Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Louder Talk and Still Too Small a Stick

Tags

alliances, allies, Biden, China, Constitution, defense budget, Finland, Lippmann Gap, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear umbrella, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Sweden, Taiwan, Ted Galen Carpenter, treaties, Ukraine, Walter Lippmann

The foreign policy headlines have been coming so fast-and-furiously these days that they’re obscuring a dramatic worsening of a big, underlying danger: The dramatic expansion spearheaded lately by President Biden in America’s defense commitments that’s been unaccompanied so far by a comparable increase in the U.S. military budget. The result: A further widening of an already worrisome “Lippmann Gap” – a discrepancy between America’s foreign policy goals and the means available to achieve them that was prominently identified by the twentieth century journalist, philosopher, and frequent advisor to Presidents Walter Lippmann.

The existence of such a gap of any substantial size is troubling to begin with because it could wind up ensnaring the nation in conflicts that it’s not equipped to win – or even achieve stalemate. As I wrote as early as March, 2021, a Gap seemed built in to Mr. Biden’s approach to foreign policy from the beginning, since he made clear that America’s goals would be much more ambitious than under the avowedly America First-type presidency of Donald Trump, but also signaled that no big increase in America’s defense budget was in the offing.

Since then, Biden aides have expressed a willingness to boost defense budgets to ensure that they keep up with inflation – and therefore ensure that price increases don’t actually erode real capabilities. But no indications have emerged that funding levels will be sought that increase real capabilities much. Congressional Republicans say they support this kind of spending growth to handle new contingencies, but the numbers they’ve put forward so far seem significantly inadequate to the task.

That’s largely because most of them have strongly supported Biden decisions greatly to broaden U.S. the foreign military challenges that America has promised to meet. As for the President, he’s specifically:

>not only supported the bids of Finland and Sweden to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but stated that the United States would “deter and confront any aggression while Finland and Sweden are in this accession process.” In other words, Mr. Biden both wants to (a) increase the number of countries that the United States is treaty-bound to defend to the point of exposing its territory to nuclear attack, and (b) extend that nuclear umbrella even before the two countries become legally eligible for such protection via Congress’ approval. It’ll be fascinating to see whether any lawmakers other than staunch non-interventionists like Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul question the Constitutionality of this position; and

>just this morning declared that he would use U.S. military force to defend Taiwan if it’s attacked by China even no defense treaty exists to cover this contingency, either, and even though, again, there’s been no Congressional approval of (or even debate on) this decision.

This Biden statement, moreover, lends credence to an argument just advanced by my good friend Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute – that although Ukraine has not yet joined NATO officially, ad therefore like Taiwan lacks an official security guarantee by the United States, it may have acquired de facto membership, and an equally informal promise of alliance military assistance whenever its security is threatened going forward.

As a result, Ted contends, “the Biden administration has erased the previous distinction between Alliance members and nonmembers” – and set a precedent that could help interventionist presidents intervene much more easily in a much greater number of foreign conflicts without Congressional authorization, let alone public support, than is presently the case.

To be sure, lots of legal and procedural issues have long muddied these waters. For example, the existence of a legally binding treaty commitment doesn’t automatically mean that U.S. leaders will or even must act on it. Even America’s leading security agreements (with the NATO members, Japan, and South Korea) stipulate that the signatories are simply required to meet attacks on each other in accordance with their (domestic) constitutional provisions for using their military forces.  (At the same time, breaking treaties like these, all else equal, isn’t exactly a formula for winning friends, influencing people, and foreign policy success generally. As a result, they shouldn’t be entered into lightly.)

Further complicating matters: America’s constitutional processes for war and peace decisions have long been something of a mess. The Constitution, after all, reserves to Congress the power to “declare war: and authorizes the legislature to “provide for the common Defense” and to “raise and support Armies.” Yet it also designates the President as the “Commander in Chief” of the armed forces.

There’s been a strong consensus since Founding Father James Madison made the argument that limiting the authority to declare war to Congress couldn’t and didn’t mean that the President couldn’t act to repel sudden attacks on the United States – that interpretation could be disastrous in a fast-moving world. But other than that, like most questions stemming from the document’s “separation of powers” approach to governing, the Constitution’s treatment of “war powers” is best (and IMO diplomatically) described as what the scholar Edward S. Corwin called a continuing “invitation to struggle.”

Undoubtedly, this struggle has resulted over time in a tremendous net increase in the Executive Branch’s real-world war powers. But the legal issues still exist and tend to wax in importance when presidential assertiveness leads to conflicts that turn unpopular.

