Is the world pushing back?
In his article ''The world pushes back'' (Ideas, March 23), Robert Pape argued that no matter how the war in Iraq turns out, countries around the world will increasingly engage in ''soft balancing'' against the United States: They will ''use international institutions, economic leverage, and diplomatic maneuvering to frustrate American intentions.'' Ideas asked five leading thinkers on foreign affairs for their responses.
By Globe Staff, 4/06/03
JOSEF JOFFE:
Once the United States was no longer contained by the Soviet Union, the balancing against Mr. Big described by Robert Pape was bound to happen. Yet other countries cannot balance against the US in the ways of yore-through formal alliances or even war. So they have gone for surreptitious balancing, trying to enmesh Gulliver in the ropes of institutional constraints like the United Nations or the International Criminal Court.
Of course, great powers abhor international institutions they cannot dominate. Both Clinton and Bush understood only too well the realpolitik thrust of the ICC: to scrutinize interventions as a way to constrain and deter US military forays abroad.
Robert Pape is a bit too sanguine about the clout Europe, et al., can muster against Mr. Big, for the balancing game can be played by everybody. Look at how the US mobilized 18 European nations against the Franco-German claim to European leadership. Unlike Gulliver, the US has a lot more chips in this game: strategic, economic, diplomatic. Nobody really wants to tangle with a country that has the richest market and the best technology. The only thing missing is diplomatic skill. "Rummy" Rumsfeld is probably the smartest defense chief since McNamara, but a winner of hearts and minds he is not.
The edge of vast power must be softened by the balm of trust; this is the great problem the US now faces.
Josef Joffe is the editor of the German weekly Die Zeit.
MAX BOOT:
R obert Pape is probably right that US predominance leads to some "soft balancing" against us, but so what? The consequences that he cites-European obstructionism at the UN, or buying oil with euros-are not very frightening. Certainly less frightening that the prospect of a world full of terrorists and rogue regimes armed with weapons of mass destruction. It is this fear that has led to military action in Iraq. And if Operation Iraqi Freedom can end Saddam Hussein's threat and deter imitators, it will have been worth it, even at the expense of increased friction with a few fair-weather friends.
In fact our resolute action in Iraq may wind up winning us many friends who want to be on the side of the strong. This is known as "bandwagoning," and it is the opposite, in international relations terminology, of "balancing." We see this phenomenon occurring now, with the United States picking up support from European and Arab states for Gulf War II. Eighteen European states have signed letters supporting the US policy (as opposed to only three that oppose it-Germany, France, and Belgium.) Meanwhile, Iraq's neighbors, such as Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, have given important cooperation to the US offensive.
Max Boot is Olin senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of "The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power" (Basic).
JOSEPH S. NYE:
A merican preeminence in the world rests on our hard and soft power. Hard power-the capacity to coerce others-is based on our economic carrots and military sticks. Soft power is the ability to attract, to get our way because others want to follow us.
France, Germany, China, and Russia could not prevent the United States from going to war in Iraq. But by depriving us of the legitimacy of a second Security Council resolution, they certainly made it more expensive. Outside the UN, diplomacy and peace movements turned the global debate from the sins of Saddam to the threat of American empire. This reduced our soft power, and also made it difficult for allied democracies to provide bases and support, cutting into our hard power as well.
Polls show that, across the world, opinions of the US have dropped dramatically in the past two years. Let us hope that the new unilateralists who focus solely on our military strength learn to stop squandering America's soft power.
Joseph S. Nye is dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and author of "The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone" (Oxford)
ANDREW MORAVCSIK:
Robert Pape's insightful analysis hits the mark when he observes that our allies oppose us not because of our military might, but because of the purposes that seem to motivate its current use. The purported link between Hussein and al-Qaeda is thin. The administration's plans for the postwar use of Iraqi oil are as murky as the substance itself. And the administration has now disowned three pieces of evidence it presented to the Security Council in support of Resolution 1441-in at least one case because the item reportedly rested on falsified evidence. The credibility of US policy is shot and the UN process did its job by alerting global opinion to the weakness of the case. The only way to re-establish credibility is for the United States to move back to multilateralism.
Pape's essay typifies a trend among scholars of US foreign policy. Where many once proclaimed the primacy of "hard" military power, the post-war world has converted most to the liberal conviction that "soft" power-public opinion, trade, civilian foreign aid, and international law-matter just as much. When historians look back in a half-century, they may well record this as the enduring lesson of the current crisis.
Andrew Moravcsik is professor of government and director of the European Union Program at Harvard University.
ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER:
The United States, or more precisely President Bush, still has a historic opportunity to avoid the fate Robert Pape outlines so grimly. Like Senator Arthur Vandenberg in 1945, George W. Bush could publicly acknowledge his conversion to the credo that US security and prosperity can only be assured by genuinely leading through international institutions, not against or despite them. That means actually accepting restraints in some areas in return for cooperation in others. It means playing by the same rules as everyone else.
In the aftermath of the war in Iraq, or perhaps even during the war, should it be prolonged, such a conversion would require President Bush to go back to the United Nations and seek backing for US actions. It would also require him to make clear that he is committed henceforth to working through the UN to address global threats, and perhaps even to propose reforms and amendments to UN practices and procedures to make it a more effective institution.
President Bush is no stranger to conversions. Would that a conversion in his public life could lead him to embrace the multilateral faith of 1945, long a source of our strength in the world and a reflection of our deepest values.
Anne-Marie Slaughter is dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
ROBERT PAPE REPLIES:
Soft balancing" against the United States is a serious problem, but with all due respect to Josef Joffe, it is not destiny. After the collapse of the Soviet Union there was little serious opposition to the American use of force against Iraq in 1991, Bosnia in 1995, Kosovo in 1999, and Afghanistan in 2001.
The reason for today's soft balancing is Bush's strategy of unilateral preventive war. For the first time, the US has adopted a national strategy to conquer countries that are not attacking us or our allies, at a time of our choosing, whether other states agree with our policies or not. The US is the world's most powerful state. The more aggressively and unilaterally we act, the more our intentions will be viewed with suspicion. That Iraq has the world's second largest oil reserves makes matters worse.
Major powers had six months to jump on America's bandwagon. They didn't do so. Max Boot asks, "So what?" In the case of Iraq, the answer is that soft balancing created cover for Turkey and Saudi Arabia to avoid deploying heavy American ground forces on their soil. As I write, American troops in Iraq are paying the most immediate price-greater blood and treasure to conquer Iraq with a smaller army.
After Iraq, the US should mend fences, but it will take more than cheap talk to overcome the damage that Iraq is doing to our reputation for benign intent. Anne-Marie Slaughter suggests renewing ties to the United Nations. I agree and would go further. The US should win the war and then give control of the Iraqi government-including oil contracts-to the UN Security Council. This would be a first, meaningful step to regain our image as a good superpower.
