$8.95 • 2013 Oct

/ NEW PHASE The Turkish Conundrum The Turkish Sept POWERFUL Foreign-Policy Default Reassessing Norman Angell

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The Long View of FDR

Asia’s Fluid Future Fluid Asia’s by Paul R. Pillar

IS MOVING INTO A INTO MOVING IS FAR FROM DEAD, FROM FAR 127 Number Rajan Menon Jacob Heilbrunn Aram Bakshian Jr. Conrad Black MerryRobert W. NATIONALISM

THE WESTPHALIAN ERA, WESTPHALIAN THE

www.nationalinterest.org THE AGE OF OF AGE THE

THE NATIONAL INTEREST ◊ NUMBER 127 ◊ SEPT/OCT 2013

Number 127 . September/October 2013

The Realist

5 America’s Default Foreign Policy by Robert W. Merry President Obama’s recent decision to arm the Syrian rebels reflects the reality that humanitarian interventionism has become official Washington’s default position on foreign-policy issues. But America’s leaders are out of step with public opinion, which is both more nationalistic and less supportive of foreign interventions. This suggests that elites of both parties are due for a political reckoning.

Articles

9 The Age of Nationalism by Paul R. Pillar We are living in the nationalist era. The emergence of the nation-state is the defining reality of our time, surpassing in significance all the recent preoccupations over civilizational clash, globalization, history’s end and great-power polarity. Nationalism drives many of today’s most salient conflicts, and any U.S. strategy must take into account the powerful sentiments of peoples and governments around the globe.

20 Asia’s Looming Power Shift by Rajan Menon The strategic choices of three states are transforming Asia. China, India and Japan have diversestrengths and weaknesses, and along with their neighbors they are all jockeying for power and influence. Meanwhile, the region’s lack of agreement on a common course and its shortage of effective institutions mean that tensions are likely to increase and major problems will continue to go unaddressed.

34 The Case for Norman Angell by Jacob Heilbrunn After the Great War made a mockery of Norman Angell’s 1910 thesis that economic interdependence had made conflict obsolete, his name became a virtual synonym for naive utopianism. Yet this assessment ignores Angell’s later career, in which he shed some of his old beliefs and came to value the importance of power in global affairs—even as his intellectual descendants today continue to cling to his early illusions.

Images Corbis: pages 10, 12, 15, 16, 19, 23, 26, 31, 38, 41, 46, 48, 51, 54, 59, 62, 68, 71, 75, 80, 85; Getty: pages 6, 35, 87; iStockPhoto: pages 91, 94 43 The Deepening Chaos in Sinai by Daniel Byman and Khaled Elgindy The instability in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula represents one of the most dangerous crises in the Middle East. The security vacuum there has allowed terrorists and criminals to expand their operations, use the area as a launching pad for attacks on Israel, and smuggle weapons and goods into Gaza. This complicates Egypt’s already-troubled transition and raises the likelihood of renewed conflict between Israel and Hamas.

56 Erdogan, the Anti-Ataturk by Aram Bakshian Jr. For nearly a century, modern Turkey has been dominated by the legacy of its founder, Mustafa Kemal, known to history as Kemal Ataturk. Ataturk was a man of iron will who dragged his countrymen into the twentieth century. Now Ataturk’s achievement is at risk, challenged by a rising Islamist tide led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has centralized power, jailed journalists and sought to craft an idealized version of the country’s Ottoman-Islamic past.

Reviews & Essays

66 Roosevelt and His Diplomatic Pawns by Conrad Black In 1940 and 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt pursued a masterful strategy to bring the United States into World War II without appearing to want to do so. Michael Fullilove chronicles the actions of Roosevelt and five of his envoys during this period. His work is a fair and well-researched history, but ultimately it assigns too much importance to the men around Roosevelt and not enough to fdr himself.

77 Tracing China’s Long Game Plan by Jacqueline Newmyer Deal For decades, many Western observers have assumed that as China rose it would also liberalize and become a more “responsible” global actor. Orville Schell and John Delury’s book skillfully explains why they were wrong. Their account of the lives and thinking of Chinese elites over the past two centuries demonstrates that China is concerned first and foremost with its own wealth and power and is only interested in Western ideas to the extent that they can contribute toward those goals.

89 The Limits of U.S. Financial Warfare by Michael Scheuer The Treasury Department is at war. Former Bush administration official Juan Zarate recounts how he and his allies used an array of financial tools to combat rogue regimes, terrorist organizations, mafias and drug cartels. Their tactical victories are impressive. But the country’s broader policy of constant overseas intervention is severely damaging America’s security and interests. Published by The Center for the National Interest

Maurice R. Greenberg Chairman Henry A. Kissinger Honorary Chairman James Schlesinger Chairman, Advisory Council

Robert W. Merry Editor Dimitri K. Simes Publisher & CEO Lewis E. McCrary Managing Editor Paul J. Saunders Associate Publisher Alexa McMahon Associate Managing Editor Advisory Council Robert Golan-Vilella Assistant Managing Editor Morton Abramowitz John Allen Gay Assistant Managing Editor Graham Allison Conrad Black Senior Editors Patrick J. Buchanan Nikolas K. Gvosdev Ahmed Charai Jacob Heilbrunn Leslie H. Gelb Anatol Lieven Evan G. Greenberg Gary Hart Contributing Editors Zalmay Khalilzad Aram Bakshian Jr. Kishore Mahbubani Ian Bremmer John J. Mearsheimer Ted Galen Carpenter Richard Plepler Ariel Cohen Alexey Pushkov Amitai Etzioni Brent Scowcroft Bruce Hoffman Ruth Wedgwood Paul R. Pillar J. Robinson West Kenneth M. Pollack Dov Zakheim

Owen Harries Editor Emeritus Cover Design: Emma Hansen Robert W. Tucker Editor Emeritus Cover Image: © Michael Hogue

Editorial Office The National Interest, 1025 Connecticut Ave, nw, Suite 1200, Washington, dc 20036. Telephone: (202) 467-4884, Fax: (202) 467-0006, Email: [email protected], Website: http://nationalinterest.org Subscription Office Postmaster and subscribers please send address changes and subscription orders to: The National Interest, P.O. Box 1081, Selmer, tn 38375. Telephone: (856) 380-4130; (800) 344-7952 Rate: $39.95/yr. Please add $5/year for Canada and $20/year for other international deliveries. The National Interest (ISSN 0884-9382) is published bimonthly by the Center for the National Interest. Articles are abstracted and indexed in P.A.I.S., Historical Abstracts, International Political Science Abstracts, U.S. Political Science Documents, Political Science Abstracts and America: History and Life; articles are available on microfilm from University Microfilms International, and archived on Lexis-Nexis. Periodicals postage is paid at Washington, dc, and at additional mailing offices. ©2013 by The National Interest, Inc. The National Interest is printed by Fry Communications, Inc. It is distributed in the U.S. and Canada by Ingram Periodicals (18 Ingram Blvd., La Vergne, tn 37086; 615-793-5522) and Source Interlink Companies (27500 Riverview Center Blvd., Bonita Springs, fl 34134; 239-949-4450). The Realist

will have a significant impact on the Syrian America’s Default civil war. It would be insulting to suggest the president believes such a thing. Foreign Policy Perhaps, one might speculate further, Obama wanted to bolster the military By Robert W. Merry position of those insurgents committed to a relatively open and pluralist nation, as opposed to the radical Islamist elements resident Obama’s June 13 decision driven by jihadist passions and the dream to send light weapons and ammuni- of a theocratic nation, like Afghanistan Ption to Syrian rebels reflects a funda- before 9/11. But this doesn’t make sense, mental reality in the dialectic of American either. Many analysts believe the war’s foreign policy. Within this administration jihadist groups—including Al Nusra Front, and indeed throughout official Washing- affiliated with Al Qaeda—are substantially ton, humanitarian interventionism is the stronger militarily than the secular rebels. It inevitable default position for policy makers seems dubious that U.S. aid can be kept out and political insiders. There is no intellec- of jihadist hands. tual counterweight emanating from either Perhaps there is a political desire to align party that poses a significant challenge to government policy with public opinion. this powerful idea that America must act Wrong again. A Gallup poll shortly after to salve the wounds of humanity wher- the president’s announcement showed ever suffering is intense and prospects for 54 percent of respondents opposed the a democratic emergence are even remotely president’s arms initiative, while 37 percent promising. approved. A Pew Research Center poll This reality emerges in sharp relief when released at about the same time showed that one attempts to find the reasoning behind fully 70 percent of respondents opposed the president’s Syria decision through a the idea of the United States and its allies process of elimination. Perhaps, one might sending arms to Syrian rebels. The Pew speculate, the president decided the time survey also indicated that large majorities finally had come to turn the tide of war of Americans believe the U.S. military is decisively in favor of the antigovernment stretched too thin and doubt that Syria’s insurgents and against the regime of Syrian rebel groups would govern any better than president Bashar al-Assad. But, no, that the Assad regime. can’t be the driver because nobody believes So the decision can’t be explained by Obama’s modest flow of military assistance politics, nor by a desire to favor more secular rebel groups, nor by any realistic Robert W. Merry, author of several books strategic aims in the region. That leaves the on American history and foreign policy, is the default explanation—that Obama turned outgoing editor of The National Interest. to humanitarian interventionism because

The Realist September/October 2013 5 that is the foundational foreign-policy Nationalists usually ask a fundamental philosophy of his party and goes largely question when foreign adventures are unchallenged from any serious Washington proposed—whether the national interest precincts. It also seems justifies the expenditure to be Obama’s own of American blood on philosophy. As he said behalf of this or that in explaining his 2011 military initiative (or military initiative in this or that action that Libya, U.S. forbearance could lead to military in the face of events initiatives). The fate of there “would have been other peoples struggling a betrayal of who we around the globe, are.” however heartrending, The president’s default doesn’t usually figure decision on Syria raises large in nationalist two questions: Why did considerations. The fate Obama feel a need to put of America is the key. up a pretense of trying This grates on many to influence events there within the Democratic when in fact his actions elite, who formulated will have little or no a doctrine during the impact on the unfolding 1990s Balkans crisis that tragedy? And why is favored humanitarian today’s foreign-policy considerations for discourse so bereft of overseas actions over any serious intellectual counterforce to the nationalist considerations. The rights and prevailing humanitarian ethos? well-being of the world’s people superseded Partial answers to both questions can for many the rights and well-being of the be found in the same phenomenon— American populace. Indeed, as writer Robert the decline in nationalist sentiment D. Kaplan has observed, the liberal embrace within the Democratic elite. The natural of universal principles as foreign-policy counterargument to humanitarian guidance “leads to a pacifist strain . . . when interventionism is nationalism, the idea it comes to defending our hard-core national that America as a nation must concern itself interests, and an aggressive strain when it first and foremost with its own interests and comes to defending human rights.” imperatives; must look after its own citizens This is pure Wilsonism. “I hope and as a top priority; and must avoid global believe,” declared Woodrow Wilson adventures that could damage the country’s in a speech before Congress in which he public fisc or undermine its security. admonished Americans to embrace U.S.

6 The National Interest The Realist Why did Obama feel a need to put up a pretense of trying to influence events in Syria when in fact his actions will have little or no impact on the unfolding tragedy?

involvement in World War I, “that I am David Rothkopf sees that too, and that’s in effect speaking for liberals and friends why he rails so viciously against American of humanity in every nation. . . . I would nationalism. Rothkopf, ceo and editor at fain believe that I am speaking for the silent large of Foreign Policy magazine, personifies mass of mankind everywhere.” When the the Davos-culture, humanitarian- United States later entered the war, Wilson interventionist sensibility of our time, bragged that his country was not motivated which wishes to obliterate the last vestiges by any national interest. “What we demand of what he calls “Westphalian nation- in this war,” he stated, “is nothing peculiar state nonsense.” Writing in Foreign Policy, to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit Rothkopf laments that his country is among and safe to live in.” those that “celebrate individuality to a This Wilsonian humanitarianism now is fault.” Its “market ideology”—more Charles the bedrock philosophy of the Democratic Darwin than Adam Smith, as he puts it— Party to such an extent that even President dismisses those who fall behind as “merely Obama, who harbors an instinctive part of nature’s grand equation.” Having skittishness over the risks in interventionist erected this caricature of a heartless nation, adventurism, feels a need to placate it with Rothkopf indelicately gives it a name— meaningless action on Syria. Although “frontier fuck-you-ism”—and suggests even the matter was debated heatedly within those of his fellow countrymen who don’t the administration, the default position embrace it in domestic affairs certainly do prevailed. so abroad. The result is our “narcissistic, Which raises a question: Where is today’s head-in-the-sand nation-statism,” which “is Henry Cabot Lodge? Lodge, a senator from putting us at risk.” Massachusetts and chairman of the Senate Rothkopf is a smart guy, and he seems to Foreign Relations Committee when Wilson perceive that this “Westphalian nation-state sought to get America into the League of nonsense” he decries poses, potentially, the Nations, went after Wilson and his League only serious intellectual counterweight to with a vengeance. His weapon: American the humanitarian interventionism that has nationalism. “I must think of the United captured the Democratic Party. No doubt he States first,” he declared on the Senate also perceives that, while there is no longer floor in August 1919. “I have loved but any serious debate on the matter within one flag, and I cannot share that devotion his elite circles or even in today’s normal and give affection to the mongrel banner political discourse, nationalist sentiment invented for a league.” Lodge didn’t oppose remains robust and lively among ordinary American interventionism in principle, only Americans going about their daily routines when it was untethered from U.S. national and endeavors. That must be why he turns interests. He saw clearly that Wilsonism in so pugilistic when discussing the matter. its purest form and American nationalism That’s understandable. History tells are antithetical. us that when elite thinking opens a wide

The Realist September/October 2013 7 gap between national policy and popular which he develops with plenty of analytical sentiment, a reckoning usually is in the rigor, that we actually are living in a global works. The Democrats’ default position on age of nationalism, in which fealty to the foreign policy may not be subject to any nation-state is driving world events to a serious counterweight now, but that doesn’t far greater extent than many American mean one can’t emerge. intellectuals are willing to recognize. He Meanwhile, over in the Republican sees this as a compelling political sentiment Party, the default territory is held by in America just as it is in other regions. neoconservatives, who harbor the same And author Rajan Menon, who teaches affinity for foreign adventurism but for at the City College of New York/City different reasons. And, with the exception University of New York, sees nationalism of Kentucky senator Rand Paul, even as a significant geopolitical force in his those in the gop who don’t embrace the survey, also in this issue, of the future of neocon label refrain from questioning the Asia. neocon position with any force. Thus, So nationalism is not dead, either here the Republican elite too faces a rank and or abroad, and it seems likely to reemerge file increasingly uncomfortable with its in America’s future as a counterweight to interventionist notions. That means it that humanitarian interventionism that has probably also faces an eventual political so thoroughly captured the Democratic reckoning. Party and political discourse in general. The Indeed, Georgetown’s Paul R. Pillar, in question is when—and what kind of crisis this issue’s cover article, posits the view, in U.S. foreign adventurism will trigger it. n

