies are arrived at and implemented. 30

States establish various organizational structures and functional relationships to create and carry out foreign policies. IR scholars are especially interested in exploring whether certain kinds of policy processes lead to certain kinds of decisions—whether certain processes produce better outcomes (for the state’s self-defi ned interests) than do others.

Comparative foreign policy is the study of foreign policy in various states in order to discover whether similar types of societies or governments consistently have similar types of foreign policies (comparing across states or across different time periods for a single state). Such studies have focused on three characteristics: size, wealth, and extent of democratic participation in government. 31 Unfortunately, no simple rule has been found to predict a state’s warlike tendencies based on these attributes. States vary greatly among each other and even within a single state over time. For example, both capitalist and

29 Howell, Will, and Jon C. Pevehouse. While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War Powers. Princeton, 2007. 30 Neack, Laura. The New Foreign Policy: U.S. and Comparative Foreign Policy in the 21st Century. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2003. Snow, Donald M. United States Foreign Policy: Politics Beyond the Water’s Edge. Longman, 2003. 31 Hook, Steven W. Comparative Foreign Policy. Prentice Hall, 2002. Beasley, Ryan K., et al., eds. Foreign Policy in Comparative Perspective: Domestic and International Infl uences on State Behavior. CQ Press, 2002.

Domestic Infl uences 147

communist states have proven capable of naked aggression or peaceful behavior, depending on circumstances.

Some political scientists have tried to interpret particular states’ foreign policies in terms of each one’s political culture and history. For example, the Soviet Union (Russia) experienced repeated, devastat- ing land invasions over the centuries (cul- minating in World War II) while the United States experienced two centuries of safety behind great oceans. Thus the military might of the Soviet Union, and its control of buffer states in Eastern Europe, seemed defensive in nature to Soviet leaders but appeared aggressive to U.S. leaders.

Foreign policy outcomes result from multiple forces at various levels of analy- sis. The outcomes depend on individual decision makers, on the type of society and government they are working within, and on the international and global con- text of their actions. The study of foreign policy processes runs counter to realism’s assumption of a unitary state actor. Because the study of foreign policy con- centrates on forces within the state, its main emphasis is on the individual and domestic levels of analysis.

The differences in the foreign policy process from one state to another are also infl u- enced by a state’s type of government, such as military dictatorship, communist party rule, one-party (noncommunist) rule, and various forms of multiparty democracy. Relatively dem- ocratic states tend to share values and interests, and hence to get along better with each other than with nondemocracies (see “The Democratic Peace,” pp. 94 – 96 ) . In practice, most states lie along a spectrum with some mix of democratic and authoritarian elements.

The attempt to explain foreign policy in a general and theoretical way has met only limited success. This is one reason why realists continue to fi nd simple unitary-actor models of the state useful; the domestic and individual elements of the foreign policy process add much complexity and unpredictability. One area of foreign policy in which knowledge stands on a somewhat fi rmer basis is the descriptive effort to understand how particular mechanisms of foreign policy formation operate in various states. Such approaches belong to the fi eld of comparative politics.

To summarize, foreign policy is a complex outcome of a complex process. It results from the struggle of competing themes, competing domestic interests, and competing government agencies. No single individual, agency, or guiding principle determines the outcome. Yet foreign policy does achieve a certain overall coherence. States form foreign policy on an issue or toward a region; it is not just an incoherent collection of decisions and actions taken from time to time. Out of the turbulent internal processes of foreign policy formation come relatively coherent interests and policies that states pursue.

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INDIVIDUAL CHOICE

Foreign policy outcomes result from processes at several levels of analysis, including the roles of individuals. All these levels were in play in 2011–2013 as Syria went from protest to civil war. In 2012, this father chose, like many other individuals, to take up arms and join rebel fi ghters. The country’s future will be decided in no small part by the aggregation of many such individual decisions.

148 Chapter 4 Foreign Policy

SUMMARY ■ Foreign policies are strategies governments use to guide their actions toward other

states. The foreign policy process is the set of procedures and structures that states use to arrive at foreign policy decisions and to implement them.

■ In the rational model of decision making, offi cials choose the action whose con- sequences best help meet the state’s established goals. By contrast, in the organi- zational process model, decisions result from routine administrative procedures; in the government bargaining (or bureaucratic politics) model, decisions result from negotiations among governmental agencies with different interests in the outcome.

■ The actions of individual decision makers are influenced by their personalities, values, and beliefs as well as by common psychological factors that diverge from rationality. These factors include misperception, selective perception, emotional biases, and cognitive biases (including the effort to reduce cognitive dissonance).

■ Foreign policy decisions are also infl uenced by the psychology of groups (including groupthink ), the procedures used to reach decisions, and the roles of participants. During crises, the potentials for misperception and error are amplifi ed.

■ Struggles over the direction of foreign policy are common between professional bureaucrats and politicians, as well as between different government agencies.

■ Domestic constituencies (interest groups) have distinct interests in foreign policies and often organize politically to promote those interests.

■ Prominent among domestic constituencies—especially in the United States and Russia, and especially during the Cold War—have been military-industrial com- plexes consisting of military industries and others with an interest in high military spending.

■ Public opinion infl uences governments’ foreign policy decisions (more so in democracies than in authoritarian states), but governments also manipulate public opinion.

■ Legislatures can provide a conduit for public opinion and interests groups to infl u- ence foreign policy. Executives and legislators may differ on how to best achieve a state’s national interest.

CHAPTER REVIEW

KEY TERMS rational model 127 organizational process

model 128 government bargaining

model 128 misperceptions, selective

perceptions 129 information screens 129

“rally ’round the fl ag” syndrome 144

diversionary foreign policy 144

foreign policy process 146

optimizing 132 satisfi cing 132 prospect theory 132 groupthink 132 interest groups 138 military-industrial

complex 139 public opinion 141

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Chapter Review 149

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS 1. Uncertainty about costs and benefi ts of an action can complicate foreign policy

decision making. What are the sources of uncertainty in IR? Can decision makers take steps to reduce that uncertainty?

2. Consider an event in IR that you are familiar with. Thinking about the actors involved in making a decision concerning that event, how would that event be explained by the rational-actor model? Might it be better explained by considering standard operating procedures or bureaucratic politics?

3. Sometimes aggressive international actions are attributed to a “madman” such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein or Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler. Do you agree that such leaders (each of whose actions severely damaged his state’s well-being) must be “mad”? What other factors could account for their actions? How do you think such people achieve and maintain national leadership?

4. India and Pakistan are neighbors and enemies. Given the problems of mispercep- tion and bias in foreign policy decision making, what steps could you propose that each government adopt to keep these problems from interfering in the rational pur- suit of national interests?

5. Traditionally, foreign policy elites have faced only sporadic pressure from mass pub- lic opinion. Is the role of television and the Internet changing this relationship? If you were a top foreign policy maker, what steps could you take to keep TV news and blogs from shaping the foreign policy agenda before you could defi ne your own goals and directions?

Should Legislatures Play a Role in Deciding Whether to Use Military Force?

LET’S DEBATE THE ISSUE

ARGUMENT 1

Legislatures Should Not Play a Role in Deciding Whether to Use Military Force

Legislatures are slow to act in times of crisis. Because legislatures are made up of hundreds of members, it is diffi cult to get agree- ment among all members on what constitutes a threat to national security. Discussions over whether to use military force can thus be long, drawn-out affairs, which can limit the ability of a country to respond to dangers. Executives also have faster access to information at their disposal.

Internal debates can show division to enemies. Debates over the appropriate- ness of military force show open divisions within a country that can encourage adversaries to remain stubborn in bargaining. If an adversary feels a country is too divided to use military force against it, it will not treat threats to use force as credible.

Most legislators know little about foreign affairs. Most legislators are elected to serve local constituent interests rather than invest their time and energy in foreign affairs. Legislators have little incentive to become highly knowledgeable about foreign affairs, thus making their decisions about whether to engage in mili- tary force less informed.

Overview In nearly all democracies, there are debates about the best way to conduct foreign policy. One partic- ularly controversial issue involves using military force—for example, initiating a war. Executives (presidents or prime ministers) usually claim the right to initiate the use of force as commanders of their militaries. Yet legislatures (Congress or parlia- ments) may object that they should have a say in whether a country goes to war.

In the United States, the president is the Com- mander in Chief of the military and thus has the power to order the deployment of American military forces. Yet Congress has the exclusive power to declare war. This has led to extensive debates in the United States about who has the ultimate authority to undertake military action. While the president has extensive advantages in terms of military intelligence and analysis (because the for- eign policy bureaucracy reports to the president, not Congress), Congress must authorize funds to pay for military action. And although American presidents often seek congressional approval before taking military action, there have been important exceptions (for example, the U.S. inva- sion of Panama in 1989).

What is the proper relationship between a legis- lature and the executive regarding the use of mili- tary force? Should initiating military force be invested only in the executive, or should legisla- tures also have a say in when and where a coun- try’s military is put in harm’s way?

Questions ■ Should legislatures play a role in the decision to

use military force? Are there some circum- stances that are better or worse for a society to have open debates about potential military action?

■ Short of military action, should legislatures play a signifi cant role in other foreign policy areas such as economic sanctions, immigration, or military alliances? How are these foreign policy issues similar to or different from questions of using military force?

■ Do you think potential adversaries pay attention to debates within a country contemplating mili- tary force? Do potential adversaries use this information to their advantage? Should this be a concern for a country contemplating the use of military force?

For Further Reading Hamilton, Lee H., and Jordan Tama. A Creative

Tension: The Foreign Policy Roles of the President and Congress. Woodrow Wilson Center, 2002.

Howell, William G., and Jon C. Pevehouse. While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War Powers. Princeton, 2007.

Feaver, Peter D., and Christopher Gelpi. Choosing Your Battles: American Civil-Military Relations and the Use of Force. Princeton, 2003.

Fisher, Louis. Presidential War Power. 2nd ed. Rev. Kansas, 2004.

ARGUMENT 2

Legislatures Should Play a Role in Deciding Whether to Use Military Force

More input regarding military force leads to more careful policy. Having an effective legislative debate over the potential use of military force can lead to better policy, avoiding some of the psychological pitfalls associated with small-group decision making such as groupthink.

Legislators are more directly accoun- table to constituents. Because a state’s citizens will bear the brunt of the costs of war, it is appropriate that their representative bodies have a say in whether the country’s men and women should be sent to fi ght. Open debates in a legislature better allow the public’s voice to be heard.

Executives need checks and balances, especially with regard to decisions about war. Because of the weight of a deci- sion to initiate military confl ict, it is important to have a checks and balances system to stop hasty wars. In the United States, the Constitution specifi - cally grants Congress the power to declare war for this reason.

Anti-Indian protester and Indian security forces in Kashmir, 2010.

International Confl ict

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153

CHAPTER OUTLINE The Wars of the World Chapter 3 (in the section “The Waning of War”) discussed the decreasing number and size of wars in the world. This chapter will focus on the remaining wars and historical cases to explain the causes of international confl icts.

Figure 5.1 shows the 14 wars in progress in January 2013. The largest are in Syria and Afghanistan. All 14 wars are in the global South. All but Colombia are in a zone of active fi ghting (outlined on the map) spanning parts of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.

In fi ve smaller zones (dotted lines on the map), dozens of wars of recent decades have ended. Some of the countries in these zones still face diffi cult postwar years with the possibility of sliding back into violence, as Yemen did in 2009 after a 1999 cease- fi re. But most peace agreements in the world’s postwar zones are holding up. 1

Types of War Many different activities are covered by the general term war. Consequently, it is not easy to say how many wars are going on in the world at the moment. But most lists of wars set some minimum criteria—for instance, a minimum of a thousand battle deaths—to distinguish war from lower-level violence such as violent strikes or riots.

Wars are very diverse. Wars arise from different situations and play different roles in bargaining over confl icts. Starting from the largest wars, we may distinguish the fol- lowing main categories.

Hegemonic war is a war over control of the entire world order —the rules of the international system as a whole, including the role of world hegemony (see “Hege- mony,” pp. 57 – 60 ) . This class of wars (with variations in defi nition and conception) is also known as world war, global war, general war, or systemic war. 2 The last hegemonic war was World War II. Largely because of the power of modern weaponry, this kind of war probably cannot occur any longer without destroying civilization.

Total war is warfare by one state waged to conquer and occupy another. The goal is to reach the capital city and force the surrender of the government, which can then be replaced with one of the victor’s choosing (see p. 185 ) . Total war began with the massively destructive Napoleonic Wars, which introduced large-scale conscription and geared the entire French national economy toward the war effort. The practice of total war evolved with industrialization, which further integrated all of society and economy into the practice of war. The last total war between great powers was World War II.

In total war, with the entire society mobilized for the struggle, the entire society of the enemy is considered a legitimate target. For instance, in World War II Germany attacked British civilians with V-2 rockets, while British and U.S. strategic bombing killed 600,000 German civilians and hundreds of thousands of Japanese.

Limited war includes military actions carried out to gain some objective short of the surrender and occupation of the enemy. For instance, the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 1991 retook the territory of Kuwait but did not go on to Baghdad to topple Saddam Hussein’s government. Many border wars have this character: after occupying the land

The Wars of the World ■ Types of War ■ Theories of the Causes

of War

Confl icts of Ideas ■ Nationalism ■ Ethnic Confl ict ■ Genocide ■ Religious Confl ict ■ Ideological Confl ict

Confl icts of Interest ■ Territorial Disputes ■ Control of Governments ■ Economic Confl ict

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1 Fortna, Virginia Page. Peace Time: Cease-Fire Agreements and the Durability of Peace. Princeton, 2004. 2 Levy, Jack S. Theories of General War. World Politics 37 (3), 1985: 344–74. Thompson, William R. On Global War: Historical-Structural Approaches to World Politics. South Carolina, 1988.

S COLOMBIA

INDIA BURMA

ISRAEL / PALESTINE

SUDANMALI

SYRIA

NIGERIA

AFGHANISTAN/PAKISTAN

DEM.DEM. CONGOCONGO

DEM. CONGO

THAILAND

SOMALIA

YEMEN NIGERIA

IRAQ/TURKEY

Estimated deaths to date under 100,000

Zones of transition from wars in recent decades

Zone of active wars

Estimated deaths to date over 100,000

FIGURE 5.1 Wars in Progress, January 2013

154

The Wars of the World 155

it wants, a state may stop short and defend its gains, as Russia did after expelling Georgian troops from disputed Georgian provinces in 2008, for example.

Raids are limited wars that consist of a single action—a bombing run or a quick incur- sion by land. In 2007, Israeli warplanes bombed a facility in Syria that Israel believed to be a nuclear research facility in order to stop Syria from making progress on nuclear weapons. Raids fall into the gray area between wars and nonwars because their destruction is limited and they are over quickly. Raiding that is repeated or fuels a cycle of retaliation usually becomes a limited war or what is sometimes called low-intensity confl ict.

Civil war refers to war between factions within a state trying to create, or prevent, a new government for the entire state or some territorial part of it. 3 (The aim may be to change the entire system of government, to merely replace the people in it, or to split a region off as a new state.) The U.S. Civil War of the 1860s is a good example of a seces- sionist civil war, as is the war of Eritrea province in Ethiopia (now the internationally recognized state of Eritrea) in the 1980s. The war in El Salvador in the 1980s is an exam- ple of a civil war for control of the entire state (not secessionist). Civil wars often seem to be among the most brutal wars. People fi ghting their fellow citizens act no less cruelly than those fi ghting people from another state. The 50,000 or more deaths in the civil war in El Salvador, including many from massacres and death squads, were not based on eth- nic differences. Of course, many of today’s civil wars emerge from ethnic or clan confl icts as well. In Chad, for example, a rebel group composed of rival clans to the president’s nearly overthrew the government in 2007. Sustaining a civil war usually requires a source of support for rebels, from neighboring states, diaspora ethnic communities, or revenue from natural resources or illegal drugs.

Guerrilla war , which includes certain kinds of civil wars, is warfare without front lines. Irregular forces operate in the midst of, and often hidden or protected by, civilian populations. The purpose is not to directly confront an enemy army but rather to harass and punish it so as to gradually limit its operation and effectively liberate territory from its control. Rebels in most civil wars use such methods. U.S. military forces in South Viet- nam fought against Vietcong guerrillas in the 1960s and 1970s, with rising frustration. Efforts to combat a guerrilla army—counterinsurgency—are discussed in Chapter 6 . In guerrilla war, without a fi xed front line, there is much territory that neither side controls; both sides thus exert military leverage over the same places at the same time. Often the government controls a town by day and the guerrillas by night. Thus, guerrilla wars are extremely painful for civilians, who suffer most when no military force fi rmly controls a location, opening the door to banditry, personal vendettas, sexual violence, and other such lawless behavior. 4 The situation is doubly painful because conventional armies fi ght- ing against guerrillas often cannot distinguish them from civilians and punish both together. In one famous case in South Vietnam, a U.S. offi cer who had ordered an entire village burned to deny its use as a sanctuary by the Vietcong commented, “We had to destroy the village to save it.” Warfare increasingly is irregular and guerrilla-style; it is less and less often an open, conventional clash of large state armies, although the latter still occurs occasionally.

In all types of war, the abstractions and theories of IR scholars hardly capture the hor- rors experienced by those on the scene, both soldiers and civilians. War suspends basic norms of behavior and, especially over time, traumatizes participants and bystanders.

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3 Collier, Paul, and Nicholas Sambanis, eds. Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis. Vol. 1: Africa. Vol. 2: Europe, Central Asia, and Other Regions. World Bank, 2005. Walter, Barbara F., and Jack Snyder, eds. Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention. Columbia, 1999. 4 Kalyvas, Stathis N. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge, 2006.

156 Chapter 5 International Confl ict

Soldiers see their best friends blown apart before their eyes, and they must kill and maim their fellow human beings; some experience lifelong psychological traumatic stress as a result. Civilians experience terror, violence, and rape; they lose loved ones and homes; they too often live with trauma after- ward. The violence of war does not resemble war movies, but instead creates a nearly psychotic experience of overwhelm- ing confusion, noise, terror, and adrenaline. Soldiers in pro- fessional armies train to keep functioning in these conditions—but still have an incredibly difficult job— whereas those in irregular forces and civilian populations caught in civil wars have little hope of coping. The horrors of all wars are magnifi ed in cases of genocide and massacre, of child soldiers, and of brutal warfare that continues over years.

Scholars and policy makers are paying more attention in recent years to the diffi cult transitions from war to peace around the world—postwar reconciliation, confl ict resolu- tion, transitional governments representing opposing fac- tions, economic reconstruction, and so forth. These efforts often address collective goods problems among the parties, as when Somali clan elders in 2007 agreed that all would be bet- ter off by giving up their guns to the new central government but none wanted to go fi rst. 5 After the shooting stops, inter- national peacekeepers and NGOs focus on Security Sector Reform (SSR) to create professional military and police forces instead of warlord militias. The process of Disarma-

ment, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) deals with the common problem of what to do with irregular forces after civil wars end. 6

In several countries where long internal wars in the 1990s had led to dehumanization and atrocities—notably in South Africa—new governments used truth commissions to help the society heal and move forward. The commission’s role was to hear honest testimony from the period, to bring to light what really happened during these wars, and in exchange to offer most of the participants asylum from punishment. Sometimes international NGOs helped facilitate the process. However, human rights groups objected to a settlement in Sierra Leone in 1999 that brought into the government a faction that had routinely cut off civilians’ fi ngers as a terror tactic. (Hostilities did end, however, in 2001.) In 2006, Colombian right-wing militia leaders called from jail for the creation of a Truth Commission before which they could confess their role in a long civil war (and receive amnesty). Thus, after brutal ethnic confl icts give way to complex political settlements, most governments try to balance the need for justice and truth with the need to keep all groups on board.

Experts have debated how much truth and reconciliation are necessary after long confl icts. Some now argue that in some circumstances, tribunals and government-spon- sored panels to investigate past crimes could lead to political instability in transitional states. Other experts disagree, noting that the work of such panels can be essential to building trust that is important for democracy. 7

GIVING UP THE GUNS

Once armed groups stop shooting, a long process of postwar transition ensues. Disarming and demobilizing militias is the most critical aspect of this transition, but also the most difficult because it leaves disarmed groups vulnerable. Here, a major armed group turns in weapons under an amnesty in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, 2009.

5 Gettleman, Jeffrey. Islamists Out, Somalia Tries to Rise from Chaos. The New York Times, January 8, 2007: A5. 6 Schnabel, Albert, and Hans-Georg Ehrhart, eds. Security Sector Reform and Post-Confl ict Peacebuilding. UN University, 2006. 7 Payne, Leigh. Unsettling Accounts: Neither Truth Nor Reconciliation in Confessions of State Violence. Duke. 2008. Subotic, Jelena. Hijacked Justice: Dealing with the Past in the Balkans. Cornell. 2009.

The Wars of the World 157

Theories of the Causes of War The Roman writer Seneca said nearly 2,000 years ago: “Of war men ask the outcome, not the cause.” 8 This is not true of political scientists. They want to know why countries fi ght.

The term confl ict in IR generally refers to armed confl ict. Confl ict itself is ever present in the international system—the condition against which bargaining takes place. In confl ict bargaining, states develop capabilities that give them leverage to obtain more favorable outcomes than they otherwise would achieve. Whether fair or unfair, the ulti- mate outcome of the bargaining process is a settlement of the particular confl ict. Rarely do confl icts lead to violence, however.

The question of when confl ict becomes violent can be approached in different ways. Descriptive approaches, favored by historians, tend to focus narrowly on specifi c direct causes of the outbreak of war, which vary from one war to another. 9 For example, one could say that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 “caused” World War I. More theoretical approaches, favored by many political scientists, tend to focus on the search for general explanations, applicable to a variety of contexts, about why wars break out. 10 For example, one can see World War I as caused by shifts in the balance of power among European states, with the assassination being only a catalyst.

One way to organize the many theories offered by political scientists to explain why wars begin is to use the levels of analysis concept from Chapter 1 . Using this framework reminds us that most important events in IR have multiple causes at different levels of analysis. 11

The Individual Level On the individual level of analysis, theories about war center on rationality. One theory, consistent with realism, holds that the use of war and other vio- lent means of leverage in international confl icts is normal and refl ects rational decisions of national leaders. “Wars begin with conscious and reasoned decisions based on the calcula- tion, made by both parties, that they can achieve more by going to war than by remaining at peace.” 12

An opposite theory holds that confl icts often escalate to war because of deviations from rationality in the individual decision-making processes of national leaders. These potentials were discussed in Chapter 4 — information screens, cognitive biases, group- think, and so forth. A related theory holds that the education and mentality of whole populations of individuals determine whether confl icts become violent. In this view, pub- lic nationalism or ethnic hatred—or even an innate tendency toward violence in human nature—may pressure leaders to solve confl icts violently.

Unfortunately, none of these theories holds up very well. Some wars clearly refl ect rational calculations of national leaders, whereas others clearly were mistakes and cannot be considered rational. Certainly some individual leaders seem prone to turn to military

8 Seneca, Hercules Furens. In Seneca’s Tragedies. Vol. 1. Translated by Frank Justus Miller. Heinemann, 1917. 9 Howard, Michael. The Invention of Peace: Refl ections on War and the International Order. Yale, 2001. Rotberg, Robert I., and Theodore K. Rabb, eds. The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars. Cambridge, 1989. Blainey, Geoffrey. Causes of War. 3rd ed. Free Press, 1988. 10 Vasquez, John A., ed. What Do We Know about War? Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2000. Maoz, Zeev, and Azar Gat, eds. War in a Changing World. Michigan, 2001. Copeland, Dale C. The Origins of Major War. Cornell, 2001. Van Evera, Stephen. Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Confl ict. Cornell, 1999. 11 Levy, Jack S. The Causes of War: A Review of Theories and Evidence. In Tetlock, P. E., et al., eds. Behavior, Society, and Nuclear War. Vol. 1. Oxford, 1989, pp. 209–333. Waltz, Kenneth N. Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis. Columbia, 2001. 12 Howard, Michael. The Causes of Wars, and Other Essays. Harvard, 1983, p. 22. Emphasis in original. For a related argument, see Fearon, James. Rationalist Explanations for War. International Organization 49 (3), 1995: 379–414.

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force to try to settle confl icts on favorable terms. But a maker of war can become a maker of peace, as did Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, for example. Individuals of many cultural back- grounds and religions lead their states into war, as do both male and female leaders.

The Domestic Level The domestic level of analysis draws attention to the characteristics of states or societies that may make them more or less prone to use violence in resolving con- fl icts. During the Cold War, Marxists frequently said that the aggressive and greedy capitalist states were prone to use violence in international confl icts, whereas Western leaders claimed that the expansionist, ideological, and totalitarian nature of communist states made them especially prone to using violence. In truth, both types of society fought wars regularly.

Likewise, rich industrialized states and poor agrarian ones both use war at times. In fact, anthropologists have found that a wide range of preagricultural hunter-gatherer socie-

ties were much more prone to warfare than today’s societies. 13 Thus the potential for warfare seems to be uni- versal across cultures, types of soci- ety, and time periods—although the importance and frequency of war vary greatly from case to case.

Some argue that domestic politi- cal factors shape a state’s outlook on war and peace. For example, the democratic peace suggests that democracies almost never fi ght other democracies (see Chapter 3 ) , although both democracies and authoritarian states fi ght wars. Oth- ers claim that domestic political par- ties, interest groups, and legislatures play an important role in whether international confl icts become inter- national wars. 14

Few useful generalizations can tell us which societies are more prone or less prone to war. The same soci- ety may change greatly over time. For example, Japan was prone to using violence in international conflicts before World War II, but averse to such violence since then. The !Kung bush people in Angola and

WHY WAR?

Political scientists do not agree on a theory of why great wars like World War II occur and cannot predict whether they could happen again. The city of Stalingrad (Volgograd) was decimated during Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, 1943.

13 Keeley, Lawrence H. War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. Oxford, 1996. O’Connell, Robert L. Ride of the Second Horseman: The Birth and Death of War. Oxford, 1995. Ehrenreich, Barbara. Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War. Metropolitan/Henry Holt, 1997. Ember, Carol R., and Melvin Ember. Resource Unpredictability, Mistrust, and War: A Cross-Cultural Study. Journal of Confl ict Resolution 36 (2), 1992: 242–62. 14 Shultz, Kenneth. Domestic Opposition and Signaling in International Crises. American Political Science Review 92 (4), 1998: 829–44. Fearon, James. Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes. American Political Science Review 88 (3), 1994: 577–92.

The Wars of the World 159

Namibia—a hunter-gatherer society—were observed by anthropologists in the 1960s to be extremely peaceful. Yet anthropologists in the 1920s had observed them engaging in murderous intergroup violence. 15 If there are general principles to explain why some soci- eties at some times are more peaceful than others and why they change, political scientists have not yet identifi ed them.

The Interstate Level Theories at the interstate level explain wars in terms of power rela- tions among major actors in the international system. Some of these theories are discussed in Chapter 2 . For example, power transition theory holds that confl icts generate large wars at times when power is relatively equally distributed and a rising power is threatening to overtake a declining hegemon in overall position. At this level, too, competing theo- ries exist that seem incompatible. Deterrence, as we have seen, is supposed to stop wars by building up power and threatening its use. But the theory of arms races holds that wars are caused, not prevented, by such actions. No general formula has been discovered to tell us in what circumstances each of these principles holds true.

Some political scientists study war from a statistical perspective, analyzing data on types of wars and the circumstances under which they occurred. 16 Current research focuses on the effects of democracy, government structure, trade, international organiza- tions, and related factors in explaining the escalation or settlement of “militarized inter- state disputes.” 17

The Global Level At the global level of analysis, a number of theories of war have been proposed. Of the several variations on the idea that major warfare in the international system is cyclical, one approach links large wars with long economic waves (also called Kondratieff cycles ) in the world economy, of about 50 years’ duration. Another approach links the largest wars with a 100-year cycle based on the creation and decay of world orders (see “Hegemony” on pp. 57 – 60 ) . These cycle theories at best can explain only general ten- dencies toward war in the international system over time. 18

An opposite approach in some ways is the theory of linear long-term change—that war as an outcome of confl ict is becoming less likely over time due to the worldwide development of both technology and international norms. Some IR scholars argue that war and military force are becoming obsolete as leverage in international confl icts because these means of infl uence are not very effective in today’s highly complex, interdependent world. A parallel line of argument holds that today’s military technology is too powerful to use in most confl icts; this is especially applicable to nuclear weapons. Advocates of these theories make historical analogies to the decline of the practices of slavery, dueling, and cannibalism—once considered normal but now obsolete. 19 These approaches have a strong empirical basis (see “The Waning of War” in Chapter 3 ) , but no consensus has emerged regarding the best explanation for this trend.

15 Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Irenaus. The Biology of Peace and War: Men, Animals, and Aggression. Viking, 1979. 16 Wright, Quincy. A Study of War. Chicago, 1965 [1942]. Richardson, Lewis F. Arms and Insecurity. Boxwood, 1960. Geller, Daniel S., and J. David Singer. Nations at War: A Scientifi c Study of International Confl ict. Cambridge, 1998. Midlarsky, Manus I., ed. Handbook of War Studies II. Michigan, 2000. Diehl, Paul F., ed. The Scourge of War: New Extensions of an Old Problem. Michigan, 2004. 17 Singer, J. David, and Paul F. Diehl, eds. Measuring the Correlates of War. Michigan, 1990. Ghosn, Faten, Glenn Palmer, and Stuart Bremer. The Militarized Interstate Dispute 3 Data Set, 1993–2001: Procedures, Coding Rules, and Description. Confl ict Management and Peace Science 21 (2), 2004: 133–54. 18 Goldstein, Joshua S. Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age. Yale, 1988. Modelski, George. Long Cycles in World Politics. Washington, 1987. 19 Mueller, John. Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War. Basic Books, 1989.

160 Chapter 5 International Confl ict

Thus, on all the levels of analysis, competing theories offer different explanations for why some confl icts become violent and others do not. For these reasons, political scientists cannot yet predict with any confi dence which of the world’s many international confl icts will lead to war. We can gain insight, however, by studying various types of confl icts to understand better what states are fi ghting about.

Confl icts of Ideas The following sections discuss six types of international confl ict: ethnic, religious, ideo- logical, territorial, governmental, and economic. The fi rst three are confl icts over ideas, the last three confl icts over interests. These six types of confl ict are not mutually exclu- sive, and they overlap considerably in practice. For example, the confl icts between Russia and Ukraine after the 1991 Soviet breakup were complex. Ethnic Russians living in Ukraine, and ethnic Ukrainians in Russia, experienced confl ict. There are also religious differences between Ukrainian and Russian forms of Christianity. In addition, the two new states had a territorial dispute over the Crimean peninsula, which Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had transferred to Ukraine in the 1950s. The two states also had economic confl icts over trade and money after the Soviet breakup, which created new borders and currencies. These multiple confl icts did not lead to the use of military force, however. In 2005, the opposition took control of Ukraine’s government (after a fl awed election was rerun in response to weeks of mass street protests). Then-Russian president Vladimir Putin, who had campaigned for the incumbent party in Ukraine, protested vigorously but did not seriously consider military force. So the types of confl ict discussed here come into play in combination rather than separately.

We will look fi rst at the most diffi cult types of confl ict, in which intangible elements such as ethnic hatred, religious fervor, or ideology come into play—confl icts of ideas. These identity-based sources of international confl ict today have been shaped historically by nationalism as the link between identity and internationally recognized statehood. Therefore, we will briefl y review the development of nationalism before examining the three types of confl icts of ideas.

Nationalism Nationalism —devotion to the interests of one’s own nation over the interests of other states—may be the most important force in world politics in the past two centuries. A nation is a population that shares an identity, usually including a language and culture. But nationality is a diffi cult concept to defi ne precisely. To some degree, the extension of political control over large territories such as France created the commonality necessary for nationhood—states created nations. At the same time, however, the perceived exist- ence of a nation has often led to the creation of a corresponding state as a people win sovereignty over their own affairs—nations created states. 20

Around a.d. 1500, countries such as France and Austria began to bring entire nations together into single states. These new nation-states were very large and powerful and overran smaller neighbors. Over time, they conquered and incorporated many small territorial units. Eventually the idea of nationalism itself became a powerful force and

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20 Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Cornell, 1983. Tilly, Charles. Coercion, Capital and European States, a.d. 990–1990. Blackwell, 1990. Hobsbawm, E. J. Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge, 1990. Mayall, James. Nationalism and International Society. Cambridge, 1990.

Confl icts of Ideas 161

ultimately contributed to the disintegration of large multinational states such as Austria- Hungary (in World War I), the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia.

The principle of self-determination implies that people who identify as a nation should have the right to form a state and exercise sovereignty over their affairs. Self- determination is a widely praised principle in international affairs today (although not historically). But it is generally secondary to the principles of sovereignty (noninterfer- ence in other states’ internal affairs) and territorial integrity, with which it frequently confl icts. Self-determination does not give groups the right to change international bor- ders, even those imposed arbitrarily by colonialism, in order to unify a group with a com- mon national identity. Generally, though not always, self-determination has been achieved by violence. When the borders of (perceived) nations do not match those of states, confl icts almost inevitably arise. Today such confl icts are widespread—in North- ern Ireland, Quebec, Israel-Palestine, India-Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Sudan, and many other places. 21

The Netherlands helped establish the principle of self-determination when it broke free of Spanish ownership around 1600 and set up a self-governing Dutch republic. The struggle over control of the Netherlands was a leading cause of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), and in that war states mobilized their populations for war in new ways. For instance, Sweden drafted one man out of ten for long-term military service, while the Netherlands used the wealth derived from global trade to fi nance a standing profes- sional army.

This process of popular mobilization intensifi ed greatly in the French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars, when France instituted a universal draft and a centrally run “command” economy. Its motivated citizen armies, composed for the fi rst time of Frenchmen rather than mercenaries, marched longer and faster. People participated in part because they were patriotic. Their nation-state embodied their aspirations and brought them together in a common national identity.

The United States meanwhile had followed the example of the Netherlands by declaring independence from Britain in 1776. Latin American states gained independ- ence early in the 19th century, and Germany and Italy unifi ed their nations out of multi- ple political units (through war) later in that century.

Before World War I, socialist workers from different European countries had banded together as workers to fi ght for workers’ rights. In that war, however, most abandoned such solidarity and instead fought for their own nation; nationalism thus proved a stronger force than socialism. Before World War II, nationalism helped Germany, Italy, and Japan build political orders based on fascism —an extreme authoritarianism girded by national chauvinism. And in World War II, it was nationalism and patriotism (not com- munism) that rallied the Soviet people in order to sacrifi ce by the millions to turn back Germany’s invasion.

In the past 50 years, nations by the dozens have gained independence and statehood. Jews worked persistently in the fi rst half of the 20th century to create the state of Israel, and Palestinians aspired in the second half to create a Palestinian state. While multina- tional states such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia have fragmented in recent years, ethnic and territorial units such as Ukraine, Slovenia, and East Timor have established themselves as independent nation-states. Others, such as Montenegro and Kurdistan, seek to do so and already run their own affairs. The continuing infl uence of nationalism in today’s world is evident. It affects several of the main types of confl ict that occupy the rest of this chapter.

21 Horowitz, Donald L. Ethnic Groups in Confl ict. 2nd ed. California, 2000.

162 Chapter 5 International Confl ict

Ethnic Confl ict Ethnic confl ict is quite possibly the most important source of confl ict in the numerous wars now occurring throughout the world. 22 Ethnic groups are large groups of people who share ancestral, language, cultural, or religious ties and a common identity (individuals identify with the group). Although confl icts between ethnic groups often have material aspects— notably over territory and govern- ment control—ethnic confl ict itself stems from a dislike or hatred that members of one ethnic group system- atically feel toward another ethnic group. Ethnic conflict is thus not based on tangible causes (what some- one does) but on intangible ones (who someone is).

Ethnic groups often form the basis for nationalist sentiments. Not all ethnic groups identify as nations; for instance, within the United States various ethnic groups coexist (sometimes uneasily) with a common national identity as Americans. But in locations where millions of members of a single ethnic group live as the majority population in their ances-

tors’ land, they usually think of themselves as a nation. In most such cases they aspire to have their own state with its formal international status and territorial boundaries. 23

Territorial control is closely tied to the aspirations of ethnic groups for statehood. Any state’s borders deviate to some extent (sometimes substantially) from the actual location of ethnic communities. Members of the ethnic group are left outside its state’s borders, and members of other ethnic groups are located within the state’s borders. The resulting situation can be dangerous, with part of an ethnic group controlling a state and another part living as a minority within another state controlled by a rival ethnic group. Fre- quently the minority group suffers discrimination in the other state, and the “home” state tries to rescue or avenge them.

Other ethnic groups lack any home state. Kurds share a culture, and many of them aspire to create a state of Kurdistan. But Kurds reside in four states—Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria—all of which strongly oppose giving up control of part of their own territory to create a Kurdish state (see Figure 5.2 ). In the 1990s, rival Kurdish guerrilla armies fought both

DRIVING OUT THE OUT-GROUP

Ethnic confl icts play a role in many international confl icts. Ethnocentrism based on an in-group bias can promote intolerance and ultimately dehumanization of an out-group, as in genocides in Darfur (Sudan), Rwanda, and Bosnia; South African apartheid; the persecution of Jews and other minorities in Nazi Germany; and slavery in the United States. In 2008, after decades of peace and tolerance, Kenya erupted in bloody ethnic violence after a disputed presidential election. Here, a mob from one ethnic group attacks and drives away all members of a rival ethnic group from a formerly mixed town.

22 Gurr, Ted Robert. Peoples versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New Century. U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2000. Saideman, Stephen M. The Ties That Divide. Columbia, 2001. Horowitz, Donald L. Ethnic Groups in Confl ict. California, 1985. Williams, Robin M. The Wars Within: Peoples and States in Confl ict. Cornell, 2003. 23 Cederman, Lars-Erik. Emergent Actors in World Politics: How States and Nations Develop and Dissolve. Princeton, 1997. Shelef, Nadav. Evolving Nationalism: Homeland, Identity, and Religion in Israel, 1925–2005. Cornell, 2010.

Confl icts of Ideas 163

Iraqi and Turkish military forces and each other. Repeatedly in the late 1990s, Turkey sent large military forces into northern Iraq to attack Kurdish guerrilla bases, and smaller clashes continue into 2013. Kurds enjoyed autonomy in part of northern Iraq under U.S. protec- tion in the 1990s and maintained a quasi-autonomous status in post-Saddam Iraq. The Kurds’ success in the 2010 Iraqi elections gave them a strong position to retain this status. In the Syrian civil war in 2011–2013, Kurdish areas gained considerable autonomy while straddling the fence politically between the government and the rebels. 24

Ethnic confl icts often create pressures to redraw borders by force. When ethnic popu- lations are minorities in territories controlled by rival ethnic groups, they may even be driven from their land or (in rare cases) systematically exterminated. By driving out the minority ethnic group, a majority group can assemble a more unifi ed, more contiguous, and larger territory for its nation-state, as ethnic Serbs tried to do through ethnic cleansing (a term they invented) after the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Similarly, ethnic confl ict between majority Kyrgyz and minority Uzbeks in 2010 in Kyrgyzstan (Central Asia) displaced hundreds of thousands of people, another example of the potency of such identity confl icts.

Outside states often worry about the fate of “their people” living as minorities in neighboring states. For instance, Albania is concerned about ethnic Albanians who are the majority population in the Serbian province of Kosovo (but a minority of the popula- tion in Serbia). But as Kosovo moved toward independence from Serbia, Serbia worried about the minority of ethnic Serbs living in Kosovo. Similar problems have fueled wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan and between India and Pakistan. The dangerous combi- nation of ethnic confl ict and territorial disputes could lead to more wars in the future.

Causes of Ethnic Hostility Why do ethnic groups frequently dislike each other? Often there are long-standing historical confl icts over specifi c territories or natural resources, or over one ethnic group’s economic exploitation or political domination of another. They

24 McDowall, David. A Modern History of the Kurds. 3rd ed. Tauris, 2004. Barkey, Henri J., and Graham E. Fuller. Turkey’s Kurdish Question. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 1998.

Saudi Arabia

Armenia

Azerbaijan

Georgia

Turkey

Syria

Iraq Jordan

Iran

Kuwait

FIGURE 5.2 Kurdish Areas

Ethnic populations often span international borders. The shaded region shows the approximate area of Kurdish settlements.

164 Chapter 5 International Confl ict

become driven not by tangible grievances (though these may well persist as irritants) but by the kinds of processes described by social psychology that are set in motion when one group of people has a prolonged confl ict with another and experiences violence at the hands of the other group. 25 The ethnic group is a kind of extended kinship group—a group of related individuals sharing some ancestors. Even when kinship relations are not very close, a group identity makes a person act as though the other members of the ethnic group were family. For instance, African American men who call each other “brother” express group identity as kinship. Likewise, Jews around the world treat each other as family even though each community has intermarried over time and shares more ancestors with local non-Jews than with distant Jews. Perhaps as technology allows far-fl ung groups to congre- gate in cyberspace, there will be less psychological pressure to collect ethnic groups physi- cally in a territorial nation-state.

Ethnocentrism , or in-group bias, is the tendency to see one’s own group in favorable terms and an out-group in unfavorable terms. Some scholars believe that ethnocentrism has roots in a biological propensity to protect closely related individuals, though this idea is controversial. 26 More often, in-group bias is understood in terms of social psychology. In either case, the ties that bind ethnic groups together, and divide them from other groups, are based on the identity principle (see pp. 6 – 7 ) . Just as the reciprocity principle has its negative side (see pp. 5 – 6 ) , so does the identity principle. The same forces that allow sacrifi ce for a group identity, as in the European Union, also allow the formation of in-group bias.

No minimum criterion of similarity or kin relationship is needed to evoke the group identity process, including in-group bias. In psychological experiments, even trivial dif- ferentiations can evoke these processes. If people are assigned to groups based on a known but unimportant characteristic (such as preferring, say, circles to triangles), before long the people in each group show in-group bias and fi nd they don’t much care for the other group’s members. 27

In-group biases are far stronger when the other group looks different, speaks a differ- ent language, or worships in a different way (or all three). All too easily, an out-group can be dehumanized and stripped of all human rights. This dehumanization includes the com- mon use of animal names— pigs, dogs, and so forth—for members of the out-group. U.S. propaganda in World War II depicted Japanese people as apes. Especially in wartime, dehumanization can be extreme. The restraints on war that have evolved in regular inter- state warfare, such as not massacring civilians (see “War Crimes” on pp. 270 – 274 ) , are easily discarded in interethnic warfare.

Experience in Western Europe shows that over time, education can overcome ethnic animosities between traditionally hostile nations, such as France and Germany. After World War II, these states’ governments rewrote the textbooks that a new generation would use to learn its people’s histories. Previously, each state’s textbooks had glorifi ed its own past deeds, played down its misdeeds, and portrayed its traditional enemies in unfl at- tering terms. In a continent-wide project, new textbooks that gave a more objective and fair rendition were created. By contrast, present-day Japanese textbooks that gloss over Japan’s crimes in World War II continue to infl ame relations with both China and Korea.

The existence of a threat from an out-group promotes the cohesion of an in-group, thereby creating a somewhat self-reinforcing process of ethnic division. However, ethno- centrism also often causes members of a group to view themselves as disunited (because

25 Glad, Betty, ed. Psychological Dimensions of War. Sage, 1990. 26 Shaw, Paul, and Yuwa Wong. Genetic Seeds of Warfare: Evolution, Nationalism, and Patriotism. Unwin Hyman, 1989. 27 Tajfel, H., and J. C. Turner. The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior. In Worchel, S., and W. Austin, eds. Psychology of Intergroup Relations. 2nd ed. Nelson-Hall, 1986, pp. 7–24.

165

POLICY PERSPECTIVES

President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf

PROBLEM How do you prevent civil war

while retaining control of your government?

BACKGROUND Imagine you are the president of Liberia. Your election in the spring of 2006 as the fi rst woman president in Africa was hailed as a breakthrough for Liberia. The election ended decades of political violence that dev- astated your own country as well as your neighbors Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone. Most recently, the violence ended when former Liberian president Charles Taylor went into exile in Nigeria. Tens of thousands of people lost their lives or were subject to human rights abuses, including torture and mutilation, in the wars begun under Taylor’s rule.

Recently, however, there is optimism within your coun- try and from the international community. Rebel groups have remained quiet, and Charles Taylor was arrested in 2006 and faces trial in a war crimes tribunal established by the UN for the brutal war in Sierra Leone. Economic aid has begun to stream into your country to assist in development. Your country is resource rich and has the potential to become a middle-income country owing to its vast natural agricultural and mineral resources. And you won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for helping end the war.

DOMESTIC CONSIDERATIONS Tremendous challenges, however, lie ahead. Economically, your coun- try is underdeveloped, with years of civil war leading to increases in corruption and economic stagnation. Many of the powerful economic actors in your country benefi t from the corruption and graft, which you have pledged to end. Unemployment is very high, with hundreds of thousands of young men unemployed. Until recently, roving bands of fi ghters controlled pockets of territory. Armed police have occasionally returned to the streets to restore order, and in late 2008, a mass breakout from the country’s only maxi- mum security prison allowed over 100 criminals to escape.

SCENARIO Now imagine that a group that was involved in the civil war begins to reopen the war. The group has taken refuge in Sierra Leone and now begins to

make cross-border raids against your country. You also suspect they are sending weapons and funds to rebels within Liberia. Although Sierra Leone does not support the group, its government is experiencing its own political instability and has limited resources to devote to the issue.

One option is to negotiate directly with the group. Nego- tiations could lead to peace, but might require power shar- ing in your government that could derail your attempts to lessen corruption.

Another option is to use military force against the rebels. But international donors would discourage you from endangering the fragile peace in Liberia, with the implicit threat of an aid cutoff if you are perceived to be too hard- line. Thus, a military offensive against the rebels would have fi nancial risks. In addition, the reemergence of a civil war would make your proposed democratic and economic reforms more diffi cult to implement. Your military is not well trained and you are very uncertain about the possibility of success against the rebels. A strong military response to the rebels, however, could discourage future aggression and establish that you are a tough leader who is serious about enforcing the peace.

CHOOSE YOUR POLICY How do you handle this new threat from the rebels? Do you adopt a hardline policy against them in hopes of defeating them? Or do you attempt reconciliation in hopes of minimizing the prospect of further bloodshed, albeit at the price of bringing your enemies into the government and thus undermining some of your goals?

Explore the Simulation “You are a Leading Shi’a Cleric in Iraq” at MyPoliSciLab

166 Chapter 5 International Confl ict

they see their own divisions up close) and the out-group as monolithic (because they see it only from the outside). This usually refl ects a group’s sense of vulnerability. In the Arab- Israeli confl ict, Israelis tend to see themselves as fragmented into dozens of political par- ties and diverse immigrant communities pulling in different directions, while they see “the Arabs” as a monolithic bloc united against them. Meanwhile, Arab Palestinians see themselves as fragmented into factions and weakened by divisions among the Arab states, while “the Israelis” appear monolithic to them.

Ethnic groups are only one point along a spectrum of kinship relations—from nuclear families through extended families, villages, provinces, and nations, up to the entire human race. Loyalties fall at different points along the spectrum. Again, there is no mini- mum criterion for in-group identity. For instance, experts said that of all the African countries, Somalia was surely immune from ethnic confl icts because Somalis were all from the same ethnic group, spoke the same language, and shared the same religion. Then in 1991–1992, a ruinous civil war erupted between members of different clans (based on extended families), leading to mass starvation, the intervention of foreign military forces, and two decades of near-anarchy and nonstop violence.

It is unclear why people identify most strongly at one level of group identity. 28 In Somalia, loyalties are to clans; in Serbia, they are to the ethnic group; in the United States and elsewhere, multiethnic nations command people’s primary loyalty. States reinforce their citizens’ identifi cation with the state through fl ags, anthems, pledges of allegiance, patriotic speeches, and so forth. Perhaps someday people will shift loyalties even further, developing a global identity as humans fi rst and members of states and ethnic groups second.

Genocide In extreme cases, governments use genocide —systematic extermination of ethnic or reli- gious groups in whole or in part—to try to destroy scapegoated groups or political rivals. Under its fanatical policies of racial purity, Nazi Germany exterminated 6 million Jews and millions of others, including homosexuals, Roma, and communists. The mass mur- ders, now known as the Holocaust, along with the sheer scale of war unleashed by Nazi aggression, are considered among the greatest crimes against humanity in history. Responsible German offi cials faced justice in the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II (see p.  270 ) . The pledges of world leaders after that experience to “never again” allow genocide have been found wanting as genocide recurred in the 1990s in Bosnia and Rwanda, and most recently in Darfur, Sudan.

In 1994, in Rwanda, where the Hutu group is the majority and the Tutsi group the minority, a Hutu-nationalist government carried out the most deadly genocide of recent decades. The minority Tutsis had earlier held power over the Hutus, and Belgian colonial- ism had exploited local rivalries. In 1994, ethnic Hutu extremists in the government gave orders throughout the country to kill ethnic Tutsis and those Hutus who had opposed the government. In short order, an estimated 800,000 men, women, and children were mas- sacred, mostly by machete, and their bodies dumped into rivers; thousands at a time washed up on lakeshores in neighboring Uganda.

It might be tempting to view Hutu-Tutsi hatred as part of a pattern of age-old ethnic hatreds that cropped up in the post–Cold War era, especially in “backward” areas such as Africa. (This age-old-hatreds theory was often articulated by Western politicians in the Bosnia case, portraying the Balkans, like Africa, as “backward” and confl ict-prone.) If kill- ings based on age-old hatreds are inevitable, then inaction by the rest of the world might

28 Krause, Jill, and Neil Renwick, eds. Identities in International Relations. St. Martin’s, 1996.

Confl icts of Ideas 167

be justifi able. However, explaining genocide as a result of backwardness does not work well, because one of the world’s most civilized, “advanced” states, Germany, exterminated its Jews even more effi ciently than Rwanda did its Tutsis—the difference being that the “advanced” society could kill with industrial chemicals instead of at knifepoint.

Social psychology theories treat the Rwandan genocide as pathological—a deviation from both rationality and social norms. In-group biases based on fairly arbitrary group characteristics become amplifi ed by a perceived threat from an out-group, and exagger- ated by history, myth, and propaganda (including schooling). Such feelings can be whipped up by politicians pursuing their own power. A key threshold is crossed when the out-group is dehumanized; norms of social interaction, such as not slitting children’s throats, can then be disregarded.

As the genocide in Rwanda unfolded, the international community stood by. A weak UN force there had to withdraw, although its commander later estimated that with 5,000 more troops he could have changed the outcome. The weak international response to this atrocity reveals how frail international norms of human rights are compared to norms of non- interference in other states’ internal affairs—at least when no strategic interests are at stake. The Hutu ultranationalists quickly lost power when Tutsi rebels defeated the government militarily, but the war spread into Democratic Congo, where the ultranationalists took refuge and where sporadic fi ghting continues 18 years later. 29 Top U.S. offi cials, including President Clinton, later apologized for their inadequate response, but the damage was done. Worse yet, renewed vows of “never again” proved wanting once more in the next case, Darfur.

In Sudan, the warring sides (largely northern Muslims versus southern Christians) in a decades-long civil war signed a peace agreement in 2003, ending a war that had killed more than a million people. The agreement called for withdrawing government forces from the south of the country, establishing a power-sharing transitional government and army, and holding a referendum in the rebel areas in six years. These processes led to the successful independence of South Sudan in 2011. But following this peace agreement, rebels in the western Darfur region began to protest their exclusion from the peace agree- ment. In response, the government helped Arab (Muslim) militias raid black African (also Muslim) Darfur villages, wantonly killing, raping, and burning. In late 2004, the government and some of the Darfur rebels reached a tentative peace agreement, and the African Union and United Nations sent in a joint peacekeeping mission in 2007. After years of Sudanese government delays and other frustrations, the force had 23,000 uni- formed personnel on the ground by 2011. The international community’s ineffective response to the mass murders in Darfur, like that in Rwanda in 1994, shows the limited reach of international norms in today’s state-based international system. 30

In cases of both genocide and less extreme scapegoating, ethnic hatreds do not merely bubble up naturally. Rather, politicians provoke and channel hatred to strengthen their own power. Often, in ethnically divided countries, political parties form along ethnic lines, and party leaders consolidate their positions in their own populations by exaggerat- ing the dangers from the other side.

The Cold War, with its tight system of alliances and authoritarian communist gov- ernments, seems to have helped keep ethnic confl icts in check. In the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia—multinational states—the existence of a single strong state (willing to

29 Power, Samantha. The Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. Basic Books, 2002. Barnett, Michael. Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda. Cornell, 2003. Straus, Scott. The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda. Cornell, 2006. Des Forges, Alison. Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. Human Rights Watch, 1999. 30 Hamburg, David A., M.D. Preventing Genocide: Practical Steps Toward Early Detection and Effective Action. Paradigm, 2008.

168 Chapter 5 International Confl ict

oppress local communities) kept the lid on ethnic tensions and enforced peace between neighboring communities. The breakup of these states allowed ethnic and regional con- fl icts to take center stage, sometimes bringing violence and war. These cases may indicate a dilemma in that freedom comes at the expense of order and vice versa. Of course, not all ethnic groups get along so poorly. After the fall of communism, most of the numerous ethnic rivalries in the former Soviet Union did not lead to warfare, and in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere, ethnic relations were relatively peaceful after the fall of communism.

Religious Confl ict One reason ethnic confl icts often transcend material grievances is that they fi nd expres- sion as religious confl icts. Because religion is the core of a community’s value system in much of the world, people whose religious practices differ are easily disdained and treated as unworthy or even inhuman. When overlaid on ethnic and territorial confl icts, religion often surfaces as the central and most visible division between groups. For instance, most people in Azerbaijan are Muslims; most Armenians are Christians. This is a very common pattern in ethnic confl icts.

Nothing inherent in religion mandates confl icts—in many places members of differ- ent religious groups coexist peacefully. But religious differences hold the potential to make existing confl icts more intractable, because religions involve core values, which are held as absolute truth. 31

This is increasingly true as fundamentalist movements have gained strength in recent decades. (The reasons for fundamentalism are disputed, but it is clearly a global-level phe- nomenon.) Members of these movements organize their lives and communities around their religious beliefs; many are willing to sacrifi ce, kill, and die for those beliefs. Funda- mentalist movements have become larger and more powerful in recent decades in Chris- tianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and other religions. In India, for example, Hindu fundamentalists have provoked violent clashes and massacres that have reverberated internationally. In 2002, a frenzy of burning, torturing, and raping by Hindu nationalist extremists killed nearly a thousand Muslims in India’s Gujarat state, where the Hindu nationalist party controls the state government. In Israel, Jewish fundamentalists have used violence, including the assassination of Israel’s own prime minister in 1995, to derail Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations.

Fundamentalist movements challenge the values and practices of secular political organizations—those created apart from religious establishments. The secular practices threatened by fundamentalist movements include the rules of the international system, which treat states as formally equal and sovereign whether they are “believers” or “infi - dels.” As transnational belief systems, religions often are taken as a higher law than state laws and international treaties. Iranian Islamist fundamentalists train and support militias in other states such as Iraq and Lebanon. Jewish fundamentalists build settlements in Israeli-occupied territories and vow to cling to the land even if their government evacu- ates it. Christian fundamentalists in the United States persuade their government to withdraw from the UN Population Fund because of that organization’s views on family planning and abortion. Each of these actions runs counter to the norms of the interna- tional system and to the assumptions of realism. 32

Some have suggested that international confl icts in the coming years may be gener- ated by a “clash of civilizations”—based on the differences among the world’s major

31 Appleby, R. Scott. The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2000. 32 Juergensmeyer, Mark. The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State. California, 1993.

Confl icts of Ideas 169

cultural groupings, which overlap quite a bit with religious communities. 33 The idea has been criticized for being overly general, and for assuming that cultural differences naturally create confl ict. In fact, although religious and ethnic confl icts receive tre- mendous attention in the media, most eth- nic and religious groups living together in states do not fi ght. 34

Islamist Movements Currently, violent confl icts are being prosecuted in the name of all the world’s major religions. But spe- cial attention is due to confl icts involving Islamic groups and states. Islamist actors are active participants in 10 of the world’s 14 wars in progress (see p. 154 ) . In addi- tion, the U.S. “war on terror” is directed against a network of Islamic terror groups. However, most Islamist movements are not violent.

Islam , the religion practiced by Mus- lims , is broad and diverse. Its divergent pop- ulations include Sunni Muslims (the majority), Shi’ite Muslims (concentrated in Iran, southern Iraq, southern Lebanon, and Bahrain), and many smaller branches and sects. Most countries with mainly Muslim popula- tions belong to the Islamic Conference, an IGO. The world’s predominantly Islamic coun- tries stretch from Nigeria to Indonesia, centered historically in the Middle East (see Figure  5.3 ) but with the largest populations in South and Southeast Asia. Many interna- tional confl icts around this zone involve Muslims on one side and non-Muslims on the other, as a result of geographical and historical circumstances including colonialism and oil.

Islamist groups advocate basing government and society on Islamic law. These groups vary greatly in the means they employ to pursue this goal. Most are nonviolent—charities and political parties. Some are violent—militias and terrorist networks. 35 In the 1990s, Islamic parties gained ground in Turkey—a secular state in which the military has inter- vened repeatedly to prevent religious politics—and a former Islamist leader has been prime minister since 2003, making Turkey an important model of moderate Islam in the region. Islamist parties have also played leading roles in Iraq’s government since 2003 and played central roles in the Arab Spring countries, winning elections in Tunisia and Egypt. An Islamist faction is a key player among armed Syrian rebels in 2013.

If Islamist movements seek changes primarily in domestic policies, why do they mat- ter for IR? Islamist politics may lead to different foreign policies, but the more important answer is that some Islamist movements have become a transnational force shaping world order and global North-South relations in important ways.

RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCES

Religious intolerance can exacerbate tensions between groups, sometimes increasing violence, with international implications. The most salient reli- gious confl ict today is between Shi’ite and Sunni branches of Islam, cen- tered in Iran and Saudi Arabia. The split played out in devastating violence in Iraq around 2007 and now helps fuel the Syrian civil war (here, 2013).

34 Fearon, James D., and David D. Laitin. Explaining Interethnic Cooperation. American Political Science Review 90 (4), 1996: 715–35.

33 Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Simon & Schuster, 1996.

35 Husain, Mir Zohair. Global Islamic Politics. 2nd ed. Longman, 2003. Esposito, John L. Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam. Oxford, 2002.

170 Chapter 5 International Confl ict

In several countries, Islamists reject Western-oriented secular states in favor of governments more explicitly oriented to Islamic values. 36 These movements refl ect long-standing anti-Western sentiment in these countries—against the old European colonizers who were Christian—and are in some ways nationalist movements expressed through religious channels. In some Middle Eastern countries with authoritarian gov- ernments, religious institutions (mosques) have been the only available avenue for political opposition. Religion has therefore become a means to express opposition to the status quo in politics and culture. These anti-Western feelings in Islamic countries came to a boil in 2006 after a Danish newspaper published offensive cartoons depicting

Germany, France, Spain1

Bosnia-Herzegovina2

Serbia/Kosovo3

Turkey4

Cyprus5

Georgia6

Southern Russia/Chechnya7

Armenia/Azerbaijan8

Afghanistan9

Tajikistan10

Western China11

Philippines12

East Timor/Indonesia13

India14

Pakistan15

Lebanon16

Israel/Palestine17

Egypt18

Algeria19

Sudan20

Nigeria21

21 20

15 14

16

12

13

17

18 19

87 10

1

2 3

4 5

6 9

11

FIGURE 5.3 Members of the Islamic Conference and Areas of Confl ict

Shaded countries are members of the conference; numbered regions are areas of confl ict between Muslims and non-Muslims or secular authorities.

36 Binder, Leonard. Islamic Liberalism: A Critique of Development Ideologies. Chicago, 1988. Davidson, Lawrence. Islamic Fundamentalism: An Introduction. Greenwood Press, 2003.

Confl icts of Ideas 171

the prophet Muhammad. Across the world, Muslims protested, set fi re to several Dan- ish embassies, rioted (with dozens of deaths resulting), and boycotted Danish goods. In 2012, an anti-Muslim YouTube video produced by an Egyptian in the United States led to further rioting and triggered an armed attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya, kill- ing the U.S. ambassador.

Public opinion in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries shows some misconcep- tions and differences in opinion (see Figure 5.4 ). Support for Islamist radicals varies greatly among countries. A 2005 poll recalls “mirror image” perceptions (see p. 131 ) . In fi ve Western industrialized countries, about 40 to 80 percent thought Muslims were “fanati- cal,” and 60 to 80 percent thought they did not respect women. But in three of fi ve Mus- lim countries, more than 60 percent thought non-Muslims were “fanatical,” and in four of those fi ve countries, a majority thought non-Muslims did not respect women.

Muslims think non-Muslims are:

Not respectful of women

53%

39%

52%

50%

52%

Jordan

Turkey

Egypt

Indonesia

Pakistan

Fanatical

68%

67%

61%

41%

24%

Non-Muslims think Muslims are:

Not respectful of women

83%

80%

77%

59%

69%

Spain

Germany

France

Great Britain

U.S.

Fanatical

83%

78%

50%

48%

43%

How often is suicide bombing or violence against civilians justified in order to defend Islam?

Lebanon

Indonesia

Pakistan

Turkey

Jordan

Egypt

Percent responding often or sometimes in 2010

39%

15%

8%

6%

20%

20%

FIGURE 5.4 Public Opinion in Muslim and Non-Muslim Countries

Source: Pew Global Attitudes Survey, 2005 and 2010.

172 Chapter 5 International Confl ict

The more radical Islamist movements not only threaten some existing governments— especially those tied to the West—but also undermine traditional norms of state sovereignty. They reject Western political conceptions of the state (based on individual autonomy) in favor of a more traditional Islamic orientation based on community. Some aspire to create a single political state encompassing most of the Middle East, as existed in the caliphate of a.d. 600–1200. Such a development would create a profound challenge to the present international system—particularly to its current status quo powers—and would therefore be opposed at every turn by the world’s most powerful states.

Islamists in Middle Eastern countries, like revolutionaries elsewhere, derive their main base of strength from championing the cause of the poor masses against rich elites. Like other revolutionaries throughout the global South, Islamist movements in countries such as Turkey, Egypt, and Lebanon draw their base of support from poor slums, where the Islamists sometimes provide basic services unmet by the government.

In a public opinion poll in 2006 in Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, a plu- rality of respondents identifi ed primarily as Muslims, more than identifi ed primarily as citizens of their states or as Arabs. But in Lebanon and the UAE, the pattern was reversed, with large majorities identifying primarily as citizens of their states. Islamist movements tap into the public’s identifi cation with issues that may not materially affect them but affect their identities as Muslims, across national borders—especially the Arab-Israeli confl ict. The public in Muslim countries also cared about wars in the 1990s in Bosnia, Azerbaijan, and Chechnya, where Christian armed forces attacked Muslim civilians. Islamists see all these confl icts as part of a broad regional (or even global) struggle of Islam against Western, Christian imperialism—a struggle dating back to the Crusades almost a thousand years ago. From the perspective of some outsiders, the religious confl icts boiling and simmering at the edges of the Islamic world look like an expansionist threat to be contained. The view from within looks more like being surrounded and repressed from several directions.

The Iraq War since 2003 greatly infl amed anti-American feeling and helped radical- ize politics across the Muslim world, especially in Arab countries that saw the U.S. inva- sion as a humiliation to Arab dignity. Initially, the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, whose middle name refl ects Muslim family roots in Kenya and who grew up partly in Mus- lim Indonesia, began to alter this anti-American dynamic. Favorability ratings of America climbed in Bahrain, Jordan, and Egypt, in part due to President Obama’s speech on Amer- ica’s relations with Muslim states in Cairo in June 2009, where Obama called for a “new beginning” to those relationships. By 2010, though, many of those numbers had begun to fall again as the Arab world began to express frustration in the Middle East peace process and the U.S. decision to stay in Afghanistan.

Armed Islamist Groups Anti-American and anti-Western sentiments in predominantly Islamic countries have accelerated the growth of violent Islamist groups as well. Although they are in the minority, they have disproportionate effects on IR and receive the most public attention.

Armed Islamist groups vary tremendously, and in some cases violently disagree with each other (see Table 5.1 ). In particular, divisions between the Sunni and Shi’ite wings of Islam have led to violence. This split played out prominently in Iraq, where Saddam Hus- sein was a Sunni ruling over a Shi’ite majority (brutally repressing their rebellion after the 1991 Gulf War) and earlier fi ghting a long deadly war against Shi’ite Iran. After the U.S.- led overthrow of Saddam in 2003, Shi’ite parties took power and Shi’ite militias exacted revenge, while some Sunnis waged a relentless insurgency that turned into deadly waves of sectarian violence. The violence in Iraq has since diminished, but the Sunni-Shi’ite relationship there remains unsettled.

Confl icts of Ideas 173

Since 2011, the Sunni-Shi’ite divide has centered on Syria, where the ruling family is Alawite (an offshoot of Shi’ism) and the majority of the population is Sunni. Civil war there has also taken on sectarian overtones, reinforced by outside backers—Shi’ite Iran for the government along with the Shi’ite Lebanese militia Hezbollah, and Sunni Turkey and Arab Gulf states for the rebels.

Regionally, Iran and Saudi Arabia represent the split, facing each other over the Persian Gulf (or, Arabian Gulf) and engaged in a major arms race, with the Saudis stock- ing in jets and missiles while the Iranians race to build a nuclear weapon. Russia tends to support the Iranian-Shi’ite side while the United States and its allies support the Saudi- Sunni side. However, neither side gets along with Israel, lending a triangular aspect to the confl ict.

In Iran, a popular uprising in 1979 overthrew the U.S.-backed shah and installed an Islamic government in which the top religious leaders (ayatollahs) can overturn the laws passed by the parliament. The rejection of international norms by some Islamists was dra- matically illustrated when Iran refused to protect U.S. diplomats [in Iran] in 1979. Defying the UN Security Council, Iran is currently developing nuclear technology that could pro- duce nuclear weapons within a few years. In 2009, a disputed presidential election led to the harsh repression of protesters. In 2012, Iran’s currency lost half its value as harsh

Group Country Branch of Islam Actions

Iran Shi’ite Only Islamic revolution to successfully control a state (since 1979); held off secular Iraq in 1980s war; now attempting to build nuclear weapons.

Hezbollah Lebanon Shi’ite Fought Israeli army in 2006. Part of ruling coalition in Lebanon.

Mahdi Army Iraq Shi’ite Clashed with U.S. forces in Iraq; major faction in Iraqi government.

Algeria in 2013.

Al-Nusra Front Syria Sunni Leading rebel militia in civil war. Ansar Dine Mali Sunni Controlled north of country in 2012; took hostages in

Various Iraq Sunni Insurgent forces inflicted many casualties on U.S. forces in Iraq. Foreign fighters also active in Iraq.

Hamas Palestine (Gaza) Sunni Forces have killed hundreds of Israeli civilians and fought a war against Israel in 2008. Won Palestinian elections in 2006. Controls Gaza Strip.

al Shabab Somalia Sunni Controlled most of country in 2007–2012. Allied with al Qaeda. Ousted by African Union in 2012.

Moro Islamic Philippines Sunni Forces have fought for independence of certain regions Liberation Front in the Muslim-populated southern Philippine Islands.

al Qaeda World (Pakistan?) Sunni 9/11 attacks and European bombings. Weakened by deaths of top leaders.

Taliban Afghanistan Sunni Major insurgent group fighting foreign forces; controlled country in 1996–2001.

Islamist guerrilla fighters/terrorists are also active in Chechnya (Russia), Kashmir (India), Central Asia, Indonesia, and Europe.

Islamic Republic of Iran

TABLE 5.1 Major Armed Islamist Groups

Source: U.S. Department of Defense

174 Chapter 5 International Confl ict

international sanctions hurt the economy, and in 2013, Israel threatened military attack if necessary to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Iran strongly supports—with money, arms, and training—the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon and the government in Syria. Hezbollah runs hundreds of schools, hospitals, and other charities, but is also included on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations. Hezbollah fought Israel for years, winning popular support throughout the Arab world, even among Sunnis. Hezbollah took a leading role in Lebanon’s government in 2011, despite a UN tribunal’s indictment of its members for the 2005 assassination of Leba- non’s prime minister.

On the Sunni side, the major militant Islamist groups, as well as some less violent ones, are Salafi s. They adhere to some version of Wahhabism, a fundamentalist interpre- tation of Islamic law with roots in Saudi Arabia. The most important center of this funda- mentalist movement currently is in Afghanistan and the next-door tribal areas of western Pakistan. Militants following the same philosophy are also active across Northern Africa in 2013, notably in Nigeria, Mali, Libya, and Somalia. In Egypt, a nonviolent Salafi party did well in 2012 elections, although they lost the presidential election to an Islamist who follows a less stringent interpretation of Islam.

In Afghanistan, an Islamic government was established in 1992 after a civil war (and following a decade of ill-fated Soviet occupation). Rival Islamic factions then con- tinued the war with even greater intensity for several years. By 1997, a faction called the Taliban had taken control of most of Afghanistan and imposed an extreme interpre- tation of Islamic law. With beatings and executions, the regime forced women to wear head-to-toe coverings, girls to stay out of school, and men to grow beards, among other repressive policies.

The incendiary mixture in Afghanistan in the 1990s—unending war, grinding pov- erty, Islamic fundamentalism, and an ideologically driven government—allowed Afghan- istan to become a base for worldwide terrorist operations, culminating in the September 11, 2001, attacks. In response, the United States exerted its power to remove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and disrupt the al Qaeda terrorist network headquartered there. Despite U.S. and NATO successes, the Taliban continues to attack NATO forces. Attacks on civilians also continue in Afghanistan.

The Taliban’s defeat in Afghanistan in 2001 led its members, with like-minded Paki- stani militants, to establish bases in the lawless “tribal areas” of western Pakistan, a much larger neighbor with nuclear weapons. Pakistan’s intelligence service is widely believed to use Islamist militants to exert infl uence in both Afghanistan and in Kashmir, a territory Pakistan and India dispute. In late 2008, Pakistan-based terrorists attacked Mumbai, India, and killed about 150 civilians there. Pro-democracy forces ousted Pakistan’s mili- tary ruler and installed an elected government in 2008, though not until after the move- ment’s leader, Benazir Bhutto, had been assassinated.

The war in Afghanistan has strained relations between Pakistan and the United States and its NATO allies. These strains worsened in 2011 when U.S. forces found and killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani city. Pakistanis objected to the intrusion that vio- lated their sovereignty, while Americans wondered whether the Pakistani military had colluded in hiding bin Laden.

Al Qaeda is a transnational group—more a network or movement than a central organization in recent years—that recruits fi ghters from various countries, encourages and sometimes trains them, and helps them fi ght in foreign confl icts (such as in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Iraq after 2003, or Syria today). 37

37 Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Knopf, 2006.

Confl icts of Ideas 175

Although al Qaeda as a “brand” has picked up followers in northern Africa in recent years, it has lost steam in Asia and Europe, where the years after 2001 saw various terror bomb- ings from Bali, Indonesia, to Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Iraq, and Turkey. In 2004, bombings of trains in Madrid killed hundreds and apparently tipped an election against the pro-American Spanish government—thus inducing Spain to pull its troops out of Iraq. The next year, the London subway was the target.

In Saudi Arabia—home to the world’s largest oil reserves, Islam’s holiest sites, and the roots of Wah- habism—al Qaeda has long hoped to overthrow the monarchy. In 1979, Islamist militants briefl y seized con- trol of the Grand Mosque in Mecca.

Saudi Arabia’s neighbor to the south, Yemen, has an active branch of al Qaeda-affiliated fighters who have tried several times to bomb U.S.-bound aircraft and who seized territory in the south of the country in 2011–2012 while the government was paralyzed by political unrest in the capital (part of the Arab Spring). Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East and has suffered from decades of civil confl ict. The United States operates a vigorous cam- paign of drone attacks to combat the Yemeni militants.

Somalia’s al Shabab fi ghters, affi liated with al Qaeda, were ousted from most cities and towns in 2012 by an African Union force, but not before taking revenge on Ethiopia and Uganda, which had contributed troops to support the Somali government. Al Shabab carried out deadly bombings in Uganda during the 2010 World Cup fi nals. In 2011, although the African Union force in Somalia pushed al Shabab out of the capital, a ter- rible famine caused by drought and war gripped the Shabab-held areas of the country and forced refugees into Kenya. In response, Kenya also sent military forces into Somalia to attack al Shabab.

In Libya, the overthrow of dictator Muammar Quadaffi in 2011 (with NATO assist- ance) empowered armed Islamist groups that had formerly been repressed. They killed the U.S. ambassador in 2012, and they joined up with ethnic rebels from Mali, who had been fi ghting as mercenaries for Quadaffi , to seize northern Mali, using large quantities of weap- ons they brought from Libya. The Islamists swept aside the ethnic rebels and took power for themselves, but by 2013 were ousted by a military intervention by France and neigh- boring African countries to return control to the government of Mali.

In Palestine, the radical Islamist faction Hamas is another important Sunni Islamist militia, although not connected with al Qaeda or the Taliban. Centered in the Gaza Strip, Hamas sent suicide bombers who killed hundreds of Israelis after 2000, then won

THE POLITICS OF ISLAM

In some Muslim-populated countries, Islam is a political rallying point—especially in authoritarian countries in which the mosque is a rare permitted gathering point. Islamist politicians are developing new models of government, mixing democracy and Islamic tradition, especially in the countries most affected by the Arab Spring protests, which frequently peaked after Friday prayers. Here, Egyptians pray dur- ing a Friday protest against the authoritarian president early in 2011.

176 Chapter 5 International Confl ict

free parliamentary elections in 2006 because it was seen as less corrupt than the dominant party. However, Palestine remains divided, with the Palestinian Authority controlling the West Bank and Hamas controlling Gaza.

The two great powers to face Islamist violence within their borders are Russia in its far south and China in its far west. The predominantly Sunni Muslim republic of Chechnya, a Russian province, tried to split away from Russia in the early 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed. After destructive wars in 1994–1995 and 1999–2000, the threat abated, although Chechen guerrillas then turned to airline hijackings, hostage taking, and suicide bombings. In 2004, hundreds of children died after Chechen terrorists took over a school and held them hostage. In 2005, Russian forces killed the Chechen separa- tist leader they held responsible, and political violence in Chechnya is now sporadic.

Overall, confl icts involving Islamist movements are more complex than simply reli- gious confl icts; they concern power, economic relations, ethnic chauvinism, and histori- cal empires as well.

Ideological Confl ict To a large extent, ideology is like religion: it symbolizes and intensifi es confl icts between groups and states more than it causes them. Ideologies have a somewhat weaker hold on core values and absolute truth than religions do, so they pose somewhat fewer problems

for the international system. For realists, ideological differences

among states do not matter much, because all members of the international system pursue their national interests in the con- text of relatively fl uid alliances. For exam- ple, the Cold War was a global ideological struggle between capitalist democracy and communism. But the alliances and mili- tary competitions in that struggle were fairly detached from ideological factors. The two communist giants—the Soviet Union and China—did not stay together very long. India, a democracy and capital- ist country, chose not to ally with the United States. And even the two great rival superpowers managed to live within the rules of the international system for the most part (such as both remaining UN members).

Over the long run, even countries that experience revolutions based on strong ide- ologies tend to lose their ideological fervor—be it Iran’s Islamic fundamental- ism in 1979, China’s Maoist communism in 1949, Russia’s Leninist communism in 1917, or even U.S. democracy in 1776. In each case, the revolutionaries expected that their assumption of power would dra- matically alter their state’s foreign policy, because in each case their ideology had

IDEOLOGICAL SPLIT

Ideology plays only a limited role in most international confl icts. After revo- lutions, ideologies such as Marxism may affect foreign policy, but over the following decades, countries such as China or the Soviet Union typically revert to a foreign policy based more on national interests than ideology. Nonetheless, ideological clashes still occur, as between the freedom- loving United States and authoritarian North Korea. Here the different styles of the two countries are on display as the New York Philharmonic performs a rare concert in North Korea, 2008.

Confl icts of Interest 177

profound international implications. Yet within a few decades, each of these revolution- ary governments turned to the pursuit of national interests above ideological ones.

Sometimes even self-proclaimed ideological struggles are not really ideological. In Angola in the 1980s, the United States backed a rebel army called UNITA against a Soviet-aligned government—supposedly a struggle of democracy against Marxism. In truth, the ideological differences were quite arbitrary. The government mouthed Marxist rhetoric to get the Soviet Union to give it aid (a policy it reversed as soon as Soviet aid dried up). The rebels who used democratic rhetoric to get U.S. support had earlier received Chinese support and mouthed Maoist rhetoric. When the government won UN-sponsored elections, the “democratic” UNITA refused to accept the results and resumed fi ghting. This confl ict, which fi nally ended in 2002, really had nothing to do with ideology. It was a power struggle between two armed, ethnically based factions fi ghting to control Angola’s oil, diamonds, and other wealth.

In the short term, revolutions do change international relations—they make wars more likely—but not because of ideology. Rather, the sudden change of governments can alter alliances and change the balance of power. With calculations of power being revised by all parties, it is easy to miscalculate or to exaggerate threats on both sides. But ideology itself plays little role in this post-revolutionary propensity for wars: revolutions are seldom exported to other states. 38

Confl icts of Interest If confl icts of ideas can be intractable because of psychological and emotional factors, confl icts about material interests are somewhat easier to settle based on the reciprocity principle. In theory, given enough positive leverage—a payment in some form—any state should agree to another state’s terms on a disputed issue.

Territorial Disputes Among the international confl icts that concern tangible “goods,” those about territory have special importance because of the territorial nature of the state (see “Anarchy and Sovereignty” on pp. 49 – 52 ) . Confl icts over control of territory are really of two varieties: territorial disputes (about where borders are drawn) and confl icts over control of entire states within existing borders (discussed next under “Control of Governments”). Consider fi rst differences over where borders between two states should be drawn—that is, who controls a disputed piece of land.

Because states value home territory with an almost fanatical devotion, border dis- putes tend to be among the most intractable in IR. States seldom yield territory in exchange for money or any other positive reward. Nor do states quickly forget territory that they lose involuntarily. For example, in 2002, Bolivian public opinion opposed a gas export pipeline through Chile to the sea because Chile had seized the coastline from Bolivia in 1879. The goal of regaining territory lost to another state is called irredentism . This form of nationalism often leads directly to serious interstate confl icts. 39 Because of their association with the integrity of states, territories are valued far beyond any inherent economic or strategic value they hold. For example, after Israel and Egypt made peace in

Watch the Video “The Cuban Missile Crisis” at MyPoliSciLab

38 Walt, Stephen M. Revolution and War. Cornell, 1996. 39 Diehl, Paul F., ed. A Road Map to War: Territorial Dimensions of International Confl ict. Vanderbilt, 1999. Ambrosio, Thomas. Irredentism: Ethnic Confl ict and International Politics. Praeger, 2001.

178 Chapter 5 International Confl ict

1978, it took them a decade to settle a border dispute at Taba, a tiny plot of beachfront on which Israeli developers had built a hotel just slightly across the old border. The two states fi nally submitted the issue for binding arbitration, and Egypt ended up in possession. For Egypt, regaining every inch of territory was a matter of national honor and a symbol of the sovereignty and territorial integrity that defi ned Egyptian statehood.

The value states place on home territory seems undiminished despite the apparent reduction in the inherent value of territory as technology has developed. Historically, ter- ritory was the basis of economic production—agriculture and the extraction of raw ma terials. Winning and losing wars meant gaining or losing territory, which meant increasing or decreasing wealth. Today, however, much more wealth derives from trade and technol- ogy than from agriculture. The costs of most territorial disputes appear to outweigh any economic benefi ts that the territory in question could provide. Exceptions exist, however, such as the capture of diamond-mining areas in several African countries by rebels who use the diamond revenues to fi nance war. (In 2002, 40 states created a program of UN certifi cation for legitimate diamonds, trying to keep the “confl ict diamonds” off the inter- national market.)

Secession Efforts by a province or region to secede from an existing state are a special type of confl ict over borders—not the borders of two existing states but the efforts to draw international borders around a new state. Dozens of secession movements exist around the world, of varying sizes and political effectiveness, but they succeed in seceding only rarely. The existing state almost always tries to hold on to the area in question. For example, in the 1990s, the predominantly Albanian population of the Serbian province of Kosovo fought a war to secede from Serbia. NATO intervention, including sustained bombing of Serbia (not approved by the UN), led to the withdrawal of Serbia’s army from Kosovo and its replacement with European and American peacekeeping troops who have been there

SEEKING THE COLLECTIVE GOOD

Peace in Latin America COLLECTIVE GOOD: Peaceful Relations Among Latin American States

BACKGROUND: Of all the world regions, Latin America is one of the most peaceful. Some scholars have gone so far as to describe Latin America as a secu- rity community given the very low incidence of inter- state war in the region for the past 100 years. This is despite civil wars and numerous border disagreements between states in the region. The stable peace is a col- lective good enjoyed by all countries in the region, even though countries that violate it might gain terri- tory or wealth by using military force.

CHALLENGE: Despite years of relatively peaceful interstate relations in the region, persistent confl icts still exist between some states. In 1995, Peru and Ecua- dor fought a border skirmish. Since 2000, other dis-

putes have escalated. Bolivia wants to reclaim a corridor to the sea that it lost to Chile more than 100 years ago. Colombia and Venezuela trade accusations over Vene- zuela’s support of rebels fi ghting in Colombia. Rival countries have linguistic differences, ideological differ- ences, territorial disputes, economic competition, and a range of other con- fl icts. With the countries having sizable armies and navies at the ready, the potential for war is always present.

SOLUTION: How has Latin America avoided more large-scale interstate war? The solution can be found in both the reciprocity and identity principles. All

Confl icts of Interest 179

ever since. Most of the Kosovo population wants to secede and become an internationally recognized state, but Serbians argue that Kosovo is historically and presently under Serbian sovereignty. While the UN and the great powers negotiated over the future of Kosovo, with Russia insisting there be no promise of independence, Kosovars took matters into their own hands. In 2008, Kosovo declared independence without UN approval. Several countries, including the United States and the largest EU states, recognized Kosovo’s independence, angering Serbia, Russia, and China. In 2011, South Sudan success- fully gained independence with UN membership and the support of Sudan.

Wars of secession can be large and deadly, and they can easily spill over international borders or draw in other countries. This spillover is particularly likely if members of an ethnic or a religious group span two sides of a border, constituting the majority group in one state and a majority in a nearby region of another state, but a minority in the other state as a whole. In the Kosovo case, Albanian Muslims are the majority in Albania and in Kosovo but the minority in Serbia. The same pattern occurs in Bosnia-Serbia, Moldova- Russia, and India-Pakistan. In some cases, secessionists want to merge their territories with the neighboring state, which amounts to redrawing the international border. Inter- national norms frown on such an outcome.

The strong international norms of sovereignty and territorial integrity treat secession movements as domestic problems of little concern to other states. The general principle seems to be this: “We existing states all have our own domestic problems and disaffected groups or regions, so we must stick together behind sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Thus, Russia and China opposed the secession of Kosovo from Serbia because of its impli- cations for Chechnya and Taiwan, respectively.

This principle does have limits, however. In August of 2008, after fi ghting broke out between the Georgian military and the Georgian province of South Ossetia, Russia inter- vened militarily on behalf of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, resulting in a brief war between

states are members of the Organization of American States, which promotes reciprocity and negotiation when political disputes arise. In this way, even when some fighting occurs, conflicts do not escalate and become long, large-scale military confl icts. This nego- tiation process has succeeded in settling many of the existing disputes, even the Peru-Ecuador dispute, three years after their border war.

The identity principle is also at work. Latin Amer- ica has developed a shared norm of confl ict resolution. A dispute between any two states is perceived as a threat to all states in the region. Each state thinks broadly about its own interests to include the continu- ation of peace in the region. In this way, threats to peace are actively dealt with by the community as a whole.

South American leaders discuss trade, not war, in Argentina, 2010.

180 Chapter 5 International Confl ict

Russia and Georgia. Russia then rec- ognized both Georgian provinces as independent, a move denounced by the United States and the EU and not accepted by the UN.

Messy border problems can result when multinational states break up into pieces. In such cases, borders that had been internal become inter- national; because these borders are new, they may be more vulnerable to challenge. In the former Yugoslavia, ethnic groups had intermingled and intermarried, leaving mixed popula- tions in most of the Yugoslav repub- lics. When Yugoslavia broke up in 1991–1992, several republics declared their independence as sepa- rate states. Two of these, Croatia and Bosnia, contained minority popula- tions of ethnic Serbs. Serbia seized effective control of signifi cant areas of Croatia and Bosnia that contained Serbian communities or linked such populations geographically. Non- Serbian populations in these areas were driven out or massacred— euphemistically called ethnic cleans- ing. Then, when Croatia reconquered most of its territory in 1995, Serbian populations in turn fled. Ethnic

nationalism, whipped up by opportunistic politicians, proved stronger than multiethnic tolerance in both Serbia and Croatia.

The breakup of a state need not lead to violence, however. Serbia split peacefully from Montenegro (another of the former Yugoslav republics) in 2006. Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in a cooperative manner. And the breakup of the Soviet Union did not lead to violent territorial disputes between republics in most cases, even when ethnic groups spanned new international borders (such as Ukraine-Russia).

The norm against forceful redrawing of borders does not apply to cases of decoloniza- tion. Only the territorial integrity of existing, recognized states is protected by interna- tional norms. Colonies and other territorial possessions historically had value only as property to be won, lost, sold, or traded in political deals and wars. The transfer of Hong Kong from British to Chinese control in 1997 also illustrates how colonial territory is dispensable (Britain’s perspective) while home territory is nearly sacred (China’s perspec- tive). From neither perspective do the views of the inhabitants carry much weight.

Increasingly, autonomy for a region has become a realistic compromise between secession and full control by a central government. In 2005, spurred partly by the devas- tating tsunami a year earlier, separatists in Aceh province, Indonesia, disbanded, giving up on independence and instead participating in regional elections in 2006. The Indo- nesian government withdrew its 24,000 troops from Aceh and offered the province limited self-rule along with 70 percent of the oil, gas, and mineral wealth earned there.

WE WANT OUT

Efforts by a region to secede from a state are a frequent source of international confl ict, but international norms generally treat such confl icts as internal matters unless they spill over borders. Increasingly, autonomy agreements are resolving secession confl icts. Here, 1.5 million citizens in Barcelona demand independence from recession-wracked Spain for the region of Catalonia, 2012. Leaders of the region promise a referendum in 2014.

Confl icts of Interest 181

Interstate Borders Border disputes between existing states are taken more seriously by the international community, but are less common than secessionist confl icts. Because of the norm of territorial integrity, few important border confl icts remain among long- established states. 40 At one time, huge chunks of territory passed between states at the stroke of a pen (on a peace treaty or marriage contract). However, this kind of whole- sale redrawing of borders has not occurred among established states for 50 years. Since the end of World War II, only a minuscule amount of territory has changed hands between established states through force (this does not apply to the formation of new states and the fragmenting of old ones). Such efforts have been made, but have failed. For instance, when Iraq attacked Iran in 1980, one objective was to control the Shatt-al-Arab waterway (with access to the Persian Gulf) because of its commercial and strategic value. But ten years and a million deaths later, the Iran-Iraq border was back where it started.

Furthermore, when territorial disputes do occur between established states, they can be settled peacefully, especially when the disputed territory is small compared with the states disputing it. In 1994, a panel of Latin American judges settled a century-long border dispute between Argentina and Chile over some mountainous terrain that both claimed. The 3-to-2 ruling, after the countries submitted the dispute for judicial arbitration, awarded the territory to Argentina and provoked howls of protest from Chile—and even a hair-pulling fi ght between the Chilean and Argentine contestants in the Miss World beauty contest two months later. But despite the strong feelings evoked by the loss of ter- ritory, Argentina and Chile settled 22 of 24 remaining border disputes peacefully after nearly going to war in 1978 over disputed islands.

The possibility of peaceful resolution of territorial disputes was highlighted in 2006 with the withdrawal of Nigerian troops from the potentially oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula, which Nigeria ceded to Cameroon’s sovereignty. The resolution of the dispute, dating from colonial times, followed more than a decade of painstaking progress through the World Court, the personal mediation of the UN secretary-general when Nigeria ini- tially rejected the Court’s decision, and the promise of outside powers to monitor imple- mentation of the agreement. Why would Nigeria—a country with nine times Cameroon’s population, more than triple its GDP, and a much stronger military— voluntarily cede territory? Doing so would seem to run counter to the predictions of realism in particular and the dominance principle in general. Liberal theories would do better at explaining this outcome: Nigeria acted in its own self-interest, because turning the dispute over to the World Court and bringing in the UN to assist with implementa- tion brought the kind of stability needed for foreign investment to develop Nigeria’s own resources, primarily oil.

Lingering Disputes Today, the few remaining interstate border disputes generate impor- tant international confl icts. Among the most diffi cult are the borders of Israel . The 1948 cease-fi re lines resulting from Israel’s war of independence expanded in the 1967 war. Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, but the remaining territories occupied in 1967—the West Bank near Jordan, the Gaza Strip near Egypt, and the Golan Heights of Syria—are central to the Arab-Israeli confl ict. In particular, Israel’s ongoing construc- tion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, bitterly opposed by Palestinians and consid- ered illegal by most international actors, remains a contentious sticking point. Israeli-Palestinian agreements since 1993 tried to move toward Palestinian autonomy in

40 The CIA’s World Factbook provides a comprehensive list of minor border and other international disputes. See http://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fi elds/2070.html .

