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DAY I: GLOBALIZATION AND WAR

Introductory Post by Zenpundit

Our featured posts today:

“A Foreign Policy Needs a Domestic Policy ” by Bruce Kesler

” Globalization and War” by Doug Macdonald

“Globalization and War” by Simon

GLOBALIZATION AND WAR: BRUCE KESLER

Mr. Bruce Kesler has been active in American politics for forty years. An early member of Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace, Mr. Kesler has also worked for The Foreign Policy Research Institute and today he writes occasionally for The Augusta Free Press, The Democracy Project and The American Enterprise Online .

A Foreign Policy Needs a Domestic Policy

By Bruce Kesler

There is no “foreign policy” separate from domestic policy. There is no “doctrine” separate from its actual implementation. A doctrine is a statement of important guiding principle. But in the absence of integration in a comprehensive winning strategy, it is little more than an inadequate public relations campaign.

In 1971, when working at an eminent foreign policy think tank, I was tasked to analyze the Nixon Doctrine[1]. After assessing reams of commentary that Delphically delved into the administration’s arguments, I concluded that there was no Nixon Doctrine. “Strength through partnership,” I argued, was a public relations coping mechanism designed to change the vocabulary of discourse in order to preserve continuity and flexibility of American foreign policy. I pointed out that it also contained a dangerous component of existential defeatism, meant to rally forces to slow the eventual perceived defeat of the West, rather than a prescriptive guidance to achieve larger goals abroad.

Learned, experienced, and respected elders privately agreed. But they then accepted the Nixon Doctrine as a practical alternative to the strong assault of the McGovernite opposition. To declare that the emperor had no clothes wasn’t realistic or politically sound.

In the context of the domestic political situation faced by Nixon and Kissinger, I didn’t question the need for such a public relations “doctrine,” at least in the short-term. But I did question whether it sowed longer-term seeds that would leave the U.S. self-absorbedly reactive and overly self-restrained.

Being raised in a Dean Acheson world, his message from a December 9, 1964 speech at Amherst College is worth revisiting: “The end sought by our foreign policy, the purpose for which we carry on relations with foreign states, is as I have said, to preserve and foster an environment in which free societies may exist and flourish. Our policies and actions must be tested by whether they contribute to or detract from achievement of this end. They need no other justification or moral or ethical embellishment.”

This was nicely followed at the time by the comments of Paul Warnke and Leslie Gelb, on the consequences of failing to deal with foreign threats: “Our own society could become a cloistered citadel of fear and repression. These events would, in turn, deeply challenge our lives and our security.” The domestic consequence of a non-engaged, reactively-protective foreign policy would eventually lead to domestic policies averse to Americans’ cherished liberties and comforts and weaken our determination to make their defense our primary goal.

With the partial exception of President Reagan’s revival of an assertive foreign policy, America spent much of the last 30 years coasting with veiled eyes as the threat to U.S. and global security brewed in the Middle East. For most of us, September 11 tore that veil away.

For 60 years, Commentary magazine educated the vital center in America about present and potential dangers from an inertial, outdated 1930s liberalism and from consequent excesses. Its current issue continues that invaluable service, publishing a symposium on the Bush Doctrine by three dozen of the most penetrating minds in foreign policy.

The contributors agree that the Bush Doctrine is about preempting potentially disastrous threats through force and preventing future ones by building more benign democratic states. They also agree that there are such threats.

Disagreements are expressed over the concept of preemption, the practicality of democratization, Iraq as a proper location for application of the doctrine, and the Bush administration’s policies toward Iran and North Korea. As to Iraq—thanks to 20/20 hindsight—most agree that there have been some serious failings in the planning and execution of the war. However, they agree on little else, one adding some more salt, another a bit more pepper, another a dollop of honey to the mix. All agree that the outcome in Iraq, more promising to some than others, will determine the ultimate judgment of the Bush Doctrine.

Richard Perle, a key player in all things Iraq, minces few words:

“Notwithstanding the caricature of the Bush Doctrine, portrayed by its critics as a menacing unilateralism serving a crusade to impose democracy by force, Bush has correctly understood that the dictatorships and autocracies of the Middle East are the soil in which lethal extremism and the passion for holy war have taken root and spread. He is under no illusion that democratic reform will come quickly or easily, or that it can be imposed from outside by military means. In pressing for reform, he has stood up against the counsel of inaction, self-designated as sophistication, from foreign offices around the world—including those of our European and ‘moderate’ Arab allies—and rather too often even from our own diplomatic establishment. Such counsel would leave the dictators in place for as long as they can cling to power or, worse still, have us collaborate with them and their secret services, or negotiate for their voluntary restraint, in the vain and by now discredited hope that we can thereby purchase safety for our citizens.”