8 The National Interest The Realist The Age of Nationalism

By Paul R. Pillar

he urge to apply era-defining la- no one formula seemed to catch on. bels to global affairs is strong and Then, with the terrorist attacks Tenduring. A label and a few easy- of September 2001, after which the to-understand attributes associated with it administration of George W. Bush declared can impart a reassuring simplicity to what a global “war on terror,” many thought we is actually a complex and often-intractable finally had a new defining theme. Some saw reality. While the disadvantages of era label- in this struggle nothing less than a looming ing, including oversimplification, are prob- “World War IV,” to be waged against radical ably as great as the advantages, the practice Islam (with the Cold War viewed as the is here to stay. third world war after the two hot global Indeed, American analysts and conflicts of the twentieth century). This commentators have struggled with this era- notion persists in many minds, but neither defining business ever since the collapse of terrorism nor radical Islam provides a valid the Soviet Union and of Communism in basis for understanding and characterizing Eastern Europe. The Cold War between current international affairs as a whole. the United States and the ussr was such Terrorism is only a tactic, and one that has a dominant backdrop for U.S. foreign been around for millennia. Radical Islamists policy for so long that it overshadowed are a fringe of a larger phenomenon every attempt to characterize international in world politics, hardly of sufficient affairs in any other terms during those worldwide weight to reshape global affairs. years. The strength of the Cold War Hence, much of this reasoning represents paradigm was demonstrated during the in large part an overreaction to a single first decade after the Cold War, when terrorist incident. the defining term most often heard was And therein lies a problem with the “the post–Cold War era.” That inherently era-defining enterprise. Most such efforts unsatisfying nomenclature described what use too short a time frame and attempt the era wasn’t but not what it was. Some to extract too broad a theme from single attempted to encapsulate the times some episodes, such as the breakup of the Soviet other way, usually with an emphasis on Union or Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks on economically oriented nonstate actors, but American soil. But an understanding of the present requires that we look much further Paul R. Pillar is a contributing editor at into the past, not to stretch the time frame The National Interest. He is also a nonresident of various eras but rather to get a sufficient senior fellow at the Brookings Institution sweep of political, social and technological and a nonresident senior fellow at Georgetown developments to truly understand how the University’s Center for Security Studies. present has flowed from what came before.

The Age of Nationalism September/October 2013 9 together have generated an added layer of muddle. Some of the ideas about World War IV, for example, reflect the concept of clashing civilizations developed by the late Samuel P. Huntington, who argued that among the many dimensions of civiliza- tions, as he defined them, the most im- portant is religion. Huntington was on to something, as demonstrated by the role of religion in many armed conflicts, large and small, in recent times. Yet there is plenty of evidence to support the chief legitimate criticism of Huntington’s concept, which is that there is at least as much conflict within civilizations as between them. We are seeing that in spades today with conflicts within Islam, one of Huntington’s civilizations. More generally, ask any group of reasonably well-informed observers to name the principal characteristics of the current global system, and you are likely to get agreement on a few essentials. The By looking far back into history, we can United States is still the preeminent military see in the past two decades the long-in- power. China is the most conspicuous coming consequences of that phenomenon and important rising power, with its known as nationalism but now in full and strength manifesting itself so far more unfettered form. It took three and a half on the economic than the military front. centuries for the basic components—the Demographic trends underlie decline in sovereign state, popular attachment to the Russia and Japan. And so forth. All true, state and worldwide spread of this popular but the essentials do not add up to a single, attachment—to emerge in full force. It took clear, era-defining concept. two centuries to shake off the occluding The polarity of the international and delaying effects of empire and of Left- system—the number of major powers or Right competition that culminated in the blocs of powers that have disproportionate dominating East-West conflict known as the weight in world affairs—is a favorite Cold War. The ingredients of nationalism basis for trying to distinguish one era may be centuries old, but the combined from another. A generation of students of result, viewed globally, is new. We are living international relations has been taught that today in the nationalist era. the world of the Cold War was bipolar and the world since the Cold War is something his reality of our time has been ob- else. Exactly what that something else is, T scured in recent years by the intellec- however, has been a matter of disagreement. tual struggles of the early post–Cold War Some say we live in a unipolar world, period to define the era and then by the with the United States being the single pole. impact of the 9/11 attacks on the American What commentator Charles Krauthammer consciousness. In some instances, the two termed the “unipolar moment” in 1990

10 The National Interest The Age of Nationalism The emergence of the nation-state is the defining reality of our time, surpassing in significance all the preoccupations over civilizational clash, globalization, history’s end and great-power polarity.

continues in some eyes as much more “nonpolarity,” in which power is diffused than a moment. This view is held not among many different state and nonstate only by those who share Krauthammer’s actors. This idea, along with ongoing neoconservative objectives but also by disagreements among others about how analysts who look at how far the United many poles the current international States is still ahead of all other countries, system has, suggests that the whole concept based on several measures of strength. An of polarity doesn’t really help define the alternative concept is multipolarity, with current era of global affairs. One problem is different possible formulations of who the multiplicity of dimensions by which to exactly, besides the United States, qualifies measure national power and thus to assess as a pole. China surely is one, and another who qualifies as a major power. Another is the European Union—which contains is that a large portion of what matters, most of what were once the great powers in and what is troubling or challenging, in an earlier period of multipolarity and whose world affairs today does not have much to economy today, considered as a unit, is the do with the number, relative strength or world’s largest. relationships of major powers, important as Some focus on a duopoly of China and they are. Haass’s idea of nonpolarity reflects the United States, with talk of a G-2 as this reality, but like “the post–Cold War being more important than the G-8 or era,” it says more about what today’s world G-20. Even with this focus, how should isn’t than about what it is. one characterize the relationship of the Big Two, which cannot simply be equated ll this debate over how best to define with the U.S.-Soviet relationship during A our time brings us back to the nation- the Cold War? Harvard Law School’s Noah state. Over the entire history of human or- Feldman suggests the term “Cool War” ganization, from bands of hunter-gatherers to capture both a traditional struggle for to the international institutions of today, power and deep economic interdependence. its emergence is one of the most impor- Clever, though probably not catchy enough tant developments of humankind. Those to come into general use. In any event, international-relations courses that drill into this and other possible descriptions of the students the concept of Cold War bipolarity U.S.-Chinese relationship—which does also teach them that the modern nation- not have the kind of globally preoccupying state was born in the mid-seventeenth cen- impact, including proxy wars in far-flung tury. The birth certificate was the Peace of places, that the Cold War did—do little to Westphalia of 1648, which marked the end characterize contemporary world affairs as of the religion-driven Thirty Years’ War and a whole. codified the concept of state sovereignty. Richard Haass, president of the Council What is sometimes called the Westphalian on Foreign Relations, advances another system is reflected in the clean lines drawn option by saying that we live in a time of between states on today’s world map.

The Age of Nationalism September/October 2013 11 During the first century and a half of that made politically possible by a strong sense system in Europe, it provided the board of loyalty and attachment of the general on which monarchs and their ministers population to its nation-state—a sense competed in a multiplayer chess game. that had been missing during the earlier This was classical European balance- monarchical chess game. The combination of-power politics, history’s most pristine of the Westphalian state and popular,

example of multipolarity in action, in emotional identification with it produced which the number and relative strength true nationalism, in which both statehood of major powers mattered much more (actual or aspirational) and mass sentiment than ideologies or internal politics. Rulers based on the nation are the key ingredients. formed alliances, occasionally fought The full impact of nationalism on world restrained wars with small armies, and affairs and even European affairs would be otherwise maneuvered to try to add more delayed, however, by other developments. land and people to their realms. The masses One was the force of empire. Napoleon were not players in this game other than as Bonaparte’s attempt at empire was short part of the booty that occasionally was won lived, but Russian, Prussian and Austrian by one ruler and lost by another. power expanded to subsume much of This elegant game was upset by the Europe, while the Ottomans clung to earlier French Revolution, in which the masses conquests in the southeastern part of the first made themselves heard in a big way. Continent. State sovereignty was divorced They did so not only in internal affairs from many nationalities other than the but also in conflicts between France and few that were at the top of an imperial the other European powers, with the heap. Many others were repressed or levy en masse becoming for the first time divided, such as the Poles, or co-opted, such a major part of international wars and as the Magyars in what became the dual the increasingly large armies that would monarchy of Austria-Hungary. fight them. Large citizen armies, even if Although this remained the political formally an output of conscription, were structure of Europe into the twentieth

12 The National Interest The Age of Nationalism century, other processes were percolating establish closer ties with Western Europe. that would add to the strength of future He advocated humanitarian exceptions nationalism. The historian E. H. Carr, to state sovereignty—a posture that today in a short book entitled Nationalism and is called the “responsibility to protect” After, describes some of these, which he doctrine. And he foreshadowed Huntington calls the “socialization of the nation.” in talking about civilizations as “great Relevant trends during the last third of multinational units in which power will be the nineteenth century, seen especially concentrated.” in Germany, included extension of the On his basic prognosis for nationalism, franchise and an increased economic role however, Carr was badly mistaken. Given of the state. Together, these factors further his firm conviction that the end of World increased the sense among ordinary citizens War II would mark the end “of the old not only that their primary loyalty belonged fissiparous nationalism, of the ideology of to their own nation-state but also that the small nation as the ultimate political their own fortunes were wrapped up with and economic unit,” it seems reasonable the nation-state’s fortunes. These trends to suspect he would be taken aback in continued into the great nationalism-fueled our time to see nations as small as Kosovo European bloodletting known as World gaining independence. And he would War I. be chagrined to find that in his native That war did not reverse the increase Britain, even though it did get closer to in nationalism, and not only because the Continent in the postwar years, there revanchism left from the war was at least as is more talk today about getting out of strong as revulsion over the bloodshed. Carr Europe than about getting more deeply in. points to a couple of other reasons: autarkic policies that further identified citizens’ he full extent to which strong and in- economic prospects with those of only their T exorable nationalism would prove Carr own state and not others; and the large wrong would not become visible until after increase in the number of European nation- a couple of other developments. One was states as empires were broken up. There was decolonization in the less developed world, plenty of nationalist sentiment left to fuel a which peaked around 1960 but contin- second round of carnage two decades later. ued well after that. This process has added Carr wrote during the closing days of that new nation-states whose numbers dwarf World War II bloodletting. Showing tinges the new European states that were created of the Marxism that would characterize after World War I and that Carr identified some of his later work, he believed that as part of what propelled nationalism in the after this war nationalism would finally interwar years. The Westphalian state has subside—hence the “and after” part of his been sold successfully worldwide, despite its title. Some of his predictions turned out to made-in-Europe label. be rather good. He expected that advances The other development harks back again in military technology, especially air power, to the French Revolution, which began two would render national frontiers strategically centuries in which competition between less significant than before. He anticipated ideologies of the Left and the Right was the establishment of multiple regional a dominant theme of global politics and organizations and what would become conflict. Between the fall of the Bastille United Nations peacekeeping forces. He in 1789 and the fall of the Berlin Wall foresaw that Great Britain would have to in 1989, Left-Right conflict had many

The Age of Nationalism September/October 2013 13 manifestations, from the Holy Alliance and national republics of the Soviet Union, Three Emperors’ League on the right to which became the biggest recent class of the Comintern and Socialist International entrants into the Westphalian club. on the left. Whatever the exact form it And so we see the emergence of the took, the Left-Right dimension was so nation-state as the defining reality of our dominant for so long—more than half the time, surpassing in significance all the lifetime of the modern nation-state—that recent preoccupations over civilizational it preempted, disguised or diverted much clash, globalization, history’s end and great- of what would have been consequences of power polarity. Indeed, it could be argued the growth of nation-states and popular that the age of nationalism actually is a attachment to them. Left-Right conflict product of the human condition. intruded in significant ways even in the That the nation-state should be the nationalism-fueled conflict of the first part primary focus of loyalties and conflicts of the twentieth century, exemplified by the flows directly from human nature and Bolsheviks’ quick relinquishment at Brest- how it evolved. Possession (or hoped-for Litovsk of large amounts of the Russian possession) of a well-defined patch of the empire to get out of World War I and by earth’s surface is a manifestation of the the role that fear of Communism played in “territorial imperative” that author and the rise of European fascism. screenwriter Robert Ardrey popularized The final phase of these two centuries in a book of that name almost fifty years was the Cold War, in which competition ago and that is a dominant trait of many between the Left and the Right became species most closely related to humans. competition between East and West. This Attachment to a nationality whose home is phase, too, delayed or disguised many of the more or less coterminous with that patch consequences of nationalism, subordinating is also a deeply rooted, birds-of-a-feather them to the East-West conflict. Suppression trait. Once established, a nation-state adds of German nationalism, for example, institutional imperatives to the biological was inextricably linked to the West’s and evolutionary ones to make it even more confrontation with the East, as rearmament the focus of attention. The state becomes of West Germany was permitted only the source of both obligations and, as within the context of the Western alliance’s Carr notes of the late nineteenth century, integrated military command. Britain’s benefits. National myths, which help to willingness to tiptoe into European achieve cohesion and cement loyalty within integration, as a founding member of the nationalities, often exacerbate suspicions Western Union Defence Organization in and resentment between nationalities; 1948, was all about the need for cohesion in think, for example, of how some Serbian the West to stand up to a new Soviet threat. national mythology centers on memories Soviet domination of Eastern Europe of a military defeat by the Turks more also delayed completion of the process, than seven centuries ago. Perhaps nation- begun at Versailles after World War I, of states, including small ones, are not, as Carr giving postimperial European nationalities puts it, the “ultimate” type of economic their own states. It was only after that and political unit, but it should not be domination ended that Germany was made surprising that the intense attachments to whole and the southern Slavs of Yugoslavia them that constitute nationalism underlie and northern Slavs of Czechoslovakia got a large proportion of the policies, conflicts their own states. As did, of course, the and problems prevalent in today’s world.

