Opinio Juris

We greatly appreciate all of the wonderful postings this week on America Between the Wars and thank all of those who participated. We wanted to conclude by touching on two of the issues raised in the discussion. One is the question Matt Waxman raised concerning the future of the U.S. political debate about democracy promotion. The other is Roger Alford’s recognition of the continuities between the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, which also implies speculating about policy continuities looking forward (a point raised by Ken Anderson who was kind enough to post from his trip to Paris).

Matt is quite right to wonder about the future of democracy promotion, especially given the political taint it has assumed as Bush has talked about the so-called “freedom agenda.” Many Democratic politicians and activists seem to forget that this was once their issue, not only in the 1992 campaign and during the Clinton years, but from Wilson through Roosevelt and Truman to JFK. Too many now see democracy promotion as a George W. Bush invention, and a number of people we interviewed, for example, Madeleine Albright, are quite upset that the war in Iraq has given democracy promotion such a bad name for those on the political left. In the early 1990s, there was also the euphoria associated with the collapse of communism, and the flourishing of democracy not just in Central and Eastern Europe, but in countries such as Mongolia and Namibia. As Matt notes, the international trends are less favorable today.

If the Democrats prevail in November, winning both the presidency and larger majorities in Congress (as polls now suggest), some will be tempted to adopt an “Anything but Bush” attitude as the Bush team did with Clinton policies in 2001. We hope they will avoid doing so – especially when it concerns democracy promotion and the place of liberal values in American foreign policy. To be sure, we must learn from Bush’s hubris and failures: there are far better ways to promote democracy other than overthrowing regimes. And while it is hard to see how a Democrat could define a progressive foreign policy that was purely realist in outlook, it will be tougher to raise democracy promotion as a central concern in this political environment. Matt is right to point to the institutional deficiencies in U.S. foreign policy in helping to do build civil society elsewhere, but it is also politically difficult because unlike holding elections, the institution-building takes time, and that means clear payoffs are way down the road, often after administrations have left office (witness Jimmy Carter’s efforts in Latin America, for example).

As Matt notes, McCain has raised the notion of a League of Democracies (which seems to build on the Clinton administration’s Community of Democracies). The League, however, seems largely focused on having countries with shared values come together to deal with common challenges. So far, at least, it seems not as focused on promoting democracy where it doesn’t exist. But if it were to get off the ground (and a number of top Obama advisers also have supported similar ideas), then democracy promotion might be an obvious agenda item for such an institution.

Roger is quite right to notice the continuities between the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations when it comes to the challenges of wielding American leverage and might. The Clinton team was not happy about leaving Saddam Hussein in power. And the United States did go to war in 1999 over Kosovo without U.N. authorization. Continuity across administrations since the end of the Cold War is a big theme of our book, and we do believe that on many of these questions there will be continuities after January 2009, as Ken’s discussions in Paris also indicate.

For example, it’s not clear how much emphasis there will be on humanitarian intervention in the next administration given that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be front and center for some time. But certainly if the next president believes that the use of force is necessary somewhere in the world (whether for humanitarian reasons or to meet a security threat), and if he believes that Russia and China will not support such action, then he is likely to go forward anyway, either as Clinton did under NATO auspices in 1999 or as Bush did with his “coalition of the willing” in 2003. And that certainly raises questions about the future of international law and the role of the United Nations in legitimizing the use of force.

In this sense, we’ve come full circle, which is exactly what we set out to do in this book. Our belief is that instead of dismissing the years we describe as a meaningless “holiday from history,” we can learn valuable lessons from this recent past, becoming better informed about our current debates, and hopefully making better choices in the future. As America grapples with the complexities of the 21st century, struggling to find the right balance between its power, responsibilities, and ambitions in a globalizing world, the lessons and legacies of the years America between the wars, from 11/9 to 9/11, will endure.

Thanks to everyone for what has been a very enriching discussion so far. I’d like to respond briefly to the thoughtful comments made by Peggy and Chris concerning what the story of these modern interwar years between 11/9 and 9/11 tells us about how to think about America’s role in the world – and whether that can be summed up in a simple phrase.