Another longtime observer, Richard Pipes, comments, “I do not recall a period in modern history when United States foreign policy has been under such relentless attack from abroad and at home as in the administration of George W. Bush.”

Pipes’s next sentence, at first, struck me as too partisan: “At home, the criticism is mainly inspired by Democratic frustration over Republican electoral triumphs and the feeling that the Republicans’ aggressive foreign policy is what makes them vulnerable.”

But then, Senate Democrat Minority Leader Harry Reid pulled the U.S. Senate into secret session to demand, “a searching and comprehensive investigation about how the Bush Administration brought this country to war.”

In doing so, Reid ensured that November 1, 2005, would forever be remembered as the day that the Democrat Party officially declared war on the war in Iraq. They’re now repeating their 1972 game plan of openly coalescing around eviscerating the war policy for which they’ve lost guts.

As Henry Kissinger reflected back in August, “America’s emotional exhaustion with the [Vietnam] war and the domestic travail of Watergate had reduced economic and military aid to Vietnam by two-thirds, and Congress prohibited military support, even via airpower, to the besieged ally.”

Neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz reflects, “If we are eventually beaten back, it will not be by the terrorist insurgency over there but by the political insurgency here at home.” Daniel Henninger, of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, chimes in, “The U.S. and Western European media are together the most potent driver of doctrinaire pacifism since the idea emerged with force in the twentieth century.”

Paul Johnson, as befits such a sweeping scholar of the entire history of religions and countries, concludes, “We must ask ourselves this question: how much more fearful and violent would our world be if America did not exist?”

Yet, what’s missing from the Commentary symposium is an in-depth examination of whether the Bush Doctrine is a blueprint for action, or a formulation for reactive coping in the post-9/11 world.

While far more assertive than Clinton’s national security strategy, I contend that the Bush Doctrine is still excessively reactive and doesn’t present a sufficiently aggressive blueprint for ultimately winning the war against terror, its state sponsors, and the threat of WMD’s. Moreover, even the Nixon Doctrine may have been more forward-looking.

So what’s needed? On the domestic front, far more is required to strengthen our foreign policy, for no such strategy can succeed absent a strong domestic policy. In turn, the self-strengthening domestic policies must be directly linked to our specific foreign policy goals:

To relieve the downward pressure of oil dependence on the American economy, and to free ourselves to more forthrightly confront the Saudi and other Arab League sycophants of Islamic extremism, we must go full tilt into conservation and alternate fuel technologies.

As seen from the generally unfocused thinking among the Commentary contributors, those friendly toward President Bush’s objectives need a more focused and effective policy to support. That can be found not in caving to his Democratic critics, but in pursuing an even more assertive doctrine, integrated within a more comprehensive strategy and execution.

President Bush is not running for reelection. And even though his poll ratings may suffer from a more assertive foreign policy, his legacy—of defending and advancing freedom—will not. And most importantly, rather than simply lurching from coping slogan to coping slogan, America will lastingly benefit.

Footnotes:

1.The 1969 Wake Island statement of the Nixon Doctrine might be summarized as “strength through partnership,” as the editor of my American Enterprise Online piece changed my draft. By 1971, under the pressure of domestic and international politics, it had migrated to “negotiation through strength and partnership,” the “weaker” formulation I was addressing in 1971 and in my piece. It’s not directly relevant to the thrust of the piece, so the editor’s change in my text can stand. However, this change in formulation is important as an indicator of the difference within a “doctrine’ over time in response to changing conditions, and to understanding that a “doctrine” is known through and only as good as its implementing strategy. Both the presentation and the comprehensiveness of Nixon’s “doctrine’ were superior to that of Bush, but both may fall on the pyre of Democrat scorched earth politics and war weariness

Editorial Note: Mr. Kesler’s article is being cross-posted at The American Enterprise Online. .

GLOBALIZATION AND WAR:DOUG MACDONALD

Dr. Doug Macdonald is Associate Professor of Political Science at Colgate University and author of Adventures in Chaos: American Intervention for Reform in the Third World and is an expert on American Defense and Terrorism policies, particularly as they relate to Asia. Professor Macdonald has held a number of distinguished positions including Director of the International Relations Program at Colgate University and Senior Research Fellow at The Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway.