14 The National Interest The Age of Nationalism ationalism infuses and drives many previously undeveloped as China, modern N of the most salient and active con- mass communications have expanded frontations around the globe. The object of the exposure and perspective of millions the Obama administration’s foreign-policy from village or district to the nation as a pivot—East Asia and the western Pacific— whole. In general, modern electronic is a prime example. The most visible con- communications enhance the symbols and flicts there largely take the classic nationalist affinities of a nation (as well as the powers form of territorial disputes. This is chief- of a national government) more than they ly true of unresolved differences between do those of a tribe or subnational region. China and its neighbors over islands in the The role of nationalism is just as apparent East and South China Seas and over the on the non-Chinese side of those East Asian land border in the Himalayas with India. territorial disputes. In Japan, the resurgent Some of the disputes involve economic in- nationalism that is identified most often terests such as hoped-for undersea hydro- with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reflects carbons, but all of them involve more visceral sentiments of competing na- tionalities, exhibiting their individual territorial imperatives, that a given piece of real estate is historically and rightfully theirs. Nationalism in China, as in most other nations, is a combination of natural sentiment bubbling up from below and exploitation of that sentiment from above. President Xi Jinping voices nationalist themes, and needs to voice them, not only to preserve national unity but also to sustain political support for necessary reforms and to claim legitimacy for the regime now that Communist ideology no longer does the trick. China, which owes its growth and prosperity to its three-decade capitalist trek, epitomizes how the receding of the great Left-Right struggle of the past has opened the way to more unreserved expressions of nationalism. China also illustrates how some of the globalizing forces such as border- hopping information technology, which the broader yearning of an exceptionally often have been seen as eroding the role homogeneous population that has taken of the nation-state, can actually enhance decades to find a capacity for the kind that role and increase popular identification of assertiveness that was crushed by the with the nation. In a country as large and disaster of World War II. In Vietnam, the

The Age of Nationalism September/October 2013 15 nationalism that the United States failed that have warred often in the past. But a to recognize as its actual adversary during reassertion of nationalism is a major the Vietnam War, when it was obsessed part of the European Union’s current with Communist ideology, is now expressed troubles, in ways that go beyond the so clearly and strongly that even the economic issues conventionally viewed as most obtuse could not miss it. Amid the the main problems. Efforts to deal with disputes over islands in the South China debt problems in the euro zone have been Sea, demonstrators in the streets of Hanoi plagued as much by national stereotypes, in shout, “Down with the henchmen of which northern Europeans see southerners China.” The Vietnamese regime knows that as lazy and southerners see the northerners as arrogant, as they have by the technical problems of having a common monetary policy without a common fiscal policy. The growing strength of nation-based sentiment in Europe shows up in many endeavors that are still organized along national lines, from soccer tournaments to the Eurovision Song Contest. Britain’s shaky involvement with European integration illustrates some of the larger trends involved. When Britain was first negotiating for entry into what was then the European Economic Community, most of the issues were narrowly defined economic ones, such as what would happen to imports of butter from New Zealand. Today the issue of Britain’s relationship with the Continent is addressed in broader terms centered on the meaning and importance of British nationality. This trend coincides with the rise of the United Kingdom Independence Party (ukip), which calls for British withdrawal from the European Union. Prime Minister David Cameron suppressing rather than identifying with once dismissed the party as “a bunch of such feelings toward China would risk fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists,” but turning the demonstrations squarely against the ukip’s electoral success—it garnered a the government. quarter of the vote in local council elections The magnificent supranational this May—has forced opponents to take experiment in Europe is an obvious it seriously. The Cameron government’s challenge to the proposition that toughened stance on immigration and identification with the nation-state is the commitment to hold a referendum on dominant pattern in world politics today. British membership in the eu are some of That experiment has indeed solidified an the results. apparently irreversible shift in which war Cameron also has agreed with Scottish is now unthinkable between some states nationalists to hold a referendum on

16 The National Interest The Age of Nationalism independence. This is an example of how transition successfully from a provincial the transfer of some powers from national Communist Party boss to a national leader capitals to Brussels, far from diminishing with a secure hold on power. nationalist sentiment, has provided a The ussr’s principal successor state, supranational umbrella under which some Russia, has exhibited a surge of nationalism nationalities, especially ones unhappy with since the Communist regime’s dissolution. the arrangements within their current The process partly parallels the one states, have become more assertive. These in China, in which the old Communist include Flemings and Catalonians as well as ideology could no longer serve as a unifier Scots. and legitimizer. But in Russia there is also However successful the European popular anger over economic dislocation experiment will ultimately be economically and the lack of growth, as well as perceived and in forever banishing intra-European threats to ethnic Russians from minorities war, it has far to go in establishing a sense that are still part of the Russian Federation. of continent-wide identity that can displace The term “Russian nationalist” is thus national identities grounded in language most closely associated with a xenophobic and culture. Even greater cultural and and extreme-right sensibility, although the linguistic commonality may, as the example nationalist resurgence in Russia extends far of Latin America suggests, be insufficient to beyond that. overshadow the histories and identities of Some of the intensified Russian nation-states. The Liberator, Simón Bolívar, nationalism has in effect been exported thought a shared Hispanic culture could be in the form of migrants to Israel. The the basis for a region-wide federation, but migrants shared with all Soviet citizens it was not to be. Today the Andean country the illiberal and undemocratic political named after Bolívar does not even have culture of the Communist era, along with full diplomatic relations with its neighbor racially tinged attitudes toward nationalities Chile, due to a territorial dispute left over of the Caucasus. But Russian Jews did from a nineteenth-century war. not have their own national republic to Africa continues to be a monument to cling to when the union broke up. Today, the strength of the nation-state as a point immigrants from Russia constitute one of of reference and object of competition, no the most fervidly nationalist segments of matter how arbitrarily drawn its boundaries Israel’s population. or deficient its central governments’ The region surrounding Israel would control over their territories. The secession appear to constitute another challenge to of South Sudan was a rare exception to a the idea of the dominance of nationalism, continent-wide resistance to tampering with given the conspicuous attention to religion the colonial boundaries left by European rather than nationality and especially to powers. A similar pattern has prevailed what is commonly perceived as a region- since the breakup of the Soviet Union in wide conflict between Sunni and Shia. That Central Asia, where arbitrary boundaries are attention is a reminder that no one way of the product of Stalin’s divide-and-rule line labeling the world explains everything, and drawing. The arbitrariness underlies some religious conflict certainly explains a lot in intrastate ethnic tensions such as those the Middle East. Many of the recent and between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz, but nationalist ongoing conflicts in that region, however, themes also have helped such figures as can properly be characterized, at least in Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan to part, as struggles to liberate nation-states

The Age of Nationalism September/October 2013 17 The United States exhibits as much nationalism as anyone else—even though Americans do not call it nationalism. More often it is termed “American exceptionalism.”

from the yoke of particular clans, ruling fact that the messy dissolution of empires families or religious sects, or from the is now mostly behind us. But he names influence of foreign powers. That certainly one major, conflict-ridden regional excep- is true, for example, of the wars in Iraq tion—the Middle East—where an empire is and Syria. Nationality has trumped religion troubled but not yet dissolved, by which he when the two have directly conflicted, as means the American empire. when Iraqi Shia fought for Sunni-controlled Troubled empire or not, the United States Iraq during the eight-year war against Shia exhibits as much nationalism as anyone Iran. Identification with individual nation- else—even though Americans do not call states has been more durable even than it nationalism. More often it is termed region-wide “Arab nationalism,” including “American exceptionalism,” which carries the Arab nationalism of Pan-Arabism’s the connotation not just of assertion of leading champion, Gamal Abdel Nasser, national identity and values but also of whose political union between Egypt and being something bigger and better than Syria was short lived. The boundary lines anyone else’s nationalism. Exceptionalism is drawn during World War I by Mark Sykes what the citizens of a superpower get to call and Francois Georges-Picot have lasted, their own nationalism. just like the colonial boundaries in Africa. The United States also is part of The leading challenge to those lines, in the worldwide trend of increased and northern Iraq, has come from the biggest intensified nationalism during the unrealized nationalist aspiration left over past quarter century. Politically, this has from the post–World War I treaties: that partly taken the form of one of the two of the Kurds. Likewise, the most salient major U.S. parties moving away from the long-running conflict with the broadest internationalism and realism of Eisenhower repercussions in the Middle East is a clash and Nixon in favor of a foreign policy of between two nationalist ambitions: those of neoconservatism, the most muscular Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. expression of American exceptionalism. A perceptive analyst of American nationalism, he fact that nationalism in the Middle Anatol Lieven, suggests that this party T East has not yet gotten completely out can now most appropriately be called the from the shadow of religious conflict, as American Nationalist Party. The trends nation-states in Europe did in the seven- involved are not limited to one side of teenth century, is part of a larger regional the political spectrum, however; they are historical lag in which the Middle East also reflected in prevailing American habits and has been slower to get out from the shadow attitudes ranging from the wearing of flag of empire. Historian Niall Ferguson, ex- pins on lapels to unquestioningly imputing plaining why the twenty-first century is goodness to a wide range of U.S. actions likely to be less bloody in most of the world overseas simply because it is the United than the twentieth, cites as one reason the States that is doing them.

18 The National Interest The Age of Nationalism The intensity of American nationalism points to the chief prescriptive implications of living in the nationalist era, which come under the heading of knowing oneself. Americans should understand how much their own first inclinations for interacting with the rest of the world stem from the same kind of nationalist urges that underlie inclinations in other countries, however much the American version is portrayed differently by affixing the label of exceptionalism. They should bear in mind that first inclinations and urges are not always in the best interest of the nation that is the object of their affection and attachment. U.S. policy makers should be continually conscious of how U.S. actions may step on someone else’s nationalist sentiments, eliciting the sort of counteractions that almost always are elicited when competing nationalist perspectives confront each other. In assessing sundry problems overseas the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where a two- and how to deal with them, one of the state solution appears increasingly out of first questions that should be asked is how reach but where a one-state formula seems a problem reflects nationalist sensibilities inconsistent with the strong nationalist and ambitions, of masses as well as elites, in aspirations of both sides. other countries. The resulting perspective No single model of the world can generate is more apt to yield sound, policy-relevant an all-purpose grand strategy. But the best insights than is a vision of transnational fit for the nationalist era is a pragmatic contests between good and evil, between realism that takes as the basic ingredient of moderates and extremists, or between global affairs the sometimes conflicting and democrats and autocrats. Sometimes the sometimes parallel interests of individual policy implication may be for the United nation-states—while recognizing the States to do less; other times it may be to power that can be generated by nationalist do more—as perhaps, for example, with sentiments within nation-states. n

The Age of Nationalism September/October 2013 19 Asia’s Looming Power Shift

By Rajan Menon

artographical conceptions of Asia dermine long-standing analytical frame- obscure what, in strategic terms, works and policies. C is a “Greater Asia.” It stretches These looming changes cannot be from eastern Iran through Central Asia fully understood through the prism of and South Asia to Indonesia, and from the the grand theories devised to depict the Aleutian Islands to Australia, encompass- post–Cold War world, including the ing the Russian Far East, China, Japan, three most prominent ones: the “Clash of the Korean Peninsula and Southeast Asia. Civilizations”; the “End of History”; and It is connected by multifarious transac- globalization. All three, underpinned by tions, cooperative and adversarial, resulting reductionism and historicism, miss the from flows of trade and investment, energy manifold, complex and contradictory forces pipelines, nationalities that spill across of- shaping Greater Asia. ficial borders, historical legacies that shape Samuel P. Huntington’s perception present perceptions, and shifting power ra- of persistent civilizational clash missed tios, within and among states. This is not a the reality that in Greater Asia states, closed system; after all, many Greater Asian not civilizations, remain the principal states are closely tied to the United States, wellsprings of change. True, something a non-Asian Pacific state whose prowess akin to civilizational conflict is visible in enables it to shape power balances and po- Afghanistan, Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan, Iran, litical and military outcomes across the re- Sri Lanka, China, the Philippines, Pakistan gion. Yet America will face unprecedented and Malaysia. But, while it may threaten changes in the distribution of power in the cohesion of such countries, it has not Greater Asia’s eastern theater and disrup- integrated them into any civilizational tions in the western theater, as domestic blocs. In Asia, the effects of culture and constraints—economic and political—cur- religion are fissiparous rather than tail its choices. That, in turn, will neces- integrative and will remain so. sitate strategic reassessments by states in the There is no Hindu civilization capable of region, particularly those that have relied mobilizing Asian loyalties and resources and on American protection. All this will un- aligning states’ policies to India’s benefit. Within India, Hindu nationalism— Rajan Menon is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Cassandras’ cries notwithstanding—has Professor of Political Science at the City College failed to overcome the abiding appeal of New York/City University of New York, a of secularism among the country’s nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council founding doctrines. Though imperfect and the author, most recently, of The End of in practice, secularism has more purchase Alliances (Oxford University Press, 2007). in Indian politics than ideologies based

20 The National Interest Asia’s Looming Power Shift on religion and remains the signature of Asia, Asia’s non-Indian Hindus would find the Congress Party, India’s only national their prospects imperiled, not advanced, political organization. Partly because of by becoming associated with a religion- its association with the North’s “Hindu based political movement led by gargantuan heartland,” the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya India. Furthermore it would be self- Janata Party (bjp)—previously the Bharatiya defeating for India to adopt a civilizational Jana Sangh—has shallow roots in southern strategy at a time when it will need allies to India, the locus of much of the country’s counterbalance a rising China. innovation and high economic growth, A Sinic civilizational bloc is equally and has failed to capture the national implausible. Confucianism’s transnational imagination. Only twice (in 1977–1980 allure will not match the emotional pull and 1999–2004) has the bjp formed a of nationalism, particularly in Japan and multiyear national government. Singly or Vietnam, still influenced by their conflict- through coalitions, the Congress Party has laden history with China. Moreover, dominated India’s national politics. a campaign by China to organize a Han India’s 170 million Muslims, nearly as civilizational coalition would antagonize its numerous as their Pakistani coreligionists, minorities, particularly the Tibetans and represent another barrier to Huntington’s Uighurs, but also the Hui, whose rising view of a Hindu civilization. It’s hard to nationalism already poses problems. China’s imagine a bigger threat to India’s future minority nationalities constitute less than than millions of Muslim citizens so fearful 10 percent of China’s population, but of ascendant Hindu chauvinism that they they inhabit more than half its landmass. can overcome differences of language, Progress in education and economic regionalism and theological pluralism development has strengthened anti-Han within their faith. But no such Hindu nationalism, not weakened it through nationalism has gained sufficient traction assimilation. Tibetans have been engaged in the country to raise such fears among in serial self-immolations (119 since 2009) Muslims. Hindutva—the inchoate ideology and riots; bombings and demonstrations that conflates Indian and Hindu—has have erupted in the autonomous region never attained significant influence. Gujarat of Xinjiang, the Uighurs’ homeland and State’s chief minister, Narendra Modi, a bjp site of bountiful energy deposits. Tibet and luminary and aspiring prime minister, has Xinjiang are remote from China’s eastern been undermined by his association with a power centers. Tibet borders four countries, 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat. And including China’s preeminent Asian rival, various other militant Hindu movements— India. Xinjiang borders eight. Geography among them the Rashtriya Swayamsevak and ethnicity conspire to compound the Sangh and the Shiv Sena—have never challenge of maintaining the state’s control. gained national followings. The Chinese leadership can contain Even weaker is the transnational potential restive minorities through repression and of Hinduism, a capacious creed with an co-option, but changes in the surrounding array of deities, doctrines and rituals that region could make it harder. New states is further fractured by differences rooted have risen in the Turkic Muslim regions in region, caste, class and language. While of Central Asia once ruled by Russia; this Hindu communities exist in Malaysia area neighbors Xinjiang and constitutes a and Singapore and Hinduism’s imprint is kindred cultural zone. Separatist Uighurs evident in Bali and elsewhere in Southeast also can seek succor in an unstable