182 Chapter 5 International Confl ict

parts of the West Bank and Gaza, and negotiations seemed headed toward creation of a state of Palestine there. However, that effort completely stalled in the 21st century, not- withstanding the 2012 upgrading of Palestine’s UN status to nonmember “state,” a sym- bolic gesture.

Another serious border dispute is in the Kashmir area where India, Pakistan, and China intersect. The Indian-held part of Kashmir is predominantly inhabited by Muslims, a group that is the majority in Pakistan but a minority in India. A Line of Control divides the disputed province. Pakistan accuses India of oppressing Kashmiris and thwarting an international agreement to decide Kashmir’s future by a popular referendum. India accuses Pakistan of aiding and infi ltrating Islamic radicals who carry out attacks in Indian- occupied Kashmir. The two countries went to war twice over the issue, and nearly did so again in 2002—that time armed with nuclear-armed missiles. A cease-fi re took hold in 2003 and stopped most of the incessant low-level fi ghting along the Line of Control, although sporadic skirmishes continue, such as those that killed several soldiers on each side in early 2013.

Many of the world’s other remaining interstate territorial disputes—and often the most serious ones—concern the control of small islands, which often provide strategic advantages, natural resources (such as offshore oil), or fi shing rights. International law now gives an island’s owner fi shing and mineral rights in surrounding seas for 200 miles in each direction. The tiny disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, whose sur- rounding waters may hold substantial oil reserves, are claimed in part or in full by China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei (see Figure 5.5 ). All of

South China Sea

Spratly Islands

Philippines

China

Taiwan

Brunei

Vietnam

Malaysia

FIGURE 5.5 Disputed Islands

The Spratly Islands exemplify contemporary confl icts over territory and natural resources around islands. All or part of the Spratlys are claimed by China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, and Taiwan.

Confl icts of Interest 183

those states except Brunei have resorted to military actions at times to stake their claims. Recently, multiple encounters between various navies have raised tensions over the contested sea. About half of the world’s trade tonnage passes through it, including Persian Gulf oil and other key resources headed for Japan, China, South Korea, and Taiwan. In 2012, China and the Philippines had a months-long standoff at a tiny shoal, but ended it peacefully.

Japan and China also dispute tiny islands elsewhere, as do Japan and South Korea. These disputes involve low economic stakes, but have become a focus of nationalist senti- ments on both sides, fueled partly by memories of World War II, when Japan occupied China and Korea. The most serious is over small islands in the East China Sea that Japan controls but China claims, and which would give Chinese submarines a clear route to the Pacifi c. The two navies and air forces confronted each other there repeatedly in 2012, though without violence, and in early 2013, the United States (bound by treaty to defend Japan in a war) called on “cooler heads” to prevail.

A number of smaller island confl icts exist around the globe. In the Middle East, Iran and the United Arab Emirates dispute ownership of small islands near the mouth of the Persian Gulf. In 2002, Spain sent soldiers to oust a handful of Moroccan troops from islands off Morocco’s coast. In South America, Argentina and Britain still dispute control of the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), over which they fought a war in 1982. And the major bone of contention in Russian-Japanese relations is the ownership of the strategi- cally located Kuril Islands, occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945. With islands now bring- ing control of surrounding economic zones, international confl icts over islands will undoubtedly continue in the coming years.

Territorial Waters States treat territorial waters near their shores as part of their national territory. Defi nitions of such waters are not universally agreed upon, but norms have developed in recent years, especially since the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) (see p. 399 ) . Waters within three miles of shore have traditionally been recognized as territorial, but beyond that there are disputes about how far out national sovereignty extends and for what purposes. UNCLOS generally allows a 12-mile limit for shipping and a 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) covering fi shing and mineral rights (but allowing for free navigation by all). The EEZs together cover a third of the world’s oceans. In 2010, Russia and Norway agreed to divide portions of the Arctic Ocean into EEZs for the purposes of oil and gas extraction, ending a 40-year dispute between those states.

Because of the EEZs, sovereignty over a single tiny island can now bring with it rights to as much as 100,000 square miles of surrounding ocean. But these zones overlap greatly, and shorelines do not run in straight lines; thus numerous questions of interpretation arise about how to delineate territorial and economic waters. For example, Libya claims owner- ship of the entire Gulf of Sidra, treating it as a bay; the United States treats it as a curva- ture in the shoreline and insists that most of it is international waters. In 1986, the United States sent warships into the Gulf of Sidra to make its point. U.S. planes shot down two Libyan jets that challenged the U.S. maneuvers.

Canada in 1994–1995 sent its navy to harass Spanish fi shing boats just beyond the 200-mile zone (but affecting fi sh stocks within the zone). In the Sea of Okhotsk, which is a little more than 400 miles across, Russia’s EEZ includes all but a small “doughnut hole” of international waters in the middle. Non-Russian boats have fi shed intensively in the “hole,” which of course depletes fi sh stocks in Russia’s EEZ.

A dangerous maritime dispute fl ared in 2010 when a South Korean warship sank in disputed waters in the Yellow Sea. International investigators concluded that a North Korean torpedo sank the vessel, although North Korea denied involvement. South Korea

184 Chapter 5 International Confl ict

continues to conduct military opera- tions in the disputed waters, while North Korea continues to fi re artil- lery shells in the area, including an attack that killed several civilians in 2010. The two countries have never formally ended the Korean War by signing a peace treaty.

Airspace Airspace above a state is considered the territory of the state. To fl y over a state’s territory, an air- plane must have that state’s permis- sion. For example, in a 1986 raid on Libya, U.S. bombers based in Britain had to fly a long detour over the Atlantic Ocean because France (between Britain and Libya) would not grant permission for U.S. planes to use its airspace during the mission.

Outer space, by contrast, is con- sidered international territory like the oceans. International law does not define exactly where airspace ends and outer space begins. How- ever, orbiting satellites fly higher than airplanes, move very fast, and cannot easily change direction to avoid overfl ying a country. Also, very few states can shoot down satellites.

Because satellites have become useful to all the great powers as intelligence-gathering tools, and because all satellites are extremely vulnerable to attack, a norm of demilitariza- tion of outer space has developed. No state has ever attacked the satellite of another. In 2007, however, China rattled nerves by successfully destroying one of its own satellites with an antisatellite missile, strewing high-speed debris around orbital space.

Control of Governments Despite the many minor border disputes that continue to plague the world, most struggles to control territory do not involve changing borders. Rather, they are confl icts over which governments will control entire states.

In theory, states do not interfere in each other’s governance, because of the norm of sovereignty. In practice, however, states often have strong interests in the governments of other states and use a variety of means of leverage to infl uence who holds power in those states. These confl icts over governments take many forms, some mild and some severe, some deeply entwined with third parties, and some more or less bilateral. Sometimes a state merely exerts subtle infl uences on another state’s elections; at other times, a state supports rebel elements seeking to overthrow the second state’s government.

During the Cold War, both superpowers actively promoted changes of government in countries of the global South through covert operations and support of rebel armies. The civil wars in Angola, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua are good examples. Both superpowers

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

Control of islands, and of the large exclusive economic zone (EEZ) that surrounds them under the law of the sea, has created a number of complicated interstate confl icts. Japan claims Okinotori, shown here in 2005, as an island with an EEZ, but China calls it merely a “rock” without surrounding economic rights.

Confl icts of Interest 185

poured in weapons, money, military advisors, and so forth—all in hopes of infl uencing who controlled the country’s government. 41

In 2004–2005, shadows of these old Cold War rivalries fell over Ukraine, as Russia and the West backed opposite sides in a disputed election. The election divided the largely Russian-speaking, Eastern Orthodox part of Ukraine to the east from the Ukrain- ian-speaking, Catholic, western part of the country. The pro-Russian incumbent carried the eastern region and was declared the winner after an election that international moni- tors declared unsound. Russian president Vladimir Putin had personally campaigned with him, and strongly opposed letting Ukraine—a former part of the Soviet Union—come under the infl uence of the West. Meanwhile, the pro-Western candidate was poisoned during the campaign, but survived. His supporters took to the streets in late 2004 demand- ing new elections, which the top Ukrainian court eventually ordered and which the oppo- sition won.

Occasionally, one state invades another in order to change its government. The Soviet Union did this in Czechoslovakia in 1968; the United States did so in Iraq in 2003. People generally resent having foreigners choose their government for them—even if they did not like the old government—and the international community frowns on such overt violations of national sovereignty.

International confl icts over the control of governments—along with territorial dis- putes—are likely to lead to the use of violence. They involve core issues of the status and integrity of states, the stakes tend to be high, and the interests of involved actors are often diametrically opposed. By contrast, economic confl icts among states are more common but far less likely to lead to violence.

Economic Confl ict Economic competition is the most pervasive form of confl ict in international relations because economic transactions are pervasive. Every sale made and every deal reached across international borders entails a resolution of confl icting interests. Costa Rica wants the price of coffee, which it exports, to go up; Canada, which imports coffee, wants the price to go down. Angola wants foreign producers of Angolan oil to receive fewer profi ts from oil sales; those companies’ home states want them to take home more profi ts. In a global capitalist market, all economic exchanges involve some con- fl ict of interest.

However, such economic transactions also contain a strong element of mutual eco- nomic gain in addition to the element of confl icting interests (see Chapters 3 and 8 ) . These mutual gains provide the most useful leverage in bargaining over economic exchanges: states and companies enter into economic transactions because they profi t from doing so. The use of violence would for the most part interrupt and diminish such profi t by more than could be gained as a result of the use of violence. Thus, economic confl icts do not usually lead to military force and war.

Economic confl ict seldom leads to violence today because military forms of leverage are no longer very effective in economic confl icts. With the tight integration of the world economy and the high cost of military actions, the use of force is seldom justifi ed to solve an economic issue. Even if an agreement is not ideal for one side in an economic confl ict, rarely is what can be gained by military force worth the cost of war. Thus, most economic

41 Owen, John M. The Foreign Imposition of Domestic Institutions. International Organization 56 (2), 2002: 375–409.

186 Chapter 5 International Confl ict

confl icts are not issues in international security ; they are discussed in Chapters 8 through 13 (on international political economy) . But economic confl icts do still bear on interna- tional security in some ways.

First, many states’ foreign policies are infl uenced by mercantilism —a practice of centuries past in which trade and foreign economic policies were manipulated to build up a monetary surplus that could be used to fi nance war (see “Liberalism and Mercantil- ism” on pp. 283 – 288 ) . Because a trade surplus confers an advantage in international security affairs over the long run, trade confl icts have implications for international security relations.

Second, the theory of lateral pressure also connects economic competition with secu- rity concerns. This theory holds that the economic growth of states leads to geographic expansion as they seek natural resources beyond their borders (by various means, peaceful and violent). As great powers expand their economic activities outward, their competi- tion leads to confl icts and sometimes to war. The theory has been used to help explain both World War I and the expansion of Japan prior to World War II. 42

Another kind of economic confl ict that affects international security concerns mili- tary industry —the capacity to produce military equipment, especially high-technology weapons such as fi ghter aircraft or missiles. There is a world trade in such items, but national governments try (not always successfully) to keep control of such production—to try to ensure that national interests take priority over those of manufacturers and that the state is militarily self-suffi cient in case of war. Economic competition (over who profi ts from such sales) is interwoven with security concerns (over who gets access to the weap- ons). In 2009, proponents of a bailout for the U.S. automobile industry argued that the industry could provide vital production capacity in a time of war, as it had during World War II. The transfer of knowledge about high-tech weaponry and military technologies to potentially hostile states is a related concern.

A different kind of economic confl ict revolves around the distribution of wealth within and among states. As discussed in Chapter 12 , the tremendous disparities in wealth in our world create a variety of international security problems with the potential for vio- lence—including terrorist attacks on rich countries by groups in poor countries. Revolu- tions in poor countries are often fueled by disparities of wealth within the country as well as its poverty relative to other countries. These revolutions in turn frequently draw in other states as supporters of one side or the other in a civil war.

Marxist approaches to international relations , discussed in Chapters 4 and 12 , treat class struggle between rich and poor people as the basis of interstate relations. According to these approaches, capitalist states adopt foreign policies that serve the interests of the rich owners of companies. Confl icts and wars between the global North and South—rich states versus poor states—are seen as refl ections of the domination and exploitation of the poor by the rich—imperialism in direct or indirect form. For example, most Marxists saw the Vietnam War as a U.S. effort to suppress revolution in order to secure continued U.S. access to cheap labor and raw materials in Southeast Asia. Many Marxists portray confl icts among capitalist states as competition over the right to exploit poor areas. Soviet founder V. I. Lenin portrayed World War I as a fi ght over the imperialists’ divi- sion of the world.

42 Choucri, Nazli, and Robert C. North. Nations in Confl ict: National Growth and International Violence. Freeman, 1975. Ashley, Richard K. The Political Economy of War and Peace: The Sino-Soviet-American Triangle and the Modern Security Problematique. Pinter, 1980. Choucri, Nazli, Robert C. North, and Susumu Yamakage. The Challenge of Japan: Before World War II and After. Routledge, 1993.

Confl icts of Interest 187

Drug Traffi cking As a form of illegal trade across international borders, drug traffi cking is smuggling, which deprives states of revenue and violates states’ legal control of their borders. 43 But smuggling in general is an eco- nomic issue rather than a security one (see Illicit Trade on p. 307 ) . Unlike other smuggling operations, however, drug traffi cking supplies illegal prod- ucts that are treated as a security threat because of their effect on national (and military) morale and effi ciency. Drug trafficking also has become linked with security concerns because military forces participate regularly in operations against the heavily armed drug traffi ckers. 44 Confl icts over drugs generally concern states on one side and nonstate actors on the other. But other states can be drawn in because the activities in question cross national borders and may involve corrupt state offi cials.

These international ramifi cations are evident in the efforts of the U.S. government to prevent cocaine cartels based in Colombia from supplying cocaine to U.S. cities. Such cocaine derives mostly from coca plants grown by peasants in mountainous areas of Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia itself. Processed in simple laboratories in the jungle, the cocaine moves from Colombia through other countries such as Panama before arriving in the United States. In each of these countries (even the United States), the drug smugglers have bribed some corrupt offi cials, including military or police offi cers, to stay clear. But other state offi cials in each country are working with U.S. law enforcement agencies and the U.S. military to crack down on the cocaine trade. In 2005, Bolivians elected as president an anti-American former coca farmer who supports farming coca though not the production of cocaine.

Segments of the populations in several of these countries, especially in cocaine- producing regions, benefi t substantially from the drug trade. For poor peasants, the cocaine trade may be their only access to a decent income. More importantly for international security, rebel armies in 2 of the world’s 14 active wars—Afghanistan and Colombia— fund their operations primarily through control of the trade in illicit drugs. Afghanistan, the central front in the West’s struggle against Islamist extremism (specifi cally the

44 Tullis, LaMond. Unintended Consequences: Illegal Drugs and Drug Policies in Nine Countries. Rienner, 1995. Kopp, Pierre. Political Economy of Illegal Drugs. Routledge, 2004.

43 Gavrilis, George. The Dynamics of Interstate Boundaries. Oxford, 2008.

DRUG WARS

Because drug traffi cking crosses national borders and involves lots of guns and money, it is a source of interstate confl ict. Afghanistan supplies most of the opium used to make heroin worldwide, and this illicit trade funds the Taliban in its fi ght against NATO and the Afghan government. Here, a poor Afghan farmer, dependent on opium poppies to make a living, checks his crop, 2007.

188 Chapter 5 International Confl ict

CHAPTER REVIEW

Taliban), supplies most of the raw material for heroin in the world. In Mexico, a major supplier of illegal drugs to the next-door United States, deadly violence among drug gangs spiraled out of control in the past decades, claiming tens of thousands of lives.

In Latin America, the long history of U.S. military intervention makes state coopera- tion with U.S. military forces a sensitive political issue. In some countries, governments have faced popular criticism for allowing the “Yankees” to “invade” in the drug war. In one case, the U.S. military literally invaded. In 1989, U.S. forces invaded Panama; arrested its leader, dictator Manuel Noriega; and convicted him in U.S. courts of complic- ity in drug traffi cking through Panama.

Just as there are many possible outcomes of confl ict, many types of war, and varied propensities for violence among different states, so too is there great diversity in how force is used if confl ict leads to violence. States develop a wide array of military forces, which vary tremendously in their purposes and capabilities. These military forces occupy the next chapter.

SUMMARY ■ When violent means are used as leverage in international confl icts, a variety of

types of war result. These vary greatly in size and character, from guerrilla wars and raids to hegemonic war for leadership of the international system. Along this spec- trum of uses of violence, the exact defi nition of war is uncertain.

■ Many theories have been offered as general explanations about when such forms of leverage come into play—the causes of war. Contradictory theories have been pro- posed at each level of analysis and, with two exceptions, none has strong empirical support. Thus, political scientists cannot reliably predict the outbreak of war.

■ Nationalism strongly infl uences IR; confl ict often results from the perception of nationhood leading to demands for statehood or for the adjustment of state borders.

■ Ethnic confl icts, especially when linked with territorial disputes, are very diffi cult to resolve because of psychological biases. It is hard to explain why people’s loyalties are sometimes to their ethnic group and sometimes to a multiethnic nation.

■ Fundamentalist religious movements pose a broad challenge to the rules of the international system in general and state sovereignty in particular.

■ Ideologies do not matter very much in international relations, with the possible exception of democracy as an ideology. State leaders can use ideologies to justify whatever actions are in their interests.

■ Territorial disputes are among the most serious international confl icts because states place great value on territorial integrity. With a few exceptions, however, almost all the world’s borders are now fi rmly fi xed and internationally recognized.

■ Confl icts over the control of entire states (through control of governments) are also serious and are relatively likely to lead to the use of force.

■ Economic confl icts lead to violence much less often, because positive gains from economic activities are more effective inducements than negative threats of violence.

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Chapter Review 189

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS 1. Given the defi nitions of war provided on pp. 153 – 155 , name two current interna-

tional situations that clearly fi t the defi nition of war and two that are ambiguous “quasi-wars” (almost but not quite fi tting the defi nition). Which do you think are more serious, the wars or the quasi-wars? Do they involve different types of actors? Different kinds of confl icts? Different capabilities?

2. European textbooks were revised after World War II to reduce ethnic and national stereotypes and to give a fairer portrayal of Europe’s various nations. What about the textbooks you used to learn your country’s history? Did they give an accurate picture, or did they overstate the virtues of your own ethnic group or nation at the expense of others? How?

3. The rise of fundamentalism among the world’s major religions challenges traditional notions of state sovereignty. How might this trend strengthen, or weaken, the United Nations and other attempts to create supranational authority (which also challenges state sovereignty)?

4. Suppose that you were the mediator in negotiations between two states, each claim- ing the same piece of land. What principles could you follow in developing a mutu- ally acceptable plan for ownership of the territory? What means could you use to persuade the two states to accept your plan?

5. How many of the six types of international confl icts discussed in this chapter can you connect with the phenomenon of nationalism discussed on pp. 160 – 161 ? What are the connections in each case?

KEY TERMS hegemonic war 153 total war 153 limited war 153 civil war 155 guerrilla war 155 truth commissions 156 confl ict 157

Islam/Muslims 169 Islamist 169 irredentism 177 ethnic cleansing 180 territorial waters 183 airspace 184

cycle theories 159 nationalism 160 ethnic groups 162 ethnocentrism 164 dehumanization 164 genocide 166 secular (state) 168

The United States and Russia: A New Cold War?

LET’S DEBATE THE ISSUE

ARGUMENT 1

A New Cold War Will Emerge Between the United States and Russia

Russia and the United States have major differences in key policy areas. On several important issues, Russia and the United States do not see eye-to-eye. In par- ticular, the United States is committed to NATO expansion, which Russia considers a direct threat to its security. In addition, the United States is committed to deploying antiballistic missiles in Europe, which Russia opposes.

Russian democracy is weak. Democ- racy in Russia is imperfect at best, creating addi- tional tensions with the United States. Opposition leaders are jailed, corruption is extensive, and the press is threatened when it investigates wrongdoing. The United States has hinted that future aid will be based on Russia’s improving these weak democratic institutions, angering Russian leaders.

Russia reaches out to U.S. enemies and confronts U.S. allies. Russia has recently conducted joint military exercises with Venezuela and has a cordial relationship with Iran. Russia has recently gone to war with Georgia over disputed territory and continues to threaten Ukraine over natural gas prices. Both Georgia and Ukraine are strong American allies.

Overview When the Cold War ended in the years between 1989 and 1991, observers hoped for a new age of U.S.-Russian cooperation. Initially, all signs pointed to a healthy relationship between these superpow- ers: they worked together to secure Russian nuclear weapons, cooperated to stabilize the Rus- sian economy, and reached an understanding to allow NATO expansion to some former Warsaw Pact members.

Lately, however, relations have taken a turn for the worse. As NATO has enlarged, Russia has objected to further expansion. Russia threatened to veto UN Security Council resolutions concerning Iraq in the 1990s and 2000s. The United States arrested several high-profi le spies who were con- tinuing to operate in America long after the end of the Cold War. American withdrawal from the Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001 spurred Russian fears that the United States would engage in another arms race. During the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War, Russia consistently opposed American efforts to gain UN Security Council approval, threatening to veto any resolution proposed by the United States. In 2008, Russia fought a war against Georgia, a U.S. ally. While relations remain civil, the friendship has cooled considerably. Although no one believes Russia and the United States will engage in war with one another, many do wonder if a new Cold War will emerge between these former rivals. What are the prospects for a new Cold War emerging between these great powers?

Questions ■ Are Russia and the United States headed for a

second Cold War? What issues are likely to con- tinue to exacerbate tensions between these two states? Are there issues of common interest that may unite them?

■ Would steps to better relations with Russia, such as ending efforts to deploy a missile shield, make relations with some European allies (for example, Poland or Ukraine) more diffi cult? Will the United States have to choose between improving relations with Russia and honoring its promises to European allies?

■ How important is it for Russia to remain demo- cratic to keep tensions low between it and the United States? How would the different IR theo- ries answer this question? Do Russia’s attempts at democracy explain differences in American perceptions of the danger from Russia as opposed to the danger from China?

For Further Reading Lucas, Edward. The New Cold War: Putin’s Russia

and the Threat to the West. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

MacKinnon, Mark. The New Cold War: Revolutions, Rigged Elections, and Pipeline Politics in the Former Soviet Union. Basic Books, 2007.

Goldman, Marshall I. Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia. Oxford, 2008.

Levine, Steve. Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia. Random House, 2008.

ARGUMENT 2

No New Cold War Will Emerge Between the United States and Russia

Russia depends on Western aid and acceptance. Russia greatly values its mem- bership in key IGOs such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It also covets membership in the World Trade Organization, which it hopes to join. Russia will not pursue poli- cies that threaten these relationships.

There are no major ideological differ- ences between the United States and Russia. Unlike during the Cold War, there are no major ideological divides between these two great powers. While Russian democracy may be imperfect, Russia is unlikely to re-embrace com- munism or abandon its experiment with capital- ism. Where their interests converge, as in the war against Islamic extremists in Afghanistan, U.S.-Russian cooperation works smoothly.

Europe will help keep tensions low. During the Cold War, Europe was divided into two camps, each supported by one of the superpowers. Now, Europe is united and can serve as a mediator between the United States and Russia. Europe has strong economic and political interests in continued cooperation with both sides and will work to ensure tensions do not spiral out of hand.

Refugees fl ee new fi ghting near Goma, Democratic Congo, 2008.

Military Force and Terrorism

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193

CHAPTER OUTLINE Conventional Forces A state leader in a confl ict can apply various kinds of leverage to infl uence the outcome (see Figure 6.1 ). One set of levers represents nonviolent means of infl uencing other states, such as foreign aid, economic sanctions, and personal diplomacy (less tangible means include the use of norms, morality, and other ideas). A second set of levers—the subject of this chapter—represents violent actions. These levers set armies marching, suicide bombers blowing up, or missiles fl ying. They tend to be costly to both the at- tacker and the attacked. Military force tends to be a last resort. Evidence also shows that the utility of military force relative to nonmilitary means is slowly declining over time.

Yet most states still devote vast resources to military capabilities compared to other means of infl uence. For example, the United States has about 20,000 diplomatic personnel but 2 million soldiers; it spends about $30 billion a year on foreign aid but about $700 billion on military forces and war (equaling the rest of the world com- bined). Because of the security dilemma (see p. 51 ) , states believe they must devote large resources to military capabilities if other states are doing so. 1

Beyond defending their territories, states develop military capabilities for several other purposes. They often hope to deter attack by having the means to retaliate. They may also hope to compel other states to behave in certain ways, by threatening an attack if the state does not comply. 2 States also use military forces for humanitarian

Conventional Forces ■ Land Forces: Controlling

Territory ■ Naval Forces: Controlling

the Seas ■ Air Forces: Controlling

the Skies ■ Coordinating Forces:

Logistics and Intelligence ■ Evolving Technologies

Terrorism

Weapons of Mass Destruction

■ Nuclear Weapons ■ Ballistic Missiles and

Other Delivery Systems ■ Chemical and Biological

Weapons ■ Proliferation ■ Nuclear Strategy and

Arms Control

States and Militaries ■ Military Economics ■ Control of Military Forces ■ Civil-Military Relations

1 Art, Robert J., and Kenneth N. Waltz, eds. The Use of Force: Military Power and International Politics. 7th ed. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2008. 2 Gat, Azar. War in Human Civilization. Oxford, 2006. Keegan, John. A History of Warfare. Random House, 1993. Van Creveld, Martin. Technology and War: From 2000 b.c. to the Present. Free Press, 1989. Luttwak, Edward, and Stuart L. Koehl. The Dictionary of Modern War. HarperCollins, 1991.

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Trade regulations Tax and

monetary policies

Diplomats Internationalorganizations Foreign

aid Economic sanctions

Commandos/ terrorists

Guerrillas/ militias

Conventional armies

Naval forces

Air forces

Chemical and biological weapons

Nuclear weapons

State Leader

Norms / Ideas

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Irregular Forces

Conventional Forces

FIGURE 6.1 Military and Nonmilitary Means of Leverage

Conventional armed force is the most commonly used military form of leverage. Source: U.S. Department of Defense

194 Chapter 6 Military Force and Terrorism

assistance after disasters, for peacekeeping, for surveillance of drug traffi cking, and for repression of domestic political dissent, among other missions. The sizes and types of mili- tary forces refl ect these missions. 3

Great powers continue to dominate the makeup of world military forces. Table 6.1 summarizes the most important forces of the great powers. Together, they account for about two-thirds of world military spending, a third of the world’s soldiers, a third of the weapons, 98 percent of nuclear weapons, and 90 percent of arms exports. (The table also indicates the sizable military forces maintained by Germany and Japan despite their non- traditional roles in international security since World War II.)

Military capabilities divide into three types: conventional forces, irregular forces (terrorism, militias), and weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons).

Land Forces: Controlling Territory Whatever their ultimate causes and objectives, most wars involve a struggle to control territory. Territory holds a central place in warfare because of its importance in the inter- national system, and vice versa. Borders defi ne where a state’s own military forces and rival states’ military forces are free to move. Military logistics makes territoriality all the more important because of the need to control territories connecting military forces with each other. An army’s supplies must fl ow from home territory along supply lines to the fi eld. Thus the most fundamental purpose of conventional forces is to take, hold, or defend territory.

Armies are adapted to this purpose. Military forces with armed foot soldiers can occupy a territory militarily. Although inhabitants may make the soldiers’ lives unhappy through violent or nonviolent resistance, generally only another organized, armed military force can displace occupiers.

Foot soldiers are called the infantry . They use assault rifl es and other light weapons (such as mines and machine guns) as well as heavy artillery of various types. Artillery is extremely destructive and not very discriminating: it usually causes the most damage and casualties in wars. Armor refers to tanks and armored vehicles. In open terrain, such as desert, mechanized ground forces typically combine armor, artillery, and infantry. In close terrain, such as jungles and cities, however, foot soldiers are more important. For this rea- son, the armies of industrialized states have a greater advantage over poor armies in open conventional warfare, such as in the Kuwaiti desert. In jungle, mountain, or urban war- fare, however—as in Afghan mountains and Iraqi cities—such advantages are eroded, and a cheaper and more lightly armed force of motivated foot soldiers or guerrillas may ulti- mately prevail over an expensive conventional army.

The superiority of conventional armed forces to irregular forces in open battle was graphically demonstrated in Somalia at the end of 2006. An Islamist militia had taken control of most of the country and the capital, leaving a transitional government near Ethiopia’s border, backed by Ethiopia’s large conventional military. The Islamists closed schools and sent teenagers with rifl es in pickup trucks to attack the provisional govern- ment. They were no match for the Ethiopian army, which then ousted them from the whole country in two weeks. The Islamists, like most irregular forces, then had to fall back to guerrilla attacks rather than taking and holding territory. Here, in turn, the con- ventional Ethiopian military proved no match, and the Islamists gained ground steadily

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3 Worley, D. Robert. Shaping U.S. Military Forces: Revolution or Relevance in a Post–Cold War World. Praeger, 2006.

195

TABLE 6.1 Estimated Great Power Military Capabilities, 2011–2012

Heavy Weaponsb

Tanks

United States Russia China France Britain Germany Japan

710 70

145 65 65 45 60

65%

1.6 1.0 2.3 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2

30%

11 / 111 / 71 1 / 32 / 57 0 / 78 / 60 1 / 24 / 10 0 / 18 / 11 0 / 20 / 4 0 / 46 / 18

95 / 80 / 50%

3,200 900 750 250 200 150 450

40%

6,300 1,300

2,800 250 250 350 800

80%

7,700 8,500

240 300 225

0 0

98%

66 5 2 4 0 0 0

91%

Problematic data: Russian and Chinese military expenditure estimates vary. U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads include deployed strategic weapons (1,950 U.S., 1,740 Russian) with the remainder held in reserve or retired (awaiting destruction).

Data on soldiers exclude reserves. Tanks include only post-1980 modern main battle tanks. Warships are cruisers, destroyers, and frigates. Airplanes are fourth-generation. Nuclear warheads include both strategic and tactical weapons. Arms exports are for orders placed, 2011.

Sources: Author’s estimates based on data provided by the following sources: a 2011 data from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. b 2011 data from Institute for International and Strategic Studies.

d Grimmett and Kerr, Conventional Arms Transfers . . . 2004–2011, Congressional Research Service, 2012.

The Military Balance 2012. c Federation of American Scientists data for 1/1/2013.

Approximate % of world total

Arms Exportedd

(Billions of US $) Nuclear

Weaponsc Combat

Airplanes

Carriers/ Warships/

Submarines

Active Duty Soldiersb

(Millions)

Military Expendituresa

(Billions of US $)

Source: U.S. Department of Defense

196 Chapter 6 Military Force and Terrorism

until the Ethiopian army gave up and left in January 2009. After their departure, Somali Islamist groups captured most of the country’s territory, overpowering Somali government forces and fi ghting peacekeepers from the African Union. Somalia’s government incorporated moderate Islamist fac- tions but continued to fi ght more radical Islamist groups. By 2010, the African Union had voted to send reinforcements to battle the Islamist forces.

Counterinsurgency has received growing attention in recent years because of Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is cen- tral to all 14 wars currently in progress worldwide. Counter- insurgency warfare often includes programs to try to “win the hearts and minds” of populations so that they stop sheltering the guerrillas. In some ways, because counterinsurgency war- fare is as much about political gains as military strategy, it is the most complex type of warfare. While battling armed fac- tions of an insurgency, a government must essentially con- duct a public relations campaign to persuade the population to abandon the movement, while providing public services (such as education and welfare programs) to show a govern- ment’s responsiveness to the population. A government must be strong militarily, but cannot be too brutal in the application of force, lest more of the population begin to support the guerrillas.

U.S. military forces conducted counterinsurgency cam- paigns in Iraq and Afghanistan for years. The campaigns included the use of lethal military force, payments to key tribal leaders to support American efforts, assisting the for- mation of local government, and training new police and

military forces to combat the insurgency. These types of activities place tremendous stress on militaries, which are usually trained only to fi ght wars, not undertake rebuilding dis- tant governments.

Counterinsurgency campaigns are costly and labor-intensive. For example, the U.S. Army’s counterinsurgency manual suggests deploying 20 troops for every 1,000 citizens to be protected from insurgents. Few states can afford such campaigns for long periods of time. Indeed, even including allied forces, the United States never reached such a ratio of troops-to-population in Iraq or Afghanistan. Such a ratio would require 600,000 troops for Afghanistan, compared with the 130,000 international troops actually deployed there at the peak in 2010 (down to 100,000 by early 2013).

A common tool of guerrillas, insurgents, and the governments fi ghting them are land mines , which are simple, small, and cheap containers of explosives with a trigger acti- vated by contact or sensor. These mines were a particular focus of public attention in the 1990s because in places such as Angola, Afghanistan, Cambodia, and Bosnia, they were used extensively by irregular military forces that never disarmed them. Long after such a war ends, land mines continue to maim and kill civilians who try to reestablish their lives in former war zones. As many as 100 million land mines remain from recent wars; they injure about 25,000 people a year (a third of whom are children); although they are cheap to deploy, it costs about $1,000 per mine to fi nd and disarm them.

Public opinion and NGOs have pressured governments to restrict the use of land mines. A treaty to ban land mines was signed by more than 100 countries at a 1997 conference organized by Canada. Russia and Japan signed on shortly afterward, but not

WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS

Counterinsurgency warfare has become central to the missions of uniformed military forces worldwide. The U.S. military rewrote its counterinsurgency manual and changed its tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan to empha- size political and economic activities and positive rela- tions with civilian populations. Here, in the capital of Somalia, a Ugandan soldier with the African Union force works on befriending local children after the AU ousted Islamist militants from the city, 2012.

Conventional Forces 197

China or the United States (which said mines would be needed to slow any North Korean invasion of South Korea). By 2009, more than 44 million land mines had been destroyed under the treaty, with 86 countries eliminating their stockpiles. A new norm seems to be emerging, but its effect on actual military practice is not yet clear.

Naval Forces: Controlling the Seas Navies are adapted primarily to control passage through the seas and to attack land near coastlines. 4 Controlling the seas in wartime allows states to move their own goods and military forces by sea while preventing enemies from doing so. Navies can also blockade enemy ports, as, for example, Israel does to control sea access to Hamas-ruled Gaza.

In 2008–2012, navies of the Western powers responded to the rapid growth of piracy in three of the world’s vital shipping lanes—off Somalia south of the Suez Canal; the Straits of Malacca in Indonesia connecting the Indian Ocean with East Asia; and, more recently, the waters off West Africa. The Somali pirates, taking advantage of near-anarchy in that country, established safe havens onshore and ventured out to cap- ture dozens of ships, holding the vessels, cargoes, and crews for ransom. Shipping com- panies generally paid up, millions of dollars per ship, rather than lose valuable goods and people. The pirates pushed the limits by capturing fi rst a Ukrainian freighter loaded with tanks and weapons and then a huge Saudi oil tanker with $100 million of oil. Rac- ing to ships in very small, fast boats, armed with automatic rifl es and grenade launchers, they toss up grappling hooks, climb the sides, and subdue the crew, typically within about ten minutes.

The world’s navies patrolled the area to deter piracy (see Figure 6.2 ), but with incom- plete success because of the sheer size of the oceans. In 2008, the UN Security Council unanimously called for international cooperation in fi ghting the surge in hijackings. Many states responded, including the fi ve permanent members of the Security Council. U.S. Special Forces killed the hijackers of one American ship in 2009, European Union attack helicopters raided an onshore pirate base in 2012, and a Somali rescue freed a ship in late 2012. Many cargo ships began carrying armed guards. All these measures led to a sharp decline in Somali hijackings in 2012. A notorious pirate leader, “Big Mouth,” who had once seized the Ukrainian ship full of tanks, announced his disarmament and retirement in 2013.

Aircraft carriers—mobile platforms for attack aircraft—are instruments of power projection that can attack virtually any state in the world. Merely sending an aircraft carrier sailing to the vicinity of an international confl ict implies a threat to use force—a modern version of 19th century “gunboat diplomacy.” Aircraft carriers are extremely expensive and typically require 20 to 25 supporting ships for protection and supply. Few states can afford even one. Only the United States operates large carriers, known as supercarriers—11 of them, costing more than $5 billion each. In 2015, the U.S. Navy plans to launch a newly designed supercarrier, costing $14 billion. China has acquired and renovated one carrier, which it uses for training. Eight other countries (France, India, Russia, Spain, Brazil, Italy, Thailand, and the United Kingdom) maintain smaller carriers that use helicopters or small airplanes.

Surface ships, which account for the majority of warships, rely increasingly on guided missiles and are in turn vulnerable to attack by missiles (fi red from ships, planes, subma- rines, or land). Because the ranges of small missiles now reach from dozens to hundreds of

4 Keegan, John. The Price of Admiralty: The Evolution of Naval Warfare. Viking, 1988.

198 Chapter 6 Military Force and Terrorism

miles, naval warfare emphasizes detection at great distances without being detected oneself—a cat-and-mouse game of radar surveillance and electronic countermeasures.

Marines (part of the navy in the United States, Britain, and Russia) move to battle in ships but fi ght on land—amphibious warfare. Marines are also useful for great power intervention in distant confl icts where they can insert themselves quickly and establish local control.

Air Forces: Controlling the Skies Air forces serve several purposes—strategic bombing of land or sea targets; “close air sup- port” (battlefi eld bombing); interception of other aircraft; reconnaissance; and airlift of supplies, weapons, and troops. Missiles—whether fi red from air, land, or sea—are increas- ingly important. Air forces have developed various means to try to fool such missiles, with mixed results. In the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the U.S.-made portable Stinger missiles used by guerrillas took a heavy toll on the Soviet air force. In 2003, the threat from shoulder-fi red missiles kept the Baghdad airport closed to commercial traffi c for more than a year after U.S. forces arrived.

Traditionally, and still to some extent, aerial bombing resembles artillery shelling in that it causes great destruction with little discrimination. This has changed somewhat as smart bombs improve accuracy. For instance, laser-guided bombs follow a

YemenSuez Canal

(Somaliland)

(Puntland)

(Yemen)

Maritime Security

Patrol Area established August 2008

Indian Ocean

Gulf of Aden

Red Sea

Ethiopia Somalia

to Mogadishu

Pirate Base

Pirate Bases

Ethiopia Somalia

Djibouti

YemenEritrea

Saudi Arabia

Sudan

Kenya

Uganda

IranIraq

Kuwait Pakistan

Afghanistan

Egypt

UAE

Oman

Jordan

Lebanon Syria

Israel

Indian Ocean

Eritrea

Djibouti

Suez Canal

FIGURE 6.2 Pirate Attacks Near Somalia, January to September 2008

Source: UNOSAT map, October 2, 2008.

Conventional Forces 199

sensor pointed at the target from the air or ground. Other bombs use GPS navigation (see p. 201 ) to hit targets through clouds, smoke, or sandstorms. Most of the bombing in the 1991 Gulf War was high- altitude saturation bombing using large numbers of dumb bombs. In typical wars, such as Russia’s 1995 Chechnya War, bombing of cities causes high civilian casualties. But in the 2003 Iraq War, the massive air campaign early in the war entirely used smart bombs, hitting far more targets with fewer bombs. Even so, thousands of civilians have apparently died in U.S. airstrikes in Iraq since 2003. 5

In cases of low-intensity con- flicts and guerrilla wars, especially where forces intermingle with civil- ians in closed terrain such as Viet- namese jungles or Iraqi cities, bombing is of limited utility— although it was extremely effective in Afghanistan in 2001. Israel also used extensive bombing in its 2006 invasion of Lebanon. Israel found, however, that Lebanese guerrillas were able to jam some of its radar systems with rudimen- tary electronic devices, creating diffi culties for the Israeli military.

The increasing sophistication of electronic equipment and the high-performance requirements of attack aircraft make air forces expensive—totally out of reach for some states. Thus, rich states have huge advantages over poor ones in air warfare. Despite the expense, air superiority is often the key to the success of ground operations, especially in open terrain. The U.S. bombings of Iraq (1991 and 2003), Serbia (1999), and Afghani- stan (2001) demonstrated a new effectiveness of air power, applied not against the morale of enemy populations (as in World War II), but directly targeted from afar at battlefi eld positions. The U.S. ability to decimate distant military forces while taking only very light casualties is historically unprecedented. The 2003 attack on Iraq demonstrated the useful- ness of air power, but also its limits. A massive precision bombing raid on Baghdad a few days into the war destroyed hundreds of targets of value to Saddam Hussein’s government. It was designed to “shock and awe” enemy commanders into giving up. However, U.S. forces still had to fi ght it out on the ground to get to Baghdad. Clearly, this war could not have been won from the air. As ground soldiers have pointed out, “Nobody ever surren- dered to an airplane.” 6

PROJECTING POWER

Different types of military forces are adapted to different purposes. Aircraft carri- ers are used for power projection in distant regions, such as in the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns.

5 Roberts, Les, et al. Mortality before and after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: Cluster Sample Survey. The Lancet 364, November 20, 2004: 1857–64. 6 Pape, Robert A. The True Worth of Air Power. Foreign Affairs 83 (2), 2004: 116–31.

200 Chapter 6 Military Force and Terrorism

Air forces are a likely area for attention in any future U.S.-China arms race. China has spent large sums in the past ten years rejuvenating its aging air force capabilities. The United States continues to invest heavily in its own air force, creating new tech- nologies to stay ahead of Chinese advances. And while air power may be less useful in small-scale warfare, states continue to build their air forces in the event of more large- scale confl icts.

Coordinating Forces: Logistics and Intelligence All military operations rely heavily on logistical support such as food, fuel, and ordnance (weapons and ammunition). Military logistics is a huge operation, and in most armed forces the majority of soldiers are not combat troops. Global-reach capabilities combine long-distance logistical support with various power-projection forces. 7 These capabilities allow a great power to project military power to distant corners of the world and to main- tain a military presence in most of the world’s regions simultaneously. Only the United States today fully possesses such a capability—with worldwide military alliances, air and naval bases, troops stationed overseas, and aircraft carriers plying the world’s oceans (see Table 6.2 ). Britain and France are in a distant second place, able to mount occasional distant operations of modest size such as the Falklands War. Russia is preoccupied with internal confl icts and its near neighbors, and China’s military forces are oriented toward regional confl icts and not global in scope (although they are currently attempting to build a navy capable of better power projection).

Space forces are military forces designed to attack in or from outer space. 8 Ballistic missiles, which travel through space briefl y, are not generally included in this category. Only the United States and Russia have substantial military capabilities in space. China put an astronaut in orbit in 2003, successfully tested an antisatellite missile, and launched a lunar orbiter in 2007, but it has fewer space capabilities overall. The development of

7 Harkavy, Robert E. Bases Abroad: The Global Foreign Military Presence. Oxford, 1989. 8 Preston, Bob, ed. Space Weapons: Earth Wars. Rand, 2002.

Region Personnel

Note: Totals do not include personnel afloat in the region. Data source: U.S. Department of Defense.

Distribution of Forces Abroad

1,140,000

75,000 65,000

5,800 30,000 2,200

500

256,500 80,000

—

29% 25% 1%

12% 1% 0%

100%

United States

Europe Japan/Pacific Russia/CIS Middle East Latin America Africa South Asia Total abroad

31%

TABLE 6.2 Location of U.S. Military Forces, September 31, 2012

Source: US Department of Defense

Conventional Forces 201

space weapons has been constrained by the technical challenges and expenses of space operations, and by norms against militarizing space.

The far more common uses of space by the military are for command and coordina- tion purposes. Satellites are used extensively for military purposes, but these purposes thus far do not include attack. Satellites perform military surveillance and mapping, communi- cations, weather assessment, and early warning of ballistic missile launches. Satellites also provide navigational information to military forces—army units, ships, planes, and even guided missiles in fl ight. Locations are calculated to within about 50 feet by small receiv- ers, which pick up beacons transmitted from a network of 18 U.S. satellites known as a Global Positioning System (GPS). Handheld receivers are available commercially, so the military forces of other countries can free-ride on these satellite navigation beacons. Poorer states can buy satellite photos—including high-resolution pictures that Russia sells for hard currency. In fact, access to such information has diffused to the point that the terrorists who attacked Mumbai, India, in 2008 planned their attack using satellite images available through Google Earth, and coordinated it in real time from Pakistan using satel- lite phones. In the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel in Lebanon, Hezbollah forces used GPS jammers to complicate Israeli air support and targeting operations. But gener- ally, in outer space great powers have advantages over smaller or poorer states.

Intelligence gathering also relies on various other means such as electronic monitor- ing of telephone lines and other communications, reports from embassies, and informa- tion in the open press. Some kinds of information are obtained by sending agents into foreign countries as spies. They use ingenuity (plus money and technology) to penetrate walls of secrecy that foreign governments have constructed around their plans and capa- bilities. For example, in 1999 a Russian spy taped conversations from a listening device planted in a high-level conference room at the U.S. State Department. The 2001 terrorist attacks showed a weakness in U.S. “human intelligence” capabilities, in that the United States had not penetrated a large terrorist network based in Afghanistan and operating globally. 9 U.S. “signal intelligence” capabilities are more impressive. The largest U.S. military intelligence agency is the National Security Agency (NSA), whose mission is encoding U.S. communications and breaking the codes of foreign communications. The NSA intercepts truly massive amounts of information from such sources as undersea phone cables, then sifts through it to fi nd signifi cant conversations. The NSA employs more mathematics Ph.D.s than anyone in the world, is the second largest electricity con- sumer in the state of Maryland, has a budget larger than the CIA’s, and is believed to have the most powerful computer facility in the world. Altogether, the budgets of U.S. intelli- gence agencies, although offi cially secret, were revealed in 2005 to be around $44 billion a year. Clearly these operations taken together are very large and are growing in impor- tance as the information revolution proceeds and as the war on terror makes their mission more central.

Evolving Technologies Technological developments have changed the nature of military force in several ways. First, the resort to force in international confl icts now has more profound costs and con- sequences. Great powers in particular can no longer use force to settle disputes among themselves without risking massive destruction and economic ruin. Also, military

9 Gerdes, Louise I., ed. Espionage and Intelligence Gathering. Greenhaven, 2004. Howard, Russell D., and Reid L. Sawyer, eds. Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Understanding the New Security Environment. McGraw-Hill/ Dushkin, 2003.

202

POLICY PERSPECTIVES

President of the United States, Barack Obama

PROBLEM How do you balance the trade-offs

in the use of force to combat non- traditional

security threats?

BACKGROUND As a presidential candidate in 2012, you publicly promised to continue and accelerate the American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. There is now a timetable set for international forces (including U.S. troops) to leave Afghanistan by next year.

This removal of international forces comes despite the fact that large parts of Afghanistan are still relatively unsta- ble after the 12-year-long war. International forces still rou- tinely confront hostile forces. The Haqqani network—a group of anti-U.S. fi ghters allied to the Taliban—continue to attack U.S. forces. This network has signifi cant ties to the security forces in neighboring Pakistan, where Haqqani fi ghters take refuge after raids in Afghanistan.

DOMESTIC CONSIDERATIONS Although the economy is the major issue for your administration, terror- ism and the war in Afghanistan are still key issues in U.S. public opinion. The American public has grown quite weary of the war in Afghanistan, and after the death of Osama bin Laden, growing numbers question the continued military presence there. Public opinion polls showed strong sup- port for your decision to establish a fi rm date for with- drawal from that confl ict.

SCENARIO Imagine that as international forces withdraw from Afghanistan, attacks against American troops increase signifi cantly. The Taliban, with help from the Haqqani network, reemerges as a major political

actor and threatens to defeat the Afghan government in several key provinces. Pakistan’s government is divided— some Pakistani offi cials push to help the Afghan govern- ment, while other key offi cials support the pro-Taliban forces. In short, Pakistan will be of little help. Your own advisors are also divided: some suggest that a victory by pro-Taliban forces would be a threat to the United States, while others contend that the decade-long war perma- nently reduced the threat from the Taliban and its remain- ing al Qaeda allies.

CHOOSE YOUR POLICY How do you respond to the possibility of civil war in Afghanistan? Do you postpone the withdrawal of American forces? That would likely stop the Taliban advances, but perhaps put off the inevitable when U.S. troops do leave. Do you leave Afghanistan to its fate? That would be popular at home, but risk the reemer- gence of anti-U.S. forces that America intervened to topple after the 9/11 attacks. How do you balance the competing domestic and international pressures in confronting non- traditional security threats?

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Conventional Forces 203

engagements now occur across greater standoff distances between opposing forces. Mis- siles of all types are accelerating this trend. These technological advances undermine the territorial basis of war and the “hard shell” of the state itself. 10 In recent years, this trend has accelerated with the use of unmanned drone aircraft, including drones armed with missiles, in U.S. military efforts in Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya. In addition to America’s 7,000 drones in 2011, other countries have been rapidly acquiring them. China showed off 25 models in 2011. Russia, India, Pakistan, and Iran also have drones. An Iranian- made drone was shot down over Israel in 2012. Britain and Israel have used drones for attacks, but most drones worldwide are used for surveillance. U.S. underwater sea drones for mine clearing, produced by Germany, were sent to the Persian Gulf in 2012 as ten- sions with Iran escalated.

Electronic warfare (now broadened to information warfare ) refers to the uses of the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves, radar, infrared, etc.) in war, and is critical to all technologically advanced military forces. Strategies for cyberwar —disrupting enemy com- puter networks to degrade command and control, or even hacking into bank accounts electronically—may fi gure prominently in future wars, although they have not yet. The United States decided against using cyberattacks to disable Libya’s air defenses in 2011 out of fear of the precedent such an action could set. In the future, terrorist attacks also could target computer networks, including the Internet and critical infrastructure such as electric grids. 11

Cyberattacks are an issue of growing importance in international relations, with Chi- nese, Russian, and American hackers constantly probing each other’s systems. In 2010, the U.S.-Israeli Stuxnet virus targeted Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, and in 2012, the Flame virus was found on thousands of computers across the Middle East, mostly in Iran. It could grab screenshots and keystrokes, and remotely turn on computer microphones to help the creators (again, presumably Americans and Israelis) spy on operations in the Iranian nuclear program. A few months later, probably in response, a virus deleted fi les on the computers of a major Saudi oil company, replacing them with an image of a burning American fl ag.

Stealth technology uses special radar-absorbent materials and unusual shapes in air- craft, missiles, and ships to scatter enemy radar. However, stealth is expensive (the B-2 stealth bomber costs about $2 billion per plane) and prone to technical problems.

Military historians refer to a period of rapid change in the conduct of war as a “revolution in military affairs.” These periods usually combine innovative applications of new technology with changes in military doctrine, organization, or operations. Such revolutions may arise from innovations in organization, as when revolutionary France fi rst mobilized an entire nation into a war machine two centuries ago. Or they may arise from new military doctrine as when Germany used the “blitzkrieg” to overwhelm Poland and France at the outset of World War II, or from technology alone as with the inven- tion of nuclear weapons. Many military analysts consider the present period, starting with the 1991 Gulf War, a revolution in military affairs, especially in U.S. forces. Man- agement of information is central to this revolution. Two centuries ago, the German military strategist Carl von Clausewitz described as a “fog of war” the confusion and uncertainty that greatly reduces the effectiveness of armies in battle. Today’s U.S. forces are piercing that fog for themselves while thickening it for their enemies. As the fog of

10 Herz, John H. International Politics in the Atomic Age. Columbia, 1959. 11 Rattray, Gregory J. Strategic Warfare in Cyberspace. MIT, 2001. Hall, Wayne M. Stray Voltage: War in the Information Age. Naval Institute Press, 2003.

204 Chapter 6 Military Force and Terrorism

war becomes transparent, U.S. forces can also disperse light forces widely, rather than massing concentrations of heavy units as Clausewitz empha- sized. The ability to conduct preci- sion strikes, and the increasing use of space in warfare, are two other aspects of the present revolution.

The revolutionary potentials were fi rst apparent in the lopsided 1991 victory over Iraq’s large but not technologically advanced army, and the 1999 Kosovo campaign was notable in achieving its war aims without loss of a single U.S. life to hostile fi re. But the 2001 Afghani- stan campaign best exemplifi ed the revolution. Small groups of lightly armed U.S. special forces, inserted across the country, used lasers to illuminate targets for smart bombs dropped by high-fl ying aircraft. The integration of these diverse forces using information-rich battle man- agement systems resulted in a stun- ningly effective bombing campaign that destroyed the Taliban as an effective army and handed victory to the smaller anti-Taliban armies, all with just a handful of U.S. casu-

alties. The 2003 invasion of Iraq seemed to continue this success, but then the postin- vasion security situation in Iraq unraveled over several years despite the revolutionary technologies of U.S. forces. A more unsettling thought is that the revolution in mili- tary affairs may work for terrorists as well as states. The September 2001 attackers used information technology, such as encrypted Internet communications, to coordinate forces while keeping U.S. authorities in the dark. They carried out precision strikes over long distances with very small, dispersed units. As a result, 19 attackers killed nearly 3,000 people, and an expenditure of under $1 million caused tens of billions of dollars in damage.

Terrorism The U.S. State Department listed 45 foreign terrorist organizations in 2010. Some are motivated by religion (for example, al Qaeda) but others by class ideology (for example, Shining Path in Peru) or by ethnic confl ict and nationalism (for example, Basque Father- land and Liberty). In Chapter 5 (pp. 169 – 172 ) we discussed confl icts involving armed Islamist militias and terrorist networks. Here we discuss terrorism itself as a tactic. Since September 2001, governments and ordinary people have paid much more attention to terrorism than ever before. But terrorism itself is not new.

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

The information revolution is making smaller weapons and smaller dispersed units more potent. A “revolution in military affairs” is driving changes in U.S. military strategy, including the expanding use of unmanned drones. This insect-size drone shown in 2011 could collect real-time intelligence in complex urban environments.

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Killed in Pakistan” at MyPoliSciLab

Terrorism 205

Terrorism refers to political violence that targets civilians deliberately and indiscrimi- nately. Beyond this basic defi nition, other criteria can be applied, but the defi nitions become politically motivated: one person’s freedom fi ghter is another’s terrorist. More than guerrilla warfare, terrorism is a shadowy world of faceless enemies and irregular tac- tics marked by extreme brutality. 12

Traditionally, the purpose of terrorism is to demoralize a civilian population in order to use its discontent as leverage on national governments or other parties to a confl ict. Related to this is the aim of creating drama in order to gain media attention for a cause. When the IRA planted bombs in London in the 1960s and 1970s, it hoped to make life miserable enough for Londoners that they would insist their government settle the Northern Ireland issue. The bombing also sought to keep the issue of Northern Ireland in the news, in the hope that the British government would then be pressured to concede terms more favorable to the IRA than would otherwise be the case. Terrorism is seldom mindless; rather, it is usu- ally a calculated use of violence as leverage. However, motives and means of terrorism vary widely, having in common only that some actor is using violence to infl uence other actors.

The primary effect of terrorism is psychological. In part, the effectiveness of terrorism in capturing attention is due to the dramatic nature of the incidents, especially as shown on television news. Terrorism also gains attention because of the randomness of victims. Although only a few dozen people may be injured by a bomb left in a market, millions of people realize “It could have been me,” because they, too, shop in markets. Attacks on airplanes augment this fear because many people already fear fl ying. Terrorism thus ampli- fi es a small amount of power by its psychological effect on large populations; this is why it is usually a tool of the weak.

However, al Qaeda’s attacks follow a somewhat different pattern, planned less to cre- ate fear than simply to kill as many Americans and their allies as possible—and ultimately to touch off apocalyptic violence that al Qaeda’s followers believe will bring about God’s intervention. Indeed, terrorist attacks in general have become more deadly over the past 50 years as terrorist tactics have increasingly employed more violent means to injure or kill civilians. 13 The psychological effect is aimed at Muslim populations worldwide rather than at Americans.

In the shockingly destructive attack on the World Trade Center, tangible damage was far greater than in previous terrorist attacks—reaching into thousands of lives and tens of billions of dollars. The psychological impact was even stronger than the physical damage—changing the U.S. political and cultural landscape instantly. And the same ter- rorist network was trying to obtain nuclear weapons (see pp. 209 – 211 ) with which to kill not thousands, but hundreds of thousands of Americans. 14

The classic cases of terrorism—from the 1970s to the 2001 attacks—are those in which a nonstate actor uses attacks against civilians by secret nonuniformed forces, operating across international borders, as a leverage against state actors. Radical political factions or separatist groups hijack or blow up airplanes or plant bombs in cafés, clubs, or other crowded places. For example, Chechen radicals seized a school in Beslan, a small city in the Caucasus region in 2004. For three days, they held nearly 1,200 children, parents, and teachers without food or water. When Russian troops stormed the school, more than 300 people died, including 172 children.

12 Lutz, James M. Global Terrorism. Routledge, 2004. Benjamin, Daniel, and Steven Simon. The Age of Sacred Terror. Random, 2002. Kushner, Harvey W. Encyclopedia of Terrorism. Sage, 2003. 13 Cronin, Audrey Kurth. Behind the Curve: Globalization and International Terrorism. International Security 27 (3), 2002/03: 30–58. 14 Young, Mitchell, ed. The War on Terrorism. Greenhaven, 2003. Cortright, David, and George A. Lopez. Uniting Against Terror. MIT, 2007.

206 Chapter 6 Military Force and Terrorism

Such tactics create spectacular incidents that draw attention to the terrorists’ cause. For example, the bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013 was an unsophisticated attack by two brothers, yet it preoccupied news media for weeks afterwards. Often terrorism is used by radical factions of movements that have not been able to get attention or develop other effective means of leverage. It is often a tactic of desperation, and it almost always refl ects weakness in the power position of the attacker. For instance, Palestinian radicals in 1972 had seen Arab states defeated by Israel in war and could not see a way to gain even a hearing for their cause. By capturing media attention worldwide with dramatic incidents of violence—even at the cost of rallying world public opinion against their cause—the radi- cals hoped to make Palestinian aspirations an issue that Western governments could not ignore when deciding on policies toward the Middle East.

Yet, the persistence of terrorism is in some ways puzzling because the tactic has a mixed record of success. Suicide bombers were arguably effective at convincing the United States to leave Lebanon in 1983, but the Chechen terrorists’ 2004 school attack marked their end as a serious force in Chechnya. The Palestinians did not win a state through ter- rorism. Al Qaeda affi liates in Iraq so alienated the Sunni tribes that had sheltered them that the tribes turned against them. In addition, even large numbers of suicide bombers have yet to be effective at gaining a state for the Tamils in Sri Lanka or providing leverage for Hamas or Islamic Jihad against Israel. Clearly, terrorist activities do not reliably achieve political ends.

Some research has attempted to systematically analyze when particular types of terror- ism, such as suicide bombings, are effective at achieving the goals of terrorist organizations. According to one study, suicide bombings, rather than an irrational use of violence by ter- rorist groups, follow strategic patterns (see Figure 6.3 ). In particular, they occur most fre- quently against democracies rather than autocracies, presumably because democracies are thought to be strongly infl uenced by public opinion. Still, this same study concludes that this terror tactic has not been particularly successful at achieving signifi cant goals. 15

Terrorists are more willing than states are to violate the norms of the international system because, unlike states, they do not have a stake in that system. Conversely, when a political group gains some power or legitimacy, its use of terrorism usually diminishes. This was true of the Palestine Liberation Organization during the peace process in 1993–2000 as well as the Irish Republican Army starting in 1995.

States themselves carry out acts designed to terrorize their own populations or those of other states, but scholars tend to avoid the label “terrorism” for such acts, preferring to call it repression or war. In fact, no violent act taken during a civil or international war—by or toward a warring party—can necessarily fi t neatly into the category of terrorism. Of course, because war is hard to defi ne, so is terrorism; warring parties often call each other terrorists. The narrowest defi nition of terrorism would exclude acts either by or against uniformed military forces rather than civilians. This defi nition would exclude the killing of 243 U.S. Marines by a car bomb in Lebanon in 1983 and the 2001 attack on the Pentagon, because they were directed at military targets. It would also exclude the bombing of German cities in World War II although the purpose was to terrorize civilians. But in today’s world of undeclared war, guerrilla war, civil war, and ethnic violence, a large gray zone surrounds clear cases of terrorism. 16 Disagreements about whether terrorism included Palestinian attacks

15 Pape, Robert. Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Random House, 2005. Bloom, Mia. Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror. Columbia, 2005. 16 Stern, Jessica. Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill. HarperCollins, 2003. Laqueur, Walter. A History of Terrorism. Transaction, 2001. Pilar, Paul R. Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy. Brookings, 2001. Ross, Jeffrey Ian. Political Terrorism: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Lang, 2006.

Terrorism 207

on Israel, and Pakistani attacks in Kashmir, scuttled efforts to pass a UN treaty on terror- ism in late 2001.

State-sponsored terrorism refers to the use of terrorist groups by states—usually under control of the state’s intelligence agency—to achieve political aims. In 1988, a bomb scattered pieces of Pan Am fl ight 103 over the Scottish countryside. Combing the fi elds for debris, investigators found fragments of a tape recorder that had contained a sophisticated plastic explosive bomb. The U.S. and British governments identifi ed the Libyan intelligence agents responsible, and in 1992, backed by the UN Security Council, they demanded that Libya turn over the agents for trial. When Libya refused, the UN imposed sanctions including a ban on international fl ights to or from Libya. In 1999, Libya turned over the suspects for trial—two received life in prison while a third was acquitted—and the UN suspended its sanctions. In 2003, Libya formally took responsibil- ity for the bombing, struck a multibillion-dollar compensation deal with the victims’ fam- ilies, and regained a normal place in the international community.

Greece

Lebanon

Israel

Kuwait

Bahrain

Qatar

Romania

Moldova Ukraine

Bulgaria

Greece

Turkey

Cyprus Lebanon

West Bank Gaza Strip

Israel Jordan

Syria

Iraq

Egypt

Sudan Eritrea

Djibouti

Yemen

Saudi Arabia

Kuwait

Bahrain

Qatar

United Arab Emirates

Oman

Iran

Turkmenistan

Uzbekistan

Afghanistan

Pakistan

Tajikistan

Kazakhstan

Kyrgyzstan

China

Nepal

India

Sri Lanka

Georgia

Armenia Azerbaijan

Russia

SomaliaEthiopia

1

2–10

11–25

26–100 101–410

FIGURE 6.3 Location of Suicide Attacks, 1980-2008

Source: Carnegie Corporation of New York.

208 Chapter 6 Military Force and Terrorism

As of 2011, the United States has accused four states of supporting international terrorism—Iran, Syria, Sudan, and Cuba. All have been on the list for more than a decade. The U.S. government has barred U.S. companies from doing busi- ness in those states. However, these kinds of unilateral U.S. sanctions are of limited effect. Cuba can do business with Canada, as can Iran with Russia. North Korea was removed from the list in 2008 in exchange for promises to halt its nuclear weapons program.

Counterterrorism Just as the methods used by terrorists have become more diverse over the past decades, so have the policies implemented to prevent terrorist incidents. Debates over how to best prevent terrorist attacks are often heated since there are also debates about why individuals engage in terrorist attacks in the fi rst place.

Policies to combat terrorism can be placed along a spectrum involving more or less force in confronting terror- ism and terrorist organizations. On the nonviolent end of the spectrum are calls for economic development. Advo- cates of these programs point out that in very poor states, people will be especially vulnerable to recruitment by ter- rorist organizations. With no bright future ahead of them and little opportunities to better themselves, people will naturally lose hope, become angry, and undertake seem- ingly irrational acts since they feel they have nothing to lose. And although there is little direct evidence that fac- tors like poverty correlate directly with terrorist activities,

it is clear that very poor states with weak central governments have served as recruiting grounds for international terrorist organizations.

In the middle of the spectrum are policing activities. These involve efforts by domestic police, usually in cooperation with other countries’ police forces, to appre- hend or kill terrorists while breaking up terrorist organizations. In one famous example of effective counterterrorist policing, the government of Peru, using an elite investiga- tive team of the national police force, arrested the leader of the Shining Path move- ment, which at one point controlled over 20,000 well-armed militia members and had assassinated several Peruvian political leaders. The police arrested the movement’s leader after staking out a dance studio (which he lived above) and digging through trash from the studio to fi nd clues. After his capture, the Shining Path movement largely collapsed.

At the other end of the counterterrorism spectrum is organized military confl ict. States may undertake small- or large-scale confl icts to counter terrorist organizations. In 1998, the United States launched cruise missile strikes against a plant in Sudan believed to be producing chemical weapons for al Qaeda, but turned out to be making infant for- mula. In addition, the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan was a response to the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

Of course, nearly every state that undertakes counterterrorism policies uses some combination of these methods. In the United States, for example, foreign aid is often justifi ed in terms of assisting development and economic growth to decrease the possibil- ity that the poor and uneducated can be easily drafted into terrorist organizations. The FBI and local law enforcement cooperate with many international partners to track and

ASYMMETRICAL CONFLICT

Terrorist attacks often refl ect the weakness of the per- petrators and their lack of access to other means of leverage. Terror can sometimes amplify a small group’s power and affect outcomes. Al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks, staged by a relatively small nonstate actor, ultimately led to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia, drew the United States into a coun- terinsurgency war in Iraq, and brought al Qaeda itself a surge of recruits for new attacks worldwide.

Weapons of Mass Destruction 209

detain suspected terrorists, while U.S. soldiers assist other states with training and weap- ons in their fi ght against terrorists. Finally, the war in Afghanistan was a large war under- taken against the Taliban government that had protected al Qaeda.

Weapons of Mass Destruction Weapons of mass destruction comprise three general types: nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. They are distinguished from conventional weapons by their enormous potential lethality, given their small size and modest costs, and by their relative lack of discrimination in whom they kill. When deployed on ballistic missiles, they can poten- tially be fi red from the home territory of one state and wreak great destruction on the home territory of another state. 17 Until now this has never happened. But the mere threat of such an action undermines the territorial integrity and security of states in the interna- tional system. Of central concern today are the potentials for proliferation—the possession of weapons of mass destruction by more and more states.

Weapons of mass destruction serve different purposes from conventional weapons. With a few exceptions, their purpose is to deter attack (especially by other weapons of mass destruction) by giving state leaders the means to infl ict great pain against a would-be conqueror or destroyer. For middle powers, these weapons also provide destructive power more in line with that of the great powers, thus serving as symbolic equalizers. For terror- ists, potentially, their purpose is to kill a great many people.

Nuclear Weapons Nuclear weapons are, in sheer power, the world’s most destructive weapons. A single weapon the size of a refrigerator can destroy a city. Defending against nuclear weapons is extremely diffi cult at best. To understand the potentials for nuclear proliferation, one has to know something about how nuclear weapons work. There are two types. Fission weap- ons (atomic bombs or A-bombs) are simpler and less expensive than fusion weapons (also called thermonuclear bombs, hydrogen bombs, or H-bombs).

When a fi ssion weapon explodes, one type of atom (element) is split, or fi ssioned, into new types with less total mass. The lost mass is transformed into energy according to Albert Einstein’s famous formula, E = mc 2 , which shows that a little bit of mass is equiva- lent to a great deal of energy. In fact, the fi ssion bomb that destroyed Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945 converted to energy roughly the amount of mass in a single penny. Two elements can be split in this way, and each has been used to make fi ssion weapons. These ele- ments—known as fi ssionable material —are uranium-235 (or U-235) and plutonium. Fis- sion weapons were invented 60 years ago by U.S. scientists in a secret World War II science program known as the Manhattan Project. In 1945, one uranium bomb and one plutonium bomb were used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 100,000 civilians in each city and inducing Japan to surrender unconditionally. By today’s standards, those bombs were crude, low-yield weapons. But they are the kind of weapon that might be built by a poor state or a nonstate actor. 18

Watch the Video “Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions” at MyPoliSciLab

17 Hutchinson, Robert. Weapons of Mass Destruction: The No-Nonsense Guide to Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Weapons Today. Cassell PLC, 2004. Eden, Lynn. Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation. Cornell, 2003. 18 Cirincione, Joseph. Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons. Columbia, 2007.

210 Chapter 6 Military Force and Terrorism

Fission weapons work by taking subcritical masses of the fi ssionable material— amounts not dense enough to start a chain reaction—and compressing them into a criti- cal mass, which explodes as the splitting atoms release neutrons that split more atoms in a chain reaction. In the simplest design, one piece of uranium is propelled down a tube (by conventional explosives) into another piece of uranium. A more effi cient but technically demanding design arranges high explosives precisely around a hollow sphere of plutonium so as to implode the sphere and create a critical mass.

Although these designs require sophisticated engineering, they are well within the capabilities of many states and some private groups. The obstacle is obtaining fi ssionable material. Only 10 to 100 pounds are required for each bomb, but even these small amounts are not easily obtained. U-235, which can be used in the simplest bomb designs, is espe- cially diffi cult to obtain. Natural uranium (mined in various countries) has less than 1 percent U-235, mixed with nonfi ssionable uranium. Extracting the fi ssionable U-235, referred to as enriching the uranium up to weapons grade (or high grade), is slow, expen-

sive, and technically complex—a major obstacle to proliferation. But North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Libya all built the infrastructure to do so in recent years. North Korea promised to end its uranium program and dis- mantle its nuclear complex (after testing a bomb in 2006 and 2009). It made progress in this direction in 2007–2008, albeit behind schedule. But Iran defi ed several UN Security Council demands to stop enriching uranium in 2006–2009, insisting on its sovereign right to enrich uranium for what it calls “peaceful purposes.” Talks on Iran’s program continued into 2011.

Plutonium is more easily pro- duced from low-grade uranium in nuclear power reactors—although extracting the plutonium requires a separation plant. But a plutonium bomb is more diffi cult to build than a uranium one—another obstacle to proliferation. Plutonium is also used in commercial breeder reactors, which Japan and other countries have built recently—another source of fi ssionable material. (Thus, if it decided to do so in the future, which is unlikely, Japan could quickly build a formidable nuclear arsenal.) North Korea tested a plutonium bomb in 2006, achieving fission although with a low yield.

Fusion weapons are extremely expensive and technically demand-

NUKE IN A BOX

Nuclear weapons were invented during World War II and used on two Japanese cities in 1945. Tens of thousands have been built, and nine states now possess them. Obtaining fi ssionable materials is the main diffi culty in making nuclear weapons. Terrorists’ efforts to obtain them pose a grave threat. Here, in 1999, a U.S. congressman displays a mock-up of the Soviet-built nuclear “suitcase bomb” that, in the wrong hands, could kill hundreds of thousands of people.

Weapons of Mass Destruction 211

ing; they are for only the richest, largest, most technologically capable states. Here two small atoms (variants of hydrogen) fuse together into a larger atom, releasing energy. This reaction occurs only at very high temperatures (the sun “burns” hydrogen through fusion). Weapons designers use fi ssion weapons to create these high energies and trigger an explo- sive fusion reaction. The explosive power of most fi ssion weapons is between 1 and 200 kilotons (each kiloton is the equivalent of 1,000 tons of conventional explosive). The power of fusion weapons can reach 20 megatons (a megaton is 1,000 kilotons). In the post–Cold War era, megaton weapons have become irrelevant, since they are too power- ful for any actor to use productively and too diffi cult for terrorists or small states to build.

The effects of nuclear weapons include not only the blast of the explosion, but also heat and radiation. Heat can potentially create a self-sustaining fi restorm in a city. Radiation creates radiation sickness, which at high doses kills people in a few days and at low doses creates long-term health problems, especially cancers. Radiation is most intense in the local vicinity of (and downwind from) a nuclear explosion, but some is carried up into the atmosphere and falls in more distant locations as nuclear fallout. Nuclear weapons also create an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that can disrupt and destroy electronic equipment.

Ballistic Missiles and Other Delivery Systems Delivery systems for getting nuclear weapons to their targets—much more than the weap- ons themselves—are the basis of states’ nuclear arsenals and strategies (discussed shortly). Inasmuch as nuclear warheads can be made quite small—weighing a few hundred pounds or even less—they are adaptable to a wide variety of delivery systems.

During the Cold War, nuclear delivery systems were divided into two categories. Strategic weapons could hit an enemy’s homeland, usually at long range (for instance, Moscow from Nebraska). Tactical nuclear weapons were designed for battlefi eld use. In the Cold War years, both superpowers integrated tactical nuclear weapons into their conventional air, sea, and land forces using a variety of delivery systems—gravity bombs, artillery shells, short-range missiles, land mines, depth charges, and so forth. However, the tens of thousands of nuclear warheads integrated into superpower con- ventional forces posed dangers such as theft or accident. Their actual use would have entailed grave risks of escalation to strategic nuclear war, putting home cities at risk. Thus, both superpowers phased out tactical nuclear weapons almost entirely when the Cold War ended.

The main strategic delivery vehicles are ballistic missiles ; unlike airplanes, they are extremely diffi cult to defend against. Ballistic missiles carry a warhead up along a trajec- tory and let it drop on the target. A trajectory typically rises out of the atmosphere—at least 50 miles high—before descending. In addition, some missiles fi re from fi xed sites (silos), whereas others are mobile, fi ring from railroads or large trailer trucks (making them hard to target). The longest-range missiles are intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) , with ranges of more than 5,000 miles.

Of special interest today are short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs), with ranges of well under 1,000 miles. The modifi ed Scud missiles fi red by Iraq at Saudi Arabia and Israel during the Gulf War were (conventionally armed) SRBMs. In regional confl icts, the long range of more powerful missiles may not be necessary. The largest cities of Syria and Israel are only 133 miles from each other; the capital cities of Iraq and Iran are less than 500 miles apart, as are those of India and Pakistan (see Figure 6.4 ). All of these states own ballistic missiles. Short-range and some medium-range ballistic missiles are cheap enough to be obtained and even home-produced by small middle-income states. Table 6.3 lists the capabilities of the 30 states with ballistic missiles.

212 Chapter 6 Military Force and Terrorism

Many short-range ballistic missiles, including those used by Iraq during the Gulf War, are highly inaccurate but still very diffi cult to defend against. 19 With conventional war- heads they have more psychological than military utility (demoralizing an enemy popula- tion by attacking cities indiscriminately). With nuclear, chemical, or biological warheads, however, these missiles could be deadlier. The accuracy of delivery systems of all ranges improves as one moves to great powers, especially the United States. After traveling thou- sands of miles, the best U.S. missiles can land within 50 feet of a target half of the time. The trend in the U.S. nuclear arsenal has been toward less powerful warheads but more accurate missiles, for fl exibility.

The cruise missile is a small winged missile that can navigate across thousands of miles of previously mapped terrain to reach a target, with the help of satellite guidance. Cruise missiles can be launched from ships, submarines, airplanes, or land. The United

2003

2003

1998

1998

PAKISTAN

CHINA

INDIA

1000 Kilometers

1000 Miles500

5000

0

FIGURE 6.4 Expanding Ranges of Indian and Pakistani Missiles, 1998–2003

Source: The Washington Post, May 29, 1999: A32, Table 6.3.

19 Postol, Theodore A. Lessons of the Gulf War Experience with Patriot. International Security 16 (3), 1991/1992: 119–71.

Weapons of Mass Destruction 213

Country Range (Miles) Potential Targets

United Statesa 13,000 (World) Russiaa 13,000 (World) Chinaa 13,000 (World) Britaina 4,600 (World; submarine-launched) Francea 3,700 [4,600] (World; submarine-launched) North Koreaa 800 [3,500] South Korea, Russia, China [All Asia] Iranb,c 900 [3,500] Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Israel

[Europe to Asia] Israela,c 900 [3,500] Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt [Iran] Indiaa,c 1,500 [2,000] Pakistan, China, Afghanistan, Iran,

Turkey Pakistana 800 [2,000] India [Russia, Turkey, Israel] Saudi Arabia 1,700 Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Turkey, Yemen,

Egypt, Libya, Sudan Syria 300 [400] Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey Egypt 400 Libya, Sudan, Israel Libya 200 Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria Yemen 200 Saudi Arabia United Arab Emirates 200 Saudi Arabia, Iran Afghanistan 200 Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan Kazakhstan 200 Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan,

Russia Turkmenistan 200 Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan Armenia 200 Azerbaijan Belarus 200 Russia, Ukraine, Poland Ukraine 200 Russia, Belarus, Poland, Hungary,

Romania South Korea 200 North Korea Vietnam 200 China, Cambodia Taiwan 80 [200] China Greece 100 Turkey Turkey 100 Greece Bahrain 100 Saudi Arabia, Qatar Slovakia 80 Czech Rep., Hungary, Poland Japanc —

Number of states with ballistic missiles: 30

aStates that have nuclear weapons. bStates believed to be trying to build nuclear weapons. cStates developing space-launch missiles adaptable as long-range ballistic missiles.

Notes: Bracketed range numbers indicate missiles under development. List of potential targets includes both hostile and friendly states, and is suggestive rather than comprehensive. Missile ranges increase with smaller payloads. 200-mile ranges (Scud-B) and 300-mile ranges (Scud Mod-C) are approximate for a three-quarter- ton payload. Saudi range is for a two-ton payload; South Korean range is for a half-ton payload.

Source: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

TABLE 6.3 Ballistic Missile Capabilities, 2010

214 Chapter 6 Military Force and Terrorism

States used cruise missiles extensively against Iraq in 1993, Serbian forces in Bosnia in 1995, Serbia in 1999, and Iraq in 2003.

The spread of ballistic missiles has been diffi cult to control. 20 Through the Missile Technology Control Regime , industrialized states try to limit the fl ow of missile-relevant technology to states in the global South, but with limited success. Short- and medium- range missiles (with ranges of up to about 2,000 miles) apparently are being developed by Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, North Korea, and possibly Argentina and Bra- zil. In 2009, Iran alarmed the West by testing a missile that could reach Egypt, Israel, and parts of Europe. In 2012, North Korea, evidently in cooperation with Iran, successfully tested a long-range missile capable of transcontinental distances.

Small states or terrorists that may acquire nuclear weapons in the future could deliver them through innovative means. Because nuclear weapons are small, one could be smug- gled into a target state by car, by speedboat, or in diplomatic pouches.

Since 2001, the United States has run a container security initiative aimed at pre- venting weapons of mass destruction from reaching U.S. shores in seaborne shipping con- tainers. But doing so without impeding the prosperity-inducing fl ow of international trade is a daunting challenge—nearly 8 million shipping containers pass through U.S. ports every year. In 2006, the U.S. Congress scuttled a deal that would have let a company based in Dubai, an Arab country, control some operations at several U.S. ports (as other foreign companies already do).

Chemical and Biological Weapons A chemical weapon releases chemicals that disable and kill people. 21 The chemicals vary from lethal ones such as nerve gas to merely irritating ones such as tear gas. Different chemicals interfere with the nervous system, blood, breathing, or other body functions. Some can be absorbed through the skin; others must be inhaled. Some persist in the target area long after their use; others disperse quickly.

It is possible to defend against most chemical weapons by dressing troops in protec- tive clothing and gas masks and following elaborate procedures to decontaminate equip- ment. But protective suits are hot, and antichemical measures reduce the effi ciency of armies. In addition, Civilians are much less likely to have protection against chemicals than are military forces. Chemical weapons are by nature indiscriminate about whom they kill. Several times, chemical weapons have been deliberately used against civilians (nota- bly by the Iraqi government against Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s).

Use of chemical weapons in war has been rare. Mustard gas, which produces skin blis- ters and lung damage, was widely used in artillery shells in World War I. After the horrors of that war, the use of chemical weapons was banned in the 1925 Geneva protocol, still in effect today. In World War II, both sides were armed with chemical weapons but neither used them, for fear of retaliation. Since then (with possibly a few unclear exceptions), only Iraq has violated the treaty—against Iran in the 1980s. Unfortunately, Iraq’s actions not only breached a psychological barrier against using chemical weapons, but showed such weapons to be cheap and effective against human waves of attackers without protective gear. This example stimulated dozens more poor states to begin acquiring chemical weap- ons. Chemical weapons are a cheap way for states to gain weapons of mass destruction. Chemical weapons can be produced using processes and facilities similar to those for pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and other civilian products, which makes it diffi cult to fi nd

20 Mistry, Dinshaw. Containing Missile Proliferation: Strategic Technology, Security Regimes, and International Cooperation in Arms Control. Washington, 2003. 21 Price, Richard M. The Chemical Weapons Taboo. Cornell, 1997.

Weapons of Mass Destruction 215

chemical weapons facilities in suspect countries or to deny those states access to the needed chemicals and equipment.

The 1925 treaty did not ban the production or possession of chemical weapons, only their use, and several dozen states built stockpiles of them. The United States and the Soviet Union maintained large arsenals of chemical weapons during the Cold War but have reduced them greatly in the past decade. The 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention to ban the pro- duction and possession of chemical weapons has been signed by all the great powers and nearly all other states, with a few exceptions including Egypt, Syria, and North Korea. The new treaty includes strict verifi cation provisions and the threat of sanctions against violators including (an impor- tant extension) nonparticipants in the treaty. Several states (including India, China, South Korea, France, and Britain) admitted to having secret chemical weapons programs, which are now being dismantled under inter- national oversight. Russia still faces very costly and long-term work to destroy a 44,000-ton arsenal of chemical weapons built during the Cold War. From 1997 to 2010, the treaty organization oversaw the elimination of more than half of the world’s chemical weapons (over 40,000 metric tons).

Biological weapons resemble chemical ones, but use deadly microorganisms or biologi- cally derived toxins. Some use viruses or bacteria that cause fatal diseases, such as small- pox, bubonic plague, and anthrax. Others cause nonfatal, but incapacitating, diseases or diseases that kill livestock. Theoretically, a single weapon could spark an epidemic in an entire population, but this would pose too great a danger, so less contagious microorgan- isms are preferred. Biological weapons have virtually never been used in war (Japan tried some on a few Chinese villages in World War II). Their potential strikes many political leaders as a Pandora’s box that could let loose uncontrollable forces if opened.

For this reason, the development, production, and possession of biological weapons are banned under the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention , signed by more than 100 countries including the great powers. The superpowers destroyed their stocks of biological weapons and had to restrict their biological weapons complexes to defensive research rather than the development of weapons. However, because the treaty makes no provision for inspection and because biological weapons programs are, like chemical ones, relatively easy to hide, several states remain under suspicion of having biological weapons. UN inspections of Iraq in the mid-1990s uncovered an active biological weapons program. Evidence surfaced after the collapse of the Soviet Union that a secret biological weapons program had been under way there as well. In 2001, the United States pulled out of talks to strengthen the 1972 treaty, declaring the proposed modifi cations unworkable.

VULNERABLE

Civilians are more vulnerable to chemical weapons than soldiers are. A treaty aims to ban chemical weapons worldwide. Here, Israeli kindergarteners prepare against a chemical warfare threat from Iraqi Scud missiles during the Gulf War, 1991.

216 Chapter 6 Military Force and Terrorism

Today the United States and perhaps a dozen other countries maintain biological weapons research (not banned by the treaty). Researchers try to ascertain the military implications of advances in biotechnology. 22

Proliferation Proliferation is the spread of weapons of mass destruction—nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and chemical or biological weapons—into the hands of more actors. The impli- cations of proliferation for international relations are diffi cult to predict but profound. Ballistic missiles with weapons of mass destruction remove the territorial protection offered by state borders and make each state vulnerable to others. Some realists, who believe in the rationality of state actions, are not so upset by this prospect, and some even welcome it. They reason that in a world where the use of military force could lead to mutual annihilation, there would be fewer wars—just as during the arms race of the Cold War the superpowers did not blow each other up. Other IR scholars who put less faith in the rationality of state leaders are much more alarmed by proliferation. They fear that with more and more nuclear (or chemical/biological) actors, miscalculation or accident— or fanatical terrorism—could lead to the use of weapons of mass destruction on a scale unseen since 1945. 23

The leaders of the great powers tend to side with the second group. 24 They have tried to restrict the most destructive weapons to the great powers. Proliferation erodes the great powers’ advantage relative to middle powers. There is also a widespread fear that these weapons may fall into the hands of terrorists or other nonstate actors who would be immune from threats of retaliation (with no territory or cities to defend). Evidence cap- tured during the 2001 war in Afghanistan showed that the al Qaeda organization was trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction and would be willing to use them. Lax secu- rity at the vast, far-fl ung former Soviet nuclear complex increased fears that fi ssionable materials could reach terrorists. 25

Nuclear proliferation could occur simply by a state or nonstate actor’s buying (or stealing) one or more nuclear weapons or the components to build one. The means to prevent this include covert intelligence, tight security measures, and safeguards to prevent a stolen weapon from being used. In 2007, two teams of armed assailants broke into the South African nuclear facility where atomic bombs had once been designed and pro- duced. After reaching the control room and shooting one guard, they were repelled, leav- ing a mystery along with doubts about the security of such nuclear facilities. As broader political unrest occurs in other nuclear states, notably Pakistan, thoughts often turn toward the safety of nuclear weapons and materials. 26

22 Lederberg, Joshua, ed. Biological Weapons: Limiting the Threat. MIT, 1999. Tucker, Jonathan B., ed. Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons. MIT, 2000. Price-Smith, Andrew T., ed. Plagues and Politics: Infectious Diseases and International Policy. Palgrave, 2001. 23 Paul, T. V., Richard J. Harknett, and James J. Wirtz, eds. The Absolute Weapon Revisited. Michigan, 1998. Sagan, Scott D., and Kenneth N. Waltz. The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate. Norton, 1995. 24 Utgoff, Victor, ed. The Coming Crisis: Nuclear Proliferation, U.S. Interests, and World Order. MIT, 1999. 25 Allison, Graham. Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe. Times, 2004. Finn, Peter. Experts Discuss Chances of Nuclear Terrorism. The Washington Post, November 3, 2001: A19. Erlanger, Steven. Lax Nuclear Security in Russia Is Cited as Way for bin Laden to Get Arms. The New York Times, November 12, 2001: B1. Gur, Nadine, and Benjamin Cole. The New Face of Terrorism: Threats from Weapons of Mass Destruction. Tauris, 2000. Falkenrath, Richard A., Robert D. Newman, and Bradley A. Thayer. America’s Achilles’ Heel: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack. MIT, 1998. 26 Bunn, Matthew. Securing the Bomb 2008. Harvard University, 2008.

Weapons of Mass Destruction 217

A stronger form of nuclear proliferation is the development by states of nuclear complexes to produce their own nuclear weapons on an ongoing basis. 27 Here, larger numbers of weapons are involved and strong potentials exist for arms races in regional confl icts and rivalries. The relevant regional confl icts are those between Israel and the Arab states, Iran and its Arab neighbors, India and Pakistan, 28 the two Koreas, and possibly Taiwan and China. India and Pakistan each have dozens of nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. North Korea tested weapons in 2006 and 2009, and negotiations over its program continue. South Africa reported after the fact that it had built several nuclear weapons but then dismantled them in the 1980s before white minority rule ended.

In the 1990s, Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist sold bomb kits with low- grade uranium, enrichment centrifuges, and bomb designs to Libya, Iran, and North Korea. Libya gave its up, North Korea negotiated but remained coy about its uranium program (while giving up its plutonium program), and Iran continues to enrich uranium. Israel has never offi cially admitted it has nuclear weapons but is widely believed to have a hundred or more. Israel wants these capabilities to convince Arab leaders that military conquest of Israel is impossible. 29 To prevent Iraq from developing nuclear weapons, Israel carried out a bombing raid on the main facility of the Iraqi nuclear complex in 1981. In 2007, Israeli warplanes destroyed a site in Syria thought to be a nuclear reactor of North Korean design. Syria quickly cleared all traces of the building after the attack.

The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968 created a framework for controlling the spread of nuclear materials and expertise. 30 The Interna- tional Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN agency based in Vienna, is charged with inspecting the nuclear power industry in member states to pre- vent secret military diversions of nuclear materials. However, a number of potential nuclear states (such as Israel) have not signed the NPT, and even states that have signed may sneak around its provisions by keeping some facilities secret (as Iraq and Iran did). Under the terms of the Gulf War cease-fi re, Iraq’s nuclear program was uncovered and dismantled by the IAEA. In 2006, a deal between the United States and India to share nuclear technology led many states to question the NPT, because those benefi ts were supposedly reserved for only signatories. Nonetheless the deal received fi nal U.S. and Indian approval in 2008.

North Korea withdrew from the IAEA in 1993, then bargained with Western leaders to get economic assistance, including safer reactors, in exchange for freezing its nuclear program. North Korea’s leader died months later, but the compromise held up. In 1999,

SOMETHING TO HIDE

The most important hurdle in making nuclear weapons is access to fi ssiona- ble materials (plutonium and uranium). Iran’s enrichment of uranium could give that country nuclear bombs within the decade. Fueling Western suspicions, Iran has not been forthcoming with international inspectors. Iran bulldozed this large site and removed its topsoil in 2004 before letting inspectors in. In 2006 and 2007, the UN Security Council applied mild sanctions against Iran over its refusal to stop enriching uranium.

30 Kokoski, Richard. Technology and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Oxford/SIPRI, 1996. Chafetz, Glenn. The Political Psychology of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime. Journal of Politics 57 (3), 1995: 743–75.

29 Cohen, Avner. Israel and the Bomb. Columbia, 1998. Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Maoz, Zeev. Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel’s Security and Foreign Policy. Michigan, 2006.

28 Albright, David, and Mark Hibbs. India’s Silent Bomb. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 48 (7), 1992: 27–31. Albright, David, and Mark Hibbs. Pakistan’s Bomb: Out of the Closet. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 48 (6), 1992: 38–43.