Globalization and War

by Doug Macdonald

I am going to concentrate my remarks on the question of Globalization and terrorism, as that is the main means of conflict that seems to have emerged since the end of the Cold War, and the acceleration of trends that had been developing for decades that we now call Globalization.

Let me begin with a working definition. Globalization has been defined in various ways, but to me it is the spread of neoliberal economic and political reforms, the diffusion of new technologies of information, especially the internet, the lowering of barriers to trade through the WTO and other international institutions, and the internationalization of capital. Taken together, this sweeping tide of change is both exhilarating and, to the vulnerable, frightening.

The reason that these changes are unsettling in Third World countries is that they disrupt old patterns of behavior and it is almost impossible, as in remote areas in the past, to avoid their effects. It is not a coincidence that many Islamist terrorists, not all, are from rural areas, or are newly arrived to urban life. These urban cultural challenges to established value systems can lead to violence, and lead minority groups in some countries to rebel. Globalization in this regard is not seen as an increase in opportunities or the hope of a better future, but as a destructive force that is destroying traditional ways of life. Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” inherent in industrialization is not appreciated everywhere, as a concept or as a process.

Some of these movements are ironically partly the result of democratization, the expressed desire for which has been spreading around the world. Neoliberal political reforms decentralize power in the political realm and weaken the authority of already weak states. In the area of the world I am most interested in, Southeast Asia, in the newly democratic countries of the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand, there is a tremendous distrust of the military and other security forces because of the recent dictatorships that has hampered the war on terror in those countries. It is also worth noting that these three countries have the most troublesome terrorist problems in the region. Countries that have sufficient economic “safety nets” and relatively strong states, such as Singapore and Malaysia, have relatively slight terror problems.

Let me illustrate with an example of how Globalization-driven reforms can have the unintended consequence of creating violent conflict. In Thailand several years ago, the government decided to push through educational reforms, specifically increasing the number of years of schooling mandated by the state from six to nine years. This was done for two primary reasons. First, the change was meant to help reduce the educational and economic disparities between rural and urban areas, the former being far behind in development. Second, it was decided that if Thailand was to become more competitive in the global marketplace, it would need better educated citizens. Their models for reform appear to have been earlier programs along these lines by Singapore and Malaysia.

A good, progressive, modernizing neoliberal reform, right? The problem was that in the heavily Muslim areas along the Malaysian border, the population – that speaks a different language, and is ethnically Malay and overwhelmingly Muslim – resented the Thai-Buddhist nationalist-secularist curriculum. When the government began closing religious schools in those areas that preached separatism, in January, 2004 tensions spilled over into violence. Since January, 2004 over 1,000 people have been killed. Twenty-seven percent of the attacks have been on educational institutions. The insurgency, perhaps the worst in the region, has no chance of overthrowing the government – Muslims are only 4% of the population. But it is causing numbers of deaths, widespread Buddhist flight from the affected areas, and consuming an inordinate amount of government time and resources. All because of a reform that by neoliberal, secularist standards was both helpful and just.

This is not an invitation to throw away Globalization, even if we could. But it may never lead to the better world it promises if those of us that support it have to shoot our way into dominance. We should not make Marx’s mistake when he saw the disruptive effects of early industrialization in Europe as capitalism’s death throes rather than its birth pangs. But we need to design these changes in more sensible and intelligent ways, and realize that we have a selling job to do, even at the lowest levels of the socio-economic totem pole. Perhaps most there. If we charge ahead with a “bottom line,”macro-economic standard only, we can expect more conflict and terroristic wars. We may have to face the fact that neoliberal decentralization in the form of democracy may be the best long term strategy, but can have disruptive and even catastrophic effects in the short run. I see no easy solution to the problem, but it deserves more attention than it is getting, especially from economists.

GLOBALIZATION AND WAR: SIMON WORLD

Simon is the Hong Kong based, anonymous proprietor of the highly regarded and enormously popular Simon World blog. Simon’s timely postings, steady output and incisive, crisp, commentary on Asian and world affairs have won him many devoted readers in an ever more competitive blogosphere.

Globalization and war

by Simon

The upcoming WTO conference in Hong Kong has everyone on edge. Hong Kong’s security forces are preparing for the inevitable anti-trade protests. The governments’ participating are inching towards an agreement, but it is by no means certain. Hong Kong’s government frets it will play host to a giant farce, with nothing agreed and everyone’s time wasted. Yet the WTO represents one of the greatest economic achievements of the modern era: trade liberalization. And Hong Kong embodies the free trade spirit better than almost any place on Earth.