Asia’s Looming Power Shift September/October 2013 21 Afghanistan. China’s minorities could prove is a true Muslim, what Islam demands of even harder to handle should a prolonged its devotees and the rights of non-Sunnis economic crisis produce political upheaval (Ahmadis and Shia). As for Indonesia, its in the East, weakening the government’s efforts to orchestrate an Islamic coalition authority. Then minorities could become would estrange non-Muslims in Bali, even more resentful over irritants such as Maluku, North Sulawesi and especially Han Chinese migration and the building Papua, where nationalism and separatist of Han-majority urban beachheads— sentiment remain resilient. massive regime policies since 1949. Unrest and violence in Tibet and Xinjiang could rancis Fukuyama’s “End of History” expand significantly. F thesis—that liberal-democratic capital- Sinic civilization, like its Hindu analog, ism remained the sole global ideology fol- cannot undergird an effective foreign lowing Soviet Communism’s demise—fares policy. The most receptive constituency no better as a guide to Asia’s future. In Iran, likely would be the thirty-four million Central Asia, Russia, Singapore and China, “overseas Chinese” in the Asia-Pacific, there is widespread ambivalence toward de- with about half residing in Indonesia, mocracy. Some leaders, invoking “Asian Malaysia and Thailand. But these groups values,” attack the materialism and hyper- are regarded with envy and often hostility individualism they see in liberal democracy in host countries because of their share and criticize its lack of regard for order, hi- of national wealth. They would be ill erarchy and social obligation. Denouncing served by becoming adjutants to what democracy promotion as a push to advance would look like a culture-based quest for American influence, they emphasize in- primacy by a country already viewed with consistencies that arise when pragmatic in- trepidation. The persistent political divide terests and democratic principles collide. between China and Taiwan illustrates the Russia’s government has developed a varia- limits of cultural kinship in producing tion on this theme—a mélange of statism, political influence. Taiwan would scarcely nationalism, Orthodox Christianity, social join a Beijing-led civilizational coalition, conservatism and critiques of Western hu- which would likely be directed against the man-rights norms. These sentiments reso- United States, the country most critical to nate with many Russians, as public-opinion continued Taiwanese independence, or at experts have noted, and may have greater India, China’s most powerful Asian rival. If appeal than the street protests of big-city the communities and countries culturally anti-Putin liberals suggest. closest to China are poor candidates for a The “Asian values” manifesto, designed to civilization-based strategy, Beijing would forge a coalition against the United States have even less success with those further throughout much of Greater Asia, has not removed and with a history of conflict with had much effect. Some of its proponents, China, such as India, Japan and Vietnam. such as Singapore, rely on America for An Asian Islamic bloc is the least likely, their security and conduct multiple as there is no obvious candidate to serve as transactions with it, some of which have a hub. Pakistan and Indonesia, which have cultural significance. Still, the weakness of heft in size and population, come closest, this approach does not mean the people but an Islam-centered Asian strategy would of Greater Asia are ready to embrace further unsettle a Pakistan already awash in democracy over authoritarian alternatives. violence stemming from disputes over who Consider the contrast between democratic

22 The National Interest Asia’s Looming Power Shift India’s checkered economic record, nomic growth and technological prowess authoritarian China’s stunning economic will force states to adopt market economics successes, the galloping growth rates South and open politics. But the first priority of Korea and Taiwan achieved when neither any government is the preservation of its was democratic, Vietnam’s brisk economic power, not maximizing economic growth. growth, and Singapore’s enviable living standards and clean government. The democracies in Asia have not been most successful at instituting economic reforms. China, unencumbered by election cycles or opposition parties, has instituted reforms more rapidly than India. Indeed, the India- China dichotomy raises questions about whether democratic India or authoritarian China will prove to be the more attractive model in Asia and whether the contrast in their economic When leaders fear that liberalization could records to date may shape attitudes in the threaten their political power, economic region more than Western democratic privileges and patronage networks, they ideals. Though opinion surveys in Asia resist. North Korea is an extreme example. show substantial support for democracy, More pertinent, perhaps, are China, Russia, people’s responses become more nuanced Japan, India, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. on such specifics as its effectiveness in Each, in its own way, has bent globalization delivering rapid economic growth and to its own purposes. efficient, clean government. The point is Asian governments have shaped not that authoritarianism is better than globalization as much as it has shaped democracy at promoting growth or curbing them. Several restrict trade, foreign corruption—which is massive in China and investment and travel. They decree currency elsewhere in Asia—but that the former’s controls, manipulate exchange rates and successes may shape Asians’ political violate intellectual-property conventions. attitudes more than the End of History They censor the mass media and block thesis assumes. This may also explain the Internet sites (a practice even in democratic lingering support for authoritarianism India). They suppress opposition groups reflected in regional opinion polls. and imprison, or even kill, their leaders. They assert state ownership over key lobalization, the third grand narrative, economic sectors. Globalization’s advocates G overlaps with Fukuyama’s framework. might retort that such measures are Its gurus proclaim that the desire for eco- inefficient. But that misses the point that

Asia’s Looming Power Shift September/October 2013 23 The post-Mao political system has never had to operate outside the congenial context of breakneck economic growth, so we don’t know how much its stability hinges on maintaining the blistering pace.

governments covet stability and control has yielded other sources of strength: near- more than efficiency. Seen thus, the curbs universal literacy, a vast middle class, politi- on economic or intellectual exchange in cal stability, modern infrastructure, soaring Iran, Central Asia, China, Singapore, exports and enormous trade surpluses, vast Russia and other nations in Greater Asia capital reserves, big advances in technologi- have achieved their goals. On occasion, cal innovation, and a substantial and versa- the refusal to adopt policies peddled by tile manufacturing sector. globalization pundits has proved prudent. China’s trade ties, investments and During the 1997 East Asian currency lending in Greater Asia already are making crisis, Malaysia, India and China all it the fulcrum of an economic system. It limited capital mobility, faring better than is the leading trade partner for nine of Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand, Greater Asia’s countries: India, Pakistan, which didn’t. Iran, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Australia, Each of the three narratives discussed Mongolia and Taiwan. Central Asia— above exalts a singular force, whether the preserve of czars and commissars for cultural, ideological or economic, as some 150 years—is being pulled eastward determinative and to which states appear by Chinese trade, investment, migration, hostage. But states remain the paramount cultural programs, railways and energy political participants in world politics. pipelines. And this reorientation has Fashionable theories miss the mark happened in a remarkably short time when they proclaim states’ diminishing frame: since 1991, the year the Soviet significance and assert that the political and Union imploded. On another front, the military competition among them counts Shanghai Cooperation Organization for less in the era of qualified sovereignty, provides institutional legitimacy to China’s global governance and nonstate actors. The expanding role, and stake, in Central Asia’s biggest changes in Asia will result from the security. In Afghanistan, China is investing successes, failures and strategic choices of in oil fields and minerals and countering three states in particular: China, India and India’s determined efforts to gain influence Japan. (though once nato forces depart, Beijing will have to devise a strategy to defend its hanks to growth rates averaging 9 per- newly acquired assets amid instability). T cent a year since 1978, an unsurpassed While China and India remain at odds, record, China overtook Japan in 2010 as the the former has become the latter’s biggest world’s second-largest economy. By 2030 its trade partner (and racks up surpluses). economic output is expected to exceed that The West has moved to isolate Iran, but of the United States. This economic suc- China has not. It is Iran’s foremost trade cess gives Chinese leaders vast resources for partner, while Iran is China’s third-largest advancing their objectives and their standing source of imported oil. On Greater Asia’s in Greater Asia. The economic boom also eastern flank, Russia is connected to

24 The National Interest Asia’s Looming Power Shift China by oil flows, trade and arms sales, States will go to defend them, especially while a “strategic partnership”—featuring if they clash with China over the rightful joint military exercises—born of a shared ownership of tiny islands and outcroppings opposition to a unipolar, American- or challenge the validity of China’s “nine- dominated world has ended decades of dash line,” which essentially asserts Chinese ideological polemics, territorial disputes ownership of the South China Sea. The and militarized borders. Underlying this, point is not that China is likely to attack however, is a dramatic shift in the balance these countries but that, if current trends of power in China’s favor, another historic continue, it could prevail on contentious transformation. issues and cast doubt on America’s American alliances (or implied promises reliability, without firing a shot. That is the of protection) span Greater Asia and are way of Sun Tzu. especially salient for Australia, Japan, Yet China also faces pressing problems. Taiwan, South Korea and the Philippines. Perhaps the biggest stems, paradoxically, But these commitments will operate in from Beijing’s success in transforming a different context from the recent past. China’s economy and society since China still trails the United States in the 1978, when Deng Xiaoping’s reforms standard indicators of power: gdp, defense commenced. The ensuing socioeconomic spending, armed forces’ reach and lethality, modernization has been revolutionary. sea and air power, and technological What has been lacking, though, is a innovation. Yet such indices obscure a corresponding transformation in China’s subtle yet critical shift occurring in East political order, which has produced Asia. China has increased the risks faced a disjuncture between, in Marxist by the United States in defending friends parlance, the “base” (socioeconomic and allies. It has done this by increasing forces) and “superstructure” (the state spending; purchasing modern ships, and its institutions). The signs include submarines and aircraft from Russia; the increasing group consciousness of modernizing its own military industries; non-Han nationalities; sharp increases in and upgrading its technological know-how. protests (which reached 180,000 in 2010, This has not gone unnoticed in the region. twice the number in 2006) over official The ambit within which China can land grabs, corruption and environmental now exact a toll on American forces is despoliation; new levels of labor unrest; and larger than ever before and will expand. an anachronistic official ideology, Marxism- Standard “force on force” comparisons or Leninism-Maoism, which is an impediment tallies of relative economic power provide to economic growth and management. a snapshot of how the United States and Continued socioeconomic change will only China compare in aggregate global power. aggravate this misalignment, for which the But such comparisons obscure the altered Communist Party appears to lack solutions distribution of risk in East Asia and the beyond repression, co-option, censorship degree to which it will require states in and harangues about subversive ideas. the area—especially those that have long Deng and his successors maintained order relied on America for their safety (above in part by ensuring phenomenal economic all Japan)—to rethink familiar defense growth rates that have recast the lives of strategies. As the twenty-first century Chinese, creating opportunities few had advances, the question these nations must imagined. Yet the post-Mao political ask themselves is just how far the United system has never had to operate outside the

Asia’s Looming Power Shift September/October 2013 25 congenial context of breakneck economic problems or will not even face them. Yet growth, so we don’t know just how much increasing capital flight (circumventing its stability hinges on maintaining the low official ceilings on moving money blistering pace. High-tempo growth also overseas) and a surge in the numbers of has increased income inequality, pervasive wealthy Chinese choosing to emigrate corruption and environmental degradation, to the West suggest that China’s most all of which have bred social turmoil. The privileged are hedging their bets. While Communist Party is likely to manage the China may not be headed for collapse, its polity-society misalignment by embracing long-running success could be replaced by nationalism (the true opiate of the masses) a period of turbulence and uncertainty. A and touting China’s emergence from faltering China, rather than a rising one, weakness to global power. Yet that could could be the challenge that awaits Asia. present its own problems. Chinese leaders Prolonged instability in China would have will find it harder to reassure their Asian wide repercussions. Chinese leaders could neighbors that China’s rise is benign and lean harder on nationalism as a legitimizing that they need not take steps to bolster their ideology under such circumstances. And security. Beijing’s room for compromise because of China’s importance in the global during crises and confrontations, especially economy, its misfortunes would spread well involving Japan or the United States, beyond its borders. will also be reduced. Chinese citizens, increasingly nationalistic and equipped with f China’s successes routinely make head- information and technologies that empower I lines, it is India’s failures that get atten- protesters, will judge the party against its tion. While the acceleration of India’s eco- rhetoric. And the more powerful China nomic growth after its reforms of the early becomes, the greater these expectations will 1990s have received coverage, enumera- be. tions of India’s failings, especially relative The mainstream view among Sinologists to China, are more common, and there is that China will overcome all such are many of them. India’s 2012 per capita gdp was $3,900, ranking 168th worldwide; for China, the re- spective numbers were $9,300 and 123rd; for Japan, $36,900 and 38th; for South Korea (whose income per person in the early 1950s was on par with India’s) $32,800 and 44th. In- dia’s literacy rate is 73.4 percent, while those of China, Indonesia and Malaysia are over 90 per- cent. Fully 32 percent of all In- dians subsist on less than $1.25 a day (in terms of purchasing- power parity), compared to 13 percent in China, 18 percent in Indonesia, 21 percent in Pak- istan, 1.5 percent in Iran and

26 The National Interest Asia’s Looming Power Shift 0 percent in Malaysia. In life expectancy, gap with China. Nor, despite huge strides India ranks 164th; in Greater Asia, only in modernizing its armed forces since the Pakistan, Nepal, Tajikistan and Afghanistan humiliating 1962 defeat at China’s hands, fare worse. Its infant-mortality rate ranks can it balance China militarily without 50th; the only states in the region with powerful coalition partners—a reality that worse records are Afghanistan, Pakistan, will remain unchanged during the next few Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Bangla- decades. desh. India’s infrastructure is antiquated—a Yet India has impressive strengths drag on economic growth and inward for- compared to China. China’s urbanization, eign investment—and a stark contrast to advances in education and, above all, its China’s. In the un’s most recent “Human draconian population-control practices Development Index” rankings—a compos- have, in a few decades, reduced its total ite measure of individuals’ access to basic fertility rate (tfr), or children born per necessities—India places 136th, and the woman of childbearing age. It is now only countries in Greater Asia that trail 1.55, well below what’s required (2.11) to it are the likes of Afghanistan, Myanmar maintain a country’s current population and Papua New Guinea. India’s anemic size. India’s tfr, by contrast, is 2.55. industrial-manufacturing base is a major China’s population is shrinking, and barrier to export-led growth and poverty re- this trend will continue, increasing the duction. Its university system, despite pock- proportion of retirees, skewing the ratio ets of excellence, cannot meet present and of retirees to taxpayers and increasing projected needs in science and engineering. expenditures on the nonworking India’s cumulative inward foreign direct population. This pattern bolsters the investment in 2010 was $191 billion, com- “demographic transition theory” (economic pared to China’s $574 billion and lilliputian advancement reduces population growth), Singapore’s $274 billion. Neighbors with which has been evident in the West and far smaller populations—Thailand, Taiwan Japan as well. But as the demographer and South Korea—were close in absolute Nicholas Eberstadt notes, Europe and terms and far ahead per capita. Though the Japan got rich before they became old. subject of much hype, India’s information- China’s experience will be the opposite, technology sector employs a tiny propor- and that portends problems for sustaining tion of the workforce and cannot offset the high economic growth and investment. By country’s weaknesses in manufacturing. contrast, 25 percent of India’s population It’s true that India has scored some gains, is projected to be below twenty-four years among them a drop in the poverty rate, of age by 2025 (compared to 18 percent for made possible by its accelerated economic China), guaranteeing an abundant supply growth since the early 1990s—averaging 6 of labor. percent for much of the 1990s, 5.5 percent Paradoxically, some of India’s apparent between 1998 and 2002, 8.8 percent weaknesses are strengths. India lacked between 2003 and 2007, and 6.5 percent the preconditions deemed necessary for between 2008 and 2012, a sharp contrast to democracy (in particular, high literacy and the 3.5 percent average from 1950 to 1980. a large middle class). Yet it established a But the dismal quality-of-life statistics democratic system in 1947 and has cited above make predictions of India’s nurtured it successfully ever since. Power impending rise as a global power sound has been transferred peacefully numerous hollow. India can’t soon close the economic times through national, state and local