27 Abraham, Itty. The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy, and the Post-Colonial State. Zed/St. Martin’s, 1998. Perkovich, George. India’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation. California, 1999. Lewis, John Wilson, and Xus Litai. China Builds the Bomb. Stanford, 1988.

218 Chapter 6 Military Force and Terrorism

North Korea allowed inspection of a disputed underground complex and agreed to sus- pend missile tests in exchange for aid and partial lifting of U.S. trade sanctions. 31 Then in 2002, the United States confronted North Korea with evidence of a secret uranium enrichment program, which the North Koreans then admitted to having. North Korea then pulled out of the agreement and out of the IAEA, restarted its nuclear reactor, and apparently turned its existing plutonium into a half-dozen bombs within months, one of which it tested in 2006. North Korea again agreed to give up its program in 2008, yet after another nuclear test in 2009, it began processing nuclear material again.

At present, in addition to the “big fi ve” Security Council members, nuclear states are Israel, India and Pakistan (with dozens of warheads each, and growing), and North Korea (with perhaps a half-dozen).

Iran denies, but appears to be, working to develop nuclear weapons. Since 2003, Iran fi rst agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment program and allow surprise IAEA inspections, then restarted enrichment, suspended it again, and restarted it again. In 2005, U.S.-backed efforts by Europe to offer Iran economic incentives to dismantle its program, and by Russia to enrich Iran’s uranium on Russian soil with safeguards, both faltered. In 2006, the UN Secu- rity Council condemned Iran’s actions and imposed mild sanctions. Iran insisted on its right to enrich uranium for what it called peaceful purposes. In 2008, Iran’s behavior led to further UN Security Council sanctions, and in 2009, after a secret underground processing facility was discovered, Iran was engaged in talks over the program with Western powers.

A number of middle powers and two great powers (Japan and Germany) have the poten- tial to make nuclear weapons but have chosen not to do so. The reasons for deciding against “going nuclear” include norms against using nuclear weapons, fears of retaliation, and practi- cal constraints including cost. Brazil and Argentina seemed to be headed for a nuclear arms race in the 1980s but then called it off as civilians replaced military governments in both

31 Sigal, Leon V. Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea. Princeton, 1999. Cha, Victor D., and David C. Kang. Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies. Columbia, 2003.

SEEKING THE COLLECTIVE GOOD

Arms Control COLLECTIVE GOOD: Limiting Nuclear Arsenals

BACKGROUND: After the creation of nuclear weap- ons in World War II, the two superpowers built large arsenals of them during the decades of the Cold War. Eventually, each side had tens of thousands. These nuclear weapons posed a grave danger that miscalcula- tion or accident could lead to truly catastrophic conse- quences. Limiting and controlling nuclear arms, to avoid this catastrophic outcome, is a collective good. Both sides benefi ted if nuclear war was avoided, regard- less of which side gave up however many weapons in a negotiated agreement.

CHALLENGE: Arms races represent the dark side of the reciprocity principle, a downward spiral of relations in which each reciprocates the other’s hostile actions— in this case, deploying more nuclear weapons. Ever since the 1960s, the two sides have used negotiated agree- ments to try to control the arms race. For decades the effort merely channeled and illuminated the steady buildup of arms on both sides.

SOLUTION: The same reciprocity that fueled the arms race also fueled its

Weapons of Mass Destruction 219

countries. 32 In 2004, after years of resistance, Brazil gave IAEA inspectors access to a contro- versial uranium enrichment plant (not part of a nuclear weapons program, evidently).

Nuclear Strategy and Arms Control The term nuclear strategy refers to decisions about how many nuclear weapons to deploy, what delivery systems to put them on, and what policies to adopt regarding the circum- stances in which they would be used. 33

The reason for possessing nuclear weapons is almost always to deter another state from a nuclear or conventional attack by threatening ruinous retaliation. This should work if state leaders are rational actors wanting to avoid the huge costs of a nuclear attack. But it will work only if other states believe that a state’s threat to use nuclear weapons is credible. The search for a credible deterrent by two or more hostile states tends to lead to an ever-growing arsenal of nuclear weapons. To follow this logic, start with Pakistan’s deployment of its fi rst nuclear missile aimed at India (the example also works with the countries reversed). Then India would not attack—that is, unless it could prevent Paki- stan from using its missile. India could do this by building offensive forces capable of wip- ing out the Pakistani missile (probably using nuclear weapons, but that is not the key point here). Then the Pakistani missile, rather than deter India, would merely spur India to destroy the missile before any other attack. An attack intended to destroy—largely or entirely—a state’s nuclear weapons before they can be used is called a fi rst strike.

reversal after the Cold War ended. Each side has matched the other’s reductions in weapons, governed by a series of formal, verifi able treaties. The arsenals have shrunk dramatically as a result.

In 2010, the U.S. and Russian presidents signed a new nuclear arms control treaty. Over seven years it will cut strategic nuclear warheads by almost one- third, from 2,200 to 1,550 for each side. Each side also agrees to extensive monitoring to ensure that the other side is living up to its bargain. Using the reciprocity principle, the former superpowers have used step-by-step measures, each side matching the other, to fi rst limit and then to greatly reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

The U.S. and Russian presidents sign thick arms control treaty, 2010.

32 Leventhal, Paul L., and Sharon Tanzer, eds. Averting a Latin American Nuclear Arms Race: New Prospects and Challenges for Argentine-Brazil Nuclear Cooperation. St. Martin’s, 1992. 33 Glaser, Charles L. Analyzing Strategic Nuclear Policy. Princeton, 1990. Sagan, Scott D. Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security. Princeton, 1989. Jervis, Robert. The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon. Cornell, 1989. Talbott, Strobe. The Master of the Game: Paul Nitze and the Nuclear Peace. Knopf, 1988.

220 Chapter 6 Military Force and Terrorism

Pakistan could make its missile survivable (probably by making it mobile). It could also build more nuclear missiles so that even if some were destroyed in an Indian first strike, some would survive with which to retaliate. Weapons that can take a fi rst strike and still strike back give a state second-strike capabilities. Possession of second-strike capabili- ties by both sides is called mutually assured destruction (MAD) because neither side can prevent the other from destroying it. The term implies that the strategy, though refl ecting “rationality,” is actually insane (mad) because deviations from rationality could destroy both sides.

If India could not assuredly destroy Pakistan’s missile, it would undoubt- edly deploy its own nuclear missile(s) to deter Pakistan from using its missile. India, too, could achieve a second- strike capability. Now the question of credibility becomes important. In the- ory, India could launch a nonnuclear attack on Pakistan, knowing that rational Pakistani leaders would rather lose such a war than use their nuclear weapons and bring on an Indian nuclear response. The nuclear missiles in effect cancel each other out.

Defense has played little role in nuclear strategy because no effective defense against missile attack has been devised. However, the United States is spending billions of dollars a year to try to develop defenses that could shoot down incoming ballistic missiles. The program is called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) , “Star Wars,” or Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD). It originated in President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 call for a comprehen- sive shield that would make nuclear missiles obsolete. 34 However, the mission soon shifted to defending some U.S. missiles in a massive Soviet attack. After the Cold War the mis- sion shifted again, to protecting U.S. territory from a very limited missile attack (at most a few missiles), such as might occur in an unauthorized launch, an accident, or an attack by a small state. Japan is spending $1 billion a year to build a U.S.-designed missile defense system, which it tested successfully in late 2007. North Korea has more than 600 ballistic missiles capable of hitting Japan, however.

As of 2010, the United States is deploying a multilayer system with 24 ground-based interceptor missiles in Alaska and California (directed toward the North Korean threat),

DEFENSIVE MOVE

The nuclear arms race between the superpowers during the Cold War led to strat- egies and arms control agreements that helped develop norms and expectations about nuclear weapons and missiles. India and Pakistan have followed a similar arms race, leading to mutual deterrence. Recently, defense against missiles has begun to enter the strategic calculus. Here, Israel’s new “Iron Dome” system shoots down short-range missiles from Gaza in 2012.

34 Lindsay, James M., and Michael O’Hanlon. Defending America: The Case for Limited National Missile Defense. Brookings, 2001. Wirtz, James J., and Jeffrey A. Larsen. Rocket’s Red Glare: Missile Defenses and the Future of World Politics. Westview, 2001.

Weapons of Mass Destruction 221

21 ship-based interceptors, about 500 Patriot missiles for short-range ballistic missile threats, and a series of radars and control centers. It had begun testing an airplane-based laser system and had concluded agreements with Poland and the Czech Republic to build missile defenses in those countries, before reversing these plans in favor of a sea-based system to guard against any Iranian threat, with a radar system based in Turkey. In 2012, Israel used a new “Iron Dome” defense system to shoot down short-range missiles fi red by Hamas in large numbers.

In addition to the technical challenges of stopping incoming ballistic missile war- heads, such as distinguishing warheads from decoys, a true strategic defense would also have to stop cruise missiles (possibly launched from submarines), airplanes, and more innovative delivery systems. If a rogue state or terrorist group struck the United States with a nuclear weapon, it would probably not use an ICBM to do so.

During the Cold War, the superpowers’ nuclear forces grew and technologies devel- oped. Those evolving force structures were codifi ed (more than constrained) by a series of arms control agreements. Arms control is an effort by two or more states to regulate by formal agreement their acquisition of weapons, 35 using the reciprocity principle to solve the collective goods problem of expensive arms races that ultimately benefi t neither side (see p. 6 ) . Arms control is broader than just nuclear weapons—for instance, after World War I the great powers negotiated limits on sizes of navies—but in the Cold War nuclear weapons were the main focus of arms control. Arms control agreements typically require long, formal negotiations with many technical discussions, culminating in a treaty. Some arms control treaties are multilateral, but during the Cold War most were bilateral (U.S.- Soviet). Some stay in effect indefi nitely; others have a limited term.

Several treaties in the 1970s locked in the superpowers’ basic parity in nuclear capa- bilities under MAD. The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty prevented either side from using a ballistic missile defense as a shield from which to launch a fi rst strike. However, to allow full-scale testing of missile-defense technologies, the United States withdrew from the ABM Treaty with six months’ notice (as provided in the treaty) in 2002. President Bush called the treaty a relic of the Cold War, but critics called U.S. mis- sile defense a costly blunder that could induce China to greatly enlarge its minimal nuclear arsenal (which, in turn, could accelerate India’s nuclear weapons production, and thus Pakistan’s as well).

The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties (SALT) in the 1970s put formal ceilings on the growth of both sides’ strategic weapons. More recent arms control agreements regu- lated the substantial reduction of nuclear forces after the end of the Cold War. 36 The U.S. arsenal peaked in the 1960s at more than 30,000 warheads; the Soviet arsenal peaked in the 1980s at more than 40,000. The 1991 START treaty limited warheads to 6,000 on each side. Meanwhile the 2002 SORT treaty called for further reductions to 2,200 each by 2012, but relies on START mechanisms for verifi cation. In March 2010, the sides signed a treaty (referred to as New START) that will lower the number of warheads to 1,550 and also creates additional verifi cation mechanisms for both sides. The reciprocity principle that helped fuel the arms race also enables its step-by-step reversal.

China, France, and Britain each have several hundred weapons—France’s and Brit- ain’s mostly on submarine-launched missiles and China’s mostly on long-range bombers and intermediate-range missiles.

A Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) to halt all nuclear test explosions was signed in 1996 after decades of stalemate. It aims to impede the development of new types

36 Larsen, Jeffrey A. Arms Control: Cooperative Security in a Changing Environment. Rienner, 2002. 35 Adler, Emanuel, ed. The International Practice of Arms Control. Johns Hopkins, 1992.

222 Chapter 6 Military Force and Terrorism

of nuclear weapons. However, the treaty does not take effect until signed and ratifi ed by all 44 states believed capable of building at least a crude nuclear weapon. India did not sign the CTBT and defi ed it in 1998 with fi ve nuclear tests. Pakistan followed suit with its own tests. The U.S. Senate voted in 1999 against ratifying the CTBT. Russia ratifi ed it in 2000. Although no nuclear tests occurred worldwide in 1999– 2005, North Korea’s nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 dealt more setbacks to the CTBT.

All the weapons of mass destruction are relatively diffi cult and expensive to build, yet provide only specialized capabilities that are rarely if ever actually used. This is why most states that could technically acquire them have decided not to do so. Such cost-benefi t thinking also applies more broadly to states’ decisions about the acquisition of all kinds of military forces.

States and Militaries Given the range of military capabilities availa- ble to states (at various costs), how much and what types should state leaders choose to acquire? This question confronts all states but they answer it in different ways.

Military Economics Choices about military forces depend on the connection between a state’s military spend- ing and its economic health. People once believed in the United States that “war is good for the economy” because, seemingly, military spending had helped end the Great Depres- sion in the late 1930s. If this were true, state leaders would not face diffi cult choices in setting military budgets. High military spending would give them both more military capabilities for use in international confl icts and more economic growth for domestic needs (buying popular and political support in various ways). Unfortunately for state lead- ers, allocating economic resources for military purposes deprives the rest of the economy and reduces its long-term growth.

Both the long- and short-term effects of military spending are magnifi ed by actual war- fare. War not only stimulates high military spending, it destroys capital (people, cities, farms, and factories in battle areas) and causes infl ation (reducing the supply of various goods while increasing demand for them). Governments must pay for war goods by borrow- ing money (increasing government debt), by printing more currency (fueling infl ation), or by raising taxes (reducing spending and investment). U.S. revolutionary Thomas Paine warned in 1787 that “war . . . has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.” 37

THE WAR IS OVER

U.S. and Russian nuclear forces were greatly reduced in the 1990s. Here, U.S. B-52 bombers are being chopped up, under the eye of Russian satellites, to bring force levels down.

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37 Paine, Thomas. The Writings of Thomas Paine. Vol. 2. Knickerbocker, 1894.

States and Militaries 223

Nonetheless, war and high military spending can have certain economic benefi ts. Short-term stimulation can result from a boost in military spending. Another potential benefi t is the acquisition of territory (containing resources and capital). 38 Serbian ultrana- tionalists made fortunes off the plunder of Bosnians whom they “ethnically cleansed,” and Congolese militia leaders enriched themselves with minerals exported during the civil war. Another potential economic benefi t of war is to stir up a population’s patriotism so that it will work harder for less pay. But overall, the economic costs of war usually far sur- pass any benefi ts.

States vary widely in military spending, from Costa Rica, with virtually no mili- tary spending at all, to North Korea, which devotes 20 percent or more of GDP to military purposes. If military budgets are too low, states may be unprepared to meet a security threat; in the worst case, they may even be overrun and conquered militarily. But if leaders set military budgets too high, they will overburden and stifl e the national economy.

World military spending is about 2.5 percent of the total goods and services in the world economy—about $1.8 trillion every year, or roughly $1 million every 20 seconds. Most is spent by a few big states, nearly half by the United States alone. (U.S. spending is expected to fall steadily in the coming years as its wars end, but other countries are increasing their spending rapidly.) World military spending is a vast fl ow of money that could, if redirected to other purposes, change the world profoundly and improve major world problems. 39 Of course, “the world” does not spend this money or choose how to direct it; states do.

In the global South, military spending varies greatly across countries, depending in part on the government in power (military or civilian). 40 Spending also depends heav- ily on available hard currency, from exports of oil or other products, to pay for arms purchases.

Most arms sales worldwide go to the global South. In recent decades, about half of these arms imports have been in the Middle East, but lately India and China have taken a growing share. The great majority of international arms exports come from the United States, with Russia, France, and Britain also ranking. In the immediate post–Cold War era, global arms sales fell, but have since climbed back to near–Cold War levels. 41

Activists have called attention to the sales of small arms, especially assault rifl es, to unstable confl ict zones where irregular armies commit brutalities. In 2001, 140 states agreed to a voluntary pact to curb small-arms sales to confl ict zones. The United States, by far the largest exporter of small arms, blocked proposals to restrict sales of military weap- ons to rebel movements and to civilians. In the fall of 2009, the UN General Assembly voted nearly unanimously to begin work on an Arms Trade Treaty. The treaty passed the General Assembly in 2013 with only Iran, North Korea, and Syria voting no. Ratifi cation by the U.S. Senate appears unlikely. 42

38 Liberman, Peter. Does Conquest Pay? The Exploitation of Occupied Industrial Societies. Princeton, 1996. 39 Forsberg, Randall, Robert Elias, and Matthew Goodman. Peace Issues and Strategies. In Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies. Peace Resource Book 1986. Ballinger, 1985, pp. 5–13. 40 Singh, Ravinder Pal, ed. Arms Procurement Decision-Making Processes: China, India, Israel, Japan, and South Korea. Oxford/SIPRI, 1997. Gill, Bates, and J. N. Mak, eds. Arms Trade, Transparency, and Security in South- East Asia. Oxford/SIPRI, 1997. 41 Craft, Cassady. Weapons for Peace, Weapons for War: The Effect of Arms Transfers in War Outbreak, Involve- ment, and Outcomes. Routledge, 1999. Forsberg, Randall, ed. The Arms Production Dilemma: Contraction and Restraint in the World Combat Aircraft Industry. MIT, 1994. 42 See http://www.controlarms.org . Boutwell, Jeffrey, and Michael T. Klare. Light Weapons and Civil Confl ict: Controlling the Tools of Violence. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 1999.

224 Chapter 6 Military Force and Terrorism

Beyond these considerations about the size of military forces, the confi guration of a state’s military forces also presents diffi cult choices. Different missions require different forces. During the Cold War, about half of all military spending in the U.S. budget—and of world military spending—was directed toward the East-West confl ict in Europe. Now other missions such as intervention in regional confl icts and counterinsurgency are more important. 43 And other new missions for military forces include humanitarian assistance, drug interdiction, and aid to other nations in building roads and schools.

Control of Military Forces One cannot take for granted the ability of a state leader to make military forces take desired actions. At best, military forces are large and complex institutions, operating in especially diffi cult conditions during wartime. At worst, military forces have a mind of their own. Sometimes, the state leader appears to exert only incomplete control over the military.

States control military forces through a chain of command running from the highest authority through a hierarchy spreading out to the lowest-level soldiers. The highest authority, or commander in chief, is usually the top political leader. The importance of this military hierarchy is illustrated by a story from ancient China in which a king was thinking of hiring Sun Tzu (see p. 43 ) as an advisor. As a test, the king asked Sun Tzu to turn his harem of 200 concubines into troops. Sun Tzu divided them into two units, com-

manded by the king’s two favorites. He explained the signals to face forward, backward, right, and left. But when he gave the signals, the women just laughed. Sun Tzu then had the two “offi cers” executed on the spot and put the next most senior concubines in their places. When he gave the signals again, the women obeyed fl awlessly. Sun Tzu declared that “the troops are in good order and may be deployed as the King desires.” Thus, military hierarchy and discipline make armed forces function as instruments of state power—at the price of brutality and loss of individual freedom.

In actual battle conditions, controlling armed forces is especially difficult because of complex operations, rapid change, and the fog of war created by the gap between bat- tlefi eld activity and command-level information. Participants are pumped up with adrenaline, deafened by noise, and con- fused by a mass of activity that—from the middle of it—may seem to make no sense. They are called on to perform actions that may run against basic instincts as well as moral norms— killing people and risking death. It is diffi cult to coordinate forces effectively in order to carry out overall plans of action. Military forces counteract these problems through military discipline. Insubordination, mutiny, or deserting are serious offenses punishable by prison or death. But discipline depends not only on punishment but also on patriotism and profes- sionalism on the part of soldiers. Offi cers play to nationalist sentiments, reminding soldiers that they fi ght for their nation

43 Hoffman, Peter J., and Thomas G. Weiss. Sword and Salve: Confronting New Wars and Humanitarian Crises. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2006. Feste, Karen A. Intervention: Shaping the Global Order. Praeger, 2003. MacFarlane, S. Neil. Intervention in Contemporary World Politics. Oxford, 2002.

TAKING OVER

Through a hierarchical chain of command, states con- trol the actions of millions of individual soldiers, creat- ing leverage in the hands of state leaders. But armed forces still sometimes defy civilian control. Here, sol- diers in Mali stage a coup (2012) that unwittingly sparked an Islamist takeover of half the country and then a French military intervention.

States and Militaries 225

and family. Combat, logistics, communication, and command all depend on individual performance; motivation matters.

Military units also rely on soldiers’ sense of group solidarity. Soldiers risk their lives because their “buddies” depend on them. 44 Abstractions such as nationalism, patriotism, and religious fervor are important, but loyalty to the immediate group (along with a sur- vival instinct) is a stronger motivator. Recent debates about participation of women in the U.S. armed forces revolve around whether their presence disrupts group solidarity. (Evidence suggests that it need not, and in 2011, the ban on U.S. gay soldiers was lifted for similar reasons.)

Finally, offi cers and political leaders need accurate intelligence to make good deci- sions. 45 Of course, even the most advanced intelligence systems cannot stop human error. “Friendly fi re” incidents account for a substantial fraction of U.S. military fatalities. In late 2001, U.S. special forces were traveling with Hamid Karzai, believed at the time to be the only person who could lead a united, U.S.-allied Afghan government. As a U.S. sol- dier called in airstrikes on an enemy position, the battery in his GPS unit needed chang- ing, and the unit’s coordinates defaulted to its own position. A U.S. warplane dropped a bomb right on that target, killing three U.S. soldiers and fi ve Afghan allies and nearly kill- ing Karzai himself.

Civil-Military Relations Beyond overcoming chaos and complexity, state leaders sometimes must confront chal- lenges from within their own military ranks as well. Many states, especially democratic states, adhere to a principle of civilian supremacy . This is the idea that civilian leaders (who are either elected or appointed) are at the top of the chain of command. Civilians, not military offi cers, decide when and where the military fi ghts. The offi cers, by contrast, are supposed to control how the military fi ghts.

This division of labor between civilians and militaries inevitably leads to tensions. The interaction of civilian with military leaders—called civil-military relations —is an important factor in how states use force. 46 Military leaders may undermine the authority of civilian leaders in carrying out foreign policies, or they may even threaten civilian supremacy if certain actions are taken in international confl icts. Military offi cers also want autonomy of decision once force is committed, in order to avoid the problems cre- ated in the Vietnam War when President Johnson sat in the White House situation room daily picking targets for bombing raids. Worse yet, in NATO’s 1999 bombing of Serbia, specifi c targets had to be approved by politicians in multiple countries. In 2010, the com- manding American general in Afghanistan lost his job after publicly questioning Presi- dent Obama’s Afghanistan policies.

Even outside of the context of ongoing warfare, differences between civilian and military leaders can lead to tensions. In the United States, opinion surveys consistently show that military offi cers, on average, maintain different opinions than civilians on issues such as the use of force as a tool of leverage. Scholars have begun to study why

44 Bourke, Joanna. An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare. Basic, 1999. Grossman, Dave. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. Little, Brown, 1995. Gray, J. Glenn. The Warriors: Refl ections on Men in Battle. Harper & Row, 1967 [1959]. 45 Lowenthal, Mark M. Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy. CQ Press, 2000. Richelson, Jeffery T. A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century. Oxford, 1995. 46 Feaver, Peter D., and Richard D. Kohn, eds. Soldiers and Civilians. MIT, 2001. Choi, Seung-Whan, and Patrick James. Civil-Military Dynamics, Democracy, and International Confl ict: A New Quest for International Peace. Palgrave, 2005.

226 Chapter 6 Military Force and Terrorism

this gap between civilians and the military has developed and its implications for American foreign policy. 47

Similar tensions exist in other democracies. In Turkey, tensions have grown between the Islamic government and its military. Historically, Turkey’s military has intervened numerous times to take control from elected leaders when military offi cers felt the govern- ment was threatening the secular nature of Turkey. Recently, however, the civilian gov- ernment has been aggressive at arresting offi cers who they believe were plotting a coup. These actions have led to a fragile situation in that country. In the 2011 Arab Spring, the Egyptian military refused to fi re on protesters, whereas Syrian forces did use lethal fi re.

If tensions become too sharp between a civilian leadership and their military forces, a coup d’état (French for “blow against the state”) can result. A coup is the seizure of politi- cal power by domestic military forces—a change of political power outside the state’s con- stitutional order. 48 The outcome of a coup attempt is hard to predict. If most or all of the military go along with the coup, civilian leaders are generally helpless to stop it. But if most of the military offi cers follow the existing chain of command, the coup is doomed. In the Philippines in the late 1980s, the top general, Fidel Ramos, remained loyal to the civilian president, Corazón Aquino, in seven coup attempts by subordinate offi cers. In each case, the bulk of the Philippine military forces stayed loyal to Ramos, and the coups failed.

International pressures, such as sanctions, may also convince military leaders to step down. In late 2009, military leaders took power in Honduras after deposing its president. The international community, including the Organization of American States, pressured Honduras after the 2009 coup. Elections were held in the fall of 2009, restoring a democratic government, but Hondurans remain divided over the legitimacy of the new government.

If a coup is successful, military forces themselves control the government. These mil- itary governments tend to be the most common in poor countries, where the military may be the only large modern institution in the country. Ironically, the disciplined central command of military forces, which makes them effective as tools of state infl uence, also lets the state lose control of them to military offi cers. Soldiers are trained to follow the orders of their commanding offi cers, not to think about politics.

Covert operations can also get out of the control of governments. Several thousand such operations were mounted during the Cold War, when the CIA and its Soviet coun- terpart, the KGB, waged an ongoing worldwide secret war. CIA covert operations in the 1950s overthrew unfriendly foreign governments—in Iran and Guatemala—by organiz- ing coups against them. The CIA-organized Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, in 1961, was its fi rst big failure, followed by other failed efforts against the Castro government (includ- ing eight assassination attempts). CIA covert activities were sharply scaled back after congressional hearings in the 1970s revealed scandals. After September 2001, the execu- tive branch enjoyed greater authority in conducting covert operations with less congres- sional scrutiny.

Overall, states face complex choices regarding the confi guration of their military forces in the post–Cold War era. Not only have the immediate contingencies and threats changed drastically, but the nature of threats in the new era is unclear. Perhaps most important, world order itself is evolving even as military technologies do. The next chap- ter discusses the evolving structures and norms governing international political relations and how they are changing the nature of world order.

47 Feaver, Peter D. and Christopher Gelpi. Choosing Your Battles: American Civil-Military Relations and the Use of Force. Princeton, 2005. 48 Carlton, Eric. The State against the State: The Theory and Practice of the Coup d’Etat. Ashgate, 1997.

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CHAPTER REVIEW

SUMMARY ■ Military forces include a wide variety of capabilities suited to different purposes.

Conventional warfare requires different kinds of forces than those needed to threaten the use of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.

■ Control of territory is fundamental to state sovereignty and is accomplished prima- rily with ground forces.

■ Air war, using precision-guided bombs against battlefi eld targets, proved extremely effective in the U.S. campaigns in Iraq in 1991, Serbia in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 2003.

■ Small missiles and electronic warfare are increasingly important, especially for naval and air forces. The role of satellites is expanding in communications, navigation, and reconnaissance.

■ Terrorism is effective if it damages morale in a population and gains media exposure for the cause.

■ The September 2001 attacks differed from earlier terrorism both in their scale of destruction and in the long reach of the global al Qaeda terrorist network. The attacks forced dramatic changes in U.S. and worldwide security arrangements and sparked U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban regime and destroy the al Qaeda bases there.

■ Weapons of mass destruction—nuclear, chemical, and biological—have rarely been used in war.

■ The production of nuclear weapons is technically within the means of many states and some nonstate actors, but the necessary fi ssionable material (uranium-235 or plutonium) is very diffi cult to obtain.

■ Most industrialized states, and many poor ones, have refrained voluntarily from acquiring nuclear weapons. These states include two great powers, Germany and Japan.

■ More states are acquiring ballistic missiles capable of striking other states from hundreds of miles away (or farther, depending on the missile’s range). But no state has ever attacked another with weapons of mass destruction mounted on ballistic missiles.

■ Chemical weapons are cheaper to build than nuclear weapons, they have similar threat value, and their production is harder to detect. More middle powers have chemical weapons than nuclear ones. A new treaty bans the possession and use of chemical weapons.

■ Several states conduct research into biological warfare, but by treaty the possession of such weapons is banned.

■ Slowing the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction in the global South is a central concern of the great powers.

■ The United States is testing systems to defend against ballistic missile attack, although none has yet proven feasible, and withdrew from the ABM Treaty with Russia to pursue this program.

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228 Chapter 6 Military Force and Terrorism

■ The United States and Russia have arsenals of thousands of nuclear weapons; China, Britain, and France have hundreds. Israel, India, and Pakistan each have scores. Weapons deployments are guided by nuclear strategy based on the concept of deterrence.

■ Arms control agreements formally defi ne the contours of an arms race or mutual disarmament process. Arms control helped build confi dence between the superpow- ers during the Cold War.

■ Political leaders face diffi cult choices in confi guring military forces and paying for them. Military spending tends to stimulate economic growth in the short term but reduce growth over the long term.

■ In the 1990s, military forces and expenditures of the great powers—especially Rus- sia—were reduced and restructured.

■ Except in times of civil war, state leaders—whether civilian or military—control military forces through a single hierarchical chain of command.

■ Military forces can threaten the domestic power of state leaders, who are vulnerable to being overthrown by coups d’état.

KEY TERMS infantry 194 counterinsurgency 196 land mines 196 power projection 197 electronic warfare 203 stealth technology 203 state-sponsored

terrorism 207 weapons of mass

destruction 209 fi ssionable

material 209 ballistic missile 211 intercontinental ballistic

missile (ICBM) 211

Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty 221

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) 221

chain of command 224 civil-military

relations 225 coup d’état 226 military

governments 226

cruise missile 212 Missile Technology

Control Regime 214 Chemical Weapons

Convention 215 Biological Weapons

Convention 215 proliferation 216 Non-Proliferation Treaty

(NPT) 217 mutually assured

destruction (MAD) 220

Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) 220

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS 1. If you were the leader of, say, Vietnam, what size and kinds of military forces would

you want your country to have? To meet what kinds of threats would you choose each type of capability?

2. Suppose that Iran turned out to have obtained three tactical nuclear warheads from the former Soviet arsenal and was keeping them in unknown locations. What, if anything, should the great powers do about this? What consequences might follow from their actions?

Chapter Review 229

3. Imagine a world in which most of the states, rather than just a few, had nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. Would it be more peaceful or more war- prone? Why?

4. Most of the great powers are reconfi guring their military forces in the post–Cold War era. What kinds of capabilities do you think your own country needs in this period? Why?

5. World military spending is more than $1 trillion every year. If you could redirect these funds, how would you use them? Would such uses be better or worse for the states involved? Do you think there is a realistic chance of redirecting military spending in the way you suggest?

LET’S DEBATE THE ISSUE

ARGUMENT 1

The United States Should Continue to Pursue North Korean Talks

U.S. allies favor negotiations. Although they are concerned that North Korea not be rewarded for its bad behavior, South Korea and Japan both would like negotiations to continue. While these U.S. allies do not want to reach an agreement at any cost, because any confl ict with North Korea would be exceedingly costly to one or both of them, they would prefer a diplomatic solution to this problem.

North Korea is interested in trading its program for aid. North Korea’s econ- omy is crumbling, and it can no longer count on Russia or China for assistance. To preserve its bargaining position, North Korea uses its nuclear weapons development program as leverage to get U.S., Japanese, and South Korean aid. In exchange for an attractive aid package, North Korea may well give up its program.

Isolating North Korea could be the most dangerous policy of all. The most likely scenario for North Korean leadership to actually use their nuclear arsenal would be a time when they feel backed into a corner. Walk- ing away from negotiations to leave them in isola- tion would accomplish exactly that goal. They could lash out militarily at South Korea or Japan, two important U.S. allies.

Overview For over a decade, North Korea has defied the international community and proceeded with its nuclear program. Several times, North Korea has agreed to give up its nuclear program, only to renege on that promise. In 2006, North Korea tested a nuclear weapon. Although the test had only a small yield, North Korea clearly possesses the knowledge, resources, and ability to produce nuclear weapons.

In 2007, an agreement was reached in which North Korea promised to halt its nuclear program in exchange for international assistance, including fuel and food aid. It then destroyed part of its nuclear processing facilities, but restarted its pro- gram when the United States delayed removing North Korea from its list of terror-supporting states. Once North Korea was removed from the list in the fall of 2008, it promised to allow nuclear inspectors to verify the stopping of its program. When the time came to formalize the agreement in writing, how- ever, North Korea refused. Then, in 2010, North Korea sank a South Korean warship and shelled an island, killing four people, greatly increasing ten- sions between the two countries.

Based on this history of failed agreements and tense negotiations, some have suggested ending negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear pro- gram. Others point to the potential danger posed by a North Korean nuclear program and urge continuation of the talks. Should the United States continue the multilateral talks aimed at disarming North Korea?

Negotiations with North Korea: Progress Toward Disarmament or Fool’s Errand?

Questions ■ Do you think North Korea is a trustworthy nego-

tiating partner? How many chances should it be given to live up to its agreements? What realistic alternatives are there to negotiations?

■ How much say should U.S. allies have in the negotiations? Does the proximity of South Korea and Japan to North Korea make their negotiat- ing interests more important than those of the United States?

■ What might be some of the potential problems if the United States took unilateral steps for the permanent disarmament of North Korea? Those unilateral steps could include more sanctions, war, or, on the other extreme, massive fl ows of fi nancial aid to pay North Korea for giving up its nuclear arsenal.

For Further Reading O’Hanlon, Michael, and Mike Mochizuiki. Crisis on

the Korean Peninsula: How to Deal with a Nuclear North Korea. McGraw-Hill, 2003.

Cha, Victor, and David Kang. Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies. Columbia, 2005.

Rozman, Gilbert. Strategic Thinking about the Korean Nuclear Crisis: Four Parties Caught between North Korea and the United States. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Wit, Joel S. Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis. Brookings, 2005.

ARGUMENT 2

The United States Should Give Up Its Quest for a North Korean Deal

North Korea has never kept its prom- ises. After its rejection of the NPT in the 1990s, North Korea has not only refused to honor many of the commitments but also actively cheated on them to continue its nuclear weapons program. Even if an agreement were reached, there would be no guarantee North Korea would not cheat.

The North Korean regime is untrust- worthy. North Korean leaders do not care about the welfare of citizens and care even less about international reputation. While North Korea may rely on international aid to stay afloat, it could extract even more aid if it had a more suc- cessful nuclear program.

Only a collapse of the North Korean regime will bring true change. As long as the current regime is in power, nothing will change in North Korea. The faster international isolation undermines the regime, the better. With- out fuel and food aid from the United States or nearby countries, the regime may collapse more quickly.

Southern Sudan rebels arrive for joint exercise with government, 2008.

International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

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233

CHAPTER OUTLINE Roles of International Organizations Most international confl icts are not settled by military force. Despite the anarchic na- ture of the international system based on state sovereignty, the security dilemma does not usually lead to a breakdown in basic cooperation among states. States generally refrain from taking maximum short-term advantage of each other (such as by invading and conquering). Rather, states work with other states for mutual gain and take advan- tage of each other only “at the margin.” Unfortunately, the day-to-day cooperative activities of international actors often are less newsworthy than their confl icts.

States work together by following rules they develop to govern their interactions. States usually do follow the rules. Over time, the rules become more fi rmly established and institutions grow up around them. States then develop the habit of working through those institutions and within the rules. They do so because of self-interest. Great gains can be realized by regulating international interactions through institu- tions and rules, thereby avoiding the costly outcomes associated with a breakdown of cooperation (see p. 6 ) .

The rules that govern most interactions in IR are rooted in norms. International norms are the expectations actors hold about normal international relations. The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq not only was illegal, but was widely viewed as immoral— beyond the acceptable range of behavior of states. Political leaders in the United States and around the world drew on moral norms to generate support for a collective response to Iraq. Thus morality is an element of power (see “Elements of Power” on pp. 47 – 49 ) drawing on the core principle of identity (most state leaders want to be seen by their publics and other leaders as upholding high morals).

Some norms, such as sovereignty and respect for treaties, are widely held; they shape expectations about state behavior and set standards that make deviations stand out. Constructivist scholars in IR (see Chapter 4 ) emphasize the importance of these global norms and standards. The attempt to defi ne international norms follows a centuries-long philosophical tradition. Philosophers such as Kant argued that it was natural for autonomous individuals (or states) to cooperate for mutual benefi t because they could see that pursuing their narrow individual interests would end up hurting all. Thus, sovereign states could work together through structures and organizations (such as Kant’s proposed world federation) that would respect each member’s autonomy, and not create a world government over them. In the 19th century, such ideas were embod- ied in practical organizations in which states participated to manage specifi c issues such as international postal service and control of traffi c on European rivers.

Agreed norms of behavior, institutionalized through such organizations, become habitual over time and gain legitimacy. State leaders become used to behaving in a nor- mal way and stop calculating, for each action, whether violating norms would pay off. For example, at the turn of the 19th century, U.S. war planners had active war plans for the possibility of a major naval confl ict between the United States and Great Britain. Today, such plans would seem ridiculous. Over time, states refrain from behav- ior not just for cost-benefi t reasons (as emphasized by realists and liberals) but for nor- mative reasons having little to do with material calculations (as emphasized by constructivists). Legitimacy and habit explain why international norms can be effec- tive even when they are not codifi ed and enforced.

The power of international norms and standards of morality, however, may vary when different states or world regions hold different expectations of what is normal. To the United States, it was a moral imperative to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

Roles of International Organizations

The United Nations ■ The UN System ■ The Security Council ■ Peacekeeping Forces ■ The Secretariat ■ The General Assembly ■ UN Programs ■ Autonomous Agencies

International Law ■ Sources of International

Law ■ Enforcement of

International Law ■ The World Court ■ International Cases in

National Courts

Law and Sovereignty ■ Laws of Diplomacy ■ Just War Doctrine

Human Rights ■ Individual Rights versus

Sovereignty ■ Human Rights Institutions ■ War Crimes ■ The Evolution of World

Order

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234 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

But from the perspective of Arab popula- tions, the U.S. invasion was an unjust violation of territorial sovereignty. In cases of diverging norms, morality can be a factor for misunderstanding and con- fl ict rather than a force of stability. Real- ists point to examples such as these to suggest that international norms do not hold much sway on important matters of IR. Rather, realists point out, many of the accepted norms were shaped by the powerful states in the system (the domi- nance principle), and these same power- ful states are often responsible for their interpretation. Yet constructivist schol- ars point out that even if international norms are violated, states (even the United States) go to tremendous lengths to justify behaviors that violate the norms. This suggests that strong norms do exist and are recognized by even the most powerful states.

Especially in times of change, when shared norms and habits may not suffi ce to solve international dilemmas and achieve mutual cooperation, institutions play a key role. They are concrete, tangi- ble structures with specifi c functions and missions. These institutions have prolif- erated rapidly in recent decades, and

continue to play an increasing role in international affairs. International organizations (IOs) include intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) such as the UN, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Liberals point out that, contrary to realists or constructivists, it is the codifi cation of international norms in institutions that gives norms their power. As discussed in Chap- ter  3 , these institutions create incentives to reciprocate behavior encouraged by a norm (the reciprocity principle), while also constraining the behavior of powerful states through rules that govern behavior. Liberals point to the large and growing number of interna- tional institutions as evidence of their power and importance.

The number of IOs has grown more than fi vefold since 1945, to about 400 independ- ent IGOs and tens of thousands of NGOs (depending somewhat on definitions). 1

Figure  7.1 illustrates this growth. New NGOs are created around the world daily. This weaving together of people across national boundaries through specialized groups refl ects interdependence (see p. 87 ) . 2

NOT THE NORM

International norms are evolving in such areas as humanitarian intervention and human rights. These norms help defi ne the roles of international organiza- tions. One of their areas of concern is the use of child soldiers, like this ten- year-old Libyan rebel in 2011. Another concern, the protection of civilians from slaughter, inspired NATO intervention in the Libya confl ict.

1 Pevehouse, Jon C., Timothy Nordstrom, and Kevin Warnke. The Correlates of War 2 International Governmental Organizations Data Version 2.0. Confl ict Management and Peace Science 21 (2), 2004: 101–20. 2 Barnett, Michael N., and Martha Finnemore. Rules for the World: International Organizations and Global Politics. Cornell, 2004. Boli, John, and George M. Thomas, eds. Constructing World Culture: International Nongovernmental Organizations Since 1875. Stanford, 1999.

Roles of International Organizations 235

Some IGOs are global in scope; others are regional or just bilateral (having only two states as members). Some are general in their purposes; others have specifi c functional purposes. Overall, the success of these IGOs has been mixed; the regional ones have had more success than the global ones, and those with specifi c functional or technical pur- poses have worked better than those with broad purposes (see pp. 355 – 358 ) . IGOs hold together because they promote the national interests (or enhance the leverage) of their member states—not because of vague ideals.

Among regional IGOs, the European Union encompasses some of the most important organizations (see Chapter 10 ) , but it is not the only example. Other important regional IGOs are the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR), and the African Union. The functional roles of IOs are important to their overall effect on international relations , but those roles are taken up in Chapter 10 on international integration . Here we will rely on the more general theoreti- cal discussion of international institutions begun in Chapter 3 .

Global IGOs (aside from the UN) usually have functional purposes involving coordi- nating actions of some set of states around the world. The IGO called Intelsat, for exam- ple, is a consortium of governments and private businesses that operates communications satellites. Members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are major oil producers who meet periodically in Vienna to set production quotas for members in an effort to keep world oil prices high and stable. Note that although the key members of IGOs are states, NGOs, businesses, or individuals can have important advi- sory and consulting roles in IGOs.

NGOs tend to be more specialized in function than IGOs. For instance, someone wanting to meet political scientists from other countries can join the International Politi- cal Science Association. Many NGOs have economic or business-related functions. The International Air Transport Association coordinates the work of airline companies. Other NGOs have global political purposes—for example, Amnesty International for human rights and Planned Parenthood for reproductive rights and family planning. Still others have cultural purposes—for example, the International Olympic Committee.

400

300

200

100

0

1815 1850 1900 1950 2005

Number of States

Number of IGOs

FIGURE 7.1 States and IGOs in the World, 1815–2005

236 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

Religious groups are among the largest NGOs—their memberships often span many countries. Both in today’s world and historically, sects of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and other world religions have organized themselves across state bor- ders, often in the face of hostility from one or more national governments. Missionaries have deliberately built and nurtured these transnational links. The Catholic Church his- torically held a special position in the European international system, especially before the 17th century. NGOs with broad purposes and geographical scope often maintain observer status in the UN so that they can participate in UN meetings about issues of concern. For example, Greenpeace attends UN meetings about the global environment.

A web of international organizations of various sizes and types now connects peo- ple in all countries. The rapid growth of this network, and the increasingly intense communications and interactions that occur within it, indicate rising international interdependence. These organizations in turn provide the institutional mesh to hold together some kind of world order even when leaders and contexts come and go, and even when norms are undermined by sudden changes in power relations. At the center of that web of connection stands the most important international organization today, the United Nations.

The United Nations The UN and other international organizations have both strengths and weaknesses in the anarchic international system. State sovereignty creates a real need for such organizations on a practical level, because no central world government performs the function of coor- dinating the actions of states for mutual benefi t. However, state sovereignty also severely limits the power of the UN and other IOs, because governments reserve power to them- selves and are stingy in delegating it to the UN or anyone else. The UN has had a mixed record with these strengths and weaknesses—in some ways providing remarkable global- level management and in other ways appearing helpless against the sovereignty of even modest-sized states (not to mention great powers).

The UN System The UN is a relatively new institution, just over 60 years old. Even newer is the more prominent role that the UN has played in international security affairs since the end of the Cold War. Despite this new prominence, the main purposes of the UN are the same now as when it was founded after World War II. 3

Purposes of the UN The UN is the closest thing to a world government that has ever existed, but it is not a world government. Its members are sovereign states that have not empowered the UN to enforce its will within states’ territories except with the consent of those states’ governments. Thus, although the UN strengthens world order, its design acknowledges the realities of international anarchy and the unwillingness of states to sur- render their sovereignty. Within these limits, the basic purpose of the UN is to provide a global institutional structure through which states can sometimes settle confl icts with less reliance on the use of force.

Watch the Video

“UN Aid in Somalia” at MyPoliSciLab

3 Weiss, Thomas G., and Sam Daws, eds. The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations. Oxford, 2007. Kennedy, Paul. The Parliament of Man: The Past, Present, and Future of the United Nations. Random House, 2006. Krasno, Jean E. The United Nations: Confronting the Challenges of a Global Society. Rienner, 2004.

The United Nations 237

The UN Charter is based on the principles that states are equal under international law; that states have full sover- eignty over their own affairs; that states should have full independence and territorial integrity; and that states should carry out their international obligations —such as respecting diplomatic privileges, refraining from committing aggres- sion, and observing the terms of treaties they sign. The Charter also lays out the structure of the UN and the meth- ods by which it operates.

The UN does not exist because it has power to force its will on the world’s states; it exists because states have created it to serve their needs. A state’s membership in the UN is essentially a form of indirect leverage. States gain leverage by using the UN to seek more benefi cial outcomes in confl icts (especially on general multilateral issues for which a global forum brings all parties together). The cost of this leverage is modest—UN dues and the expenses of diplomatic represent- atives, in addition to the agreement to behave in accordance with the Charter (most of the time).

States get several benefi ts from the UN. Foremost among these is the international stability (especially in security affairs) that the UN tries to safeguard; this allows states to realize gains from trade and other forms of exchange (see Chapter 8 ) . The UN is a symbol of international order and even of global identity. It is also a forum where states promote their views and bring their disputes. And it is a mechanism for confl ict resolution in inter- national security affairs. The UN also promotes and coordinates development assistance (see Chapter 13 ) and other programs of economic and social development in the global South. These programs refl ect the belief that economic and social problems—above all, poverty—are an important source of international confl ict and war. Finally, the UN is a coordinating system for information and planning by hundreds of internal and external agencies and programs, and for the publication of international data.

Despite its heavy tasks, the UN is still a small and fragile institution. Compare, for instance, what states spend on two types of leverage for settling confl icts: military forces and the UN. Every year, the world spends almost $2 trillion on the military, and about $2  billion on the UN regular budget. The whole budget of UN operations, peacekeeping, programs, and agencies combined is less than 3 percent of world military spending. That proportion is even more extreme in the United States: more than 100 to 1. Each U.S. citizen pays (on average) more than $2,000 a year for U.S. military spending but only about $15 a year for U.S. payments of UN dues, assessments, and voluntary contributions to UN programs and agencies combined.

Sometimes the UN succeeds and sometimes it fails. The UN deals with the issues that are perhaps the most diffi cult in the world. If groups of states could easily solve prob- lems such as ethnic confl icts, human rights, refugees, and world hunger themselves, they most likely would have done so. Instead, states turn many of these diffi cult problems over to the UN and hope it can take care of them.

Structure of the UN The UN’s structure, shown in Figure 7.2 , centers on the UN Gen- eral Assembly , where representatives of all states sit together in a huge room, listen to speeches, and pass resolutions. The General Assembly coordinates a variety of develop- ment programs and other autonomous agencies through the Economic and Social Council

MAKING PROGRESS

The United Nations has very limited powers and resources, yet the world places great hopes in the UN when national governments cannot solve problems. Sometimes the UN seems to need an assist, like this vehicle in 2010 in Western Sahara, where the peace process itself has been stuck for many years.

238 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

Secretary-General

World Court

UNEP UNICEF UNDRO

UNHCR

UNRWA*

UNDP UNITAR* UNIFEM INSTRAW

UNCTAD

WFP WFC UNCHS UNFPA UNU UNDCP ITC

UN Environment Program UN Children’s Fund Office of the UN Disaster Relief Coordinator Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees UN Relief Works Agency [for Palestinian Refugees] UN Development Program UN Institute for Training and Research UN Development Fund for Women UN International Research and Training Institute [for women] UN Conference on Trade and Development World Food Program World Food Council Human Settlements (Habitat) UN Population Fund UN University Drug Control Program International Trade Center

* Does not report to ECOSOC.

Committees

Peacekeeping Forces

Sudan, Lebanon, Dem. Congo, etc.

Regional commissions Functional commissions Expert bodies

Other committees

Military staff committee

International Atomic Energy Agency (Vienna) World Health Organization (Geneva)

Food and Agriculture Organization (Rome) International Fund for Agricultural Development (Rome) International Labor Organization (Geneva) UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (Paris) UN Industrial Development Organization (Vienna)

International Telecommunications Union (Geneva) International Postal Union (Berne) International Civil Aviation Organization (Montreal)

International Maritime Organization (London) World Intellectual Property Organization (Geneva)

World Meteorological Organization (Geneva) Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency International Monetary Fund (Washington) International Bank for Reconstruction and Development [World Bank] (Washington)

International Development Association (Washington)

International Finance Corporation (Washington) World Trade Organization (Geneva)

* Does not report to ECOSOC.

Economic and Social Council

(ECOSOC)

(UN staff)

General Assembly

Security Council

UN Programs Autonomous Agencies

ILO

IPU ICAO

IMO

WIPO

WMO

IMF MIGA

IBRD

IDA

IFC

WTO*

ITU

UNIDO

UNESCO

IFAD FAO WHO

IAEA*

Secretariat

FIGURE 7.2 The United Nations

Source: United Nations

The United Nations 239

(ECOSOC). Parallel to the General Assembly is the UN Security Council , in which fi ve great powers and ten rotating member states make decisions about international peace and security. The Security Council dispatches peacekeeping forces to trouble spots. The administration of the UN takes place through the UN Secretariat (executive branch), led by the secretary-general of the UN. The World Court (International Court of Justice), which is discussed later in the chapter, is a judicial arm of the UN. (A Trus- teeship Council oversaw the transition of a handful of former colonial territories to full independence, but with the last trust territory’s independence in 1994, the Council sus- pended operations.)

National delegations to the UN, headed by ambassadors from each member state, work and meet together at UN headquarters in New York City. They have diplomatic status in the United States, which as host country also assumes certain other obligations to facilitate the UN’s functioning. For example, the U.S. government has permitted peo- ple such as Fidel Castro—normally barred from entry to the United States—to visit New York long enough to address the UN.

A major strength of the UN structure is the universality of its membership. The UN had 193 members in 2013. Virtually every territory in the world is either a UN member or formally a province or colony of a UN member. (Taiwan is considered part of China; Switzerland, traditionally neutral, joined in 2003; and Palestine became a nonmember observer state in 2012.) Formal agreement on the Charter, even if sometimes breached, commits all states to a set of basic rules governing their relations. The old League of Nations, by contrast, was fl awed by the absence of several important actors.

One way the UN induced all the great powers to join was to reassure them that their participation in the UN would not harm their national interests. Recognizing the role of power in world order, the UN Charter gave fi ve great powers each a veto over substantive decisions of the Security Council.

The UN Charter establishes a mechanism for collective security —the banding together of the world’s states to stop an aggressor. Chapter 7 of the Charter explicitly authorizes the Security Council to use military force against aggression if the nonviolent means called for in Chapter 6 have failed. The 2011 authorization of a no-fl y zone in Libya, for instance, was taken under Chapter 7. However, because of the great power veto, the UN cannot effectively stop aggression by (or supported by) a great power. As often happens with the dominance principle, this structure creates resentments by smaller powers. In 2006, Iran’s president asked the General Assembly, “If the governments of the United States or the United Kingdom commit atrocities or violate international law, which of the organiza- tions in the United Nations can take them to account?” (None of them, of course, is the answer.) Chapter 7 was used only once during the Cold War—in the Korean War when the Soviet delegation unwisely boycotted the proceedings (and when China’s seat was held by the nationalists on Taiwan).

History of the UN The UN was founded in 1945 in San Francisco by 51 states. It was the successor to the League of Nations, which had failed to effectively counter aggression in the 1930s. Like the League, the UN was founded to increase international order and the rule of law to prevent another world war.

A certain tension has long existed between the UN and the United States as the world’s most powerful state. (The United States had not joined the League, and it was partly to ensure U.S. interest that the UN headquarters was placed in New York.) The UN in some ways constrains the United States by creating the one coalition that can rival U.S. power—that of all the states. A certain isolationist streak in U.S. foreign policy runs counter to the UN concept. However, the UN amplifi es U.S. power when the United States leads the global UN coalition. The United States is not rich or strong enough to

240 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

keep order in the world by itself. And, as a great trading nation, the United States benefi ts from the stability and order that the UN helps create.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the UN’s membership more than doubled as colonies in Asia and Africa won independence. This expansion changed the character of the General Assembly, in which each state has one vote regardless of size. The new members had dif- ferent concerns from those of the Western industrialized countries and in many cases resented having been colonized by Westerners. Many states in the global South believed that the United States enjoyed too much power in the UN. They noticed that the UN is usually effective in international security affairs only when the United States leads the effort (which happens when U.S. interests are at stake).

The growth in membership thus affected voting patterns in the UN. During the UN’s fi rst two decades, the General Assembly had regularly sided with the United States, and the Soviet Union was the main power to use its veto in the Security Council to counter- balance that tendency. But as newly independent states began to predominate, the United States found itself in the minority on many issues, and by the 1970s and 1980s it had become the main user of the veto. 4

Until 1971, China’s seat on the Security Council (and in the General Assembly) was occupied by the nationalist government on the island of Taiwan, which had lost power in mainland China in 1949. The exclusion of communist China was an exception to the UN principle of universal membership, and in 1971, the Chinese seat was taken from the nationalists and given to the communist government. Today, the government of Taiwan—which functions autonomously in many international matters despite its formal status as a Chinese province—is not a member of the UN. But it is the only important such case.

Throughout the Cold War, the UN had few successes in international security because the U.S.-Soviet confl ict prevented consensus. The UN appeared somewhat irrel- evant in a world order structured by two opposing alliance blocs. A few notable excep- tions exist, such as defending South Korea during the Korean War and agreeing to station peacekeeping forces in the Middle East, but the UN did not play a central role in solving international confl icts. The General Assembly, with its predominantly third world mem- bership, concentrated on the economic and social problems of poor countries, and these became the main work of the UN.

States in the global South also used the UN as a forum to criticize rich countries in general and the United States in particular. By the 1980s, the U.S. government showed its displeasure with this trend by withholding U.S. dues to the UN (eventually more than $1 billion), paying up only years later after UN reforms.

After the Cold War, the great powers could fi nally agree on measures regarding inter- national security. In this context, the UN moved to center stage in international security affairs. 5 The UN had several major successes in the late 1980s in ending violent regional confl icts (in Central America and the Iran-Iraq War) while introducing peacekeepers to monitor the cease-fi res. In Namibia, a UN force oversaw independence from South Africa and the nation’s fi rst free elections. By the 1990s, the UN had emerged as the world’s most important tool for settling international confl icts. Between 1987 and 1993, Security Council resolutions increased from 15 to 78, peacekeeping missions from 5 to 17, peace- keepers from 12,000 to 78,000, and countries sending troops from 26 to 76.

4 Weiss, Thomas G. What’s Wrong with the United Nations and How to Fix It. Polity, 2009. 5 Price, Richard M., and Mark W. Zacher. The United Nations and Global Security. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Newman, Edward, and Oliver P. Richmond. The United Nations and Human Security. Palgrave, 2001.

The United Nations 241

The new missions ran into serious problems, however. Inadequate funding and man- agement problems undermined peacekeeping efforts in Angola, Somalia, and Cambodia. In the former Yugoslavia in 1993–1995, the UN undertook a large peacekeeping mission before a cease-fi re was in place—“peacekeeping where there is no peace to keep.” In response to these problems (and to the unpaid U.S. dues), the UN scaled back peacekeep- ing operations in 1995–1997 (from 78,000 to 19,000 troops) and carried out reductions and reforms in the UN Secretariat and UN programs.

For years the United States failed to pay its bills, even though a new secretary-general shrank budgets and jobs as the United States had demanded. This U.S. free riding shows that support of intergovernmental organizations presents a diffi cult collective goods prob- lem (see pp. 56 – 57 ) . Finally, after criticism from allies, the United States agreed to pay up, but under renegotiated terms for the future.

The 2003 Iraq War, however, triggered serious divisions among the great powers that sidelined the UN. After reaching consensus to insist on Iraqi disarmament and send back UN weapons inspectors, the Security Council split on whether to author- ize force against Iraq—the United States and Britain in favor; France, Russia, and China against. When France threatened to veto a UN resolution authorizing war, a U.S.-British coalition toppled the Iraqi government without explicit UN backing. UN secretary-general Kofi Annan later called the war “illegal.” The UN sent a team to Iraq to help with reconstruction, but suicide truck bombers destroyed it, killing the chief of the mission and dozens of others. The UN withdrew its staff from Iraq in 2003 and found itself largely sidelined in the world’s most prominent international conflict.

To further aggravate U.S.-UN tensions, documents recovered during the Iraq War showed that high-ranking UN, French, Chinese, and Russian officials (and American oil companies) illegally profited from the UN’s $64 billion oil-for-food program for Iraq, which was supposed to ease the civilian suffering caused by eco- nomic sanctions in the 1990s. A Swiss company under investigation for suspected fraud in the Iraq program turned out to be paying Annan’s son thousands of dollars a month, creating what Annan admitted was a “perception problem.” In 2005, an independent investigation cleared Annan of personal wrongdoing, but found the program corrupt and heavily criticized the UN for mismanagement and poor over- sight of the program. 6

Currently, the UN follows a principle of “three pillars”—security, economic devel- opment, and human rights—which are considered mutually necessary for any of them to succeed. At the end of 2006, the outgoing and incoming secretaries-general both referred to this principle. In a postwar confl ict situation, in particular, the three rein- force each other.

The UN is in some ways just beginning to work as it was originally intended to, through a concert of great powers and universal recognition of the Charter. However, as states turned increasingly to the UN after the Cold War, its modest size and resources became seriously overburdened, leading to contraction of missions and funding. Today, the UN is more important than ever, yet still in danger of failing. In the coming few years the UN must continue to grapple with the challenges of its evolving role in a unipolar world, the limitations of its budget, and the continuing strength of state sovereignty.

6 Traub, James. The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006.

242 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

The Security Council The Security Council is responsible for maintaining international peace and security and for restoring peace when it breaks down. Its decisions are binding on all UN mem- ber states. The Security Council has tremendous power to defi ne the existence and nature of a security threat, to structure the response to such a threat, and to enforce its decisions through mandatory directives to UN members (such as to halt trade with an aggressor).

Since 1945, the Council has passed more than 2,000 resolutions, with new ones added every week. These resolutions represent the great powers’ blueprints for resolving the world’s various security disputes, especially in regional confl icts. (Because of the veto system, the Council avoids confl icts among great powers themselves, such as on arms control.)

The fi ve permanent members of the Council—the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China—are the most important. What they can agree on, generally the world must go along with. Issues on which they disagree can quickly become conten- tious. In 2008, after the Security Council failed to decide whether the Serbian province of Kosovo should be independent, Kosovars unilaterally declared their independence from Serbia. Kosovo was quickly recognized by some Security Council members (the United States, France, and Britain), but not by others (China and Russia). Angry Ser- bians rejected Kosovo’s declaration and blamed the Western powers for encouraging it. In 2010, the World Court held Kosovo’s declaration to be legal, but its substantive status remains bitterly disputed.

Security Council resolutions require 9 votes from among the 15 members. But a “no” vote by any permanent member defeats the resolution—the veto power. Many resolutions have been vetoed by the permanent members, and many more have never been proposed because they would have faced certain veto. However, since the mid-1990s the use of the veto has dropped abruptly, to just 27 vetoes—13 by the United States, and 7 each by Rus- sia and China.

The Council’s ten nonpermanent members rotate onto the Council for two-year terms. Nonpermanent members are elected (fi ve each year) by the General Assembly from a list prepared by informal regional caucuses. Usually there is a mix of regions and country sizes, though not by any strict formula. Often, countries lobby vigorously for a seat on the Council, producing books, advertisements, and memos to gain votes from other members of the regional caucuses. In 2006, Venezuela campaigned for the upcoming Latin Ameri- can seat on the Council, seeking a platform to lead a growing, virulently anti-American coalition. Its president, in his speech to the General Assembly, called the U.S. president “the devil” and said the room still smelled of sulfur from his speech the previous day. Gua- temala, with U.S. support, also campaigned for the seat. In the General Assembly, neither country could achieve the required two-thirds majority for election to the Council. After voting 47 times, the Assembly fi nally gave the seat to Panama as a compromise. In 2008, Iran campaigned for a seat, but gained only a handful of votes, while Turkey was voted onto the Council for the fi rst time in more than 45 years.

Table 7.1 shows the recent rotations of members onto the Security Council. The system of nomination by regional caucuses has worked to keep the regional balance on the Council fairly constant as individual states come and go. Major regional actors tend to rotate onto the Council more often than do less important states.

Members can abstain on resolutions, an option that some permanent members use to register misgivings about a resolution without vetoing. China regularly abstains when its own security is not directly affected, and the United States has abstained several times to register a middle position on resolutions critical of Israel.

The United Nations 243

The Security Council meets irregularly (in the New York UN headquarters) upon request of a UN member—often a state with a grievance regarding another state’s actions. When Kuwait was invaded, and when Bosnia was being overrun, the victims called on the Security Council—a kind of 911 phone number for the world (but one without a standing police force). Because international security continues to be trouble- some in many regions and because these troubles often drag on for months or years, meetings of the Council are frequent.

The Security Council’s power is limited in two major ways; both refl ect the strength of state sovereignty in the international system. First, the Council’s decisions depend entirely on the interests of its member states (see Figure 7.3 ). The ambassadors who repre- sent those states cannot change a Council resolution without authorization from their governments. Second, although Security Council resolutions in theory bind all UN mem- bers, member states in practice often try to evade or soften their effect. For instance, trade sanctions are diffi cult to enforce. A Security Council resolution can be enforced in prac- tice only if enough powerful states care about it.

Military forces responding to aggression under the auspices of Security Council reso- lutions remain under national command. For example, neither U.S. forces in the Gulf War charged with enforcing UN resolutions, nor U.S. soldiers sent to Somalia in late 1992 to restore humanitarian relief efforts disrupted by civil war, displayed UN insignia or fl ags. Similarly, NATO forces in the former Yugoslavia, and the Australian-led force in

Nonpermanent Membersb

Region

North America United States W. Europe Britain Germany

France

Japan/Pacific Japan

Russia/CIS Russia

China China

Middle East Egypt? Latin America Brazil, Mexico?

South Asia India, Indonesia?

Africa Nigeria? South Africa?

aThe five permanent members hold veto power. bNonpermanent members are elected for two-year terms by the General Assembly, based on nominations by regional caucuses. cPossible new permanent seats might have fewer if any veto powers.

Possible Contenders for

New Permanent Seatsc

Permanent Membersa 2013

Luxembourg

South Korea

Australia Azerbaijan

Morocco Guatemala Argentina

Rwanda Togo

2012

Germany Portugal

Morocco

Azerbaijan

Colombia Guatemala

India PakistanPakistan

South Africa Togo

2011

Germany Portugal Bosnia

Lebanon

Colombia Brazil

India

South Africa Nigeria Gabon

TABLE 7.1 Regional Representation on the UN Security Council

244 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

East Timor, operate under their national fl ags but their missions are authorized by UN resolution. (Peace- keeping operations are different, and are discussed shortly.)

Even when the Security Council cannot agree on means of enforce- ment, its resolutions shape the way disputes are seen and ultimately how they are resolved. Security Council Resolution 242 after the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 laid out the principles for a just peace in that confl ict—prima- rily the right of all states in the region to live within secure and well-defi ned borders and the return by Israel of territories captured in the 1967 war. (The parties are still arguing about whether territories to be returned by Israel means “all” territories.) Reaf- fi rmed in Resolution 338 after the 1973 war, these resolutions helped shape the 1978 Camp David agree- ment and later formed the basis for peace negotiations between Israel and its Arab neighbors that began in 1991. If a Palestinian-Israeli settle- ment is ever reached, it surely will follow the outlines of Resolutions 242 and 338.

Proposed Changes The structure of the Security Council is not without problems. Japan and Germany are great powers that contribute substantial UN dues (based on economic size) and make large contributions to UN programs and peacekeeping operations. Yet they have exactly the same formal representation in the UN as tiny states with less than one-hundredth of their populations: one vote in the General Assembly and the chance to rotate onto the Security Council (in practice they rotate onto the Council more often than the tiny states). As global trading powers, Japan and Germany have huge stakes in the ground rules for international security affairs and would like seats at the table.

But including Japan and Germany as permanent Security Council members would not be simple. If Germany joined, three of the seven permanent members would be Euro- pean, giving that region unfair weight. The three European seats could be combined into one (a rotating seat or one representing the European Union), but this would water down the power of Britain and France, which can veto any such change in the Charter. Japan’s bid for a seat faces Chinese opposition. Also, if Japan or Germany got a seat, then what about India, with 20 percent of the world’s population? And what about an Islamic coun- try such as Indonesia? Finally, what about Latin America and Africa? Possible new perma- nent members could include Germany, Japan, India, Brazil, Egypt, and either Nigeria or South Africa. None of these plans has made much progress. Any overhaul of the Security Council would require a change in the UN Charter, and a change in membership would reduce the power of the current fi ve permanent members, any of which could veto the

COUNCIL OF POWER

Collective security rests with the UN Security Council, which has authorized such military interventions as the Gulf War and the 2001 campaign in Afghanistan. Mili- tary actions not approved by the Council—such as the 1999 bombing of Serbia and the 2003 U.S.-British invasion of Iraq—tend to be controversial. Here, Serbia’s president (left end of table) objects to Kosovo’s claim of independence from Ser- bia, 2008. With the permanent members split on the issue—Russia and China backed Serbia while the United States, Britain, and France recognized Kosovo— the Council did not take action.

The United Nations 245

change, making any change very diffi cult. In late 2004, an expert panel appointed by Annan recommended expanding the Security Council to 24 members under either of two formulas, neither changing veto powers. These proposals were debated in 2005 but no agreement was reached and the issue was put on hold. During the debate, 42 million peo- ple in China and 40 other countries signed a petition against Japan’s getting a Council seat until it recognizes and sincerely apologizes for its war crimes in World War II.

Peacekeeping Forces Peacekeeping forces are not mentioned in the UN Charter. Secretary-General Dag Ham- marskjöld in the 1960s joked that they were allowed under “Chapter Six and a Half ”— somewhere between the nonviolent dispute resolution called for in Chapter 6 of the Charter and the authorization of force provided for in Chapter 7. The Charter requires member states to place military forces at the disposal of the UN, but such forces were envisioned as being used in response to aggression (under collective security). In practice, when the UN has authorized force to reverse aggression—as in the Gulf War in 1990— the forces involved have been national forces not under UN command.

The UN’s own forces—borrowed from armies of member states but under the fl ag and command of the UN—have been peacekeeping forces to calm regional confl icts, playing a neutral role between warring forces. 7 These forces won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988 in

7 Fortna, Virginia Page. Does Peacekeeping Work? Shaping Belligerents’ Choices after Civil War. Princeton, 2008. Doyle, Michael W., and Nicholas Sambanis. Making War and Building Peace: United Nations Peace Operations. Princeton, 2006. Durch, William J., ed. Twenty-First-Century Peace Operations. U.S. Institute of Peace, 2006. Findlay, Trevor. The Use of Force in UN Peace Operations. Oxford, 2002.

Secretary General

Russia

Non-permanent Reps

Problemia

China

U.S.A.

France

Britain

UN Staff

Will this affect oil prices? A precedent affecting Russian

republics like Chechnya?

We should take action and the great powers

should pay for it!

You infringe our sovereignty,

you die!

Does this set a precedent that could affect Taiwan?

Business ties?

Will this affect gas prices? The next election?

The budget?

Is Problemia a former French colony, and if so, will we get stuck

paying for it?

Right, terrible shame.

*Problemia could be Kurdish Iraq in 1991 or Darfur, Sudan, in 2007.

How will the crisis affect my career?

The crisis in Problemia* is a potential humanitarian catastrophe,

and vital principles are at stake.

FIGURE 7.3 Divergent Interests on the UN Security Council

Source: United Nations

246 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

recognition of their growing importance and success. As was learned in Bosnia, however, such neutral forces do not succeed well in a situation in which the Security Council has identifi ed one side as the aggressor.

Peacekeeping Missions The secretary-general assembles a peacekeeping force for each mission, usually from a few states totally uninvolved in the confl ict, and puts it under a single commander. The soldiers are commonly called blue helmets. Peacekeeping forces serve at the invitation of a host government and must leave if that government orders them out.

Authority for peacekeeping forces is granted by the Security Council, usually for a period of three to six months that may be renewed—in some cases for decades. In one early case, the Suez crisis in 1956, the General Assembly authorized the forces under the “Uniting for Peace” resolution, which allowed the General Assembly to take up security matters when the Security Council was deadlocked. In the Congo in 1960, the secretary- general took the initiative. But today the Security Council fi rmly controls peacekeeping operations.

Funds must be voted on by the General Assembly, and lack of funds is today the sin- gle greatest constraint on the use of peacekeeping forces. Special assessments against member states pay for peacekeeping operations. With the expansion of peacekeeping since 1988, the expenses of these forces (over $7 billion in 2012) are several times larger than the regular UN budget.

Recent Missions At the end of 2012, the UN maintained more than 100,000 interna- tional personnel (including troops, military observers, police, and administrators) in 14 peacekeeping or observing missions, spanning 5 world regions, using military personnel from 113 countries (see Table 7.2 ).

Democratic Congo Africa 20,700 1,400 Enforce cease-fire; protect civilians 1999 Sudan/Darfur Africa 22,900 $1,500 Protect civilians 2007

Haiti Latin America 10,600 700 Assist transitional govt. 2004

Lebanon Middle East 11,600 550 Monitor cease-fire on Israeli border 1978

Sudan/South Sudan Africa 8,200 900 Support peace agreement 2011

Syria (Golan Heights) Middle East 1,100 50 Monitor Israel-Syria cease-fire 1974 Cyprus Middle East 1,000 60 Monitor Greek-Turkish cease-fire 1964

Israel Middle East 250 70 Observe Arab-Israeli truce 1948

Liberia Africa 9,700 525 Assist transitional govt. 2003

Ivory Coast Africa 11,600 600 Help implement peace agreement 2004

Western Sahara Africa 350 60 Organize referendum in territory 1991

Sudan/Abyei Africa 4,100 270 Monitor disputed town on border 2011

India/Pakistan South Asia 65 20 Observe India-Pakistan cease-fire 1949 Kosovo Europe 175 50 Civil administration; relief 1999

Location Region Personnel Role Since

Total 102,800 7,200

Note: Size indicates total international personnel (mostly troops but some civilian administrators and police).

Annual Cost (million $)

TABLE 7.2 UN Peacekeeping Missions as of November 30, 2012

Source: United Nations

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The two largest peacekeeping missions in 2012 were in the Darfur region of Sudan and Democratic Congo. In the Congo mission, 20,000 peacekeepers monitored a cease- fi re and protected civilians after a civil war. In 2012, these UN peacekeepers proved weak when a rebel movement in the unstable east of the country went on the attack, displacing civilians. A decade after the main war ended, such recurrent attacks proved vexing for UN forces. The secretary-general has called for thousands of additional troops for Democratic Congo, and in 2013 the Security Council approved an interven- tion brigade prepared for combat with rebels in eastern Congo.

In 2007, the Security Council approved a nearly 20,000-troop peacekeeping force (plus more than 6,000 police) for the Darfur region in Sudan, after several years of resist- ance from the Sudanese government. The UN troops joined an already-deployed (but small) African Union contingent. It took several more years for all of the authorized troops to arrive, owing to numerous objections from Sudan and attacks on civilians con- tinued despite their presence. In 2012, fi ghting between government and rebel forces drove 25,000 civilians out of one refugee camp. The Darfur mission is in addition to 7,000 UN troops enforcing a cease-fi re between Sudan and newly independent South Sudan, focused on the disputed town of Abyei.

The UN’s other largest peacekeeping operations were in Liberia (maintaining a cease-fi re after a civil war), Ivory Coast (stabilizing a peace agreement), Lebanon (follow- ing the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war), and Haiti (trying to maintain stability after a military coup). The largest recent missions refl ect the resurgence of UN peacekeeping after a shakeout in the mid-1990s.

In the 1990s, the UN had several spectacular failures in peacekeeping, in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Angola, and Somalia. Less newsworthy were the success- ful missions in that period. In Cambodia, 15,000 peacekeepers worked with a large force of UN administrators who largely took over the Cambodian government after a long and devastating civil war. Despite many diffi culties, the UN held elections in 1993 and helped stabilize Cambodian politics to some extent. The lessons learned in Cambodia helped the UN accomplish a similar mission in Mozambique. A peace agree- ment ended a long and devastating civil war there, setting up mechanisms for disarma- ment, the integration of military forces, and the holding of internationally supervised elections for a new government. Missions in El Salvador and Namibia were also early successes for post–Cold War UN peacekeeping. These experiences helped the UN respond more effectively after civil wars in Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, and Liberia in 2002–2003. But problems with sex-related crimes in UN peacekeeping operations and the importance of women in postwar societies spurred the Security Council to pass Resolution 1325 in 2000 to focus attention on gender issues in UN peacekeeping and reconstruction (see p. 115 ) . 8

As UN peacekeeping has become more intensive in recent years, new missions have expanded the range of what are now called broadly peace operations. These operations include not only traditional peacekeeping but also the use of force to protect civilians (as in Democratic Congo), the supervision of elections (as in Liberia), and even running the government while a society gets back on its feet (as in Cambodia, East Timor, and Kos- ovo). These expanded operations after confl icts are called peacebuilding . In an effort to provide longer-term support after wars, in 2005 the UN created a Peacebuilding Commis- sion to coordinate reconstruction, institution building, and economic recovery efforts after peacekeeping missions end. 9

8 Whitworth, Sandra. Men, Militarism and UN Peacekeeping: A Gendered Analysis. Rienner, 2007. 9 Howard, Lise Morjé. UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars. Cambridge, 2008.

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Observing and Peacekeeping “Peacekeepers” actually perform two different functions—observing and peacekeeping. Observers are unarmed military offi cers sent to a confl ict area in small numbers simply to watch what happens and report back to the UN. With the UN watching, the parties to a confl ict are often less likely to break a cease-fi re. Observers can monitor various aspects of a country’s situation—cease- fi res, elections, respect for human rights, and other areas. 10

The function of peacekeeping is carried out by lightly armed soldiers (in armored vehicles with automatic rifl es but without artillery, tanks, and other heavy weapons). Such forces play several roles. They can interpose themselves physically between war- ring parties to keep them apart (more accurately, to make them attack the UN forces in order to get to their enemy). UN peacekeepers often try to negotiate with military offi cers on both sides. This channel of communication can bring about tactical actions and understandings that support a cease-fi re. But the UN forces in a war zone cannot easily get from one side’s positions to those of the other to conduct negotiations.

Peacekeeping is much more diffi cult if one side sees the UN forces as being biased toward the other side. Israel feels this way about UN forces in southern Lebanon, for example. On occasion, Israeli forces have broken through UN lines to attack enemies, and they allegedly have targeted UN outposts on occasion. In Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, one party deliberately attacked UN forces many times, causing a number of deaths. In general, when cease-fi res break down, UN troops get caught in the middle. More than 2,800 have been killed over the years.

Many countries contribute their national military forces to UN peacekeeping missions. In 2010, the fi ve leading contributors (with troop numbers) are Bangladesh (11,000), Pakistan (9,000), India (8,000), Nigeria (6,000), and Nepal (4,000). Rea- sons for troop contributions to UN peacekeeping vary. Some states feel that by con- tributing to a common good, they are advancing the interest of peace, while simultaneously projecting the image of a strong military power. In this way, states may serve to increase their soft power. Alternatively, some states fi nd contributing to these missions fi nancially benefi cial, since peacekeeping forces are paid by UN contri- butions. In a few countries such as Nepal and Sierra Leone, sending military forces out of the country for peacekeeping is useful for domestic political stability after a civil war.

In some confl icts, peacekeepers organized outside the UN framework have been used instead of UN-commanded forces. Some 3,500 French peacekeepers—not under UN command—serve in Ivory Coast alongside 11,000 UN peacekeepers, monitoring a 2003 cease-fi re. When government airstrikes killed nine French soldiers in 2004, the French forces retaliated robustly, destroying the government’s air force. In 2011, after the incumbent president lost an election but refused to leave, UN and French troops helped the winner dislodge him by force.

Peacekeeping forces have generally been unable to make peace, only to keep it. To go into a shooting war and suppress hostilities requires military forces far beyond those of past UN peacekeeping missions. Thus, peacekeepers are usually not sent until a cease-fi re has been arranged, has taken effect, and has held up for some time. Often, dozens of cease-fi res are broken before one sticks. Wars may simmer along for years, taking a terrible toll, before the UN gets its chance.

To address this problem, the secretary-general in 1992 proposed the creation of UN peace-making (or peace enforcement ) units that would not only monitor a cease-fi re but

10 Lindley, Dan. Promoting Peace with Information: Transparency as a Tool of Security Regimes. Princeton, 2007.

The United Nations 249

enforce it if it broke down. 11 The secretary-general called for member states to make available, on a rapid deployment basis, 1,000 soldiers each—specially trained volun- teers—to create a standby UN army that could respond quickly to crises. Not only did the member states refuse the request for soldiers, they shot down the idea of peacemaking altogether. Since then, the UN has authorized member states to provide real military forces, not peacekeepers, when fi ghting may be required. In an exception that may or may not indicate a trend, the Security Council broadened the mandate of UN peacekeepers in Democratic Congo to let them protect civilians (which UN forces have been criticized for not doing). In 2005, Pakistani peacekeepers killed 50 militia fi ghters after nine peace- keepers from Bangladesh were killed in an ambush.

In the late 1990s, seven countries—Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, the Nether- lands, Austria, and Canada—formed a 4,000-troop UN Standby High Readiness Brigade. Headquartered in Denmark and available to deploy to confl ict areas in two to four weeks rather than months, the brigade is controlled by the Security Council. It participated in the UN mission to Ethiopia-Eritrea in 2000–2001. In early 2005, the brigade deployed to Sudan to support a peace agreement between northern and southern regions after a long civil war.

The Secretariat The secretary-general of the UN is the closest thing to a “president of the world” that exists. But the secretary-general represents member states—not the world’s 7 billion people. Where the great powers do not have consen- sus, it is hard for the secretary-general to make anything happen.

The secretary-general is nominated by the Security Council—requiring the consent of all fi ve permanent members—and must be approved by the General Assembly. The term of offi ce is fi ve years and may be renewed. Past secretaries-general have come from various regions of the world, but never from a great power.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a former foreign minister of South Korea, began his term in 2007 focused on UN reform, eco- nomic development, human rights, terrorism, proliferation, environmental problems, and HIV/AIDS. He was elected to a second term starting in 2012. His predecessor, Kofi Annan, served ten years and helped reinvigorate the UN, winning the 100th-anniversary Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.

11 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros. An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-keeping. United Nations, 1992. Woodhouse, Tom, Robert Bruce, and Malcolm Dando, eds. Peacekeeping and Peacemaking: Towards Effective Intervention in Post–Cold War Confl icts. St. Martin’s, 1998.

DIPLOMATIC MOVES

The UN secretary-general has a lofty mission but limited power and resources. Ban Ki-moon, here learning some dance moves from fellow South Korean PSY in 2012, faces daunting tasks, serving multiple bosses (the member states) with a tight budget.

250 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

The Secretariat of the UN is its executive branch, headed by the secretary-general. It is a bureaucracy for administering UN policy and programs, just as the State Department is a bureaucracy for U.S. foreign policy. In security matters, the secretary-general person- ally works with the Security Council; development programs in poor countries are coordi- nated by a second-in-command, the director-general for Development and International Economic Co-operation. The Secretariat is divided into functional areas, with undersec- retaries-general and assistant secretaries-general.

The UN staff in these areas includes administrative personnel as well as technical experts and economic advisors working on various programs and projects. The staff num- bers about 15,000 people, and the total number of employees in the UN system (including the World Bank and IMF) is 80,000. UN-related agency offi ces are concentrated in Geneva, Switzerland. Geneva is a frequent site of international negotiations and is seen by some as more neutral than New York.

One purpose of the UN Secretariat is to develop an international civil service of diplo- mats and bureaucrats whose loyalties lie at the global level, not with their states of origin. The UN Charter sets the secretary-general and staff apart from the authority of national governments and calls on member states to respect the staff’s “exclusively international character.” The UN has been fairly successful in this regard; the secretary-general is most often seen as an independent diplomat thinking about the whole world’s interests, not as a pawn of any state. But in the early 1990s the UN bureaucracy came under increasing criticism for both ineffi ciency and corruption. These criticisms, coming especially from the United States, which saw itself as bearing an unfair share of the costs, led to a reform program. By the late 1990s, UN staff was reduced by one-quarter compared to a decade earlier, and budgets were scaled back year by year. By winter 2002, a strapped UN could not keep its New York headquarters building heated. Since then, the situation has improved, but money remains extremely tight.

The secretary-general is more than a bureaucratic manager. He (it has not yet been a she) is a visible public fi gure whose personal attention to a regional confl ict can move it toward resolution. The Charter allows the secretary-general to use the UN’s “good offi ces” to serve as a neutral mediator in international confl icts—to bring hostile parties together in negotiations.

The secretary-general also works to bring together the great power consensus on which Security Council action depends. The secretary-general has the power under the Charter to bring to the Security Council any matter that might threaten international peace and security, and so to play a major role in setting the UN’s agenda in international security affairs. Still, the secretary-general experiences tensions with the Security Coun- cil. When the secretary-general asks for authority for a peacekeeping mission for six months, the Security Council is likely to say “three months.” If the secretary-general asks for $10 million, he might get $5 million. Thus the secretary-general remains, like the entire UN system, constrained by state sovereignty.

The General Assembly The General Assembly is made up of all 193 member states of the UN, each with one vote. 12 It usually meets every year, from late September through January, in plenary ses- sion. State leaders or foreign ministers, including the U.S. president, generally come through one by one to address this assemblage. The Assembly sessions, like most UN deliberations, are simultaneously translated into dozens of languages so that delegates

12 Peterson, M. J. The United Nations General Assembly. Routledge, 2005.

The United Nations 251

from around the world can carry on a single conversa- tion. This global town hall is a unique institution and pro- vides a powerful medium for states to put forward their ideas and arguments. Presid- ing over it is a president elected by the Assembly—a post without much power.

The Assembly convenes for special sessions every few years on general topics such as economic cooperation. The UN special session on disarmament in June 1982 provided the occasion for one of the largest political rallies in U.S. history—a peace demonstration of a million people in New York. The Assembly has met in emer- gency session in the past to deal with an immediate threat to international peace and security, but this has hap- pened only nine times and has now become uncommon.

The General Assembly has the power to accredit national delegations as mem- bers of the UN (through its Credentials Committee). For instance, in 1971, the delega- tion of the People’s Republic of China was given China’s seat in the UN (including on the Security Council) in place of the nationalists in Taiwan. For decades, neither North Korea nor South Korea became members of the UN (because both claimed the whole of Korea), but they fi nally took seats as separate delegations in 1991. Some political entities that fall short of state status send permanent observer missions to the UN. These missions participate without a vote in the General Assembly. They include the Vatican (Holy See) and the Palestinian Authority.

The General Assembly’s main power lies in its control of fi nances for UN programs and operations, including peacekeeping. It also can pass resolutions on various matters, but these are purely advisory and at times have served largely to vent frustrations of the majority of poor countries. The Assembly also elects members of certain UN agencies and programs. Finally, the Assembly coordinates UN programs and agencies through its own system of committees, commissions, councils, and so forth.

The Assembly coordinates UN programs and agencies through the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which has 54 member states elected by the General Assem- bly for three-year terms. ECOSOC manages the overlapping work of a large number of programs and agencies. Its regional commissions look at how UN programs work together in a particular region; its functional commissions deal with global topics such as population growth, narcotics traffi cking, human rights, and the status of women; and its expert bodies

ASSEMBLY OF EQUALS

The universal membership of the United Nations is one of its strengths. All member states have a voice and a vote in the General Assembly, where state leaders rotate through each autumn. Here, the president of Palestine, which hopes to join the UN as soon as the Secu- rity Council allows it, addresses the Assembly in 2011.

252 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

work on technical subjects that cut across various UN programs in areas such as crime prevention and public fi nances. Outside ECOSOC, the General Assembly operates many other specialized committees. Standing committees ease the work of the Assembly in issue areas such as decolonization, legal matters, and disarmament.

Many of the activities associated with the UN do not take place under tight control of either the General Assembly or the Security Council. They occur in functional agen- cies and programs that have various amounts of autonomy from UN control.

UN Programs Through the Economic and Social Council, the General Assembly oversees more than a dozen major programs to advance economic development and social stability in poor states of the global South. Through its programs, the UN helps manage global North- South relations: it organizes a fl ow of resources and skills from the richer parts of the world to support development in the poorer parts.

The programs are funded partly by General Assembly allocations and partly by con- tributions that the programs raise directly from member states, businesses, or private charitable contributors. The degree of General Assembly funding, and of operational autonomy from the Assembly, varies from one program to another. Each UN program has a staff, a headquarters, and various operations in the fi eld, where it works with host governments in member states.

Several of these programs are of growing importance. The UN Environment Program (UNEP) became more prominent in the 1990s as the economic development of the glo- bal South and the growing economies of the industrialized world took a toll on the world environment (see Chapter 11 ) . The UNEP grapples with global environmental strategies. It provides technical assistance to member states, monitors environmental conditions glo- bally, develops standards, and recommends alternative energy sources.

UNICEF is the UN Children’s Fund, which gives technical and fi nancial assistance to poor countries for programs benefi ting children. Unfortunately, the needs of children in many countries are still urgent, and UNICEF is kept busy. Financed by voluntary con- tributions, UNICEF has for decades organized U.S. children in an annual Halloween fund drive on behalf of their counterparts in poorer countries.

The Offi ce of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is also busy. UNHCR coordinates efforts to protect, assist, and eventually repatriate the many refugees who fl ee across international borders each year to escape war and political violence. The longer- standing problem of Palestinian refugees is handled by a different program, the UN Relief Works Agency (UNRWA).

The UN Development Program (UNDP), funded by voluntary contributions, coordi- nates all UN efforts related to development in poor countries. With about 5,000 projects operating simultaneously around the world, UNDP is the world’s largest international agency for technical development assistance. The UN also runs several development- related agencies for training and for promoting women’s role in development.

Many poor countries depend on export revenues to fi nance economic development, making them vulnerable to fl uctuations in commodity prices and other international trade problems. The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) negoti- ates international trade agreements to stabilize commodity prices and promote develop- ment. Because countries of the global South do not have much power in the international economy, however, UNCTAD has little leverage to promote their interests in trade (see p. 482 ) . The World Trade Organization has thus become the main organization dealing with trade issues (see pp. 294 – 298 ) .

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In 2006, the UN created a new Human Rights Council, replacing a Human Rights Commission notorious for includ- ing human rights abusers as member states. The new council has expanded powers and more selective membership.

Other UN programs manage problems such as disaster relief, food aid, housing, and population issues. Throughout the poorer countries, the UN maintains an active presence in economic and social affairs.

Autonomous Agencies In addition to its own programs, the UN General Assembly maintains formal ties with about 20 autonomous interna- tional agencies not under its control. Most are specialized technical organizations through which states pool their efforts to address problems such as health care and labor conditions.

The only such agency in international security affairs is the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), head- quartered in Vienna, Austria. It was established under the UN but is formally autonomous. Although the IAEA has an economic role in helping develop civilian nuclear power plants, it mainly works to prevent nuclear proliferation (see pp. 217 – 219 ) . The IAEA was responsible for inspec- tions in Iraq in 2002–2003, which found no evidence of a secret nuclear weapons program. It is involved in monitor- ing Iran’s nuclear program to the extent Iran allows. The IAEA won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.

In the area of health care, the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) provides technical assistance to improve conditions and conduct major immunization campaigns in poor countries. In the 1960s and 1970s, WHO led one of the great public health victories of all time—the worldwide eradication of smallpox. Today, WHO is a leading player in the worldwide fi ght to control AIDS (see pp. 414 – 417 ) .

In agriculture, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is the lead agency. In labor standards, it is the International Labor Organization (ILO). UNESCO —the UN Edu- cational, Scientifi c, and Cultural Organization —facilitates international communication and scientifi c collaboration. The UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) pro- motes industrialization in the global South.

The longest-established IOs, with some of the most successful records, are special- ized agencies dealing with technical aspects of international coordination such as aviation and postal exchange. For instance, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) allocates radio frequencies. The Universal Postal Union (UPU) sets standards for international mail. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) sets binding standards for international air traffi c. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) facilitates international cooperation on shipping at sea. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) seeks world compliance with copyrights and patents and promotes development and technology transfer within a legal framework that protects such intellectual property (see pp. 305 – 306 ) . Finally, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) oversees a world weather watch and promotes the exchange of weather information.

HELPING WHERE NEEDED

An array of UN programs, operating under the General Assembly, aim to help countries in the global South to overcome social and economic problems. These pro- grams play a crucial role in the international assistance after disasters and wars. This girl displaced by ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan in 2010 receives help from UNICEF.

254 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

The major coordinating agencies of the world economy (discussed in Chapters 8 , 9 , and 13 ) are also UN-affi liated agencies. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) give loans, grants, and technical assistance for economic development (and the IMF manages international balance-of-payments accounting). The World Trade Organization (WTO) sets rules for international trade.

Overall, the density of connections across national borders, both in the UN system and through other IOs, is increasing year by year. In a less tangible way, people are also becoming connected across international borders through the meshing of ideas, including norms and rules. And gradually the rules are becoming international laws.