It is quite right that, as we admitted at the outset, this book is in part an intellectual history of how Washington policymakers, politicians and intellectuals tried to make sense of the world and America’s role in it after the collapse of communism. In that sense it is focused. I fully agree that it would be very interesting to broaden the aperture to see how others around the world were trying to do the same thing, and how they perceived our efforts – perhaps we can convince our publisher that that can be the subject of our next book!

Peggy raised the good question of why policymakers were so obsessed with finding a bumper-sticker for America’s global role especially when, as we hope the book shows, it became increasingly implausible and even misguided to do so. I think there are at least a couple reasons for this.

First, I think there was (and still is) a misplaced nostalgia for the supposed simplicity of the Cold War. Some seem to remember these years as ones when all the calls were relatively easy and everyone agreed on America’s global role. There was a sense that by having a single-word doctrine like “containment” we knew exactly what we were doing and why. Well, of course, the history of the Cold War is a lot more complicated than that, and in many ways actions came first and the words to describe them only later (on this point I strongly recommend Deborah Welch Larson’s 1985 book Origins of Containment, in which she uses psychological theories to argue that Truman and others came up with their worldviews retrospectively as a way to explain their actions, rather than the other way around). Yet looking back, policymakers during the 1990s saw America’s Cold War policies as successful because they were driven by an overriding concept – so to equal that success, post-Cold War policies needed a single concept too.

Another reason for all the interest in what we describe as the “George Kennan sweepstakes” during the 1990s was that politicians believed Americans needed something to rally them to stay engaged in the world. Bill Clinton was the consummate politician, and his own obsession with finding that one defining word or phrase was driven in large part by a desire to explain to people what was he was trying to do and why. This is understandable and perhaps even required in a democracy, where leaders need to gain public and Congressional support for what they are doing. It’s worth considering whether because of such pressures we are destined to always be looking for ways to over-simplify things in describing foreign policy goals and interests – no matter how fruitless that might be.

But we hope our book reveals the dangers of trying to sum all of America’s interests and goals into a simple concept. Conservatives looked back on the Clinton years with contempt for the failure to talk about doctrine and come up with an overarching strategy. They thought it was a sign of weakness. That’s one big reason why, in the wake of 9/11, they were so quick to beat their chests and talk about the preemption doctrine and the war on terror. And look where that got us.

This is not to say that moving forward leaders should embrace some kind of strategic nihilism. Of course ideas are important, as are lofty goals. The president should articulate a set of principles and priorities that will help guide the country’s policies. But we think the lessons of America between the wars show that solving problems is more important than laying out all-encompassing ideological pronouncements.

Let me raise the uncomfortable subject of the Clinton Administration's commitment to international law. Chollet and Goldgeier offer three episodes that I think shed light on President Clinton’s commitment to international law and the use of force. First, with the Rwandan genocide, Clinton failed to intervene in Rwanda or even treat the situation seriously. Tony Lake described the inaction of the Clinton Administration on Rwanda “truly pathetic” and Clinton himself called the episode the greatest regret of his presidency. (p. 92). The implication is that the Clinton Administration was of the view that humanitarian intervention in Rwanda would have been legitimate, whether or not it was lawful.

Second, with Iraq the Clinton Administration’s military actions had no more Security Council authorization than President Bush did in 2003. Clinton took military action numerous times against Iraq, and with his bold assertions of the Iraqi threat and his dramatic show of force Chollet and Goldgeier argue that his words and deeds could have come from George W. Bush’s playbook. (p. 179). Moreover, “the administration believed it had all the U.N. Security Council justification it needed with the resolutions already on the books.” (p. 194). The urgency of military action in Iraq stemmed in no small part from the fact that the “Clinton team became convinced that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and had every intention of developing more.” (p. 190).