Asia’s Looming Power Shift September/October 2013 27 elections over nearly seven decades. India is immigration policy to stay that way). The a linguistic and religious kaleidoscope, but homogeneity has eased the bargaining and this trait, far from being an impediment compromises integral to democratic poli- to stability, has made it harder to organize tics. Though Japan descended into decades mass movements against the central of deflation after the early 1990s, it now government. It also has increased the seems to be emerging from that swamp. It significance of state-level politics, thus retains a world-class industrial and tech- localizing problems. nological base and service sector, and its India’s diversity also has economy is still the world’s third largest. compartmentalized crises, whether violence These assets give Japan the wherewithal to in Kashmir, Sikh separatism, tribal and increase its military power relatively quickly. Maoist insurgencies, or riots provoked by It can also do so without significant eco- the government’s efforts, now abandoned, nomic strain: thanks to its alliance with the to make Hindi the national language. United States, defense spending has aver- The strong elements of decentralization aged below 1 percent of gdp since the end in India’s political system reduce the of World War II. Altering the established probability that an upheaval in the center pattern will ignite controversy at home and will radiate outward, encompassing the rest abroad, but Japan’s decades-long strategy of of the country—a contrast to what occurred relying on American protection—outsourc- in the twilight of the Soviet Union and to ing defense—will become less tenable as what could happen in China. the balance of power between America and Then there are the clear-cut strengths China changes. Changes in Japan’s defense of the Indian polity. The army has stayed strategy loom, and it is absurd to see the clear of politics, which provides an added choices as limited to the militarism of the source of political stability. Despite Indian past or the minimalism of the present. democracy’s blemishes (such as elections The “peace constitution,” many marred by corruption and patronage, citizens’ aversion to abandoning military and parties anchored in personalities), minimalism and still-strong Asian the country faces nothing comparable to memories of Japanese imperialism will China’s base-superstructure misalignment. together make it difficult for Tokyo to India’s problem is the reverse of China’s: a respond to the new context. Yet, with an lagging “base.” That’s a serious challenge economy reliant on imports for just about but not comparable to the obsolescence of everything needed to keep operating, an entrenched political order. Japan is especially vulnerable to states with naval power capable of blocking sea-lanes. he last of the trio, Japan, has long It has been fortunate for almost seventy T since solved the problem of meeting years: the national interest of the United its citizens’ basic needs. And it rivals Eu- States, the world’s preeminent maritime rope and America in living standards. Japan power, required that it keep sea routes took to democracy when it was imposed by secure, including Asian sea-lanes. Though America following World War II and has the United States will maintain its naval maintained it through the decades while preponderance for many years, China, also avoiding the kind of social turmoil expe- dependent on sea-lanes and thus susceptible rienced by the West in the 1960s and by to their disruption, will continue to expand Europe now. Japan is about as monoethnic its naval power with the advantage of as countries get (and employs a restrictive having significant resources in hand. For

28 The National Interest Asia’s Looming Power Shift Changes in Japan’s defense strategy loom, and it is absurd to see the choices as limited to the militarism of the past or the minimalism of the present.

the first time since 1945, Japan will face an likely to retain what it has, offer partial ascendant Asian power that is an adversary concessions to India, and press its claims committed to becoming a front-rank naval more forcefully over the Senkaku/Diaoyu power. islands as well as the Spratlys/Nansha and Japan also faces serious demographic Paracel/Xisha archipelagoes. A Chinese problems. Although the aging of Japanese leadership reliant on nationalism to manage society accelerated once Japan got rich, internal instability will be even less willing the process continues, and the Japanese (or able) to make compromises. seem unwilling to turn to immigration as Barring an internal crisis, China will a solution. Japan’s population, now close have substantial superiority in power over to 128 million, is projected to shrink to other Asian states. Thus, strategies aimed ninety-seven million by midcentury. at balancing it will be collective rather Demographic constraints will shape Japan’s than unilateral or bilateral, and even the defense choices, inclining it toward sea and United States will seek partners to reduce air power and high-tech weapons, but it will the associated risks and costs. Pressing U.S. not rule out increases in defense spending domestic needs—outmoded infrastructure, or a rethinking of the established national- long-neglected social problems, the rising security strategy. costs of health and retirement programs, budget deficits and debt, and the increasing he biggest security challenge for much proportion of retirees—are likely to T of Greater Asia will be balancing reduce the revenues and reservoir of China, whose neighbors will hedge their public support American leaders require bets even if the Chinese leadership uses to sustain expensive overseas defense sticks sparingly and carrots liberally, while commitments. Thus, a diminution in the emphasizing China’s “peaceful rise.” In the American commitment appears likely, politics of nations, words have slippery the current clamor about a pivot to Asia meanings, and intentions are difficult to notwithstanding. divine. Hence, states dwell on others’ deeds The most effective collective strategy and on the changes in relative capabilities for states seeking to counterbalance that create new power ratios. China would be to extend Chinese focus Asian countries that have fought wars and resources across several fronts. Given or had skirmishes with China will be China’s size, these fronts are widely particularly inclined to hedge. China’s separated and hence hard to reinforce. growing capabilities will coincide with its Simple geography suggests that the natural territorial disputes with India, Japan and partners will be the United States, Japan, various Southeast Asian countries. It could Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia, Singapore resolve these disagreements to reassure and India. Yet apart from the difficulties the region, but that has not been the of orchestrating such a disparate coalition, predilection of rising powers. China is more its members’ varying degrees of economic

Asia’s Looming Power Shift September/October 2013 29 dependence on China and exposure to its with a multilateral strategy and resolves its military power will complicate cohesion territorial squabbles with South Korea (over and collective action. the Takeshima/Dokdo island groups) and Still, security consultations among these Russia (concerning the South Kurils/Hoppo states have increased, and some (India, Ryodo). Japan, Australia and Singapore) have Some states will stand apart from an engaged in joint naval exercises. China’s anti-Chinese coalition. They include rise has initiated a strategic convergence South Korea, as long as China does not between India and the United States—a pose a threat and remains North Korea’s stark contrast to the Cold War years—and principal patron. Russia will follow suit. Its their 2008 agreement on civilian nuclear vast Far Eastern provinces—almost three cooperation was a landmark. That deal times the area of France, Germany and constituted, in effect, America’s recognition Spain combined—are sparsely populated of India as a nuclear-weapons state—a (just over six million, 4.2 percent of major departure from Washington’s Russia’s total population), far from Russia’s traditional nonproliferation policy. Yet western industrial heartland (Moscow is talk of a U.S.-Indian alliance is misplaced. five thousand miles away) and hence hard India will seek the material and symbolic to support militarily. This is particularly gains that flow from a partnership with true given that the four Chinese provinces Washington but without losing its leverage across the border (Heilongjiang, Inner or alarming China. Given China’s proximity Mongolia, Jilin and Liaoning) alone contain to India and its growing power, the risks about 160 million people. Russia’s relative of joining an overtly anti-Chinese alliance weakness will give China a secure northern would outweigh any gains. This same logic front and reduce any encirclement strategy’s will guide Vietnam. efficacy. Mongolia—weak, exposed to Japan will face the toughest choices. The Chinese power and lacking nearby allies— prevailing view among Japan experts is that will respond similarly, while Laos and it will not jettison its military minimalism Cambodia will rely on China to balance for various reasons—public opposition, Vietnam. For its part, Beijing will counter a quasi-pacifist culture, constitutional any encirclement strategy by preserving and barriers, confidence in the American extending interior lines of supply for energy alliance and regional memories of Japanese and trade that connect it to Russia, Central militarism. Yet over the past three hundred Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. It will years Japan’s foreign policy has ranged from also seek access to ports on the coasts of isolationism to imperialism, with variations Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan in between, and changes in its external and Iran, so as to have supplements to the environment have often forced these Straits of Malacca, Sunda and Lombok. fluctuations. Furthermore, Japan’s choices China also will insist that any deal over the are not limited to inertia or imperialism. unification of the Korean Peninsula, which It now spends a tiny proportion of its will require its participation, involve the gdp on defense and could improve its removal of or a sharp reduction in American military capabilities modestly without forces now stationed in South Korea. provoking panic. Moreover, depending On Greater Asia’s western flank, China on how China wields its power, regional will replace Russia as the state most attitudes could change, especially if Japan consequential for Central Asian states’ increases its military strength in tandem economies and national security. But

30 The National Interest Asia’s Looming Power Shift this transition will unfold as much of on Pakistan’s strength, would face Central Asia resumes its cultural trajectory new circumstances that are harder to southward, toward the wider Islamic world, comprehend, let alone counter, above a process interrupted by the nineteenth- all preserving nuclear deterrence with century czarist conquest. In deepening its an adversary lacking a functioning state. presence in Central Asia and Afghanistan, Five other problems could surface or China will have to navigate cultural and become more difficult to manage were religious currents that could flow into Pakistan to unravel. One is irredentism, Xinjiang. Another challenge will be to given that the Pashtun homeland straddles safeguard its economic investments and Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Baluch security interests without provoking a territories traverse Pakistan, Afghanistan backlash or becoming mired in conflicts in and Iran. The second concerns groups what promises to be a volatile area. That that couple terrorism and radical Islam, balancing act will be even harder should which would find it much easier to China experience a political crisis that operate in Kashmir and Afghanistan in the makes distant Xinjiang harder to control, absence of a strong Pakistani state. The precisely at a time when the province is third is the management of crucial water exposed to destabilizing influences. resources shared by India and Pakistan, China’s biggest problem in Greater and by Pakistan and Afghanistan, in ways Asia’s western theater would be Pakistan’s that do not pit upstream states against fragmentation, which would undermine their downstream neighbors. Fourth is the most important element of China’s the prospect that transnational drug and outflanking strategy against India and criminal networks spanning Pakistan, trigger upheavals with follow-on effects Afghanistan, Central Asia and Iran could be that could flow into China’s westernmost strengthened. The fifth would be ensuring provinces. Pakistan’s breakup would Afghanistan’s stability amid upheaval in be even more dangerous for India, Iran, Pakistan. Afghanistan and Central Asia. Each has Another challenge on Greater Asia’s borders and cultural and ethnoreligious western flank involves stabilizing post- connections with Pakistan, which would American Afghanistan. What looms is ensure that its problems would be theirs, freewheeling competition—featuring India, too. India’s leaders, having long focused Pakistan, China, Iran and Uzbekistan—

Asia’s Looming Power Shift September/October 2013 31 powered by fear and mistrust and without more important than others and can take a robust regional organizations that could turn steering. But this bus has several steer- foster collective action. Worse, as part ing wheels and no consensus on a common of their rivalry, these states are likely to course, least of all among the drivers, who establish patron-client relationships with also lack maps and don’t trust one another armed Afghan groups, making order enough to select a route or destination. in Afghanistan even harder to preserve. Some vehicle parts are old and unreliable; None of these states stands to gain from others have yet to encounter rough terrain. worsening turmoil in Afghanistan, yet each And a thick fog obscures the road. is acting in ways that increase its likelihood. A likely consequence of the divergent interests among Greater Asia’s most ould that one of the three prevail- powerful states and the absence of effective W ing megatheories offered a reliable institutions to facilitate collective action guide to Greater Asia’s future. Alas, with is that problems that cannot be addressed so many forces at play in the region, tidy effectively without multilateral cooperation frameworks are useless. Greater Asia is like will go unattended and fester. These a big bus crammed with passengers of vary- problems include nuclear proliferation, ing backgrounds and persuasions. Some are terrorism, environmental degradation, territorial disputes and arms races. Among the desirables that appear infeasible are confidence-building measures that avert crises on land and sea; agreements that enable the cooperative exploration of contested oceanic energy deposits; rule- based management of shared water resources by riverine countries; and codes of conduct on cyberwarfare, trade and investment in a transaction- dense region. The pity is not merely that these challenges are likely to be missed opportunities for cooperation but also that they may aggravate already-abundant sources of tension and conflict resulting from changes in the balance of power. Thucydides would have found these tragic circumstances familiar, but our prevailing paradigms, long on sweep and short on subtlety, cannot do them justice. n

32 The National Interest Asia’s Looming Power Shift

The Case for Norman Angell

By Jacob Heilbrunn

ver a century ago, a talented Brit- unlimited praise of his contemporaries, ish newspaperman sent a manu- expressed or indicated by many men O script on the irrationality of war of eminence and influence, by countless to numerous London publishers. It was reviewers who have lately hungered for a uniformly rejected on the grounds that hero to worship.” The Boston Herald the public was uninterested in the topic. stated, “This is an epoch-making book.” After he paid a well-known firm to print A French economics journal called it his opuscule, it quickly garnered praise, “profound,” and it was hailed in Germany and then, a few months later, an expanded as “an invaluable contribution.” Edward edition became a publishing sensation. It VII read the book and an institute called sold several million copies and was almost the Garton Foundation was established to immediately translated into twenty-five lan- disseminate its message. Lord Esher wrote guages. At a moment when a highly nation- the author, “Your book can be as epoch alistic imperial Germany was arming itself making as Seeley’s Expansion of England or to the teeth and Edwardian England was, Mahan’s Sea Power. It is sent forth at the in turn, bolstering its naval program, the right psychological moment, and wants to book’s thesis was as revolutionary as it was be followed up.” Esher himself did just that: sweeping—that growing economic interde- he lectured at the Sorbonne as well as to pendence among nations rendered renewed a group of high-ranking military officers, conflict a thing of the past. which included Sir John French, the chief Norman Angell’s triumph was not of the General Staff, to explain that growing adventitious. Much of it was owed to the economic ties meant that armed conflict unstinting efforts of Lord Esher, a close “becomes every day more difficult and friend of King Edward VII and chairman improbable.” of the war committee, who touted Angell’s Yet only four years after this volume The Great Illusion as a profound work. appeared, the improbable occurred, Others agreed. The volume became the severing the very economic ties that were subject of a cult following, and study groups supposed to render conflict among nations and societies in England and Europe were nugatory. In August 1914, Europe plunged formed to discuss and propagate its views. into World War I. By war’s end, the Reviews in the popular press were seldom Austro-Hungarian, German and Russian less than adulatory. The New York Times monarchies had been toppled. Dictatorships declared, “The author is enjoying the almost emerged. And so the heady acclaim that Angell had experienced on the eve of the Jacob Heilbrunn is the incoming editor of The Great War was replaced by withering scorn. National Interest. Perhaps the most lasting verdict came in