International Law International law, unlike national laws, derives not from actions of a legislative branch or other central authority, but from tradition and agreements signed by states. It also differs in the diffi culty of enforcement, which depends not on the power and authority of central government but on reciprocity, collective action, and international norms. 13

Sources of International Law Laws within states come from central authorities—legislatures or dictators. Because states are sovereign and recognize no central authority, international law rests on a different basis. The declarations of the UN General Assembly are not laws, and most do not bind the members. The Security Council can compel certain actions by states, but these are commands rather than laws: they are specifi c to a situation. No body of international law has been passed by a national legislative body. Four sources of international law are recog- nized: treaties, custom, general principles of law (such as equity), and legal scholarship (including past judicial decisions).

Treaties and other written conventions signed by states are the most important source. 14 International treaties now fi ll more than a thousand thick volumes, with tens of thousands of individual agreements. A principle in international law states that treaties, once signed and ratifi ed, must be observed ( pacta sunt servanda ). States violate the terms of treaties they have signed only if the matter is very important or the penalties for such a violation seem very small. In the United States, treaties duly ratifi ed by the Senate are considered the highest law of the land, equal with acts passed by Congress.

Treaties and other international obligations such as debts are binding on successor governments whether the new government takes power through an election, a coup, or a revolution. For example, after the revolutions in Eastern Europe around 1990, newly dem- ocratic governments were held responsible for debts incurred by their communist prede- cessors. Even when the Soviet Union broke up, Russia as the successor state had to guarantee that Soviet debts would be paid and Soviet treaties honored. Although revolu- tion does not free a state from its obligations, some treaties have built-in escape clauses

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13 Shaw, Malcolm N. International Law. 5th ed. Cambridge, 2003. Joyner, Christopher C. International Law in the 21st Century: Rules for Global Governance. Rowman, 2005. Franck, Thomas M. Fairness in International Law and Institutions. Oxford, 1995. Ku, Charlotte, and Paul F. Diehl. International Law: Classic and Contemporary Readings. 3rd ed. Rienner, 2008. Goldsmith, Jack L., and Eric A. Posner. The Limits of International Law. Oxford, 2006. 14 Gardiner, Richard. Treaty Interpretation. Oxford, 2008. Aust, Anthony. Modern Treaty Law and Practice. 2nd ed. Cambridge, 2007.

International Law 255

that let states legally withdraw from them, after giving due notice, without violating inter- national law. For example, the United States in 2001 invoked the six-month opt-out provision of the ABM treaty.

Because of the universal commitment by all states to respect certain basic principles of international law, the UN Charter is one of the world’s most important treaties. Its implications are broad and far-reaching, in contrast to more specifi c treaties such as a fi shery management agreement. However, the specialized agreements are usually easier to interpret and more enforceable than broad treaties such as the Charter. Another key treaty in international law is the 1949 Geneva Conventions (expanding an 1864 conven- tion) defi ning the laws of war regarding the protection of civilians and prisoners, among related issues. 15

Custom is the second major source of international law. If states behave toward each other in a certain way for long enough, their behavior may become generally accepted prac- tice with the status of law. Western international law (though not Islamic law) tends to be positivist in this regard—it draws on actual customs, the practical realities of self-interest, and the need for consent rather than on an abstract concept of divine or natural law.

General principles of law also serve as a source of international law. Actions such as theft and assault recognized in most national legal systems as crimes tend to have the same meaning in an international context. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was illegal under treaties signed by Iraq (including the UN Charter and that of the Arab League) and under the custom Iraq and Kuwait had established of living in peace as sovereign states. Beyond treaty or custom, the invasion violated international law because of the general principle that one state may not overrun its neighbor’s territory and annex it by force. (Of course, a state may still think it can get away with such a violation of international law.)

The fourth source of international law, recognized by the World Court as subsidiary to the others, is legal scholarship —the written arguments of judges and lawyers around the world on the issues in question. Only the writings of the most highly qualifi ed and respected legal fi gures can be taken into account, and then only to resolve points not resolved by the fi rst three sources of international law.

Often international law lags behind changes in norms; law is quite tradition-bound. Certain activities such as espionage are technically illegal but are so widely condoned that they cannot be said to violate international norms. Other activities are still legal but have come to be frowned upon and seen as abnormal. For example, China’s shooting of student demonstrators in 1989 violated international norms but not international law.

Enforcement of International Law Although these sources of international law distinguish it from national law, an even greater difference exists as to the enforcement of the two types of law. International law is much more diffi cult to enforce. There is no world police force. Enforcement of interna- tional law depends on the power of states themselves, individually or collectively, to pun- ish transgressors.

Enforcement of international law depends heavily on the reciprocity principle (see pp. 5 – 6 ) . States follow international law most of the time because they want other states to do so. The reason neither side in World War II used chemical weapons was not that anyone could enforce the treaty banning use of such weapons. It was that the other side would probably respond by using chemical weapons, too, and the costs would be high to

15 Kinsella, Helen M. The Image Before the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction Between Combatant and Civilian. Cornell, 2011.

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both sides. International law recognizes in certain circumstances the legitimacy of repris- als: actions that would have been illegal under international law may sometimes be legal if taken in response to the illegal actions of another state.

A state that breaks international law may face a collective response by a group of states, such as the imposition of sanctions —agreements among other states to stop trading with the violator, or to stop some particular commodity trade (most often military goods) as punishment for its violation. Over time, a sanctioned state can become a pariah in the community of nations, cut off from normal relations with others. This is very costly in today’s world, in which economic well-being everywhere depends on trade and economic exchange in world markets. Libya suffered for decades from its isolated status in the inter- national community, and decided in 2003 to make a clean break and regain normal status. Libya admitted responsibility for past terrorism, began to compensate victims, and agreed to disclose and dismantle its nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs.

Even the world’s superpower constrains its behavior, at least some of the time, to adhere to international law. For example, in late 2002 a North Korean freighter was caught en route to Yemen with a hidden load of 15 Scud missiles. The United States, fi ghting the war on terrorism, had an evident national interest in preventing such prolif- eration, and had the power to prevent it. But when U.S. government lawyers determined that the shipment did not violate international law, the United States backed off and let the delivery continue.

International law enforcement through reciprocity and collective response has one great weakness—it depends entirely on national power. Reciprocity works only if the aggrieved state has the power to infl ict costs on the violator. Collective response works only if the collective cares enough about an issue to respond. Thus, it is relatively easy to cheat on small issues (or to get away with major violations if one has enough power).

If international law extends only as far as power reaches, what good is it? The answer lies in the uncertainties of power (see Chapter 2 ) . Without common expectations regard- ing the rules of the game and adherence to those rules most of the time by most actors, power alone would create great instability in the anarchic international system. Interna- tional law, even without perfect enforcement, creates expectations about what constitutes legal behavior by states. Because violations or divergences from those expectations stand out, it is easier to identify and punish states that deviate from accepted rules. When states agree to the rules by signing treaties (such as the UN Charter), violations become more visible and clearly illegitimate. In most cases, although power continues to reside in states, international law establishes workable rules for those states to follow. The resulting stabil- ity is so benefi cial that usually the costs of breaking the rules outweigh the short-term benefi ts that could be gained from such violations.

The World Court As international law has developed, a general world legal framework in which states can pursue grievances against each other has begun to take shape. The rudiments of such a system now exist in the World Court (formally called the International Court of Jus- tice ), although its jurisdiction is limited and its caseload light. 16 The World Court is a branch of the UN.

Only states, not individuals or businesses, can sue or be sued in the World Court. When a state has a grievance against another, it can take the case to the World Court for an impartial hearing. The Security Council or General Assembly may also request advisory

16 Meyer, Howard N. The World Court in Action: Judging among Nations. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2002.

International Law 257

Court opinions on matters of inter- national law. For example, the 2010 Court ruling declaring Kosovo’s dec- laration of independence legal was an advisory opinion requested by the General Assembly.

The World Court is a panel of 15 judges elected for nine-year terms (5 judges every three years) by a majority of both the Security Coun- cil and General Assembly. The Court meets in The Hague, the Nether- lands. It is customary for permanent members of the Security Council to have one of their nationals as a judge at all times. Ad hoc judges may be added to the 15 if a party to a case does not already have one of its nationals as a judge.

The great weakness of the World Court is that states have not agreed in a comprehensive way to subject themselves to its jurisdiction or obey its decisions. Almost all states have signed the treaty creating the Court, but only about a third have signed the optional clause in the treaty agree- ing to give the Court jurisdiction in certain cases—and even many of those signatories have added their own stipulations reserving their rights and limiting the degree to which the Court can infringe on national sovereignty. Colombia withdrew in 2012 after the Court awarded disputed territorial waters to Nicaragua. 17 Similarly, Iran refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Court when sued by the United States in 1979 over its seizure of the U.S. embassy in Iran. In such a case, the Court may hear the case anyway and usually rules in favor of the partici- pating side—but has no means to enforce the ruling. Justice can also move slowly. In 2007, the Court issued a ruling against Bosnia’s case accusing Serbia of genocide, after 14 years of preliminary maneuvering.

In one of its most notable successes, the World Court in 1992 settled a complex bor- der dispute between El Salvador and Honduras dating from 1861. In 2002, the World Court settled a long-standing and sometimes violent dispute over an oil-rich peninsula on the Cameroon-Nigeria border. It gave ownership to Cameroon, and Nigeria (which is more powerful) pulled troops out in 2006.

A main use of the World Court now is to arbitrate issues of secondary importance between countries with friendly relations overall. The United States has settled commer- cial disputes with Canada and with Italy through the Court. Because security interests are not at stake, and because the overall friendly relations are more important than the par- ticular issue, states have been willing to submit to the Court’s jurisdiction. In 2004, the court ordered the United States to review death sentences of Mexican nationals to see if

17 Forsythe, David P. The Politics of International Law: U.S. Foreign Policy Reconsidered. Rienner, 1990.

ALL RISE

The World Court hears international disputes but with little power to enforce judg- ments. Here, in 2004, the judges rule in favor of Mexico’s complaint that the U.S. death penalty against Mexican citizens violated a 1963 treaty.

258 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

Uruguay brings in foreign companies to build 2 pulp mills across the river from a major

Argentine tourist resort.

Yikes, our economy!

Angry Argentines block bridges to Uruguay. Yikes,

our economy!

Make them stop building pulp mills!

Argentina

Make them stop blocking the border!

Uruguay

World Court

2006. Please hold while we review your case. We regret any inconvenience.

Please continue to hold.

Argentina Uruguay

2006. We'll cancel one of

the mills.

World Court

It’s 2010. Uruguay wins. Everybody

go home.

2006. We'll ask the King of Spain

to mediate.

Argentina and Uruguay signed a treaty in 1975 governing the river on their border.

FIGURE 7.4 World Court Case of Argentina v. Uruguay

Source: The International Court of Justice aka the World Court

International Law 259

their lack of access to Mexican offi cials had harmed their legal case. Under the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, citizens arrested in a foreign country must be advised of their right to meet with their home country’s representatives. The United States had often failed to do so despite demanding this right for Americans abroad. The World Court suggested that U.S. courts add relevant language to the Miranda warning for cases when police arrest foreign nationals. Figure 7.4 illustrates one of the Court’s recent cases, a dispute between Argentina and Uruguay.

Because of the diffi culty of winning enforceable agreements on major confl icts through the World Court, states have used the Court infrequently over the years—a dozen or fewer cases per year (about 140 judgments and advisory opinions since 1947).

International Cases in National Courts Most legal cases concerning international matters—whether brought by governments or by private individuals or companies—remain entirely within the legal systems of one or more states. National courts hear cases brought under national laws and can enforce judgments by collecting damages (in civil suits) or imposing punishments (in criminal ones).

A party with a dispute that crosses national boundaries gains several advantages by pursuing the matter through the national courts of one or more of the relevant states, rather than through international channels. First, judgments are enforceable. The party that wins a lawsuit in a national court can collect from the other party’s assets within the state. Second, individuals and companies can pursue legal complaints through national courts (as can subnational governmental bodies), whereas in most areas of international law, states must themselves bring suits on behalf of their citizens. (In truth, even national governments pursue most of their legal actions against each other through national courts.)

Third, there is often a choice of more than one state within which a case could legally be heard; one can pick the legal system most favorable to one’s case. Each state’s court system must decide whether it has jurisdiction in a case (the right to hear it), and courts tend to extend their own authority with a broad interpretation. Traditionally, a national court may hear cases concerning any activity on its national territory, any actions of its own citizens anywhere in the world, and actions taken toward its citizens elsewhere in the world. Noncitizens can use the national courts to enforce damages against citizens, because the national court has authority to impose fi nes and, if neces- sary, to seize bank accounts and property.

The United States is a favorite jurisdiction within which to bring cases for two reasons. First, U.S. juries have a reputation for awarding bigger settlements in lawsuits than juries elsewhere in the world (if only because the United States is a rich country). Second, because many people and governments do business in the United States, it is often possible to collect damages awarded by a U.S. court. For these reasons, U.S. courts in recent years have ruled on human rights cases brought by Chinese dissidents over the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, Cuban exiles against the Cuban government, and a Paraguayan doctor suing a Paraguayan police offi cial for torturing the doctor’s son. In 2003, U.S. courts ordered large payments by Iraq and Iran to U.S. victims of terrorism and torture. The Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789 gives federal courts jurisdiction over civil lawsuits against foreigners for “violation of the law of nations.” Human rights activists have used the law against repressive governments in recent years, as when

260 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

they sued U.S. oil companies ExxonMobil and Unocal for aiding abusive regimes in Indonesia and Burma, respectively. But in 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court sharply lim- ited this extension of U.S. legal jurisdiction, throwing out a case against the Dutch company Shell for facilitating government atrocities in Nigeria. 18

Belgium’s national courts are a favorite venue for international human rights cases because a 1993 law gives them jurisdiction over any violation of the Geneva Conven- tions. In 2001, four people accused of war crimes in Rwanda in 1994 were sent to prison by a Belgian jury. (Rwanda is a former Belgian colony, and ten Belgian soldiers had been killed in the genocide there.) In 2005, Belgium indicted a former leader of Chad accused of 40,000 political murders in Chad in the 1980s, and Senegal (where he lived) asked the African Union to rule on whether it should extradite him. The AU encouraged Senegal to try him domestically instead.

There are important limits to the use of national courts to resolve international disputes, however. Most important is that the authority of national courts stops at the state’s borders, where sovereignty ends. A court in Zambia cannot compel a resident of Thailand to come and testify; it cannot authorize the seizure of a British bank account to pay damages; it cannot arrest a criminal suspect (Zambian or foreigner) except on Zambian soil. To take such actions beyond national borders, states must persuade other states to cooperate. In 2012, a U.S. hedge fund that had lost $370 mil- lion in Argentina’s 2002 debt default convinced Ghana to seize a visiting Argen- tinean ship to pay the debt, but Ghana released the ship after a ruling by a UN maritime tribunal.

To bring a person outside a state’s territory to trial, the state’s government must ask a second government to arrest the person on the second state’s territory and hand him or her over for trial. Called extradition, this is a matter of international law because it is a legal treaty arrangement between states. Hundreds of such treaties exist, many dating back hundreds of years. If no such treaty exists, the individual generally remains immune from a state’s courts by staying off its territory. Some U.S. allies do not usually extradite to the United States suspects who would face the death penalty. The war on terrorism since 2001, however, has expanded international legal and law enforcement cooperation.

In one high-profi le debate about extradition, the former Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in England in 1999 on a Spanish warrant, based on crimes committed against Spanish citizens in Chile during Pinochet’s rule. His sup- porters claimed that he should have immunity for acts taken as head of state, but because he was not an accredited diplomat in England (where he had gone for medical treatment) and no longer head of state, the British courts held him on Spain’s request to extradite him. However, the British government eventually let him return to Chile, citing his medical condition, and a Chilean court suspended his case on health grounds. He died in 2006 without standing trial.

Gray areas exist in the jurisdiction of national courts over foreigners. If a govern- ment can lure a suspect onto the high seas, it can nab the person without violating another country’s territoriality. More troublesome are cases in which a government obtains a foreign citizen from a foreign country for trial without going through extradi- tion procedures. In a famous case in the 1980s, a Mexican doctor was wanted by U.S. authorities for allegedly participating in the torture and murder of a U.S. drug agent in Mexico. The U.S. government paid a group of bounty hunters to kidnap the doctor in

18 Liptak, Adam. Justices Bar Nigerian Human Rights Case from U.S. Courts. The New York Times, April 18, 2013: A16.

Law and Sovereignty 261

Mexico, carry him forcibly across the border, and deliver him to the custody of U.S. courts. The U.S. Supreme Court gave the U.S. courts jurisdiction in the case—show- ing the tendency to extend state sovereignty wherever possible—although interna- tional lawyers and Mexican offi cials objected strongly. The U.S. government had to reassure the Mexican government that it would not kidnap Mexican citizens for trial in the United States in the future. The doctor returned home after the case was thrown out for lack of evidence. In late 2004, Colombia arranged the abduction of a leading Colombian rebel living in Venezuela, provoking Venezuelan protests about the viola- tion of sovereignty.

The principle of territoriality also governs immigration law . When people cross a border into a new country, the decision about whether they can remain there, and under what conditions, is up to the new state. The state of origin cannot compel their return. National laws establish conditions for foreigners to travel and visit on a state’s territory, to work there, and sometimes to become citizens ( naturalization ). Many other legal issues are raised by people traveling or living outside their own country—passports and visas, babies born in foreign countries, marriages to foreign nationals, bank accounts, businesses, taxes, and so forth. Practices vary from country to country, but the general principle is that national laws prevail on the territory of a state.

Despite the continued importance of national court systems in international legal affairs and the lack of enforcement powers of the World Court, it would be wrong to con- clude that state sovereignty is supreme and international law impotent. Rather, a balance of sovereignty and law exists in international interactions.

Law and Sovereignty The remainder of this chapter discusses particular areas of international law, from the most fi rmly rooted and widely respected to newer and less-established areas. In each area, the infl uence of law and norms runs counter to the unimpeded exercise of state sover- eignty. This struggle becomes more intense as one moves from long-standing traditions of diplomatic law to recent norms governing human rights.

Laws of Diplomacy The bedrock of international law is respect for the rights of diplomats. The standards of behavior in this area are spelled out in detail, applied universally, and taken very seriously. The ability to conduct diplomacy is necessary for all other kinds of relations among states, except perhaps all-out war. Since the rise of the international system fi ve centuries ago, it has been considered unjustifi able to harm an emissary sent from another state as a means of infl uencing the other state. Such a norm has not always existed; it is natural in some ways to kill the messenger who brings an unpleasant message, or to use another state’s offi cial as a hostage or bargaining chip. But today, this kind of behavior is universally con- demned, though it still happens from time to time.

The status of embassies and of an ambassador as an offi cial state representative is explicitly defi ned in the process of diplomatic recognition . Diplomats are accredited to each other’s governments (they present “credentials”), and thereafter the individuals so defi ned enjoy certain rights and protections as foreign diplomats in the host country. Diplomats have the right to occupy an embassy in a host country, within which the host country’s laws may not be enforced without the consent of the embassy’s country. For this reason, embas- sies occasionally shelter dissidents who take refuge there from their own governments.

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262 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

A fl agrant violation of the sanctity of embassies occurred in Iran after Islamic revolutionaries took power in 1979. Iranian students seized and occupied the U.S. embassy compound, holding the U.S. diplomats hostage for more than a year. The Iranian government did not directly commit this act but did condone it and did refuse to force the students out of the embassy. (Host countries are expected, if necessary, to use force against their own citizens to protect a for- eign embassy.)

Diplomats enjoy diplomatic immunity even when they leave the embassy grounds. The right to travel varies from one country to another; diplomats may be restricted to one city or free to roam about the countryside. Alone among all foreign nationals, diplo- mats are beyond enforcement of the host country’s national courts. If they commit crimes, from jaywalking to murder, they may be shielded from arrest. All the host country can do is take away a diplomat’s accreditation and expel the person from the host country. However, strong countries sometimes pressure weaker ones to lift immunity so that a diplomat may face trial for a crime. This happened twice in 1997, for example, when the United States and France were allowed to prosecute diplomats from Georgia and Zaire, respectively, for reckless driving that killed children.

U.S. commitments as host country to the UN include extending diplomatic immunity to the diplomats accredited to the UN. Given this immunity, delegates simply tear up thousands of parking tickets each year, for example. It is estimated that the city of New York is owed $18 million in unpaid tickets. The parking ticket issue has become a sensitive political issue, as the State Department now reserves the right to revoke driver’s licenses, license plates, and even reduce foreign aid based on outstanding parking tickets. Similarly, in London three cars driven by Sudanese diplomats received over 800 tickets tallying over $100,000 in fi nes.

Because of diplomatic immunity, espionage activities are commonly conducted through the diplomatic corps, out of an embassy. Spies are often posted to low-level positions in embas- sies, such as cultural attaché, press liaison, or military attaché. If the host country catches them spying, it cannot prosecute them,

so it merely expels them. Diplomatic norms (though not law) call for politeness when expelling spies; the standard reason given is “for activities not consistent with his or her diplomatic status.” If a spy operates under cover of being a businessperson or tourist, then no immunity applies; the person can be arrested and prosecuted under the host country’s laws. Such was the case in 2010, when the U.S. government arrested ten Russian spies who were leading lives as ordinary citizens in America. Before the prosecution of the accused spies could proceed in New York courts, how- ever, the United States and Russia agreed to an exchange of accused spies.

A diplomatic pouch is a package sent between an embassy and its home country. As the name implies, it started out historically as a small and occasional shipment, but today a large and steady volume of such shipments travel all over the world. Diplo- matic pouches, too, enjoy the status of home country territoriality: they cannot be opened, searched, or confi scated by a host country. Although we do not know how much mischief goes on in diplomatic pouches (because they are secret), it is safe to

OUT OF REACH

International law prohibits attacks on diplomats and embassies. This fundamental principle, like others in international law, is ultimately enforced through reciprocity. When the founder of Wikileaks took refuge in the Ecuado- rian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden, the British government considered coming in and taking him, but thought better of it. Here, after six months in residency, he deliv- ers a speech from the embassy balcony, 2012.

Law and Sovereignty 263

assume that illicit goods such as guns and drugs regularly fi nd their way across borders in diplomatic pouches.

To break diplomatic relations means to withdraw one’s diplomats from a state and expel that state’s diplomats from one’s own state. This tactic is used to show displeasure with another government; it is a refusal to do business as usual. When a revolutionary government comes into power, some countries may withdraw recognition. And when small states recognize Taiwan diplomatically, China withdraws recognition of them.

When two countries lack diplomatic relations, they often do business through a third country willing to represent a country’s interests formally through its own embassy. This is called an interests section in the third country’s embassy. Thus, the practical needs of diplomacy can overcome a formal lack of relations between states. For instance, U.S. interests are represented by the Swiss embassy in Cuba, and Cuban interests are represented by the Swiss embassy in the United States. In practice, these interests sec- tions are located in the former U.S. and Cuban embassies and staffed with U.S. and Cuban diplomats.

States register lower levels of displeasure by recalling their ambassadors home for some period of time; diplomatic norms call for a trip home “for consultations” even when everyone knows the purpose is to signal annoyance. Milder still is the expression of dis- pleasure by a formal complaint. Usually the complaining government does so in its own capital city, to the other’s ambassador.

The law of diplomacy is repeatedly violated in one context—terrorism (see pp. 204 – 209 ) . Because states care so much about the sanctity of diplomats, the diplomats make a tempting target for terrorists, and because terrorist groups do not enjoy the benefi ts of diplomatic law (as states do), they are willing to break diplomatic norms and laws. An attack on diplomats or embassies is an attack on the territory of the state itself—yet can be carried out far from the state’s home territory. Many diplomats have been killed in recent decades. In 1998, al Qaeda terrorists bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than 200 people. In late 2004, terrorists stormed a U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia, killing several guards, and in 2012, they burned the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing the ambassador.

Just War Doctrine After the law of diplomacy, international law regarding war is one of the most developed areas of international law. Laws concerning war are divided into two areas—laws of war (when war is permissible) and laws in war (how wars are fought).

To begin with the laws of war, international law distinguishes just wars (which are legal) from wars of aggression (which are illegal). (We discuss laws in war later in the context of human rights.) This area of law grows out of centuries-old religious writ- ings about just wars (which once could be enforced by threats to excommunicate indi- viduals from the church). Today, the legality of war is defi ned by the UN Charter, which outlaws aggression. Above and beyond its legal standing, just war doctrine has become a strong international norm, not one that all states follow but an important part of the modern intellectual tradition governing matters of war and peace that evolved in Europe. 19

19 Walzer, Michael. Arguing about War. Yale, 2004. Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. 4th ed. Basic, 2006. Hensel, Howard M. The Legitimate Use of Military Force: The Just War Tradition and the Customary Law of Armed Confl ict. Ashgate, 2008.

264 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

The idea of aggression, around which the doctrine of just war evolved, is based on a violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. Aggression refers to a state’s use of force, or an imminent threat to do so, against another state’s territory or sovereignty—unless the use of force is in response to aggression. Tanks swarming across the border constitute aggression, but so do tanks massing at the border if their state has threatened to invade. The lines are somewhat fuzzy. But for a threat to constitute aggres- sion (and justify the use of force in response), it must be a clear threat of using force, not just a hostile policy or general rivalry.

States have the right to respond to aggression in the only manner thought to be reliable—military force. Just war doctrine is thus not based on nonviolence. Responses can include both repelling the attack itself and punishing the aggressor. Responses can be made by the victim of aggression or by other states not directly affected—as a way of maintaining the norm of nonaggression in the international system. The collective actions of UN members against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait are a classic case of such a response.

Response to aggression is the only allowable use of military force according to just war doctrine. The just war approach thus explicitly rules out war as an instrument to change another state’s government or policies, or in ethnic and religious confl icts. In fact, the UN Charter makes no provision for “war” but rather for “international police actions” against aggressors. The analogy is with law and order in a national society, enforced by police when necessary. Because only aggression justifi es military force, if all states obeyed the law against aggression, there would be no international war.

For a war to be morally just, it must be more than a response to aggression; it must be waged for the purpose of responding to aggression. The intent must be just. A state may not take advantage of another’s aggression to wage a war that is essentially aggressive. Although the U.S.-led war effort to oust Iraq from Kuwait in 1991 was certainly a response to aggression, critics found the justness of the war to be compromised by the U.S. interest in obtaining cheap oil from the Middle East—not an allowable reason for waging war.

Just war doctrine has been undermined, even more seriously than have laws of war crimes, by the changing nature of warfare. 20 In civil wars and low-intensity confl icts, the belligerents range from poorly organized militias to national armies, and the battleground is often a patchwork of enclaves and positions with no clear front lines (much less bor- ders). It is thus harder to identify an aggressor in such situations, and harder to balance the relative merits of peace and justice.

Human Rights One of the newest areas of international law concerns human rights —the rights of human beings against certain abuses of their own governments. 21

21 Donnelly, Jack. Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice. 2nd ed. Cornell, 2003. Donnelly, Jack. International Human Rights. 3rd ed. Westview, 2006. DeLaet, Debra L. The Global Struggle for Human Rights: Universal Principles in World Politics . Wadsworth, 2005. Thomas, Daniel. The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism. Princeton, 2001. Risse, Thomas, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink, eds. The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change. Cambridge, 1999. Cohen, Cynthia Price, ed. Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Transnational, 1998. Cronin, Bruce. Institutions for the Common Good: International Protection Regimes in International Society. Cambridge, 2003.

20 Johnson, James Turner. Can Modern War Be Just? Yale, 1984.

Human Rights 265

Individual Rights versus Sovereignty The very idea of human rights fl ies in the face of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. Sovereignty gives states the right to do as they please in their own territory: nobody can tell them how to treat their own citizens.

Thus, a consensus on what are the most important human rights is diffi cult to reach. 22 One approach to human rights argues that rights are universal. No matter where a person resides, no matter his or her ethnic nationality, and no matter his or her local religious, ethnic, or clan tradi- tions, that person has certain rights that must be respected. The other approach to human rights is often labeled relativism. According to this idea, local traditions and histories should be given due respect, even if this means limiting rights that others outside that local context find important. Efforts to promote human rights are routinely criticized by govern- ments with poor human rights records by Western standards (including China and Russia) as “interference in our internal affairs.” This charge puts human rights law on shaky ground and refl ects a more relativist stance.

The concept of human rights arises from at least three sources. 23 The fi rst is religion. Nearly every major world religion has at its foundation the idea that humans were created in an image of a higher power and that therefore all humans are to be afforded the dignity and respect that are due that higher power. Nowhere is this idea more clearly spelled out than in the American Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, that all people are “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.”

Second, political and legal philosophy for centuries has discussed the idea of natural law and natural rights. From Aristotle, to John Locke, to Immanuel Kant, to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, political philosophers have developed the idea that a natural law exists that grants all humans the right to life, liberty, property, and happiness. 24

Finally, political revolutions in the 18th century, such as the American and French Revolutions, translated the theory of natural law and natural rights into practice. In America, the Declaration of Independence, and in France, the Declaration of the Rights

Watch the Video “State Sovereignty and the ‘Responsibility to Protect’” at MyPoliSciLab

Explore the Simulation “Human Rights: You Are a Refugee” at MyPoliSciLab

23 Lauren, Paul Gordon. The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen. Pennsylvania, 2003. 24 Hayden, Patrick, ed. The Philosophy of Human Rights. Paragon, 2001.

22 An-Na’im, Abdullahi Ahmed, ed. Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives: A Quest for Consensus. Pennsylvania, 1991.

SEA OF RED

International norms concerning human rights confl ict with state sovereignty, causing friction in relationships such as that of Burma (Myanmar) with the international community. Here, in 2008, Buddhist monks in Burma’s capital lead huge demonstrations against the repressive military government, which cracked down harshly within days. Western powers apply economic sanc- tions against Burma because of its human rights record.

266 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

of Man and Citizen, created laws that solidifi ed the idea that humans have certain rights that no state or other individuals can take away.

Of course, criticisms of these ideas of human rights exist, on both a theoretical and a practical level. Theoretically, relativists point out that much of the origin and develop- ment of human rights ideas (at least two of the three sources discussed) are Western in origin. Non-Western societies have different philosophical traditions and may choose to emphasize group or family rights, for example, over individual ones. At a practical level, many (especially non-Western) critics are quick to point out that even after the 18th- century revolutions in Europe and America, rights were still not universal. Women, chil- dren, and usually nonwhites were not assumed to enjoy the same rights as landholding white males, making the very idea of universal rights misleading.

Partially because of this controversy, no globally agreed-upon defi nitions of the essen- tial human rights exist. Rights are often divided into two broad types: civil-political and economic-social. Civil-political rights are sometimes referred to as “negative rights” and include what are considered traditional Western rights such as free speech, freedom of religion, equal protection under the law, and freedom from arbitrary imprisonment. These are rights generally thought to be best guaranteed by limiting the power of governments over their people. Economic-social rights are referred to as “positive rights” and include rights to good living conditions, food, health care, social security, and education. 25 These rights are often held to be best promoted by the expansion of governments to provide minimal standards to their people.

No state has a perfect record on any type of human rights, and states differ as to which areas they respect or violate. When the United States criticizes China for prohibiting free speech, using prison labor, and torturing political dissidents (civil-political rights), China notes that the United States has 40 million poor people, the highest ratio of prison inmates in the world, and a history of racism and violence (economic-social rights). 26 During the Cold War, the United States and its allies consistently criticized the Soviet Union and China for violations of civil-political rights, yet refused to endorse treaties championing economic-social rights. Likewise, communist states encouraged the development of the latter rights, while ignoring calls for the former. Overall, despite the poor record of the world’s states on some points, progress has been made on others. For example, slavery— once considered normal worldwide—has been largely abandoned in the past 150 years.

Historically, a signifi cant global shift in human rights occurred at the end of World War II. Horrifi ed by Nazi Germany’s attempt to exterminate the Jewish population and by Japanese abuses of Chinese citizens, many scholars and practitioners began to suggest that there were limits to state sovereignty. States could not claim to be sovereign and above interference if they attempted to massacre their own people. In the aftermath of World War II and the creation of the United Nations, some of the most signifi cant international attempts to codify and enforce human rights began. In the next section, we examine some of these agreements and institutions.

Human Rights Institutions In 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted what is considered the core international docu- ment concerning human rights: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) . 27

25 Forsythe, David. Human Rights in International Relations. Cambridge, 2000. 26 People’s Republic of China, State Council. America’s “Abominable” Human Rights Conditions. The  Washington Post, February 16, 1997: C3. 27 Morsink, Johannes. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent. Pennsylvania, 1999.

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The UDHR does not have the force of international law, but it sets forth (hoped-for) inter- national norms regarding behavior by governments toward their own citizens and foreigners alike. The declaration roots itself in the principle that violations of human rights upset international order (causing outrage, sparking rebellion, etc.) and in the fact that the UN Charter commits states to respect fundamental freedoms. The declaration proclaims that “all human beings are born free and equal” without regard to race, sex, language, religion, political affi liation, or the status of the territory in which they were born. It goes on to pro- mote norms in a wide variety of areas, including banning torture, guaranteeing religious and political freedom, and ensuring the right of economic well-being.

Since the adoption of the UDHR, the UN has opened seven treaties for state signa- ture to further defi ne protections of human rights (see Table 7.3 ). Unlike the UDHR, these treaties are legally binding contracts signed by states. Of course, international law is only as good as the enforcement mechanisms behind it. Yet these seven treaties are important in outlining the basic protections for individuals expected by the interna- tional community.

Two key treaties are the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR). These two treaties, both of which entered into force in 1976, codify the promises of the UDHR while dividing the list of rights in the UDHR into civil-political and economic-social rights, respectively. These two covenants, along with the UDHR, are often referred to as the International Bill of Human Rights. 28

The remaining treaties each deal with a particular group that the international com- munity considers vulnerable. The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), enacted in 1969, bans discrimination against individuals based on race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin. The CERD does not

28 Simmons, Beth. Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics. Cambridge, 2009. Oberleitner, Gerd. Global Human Rights Institutions. Polity, 2007.

Treaty Date in Force Key Non-Members

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD)

Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR)

Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR)

Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Convention Against Torture (CAT)

Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)

Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers (CMW)

January 4, 1969 175 Bhutan, Burma, Malaysia, North Korea

January 3, 1976 160 Cuba, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, U.S.

March 23, 1976 167 Burma, China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia

September 3, 1981 187 Iran, Somalia, Sudan, U.S.

June 26, 1987 153 Burma, India, Iran, Sudan

September 2, 1990 193 Somalia, U.S.

July 1, 2003 46 France, Great Britain, China, Russia, U.S.

Number of Parties

TABLE 7.3 Ratifi cation Status of Seven Core UN Human Rights Treaties, 2013

Source: United Nations

268 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

include language concerning gender discrimination. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), however, fi lls this void by banning discrimination against women. CEDAW entered into force in 1981.

The Convention against Torture (CAT), instituted in 1987, bans dehumanizing, degrading, and inhumane treatment of individuals even in times of war. 29 The Conven- tion on the Rights of the Child (CRC), enacted in 1990, promotes children’s health, education, and physical well-being (every country in the world except Somalia and the United States has approved the CRC). Finally, the most recent UN human rights treaty is the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (CMW), which entered into force in 2003. The CMW attempts to protect the political, labor, and social rights of the nearly 100 million migrant workers around the globe.

Equally important as these UN treaties themselves are the optional protocols that are attached to several of the treaties. These protocols can be thought of as addendums to the treaties as they contain additional protections not included in the original documents. In general, far fewer states sign these optional protocols since the protections contained in them were too controversial for the original document. In addition, some of the optional protocols contain stronger enforcement mechanisms, such as giving individuals in signa- tory states the right to go to the UN monitoring bodies without the approval of their governments. States that are not party to the original treaty may sign them, as is the case with the United States, which has not signed the CRC, but has signed its two optional protocols.

Besides the UN-related human rights treaties, several regional IOs have promoted the protection of human rights. Nowhere is this more true than in Europe, where the European Union, the Council of Europe, and the European Court of Human Rights all work to ensure that human rights are respected by all states in the region (see Chap- ter  10 ) . In Latin America as well, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has had some success in promoting human rights, yet it has also been limited by state refusal to abide by its decisions. Finally, the African Union helps support the African Human Rights Com- mission, but the commission has been hampered by its lack of monetary and political sup- port from African states.

In the past decade, developed states have begun to use other international organiza- tions to pressure developing states to improve human rights conditions. Free trade agree- ments (see Chapter 8 ) frequently contain provisions that condition trade benefi ts on the respect for human rights, especially workers’ rights. 30 Because these treaties provide poli- cies benefi cial to the developing states, they create a ready mechanism to punish countries who abuse their citizens. Others argue, however, that limiting economic benefi ts to coun- tries harms their economic development, which is likely only to make the human rights situation worse.

Today, NGOs play a key role in efforts to win basic political rights in authoritarian countries—including a halt to the torture, execution, and imprisonment of those express- ing political or religious beliefs. 31 The leading organization pressing this struggle is Amnesty International , an NGO that operates globally to monitor and try to rectify glar- ing abuses of human rights. 32 Amnesty International has a reputation for impartiality and has criticized abuses in many countries, including the United States. Other groups, such

29 Nowak, Manfred, and Elizabeth McArthur. The United Nations Convention against Torture. Oxford, 2008. 30 Hafner-Burton, Emilie. Forced to Be Good: Why Trade Agreements Boost Human Rights. Cornell, 2009. 31 Keck, Margaret, and Kathryn Sikkink. Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Cornell, 1998. Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink, The Power of Human Rights (see footnote 21 in this chapter). 32 Hopgood, Stephen. Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International. Cornell, 2006.

Human Rights 269

as Human Rights Watch, work in a similar way but often with a more regional or national focus. NGOs often provide information and advocacy for UN and other regional organi- zations. They essentially serve as a bridge between the global or regional organizations and efforts to promote human rights “on the ground.” 33

Enforcing norms of human rights is diffi cult because it involves interfering in a state’s internal affairs. 34 Cutting off trade or contact with a government that violates human rights tends to hurt the citizens whose rights are being violated by further isolating them. Yet, such measures keep those suffering from human rights abuses in the global spotlight, drawing more attention to their plight.

The most effective method yet discovered is a combination of publicity and pressure. Publicity entails digging up information about human rights abuses, as Amnesty Interna- tional does. Through a process some scholars have dubbed “naming and shaming,” sup- porters of human rights hope that publicity will embarrass the regime and change its behavior. 35 The publicity also serves to alert those traveling to or doing business with offending regimes to the conditions in those countries. Human rights activists hope this negative attention will convince individuals to stop their interactions with the state in question, putting further economic pressure on it.

The pressure of other governments, as well as private individuals and businesses, con- sists of threats to punish the offender in some way through nonviolent means. But because most governments seek to maintain normal relations with each other most of the time, this kind of intrusive punishment by one government of another’s human rights violations is rare—and not reliably successful.

Also rare are humanitarian interventions using military force to overcome armed resistance by local authorities or warlords and bring help to civilian victims of wars and disasters. However, international norms have increasingly shifted against sovereignty and toward protecting endangered civilians. A major summit of world leaders in 2005 enshrined the concept of the responsibility to protect (R2P) , which holds that govern- ments worldwide must act to save civilians from genocide or crimes against humanity perpetrated or allowed by their own governments. 36 Three important humanitarian inter- ventions in the 1990s were in Kurdish areas of Iraq, in Somalia, and in Kosovo (Serbia). The UN-authorized NATO campaign in Libya in 2011 followed from the R2P concept. Yet the people of Syria did not get protection in 2011–2013 as tens of thousands were slaughtered by their government.

The U.S. State Department has actively pursued human rights since the late 1970s. An annual U.S. government report assesses human rights in states around the world. In states where abuses are severe or becoming worse, U.S. foreign aid has been withheld. (But in other cases, CIA funding has supported the abusers.) 37

33 Amnesty International. Amnesty International Report. London, annual. Clark, Ann Marie. Diplomacy of Conscience: Amnesty International and Changing Human Rights Norms. Princeton, 2000. 34 Poe, Steven, C. Neal Tate, and Linda Camp Keith. Repression of the Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited: A Global Cross-National Study. International Studies Quarterly 43 (2), 1999: 291–313. Hafner- Burton, Emilie M., and Kiyoteru Tsutsui. Human Rights in a Globalizing World: The Paradox of Empty Promises. American Journal of Sociology 110, 2005: 1373–1411. 35 Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (see footnote 31 in this chapter). 36 Evans, Gareth. The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All. Brookings, 2008. Weiss, Thomas G. Military-Civilian Interactions: Humanitarian Crises and the Responsibility to Protect. 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2005. Welsh, Jennifer M., ed. Humanitarian Intervention and International Relations. Oxford, 2004. 37 Liang-Fenton, Debra, ed. Implementing U.S. Human Rights Policy: Agendas, Policies, and Practices. U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2004.

270 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

Currently, human rights is one of the two main areas of confl ict (along with Taiwan) in China’s relationship with the United States. Several practices draw criticism; these include imprisoning political opponents of the government, the use of prison labor, and a criminal justice system prone to abuses. According to Amnesty International, China exe- cutes more people than the rest of the world combined—thousands each year—sometimes within days of the crime and sometimes for relatively minor crimes. 38

War Crimes Large-scale abuses of human rights often occur during war. Serious violations of this kind are considered war crimes . 39 In wartime, international law is especially diffi cult to enforce, but extensive norms of legal conduct in war as well as international treaties are widely followed. After a war, losers can be punished for violations of the laws of war, as Germans were in the Nuremberg trials after World War II. Since the Nazi murders of civilians did not violate German law, the Nuremberg tribunal treated them as a new category, crimes against humanity , conceived as inhumane acts and persecutions against civilians on a vast scale in the pursuit of unjust ends.

38 Amnesty International. Executed “According to Law”? The Death Penalty in China. March 17, 2004. 39 Falk, Richard, Irene Gendzier, and Robert Jay Lifton, eds. Crimes of War: Iraq. Nation, 2006. Howard, Michael, George J. Andreopoulos, and Mark R. Shulman, eds. The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World. Yale, 1994. Best, Geoffrey. War and Law Since 1945. Oxford, 1994. Hartle, Anthony E. Moral Issues in Military Decision Making. Kansas, 2004.

SEEKING THE COLLECTIVE GOOD

Responsibility to Protect COLLECTIVE GOOD: Stopping Atrocities Against Civilians

BACKGROUND: The international system based on sovereignty has historically treated serious human rights abuses as domestic problems of no concern to outside countries. Over the years, however, a norm has developed that treats the most serious atrocities as mat- ters of concern for all of humanity. For instance, after the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust during World War II, the world’s countries signed the Genocide Convention in 1948. Signatories (currently 140 states) pledge to “prevent and punish” genocide in both war and peace- time. Many scholars of international law interpret this as a commitment by states to intervene in recognized cases of genocide to stop the killing.

The concept that the international community must stop abuses by governments against their own people has gained momentum over the years since then, with various treaties and practices moving in this direction. The International Criminal Court (ICC) and several international war crimes tribunals have tried individuals accused of war crimes, crimes against

humanity, and genocide. Recently, human rights advo- cates proposed the overarching concept of “responsibil- ity to protect,” or R2P. The international community should try prevention and diplomacy fi rst, but ulti- mately must use military intervention as a last resort if necessary to stop mass atrocities.

Everyone agrees that the world would be better off without atrocities, which degrade humanity and undermine norms of peaceful politics. These ideals, however, are a collective good, enjoyed by all coun- tries regardless of which ones put money and lives on the line.

CHALLENGE: Mass atrocities continue to occur despite the Genocide Convention, the human rights treaties, the tribunals, and the R2P concept. In 1994 in Rwanda, ultra- nationalists seized power and slaughtered more than half a million ethnic minority members and political opponents. In

Human Rights 271

In the 1990s, for the fi rst time since World War II, the UN Security Council author- ized an international war crimes tribunal, directed against war crimes in the former Yugo- slavia. Similar tribunals were later established for genocide in Rwanda and Sierra Leone. 40

The tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, headquartered in The Hague, the Netherlands, issued indictments against the top Bosnian Serb leaders and other Serbian and Croatian offi cers, and in 1999 against Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic for his expulsion of Albanians from Kosovo. The tribunal was hampered by lack of funding and by its lack of power to arrest suspects who enjoyed the sanctity of Serbia and Croatia. After Milosevic lost power in Serbia, the new Serbian government turned him over to the tribunal in 2001, and he died in custody in 2006. In 2008 and 2011, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs and their top military commander were arrested after more than a decade in hiding. They are currently on trial, charged with massacring and shelling civilians and destroying prop- erty, including places of worship. By 2011, no Bosnia war criminals remained at large, and at the end of 2012 the Rwanda tribunal also completed all of its 71 cases.

Following the civil war in Sierra Leone, the government there runs a war crimes tribu- nal jointly with the UN. In 2003, it indicted the sitting state leader in next-door Liberia, Charles Taylor, for his role in the war’s extreme brutality. He fl ed to Nigeria shortly after- ward but was captured there, turned over to the tribunal in 2006, and convicted in 2012.

40 Moghalu, Kingsley. Global Justice: The Politics of War Crimes Trials. Stanford, 2008. Bass, Gary Jonathan. Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals. Princeton, 2000.

2004, Sudan used an armed militia to murder and dis- place large numbers of inhabitants of the Darfur region where rebels opposed the government. In these and other cases, no states intervened effectively to stop the atrocities. But in 2011, outsiders did halt an imminent slaughter by Libya’s dictator.

SOLUTION: Human rights organizations rely on the identity principle to try to spur action by the international community. They publicize crises and goad the governments of democracies to act in the name of humanity. In the case of Darfur, a well- funded campaign with plentiful popular support called for strong action to stop the Sudanese govern- ment. These appeals, however, have brought meager results, as Western governments do not want to spend blood and treasure to intervene in messy for- eign conflicts. The reciprocity principle has also come up short, as the ICC, which the world’s coun- tries are supposed to mutually support, has been una- ble to arrest the president of Sudan after indicting him for war crimes.

The dominance principle, then, governs the response to atrocities. When great powers see action

Rwandan survivor visits memorial on tenth anniversary of the 1994 genocide.

as in their national interest, they act. Otherwise, they do not. Until the world’s strong military powers decide to act against mass atrocities, the provision of the collective good embodied by R2P will continue to fall short.

272 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

Following up on the UN tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, in 1998 most of the world’s states signed a treaty to create a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) . 41 It hears cases of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity from anywhere in the world. The ICC opened for business in 2003 in The Hague, with 18 judges sworn in from around the world (but not the United States). In 2008, the ICC began its fi rst trial, of a militia leader from Democratic Congo accused of drafting children under 15 and kill- ing civilians. He was convicted in 2012.

The United States has refused to ratify the ICC agreement and shows little interest in doing so. In addition, the United States has pressured many ICC member states to sign immunity agree- ments (known as Bilateral Immunity Agreements or BIA) to protect American soldiers serving in those countries from prosecution. In 2005, after several ICC members refused to sign a BIA, Con- gress voted to cut foreign aid to those states. U.S. leaders are concerned that American soldiers, serving in peacekeeping missions or in NATO allies, will fall under the jurisdiction of the ICC rather than under the American military’s own justice system.

War crimes in Darfur, Sudan—which a UN commission found grave but short of

“genocide”—have also been referred to the ICC after the United States dropped its objections in 2005 (when exemptions for U.S. soldiers serving in peacekeeping opera- tions were restored). 42 The Darfur case is a diffi cult challenge for the ICC. In 2009, the ICC indicted the sitting Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and issued a warrant for his arrest. The indict- ment angered the Sudanese government, which then expelled humanitarian organiza- tions from Darfur. In 2010, al-Bashir left Sudan for the fi rst time, but his destination country of Chad refused to arrest him, citing bias in the ICC (all ICC prosecutions have been in Africa). The ICC faces a diffi cult balance in holding offi cials in Sudan accountable, yet being sensitive to efforts to end the violence in Darfur (see p. 167 ) . In 2011, the ICC quickly indicted Libya’s dictator and several others, but he was killed before facing justice.

What makes the ICC different (and controversial) is the idea of universal jurisdiction — that the court has the ability to prosecute individuals of any nation. This distinguishes the ICC from the World Court, which has only states as complainants and defendants. Under the ICC, individuals can be prosecuted for their roles in violations of human rights. Three mechanisms can trigger an ICC trial. First, a state can turn over an

REMAINS OF WAR CRIMES

War crimes include unnecessary targeting of civilians and mistreat- ment of prisoners of war (POWs). The most notorious war crime in Europe in recent decades was the massacre of more than 7,000 men and boys by Serbian forces who overran the UN “safe area” of Sre- brenica, Bosnia, in 1995. Here, a mass grave there is excavated in 2007.

41 Schiff, Benjamin N. Building the International Criminal Court. Cambridge, 2008. Schabas, William A. An Introduction to the International Criminal Court. 2nd ed. Cambridge, 2004. 42 Prunier, Gerard. Darfur: A 21st Century Genocide. 3rd ed. Cornell, 2008.

Human Rights 273

individual for trial if the state agrees to do so. Second, against the wishes of a state, a special prosecutor at the ICC can begin a trial if the crimes occurred in the territory of a signatory to the ICC. Third, the UN Security Council can begin proceedings even against individuals from nonsignatory states. It is hoped that the ICC, more than prose- cuting every individual case of war crimes, will also serve to deter potential violators of these norms under the threat of potential prosecution under the ICC. 43

The most important principle in the laws of war is the effort to limit warfare to the combatants and to protect civilians. It is illegal to target civilians in a war. It is not illegal, however, to target military forces knowing civilians will be killed. Even then, the amount of force used must be proportional to the military gain, and only the necessary amount of force can be used.

To help separate combatants from civilians, soldiers must wear uniforms and insignia, such as a shoulder patch with a national fl ag. This provision is frequently violated in guerrilla warfare, making that form of warfare particularly brutal and destructive of civilian life. If one cannot tell the difference between a bystander and a combatant, one is likely to kill both when in doubt. By contrast, in a large-scale con- ventional war it is much easier to distinguish civilians from soldiers, although the effort is never completely successful. 44 When U.S. special forces in Afghanistan made friends with local fi ghters by operating out of uniform and with bushy beards, human- itarian-aid agencies complained and the Pentagon ordered the soldiers back into uni- form. In the Iraq War, insurgents have repeatedly targeted civilians and attacked in civilian clothes, from hospitals and schools, and after feigning surrender—all against the laws of war. And a 2007 report from Human Rights Watch accused the presiden- tial guard unit in the Central African Republic of dozens of summary executions of civilians.

In recent years, the unprecedented rise in the use of private military forces in wars, especially in Iraq, has challenged the laws of war. 45 Because these private forces are not members of a country’s military, the international laws of war do not necessar- ily apply to them (only states, not corporations, sign the Geneva Conventions). In Iraq, the U.S. government had granted a waiver to these companies to ensure that they could not be prosecuted for violations of international law, only local law. But because there was no formal Iraqi government, no one could enforce violations of domestic law committed by these companies. Several high-profi le incidents (includ- ing abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison and several shootings of civilians) led Congress, the UN, and Iraq to hold private forces accountable. A 2008 Iraqi-U.S. agreement on the status of American military forces ended the legal waiver for private contractors beginning in 2009.

Soldiers have the right under the laws of war to surrender, which is to abandon their status as combatants and become prisoners of war (POWs) . They give up their weapons and their right to fi ght, and earn instead the right (like civilians) not to be targeted. POWs may not be killed, mistreated, or forced to disclose information beyond their name, rank, and serial number. The law of POWs is enforced through practical reciprocity. Once, late in World War II, German forces executed 80 POWs from the French partisan forces (whom Germany did not recognize as legitimate belligerents). The partisans responded by executing 80 German POWs.

43 Cryer, Robert. Prosecuting International Crimes: Selectivity and the International Criminal Law Regime . Cambridge, 2005. 44 Sterba, James P., ed. Terrorism and International Justice. Oxford, 2003. 45 Avant, Deborah. The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security. Cambridge, 2005.

274 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

The laws of war reserve a special role for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) . The ICRC provides practical support—such as medical care, food, and letters from home—to civilians caught in wars and to POWs. Exchanges of POWs are usually negotiated through the ICRC. Armed forces must respect the neutrality of the Red Cross, and usually do so (again, guerrilla war is problematical). In the current war on terrorism, the United States does not consider the “enemy combatants” it detains to be POWs, but has granted the ICRC access to most (though not all) of them. More controversial is the U.S. policy called “extraordinary rendition,” which lets terrorist suspects captured overseas be transferred to other countries, including some that use torture, for questioning.

The laws of warfare impose moral responsibility on individuals in wartime, as well as on states. The Nuremberg Tribunal established that participants can be held accounta- ble for war crimes they commit. German offi cers defended their actions as “just following orders,” but this was rejected; the offi cers were punished, and some executed, for their war crimes.

Not all Nuremberg defendants were found guilty, however. For example, laws of war limit the use of force against civilians to what is necessary and proportional to military objectives. In World War II, the German army besieged the Russian city of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) for two years, and civilians in the city were starving. Sieges of this kind are permitted under international law if an army cannot easily capture a city.

Changing Context The laws of warfare have been undermined by the changing nature of war. Conventional wars by defi ned armed forces on defi ned battlegrounds are giving way to irregular and “low-intensity” wars fought by guerrillas and death squads in cities or jungles. The lines between civilians and soldiers blur in these situ- ations, and war crimes become more commonplace. In the Vietnam War, one of the largest problems faced by the United States was an enemy that seemed to be every- where and nowhere. This led frustrated U.S. forces to attack civilian villages seen as supporting the guerrillas. In one infamous case, a U.S. offi cer was court-martialed for ordering his soldiers to massacre hundreds of unarmed civilians in the village of My Lai in 1968 (he was convicted but given a light sentence). In today’s irregular warfare, frequently infl amed by ethnic and religious confl icts, the laws of war are increasingly diffi cult to uphold. 46

Another factor undermining laws of war is that states rarely issue a declaration of war setting out whom they are warring against and the cause of their action. Ironically, such declarations are historically the exception, not the rule. This trend continues today because declarations of war bring little benefi t to the state declaring war and incur obliga- tions under international law. In many cases, such as revolutionary and counterrevolu- tionary civil wars, a declaration would not even be appropriate, because wars are declared only against states, not internal groups. In undeclared wars the distinctions between par- ticipants and nonparticipants are undermined (along with the protection of the latter). The Bush administration called the 2001 terrorist attacks acts of war, and the response a war on terror, but Congress did not formally declare war (just as it had not during the Korean and Vietnam Wars).

46 Wippman, David, and Matthew Evangelista, eds. New Wars, New Laws? Applying the Laws of War in 21st Century Confl icts. Transnational, 2005.

275

POLICY PERSPECTIVES

International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda

PROBLEM How do you balance respect for

international legal principles and national

interests?

BACKGROUND For six years, fi ghting has raged in the western Sudanese province of Darfur. This confl ict has been labeled a genocide by many observers. It is estimated that 2.7 million people have been forced from their homes and perhaps 300,000 have died. While some of the violence in Darfur is between warring rebel groups, the Sudanese government has been accused of arming one set of militias and encouraging the violence.

You are the chief prosecutor for the International Crimi- nal Court (ICC). Although Sudan is not a member of the ICC, because the Security Council referred the Darfur case to the ICC you may choose to begin a case against anyone in the Sudan. The ICC has already issued two arrest warrants for war crimes related to Darfur. In 2009, your predecessor obtained an indictment and arrest warrant against Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Such a move to prosecute a sit- ting president of a country in the middle of a civil war was unprecedented.

DOMESTIC CONSIDERATIONS While human rights groups applauded the decision to pursue criminal charges against the Sudanese president, many countries opposed the move. China and Russia, both of which main- tain diplomatic ties with Sudan, have expressed disap- proval and pressed the ICC to stop prosecutions. Many African Union (AU) countries, which currently deploy peacekeepers in Darfur, have opposed the move, warning that it could lead to a breakdown of the peace process. In fact, after the ICC announced plans to indict al-Bashir, violence did increase in Darfur, including attacks against AU peacekeepers, and after the indictment was announced, Sudan expelled humanitarian NGOs from Darfur, gravely imperiling the population there. The AU

has called for the ICC to suspend all ICC proceedings relating to Darfur, and the Arab League has condemned the indictment of al-Bashir.

The United States and the major European countries support efforts to bring members of the Sudanese govern- ment to justice. And while Russia and China have sug- gested revoking ICC authority to prosecute cases related to Darfur, the United States, France, or Britain could use their Security Council vetoes to stop such an effort. Supporters of the ICC have argued that Darfur represents a crucial case for the future of the legitimacy of the Court. This case will set important precedents as to the power of this rela- tively new body.

SCENARIO Imagine that the Chinese government approaches you and asks you to suspend the indictment of al-Bashir. In return, China agrees to press Sudan to both end violence in Darfur and allow more peacekeepers to be deployed there. China has no direct control over Sudan, however, so China’s promises may bring little change in behavior on the part of Sudan. On the other hand, China does have some pull with the Sudanese leadership. The United States and its allies would be likely to support such a move if it resulted in a stable cease-fi re.

CHOOSE YOUR POLICY Do you suspend the ICC’s efforts to prosecute the Sudanese leadership, especially the Sudanese president, for war crimes? How do you bal- ance the demands of competing great powers? How do you balance your desire to bring justice to the victims of the confl ict in Darfur with the reality of the peace process, which hangs in the balance? Can justice be delayed to save lives in the short term? If justice is delayed, will it ever be achieved?

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276 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

The Evolution of World Order The most powerful states, especially hegemons, have great infl uence on the rules and val- ues that have become embedded over time in a body of international law. 47 For example, the principle of free passage on the open seas is now formally established in international law. But at one time warships from one state did not hesitate to seize the ships of other states and make off with their cargoes. This practice was profi table to the state that pulled off such raids, but of course, their own ships could be raided in return. Such behavior made long-distance trade itself more dangerous, less predictable, and less profi table. The trading states could benefi t more by getting rid of the practice. So, over time, a norm developed around the concept of freedom of navigation on the high seas. It became one of the fi rst areas of international law developed by the Dutch legal scholar Hugo Grotius in the mid-1600s—a time when the Dutch dominated world trade and could benefi t most from free navigation.

Dutch power, then, provided the backbone for the international legal concept of freedom of the seas. Later, when Britain was dominant, it enforced the principle of  free seas through the cannons of its warships. As the world’s main trading state, Britain benefi ted from a worldwide norm of free shipping and trade. And with the world’s most powerful navy, it was in a position to defi ne and enforce the rules for the world’s oceans.

Likewise, 20th-century world order depended heavily on the power of the United States (and, for a few decades, on the division of power between the United States and the Soviet Union). The United States at times came close to adopting the explicit role of “world police force.” But in truth the world is too large for any single state—even a hegemon—to police effectively. Rather, the world’s states usually go along with the rules established by the most powerful state without constant policing. Meanwhile, they try to infl uence the rules by working through international institutions (to which the hegemon cedes some of its power). In this way, although states do not yield their sovereignty, they vest some power and authority in international institutions and laws and generally work within that framework.

Three factors combined to shake up international norms in the post–Cold War era—the end of the Cold War, the shifts in economic position of various regions and states, and the effects of technological change in creating a “small world.” Domestic and local politics now play out on a global stage. These new norms still remain unsettled. New expectations are emerging in such areas as human rights, UN peace- keeping, humanitarian interventions, Russia’s and China’s roles as great powers, and the U.S. role as a superpower. However, core norms and stable institutions shape international political economy—the subject of the remaining chapters of this book— with more stability than in international security. We return to the pinnacle of inter- national organization, the EU, in Chapter 10 . But fi rst, we review key world economic arrangements.

47 Ikenberry, G. John. After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars . Princeton, 2001.

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Chapter Review 277

CHAPTER REVIEW

SUMMARY ■ International anarchy is balanced by world order—rules and institutions through

which states cooperate for mutual benefi t. ■ States follow the rules—both moral norms and formal international laws—much

more often than not. These rules operate through institutions (IOs), with the UN at the center of the institutional network.

■ The UN embodies a tension between state sovereignty and supranational authority. In part because of its deference to state sovereignty, the UN has attracted virtually universal membership of the world’s states, including all the great powers.

■ The UN particularly defers to the sovereignty of great powers, fi ve of whom as per- manent Security Council members can each block any security-related resolution binding on UN member states. The fi ve permanent members of the Security Coun- cil are the United States, France, Great Britain, China, and Russia.

■ Each of the 193 UN member states has one vote in the General Assembly, which serves mainly as a world forum and an umbrella organization for social and eco- nomic development efforts.

■ The UN is administered by international civil servants in the Secretariat, headed by the secretary-general.

■ The regular UN budget plus all peacekeeping missions together amount to far less than 1 percent of what the world spends on military forces.

■ UN peacekeeping forces are deployed in regional confl icts in fi ve world regions. Their main role is to monitor compliance with agreements such as cease-fi res, disar- mament plans, and fair election rules. They were scaled back dramatically in 1995– 1997, then grew rapidly since 1998.

■ UN peacekeepers operate under the UN fl ag and command. Sometimes national troops operate under their own fl ag and command to carry out UN resolutions.

■ IOs include UN programs (mostly on economic and social issues), autonomous UN agencies, and organizations with no formal tie to the UN. This institutional net- work helps strengthen and stabilize the rules of IR.

■ International law, the formal body of rules for state relations, derives from treaties (most important), custom, general principles, and legal scholarship—not from legis- lation passed by any government.

■ International law is diffi cult to enforce and is enforced in practice by national power, international coalitions, and the practice of reciprocity.

■ The World Court hears grievances of one state against another but cannot infringe on state sovereignty in most cases. It is an increasingly useful avenue for arbitrating relatively minor confl icts.

■ A permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) began operations in 2003. Tak- ing over from two UN tribunals, it hears cases of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

■ In international law, diplomats have long had special status. Embassies are consid- ered the territory of their home country.

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278 Chapter 7 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights

■ Laws of war are also long-standing and well established. They distinguish combat- ants from civilians, giving each certain rights and responsibilities. Guerrilla wars and ethnic confl icts have blurred these distinctions.

■ International norms concerning human rights are becoming stronger and more widely accepted. However, human rights law is problematic because it entails inter- ference by one state in another’s internal affairs.

KEY TERMS international

norms 233 international

organizations (IOs) 234

UN Charter 237 UN General

Assembly 237 UN Security

Council 239 UN Secretariat 239 peacebuilding 247 UN Conference on Trade

and Development (UNCTAD) 252

Amnesty International 268

responsibility to protect (R2P) 269

war crimes 270 crimes against

humanity 270 International Criminal

Court (ICC) 272 prisoners of war

(POWs) 273 International Committee

of the Red Cross (ICRC) 274

World Health Organization (WHO) 253

World Court (International Court of Justice) 256

immigration law 261 diplomatic

recognition 261 diplomatic

immunity 262 just wars 263 human rights 264 Universal Declaration of

Human Rights (UDHR) 266

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS 1. Suppose you were asked to recommend changes in the structure of the UN Security

Council (especially in permanent membership and the veto). What changes would you recommend, if any? Based on what logic?

2. The former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali proposed (without suc- cess) the creation of a standby army of peacemaking forces loaned by member states (see p. 249 ) . This would reduce state sovereignty a bit and increase supranational authority. Discuss this plan’s merits and drawbacks.

3. Collective security against aggression depends on states’ willingness to bear the costs of fi ghting wars to repel and punish aggressors. Sometimes great powers have been willing to bear such costs; at other times they have not. What considerations do you think should guide such decisions? Give examples of situations (actual or potential) that would and would not merit the intervention of great powers to reverse aggression.

Chapter Review 279

4. Given the diffi culty of enforcing international law, how might the role of the World Court be strengthened in future years? What obstacles might such plans encounter? How would they change the Court’s role if they succeeded?

5. Although international norms concerning human rights are becoming stronger, China and many other states continue to consider human rights an internal affair over which the state has sovereignty within its territory. Do you think human rights are a legitimate subject for one state to raise with another? If so, how do you recon- cile the tensions between state autonomy and universal rights? What practical steps could be taken to get sovereign states to acknowledge universal human rights?

Human Rights: A Hollow Promise to the World?

LET’S DEBATE THE ISSUE

ARGUMENT 1

States Make Few Efforts to Promote and Protect Human Rights

Most UN treaties concerning human rights are not enforced. The core UN human rights treaties have little, if any, enforce- ment attached to them. In fact, some of the worst violators of human rights are often the fi rst to sign these documents because they know there will be no enforcement of the rules. The treaties are only pieces of paper.

Political goals will always subvert the promotion of human rights. When push comes to shove, states will ignore human rights abuses to achieve other political goals. Whether it is the United States ignoring political repression in China, China ignoring genocide in Sudan, or South Africa ignoring a crackdown in Zimbabwe, states of all types will turn a blind eye to human rights abuses if it serves their purposes.

Human rights standards are applied unevenly. When attention is paid to human rights violations, it is done so unevenly. More often than not, violations are brought to light only against states that are considered enemies or politically unimportant. Meanwhile, similar violations are ignored in allied or politically powerful states.

Overview Since the adoption of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights over 60 years ago, states have been committed to advancing human rights. Seven different UN treaties, signed by the majority of the world’s states, guarantee the protection and advancement of human rights in several areas including the rights of women, the rights of the child, the rights of migrant workers, and protection from torture. Numerous other regional treaties and proto- cols promote economic well-being, protect due- process rights, and endorse self-determination.

State leaders consistently tout the importance of human rights in promoting fairness, justice, and equality. This is true of both democratic and non- democratic states. In rhetoric, the importance of promoting and protecting human rights does seem universal.

Yet, violations of all of these treaties still occur and indeed, at times, seem commonplace. Viola- tions range from small (lack of equal protection for minorities in some states, the allowing of torture of a few individuals) to large (genocide in Darfur). No matter the scale of the violations, all show a brazen disregard for the importance of human rights. This leads many to ask, is the promise of global human rights one that states will ever attempt to fulfi ll? Can individuals count on state governments to pro- mote and protect human rights?

Questions ■ Do states, especially Western states, effectively

advance human rights? Do you think there has been more or less enforcement of human rights standards in the past decade? Are there impor- tant cases of states supporting human rights? Or ignoring violations of them?

■ How can human rights standards be more effec- tively promoted? Is it more effective to use sticks (threats of punishment) or carrots (promises of rewards for better behavior) to improve respect for human rights?

■ Is promoting human rights standards forcing a particular set of morals and norms on non- Western states? Is there such a thing as univer- sal human rights?

For Further Reading Donnelly, Jack. International Human Rights. 3rd ed.

Westview, 2006. Mahoney, Jack. The Challenge of Human Rights:

Origin, Development and Signifi cance. Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.

Mutua, Makau. Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique. Pennsylvania, 2008.

Farmer, Paul, and Amartya Sen. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. California, 2004.

ARGUMENT 2

States Do Help to Promote Human Rights

Emerging norms of democracy are promoting human rights. The growing number of democratic countries around the globe is serving to increase respect for human rights. Democracies are more likely to protect and pro- mote human rights. Many Western countries have expanded their support for young democra- cies, which will help human rights worldwide.

NGOs continue to work with states to promote human rights. NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch continue to provide information to states and their citizens concerning human rights abuses. While states do not act on all of these instances, they do respond to some of these grassroots efforts to improve global respect for human rights. NGOs are thus important agents for states wanting to advance the cause of human rights.

States promote human rights through other institutions. Many states are beginning to condition foreign aid and free trade policies on human rights behavior. The European Union requires all signatories to trade agreements to abide by certain human rights standards, while the United States requires all free trade partners to acknowledge workers’ and children’s rights. These requirements, embedded in economically important treaties, are more likely to be enforced.

Port in Valparaiso, Chile, 2005.

International Trade

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283

CHAPTER OUTLINE Theories of Trade International trade amounts to a sixth of the total economic activity in the world. About $19 trillion of goods and services cross international borders each year. 1 This is a very large number, about 12 times the world’s military spending, for example. The great volume of international trade refl ects the fact that trade is profi table.

The role of trade in the economy varies somewhat from one nation to another, but overall, it is at least as important in the global South as in the industrialized North. Although the global South accounts for a relatively small part of all trade in the world economy, this is because its economic activity itself is only 40 percent of the world total (see p. 24 ) .

Trade is not only an economic issue but a highly political one. It crosses state- defi ned borders, is regulated by states that are pressured by interest groups, and occurs within trade regimes maintained by and negotiated among states.

Scholars of international political economy (IPE) thus study the politics of interna- tional economic activities. 2 The most frequently studied of these activities are trade, monetary relations, and multinational corporations (see this chapter and Chapter 9 ) . In addition, two topics of special interest in recent years are the economic integration of Europe and other regions ( Chapter 10 ) and the international politics of the global environment ( Chapter 11 ) . Most scholars of IPE focus on the industrialized regions of the world, where most of the world’s economic activity occurs. However, the global South has received growing attention as globalization integrates parts of the South into the world economy more intensely ( Chapters 12 and 13 ) . Although these issues over- lap (to varying degrees) with international security matters, they all deal primarily with political bargaining over economic issues and thus fi t within IPE broadly defi ned.

The core principles laid out in Chapter 1 and the concepts of power and bargain- ing developed initially in Chapter 2 apply to IPE. States are the most important actors in IPE, but are not as important as in international security. Actors in IPE, as in secu- rity affairs, tend to act in their own interests. As Brazil’s foreign minister explained in 2001, his country shared with the United States the same guiding principle in negoti- ating a hemisphere-wide free trade area: “What’s in it for us?” 3

Liberalism and Mercantilism Two major approaches within IPE differ on their views of trade. 4 One approach, called mercantilism , generally shares with realism the belief that each state must protect its own interests at the expense of others—not relying on international organizations to

Theories of Trade ■ Liberalism and

Mercantilism ■ Comparative Advantage ■ Political Interference in

Markets ■ Protectionism

Trade Regimes ■ The World Trade

Organization ■ Bilateral and Regional

Agreements ■ Cartels ■ Industries and Interest

Groups ■ Enforcement of Trade

Rules

Economic Globalization ■ The Evolving World

Economy ■ Resistance to Trade

Study and Review the Pre-Test & Flashcards at MyPoliSciLab

2 Oatley, Thomas H. International Political Economy: Interests and Institutions in the Global Economy. 4th ed. Longman, 2009. Frieden, Jeffry A., and David A. Lake. International Political Economy: Perspectives on Global Power and Wealth. 4th ed. St. Martin’s, 2000. Peterson, V. Spike. A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy: Integrating Reproductive, Productive, and Virtual Economies. Routledge, 2003. Chase-Dunn, Christopher, ed. The Historical Evolution of the International Political Economy. Elgar, 1995. Murphy, Craig N. International Organization and Industrial Change, Global Governance Since 1850. Polity, 1994. 3 Rohter, Larry, with Jennifer L. Rich. Brazil Takes a Trade Stance and Offers a Warning to U.S. The New York Times, December 19, 2001: W1. 4 Hellenier, Eric. Economic Liberalism and Its Critics: The Past as Prologue? Review of International Political Economy 10 (4), 2003: 685–96.

1 Data in this chapter are calculated from World Trade Organization statistics.

284 Chapter 8 International Trade

create a framework for mutual gains. Mercantilists therefore emphasize relative power (as do realists): what matters is not so much a state’s absolute amount of well-being as its posi- tion relative to rival states. 5

In addition, mercantilism (like realism) holds that the importance of economic trans- actions lies in their implications for the military. States worry about relative wealth and trade because these can be translated directly into military power. Thus, although military power is generally not useful in economic negotiations, mercantilists believe that the out- come of economic negotiations matters for military power.

Economic liberalism , an alternative approach, generally shares with liberal interna- tionalism a belief in the possibility of cooperation to realize common gains (see pp. 90 – 92 and pp. 233 – 235 ) . 6 It holds that by building international organizations, institutions, and norms, states can mutually benefi t from economic exchanges. It matters little to liberals whether one state gains more or less than another—just whether the state’s wealth is increasing in absolute terms.

Liberalism and mercantilism are theories of economics and also ideologies that shape state policies. Liberalism is the dominant approach in Western economics, though more so in microeconomics (the study of fi rms and households) than in macroeconomics (the study of national economies). Marxism is often treated as a third theoretical/ideological approach to IPE, along with mercantilism and liberalism (see Chapter 4 ) . Marxist approaches are attuned to economic exploitation as a force that shapes political relations. We will explore Marxist theories in depth in Chapter 12 , as they fi nd their greatest explanatory power in North-South relations.

Most international economic exchanges (as well as security relationships) contain some element of mutual interests—joint gains that can be realized through coopera- tion—and some element of confl icting interests. Game theorists call this a “mixed interest” game. For example, in the game of Chicken (see p. 78 ) , the two drivers share an interest in avoiding a head-on collision, yet their interests diverge in that one can be a hero only if the other is a chicken. In international trade, even when two states both benefi t from a trade (a shared interest), one or the other will benefi t more (a confl icting interest).

Liberalism emphasizes the shared interests in economic exchanges, whereas mercan- tilism emphasizes the confl icting interests. For liberals, the most important goal of eco- nomic policy is to create a maximum of total wealth by achieving optimal effi ciency (maximizing output, minimizing waste). For mercantilists, the most important goal is to create the most favorable possible distribution of wealth (see Figure 8.1 ).

Liberal economists believe in markets. The terms of an exchange are defi ned by the price at which goods are traded. Often the bargaining space —the difference between the lowest price a seller would accept and the highest price a buyer would pay—is quite large. For example, Saudi Arabia would be willing to sell a barrel of oil (if it had no better option) for as little as, say, $10 a barrel, and industrialized countries are willing to pay more than $100 a barrel for the oil. (In practice, oil prices have fl uctuated in this broad range in recent decades.) How are prices determined within this range? That is, how do the participants decide on the distribution of benefi ts from the exchange?

Explore the Simulation

“International Trade: You Are a Trade

Expert” at MyPoliSciLab

5 Gilpin, Robert. Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order. Princeton, 2001. Grieco, Joseph, and John Ikenberry. State Power and World Markets: The International Political Economy. Norton, 2002. 6 Neff, Stephen C. Friends but No Allies: Economic Liberalism and the Law of Nations. Columbia, 1990. Ward, Benjamin. The Ideal Worlds of Economics: Liberal, Radical, and Conservative Economic World Views. Basic, 1979.

Theories of Trade 285

When there are multiple buyers and sellers of a good (or equivalent goods that can be substituted for it), prices are determined by market competition. 7 In practice, free markets are supposed to (and sometimes do) produce stable patterns of buying and selling at a fairly uniform price. At this market price, sellers know that an effort to raise the price would drive the buyer to seek another seller, and buyers know that an effort to lower the price would drive the seller to seek another buyer. Thus, in liberal economics, bilateral relations between states are less important than they are in security affairs. The existence of world markets reduces the leverage that one state can exert over another in economic affairs (because the second state can simply fi nd other partners). For example, U.S. sanc- tions on Iran, a major oil exporter, invited European companies to fi ll the void in recent years. In IPE, then, power is more diffuse and involves more actors at once than in inter- national security.

Buyers vary in the value they place on an item (such as a barrel of oil); if the price rises, fewer people are willing to buy it, and if the price drops, more people are willing to buy it. This is called the demand curve for the item. Sellers also vary in the value they place on the item. If the price rises, more sellers are willing to supply the item to buyers; if the price drops, fewer sellers are willing to supply the item. This is called the supply curve. In a free market, the price at which the supply and demand curves cross is the equilibrium price. At this price, sellers are willing to supply the same number of units that buyers are willing to purchase. (In practice, prices refl ect expectations about supply and demand in the near future.)

The supply and demand system does not always produce stability, however. Such a failure can be seen with oil, arguably the most important commodity in the world economy

7 Lindblom, Charles E. The Market System: What It Is, How It Works, and What to Make of It. Yale, 2001.

Be ne

fit to

A ct

or 2

Benefit to Actor 1

Pareto-optimal frontier

A

B

C

0 0

(No deal)

FIGURE 8.1 Joint and Individual Benefi ts

Any deal struck, such as at point A, yields certain benefi ts to each actor (dotted lines). Joint benefi ts are maximized at the Pareto-optimal frontier, but the distribution of those benefi ts, as between points B and C (both of which are better than A for both actors), is a matter for bargaining. Liberalism is more concerned with joint benefi ts, mercantilism more with the relative distribution.

286 Chapter 8 International Trade

and the most traded one by value. The price of a barrel of oil has fl uctuated radically over recent years. Each time world economic growth accelerates, demand for oil rises and so does its price. But each time oil prices spike up, Western economies go into recession because high prices for this key commodity undermine the whole economy. These reces- sions in turn reduce demand, and oil prices drop. 8 The amount of economic activity may vary by only 5 or 10 percent, but the price of oil doubles or triples, then drops in half. The most recent case of this cycle, in 2007–2008, saw spectacular, unprecedented (and unsus- tainable) increases in oil prices from around $70 a barrel to $140 a barrel, driven by new demand in fast-growing Asian economies, among other factors. The world economy then entered a spectacular, unprecedented recession, and oil prices dropped in just a few months back to $40 a barrel. This kind of instability in the price of a key commodity is terrible for the world economy, and creates a big incentive for governments to take politi- cal actions rather than rely entirely on market forces.

Liberalism sees individual households and fi rms as the key actors in the economy and views government’s most useful role as one of noninterference in economics, except to regulate markets in order to help them function effi ciently (and to create infrastructure such as roads, which also help the economy function effi ciently). Politics, in this view, should serve the interests of economic effi ciency. With the hand of government removed from markets, the “invisible hand” of supply and demand can work out the most effi cient patterns of production, exchange, and consumption (through the mechanism of prices). Because of the benefi ts of free trade among countries, liberals disdain realists’ obsession with international borders, because borders constrain the maximum efficiency of exchange. Trade-based wealth depends on international political cooperation, and vio- lence usually does not work well in pursuing such wealth. Thus, liberals argue that inter- dependence inherently promotes peace , an idea introduced earlier (pp. 90 – 92 ) . 9 (Then again, some observers saw similar trends in international interdependence just before World War I, but war occurred anyway.)

For mercantilists, by contrast, economics should serve politics: the creation of wealth underlies state power. Because power is relative, trade is desirable only when the distribu- tion of benefi ts favors one’s own state over rivals. 10 The terms of exchange shape the rela- tive rates at which states accumulate power and thus shape the way power distributions in the international system change over time.

Mercantilism achieved prominence several hundred years ago, and Britain used trade to rise in relative power in the international system around the 18th century. At that time mercantilism meant specifi cally the creation of a trade surplus in order to stockpile money in the form of precious metal (gold and silver), which could then be used to buy military capabilities (mercenary armies and weapons) in time of war. 11

Mercantilism declined in the 19th century as Britain decided it had more to gain from free trade than from protectionism. It returned as a major approach in the period between World War I and World War II, when liberal global trading relations broke down. With the global recession in 2009, world leaders eyed each other warily to see if mercantilism would again make a comeback.

8 Goldstein, Joshua S., Xiaoming Huang, and Burcu Akan. Energy in the World Economy, 1950–1992. International Studies Quarterly 41 (2), 1997: 241–66. 9 Mansfi eld, Edward D., ed. International Confl ict and the Global Economy. Elgar, 2004. 10 Grieco, Joseph M. Cooperation among Nations: Europe, America, and Non-Tariff Barriers to Trade. Cornell, 1990. Gowa, Joanne. Allies, Adversaries, and International Trade. Princeton, 1993. Hirschman, Albert O. National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade. California, 1945. 11 Coulomb, Fanny. Economic Theories of Peace and War. Routledge, 2004.

Theories of Trade 287

Mercantilists’ preferred means of making trade serve a state’s political interests— even at the cost of some lost wealth that free markets might have created—is to create a favorable balance of trade. The balance of trade is the value of a state’s imports relative to its exports. A state that exports more than it imports has a positive balance of trade, or trade surplus. China has run a large trade surplus for years, passing $250 billion per year. It gets more money for the many goods it exports than it pays for raw materials and other imported goods (see Figure 8.2 ). A state that imports more than it exports has a negative balance of trade ( trade defi cit ). A trade defi cit is different from a budget defi cit in government spending (see pp. 336 – 337 ) . Since the late 1990s, the U.S. trade defi cit has grown steadily to hundreds of billions of dollars per year, approaching $1 trillion, with about a quarter accounted for by China and another quarter by oil imports.

States must ultimately reconcile the balance of trade. It is tracked fi nancially through the system of national accounts (pp. 333 – 334 ) . In the short term, a state can trade for a few years at a defi cit and then a few years at a surplus. The imbalances are carried on the national accounts as a kind of loan. But a trade defi cit that persists for years becomes a problem. In recent years, to balance its trade defi cit, the United States has “exported” currency (dollars) to China, Japan, Europe, and other countries, which use the dollars to buy such things as shares of U.S. companies, U.S. Treasury bills, or U.S. real estate. Economists worry that if foreigners lose their taste for investments in the United States, the U.S. economy could suffer.

This is one reason why mercantilists favor national economic policies to create a trade surplus. Then, rather than being unable to fi nd the money it might need to cope

350

400 billion

300

250

200

150

100

50

0

(Y ea

rly T

ra de

B al

an ce

)

20012000 2002 20042003 2005 2007 2008 2009 2010 20112006

FIGURE 8.2 China’s Growing Trade Surplus

Source: New York Times September 12, 2006: US Census, Foreign Trade Statistics.

288 Chapter 8 International Trade

with a crisis or fi ght a war, the state sits on a pile of money representing potential power. Historically, mercantilism literally meant stockpiling gold (gained from running a trade surplus) as a fungible form of power (see Figure 8.3 ). Such a strategy is attuned to realism’s emphasis on relative power and is an example of the dominance principle. For one state to have a trade surplus, another must have a defi cit.

Comparative Advantage The overall success of liberal economics is due to the substantial gains that can be real- ized through trade. 12 These gains result from the comparative advantage that different states enjoy in producing different goods (a concept pioneered by economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo 200 years ago). States differ in their abilities to produce cer- tain goods because of differences in natural resources, labor force characteristics, tech- nology, and other such factors. In order to maximize the overall creation of wealth, each state should specialize in producing the goods for which it has a comparative advantage and then trade for goods that another state produces best. Of course, the costs of trans- portation and of processing the information in the trade (called transaction costs ) must be included in the costs of producing an item. But increasingly, as globalization pro- ceeds, both of these are low relative to the differences in the cost of producing items in different locations.

Two commodities of great importance in the world are oil and cars. It is much cheaper to produce oil (or another energy source) in Saudi Arabia than in Japan, and much cheaper to produce cars in Japan than in Saudi Arabia. Japan needs oil to run its industry (including its car industry), and Saudi Arabia needs cars to travel its vast territory (includ- ing reaching its remote oil wells). Even with shipping and transaction costs, shipping

Balance of

Trade

or

Expo rts

Imports

Mone y rece

ived f or exp

orts

Money paid for imports

(Mercantilists' stockpile of money)

Reserves (minus debts)

Surplus adds to

reserves or reduces

debts

Deficit depletes reserves or increases debts

FIGURE 8.3 Balance of Trade

12 Irwin, Douglas. Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade. Princeton, 1996. Dimond, Robert. Classical Theory of the Gains from Trade: The Origins of International Economics. Routledge, 2004.

Theories of Trade 289

Japanese cars to Saudi Arabia and Saudi oil to Japan saves a huge amount of money, com- pared to the costs if each tried to be self-suffi cient.

A state need not have an absolute advantage (that is, be the most effi cient producer in the world) in producing one kind of good in order to make specialization pay. It need only specialize in producing goods that are relatively lower in cost than other goods. Imag- ine that Japan discovered a way to produce synthetic oil using the same mix of labor and capital that it now uses to produce cars, and that this synthetic oil could be produced a bit more cheaply than what it costs Saudi Arabia to produce oil, but that Japan could still produce cars much more cheaply than Saudi Arabia. It might seem intuitive that Japan should produce synthetic oil rather than pay extra for Saudi oil. But this is wrong. From a strictly economic point of view, Japan should keep producing cars (where it has a huge comparative advantage) and not divert capital and labor to make synthetic oil (where it has only a slight advantage). The extra profi ts Japan would make from exporting more cars would more than compensate for the slightly higher price it would pay to import oil.

Thus, international trade generally expands the Pareto-optimal frontier (see Fig- ure  8.1 on p. 285 ) by increasing the overall effi ciency of production. Free trade allocates global resources to states that have the greatest comparative advantage in producing each kind of commodity. As a result, prices are both lower overall and more consistent world- wide. Increasingly, production is oriented to the world market.

The economic benefi ts of trade, however, come with some political drawbacks. First, long-term benefi ts may incur short-term costs. When a state begins to import goods that it had been producing domestically, its economy may be disrupted; workers may need to retrain and fi nd new jobs, and capital may not be easy to convert to new uses. Thus, state leaders may feel political pressure to become involved in economic policy (see “Resistance to Trade,” pp. 313 – 314 ) . Also, the benefi ts and costs of trade tend to be unevenly distributed within a state. Some industries or communities may benefi t at the expense of others. For example, if a U.S. manufacturing company moves its factory to Mexico to take advantage of cheaper labor there and exports its goods back to the United States, the workers at the old U.S. factory lose their jobs, but U.S. consumers enjoy cheaper goods. The costs of such a move fall heavily on a few workers, but the benefi ts are spread thinly across many consumers.

By the same logic, protectionist measures benefi t a few people greatly, and cost many people a bit. By one estimate, a 20 percent steel tariff enacted by the Bush administration in 2002–2003 cost consumers $7 billion and saved 7,300 U.S. jobs—a pricey $326,000 per job. 13 Yet those 7,300 workers (and their unions and companies) benefi t greatly, whereas the roughly $20 cost per U.S. citizen goes unnoticed. This kind of unequal distribution of costs and benefi ts often creates political problems for free trade even when the overall eco- nomic benefi ts outweigh the costs. Worker or industry interest groups (see pp. 304 – 307 ) will form against the concentrated costs (losing jobs) far more often than consumer groups will form against the diffuse losses (such as a $20 increase for many).

Political Interference in Markets A free and effi cient market requires many buyers and sellers with fairly complete information about the market. Also, the willingness of participants to deal with each other should not be distorted by personal (or political) preferences but should be governed only by price and quality considerations. Deviations from these conditions, called market imperfections, reduce effi ciency. Most political intrusions into economic transactions are market imperfections.

13 Kahn, Joseph. U.S. Trade Panel Backs Putting Hefty Duties on Imported Steel. The New York Times, December 8, 2001: C1, C3.

290 Chapter 8 International Trade

International trade occurs more often at world market prices than does domestic eco- nomic exchange. No world government owns industries, provides subsidies, or regulates prices. Nonetheless, world markets are often affected by politics. When states are the principal actors in international economic affairs, the number of participants is often small. When there is just one supplier of an item—a monopoly —the supplier can set the price quite high. For example, the South African company De Beers produces 40 percent of the world supply and controls two-thirds of the world market for uncut diamonds. An oligopoly is a monopoly shared by just a few large sellers—often allowing for tacit or explicit coordination to force the price up. For example, OPEC members agree to limit oil produc- tion to keep prices up. To the extent that companies band together along national lines, monopolies and oligopolies are more likely.

Another common market imperfection in international trade is corruption; individu- als may receive payoffs to trade at nonmarket prices. The government or company involved may lose some of the benefi ts being distributed, but the individual government offi cial or company negotiator gets increased benefi ts (see pp. 475 – 476 ) .

Politics provides a legal framework for markets—ensuring that participants keep their commitments, contracts are binding, buyers pay for goods they purchase, counter- feit money is not used, and so forth. In the international economy, lacking a central government authority, rules are less easily enforced. As in security affairs, such rules can be codifi ed in international treaties, but enforcement depends on practical reciprocity (see pp. 273 – 274 ) .

Taxation is another political infl uence on markets. Taxes are used both to generate revenue for the government and to regulate economic activity by incentives. For instance, a government may keep taxes low on foreign companies in hopes of attracting them to locate and invest in the country. Taxes applied to international trade itself, called tariffs, are a frequent source of international confl ict (see “Protectionism,” pp. 291 – 294 ) .

Sanctions Political interference in free markets is most explicit when governments apply sanctions against economic interactions of certain kinds or between certain actors. Political power then prohibits an economic exchange that would otherwise have been mutually benefi cial. In 2011, the United States had trade restrictions on 15 states in response to those states’ political actions, such as human rights violations. 14

Enforcing sanctions is always a diffi cult task, because participants have a fi nancial incentive to break the sanctions through black markets or other means. 15 Without broad, multilateral support for international sanctions, they generally fail. For instance, in 2012, India—Iran’s top oil customer—sent a trade delegation to Iran to take advantage of open- ings created by Western sanctions. The diffi culty of applying sanctions refl ects a more gen- eral point made earlier—that power in IPE is more diffused among states than it is in security affairs. Refusing to participate in mutually profi table economic trade often harms oneself more than the target of one’s actions, unless nearly all other states follow suit (note that sanctions enforcement is a form of the collective goods problem). In the case of Iran, it took quite a few years to get European and other major powers on board with the United States (notwithstanding India’s reticence) to apply sanctions that hurt Iran’s economy.

14 See http://www.ustreas.gov/offi ces/enforcement/ofac/programs/index.shtml . 15 Hufbauer, Gary Clyde, Jeffrey Schott, Kimberly Ann Elliot, and Barbara Oegg. Economic Sanctions Reconsidered. Peterson Institute, 2008. Drezner, Daniel W. The Sanctions Paradox: Economic Statecraft and International Relations. Cambridge, 1999. Lopez, George A., and David Cortwright. Smart Sanctions: Targeting Economic Statecraft. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2002. Martin, Lisa L. Coercive Cooperation: Explaining Multilateral Economic Sanctions. Princeton, 1992.