I should specify that personally, I’m far from opposed yet to NATO membership for Finland and Sweden. Indeed, their militaries are so strong that their membership seems likely to strengthen the alliance on net, which would be a welcome change from NATO’s (and Washington’s) habit of welcoming countries whose main qualification seems to be their military vulnerability (like the Baltic states) and tolerating long-time members that have been inexcusable deadbeats (like Germany).

Similarly, as I’ve written, because American policymakers recklessly allowed the country’s semiconductor manufacturers to fall behind a Taiwanese company technologically, I now believe that Taiwan needs to be seen as a vital U.S. national security interest and deserves a full U.S. defense guarantee.

Yet I remain worried that the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy risks plunging the United States into a conflict with Russia that could escalate to the nuclear level on behalf of a country that (rightly) was never seen as a vital U.S. interest during the Cold War.

So my main concern today doesn’t concern the specifics of these latest Biden security commitment decisions. Instead, it concerns the overall pattern that’s emerging of talking loudly and carrying too small a stick – and ignoring the resulting Lippmann Gap widening. However Americans and their leaders come out on handling these individual crises, they need to agree that the responses  urgently need to close the Gap overall. Otherwise, it’s hard to imagine satisfactorily dealing with any of them on their own.

Advertisement

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: NATO, Ukraine, and the Primrose Path

Tags

Austria, Finland, Finlandization, John Mearsheimer, NATO, NATO expansion, neutrality, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine invasion, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin

Lots of attention has focused lately (and rightly, IMO) on whether the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) membership ranks smack up against the Russian border wound up needlessly provoking Russian countermoves that have culminated in the invasion of Ukraine. Generally neglected but also important is examining the conflict and its runup from another angle: whether the West’s post-Cold War policies wound up leading Ukraine’s recent leaders down a primrose path, creating both unrealistic expectations about the alliance’s commitment to that country’s defense, and therefore equally unrealistic expectations in Kyiv about the best options for living on acceptable terms with Russia.

This neglect is surprising, to say the least, because so much evidence for that proposition is available from sources that can’t sanely be dismissed as apologists for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, or as head-in-the-sand isolationists. (The latter accusation has been leveled against, notably, political scientist John Mearsheimer – who made this argument at length here back in 2015.) In fact, some of the most compelling material supporting the primrose path case comes from NATO itself. Just look at this document posted by the alliance from last month. Here are some highlights:

>NATO has permitted Ukraine to “actively contribute” (that is, fight alongside NATO forces), in “peace-support operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, NATO’s two missions in Afghanistan, namely the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Resolute Support Mission, the NATO Training Mission in Iraq and the maritime operations Active Endeavour and Ocean Shield. It currently supports NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR) and continues to provide information in support of NATO’s maritime situational awareness in and around the Black Sea [which also borders Russia].”

>In this vein, “NATO has increased its presence in the Black Sea and stepped up maritime cooperation with Ukraine and Georgia.”

>”Furthermore, Ukraine is building capacity and interoperability through participation in the NATO Response Force as well as through the participation in exercises such as NATO’s flagship annual collective cyber defence exercise ‘Cyber Coalition’”.

>”Given this longstanding support and significant contributions to its operations, NATO offered Ukraine in June 2020 the status as Enhanced Opportunity Partner (EOP). This status works as a facilitator, providing Ukraine preferential access to NATO’s interoperability toolbox, including exercises, training, exchange of information and situational awareness….”

>”NATO supports Ukraine in building capabilities and interoperability through dedicated working groups, such as the Joint Working Group on Defence Reform, programmes….”

>”NATO has significantly stepped up its practical assistance to Ukraine following the illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea by Russia.”

This rhetoric and these concrete measures, moreover, have come in the context of the alliance’s landmark declaration at its 2008 summit in Romania that, “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO.  We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.”

So leaving aside how Putin might have interpreted these developments, it seems reasonable that they fueled Ukraine’s leaders’ refusal virtually up to the last pre-invasion minute to entertain seriously Moscow’s demand that it rethink joining NATO. (Indeed, in 2019, Ukraine enshrined this goal in its constitution.)

After all, not only did NATO endorse its bid. It was already treating Ukraine, and especially its military, as a member in numerous – and tangible – respects.

Ukraine’s leaders are of course ultimately responsible for their own decisions. And the country’s valiant (and so far seemingly pretty effective) resistance, along with the impact on Russia of western sanctions, may well wind up preserving its right to take whatever national security steps it wishes – including joining NATO.