34 The National Interest The Case for Norman Angell 1962 with Barbara Tuchman’s popular Angell from the condescension of the past history, The Guns of August: than Martin Ceadel in his punctilious study, Living the Great Illusion, which this By impressive examples and incontrovertible essay draws upon. What emerges is an argument Angell showed that in the present intriguingly contradictory character with a financial and economic interdependence of na- flair for self-promotion. A canny operator, tions, the victor would suffer equally with the he steadily sidled toward realist principles, vanquished; therefore war had become unprof- abandoning some of his own illusions, even itable; therefore no nation would be so foolish if he never quite explicitly acknowledged as to start one. his transformation. He embarked upon a prolonged intellectual journey—from Angell enjoyed a career that included opposition to war to an appreciation of writing a total of forty-one books, winning the centrality of power in international the Nobel Peace Prize and becoming a relations—that indicates he was a restless member of Parliament—“It is the only and, more often than not, insightful student gate before which I have ever stood filled of world politics. with envy,” wrote Anthony Trollope The school of thought that this in Can You Forgive Her?, “sorrowing to intellectual gladiator helped found—liberal think that my steps might never pass internationalism—has demonstrated a under it”—but his popular reputation remarkable perdurability. All along during never really recovered. Instead, his name the Cold War, the United States attempted became a synonym for naive utopianism. to use a web of economic ties to create Shakespeare’s description in Julius Caesar closer relations with and prosperity for of Casca as belonging to the kind of men who “construe things after their fashion, / Clean from the purpose of the things themselves” comes forcibly to mind when considering Angell’s posthumous reputation. As the Canadian writer Dan Gardner sympathetically observed in his study of expert opinion, Future Babble, “No one has ever suffered more for a prediction that failed.” But as the hundredth anniversary of World War I looms large—and a spate of books arguing about its real origins appears (was Germany the culprit? Russia? England? Austria?)—a fresh look at Angell, too, is surely warranted. Indeed, his remarkable life has attracted fresh scholarly scrutiny. Perhaps no one has done more to rescue

The Case for Norman Angell September/October 2013 35 Europe and Asia. But, when the conflict of nations”). But a look at Angell’s full with the Soviet Union ended, the thesis career indicates that his story is more of globalization, harking back to Angell’s complicated—and more enlightening— heady pre–World War I argument, than the caricature of many of his detractors reemerged. It reached its apex during would suggest. the 1990s, in the time of the Clinton Perhaps Angell’s most outstanding administration, which emphasized, or tried characteristic was his relentless desire to to emphasize, economic ties with other puncture conventional thinking. He went nations over the exercise of military force. from foe of World War I to friend of Walter Wriston, who was head of Citicorp, Winston Churchill and vigorous opponent heralded the information age in his 1992 of the appeasement of the great dictators. book The Twilight of Sovereignty as marking After World War II, he warned about the a new era of global convergence, rendering Soviet threat. He never fully left the Left, national borders impotent and obsolete. but he didn’t hesitate to chastise it for its Wriston saw the fax machine as the own naïveté about power politics. “pamphleteer of the late twentieth century.” Today the most prominent globalization ngell’s penchant for upsetting intel- cheerleader is New York Times columnist A lectual apple carts began at an early Thomas L. Friedman, who announced age. Born on December 26, 1872, into a in 1999 that Angell was “actually right.” prosperous family that lived in Holbeach, In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, he Lincolnshire, he soon rebelled against his promulgated his “Golden Arches Theory mother’s Christian faith. As a lad, he im- of Conflict Prevention,” which held that mersed himself in political debates at a no two countries that had a McDonald’s time, as he recalled later, “when George would go to war with each other because Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells were just getting a Golden Arches franchise signified beginning to come into prominence.” These membership in the new, globalized order influences, along with the Fabian Society of international cooperation. But, after war of that era and, as he recounted, “all the between Serbia and its Balkan neighbors fermentation of socialism and what not,” put paid to that theory, Friedman amended transformed him into a “socialist, an agnos- it slightly in another best seller, The World tic, a republican.” Politics, he mused, was Is Flat, by introducing the “Dell Theory of “entertainment”—there weren’t the distrac- Conflict Prevention.” tions of football or movies, let alone video Now, with the economic collapse that games. Then his father sent him abroad to began in 2008 lingering on in Europe Saint-Omer to study at a lycée. By age sev- and America, the theory of globalization enteen, he was editing an English-language is under siege. This has led inevitably newspaper while enrolled at the University to dismissive references to Angell as the of Geneva. ultimate progenitor of delusions about A young idealist, Angell came to international affairs (though it was, of regard Europe as suffused with parochial, course, Karl Marx who first discussed the nationalistic feuds and hopelessly backward phenomenon of the newly emerging global when it came to power politics. He headed capitalism in The Communist Manifesto: “In for the New World. He worked as a place of the old local and national seclusion cowhand and prospector before becoming and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in a homesteader in 1892 in California, every direction, universal inter-dependence where he also began writing essays about

36 The National Interest The Case for Norman Angell Angell steadily sidled toward realist principles, abandoning some of his own illusions, even if he never quite explicitly acknowledged his transformation.

economics. He defended free trade and improvement in Angell’s fortunes.” The attacked Massachusetts senator Henry newspaper magnate Lord Northcliffe, who Cabot Lodge for espousing protectionism. was impressed by Angell’s knowledge of He observed, “One may say without Europe, appointed him manager of the exaggeration that whole States in the Daily Mail’s continental edition. So far, West owe their prosperity to the British so good. But what really made Angell’s market.” Later he took a swipe at Theodore name was the publication in 1909 of a Roosevelt’s praise for the strenuous life, book called Europe’s Optical Illusion. At which Angell depicted as a reversion to the a moment when Europe seemed headed nasty habits of Europe that the New Eden toward conflict, Angell offered a rosier was supposed to shun: “The superiority of scenario, suggesting that financial links had this country to the Old World lay in our made conflict unlikely. This gave hope to freedom from the burden of militarism, England’s peace camp, which warmed to from the mischief of the military ideal.” his blasé attitude about warfare. He wrote Engaging in foreign quarrels, he said, was that “our defeat cannot advantage our a sideshow for America and prompted it enemy nor do us in the long run much to “prefer indulgence in a sentiment harm.” This of course signified a woeful of hostility to the furtherance of our misunderstanding of Kaiser Wilhelm’s interests.” The “our” indicates that Angell aims, particularly his desire to rule over a had come to see himself as something of German-led Mitteleuropa. an American. But for all his solicitude for Still, Angell was right to debunk his adopted country, he failed to make it the bogus notion that capitalism was financially and ended up accepting a responsible for war. This was not an well-paid position in Paris in 1897 as a insignificant contribution. Angell was newspaper editor for the Daily Messenger, entering the lists at a time when competing where he continued to observe and write liberal and radical theories about about international affairs. He was also imperialism were flourishing. Richard deeply influenced by Gustave Le Bon’s new Cobden and John Bright, champions of book, The Crowd, which heightened his a “little England” that focused on trade conviction that the masses were susceptible and didn’t intervene abroad, had argued to being manipulated by crude appeals to that financiers were essentially interested nationalism. In 1903, he published his in peace. But J. A. Hobson, who viewed first book, Patriotism Under Three Flags: A finance capital as the main motor of Plea for Rationalism in Politics, which drew imperial expansion and war, would have on his experiences in England, America none of it. He offered a much more radical and France to argue against jingoism. This critique in Imperialism, which Lenin relied maiden effort went nowhere. upon in composing his own misbegotten Angell was undaunted. The next decade tract, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of saw what Ceadel terms an “astonishing Capitalism. Angell offered a different

The Case for Norman Angell September/October 2013 37 critique that focused on the irrationality against others. . . . The author challenges this and hubris of various nations: “Vanity whole doctrine. and all its concomitants: national pride of place, of mastery; coerciveness, that Angell warned that the heads of European conception of ‘honour’ which demands states risked becoming the caricatures that Hobson and others depicted. It was a commonplace that military success was the precondition for economic prosperity. “The fact that Germany has of late come to the front as an industrial nation,” he wrote, “making giant strides in general prosperity and well- being, is deemed also to be the result of her military successes and the increasing political power which she is coming to exercise in Continental Europe.” But this was turning things on their head. The belief that material advantage could be vindication by force of arms, the lust of derived by conquering another country or rule and dominion, the pride of territorial by adding fresh territories to an empire possession, and the jealousy of like was wrong: “It is universally assumed that possessions in others.” national power means national wealth, national advantage; that expanding territory urope’s Optical Illusion led a few months means increased opportunity for industry; E later to his breakthrough book, a re- that the strong nation can guarantee vised and expanded version titled The Great opportunities for its citizens that the weak Illusion. nation cannot.” How does this much-derided study hold This was the optical illusion of Angell’s up in retrospect? Angell’s primary gift initial title. He saw it as a snare and a was his journalistic talent—the ability to trap, nothing less than a superstition deliver sweeping statements in clear prose. that threatened to plunge the nations of He explained everything. The explanation Europe into a senseless war. In his eyes, a for the armaments rivalry in Europe, he war would have such convulsive effects on said, was not difficult to discern. The states’ international trade that it would render the motives were all too obvious: aggressor prostrate almost immediately. He declared: They are based on the universal assumption that a nation, in order to find outlets for ex- Even where territory is not formally annexed, panding population and increasing industry, or the conqueror is unable to take the wealth of simply to ensure the best conditions possible a conquered territory, owing to the delicate for its people, is necessarily pushed to territo- interdependence of the financial world (an rial expansion and the exercise of political force outcome of our credit and banking systems),

38 The National Interest The Case for Norman Angell which makes the financial and industrial se- Man’s pugnacity, though not disappearing, is curity of the victor dependent upon financial very visibly, under the forces of mechanical and industrial security in all considerable civi- and social development, being transformed lized centres; so that widespread confiscation and diverted from ends that are wasteful and or destruction of trade and commerce in a con- destructive to ends that are less wasteful, which quered territory would react disastrously upon render easier that co-operation between men the conqueror. in the struggle with their environment which is the condition of their survival and advance; Angell argued further that the fact that that changes which, in the historical period, small states—Switzerland, Belgium or Hol- have been extraordinarily rapid are necessarily land—were as well off as larger ones with quickening—quickening in geometrical rather big militaries showed that armaments were than in arithmetical ratio. no road to wealth. Even the direct occupa- tion and confiscation of a foreign country’s Angell also lobbed some intellectual mortars assets would have no beneficial effect. Ac- at the militarists who argued that the West cording to Angell: was going soft, succumbing to what in the eighteenth century was known as luxury If the British could annihilate Germany, they and effeminacy. Angell’s embrace of luxury would annihilate such an important section contradicts Montesquieu and Edward Gib- of their debtors as to create hopeless panic in bon, who feared that citizens would hap- London, and that panic would so react on their pily exchange the freedoms of the republic own trade that it would be in no sort of con- for prosperity and indolence. As Gibbon dition to take the place which Germany had put it in The Decline and Fall of the Roman previously occupied in neutral markets, leaving Empire: aside the question that by the act of annihila- tion a market equal to that of Canada and In the purer ages of the commonwealth, the South Africa combined would be destroyed. use of arms was reserved for those ranks of citizens who had a country to love, a property Angell was fascinated by markets. He to defend, and some share in enacting those subordinated everything to capital, and his laws, which it was their interest, as well as duty, worship of it led him to advocate a kind to maintain. But in proportion as the public of international arrangement in which freedom was lost in extent of conquest, war was various countries would maintain financial gradually improved into an art, and degraded order by accepting spheres of influence. He into a trade. wrote, “It is more to the general interest to have an orderly and organized Asia Minor Where Angell went astray, however, was under German tutelage than to have an in underestimating the profits that could unorganized and disorderly one which be extracted from colonies. Belgium, for should be independent.” example, profited immensely from the At the same time, Angell dismissed the brutal exploitation of its territories in the idea that politics has to consist of a ceaseless Congo, as Adam Hochschild has vividly struggle for power. Humans, he said, could shown in King Leopold’s Ghost. He also change. Religious dogmas had been shed. was mistaken to suggest that warfare So could militaristic ones. The notion that would almost instantly lead to general human bellicosity was irredeemable was economic collapse. It did not. Instead, mistaken. As he put it: the war ground on for years. But almost

The Case for Norman Angell September/October 2013 39 no one had anticipated the emergence of congressional approval for war against trench warfare. Moreover, it certainly was Germany and the Central powers, Angell true that Germany, which, together with became a staunch proponent of a league of Austria-Hungary, started World War I, nations. Collective security was to become found itself in desperate straits by 1917 his new mantra and the path back to as it became unable to feed its population respectability. properly. But this was more a function of the naval blockade of the German Reich o his credit, Angell deplored the harsh than it was of financial upheaval. The T settlement that emerged at Versailles. true turmoil came after the war, when the Like Keynes, he viewed it as counterproduc- Allies sought massive indemnities from the tive—why should American goods rot in fledgling Weimar Republic, a course that docks because Germans were arbitrarily ren- Angell, like John Maynard Keynes, whom dered unable to pay for them? The notion he knew personally, correctly denounced as that an indemnity should be demanded was a punitive measure that would boomerang precisely what he had always opposed in upon England and France. Still, Angell was arguing that war should not pay. His book clearly wrong to suggest that aggression was, The Peace Treaty and the Economic Chaos of as he put it, “out of date.” Indeed, several Europe was written with his characteristic decades later the Nazi empire would be asperity. By June 1929, Angell had become predicated on the notion that aggression a Labour mp, but he never achieved the could pay, and it did—for a while. The high office he had hoped for from Prime Nazis relentlessly extracted supplies and Minister Ramsay MacDonald. In 1931, natural resources from the territories that his rehabilitation continued with a knight- they conquered in an effort to avoid any hood conferred upon him by King George shortages on the home front. V. Next came the bestowal of the Nobel During World War I, Angell Peace Prize in 1933—the year Hitler and understandably bridled at the idea that the Nazis came to power. he was “attacking patriotism,” as one of Reflecting his new views on international his contemporaries put it. This was power politics, Angell confronted the Nazi a canard. He was assailing what he saw threat head-on. He did not indulge in the as irrationality. But his opposition to illusions of the British Left or Right, which it led him astray. The cold, hard truth is embraced malignant forms of pacifism or that Angell had wrongly deprecated the appeasement. Angell became increasingly centrality of power in international convinced of the need to stop Nazi relations. In 1914, for example, he aggression. And, departing from his pre– announced to an American journalist, World War I outlook, he now embraced “There will never be another war between the idea of collective security. War could European powers.” Once Germany backed result, he argued, from the failure of well- Austria-Hungary’s ultimatum to Serbia, intentioned policies. He noted in his Nobel British progressives went into overdrive to address: avert England’s entry into the war. They failed. By the end of 1914, Angell was In England at this moment there is a consider- performing ambulance service in France. able section of the press systematically opposing A year later he was traveling in America the League of Nations on the ground that it seeking U.S. support for Britain in the war. would involve Great Britain in the risk of war. Once President Woodrow Wilson sought There is no reason whatever to suppose that