Theories of Trade 291

Autarky One obvious way to avoid becom- ing dependent on other states, especially for a weak state whose trading partners would tend to be more powerful, is to avoid trading and instead to try to produce everything it needs by itself. Such a strategy is called self- reliance or autarky . But it has proven inef- fective. A self-reliant state pays a very high cost to produce goods for which it does not have a comparative advantage. As other states cooperate among themselves to maxi- mize their joint creation of wealth, the rela- tive power of the autarkic state in the international system tends to fall.

States that have relied on a policy of autarky have indeed lagged behind others. A classic case in recent decades was the small state of Albania in southeast Europe. A com- munist state that split from both the Soviet Union and China, Albania for decades did not participate in world markets but relied on a centrally planned economy designed for self-suffi ciency. Few foreigners could visit, little trade took place, and Albania pursued autarky to prevent outsiders from gaining power over it. When this curtain of isolation fi nally fell in 1991, Albania was as poor as decades earlier and had missed out on the prosperity that came to the rest of Europe.

China’s experience also illustrates the problems with autarky. China’s economic isolation in the 1950s and 1960s, resulting from an economic embargo imposed by the United States and its allies, deepened during its Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s when it broke ties with the Soviet Union as well. In that period, China rejected all things foreign. When China opened up to the world economy in the 1980s, the pattern reversed. The rapid expan- sion of trade, along with some market-oriented reforms in its domestic economy, resulted in rapid economic growth. By contrast, North Korea maintained a policy of self-reliance and isolation even after the Cold War, and experienced mass starvation in the 1990s.

Protectionism Although few states pursue strategies of autarky, many states try to manipulate interna- tional trade to strengthen one or more domestic industries and shelter them from world markets. Such policies are broadly known as protectionism —protection of domestic industries from international competition. Although this term encompasses a variety of trade policies arising from various motivations, all are contrary to liberalism in that they seek to distort free markets to gain an advantage for the state (or for substate actors within it), generally by discouraging imports of competing goods or services. 16

SANCTIONS BITE

Economic sanctions, such as the current international restrictions on trade and business with Iran, are among the most obvious ways that politics interferes in markets. Sanctions are hard to enforce, especially when not all countries participate, because doing business is profi table. Once Europe and the United States coordinated tough sanctions on Iran, they caused major economic disruption there, triggering a decline in Iran’s currency by about half. Here, a street vendor offers banknotes on a Tehran street, 2013.

16 Lustzig, Michael. The Limits of Protectionism: Building Coalitions for Free Trade. Pittsburgh, 2004. Goldstein, Judith. The Political Economy of Trade: Institutions of Protection. American Political Science Review 80 (1), 1986: 161–84.

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A state’s motivation to protect domestic industry can arise from several sources. Often governments simply cater to the political demands of important domestic industries and interests, regardless of the overall national interest. An industry may lobby or give cam- paign contributions in order to win special tax breaks, subsidies, or restrictions on compet- ing imports (see “Industries and Interest Groups” later in this chapter).

States often attempt to protect an infant industry as it starts up in the state for the fi rst time, until it can compete on world markets. For instance, when South Korea fi rst devel- oped an automobile industry, it was not yet competitive with imports, so the government gave consumers incentives to buy Korean cars. Eventually the industry developed and could compete with foreign producers and even export cars profi tably. In a number of poor states, the textile trade has been a favored infant industry (adding value without heavy capital requirements) that governments have protected. 17 Protection of infant industry is considered a relatively legitimate reason for (temporary) protectionism.

Another motivation for protection is to give a domestic industry breathing room when market conditions shift or new competitors arrive on the scene. Sometimes domes- tic industry requires time to adapt and can emerge a few years later in a healthy condition. When gas prices jumped in the 1970s, U.S. auto producers were slow to shift to smaller

cars, and smaller Japanese cars gained a great advantage in the U.S. market. The U.S. government used a variety of measures, including import quotas and loan guarantees, to help the U.S. industry through this transition. (Yet when gas prices jumped again in 2008, the U.S. producers again were unprepared, and needed government help to stay afl oat in 2009.)

Government also protects indus- tries considered vital to national security. In the 1980s, U.S. offi cials sought to protect the U.S. electronics and computer industries against being driven out of business by Japanese competitors, because those industries were considered crucial to military production. The government spon- sored a consortium of U.S. computer chip companies to promote the U.S. capability to produce chips cheaply (ordinarily the government would discourage such a consortium as an antitrust violation). Autarky may not pay in most economic activities, but for military goods, states will sacrifi ce some economic effi ciency for the sake of self-suffi ciency, to reduce vulnera- bility in the event of war.

17 Aggarwal, Vinod K. Liberal Protectionism: The International Politics of Organized Textile Trade. California, 1985. English, Beth. A Common Thread: Labor, Politics, and Capital Mobility in the Textile Industry. Georgia, 2006.

KING COTTON

Protectionism uses various means to keep foreign imports from competing with domestic products. Agricultural producers in the global South complain that sub- sidies and other protectionist measures in Europe and the United States prevent poor farmers in developing countries from exporting to world markets. Here, cot- ton awaits processing in Mali, where low prices for cotton, the country’s most important cash crop, have hurt farmers badly (2006).

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Finally, protection may be motivated by a defensive effort to ward off predatory prac- tices by foreign companies or states. Predatory generally refers to efforts to unfairly capture a large share of world markets, or even a near-monopoly, so that eventually the predator can raise prices without fearing competition. Most often these efforts entail dumping products in foreign markets at prices below the minimum level necessary to make a profi t. Within a domestic economy, the government can use antitrust laws to break up an impending monopoly, but because no such mechanism exists in IR, governments try to restrict imports in such situations to protect their state’s industries. Such restrictions are recognized as legitimate, although great disagreements exist about whether a given price level is predatory or merely competitive. These confl icts now generally are resolved through the WTO (see pp. 294 – 298 ) .

Dumping complaints are usually lodged by particular industries that feel they have been harmed by foreign competitors. They must fi rst convince their own governments that they have been unfairly targeted. Then, after their government places tariffs on imports of the good, the foreign government may fi le a complaint with the WTO. In 2007, the WTO ruled against the United States in a complaint brought by Japanese man- ufacturers who claimed they had been unfairly accused of dumping industrial goods on the American market. Ironically, rather than denying that Japan had dumped goods on the American market, the WTO criticized how the United States had computed the tariff on Japanese goods, ruling that it was set too high to create a level playing fi eld. The United States was then forced to review how it proceeds with dumping complaints because of the WTO ruling.

Just as there are several motivations for protectionism, so too governments use several tools to implement this policy. The simplest is a tariff or duty —a tax imposed on certain types of imported goods (usually as a percentage of their value) as they enter the country. Tariffs not only restrict imports but also can be an important source of state revenues. If a state is to engage in protectionism, international norms favor tariffs as the preferred method of protection because they are straightforward and not hidden (see pp. 294 – 298 ) . Most states maintain a long and complex schedule of tariffs based on thousands of catego- ries and subcategories of goods organized by industry.

Other means to discourage imports are nontariff barriers to trade. Imports can be limited by a quota. Quotas are ceilings on how many goods of a certain kind can be imported; they are imposed to restrict the growth of such imports. The extreme version is a fl at prohibition against importing a certain type of good (or goods from a certain coun- try). The U.S. government used quotas to restrict the number of Japanese-made cars that could enter the United States in the 1980s, when the U.S. automobile industry was losing ground rapidly to Japanese imports. Most of those quotas were voluntary in that Japan and the United States negotiated a level that both could live with.

The two nontariff barriers that are the most fought about in the WTO are subsidies and regulation. Subsidies are payments by a government to a domestic industry that allow it to lower its prices without losing money. Such subsidies are extensive in, but not limited to, state-owned industries. Subsidies to an industry struggling to get established or facing strong foreign competition include tax breaks, loans (or guaranteed private loans) on favo- rable terms, and high guaranteed prices paid by governments. Subsidies to farmers have been the major sticking point between rich and poor countries in the Doha Round trade talks. In 2010, the United States and Brazil settled a WTO case over American subsidies to cotton growers. Prior to the settlement, Brazil was set to begin imposing nearly $830 million in sanctions against the United States.

Subsidies are also a frequent source of U.S.-European confl ict, often involving EU policies regarding the Common Agricultural Policy (see p. 360 ) . Subsidies outside the agricultural sector can also be sensitive politically. A European aerospace company that

294 Chapter 8 International Trade

receives EU subsidies now actively bids on American defense department projects. American manufacturers complain that the subsidies given to the EU-based company make it diffi cult for them to compete since the subsidies allow the European company to place a lower bid. Thus, subsidies have moved from an issue in trade policy to the secu- rity area as well.

Imports can also be restricted by restrictions and regulations that make it hard to dis- tribute and market a product even when it can be imported. In marketing U.S. products in Japan, U.S. manufacturers complain of complex bureaucratic regulations and a tight system of corporate alliances funneling the supply of parts from Japanese suppliers to Japa- nese manufacturers. Environmental and labor regulations can function as nontariff barri- ers as well. This has caused great controversy in the WTO (see pp. 294 – 298 ) , such as when Europe banned genetically modifi ed crops that happened to come mostly from the United States. Finally, when a state nationalizes an entire industry, such as oil production or banking, foreign competition is shut out.

Sometimes a country’s culture, rather than state action, discourages imports. Citizens may (with or without government encouragement) follow a philosophy of economic nationalism —use of economics to infl uence international power and relative standing in the international system (a form of mercantilism). For example, U.S. citizens sometimes ignore the advice of liberal economists to buy the best products at the best price, and instead “buy American” even if it means paying more for an equivalent product. Although such a bias reduces the overall effi ciency of world production, it does benefi t U.S. workers.

Protectionism has both positive and negative effects on an economy, most often helping producers but hurting consumers. For instance, although U.S. automobile manu- facturers were aided somewhat by the restrictions imposed on Japanese imports in the 1980s, U.S. automobile consumers paid more for cars as a result (several hundred dollars more per car by some estimates). Another problem with protectionism is that domestic industry may use protection to avoid needed improvements and may therefore remain ineffi cient and uncompetitive—especially if protection continues over many years.

Still, temporary protectionism can have a stabilizing effect under certain conditions. When U.S. motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson lost half its U.S. market share in just four years, the U.S. government imposed tariffs on imported Japanese motorcycles. The tariffs started at 45 percent in 1983 and were to decline each year for fi ve years and then be eliminated. With the clock running, Harley scrambled to improve effi ciency and raise quality. As a result, Harley regained its market share, and the tariffs were lifted a year early. In the late 1980s, a reinvigorated Harley expanded its market share and began exporting to Japan. Protectionism worked in this case because it was short term and straightforward.

Trade Regimes As technology links the world across space, a global integration process based on free trade is shaping the international economic agenda. The World Trade Organization plays the central role in this process.

The World Trade Organization The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a global, multilateral IGO that promotes, monitors, and adjudicates international trade. Together with the regional and bilateral arrangements described shortly, the WTO shapes the overall expectations and practices

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Trade Regimes 295

of states regarding international trade. 18 The WTO is the successor organization to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) , which was created in 1947 to facili- tate freer trade on a multilateral basis. The GATT was more of a negotiating framework than an administrative institution. It did not actually regulate trade. Before the GATT, proposals for a stronger institutional agency had been rejected because of U.S. fears that overregulation would stifl e free trade. The GATT had little institutional infrastructure until the mid-1990s, with just a small secretariat headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland (where the WTO remains). In addition to its main role as a negotiating forum, the GATT helped arbitrate trade disputes, clarifying the rules and helping states observe them.

In 1995, the GATT became the WTO, which incorporated the GATT agreements on manufactured goods and extended the agenda to include trade in services and intel- lectual property. The WTO has some powers of enforcement and an international bureaucracy (more than 600 people) that monitors trade policies and practices in each member state and adjudicates disputes among members. The WTO wields some power over states, but as with most international institutions, this power is limited. An ongoing public backlash against free trade (see pp. 313 – 314 ) refl ects uneasiness about the poten- tial power of a foreign and secretive organization to force changes in democratically enacted national laws. But the WTO is the central international institution governing trade and therefore one that almost all countries want to participate in and develop.

Over time, the membership of the WTO has grown. By 2012, 155 countries—includ- ing all of the world’s major trading states—had joined the WTO. Russia’s membership bid succeeded in 2011 after 17 years, when neighboring Georgia agreed not to block it (a consensus of all members is needed). Vietnam joined in 2007, and Ukraine in 2008. More than 25 states are seeking admission, the most important of which are Iran and Iraq. After more than a decade of negotiations, China joined in 2001. The United States and other countries usually demand, as a condition of membership, liberalization of the trading prac- tices of would-be members. These new practices have affected China’s economic and political development (see pp. 464 – 467 ) .

The WTO framework rests on the principle of reciprocity—matching states’ lowering of trade barriers to one another. It also uses the concept of nondiscrimination, embodied in the most-favored nation (MFN) concept, which says that trade restrictions imposed by a WTO member on its most-favored trading partner must be applied equally to all WTO members. If Australia applies a 20 percent tariff on auto parts imported from France, it must not apply a 40 percent tariff on auto parts imported from the United States. Thus, the WTO does not get rid of barriers to trade altogether but equalizes them in a global framework to create a level playing fi eld for all member states. States are not prevented from protecting their own industries but cannot play favorites among their trading part- ners. States may also extend MFN status to others that are not WTO members, as the United States did with China before it joined the WTO.

An exception to the MFN system is the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) , dating from the 1970s, by which rich states give trade concessions to poor ones to help their economic development. Preferences amount to a promise by rich states to allow imports from poor ones under lower tariffs than those imposed under MFN. 19

The WTO continues the GATT’s role as a negotiating forum for multilateral trade agreements that lower trade barriers on a fair and reciprocal basis. These detailed and complex agreements specify commitments to lower certain trade barriers by certain

18 Hoekman, Bernard, and Michel Kostecki. The Political Economy of the World Trading System: The WTO and Beyond. 2nd ed. Oxford, 2001. 19 Ozden, Caglar, and Eric Reinhardt. The Perversity of Preferences: GSP and Developing Country Trade Policies, 1976–2000. Journal of Development Economics (78) 1, 2005: 1–21.

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amounts on fi xed schedules. Almost every commitment entails domestic political costs, because domestic industries lose protection against foreign competition. Even when other states agree to make similar commitments in other areas, lowering trade barriers is often hard for national governments.

As a result, negotiations on these multilateral agreements are long and diffi cult, typi- cally stretching on for years in a round of negotiations. Among the fi ve rounds of GATT negotiations from 1947 to 1995, the Kennedy Round in the 1960s—so called because it started during the Kennedy administration—paid special attention to the growing role of European integration, which the United States found somewhat threatening. The Tokyo Round (begun in Tokyo) in the 1970s had to adjust rules to new conditions of world interdependence when, for instance, OPEC raised oil prices and Japan began to dominate the automobile export business.

The Uruguay Round started in 1986 (in Uruguay). Although the rough outlines of a new GATT agreement emerged after a few years, closure eluded fi ve successive G7 sum- mit meetings in 1990–1994. As the round dragged on year after year, participants said the GATT should be renamed the “General Agreement to Talk and Talk.” A successful con- clusion to the round would add more than $100 billion to the world economy annually. But that money was a collective good, to be enjoyed both by states that made concessions in the fi nal negotiations and by states that did not. Agreement was fi nally reached in late 1994. The United States had pressured Europe to reduce agricultural subsidies and states in the global South to protect intellectual property rights. In the end, the United States got some, but not all, of what it wanted. For example, France held out adamantly and won the right to protect its fi lm industry against U.S. fi lms.

From 1947, the GATT encouraged states to use import tariffs rather than nontariff barriers to protect industries, and to lower those tariffs over time. The GATT concen- trated on manufactured goods and succeeded in substantially reducing the average tariffs, from 40 percent of the goods’ value decades ago to 3 percent by 2002 (under the Uruguay Round agreement). Tariff rates in the global South are much higher, around 15 percent (refl ecting the greater protection that industry there apparently needs).

Agricultural trade is politically more sensitive than trade in manufactured goods (see p. 138 ) and came into play only in the Uruguay Round. 20 Trade in services, such as bank- ing and insurance, is another current major focus of the WTO. Such trade exceeded one- fi fth of the total value of world trade in 2012. Trade in telecommunications is a related area of interest. In 1997, 70 states negotiating through the WTO agreed on a treaty to allow telecommunications companies to enter each other’s markets.

The problems in expanding into these and other sensitive areas became obvious at a 1999 Seattle WTO conference, where trade ministers had hoped to launch a new, post- Uruguay round of trade negotiations. Representatives of poor countries argued that they needed trade to raise incomes and could not meet the standards of industrialized countries (which, after all, had allowed low wages, harsh working conditions, and environmental destruction when they began industrializing). Environmental and labor activists, joined by window-smashing anarchists, staged street protests that delayed the conference opening by a day. The meeting ended in failure.

Recovering from Seattle, in 2001 trade ministers meeting in Doha, Qatar, agreed to launch a new round of trade negotiations, the Doha Round . The issues under negotiation

20 Marlin-Bennett, Renee Elizabeth. Food Fights: International Regimes and the Politics of Agricultural Trade Disputes. Gordon & Breach, 1993. Anderson, Kym, and Will Martin. Agricultural Trade Reform and the Doha Development Agenda. World Bank, 2006. UNCTAD. Roadblock to Reform: The Persistence of Agricultural Export Subsidies. United Nations, 2006.

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included agriculture, services, industrial products, intellectual property, WTO rules (including how to handle antidumping cases), dispute settlement, and some trade and environmental questions. At the 2003 meeting in Cancun, Mexico, states from the global South walked out after the industrialized countries would not agree to lift their agricultural subsidies, which were shutting out poor countries’ agricultural exports. At the 2005 Hong Kong meeting, wealthy states agreed to end the export subsidies, but tough negotiations continued over tariffs on manufactured goods, protec- tion of intellectual property, and opening financial sectors. The main obstacle remains the resistance of the industrialized West to cut agricultural subsidies as demanded by countries in the global South.

In explaining the diffi culty in wrap- ping up a major trade agreement such as the Doha Round, game theorists might look to the game of Chicken (see p. 78 ) as an explanatory model. In most trade dis- putes, each state would rather get to a deal, even on terms that somewhat favor the other state if need be. But each would like, if possible, to get a deal on its own terms. Similarly, in a game of Chicken, each player wants to avoid a head-on collision, and being a hero or a chicken is a secondary consideration. In trade negotiations, both states hold out for their own terms (not swerving) for as long as possible, then come to agreement only when faced with an imminent collision—the expiration of a deadline beyond which there will be no deal at all. In Chicken, there is no incentive to give ground before the last minute.

The Doha Round of WTO negotiations stretched from 2001 to 2013 without conclu- sion. In 2007, participants tried to use a key deadline—expiration of the U.S. Congress’s fast-track authorization, after which U.S. approval of a new WTO agreement would become diffi cult—to inspire a fi nal agreement. After that deadline passed, other deadlines came and went as well. For instance, before the November 2008 summit in Washington, D.C., that grappled with a growing fi nancial crisis, some leaders suggested just wrapping up the Doha Round over that weekend, before the change in U.S. administrations. As each such deadline passed, it became harder to believe that the next deadline was real, that the head-on collision loomed if states did not “swerve” in time. The Chicken game may help us understand such dynamics. One drawback of the model, however, is that it does not predict the outcomes, because the game is inherently unstable. What it does predict is that an agreement, if reached, will arrive suddenly, ahead of a credible deadline, and that a disastrous failure will come as an unpleasant surprise to participants (“Why didn’t he swerve?”).

In general, states continue to participate in the WTO because the benefi ts, in terms of global wealth creation, outweigh the costs, in terms of harm to domestic

MAKING MAGIC

Rounds of trade negotiations, such as the current Doha Round begun in 2001, last for years as members negotiate complex deals that must be approved by consensus of all 150 member states. A conference of trade ministers in December 2005 tried to regain momentum for the stalled Doha Round, with mixed success. Here, WTO head Pascal Lamy opens the con- ference with the tool he hopes will bring success—a magic wand. The talks remained stalled in early 2013.

298 Chapter 8 International Trade

industries and painful adjustments in national economies. States try to change the rules in their favor during negotiations and between rounds they may evade the rules in minor ways. But the overall benefi ts are too great to jeopardize by nonparticipation or frequent trade wars.

Bilateral and Regional Agreements Although the WTO provides an overall framework for multilateral trade in a worldwide market, most international trade also takes place under more specifi c international politi- cal agreements—bilateral trade agreements and regional free trade areas.

Bilateral Agreements Bilateral treaties covering trade are reciprocal arrangements to lower barriers to trade between two states. Usually they are very specifi c. For instance, one country may reduce its prohibition on imports of product X (which the second country exports at competitive prices) while the second country lowers its tariff on product Y (which the fi rst country exports). A sweeping agreement, such as that between Canada and India in 2007, generally contains mind-numbing levels of detail concerning specifi c industries and products. As with most agreements based on the reciprocity principle, trade treaties involve great complexity and constant monitoring. U.S. free trade deals with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia took effect in 2011.

Part of the idea behind the GATT/WTO was to strip away the maze of bilateral agreements on trade and simplify the system of tariffs and preferences. This effort has only partially succeeded, however, as bilateral trade agreements continue to play an important

SEEKING THE COLLECTIVE GOOD

Freer Trade COLLECTIVE GOOD: A Doha Round WTO Agreement

BACKGROUND: Over the decades, the world has substantially lowered trade barriers and enjoyed ris- ing prosperity as a result of trade. Negotiating through the World Trade Organization (WTO), countries have concluded successive “rounds” of trade agree- ments, in which each state reciprocates the conces- sions of other states. These negotiations require every single member—almost all the world’s major trading powers—to agree before any can enjoy the benefi ts of an agreement.

A new WTO agreement is a collective good because all the member states profi t from relaxing trade restrictions regardless of which of them made the concessions needed to reach a deal. For example, in the previous Uruguay Round, the entire deal was

held up while France and the United States fought about French restrictions on U.S. films. Whether France or the United States hung tough to win on this issue, both would benefi t overall from the deal. But if both hung tough, the entire deal would break down and the collective good would not be provided. (In the end, France was able to free-ride, and the trade deal went forward.)

CHALLENGE: The current Doha Round has been stalled for several years. Countries want the overall freer trade that an agreement would bring—worth many billions of dollars to the world— but are fighting about agricultural

Trade Regimes 299

role. They have the advantages of reducing the collective goods problem inherent in mul- tilateral negotiations and facilitating reciprocity as a means to achieve cooperation. 21

When WTO negotiations bog down, bilateral agreements can keep trade momentum going. Because most states do most of their trading with a few partners, a few bilateral agreements can go a long way in structuring a state’s trade relations. The number of bilat- eral agreements has grown substantially in the past decade and their numbers far over- whelm all other types of agreements combined.

Free Trade Areas Regional free trade areas also matter in the structure of world trade. In such areas, groups of neighboring states agree to remove most or all trade barriers within their area. Beyond free trade areas, states may reduce trade barriers and adopt a common tariff toward states that are not members of the agreement. This is known as a customs union. If members of a customs union decide to coordinate other policies such as monetary exchange, the customs union becomes a common market. The creation of a regional trade agreement (of any type) allows a group of states to cooperate in increasing their wealth without waiting for the rest of the world.

The most important free trade area is in Europe; it is connected with the European Union but has a somewhat larger membership. Because Europe contains a number of small industrialized states living close together, the creation of a single integrated market allows

21 Oye, Kenneth A. Economic Discrimination and Political Exchange: World Political Economy in the 1930s and 1980s. Princeton, 1992.

subsidies and other issues. The talks have broken down and been resurrected several times. Until the partici- pants fi nd agreement on these pesky remaining issues, nobody can enjoy the economic boost that a new WTO agreement will bring.

SOLUTION: Only reciprocity can solve this dilemma. No feel-good shared identity can compete with the dollars in the pockets of participating states and their constituents (industries, citizens, etc.). And the entire structure of world trade relies on the formal equality of all participants, so dominance does not play a major role. Certainly, military force cannot resolve trade dis- putes as it might have done centuries ago.

Consistent with reciprocity solutions generally, trade agreements have great complexity, fi ne-level detail, and considerable effort to monitor compliance. When an agreement fi nally emerges from the Doha Round, it will result from breaking the disagreements into many tiny

WTO trade ministers from 153 countries meet in Geneva, 2009.

pieces and fi nding reciprocal compromises—everyone giving some ground—on each one.

300 Chapter 8 International Trade

these states to gain the economic advantages that come inherently to a large state such as the United States. The European free trade experiment has been a great success overall, contributing to Europe’s accumulation of wealth since World War II (see Chapter 10 ) .

The United States, Canada, and Mexico signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, following a U.S.-Canadian free trade agreement in 1988. 22 In NAFTA’s fi rst decade, U.S. imports from both Mexico and Canada more than doubled, then fell back somewhat (after 1999). Canada and Mexico were the largest and third-largest U.S. trading partners, respectively (Japan was second). Initially, Mexico’s currency dropped drastically relative to the dollar in 1994–1995. U.S. opponents of NAFTA, including various U.S. labor unions, criticized the low wages and poor labor laws in Mexico, which they feared would drag down U.S. labor standards. Environmentalists similarly criticized Mexico’s lax environmental laws (relative to those of the United States) and saw NAFTA as giving U.S. corporations license to pollute by moving south of the border (see p. 305 ) . But over 15 years, neither the great benefi ts predicted by NAFTA supporters nor the disasters predicted by opponents materialized.

Politicians in North and South America have long spoken of creating a single free trade area in the Western Hemisphere, from Alaska to Argentina—the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). To empower him to do so, President Clinton asked Congress in 1997 to reinstate fast-track legislation. But Democrats in Congress defeated the measure, demanding that free trade agreements include requirements for labor and environmental standards for other countries—points on which they found NAFTA’s record wanting. President Bush had more success winning fast-track authority from Congress, and FTAA negotiations began in 2003 with a target date of 2005. But by then several factors had cre- ated pressures against the FTAA. The 2001 recession and post–September 11 security measures reduced trade; China provided U.S. companies with a better source of cheap labor; and left-leaning governments, wary of liberal economic advice, came to power in most of the Latin American countries. Those countries cared most about tariff-free trade, while the U.S. position emphasized a range of other issues such as services, intellectual property, and fi nancial openness. In late 2005, trade talks failed at a summit meeting in Argentina, where one participant, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, led a 25,000- person anti-American rally in the streets. Currently, the FTAA talks remain in hibernation, and the weight of trade negotiations fall to the Doha Round. Meanwhile, however, the United States reached free trade agreements with several Latin American countries.

Efforts to create a free trade area in Asia began in the late 1980s but moved slowly. Unlike the European and North American arrangements, an Asian bloc would include very different kinds of states—rich ones such as Japan; poor ones such as the Philippines; and democracies, dictatorships, and communist states. It is unclear how well such diverse states could coordinate their common interests, especially because their existing trade patterns are not focused on each other but spread out among other states including the United States (again in contrast to trade patterns existing before the creation of the Euro- pean and North American free trade areas).

But despite these problems, in 2007 the ten ASEAN countries met with China, Japan, India, Australia, and New Zealand to begin negotiating an East Asian free trade area. The group, unlike some other Asia-Pacifi c IGOs, does not include the United States, but it does include half the world’s population and some of its most dynamic economies.

22 Hakim, Peter, and Robert E. Litan, eds. The Future of North American Integration: Beyond NAFTA. Brookings, 2002. Andreas, Peter, and Thomas J. Biersteker, eds. The Rebordering of North America: Integration and Exclusion in a New Security Confl ict. Routledge, 2003.

301

POLICY PERSPECTIVES

President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff

PROBLEM How do you balance the demands

of key trading partners with domestic eco-

nomic needs?

BACKGROUND Imagine that you are the president of Brazil. You were recently elected and are expected to con- tinue the policies of your predecessor. Brazil is now the tenth-largest economy in the world and in 2010, growth was around 5 percent, up from –0.5 percent in 2003. Your country’s export-led growth strategy is an important piece of this economic picture. Exports to industrialized countries are at an all-time high, and in 2005, you ran a current account surplus for the fi rst time since 1992.

The United States, Argentina, China, the Netherlands, and Germany are your key export partners. The United States alone accounts for 11 percent of your exports and about 16 percent of your imports. EU states combine to account for more than 23 percent of your exports, but far less of your imports.

You have been pressured extensively by the United States to join a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), but have refused to do so. Your goal for the FTAA is that developed countries lower their agricultural subsidies and increase their quotas for Brazilian farm products. To date, America has largely turned down your demands in the agri- cultural realm. Given U.S. bargaining power, this may be a diffi cult concession to extract in future negotiations.

DOMESTIC CONSIDERATIONS Domestically, you are being pressured to ensure continued market access for your industrial and agricultural products in international markets. Luckily, trade relations with your neighbors are relatively good. You are the largest state in the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur). You recently pushed to bring several other Latin American states (such as Mexico and Peru) into Mercosur as associ- ate members to hedge your bets against a collapse in the

FTAA negotiations. Unfortunately, you cannot rely on your Mercosur partners alone to absorb your export production. For example, your three full partners in Mercosur (Argen- tina, Paraguay, and Uruguay) have a combined total GDP smaller than Canada’s.

SCENARIO Now imagine that the EU offers a free trade agreement with better terms (especially concerning agricultural goods) than a potential FTAA agreement. Because several EU states are key trading partners, this is an attractive offer. In order for your exports to continue to grow, your market opportunities must expand. This would provide such an opportunity while satisfying those export- oriented industries.

But accepting the EU offer would likely anger the United States. If the United States then completed an FTAA with- out you, this would be costly to your economy because any similar goods produced by your neighbors would have preferential access to U.S. markets, making them more attractive than Brazilian goods to U.S. businesses and consumers.

CHOOSE YOUR POLICY Do you accept the EU offer? Do you attempt to bargain more with the United States in hopes of achieving a breakthrough? How do you balance the demands of competing (and important) trade partners while trying to achieve the best outcome for your public?

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302 Chapter 8 International Trade

The negotiations between ASEAN states and China were successful, and in 2010, a free trade area went into effect between these countries. The ASEAN-China FTA is the world’s third-largest free trade area, after the EU and NAFTA.

During the Cold War, the Soviet bloc maintained its own trading bloc. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the members scrambled to join up with the world economy. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), formed by 12 former Soviet republics, remains economically integrated (although Georgia quit after its 2008 war with Russia). It was previously a free trade zone by virtue of being part of a single state with integrated transportation, communication, and other infrastructure links.

Latin America has followed a winding path toward free trade. The Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur) began in the early 1990s with Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, which opposed letting Venezuela in. After Paraguay’s president was hastily impeached in 2012, Brazil engineered Paraguay’s suspension from Mercosur for ten months, during which Venezuela was admitted. Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru have joined as associate members. Mercosur members trade more with the United States than they do with each other, but played a leading role in blocking a proposed free trade area of North and South America. In 2002, the countries agreed to allow their 250 million citizens free movement and residency across countries. A Caribbean common market (CARICOM) was created in 1973, but the area is neither large nor rich enough to make regional free trade a very important accelerator of economic growth. In 1969, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia created a group now known as the Andean Com- munity of Nations, which had modest successes and counts the Mercosur members as associate members. Finally, in 2008, a single continent-wide Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) began taking shape, to merge Mercosur and the Andean Commu- nity in an effort to follow the example of the European Union.

If regional free trade areas such as now exist in Europe and in North America gain strength and new ones arise, the WTO may be weakened. The more that states meet the political requirements of economic growth through bilateral and regional agreements, the less they may depend on the worldwide agreements developed through the WTO. Fur- thermore, the overlap of WTO rules and regional agreements can create confusion. 23 For example, in 2006, a WTO panel upheld U.S. duties on Canadian softwood lumber while a NAFTA panel overturned the duties and ordered refunds to Canada. (On appeal, the WTO reversed its ruling and the two countries promptly signed a new agreement, with the United States refunding more than $4 billion.) Ultimately, regional agreements might divide the world into three competing trading blocs, each internally integrated but not very open to the other two blocs. Regional free trade areas in Europe and the Americas, and perhaps in Asia in the future, raise the possibility of trading zones practicing liberal- ism inwardly and mercantilism outwardly.

Cartels A cartel is an association of producers or consumers, or both, of a certain product—formed to manipulate its price on the world market. It is an unusual but interesting form of trade regime. Most often producers and not consumers form cartels, because there are usually fewer producers than consumers, and it seems possible for them to coordinate to keep prices high. Cartels can use a variety of means to affect prices; the most effective is to coordinate limits on production by each member so as to lower the supply, relative to demand, of the good.

23 Davis, Christina. Overlapping Institutions in Trade Politics. Perspectives on Politics 7 (1), 2009: 25–31.

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The most prominent cartel in the international economy is the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) . Its member states together control hundreds of billions of dollars in oil exports annually—about 40 percent of the world total and enough to signifi cantly affect the price. (A cartel need not hold a monopoly on production of a good to affect its price.) At OPEC’s peak of strength in the 1970s, the proportion was even higher. OPEC maintains a headquarters in Vienna, Austria, and holds negotiations several times a year to set quotas for each country’s production of oil in order to keep world oil prices in a target range. Saudi Arabia is by far the largest oil exporter and there- fore occupies a unique position in the world economy (see Table 8.1 ).

OPEC illustrates the potential that a cartel creates for collective goods problems. Individual members of OPEC can cheat by exceeding their production quotas while still enjoying the collective good of high oil prices. The collective good breaks down when too many members exceed their quotas, as has happened repeatedly to OPEC. Then world oil prices drop. (Iraq’s accusations that fellow OPEC member Kuwait was exceed- ing production quotas and driving oil prices down was one factor in Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.)

OPEC may work as well as it does only because one member, Saudi Arabia, has enough oil to unilaterally manipulate supply enough to drive prices up or down—a form of hegemonic stability (see p. 59 ) within the cartel. Saudi Arabia can take up the slack from some cheating in OPEC (cutting back its own production) and keep prices up. Or if too many OPEC members are cheating on their quotas, it can punish them by fl ooding the market with oil and driving prices down until the other OPEC members collectively come to their senses.

Member State Millions of Barrels/Day

Saudi Arabia 9.4 Iraq 3.0

Qatar 0.8 Ecuadora 0.5

Total OPEC 31.1 Percent of World 40%

aEcuador re-joined OPEC in 2007 after suspending its membership in 1992.

Note: Major oil exporters not in OPEC include Russia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, China, Britain, and Norway. Gabon left OPEC in 1995 and Indonesia left OPEC in 2008. The United States, until several decades ago a major oil exporter, is now a major importer.

Iran 2.7 United Arab Emirates 2.6

Kuwait 2.8

Venezuela 2.3 Nigeria 2.0 Angola 1.8 Libya 1.5 Algeria 1.2

TABLE 8.1 OPEC Members and Oil Production, December 2012

Source: Data adapted from: www.platts.com/NewsFeature/2010/opec/prod_table.

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Consumers usually do not form cartels. However, in response to OPEC, the major oil-importing states formed their own organization, the International Energy Agency (IEA), which partly functions as a cartel. The IEA coordinates the energy policies of major industrialized states—such as the maintenance of oil stockpiles in case of a short- age on world markets—in order to keep world oil prices low and stable. The largest importers of oil are the members of the G8 (large industrialized states). Considering the importance of oil to the world economy, and the existence of both producer and con- sumer cartels, the price of oil has been surprisingly unstable, with prices fl uctuating from about $20 per barrel in 1998 to over $140 and back to $40 in 2008. This shows the limits of cartels in affecting prices.

For a few commodities that are subject to large price fl uctuations on world markets— detrimental to both producers and consumers—joint producer-consumer cartels have been formed. In order to keep prices stable, producing and consuming states use the cartel to coordinate the overall supply and demand globally. Such cartels exist for coffee, several minerals, and some other products. NGOs introduced Fair Trade Certifi ed coffee, and later chocolate and other products, guaranteeing farmers a price above their production costs through the price booms and busts. More than a million farmers in 70 countries benefi t from these arrangements.

In general, the idea of cartels runs counter to liberal economics because cartels deliberately distort free markets. Cartels usually are not as powerful as market forces in determining overall world price levels: too many producers and suppliers exist—and too many substitute goods can replace ones that become too expensive—for a cartel to corner the market.

Industries and Interest Groups Industries and other domestic political actors often seek to infl uence a state’s foreign eco- nomic policies (see “Interest Groups,” pp. 138 – 139 ) . 24 These pressures do not always favor protectionism. Industries that are advanced and competitive in world markets try to infl uence their governments to adopt free trade policies. This strategy promotes a global free trade system in which such industries can prosper. By contrast, industries that lag behind their global competitors tend to seek protection.

Means to infl uence foreign economic policy include lobbying, forming interest groups, paying bribes, and even encouraging coups. Actors include industry-sponsored groups, companies, labor unions, and individuals. Within an industry, such efforts usu- ally work in a common direction because, despite competition among companies and between management and labor, all share common interests regarding the trade poli- cies. However, a different industry may be pushing in a different direction. For instance, some U.S. industries supported the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); others opposed it.

In many countries, government not only responds to industry infl uence, but works actively with industries to promote their growth and tailor trade policy to their needs. Such industrial policy is especially common in states where one or two industries are crucial to the entire economy (and of course where states own industries directly). 25

24 Rothgeb, John M., Jr. U.S. Trade Policy: Balancing Economic Dreams and Political Realities. CQ Press, 2001. Hiscox, Michael. International Trade and Political Confl ict: Commerce, Coalitions, and Mobility. Princeton, 2001. 25 Busch, Marc L. Trade Warriors: States, Firms, and Strategic Policy in High Technology Competition. Cambridge, 1999. Hart, Jeffrey A. Technology, Television, and Competition: The Politics of Digital TV. Cambridge, 2004. McGillivray, Fiona. Privileging Industry: The Comparative Politics of Trade and Industrial Policy. Princeton, 2004.

Trade Regimes 305

Interest groups not organized along industry lines also have particular interests in state trade policies. U.S. environmen- talists, for example, do not want U.S. com- panies to use NAFTA to avoid pollution controls by relocating to Mexico (where environmental laws are less strict). U.S. labor unions do not want companies to use NAFTA to avoid paying high wages. How- ever, Mexican American citizens’ groups in the United States tend to support NAFTA because it strengthens ties to rel- atives in Mexico.

Several industries are particularly important in trade negotiations currently. Atop the list is the agricultural sector. Tra- ditionally, agriculture has been protected since self-sufficiency in food reduces national vulnerability (especially in time of war). Although such security concerns have now faded somewhat, farmers are well- organized and powerful domestic political actors in Europe, the United States, Japan, and other countries. For instance, Japanese farmers argue that Japan’s rice-centered culture demands self-sufficiency in rice production. In the Doha Round of WTO negotiations, agricultural subsidies were a key sticking point. The talks collapsed in 2003 in Cancun, Mexico, over the subsidies, but were revived the next year by U.S. promises to cut farm subsidies 20 percent. At the 2005 Hong Kong talks, wealthy countries agreed to end all farm export subsidies by 2013.

A second important focus in recent years has been the textile and garment sector. As of 2005, textile quotas worldwide were dropped as a part of previously negotiated WTO deals. At the same time, China began dominating world clothing exports, with whole cit- ies specializing in one type of garment produced for mass export to giant retailers. 26 With vast pools of cheap and disciplined labor, China threatened to drive U.S. textile and clothing producers out of business and give stiff new competition to exporters such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, where textiles make up 70 percent of exports. Later in 2005, the European Union and the United States each reached bilateral agreements with China to reimpose textile quotas for a few years. Now, countries such as Vietnam have begun to take textile business away from China by providing even lower production costs.

Intellectual property rights are a third contentious area of trade negotiations. Intel- lectual property rights are the rights of creators of books, fi lms, computer software, and similar products to receive royalties when their products are sold. The United States has a major confl ict with some states over piracy of computer software, music, fi lms, and other creative works—products in which the United States has a strong comparative advantage globally. It is technically easy and cheap to copy such works and sell them in violation of

COMPETING WITH BIG CORN

Agriculture is at the top of the agenda of international trade negotiations, as developing countries push richer ones to end farm subsidies. Here, Mexican farmers protest the full opening of Mexico’s markets to imported U.S. corn under NAFTA, 2008.

26 Barboza, David. In Roaring China, Sweaters Are West of Socks City. The New York Times, December 24, 2004: A1.

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the copyright, patent, or trademark. Because U.S. laws cannot be enforced in foreign countries, the U.S. gov- ernment wants foreign governments to prevent and punish such viola- tions. Countries that reportedly pirate large amounts of computer software and music and entertain- ment products include China, Tai- wan, India, Thailand, Brazil, and the former Soviet republics. The Russian government estimated in 2002 that more than 80 percent of fi lms sold in Russia on video and DVD were pro- duced illegally. The worldwide piracy rate was estimated at 40 percent in 2001. Infringement of intellectual property rights is widespread in many third world countries, on products such as DVDs and prescription drugs.

In response, the international community has developed an exten- sive IGO with 184 member states, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which tries to regularize patent and copyright law across borders. Most states have signed an important 1994 patent treaty and a 1996 copyright treaty. The WTO oversees the world’s most important multilateral agreement on intellectual property, called TRIPS (Trade-Related aspects of Intellec-

tual Property Rights). Most industrialized countries prefer to use TRIPS rules because these rules are stronger than WIPO safeguards and can be relaxed only if all WTO mem- bers agree. WIPO rules require only a majority vote to change.

The 2001 WTO meeting at Doha led to a declaration that states could exempt certain drugs from TRIPS rules to deal with serious domestic health crises, such as an HIV/AIDS epidemic. (The U.S. government supported this move after it had threatened to take over production of a powerful antibiotic drug, Cipro, during the post-9/11 anthrax scare.) Although procedures were established for these exceptions, only a few developing coun- tries have used them. For several years these disputes slowed the effective distribution of medicines to millions of Africans with AIDS, though progress picked up after 2004.

Companies trying to protect intellectual property in an international context cannot rely on the same enforcement of rules as in domestic contexts. Instead, they need to bring their own state’s government to bear, as well as use their own resources. Because of state sovereignty in legal matters, private international economic confl icts easily become gov- ernment-to-government issues. 27

J’ACCUSE!

Intellectual property rights have been an important focus of recent trade negotia- tions. In many countries, pirated copies of videos, music, and software sell on the street with no royalty payments. Here, the U.S. Trade Representative holds a pirated DVD from China as she fi led a copyright complaint against China in the World Trade Organization, 2007.

27 Marlin-Bennett, Renée. Knowledge Power: Intellectual Property, Information, and Privacy. Rienner, 2004.

Trade Regimes 307

A fourth key trade issue is the openness of countries to trade in the service sector of the economy. This sector includes many services, especially those concerning informa- tion, but the key focus in international trade negotiations is on banking, insurance, and related fi nancial services. U.S. companies, and some in Asia, enjoy a comparative advan- tage in these areas because of their information-processing technologies and experience in fi nancial management. In general, as telecommunications becomes cheaper and more per- vasive, services offered by companies in one country can be effi ciently used by consumers in other countries. U.S. consumers phoning customer service at U.S. companies and con- necting to India or another English-speaking developing country engage in a long- distance trade in services.

Another especially important industry in international trade is the arms trade, which operates largely outside the framework of normal commercial transactions because of its national security implications. Governments in industrialized countries want to protect their domestic arms industries rather than rely on imports to meet their weapons needs. And those domestic arms industries become stronger and more economically viable by exporting their products (as well as supplying their own governments). Governments usu- ally participate actively in the military-industrial sector of the economy, even in countries such as the United States that lack industrial policy in other economic sectors. For exam- ple, fi ghter jets are a product in which the United States enjoys a global comparative advantage. In the 1990s, the U.S. arms industry, like the tobacco industry, looked overseas for new customers to offset declining demand at home. The Middle East has been the lead- ing arms-importing region of the global South, with India and China increasing recently.

A different problem is presented by the “industry” of illicit trade, or smuggling. No matter what restrictions governments put on trading certain goods, someone is usually willing to risk punishment to make a profi t in such trade. Illegal goods, and legal goods imported illegally, often are sold in black markets—unoffi cial, sometimes secret markets. This deprives governments of signifi cant revenue. Black markets also exist for foreign cur- rency exchange (see Chapter 9 ) .

The extent of illicit trade varies from one country and industry to another, depending on profi tability and enforcement. Drugs and weapons are most profi table, and worldwide illegal trade networks exist for both. International black markets for weapons trade, beyond government controls, are notorious. A state with enough money can buy— although at premium prices—most kinds of weapons.

Enforcement of Trade Rules As with international law generally, economic agreements among states depend strongly on the reciprocity principle for enforcement (see pp. 5 – 6 , 225 ) . If one state protects its industries, or puts tariffs on the goods of other states, or violates the copyright on works produced in other countries, the main resort that other states have is to apply similar measures against the offending state. The use of reciprocity to enforce equal terms of exchange is especially important in international trade, in which states often negotiate complex agreements—commodity by commodity, industry by industry—based on reci- procity. 28 Trade disputes and retaliatory measures are common. States keep close track of the exact terms of trade. Large bureaucracies monitor international economic transac- tions (prices relative to world market levels, tariffs, etc.) and develop detailed policies to reciprocate any other state’s deviations from cooperation.

28 Bayard, Thomas O., Kimberly Ann Elliott, Amelia Porges, and Charles Iceland. Reciprocity and Retaliation in U.S. Trade Policy. Institute for International Economics, 1994. Bhagwati, Jagdish, ed. Going Alone: The Case for Relaxed Reciprocity in Freeing Trade. MIT, 2002.

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Enforcement of equal terms of trade is complicated by differing interpretations of what is “fair.” States generally decide which practices of other states they consider unfair (often prodded by affected domestic industries) and then take (or threaten) retaliatory actions to punish those practices. A U.S. law, the Super 301 provision, mandates retalia- tion against states that restrict access of U.S. goods to their markets. However, if the other state does not agree that its practices are unfair, the retaliatory actions may themselves seem unfair and call for retaliation. One disadvantage of reciprocity is that it can lead to a downward spiral of noncooperation, popularly called a trade war (the economic equiva- lent of an arms race ; see p. 75 ) . To prevent this, states often negotiate agreements regard- ing what practices they consider unfair. In some cases, third-party arbitration can also be used to resolve trade disputes. Currently, the World Trade Organization (see pp. 294 – 298 ) hears complaints and sets levels of acceptable retaliation. In addition, some regional trade agreements establish mechanisms to hear and resolve complaints as well.

Retaliation for unfair trade practices usually tries to match the violation in type and extent. Under WTO rules, a state may impose retaliatory tariffs equivalent to the losses caused by another state’s unfair trade practices (as determined by WTO hearings). But the retaliatory measures do not necessarily need to stay in the same sector. For instance, in 2013, Antigua and Barbuda received permission to punish the United States for blocking its online gambling sites, costing the tiny Caribbean country $21 million a year. (Since various forms of gambling are widely available domestically, the U.S. government failed to show why its citizens should be protected from “imported” gambling online.) The WTO said Antigua and Barbuda could steal $21 million annually in U.S. intellectual property by, for example, putting movies and TV shows online without paying for U.S. copyrights. The political strategy seemed to be to provoke the U.S. entertainment indus- try to lobby the government to allow online gambling.

In cases of dumping, retaliation aims to offset the advantage enjoyed from goods imported at prices below the world market. Retaliatory tariffs raise the price back to mar- ket levels. In 2001, the weakened U.S. steel industry pleaded for U.S. government protec- tion from cheap foreign steel, under an antidumping rationale. Before such tariffs are imposed, a U.S. government agency, the International Trade Commission (ITC), decides whether the low-priced imports have actually hurt the U.S. industry. 29 The ITC ruled that U.S. steelmakers had indeed been hurt, and the U.S. government imposed 30 per- cent tariffs in 2002. But the WTO ruled against the United States in 2003, and gave other countries the right to impose $2 billion in retaliatory tariffs. As Europeans drew up their list of tariffs, targeting maximum damage to swing electoral states in 2004, President Bush backed down and abolished the steel tariffs (declaring them successful and no longer needed). By making the cost of tariffs higher than the benefi ts, the WTO effectively changed U.S. policy—an indication of the WTO’s growing power. 30 This example also shows how closely international trade connects with domestic politics.

Trade cooperation is easier to achieve under hegemony (see “Hegemony” on pp.  57 – 60 ) . The effi cient operation of markets depends on a stable political framework such as hegemony can provide. Political power can protect economic exchange from the distorting infl uences of violent leverage, of unfair or fraudulent trade practices, and of uncertainties of international currency rates. A hegemon can provide a world currency in which value can be universally calculated. It can punish the use of violence and can

29 Hansen, Wendy L. The International Trade Commission and the Politics of Protectionism. American Political Science Review 84 (1), 1990: 21–46. 30 Sanger, David E. A Blink from the Bush Administration: Backing Down on Tariffs, U.S. Strengthens Trade Organization. The New York Times, December 5, 2003: A25.

Economic Globalization 309

enforce norms of fair trade. Because its economy is so large and dominating, the hegemon can threaten to break off trade ties even without resorting to military force. For example, to be denied access to U.S. markets today would seriously hurt export industries in many states. U.S. hegemony thus helped create the major norms and institutions of interna- tional trade in the post–1945 era. Now that U.S. hegemony seems to be giving way to a more multipolar world—especially in economic affairs among the great powers—institu- tions are even more important for the success of the world trading system.

States have found it worthwhile to expand trade steadily, using a variety of regimes and institutions to do so—the WTO, free trade areas, bilateral agreements, and cartels. Overall, despite some loss of state sovereignty as a result of growing interdependence, these efforts have benefi ted participating states. Stable political rules governing trade allow states to realize the great economic gains that can result from international exchange.

Economic Globalization We introduced the process of globalization in Chapter 1 (see pp. 19–21 ) in general terms, and will now consider some specifi cally economic aspects of globalization. The expansion of trade is a central aspect of globalization in the international political economy, but hardly the only one. Globalization is transforming not only trade but money, business, integration, communication, environmental management, and the economic develop- ment of poor countries—the subjects of the remaining chapters of this book. Today’s accelerating pace of economic activity grows out of a long history of world economic expansion, which serves as the foundation for globalization. 31

The Evolving World Economy In 1750, Britain, the world’s most advanced economy, had a GDP of about $1,200 per capita (in today’s dollars). That is less than the present level of most of the global South. However, today Britain produces more than ten times that much per person (and with a much larger population than in 1750). This accomplishment is due to industrialization — the use of energy to drive machinery and the accumulation of such machinery along with the products created by it. The Industrial Revolution started in Britain in the 18th century, underpinned Britain’s emerging leadership role in the world economy, and spread to the other advanced economies (see Figure 8.4 ). 32

By around 1850, the wooden sailing ships of earlier centuries had given way to larger and faster coal-powered iron steamships. Coal-fueled steam engines also drove factories producing textiles and other commodities. The great age of railroad building was taking off. These developments not only increased the volume of world production and trade, but also tied distant locations more closely together economically. The day trip across France by railroad contrasted with the same route a hundred years earlier, which took three weeks to complete. In this period of mechanization, however, factory conditions were extremely harsh, especially for women and children operating machines.

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31 Rosencrance, Richard. The Rise of the Virtual State: Wealth and Power in the Coming Century. Basic, 2000. 32 North, Douglass C., and Robert Paul Thomas. The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History. Cambridge, 1973. Hobsbawm, E. J. Industry and Empire: From 1750 to the Present Day. Penguin-Pelican, 1969. Tracy, James D., ed. The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350–1750. Cambridge, 1991.

310

Communi- cation

Money

Production

Energy

Leading Sectors

Trans- portation

Trade

industrialization

coal

steam engine

(wooden sailing ships)

cotton gin iron & steam

textiles

iron steamships

railroads

British dominance

pound sterling (British) as world currency

telegraph

steel

Suez Canal

(free trade)

telephone invented

WWI

assembly line

world depression

Soviet industrialization

WWII

oil

electricity

motor vehicles

airplanes

Trans-Siberian Railroad

automobiles

Panama Canal

protec- tionism

post-WWI inflation

Keynes

transoceanic cables

radio

postwar prosperity

Cold War arms race Japanese &

German growth

nuclear power

electronics

computers

global- ization

Soviet collapse

nat. gas

biotechplastics

jets

freeways high-speed

rail

U.S. dominance

GATT European integration

WTO

NAFTA

U.S. dollar as world currency

Marshall Plan

U.S. drops gold

standard

Russia joins IMFIMF

Bretton Woods debt crises

communication satellites

information revolution Internet

fax, modem, cellular, etc.

200019501900185018001750

FIGURE 8.4 The World Economy, 1750–2000

Source: North, Douglass C., and Robert Paul Thomas. The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History. Cambridge, 1973. Hobsbawm, E. J. Industry and Empire: From 1750 to the Present Day. Penguin-Pelican, 1969. Tracy, James D., ed. The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350–1750. Cambridge, 1991.

Economic Globalization 311

Britain dominated world trade in this period. Because Britain’s economy was the most technologically advanced in the world, its products were competitive worldwide. Thus, British policy favored free trade. In addition to its central role in world trade, Britain served as the fi nancial capital of the world, managing an increasingly complex world mar- ket in goods and services in the 19th century. The British currency, pounds sterling (sil- ver), became the world standard. International monetary relations were still based on the value of precious metals, as they had been in the 16th century when Spain bought its armies with Mexican silver and gold.

By the outset of the 20th century, however, the world’s largest and most advanced economy was no longer Britain but the United States. The industrialization of the U.S. economy was fueled by territorial expansion throughout the 19th century, add- ing vast natural resources. The U.S. economy attracted huge pools of immigrant labor from Europe as well. The United States led the world in converting from coal to oil and from horse-drawn transportation to motor vehicles. New technical innovations, from electricity to airplanes, also helped push the U.S. economy into a dominant world position.

In the 1930s, the U.S. and world economies suffered a severe setback in the Great Depression. The protectionist Smoot-Hawley Act adopted by the United States in 1930, which imposed tariffs on imports, contributed to the severity of the depression by provok- ing retaliation and reducing world trade. Adopting the principles of Keynesian economics, the U.S. government used defi cit spending to stimulate the economy, paying itself back from new wealth generated by economic recovery. 33 The government’s role in the econ- omy intensifi ed during World War II.

Following World War II, the capitalist world economy was restructured under U.S. leadership. Today’s international economic institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), date from this period. The United States provided massive assistance to resuscitate the Western European economies (through the Mar- shall Plan) as well as Japan’s economy. World trade greatly expanded, and the world market became ever more closely woven together through air transportation and tele- communications. Electronics emerged as a new leading sector, and technological progress accelerated throughout the 20th century.

Standing apart from this world capitalist economy, the economies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe followed communist principles of central planning and state ownership. In a centrally planned economy (or command economy ), political authorities set prices and decide on quotas for production and consumption of each commodity according to a long-term plan, and international trade occurs at government-controlled prices. The proponents of central planning claimed that it would make economies both more rational and more just. By controlling the economy, governments could guarantee the basic needs of citizens and could mobilize the state fully for war if necessary. Proponents of central planning also hoped that governments’ long-term view of resources and needs would smooth out the “boom and bust” fl uctuations of capitalist economies (known as business cycles).

The Soviet economy had some notable successes in rapidly industrializing the coun- try in the 1930s, surviving the German assault in the 1940s, and developing world-class aerospace and military production capability in the 1950s and 1960s. The Soviet Union launched the world’s fi rst satellite ( Sputnik ) in 1957, and in the early 1960s its leaders

33 Markwell, Donald. John Maynard Keynes and International Relations: Economic Paths to War and Peace. Oxford, 2006.

312 Chapter 8 International Trade

boasted that communist economies would outperform capitalist ones within decades. Instead, the Soviet-bloc economies stagnated under the weight of bureaucracy, ideologi- cal rigidity, environmental destruction, corruption, and high military spending. Centrally planned economies proved hopelessly ineffi cient.

Now the former Soviet republics and Eastern Europe are transitional economies , changing over to a market-based economy connected to the world capitalist economy. 34 This transition proved diffi cult. In the fi rst half of the 1990s, the total GDP of the region shrank by about 35 percent—a depression worse than the Great Depression the United States experienced in the early 1930s. Living standards dropped dramatically. In Boris Yeltsin’s administration (1991–1999), Russia’s economy remained dysfunctional, owing to depression, corruption, tax delinquency, and the vast differences between the old com- munist and new capitalist models. President Vladimir Putin (2000–2008) brought new energy to economic reform, and high prices for crude oil, a major Russian export, buoyed its economy in the new century, but Putin’s centralization of political power could choke off capitalist growth.

China, whose government continues to follow a Marxist political line (central control by the Communist party), has shifted substantially toward a market economy. 35 (The state still controls major industries.) This transition has dramatically increased China’s eco- nomic growth ever since the 1980s. Growth reached a sustained annual rate of about 10 percent throughout the 1990s and nearly as fast in recent years (see “The Chinese Experi- ence” on pp. 464 – 467 ) .

Today, the world’s economic activity follows the principles of free markets more than central planning but often falls somewhere between the extremes. Many govern- ments control domestic prices on some goods (for instance, subsidizing certain goods to win political support). Many states own (all or part of) industries thought to be vital for the national economy— state-owned industries such as oil production companies or national airlines. And the government sector of the economy (military spending, road building, Social Security, and so on) makes up a substantial fraction of the industrial- ized countries’ economies. Because they contain both some government control and some private ownership, the economies of the industrialized West are often called mixed economies . 36

Today there is a single integrated world economy that almost no country can resist joining. At the same time, the imperfections and problems of that world economy are evident in periodic crises and recessions and in the sharpening of disparities between the richest and poorest world regions. At no time have these imperfections been more glaring than during the 2008–2009 global fi nancial crisis and ensuing world recession. Starting with the sub-prime mortgage collapse in the United States, economic troubles quickly spread to Europe as major banks and investment companies lost hundreds of billions of dollars. These losses led to a global slowdown in consumer spending and production that caused large job losses in countries like the United States, China, and India. The subse- quent fall in consumer demand for goods led to declines in global trade of 9 percent—the largest decline since World War II.

34 Gustafson, Thane. Capitalism Russian-Style. Cambridge, 1999. Frye, Timothy. Brokers and Bureaucrats: Building Market Institutions in Russia. Michigan, 2000. 35 Gore, Lance L. P. Market Communism: The Institutional Foundation of China’s Post-Mao Hyper-Growth. Oxford, 1999. Wedeman, Andrew H. From Mao to Market: Rent Seeking, Local Protectionism, and Marketization in China. Cambridge, 2003. 36 Meso-Lago, Carmelo. Market, Socialist, and Mixed Economies: Comparative Policy and Performance—Chile, Cuba and Costa Rica. Johns Hopkins, 2000. Ikeda, Sanford. Dynamics of the Mixed Economy. Taylor & Francis, 2007.

Economic Globalization 313

Resistance to Trade The globalization of the world economy has fueled a countercurrent of growing national- ism in several world regions where people believe their identities and communities to be threatened by the penetration of foreign infl uences. In addition, the material dislocations caused by globalization directly affect the self-interests of certain segments of countries’ populations.

Workers in industrialized countries in industries that face increasing competition from low-wage countries in the global South—such as steel, automobiles, electronics, and cloth- ing—are among the most adversely affected by free trade. Inevitably, the competition from low-wage countries holds down wages in those industries in the industrialized countries. It also creates pressures to relax standards of labor regulation, such as those protecting worker safety, and it can lead to job losses if manufacturers close down plants in high-wage countries and move operations to the global South. Not surprisingly, labor unions have been among the strongest political opponents of unfettered trade expansion. (Although the United States stands at the center of these debates, other industrialized countries face similar issues.)

Human rights NGOs have joined labor unions in pushing for trade agreements to include requirements for low-wage countries to improve working conditions such as mini- mum wages, child labor, and worker safety. The United States bans imports of goods (mostly rugs) made by South Asia’s 15 million indentured (slave) child laborers. Com- panies stung by criticism of conditions in their Asian facto- ries have adopted voluntary measures to end the worst abuses, as Apple Computer did in 2012 after its Chinese supplier Foxconn faced worker protests and media atten- tion over working conditions. More than 200 million chil- dren under age 14 work in the global South, more than half in hazardous labor, according to the International Labor Organization. They are about 5 percent of 5- to 14-year- olds in Latin America, 20 percent in Asia, and 25 percent in Africa. In Ivory Coast, world’s largest exporter of cocoa (for chocolate consumed in the global North), tens of thousands of children work for low wages, or even as slaves, on cocoa plantations.

Environmental groups also have actively opposed the unrestricted expansion of trade, which they see as undermin- ing environmental laws in industrialized countries and pro- moting environmentally harmful practices worldwide (see p. 392 ) . For example, U.S. regulations require commercial shrimp boats to use devices that prevent endangered species of sea turtles from drowning in shrimp nets. Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Pakistan, whose shrimp exports to the United States were blocked because they do not require the use of such devices, fi led a complaint with the World Trade Organization, arguing that the U.S. regulation unfairly discriminated against them. In 1998, the United States lost the WTO ruling and appeal. Sea turtles became a symbol of environmentalist opposition to the WTO. (In 2001, the WTO ruled the U.S. law acceptable after changes had made application of the law more even-handed.) In 1996, Brazil and Venezuela took the United States to the WTO and forced a change in U.S. environmental rules regarding

CHEAP LABOR

Labor, environmental, and human rights organizations have all criticized unrestricted free trade. They argue that free trade agreements encourage MNCs to produce goods under unfair and unhealthy conditions, including the use of child labor. This boy in India makes soccer balls, 2002.

314 Chapter 8 International Trade

imported gasoline, claiming that regulations under the Clean Air Act were functioning as nontariff barriers.

In general, unrestricted trade tends to force countries to equalize their regulations in a variety of areas not limited to labor and environmental rules. For example, the WTO ruled in 1997 that Europeans’ fears about the use of growth hormones in beef were not scientifically warranted, and therefore EU regulations could not be used to exclude U.S. beef containing hormones. When the European Union persisted, the United States was allowed to retaliate by imposing high tariffs on a list of EU exports such as French cheeses. Similarly, in 2006 the WTO ruled that European restrictions on imports of genetically modified food from the United States violated trade rules.

These examples illustrate the variety of sources of backlash against free trade agree- ments. Labor, environmental, and consumer groups all portray the WTO as a secretive bureaucracy outside democratic control that serves the interests of big corporations at the expense of ordinary people in both the global North and South. More fundamentally, these critics distrust the corporate-driven globalization (see pp. 19 – 21 ) , of which the

WTO is just one aspect. Recent U.S. surveys show a drop in the belief that trade is good for the economy. According to a June 2008 survey, 34 percent believe free trade is good for the United States, while 36 percent say it is not—down from 59 percent just two years earlier. In similar surveys, Americans’ support for NAFTA has also declined: 56 percent say it should be renegotiated while only 16 percent support the agreement as it currently stands. 37 Globally, however, public opinion supports trade: a 2009 poll found that majorities in all 22 countries surveyed saw international trade as a good thing, despite concerns about negative cultural and environmental effects. Support was especially high in export-dependent economies— above 90 percent in China, India, South Korea, and Lebanon, for example. The United States ranked near the bottom in the survey, with 65 percent supporting trade. 38

The benefi ts of free trade, as noted earlier, are much more diffuse than the costs. U.S. consumers enjoy lower prices on goods imported from low-wage countries. The consumers may therefore spend more money on other products and services, eventually employing more U.S. workers. Cheap imports also help keep infl ation low, which benefi ts citizens. This is small comfort, however, if you are the one who just lost your job.

Of course, international trade requires money to facilitate exchange. In the era of globalization, a signifi cant amount of international trade is conducted through multina- tional corporations. The next chapter takes up these two issues in the context of the global economy.

UNSETTLING CHANGES

Growing trade makes states more interdependent. This may make them more peaceful, but can also introduce new insecurities and sources of confl ict. The worldwide economic turmoil starting in 2008 sharpened some trade confl icts, while WTO negotiations remained stalled. This ship that ran aground off New Zealand in 2011 seemed to embody the precarious state of trade relations.

37 Rasmussen Reports. “56% Want NAFTA Renegotiated, Americans Divided on Free Trade.” June 20, 2008. See http://www.rasmussenreports.com . 38 Pew Global Attitudes Project. Views on Trade. Pew Research Center, 2010. http://pewglobal.org .

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CHAPTER REVIEW

SUMMARY ■ Liberal economics emphasizes international cooperation—especially through

worldwide free trade—to increase the total creation of wealth (regardless of its dis- tribution among states).

■ Mercantilism emphasizes the use of economic policy to increase state power relative to that of other states. It mirrors realism in many ways. Mercantilists favor trade policies that produce a trade surplus for their own state. Such a positive trade bal- ance generates money that can be used to enhance state power.

■ Trade creates wealth by allowing states to specialize in producing goods and services for which they have a comparative advantage (and importing other needed goods).

■ The distribution of benefi ts from an exchange is determined by the price of the goods exchanged. With many buyers and sellers, prices are generally determined by market equilibrium (supply and demand).

■ Politics interferes in international markets in many ways, including the use of eco- nomic sanctions as political leverage on a target state. However, sanctions are diffi - cult to enforce unless all major economic actors agree to abide by them.

■ States that have reduced their dependence on others by pursuing self-suffi cient autarky have failed to generate new wealth to increase their well-being. Self- reliance, like central planning, has been largely discredited as a viable economic strategy.

■ Through protectionist policies, many states try to protect certain domestic indus- tries from international competition. Such policies tend to slow down the global creation of wealth but do help the particular industry in question. Protectionism can be pursued through various means, including import tariffs (the favored method), quotas, subsidies, and other nontariff barriers.

■ The volume of world trade is very large—about one-sixth of global economic activity—and is concentrated heavily in the states of the industrialized West (West- ern Europe, North America, and Japan/Pacifi c) and China.

■ Over time, the rules embodied in trade regimes (and other issue areas in IR) become the basis for permanent institutions, whose administrative functions provide yet further stability and effi ciency in global trade.

■ The World Trade Organization (WTO), formerly the GATT, is the most important multilateral global trade agreement. The GATT was institutionalized in 1995 with the creation of the WTO, which expanded the focus on manufactured goods to consider agriculture and services. Intellectual property is another recent focus.

■ In successive rounds of GATT negotiations over 50 years, states have lowered over- all tariff rates (especially on manufactured goods). The Uruguay Round of the GATT, completed in 1994, added hundreds of billions of dollars to the global crea- tion of wealth. The Doha Round began in 2003 and has yet to conclude. Meanwhile textile tariffs were dropped worldwide in January 2005.

■ Although the WTO provides a global framework, states continue to operate under thousands of bilateral trade agreements specifying the rules for trade in specifi c products between specifi c countries.

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316 Chapter 8 International Trade

■ Regional free trade areas (with few if any tariffs or nontariff barriers) have been cre- ated in Europe, North America, and several other less important instances. NAFTA includes Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

■ International cartels are occasionally used by leading producers (sometimes in con- junction with leading consumers) to control and stabilize prices for a commodity on world markets. The most visible example in recent decades has been the oil produc- ers’ cartel, OPEC, whose members control more than half the world’s exports of a vital commodity, oil.

■ Industries often lobby their own governments for protection. Governments in many states develop industrial policies to guide their efforts to strengthen domestic indus- tries in the context of global markets.

■ Certain economic sectors—especially agriculture, intellectual property, services, and military goods—tend to deviate more than others from market principles. Polit- ical confl icts among states concerning trade in these sectors are frequent.

■ Because there is no world government to enforce rules of trade, such enforcement depends on reciprocity and state power. In particular, states reciprocate each other’s cooperation in opening markets (or punish each other’s refusal to let in foreign products). Although it leads to trade wars on occasion, reciprocity has achieved substantial cooperation in trade.

■ The world economy has generated wealth at an accelerating pace in the past two cen- turies and is increasingly integrated on a global scale, although with huge inequalities.

■ Communist states during the Cold War operated centrally planned economies in which national governments set prices and allocated resources. Almost all these states are now in transition toward market-based economies, which more effi ciently generate wealth.

■ Free trade agreements have led to a backlash from politically active interest groups adversely affected by globalization; these include labor unions, environmental and human rights NGOs, and certain consumers.

KEY TERMS mercantilism 283 economic liberalism 284 free trade 286 balance of trade 286 comparative

advantage 288 autarky 291 protectionism 291 dumping 293 tariff 293 nontariff barriers 293 World Trade Organization

(WTO) 294 General Agreement on

Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 295

intellectual property rights 305

service sector 307 industrialization 309 centrally planned

economy 311 transitional

economies 312 state-owned

industries 312 mixed economies 312

most-favored nation (MFN) 295

Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) 295

Uruguay Round 296 Doha Round 296 North American Free

Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 300

cartel 302 Organization of

Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) 303

industrial policy 304

Chapter Review 317

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS 1. Suppose your state had a chance to reach a major trade agreement by making sub-

stantial concessions. The agreement would produce $5 billion in new wealth for your state, as well as $10 billion for each of the other states involved (which are political allies but economic rivals). What advice would a mercantilist give your state’s leader about making such a deal? What arguments would support the advice? How would liberal advice and arguments differ?

2. China seems to be making a successful transition to market economics and is grow- ing rapidly. It is emerging as the world’s second-largest economy. Do you think this is a good thing or a bad thing for your state? Does your reasoning refl ect mercantilist or liberal assumptions?

3. Given the theory of hegemonic stability (p. 59 ) , what effects might a resurgence of U.S. power in the post–Cold War era have on the world trading system? How might those effects show up in concrete ways?

4. Before you read this chapter, to what extent did you prefer to buy products made in your own country? Has reading this chapter changed your views on that subject? How?

5. The proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas would join Canada and the United States with Latin American countries, where wages are lower and technology is less developed. Which U.S. industries do you think would gain from such a trade area? Specifi cally, do you think labor-intensive industries or high-technology industries would be winners? Why?

Are Free Trade Agreements Good for the Global Economy?

LET’S DEBATE THE ISSUE

ARGUMENT 1

FTAs Are Benefi cial to the Global Economy

FTAs usually increase trade. Several studies in economics have shown that free trade areas do increase the amount of trade between countries. This trade can be benefi cial to con- sumers and producers, and helps increase eco- nomic growth. Given the slow rate of progress at the WTO talks, other solutions are needed to increase trade.

Free trade lowers costs for con- sumers. Once tariffs are removed from goods, these goods may be sold at a cheaper price. Con- sumers benefit from these cheaper prices. In extreme cases, FTAs can lower tariffs that effec- tively exclude goods from entering a market, giving consumers more choice in the products they buy.

FTAs increase foreign invest- ment. Because FTAs eliminate or lower trade barriers, they encourage companies located in states outside the FTAs to locate new factories within the FTAs in order to take advantage of lower tariffs. Some research has shown that FTAs lure increased foreign investment to mem- ber states—an important way to increase eco- nomic growth, especially in poor countries.

Overview In the past two decades, the number of bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) has skyrocketed. Today, nearly every country is a party to at least one FTA. Many countries are party to multiple FTAs, and nearly all FTAs cover states that are members of the WTO.

There are several reasons offered for the recent explosion of these arrangements. Some attribute the popularity of the neoliberal economic model and its emphasis on free trade as a source of moti- vation for these agreements. Others point to the near-collapse of the Doha Round of the WTO nego- tiations. Should the WTO cease to expand in scope, groups of states will do so on their own by signing an FTA. Finally, some point to business pressure to join these arrangements because under an FTA, an MNC with factories in multiple states can ship goods between those factories tariff free.

Despite the prevalence of these agreements, they are controversial. As discussed in this chap- ter, because free trade brings diffuse benefi ts but concentrated costs, there are always opponents to these agreements within member states. Econo- mists are also divided on whether FTAs are benefi - cial, since states may be less likely to cooperate to achieve global free trade (the best outcome for economists) if they are happy with free trade among their key trading partners. Yet others con- tend they are acceptable “stepping stones” to a world of global free trade. Are FTAs good for the global economy, or do they bring more diffi culties domestically and internationally?

Questions ■ Do you feel that FTAs are helpful or harmful to

the global economy? Would the global economy be better off with no FTAs, leaving only the WTO to liberalize trade?

■ When the economy emerges from its current economic downturn, will we see a move back to free trade? How much of the current opinion toward the effects of free trade is infl uenced by the global economic recession?

■ Suppose WTO negotiations continue to be deadlocked, with no hope in sight for a more extensive global trade agreement. Does this change your opinion of whether more FTAs should exist? Or are the domestic implications (price changes versus job losses) more important in your thinking?

For Further Reading Rodrik, Dani. One Economics, Many Recipes:

Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth. Princeton, 2007.

Irwin, Douglas. Free Trade Under Fire. Princeton, 2002.

Stiglitz, Joseph, and Andrew Charlton. Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development. Oxford, 2006.

Chang, Ha-Joon. Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. Bloomsbury, 2007.

ARGUMENT 2

FTAs Are Harmful to the Global Economy

FTAs hinder the advancement of glo- bal free trade. Most economists agree that the ideal situation in the global economy is the complete elimination of trade barriers through a large agreement like the WTO. Once states have secured their best trading partners in an FTA, they have no incentive to advance the WTO process.

FTAs are exclusionary and discrimi- natory. By defi nition, FTAs provide lower tar- iffs for only a small number of states. They do not address tariffs levied against nonmembers, and states may have incentives to increase tariffs against nonmembers to encourage trade within the FTA and discourage imports from outside of it.

FTAs threaten jobs and general eco- nomic well-being. Because FTAs make it easier for goods to cross borders, companies can locate in other member states where labor costs or environmental standards are lower, in order to cut their production costs. This means fewer jobs in some member states and can lead to further degradation of the natural environment.

Tokyo brokerage, 2010.

Global Finance and Business

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321

Globalization and Finance Globalization has led to momentous changes in many areas of international relations. So far, we have discussed how globalization has infl uenced global security and inter- national trade relations. Globalization has had its most profound infl uence in the way states, businesses, and individuals deal with fi nancial markets.

Today, global fi nancial markets are as integrated as they have ever been. Investors in one country buy and sell assets or exchange currency with a few clicks of a mouse. Banks’ investment portfolios often contain millions of dollars in assets (real estate, land, stocks) located in other countries. Nearly a trillion and a half dollars a day is exchanged on currency markets as investors need various currencies to do business in other countries, but also to bet on the rise and fall of currencies, which we discuss momentarily.

This fi nancial integration has tremendous advantages. It offers investors and busi- nesses access to overseas markets to spur economic growth. It allows for the possibility of better returns on investment for individuals investing for college tuition or retire- ment. But as we have witnessed in the past two years, fi nancial integration also carries risks. An economic crisis in one state can quickly spread to another, then another. The spread of economic diffi culties can quickly lead to a global economic crisis affecting small and large economies alike.

Such was the case in 2008. As an economic downturn began in the United States, many Americans who had taken out loans on their homes found themselves unable to pay these loans back. At the same time, the value of their homes began to fall, so that even if banks were to reclaim them, the banks could not recover the money they had loaned. Moreover, these loans had been resold by the banks to other businesses as investments, often in other countries. Several large U.S. banks then announced that they were on the verge of failing because they had too much money tied up in these bad home loans. This was a problem not only for the banks and the individuals who could not pay for their homes, but also for those businesses who had purchased these loans as investments.

Given the global integration of fi nancial markets, this housing crisis led quickly to a global banking crisis. Several British banks then announced they were near bank- ruptcy. The U.S. government responded with a rescue package of $800 billion to help shore up failing banks. Britain also created a rescue package of nearly $450 billion. The entire banking sector of Iceland was taken over by the government, and Iceland, a prosperous country, needed a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to rescue the government from bankruptcy.

Global stock markets tumbled dramatically as a result of this fi nancial crisis, by a third, a half, and even two-thirds in the case of China. Unemployment increased worldwide. What began as trouble in the U.S. housing market ended as a global fi nan- cial meltdown.

The world economy recovered in the years after 2008, but soon faced the ripple effects of a debt crisis in Europe. The fi nancial problems there, which began in Greece and spread to Spain, Portugal, and even giant Italy, threatened the European Union as a whole while holding back growth in the United States and China, dramatically illus- trating the fi nancial interdependence of today’s world.

This chapter investigates two central pillars of our global fi nancial markets: the politics of the world monetary system and the role of private companies as nonstate actors in the world economy.

Globalization and Finance

The Currency System ■ About Money ■ International Currency

Exchange ■ Why Currencies Rise or

Fall ■ Central Banks ■ The World Bank and the

IMF

State Financial Positions ■ National Accounts ■ International Debt ■ The Position of the

United States ■ The Position of Russia

and Eastern Europe ■ The Position of Asia

Multinational Business ■ Multinational

Corporations ■ Foreign Direct Investment ■ Host and Home

Government Relations

CHAPTER OUTLINE

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322 Chapter 9 Global Finance and Business

The Currency System Nearly every state prints its own money. The ability to print one’s own currency is one of the hallmarks of state sovereignty. Yet, in a globalized system of trade and fi nance, busi- nesses and individuals often need other states’ currencies to do business.

About Money Because of the nature of state sovereignty, the international economy is based on national currencies, not a world currency. One of the main powers of a national government is to create its own currency as the sole legal currency in the territory it controls. The national currencies are of no inherent value in another country, but can be exchanged one for another. 1

Traditionally, for centuries, the European state system used precious metals as a global currency, valued in all countries. Gold was most important, and silver second. These metals had inherent value because they looked pretty and were easily molded into jewelry or simi- lar objects. They were relatively rare, and the mining of new gold and silver was relatively slow. These metals lasted a long time, and they were diffi cult to dilute or counterfeit.

Over time, gold and silver became valuable because they were a world currency— because other people around the world trusted that the metals could be exchanged for future goods—and this overshadowed any inherent functional value of gold or silver. Bars of gold and silver were held by states as a kind of bank account denominated in an inter- national currency. These piles of gold (literal and fi gurative) were the object of mercantil- ist trade policies in past centuries (see Chapters 2 and 8 ) . Gold has long been a key power resource with which states could buy armies or other means of leverage.

In recent years the world has not used such a gold standard but has developed an international monetary system divorced from any tangible medium such as precious met- als. Even today, some private investors buy stocks of gold or silver at times of political instability, as a haven that would reliably have future value. But gold and silver have now become basically like other commodities, with unpredictable fl uctuations in price. The change in the world economy away from bars of gold to purely abstract money makes international economics more effi cient; the only drawback is that without tangible back- ing in gold, currencies may seem less worthy of people’s confi dence.

International Currency Exchange Today, national currencies are valued against each other, not against gold or silver. Each state’s currency can be exchanged for a different state’s currency according to an exchange rate —defi ning, for instance, how many Canadian dollars are equivalent to one U.S. dollar. These exchange rates affect almost every international economic transaction— trade, investment, tourism, and so forth. 2

Most exchange rates are expressed in terms of the world’s most important currencies— the U.S. dollar, the Japanese yen, and the EU’s euro. Thus, the rate for exchanging Dan- ish kroner for Brazilian reals depends on the value of each relative to these world currencies. Exchange rates that most affect the world economy are those within the largest economies—U.S. dollars, euros, yen, British pounds, and Canadian dollars.

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1 Solomon, Robert. Money on the Move: The Revolution in International Finance Since 1980. Princeton, 1999. Cohen, Benjamin J. The Future of Money. Princeton, 2004. 2 Aliber, Robert Z. The New International Money Game. Chicago, 2002.

The Currency System 323

The relative values of currencies at a given point in time are arbitrary; only the changes in values over time are meaningful. For instance, the euro happens to be fairly close to the U.S. dollar in value, whereas the Japanese yen is denominated in units closer to the U.S. penny. In itself this disparity says nothing about the desirability of these currencies or the fi nancial positions of their states. However, when the value of the euro rises (or falls) relative to the dollar, because euros are considered more (or less) valuable than before, the euro is said to be strong (or weak). A strong currency makes imports more affordable, while a weak currency makes exports more com- petitive. For example, when the U.S. dollar’s value fell in 2001– 2006, the exports of 200 large U.S. companies with substantial foreign sales rose from 32 to 44 percent of their total sales. 3

Some states do not have convertible currencies . The holder of such money has no guarantee of being able to trade it for another currency. Such is the case in states cut off from the world capitalist economy, such as the former Soviet Union. In practice, even nonconvertible currency can often be sold, in black markets or by dealing directly with the government issuing the currency, but the price may be extremely low. Some currencies are practi- cally nonconvertible because they are infl ating so rapidly that holding them for even a short period means losing money. Infl a- tion reduces a currency’s value relative to more stable (more slowly infl ating) currencies.

The industrialized West has kept infl ation relatively low— mostly below 5 percent annually—since 1980. (The 1970s saw infl a- tion of more than 10 percent per year in many industrialized economies, including the United States.) Infl ation in the global South is lower than two decades ago (see Table 9.1 ). Latin America brought infl ation from 750 percent to below 15 percent, while China and South Asia got infl ation rates below 5 percent. Most dramati- cally, in Russia and other former Soviet republics, infl ation rates of more than 1,000 percent came down to 8 percent.

Extremely high, uncontrolled infl ation—more than 50 percent per month, or 13,000 percent per year—is called hyperinfl ation . The 100-trillion-dollar notes introduced by Zimbabwe in 2009 quickly lost most of their initial value (about $30 U.S.) under hyperinfl ation exceeding 200 million percent per year. Even just moderately high infl ation causes money to lose value weekly, making it hard to con- duct business.

In contrast with nonconvertible currency, hard currency is money that can be read- ily converted to leading world currencies (which now have relatively low infl ation). For example, a Chinese computer producer can export its products and receive payment in dollars, euros, or another hard currency, which it can use to pay for components it needs to import from abroad. But a Chinese farmer paid in Chinese currency for rice could not simply use that currency to buy imported goods. Rather, the exchange for foreign currency would be controlled by the Chinese government at rates the government set. In a few countries, such as Cuba, two versions of currency circulate, one convertible to foreign

3 New York Times, November 20, 2007: A15.

WHAT’S IT WORTH TO YOU?

Money has value only because people trust its worth. Infl ation erodes a currency’s value if governments print too much money or if politi- cal instability erodes public confi dence. Con- stant minor adjustments set currencies’ values; this Russian exchange in 2006 offers 0.01 rubles less per U.S. dollar than the one in the back- ground.

324 Chapter 9 Global Finance and Business

hard currency and one for internal use only. Cubans complain that needed goods are available only at stores taking the hard version (such as stores selling to tourists), whereas their salaries are paid in the soft version. Generally, as economies develop and join the global marketplace, their currencies also develop, from the shaky versions based on beer cans or prone to hyperinfl ation, to the much more stable versions such as China’s today, and eventually to the fully convertible model.

States maintain reserves of hard currency. These are the equivalent of the stockpiles of gold in centuries past. National currencies are now backed by hard-currency reserves, not gold. Some states continue to maintain gold reserves as well. In 2010, Saudi Arabia disclosed that it maintained over 300 tons of gold in reserve, worth more than $10 billion. China’s gold reserves were three times larger. The industrialized countries have fi nancial reserves roughly in proportion to the size of their economies.

One form of currency exchange uses fi xed exchange rates . Here governments decide, individually or jointly, to establish offi cial rates of exchange for their currencies. For example, the Canadian and U.S. dollars were for many years equal in value; a fi xed rate of one-to-one was maintained (this is no longer true). States have various means for trying to maintain, or modify, such fi xed rates in the face of changing economic conditions (see “Why Currencies Rise or Fall” later in this chapter).

Floating exchange rates are now more commonly used for the world’s major curren- cies. Rates are determined by global currency markets in which private investors and gov- ernments alike buy and sell currencies. There is a supply and demand for each state’s currency, with prices constantly adjusting in response to market conditions. Just as inves- tors might buy shares of Apple or Wal-Mart stock if they expected its value to rise, so they would buy a pile of Japanese yen if they expected that currency’s value to rise in the future. Through short-term speculative trading in international currencies, exchange rates adjust to changes in the longer-term supply and demand for currencies.

Major international currency markets operate in a handful of cities—the most impor- tant being New York, London, Zurich (Switzerland), Tokyo, and Hong Kong—linked together by instantaneous computerized communications. These markets are driven in the short term by one question: What will a state’s currency be worth in the future relative

Region 1993 2003 2012a

Industrialized West Russia/CIS China Middle East Latin America South Asia Africa

3 1,400

15 27

750 6

112

2 12 7

12 10 6 8

2 8 4 5 6

10 7

aData are estimates based on partial data for 2012.

Note: Regions are not identical to those used elsewhere in this book.

Inflation Rate (percent per year)

TABLE 9.1 Infl ation Rates by Region, 1993–2012

Source: United Nations. World Economic Situation and Prospects, 2010. United Nations, 2010.

The Currency System 325

to what it is worth today? These international currency markets involve huge amounts of money—a trillion and a half dollars every day—moving around the world (of course, only the computerized information actually moves). They are private markets, not as strongly regulated by governments as are stock markets. 4

National governments periodically intervene in fi nancial markets, buying and selling currencies in order to manipulate their value. (These interventions may also involve changing interest rates paid by the government ; see p. 334 .) Such government interven- tion to manage the otherwise free-fl oating currency rates is called a managed fl oat sys- tem. The leading industrialized states often, but not always, work together in such interventions. If the price of the U.S. dollar, for instance, goes down too much relative to other important currencies (a political judgment), governments step into the currency markets, side by side with private investors, and buy dollars. With this higher demand for dollars, the price may then stabilize and perhaps rise again. (If the price gets too high, governments step in to sell dollars, increasing supply and driving the price down.) Such interventions usually happen quickly, in one day, but may be repeated several times within a few weeks in order to have the desired effect. 5 Note that monetary intervention requires costly multilateral cooperation among states. Liberals point to such cooperation as evidence that states recognize their long-term interest in a mutually benefi cial inter- national economy.

In their interventions in international currency markets, governments are at a dis- advantage because even acting together, they control only a small fraction of the money moving on such markets; most of it is privately owned. However, governments have one advantage in that they can work together to have enough impact on the market to make at least modest changes in price. Governments can also operate in secret, keeping private investors in the dark regarding how much currency govern- ments may eventually buy or sell, and at what price. Only after a coordinated multina- tional intervention into markets does the public fi nd out about it. (If speculators knew in advance, they could make money at the government’s expense.) Note that this is an area where states have a common interest (making sure a large economy does not col- lapse) aligned against transnational actors, investors who are trying to make money at the expense of states.

A successful intervention can make money for governments at the expense of pri- vate speculators. If, for example, the G20 governments step in to raise the price of U.S. dollars by buying them around the world (selling other hard currencies), and if they suc- ceed, the governments can then sell again and pocket a profi t. However, if the interven- tion fails and the price of dollars keeps falling, the governments lose money and may have to keep buying and buying in order to stop the slide. In fact, if investors become aware of such moves, they may interpret this action as a signal that the currency being bought is weak, which could depress the price even further. In extreme cases, the gov- ernments may run out of their stockpiles of hard currencies before then and have to absorb a huge loss. Thus governments must be realistic about the limited effects they can have on currency prices.

These limits were well illustrated in the 2001 Argentine fi nancial collapse. Argentina in the 1990s had pegged the value of its currency at a fi xed rate to the U.S. dollar—a

4 Baker, Andrew. Governing Financial Globalization: International Political Economy and Multi-Level Governance. Routledge, 2008. 5 Bearce, David H. Monetary Divergence: Domestic Political Autonomy in the Post-Bretton Woods Era. Michigan, 2007. Kirshner, Jonathan. Currency and Coercion: The Political Economy of International Monetary Power. Princeton, 1997.

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wonderfully effective way to stop the runaway infl ation that had recently wreaked devas- tation on Argentina’s economy. Tying the peso to the dollar, however, represented a loss of sovereignty over monetary policy, one of the key levers to control an economy. Argentina and the United States in the late 1990s had different needs. As a historic U.S. expansion brought unprecedented prosperity (allowing interest rates to be kept relatively high), Argentina suffered four years of recession, but could not lower interest rates to stimulate growth. Argentina accumulated more than $100 billion in foreign loans and could not service its debts. Assistance from the IMF in restructuring debt was contingent on a tight fi nancial policy of tax increases and spending cuts—a mistake during a major multiyear recession, according to critics. In 2001, as the United States and IMF stood by, Argentina’s economy collapsed; two presidents resigned in short order; and a populist took power, defaulted on foreign debts, and devalued the peso to create jobs—an embar- rassing chapter for the IMF and a painful one for Argentina. In 2003, Argentina defaulted on a $3 billion payment to the IMF, the largest default in IMF history. Its economy turned around and it paid the IMF off in 2006, though negotiations with foreign govern- ment creditors continued.

More recently, pressures built up in a vastly more important case—China’s currency. As in Argentina in 2001, the current policy of “pegging” China’s currency to the dollar did not adjust to different economic conditions in China and the United States. China runs a big trade surplus (see p. 287 ) while the United States runs a big trade defi cit—over $300 billion with China alone in 2012 and over $500 billion in total. Critics charge that the dollar-yuan ratio is held artifi cially high, making China’s exports to the United States cheaper and contributing to the trade imbalance and the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs—an issue in U.S. domestic politics. As the economic position of the United States has worsened in the past three years, pressure on China to reform its currency has grown. Yet, China is concerned about domestic stability—for employment to stay high, China

SEEKING THE COLLECTIVE GOOD

Currency Stability COLLECTIVE GOOD: Stable Currency Exchange Rates for World Business

BACKGROUND: Globalization has brought great wealth to the world as business increasingly operates internationally. The ability to do business internation- ally depends on the stability of currency exchange rates in different countries. Whatever the exchange rate, businesspeople can plan on investments, imports, or purchases based on knowing what these things will cost if paid in a foreign currency. This stability is a col- lective good for the world. If the world’s major coun- tries maintain stability by coordinating their fi nancial policies, all enjoy the benefi t. That stability can be achieved even if some states free-ride by manipulating their own currency exchange rates to advantage. If too many countries do so, the collective good is not

achieved, as shown in the competitive devaluations of major currencies in the 1930s, which worsened the Great Depression.