Third, with Kosovo the Clinton Administration “purposely avoided seeking U.N. Security Council authorization because of opposition from Russia and China. For the Clinton team, bypassing the United Nations proved that the Security Council did not have a veto over NATO’s, and by extension America’s, actions. But for domestic opponents on the left and for many leaders abroad, this set the dangerous precedent of a lone superpower thumbing its nose at international law.” (p. 230) The military intervention in Kosovo is one of the best historical precedents for justifying the Bush Administration's actions in Iraq.

Although international law does not feature prominently in Chollet and Goldgeier’s account of the Clinton Administration, one disturbing thread that runs through the book is that, in terms of military force, the Clinton Administration’s commitment to international law was seriously wanting. And yet the world yawned in the face of these illegal military overtures.

This leads to the interesting question: given that the Clinton Administration by and large received a free pass for its unlawful use of force, should we be surprised if the Bush Administration thought it would receive similar treatment?

I think that when historians write the book on the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, it will be impossible to ignore the Clinton Administration’s earlier actions that set the stage. The themes are all there: (1) the United States should intervene to prevent Saddam Hussein from using weapons of mass destruction; (2) the United States should bypass the Security Council in using military force if it is political necessary to do so; and (3) the United States should accept that humanitarian intervention is a legitimate basis for military intervention, with or without Security Council authorization.

Of course, I am not equating the scale of military action between the two Administrations. But in terms of commitment to international law and the use of force, there are obvious and uncomfortable similarities.

One theme running throughout America Between the Wars is constant debate and struggle regarding the proper role of democracy promotion in U.S. foreign policy. A tension over pushing democratic reform has long existed within both American liberalism and conservatism, and pervades each presidential administration discussed in the book. My question is: where will the next president take it?

Chollet and Goldgeier tell, for example, of neo-conservative dissatisfaction with George H.W. Bush’s lack of emphasis on spreading democracy, and of candidate Bill Clinton foreign policy adviser Tony Lake’s efforts to elevate the issue on Clinton’s agenda. Both administrations, like the current one, featured both idealist democratization-hawks and pragmatic realists competing for influence.

After talking during the 2000 campaign in terms of narrow national interest, the George W. Bush Administration ultimately made democracy-promotion a major pillar of its foreign policy. The view that terrorist extremism prospered amidst failed or autocratic states and the failure to substantiate pre-war claims about WMD or al Qaida links (leaving tyranny rollback as a remaining war justification) pushed democracy promotion to the fore of the White House’s agenda.

America Between the Wars tells of an “ABC” or “anything but Clinton” rampage in 2001 by the incoming George W. Bush Administration. Will democracy share a similar fate, tossed out with dirty bath water? Unlikely, but its advocates are back on their heels a bit.

With Iraqi and Afghan democracy teetering, Lebanon facing internal clashes, Hamas scoring electoral victories, politically-backsliding Russia reasserting influence over its former republics, and high oil prices propping up fossil fuel-rich dictators, democracy promotion faces a tough road. There is reportedly a competition for influence within the McCain campaign between neocon and realist advisers, though McCain has pitched the idea of a “League of Democracies” to both defend and advance shared values and interests. Obama talks of using an array of tools, including foreign assistance and public diplomacy, to promote democratic values and institutions — “We do need to stand for democracy” – but democracy promotion hasn’t featured prominently in his foreign policy platform. Either new president’s commitment to a democracy agenda may be tested quickly if, for example, Pakistan’s new civilian leadership doesn’t get its border regions under control.

I hope that a lesson drawn from the George W. Bush years is not that democracy promotion is hopeless or counterproductive but that it must start with a realistic assessment of American influence over foreign internal politics, and with leadership by example. It also requires focusing less on pushing elections and more on building transparent civic institutions, political parties and middle classes – all things for which traditional tools of U.S. statecraft are not sufficiently well-suited.

Thanks to Roger Alford, Matt Waxman, Ken Anderson, Chris Borgen, and Peggy McGuiness for their interesting posts today.

I wanted to respond to Roger’s very astute observation about 1993. We do write about the disaster on the national security side, but as he notes, Clinton also got NAFTA passed that year, which was a major achievement.