40 The National Interest The Case for Norman Angell these protagonists of isolationism are insincere opposed to his earlier contention that the in their professions of desire for peace. One of assets of a country could not be profitably these groups has just organized a war museum deployed against it. He attacked both Tory for the direct purpose of bringing home to the and Labour Party appeasers of Nazism public an intensified horror of war as an argu- and battled with the mendacious left-wing ment against the League. If their policy of de- diplomat and historian E. H. Carr, who stroying the League should ultimately produce hailed the 1938 Munich agreement in his war, it is not their intention which would be at book The Twenty Years’ Crisis. In it Carr fault, but their judgment; not their aims, but also loftily dismissed the “utopians” such their calculations as to the means by which the as Angell who failed to understand what end may be obtained. “realists” understood. But who was truly realistic about the Nazis? “For the final But of course collective security was no eighteen months of peace,” Ceadel writes, panacea. In 1936, Hitler’s reoccupation Angell “was to be an outspoken critic not of the Rhineland and Mussolini’s invasion only of the Chamberlain government for its of Abyssinia delivered a brutal buffeting appeasement policy but also of the Labour to the League of Nations, which proved Party for its hostility to a popular front.” wholly ineffectual in stopping the dictators. He also insisted that it was essential Once again, Angell adjusted his views. As to make common cause with Russia a result, writes Martin Ceadel, “Angell’s against the Nazi menace. Sounding like message was becoming increasingly realist in the ultimate realist, he said, “We are not tone. . . . he was more concerned than ever concerned with the internal policy of a before with the distribution of international nation—we don’t care whether it is Fascist power.” Angell established close ties with or Communist. What we are concerned his former detractor Winston Churchill with is its external policy.” During and inveighed against World War II, he the dismantling of championed the cause the British Empire, of the Western Allies. departing from a His metamorphosis position he had was almost complete. previously trumpeted. After World War Now Angell saw the II, while Angell empire as a vital force supported creation of for stability abroad. the United Nations, Besides, he now he also became believed that England something of a cold had “an interest in warrior, warning the preservation of of the “frightening order in the area it communist conquest covers.” At the same of the human mind” time, the British and favoring a economy would be close cooperation threatened if other between America countries claimed its and England against resources. This, too, the Soviet threat. In was diametrically his autobiography

The Case for Norman Angell September/October 2013 41 Angell’s career provides an object lesson, not in the absurdity of liberal internationalism but, rather, in its limitations.

After All, which appeared in 1951, Angell the potential for a military clash between complained about the “tendency of China and the West, with Japan in the mix, Liberals and the Left to subject Churchill is improbable, an exercise in futility and to savage attacks while completely in no one’s interest, particularly given the exonerating Russia” and to ignore the economic interdependence of these nations. “doctrinal fanaticism of the Communist Or is it? creed.” A particular Angell bugbear was Angell I would have said that any move Colonel Robert McCormick, the tyrannical toward war would be self-defeating and Chicago Tribune publisher who opposed hence improbable. But Angell II likely cooperation with the British and preached would have acknowledged the military isolationism even during the Truman years. threat that China poses and adopted Angell placed him at the head of what he a more cautious stance. Though he does called the “professional Anglophobes”— not provide a road map to the present, the antediluvian remnant of isolationist he was one of the first modern, sweeping American conservatives who believed that theorists of international relations. The next America was doing the bidding of Britain in thinker to have a similar impact was George opposing totalitarianism abroad. F. Kennan. Then, at the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama, in the pages of The lthough Angell altered his own theories National Interest, offered a modified version A as he went along, his early belief in of Angell’s initial thesis, suggesting that economic interdependence remains a pow- history was coming to an end and detecting erful credo. Today the players may be dif- the “ineluctable spread of consumerist ferent, but the realities of global competi- Western culture.” That proved premature as tion are the same as ever. And the debates atavistic forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere about them have not changed much either. rose up. Great-power competition has not China is a boisterous rising power that is disappeared. Nor have borders. Angell’s challenging the international system, much career provides an object lesson, not in the as Wilhelmine Germany once did. What’s absurdity of liberal internationalism but, more, America is eyeing China’s rise with a rather, in its limitations. He was a Davos wariness reminiscent of Britain’s at the turn man before Davos men even existed, but he of the last century. Japan, long an adherent gradually came to acknowledge the truths of pacifism, is now beefing up its military in that many of his intellectual descendants an effort to safeguard its security. This time, continue to resist. n

42 The National Interest The Case for Norman Angell The Deepening Chaos in Sinai

By Daniel Byman and Khaled Elgindy

he growing instability in Egypt’s clash also could be heightened, in which Sinai Peninsula represents one of case the United States could find itself Tthe most dangerous, and most an- caught between its closest ally in the region, ticipated, crises in the Middle East. Even Israel, and a vital Arab partner on which before the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the regional stability depends. security vacuum in the Sinai allowed crimi- On the surface, the Sinai-Gaza crisis nals and terrorists, including those with an looks simply like an issue of border ideology akin to Al Qaeda’s, to expand their security. Fighters and weapons go to and operations. In the chaos after the revolu- from Gaza via the Sinai, and these, in turn, tion, these problems have worsened. Mean- are used to attack Israel and undermine while, various Palestinian groups use the stability in Egypt. Meanwhile, the illicit Sinai as a launching pad for attacks against economies that have grown on both sides Israel. The large-scale smuggling of weapons of the Gaza-Sinai border are largely the and civilian goods to and through this ter- product of increased smuggling operations ritory—much of it bound for Gaza—has that grew in response to the closure of fostered an illicit economy in both Gaza Gaza’s borders. But this surface picture and Sinai while helping Hamas bolster its shrouds much deeper and far more complex military capacity and political grip over political issues. For Egypt, policing the Gaza. Increasing violence and instability Sinai is caught up in the country’s turbulent in Sinai could complicate Egypt’s already- internal politics, with successive civilian troubled transition and raise the prospect of governments, including the former Muslim renewed large-scale conflict between Israel Brotherhood–led government, the military and Hamas. And the reverse is also true, as and the intelligence services all wanting to witnessed by the dramatic spike in deadly avoid responsibility while asserting their violence in Sinai following the ouster of power vis-à-vis one another. For Hamas, Egypt’s Islamist president Mohamed Morsi the smuggling economy is vital both to its in July. In addition to instability in Egypt, military power and its ability to prop up prospects for an Egyptian-Israeli military Gaza’s feeble economy. Meanwhile, for the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (pa), which Daniel Byman is a professor at Georgetown was forced out of Gaza by Hamas in 2007, University and the research director of the Saban the Sinai problem underscores its growing Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings political irrelevance. Institution. Khaled Elgindy is a fellow at the Saban The irony is that all of the main actors— Center and previously served as an adviser to the Egypt, Israel, Hamas and the pa—would Palestinian leadership in Ramallah. Follow them on prefer to see changes in the status quo. Twitter at @dbyman and @elgindy_. Israel, of course, would like to have calm

The Deepening Chaos in Sinai September/October 2013 43 on its borders as well as neighbors that to make concessions, some of which would can deal effectively and responsibly with require risks. Doing so, however, would violence and smuggling, even if they are not reduce the chance of a confrontation over openly friendly. Egyptian officials worry Sinai, help protect Israel from attacks, make that instability in the Sinai will become the success of peace talks more likely and a lightning rod for renewed war and a improve regional stability. The goal would breeding ground for radicalism in Egypt, be to ensure not only that everyone gets further undermining the credibility of the something but also that everyone has a stake security services and any government, be in continuing at least de facto cooperation. it military or civilian. They also fear, with some reason, that Israel seeks to dump the gypt and Israel have long enjoyed a Gaza problem in Egypt’s lap. Cairo also E largely peaceful border, but even before seeks to reassert its sovereignty in the Sinai, the fall of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 where restrictions imposed by the 1979 the Sinai had become home to numerous Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty are seen by groups bent on attacking Israel. On Feb- Egyptians as an affront to national pride. ruary 4, 2008, a suicide bomber entered Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Israel from Sinai and attacked Dimona, a other pa figures would welcome the chance city close to the border that is the home of to return to Gaza as well as the added Israel’s nuclear establishment. Later, in two legitimacy that would come simply from separate incidents in 2010, rockets fired being part of any new arrangement. from Sinai hit the resort town of Eilat. Even Hamas—or perhaps especially The situation became more fraught Hamas—worries about the Sinai. Many after Mubarak’s fall. The most deadly of the radicals there have links inside the cross-border event in years occurred in Gaza Strip and oppose Hamas nearly as August 2011, when infiltrators based in much as they oppose Israel, seeing the the Sinai conducted multiple attacks Palestinian group as insufficiently zealous near Eilat, killing eight Israelis. The Eilat in its pursuit of an Islamic state in Gaza attacks were dangerous not only because and too accommodating with Israel. of the lives lost, but also because of the Moreover, whereas Hamas’s fortunes had risk of escalation. Israeli forces pursued improved following the Arab uprisings, the the attackers into Sinai and accidentally toppling of Morsi and the Brotherhood clashed with Egyptian troops there, killing in Egypt dealt the most serious blow five. Israel initially blamed the Gaza-based yet to Gaza’s Islamist rulers. Even under Popular Resistance Committees (prc) and Egypt’s short-lived Muslim Brotherhood bombed several sites in the Strip, killing government Gaza’s borders were never fully fifteen Palestinians, including the leader opened. Moreover, since Morsi’s ouster, of the prc. Hamas responded with rocket Egyptian authorities have imposed even attacks, in which one Israeli was killed. A tighter restrictions on the Gaza border and few weeks later, Egyptian protesters angry stepped up efforts to destroy the smuggling at the killing of Egyptian soldiers stormed tunnels beneath the border, renewing and the Israeli embassy in Cairo, prompting the intensifying Gaza’s and Hamas’s isolation. evacuation of the ambassador and his staff By working with Israel, Egypt, the pa and sparking a diplomatic crisis between and friendly governments in the region, Egypt and Israel. the United States can help forge a new Cooler heads in both Egypt and Israel regional dynamic. All involved would have prevailed (aided by U.S. mediation), and

44 The National Interest The Deepening Chaos in Sinai Increasing violence and instability in Sinai could complicate Egypt’s already-troubled transition and raise the prospect of renewed large-scale conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Hamas also backed down. But should disaffected communities in Sinai or another clash occur at a tense time in Gaza—and very often both, given the Egyptian politics—and Egyptian politics many tribal, commercial and other links are very tense now—it may be hard for the that exist particularly among the bedouin regime in Cairo to avoid a confrontation. communities of Sinai, Gaza and even Israeli-Egyptian relations could sour, Israel. Within these marginalized and jeopardizing broader cooperation. interconnected communities, various Salafi- During 2012, the number of attacks jihadi groups have emerged. These groups on Israel originating in the Sinai grew do not always cooperate with one another, considerably. According to a report from but they often share a common leadership, Israel’s intelligence service, eleven attacks cadres, training and supplies. And they are emanated from the Sinai that year, highly dangerous. Some wish to affiliate including rocket attacks and five attempted formally with Al Qaeda, while others do infiltrations. Militants also routinely not. However, Al Qaeda has so far been targeted the pipeline running from Egypt to reluctant to embrace these groups, perhaps Israel, exchanged fire with Israeli troops and due to doubts about their operational planted explosives along the border. Many sophistication and overall level of support, more attacks were thwarted. though in 2011 Al Qaeda leader Ayman al- Although Israel often blames Hamas or Zawahiri praised the “heroes” in Sinai who other Gaza-based Palestinian groups for attacked the gas pipeline to Israel. the violence, frequently the attackers are The jihadists, who see attacking Israel Sinai-based jihadists, who are ideologically as their main mission, seek to exploit the more like Al Qaeda than Hamas. As a report Sinai’s strategic position and instability from Israel’s Intelligence and Terrorism to inflame regional tension. By attacking Information Center concluded: “The Sinai Israel, they hope to provoke Israeli strikes Peninsula has been turned into a convenient on Egypt, thereby inflaming the Egyptian venue for terrorist organizations affiliated public and forcing Egyptian authorities into with the global jihad.” Khalil al-Anani, a a military response. Their objective is to Middle East expert at Durham University in set off a chain reaction, triggering tension, England, similarly warns, “Sinai is ideal and strife and even war. In so doing, they hope fertile ground for al Qaeda. It could become to destroy the thirty-year peace between a new front for al Qaeda in the Arab world.” Egypt and Israel. Although the threat is predominantly homegrown, the mix also includes a handful he removal of Egypt’s first Islamist of foreign fighters. Israel asserts that Iran- T president in July breathed new life into backed groups such as Palestinian Islamic jihadi elements in Sinai and elsewhere in Jihad are also active in Sinai. Egypt. The weeks immediately following The threat comes primarily from Morsi’s ouster saw a major spike in deadly elements within isolated and often- attacks on both civilian and military targets

The Deepening Chaos in Sinai September/October 2013 45 in Sinai, while calls for jihad and the black groups in Gaza. While Hamas has long flag of Al Qaeda became common features been Israel’s enemy, historically it has been of pro-Morsi rallies across Egypt. After fifty poorly armed, and most of its rockets have Brotherhood protesters were killed by the had little accuracy or range. But Hamas’s army on July 8, one speaker in Cairo de- ability to send fighters in and out of Gaza clared, “The era of peace has ended. If the for additional training in Lebanon and army attacks us we will attack back. We say Iran also makes the organization more to the Egyptian army that the day might yet formidable. In addition, Sinai-based come when we tell it to leave Sinai.” While militants have entered Gaza to fight Israel. there is no clear evidence of any operational Many of the worst networks of jihadists ties with the Brotherhood, the nearly daily and criminals overlap both Gaza and Sinai. attacks in the Sinai are looking increasingly During Israel’s eight-day Operation Pillar like a low-level insurgency. of Defense in Gaza in November 2012, Beyond the risk of direct attacks, for years Islamist organizations in Egypt sent money, Sinai has been a concern to Israel because weapons and fighters to oppose “the enemy it is a source of, and path for, weapons, of God.” As Israel regularly clashes with explosives and fighters going to and from Hamas, anything that increases Hamas’s Gaza. A 2012 State Department report military strength is viewed as a grave threat. found that the northern Sinai had become Israel has tried to meet the threat from “a base for smuggling arms and explosives Sinai as it has met past cross-border threats: into Gaza, as well as a transit point for by employing a mix of diplomacy, threats, Palestinian extremists.” Israeli intelligence punishments, stepped-up intelligence and contends that weapons looted from defenses. Israel’s preferred approach is to Muammar el-Qaddafi’s arsenals in Libya push Egypt to solve the Sinai problem. and from the Sudan—including antitank This has worked only fitfully at best. Senior Israeli defense official Amos Gilad contends: “There is constant and in- depth dialogue with the Egyptians.” Israel, however, is leery of high-profile efforts or coercion, fearing that it would put the Egyptian government in a corner and, given Israel’s deep unpopularity in Egypt and the political uncertainty there, lead any regime to turn against Israel to curry favor with the Egyptian people. Because neither Egypt nor Hamas can control and antiaircraft missiles as well as long- Sinai, Israel has fallen back on improved range rockets—pass through Sinai en route intelligence gathering and defenses. to Gaza. Israel’s intelligence networks in Sinai were These weapons could fundamentally weak under the former regime of Hosni change the threat to Israel from militant Mubarak; they relied on the Egyptian