Can an economically integrated and trading world go to war? It certainly managed to in 1914. China’s ongoing stirring of nationalism, especially against the Japanese and Taiwan, serves a political purpose that is at odds with the economic benefits trade and investment between these places. On the other hand, China has become in the naughties what Japan was in the eighties to America – the trade and economic bogey-man. There are plenty on both sides of that fence that can envisage war between two of the world’s biggest trading partners. It might not be good for Wal-Mart but a confrontation over Taiwan is a possibility.

And yet globalization could well act as a mitigating circumstance. Will China’s rulers, for all their bluster, squander the value of their massive holdings of US government debt, the massive benefits that export-led growth has brought to China’s economy? Certainly one consequence of globalization is it has made war more costly. Not just first order costs, but broader economic costs as well. Upping the costs and reducing the benfits of going to war makes globalization a force for moderation and peace.

But wait, there’s more. The flipside of this is the globalization of war and especially the global market for military weapons and technology. Pakistan made a business of exporting nuclear technology. It is widely thought China has exported military technology to unsavory regimes, and North Korea is famous for its missile exports. So in that regard globalization has become a force for war.

There’s more again. China’s opening up to the world through globalization has seen it create a vigorous appetite for commodities and energy. With its leadership primarily focused on economic growth at almost any cost, combined with a “flexible” ideology and foreign policy, has meant China has formed alliances and invested in far flung corners of the world that are inherently unstable or alien to liberal democracies. There are examples from the Middle East, Central Europe and Africa that all fit into this category. Whereas it could be argued that America’s foreign policy is not solely or even primarily driven by economic concerns, China’s is and that leads to allies you wouldn’t want to take home to your Mum. Chalk it up as another minus for globalization.

But I’m not here to finish on a pessimistic note. I am a firm believer in free trade and globalization for both its economic benefits, especially to the poor, and as a driver of a more peaceful and safer world. The globalization of culture is often characterized as the “Disneyfication” (or McDonaldisation, or Hollywodisation, whichever American cultural icon you choose) of the world and is derided as a “bad thing”. But these companies and groups provide products that are popular with consumers the world over. No-one is forced to visit Disneyland, or eat a Big Mac, or watch a movie. But people want to. Moreover America remains the favoured destination for immigrants and would-be immigrants the world over, including in China. The American dream is a global one. This success sometimes drives envy, but America’s prosperity is widely admired. The foundations of that success? Liberal capitalist democracy. If globalization can bring images and ideas of liberal capitalist democracy to those who live without it, it can only serve to drive people to aspire to such a society. America’s model is not the only one. But it is the biggest and most successful (and note that I’m an Australian). As people grow richer in countries like China, they will start demanding more secure property rights, rule of law, less tolerance of corruption, more say in how they are governed. Globalization makes countries richer while at the same time constantly exposing populations to the most successful economic and political model the world has devised.

As globalization brings economic growth, it will bring political growth. Countries that are economically successful and growing do not, as a rule, go to war. In a world where there are numerous flashpoints and delicate balances to be maintained, globalization is a key force pushing towards peace. It is that complicated. And that simple.

THE ZENPUNDIT ROUNDTABLE:
ON GLOBALIZATION AND WAR

It is my great pleasure to announce the start of a symposium designed to examine our time as an age of globalization and war.

On Wednesday November 9th I am turning Zenpundit over to a special group of invited academic experts, military veterans, experienced journalists and highly regarded bloggers who will be debating the state of the world and the war we find ourselves in today and perhaps tomorrow. The issues are deep but the range and of the participants is wide and their prose is sharp. I am certain you will find their arguments as challenging and interesting to read as I have these last few days.

The Zenpundit Roundtable:

Austin Bay

Bruce Kesler of The Democracy Project

Professor Doug Macdonald of Colgate University

Simon of Simon World

Professor Sam Crane of Williams College and The Useless Tree

Chester of The Adventures of Chester

Professor RJ Rummel of the University of Hawaii and Democratic Peace

Paul D. Kretkowski of Beacon

Posts will appear in groups of three over the next three days each with a concluding post from me as the host and moderator of the symposium. Comments from the readers, as always, are welcome and encouraged. Many of the authors will be cross-posting and linking for further discussion on their own blogs as well.

“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”

John Milton

“To speak his thoughts is every freeman’s right, in peace and war, in council and in fight.”

Homer, The Iliad