It was really striking to us as we did the research for the book the difference between Clinton on economics and Clinton on national security in that first year. He was so confident of his knowledge of globalization and knew that he wanted America to engage the world not retreat from it. Yet he was so lacking in confidence on the national security side. He had just an awful time with Somalia (and as we report, his team handled the aftermath of the events of October 1993 incredibly poorly). In Haiti, there was the embarrassing retreat of the Harlan County in 1993, but Clinton did push forward more successfully the following year. Bosnia went terribly in 1993-94 but Clinton did achieve an end to the war in 1995, marking his emergence as a foreign policy president. Another good example of the difference in economic and national security policy came in early 1995, when Clinton provided a bailout to Mexico despite polls showing 80% of the population opposed it. That required a degree of confidence he would only start developing later that year in national security.

There are at least two reasons for talking about 1993 as a disaster, despite the economic triumph Roger points to (and there were other successes that year such as passing the aid package for Russia). One is that the national security disasters that year defined Clinton for many as bumbling when it came to being commander-in-chief, and that picture remained even after later successes such as NATO enlargement, a show of force in the Taiwan Strait, and the Kosovo war. When George W. Bush ran for president in 2000, his campaign team articulated a critique of Clinton that really stemmed from the failures in Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia in that first year.

Secondly, Clinton got NAFTA passed in 1993 thanks to Republican support in Congress. Republicans had told him he needed to get half the votes from his own party, because they wanted Clinton to have a bruising fight with his fellow Democrats. In the end, he could only pull 102 Democrats, and he was constantly fighting an uphill battle with his party throughout the decade. Many believed he had pulled the Democrats to the center on trade during his time in office, but look at the discussion of NAFTA in the primary campaign this spring. Many believed that Clinton’s support for trade, including the passage of Permanent Normal Trading Relations with China in 2000, hurt Al Gore in the 2000 campaign. So yes, Roger is correct to remind us of the Clinton successes on trade in 1993-94, but they were overshadowed during his presidency by the early problems on the national security side, and they are overshadowed today by the ongoing fight within the Democratic Party about the best way to respond to globalization.

I greatly enjoyed Chollet and Goldgeier's book on American Between the Wars. I have several thoughts about the book, but I wanted to begin by discussing their thesis that from a foreign policy perspective President Clinton had a disastorous first year in office. They write: "January 1994 brought an end to a very bad first year in office.... It would be 1995 before the president came to realize he could handle foreign policy as well as he could overswee bold domestic initiatives, such as welfare reform.... With a disastrous first year in office, Clinton had lost the initiative to define the era." (pp. 83-84).

They are, of course, speaking about Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. But as a international economic scholar, I have always thought that the greatest foreign policy legacy of the Clinton Administration was its commitment to economic globalization. Thus, while Chollet and Goldgeier argue with the debacle of Mogadishu that October 3, 1993 was the "darkest day for American foreign policy since the triumph of 11/9" (p. 72), I think a strong case could be made that November 20, 1993--the day NAFTA secured final passage in Congress--was the best and brighest day for the Clinton Administration's foreign policy legacy. Indeed, later in the book they argue that "passing NAFTA in 1993--followed by the deal to establish the WTO a year later--turned out to be the apex of the administration's globalization agenda." (p. 162).

From the long view, I have little doubt that the passage of NAFTA and the WTO has far greater historical significance than Clinton's missteps in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. So which is it? Was 1993 the worst or best days for the Clinton Administration's foreign policy legacy?

This superb book is must-reading for students of contemporary foreign policy and for anyone hoping to be part of the incoming foreign policy team of the next president.

America Between the Wars is a book about ideas – the foreign policy and national security ideas that presidential administrations bring with them into office, and the competition of ideas within administrations and between administrations and other actors at home and abroad. One of the most interesting themes is the continuity of debates between and within parties about the purpose of American power (such as protecting U.S. interests versus exporting democratic values) and the source of that power (accumulating military and economic advantage versus harnessing soft-power influence).

