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Chapter Eight: Foreign Policy And War
Review |
This chapter defines foreign policy and examines the characteristics of states, groups, and individuals that shape it, with a particular focus on foreign policies associated with interstate war. It then considers how to manage these wars. The chapter focuses on a wide range of policy instruments: diplomacy and negotiation, deterrence and compellence, alliances, and arms control and disarmament. The chapter concludes with an examination of foreign policies designed to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
1. What is foreign policy?
a) Traditionally, foreign policy refers to how a state interacts with other actors in the global arena, but the analysis of foreign policy is complicated in today’s world by questions like: Who makes foreign policy? What are its objectives? Who are its targets?
b) The realist idea of a single, national interest shaped by external factors does not seem to apply in today’s world. Many domestic groups with diverse interests compete to shape a state’s foreign policy.
2. War and the domestic sources of foreign policy
The global system-level explanations of war discussed in Chapter 6 provide an incomplete picture, often making war seem inevitable. State and individual characteristics provide another dimension to the analysis.
a) State characteristics and war
- Regime type: the ‘democratic peace’
Liberal theorists claim that democracies do not fight one another and that as more countries become democratic, there will be less war.
- Economic systems and war
Marxists believe that capitalist states collide in search of resources and markets.
- Nationalism and public opinion
Nationalism and public opinion can promote war and can be manipulated by governments to rally support.
- Domestic politics: war as a diversion from domestic issues
Wars may be instigated by leaders to turn public attention away from problems at home and unify a country.
b) Decision-Making, Decision-Makers, and War
- The process by which actors make and implement policies can be a source of war. Assuming rationality is questionable, cognitive and affective models examine how individuals may make decisions on the basis of their biases and emotions.
- The bureaucratic and organizational models of decision-making help explain how intra-governmental dynamics influence the policy and sometimes contribute to war.
3. Managing interstate conflict
Actors have a variety of means to resolve differences peacefully and to end wars if they erupt.
a) Diplomacy and Negotiation
Diplomacy seeks to manage interstate disputes by peaceful means. It involves evaluating actors’ goals and capabilities and finding an effective mix of persuasion, compromise, and force to reach mutually acceptable outcomes.
b) Foreign policies based on the use of force
Sometimes, states find it necessary to use force to prevent wars from erupting.
c) Deterrence and survival
- The Elements of Deterrence
- Deterrence involves persuading an adversary that the costs of war are greater than any benefits to be derived. Communication, capability, and credibility are the three key features of successful deterrence.
- During the Cold War, deterrence assumed four forms: immediate, general, primary, and extended.
- Strategic stability and vulnerability are key concerns when trying to create a deterrence relationship.
- In a stable deterrent relationship, neither side feels the need to strike first to gain an advantage.
- Paradoxically, this stability increases the more vulnerable each side is to attack.
- Nuclear Deterrence in the Cold War
- As military technology, especially nuclear delivery systems, evolved during the Cold War, so, too, did deterrence strategies.
- The threat of massive retaliation was favored in the 1950s, when the US maintained nuclear preponderance.
- As a nuclear parity developed, both sides sought a second-strike capability that produced a condition of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) in which a nuclear exchange would surely destroy both sides.
- Deterrence strategies began to favor a flexible response in which the threat of retaliation was more ambiguous.
- Nuclear Deterrence Today
- Although the U.S. still uses deterrence, the strategy is difficult to use against rogue states and terrorists.
d) Compellence and Coercion
- Compellence requires the use of force to make an adversary change its behavior.
- It works by communicating to the adversary that the costs of noncompliance will continue to increase, producing greater pain.
- This is also called coercive diplomacy, for it uses force to bargain for a new, mutually acceptable condition.
e) Alliances
- States make alliances to prevent war and to fight it should it occur, but also to demonstrate cultural or ideological solidarity.
- Evidence suggests, however, that alliances may actually encourage security dilemmas and even war.
f) Arms Control and Disarmament
- Arms control and disarmament are policies to limit arms races and manage weapons levels. They help prevent war by building mechanisms for transparency, security, and trust.
- Arms control and disarmament can be achieved by placing numerical limits on weapons and delivery systems; restricting the development, testing, and deployment of weapons; and limiting the transfer of weapons among countries.
- Such arrangements face technical obstacles because weapons are not easily comparable and actors may not trust each other to cooperate.
4. Foreign policy and the proliferation of WMD
a) States also design foreign policies to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction and to protect themselves against their use.
b) Defensive strategies include missile defense and preemptive war.
c) The US pursued missile defenses through much of the Cold War, most notably, that proposed by President Reagan in 1983 and later dubbed “Star Wars.”
d) In December 2001, the US withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty to pursue missile defenses more aggressively.
e) The US adopted a policy of preemption following the September 11, 2001 attacks. The meaning of preemption was enlarged to include the use of force without evidence of an imminent attack.
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Focus Questions |
Q1 What is "foreign policy"?
A1 There are several ways to think about "foreign policy." One is to regard foreign policy as a complex system of agents and actions intended to alter the behavior of other states. Another is to focus on decision-making and conceive of foreign policy as how leaders respond to factors and conditions external to the state. Yet a third definition focuses on what states do to one another, and foreign policy is defined as the sum of an actor's goals and purposive actions. These definitions lead us to ask who makes foreign policy, what are their objectives, what generates foreign policy, who are the targets of foreign policy, and is making and implementing foreign policy different than making and implementing domestic policy? Realists concentrate on external or system-level factors and try to understand the national interest, whereas liberals concentrate on social and domestic sources of policy such as type of government, public opinion, and the objectives and behavior of bureaucracies. Constructivists look at ideas and ideologies and how these change, and Marxists examine economic forces as sources of policy. At the individual level we may examine leaders and decision-makers, while at the state we look at characteristics like regime type.