CHALLENGE: China has kept its currency pegged to the U.S. dollar for years, even as economic conditions in the two countries have diverged and a huge trade imbalance developed. Most economists expect that if allowed to fl oat freely like the world’s other major cur- rencies, the Chinese currency would rise substantially. This would help American exports and harm Chinese exports, reduc- ing the trade imbalance somewhat. How- ever, although China says occasionally

The Currency System 327

must export goods. China’s undervalued currency keeps exports cheap and workers employed. China has only slowly allowed its currency to appreciate in value modestly, and will not allow it to fl oat freely.

In 2006, China, Japan, and South Korea announced plans to work toward coordinat- ing their currency policies. In 2010, South Korea agreed to further coordinate currency exchanges with China. Along with the ASEAN countries, they are also studying the creation of an Asian currency unit that would track the aggregate value of the region’s currencies. Both measures are possible early steps toward the eventual creation of an Asian currency like the euro. But such a major move is in the early stages at best.

Why Currencies Rise or Fall In the short term, exchange rates depend on speculation about the future value of cur- rencies. But over the long term, the value of a state’s currency tends to rise or fall rela- tive to others because of changes in the long-term supply and demand for the currency. Supply is determined by the amount of money a government prints. Printing money is a quick way to generate revenue for the government, but the more money printed, the lower its price. Domestically, printing too much money creates infl ation because the amount of goods in the economy is unchanged but more money is circulating to buy them with. Demand for a currency depends on the state’s economic health and political stability. People do not want to own the currency of an unstable country, because polit- ical instability leads to the breakdown of economic effi ciency and of trust in the cur- rency. Conversely, political stability boosts a currency’s value. For instance, in 2001, when a new Indonesian president took offi ce after a period of political and economic turmoil, the Indonesian currency jumped 13 percent in two days because of expecta- tions of greater stability.

that it will let the currency rise, the actual changes have been quite modest.

SOLUTION: Unlike the trade system based on equal- ity and reciprocity, the international fi nancial system more closely resembles a dominance hierarchy. The IMF uses a weighted voting system that gives power to the largest economies. Until recently, major world cur- rency decisions were taken by the Group of Seven (G7) countries. This was expanded to the larger and more inclusive G20—a fl attening of the dominance hierar- chy in response to the world economic crisis—but still leaves the top countries calling the shots. World cur- rency markets are dominated by the U.S. dollar, the euro, and the Japanese yen.

By keeping its currency artifi cially low, China is free riding on the world currency system by boosting its own exports. However, China is not a large enough

Dollars and euros anchor the currency system, 2010.

piece of the world economy as a whole to bring down the currency system by its nonparticipation.

328 Chapter 9 Global Finance and Business

Currency stability is hard to achieve. Between 1995 and 2004, the U.S. dollar dropped from 100 Japanese yen to 80, rose to 130, and dropped back to 105. This kind of instability in exchange rates disrupts business in trade-oriented sectors because companies face sudden and unpredictable changes in their plans for income and expenses (for example, changes in the cost of computer chips from Japan needed to manufacture U.S. computers, or U.S. soft- ware needed in Japan). States also have a shared interest in currency stability because instability tends to be profi table for specu- lators at the expense of central banks. States also share an interest in the integrity of their currencies against counterfeiting, but “rogue” states may feel otherwise. In 2006, the United States accused North Korea of passing off tens of millions of dol- lars in extremely realistic counterfeit $100 bills—a direct gain for the North Korean regime at the expense of the U.S. Treasury.

Despite these shared interests in cur- rency stability, states also experience con- fl icts over currency exchange. States often prefer a low value for their own currency

relative to others, because a low value promotes exports and helps turn trade defi cits into surpluses—as mercantilists especially favor (see pp. 286 – 287 ) . For instance, as Canada’s dollar rose 25 percent in 2009–2012 relative to the U.S. dollar, American automakers shifted production, and thousands of jobs, out of Canada and into the United States.

Exchange rates and trade surpluses or defi cits tend to adjust automatically toward equilibrium (the preferred outcome for liberals). An overvalued currency, whose exchange rate is too high, creates a chronic trade defi cit. The defi cit can be covered by printing more money, which waters down the currency’s value and brings down the exchange rate (assuming it is allowed to fl oat freely). Because they see such adjustments as harmless, liberals view these changes as positive mechanisms for the world economy to work out ineffi ciencies and maximize overall growth.

A unilateral move to reduce the value of one’s own currency by changing a fi xed or offi cial exchange rate is called a devaluation . Generally, devaluation is a quick fi x for fi nancial problems in the short term, but it can create new problems. It causes losses to foreigners who hold one’s currency (which suddenly loses value). Such losses reduce the trust people place in the currency. As a result, demand for the currency drops, even at the new lower rate. Investors become wary of future devaluations, and indeed such devalua- tions often follow one after another in unstable economies. In the fi rst three weeks of 2009, Russia devalued its ruble six times after the price of its main export, oil, plummeted. A currency may be devalued by being allowed to fl oat freely after a period of fi xed exchange rates, often bringing a single sharp drop in values. In general, any sharp or artifi cial change

PRICES SUBJECT TO CHANGE

Changes in the value of the dollar—refl ecting underlying trends in U.S. and foreign economies as well as governments’ monetary policies—directly affect the prices of imported goods such as gasoline, here dropping in 2012.

329

POLICY PERSPECTIVES

President of China, Xi Jinping

PROBLEM How do you balance international

political pressures with domestic economic

concerns?

BACKGROUND Imagine that you are the president of China. The Chinese economy has grown rapidly in the past decade. Growth rates continue to run near 9 percent as of 2012, exceeding nearly all countries in the developing world. After economic slowdowns during the 2008 global fi nancial crisis, rapid growth has returned. Chinese exports fell during the crisis, but have surged back, leading to mas- sive yearly trade surpluses.

Your position in the international economy is unique, because China’s currency, the yuan, does not fl oat freely and was pegged to the U.S. dollar (and then to a basket of curren- cies) for more than a decade. Although your predecessor let the currency rise by 40 percent between 2005 and 2012, many economists consider it still substantially undervalued.

Many feel your fi xed currency is one explanation for your country’s tremendous economic growth and trade surplus. The demand for the yuan is high (to pay for your exports), but because it does not fl oat, your government can keep its value low. The result is that Chinese exports are much cheaper on the world market, making your goods very attractive.

DOMESTIC CONSIDERATIONS Economic growth is important for your country. Given the country’s large population, increases in jobs are important to keep unemployment low. Higher wages help ensure low birth- rates (through the demographic transition ; see p. 409 ). Exports are a key part of this picture, contributing heavily to your economic growth and generating hard currency for your economy and creating jobs.

Recently, however, two dangers have appeared on the horizon. The fi rst is economic. Since 2010, your country has experienced labor unrest from workers unhappy with their low pay. Responses to these protests could include higher wages, raising the costs of goods produced and potentially lowering exports. The second danger is political. Both Europe and the United States have complained bitterly about your exchange rate and trade surplus. The United States has blamed the undervalued yuan for costing Amer-

ica 1.5 million jobs, and the 2012 American presidential election featured recurrent “China bashing,” further exac- erbating political tensions.

SCENARIO Now imagine that the United States offers the possibility of awarding the next presidency of the World Bank to China (until now the World Bank President has always been an American). The condition is that you allow the yuan to fl oat freely on international currency markets. Such a move would be very popular in international politi- cal circles and would lessen the chances that your own economy will “overheat” and become infl ationary. In the long run, such a move will ensure your further integration into the international economy. In addition, leading the World Bank would provide great prestige and leverage for your government.

Of course, there are also dangers in this course of action. If the yuan rises rapidly in value, your exports will be less competitive internationally, risking a stall in a key engine of your economy just as you have come through the fi nancial crisis. You also become more vulnerable to inter- national currency shocks, such as the 1997 Asian eco- nomic crisis, which you avoided in large part due to your fi xed exchange rate.

CHOOSE YOUR POLICY Do you allow the yuan to fl oat freely on international currency markets? If yes, how do you make sure your economy stays on a high-growth path and your exports stay competitive? If no, how do you deal with the political pressure arising from your existing currency policy? Can you also run the risk that your economy will grow too fast, risking infl ation and domestic discontent?

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330 Chapter 9 Global Finance and Business

in exchange rates tends to disrupt smooth international trade and interfere with the crea- tion of wealth.

Relatively stable exchange rates for international currency can be seen as a collective good, in that all members of the international economy benefi t from a stable framework for making investments and sales, yet an individual country can benefi t from devaluing its own currency. (Whether such benefi ts are actually economic, or merely political benefi ts tied to perceptions of national interest, does not matter here, as long as state leaders per- ceive that defection from existing exchange rates can benefi t their countries.) According to the theory of collective goods, international exchange rate stability should be more readily achieved in two circumstances—under hegemony (the dominance principle) and under an arrangement among a small group of key states (where the reciprocity principle operates effectively). Hegemonic stability, in this theory, includes providing backing for world currency stability, using the hegemon’s own economic clout and its infl uence over other great powers. Lacking a hegemon, collective goods are thought to be easiest to ensure if controlled by a small group. In the small-group setting, defectors stand out and mutual cooperation is more readily enforced.

Central Banks Governments control the printing of money. In some states, the politicians or generals who control the government directly control the amounts of money printed. It is not sur- prising that infl ation tends to be high in those states, because political problems can often be solved by printing more money. But in most industrialized countries, politicians know they cannot trust themselves with day-to-day decisions about printing money. To enforce self-discipline and enhance public trust in the value of money, these decisions are turned over to a central bank . 6

The economists and technical experts who run the central bank seek to maintain the value of the state’s currency by limiting the amount of money printed and not allowing high infl ation. Politicians appoint the people who run the bank, but generally for long terms that do not coincide with those of the politicians. Thus, central bank managers try to run the bank in the national interest, a step removed from partisan politics. If a state leader orders a military intervention, the generals obey, but if the leader orders an intervention in currency markets, the central bank does not have to comply. In practice, the autonomy of central banks varies. For instance, the head of Thailand’s central bank was fi red by the prime minister in a dispute over interest rates in 2001.

In the United States, the central bank is the Federal Reserve, or the Fed. The “reserve” is the government’s stockpile of hard currency. The Fed can affect the economy by releas- ing or hoarding its money. Internationally, it does this by intervening in currency markets (as described earlier). Multilateral interventions are usually coordinated by the heads of central banks and treasury (fi nance) ministries in the leading countries. The long-term, relatively nonpartisan perspective of central bankers makes it easier for states to achieve the collective good of a stable world monetary system.

Domestically, the Fed exercises its power mainly by setting the discount rate —the interest rate the government charges when it loans money to private banks. (Central banks have only private banks, not individuals and corporations, as their customers.) In effect, this rate controls how fast money is injected into the economy. If the Fed sets too

6 Blinder, Alan S. The Quiet Revolution: Central Banking Goes Modern. Yale, 2004.

The Currency System 331

low a discount rate, too much money will enter into circulation and infl ation will result. If the rate is set too high, too little money will circulate and consumers and businesses will fi nd it hard to borrow as much or as cheaply from private banks; economic growth will be depressed.

Central bank decisions about the discount rate have important international conse- quences. If interest rates are higher in one state than in another, foreign capital tends to be attracted to the state with the higher rate. And if economic growth is high in a foreign country, more goods can be exported to it. So states care about other states’ monetary policies. The resulting international confl icts can be resolved only politically (such as at G20 meetings), not technically, because each central bank, although removed from domestic politics, still looks out for its own state’s interests.

Although central banks control sizable reserves of currency, they are constrained by the limited share of world money they own. Most wealth is controlled by private banks and corporations. As economic actors, states do not drive the direction of the world econ- omy; in many ways they follow it, at least over the long run. Yet, as we have seen in the recent global economic crises, states still play a key role in the global economy. In the short run, states can adopt massive fi nancial stimulus packages, can rescue private banks and corporations that teeter on bankruptcy, and can prosecute individuals who act illegally to cause economic hardship.

The World Bank and the IMF Because of the importance of international cooperation for a stable world monetary sys- tem and because of the need to overcome collective goods problems, international regimes and institutions have developed around norms of behavior in monetary relations. Just as the UN institutionally supports regimes based on norms of behavior in international secu- rity affairs, the same is true in the world monetary regime.

As in security affairs, the main international economic institutions were created near the end of World War II. The Bretton Woods system was adopted at a conference of the winning states in 1944 (at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire). It established the Interna- tional Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), more commonly called the World Bank , as a source of loans to reconstruct the Western European economies after the war and to help states through future fi nancial diffi culties. (Later, the main borrowers were developing countries and, in the 1990s, Eastern European ones.) Closely linked with the World Bank is the International Monetary Fund (IMF) . The IMF coordinates interna- tional currency exchange, the balance of international payments, and national accounts (discussed shortly). The World Bank and the IMF continue to be the pillars of the inter- national fi nancial system. (The roles of the World Bank and the IMF in international development are taken up in Chapter 13 .) 7

Bretton Woods set a regime of stable monetary exchange, based on the U.S. dollar and backed by gold, that lasted from 1944 to 1971. 8 During this period, the dollar had a fi xed value equal to 1/35 of an ounce of gold, and the U.S. government guaranteed to buy dollars for gold at this rate (from a stockpile in Fort Knox, Kentucky). Other states’ cur- rencies were exchanged at fi xed rates relative to the dollar. These fi xed exchange rates

7 Fischer, Stanley. IMF Essays from a Time of Crisis: The International Financial System, Stabilization, and Development. MIT, 2004. Copelovitch, Mark S. The International Monetary Fund in the Global Economy. Cambridge, 2010. 8 Eichengreen, Barry. Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System. Princeton, 1996. Andrews, David M., C. Randall Henning, and Louis W. Pauly, eds. Governing the World’s Money. Cornell, 2002.

332 Chapter 9 Global Finance and Business

were set by the IMF based on the long-term equilibrium level that could be sustained for each currency (rather than short-term political considerations). The international cur- rency markets operated within a narrow range around the fi xed rate. If a country’s cur- rency fell more than 1 percent from the fi xed rate, the country had to use its hard-currency reserves to buy its own currency back and thus shore up the price. If the price rose more than 1 percent, it had to sell its currency to drive the price down.

The gold standard was abandoned in 1971—an event sometimes called the “collapse of Bretton Woods.” The term is not quite appropriate: the institutions survived, and even the monetary regime underwent more of an adjustment than a collapse. The U.S. econ- omy no longer held the overwhelming dominance it had in 1944—mostly because of European and Japanese recovery from World War II, but also because of U.S. overspend- ing on the Vietnam War and the outfl ow of U.S. dollars to buy oil. As a result, the dollar became seriously overvalued. By 1971, the dollar was no longer worth 1/35 of an ounce of gold, and the United States had to abandon its fi xed exchange rate. President Nixon uni- laterally dumped the dollar-gold system, and allowed the dollar to fl oat freely. Soon it had fallen to a fraction of its former value relative to gold.

The abandonment of the gold standard was good for the United States and bad for Japan and Europe, where leaders expressed shock at the unilateral U.S. actions. The inter- dependence of the world capitalist economy, which had produced record economic growth for all the Western countries after World War II, had also created the conditions for new international confl icts.

To replace gold as a world standard, the IMF created a new world currency, the Spe- cial Drawing Right (SDR) . The SDR has been called “paper gold” because it is created in limited amounts by the IMF, is held as a hard-currency reserve by states’ central banks, and can be exchanged for various international currencies. The SDR is today the closest thing to a world currency that exists, but it cannot buy goods—only currencies. And it is owned only by states (central banks), not by individuals or companies. The value of the U.S. dollar was pegged to the SDR rather than to gold, at a fi xed exchange rate (but one that the IMF periodically adjusted to refl ect the dollar’s strength or weakness). SDRs are linked in value to a basket of several key international currencies. When one currency rises a bit and another falls, the SDR does not change value much; but if all currencies rise (worldwide infl ation), the SDR rises with them.

Since the early 1970s, the major national currencies have been governed by the man- aged fl oat system. Transition from the dollar-gold regime to the managed fl oat regime was diffi cult. States had to bargain politically over the targets for currency exchange rates in the meetings now known as G6 summits. The G6 was later expanded to the G8 with the addition of Canada (in 1976) and Russia (in 1997). In 2009, it was announced that the G20, including far more developed and developing countries, would begin to replace the G8 in undertaking major fi nancial deliberations.

The technical mechanisms of the IMF are based on each member state’s depositing fi nancial reserves with the IMF. Upon joining the IMF, a state is assigned a quota for such deposits, partly of hard currency and partly of the state’s own currency (this quota is not related to the concept of trade quotas, which are import restrictions). The quota is based on the size and strength of a state’s economy. A state can then borrow against its quota (even exceeding it somewhat) to stabilize its economy in diffi cult times and repay the IMF in subsequent years. In 2009, world leaders pledged an additional $1 trillion to be paid to the IMF so it could help developing countries cope with the global fi nancial crisis.

Unlike the WTO or UN General Assembly, the IMF and the World Bank use a weighted voting system—each state has a vote equal to its quota. Thus the advanced econo- mies control the IMF, although nearly all the world’s states are members. The United States has the single largest vote (17 percent), and its capital city is headquarters for both

State Financial Positions 333

the IMF and the World Bank. In 2008, the IMF adjusted the voting formula, increas- ing modestly the quota and voting power of China (from about 3 to 3.7 percent of the total) and other developing countries.

Since 1944, the IMF and the World Bank have tried to accomplish three major missions. First they sought to provide sta- bility and access to capital for states rav- aged by World War II, especially Japan and the states of Western Europe. This mission was a great success, leading to growth and prosperity in those states. Sec- ond, especially in the 1970s and 1980s but still continuing today, the World Bank and the IMF have tried to promote eco- nomic development in poor countries. That mission has been far less successful— as seen in the lingering poverty in much of the global South (see Chapter 12 ) . The third mission, in the 1990s, was the inte- gration of Eastern Europe and Russia into the world capitalist economy. This effort posted a mixed record but has had general success overall.

State Financial Positions As currency rates change and state economies grow, the overall positions of states relative to each other shift.

National Accounts The IMF maintains a system of national accounts statistics to keep track of the overall monetary position of each state. A state’s balance of payments is like the fi nancial state- ment of a company: it summarizes all the fl ows of money in and out of the country. The system itself is technical and not political in nature. Essentially, three types of interna- tional transactions go into the balance of payments: the current account, fl ows of capital, and changes in reserves.

The current account is basically the balance of trade discussed in Chapter 8 . Money fl ows out of a state to pay for imports and fl ows into the state to pay for exports. The goods imported or exported include both merchandise and services. For instance, money spent by a British tourist in Florida is equivalent to money spent by a British consumer buying Flor- ida oranges in a London market; in both cases money fl ows into the U.S. current account. The current account includes two other items. Government transactions are military and foreign aid grants, as well as salaries and pensions paid to government employees abroad. Remittances are funds sent home by companies or individuals outside a country (see Chap- ter 13 ) . For example, a Honda subsidiary in America may send profi ts back to Honda in Japan. Or a British citizen working in New York may send money to her parents in London.

SEEDS OF DEVELOPMENT

The World Bank works to stabilize and develop economies in poor and mid- dle-income countries. In Pakistan, the Bank runs programs to increase agricultural productivity and improve nutrition. This vendor in Lahore sells apples from his donkey cart, 2012.

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334 Chapter 9 Global Finance and Business

The second category in the accounts, capital fl ows, are foreign investments in, and by, a country. 9 Capital fl ows are measured in net terms—the total investments and loans for- eigners make in a country minus the investments and loans that country’s companies, citizens, and government invest in other countries. Most of such investment is private, although some is by (or in) government agencies and state-owned industries. Capital fl ows are divided into foreign direct investment (or direct foreign investment )—such as owning a factory, company, or real estate in a foreign country—and indirect portfolio investment, such as buying stocks and bonds or making loans to a foreign company. These various kinds of capital fl ows have somewhat different political consequences (see “International Debt” and “Foreign Direct Investment” later in this chapter), but are basically equivalent in the overall national accounts picture.

The third category, changes in foreign exchange reserves, makes the national accounts balance. Any difference between the infl ows and outfl ows of money (in the current account and capital fl ows combined) is made up by an equal but opposite change in reserves. These changes in reserves consist of the state’s purchases and sales of SDRs, gold, and hard currencies other than its own, and changes in its deposits with the IMF. If a state has more money fl owing out than in, it gets that money from its reserves. If it has more money fl owing in than out, it puts the money in its reserves. Thus, national accounts always balance in the end. At least, they almost balance; there is a residual category—errors and omissions—because even the most effi cient and honest govern- ment (many governments are neither) cannot keep track of every bit of money crossing its borders.

International Debt In one sense, an economy is constantly in motion, as money moves through the processes of production, trade, and consumption. But economies also contain standing wealth. The hard-currency reserves owned by governments are one form of standing wealth, but not the most important. Most standing wealth is in the form of homes and cars, farms and factories, ports and railroads. In particular, capital goods (such as factories) are products that can be used as inputs for further production. Nothing lasts forever, but standing wealth lasts for enough years to be treated differently from goods that are quickly con- sumed. The main difference is that capital can be used to create more wealth: factories produce goods, railroads support commerce, and so forth. Standing wealth creates new wealth, so the economy tends to grow over time. As it grows, more standing wealth is cre- ated. In a capitalist economy, money makes more money.

Interest rates refl ect this inherent growth dynamic. Real interest rates are the rates for borrowing money above and beyond the rate of infl ation (for instance, if money is loaned at an annual interest rate of 8 percent but infl ation is 3 percent, the real interest rate is 5 percent). Businesses and households borrow money because they think they can use it to create new wealth faster than the rate of interest on the loan.

If a state’s economy is healthy, it can borrow money from foreign governments, banks, or companies and create enough new wealth to repay the debts a few years later. But states, like businesses, sometimes operate at a loss; then their debts mount up. In a vicious circle, more and more of the income they generate goes to pay interest, and more money must be borrowed to keep the state in operation. If its fortunes reverse, a state or business can create wealth again and over time pay back the principal on its debts to climb out of the hole. If not, it will have to begin selling off part of its standing wealth

9 Kindleberger, Charles P. International Capital Movements. Cambridge, 1987.

State Financial Positions 335

(buildings, airplanes, factories, and the like). The net worth of the state or busi- ness (all its assets minus all its liabilities) will decrease.

Failure to repay debts makes it hard to borrow in the future, a huge impedi- ment to economic growth. When debts become unpayable, the lenders (banks and governments) have to write them off the books or settle them at a fraction of their offi cial value. In 2001, when Argentina collapsed under more than $100 billion of debt accumulated over the prior decade (see pp. 325 – 326 ) , creditors had to accept less than one- third of their money in a 2005 restruc- turing deal. In 2010 to 2012, fi nancial markets repeatedly slumped in reaction to fears of a Greek default on large debts, and possible contagion to larger economies—Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and perhaps Italy. In 2012, several bail- outs stabilized the crisis but not until austerity measures had driven the entire euro zone into a recession, projected to last through 2013.

Why do states go into debt? One major reason is a trade defi cit. In the bal- ance of payments, a trade defi cit must somehow be made up. It is common to borrow money to pay for a trade defi cit. A second reason is the income and consumption pattern among households and busi- nesses. If people and fi rms spend more than they take in, they must borrow to pay their bills. The credit card they use may be from a local bank, but that bank may be getting the money it lends to them from foreign lenders.

A third reason for national debt is government spending relative to taxation. Under the principles of Keynesian economics (named for economist John Maynard Keynes), governments sometimes spend more on programs than they take in from tax revenue— defi cit spending —to stimulate economic growth. This has been the strategy adopted by many G8 countries in the current fi nancial crisis, especially the United States. If this strategy works, increased economic growth eventually generates higher tax revenues to make up the defi cit. If it does not, a state fi nds itself with a poor econ- omy in even deeper debt.

Government decisions about spending and taxation are called fi scal policy ; decisions about printing and circulating money are called monetary policy . 10 These are the two main tools available for government to manage an economy. There is no free lunch: high taxation chokes off economic growth, printing excess money causes infl ation, and borrow- ing to cover a defi cit places a mortgage on the state’s standing wealth. Thus, for all the

DRAGGED DOWN BY DEBT

Failure to make payments on international debt, called a default, is a very seri- ous action because it can cut off a country’s access to future investment and loans. Nonetheless, several states have defaulted on debts rather than infl ict painful budget cuts that would hurt the population. In 2011–2012, Greece nar- rowly averted defaulting on its huge debts, accepting EU bailouts intended to stabilize the euro zone that Greece belongs to. This trader reacts as Ger- many’s stock market falls on fears of a Greek default.

10 Kirshner, Jonathan, ed. Monetary Orders: Ambiguous Economics, Ubiquitous Politics. Cornell, 2003.

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complexities of governmental economic policies and international economic transac- tions, a state’s wealth and power ultimately depend more than anything on the underlying health of its economy—the education and training of its labor force, the amount and modernity of its capital goods, the morale of its population, and the skill of its managers. In the long run, international debt refl ects these underlying realities.

Shifts in fi nancial fortune among the great powers often accompany changing power relations. Consider how the past decade has changed the fi nancial positions of the United States, of Russia and Eastern Europe, and of Asia. (The position of Europe, including the new European currency, is discussed in Chapter 10 .)

The Position of the United States The United States is an extraordinarily wealthy and powerful state. Its most unique strengths may be in the area of international security—as the world’s only superpower— but its economic strengths are also striking. It is not only the world’s largest economy but also the most technologically advanced one in such growth sectors as computers, telecom- munications, aviation and aerospace, and biotechnology. The U.S. position in scientifi c research and higher education is unparalleled in the world.

The U.S. position in the international economy, however, has shifted over the dec- ades. U.S. hegemony peaked after World War II, then gradually eroded as competitors gained relative ground (especially in Western Europe and Asia). In the early 1950s, the U.S. economy (GDP) was about twice the size of the next six advanced industrial states combined. By the 1980s, its relative share of world GDP had dropped almost by half. In 1950, the United States held half of the world’s fi nancial reserves; by 1980, it held less than 10 percent. This long-term decline after the extraordinary post–1945 U.S. hege- mony was a natural and probably unavoidable one. The shifting U.S. fi nancial position since the 1980s is illustrated in Figure 9.1 . In the early 1980s, the trade defi cit (exports minus imports) grew from near zero to $200 billion in just a few years. The trade defi cit shrank back, but then grew to more than $700 billion a year by 2007. After shrinking again during the 2008–2009 recession, the trade defi cit began to grow again in 2010. The budget defi cit meanwhile jumped to $300 billion per year in the early 1980s, then closed in the 1990s and briefl y became a large surplus, only to exceed $1 trillion a year in 2008– 2012 as a result of war spending, tax cuts, and a Keynesian effort to stimulate economic growth during the economic recession. These trends have caused alarm regarding U.S. international economic leadership. 11

The United States economy began the 21st century roughly, after a decade of rela- tive prosperity in the 1990s. The bursting of an Internet investment “bubble” was followed by a worldwide recession in 2001 and then the economic disruptions that fol- lowed the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Tax cuts and war spending primed growth in 2002–2006, but at the cost of rising debt. In 2008, another recession arrived, the “Great Recession,” the worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s (although not nearly that bad). Growth resumed in 2009 but remained sluggish, with persistently high unemployment, ever-rising debt, and contentious government decision-making. By 2013, stock markets had fully recovered from the 2008 crash, but a new European reces- sion threatened to hurt U.S. exports.

11 Thorbecke, Willem. The Effects of U.S. Budget Defi cits on Financial Markets since 1980. Edward Elgar, 2009. Dam, Kenneth W. The Rules of the Global Game: A New Look at U.S. International Economic Policy Making. Chicago, 2001.

State Financial Positions 337

In addition, the accumulated debt from decades of defi cit spending remains. The U.S. government’s national debt grew from about $1 trillion in 1980 to $3 trillion in 1990, $5 trillion in 2000, and $16 trillion in 2013. The interest payments are equivalent to what would otherwise be a healthy rate of economic growth. Once, the United States was the world’s leading lender state; now it is the world’s leading debtor state.

These U.S. fi nancial trends have profound implications for the entire world political economy. They fi rst undermined (in the 1980s), then reconstructed (in the 1990s), and then undermined again (since 2000) the leading U.S. role in stabilizing international

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For decades the United States has imported more than it has exported (the current account balance or trade defi cit), and its government has spent more than its income (the budget defi cit). The budget defi cit results in a large national debt. Source: Congressional Budget Offi ce

338 Chapter 9 Global Finance and Business

trade and monetary relations, in ensuring the provision of collective goods, and in provid- ing capital for the economic development of other world regions. In a more decentralized, more privatized world economy with an uncertain U.S. role, collective goods problems would be harder to solve and free trade harder to achieve.

The Position of Russia and Eastern Europe The United States provided limited capital (investments, loans, and grants) to help get the Russian and Eastern European region on its feet again after the Cold War. The United States has not repeated in Russia and Eastern Europe the aid program that stimulated new growth in Western Europe and Japan after World War II.

Instead, states in this region faced daunting challenges as they converted from cen- trally planned to capitalist economies and joined the world capitalist economy. These challenges included integrating into the world trading system (membership in the WTO, bilateral trade agreements, and so forth) and attracting foreign investment. Among the most diffi cult tasks were the attempts of states in this region to join the international monetary system. These matter greatly because having a stable and con- vertible currency is a key element in attracting foreign business and expanding interna- tional trade.

Most of the states of the former Soviet bloc became members of the IMF and were assigned quotas. But the IMF and the World Bank would not make loans available freely to these states until their governments took strong action to curb infl ation, bal- ance government budgets, and ensure economic stability. Such stability would have been easier to achieve with the foreign loans, however, creating a chicken-and- egg problem.

All the economies of the region experienced a deep depression (shrinking GDP) in the years following the end of the Cold War. The economies of the former Soviet Union shrank by half over seven years before climbing again (see Table 9.2 ). In general, the East- ern European countries have turned around their economies more effectively than have the former Soviet republics. Among the latter, Russia was better off than some others; it had inherited much of the Soviet Union’s economic infrastructure and natural resources,

Country Cumulative (10-Year) Change

in GDP, 1990–1999

Russia/CIS �50% Former Yugoslavia �35% Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania �29% Bulgaria �29% Romania �28% Albania �12% Czech Republic �11% Slovakia �1% Hungary �1% Poland +21%

TABLE 9.2 Economic Collapse in Russia and Eastern Europe

Source: Based upon United Nations, World Economic and Social Survey 1999. United Nations, 1 999, p. 263.

State Financial Positions 339

especially oil, and was large enough to gain the attention of the West. But internal power struggles created political instability in Russia, discouraging foreign investment. Infl ation reached 1,500 percent in 1992 but was brought down to less than 10 percent by 2006. Growth returned—more than 6 percent a year in 2000–2005—and a new fl at tax on income boosted tax collections. In 2012, Russia joined the World Trade Organization.

Organized crime emerged as a major problem in the 1990s. “Plutocrats” seized for- merly state-owned companies and drained their wealth into private bank accounts. The chaos of transition also provided fertile ground for corruption among government offi cials. In 2004, Russia’s largest oil company (Yukos) was shut down by President Vladimir Putin because of nonpayment of a $10 billion tax bill, only to have its assets purchased by a state-owned business. (Yukos’s owner was an opponent of Putin.) The state has consoli- dated its control of major companies and the media again, using its powers to put the “plutocrats” under its control or push them aside.

Since a fi nancial crisis in 1998, Russia has registered strong economic growth and reduced runaway infl ation to less than 10 percent a year. In recent years, high oil prices have helped Russia (an oil exporter) to pay off debts and build large foreign reserves. Incomes are rising and poverty shrinking. However, structural obstacles remain, including corruption, weak rule of law, and political uncertainty as the government centralizes power and reasserts state control over business and the press. Russia was aggressive in attempting to stabilize its economy during the 2008 global recession and those efforts appeared to pay off, as economic growth began to return a year later. The return of Vladimir Putin to the presidency in 2012 could provide greater economic stability (perhaps at the cost of freedoms), and Russia’s WTO membership should boost trade and foreign investment. Full integration into the world capitalist economy will require currency stability, stronger rule of law, and reduced corruption. Perhaps Russia’s biggest economic challenge is its current reliance on oil exports and the need to diversify its sources of wealth.

The Position of Asia Following decades of robust growth since the devastation of World War II, Japan by the 1980s seemed to be emerging as a possible rival to the United States as the world’s leading industrial power. Japanese auto manufacturers gained ground on U.S. rivals when smaller cars became popular after the oil-price shocks of the 1970s. In electronics and other fi elds, Japa- nese products began to dominate world markets, and Japanese capital became a major eco- nomic force in nearby developing economies (such as China and Thailand) and even in the United States, where Japanese creditors fi nanced much of the growing U.S. national debt.

These successes, however, masked serious problems. The economic growth of the 1980s drove prices of stocks and real estate to unrealistic levels based on speculation rather than inherent value. When these collapsed at the end of the 1980s, many banks were left with bad loans backed by defl ated stocks and real estate. These losses were cov- ered up, and the underlying problems—lax banking regulation, political cronyism, and outright corruption—persisted through the 1990s.

Despite the example of Japan’s fi nancial system, these mistakes were repeated almost exactly in the 1990s by other countries of East and Southeast Asia. Real estate and stocks became overvalued as rapid economic growth led to speculation and ever-rising expecta- tions. Banks made massive bad loans based on the overvalued assets and got away with it because of political corruption and cronyism. In 1997, these economies suffered a serious fi nancial crisis, which jumped across international borders and sent shock waves around the globe that reverberated for two years. The 1997 Asian fi nancial crisis began when cur- rency speculators began selling off the currencies of Southeast Asian countries. Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia were forced to let their currencies be devalued.

340 Chapter 9 Global Finance and Business

The currency problems of Asian coun- tries led to stock market crashes in sev- eral of them. Other so-called emerging markets around the world—notably Brazil—suffered as investors general- ized the problems in Asia.

The Philippines addressed the problem in the manner that interna- tional agencies and foreign investors preferred. After losing $1 billion in unsuccessfully defending its currency’s value, the Philippines let its currency fl oat and then asked the IMF for a $1 billion stabilization loan, which the IMF approved in a week. In return for the IMF loan, the Philippines’ government agreed to keep interest rates high and budget defi cits low (to reduce infl ation), to pass a tax reform law, and to tighten control of banks that had made bad real estate loans. These kinds of tough meas- ures create political problems, especially when banks are politically connected or when governments are corrupt. The Philippines, by addressing such prob- lems, won international approval.

Other Asian countries did not act decisively and suffered greater eco- nomic setbacks. The currency specula-

tors attacked Indonesia, which had to let its currency fall, raise interest rates, and let its stock market drop. Within months, Indonesia too sought tens of billions of dollars in IMF loans, with the usual conditions attached. But Indonesia resisted implementing the prom- ised reforms, and its economy continued to slide (as did its political stability) in 1998. Riots and student protests eventually forced Indonesia’s President Suharto to resign after 30 years of dictatorship. Overall, in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, stock markets lost about half their value and currencies about a quarter of their value.

When South Korea caught this “Asian fl u” in 1997, its stock markets collapsed and its banks were saddled with $50 billion in bad loans based on cronyism. The IMF stepped in with a $60 billion international bailout—the largest ever—and Koreans elected a new reformist president. Thus in South Korea, as in Thailand and Indonesia, the fi nancial crisis brought about reform as well as pain.

China escaped harm from the 1997 crisis, for several reasons: its economic growth had been less speculative (although rapid), its currency was not freely convertible, it held massive reserves of hard currency, and its government had shown the discipline necessary to bring infl ation under control. The government reduced infl ation from 20 percent to less than 4 percent in 1995–1997, and the engineer of this tight-money policy, Zhu Rongji, became the Chinese prime minister in 1998. (Successful infl ation fi ghters also became presidents of Brazil and Argentina in the 1990s.)

In theory, the instant free fl ow of capital around the world—a result of global com- munications technologies—should stabilize economies. Investors can shift money quickly, and thus incrementally, as conditions indicate shifting strength and weakness of different

BODY CHECK

East Asia’s economies have grown robustly in the decade since the 1997 fi nan- cial crisis, but many of the causes of instability remain. Poor quality control in China’s fast-growing export sector has sent tainted foods, drugs, and toys to Western markets. Authorities opened this toy-testing lab in response, 2007.

Multinational Business 341

currencies and economies. Instead of waiting for governments to devalue or revalue cur- rencies when problems are far along, markets can gradually adjust values day by day. In practice, however, the global liquidity of capital has also shown a destabilizing tendency, as small events can be amplifi ed and reverberate in distant locations. Thus the problems of Thailand became an Asian crisis and then an emerging-markets crisis, as liquid capital fl ed for cover at the speed of light. These events foreshadowed the fi nancial crisis in 2008 when events in one country and sector again quickly spread worldwide.

Governments face a dilemma in that politically desirable policies—from stimulating growth and keeping taxes low to supporting banks and businesses owned by friends and relatives—tend to undermine currency stability. If allowed to continue, such policies may lead to an economic collapse and the loss of foreign investment, but tough policies to maintain currency stability may cause a government to lose power.

In all the regions just discussed—North America, Asia, Russia and Eastern Europe— the role of private businesses is expanding relative to that of the state. Throughout the remainder of the world, private business plays a role in the economy that exceeds that of the state. The remainder of this chapter considers the international political issues related to the operation of private businesses across state borders.

Multinational Business Although states are the main rule makers for currency exchange and other international economic transactions, those transactions are carried out mainly by private fi rms and indi- viduals, not governments. Most important among these private actors are MNCs.

Multinational Corporations Multinational corporations (MNCs) are companies based in one state with affi liated branches or subsidiaries operating in other states. There is no exact defi nition, but the clear- est case of an MNC is a large corporation that operates on a worldwide basis in many coun- tries simultaneously, with fi xed facilities and employees in each. There is also no exact count of the total number of MNCs, but most estimates are in the tens of thousands worldwide.

Most important are industrial corporations, which make goods in factories in various countries and sell them to businesses and consumers in various countries. The automobile, oil, and electronics industries have the largest MNCs. Almost all of the largest MNCs are based in G8 states. 12

Financial corporations (the most important being banks) also operate multinationally— although often with more restrictions than industrial MNCs. Among the largest commercial banks worldwide, the United States does not hold a leading position—refl ecting the tradi- tional U.S. antitrust policy that limits banks’ geographic expansion. The growing interna- tional integration of fi nancial markets was spectacularly illustrated in 1995, when a single 28-year-old trader in Singapore lost $1 billion speculating on Japanese stock and bond mar- kets and bankrupted his employer, a 200-year-old British investment bank.

Some MNCs sell services. 13 The McDonald’s fast-food chain and American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) are good examples. So are the international airlines, which sell tickets in dozens of states (and currencies) for travel all over the world. More down-to-earth

Watch the Video “Banking Interests and Regulatory Reform” at MyPoliSciLab

12 United Nations. World Investment Report 1994: Transnational Corporations, Employment and the Workplace. United Nations, 1994. 13 Mattoo, Aaditya, Robert M. Stern, and Gianni Zanini. A Handbook of International Trade in Services. Oxford, 2007.

342 Chapter 9 Global Finance and Business

service businesses such as retail grocery stores can also become MNCs. The United States predominates in service MNCs as it does in industrial ones.

The role of MNCs in international political relations is complex and in some dispute. 14 Some scholars see MNCs as vir- tually being agents of their home national governments. This view resonates with mercantilism, in which economic activity ultimately serves political authorities; thus MNCs have clear national identities and act as members of their national society under state authority. A variant of this theme (from a more revolutionary world view) considers national governments as being agents of their MNCs; state inter- ventions (economic and military) serve private, monied interests.

Others see MNCs as citizens of the world beholden to no government. The head of Dow Chemical once said he dreamed of buying an island beyond any state’s territory and putting Dow’s world headquarters there. In such a view, MNCs act globally in the interests of their (inter- national) stockholders and owe loyalty to no state. In any case, MNCs are motivated

by the need to maximize profi ts. Only in the case of state-owned MNCs—an important exception but a small minority of the total companies worldwide—do MNC actions refl ect state interests. Even then, managers of state-owned MNCs have won greater autonomy to pursue profi t in recent years (as part of the economic reforms instituted in many countries), and in many cases state-owned enterprises are being sold off (privatized).

As independent actors in the international arena, MNCs are increasingly powerful. Dozens of industrial MNCs have annual sales of tens of billions of dollars each (hundreds of billions of dollars for the top corporations). Only 27 states had more economic activity per year (GDP) in 2011 than did the largest MNC, Shell Oil, at nearly $500 billion. How- ever, the largest government (the United States) has government revenues above $2 tril- lion —about six times that of Shell. Thus the power of MNCs does not rival that of the largest states but exceeds that of many poorer states; this affects MNC operations in the global South (see pp. 476 – 478 ) .

Giant MNCs contribute to global interdependence. They are so deeply entwined in so many states that they have a profound interest in the stable operation of the interna- tional system—in security affairs as well as in trade and monetary relations. 15 MNCs pros- per in a stable international atmosphere that permits freedom of trade, of movement, and

DOING BUSINESS WORLDWIDE

Multinational corporations (MNCs) play important roles in international rela- tions and are powerful actors with considerable resources in negotiating with governments. Here, Airbus, a division of a European MNC, shows off its new super-jumbo jet at the Singapore Airshow, 2008.

14 Doremus, Paul N., William W. Keller, Louis W. Pauly, and Simon Reich. The Myth of the Global Corporation. Princeton, 1998. Gilpin, Robert. U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation. Basic Books, 1975. 15 Brooks, Stephen G. Producing Security: Multinational Corporations, Globalization, and the Changing Calculus of Confl ict. Princeton, 2005.

Multinational Business 343

of capital fl ows (investments)—all governed by market forces with minimal government interference. Thus MNCs are, overall, a strong force for liberalism in the world economy, despite the fact that particular MNCs in particular industries push for certain mercantilist policies to protect their own interests.

Most MNCs have a world management system based on subsidiaries in each state in which they operate. The operations within a given state are subject to the legal authority of that state’s government. But the foreign subsidiaries are owned (in whole or in substan- tial part) by the parent MNC in the home country. Thus, the parent MNC hires and fi res the top managers of its foreign subsidiaries. The business infrastructure is a key aspect of transnational relations —linkages among people and groups across national borders.

In addition to the direct connections among members of a single MNC, the opera- tions of MNCs support a global business infrastructure connecting a transnational com- munity of businesspeople. A U.S. manager arriving in Seoul, South Korea, for instance, does not fi nd a bewildering scene of unfamiliar languages, locations, and customs. Rather, he or she moves through a familiar sequence of airport lounges, telephone calls and faxes, international hotels, business conference rooms, and CNN broadcasts—most likely hear- ing English spoken in all.

Foreign Direct Investment MNCs do not just operate in foreign countries, they also own capital there—buildings, factories, cars, and so forth. For instance, U.S. and German MNCs own some of the capi- tal located in Japan, and Japanese MNCs own capital located in the United States and Germany. Investment means exchanging money for ownership of capital (for the purpose of producing a stream of income that will, over time, more than compensate for the money invested). Investments in foreign countries are among the most important, and politically sensitive, activities of MNCs. Figure 9.2 illustrates the growth of foreign direct invest- ment. Although there is a strong trend toward more foreign direct investment, these fl ows rise and fall with the global economy.

Unlike portfolio investment (on paper), foreign direct investment involves tangible goods such as factories and offi ce buildings (including ownership of a sizable fraction of a company’s total stock, as opposed to a portfolio with little bits of many companies). Paper can be traded on a global market relatively freely, but direct investments cannot be freely moved from one state to another when conditions change. Direct investment is long term, and it is more visible than portfolio investment. Investments in the manufacturing sector usually entail the greatest investment in fi xed facilities and in training workers and managers. Investments in the service sector tend to be less expensive and easier to walk away from if conditions change. 16

Mercantilists tend to view foreign investments in their own country suspiciously. In developing countries, foreign direct investment often evokes concerns about a loss of sovereignty, because governments may be less powerful (and possibly less wealthy) than the MNCs that invest in their country. These fears also refl ect the historical fact that most foreign investment in the global South once came from colonizers. Furthermore, although such investments create jobs, they also bring dislocations of traditional ways of life and cultures.

But because many poor and transitional states also desperately need capital from any source to stimulate economic growth, foreign direct investment is generally welcomed

16 Jensen, Nathan M. Nation-States and the Multinational Corporation: A Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment. Princeton, 2008.

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and encouraged despite the fears of economic nationalists (North-South investment is discussed further on pp. 476 – 478 ) . 17 Most foreign direct investment (like most portfolio investment) is not in the global South, however, but in industrialized countries.

Economic nationalists in industrialized countries also worry about losing power and sovereignty due to foreign investment. In Canada, for instance, mercantilists are alarmed that U.S. fi rms own more than half of Canada’s manufacturing industry and more than two-thirds of Canada’s oil and gas industry. Canada is much smaller than the United States, yet it depends heavily on U.S. trade. In this asymmetrical situation, some Canadi- ans worry that they are being turned into an annex of the United States—economically, culturally, and ultimately politically—losing their own national culture and control of their economy.

Meanwhile, U.S. economic nationalists have similar concerns over foreign direct investment in the United States. Partly this refl ects alarm over the accumulation of U.S. debts. Mercantilists see a loss of power when foreign investors buy up companies and real estate in a debtor country. Such concerns seem stronger when a foreign MNC buys an existing company or building than when it builds a new factory or other facility. For example, in 2005, an outcry in the United States forced a Chinese oil company to with- draw its bid to buy the U.S. company Unocal, which ended up selling itself for a lower price to a U.S. company. (Chinese business and government leaders resented what they saw as a U.S. double standard.) But when Honda builds a new car factory in Ohio, adding jobs and facilities to the U.S. economy, Americans perceive no such loss.

17 Cohen, Stephen D. Multinational Corporations and Foreign Direct Investment: Avoiding Simplicity, Embracing Complexity. Oxford, 2007.

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Multinational Business 345

Liberalism does not condone such arguments. Liberal economists emphasize that glo- bal effi ciency and the increased generation of wealth result from the ability of MNCs to invest freely across international borders. Investment decisions should be made solely on economic grounds, not nationalistic ones. In the view of liberal economists, foreign investments in the United States help, rather than hurt, the U.S. economy. Many of the benefi ts of a profi table Japanese factory in the United States accrue to U.S. workers at the plant and U.S. consumers of its products, even if some profi ts go back to Japan (and even those profi ts may be reinvested in the United States). Because U.S. MNCs have more than $1 trillion of foreign direct investment outside the United States, the picture is by no means one-sided.

Host and Home Government Relations A state in which a foreign MNC operates is called the host country ; the state where the MNC has its headquarters is called its home country . MNC operations create a variety of problems and opportunities for both the host and home countries’ governments. Confl icts between the host government and the MNC may spill over to become an interstate con- fl ict between the host government and home government. For example, if a host govern- ment takes an MNC’s property without compensation or arrests its executives, the home government may step in to help the MNC. 18

Because host governments can regulate activities on their own territories, an MNC cannot operate in a state against the wishes of its government. Conversely, because MNCs have many states to choose from, a host government cannot generally force an MNC to do business in the country against the MNC’s wishes. At least in theory, MNCs operate in host countries only when it is in the interests of both the MNC and the host government. Common interests result from the creation of wealth in the host country by the MNC. Both the MNC and the host government benefi t—the MNC from profi ts, the govern- ment directly by taxation and indirectly through economic growth (generating future taxes and political support).

However, confl icts also arise in the relationship. One obvious confl ict concerns the distribution of new wealth between the MNC and the host government. This distribution depends on the rate at which MNC activities or profi ts are taxed, as well as on the ground rules for MNC operations. Before an MNC invests or opens a subsidiary in a host country, it sits down with the government to negotiate these issues. Threats of violent leverage are largely irrelevant. Rather, the government’s main leverage is to promise a favorable cli- mate for doing business and making money; the MNC’s main leverage is to threaten to take its capital elsewhere.

Governments can offer a variety of incentives to MNCs to invest. Special terms of taxation and of regulation are common. In cases of resource extraction, negotiations may revolve around the rates the government will charge to lease land and mineral rights to the MNC. National and local governments may offer to provide business infrastructure— such as roads, airports, or phone lines—at the government’s expense. (An MNC could also offer to build such infrastructure if allowed to operate on favorable terms in the coun- try.) Over time, certain locations may develop a strong business infrastructure and gain a comparative advantage in luring MNCs to locate there.

In addition to these relatively straightforward questions of distribution, MNC rela- tions with host governments contain several other sources of potential confl ict. One is

18 Rodman, Kenneth A. Sanctity versus Sovereignty: U.S. Policy toward the Nationalization of Natural Resource Investments in the Third World. Columbia, 1988.

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the potential for governments to break their agreements with MNCs and change the terms of taxes, regulations, or other conditions. The extreme case is nationali- zation, in which a host government takes ownership of MNC facilities and assets in the host country (with or without compen- sation). In recent years, Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador have all taken signifi - cant state ownership in what had been for- eign assets in those countries’ oil and gas sectors. Once an MNC has invested in fi xed facilities, it loses much of its leverage over the government because it cannot move to another country without incurring huge expenses. However, governments hes- itate to break their word with MNCs because then other MNCs may not invest in the future. In fact, for this reason, for- eign direct investment in Bolivia dropped by 90 percent from 1999 to 2005. 19 Nation- alization of foreign assets is rare now.

Another source of confl ict is the trade policies of the host government. Govern- ment restrictions on trade seldom help for- eign MNCs; more often they help the host country’s own industries—which often directly compete with foreign MNCs. Ironi- cally, although they favor global free trade, MNCs may funnel direct investment to states that restrict imports, because MNCs

can avoid the import restrictions by producing goods in the host country (rather than exporting from the home country). Trade restrictions are thus another form of leverage that states have in luring foreign direct investment.

Trade regulations often seek to create as many jobs and as much taxable income as possible within the host country. If Toyota assembles cars at a factory in the United States (perhaps to avoid U.S. import restrictions), the U.S. government tends to pressure Toyota to use more U.S. parts in building the cars (such “domestic content” rules were part of NAFTA). MNCs generally want the freedom to assemble goods anywhere from parts made anywhere; governments, by contrast, want to maximize the amount of wealth cre- ated on their own territories. With parts and supplies now routinely converging from many countries to go into a product completed in one country, it is very diffi cult to say exactly where the product was made. The question is a complex one that entails long negotiations between MNCs and host governments.

Monetary policy also leads to confl icts between MNCs and host governments. When a state’s currency is devalued, imports suddenly become more expensive. A foreign MNC selling an imported product (or a product assembled from imported parts) in the host

19 Romero, Simon, and Juan Forero. Bolivia’s Energy Takeover: Populism Rules in the Andes. The New York Times, May 3, 2006: A8.

IT’S A JOB

Foreign direct investment is often sought by host governments because it stimulates employment and economic growth, though at wages that home countries would not tolerate. Here, Muslim women in Indonesia assemble Barbies at a Mattel factory. Note that along with investment, a host coun- try imports certain cultural trappings of the MNC’s activity—such as Mat- tel’s rendition of femininity in its doll. (This is a literal case of what postmodern feminists call the social construction of gender roles.)

Multinational Business 347

country can be devastated by such a change. For example, if the dollar falls relative to the yen, Toyota USA may have to charge more U.S. dollars for its cars in order to pay for the parts it brings in from Japan. Therefore, an MNC making a long-term investment in a host country wants the country’s currency to be reasonably stable.

Finally, MNCs may confl ict with host governments on issues of international secu- rity as well as domestic political stability. When an MNC invests in a country, it assumes that its facilities there will operate profi tably over a number of years. If a war or revolu- tion takes away the MNC’s facility, the company loses not just income but capital—the standing wealth embodied in that facility. In 2001, ExxonMobil suspended operations at gas fields in Aceh province of Indonesia for three months until the Indonesian government—which earns $1 billion a year from the operation—brought in military forces to suppress armed separatists who had been attacking ExxonMobil. In 2003, Chev- ron Texaco, Shell, and TotalFinaElf had to shut down oil production in Nigeria for weeks owing to ethnic violence.

In negotiating over these various sources of confl ict, MNCs use a variety of means to infl uence host governments. These generally follow the same patterns as those used by domestic corporations. MNCs hire lobbyists, use adver- tisements to infl uence public opinion, and offer incen- tives to host-country politicians (such as locating facilities in their districts). Such activities are politi- cally sensitive because host-country citizens and politi- cians may resent foreigners’ trying to infl uence them.

Corruption is another means of infl uence over host governments that cannot be overlooked. Nobody knows the full extent to which MNCs use payoffs, kickbacks, gifts, and similar methods to win the approval of indi- vidual government offi cials for policies favorable to the MNC. Certainly this occurs frequently with host gov- ernments in the global South (where government offi - cials may be more desperate for income), but corruption also occurs regularly in rich industrialized countries.

MNCs have a range of confl icts with their home governments (where their headquarters are located), just as they do with their host states. 20 Some MNC confl icts with home governments resemble the con- fl icts with host governments. Taxation is an important one. Trade policies are another. A recurrent complaint of MNCs against home governments is that policies adopted to punish political adversaries—economic sanctions and less extreme restrictions—end up harm- ing the home-country MNCs more than the intended target. Usually, a competing MNC from another coun- try is able to step into the gap when a government restricts its own MNCs. Unless they are prohibited from doing so, MNCs tend to go on doing business wherever it is profi table, with little regard for the polit- ical preferences of their governments.

20 Pauly, Louis W. Who Elected the Bankers? Surveillance and Control in the World Economy. Cornell, 1997.

THE CHILDREN BEHIND THE CHOCOLATE

International business prospers in stable political environ- ments in host countries, but the relationship of a host country with an investing MNC can be complex. Foreign investors are wary of putting money into business environments marked by infl ation, crime, corruption, and especially armed violence that could hit their facilities and employees. Ivory Coast, the world’s largest supplier of cocoa, not only suffered from civil war in recent years but also depends on child labor to grow the cocoa that corporations ultimately market as chocolate products around the world. This 14-year-old works on a cocoa plantation, 2001.

348 Chapter 9 Global Finance and Business

Sometimes governments do prevail, because MNCs often need the support of their home governments. In the 1990s, the U.S.-based Conoco oil company agreed to a bil- lion-dollar oil development project in Iran, just when the U.S. government was trying to isolate Iran as a rogue state. Under pressure from the U.S. government, Conoco quickly decided to back out of the deal. This move saved Conoco a fi ght with its home government, but cost Conoco a lucrative contract that went instead to a European company.

The location of an MNC’s headquarters determines its home nationality. The share- holders and top executives of an MNC are mostly from its home country. But as the world economy becomes more integrated, this is becoming less true. Just as MNCs are increasingly doing business all over the world and assembling products from parts made in many countries, so are shareholders and managers becoming more international in composition. 21

All business activity takes place in an environment shaped by politics. The interna- tional business environment most conducive to the creation of wealth by MNCs is one of stable international security. It is diffi cult and risky to make money in a situation of inter- national confl ict, especially one that threatens to degenerate into violence and war. War destroys wealth, reduces the supply of labor, and distorts markets in many ways. Certainly some businesses profi t from international instability and the threat of war—such as arms merchants and smugglers—but these are the exceptions.

Beyond these international security concerns, MNCs favor political stability in the broader rules of the game governing international business. In monetary policy, interna- tional business benefi ts from the stability of rates that the managed fl oat system tries to achieve. In trade policy, business benefi ts from the stability of tariff levels in the slowly shifting WTO framework. In norms of international law, business benefi ts from the tradi- tions holding governments responsible for their predecessors’ debts and requiring com- pensation for nationalized foreign assets.

Occasionally, MNCs can get their home governments to provide security when host governments fail to do so. IR scholars continue to study the relationships between the international economic activities of MNCs and the international security activities of their home governments. 22

Corporate alliances involving MNCs often have international implications. When business alliances in an industry that has international markets occur within a single state, the alliances may in effect promote economic nationalism. Increasingly, however, corpo- rate alliances are forming across national borders. Such alliances tend to promote liberal- ism rather than economic nationalism.

These international business alliances undermine both economic nationalism and the concept of a world splitting into rival trading blocs based in Europe, North America, and East Asia. In fact, international business alliances create interdependence among their home states. National interests become more intertwined and interstate confl icts tend to be reduced. By operating in multiple countries at once, all MNCs have these effects to some degree. But because they are based in one home country, MNCs are

21 Bernhard, William T., and David Leblang. Democratic Processes and Financial Markets: Pricing Politics. Cambridge, 2006. Braithwaite, John, and Peter Drahos. Global Business Regulation. Cambridge, 2000. 22 Krasner, Stephen D. Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy. Princeton, 1978. Gibbs, David N. The Political Economy of Third World Intervention: Mines, Money, and U.S. Policy in the Congo Crisis. Chicago, 1991. Lipson, Charles. Standing Guard: Protecting Foreign Capital in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. California, 1985.

Chapter Review 349

foreigners in other countries. International alliances of MNCs, however, are at home in several countries at once.

We do not yet live in a world without national borders—by a long shot—but the inter- national activities of MNCs are moving us in that direction. Chapter 10 explores some of the ways in which people, companies, and ideas are becoming globally integrated across states.

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CHAPTER REVIEW

SUMMARY ■ Each state uses its own currency (except 17 states share the euro). These currencies

have no inherent value but depend on the belief that they can be traded for future goods and services.

■ Gold and silver were once used as world currencies that had value in different coun- tries. Today’s system is more abstract: national currencies are valued against each other through exchange rates.

■ The most important currencies—against which most other states’ currencies are compared—are the U.S. dollar, the euro, and the Japanese yen.

■ Infl ation, most often resulting from the printing of currency faster than the creation of new goods and services, causes the value of a currency to fall relative to other cur- rencies. Infl ation rates vary widely but are generally much higher in the global South and former Soviet bloc than in the industrialized West.

■ States maintain reserves of hard currency and gold. These reserves back a national currency and cover short-term imbalances in international fi nancial fl ows.

■ Fixed exchange rates can be used to set the relative value of currencies, but more often states use fl oating exchange rates driven by supply and demand on world cur- rency markets.

■ Governments cooperate to manage the fl uctuations of (fl oating) exchange rates but are limited in this effort by the fact that most money traded on world markets is privately owned.

■ Over the long term, the relative values of national currencies are determined by the underlying health of the national economies and by the monetary policies of gov- ernments (how much money they print).

■ Governments often prefer a low (weak) value for their own currency, as this pro- motes exports, discourages imports, and hence improves the state’s balance of trade. However, a sudden unilateral devaluation of the currency is a risky strategy because it undermines confi dence in the currency.

■ To ensure discipline in printing money—and to avoid infl ation—industrialized states turn monetary policy over to semiautonomous central banks, such as the U.S. Federal Reserve. By adjusting interest rates on government money loaned to private banks, a central bank can control the supply of money in the national economy.

■ The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) work with states’ central banks to maintain stable international monetary relations. From 1945 to 1971, this was done by pegging state currencies to the U.S. dollar and the dollar in turn to gold. Since then the system has used Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)—a kind of world currency controlled by the IMF—in place of gold.

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350 Chapter 9 Global Finance and Business

■ The IMF operates a system of national accounts to keep track of the fl ow of money into and out of states. The balance of trade (exports minus imports) must be bal- anced by capital fl ows (investments and loans) and changes in reserves.

■ International debt results from a protracted imbalance in capital fl ows—a state borrowing more than it lends—to cover a chronic trade defi cit or government budget defi cit.

■ The U.S. fi nancial position declined naturally from its extraordinary predominance immediately after World War II. The fall of the dollar-gold standard in 1971 refl ects this decline.

■ The positions of Russia and the other states of the former Soviet bloc declined dras- tically as they made the diffi cult transition from communism to capitalism. Though the uncontrolled infl ation of the early 1990s has subsided, the economies of the former Soviet republics are still not fully integrated into the world economy.

■ Multinational corporations (MNCs) do business in more than one state simultane- ously. The largest are based in the leading industrialized states, and most are privately owned. MNCs are increasingly powerful in international economic affairs.

■ MNCs contribute to international interdependence in various ways. States depend on MNCs to create new wealth, and MNCs depend on states to maintain interna- tional stability conducive to doing business globally.

■ MNCs try to negotiate favorable terms and look for states with stable currencies and political environments in which to make direct investments. Governments seek such foreign investments on their territories so as to benefi t from the future stream of income.

■ MNCs try to infl uence the international political policies of both their headquarters state and the other states in which they operate. Generally, MNCs promote policies favorable to business—low taxes, light regulation, stable currencies, and free trade. They also support stable international security relations, because war generally disrupts business.

■ Increasingly, MNCs headquartered in different states are forming international alli- ances with each other. These inter-MNC alliances, even more than other MNC operations across national borders, are creating international interdependence and promoting liberal international cooperation.

KEY TERMS gold standard 322 exchange rate 322 convertible

currency 323 hyperinfl ation 323 hard currency 323 reserves 324 fi xed exchange

rates 324 fl oating exchange

rates 324 managed fl oat 325

Keynesian economics 335

fi scal policy 335 monetary policy 335 national debt 337 multinational corporations

(MNCs) 341 foreign direct

investment 343 host country 345 home country 345

devaluation 328 central bank 330 discount rate 330 Bretton Woods

system 331 World Bank 331 International Monetary

Fund (IMF) 331 Special Drawing Right

(SDR) 332 balance of

payments 333

Chapter Review 351

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS 1. Find a recent newspaper article about a change in currency exchange rates (usually

located in the business section). Analyze the various infl uences that may have been at work in the change of currency values—monetary policies, the underlying state of national economies, the actions of central banks (separately or in coordination), and factors such as political uncertainty that affect investors’ confi dence in a currency.

2. The IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) are a world currency used only by gov- ernments for international currency management and national accounts. Do you think SDRs could become a currency used by businesses and individuals, and how could this happen (or why couldn’t it)? What would be the effects on world business and on the ability of sovereign states to manage their own economies?

3. Many scholars and politicians alike think private international investment is the best hope for the economies of Russia and Eastern Europe. Given the current eco- nomic and political disarray in that region, what kinds of investors from the indus- trialized West might be willing to invest there? What actions could the governments of Western states take to encourage such investment? What pitfalls would the gov- ernments and investors have to watch out for?

4. If you were representing an MNC such as Toyota in negotiations over building an automobile factory in a foreign country, what kinds of concessions would you ask the host government for? What would you offer as incentives? In your report to Toyota’s top management regarding the deal, what points would you emphasize as most important? If instead you were representing the host state in the negotiations and reporting to top state leaders, what would be your negotiating goals and the focus of your report?

5. Suppose that the head of Dow Chemical had his way and established Dow’s world headquarters on an island outside all state territories. How do you think such a loca- tion would change Dow’s strategies or business operations? What problems might it create for Dow?

Foreign Direct Investment: Engine of Growth or Tool of Exploitation?

LET’S DEBATE THE ISSUE

ARGUMENT 1

FDI Brings Positive Benefi ts to Developing Countries

FDI brings capital investment that is key to economic growth. What develop- ing countries need more than anything to spur growth is capital. It is difficult for developing economies to generate this capital from within, so foreign investment is an excellent source of it to increase the potential for economic growth.

FDI brings more employment to developing economies. FDI often comes in the form of factories that bring increased employment for developing countries. While some argue that these jobs do not pay well, by local standards they often pay better than jobs generated locally.

FDI contributes to global interde- pendence. As fi rms and MNCs spread their manufacturing across the globe, this increases economic interdependence between states and thus fosters better relationships. As investors put more money into other states’ economies, they may care more about those states’ policies in other areas such as human rights or the environ- ment. This could lead to pressure on FDI recipi- ents to improve standards in areas such as labor practices or pollution.

Overview Foreign direct investment (FDI) is a central part of the international economy. Well over $1 trillion a year fl ows across borders as investments. Although much of that investment (almost $1.3 trillion in 2007) is investment between developed countries (such as Japan and the United States), an increasing amount (over $500 billion in 2007) fl ows from devel- oped countries in the global North to developing countries in the global South.

Historically, most FDI fl owed between countries in the global North. In fact, until the 1960s, the United States accounted for a large majority of FDI. Yet, with the growth of the global economy and the rise of globalization, FDI has become a global phe- nomenon. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, FDI into developing countries remained low, averaging less than $20 billion as the 1990s approached. By the end of the 1990s, however, over $200 billion in investments entered into developing economies from abroad.

These fl ows to the global South are not without controversy. While some fi nd these FDI fl ows nec- essary to spur economic growth, others argue that the money is not worth the political and social costs. Some states have attempted to lure FDI, especially from large Western MNCs, by undertak- ing domestic economic reforms. Other states do lit- tle to encourage FDI, fearful of potential negative environmental, social, and political impacts. Is FDI a positive resource for the developing world?

Questions ■ On balance, do you believe that FDI is good or

bad for developing countries? Given the expan- sion of MNCs and investment in this time of glo- balization, can a developing country forgo FDI if it hopes to achieve economic growth?

■ Assuming that some harm comes to recipients of FDI, how can the harm be mitigated? Would it be easier to change the policies of the states that accept FDI or the behavior of the investors and businesses that invest in developing states?

■ What leverage do leaders in developing countries have against MNCs that want to invest in their states? What are the dangers in making demands about the nature of FDI that enters the state?

For Further Reading Jensen, Nathan. Nation-States and the

Multinational Corporation: A Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment. Princeton, 2008.

Cohen, Stephen D. Multinational Corporations and Foreign Direct Investment: Avoiding Simplicity, Embracing Complexity. Oxford, 2007.

Moran, Theodore. Harnessing Foreign Direct Investment for Development: Policies for Developed and Developing Countries. Center for Global Development, 2006.

Paus, Eva. Global Capitalism Unbound: Winners and Losers from Offshore Outsourcing. Palgrave, 2007.

ARGUMENT 2

FDI Brings Problems to Developing Countries

FDI’s impact on developing econo- mies is limited. Often, a very small number of individuals benefi t from FDI, leaving the rest of the population unaffected by this external invest- ment. Thus, even when FDI does add to economic growth, this growth is distributed very unevenly, leading to a large rich-poor gap in recipient states.

Policies to lure FDI hurt recipient states. To lure large amounts of foreign invest- ment, states will often adopt policies to please investors such as large MNCs. These policies can include tax breaks (thus removing a source of state income), lax environmental standards (leading to problems such as pollution), or weak labor standards (leading to abusive labor prac- tices such as child labor).

Jobs created by FDI are of poor quality. Regardless of their pay, jobs created by FDI are of poor quality. Almost all lack any sig- nificant benefits, and unionization is nearly always prohibited. The jobs can be very tempo- rary as well—if a lower-cost labor supply is found, MNCs will pick up and move to other loca- tions at a moment’s notice. These are not the types of jobs that bring long-term stability to developing economies.

European Parliament, 2011.

International Integration

CHAPTER 10 Listen to Chapter 10 at MyPoliSciLab

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355

CHAPTER OUTLINE Globalization and Integration Common to most discussions of globalization is a sense that there are forces in the world bringing us all closer together. Some of these forces are the result of state decisions —as we discussed in Chapter 8 , states have attempted to integrate their econ- omies through free trade agreements. Still other forces are factors such as technological changes that infl uence how states, nonstate actors, and even individual citizens func- tion on a day-to-day basis.

This chapter discusses the sources of this “coming together.” First, we will discuss state decisions to cooperate in order to create international organizations that are supranational —they subsume a number of states and their functions within a larger whole. The UN, as we have seen, has some supranational aspects, though they are limited by the UN Charter, which is based on state sovereignty. On a regional level, the European Union (EU) is a somewhat more supranational entity than the UN; other regional organizations have tried to follow Europe’s path as well, but with only limited success. These IOs all contain a struggle between the contradictory forces of nationalism and supranationalism —between state sovereignty and the higher authority of supranational structures.

The other source of “coming together” we examine is technological change, spe- cifi cally, the revolution in information technologies such as the Internet. These tech- nologies may be even more far-reaching in that they operate globally and regionally across state boundaries without formal political structures. Nearly all of us have been affected by information technology that has brought us closer together within a state, across a region, or around the world.

Whether the sources of integration are from states or nonstate actors, the process of integration always involves transnational actors or issues. Transnational actors (for example, MNCs and NGOs) bridge national borders, creating new avenues of interde- pendence among states. 1 Transnational issues (for example, global warming or the spread of information technology) are processes that force states to work together because they cannot solve or manage the issue alone. This chapter explores how transnational actors and issues can lead to integration either through the actions of states or through technological change.

Integration Theory The theory of international integration attempts to explain why states choose suprana- tionalism, which challenges once again the foundations of realism (state sovereignty and territorial integrity). International integration refers to the process by which supranational institutions replace national ones—the gradual shifting upward of sover- eignty from state to regional or global structures. The ultimate expression of integra- tion would be the merger of several (or many) states into a single state—or ultimately into a single world government. Such a shift in sovereignty to the supranational level would probably entail some version of federalism, in which states or other political units recognize the sovereignty of a central government while retaining certain powers

Globalization and Integration

Integration Theory

The European Union ■ The Vision of a United

Europe ■ The Treaty of Rome ■ Structure of the

European Union ■ The Single European

Act ■ The Maastricht Treaty ■ Monetary Union ■ Expanding the

European Union ■ The Lisbon Treaty

The Power of Information ■ Connecting the World ■ Information as a Tool

of Governments ■ Information as a Tool

against Governments ■ Telecommunications

and Global Culture

1 Rissen-Kappen, Thomas, ed. Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-state Actors, Domestic Structures, and International Relations. Cambridge, 1995.

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356 Chapter 10 International Integration

for themselves. This is the form of gov- ernment adopted (after some debate) in the U.S. Constitution.

In practice, the process of integra- tion has never gone beyond a partial and uneasy sharing of power between state and supranational levels. States have been unwilling to give up their exclusive claim to sovereignty and have limited the power and authority of supranational institutions. The UN cer- tainly falls far short of a federal model (see Chapter 7 ) . It represents only a step in the direction of international integra- tion. Other modest examples of the integration process have been encoun- tered in previous chapters—for exam- ple, NAFTA and the WTO. But these arrangements hardly challenge states’ territorial integrity and usually chal- lenge political sovereignty on only a handful of issues (such as trade).

The most successful example of the process of integration by far— though even that success is only partial—is the European Union. The regional coordination now occurring in Western Europe is a new historical phenomenon achieved only since World War II. 2

Until 50 years ago, the European continent was the embodiment of national sover- eignty, state rivalry, and war. For 500 years, until 1945, the states of Europe were locked in chronic intermittent warfare; in the 20th century alone, two world wars left the continent in ruins. The European states have historical and present-day religious, ethnic, and cul- tural differences. The 27 members of the EU in 2011 spoke 23 different offi cial languages. If ever there were a candidate for the failure of integration, Europe would appear to be it. Even more surprising, European integration began with the cooperation of Europe’s two bitterest enemies over the previous 100 years, enemies in three major wars since 1870— France and Germany (references to “Germany” refer to West Germany from 1944 to 1990, and unifi ed Germany since).

That Western European states began forming supranational institutions and creating an economic community to promote free trade and coordinate economic policies caught the attention of IR scholars, who used the term integration to describe what they observed. Seemingly, integration challenged the realist assumption that states were strictly autono- mous and would never yield power or sovereignty.

CROSSING THE BORDER

Integration processes in Europe and elsewhere are making state borders more permeable to people, goods, and ideas—increasing interdependence. The European Union is deepening economic integration while expanding eastward. Here, in 2006, the Tour de France crosses into Germany, passing only a road sign where in centuries past, great armies faced off across massive fortifi cations.

2 Eichengreen, Barry. The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond. Princeton, 2006. Moravcsik, Andrew. The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht. Cornell, 1998. Dinan, Desmond. Europe Recast: A History of the European Union. Rienner, 2004.

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These scholars proposed that European moves toward integration could be explained by functionalism —growth of specialized technical organizations that cross national borders. 3 According to functionalists, technological and economic develop- ment lead to more and more supranational structures as states seek practical means to fulfi ll necessary functions such as delivering mail from one country to another or coor- dinating the use of rivers that cross borders. As these connections became denser and the fl ows faster, functionalism predicted that states would be drawn together into stronger international economic structures.

The European experience, however, went beyond the creation of specialized agencies to include the development of more general, more political supranational bodies, such as the European Parliament. Neofunctionalism is a modifi cation of func- tional theory by IR scholars to explain these developments. Neofunctionalists argue that economic integration (functionalism) generates a political dynamic that drives integration further. Closer economic ties require more political coordination in order to operate effectively and eventually lead to political integration as well—a process called spillover.

Some scholars focused on the less tangible sense of community (“we” feeling) that began to develop among Europeans, running contrary to nationalist feelings that still existed as well. The low expectation of violence among the states of Western Europe created a security community in which such feelings could grow. 4 This is a prime exam- ple of the identity principle discussed in Chapter 1 .

Elsewhere in the world, economies were becoming more interdependent at both the regional and global levels. In Asia, the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), founded in 1967, chalked up some successes in promoting regional eco- nomic coordination over several decades. The Andean Common Market, begun in 1969, promoted a limited degree of regional integration in the member states of Vene- zuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Other South American countries (Argen- tina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay) founded Mercosur in 1991 to increase economic trade and integration. Most recently, the countries of Africa in 2002 formed the Afri- can Union, an ambitious plan to coordinate economic and foreign policies, elect an African parliament, and create a stronger infrastructure than the predecessor, Organiza- tion of African Unity (OAU). Of course, none of these organizations have experienced the success of the EU, but their aims are often similar. 5

The new wave of integration in Europe and elsewhere encountered limits and set- backs. Integration reduces states’ ability to shield themselves and their citizens from the world’s many problems and confl icts. For example, in the early 1990s Venezuela found that its open border with Colombia brought in large transshipments of cocaine bound for the United States. Moreover, as states increasingly fear transnational terrorism, the prospects of open borders can give state leaders pause.

3 Mitrany, David. The Functional Theory of Politics. London School of Economics/M. Robertson, 1975. Haas, Ernst B. Beyond the Nation-State: Functionalism and International Organization. Stanford, 1964. Ginsberg, Roy H. Demystifying the European Union: The Enduring Logic of Regional Integration. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2007. 4 Adler, Emanuel, and Michael Barnett, eds. Security Communities. Cambridge, 1998. Deutsch, Karl W., et al. Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience. Princeton, 1957. 5 Mattli, Walter. The Logic of Regional Integration: Europe and Beyond. Cambridge, 1999. Gleditsch, Kristian S. All International Politics Is Local: The Diffusion of Confl ict, Integration, and Democracy. Michigan, 2002. Acharya, Amitav, and Alastair I. Johnston. Crafting Cooperation: Regional International Institutions in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge, 2007.

358 Chapter 10 International Integration

Integration can mean greater centralization at a time when individuals, local groups, and national populations demand more say over their own affairs. The centrali- zation of political authority, information, and culture as a result of integration can threaten both individual and group freedom. Ethnic groups want to safeguard their own cultures, languages, and institutions against the bland homogeneity that a global or regional melting pot would create. As a result, many states and citizens, in Europe and elsewhere, responded to the new wave of integration with resurgent nationalism over the past decade.

Indeed, these forces have set in motion a wave of disintegration of states running counter to (though simultaneous with) the integrating tendencies in today’s world. The wave of disintegration in some ways began with the decolonization of former European empires in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East after World War II. After the Cold War, disintegration centered on Russia and Eastern Europe—especially in the former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia. States in other regions—Somalia, Democratic Congo, and Iraq—appear in danger of breaking into pieces, in practice if not formally. A chal- lenge to integration theorists in the future will be to account for these new trends run- ning counter to integration.

Throughout the successful and unsuccessful efforts at integration runs a common thread—the tension between nationalism and supranational loyalties (regionalism or globalism). In the less successful integration attempts, nationalism stands virtually unchallenged, and even in the most successful cases, nationalism remains a potent force locked in continual struggle with supranationalism. This struggle is a central theme even in the most successful case of integration—the European Union.

The European Union Like the UN, the European Union (EU) was created after World War II and has devel- oped since. But whereas the UN structure has changed little since its Charter was adopted, the EU has gone through several waves of expansion in its scope, membership, and mission over the past 50 years. 6 The EU today has nearly 500 million citizens and surpasses the U.S. economy in GDP.

The Vision of a United Europe Europe in 1945 was decimated by war. Most of the next decade was spent recovering with help from the United States through the Marshall Plan. But already, two French leaders, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, were developing a plan to implement the idea of functionalism in Europe—that future wars could be prevented by creating economic linkages that would eventually bind states together politically.

In 1950, Schuman as French foreign minister proposed a fi rst modest step—the merger of the French and German steel (iron) and coal industries into a single framework that could most effi ciently use the two states’ coal resources and steel mills. Coal and steel were key to European recovery and growth. The Schuman plan gave birth in 1952 to the

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6 Sidjanski, Dusan. The Federal Future of Europe: From the European Community to the European Union. Michigan, 2000. Caporaso, James A. The European Union: Dilemmas of Regional Integration. Westview, 2000. Nelsen, Brent F., and Alexander Stubb. European Union: Readings on the Theory and Practice of European Integration. Rienner, 2003.

The European Union 359

European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), in which France and Germany were joined by Italy (the third large industrial country of continental Europe) and by three smaller countries—Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg (together called the Benelux countries ). These six states worked through the ECSC to reduce trade barriers in coal and steel and to coordinate their coal and steel policies. The ECSC also established a High Authority that to some extent could bypass governments and deal directly with compa- nies, labor unions, and individuals. Britain did not join, however.

If coal and steel sound like fairly boring topics, that was exactly the idea of function- alists. The issues involved were matters for engineers and technical experts, and did not threaten politicians. Since 1952, technical experts have served as the leaders of the inte- gration process in other aspects of European life and outside Europe. (Of course, coal and steel were not chosen by accident, since both were essential to make war.) As mentioned in Chapter 7 , technical IOs such as the Universal Postal Union came before political ones such as the UN.

International scientifi c communities deserve special mention in this regard. If Ger- man and French steel experts had more in common than German and French politicians, this is even truer of scientists. Today the European scientifi c community is one of the most internationally integrated areas of society. For example, the EU operates the European Space Agency and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory.

Although technical cooperation succeeded in 1952, political and military cooperation proved much more diffi cult. In line with the vision of a united Europe, the six ECSC states signed a second treaty in 1952 to create a European Defense Community to work toward integrating Europe’s military forces under one budget and command. But the French parliament failed to ratify the treaty, and Britain refused to join such a force. The ECSC states also discussed formation of a European Political Community in 1953, but could not agree on its terms. Thus, in economic cooperation the supranational institutions succeeded, but in political and military affairs, state sovereignty prevailed.

The Treaty of Rome In the Treaty of Rome in 1957, the same six states (France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg) created two new organizations. One extended the coal- and-steel idea into a new realm, atomic energy. Euratom , the European Atomic Energy Community, was formed to coordinate nuclear power development by pooling research, investment, and management. It continues to operate today with an expanded member- ship. The second organization was the European Economic Community (EEC), later renamed the European Community (EC).

As discussed briefl y in Chapter 8 , there are important differences between free trade areas, customs unions, and common markets. Creating a free trade area meant lifting tariffs and restrictions on the movement of goods across (EEC) borders, as was done shortly after 1957. Today the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) is an extended free trade area associated with the European Union; its members are Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland.

In a customs union , participating states adopt a unifi ed set of tariffs with regard to goods coming in from outside the free trade area. Without unifi ed tariffs, each type of good could be imported into the state with the lowest tariff and then reexported (tariff free) to the other states in the free trade area; this would be ineffi cient. The Treaty of Rome committed the six states to creating a customs union by 1969. A customs union creates free and open trade within its member states, bringing great economic benefi ts.

360 Chapter 10 International Integration

Thus, the customs union remains the heart of the EU and the one aspect widely copied elsewhere in the world.

A common market means that in addition to the customs union, member states allow labor and capital (as well as goods) to fl ow freely across borders. For instance, a Belgian fi nancier can invest in Germany on the same terms as a German investor. Although the Treaty of Rome adopted the goal of a common market, even today it has been only partially achieved.

One key aspect of a common market was achieved, at least in theory, in the 1960s when the EU (then the EC) adopted a Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) . In prac- tice, the CAP has led to recurrent confl icts among member states and tensions between nationalism and regionalism. Recall that agriculture has been one of the most diffi cult sectors of the world economy in which to achieve free trade (see p. 305 ) . To promote national self-suffi ciency in food, many governments give subsidies to farmers. The CAP was based on the principle that a subsidy extended to farmers in any member state should be extended to farmers in all EU countries. That way, no member government was forced to alienate politically powerful farmers by removing subsidies, yet the overall policy would be equalized throughout the community in line with the common market principle. As a result, subsidies to farmers today absorb about 40 percent of the total EU budget, with France as the main benefi ciary, and are the single greatest source of trade friction between Europe and the United States (see pp. 293 – 294 ) .

The next step in the plan for European integration, after a free trade area, customs union, and common market, was an economic and monetary union (EMU) in which the overall economic policies of the member states would be coordinated for greatest effi - ciency and stability. In this step, a single currency would replace the separate national currencies now in use (see “Monetary Union,” later in this chapter). A possible future step could be the supranational coordination of economic policies such as budgets and taxes.

To reduce state leaders’ fears of losing sovereignty, the Treaty of Rome provides that changes in its provisions must be approved by all member states. For example, France vetoed Britain’s application for membership in the EEC in 1963 and 1967. However, in 1973 Brit- ain did fi nally join, along with Ireland and Denmark. This action expanded the organiza- tion’s membership to nine, including the largest and richest countries in the region.

In 1981, Greece was admitted, and in 1986 Portugal and Spain joined. Inclusion of these poorer countries with less industry and lower standards of living created diffi culties in effectively integrating Europe’s economies (diffi culties that persist today). Richer Euro- pean states give substantial aid to the poorer ones in hopes of strengthening the weak links. Yet, in 2011, the debt problems of these countries created the need for expensive new bailout funds and threatened the stability of the wider European economy.

Structure of the European Union The structure of the EU refl ects its roots in technical and economic cooperation. The coal and steel experts have been joined by experts on trade, agriculture, and fi nance at the heart of the community. The EU headquarters and staff have the reputation of colorless

PLANTING POLITICAL SEEDS

Under the free trade area fi rst created by the 1957 Treaty of Rome, goods can move freely across European borders to reach consumers in any member country. In agriculture, creating an integrated free market in Europe has not been easy; the EC adopted a Common Agricultural Policy in the 1960s to address the problem. These Danish farmers took to the streets in 2011 to protest EU agricultural policies that put them at a disadvantage.

The European Union 361

bureaucrats—sometimes called Eurocrats —who care more about technical problem solv- ing than about politics. These supranational bureaucrats are balanced in the EU structure by provisions that uphold the power of states and state leaders.

Although the rule of Eurocrats follows the functionalist plan, it has created problems as the EU has progressed. Politicians in member states have qualms about losing power to the Eurocrats. Citizens in those states have become more uncomfortable in recent years with the growing power of faceless Eurocrats over their lives. Citizens can throw their own political leaders out of offi ce in national elections, but the Eurocrats seem less accountable.

The EU’s structure is illustrated in Figure 10.1 . The Eurocrats consist of a staff of 25,000, organized under the European Commission at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. The Commission has 27 individual members—one from each member state—who are chosen for four-year renewable terms. Their role is to identify problems and propose solutions to the Council of the European Union. They select one of their members as the commission presi- dent. These individuals are supposed to represent the interests of Europe as a whole (supra- national interests), not their own states, but this goal has been only imperfectly met.

The European Commission lacks formal autonomous power except for day-to-day EU operations. Formally, the Commission reports to, and implements policies of, the Council of the European Union (formerly named the Council of Ministers). The Council is a meeting of the relevant ministers (foreign, economic, agriculture, fi nance, etc.) of each member state—politicians who control the bureaucrats (or who try to). For instance, in 2009 the 27 energy ministers met to approve EU efforts to restart natural gas supplies from Russia that had been shut off in a price dispute with Ukraine. This formal structure refl ects states’ resistance to yielding sovereignty. It also means that the individuals making up the Council of the European Union vary from one meeting to the next, and that technical issues receive priority over political ones. The arrangement thus gives some advantage back to the Commission staff. Recall the similar tension between politicians and career bureaucrats in national foreign policy making (see “Bureaucracies” on pp. 136 – 137 ) .

The Council of the European Union in theory has functioned using weighted voting based on each state’s population, but in practice it operated by consensus on major policy

National elections( European Council(28 state leaders)

Council of the European Union (28 foreign ministers)

Commission President

Staff (“Eurocrats”)

European Commission

(28 individual members)

European Parliament

European Court of Justice

Economic & Social Committee

)

FIGURE 10.1 Structure of the European Union (EU)

Source: European Commission in the European Union.

362 Chapter 10 International Integration

issues (all members must agree). After adoption of the Lisbon Treaty (see p. 369 ) , nearly all issues are now decided by qualifi ed majority voting. The Treaty’s defi nition of a quali- fi ed majority is that at least 55 percent of EU members, representing 65 percent of EU citizens, must vote in favor to secure passage. The Council has a rotating presidency (with limited power). The Council of the European Union must approve the policies of the European Commission and give it general directions. 7

In the 1970s, state leaders (prime ministers or presidents) created a special place for themselves in the EC, to oversee the direction of the community; this structure again shows state leaders’ resistance to being governed by any supranational body. This Euro- pean Council of the 28 state leaders meets with the European Commission president twice a year. They are the ones with the power to get things done in their respective national governments (which still control most of the money and power in Europe).

There is a European Parliament , which falls somewhat short of a true legislature passing laws for all of Europe. 8 At present, it operates partly as a watchdog over the Commission, but with some power to legislate. It must approve the Commission’s budget but cannot control it item by item. The parliament shares power with the Coun- cil under a “co-decision procedure” in such areas as migration, employment, health, and consumer protection. The 2009 Lisbon Treaty signifi cantly expanded the areas in which the co-decision procedure applies. It also serves as a debating forum and a symbol of European unity. In 1999, an independent commission created by the parliament found waste and fraud in the Commission, leading all 20 commissioners to resign. Since 1979, voters throughout Europe have directly elected their representatives according to population—750 members representing nearly 500 million citizens. Political parties are organized across national lines.

The Economic and Social Committee discusses continent-wide issues that affect particular industries or constituencies. This committee is purely advisory; it lobbies the European Commission on matters it deems important. It is designed as a forum in which companies, labor unions, and interest groups can bargain transnationally.

The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg adjudicates disputes on matters cov- ered by the Treaty of Rome—which covers many issues. Unlike the World Court (see pp.  256 – 258 ) , the European Court has actively established its jurisdiction and does not serve merely as a mechanism of international mediation. The European Court can over- rule national laws that confl ict with EU law—giving it unique powers among interna- tional courts. In addition, it hears cases brought by individuals, not just governments. In hundreds of cases, the Court has ruled on matters ranging from discrimination in the workplace to the pensions of Commission staff members.

The Single European Act European integration has proceeded in a step-by-step process that produces tangible suc- cesses, reduces politicians’ fears of losing sovereignty, and creates pressures to continue the process. Often major steps forward are followed by periods of stagnation or even reversals in integration. The fi rst major revision of the Treaty of Rome—the 1985 Single European Act —began a new phase of accelerated integration. The EU set a target date of

7 Kirchner, Emil Joseph. Decision Making in the European Community: The Council Presidency and European Integration. Manchester, 1992. Pollack, Mark A. The Engines of Integration: Delegation, Agency, and Agenda Setting in the European Union. Oxford, 2003. 8 Judge, David, and David Earnshaw. The European Parliament. Palgrave, 2003. Kreppel, Amie. The European Parliament and the Supranational Party System: A Study in Institutional Development. Cambridge, 2002.

The European Union 363

the end of 1992 for the creation of a true common market in Europe. 9 This comprehen- sive set of changes was nicknamed Europe 1992 and centered on about 300 directives from the European Commission, aimed at eliminating nontariff barriers to free trade in goods, services, labor, and capital within the EC. The issues tended to be complex and technical. For instance, professionals licensed in one state should be free to practice in another, but Spain’s licensing requirements for, say, physical therapists may have differed from those of Britain. The Commission bureaucrats worked to smooth out such inconsistencies and cre- ate a uniform set of standards. Each national government had to pass laws to implement these measures.

For example, a dispute raged for decades over the defi nition of chocolate. Belgium— famous for its chocolates—requires the exclusive use of cocoa butter for a product to be called chocolate; Britain and other countries use a cheaper process that partially substi- tutes other vegetable oils. With deepening integration and seamless trade, Belgium wor- ried that it would lose its competitive advantage in the $30 billion worldwide chocolate market (half of which came from Europe). Britain and six other EU countries that joined the EU since 1973 won an exemption from the all–cocoa butter rule that applies to the other eight EU members. Under the pressure of integration, however, the EU is moving to unify standards such as food regulations. The chocolate wars illustrate that the seemingly simple concept of economic integration sets in motion forces of change that reach into every corner of society and affect the daily lives of millions of people.

The Single European Act also gave a new push to the creation of a European Central Bank (in Frankfurt, Germany), and a single currency and monetary system—long- standing goals that have since been accomplished. As long as the economies of the EU members were tied to separate states (with separate central banks), efforts to maintain fi xed exchange rates were diffi cult. For example, British politicians in 1992 were reluctant to deepen a recession by keeping interest rates high just to save German politicians from infl ation that might result from lowering rates.