But America Between the Wars is also about politics and institutional bureaucracy (see, e.g., military resistance to Clinton’s proposals regarding homosexuality in the military), as well as the unexpected crises that can overwhelm decision making and pull policy agendas off track (to take it up to the present, who would have expected that the George W. Bush Administration originally intent on “no nation-building”, especially by the U.S. military which it also planned to modernize and streamline, would end with 160,000 U.S. troops rebuiling Afghanistan and Iraq?).

When it comes to international law and diplomacy, both Senators Obama and McCain have promised a set of ideas different from the Bush Administration (Obama more so than McCain). Their agendas include a rejuvenated American leadership on issues such as global warming, non-proliferation and detainee treatment, and they both recognize that international legal constraints in these areas can enhance American power in a variety of ways.

But the new president and his administration will have to contend in his first few months with managing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a Middle East peace process that’s at best fragile, as well as immediate strategic choices on Iran diplomacy. Those aren’t optional agenda items, and they already fill a plate. And some institutional players, such as the military and the Congress, will have strong views and entrenched positions. And then there are the wildcards (coups, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, domestic political scandals, or something totally new).

I am hopeful and confident that whoever wins in November will keep a restoration of American leadership and credibility on international law near the top of a huge agenda pile (yes, of course, this is not independent of the other issues I just mentioned, but tied tightly into them). But the story Chollet and Goldgeier weave so effectively is cause for caution. It teaches that the power of ideas only goes so far in foreign policy-making. Success or failure of the next presidential term in advancing a new global vision will turn on the White House’s ability to navigate politics, prioritize, cut deals, mediate internal disputes, and ride herd on a vast bureaucracy to ensure implementation. Advisers to the next president would do well to study those parts of the book.

Let us begin by thanking Roger Alford and his colleagues here at Opinio Juris for hosting this conversation about America Between the Wars, as well as Ken Anderson and Matt Waxman, who so kindly agreed to help keep the discussion lively! Since the book was published a month ago we’ve been doing a lot of events and talks, but we really welcome this opportunity to have an in-depth discussion with such a fine group.

Our book tells the story of the struggle to define America’s role in the world between two pivotal dates, which for us serve as bookends to what we describe as the modern interwar years: the day the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989 (or 11/9), and the day of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which will forever be known as 9/11. In the course of our research for this book, we talked to as many people as we could who had a role in the events of these years – a diverse group from Colin Powell and Newt Gingrich to Madeline Albright and Robert Rubin to Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader – and our narrative very much reflects the insights and stories that we gleaned from these revealing conversations.

In writing about America from 11/9 to 9/11, we tried to do several things. This book is an intellectual history of the debates between liberals and conservatives (and among factions inside both the political right and left) about the world after the Cold War and America’s role in it. It is also diplomatic history, in that it is a narrative of the major events and key turning points in American foreign policy during these years. And finally, and perhaps most importantly for our readers during an election-year summer, it is a political history of how the politics of national security played out during these years, as liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, responded to the end of the Cold War and tried to reshape themselves to face the new global landscape. It is impossible to understand this era without seeing the interweaving of the ideas, events, and politics, which we argue very much shaped the history of the past eight years and continues to shape the foreign policy choices McCain and Obama will argue about in the months ahead.

As a way to get things rolling, and hopefully to provoke some debate, we’d like to offer five myths that we believe our story shatters.

Myth 1: When it comes to America’s role in the world, 9/11 changed everything.

Reality: Describing the events of 9/11, President Bush asserted, “All of this was brought upon us in a single day, and night fell on a different world.” With these words, he reinforced a general perception that global politics had changed irrevocably on September 11, 2001. It was a day we will always remember and honor, but the president was articulating an emotional truth – not an analytical one. Just as history did not end in 1989, it did not begin on 9/11.

The tragedy of 9/11 and its aftermath had its origins twelve years earlier, when the world shifted in ways that were incomprehensible at the time. On 11/9 the Berlin Wall fell, and the Cold War was effectively over. That year, the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, and the former superpower battleground was left unattended until Bill Clinton bombed Al Qaeda training camps there in August 1998 in retaliation for the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. As we show in the book, by 1998, the Clinton administration believed it was “at war” with Osama bin Laden and his followers, and Clinton told George W. Bush after the 2000 election was decided, “One of the great regrets of my presidency is that I didn’t get him [bin Laden] for you, because I tried.” Of course, conservatives at the time were hardly focused on the threat from Islamic extremism.