Q2 What is the "democratic peace"?
A2 The German liberal philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that republics with representative institutions and citizen participation would be less likely to go to war than authoritarian states. Republics favor peace because peace is in the interest of all citizens, whereas in authoritarian states leaders and profiteers might benefit even if the country suffered defeat. He reasoned that, as more states became liberal republics, the incidence of war would decline, and he advocated the formation of a "pacific union" of liberal republics that would resemble a multilateral nonaggression treaty. Kant's ideas were revived by Michael Doyle in the 1980s and were then studied by large numbers of empirically-oriented scholars. Their major finding was that democracies do not go to war against other democracies, although they are as likely to fight non-democratic states as are other non-democracies. These scholars reasoned that peaceful relations among democracies result from a combination of democratic norms such as respect for individual rights and nonviolent resolution of conflict and democratic institutions such as checks and balances that slow decisions to go to war. Such research depends importantly on how democracies are defined and whether peace is a result of other, highly correlated factors, like the wealth of a state.
Q3 What additional state characteristics are associated with war?
A3 Another state-level factor that foreign-policy theorists study is economic systems, with liberals arguing that capitalism fosters peace and Marxists claiming just the opposite. Liberals see free trade and economic interdependence linked with peace because war is costly, wastes scarce resources, and is bad for trade and business. By contrast, Marxists see capitalism causing war indirectly because it leads to overproduction and underconsumption which in turn lead to imperial expansion that in time results in a war among the imperial powers. Other theorists link nationalism with war. Liberals argue that public opinion is naturally pacific but can be manipulated by unscrupulous leaders like Adolf Hitler, who stir up nationalist and xenophobic feelings among the masses. In fact, in democracies public opinion tends to be divided. The public tends to support leaders during crises, but such support wanes in non-crisis conditions. Finally, some theorists argue that leaders and governments sometimes provoke war to divert public attention from domestic problems, hence the name "diversionary theory of war."
Q4 What models of decision-making can help us clarify the relationship between how decisions are made and the likelihood of war?
A4 There are a number of important models of foreign-policy decision-making. One, favored by realists, is the rational-actor model (RAM) which assumes that decision-makers have clearly defined and ordered preferences. It also assumes that decision-makers gather all information about alternatives and about the situation and then select the policy alternative that promises to maximize their gains and minimize their losses. In reality, decision-makers never have such complete information and often have to decide quickly. They have to choose the better of the relatively few alternatives before them based on incomplete information and, thus, are limited to "bounded rationality." A second model, the cognitive model, involves analyzing perceptual distortions owing to real-life ambiguities in situations in which decisions have to be made under conditions of high stress. Theorists who use the cognitive model focus on the sources of misperception and on decisions based on poor analogies. Decisions based on such cognitive errors sometimes lead to wars that leaders do not desire or cannot win. A third model, the affective model, examines leaders' personality characteristics such as hostility, anger, and insecurity that can produce poor decisions. A fourth model, prospect theory, suggests that leaders are more willing to take risks that may result in war when there is the prospect of gaining something than they are when there is a prospect of losing what they already have. Other theorists focus on the ways in which small groups make decisions since such groups are often important in the foreign-policy process. They examine how such factors as the need for consensus may blur decisions or lead to bad ones. Still other theorists study how conflicts among large bureaucracies (bureaucratic-politics model) can produce bad decisions as well as how bureaucratic organizations produce outputs called standard operating procedures (SOPs) that do not account of unique situations that demand creative responses (organizational-process model).
Q5 What foreign policy strategies are available to political leaders to manage conflict?
A5 Leaders for centuries have employed diplomacy and negotiation to avoid or resolve conflicts. Even during the Italian Renaissance, diplomats were sent abroad to gather information and conduct negotiations. Realists like Hans Morgenthau advocate the use of professional diplomats who avoid being ideological, can understand the ways in which adversaries view the world, appreciate the importance of power, and are willing to reach compromises even with opponents. Diplomats try to use persuasion as well as compromise to achieve favorable outcomes. However, actors sometimes feel they have to use military force to achieve foreign-policy objectives. Two of the most important strategies that employ force are deterrence and compellence. The first involves threatening to retaliate against an adversary if it attacks either one's homeland or that of an ally. For deterrence to succeed an actor must have the capability to retaliate even if an enemy attacks first; the actor's threat must be communicated to the adversary, and must be credible or believable. The second strategy, compellence, involves using some force to make an adversary stop what it is doing or undo what it has already done. In this case, the use of some force combined with the threat of still more puts pressure on an adversary to do what is demanded of it. For compellence to be successful, an adversary must be convinced that if it refuses to comply escalation will occur and it will suffer still greater pain as a result. Another foreign-policy tool that involves force or a threat of force is making alliances. Other policies that aim to manage conflict by reducing the likelihood of war include disarmament and arms control. The former is based on an assumption that the mere possession of arms makes war more likely. The latter, preferred by realists, assumes that certain types of warms are more likely to promote war than others. For example, missiles that are sufficiently accurate to destroy an enemy's ability to retaliate are regarded as very dangerous because they encourage the adversary to use its weapons first in the event of a crisis or risk losing them. |
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