The 1992 process moved economic integration into more political and controversial areas, eroding sovereignty more visibly than before. It also deepened a trend toward the EU’s dealing directly with provinces rather than the states they belong to—thus begin- ning to “hollow out” the state from below (stronger provincial governments) as well as from above (stronger Europe-wide government). However, Europe 1992 continued to put aside for the future the diffi cult problems of political and military integration.

The Maastricht Treaty The Maastricht Treaty , signed in the Dutch city of Maastricht in 1992, renamed the EC as the EU and committed it to further progress in three main areas. The fi rst was monetary union (discussed shortly), in which the existing national currencies were abolished and replaced by a single European currency. A second set of changes, regard- ing justice and home affairs, created a European police agency and responded to the new reality that borders were opening to immigrants, criminals, sex traffi ckers, and con- traband. It also expanded the idea of citizenship, so that, for example, a French citizen living in Germany can vote in local elections there. A third goal of Maastricht— political and military integration—was even more controversial. The treaty commits European states to work toward a common foreign policy with a goal of eventually establishing a joint military force.

9 Moravcsik, Andrew. Negotiating the Single European Act: National Interests and Conventional Statecraft in the European Community. International Organization 45 (1), 1991: 19–56.

364 Chapter 10 International Integration

Some citizens of Europe began to react strongly against the loss of national identity and sovereignty implicit in the Maastricht Treaty. 10 As an amendment to the Treaty of Rome, Maastricht had to be ratifi ed by all (then 12) members. The ratifi cation process stirred up strong public feelings against closer European union in several countries. Sud- denly, citizens and leaders in several countries seemed to realize that the faceless Eurocrats in Brussels were stripping away their national sovereignty! In the end, the EU imple- mented the Maastricht Treaty, although more slowly and with fewer participating coun- tries than originally hoped. Economic and technical integration, including the new monetary union among 12 members, maintained momentum.

Europe’s economic integration has begun to reshape political economy at a global level. The EU now sets the rules for access to one of the world’s largest markets, for a vast production and technology network, and for the world’s strongest currency. Europe’s new power is illustrated in its environmental initiatives. The U.S. chemical industry operated under U.S. regulations that exempt 80 percent of chemicals. But the EU adopted stricter chemical regulations, requiring tests of health effects of all chemicals used in products and mandating efforts to substitute for toxic chemicals in everyday products. As a result, sev- eral major U.S. cosmetics companies reformulated their products to comply with new EU cosmetics regulations calling for removal of unhealthy substances. And Japanese car man- ufacturers adapted production processes to meet the EU’s requirement that new cars con- sist of 85 percent recyclable components by 2006 (and 95 percent by 2015). 11

Political and military integration have been much more problematic. 12 The struggle between nationalism and supranationalism seems precariously balanced between the two; the transition to supranationalism has not yet been accomplished in the realms of sover- eignty and foreign and military policy. Even after 50 years of preparation, spillover from economic to political issues is elusive.

Monetary Union A European currency, the euro , has replaced national currencies in 17 EU member states, as mandated in the Maastricht process. After several years as an abstract unit like the IMF’s SDR (see p. 332 ) , used by national governments and for international exchange, the euro came into full circulation in 2002 and the national currencies ceased to exist. The European Central Bank took over the functions of states’ central banks. 13

Monetary union is diffi cult for both economic and political reasons. In participating states, fundamental economic and fi nancial conditions must be equalized. One state cannot stimulate its economy with low interest rates (for example, because of a recession) while another cools infl ation with high interest rates (because of high economic growth). For example, in 2010 the unemployment rate was over 11 percent in Slovakia but only 5 per- cent in the Netherlands. In an integrated economy that is also politically centralized, the central government can reallocate resources, as the United States might do if Texas were booming and Massachusetts were in recession. But the EU does not have centralized powers of taxation or control of national budgets. This split of fi scal and monetary policy is unusual.

10 Cowles, Maria Green, James Caporaso, and Thomas Risse, eds. Transforming Europe: Europeanization and Domestic Change. Cornell, 2001. Gstohl, Sieglende. Reluctant Europeans: Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland and the Process of Integration. Rienner, 2002. 11 Schapiro, Mark. New Power for “Old Europe.” The Nation, December 27, 2004. 12 Duke, Simon. The Elusive Quest for European Security: From EDC to CFSP. St. Martin’s, 2000. Salmon, Trevor C., and Alistair J. K. Shepherd. Toward a European Army: A Military Power in the Making? Rienner, 2003. 13 Chang, Michele, Neill Nugent, and William E. Patterson, eds. The Monetary Integration in the European Union. Palgrave, 2009. De Grauwe, Paul. The Economics of Monetary Union. 5th ed. Oxford, 2004.

The European Union 365

One solution is to work toward equaliz- ing Europe’s economies. For example, to reduce the disparity between rich and poor EU states, the Maastricht Treaty increased the EU budget by $25 billion annually to provide economic assistance to the poorer members. But the richer EU members pay the cost for this aid—in effect carrying the poor countries as free riders on the collective good of EU integration. Partly for this rea- son, $25 billion annually was far too small to truly equalize the rich and poor countries.

The main solution adopted at Maas- tricht was to restrict membership in the mon- etary union, at least in the fi rst round, to only those countries with enough fi nancial stabil- ity not to jeopardize the union. To join the unifi ed currency, a state had to achieve a budget defi cit of less than 3 percent of GDP, a national debt of less than 60 percent of GDP, an infl ation rate no more than 1.5 per- centage points above the average of the three lowest-inflation EU members, and stable interest rates and national currency values.

This meant hard choices by govern- ments in France, Spain, Italy, and other countries to cut budgets and benefi ts and to take other politically unpopular moves. French workers responded with massive strikes on several occasions. Governments fell to opposition parties in several countries, but the new leaders generally kept to the same course. As a result of their newfound fi scal discipline, all 12 EU members that wanted to participate in the euro qualifi ed. Slovenia joined in 2007, Cyprus and Malta in 2008, Slovakia in 2009, and Estonia in 2011. Lithuania and Latvia are preparing to adopt the euro next. Britain, Denmark, and Sweden opted to retain their national currencies.

Money is more political than steel tariffs or chocolate ingredients. A monetary union infringes on a core prerogative of states—the right to print currency. Because citizens use money every day, a European currency along these lines could deepen citizens’ sense of identifi cation with Europe—a victory for supranationalism over nationalism. When the euro went into circulation in 2002, people for the fi rst time could “put Europe in their pocket.” However, precisely for this reason, some state leaders and citizens resisted the idea of giving up the symbolic value of their national currencies. These problems were refl ected in the task of designing euro banknotes and coins. How could any country’s leaders or monuments become Europe-wide symbols? The solution was to put generic architectural elements (not identifi able by country) on the front of the banknotes and a map of Europe on the back. Coins come in various member-state designs (all valid throughout the eurozone).

Confl icts have arisen within the eurozone. In 2004, the European Commission chal- lenged the EU member states for voting to let France and Germany break the euro rules by running high budget defi cits. And Latvia’s government lost power within six months of

TAKE A NUMBER

The Maastricht Treaty called for a monetary union with a common cur- rency. In 2002, the euro currency came into effect smoothly in 12 (now 17) countries and emerged as a world currency that rivals the U.S. dollar. But the 2008 recession exposed underlying problems that triggered a euro- zone debt crisis and second recession in 2012, especially in weaker mem- bers. These workers in hard-hit Spain, where unemployment passed 25 percent, line up for help in 2013.

366 Chapter 10 International Integration

the country’s joining the EU, under pressure of unpopular budget cuts needed to meet the euro rules within four years.

In 2010, new challenges to the euro arose. Greece, which had previously admitted to falsifying economic data in order to be admitted to the eurozone, had for years borrowed more than it could repay, and needed a European bailout to survive the global fi nancial crisis. Because Greece used the euro, its troubles affected global investors’ impressions of all euro states.

Worse, the debt problems soon spread beyond Greece. In fact, in 2010, only two states in the EU (Finland and Luxembourg) actually met the EU targets for debt levels. Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Italy all undertook large-scale economic reforms, and governments lost power (to be replaced by technocrats) in Greece, Italy, and other EU states. Germany and France fought over who would help bail out the euro states in trouble. After Germany’s economic minister stated that Germany “would not offer Greece a cent,” cooler heads prevailed and the EU countries banded together to support one another’s economies. Soon Ireland also needed, and received, a massive bailout. By 2012, the EU had patched together a bailout system capable of propping up its members’ econo- mies when needed, backed by more than a trillion dollars. But the EU’s decision process remained cumbersome, and citizens took to the streets frequently in countries such as Greece and Spain that had to implement harsh austerity budgets in exchange for bailouts. The austerity measures not only drove up unemployment, above 25 percent in the case of Spain in 2013 (55 percent for those under 25), but also helped drive the whole eurozone into recession.

Despite these recent problems in the eurozone, the creation of a European currency is arguably the largest fi nancial overhaul ever attempted in history, and in its fi rst eight years it has been successful.

SEEKING THE COLLECTIVE GOOD

Bailing Out Greece COLLECTIVE GOOD: European Financial Health

BACKGROUND: The 17 states that make up the euro- zone have given up their national currencies in favor of a common one. As a result, each is affected by the fi nancial policies of the others. For instance, defi cit spending on politically popular programs would normally affect just that country’s currency, but if the country is in the euro- zone, then that effect is spread across all the other euro countries. To avoid the temptation to free-ride, the Euro- pean Union set up rules for fi scal responsibility (including low defi cits) before a country can adopt the euro. As later became clear, several countries, including Greece, fudged those requirements when they fi rst joined the euro.

The health of the euro currency is thus a collective good depending on the fi scal discipline of its members.

Free riding threatens all eurozone members since an economic crisis in one country can easily spread to oth- ers through the common currency.

CHALLENGE: In 2010, Greek fi scal policies combined with the aftermath of the global recession to put Greece into a debt crisis, nearing bankruptcy. This instability threatened to spread to the other high-deficit euro members (Spain, Portugal, Ireland). The value of the euro began to drop and world financial markets fell as anxiety increased.

The European Union 367

Expanding the European Union The EU’s success has attracted neighboring states that want to join. The EU has expanded from 15 members to 28 since 2004, with potentially far-reaching changes in how the EU operates. 14

Spain and Portugal, admitted in 1986 as the 11th and 12th members, fi lled out the western side of Europe. In 1995, Austria, Sweden, and Finland joined the EU. They are located on the immediate fringe of the present EU area, and as relatively rich countries, they did not disrupt the EU economy. Norway applied to join and was accepted, but its citizens voted down the idea in a referendum in 1994, leaving the EU with 15 members after 1995—all but two of the main states of Western Europe. (Switzerland’s plans to join were, like Norway’s, halted by a popular referendum in the early 1990s.)

The EU’s current expansion is guided by the 2000 Treaty of Nice, which came into effect in 2003 after Irish voters reversed an earlier vote and approved it (the last country to ratify it). Ten new members joined in 2004: Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, and Cyprus. The European Commission expanded to 25 members, without the fi ve largest having two seats, and with new voting rules that move away from a requirement for consensus. In 2007, Romania and Bulgaria brought the EU’s membership to 27. Croatia joined in 2013 as the 28th member, showing that despite its fi nancial problems the EU continues to expand, albeit slowly.

SOLUTION: In response, the European Union and IMF put together a $141 billion rescue package for Greece. To take effect, the package needed approval from all 16 (at that time) eurozone members. In Ger- many, where fi scal discipline is a tradition, angry voters did not want to bail out the irresponsible Greeks, and the governing party’s slim majority in Parliament was threatened. The German government thus faced both domestic costs and a direct price tag of $28 billion for Germany’s share of the bailout.

Identity played a role in the German government’s decision to approve the deal. The European Union’s identity as a continent in common meant that Ger- many saw the collective good of euro stability as its own good. However, reciprocity also played a role, since the German government supported the bailout only after the problem threatened to spread and desta- bilize the euro, directly harming Germany if it did not

Greeks protest austerity measures taken as part of a bailout plan, 2010.

approve the deal. Just the thought of fellow Europeans in need did not alone make Germany want to help.

14 Jacoby, Wade. The Enlargement of the European Union and NATO: Ordering from the Menu in Central Europe. Cambridge, 2004.

368 Chapter 10 International Integration

Turkey continues to seek membership. Although it rebuffed Turkey in 2002, the EU later agreed to begin formal entry negotiations with Turkey in 2005—the start of a years- long process. The EU has not reached a consensus on admitting Turkey as a full member. Proponents note that Turkey has made major economic and political changes, including abolishing the death penalty and improving human rights, to try to win EU membership. Granting full membership would reward these changes, keeping an implicit promise to reciprocate Turkey’s actions. Turkey’s GDP, growing rapidly in recent years, would add about 5 percent to the EU’s economy. And Turkish workers could help alleviate a labor shortage in Western Europe. Supporters also argue that Turkey as an EU member would serve as a bridge between Europe and the important but unstable Middle East region and as an example of secular democracy to other Middle Eastern countries.

Opponents note that Turkey would be the only Muslim country in the EU, yet would become the second most populous EU member after Germany. With 2 million Turks already living in Germany, opponents argue that EU membership would open the fl ood- gates for immigration from a large, poor country, overwhelming the smaller and richer EU members. In economic terms, Turkey would be the poorest member, even including the new Eastern European members (see Figure 10.2 ). Costs to subsidize Turkish farmers and expand social programs could reach tens of billions of euros. Finally, opponents want

$40,000

30,000

20,000

10,000

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Countries* Other

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2 Countries Joined in 2007

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GD P

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ap ita

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Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Lux.,

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Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Cyprus

Bulgaria, Romania

*Slovenia adopted the euro in 2007, Cyprus and Malta in 2008, Slovakia in 2009, and Estonia in 2011.

FIGURE 10.2 Income Levels of Old and New EU Members, 2005

Source: World Bank data.

The European Union 369

Turkey to remove its military forces from EU member Cyprus, where a Greek-Turkish partition has endured for decades. In 2010– 2013, the fi nancial crisis in the eurozone pushed aside the question of admitting Turkey or other new members.

As the new members joined the EU since 2004, the ability of the EU to reach decisions by consensus became more complicated, a point underscored by Slovakia’s single-handed veto of a massive euro bailout briefl y in 2011. The working time required to make decisions in the Council of the European Union expanded, with potential confl icts and alliances on a particular issue among 28 rather than 15 members. Recall that collective goods are generally harder to provide in larger groups, where free riding is less obvious, than in smaller ones.

Furthermore, by Western European standards, the new mem- bers are relatively poor. Existing EU members were wary of being dragged down by these economies, most of which are still embroiled in the painful transition from socialism to capitalism and some- times lack stable currencies. In fact, however, the 2012–2013 debt crisis and recession centered on the older members such as Greece, Spain, and Portugal, not the new members.

Perhaps as a result of these pressures, the EU in the last decade has shown signs of dividing into “inner” and “outer” layers—with states such as France and Germany joining a currency union and deepening their integration, and those such as Britain and perhaps the new members operating at the edges of the EU with more autonomy. Still, in some areas, there have been strides toward inte- gration. Since 1995, the EU has established and expanded the Schengen area, a zone in which border controls have been abol- ished. Goods and people move freely within the zone without stop- ping at borders. The Schengen countries include the major EU states (except Britain, by its choice). Norway, Iceland, and Switzer- land also belong, although they are not EU members.

The Lisbon Treaty To grapple with the implications of an expanding EU, the 25 leaders signed an EU consti- tution in late 2004, and the European Parliament gave it a strong vote of support in 2005. To take effect, it had to be ratifi ed by all 25 states, including several requiring referenda. The constitution would establish a stronger president of the EU, as well as a foreign min- ister, and would replace the requirement for consensus in EU decision making with major- ity voting in more cases. It also guaranteed fundamental rights to all EU citizens. But voters in France and the Netherlands rejected the constitution and the process halted.

At the end of 2007, the EU moved forward with another new proposed constitution, the Lisbon Treaty . The treaty was similar to the previous constitution, but faced a popu- lar referendum only in Ireland. (Lisbon did not require more state-level votes since it only amended previous EU treaties rather than replacing them as the constitution proposed to do.) The treaty came into force in 2009.

The treaty created numerous changes in both the structure and the day-to-day opera- tions of the EU. Some of those changes promote more supranational decision making. For example, a charter of human rights was made legally binding on all member states. A new position called the High Commissioner on Foreign Affairs and Security Policy was created

IMPERFECT UNION

The European Union added 12 members, mostly from Eastern Europe, in 2004 and 2007. Efforts to update European governance with the new Lisbon Treaty fi nally succeeded in 2009. But much com- plexity remains to be worked out, as shown in the muddled response to the Greek fi nancial crisis in 2011. Here, protesters demonstrate at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany, 2011.

370 Chapter 10 International Integration

to better coordinate foreign policy among member states. (This position immediately became controversial when a relatively unknown British lord was chosen to fi ll the position.)

On the other hand, some changes allow state members and individual citizens to place more checks on EU power. Now, national parliaments can have more say in who is admitted to the EU (likely bad news for Turkey). National parliaments will now also receive draft legislation to evaluate and respond to before it is enacted in Brussels. The Treaty also attempts to increase transparency by requiring European Council meetings to be held in public. And in an attempt to engage EU citizens directly, the Commission must now take up any proposal or petition that receives 1 million signatures.

Beyond the EU itself, Europe is a patchwork of overlapping structures with varying memberships (see Figure 10.3 ). Despite the Single European Act, there are still many Europes. Within the EU are the “inner six” and the new arrivals, each with its own con- cerns. Around the edges are the EFTA states participating in the European Economic Area. NATO membership overlaps partly with the EU. Russia and even the United States are European actors in some respects but not others. One truly universal intergovernmen- tal organization exists in Europe—the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Operating by consensus, with a large and universal membership of 56 states, the OSCE has little power except to act as a forum for discussions of security issues. In the late 1990s, the OSCE shifted into new tasks such as running elections, helping political par- ties in Bosnia and Kosovo, and providing various forms of monitoring and assistance in half a dozen Eastern European countries.

Thus, international integration is not a matter of a single group or organization but more a mosaic of structures tying states together. These various structures of the European political system, centered on the EU, are IGOs composed of states as members. But a less- tangible aspect of integration is the sense of identity that develops over time as economic (and other functional) ties bring people closer together across borders. Supranational identity, culture, and communication are also aspects of international integration. The remainder of this chapter considers how information technologies are bypassing states and bringing about this kind of integration globally.

The Power of Information Global telecommunications are profoundly changing how information and culture func- tion in international relations. 15 These technological advances, at the center of globaliza- tion, are bringing the identity principle to the fore as communities interact across distances and borders. Newly empowered individuals and groups are creating new transnational networks worldwide, bypassing states.

Connecting the World New international political possibilities arise from technological developments. The media over which information travels—telephones, television, fi lms, magazines, and so forth—shape the way ideas take form and spread from one place to another. The media with the strongest political impact are television, radio, phones, and the Internet.

15 Hanson, Elizabeth C. The Information Revolution in World Politics. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2008. Allison, Juliann E., ed. Technology, Development, and Democracy: International Confl ict and Cooperation in the Information Age. SUNY, 2002. Pool, Ithiel de Sola. Technologies without Boundaries: On Telecommunications in a Global Age. Edited by Eli M. Noam. Harvard, 1990.

371

France

Germany

Britain

Denmark

USA

Canada

Belgium – Netherlands – Luxembourg (“Benelux”)

PortugalSpainGreeceIreland

Austria

Malta Cyprus Turkey

Norway Iceland

Albania

Georgia

Azerbaijan

Slovenia

Croatia

Macedonia

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Serbia

Montenegro

Moldova

Armenia Romania

Bulgaria

Switzerland Liechtenstein

Estonia Latvia Lithuania

Ukraine

Belarus

Russia

Former Soviet Union

Kazakhstan

Uzbekistan

Turkmenistan

Tajikistan

Kyrgyzstan

Former Yugoslavia

Poland Hungary Czech Rep.

Slovakia

Sweden Finland

Monaco

Andorra

San Marino

EU

EFTA

euro zone

“Inner 6”

UN Security Council

(with China) G8 (with Japan)

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OSCE

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er

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w Pa

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(Central Asian Republics)

Italy

FIGURE 10.3 Overlapping Memberships of European States

Source: European Union

372

POLICY PERSPECTIVES

Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel

PROBLEM How do you balance competing

forces in the EU while satisfying domestic

public opinion?

BACKGROUND For decades, Turkey has desired full membership in the European Union. For many reasons, Tur- key’s application has been stalled. It would be the poorest member of the EU; it would be the only non-Christian EU member; it has not settled past confl icts with current mem- bers Cyprus and Greece; and it has never admitted its role in the genocide of Armenians during World War I.

Yet, many observers argue that Turkey is too important to leave out of the EU: it serves as a vital link between Europe and the Middle East; it is a NATO member; and it has successfully undertaken many of the reforms asked of it by EU states, in human rights, minority rights, and democracy. Your own country maintains extensive economic ties with Turkey as well—Germany is Turkey’s top source of imports and biggest market for exports. An economically healthy Turkey in the EU would be good for German businesses.

Past German leaders have differed on their views on Turkey’s application, ranging from outright opposition to strong support. You have attempted to provide a compro- mise solution: the idea of a “privileged partnership,” which would provide some economic benefi ts to Turkey, but not full membership. Turkish leaders strongly oppose this option, and other European leaders have not supported your compromise to date.

While Turkey’s application to the EU has supporters and detractors across Europe, no country opposes Turkish mem- bership more than France. Its president, Nicolas Sarkozy, in 2007 campaigned on the platform of opposing Turkish mem- bership in the EU. Recently, when France held the EU presi- dency, it demanded delays of Turkey’s accession talks.

DOMESTIC CONSIDERATIONS Turkish member- ship in the EU is not popular domestically. Native Germans are concerned that immigrants could freely come to Ger- many and take jobs. They also fear that a wave of cheap exports from Turkey will undermine German workers. Already, more than 2.1 million Turks live in Germany, mak- ing them the largest ethnic minority in your country. There have been ethnic tensions between the Turkish immigrants and native Germans, leading for calls for tight restrictions on Turkish immigration. Yet, many of the Turks in Germany are voting and tax-paying citizens who have urged you to support Turkey’s membership.

SCENARIO Imagine that France proposes to perma- nently kill Turkey’s membership application to the EU. France asks for your support in ensuring that Turkey will never become a member of the EU. Upon hearing of France’s proposal, ethnic Turks begin large protests in sev- eral cities in Germany to urge your support of Turkey’s application.

CHOOSE YOUR POLICY Do you support France’s attempt to keep Turkey out of the EU? Do you continue to push for your idea of a “privileged partnership” even though the idea has received little support at home or abroad? How do you balance demands from important EU partners with your own policy preferences and a diffi cult domestic situation?

Explore the Simulation “You are the President of the European Commission” at MyPoliSciLab

The Power of Information 373

TV and Radio There are nearly 2 billion TV sets and 3 billion radio receivers in the world. Radio, and increasingly TV, reaches the poorest rural areas of the global South. Peasants who cannot read can understand radio. Ordinary over-the-air TV and radio sig- nals are radio waves of specifi c frequencies, which are a limited resource in high demand, regulated by governments. Because radio waves do not respect national borders, the allo- cation of frequencies is a subject of interstate bargaining. International regimes have grown up around the regulation of communications technologies, centered on the Inter- national Telecommunications Union (ITU). 16

Satellite TV bypasses states’ control and fortifi es transnational or supranational iden- tity politics by allowing, for example, all Arabs in the world to see Arab satellite TV cov- erage of the Palestinian issue. The Qatar-based al Jazeera, begun in 1996, is a force in Middle Eastern politics and reaches an infl uential audience worldwide. In a 2006 poll in six Arab countries, citizens listed al Jazeera as their main source of international news by a large margin over any other satellite TV network. 17 In 2013, al Jazeera bought Al Gore’s channel, Current, in a bid to expand its U.S. audience.

Telephone and Internet Even more empowering of ordinary citizens are telephones and the Internet. These are two-way media through which users interact among themselves without a centralized information source. In 2012, the world had 6 billion cell phone subscriptions, almost as many as people and far outnumbering the 1.2 billion landlines. More than a billion had mobile broadband Internet capability, including 100 percent of the population in Korea and Singapore. In 2011 alone, India added nearly 150 million cell phone subscribers, while China had more than 400 million. The explosion of interna- tional phone traffi c worldwide and of home and mobile access to the Internet is a clear indicator of globalization (see Figure 10.4 ).

Surprisingly, one of the most politically important features of these technologies turned out to be the cell phone camera. It has empowered ordinary citizens to create vis- ual records, such as videos of political demonstrations in one country that end up on TV in another country. In the 2011–2012 Arab Spring revolutions, especially in Syria, cell phone videos played a critical role in winning support by showing governments brutally murdering citizens. A related technological development of paramount political impor- tance is the growth of social media such as Facebook, building communities and allowing sharing of ideas (including those cell phone videos) outside government control and sometimes across international borders.

In Africa, cheap cell phones with cheap prepaid calling cards have let millions of relatively poor individuals communicate. In about a decade, sub-Saharan Africa saw sub- scribers increase from near zero to nearly 300 million. These phones empower individuals, for example by letting farmers check market prices before deciding when to harvest crops. In one notable African success, Kenya has become the world’s leader in using cell phones for banking. The country has 10 million banking transactions daily (averaging $20), but half the population lacks a bank account, so entrepreneurs developed the M-Pesa mobile payment system. City dwellers can transfer money to their home villages by phone instead of taking a wad of cash for a long bus ride. By 2012, these mobile fund transfers by 15 mil- lion users made up a third of Kenya’s GDP.

Deep political divisions over the Internet came into focus in December 2012, at a conference of the ITU in Dubai to develop a new treaty on the Internet and global

16 Franda, Marcus. Governing the Internet: The Emergence of an International Regime. Rienner, 2001. Braman, Sandra, ed. The Emergent Global Information Policy Regime. Palgrave, 2004. 17 Sadat Chair, University of Maryland. Arab Attitudes toward Political and Social Issues, Foreign Policy and the Media. Available online at http://www.bsos.umd.edu/SADAT/PUB/Arab-attitudes-2005.htm .

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telecommunications. Russia, China, and others saw the Internet as a system of government-controlled networks, while the United States and others, including Google and various NGOs, saw it as a more amorphous entity to facilitate the free fl ow of infor- mation. The U.S. House of Representatives, in a rare moment of bipartisanship, unani- mously opposed the new treaty. In the end, 89 countries supported it but 55 others would not sign. Further meetings were planned for 2013.

The Digital Divide Taken on its own, the addition of phone and Internet capability in poor countries is impressive. But in comparison with rich regions, the gap persists (see Fig- ure 10.5 ). A person living in the global North is far more likely than a person in the global South to have a landline, cell phone, and Internet access. This gap, along with the gap in access to information technologies within countries, is known as the digital divide . 18

2.0

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Internet Users

Cell Phone Subscribers

Fixed Phone Lines

To ta

l u ni

ts (b

ill io

ns )

FIGURE 10.4 World Phone and Internet Use, 1995–2010

Source: International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

18 Norris, Pippa. Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. Cambridge, 2001. James, Jeffrey. Bridging the Global Digital Divide. Edward Elgar, 2003.

The Power of Information 375

As the Internet wires parts of the world into a tight network centered on the United States, Europe, and East Asia—where most Web users live—other regions are largely left out. Poor countries and poor people cannot afford computers. In 2012, the Internet band- width per user was 25 times higher in Europe than Africa. The Internet reached 70 percent of households in the global North but only 20 percent in the global South. The numbers for mobile phone Internet are 51 percent in the North and 8 percent in the South. The explosive growth of Internet use is occurring mainly among the world’s richer people. 19

Some activists hope that the Internet can transform poor villages in the global South, partly by letting them produce traditional goods locally and market them globally. In one successful experiment in India in recent years, a businessman placed computer screens with pointing and clicking devices and high-speed Internet access in walls and kiosks in very poor slums. In each location, neighborhood kids quickly gathered, taught themselves to browse the Internet, and even invented their own terminology to describe the unfamiliar cursor and icons on the screen. This small-scale “hole in the wall experiment” shows that simple meth- ods can go far to break down the digital divide between the world’s rich and poor.

A model project in Cambodia in 2001 helped revive a village silk-weaving industry by marketing locally made scarves on a village Web site. However, critics noted that the project was feasible only because a satellite company owned by the Thai prime minister donated $18,000 per year of link time. A U.S. aid organization provided the computers, training, Web site design, and credit card processing required to sell scarves from the village. The reality is that most poor villages cannot afford the Internet, cannot read the language of most Web sites, and cannot maintain computers and Web sites without extensive training. 20

Since 2007, the One Laptop Per Child project has been mass-producing an inexpen- sive Web-capable wireless personal computer, priced at $200. 21 The computers, designed

Internet UsersCell Phone Subscribers 100100

00 2008

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0 1996 2000 2004

Pe r 1

00 in

ha bi

ta nt

s

Fixed Phone Lines

North

South

North

South

North

South

20081996 2000 2004 20081996 2000 2004

FIGURE 10.5 The North-South Digital Divide, 1994–2010

Source: International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

19 Data on information access are from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) unless otherwise noted. 20 Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. Cambodian Village Wired to Future. The Washington Post, May 13, 2001: A1. 21 See www.laptop.org/ . Suroecki, James. Philanthropy’s New Prototype. Technology Review, Nov./Dec. 2006.

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by an MIT professor, can communicate with Inter- net access points, such as at school, and network with each other to extend Internet access along a chain, say from school to students’ homes. The lap- tops can be hand-powered, with one minute of exer- tion charging the battery for ten minutes of use. Several countries have ordered millions for their children, and about 3 million have shipped to 40 countries, notwithstanding problems and setbacks. In 2009, Uruguay bought one for every school-age child in that country. In a dramatic experiment in 2012, the organization sent boxes of a tablet version of its computer to elementary students in two remote Ethiopian villages that had no schools and no liter- acy. Other than showing some adults how to use the solar chargers, the project included no instructions. Within four minutes, the students had opened the boxes and fi gured out how to turn on the machines. In fi ve days, the average child was using nearly 50 apps daily. Within two weeks, the students were singing ABC songs, teaching themselves to read. And in five months, they had hacked into the Android operating system to enable a camera and customize the desktop.

Information as a Tool of Governments With more information traveling around the world than ever before, information has become an impor- tant instrument of governments’ power (domestic

and interstate). 22 After the Soviet Union collapsed, leaders of the newly independent republics asked the U.S. secretary of state, “How do I get CNN?” 23 They wanted informa- tion. Today, governments can gather, organize, and store huge amounts of information. In this respect, the information revolution empowers governments more than ever. In the past, a wanted criminal, drug lord, or terrorist could slip over the border and take refuge in a foreign country. The terrorists who attacked the United States in 2001 demonstrated how easy this was. Today, however, it is more likely that a routine traffi c ticket in the foreign country could trigger an instant directive to arrest the person. On the other hand, information technologies give repressive governments more power to keep tabs on citi- zens, spy on dissidents, and manipulate public opinion. Those technologies are now being mobilized in force to strengthen counterterrorism.

Just as citizens and terrorists fi nd it harder to hide from governments, so are state governments fi nding it harder to hide information from each other. The military impor- tance of satellite reconnaissance has been mentioned (see pp. 201 – 203 ) . A powerful state such as the United States can increase its power through information technologies. It can and does monitor phone calls, faxes, data transmissions, and radio conversations in for- eign countries.

WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

Global communication, a very new capability on the time scale of the international system, is changing the rules of IR and empower- ing nonstate transnational actors. Telecommunications could change the path of development in poor countries, possibly bypassing traditional infrastructure such as phone lines and leap- frogging to a wireless networked economy. And digital capabilities are illuminating political hotspots—cell phone videos fueled Arab protests in 2011, and these cameras, distributed to 700 children in Darfur, Sudan, by the UN, documented life in that confl ict zone.

22 Roberts, Alasdair. Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age. Cambridge, 2006. 23 The New York Times, February 2, 1992: A10.

The Power of Information 377

In the Arab Spring movements in 2011, protesters were not the only ones to deploy Internet capabilities; governments did as well. Egypt successfully blocked a choke point and cut off international Web access. And Syria’s government used its own hackers to track down the identities of protesters anonymously posting antigovernment videos and messages on the Web. The U.S. government in response trained democracy activists in technologies of the Internet and social media and created shadow Internet and cell phone networks inside foreign countries whose governments were trying to shut down communications.

As the cost of information technology decreases, it comes into reach of more states. Now small states can gain some of the same capabilities electronically. Even sophisticated information is more available and cheaper—high-resolution satellite photos are now available commercially and are cheap or free. These images can be used for both military purposes and natural resource management—for example, knowing which states (includ- ing one’s own) have such resources as oil, minerals, forests, and farmland, and the rate at which they are being used.

Most governments create explicit channels of information dissemination to infl uence domestic and international audiences. Stations such as Radio Moscow broadcast radio programs in dozens of languages aimed at all the world’s regions. The United States oper- ates the Voice of America (VOA) shortwave radio network, which is picked up in many remote regions. The United States also beams specialized programming into Cuba (TV/ Radio Marti) and China, among others.

Governments spread false as well as true information as a means of international infl uence. This is called disinformation. In the 1930s, the Nazis discovered that the “big lie,” if repeated enough times, would be accepted as truth by most people. It is harder to fool international audiences these days, but domestic ones can still respond to propagan- distic misinformation.

Most governments (but not the U.S. government) own and operate at least one main TV station, and many hold a monopoly on TV stations. Thus, TV signals often rank with military equipment and currency as capabilities so important to a government that it must control them itself. Indeed, in a military coup d’état, usually one of the fi rst and most important targets seized is the television broadcasting facility.

Information as a Tool against Governments Information can be used against governments as well, by foreign governments, NGOs, or domestic political opponents. 24 Governments, especially repressive ones, fear the free fl ow of information, for good reason. New information technologies have become power- ful tools of domestic opposition movements and their allies in foreign governments. Tel- evision coverage has fed popular discontent regarding the current U.S. war in Iraq, as it did for the Vietnam War and the Russian war in Chechnya.

More than 500 million Chinese use the Internet, though not uncensored. In 2009, the Chinese government began blocking all access to YouTube after videos surfaced of Chinese military forces repressing pro-Tibet demonstrations. In Iran, where millions of people have used the Internet to discuss taboo topics such as sex, fashion, and politics, the government was widely criticized for cracking down on protesters after a disputed election in 2009. That crackdown was broadcast on Internet sites such as Twitter and Facebook as opposition members posted video and pictures of beatings and even the shooting death of a female protester. These methods were later adopted by the Arab Spring protesters.

24 Jones, Adam. Wired World: Communications Technology, Governance, and the Democratic Uprising. In Comor, Edward A., ed. The Global Political Economy of Communication: Hegemony, Telecommunication, and the Information Economy. Macmillan, 1994.

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In the Philippines in 2001, huge pro- tests that swept a president from offi ce were organized through text messages on cell phones. In Ghana, very popular talk shows on private FM radio programs— allowed after 1995—gave voice to ordi- nary people who then threw out the ruling party in 2000. The global peace demon- strations preceding the 2003 Iraq War used information technologies to turn out millions of people in dozens of countries on short notice. One U.S. group ( moveon. org ) used a Web site to schedule protest- ers’ phone calls to their congressional rep- resentatives every minute of one day, the kind of coordinated action that would have required a large staff and budget in the past ( moveon.org had a staff of four at the time). 25

To counteract such uses of informa- tion, governments throughout the world try to limit the fl ow of unfavorable infor- mation—especially information from for- eign sources. For example, China, like several other developing countries, chan- nels all access to the Internet through a few state-controlled service providers, and fi lters the hundreds of billions of text mes- sages exchanged annually among 300 mil- lion Chinese cell phone subscribers. In

2010, the United Arab Emirates announced it would shut down BlackBerry’s services, but later reached a compromise allowing users to continue using the devices.

A major controversy over Web freedom also emerged in 2010 when the U.S. com- pany Google announced that it would no longer comply with Chinese law that censors Internet searches by blocking politically sensitive words from its Chinese search engine. Later, Google compromised with the Chinese government, angering some U.S. critics. 26

U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton has been active at promoting Internet freedom as a core human right on her visits to countries that limit Internet access.

Information technologies have security implications. Capabilities such as fi ber- optic cables or satellite communications serve governments in conducting their foreign and military policies (see “Evolving Technologies” on pp. 201 – 204 ) . Nonstate actors such as terrorist organizations have also harbored the power of cellular phones and the Internet to recruit operatives, raise money, and coordinate attacks—even to detonate improvised explosive devices remotely with a cell phone’s ring triggering the bomb when called. Recall that new “smart weapons” technologies empower foot soldiers

HOT OFF THE PRESS

Information, which easily crosses state borders, is a major factor in both international and domestic politics and may even be laying technological foundations for a global identity. Governments have many ways to try to con- trol information. Here a staff member of Kenya’s daily newspaper surveys the damage after police—responding to unfavorable coverage of the president— stormed its offi ces and burned tens of thousands of copies, 2006.

25 Fathi, Nazila, and Erik Eckholm. Taboo Surfi ng: Click Here for Iran . . . And Click Here for China. The New York Times, August 4, 2002. Schmetzer, Uli. Cellphones Spurred Filipinos’ Coup. The Chicago Tribune, January 22, 2001. Friedman, Thomas L. Low-Tech Democracy. The New York Times, May 1, 2001: A27. 26 Goldsmith, Jack, and Tim Wu. Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World. Oxford, 2008.

The Power of Information 379

relative to large weapons systems (see p. 204 ) . New communications technologies may be doing the same for ordinary citizens relative to governments and political parties.

The Internet in many ways empowers small fringe groups relative to states, and leaves states vul- nerable in new ways. Hackers have taken over con- trol of U.S. government computers and have unleashed costly viruses against businesses and peo- ple worldwide. These cyberattacks by small-scale actors may target foreign countries. During the U.S.- China spy plane standoff in 2001, nationalistic Chi- nese hackers claimed to have put pro-Chinese graffi ti on 1,000 U.S. Web sites, and U.S. hackers returned the favor. An Ohio school district found that its site now played China’s national anthem. The Chinese communist party criticized “Web ter- rorism” and the crisis eased. 27 But the U.S. govern- ment worries that real terrorists could use the Internet to cause massive disruptions in U.S. eco- nomic life.

All in all, the tide of technology seems to be running against governments. Information gets through, and no political power seems capable of holding it back for long. As more and more commu- nication channels carry more information to more places, governments become just another player in a crowded fi eld.

Telecommunications and Global Culture As the information revolution continues to unfold, it will further increase international interdependence, making actions in one state reverberate in other states more strongly than in the past. Information is thus slowly undermining realists’ assumptions of state sovereignty and territorial integrity. At the same time, by empowering substate and transnational actors, information technology is undermining the centrality of states themselves in world affairs.

The information revolution greatly increases transparency in international relations. As a result, states do not need to arm against unknown potential threats because they see the real threats. Similarly, the ability to monitor performance of agreements makes collective goods problems easier to resolve because cheaters and free riders can be identi- fi ed. Moreover, the ability of governments to bargain effectively with each other and to reach mutually benefi cial outcomes is enhanced by the availability of instant communica- tions channels. In these ways, the increased transparency allowed by new technologies strengthens the reciprocity principle as a solution to IR confl icts. The complex monitor- ing and accounting required in international agreements based on reciprocity—from trade deals to arms control—comes much easier in a transparent world.

27 Hockstader, Lee. Pings and E-Arrows Fly in Mideast Cyber-War. The Washington Post, October 27, 2000: A1. Cha, Ariana Eunjung. Chinese Suspected of Hacking U.S. Sites. The Washington Post, April 13, 2001: A13.

CONNECTED

States do not control the global fl ow of information, which has become a potent force in world politics. Despite efforts by author- itarian governments, the young participants in the Arab Spring used Internet capabilities and social networking sites to publicize abuses and organize resistance. These protesters in Egypt’s cap- ital in 2012 stay connected to each other and the world via iPad.

380 Chapter 10 International Integration

Telecommunications, with its ability to connect com- munities beyond geographic space, is also strengthening the identity principle in IR because people’s identities have new sources and new avenues of expression that often transcend national borders. In the past, nationalism has tapped into the psychological dynamics of group identity in a powerful way that has legitimized the state as the ultimate embodiment of its people’s aspirations and identity. Now the information revolution may aid the development of transnational or supranational identities. Journalists, scientists, and church members, among others, work in communities spanning national borders. So do members of transnational move- ments, such as those linking women from various countries, or environmentalists, or human rights activists. The links forged in such transnational communities may create a new functionalism that could encourage international integration on a global scale.

Sports also create transnational communities. Citizens of different states share their admiration of sports stars, who become international celebrities. The Olympics (run by the International Olympic Committee, an NGO) is a global event with a worldwide audience. 28 The U.S.-Chinese rap- prochement of 1971 was so delicate that political coopera- tion was impossible until the way had fi rst been paved by sports—the U.S. table tennis team that made the fi rst offi cial U.S. visit to China.

Finally, tourism also builds transnational communities. 29 International tourists cross borders 500 million times a year. Tourism ranks among the top export industries world- wide. People who travel to other countries often develop both a deeper understanding and a deeper appreciation for them. Added to these contacts are exchange students and those who attend college in a foreign country.

Like international integration and globalization generally, global culture has its downside. The emerging global culture is primarily the culture of white Europeans and their descendants in rich areas of the world (mixed slightly with cultural elements of Japan and local elites in the global South). This cultural dominance has been referred to as cultural imperialism . 30 For many people, especially in the global South, the informa- tion revolution carrying global culture into their midst is, despite its empowering poten- tial, an invasive force in practice. Because cultures are being subsumed, half of the world’s nearly 7,000 languages risk extinction this century, according to UNESCO.

Above all, the emerging global culture is dominated by the world’s superpower, the United States; U.S. cultural infl uence is at least as strong as U.S. military infl uence. Cul- ture may be just another economic product, to be produced in the place of greatest com- parative advantage, but culture also is central to national identity and politics. The prospect of cultural imperialism thus opens another front in the confl ict of liberalism and

WORLD CULTURE

The power of information, opening up a wave of globali- zation in international business, is also strengthening global communities that cross or even transcend national borders. Some events, such as the British royal wedding in 2011, may be rooted in one nation but become global news stories followed by millions around the world.

28 Pound, Richard. Inside the Olympics: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Politics, the Scandals, and the Glory of the Games. John Wiley, 2004. Schaffer, Kay, and Sidonie Smith. The Olympics at the Millennium: Power Politics and the Games. Rutgers, 2000. 29 Leheny, David. The Rules of Play: National Identity and the Shaping of Japanese Leisure. Cornell, 2003. 30 Maxwell, Richard. Culture Works: The Political Economy of Culture. Minnesota, 2001. Barber, Benjamin R. Jihad vs. McWorld. Times Books, 1995. Tomlinson, John. Globalization and Culture. Chicago, 1999.

Chapter Review 381

mercantilism. Even the architecture of cyberspace assumes the United States as the default in such domain names as .gov (U.S. government) and .mil (U.S. military). At the UN-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society in 2005, Europe and develop- ing countries tried unsuccessfully to break the monopoly held by a U.S. consortium over registering domain names, including country-code domains such as “.uk” (Britain) and “.cn” (China) that states want to control as a matter of national sovereignty. By 2009, however, the Internet’s governing body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), announced that Internet addresses can now contain non-Latin characters. This will allow addresses to contain Chinese, Cyrillic, Japanese, Arabic, or any number of non-Latin based characters to form a Web address.

Recent trends seem to be moving toward a more multilateral world culture. For exam- ple, South Korea’s Ministry of Culture has supported the mass-production of a new, fast growing, billion-dollar export product, Korean pop music (K-pop). Boy and girl bands are systematically recruited and developed, then marketed globally via social media. The music video “Gangnam Style” by the Korean artist PSY outpaced Justin Bieber to become the most-watched YouTube video ever (1.2 billion views by early 2013). Another highly successful cultural export product can be found in Brazilian soap operas.

These supranational cultural infl uences are still in their infancy. Over the coming years and decades, their shape will become clearer, and scholars will be able to determine more accurately how they infl uence world politics and state sovereignty. We need not wait as long to see the effects of a different kind of supranational infl uence, however. Environmental problems, which rarely recognize national borders, have forced states into ever-closer cooperation as political leaders fi nd that the only effective responses are at a supranational level. These issues occupy Chapter 11 .

Study and Review the Post-Test & Chapter Exam at MyPoliSciLab

SUMMARY ■ Supranational processes bring states together in larger structures and identities.

These processes generally lead to an ongoing struggle between nationalism and supranationalism.

■ International integration—the partial shifting of sovereignty from the state toward supranational institutions—is considered an outgrowth of international coopera- tion in functional (technical and economic) issue areas.

■ Integration theorists thought that functional cooperation would spill over into political integration in foreign policy and military issue areas. Instead, forces of dis- integration tore apart previously existing states such as the Soviet Union.

■ The European Union (EU) is the most advanced case of integration. Its 28 member states have given considerable power to the EU in economic decision making. How- ever, national power still outweighs supranational power even in the EU.

■ Since the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1952, the mission and membership of what is now the EU have expanded continually.

■ The most important and most successful element in the EU is its customs union (and the associated free trade area). Goods can cross borders of member states freely, and the members adopt unifi ed tariffs with regard to goods entering from outside the EU.

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382 Chapter 10 International Integration

■ Under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), subsidies to farmers are made uniform within the community. Carrying out the CAP consumes 40 percent of the EU’s budget. EU agricultural subsidies are a major source of trade confl ict with the United States.

■ The EU has a monetary union with a single European currency (the euro) in 17 of the 28 EU states. It is the biggest experiment with money in history and had great success in its fi rst years but hit a crisis in 2010–2013 over members’ debts. A mone- tary union requires roughly comparable infl ation rates and fi nancial stability in par- ticipating states.

■ In structure, the EU revolves around the permanent staff of Eurocrats under the European Commission. The Commission’s president, individual members, and staff all serve Europe as a whole—a supranational role. However, the Council of the European Union representing member states (in national roles) has power over the Commission.

■ The European Parliament has members directly elected by citizens in EU states, but it has few powers and cannot legislate the rules for the community. The European Court of Justice also has limited powers, but has extended its jurisdiction more suc- cessfully than any other international court, and can overrule national laws.

■ The 1991 Maastricht Treaty on closer European integration (monetary union and political-military coordination) provoked a public backlash in several countries against the power of EU bureaucrats.

■ Twelve new members, mostly Eastern European, joined the EU in 2004 and 2007. The EU’s structures and procedures were adapted as it moved from 15 to 27 mem- bers. The EU faces challenges in deciding how far to expand its membership, par- ticularly regarding Turkey.

■ A different type of international integration can be seen in the growing role of com- munication and information operating across national borders. Supranational relationships and identities are being fostered by new information technologies— especially mass media such as TV, radio, and the Internet—although the process is still in an early stage.

■ Internet governance is under negotiation at UN meetings, notably one in 2012, where 89 countries supported a new treaty giving governments more power, but 55 others would not sign.

■ Governments use the dissemination of information across borders as a means of infl uencing other states. Government access to information can also increase the stability of international relationships, since the security dilemma and other collec- tive goods problems become less diffi cult in a transparent world.

■ The greater and freer fl ow of information around the world can undermine the authority and power of governments as well. Authoritarian governments fi nd it hard to limit the fl ow of information into and out of their states.

■ Telecommunications are contributing to the development of global cultural inte- gration. This process may hold the potential for the development of a single world culture. However, some politicians and citizens worry about cultural imperialism— that such a culture would be too strongly dominated by the United States.

■ Transnational communities in areas such as sports, music, and tourism may foster supranational identities that could someday compete with the state for the loyalty of citizens.

Chapter Review 383

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS 1. Functional economic ties among European states have contributed to the emer-

gence of a supranational political structure, the EU, which has considerable though not unlimited power. Do you think the same thing could happen in North America? Could the U.S.-Canadian-Mexican NAFTA develop into a future North American Union like the EU? What problems would it be likely to face, given the experience of the EU?

2. Suppose you happened to be chatting with the president of the European Commis- sion, who is complaining about the public reaction in European states against the growing power of the Commission’s Eurocrats. What advice would you give? What steps could the Commission take to calm such fears without reversing the process of integration? How would your suggestions address the resentments that many European citizens or governments feel against Brussels?

3. Suppose the government of Turkey hired you as a consultant to help it develop a presentation to the EU about why Turkey should be admitted as a member. What arguments would you propose using? What kinds of rebuttals might you expect from the present EU members? How would you recommend that Turkey respond?

4. Information technologies are strengthening transnational and supranational communications and identity. However, they are also providing states with new instruments of power and control. Which aspect do you fi nd predominant now? Are these new capabilities helpful or harmful to state governments? Why? Do you expect your answer to change in the future, as technology continues to develop?

5. What are the good and bad effects, in your opinion, of the emergence of global communications and culture? Should we be cheering or lamenting the possibility of one world culture? Does the answer depend on where one lives in the world? Give concrete examples of the effects you discuss.

KEY TERMS supranational 355 international

integration 355 neofunctionalism 357 security

community 357 European Union

(EU) 358 Treaty of Rome 359 Euratom 359 free trade area 359

European Court of Justice 362

Single European Act 362

Maastricht Treaty 363 euro 364 Lisbon Treaty 369 digital divide 374 cultural

imperialism 380

customs union 359 common market 360 Common Agricultural

Policy (CAP) 360 European

Commission 361 Council of the

European Union 361

European Parliament 362

ARGUMENT 1

The EU Integration Process Is Finished Progressing

Troubles with the proposed Consti- tution and new Lisbon Treaty prove there are diffi culties. The rejection of the proposed European Constitution in 2007 and the  initial rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in 2008 show that major challenges lie ahead when it comes to implementing major EU policy changes. Even the attempt to guarantee individual rights in Europe created controversy.

The number of members makes it nearly impossible to get major change. Many of the major EU changes, including the Single European Act and Maas- tricht, began when the EU had 12 or 15 members. Now, with 28 members, fi nding agreement among all the states will be extremely diffi cult, especially on issues where unanimous consent is required.

Public opinion is skeptical of further integration. ”Euroskeptics,” as they are labeled, are increasingly common in Europe. While public support may not directly infl uence EU policy, the public may begin to vote for lead- ers and political parties that will put a halt to EU integration (and possibly expansion as well).

Overview Since the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, there appears to be a forward-moving process of integration in Europe. The European Union is now the major political force in Europe. It is economically large, with an aggregate GDP greater than that of the United States. It is a power- ful force diplomatically, mediating international dis- putes and conflicts, even those involving other great powers. It possesses signifi cant infl uence inside and outside of Europe.

Yet, the EU has lately had diffi culty furthering the integration process. After the adoption of the euro, the EU changed its focus from deepening integra- tion (taking over more policy areas from member states) to broadening membership by admitting former Eastern European states to membership. This expansion has extended the economic and political power of the EU, but it has also resulted in challenges. Attempts to change EU rules to further extend the power of the European Parliament, to create a position to help unify European foreign policy, to make the EU’s human rights charter legally binding, and to alter voting systems within the EU Council to remove the requirement for unanimous voting have all met with stiff resistance. The global economic recession also put strains on the EU, with the Hungarian prime minister warning in 2009 of a “new iron curtain” between rich (Western Euro- pean) and poor (Eastern European) states.

Some now wonder if European integration has run its course. Have the last steps toward deepen- ing integration already taken place? Are there more issues on which states will surrender their sover- eignty in favor of supranationalism, or is the EU left only to add more members?

Has European Integration Gone as Far as Possible?

LET’S DEBATE THE ISSUE

Questions ■ Will the EU branch out into new issue areas or

focus only on expanding to new members for the foreseeable future? Is there a natural geo- graphic limit to the boundaries of the EU?

■ Could the EU separate into two tiers: the wealth- ier Western European states and the poorer Eastern European states? Would the EU be as important politically and economically if only certain states cooperated on some issues? Could a euro-like solution work in other policy areas?

■ What other functions could the EU attempt to perform? What would the prospects for success be in deepening military cooperation or budget- ary coordination? How would increasing military cooperation fi t with many EU states’ existing commitment to NATO?

For Further Reading Scott, James Wesley. EU Enlargement, Region

Building and Shifting Borders of Inclusion and Exclusion. Ashgate, 2006.

Schimmelfennig, Frank. The Politics of European Union Enlargement: Theoretical Approaches. Routledge, 2005.

Sjursen, Helene. Questioning EU Enlargement. Routledge, 2006.

DeBardeleben, Joan. The Boundaries of EU Enlargement: Finding a Place for Neighbours. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

ARGUMENT 2

The EU Integration Process Will Continue to Advance

Obstacles have been overcome in the past. Few observers gave the EU much of a chance to get the euro off the ground, yet it has succeeded in doing so. Soon after the defeat of the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland, a new agreement was reached to allow a second vote. EU ministers have been persistent and creative in their attempts to deepen the integration process.

External factors will drive deepen- ing. With the failure to date of the Doha Round of WTO negotiations and tensions with the United States over when and where NATO forces should be used, the EU has strong incentives to deepen cooperation among its members. It now knows it cannot rely only on the WTO to further trade lib- eralization or on the United States for military leadership.

The EU is flexible enough to deal with large numbers of members. Many cooks in the kitchen does not necessarily mean bad broth. The EU has been and remains fl exible as to how member states respond to the deepen- ing of cooperation. The euro is a perfect exam- ple—not all members use the euro, some from economic necessity but some by choice (for example, Britain). Thus, further integration does not require unanimous adoption of all policies.

Windmill and nuclear power plant, Britain, mid-1980s.

Environment and Population

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387

Interdependence and the Environment Global threats to the natural environment are a growing source of interdependence. States’ actions regarding pollution, conservation, and natural resources routinely affect other states. Because environmental effects tend to be diffuse and long term and because such effects easily spread from one location to another, international environ- mental politics creates diffi cult collective goods problems (see pp. 4 – 7 ) . A sustainable natural environment is a collective good, and states bargain over how to distribute the costs of providing that good. The technical, scientifi c, and ethical aspects of managing the environment are complex, but the basic nature of states’ interests is not. The col- lective goods problem arises in each issue area concerning the environment, resources, and population.

For example, the world’s major fi sheries in international waters are not owned by any state; they are a collective good. The various fi shing states must cooperate (partly by regulating nonstate actors such as MNCs) to avoid depleting the stocks of fi sh. If too many states fail to cooperate, the fi sh populations decline and everyone’s catch drops. And indeed, in 1997–2007, catches worldwide declined by about 15 percent. Further declines are projected for the coming years. Fishers have moved on to new species of seafood after depleting earlier ones, but have already depleted a third of the species, with the rest projected to go by midcentury (see Figure 11.1 ). Because the world’s states did not solve the collective goods problem of world fi sheries, they are paying $20 billion a year in subsidies to bankrupt fi shing industries in their respective countries. 1

CHAPTER OUTLINE

Interdependence and the Environment

■ Sustainable Development

Managing the Environment ■ The Atmosphere ■ Biodiversity ■ Forests and Oceans ■ Pollution

Natural Resources ■ World Energy ■ Minerals ■ Water Disputes

Population ■ The Demographic

Transition ■ Population Policies ■ Disease

Study and Review the Pre-Test & Flashcards at MyPoliSciLab

1 Food and Agriculture Organization. State of World Aquaculture 2006. FAO, 2006. Worm, Boris, et al. Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services. Science 314, November 3, 2006: 787–90. Black, Richard. “Only 50 Years Left” for Sea Fish. BBC News Web site, November 2, 2006.

20

40

0

60

80

100 1950 1975 20252000 2050

Pe rc

en t o

f s pe

ci es

c ol

la ps

ed

Global fisheries data 1950–2003

Extrapolated long-term trend

FIGURE 11.1 Global Loss of Seafood Species

Source: New York Times, Nov. 3, 2006: A16.

388 Chapter 11 Environment and Population

This depletion occurred because each additional fi shing boat—and the MNC that owns it as well as its state of origin—gains by catching an additional fi sh. The benefi ts of that fi sh go entirely to the one catching it, whereas the eventual costs of depleted stocks will be shared by all who fi sh there. But what is a state’s fair quota of fi sh? No world government exists to decide such a question, so states must enter into multilat- eral negotiations, agreements, and regimes. Such efforts create new avenues for func- tionalism and international integration, but also new potentials for confl ict and “prisoner’s dilemmas.”

In 1999, a UN-sponsored agreement among all the world’s major fi shing states set goals to reduce fl eet overcapacity. (Four million fi shing boats operate worldwide, of which 40,000 are ships larger than 100 tons.) Participating nations are capping the size of fi shing fl eets and then scaling them back gradually, while reducing subsidies. The pain of unem- ployment and economic adjustment should thus be shared. However, the agreement is voluntary, its implementation delayed, and its effect on collapsing fi sheries probably too little, too late.

This type of collective goods dilemma has been called the tragedy of the commons . 2 Centuries ago, the commons were shared grazing land in Britain. As with fi sheries, if too many people kept too many sheep, the commons would be overgrazed. Yet adding one more sheep was profi table to that sheep’s owner. Britain solved the problem by enclosure of the commons—splitting it into privately owned pieces on each of which a single owner would have an incentive to manage resources responsibly. The world’s states have taken a similar approach to coastal fi sheries by extending territorial waters to put more fi sh under the control of single states (see p. 408 ) . The global commons refers to the shared parts of the earth, such as the oceans and outer space.

As in other areas of IPE, the solution of environmental collective goods problems is based on achieving shared benefi ts that depend on overcoming confl icting interests. 3 Regimes are an important part of the solution (see pp. 90 – 92 ) , providing rules based on the reciprocity principle to govern bargaining over who gets the benefi ts and bears the costs of environmental protection. Functional IOs specialize in technical and management aspects of the environment. 4

Increasingly, these IOs overlap with broader communities of experts from various states that structure the way states manage environmental issues; these have been called epistemic communities (knowledge-based communities). For example, the transnational community of experts and policy makers concerned with pollution in the Mediterranean is an epistemic community. 5

In global environmental politics, it is hard to manage collective goods problems because of the large number of actors. Collective goods are easier to provide in small

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2 Hardin, Garrett. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science 162, December 16, 1968: 1243–48. 3 Tolba, Mostafa K., and Iwona Rummel-Bulska. Global Environmental Diplomacy: Negotiating Environmental Agreements for the World, 1973–1992. MIT, 2008. Speth, James Gustave, and Peter M. Haas. Global Environ- mental Governance. Island, 2006. Stevis, Dimitris, and Valerie J. Assetto, eds. The International Political Economy of the Environment: Critical Perspectives. Rienner, 2001. Schreurs, Miranda A., and Elizabeth Economy, eds. The Internationalization of Environmental Protection. Cambridge, 1997. 4 Young, Oran R., Leslie A. King, and Heike Schroeder, eds. Institutions and Environmental Change: Principal Findings, Applications, and Research Frontiers. MIT, 2008. Young, Oran R., ed. The Effectiveness of International Environmental Regimes: Casual Connections and Behavioral Mechanisms. MIT, 1999. Peterson, M. J. International Regimes for the Final Frontier. SUNY, 2005. 5 Haas, Peter M. Saving the Mediterranean: The Politics of International Environmental Cooperation. Columbia, 1990.

Interdependence and the Environment 389

groups, in which individual actions have more impact on the total picture and cheating is more noticeable. The opposite is true with the environment. The actions of nearly 200 states (albeit some more than others) aggregate to cause indirect but serious consequences throughout the world.

Interest in the environment has grown steadily since the fi rst Earth Day organized by environmental activists in 1970. 6

The fi rst UN conference on the international environment took place in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972. It adopted gen- eral principles—that one state’s actions should not cause environmental damage to another, for instance—and raised awareness about international aspects of environmental dam- age. A second conference was held, with less publicity, in 1982 in Nairobi, Kenya (headquarters of the UN Environ- ment Program). The larger and more ambitious 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, brought together more than a hundred state leaders.

Sustainable Development A major theme of these conferences is sustainable develop- ment. This refers to economic growth that does not deplete resources and destroy ecosystems so quickly that the basis of that economic growth is itself undermined. The concept applies to both the industrialized regions and the global South. 7

The 1992 Earth Summit established the Commission on Sustainable Development, which monitors states’ compliance with the promises they made at the Earth Summit and hears evidence from environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace. But it lacks powers of enforcement over national governments—again refl ecting the preeminence of state sov- ereignty over supranational authority (see p. 355 ) . The Commission has 53 member states. The Commission’s ability to monitor and publicize state actions is supposed to dis- courage states from cheating. But progress has been slow.

China and other developing countries in Asia stand at the center of the debate over sustainable development. In the drive for rapid economic growth, these countries have created serious pollution and other environmental problems. In early 2013, Bei- jing’s smog far exceeded dangerous levels, and residents who ventured outside suffered burning lungs and stinging eyes. Because of China’s size, any success in developing its economy along Western industrialized lines (for example, with mass ownership of automobiles) could create shocks to the global environment. In recent years, while China has been scouring the planet for raw materials, it has also become a leader in the development of “green” technology. For example, China now dominates the produc- tion of solar panels. But China’s growth is still powered in large part by dirty, coal- burning power plants.

TOO MANY COOKS

Management of environmental issues is complicated by the large numbers of actors involved, which make collective goods problems hard to resolve (partici- pants may be more tempted to free-ride). Here, 195 countries participate in global warming negotiations in Doha, 2011.

6 Desombre, Elizabeth R. The Global Environment and World Politics: International Relations for the 21st Century. Continuum, 2007. Bernstein, Steven F. The Compromise of Liberal Environmentalism. Columbia, 2001. Sprout, Harold, and Margaret Sprout. The Ecological Perspective on Human Affairs, with Special Reference to International Politics. Princeton, 1965. 7 Brown, Lester R., et al. State of the World (annual). Norton/Worldwatch Institute.

390 Chapter 11 Environment and Population

Managing the Environment Most global environmental prob- lems are those that involve col- lective goods for all states and people in the world. 8

The Atmosphere Preserving the health of the earth’s atmosphere is a benefi t that affects people throughout the world with- out regard for their own state’s contribution to the problem or its solution. Two problems of the atmosphere have become major international issues—global warming and depletion of the ozone layer.

Global Warming Global cli- mate change, or global warming , is a long-term rise in the average world temperature. Growing and compelling evidence shows that global warming is a real prob- lem, that it is caused by the emission of carbon dioxide and other gases, and that it will get

much worse in the future. The issue of global warming has risen high on the political agenda in the past decade because of massive melt-offs of Arctic ice, freakish weather, and devastating hurricanes, including Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 and Sandy in New York in 2012. Unfortunately, the international community has had little success solving the problem.

Over the coming decades, according to most estimates, global temperatures may rise by between 3 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit if nothing is done. Possibly within a few decades, the polar ice caps will begin to melt and cause the sea level to rise by as much as a few feet. Studies in 2012 confi rmed that the warming trend is accelerating, faster than what had been seen as worst-case scenarios. The fi rst 12 years of the 21st century were all among the 14 warmest ever recorded. Global warming could fl ood many coastal cities and devastate low-lying areas such as the heavily populated coastal areas of Bangladesh and China. Urgent calls for action to avert global warming come from island states in the Pacifi c that will likely disappear this century. Indeed, refl ecting an all too realistic lack of faith in international action, the low-lying state of the Mal- dives created a fund to buy land in another country to move its 300,000 residents as its territory disappears.

8 Pirages, Dennis Clark, and Theresa Manley DeGeest. Ecological Security: An Evolutionary Perspective on Globalization. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2003.

NOT SUSTAINABLE

Developing countries such as China rely heavily on coal and other dirty technologies for the energy and raw materials they need. As it grows rapidly, China is literally choking on its own pollution. In 2013, the Beijing air quality far exceeded the most dangerous end of the pollution scale. This woman’s mask offers scant protection as she rides past a steel plant in Beijing, 2013.

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Managing the Environment 391

Global climate change has begun to alter weather patterns in many regions, causing droughts, fl oods, freezes, and widespread disruption of natural ecosystems. It is also possi- ble that climate changes could benefi t some regions and make agriculture more productive. Melting of polar ice is opening new shipping routes north of Canada and Russia that could potentially cut weeks off the transit time from northern Europe or America to Asia (see Figure 11.2 ), a huge savings for global business. Furthermore, the Arctic seas hold large deposits of oil and gas, which will become commercially accessible as the ice melts (and, ironically, contribute to even more global warming).

The UN Environment Program (UNEP) , whose main function is to monitor envi- ronmental conditions, works with the World Meteorological Organization to measure changes in global climate from year to year. Since 1989, the UN-sponsored Intergovern- mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has served as a negotiating forum for this issue. In 2007, the IPCC issued a report from scientists around the world, approved by more than 100 countries, calling global warming “unequivocal” and expressing “very high confi - dence” that humans are the main cause. 9

It is costly to reduce the emissions of gases—mainly carbon dioxide—that cause global warming. These gases result from the broad spectrum of activities that drive an industrial economy. They are a by-product of burning fossil fuels —oil, coal, and natural gas—to run cars, tractors, furnaces, factories, and so forth. These activities create greenhouse gases — so named because when concentrated in the atmosphere, these gases act like the glass in a greenhouse: they let energy in as short-wavelength solar radiation but refl ect it back when it tries to exit again as longer-wavelength heat waves. The greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide (responsible for two-thirds of the effect), methane gas, chlorofl uorocarbons (CFCs), and nitrous oxide. Particulate matter from diesel engines (in the global North) and dirty cookstoves (in the South) are also major contributors. Ironically, data stored in “the cloud,” seemingly free from earthly concerns, actually lives in data centers that use vast amounts of electricity and run large diesel generators, contributing to global warming.

9 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Cambridge, 2007. United Nations Environment Program. Global Environment Outlook 3. Oxford, 2002.

Tokyo

Tokyo

London

London

Panama Canal Route 15,000 mi les

Northwest Passage 8,500 mi les

Suez Canal Route 13,000 mi les

Northern Sea Route 8,000 mi les

FIGURE 11.2 Potential Arctic Shipping Routes

Source: United Nations Environment Program

392 Chapter 11 Environment and Population

Thus reducing the greenhouse effect means curbing eco- nomic growth or shifting it onto entirely new technological paths, both of which are extremely expensive. 10 The politi- cal costs of such actions—which would likely increase unem- ployment, reduce corporate profits, and lower personal incomes—could be severe. If Arctic sea ice melts, polar bears may go extinct, but they do not have a seat at the table in international climate negotiations. Neither do today’s chil- dren, who cannot vote but will live with the long-term con- sequences of their elders’ actions.

For individual states, the costs of reducing greenhouse emissions are almost unrelated to the benefi ts of a solution. If one state reduces its industrial production or makes expensive investments in new technologies, this will have little effect on the long-term outcome unless other states do likewise. And if most states took such steps, a free rider that did not go along would save money and still benefi t from the solution.

Global warming thus presents states with a triple dilemma. First, there is the dilemma of short-term (and pre- dictable) costs to gain long-term (and less predictable) ben- efi ts. Second, specifi c constituencies such as oil companies and industrial workers pay the costs, whereas the benefi ts are distributed more generally across domestic society and inter- nationally. Third, there is the collective goods dilemma among states: benefi ts are shared globally but costs must be extracted from each state individually.

This third dilemma is complicated by the North- South divide. How can the industrialization of today’s

poor countries (China and India in particular) take place without pushing greenhouse emissions to unacceptable levels? Greenhouse gases are produced by each state roughly in proportion to its industrial activity. Eighty percent of greenhouse gases now come from the industrialized countries—25 percent from the United States alone. U.S. car- bon dioxide emissions amount to 20 tons per person annually, about twice the Euro- pean rate and eight times China’s (although China’s aggregate emissions now exceed those of the United States). Yet the most severe impacts of global warming are likely to be felt in the global South. In densely populated countries such as Bangladesh, hundreds of millions of people stand to lose their homes and farmland under a rising sea. Offsetting these North-South divisions, however, is the emerging realization that global climate change could cause environmental catastrophes across both North and South.

All of these elements make for a diffi cult multilateral bargaining situation, one not yet resolved. The Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit set a nonbinding goal to limit greenhouse emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. That goal was not met. The treaty did not commit the signatory states to meet target levels of greenhouse emissions by a particular date, owing to U.S. objections to such a commitment. Western Europe and Japan have been more willing to regulate greenhouse emissions than has the United States (which burns more fossil fuel per person).

GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE

International treaties have been much more successful at addressing ozone depletion than global warming, mostly because of costs. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol, extended in 2012, set modest goals for industrialized countries to reduce their output of carbon dioxide and related gases, but progress has fallen short. Extreme weather in 2012 offered an early warning sign. Here fl ooding hits the capital of Indonesia, 2013. If global warming melts polar ice caps in the coming decades, sea levels could rise and devastate many cities.

10 Luterbacher, Urs, and Detlef F. Sprinz. International Relations and Global Climate Change. MIT, 2001. Fisher, Dana R. National Governance and the Global Climate Change Regime. Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2004.

Managing the Environment 393

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol adopted a complex formula for reducing greenhouse emis- sions to 1990 levels in the global North over about a decade. 11 Countries in the global South received preferential treatment because their levels (per capita) were much lower. Yet China’s fast-growing, coal-burning economy is a major factor in global warming (see Figure 11.3 ). India is another large source of carbon dioxide. The United States signed the treaty, but Congress would not ratify it.

Moving forward without U.S. support, 160 countries in 2001 agreed to implement Kyoto. The agreement called for 40 industrialized countries to reduce emissions to 5 per- cent below 1990 levels, by 2012, with binding penalties for failure. The EU pledged $400 million per year to help the global South reduce its emissions. After enough ratifi cations the treaty came into effect in 2005, and mandatory carbon cuts began in 2008, but are falling short of targets.

The European Union established markets to trade carbon emission credits among 11,000 industrial facilities across Europe, and in 2012 linked it to Australia’s market to create a global carbon trading system by 2015. However, the economic slowdown in Europe led to a drastic price drop for carbon credits in 2011. Europe deferred the require- ment for fl ights to and from Europe to buy carbon credits pending talks scheduled for 2013. Meanwhile, South Korea created its own carbon emissions trading scheme in 2012. All these carbon markets use free market principles to make reduction in carbon emissions more effi cient. For example, a venture in Brazil earned carbon credits by burning methane gas from a garbage dump (to generate electricity) instead of venting it as a strong greenhouse gas. European investors bought the credits and could then sell them to, say, a polluting factory in Eastern Europe where reducing carbon might be especially expensive. 12

12

8

6

2015 2020 20302025

10

4

2

0 1990 1995 20052000 2010

Bi lli

on s

of to

ns

China

United States

FIGURE 11.3 Projected U.S. and Chinese Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 1990–2030

Source: International Energy Agency.

11 Von Stein, Jana. The International Law and Politics of Climate Change: Ratifi cation of the United Nations Framework Convention and the Kyoto Protocol. Journal of Confl ict Resolution 52 (2), 2008: 243–68. Victor, David G. The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming. Princeton, 2001. Grubb, Michael, and Duncan Brack, eds. The Kyoto Protocol: A Guide and Assessment. Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1999. 12 Stowell, Deborah. Climate Trading: Development of Greenhouse Gas Markets. Palgrave, 2005.

394 Chapter 11 Environment and Population

With the Kyoto agreement set to expire after 2012, 180 states negotiated for years about what to do next. The United States rejoined these talks. A 2009 Copenhagen sum- mit failed to reach an agreement. In late 2011, a meeting in Durban (South Africa) agreed to extend the Kyoto framework to 2013–2017. The participants—195 countries, 99 IGOs, and 1,598 NGOs—made plans for a new treaty by 2015 that would force cuts starting in 2020 and include countries such as China, India, and Brazil that had gotten a free ride under Kyoto. A new Green Climate Fund was to disperse $100 million to developing countries to help them adapt. Whether these new plans meet with more success than past agreements remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, about half the states of the United States (notably California), and a number of cities, began taking steps to limit greenhouse emissions. Yet, none of these moves are enough, or soon enough, to decisively reverse the direction of climate change. The dilemma of global warming remains fundamentally unsolved, and with weak enforce- ment mechanisms, even the states that signed the Kyoto Protocol did not meet their tar- gets by 2012. Indeed, even European states, which have the largest markets for carbon as an attempt to lower emissions, have yet to see any declines in carbon dioxide. Moreover, some EU leaders have questioned the operation of the cap-and-trade carbon market sys- tem, pushing for other alternatives to cut emissions. 13

Ozone Depletion A second major atmospheric problem negotiated by the world’s gov- ernments is the depletion of the world’s ozone layer . 14 Ozone high in the atmosphere screens out harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun. Certain chemicals expelled by

13 Kanter, James. As Cap and Trade Falls Short, Europe Weighs New Tacks to Cut Carbon. The New York Times, May 25, 2010: B4. 14 Litfi n, Karen. Ozone Discourses: Science and Politics in Global Environmental Cooperation. Columbia, 1993.

SEEKING THE COLLECTIVE GOOD

Global Warming COLLECTIVE GOOD: A New Climate Treaty

BACKGROUND: The prevention of global warming is a collective good that affects the entire world but results from the actions of the world’s states individu- ally. Those affected most actually will be those least responsible for causing it. Weather disasters such as the 2010 catastrophic fl oods in Pakistan would become more common if the world does not address the prob- lem effectively.

The costs of required actions are high, how- ever, and states have not been willing to pay them. Governments and businesses alike focus on short- term outcomes. Thus the international community has not yet been able to address the very serious problem of global warming. Major players such as the United States did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol,

and the world’s output of greenhouse gases has not slowed.

CHALLENGE: In late 2011, the world’s states gathered in Durban, South Africa, to negotiate a new treaty on global warming to follow Kyoto. Countries of the glo- bal North and global South differed on their approaches. Agreement proved elusive. A deadline came and went. At 3:00 a.m., Europe bitterly denounced language that India and China favored. China’s negotiator lectured Europe: “Who gives you the right to tell us what to do?”

SOLUTION: At the last moment, with the conference minutes away from

Managing the Environment 395

industrial economies fl oat to the top of the atmosphere and interact with ozone in a way that breaks it down. The chief culprits are CFCs, until recently widely used in refrigera- tion and in aerosol sprays. (Unfortunately, ozone produced by burning fossil fuels does not replace the high-level ozone but only pollutes the lower atmosphere.) As the ozone layer thins, more ultraviolet radiation reaches the earth’s surface. Over Antarctica, a seasonal hole in the ozone grew larger year by year. If ozone levels kept rising, the increased radiation could eventually kill off vegetation, reduce agricultural yields, and disrupt ecosystems.

Clearly, this was another collective goods problem in that one state could benefi t by allowing the use of CFCs in its economy, provided that most other states prohibited their use. But the costs of replacing CFCs were much lower than the costs of addressing global warming: CFCs could be replaced with other chemicals at relatively modest costs. Fur- thermore, the consequences of ozone depletion were both better understood and more immediate than those of global warming.

Perhaps because of these cost issues, states had much more success in negotiating agreements and developing regimes to manage ozone depletion than global warming. In the 1987 Montreal Protocol , 22 states agreed to reduce CFCs by 50 percent by 1998. In 1990, the timetable was accelerated and the signatories expanded: 81 states agreed to eliminate all CFCs by 2000. In 1992, as evidence of ozone depletion mounted, the schedule was again accelerated, with major industrial states phasing out CFCs by 1995. The signatories agreed in principle to establish a fund to help develop- ing countries pay for alternative refrigeration technologies not based on CFCs. With- out such an effort, the states of the global South would be tempted to free-ride and could ultimately undermine the effort. These countries were also given until 2010 to phase out production. The Montreal Protocol was revised and strengthened again in 1997 and 1999. Rich countries stopped making CFCs in 1996 and have contributed about $3 billion to the fund. This money, supporting thousands of projects in more

failure, South Africa’s foreign minister convened a small group of key players for a huddle on the confer- ence fl oor—the United States, China, India, Britain, France, Sweden, Poland, Gambia, and Brazil. Brazil’s negotiator suggested new language, and within two hours the group had reached agreement, the talks were over and the conference saved. The dominance princi- ple came into play as a few big players from North and South worked out an agreement and presented it to the rest of the world. The identity principle perhaps helped, as three women found common ground (the South African foreign minister, EU climate commis- sioner, and India’s environment minister).

Collective goods problems are easier to solve in smaller groups than in larger ones. Face-to-face interactions limit free riding and reinforce norms. In this case, ten leaders made more progress than did the 195 participating states working as sovereign equals.

Key delegates huddle at Durban conference, 2011.

396 Chapter 11 Environment and Population

than a hundred countries, has helped the global South reduce emissions over the past decade. The ozone hole is projected to slowly shrink back over the coming 50 years if current arrangements continue.

The Montreal Protocol on CFCs is the most important success yet achieved in interna- tional negotiations to preserve the global environment. Indeed, UN secretary-general Kofi Annan called it “perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date.” It showed that states can agree to take action on urgent environmental threats, can agree on targets and measures to counter such threats, and can allocate the costs of such measures in a mutually acceptable way and actually pay up when the bill comes. But the international coop- eration on the ozone problem has not been widely repeated on other environmental issues.

Environmental negotiations resemble trade talks in that they rely on the reciprocity principle as the prime mover of agreement. If each country contributes, and all the others contribute, a goal such as restoring the ozone layer can be accomplished. As with trade, the agreements and regimes are complicated and require monitoring of compliance to prevent free riding. The biggest difference from trade talks is that when trade talks suc- ceed in solving a collective goods problem, the participants get a short-term, tangible benefi t of billions of dollars added to the world economy. When environmental collective goods problems are solved, the participants get a short-term, tangible bill to pay, and then long-term benefi ts. The size of that bill seems to be the major difference between very dif- fi cult, expensive global warming solutions and reasonably affordable ozone solutions. Reciprocity, evidently, solves collective goods problems better with low costs or tangible benefi ts (ozone; trade) than high costs and distant benefi ts (climate change).

Biodiversity Biodiversity refers to the tremendous diversity of plant and animal species making up the earth’s (global, regional, and local) ecosystems. 15 Because of humans’ destruction of ecosys- tems, large numbers of species are already extinct. Extinction results from overhunting, overfi shing, and introducing non-native species that crowd out previous inhabitants. But the most important cause is loss of habitat —the destruction of rain forests, pollution of lakes and streams, and loss of agricultural lands to urban sprawl. Because ecosystems are based on complex interrelationships among species, the extinction of a few species can cause deeper changes in the environment. For example, the loss of native microorganisms can lead to chronic pollution of rivers or to the transformation of arable land into deserts.

Because ecosystems are so complex, it is usually impossible to predict the consequences of a species’ extinction or of the loss of a habitat or ecosystem. Generally, the activities that lead to habitat loss are economically profi table, so real costs are associated with limiting such activities. Species preservation is thus a collective good resembling global warming; the costs are immediate and substantial but the benefi ts are long term and ill defi ned.

It has been diffi cult to reach international agreement on sharing the costs of preserv- ing biodiversity. A UN convention on trade in endangered species has reduced but not eliminated such trade. At the 1992 Earth Summit, a treaty on biodiversity committed signatories to preserving habitats and got rich states to pay poor ones for the rights to use commercially profi table biological products extracted from rare species in protected habi- tats (such as medicines from rain forest trees). However, because of fears that the treaty could limit U.S. patent rights in biotechnology, the United States never ratifi ed it. As of 2010, the treaty had 193 member states. The United States does, however, participate in other biological treaties, such as a 1971 wetlands convention and the 1973 Convention

15 Swanson, Timothy M., ed. The Economics and Ecology of Biodiversity Decline: The Forces Driving Global Change. Cambridge, 1998. Mulongoy, K. J., and S. Chape. Protected Areas and Biodiversity Report: An Overview of Key Issues. UNEP, 2004.

Managing the Environment 397

on International Trade in Endangered Spe- cies (CITES).

International regimes to protect whales and dolphins have had limited suc- cess. The International Whaling Com- mission (an IGO) sets quotas for hunting certain whale species, but participation is voluntary and governments are not bound by decisions they object to.

The Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (another IGO) regulates meth- ods used to fi sh for tuna, aiming to mini- mize dolphin losses. The United States, which consumes half the world’s tuna catch, has gone further and unilaterally requires—in the Marine Mammal Protec- tion Act—that dolphin-safe methods be used for tuna sold in U.S. territory. Other countries have challenged the act through international trade organizations as an unfair restriction on tuna exports to the United States. Such conflicts portend future battles between environmentalists and free trade advocates. 16 Free traders argue that states must not use domestic leg- islation to seek global environmental goals. Environmentalists do not want to give up national laws that they worked for decades to enact, over the opposition of industrial corporations.

For example, the U.S. Clean Air Act successfully reduced air pollution in U.S. cities, but the regulations had to be revised in 1997, on order of the WTO, to allow gasoline refi ned in Venezuela and Brazil to compete in U.S. markets. Environmentalists adopted the sea turtle as a symbol of their opposition to the WTO after the WTO overturned U.S. regulations that required shrimp to be caught in nets from which sea turtles (an endangered species) can escape. Recent confl icts have arisen over U.S. laws restricting imports of foods with pesticide residues, and over European laws on imports of genetically engineered agri- cultural and pharmaceutical products, which the United States wants to export worldwide.

Thus, unilateral approaches to biodiversity issues are problematic because they disrupt free trade; multilateral approaches are problematic because of the collective goods problem. It is not surprising that the international response has been fairly ineffective to date.

Forests and Oceans Two types of habitat—tropical rain forests and oceans—are especially important to biodi- versity and the atmosphere. Both are also reservoirs of commercially profi table resources such as fi sh and wood. They differ in that forests are located almost entirely within state territory, whereas oceans are largely beyond any state territory, in the global commons.

16 Chambers, W. Bradnee, ed. Inter-Linkages: The Kyoto Protocol and the International Trade and Investment Regimes. Brookings, 2001. DeSombre, Elizabeth R. Domestic Sources of International Environmental Policy. MIT, 2000. Copeland, Brian R., and M. Scott Taylor. Trade and the Environment: Theory and Evidence. Princeton, 2003.

TAKE IT TO THE BANK

Some environmentalists criticize the World Bank and other international insti- tutions promoting economic development in poor countries for interfering destructively in local ecosystems such as rain forests. The green revolution increased yields but shifted patterns of agriculture in complex ways, such as by increasing pesticide and fertilizer runoff. Now genetically engineered crops promise further increases in agricultural productivity—more food on the table—but with environmental consequences that are not fully understood. This gene bank in the Philippines stores rice varieties from around the world.

398

SCENARIO Imagine that the balance of power in the EU shifts against GMOs with the admission of new Central European states. Now, the EU will not approve the sale of GMO products within Europe. Thus, although it would still be legal to grow GMO crops, it would not be legal to export them to EU countries.

GMO crops could provide economic benefi ts to your country. Given your comparative technological advantage in this area, your economy stands to profi t from expanding GMO use through increased agricultural output and increased business activity from MNCs. The United States has no regulations concerning the importation of GMO products and would be open to exports of these crops.

GMOs carry possible dangers as well. Some environ- mentalists warn that GMOs could have negative effects on ecology, wildlife, and human health. Many of your EU part- ners will shun your GMO products, robbing you of a large export market for these goods. Domestically, expanding the production of GMOs will be controversial.

CHOOSE YOUR POLICY Do you continue to qui- etly encourage the advance of GMO crops? Do you follow the new EU members in opposing GMOs, out of respect for the long-term environmental concerns raised by these products? Do you work with MNCs to use your compara- tive advantage for economic gain? How do you balance economic prosperity with a concern for the environment?

PROBLEM How do you balance environmen-

tal and economic concerns?

BACKGROUND Imagine that you are the president of Ireland. Genetically modifi ed organisms (GMOs) are highly controversial in Europe, and this certainly includes your country. In 1997, for example, Ireland reluctantly approved a permit for the global MNC Monsanto to grow sugar beets near Dublin. After several legal attempts to halt the planting of the crop failed, activists destroyed the crop in the ground before it could be harvested.

Your country has quietly supported several Irish bio- technology fi rms in the past with joint ventures in research. These have produced a variety of advances that give Ireland a significant advantage in this field over other European states. Several MNCs stand to benefi t from this research, providing you with investment and tax income.

DOMESTIC CONSIDERATIONS Unfortunately, this “positive but precautionary” approach is unpopular with the public. Some worry that Ireland’s reputation as “the Green Island” will suffer, possibly posing a threat to tourism—a major source of income for your country. Oth- ers join the chorus of European opposition to GMOs based on concerns over the possible environmental effects of these products. A recent Eurobarometer poll found that 54 percent of European consumers consider GMO foods “dangerous.”

In the spring of 2004, the European Union (EU) approved an end to the moratorium on GMO product sales (with your country voting in the majority), partially under a threat from the United States to enforce a WTO ruling that found the GMO ban illegal. The United States is your largest single trade partner, but other EU states combined are your most signifi cant export market.

Prime Minister of Ireland, Enda Kenny

POLICY PERSPECTIVES

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Managing the Environment 399

Rain Forests As many as half the world’s total species live in rain forests, which replen- ish oxygen and reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—slowing down global warming. Rain forests thus benefi t all the world’s states; they are collective goods.

International bargaining on the preservation of rain forests has made considerable progress, probably because most rain forests belong to a few states. These few states have the power to speed up or slow down the destruction of forests—and international bargain- ing amounts to agreements to shift costs from those few states onto the broader group of states benefi ting from the rain forests.

Although some rich states (including the United States) have large forests, most of the largest rain forests are in poor states such as Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Madagas- car. Such states can benefi t economically from exploiting the forests—freely cutting lum- ber, clearing land for agriculture, and mining. 17 Until recently (and still to an extent), leaders of rich states have been most interested in encouraging maximum economic growth in poor states so that foreign debts could be paid—with little regard for environ- mental damage.

Now that rich states have an interest in protecting rain forests, they are using development assistance as leverage to induce poorer states to protect their forests rather than exploit them. Under international agreements reached in the early 1990s, rich countries contribute hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid for this purpose. In some poor countries burdened by large foreign debts, environmentalists and bankers from rich countries have worked out “debt-for-nature swaps” in which a debt is can- celed in exchange for the state’s agreement to preserve forests. In 2006, for example, the U.S. government and NGOs helped Guatemala cancel more than $20 million in debts in exchange for expanded conservation programs. In 2005, Brazil announced that deforestation had fallen 50 percent since 2003, while in 2008 it announced that it planned to end deforestation by 2015. Environmentalists fi nd the fi gure and the plan overly optimistic.

Oceans The oceans, covering 70 percent of the earth’s surface, are (like the rain for- est) a key to regulating climate and preserving biodiversity. Oceans, like forests, are attractive targets for short-term economic uses that cause long-term environmental damage. Such uses include overfi shing, dumping toxic and nuclear waste (and other garbage), and long-distance oil shipments with their recurrent spills. Unlike rain for- ests, oceans belong to no state but are a global commons. 18 This makes the collective goods problem more diffi cult because no authority exists to enforce regulations. Pre- serving the oceans depends on the cooperation of more than a hundred states and thousands of nonstate actors. Free riders have great opportunities to profi t. For exam- ple, drift nets are huge fi shing nets, miles long, that scoop up everything in their path. They are very profi table but destructive of a sustainable ocean environment. Most states have now banned their use (under pressure from the environmental movement). However, no state has the authority to go onto the high seas (nonterritorial waters) and stop illegal use of these nets.

One solution that states have pursued involves “enclosing” more of the ocean. Terri- torial waters have expanded to hundreds of miles off the coast (and around islands), so that state sovereignty encloses substantial resources such as fi sheries and offshore oil and

17 Dauvergne, Peter. Loggers and Degradation in the Asia-Pacifi c: Corporations and Environmental Management. Cambridge, 2001. Guimãraes, Roberto P. The Ecopolitics of Development in the Third World: Politics and Environ- ment in Brazil. Rienner, 1991. 18 Borgese, Elisabeth Mann. The Oceanic Circle: Governing the Seas as a Global Resource. UN University Press, 1999.

400 Chapter 11 Environment and Population

mineral deposits. This solution has been pursued in the context of larger multilateral negotiations on ocean management. 19

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) , negotiated from 1973 to 1982, governs the uses of the oceans. After more than a decade’s delay and renegotiation of some of the deep-sea mining aspects, the United States signed UNCLOS in 1994, but has yet to ratify the treaty. The UNCLOS treaty established rules on territorial waters—12 miles for shipping and a 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) for eco- nomic activities, such as fi shing and mining. The 200-mile limit placed a substantial share of the economically profi table ocean resources in the control of about a dozen states (see Figure 11.4 ).

Varying interpretations leave economic rights in dispute in a number of locations. In the East China Sea, China sent fi ve warships in 2005 to back up its claim to an undersea gas fi eld partly claimed by Japan, where China began drilling and Japan granted drilling rights to a Japanese company. China’s claim under a Continental Shelf treaty confl icts with Japan’s claim of an EEZ.

UNCLOS also developed the general principle that the oceans are a common herit- age of humankind. A mechanism was created, through an International Sea-Bed Author- ity, for sharing some of the wealth that rich states might gain from extracting minerals on the ocean fl oor (beyond 200 miles).

Antarctica Like the oceans, Antarctica belongs to no state. 20 The continent’s strategic and commercial value is limited, however, and not many states care about it. Thus, states have been successful in reaching agreements on Antarctica because the costs were low and the players few. The Antarctic Treaty of 1959 —one of the fi rst multilateral treaties concerning the environment—forbids military activity as well as the presence of nuclear weapons or the dumping of nuclear waste. It sets aside territorial claims on the continent for future resolution and establishes a regime under which various states conduct scien- tifi c research in Antarctica. The treaty was signed by all states with interests in the area, including both superpowers. By 1991, Greenpeace had persuaded the treaty signatories to turn the continent into a “world park.” Antarctica is largely a success story in interna- tional environmental politics.