But it wasn’t just terrorism. Other national security problems we face today – including failed states and civil wars, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea – all arose in the years after the collapse of communism.

Myth 2: Our problems began with George W. Bush, and will end when he leaves.

Reality: There is more continuity between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush than partisans on both sides care to admit: Clinton feared Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and tried to bring about regime change in Iraq. Bush is now pursuing Clinton-type policies on Iran, North Korea and the Middle East Peace Process. Both bypassed the UN to take military action, and both saw America as “indispensable.” There was continuity from George H.W. Bush to Clinton to George W. Bush – and there will be probably be a surprising degree of continuity after January 2009 regardless of who wins.

Myth 3: Democrats are incompetent at protecting America’s national security.

Reality: While that’s been the conventional wisdom conservatives have peddled for decades, especially at election time, we show that by the end of 2001, the charge rang pretty hollow. When Clinton left office, he had used military force in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Balkans, transformed NATO, and brought China into the World Trade Organization. Democrats used to get defensive when Republicans asserted they knew better how to conduct national security, but those days are over. Just look at how Obama is taking the fight to McCain on national security issues.

In fact, the shoe is on the other foot. Republicans are facing their own “best and the brightest” moment. Just as leading national security Democrats were tarnished by Vietnam, so are many leading Republicans today in the wake of the George Bush presidency. When the George W. Bush team came into office in 2001, many in the press and among the foreign policy elite believed that individuals such as Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz represented the “A-team” in American foreign policy after the seeming confusion of the Clinton years. But that was both a misreading of the latter years in the Clinton presidency and unwarranted optimism about the Bush team.

Myth 4: There is a strong Republican consensus about America’s role in the world.

Reality: Since the end of the Cold War nearly 20 years ago, conservatives have been deeply divided about America’s global role. Traditional pragmatists such as George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft hoped that America could lead through institutions like the United Nations. Isolationist Patrick Buchanan ran on the old George McGovern slogan, “Come Home, America” in 1992 and nearly won the New Hampshire primary against a sitting president. Many neo-conservatives believed with the end of the Cold War that America no longer needed a global mission, and the neo-conservative movement appeared dead by the mid-1990s. And on Capitol Hill, the “Contract Republicans” who swept to power in the 1994 elections combined neo-isolationism with strong nationalism and anti-Clintonism to focus their attention on missile defense, the rise of China, and UN bashing.

The aftermath of 9/11 created an illusion that conservatives were unified behind the “war on terror” as they had been against communism during the Cold War. But now we are seeing Republicans splitting into familiar factions, with neoconservatives, traditional realists, and neo-isolationists facing off against one another. This presents huge challenges for John McCain, whether as a candidate or, if he wins, as president.

Myth 5: America needs a simple foreign policy doctrine like “containment.”

Reality: For twenty years people have been trying to come up with a replacement for the Cold War’s “containment” policy. We tell the story of how Clinton himself was obsessed with coming up with a theory of the case, but was ultimately unsuccessful. George W. Bush thought he had found the new defining concept after 9/11 with the “war on terror.”

But that concept has lost its luster – most senior military leaders don like the phrase, and even Colin Powell told us in an interview that the “war on terror” is a “bad phrase…it’s a criminal problem.” So we argue that the quest for defining a simple concept to guide American foreign policy is fruitless, overrated and even dangerous in the complex world of the 21st century. As the book recounts, in 1994, the Clinton team asked 90-year old George Kennan to come down from Princeton so they could get his advice on replacing the doctrine that he had articulated so successfully in 1947. The former diplomat’s sage counsel: “forget about the bumper sticker; try to come up with a thoughtful paragraph or two.”

Well, there’s some food for thought. We look forward to your responses to this or any other aspect of the book. And again, thanks so much for having us here.