But when I look at the fates of European countries that have been willing to accept limits on their sovereignty – namely Finlandized and prosperous Finland, and neutralized and prosperous Austria – and compare them with the death and destruction being suffered by Ukraine, I can’t help but wonder if the alliance should have actually focused on convincing Kyiv that discretion can be the better part of valor.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Who Really Lost Ukraine

Tags

Austria, Baltic states, Barack Obama, Biden, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Eastern Europe, Finland, Finlandization, foreign policy establishment, geography, George Kennan, George W. Bush, NATO, neutralization, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Thomas Friedman, Ukraine

When it comes to explaining a big and possibly the biggest reason that Ukraine is under apparently full-scale attack by Russia, why it faces a foreseeable future of major casualties and widespread destruction (especially if it mounts a full-scale resistance), and why a longer-term future of heavy-handed dominance by Russia is surely in store, the late George Kennan put it best.

That’s no surprise, since Kennan was one of the most learned, most rigorous, and most practical minds ever to analyze the foreign policies not only of the United States but of Russia and the old Soviet Union. And as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman reminded his readers Monday, Kennan was one of the few voices warning why the 1990s U.S. decisions to push the bounds of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) right up to the Russian border were practically bound to bring tragic consequences. The full Kennan remarks (given in a telephone interview) are well worth reading, but to me, by far the most crucial point was this:

“We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a lighthearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs. What bothers me is how superficial and ill informed the whole Senate debate was.”

He’s entirely correct about the cavalier nature of the Capitol Hill decision-making needed to formalize this treaty modification – the bloviating and posturing and sloganeering about defending freedom and deterring aggression and new world orders that were completely disconnected from the iron realities of brute power and immutable geography.

But this particular list of culprits was far too short, because it should have included the entirely of the Clinton administration (and the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, which successfully pushed for new rounds of NATO expansion), along with virtually all of the academics, think tankers, pundit, and mainstream media foreign policy and national security reporters making up the U.S. foreign policy establishment.

Moreover, at least as important today, the quality of decision-making and analysis inside or outside the federal government remains just as unhinged from both the facts on the ground in Europe – not to mention the skepticism about the establishment’s judgement and competence that’s clearly shaping public opinion at home. 

As a result, Ukraine is now paying the price of their pig-headed refusal (which President Biden has so far continued) to help devise security arrangements in Eastern Europe that actually reflected the national interests (or lack thereof) of the major parties, and the real current and likely future power balances in the region.

It’s entirely possible that neutralizing or Finlandizing the former Soviet bloc countries and regions that used to be part of the Soviet Union itself (in particular Ukraine and the Baltic states) would have only fed Moscow’s appetite for further gains, and/or returned those lands to their former state of dictatorial rule and economic stagnation.

But it’s also entirely possible that their experiences could have mirrored those of Austria (neutralized in 1955, during the height of the Cold War) and, yes, famously Finlandized Finland. Both are prosperous democracies whose well-being seems not to have been affected in the slightest by their lack of total freedom of manuever in foreign policy.

What’s most important to recall is that this option was never even seriously entertained by American leaders or their official and unofficial advisers. For they’ve been living in a fantasy world dominated by international law, unfettered national self-determination, global public opinion, “soft power,” and the like. These myths conveniently relieved them of the need to set priorities, call for spending anything close to the major costs required of their ambitions, or preparing for of the sobering risks.

Meanwhile, America’s high degree of intrinsic security (thanks to geography) and prosperity (thanks to a combination of abundant resources and a dynamic economic system) just as conveniently goes far toward relieving both the establishment and country at large of experiencing the full consequences of commitments glibly and (using Kennan’s language) lightheartedly made. 

Except that American leaders haven’t left the nation entirely off the hook. That’s because although the Biden administration in recent weeks hasn’t deployed remotely the kinds of forces able to defend possible future Russian targets like the Baltics etc. from Russian attack, it has deployed more than enough to boost the risk of direct encounters with Russian forces by accident. (The Trump administation took some similar steps, too.) Given the size of both countries’ nuclear arsenals, and the clearcut treaty commitments Washington has made to new NATO members like the Baltics, the results could be nothing less than the stuff of armageddon novels – or a backdown for the West that could truly reverberate globally and kneecap its credibility.

Although Ukraine seems destined to become a Russian satellite, saving the Baltics and other now independent former Soviet republics from such a fate may still be possible. Before this Russian invasion, because many are now NATO members, it seemed like a bridge too far for American politics for Washington to offer to neutralize or Finlandize them.

In the wake of a completed Russian victory in Ukraine (and yes, the occupation may prove Afghanistan-like for Moscow, but that’s far from a certainty), this idea may move up to the status of the best of several lousy options. Certainly it’s the one that better aligns American goals with American capabilities than what Kennan aptly described as Washington’s now increasingly hollow-looking support for their full sovereignty – not to mention an approach less likely to trigger an even wider, far more dangerous war, either by design or accident.