Pollution Pollution generally creates a collective goods problem, but one that is not often global in scale. Pollution is more often a regional or bilateral issue. With some exceptions—such as dumping at sea—the effects of pollution are limited to the state where it occurs and its close neighbors; U.S. industrial smokestack emissions cause acid rain in Canada but do not directly affect distant states. China’s terrible air pollution kills nearly half a million Chinese a year, but few foreigners. Even when pollution crosses state borders, it often has its strongest effects closest to the source. This localized effect makes for a somewhat less intractable collective goods problem, because a polluting state can seldom free-ride, and few actors are involved.

In several regions—notably Western and Eastern Europe and the Middle East—states are closely packed in the same air, river, or sea basins. In such situations, pollution controls must often be negotiated multilaterally. In Europe during the Cold War, the international

19 Webster, D. G. Adaptive Governance: The Dynamics of Atlantic Fisheries Management. MIT, 2008. 20 Stokke, Olav Schram, and Davor Vidas, eds. Governing the Antarctic: The Effectiveness and Legitimacy of the Antarctic Treaty System. Cambridge, 1997.

401

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30

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0

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PANAMA CANAL

SUEZ CANAL

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Dover Straits Baltic Straits

Turkish Straits

Hormuz Straits

Bab el Mandeb Straits

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200 mile offshore economic zone

FIGURE 11.4 State-Controlled Waters

Overfi shing and similar problems of managing the “commons” of world oceans have been addressed by enclosing the most important ocean areas under the exclusive control of states. Shaded areas are within the 200-mile economic zones controlled by states under terms of the UNCLOS treaty. Source: Adapted from Andrew Boyd, An Atlas of World Affairs, 9th ed. New York: Routledge, 1992.

402 Chapter 11 Environment and Population

pollution problem was exacerbated by the inability of Western European states to impose any limits on Eastern ones, whose pollution was notorious.

Several regional agreements seek to limit acid rain , caused by air pollution. European states—whose forests have been heavily damaged—have agreed to limit air pollution and acid rain for their mutual benefi t. In 1988, 24 European states signed a treaty to limit nitrogen oxide emissions to 1988 levels by 1995. After long negotiations, the United States and Canada signed bilateral agreements to limit such pollution as well. These regional agreements have worked fairly well.

Water pollution often crosses bor- ders as well, especially because indus- trial pollution, human sewage, and agricultural fertilizers and pesticides all tend to run into rivers and seas. For instance, in 2005, a huge chemical spill in northeast China polluted a river that flows into Russia. Long- standing regional agencies that regu- late shipping on heavily used European

rivers now also deal with pollution. The Mediterranean basin is severely polluted and diffi cult to manage because so many states border it. 21 In 2010, the largest oil spill in U.S. history occurred in the Gulf of Mexico. The spill resulted from an explosion on an oil platform, which resulted in a broken oil pipe 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. The leakage took months to contain and highlighted the dangers associated with deep-water oil drilling. British Petroleum, the company that operated the well, agreed to set aside billions of dollars to pay damages to residents of several southern U.S. states affected by the spill.

Toxic and nuclear wastes are a special problem because of their long-term dangers. States occasionally try to ship such wastes out of the country. However, international agreements now ban the dumping of toxic and nuclear wastes at sea (an obvious collective goods problem). But such wastes have been sent to developing countries for disposal, for a fee. For instance, toxic ash from Pennsylvania became material for bricks in Guinea, and Italian nuclear waste was shipped to Nigeria.

Norms have developed in recent years against exporting toxic wastes—a practice seen as exploitive of the receiving country. In 1989, 100 states signed a treaty under UN auspices to regulate shipments of toxic and nuclear wastes and prevent their secret move- ments under corrupt deals. Forty more countries, in Africa, did not sign the treaty but called for a complete halt to toxic waste shipments to Africa. Nonetheless, in 2006 a mul- tinational company tried to dispose of toxic waste from a tanker ship in the Netherlands but took it back, on fi nding the cost to run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Six weeks later, the ship unloaded the toxic sludge in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where a local

POISONED WATERS

Pollution easily crosses national borders. For example, here industrial waste and sewage in the New River crosses from Mexico into California, 2003.

21 Haas, Peter M. Saving the Mediterranean (see footnote 5 in this chapter).

Natural Resources 403

company dumped it at locations around the city. Thousands of residents got sick and eight people died. 22 In 2007, the company agreed to pay $200 million to settle claims.

In 1986, a meltdown at the Soviet nuclear power plant at Chernobyl , in Ukraine, created airborne radioactivity that spread over much of Europe, from Italy to Sweden. The accident exemplifi ed the new reality—that economic and technical decisions made in one state can have grave environmental consequences for other countries. Soviet leaders made matters worse by failing to notify neighbors promptly of the accident.

On the various issues of water and air pollution, both unilateral state actions and international agreements have often been feasible and effective. In recent decades, river water quality has improved in most industrialized regions. Market economies have begun to deal with pollution as just another cost of production that should be charged to the pol- luter instead of to society at large. Some governments have begun to allocate “pollution rights” that companies can buy and sell on a free market.

In the former Soviet bloc, decades of centrally planned industrialization created more severe environmental problems. 23 With staggering environmental damage and human health effects, the economically strapped former Soviet republics had to bargain over lim- iting pollution and repairing the damage. For example, the severely polluted Aral Sea, formerly contained within one state, the Soviet Union, is now shared by two, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Once the world’s fourth-largest inland sea, it shrank in half, its huge fi sh- eries destroyed, after a Soviet-era mega-irrigation project to grow cotton in the desert diverted the Aral Sea’s inlet rivers and polluted them with pesticides. Former fi shing towns found themselves many miles from the shoreline. After local and international political leaders failed to implement plans to address the problem, local populations suf- fered from widespread health effects of the disaster.

Natural Resources The natural environment is not only a delicate ecosystem requiring protection, but also a repository of natural resources. Because the extraction of resources brings states wealth, these resources regularly fuel international confl icts. 24 Because they are mostly located within individual states, however, they do not present a collective goods problem. Rather, states bargain over these vital resources.

Three aspects of natural resources shape their role in international confl ict. First, they are required for the operation of an industrial economy (sometimes even an agrarian one). Second, their sources—mineral deposits, rivers, and so forth—are associated with particular territories over which states may fi ght for control. Third, natural resources tend to be unevenly distributed, with plentiful supplies in some states and an absence in others. These aspects mean that trade in natural resources is extremely profi table; much addi- tional wealth is created by such trade. They also mean that trade in resources is fairly politicized—creating market imperfections such as monopoly, oligopoly, and price manip- ulation, sometimes by cartels (see pp. 304 – 307 ) .

22 Polgreen, Lydia, and Marlise Simons. Global Sludge Ends in Tragedy for Ivory Coast. The New York Times, October 2, 2006: A1. 23 Feshbach, Murray. Ecological Disaster: Cleaning Up the Hidden Legacy of the Soviet Regime. Brookings, 1995. Weinthal, Erika. State Making and Environment Cooperation: Linking Domestic and International Politics in Central Asia. MIT, 2002. 24 Zacher, Mark W., ed. The International Political Economy of Natural Resources. Elgar, 1993. Lipschutz, Ronnie D. When Nations Clash: Raw Materials, Ideology, and Foreign Policy. Ballinger, 1989. Bannon, Ian, and Paul Collier, eds. Natural Resources and Violent Confl ict: Options and Actions. World Bank, 2003.

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404 Chapter 11 Environment and Population

World Energy Of the various natural resources required by states, energy resources (fuels) are central. The commercial fuels that power the world’s industrial economies are oil (about 40 per- cent of world energy consumption), coal (30 percent), natural gas (25 percent), and hydroelectric and nuclear power (5 percent). The fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) thus account for 95 percent of world energy consumption. Some energy consumed as electricity comes from hydroelectric dams or nuclear power plants, but most of it comes from burning fossil fuels in electric-generating plants.

Imagine a pile of coal weighing 65 pounds. The energy released by burning that much coal is equivalent to the amount of energy North Americans use per person every day. Wealthier people, of course, consume more energy per person than do poorer people, but 65 pounds is the average. The North American’s pile of coal would be fi ve times larger than that of a person in China, 20 times that of an African.

Table 11.1 shows energy consumption per person in the nine world regions. The four industrialized regions of the North use much more energy per person than those of the South. Because South Asia and Africa have little industry, North America uses 15 times as much per person as those two regions. Among industrialized countries there are differ- ences in the effi ciency of energy use—GDP produced per unit of energy consumed. The least effi cient are the former Soviet Republics; North America is also rather ineffi cient; Europe and Japan are the most energy effi cient.

International trade in energy thus plays a vital role in the world economy. As Table  11.1 shows, the regions of the industrialized West are all large net importers of energy. The Middle East, Africa, and Russia are exporters of energy. Although all forms of energy are traded internationally, the most important by far is oil, the cheapest to transport over long distances. Russia receives vital hard-currency earnings from export- ing oil. Venezuela and Mexico (in Latin America) and Nigeria and Angola (in Africa) are also major oil exporters. But by far the largest source of oil exports is the Middle East—especially the countries around the Persian Gulf (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran,

North America 315 –17 Europe 135 –36 Japan/Pacific 185 –20 Russia/CIS 140 +25 China 70 –10 Middle East 130 +39 Latin America 55 +4 South Asia 20 –2 Africa 16 +20

World as a whole 71

aNet exports refers to production minus consumption. Net exports worldwide do not equal net imports for technical reasons.

Total Net Energy Exportsa

(quadrillion BTU) Per Capita Consumption

(million BTU)

TABLE 11.1 Per Capita Energy Consumption and Net Energy Trade, 2009

Source: US Department of Energy

Natural Resources 405

and the small sheikdoms of United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman). Saudi Arabia is the largest oil exporter and holds the largest oil reserves (see Table 8.1 on p.  303 ) . The politics of world energy revolve around Middle Eastern oil shipped to Western Europe, Japan/Pacifi c, and North America.

The importance of oil in the industrialized economies helps explain the political importance of the Middle East in world politics. 25 Not only is energy a crucial economic sector (on which all industrial activity depends), but it is also one of the most politically sensitive because of the dependence of the West on energy imported from the Middle East and the rest of the global South.

To secure a supply of oil in the Middle East, Britain and other European countries colonized the area early in the 20th century, carving up territory into protectorates in which European power kept local monarchs on their thrones. The United States did not claim colonies or protectorates, but U.S. MNCs were heavily involved in the develop- ment of oil resources in the area from the 1920s through the 1960s—often wielding vast power. 26 These U.S. and European oil companies kept the price paid to local states low and their own profi ts high, yet local rulers depended on the expertise and capital invest- ment of these companies.

After World War II the British gave up colonial claims in the Middle East, but the Western oil companies kept producing cheap oil there for Western consumption. Then in 1973, during an Arab-Israeli war, the oil-producing Arab states of the region decided to punish the United States for supporting Israel. They cut off their oil exports to the United States and curtailed their overall exports. This supply disruption sent world oil prices skyrocketing. OPEC realized its potential power and the high price the world was willing to pay for oil. This 1973 oil shock had a profound effect on the world economy and on world politics. Huge amounts of hard currency accumulated in the treasuries of the Middle East oil-exporting countries, which in turn invested them around the world (these were called petrodollars ). High infl ation plagued the United States and Europe for years afterward. The economic instability and sense of U.S. helplessness—coming on top of the Vietnam War—seemed to mark a decline in American power and perhaps the rise of the global South.

In 1979, the revolution in Iran led to a second oil shock. But higher oil prices led to the expansion of oil production in new locations outside of OPEC—in the North Sea (Britain and Norway), Alaska, Angola, Russia, and elsewhere. By the mid-1980s, the Middle East was rapidly losing its market share of world trade in oil. At the same time, industrialized economies learned to be more energy efficient. With supply up and demand down, oil prices dropped in the late 1980s to historic lows of less than $20/barrel.

In the late 1990s, the Caspian Sea region beckoned as a new and largely untapped oil source (see Figure 11.5 ). However, the oil must travel overland by pipeline to reach world markets (the Caspian is an inland sea). But the main pipeline from oil-producing Azer- baijan to the Black Sea (where tanker ships could load) traveled through war-torn Chech- nya in southern Russia. Russia then built a bypass route around Chechnya that carries a large and growing amount of Caspian oil for export through the Black Sea. Western pow- ers sought other pipeline routes that did not cross Russia, while Turkey sought to control a larger market share and reduce environmental damage to the Bosporus waterway (through which Russian tankers must travel). After long negotiations, in 2002–2004,

25 Kapstein, Ethan B. The Insecure Alliance: Energy Crises and Western Politics Since 1944. Oxford, 1990. Parra, Francisco R. Oil Politics: A Modern History of Petroleum. Tauris, 2004. Yergin, Daniel. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. Simon & Schuster, 1991. 26 Vitalis, Robert. America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier. Verso, 2009.

406 Chapter 11 Environment and Population

states and oil companies built a large-capacity pipeline, costing billions of dollars, through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast.

Violent confl icts make pipeline routes particularly complex. All three countries on the new pipeline route were at war in the past decade. A dozen other existing and pro- posed oil pipelines for Caspian Sea oil are no easier. Across the Caspian Sea, Turkmeni- stan wants to export natural gas to Pakistan, and from there to Asia, but a pipeline would have to cross war-torn Afghanistan. Meanwhile in 2003, a new $4 billion pipeline began carrying oil from Chad through Cameroon for export, promising to help both countries alleviate poverty, but as rebels based in Sudan attacked in Chad, oil money was diverted to military purposes. Although borders and geopolitics may be less and less important in communications and business, they still matter greatly in such international economic transactions as oil pipelines.

Joint area

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0 500 Miles

FIGURE 11.5 Dividing the Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea is the world’s largest inland body of water. It could be defined under international law as either a lake or a sea. a A lake has a joint area in the middle (in green on the left panel) that can be exploited only if the countries agree on terms. There are also coastal zones under each country’s sole control. In a sea less than 400 miles across, the bordering countries’ 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) split up the whole sea (right panel). If the whole area is split as in the map on the right, the sectors can be defined by median lines (dashed line) or by a division into five sectors of equal area (dotted line), giving Iran a larger sector.

In 2010, with major oil development underway in all five countries’ coastal areas, a summit meeting agreed to give each a 25-mile zone, but most of the border issues remain in dispute. Russia had agreed with its neighbors, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, to use the median line on the seabed floor. Iran still wants one-fifth of the lake. In 2012, a naval arms race was underway, and Russia held joint military exercises with Kazakhstan to practice defense of oil facilities from an Iranian attack. But this conflict will be resolved not through dominance, but through reciprocity. Nobody benefits from a war and all five countries benefit from developing their oil resources. Solutions are enormously complicated—in this case factor- ing in additional elements like shipping, fishing, smuggling, and pipeline routes—and reaching agreement can take a very long time. a Sciolino, Elaine. “It’s a Sea! It’s a Lake! No. It’s a Pool of Oil!” The New York Times, June 21, 1998. Kucera, Joshua. “The Great Caspian Arms Race.” Foreign Policy , June 22, 2012.

Natural Resources 407

Oil prices stayed relatively high after 2000, ultimately shooting up to $140 a barrel in 2008 and pushing U.S. gas prices to more than $4 a gallon. These high oil prices had two major benefi ts. First, burning oil contributes to global warming, and high prices made it profi table to burn less oil and be more energy effi cient. For instance, in 2008 sales of gas- guzzling SUVs dropped sharply while hybrids sold briskly. Second, high oil prices increase the export earnings of oil-producing countries. Countries such as Venezuela and Mexico count on oil revenues in their economic development plans and to repay foreign debts. These countries eased their debt problems as a result of higher prices, which also played a crucial part in Russia’s economic recovery. Oil exporters can have too much of a good thing, however. The easy money concentrated in a few hands allowed dictators to rule and extremism to fl ourish in states such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. More importantly, high oil prices helped drive the world economy into a severe recession, cur- tailing demand and forcing prices back down to $40 a barrel in a matter of months. The exporting countries and their recently rich governments suddenly found themselves cash poor. And the alternative energy sources like solar power, which had looked promising when oil was expensive, lost support when oil prices dropped, suggesting the start of a new cycle of dependence on oil imports in Western countries.

Minerals To build the infrastructure and other manufactured goods that create wealth in a national economy, states need other raw materials in addition to energy. These include metals, other minerals, and related materials extracted through mining. The political economy of minerals—iron, copper, platinum, and so forth—differs from that of world energy. The value of international trade in oil is many times that of any mineral. Moreover, mineral supply is not so concentrated in one region of the world. Industrialized countries have also reduced their vulnerability by stockpiling strategic minerals.

Most important to industrialized economies are the minerals that go into making industrial equipment. Traditionally most important is iron, used to make steel. The lead- ing producers of steel are the former Soviet Union, Japan, the United States, China, and Germany, followed by Brazil, Italy, South Korea, France, and Britain. Thus, major indus- trialized countries produce their own steel (Germany and Japan are the leading exporters worldwide). To preserve self-suffi ciency in steel production, the United States and others have used trade policies to protect domestic steel industries (such as the U.S. steel tariffs ; see p. 293 ). Some industrialized countries, notably Japan, depend heavily on importing iron ore for their steel industry. Iron ore is not concentrated in one location but is exported from developing and industrialized countries around the world.

For other important industrial minerals such as copper, nickel, and zinc, the pattern of supply and trade is much more diffuse than for oil, and the industrialized countries are largely self-suffi cient. Even when poor states are the main suppliers, as with tin and baux- ite, they have not gained the power of OPEC. There is a producer cartel in some cases (copper), a producer-consumer cartel in some (tin), and separate producer and consumer cartels in others (bauxite). China currently holds a near monopoly on the world’s supply of “rare earth” minerals vital (in small amounts) to the production of electronics. China has cut exports at times to boost these minerals’ price.

Certain agricultural products have spawned producer cartels such as the Union of Banana Exporting Countries (UBEC) and the African Groundnut Council. Like miner- als, some export crops come mainly from just a few countries. These include sugar (Cuba), cocoa (Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria), tea (India, Sri Lanka, China), and coffee (Brazil, Colombia). Despite the concentrations, producer cartels have not been very successful in boosting prices of these products, which are less essential than energy.

408 Chapter 11 Environment and Population

Water Disputes In addition to energy and minerals, states need water. This need increases as a society industrializes, as it intensifi es agriculture, and as its population grows. World water use is 35 times that of just a few centuries ago, and grew twice as fast as population in the 20th century. Yet water supplies are relatively unchanging and are becoming depleted in many places. One-fi fth of the world’s population lacks safe drinking water, and 80 countries suf- fer water shortages. Water supplies—rivers and water tables—often cross international boundaries; thus access to water is increasingly a source of international confl ict. Some- times—as when several states share access to a single water table—these confl icts are col- lective goods problems.

Water problems are especially important in the Middle East. For instance, the Euphrates River runs from Turkey through Syria to Iraq before reaching the Persian Gulf. Iraq objects to Syrian diversion of water from the river, and both Iraq and Syria object to Turkey’s diversion.

The Jordan River originates in Syria and Lebanon and runs through Israel to Jor- dan. In the 1950s, Israel began building a canal to take water from the Jordan River to “make the desert bloom.” Jordan and its Arab neighbors complained to the UN Secu-

rity Council, but it failed in efforts to medi- ate the dispute, and each state went ahead with its own water plans (Israel and Jordan agreeing, however, to stay within UN- proposed allocations). In 1964, Syria and Lebanon tried to build dams and divert water before it reached Israel, rendering Israel’s new water system worthless. Israeli air and artillery attacks on the construction site forced Syria to abandon its diversion project, and Israel’s 1967 capture of the Golan Heights precluded Syria from renew- ing such efforts. 27 Thus, the dominance principle comes into play in resolving con- fl icts over natural resources.

Water also contains other resources such as fish and offshore oil deposits. The UNCLOS treaty enclosed more of these resources within states’ territory—but this enclosure creates new problems. Norms regarding territorial waters are not firmly entrenched; some states disagree on who owns what. Also, control of small islands now implies rights to surrounding oceans with their fi sh, offshore oil, and minerals. A potentially serious international dispute has been brewing in the Spratly Islands, where some tiny islands are claimed by China, Vietnam, and other nearby countries (see p. 182 ) . With the islands come nearby oil drilling rights and fi sheries.

27 Conca, Ken. Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building. MIT, 2005. Selby, Jan. Water, Power, and Politics in the Middle East. Tauris, 2003.

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE

As population growth and economic development increase the demand for water, more international confl icts arise over water rights. Many important rivers pass through multiple states, and many states share access to seas and lakes. The Aral Sea, once part of the Soviet Union but now shared between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was among the world’s largest lakes until it was decimated by the diversion of its water sources to irrigate cotton. This scene shows the former seabed, now 70 miles from shore, in 1997.

Population 409

A common theme runs through the confl icts over fuels, minerals, agricultural prod- ucts, and territorial waters. They are produced in fi xed locations but traded to distant places. Control of these locations gives a state both greater self-suffi ciency (valued by mercantilists) and market commodities generating wealth (valued by liberals).

Of course, these resources can also be directly related to international security. IR scholars have expanded their studies of environmental politics to systematically study the relationship of military and security affairs to the environment. 28 One side of this rela- tionship is the role of the environment as a source of international confl ict. We have seen how environmental degradation can lead to collective goods problems among large num- bers of states, and how competition for territory and resources can create confl icts among smaller groups of states.

Activities in the international security realm also affect the environment. Military activities—especially warfare—are important contributors to environmental degradation, above and beyond the degradation caused by economic activities such as mining and manufacturing. During the 1991 Gulf War, for example, Iraqi forces spilled large amounts of Kuwaiti oil into the Persian Gulf and then, before retreating from Kuwait, blew up hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells, leaving them burning uncontrollably and covering Iraq and Iran with thick black smoke.

Population Global population reached a record high today, as it does every day. World popula- tion, 7 billion in 2012, is growing by 80 million each year. Forecasting future popula- tion is easy in some respects. Barring a nuclear war or an environmental catastrophe, today’s children will grow up and have children of their own. For the coming 20 to 30 years, world population growth will be driven, rather mechanistically, by the large number of children in today’s populations in the global South. The projected world population in 2030 will be 8–9 billion people, and there is little anyone can do to change that projection.

Of the increase in population in that period, 96 percent will be in the global South. Currently, half the world’s population growth occurs in just six countries: India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. Among the world’s poorest countries, pop- ulation is expected to triple in the next 50 years, whereas many rich countries will see population shrinkage in that period. 29

Forecasting beyond 25 years is diffi cult. When today’s children grow up, the number of children they bear will be affected by their incomes (because of the “demographic tran- sition,” discussed shortly). To the extent that developing countries accumulate wealth —a subject taken up in Chapter 13 — their populations will grow more slowly. A second factor affecting the rate of population growth will be government policies regarding women’s rights and birth control.

Because of these two uncertainties, projections beyond a few decades have a range of uncertainty (see Figure 11.6 ). By 2050, world population could be 9 billion, with a fi nal leveling out around 10 billion in the next 100 years. New data in 2002 showed that higher women’s status and literacy are reducing population growth more than expected

28 Kahl, Colin H. States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World. Princeton, 2006. Dalby, Simon. Environmental Security. Minnesota, 2002. Homer-Dixon, Thomas F. Environment, Scarcity, and Violence. Princeton, 1999. 29 UNFPA data. See United Nations. State of World Population Report 2004. UN, 2004.

410 Chapter 11 Environment and Population

in large, poor countries. 30 The actions of states and IOs now will determine the earth’s population in 200 years.

Two hundred years ago, the British writer Thomas Malthus warned that population tends to increase faster than food supply and predicted that population growth would limit itself through famine and disease. Today, experts and offi cials who warn against world overpopulation are sometimes called Malthusian. Critics of this view point out that tech- nology has kept pace with population in the past, allowing more food and other resources to be extracted from the environment even as population keeps growing.

The Demographic Transition Population growth results from the difference between rates of birth (per 1,000 people) and rates of death. In agrarian (preindustrial) societies, both birthrates and death rates are high. Population growth is thus slow—even negative at times when death rates exceed birthrates (during a famine or plague, for instance).

The process of economic development—of industrialization and the accumulation of wealth on a per capita basis—brings about a change in birthrates and death rates that follows a fairly universal pattern called the demographic transition (see Figure 11.7 ). First, death rates fall as food supplies increase and access to health care expands. Later, birthrates fall as people become educated, more secure, and more urbanized, and as the status of women in society rises. At the end of the transition, as at the beginning, birth- rates and death rates are fairly close to each other, and population growth is limited. But during the transition, when death rates have fallen more than birthrates, population grows rapidly.

One reason poor people tend to have many children is that under harsh poverty, a child’s survival is not assured. Disease, malnutrition, or violence may claim the lives of many children, leaving parents with no one to look after them in their old age. Having many children helps ensure that some survive.

As a state makes the demographic transition, the structure of its population changes dramatically. At the beginning and middle of the process, most of the population is young.

30 Crossette, Barbara. Population Estimates Fall as Women Assert Control. The New York Times, March 10, 2002.

15

10

5

0 1800 1900 2000 2100

Po pu

la tio

n (b

ill io

ns )

You are here

High estimate

Most likely

Low estimate

FIGURE 11.6 World Population Trends and Projections

Source: UN Population Offi ce.

Population 411

Families have many children, and adults do not have a long life expectancy. Because chil- dren are not very productive economically, the large number of children in poor countries tends to slow down the accumulation of wealth. But by the end of the demographic transi- tion, because adults live longer and families have fewer children, the average age of the population is much older. Eventually a substantial section of the population is elderly—a different nonproductive population that the economy must support.

The industrialized countries have completed the demographic transition and now have slow population growth. Russia, Europe, and Japan have shrinking populations. Most developing countries are in the middle of the transition and have rapid population growth.

The dilemma of the demographic transition is this: rapid population growth and a child- heavy population are powerful forces lowering per capita income. Yet the best way to slow population growth is to raise per capita income. Population growth thus contributes to a vicious cycle in many poor states. Where population rises at the same rate as overall wealth, the average person is no better off over time. Even when the economy grows faster than population, so that the average income rises, the total number of poor people may increase.

The demographic transition tends to widen international disparities of wealth. States that manage to raise incomes a bit enter an upward spiral—as population growth slows, income levels per capita rise more, which further slows population growth, and so forth. Meanwhile, states that do not raise incomes have unabated population growth; per capita incomes stay low, which fuels more population growth—a downward spiral.

Globally, this disparity contributes to the gap in wealth between the North and South (see Chapter 12 ) . Within the South, disparities are also sharpened as a few countries man- age to slow population growth and raise incomes while others fail to do so. Even within a single country, the demographic transition sharpens disparities. Cities, richer classes, richer ethnic groups, and richer provinces tend to have low birthrates compared to the countryside and the poorer classes, ethnic groups, and provinces. In countries such as France, Israel, and the United States, wealthier ethnic groups have much slower popula- tion growth than poorer ethnic groups.

Bi rth

o r D

ea th

R at

e pe

r 1 00

0 Po

pu la

tio n 40

30

20

10

Poor Rich

Income per Capita

Death

Birth

Population growth

FIGURE 11.7 The Demographic Transition

As income rises, fi rst death rates and then birthrates fall. The gap between the two is the population growth rate. Early in the transition, the population contains a large proportion of children; later it contains a large proportion of elderly people. Source: United Nations.

412 Chapter 11 Environment and Population

In recent decades, the global South seems to be splitting into two groups of states. The first group, including China and India, entered the phase of the demographic transi- tion marked by falling birthrates in the 1970s. But in nearly 70 other poor states, death rates kept falling faster than birthrates, leading to accelerating population growth. These popu- lation trends contributed to disparities within the global South that emerged in the 1990s, notably between Africa and Asia.

Population Policies The policies that governments adopt—not just economic and demographic conditions— infl uence the birthrate. Among the most impor- tant policies are those regarding birth control (contraception). State policies vary widely.

At one extreme, China uses its strong government control to try to enforce a limit of one child per couple. Penalties for having a second child include being charged for services that were free for the fi rst child. China has started to encourage wealthy and more edu- cated families to have two children, and now, in some Chinese cities such as Shanghai, cou- ples are allowed two-child families. Beyond two children, the penalties escalate. Contra-

ceptives and abortions are free. China’s policy has lowered growth rates considerably in the cities but less so in the countryside, where most people still live. Still, in a single dec- ade (the 1970s), China’s fertility rate fell from 6 children per woman to about 2.5, a dra- matic change. (By 2011, it was 1.5.)

But the Chinese policy has drawbacks. It limits individual freedom in favor of govern- ment control. Forced or coerced abortions have been reported. In traditional Chinese society (as in some other countries), sons are valued more than daughters. Couples who have a daughter may keep trying until they have a son. In some cases, Chinese peasants have reportedly killed newborn daughters so that they could try for a son. Simply bribing or paying fi nes became more common routes around the one-child policy in the 1990s. Most often, parents in China (and some places in India) are using information technol- ogy—ultrasound scans—to determine their fetus’s gender and abort it if female. China’s 2000 census showed the percentage of female births at 0.85 per boy, rather than the nor- mal 0.95, a difference that amounts to a million “missing” girls per year. In the country- side, the sex differential is twice as high as in the cities, reaching 140 men per 100 women in some areas where the one-child policy is strictly enforced. In recent years, hundreds of thousands of young women there have been kidnapped and sold as brides. 31

RUB AND TUB

Because of the demographic transition, controlling population growth helps economic development and vice versa. Various countries use a wide range of population policies to this end, none stricter than China’s one-child policy for urban couples. These Dutch babies enter a society well through the demographic transition, with plentiful resources for relatively few babies. Here, they cool down after a baby massage class, 2009.

31 Dugger, Celia W. Modern Asia’s Anomaly: The Girls Who Don’t Get Born. The New York Times, May 6, 2001: Week in Review. Rosenthal, Elisabeth. Harsh Chinese Reality Feeds a Black Market in Women. The New York Times, June 25, 2001: A1. Hudson, Valerie M., and Andrea M. Den Boer. Bare Branches: The  Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population. MIT, 2004.

Population 413

India’s policies are less extreme but have been slower to have an effect. The birth- rate fell from nearly 6 per woman to about 4.7 in the 1970s and 2.7 in 2011. India’s government, strongly committed to birth control, has tried to make information and means widely available, but as a democracy it does not have China’s extreme govern- ment control over society. Countries with somewhat higher incomes than India or China can succeed more easily. Mexico’s strong but noncoercive family-planning pro- gram, adopted in 1974, cut birthrates in half over 15 years, to 2.7 per woman (and to 2.3 as of 2011). 32

At the other extreme from China are governments that encourage or force child- bearing and outlaw or limit access to contraception. Such a policy is called pronatalist (pro-birth). Traditionally, many governments have adopted such policies because population was seen as an element of national power. More babies today meant more soldiers later.

Today, only a few governments have strongly pronatalist policies, but many do not make birth control or sex education available to poor women. In some such states, popula- tion is not considered a problem (and may even be seen as an asset); in other states, the government simply cannot afford effective measures to lower birthrates. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), 200 million women do not have access to effective contraception.

Birthrates are heavily infl uenced by the status of women in society. In cultures that traditionally see women as valuable only in producing babies, great pressures exist against women who stop doing so. Many women do not use birth control because their husbands will not allow them to. These husbands may think that having many children is proof of their manliness. However, as women’s status improves and they can work in various occu- pations, own property, and vote, women gain the power as well as the education and money necessary to limit the size of their families. According to the UNFPA, improving the status of women is one of the most important means of controlling world population growth. Government policies about women’s status vary from one state to another. Inter- national programs and agencies, such as the UN Commission on the Status of Women, are working to address this issue on a global scale.

Disease Population growth is determined by the death rate as well as the birthrate. People die from many different causes at different ages. In poor countries, people tend to die younger, often from infectious diseases; in richer countries, people live longer and die more often from cancer and heart disease. The proportion of babies who die within their fi rst year is the infant mortality rate . This rate is an excellent indicator of overall health because it refl ects a population’s access to nutrition, water, shelter, and health care. Infant mortality is 5 percent worldwide: 1 percent or less in rich countries but more than 10 percent in the poorest countries and even higher in local pockets of extreme poverty (especially in Africa and in recent war zones).

Although death rates vary greatly from one state or region to another, the overall trends are stable from decade to decade. Wars, droughts, epidemics, and disasters have an effect locally but hardly matter globally. In the poorest countries, which are just begin- ning the demographic transition, the death rate declined from nearly 30 deaths per thou- sand population in 1950 to less than 15 since 1990. In the industrialized countries, the death rate bottomed out around 10 per thousand by 1960, and now stands around 7 in

32 Anderson, John Ward. Six Billion and Counting—But Slower. The Washington Post, October 12, 1999: A1.

414 Chapter 11 Environment and Population

the West. These stable trends in mortality mean that the death rate is not a means by which governments or international agencies can affect population growth—worsening poverty may cause famine and a rising death rate, but this is not a realistic way to control population growth. It would mean moving backward through the demographic transi- tion, which would wreck any chance of lowering birthrates. Nor do wars kill enough people to reduce population growth. In short, most of the world is already at or near the end of the transition in death rates; the key question is how long birthrates take to com- plete the transition. 33

Three mortality factors, however—HIV/AIDS, other infectious diseases, and smok- ing—deserve special attention because they exact very high costs even if they do not much affect global population trends. In these cases, actions taken in the short term have long-term and often international consequences, and once again there are short-term costs and long-term benefi ts.

HIV/AIDS In the worldwide AIDS epidemic, one state’s success or failure in limiting the spread of HIV (human immunodefi ciency virus) affects infections in other states as well. There is a delay of fi ve to ten years after infection by the virus before symptoms appear, and during this period an infected individual can infect others (through sex or blood). AIDS spreads internationally—through business, tourism, migration, and military opera- tions—refl ecting the interdependence of states.

By 2009, the HIV/AIDS epidemic had already killed more than 30 million people, and an estimated 33 million more were infected—though most of them did not know it. Two-thirds of them live in Africa and half of the rest in South Asia (see Table 11.2 ). The epidemic has also left 15 million orphans worldwide. Each year, about 2.7 million people

33 Soubbotina, Tatyana P., and Katherine Sheram. Beyond Economic Growth: Meeting the Challenges of Global Development. World Bank, 2000.

Regiona

World 7,000

Global North 1,405 Global South 5,595

of which: China 400 Middle East 475 Latin America 600 South Asia 2,250 Africa (sub-Saharan) 870

1.2%

0.3 1.5

0.5 2.0 1.1 1.6 2.5

aRegions do not exactly match those used elsewhere in this book.

Source: Calculated from World Development Indicators. World Bank, 2012. UNAIDS Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic. UNAIDS, 2012. In 2007, UNAIDS corrected earlier estimates, resulting in a significant drop in infection rates.

HIV Infections (millions)

Population Growth Rate

1991–2010 Population (millions)

34

4 30

0.7 0.3 1.6 4.0

23.5

TABLE 11.2 Population and AIDS by World Region, 2012

Population 415

are newly infected with HIV, and 2 million die from AIDS, including more than a quarter of a million children.

In Africa, already the world’s poorest region, AIDS has emerged as one of several powerful forces driving the region backward into deeper poverty. About 5 percent of adults are infected with HIV, more than half of them women. In the most affected Afri- can countries in southern Africa, one in six adults has HIV (one in four for Botswana, the worst case). Infection is also rampant in African armies, with direct implications for inter- national security. In Angola, it was the end of a long civil war that opened borders and increased traffi c with neighboring states that had high HIV infection rates. As Angola’s infection rate began to climb, military offi cers took the initiative to set up education pro- grams and comprehensive HIV testing within the army. In contrast to other African states with high military infection rates, Angola’s aggressive program kept the rate as low as in the general population, below 10 percent.

In North America and other industrialized regions, new drug therapies (which keep the virus in check for years) dramatically lowered the death rate from AIDS starting in the late 1990s. But these treatments were too expensive to help much in Africa and other poor regions. India and Brazil began to export cheap generic versions of these drugs, vio- lating patent rights of Western drug companies. The U.S. government threatened to punish South Africa and other countries if they allowed import of these drugs without com- pensating U.S. corporations holding patents. It fi led a complaint against Brazil with the WTO. In response, AIDS activists demonstrated loudly and mobilized public opinion to get the policies changed.

The United States withdrew its complaint against Brazil in 2001. Meanwhile, drug companies began offering lower prices to poor coun- tries, but delivery of the drugs to millions of poor people remained painfully slow. In 2004, the interna- tional community fi nally initiated the large-scale delivery of antiviral drugs to AIDS patients in poor countries. Now, tremendous progress has been made in delivering these drugs. In the past four years, the number of people receiving treat- ment has increased fi vefold, to over 3 million (over 2 million alone in sub-Saharan Africa). 34

34 UNAIDS. 2008 Report on the Global Aids Epidemic. UNAIDS/WHO, 2008.

LIFE SAVER

AIDS has killed 30 million people and is spreading rapidly in Southeast Asia and Africa. The worldwide effort to slow AIDS, coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO), illustrates how global-level problems such as AIDS are making IOs such as WHO more important. Currently, international efforts focus on trying to get antiviral medicines to more of the world’s 40 million infected people, such as this woman in Swaziland, who began recovering after starting twice-a-day pills provided free each month, 2004. Millions of people who cannot afford the drugs and do not have access to a free program are dying of AIDS.

416 Chapter 11 Environment and Population

The global fi ght against AIDS has fi nally begun to receive the funding necessary to make progress against the disease, although it has taken some time. In 2001, during a special UN session on AIDS, Kofi Annan proposed a $7 billion to $10 billion per year global budget to combat AIDS (a fi vefold increase in funding). The G8 states responded with pledges of a bit more than $1 billion—”laudable” but “not enough,” in Annan’s view. 35 In 2003, President Bush pledged $15 billion over fi ve years to help slow AIDS in Africa. That program has since been expanded dramatically. Since 2003, the United States has provided nearly $20 billion to combat AIDS. Between 2009 and 2014, the U.S. government has pledged $48 billion to combat AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria. In 2006, fi ve countries—France, Britain, Norway, Brazil, and Chile—agreed to raise $300 million a year to buy medications for children with AIDS, TB, and malaria. Most of it will come from taxing airline tickets (typically $5 coach and $50 fi rst class). While observers have applauded these increased efforts, much more work remains, including care for the estimated 12 million children orphaned by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.

In some ways, AIDS has deepened the global North-South division. The 2001 UN session also revealed sharp differences between Western, secular states and a number of Islamic states that objected to any reference to gay people. This point was underscored when the president of Iran, in a 2007 speech at Columbia University, claimed there were no gay people in Iran. Catholic authorities worldwide have objected to programs that encourage condom use. As these examples show, some of the most effective prevention measures (public education, outreach to at-risk groups, condom distribution, free needles to drug users) are culturally and politi- cally sensitive issues.

States must cooperate with each other if they are to bring the epidemic under control. These international efforts are coordinated primarily by WHO and funded mainly by the industrialized countries. But the entire WHO budget is equivalent to that of a midsize hospital in the global North. WHO depends on national govern- ments to provide information and carry out policies, and governments have been slow to respond. Some governments falsify statistics to underreport the number of cases (lest tourists be driven away), and many governments are reluctant to con- done or sponsor sex education and distribution of condoms because of religious or cultural taboos.

In recent years, HIV has spread rapidly in South Asia, China, and Russia/Eastern Europe, where prostitution and drug use are growing. Thailand was especially vulnerable because of its huge prostitution industry, acceptance of male promiscuity, and large tour- ism industry. It was one of the fi rst developing countries to develop an effective anti- AIDS program, which focuses on public education, and it dramatically lowered the infection rate in the 1990s. 36

In China, the government has been slow to act, and a stigma still prevents effective identifi cation or treatment of the rapidly growing HIV-positive population. Unscrupu- lous cash-for-blood businesses, especially in one rural region, caused massive HIV infec- tion. In rural China, medical practice relies heavily on shots—often with poorly

35 Annan, Kofi A. We Can Beat AIDS. The New York Times, June 25, 2001: A21. 36 Shenon, Philip. Brash and Unabashed, Mr. Condom Takes on Sex Death in Thailand. The New York Times, December 20, 1992. Altman, Lawrence K. AIDS Surge Is Forecast for China, India, and Eastern Europe. The New York Times, November 4, 1997.

Population 417

sterilized needles—when other forms of treatment would be as effective. As a result, 60 percent of China’s population has had hepatitis B, compared with 1 percent in the United States and Japan—a danger sign for the future growth of HIV in China. 37 China had an estimated 1 million infected people in 2011.

AIDS illustrates the transnational link- ages that make international borders less meaningful than in the past. Effective international cooperation could save mil- lions of lives and significantly enhance the prospects for economic development in the poorest countries in the coming decades. But once again, a collective goods problem exists regarding the allocation of costs and benefits. A dollar spent by WHO has the same effect regardless of which country contributed it.

Other Infectious Diseases AIDS is not the only concern. TB, malaria, hepatitis, dengue fever, and cholera have all reemerged or spread in recent decades, often mutating into drug-resistant forms. TB now kills 1.5 million people per year (in addition to AIDS patients who also con- tract TB). Malaria sickens hundreds of mil- lions of people and kills more than a million per year, nearly all in Africa. New cam- paigns have distributed millions of mosquito nets in Africa to reduce malaria—a proven, cost-effective measure. A new vaccine being tested in 2011 could cut malaria cases in half. Meanwhile, new and poorly understood diseases have emerged, among them HIV, Ebola virus, hantavirus, and hepatitis C. Pneumonia, influenza, diarrhea- causing diseases, and measles all continue to be major problems but are not growing or spreading to the same extent. Vaccination programs have reduced the incidence of both polio and measles in recent years. A measles vaccination campaign now reaches 85 percent of infants worldwide, reducing deaths by 80 percent since 2000. Sadly, a polio vaccination drive in Pakistan was cut short in 2012 after Taliban militants killed health workers, claiming the vaccine was a Western plot to sterilize Muslim children.

Iodine defi ciency has historically received little attention although it affects as many as 2 billion people worldwide. Even moderate defi ciencies in fetuses can lower intelli- gence by 10 to 15 I.Q. points, and serious defi ciencies can stunt growth and cause mental

37 Rosenthal, Elisabeth. Doctors’ Dirty Needles Spreading Disease in China. The New York Times, August 20, 2001: A1.

PANDEMIC PREVENTION

In 2009, H1N1 influenza (swine flu) spread rapidly across much of the world, testing the small and poorly funded international institutions devoted to global health, such as the World Health Organization. In Mexico City in 2009, where the epidemic gained speed and shut down normal life for weeks, this baptism went on but with flu precautions taken.

418 Chapter 11 Environment and Population

retardation and goiter (enlarged thyroid gland). For about 5 cents per person yearly, iodine can be added to salt and completely prevent the defi ciency, but many countries in the global South and former Soviet bloc still do not do so. An international campaign has increased the use of iodized salt from 25 percent of households worldwide in 1990 to 66 percent in 2006. 38

Epidemics among animals have major effects as well. Currently, scientists fear that bird fl u could mutate and spread person to person, sparking a global pandemic that could potentially kill millions. 39 In 2009–2010, swine fl u spread quickly across the globe, rekindling fears of a global health epidemic and leading various countries to restrict travel to Mexico (where the fl u originated). This strain of swine fl u (H1N1) was found in many countries, many of which adopted quarantine policies for patients.

Smoking Worldwide, more than a billion people smoke, fi ve-sixths of them in develop- ing countries, and 5 million people a year die from tobacco-related disease. States that fail to curb the spread of nicotine addiction face high future costs in health care—costs that are just beginning to come due in many poor countries. The costs are largely limited to the state itself; its own citizens and economy pay the price. Nonetheless, the tobacco trade makes smoking an international issue. Tobacco companies’ recent marketing campaigns targeting women in the global South could produce a huge increase in smokers in that group, according to the World Health Organization. The gender differences in smoking in developing countries are striking: around 4 percent of women smoke in most developing countries whereas the corresponding number for males runs as high as 60 percent (in China). By contrast, in the United States, about 24 percent of men smoke compared to 18 percent of women. 40

In 2001, tobacco companies with some U.S. support sought to weaken a new pro- posed treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, but in 2003, the United States dropped its objections and WHO member states adopted the treaty, which entered into force in 2005. Member states pledge to ban tobacco advertising and are encouraged to raise taxes on tobacco 5 percent a year above the infl ation rate. The United States, alone among the world’s major powers, still had not ratifi ed the treaty in 2011.

Population issues are sometimes portrayed as simply too many people using up too little food and natural resources. However, the idea that overpopulation is the cause of hunger in today’s world is not really accurate. Poverty and politics more than population are the causes of malnutrition and hunger today (see “World Hunger” on pp. 431 – 432 ) . There is enough food, water, petroleum, land, and so forth—but these are unequally dis- tributed.

This unequal distribution is directly related to the gap between the global North and the global South. Strains on the environment and on natural resources are global in scope, yet in the North they arise from industrialization (growing GDP per capita), whereas in the South they are more affected by growing populations. These differences in environ- mental impacts are by no means the only such North-South difference. The next two chapters turn to that global North-South divide.

38 McNeil, Donald G., Jr. In Raising the World’s I.Q., the Secret’s in the Salt. The New York Times, December 16, 2006: A1. 39 U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for the United States [National Intelligence Estimate 99–17D]. CIA, 2000. 40 Marsh, Bill. A Growing Cloud Over the Planet. The New York Times, February 24, 2008: 4.

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Chapter Review 419

SUMMARY ■ Environmental problems are an example of international interdependence and

often create collective goods problems for the states involved. The large numbers of actors involved in global environmental problems make them more diffi cult to solve.

■ To resolve such collective goods problems, states have used international regimes and IOs, and have in some cases extended state sovereignty (notably over territorial waters) to make management a national rather than an international matter.

■ International efforts to solve environmental problems aim to bring about sustaina- ble economic development.

■ Global warming results from burning fossil fuels—the basis of industrial economies today. The industrialized states are much more responsible for the problem than are developing countries, but countries such as China and India also contribute to the problem. Solutions are diffi cult to reach because costs are substantial and dangers are somewhat distant and uncertain.

■ Damage to the earth’s ozone layer results from the use of specific chemicals, which are now being phased out under international agreements. Unlike glo- bal warming, the costs of solutions are much lower and the problem is better understood.

■ Many species are threatened with extinction due to loss of habitats such as rain forests. An international treaty on biodiversity and an agreement on for- ests aim to reduce the destruction of local ecosystems, with costs spread among states.

■ The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) establishes an ocean regime that puts most commercial fi sheries and offshore oil under control of states as territorial waters.

■ Pollution—including acid rain, water and air pollution, and toxic and nuclear waste—tends to be more localized than global and has been addressed mainly through unilateral, bilateral, and regional measures rather than global ones.

■ Most Western states import energy resources, mostly oil, whereas the other world regions export them. Oil prices rose dramatically in the 1970s but declined in the 1980s as the world economy adjusted by increasing supply and reducing demand. Prices spiked again around 1991 and 2007–2008 before collapsing in 2008. Such fl uctuations undermine world economic stability.

■ The most important source of oil traded worldwide is the Persian Gulf area of the Middle East. Consequently, this area has long been a focal point of international political confl ict.

■ World population—now at 7 billion—may eventually level out around 10 billion. Virtually all of the increase will come in the global South.

■ Future world population growth will be largely driven by the demographic transi- tion. Death rates have fallen throughout the world, but birthrates will fall propor- tionally only as per capita incomes go up. The faster the economies of poor states develop, the sooner their populations will level out.

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420 Chapter 11 Environment and Population

■ Government policies can reduce birthrates somewhat at a given level of per capita income. Effective policies are those that improve access to birth control and raise the status of women in society. Actual policies vary, from China’s very strict rules on childbearing to pronatalist governments that encourage maximum birthrates and outlaw birth control.

■ The global HIV/AIDS epidemic creates huge costs for many poor states. Currently 33 million people are infected with HIV, and 30 million more have died. Most are in Africa, but new infections are growing rapidly in Asia and Russia.

KEY TERMS tragedy of the

commons 388 enclosure 388 global warming 390 UN Environment

Program (UNEP) 391 greenhouse gases 391 Kyoto Protocol 393 ozone layer 394

Chernobyl 403 demographic

transition 410 pronatalist 413 infant mortality

rate 413

Montreal Protocol 395 biodiversity 396 International Whaling

Commission 397 high seas 399 UN Convention on

the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 400

acid rain 402

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS 1. Given the collective goods problem in managing environmental issues—height-

ened by the participation of large numbers of actors—what new international organizations or agreements could be created in the coming years to help solve this problem? Are there ways to reduce the number of actors participating in the man- agement of global problems such as global warming? What problems might your proposals run into?

2. Few effective international agreements have been reached to solve the problem of global warming. Given the several difficulties associated with managing this problem, what creative international solutions can you think of? What would be the strengths and weaknesses of your solutions in the short term and in the long term?

Chapter Review 421

3. Does the record of the international community on environmental management refl ect the views of mercantilists, liberals, or both? In what ways?

4. Some politicians call for the Western industrialized countries, including the United States, to be more self-suffi cient in energy resources in order to reduce dependence on oil imports from the Middle East. In light of the overall world energy picture and the economics of international trade, what are the pros and cons of such a proposal?

5. Dozens of poor states appear to be stuck midway through the demographic transi- tion: death rates have fallen, birthrates remain high, and per capita incomes are not increasing. How do you think these states, with or without foreign assistance, can best get unstuck and complete the demographic transition?

ARGUMENT 1

Developing Countries Should Pay Their Share to Stop Warming

Developing countries contribute to warming, so they should pay. Develop- ing countries contribute large amounts of carbon dioxide to the global atmosphere. They should not be allowed to free-ride on the efforts of the wealthy states who want to slow down global warming.

Technologies will keep costs low in the long run. While the cost to slow down global warming will be high initially, over time technology will help states keep costs low while lessening emissions. Thus, one should not be overly concerned that the costs of policy change in developing states will be overwhelming.

Developing countries could benefi t economically from Kyoto-type agree- ments. If the Kyoto agreement is extended or future agreements have similar market-based mechanisms as Kyoto, developing countries could benefi t economically. If these countries can bring emissions down enough to sell their extra cap space, they could actually recoup some of the costs of implementing the agreement.

Overview The Kyoto Protocol has been the strongest attempt to date to control the pollutants that lead to global warming. Although the Protocol has been in effect for only a few years, it has already generated tre- mendous controversy. As discussed in this chap- ter, Kyoto uses a market mechanism to allocate caps on the amount of emissions that can come from various countries. Yet, only developed coun- tries are required to meet the targets under Kyoto. Developing countries do not have binding caps on their emissions.

Some countries, such as the United States, object to the nonbinding targets for developing countries. In particular, the United States objects to China’s classifi cation as a developing state that does not need to abide by the limits of the treaty. It claims that China will be allowed to pollute while the United States pays a high economic cost to reduce global warming. These costs could run into the hundreds of billions of dollars over the long run.

Now, as the world attempts to design a new glo- bal warming treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires, the question of who pays is again at the forefront of discussions. Should developing countries, such as China, be asked to contribute to stopping global warming? Who should be required to contribute to the provision of this public good?

Stopping Global Warming: Who Should Pay?

LET’S DEBATE THE ISSUE

Questions ■ Should developing countries be bound by the

Kyoto Protocol (or its successor) and forced to pay the cost of reducing emissions? Is such a requirement fair? Would this requirement make the success of the Kyoto Protocol more or less likely?

■ Do you believe that environmental issues like global warming will be more or less diffi cult to solve during the current global economic crisis? Why or why not?

■ Do you think that technological solutions will be developed to help solve the problem of global warming? Or will fundamental changes in how individuals consume energy be a better path to reduce the problem of global warming?

For Further Reading Nordhaus, William D. A Question of Balance:

Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies. Yale, 2008.

Zedillo, Ernesto. Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto. Brookings, 2008.

Sachs, Jeffrey D. Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet. Penguin, 2008.

Houser, Trevor, Rob Bradley, Britt Childs, Jacob Werksman, and Robert Heilmayr. Leveling the Carbon Playing Field: International Competition and US Climate Policy Design. Peterson Institute, 2008.

ARGUMENT 2

Only Developed Countries Should Pay to Stop Warming

The costs to developing countries will undermine development. The costs of slowing global warming will be large. Placing even some of these costs on developing countries will lead to economic hardship, which will further undermine development, which could then increase emissions since these states would have no money to invest in better technologies or to develop cleaner industries.

Developed countries were allowed to pollute to develop. For many years, devel- oped countries paid little attention to the environ- ment as they built industries, achieved economic growth, and became successful. Now, with India and China threatening to become economically successful, Western states want to place limita- tions on how other states can develop and how they can treat the environment. Non-Western states should be allowed the same development path as Western states.

It is really the developed countries’ pollution. Although developing countries do their fair share of polluting, many of these emis- sions come from industries that have been shipped from developed states. Western states did not want these polluting industries in their backyards, so they sent them abroad, and now demand that the host countries pay the bill for the cleanup.

Passengers on overcrowded train, Bangladesh, 2013.

The North-South Gap

CHAPTER 12 Listen to Chapter 12 at MyPoliSciLab

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425

CHAPTER OUTLINE The State of the South This and the following chapter concern the world’s poor regions—the global South— where most people live. States in these regions are called by various names, used inter- changeably: third world countries, less-developed countries (LDCs) , underdeveloped countries (UDCs), or developing countries . This chapter discusses the gap in wealth between the industrialized regions (the North) and the rest of the world (the South). It develops the theories of imperialism introduced in Chapter 3 (pp. 103 – 104 ), which try to explain this gap in terms of historical colonization of the South by the North. Chapter 13 discusses international aspects of economic development in the South.

IR scholars do not agree on the causes or implications of poverty in the global South, nor on solutions (if any) to the problem. Thus, they also disagree about the nature of relations between rich and poor states (North-South relations). 1 Everyone agrees, however, that much of the global South is poor, and some of it extremely poor. 2

In all, about a billion people live in abject poverty, without access to basic nutrition or health care. They are concentrated in Africa, where income levels have lagged for decades. Two decades ago the concentration was as strong in South Asia, but economic growth there has greatly reduced extreme poverty. Still, the average income per person in South Asia—home to 2 billion people—is only $4,000 per year, and in Africa only $2,300 (even after adjusting for the lower costs of living in these regions compared to richer ones). Although billions of people are rising out of poverty, because of population growth the number of very poor people nonetheless remains about the same. 3

The bottom line is that every fi ve seconds, somewhere in the world, a child dies as a result of malnutrition. That is 700 every hour, 16,000 every day, 6 million every year. The world produces enough food to nourish these children and enough income to afford to nourish them, but their own families or states do not have enough income. They die, ultimately, from poverty. Meanwhile, in that same fi ve seconds the world spends $270,000 on military forces, a thousandth of which could save the child’s life and more. Likewise, people lack water, shelter, health care, and other necessities because they cannot afford them. The widespread, grinding poverty of people who can- not afford necessities is less visible than the dramatic examples of starvation triggered by war or drought, but affects many more people.

The UN in 2000 adopted the Millennium Development Goals , which set targets for basic needs measures to be achieved by 2015 and measured against 1990 data. The fi rst of the eight goals is to cut in half the proportion of the world’s population living in “extreme poverty,” defi ned as income of less than $1.25 per day. This goal was met ahead of schedule in 2010, although Africa lagged far behind Asia in cutting poverty. Since 1990, 2 billion people have gained access to improved drinking water, but 1 bil- lion remain hungry around the world. 4

The fi ve regions of the global South differ not only on poverty reduction, but also on income level and growth. As Figure 12.1 shows, the regions experiencing the fastest growth—China and South Asia—are neither the highest- nor the lowest-income

The State of the South ■ Basic Human Needs ■ World Hunger ■ Rural and Urban

Populations ■ Women in Development ■ Migration and Refugees

Theories of Accumulation ■ Economic Accumulation ■ The World-System

Imperialism ■ World Civilizations ■ History of Imperialism,

1500–2000 ■ Effects of Colonialism ■ Postcolonial Dependency ■ Revolutionary

Movements

Study and Review the Pre-Test & Flashcards at MyPoliSciLab

3 World Bank. World Development Indicators 2006. World Bank, 2006.

2 UN Development Program. Human Development Report. Oxford, annual. World Bank. World Development Report. Oxford, annual.

1 Seligson, Mitchell A., and John T. Passe-Smith, eds. Development and Underdevelopment: The Political Economy of Inequality. 3rd ed. Rienner, 2003.

4 United Nations. The Millennium Development Goals Report 2008. UN, 2008.

426 Chapter 12 The North-South Gap

regions. The Middle East is about as developed as China in terms of GDP per capita, but is growing at only half the rate. Chapter 13 will explore the reasons for these differences in economic growth, but here we note simply that the world’s regions vary on both income and growth, with the two dimensions not correlated.

Experts disagree about how much poverty and inequality have decreased, with some arguing that poverty has been halved through rapid economic growth and that the global distribution of income is shifting from having rich and poor extremes to having a bell curve distribution with a large population at middle incomes—an emerging global middle class. The World Bank describes progress as slower. 5 Between 1990 and 2008, incomes per person (adjusted for infl ation, in today’s dollars) in the global South as a whole rose from about $3,000 to about $5,500. In the global North they rose from about $20,000 to about $31,000. Does this indicate a slow closing of the gap because the ratio fell from about 6.6 to 5.6 as the result of a higher rate of growth in the South? Or does it indicate a widening of the gap between a person in the North and one in the South because in absolute terms, it increased from $17,000 to over $25,000? Each has some truth.

Basic Human Needs Some countries in the global South have made rapid progress in raising incomes, but oth- ers are caught in a cycle of poverty. Until incomes rise, the population will not move through the demographic transition (see pp. 410 – 412 ) ; population growth will remain high and incomes low. 6

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6 World Bank. World Development Report 2004. Oxford, 2004.

5 Sala-i-Martin Xavier. The World Distribution of Income (Estimated from Individual Country Distributions). NBER Working Paper No. 8933. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2002. Bhalla, Surjit S. Imagine There’s No Country: Poverty Inequality and Growth in the Era of Globalization. Institute for International Economics, 2002.

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Note: For the global North overall, GDP per capita is $30,000.

FIGURE 12.1 Income Level and Growth Rate by World Region

Source: World Bank.

The State of the South 427

In order to put economic growth on a fi rm foundation, societies must meet the basic human needs of most of the population. 7 People need food, shelter, and other necessities of daily life in order to feel secure. Furthermore, as long as peo- ple in the global South blame imperialism for a lack of basic needs, extreme poverty fuels revolu- tion, terrorism, and anti-Western sentiments.

Children are central to meeting a popula- tion’s basic needs. In particular, education allows a new generation to meet other basic needs and move through the demographic transition. 8 Lit- eracy—which UNESCO defi nes as the ability to read and write a simple sentence—is the key component of education. A person who can read and write can obtain a wealth of information about farming, health care, birth control, and so forth. Some poor countries have raised literacy rates substantially; others lag behind.

Great variation also exists in schooling. Pri- mary-school attendance in 2008 was more than 90 percent in most world regions, though only 76 percent for Africa. Secondary education— middle and high school—is another matter. In the North, about 90 percent of secondary-age chil- dren are enrolled, but in most of the global South, fewer than two-thirds are. College is available to only a small fraction of the population.

In 2008 in the global South, according to UNICEF, one in four children suffered from malnutrition, one in seven lacked access to health care, and one in fi ve had no safe drinking water. The AIDS epidemic is undoing progress made over decades in reducing child mortality and increasing education. 9

Figure 12.2 shows the variation across regions in two key indicators of children’s well- being at different stages—immunizations and secondary-school enrollments. In both cases, achievement of these basic needs for children roughly correlates with the regions’ respective income levels.

Effective health care in poor countries is not expensive—less than $5 per person per year for primary care. For instance, UNICEF has promoted four inexpensive methods that together are credited with saving the lives of millions of children each year. One method is growth monitoring. Experts estimate that regular weighing and advice can prevent half of all cases of malnutrition. A second method is oral rehydration therapy (ORT), which stops diarrhea in children before they die from dehydration. A facility that produced 300 packets per day of the simple sugar-salt remedy, at a cost of 1.5 cents each, was built in Guatemala for just $550. Child deaths from diarrhea were cut in half in one year. The

BABY BOOST

Nearly a billion people in the global South—most of them in Africa and South Asia—live in abject poverty, lacking safe water, housing, food, and the ability to read. Natural disasters, droughts, and wars can displace subsistence farmers from their land and make matters worse. But sustained advances in health care, such as the prenatal checkup given these women in Ivory Coast in 2012, are bringing dra- matic improvements.

7 Gough, Ian, and J. Allister McGregor, eds. Wellbeing in Developing Countries: From Theory to Research. Cambridge, 2007. Goldstein, Joshua S. Basic Human Needs: The Plateau Curve. World Development 13, 1985: 595–609. Moon, Bruce E. The Political Economy of Basic Human Needs. Cornell, 1991. 8 Brown, Philip, and Hugh Lauder. Education, Globalization, and Economic Development. Journal of Education Policy 11 (1), 1996: 1–25. 9 UNICEF. The State of the World’s Children 2009: Maternal and Newborn Health. UNICEF, 2009.

428 Chapter 12 The North-South Gap

third method is immunization against six common deadly diseases: measles, polio, tuber- culosis (TB), tetanus, whooping cough, and diphtheria. In recent decades, the number of children immunized in poor countries has risen from 5 percent to more than 50 percent. By 2010, the number of children immunized at least once against measles had climbed to 85 percent. The fourth method is the promotion of breast-feeding rather than infant for- mula (sometimes marketed unethically as more modern).

Since 1990, despite the daunting problems of war and the HIV/AIDS epidemic, public health in the global South registered some important gains. 10 Infant tetanus deaths were halved, and access to safe water was extended to a billion more people. Polio was nearly eliminated, but resistance to vaccination in parts of Nigeria let the disease begin to spread again, with three countries having indigenous virus populations as of 2013 (Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria—and the virus traveled from Pakistan to Egyptian sewage in 2013). 11 In eight African countries in 2006, following successful trials in several other coun- tries, authorities combined the distribution of insecticide-treated mosquito nets for malaria with measles and polio vaccines, deworming pills, vitamin A supplements, and educational materials—a combined approach proven to work. Deaths of children under fi ve worldwide hit a record low, below 8 million, in 2010, down from nearly 12 million in 1990. Measles deaths dropped by three-quarters in just ten years, 2000–2010, a striking success. 12

Still, globally, the disparities in access to health care are striking. 13 The 75 percent of the world’s people living in the global South have about 30 percent of the world’s doctors

10 Esman, Milton J., and Ronald J. Herring, eds. Carrots, Sticks and Ethnic Confl ict: Rethinking Development Assistance. Michigan, 2001. Thomas, Caroline, and Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, eds. Confl ict and Consensus in South/North Security. Cambridge, 1989. 11 World Health Organization. Poliomyelitis. Fact Sheet No. 114. October 2012. 12 WHO. Measles. April 2012. Rajaratnam, Julie Knoll et al. Neonatal, Postneonatal . . .  The Lancet 375 (9730), 2010: 1988–2008. 13 World Health Organization. World Health Statistics 2010. WHO, 2010.

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China

FIGURE 12.2 Basic Needs Indicators by Region (2011)

Data Source: World Bank. Regions do not exactly match those used elsewhere in this book. Source: World Bank.

The State of the South 429

and nurses. In medical research, less than 5 percent of world expenditures are directed at problems in developing coun- tries, according to the WHO. The big- gest killers are AIDS, acute respiratory infections, diarrhea, TB, malaria, and hepatitis. More than 600 million people are infected with tropical diseases—400 to 500 million with malaria alone. Yet, because the people with such diseases are poor, there is often not a large enough market for drug companies (MNCs) in the industrialized world to invest in med- icines for them. And when poor coun- tries need medicines developed for rich markets, the drugs may be prohibitively expensive—as with the AIDS drugs dis- cussed in Chapter 11 (see pp. 414 – 417 ).

Safe water is another essential ele- ment of meeting basic human needs. In many rural locations, people must walk miles every day to fetch water. Note that access to water does not mean run- ning water in every house, but a clean well or faucet for a village. In 1990– 2010, the number without access fell by half, meeting the MDG target early, but one in six people worldwide still lack safe drinking water. And many among those with safe drinking water lack sanitation facilities (such as sewers and sanitary latrines). Some 2.5 billion people, a third of the world’s population, do not have access to sanitation. The result is recurrent epidemics and widespread diarrhea, which kill millions of children each year. Rural areas are worse than cities. Poor sanitation in Haiti allowed a cholera epidemic (ironically introduced by visiting Nepalese peacekeepers, sent to help Haiti) to kill thousands in 2010–2013. Despite the tremendous progress the world has made in improving water and sanitation, with population growth there are still about 1 billion people lacking safe water and more than 2 billion without adequate sanitation. 14

Shelter is another key basic need. Of the world’s seven billion people, about one in six lives in substandard housing or is homeless altogether. For indicator after indicator, we fi nd about a billion people left behind with nothing. The different indicators do not over- lap perfectly, but basically the bottom billion of humanity, most living in rural areas, are in desperate poverty. The most important factors keeping these people in desperate pov- erty appear to be civil war, corruption, the “resource curse” (see p. 443 ), and landlocked locations without ready access to trade. 15

In theory, providing for basic needs should give poor people hope of progress and should ensure political stability. However, that is not always the result. In Sri Lanka, a

DO THE MATH

Children are a main focus of efforts to provide basic human needs in the global South. Education is critical to both economic development and the demo- graphic transition. Girls worldwide receive less education than boys, and in Afghanistan under the Taliban, they were banned from schools altogether. This math class in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2002 followed the Taliban’s fall.

14 World Health Organization and UNICEF. Meeting the MDG Drinking Water and Sanitation Target. UNICEF, 2004. World Health Organization. World Health Statistics 2010. WHO, 2010. 15 Collier, Paul. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. Oxford, 2007.

430 Chapter 12 The North-South Gap

progressive-minded government implemented one of the world’s most successful basic needs strategies, addressing nutrition, health care, and literacy. The policy showed that even a very poor country could meet basic needs at low levels of per capita income. Then an ethnic civil war broke out. The war became more and more brutal—with death squads and indis- criminate reprisals on civilians—until it consumed the progress Sri Lanka had made.

War in the global South—both international and civil war—is a leading obstacle to the provision of basic needs. War causes much greater damage to society than merely the direct deaths and injuries it infl icts. In war zones, economic infrastructure such as transportation is disrupted, as are government services such as health care and education. Wars drastically reduce the confi dence in economic and political stability on which investment and trade depend.

Figure 12.3 maps the rates of access to safe water and food. The worldwide pattern somewhat resembles the map of wars in progress on page 154 . If indeed there is a

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Yugo

Mac

Slov. Cro.

Bos

Slovak.

Eritrea

Tajikistan

Hawaiian Islands

Galapagos Islands (Ecuador)

Mauritiu

Seychelles

S o u t h A t l a n t i c O c e a n

S o u t h P a c i f i c O c e a n

N o r t h P a c i f i c O c e a n

N o r t h A t l a n t i c O c e a n

I n d i a n O c e a n

A rc t i c A rc t i c A rc t i c

N o r t h P a c i f i c O c e a n

1 2 0 6 0 0 6 0 1 2 0 1 8 0

6 0

3 0

0

3 0

6 0

1 8 0 1 5 0 1 2 0 9 0 3 0 0 3 0 6 0 9 0 1 2 0 1 5 0

6 0

3 0

0

3 0

6 0

6 0

Percentage of population undernourished Less than 4 4 – 9

9 – 17 17 – 28

28 or more Insufficient data

U n i t e d S t a t e s o f A m e r i c a

U . S . A .

C a n a d a

Mexic

B r a z i l

U. S. A.

F r e n c h P o l y n e s i a

( F r . )

Argentina Uruguay

Paraguay

Chile

Bolivi

Peru

Ecuado

Colombi

Venezuela French Guiana

(Fr.)

Suriname Guyana

The Bahamas

Cub Dominica

n

Panama Costa

Nicaragua

HonduraGuatemala

El Salvador Trinidad and

Jam Hait Puerto

Rico (US)

G r e e n l a n d ( D e n . )

Icelan

Madagasca

Sout h

Lesoth

Swaziland

Mozambiqu

Tanzania

Botswan Namibi Zimbabw

Angola

Z a i r e

Zambi

Malaw

Burund

KenyaRwanda

Ugand

Cong

Gabo

Somalia

Ethiopi

S u d a n

Djibout

Belize

EgypL i b y a

Cha

Niger

A l g e r i a

M a l i

Tunisia

Nigeria

Cameroon C. A. R.

Benin

TogGhana

Burkin a FasoBarbado

Dominic

Côte D’Ivoire

Liberia

Sierra Leone

GuineaGuinea-Bissau

Senegal The Gambia

Mauritani

Western Sahara (Mor.)

Morocc

Finland Norwa

Swede Estonia Latvia

Lithuania

Polan

Romania

Bulgaria

T u r k e yGreece

Czech.

Hung

Italy Albania

Portuga

France

Spain

Aus. Switz

United Kingdo

Ireland

Den.

Germany Neth Bel.

Cyp

Yemen

Oman Saudi Arabia

U. A. E.

Qatar

I r a nI r a q Syria

Jorda

Israel Leb C h i n a

M o n g o l i a

R u s s i a

Afghanistan

Pakistan

I n d i a

Sri LankaMaldive

Nepal Bhu

Myanma r (Burma)

Bang

Andaman Islands (India)

Thailand

I n d o n e s i a

Malaysia

Brunei

Philippine

Taiwan

Cambodi

Vietnam

Laos

A u s t r a l i a

Papua New Guinea

New Zealand

Fiji New

Caledonia

Solomon Islands

K i r i b a t i

M a r s h a l l I s l a n d sF e d e r a t e d S t a t e s

o f M i c r o n e s i aGuam (USA)

J a p a n

N. Korea

S. Korea

Kuril Islands

Wrangel Island

Aleutian Islands (USA)

New Siberian Islands

Severnaya Zemlya

Novaya Zemlya

Franz Josef LandSvalbard

(Nor.)Jan Mayen (Nor.)

Bank s

Victori a

B a f f i n I s l a n d

Ellesmere Island

Island of Newfoundlan

A n t a r c t i c a

Î l e s C r o z e t ( F r a n c e )

Ta s m a n i a

S o u t h G e o r g i a ( a d m . b y U K , c l a i m e d

b y A r g e n t i n a )

F a l k l a n d I s l a n d s ( I s l a s M a l v i n a s )

( a d m . b y U K , c l a i m e d b y A r g e n t i n a )

Kuwai Canary Islands

(Sp.)

Sao Tome & Principe

SingaporeEq. Guinea

Faroe Is. (Den.)

K a z a k h s t a n

Belarus

Ukraine

Moldov

Georgia Armenia Azerbaijan

Turkmenistan

Uzbekista Kyrgyzstan

Yugo

Mac

Slov. Cro.

Bos

Slovak.

Eritrea

Tajikistan

Hawaiian Islands

Galapagos Islands (Ecuador)

Mauritiu

Seychelles

S o u t h A t l a n t i c O c e a n

S o u t h P a c i f i c O c e a n

N o r t h P a c i f i c O c e a n

N o r t h A t l a n t i c O c e a n

I n d i a n O c e a n

A rc t i c A rc t i c A rc t i c

N o r t h P a c i f i c O c e a n

1 2 0 6 0 0 6 0 1 2 0 1 8 0

6 0

3 0

0

3 0

6 0

1 8 0 1 5 0 1 2 0 9 0 3 0 0 3 0 6 0 9 0 1 2 0 1 5 0

6 0

3 0

0

3 0

6 0

6 0

91 – 100 76 – 90

50 – 75 Less than 50

Insufficient data

Percentage of population using improved drinking water sources

FIGURE 12.3 Rates of Access to Water and Food, 2005

Source: United Nations.

The State of the South 431

relationship between recent or present warfare and a lack of basic needs (in turn corre- lated with income level), what really causes what? Does being at war keep a society poor and prevent it from meeting its population’s basic needs? Or does being poor, with unmet basic needs, make a society more war-prone? Probably both are true. War is often part of a vicious circle for states unable to rise out of poverty.

The fragility of life in poor countries was demonstrated all too starkly in 2010 when a major earthquake devastated Haiti, already the poorest country in the Western hemi- sphere, with annual GDP of $1,300 per person. Because of poor construction, many build- ings collapsed, and because of poor health and sanitation facilities, survivors faced desperate conditions. More than 100,000 people died and millions were left homeless. Haitians could only hope that international aid would help them rebuild from scratch in the coming years.

World Hunger Of all the basic needs of people in the global South, the most central is food. Malnutrition (or malnourishment) refers to the lack of needed foods including protein and vitamins. The term hunger refers broadly to malnutrition or outright undernourishment —a lack of calories. Hunger does not usually kill people through outright starvation, but it weakens them and leaves them susceptible to infectious diseases that would not ordinarily be fatal. 16

More than 800 million people—about one in nine worldwide—are chronically undernourished (see Table 12.1 ). Their potential contribution to economic accumu- lation is wasted because they cannot do even light work. And they are a potential source of political instability—including international instability—as long as they stay hungry. Record food prices in 2011 made the problem worse. At the World Food Summit in 1996, world leaders adopted a goal to cut hunger in half by 2015. New estimates in 2012 show that goal within reach. As a proportion of a growing population,

16 Leathers, Howard D., and Phillips Foster. The World Food Problem: Tackling the Causes of Undernutrition in the Third World. 3rd ed. Rienner, 2004. Dréze, Jean, Amartya Sen, and Athar Hussain, eds. The Political Economy of Hunger: Selected Essays. Oxford, 1995.

Region Number (millions) Percentage of Population 20 Years Earlier

South Asia

China Africa Latin America Middle East

Southeast Asia

Developing World

300

160 230 50 30

65

835

18%

11% 27%

8% 10%

11%

15%

27%

21% 33% 15% 6%

30%

23%

Notes: Data are from 2010–2012 and 1990–1992. Chronic undernourishment means failing to consume enough food on average over a year to maintain body weight and support light activity.

TABLE 12.1 Who’s Hungry? Chronically Undernourished People by Region, c. 2012

Source: Based on Food and Agriculture Organization, The State of food Inequality in the World, 2012, FAO, 2011, pp 44–47.

432 Chapter 12 The North-South Gap

the rate of hunger dropped from 19 to 12 percent from 1991 to 2011. 17 In 2006, UNICEF reported that China had made great progress in reducing child malnutrition, but progress in South Asia had been very slow and Africa was not moving forward. A quarter of the world’s children under age 5—and nearly half those in India—were underweight. Of the world’s 150 million underweight children, half lived in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. 18

Traditionally, rural communities have grown their own food— subsistence farm- ing . Colonialism disrupted this pattern, and the disruption has continued in postcolo- nial times. States in the global South shifted from subsistence to commercial agriculture. Small plots were merged into big plantations, often under the control of wealthy landlords. By concentrating capital and orienting the economy toward a niche in world trade, this process is consistent with liberal economics. But it displaces subsistence farmers from the land. Wars displace farmers even more quickly, with similar results.

Commercial agriculture relies on machinery, commercial fuels, and artifi cial ferti- lizers and pesticides, which must be bought with cash and often must be imported. To pay for these supplies, big farms grow cash crops —agricultural goods produced for export to world markets. 19 Such crops typically provide little nutrition to local peas- ants; examples include coffee, tea, and sugar cane. When a plantation is built or expanded, subsistence farmers end up working on the plantation at very low wages or migrating to cities in search of jobs. Often they end up hungry. Ironically, the higher food prices in 2007–2008 have provided increased income for farmers in rural areas, yet at the cost of many being unable to afford food.

Natural disasters can exacerbate food shortages. The threat of major food short- ages threatened Pakistan after devastating fl oods in the summer of 2010. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, nearly 2 million acres of crops were lost in the Pakistan fl ood, leaving food in short supply for people and farm animals. States, IGOs, and NGOs rushed food to Pakistan after the fl oods, hoping to avert a major humanitarian catastrophe.

International food aid itself can sometimes contribute to these problems. 20 Agri- cultural assistance may favor mechanized commercial agriculture. And if an interna- tional agency fl oods an area with food, prices on local markets drop, which may force even more local farmers out of business and increase dependence on handouts from the government or international community. Also, people in a drought or famine often have to travel to feeding centers to receive the food, halting their work on their own land.

Rural and Urban Populations The displacement of peasants from subsistence farming contributes to a massive popula- tion shift that typically accompanies the demographic transition. More and more people move to the cities from the countryside— urbanization . This is hard to measure exactly; there is no standard defi nition of when a town is considered a city. But industrialized states report that about 70 to 90 percent of their populations live in cities. By contrast,

17 Food and Agriculture Organization. The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012. FAO, 2012. 18 UNICEF. Progress for Children: A Report Card on Nutrition. Number 4, May 2006. UNICEF, 2006. 19 Barkin, David, Rosemary L. Batt, and Billie R. DeWatt. Food Crops vs. Feed Crops: Global Substitution of Grains in Production. Rienner, 1990. 20 Webb, Patrick. Food as Aid: Trends, Needs, and Challenges in the 21st Century. World Food Program, 2004.

The State of the South 433

China was only 50 percent urbanized in 2012—a level more typical of Asia and Africa. Most Middle Eastern states are around 50 percent urbanized, and South American ones are 70 to 85 percent urban.

Urbanization is not caused by higher population growth in cities than in the countryside. In fact, the opposite is true. In cities, the people are generally better educated, with higher incomes. They are further along in the demographic transition and have lower birthrates than people in the coun- tryside. Rather, the growth of urban population is caused by people moving to the cities from the countryside. They do so because of the higher income levels in the cities—economic opportunity—and the hope of more chances for an exciting life. They also move because population growth in the countryside stretches available food, water, arable land, and other resources.

In many cities, the infl ux of people cannot be accommo- dated with jobs, housing, and services. In slums, basic human needs often go unmet. Many states have considered policies to break up large land holdings and redistribute land to poor peasants for use in subsistence farming— land reform . 21 The main opponents of land reform are large landowners, who often wield great political power because of their wealth and international connections to markets, MNCs, and other sources of hard currency.

Women in Development Economic development in poor countries is closely tied to the status of women in those societies. 22 This is a relatively recent revelation; most attention for decades had focused on men as supposedly the main generators of capital. Governments and inter- national reports concentrated on work performed by male wage earners. Women’s work, by contrast, often is not paid for in money and does not show up in fi nancial statistics. But women in much of the world work harder than men and contribute more to the economic well-being of their families and communities. Women are key to efforts to improve the lot of children and reduce birthrates. In nutrition, education, health care, and shelter, women are central to providing the basic needs of people in poor countries.

Yet women hold inferior social status to men in the countries of the South (even more so than in the North). For instance, when food is in short supply, men and boys often eat fi rst, with women and girls getting what is left.

DISPLACED

Subsistence farmers displaced from their land risk chronic hunger and sometimes starvation. These villagers in eastern Democratic Congo, where sporadic political violence has continued for more than a decade, fl ee new fi ghting in 2012.

21 Dorner, Peter. Latin American Land Reform in Theory and Practice. Wisconsin, 1992. Deininger, Klaus W. Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction. Oxford, 2003. 22 Boserup, Ester, Nazneed Kanji, Su Fei Tan, and Camilla Toulmin. Woman’s Role in Economic Development. Earthscan, 2007. Jaquette, Jane S., and Gale Summerfi eld. Women and Gender Equality in Development Theory and Practice: Institutions, Resources, and Mobilization. Duke, 2006. Afshar, Haleh, and Deborah Eade. Develop- ment, Women, and War: Feminist Perspectives. Oxfam, 2004. Aguilar, Delia D., and Anne E. Lacsamana. Women and Globalization. Humanity, 2004. Beneria, Lourdes. Gender, Development, and Globalization: Econom- ics as if All People Mattered. Routledge, 2003.

434 Chapter 12 The North-South Gap

Discrimination against girls is widespread in education and liter- acy. Worldwide, nearly twice as many women as men are illiterate. Across the global South, only in Latin America do women’s literacy rates approach those of men. In Pakistan, three-quarters of boys but little more than half the girls receive primary education. Throughout Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (but not in Latin America), more boys receive education, especially at the secondary level, though the gap has closed considerably in recent years. At the university level, only 30 percent of students in China and the Middle East are women, a bit more than 20 percent in South Asia and Africa (but 45 percent in Latin America). The Taliban regime in Afghanistan (1996–2001) took extreme measures against women’s education, banning all girls from school and all women from paid work.

States and international agencies have begun to pay attention to ending discrimination in schooling, ensuring women’s access to health care and birth control, educating mothers about prenatal and child health, and generally raising women’s status in society (allowing them a greater voice in decisions). These issues occupied the 1995 UN women’s conference in Beijing, China, attended by tens of thousands of state and NGO representatives.

For example, international agencies help women organize small businesses, farms, and other income-producing activities. UNICEF has helped women get bank loans on favorable terms to start up small busi- nesses in Egypt and Pakistan as well as cooperative farms in Indonesia. Women have organized cooperatives throughout the global South, often in rural areas, to produce income through weaving and other textile and clothing production, retail stores, agriculture, and so forth. 23 In the slums of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, women heads of house- hold with no land for subsistence farming had been forced into beg- ging and prostitution. Women taking part in the Integrated Holistic Approach Urban Development Project organized income-producing businesses in areas such as food processing, cloth weaving, and gar- ment production. These profi table businesses earned income for the women and helped subsidize health and sanitation services in the slums.

Migration and Refugees The processes just outlined—basic needs deprivation, displacement from land, and urbanization—culminate in one of the biggest political issues affecting North-South relations: migration from poorer to richer

states. 24 Millions of people from the global South have crossed international borders, often illegally, to reach the North.

Someone who moves to a new country in search of better economic opportunities, a better professional environment, or better access to his or her family, culture, or religion is

WOMEN’S POWER

The status of women in countries of the glo- bal South affects their prospects for eco- nomic development. Women are central to rural economies, to population strategies, and to the provision of basic human needs, including education. Here, a women’s coop- erative in Mauritania makes small loans to its members, 2006.

23 Lopez, T. Women and Rural Development: New Employment Sources and Cooperatives in Less Favored Areas. FAO, 2007. Rahman, Aminur. Women and Microcredit in Rural Bangladesh: An Anthropological Study of Grameen Bank Lending. Westview, 2001. 24 Stalker, Peter. Workers without Frontiers: The Impact of Globalization on International Migration. Rienner, 2000. Meyers, Eytan. International Immigration Policy: An Empirical and Theoretical Analysis. Palgrave, 2004.

The State of the South 435

engaging in migration (emigration from the old state and immigration to the new state). Such migration is considered voluntary. The home state is not under any obligation to let such peo- ple leave, and, more important, no state is obli- gated to receive migrants. As with any trade issue, migration creates complex patterns of win- ners and losers. Immigrants often provide cheap labor, benefi ting the host economy overall, but also compete for jobs with (poor) citizens of the host country.

Most industrialized states try to limit immi- gration from the global South. Despite border guards and fences, many people migrate any- way, illegally. In the United States, such immi- grants come from all over the world, but mostly from nearby Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. In Western Europe, they come largely from North Africa, Turkey, and (increasingly) Eastern Europe. 25 Some Western European leaders worry that the loosening of border controls under the process of integration (see pp. 355 – 358 ) will make it harder to keep out illegal immigrants. Indeed, fear of immigra- tion is one reason why Swiss voters rejected membership in the EU. In 2004–2006, tens of thousands of migrants and refugees from sub- Saharan Africa came to Morocco and climbed over razor-wire fences to enter two tiny Spanish enclaves there. Once on Spanish soil, they could not be sent home if they kept authorities from determining their national- ity. The increase in migrants trying to reach the enclaves in Morocco followed Spanish efforts to stem the fl ow of migrants crossing in boats from North Africa to Spain itself near the Gibraltar straits. In turn, when Spain cracked down on the crossings at the Moroccan enclaves, Africans set out in boats and rafts to reach the Spanish-owned Canary Islands in the Atlantic off Morocco.

International law and custom distinguish migrants from refugees , people fl eeing to fi nd refuge from war, natural disaster, or political persecution. 26 (Fleeing from chronic discrimination may or may not be grounds for refugee status.) International norms obli- gate countries to accept refugees who arrive at their borders. Refugees from wars or natural disasters are generally housed in refugee camps temporarily until they can return home (though their stay can drag on for years). Refugees from political persecution may be granted asylum to stay in the new state. Acceptance of refugees—and the question of which states must bear the costs—is a collective goods problem.

ON THE MOVE

Refugees are both a result of international confl ict and a source of confl ict. In addition to those fl eeing war and repression and those seeking economic opportunity, hundreds of thousands of people each year cross borders as sex and labor slaves. These refugees crossing from war-torn Libya into Tunisia in 2011 show their Bangla- desh passports.

25 Aleinikoff, Alexander, and Douglas Klusmeyer, eds. From Migrants to Citizens: Membership in a Changing World. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2000. Massey, Douglas S., and J. Edward Taylor. Interna- tional Migration: Prospects and Policies in a Global Market. Oxford, 2004. 26 UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The State of the World’s Refugees. Oxford, annual. Haddad, Emma. The Refugee in International Society: Between Sovereigns. Cambridge, 2008. Zolberg, Aristide R., and Peter Benda. Global Migrants, Global Refugees: Problems and Solutions. Berghan, 2001. Loescher, Gil. The UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path. Oxford, 2001.

436 Chapter 12 The North-South Gap

This problem came into sharp focus in 2011 when tens of thousands of refugees from Tunisia and Libya poured into Italy, from which they could pass freely into other nearby European countries. France stopped accepting them, and EU leaders reviewed their free- movement rules.

The number of international refugees in the world was about 10 million in 2012. About 15 million more people were displaced within their own countries. Three-fourths of these internally displaced persons (IDPs) resided in Colombia, Congo, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. An additional 4 million Palestinian refugees fall under the responsibility of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The majority of refugees and IDPs have been displaced by wars (see Table 12.2 ), most recently by the civil war in Syria, which by early 2013 had generated 600,000 refugees in Turkey and Jordan, and 2.5 million internally displaced persons, all fl eeing violence in general and sexual violence in particular. In 2013, Jordan declared it would take no more refugees in a new Syrian crisis beyond the 200,000 already there.

The political impact of refugees has been demonstrated repeatedly. The most politi- cized refugee problem for decades has been that of Palestinians displaced in the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars (and their children and grandchildren). They live in “camps” that have become long-term neighborhoods, mainly in Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank. The poverty of the refugees in turn fuels radical political movements among the inhabitants. The question of Palestinian refugees’ right to return to what is now Israel has challenged every attempt at a comprehensive peace settle- ment for years.

It is not always easy to distinguish a refugee fl eeing war or political persecution from a migrant seeking economic opportunity. Illegal immigrants may claim to be refugees in order to be allowed to stay, when really they are seeking better economic opportunities. In recent decades this issue has become a major one throughout the North. In Germany, France, Austria, and elsewhere, resentment of foreign immigrants has fueled upsurges of right-wing nationalism in domestic politics.

Remittances A crucial aspect of migration and immigration is remittances —money sent home by migrants to relatives in their country of origin. They are an important source of income for many poor countries. 27 Remittances are important for states in many regions

27 Terry, Donald F., and Steven R. Wilson. Beyond Small Change: Making Migrant Remittances Count. Inter-American Development Bank, 2005.

Region Millions Main Concentrations

Middle East and Asia Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Thailand, Iran Palestinians under UNRWA Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria Africa Somalia, Uganda, Sudan, D.R. Congo Latin America Colombia Europe Germany

World Total

10 4

10 4 3

31

Note: Includes refugees, asylum seekers, returned refugees, and internally displaced people.

Source: UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

TABLE 12.2 Refugee Populations, 2011

437

POLICY PERSPECTIVES

President of Botswana, Seretse Khama Ian Khama

PROBLEM How do you confront a regional

humanitarian crisis without sacrificing the

well-being of your own population?

BACKGROUND Imagine that you are the president of Botswana. Your neighbor to the east, Zimbabwe, has undergone years of political, economic, and social turmoil. Most recently, a contested presidential election set off waves of violence and protest there. These violent clashes sent waves of refugees fl eeing from their homes. Besides the political violence, a food shortage crisis affects up to half of the 12 million inhabitants of Zimbabwe. Economi- cally, Zimbabwe is in collapse as well, with an infl ation rate above 200 million percent. Finally, Zimbabwe has experi- enced several outbreaks of cholera, which have killed thousands who lack basic health care in the midst of the crisis. These terrible political, social, and economic condi- tions have led many to fl ee Zimbabwe looking for tempo- rary (or in some cases permanent) relief from the conditions in that country.

DOMESTIC CONSIDERATIONS Your own politi- cal and economic situation, however, is quite different. Over the past decade, your country has gone from being one of the poorest in Africa to one with a per capita GDP of $15,000 per person. The economic situation of your coun- try is solid and the political situation is relatively stable. This new wealth has let you put in place a comprehensive program to address the very high rate of HIV/AIDS infec- tion (one in three adults) in your country, and to begin reducing the high unemployment rate (40 percent by some estimates).

While your political and economic situation is certainly better than Zimbabwe’s, it is not clear that you would be able to provide assistance or refuge for the tens of thou- sands of Zimbabweans fl eeing to your country. In particular,

your health care system, already strained by the AIDS epi- demic, would be quickly overtaxed by refugees streaming in from Zimbabwe infected with cholera. And while your own public has some tolerance for a limited number of ref- ugees, they would oppose accommodating all Zimbabwe- ans who want assistance.