46 The National Interest The Deepening Chaos in Sinai regime to exercise control and thus didn’t quietly, but more importantly for ordinary need a robust capability of their own. Gazans, Israel also maintains a host of Although Israel’s networks have improved, severe restrictions on trade and travel to it is difficult to gain a comprehensive and from Gaza as well as on energy supplies intelligence picture on all the small groups entering the Strip. Since September 2007, in the Sinai and thus anticipate all attacks. Israel’s stated policy has been to allow in Since 2010, Israel has built more than a just enough to prevent a humanitarian hundred miles of fence along the Israeli- crisis, while making daily life difficult and Egyptian border from Gaza to just north normal economic development impossible. of Eilat. Sixteen feet high, the fence uses According to a statement issued by Israel’s cameras, radar devices and other means security cabinet shortly after Hamas took of detecting infiltration by Sinai-based control of the Gaza Strip: smugglers and militants. It also serves as a means of barring illegal migrants from Additional sanctions will be placed on the entering Israel from Sudan and Eritrea. Hamas regime in order to restrict the passage Although this fence suppresses some of various goods to the Gaza Strip and reduce infiltration, the threat to Israel is not the supply of fuel and electricity. Restrictions just from cross-border attacks. As Prime will also be placed on the movement of people Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conceded, to and from the Gaza Strip. The sanctions will “We are building a very impressive security be enacted following a legal examination, while fence, but it doesn’t block rockets.” For taking into account both the humanitarian as- rockets, he added, “We will hit those pects relevant to the Gaza Strip and the inten- who come to hurt us and we will also tion to avoid a humanitarian crisis. hit those who send them.” Such talk sounds tough, but in practice it is hard In addition to restricting what goes into to implement. Striking directly at groups Gaza, Israel’s blockade has also meant a vir- in Sinai would violate Egypt’s sovereignty tual ban on exports from the impoverished and risk inflaming Egyptian nationalism— Strip; in all of 2012, a paltry 210 truckloads exactly the sort of passions the jihadists of goods made their way out of Gaza, com- want to generate. And hitting Hamas in pared with more than 5,290 in 2006 and Gaza does little to control violence from 15,255 in 2000. jihadists in Sinai, many of whom are also Israeli coercion has limited attacks from critical of Hamas. The jihadists reject the Gaza because Hamas is capable of policing concessions Hamas has made in the name itself and, to some degree, other groups of governance, being particularly critical in Gaza. But it is far less likely to work in of its regular cease-fires with Israel and its the Sinai because, while Hamas exploits failure to Islamicize Gaza fully. the Sinai, it does not control it. Hamas has Threats and punishments have worked cracked down on these groups in Gaza, at with Gaza to some degree, however. Israel times harshly and bloodily, but it cannot do regularly strikes a range of sites in Gaza so in Sinai. to put pressure on the Hamas regime, particularly after a rocket or terrorist attack. eyond Egypt’s risk of a clash with Is- At times, as in Operations Cast Lead B rael, Egyptians themselves are paying a (2008–2009) and Pillar of Defense, the heavy price for Sinai-based terrorism. Years military punishment is massive, leading to of neglect by successive Egyptian govern- widespread devastation in the Strip. More ments, along with a harsh and mountain-

The Deepening Chaos in Sinai September/October 2013 47 ous terrain, have made the impoverished outside the control of Egyptian authorities. Sinai an ideal breeding ground for extremist Two overriding interests guide Egyptian elements. A series of spectacular terror at- responses to Sinai: maintaining stability tacks on popular tourist destinations in the and safeguarding Egyptian sovereignty. Sinai between 2004 and 2006 left some 150 Egyptian authorities have cracked down Egyptians and foreigners dead and hundreds periodically on jihadist militants as well more wounded. It also dealt a major blow to as smuggling networks in the Sinai-Gaza Egypt’s tourist-dependent economy. arena, but they are equally worried about The erosion of law and order that has the prospect of unilateral Israeli actions in plagued Egypt since Mubarak’s fall has the Sinai. Egyptians also have long feared only compounded the growing security that Israel seeks to permanently push Gaza, vacuum in the Sinai. Since February 2011, demographically and politically, onto the security checkpoint in El Arish, near Egypt. This fear feeds into other goals of the Gaza border in North Sinai, has been the Egyptian government, including the attacked at least thirty-nine times, while the promotion of Hamas-Fatah reconciliation

natural-gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan has and restoration of Egypt’s regional prestige been bombed no fewer than fifteen times. and leadership role. Attacks on Egyptian security forces and Egypt’s determination to control the even multinational forces stationed in the situation in the Sinai-Gaza arena was Sinai have become routine. The deadliest demonstrated last November when attack occurred in August 2012 when Egyptian authorities brokered a cease-fire armed militants ambushed an Egyptian agreement that ended eight days of fighting military outpost near the Egypt-Gaza-Israel between Hamas and Israel, as well as triborder area; they killed sixteen soldiers intensified operations against Sinai jihadi and commandeered two armored vehicles. elements and Gaza tunnels. In May 2013, gunmen abducted seven Long-term calm in Gaza, however, Egyptian police officers in northern Sinai. requires more than just an arrangement Although the kidnapped officers have since between Hamas and Israel and Egyptian been released, the incident demonstrated security operations along the border; that large swaths of Sinai territory remain it also requires political arrangements

48 The National Interest The Deepening Chaos in Sinai Israel’s preferred approach is to push Egypt to solve the Sinai problem. This has worked only fitfully at best.

between Egypt and Israel, and between services treated Sinai residents with more Hamas and Fatah. So long as Hamas contempt and brutality than they did the continues to operate as a free agent, rest of the population. Consequently, after outside the authority of the pa, it will Mubarak’s fall, Egypt’s as-yet-unreformed remain unpredictable and hence a potential police force became a frequent target of threat, as well as vulnerable to threats by Sinai-based militants and was less eager to even more radical groups. Consequently, police the Sinai than the major population internal Palestinian reconciliation, while centers to the west. The military, still shunned by Israel and the United meanwhile, although it values Egypt’s States, is in many ways a matter of national security ties to Israel and places a premium security for Egypt. on internal stability, has neither the desire Yet political rivalries and uncertainty nor the capacity to police the Sinai—or, for complicate any Egyptian approach. that matter, any other part of Egypt. In the While security matters in the Sinai have wake of Morsi’s overthrow, deadly attacks long been mainly the purview of the on police and other security personnel military establishment and intelligence became an almost-daily occurrence, while services and, to a lesser extent, the Interior Egypt’s previously embattled police force Ministry, Morsi’s Brotherhood-led civilian resumed its prerevolutionary levels of government did play at least a limited brutality. The current wave of violence has role as last November’s Gaza cease-fire reinforced Egyptian authorities’ traditional demonstrates. In fact, in the lead-up to security-focused approach to dealing with his ouster, some reports indicate Morsi the Sinai, while neglecting the deeper frequently clashed with his military economic and developmental problems commanders over Sinai and Gaza policy. that afflict the troubled region. For years Preferring dialogue over confrontation, the United States has offered millions in Morsi repeatedly ordered the military to development aid for the Sinai, although halt planned operations against jihadi Egyptian authorities have yet to decide militants believed to be involved in the whether or not even to accept it. abduction of Egyptian police officers in May. The military was also suspicious inai instability has been both an asset of Morsi’s relationship with Hamas and S and a liability for the Gaza Strip’s resisted his entreaties to improve relations Hamas rulers. Since the closure of Gaza’s with Hamas. In response to the spike in borders by Israel in 2007, the tiny enclave violent attacks following Morsi’s ouster, has relied on the elaborate network of tun- the military intensified operations in nels constructed beneath the Sinai-Gaza northern Sinai, requesting and receiving border for the smuggling of basic goods as Israel’s approval to increase its troop well as weapons, most of which are trans- deployment in the area. Under Mubarak, ferred to Gaza via the Sinai. As one Israeli Egypt’s notoriously corrupt internal-security security analyst put it, “Whatever isn’t al-

The Deepening Chaos in Sinai September/October 2013 49 lowed to move above ground will find its the Hamas regime has focused much of way below it.” Tunnels beneath the Ga- its energies on pushing back against the za-Egypt border have existed since at least restrictions imposed on Gaza from the the 1980s, but were limited mostly to the outside, whether by Israel or by Egypt. The smuggling of contraband such as cocaine results have been mixed. Hamas’s ultimate and hashish. After Hamas’s takeover of Gaza objective is to see an end to the six-year- and the imposition of the Israeli blockade old Gaza blockade and the reopening of in the latter half of 2007, however, the tun- its borders. To this end, Hamas frequently nel network expanded greatly. Hamas has tolerates (and occasionally engages in) used the tunnels to smuggle in weapons rocket attacks against Israel, partly in order and to smuggle out fighters for training. to bolster its “resistance” credentials and However, most of what is smuggled into partly to challenge its containment. That Gaza through the tunnels are civilian goods, was the case last November, when Israel’s including building materials and basic con- eight-day offensive exacted a heavy price on sumer goods that are scarce or unavailable Gaza in both military and human terms. due to the Israeli-imposed blockade. But the cease-fire deal resulted in some At its peak in mid-2010, Gaza’s illicit limited but tangible improvements in the trade network consisted of some thousand Gaza closure regime, such as the expansion tunnels funneling more than four thousand of Gaza’s fishing zone from three to six different types of products, both consumer nautical miles. goods and contraband, into Gaza. But Hamas’s political ambitions go well things changed after the flotilla incident beyond Gaza. In the short term it hopes of May 2010, in which Israeli commandos to outgovern its Fatah rivals in the West raided a Turkish vessel carrying civilian Bank and ultimately to displace them. Since goods bound for Gaza and killed nine its formation in the late 1980s, Hamas’s people aboard the ship. In response to the position has gradually evolved from seeking widespread criticism unleashed by that to replace the traditional Palestinian episode, Israel eased restrictions on imports leadership—initially embodied in the into Gaza. As a result, 70–80 percent of Palestine Liberation Organization (plo) and Gaza’s tunnels were put out of commission. since 1994 by the Palestinian Authority—to Moreover, Hamas taxes these tunnels, and taking over these institutions. Such aims Israel has largely tolerated them in order to drove Hamas’s decision to participate in pa ease some of the economic pressure on Gaza elections in 2006 after having boycotted (and diplomatic pressure on Israel), thereby all previous polls. Likewise, Hamas leaders helping Hamas to consolidate its economic now have set their sights on the plo, the and military hold over Gaza while displacing barely functional but traditional center Gaza’s legitimate economy. So long as these of the Palestinian national movement. networks remain financially viable, they will Although a shadow of its former self, continue to support smuggling and illicit the plo remains the legal and political networks in Sinai as well. address of the Palestinian cause and is Hamas’s immediate priority is to universally recognized as the sole legitimate maintain and strengthen its grip over representative of the Palestinian people, the Gaza Strip. At a minimum, this both inside and outside the occupied requires meeting the basic needs of Palestinian territories. Gaza’s population. Having been relatively It is this international legitimacy that successful at restoring basic law and order, Hamas desires. Although international

50 The National Interest The Deepening Chaos in Sinai attitudes toward Hamas have warmed three times the population of Sinai (but somewhat in recent years, the movement less than 1 percent of its land area), and is still shunned by most Western European Gaza’s robust smuggling trade, including states as well as the United States, to say the influx of weapons and the promise of nothing of Israel, and is once again on fast money, has helped to fuel the Sinai’s the defensive in the region. For the most own illicit economy as well as increased part, the debate within Hamas, however, violence. This growing incidence of attacks has not been about whether it will come has prompted Egyptian security forces to power but when and how—whether in to crack down with increasing severity in the interim to share power with Fatah (via recent months. They flooded dozens of a reconciliation agreement) or simply to tunnels beneath the Sinai-Gaza border in wait it out by banking on Fatah’s eventual January and closed Gaza’s border crossings collapse. In the absence of a credible peace with Egypt in June. Egypt’s antitunnel process and with the Fatah faction in a activity and border restrictions intensified perpetual state of disarray, the latter strategy further following Morsi’s overthrow, leading had always served Hamas well. The fall of to acute shortages in fuel and other basic the Brotherhood in Egypt and its growing necessities in Gaza. This combined with regional isolation, however, may force Hamas’s loss of its Brotherhood allies in Hamas to reassess its options. The loss of its Brotherhood allies in Egypt is an especially bitter pill for Hamas to swallow. Gaza’s borders have once again been closed, while the smuggling tunnels that are the lifeblood of both Gaza’s economy and Hamas rule have come under increasing attack by Egyptian security forces. Meanwhile, Gaza’s 1.7 million residents are growing impatient Egypt feeds its willingness to renew rocket with Hamas’s increasing repression and the attacks on Israel. absence of a long-term plan for ending their Regardless, Hamas is keen to maintain its predicament. As a result, reconciliation with “resistance” credentials, notably its weapons Fatah, once the shock of Morsi’s loss has and armed militias. This is so not only died down, may now be a more attractive because much of its legitimacy has come option for Hamas. from confronting Israel but also because it Further, while Hamas does not control wishes to avoid the fate of its Fatah rivals in all the tunnel traffic, its reliance on tunnels the West Bank, whose decision to cooperate was already beginning to backfire. Gaza has with Israel left them open to allegations

The Deepening Chaos in Sinai September/October 2013 51 Worsening conditions in Gaza, far from enhancing the position of Abbas and Fatah, as many U.S. policy makers have believed, actually erode the pa’s overall standing in the eyes of Palestinians.

of being “Israel’s subcontractor.” Hamas Hamas in June 2007. Since then, Abbas is determined to avoid what it views as has longed to return to Gaza and restore his the fundamental mistakes of Fatah, which credibility; without at least a nominal role in agreed to recognize Israel and abandon Gaza, Abbas cannot truly claim to speak for armed struggle without getting an end to all Palestinians. The fact that Gaza, rather the Israeli occupation. Parallels with the than the West Bank, has been the main pa are reinforced by Hamas’s periodic driver of events on the Israeli-Palestinian crackdowns against more radical Salafi and front for nearly a decade—beginning with jihadi elements in Gaza, mirroring Fatah’s Israel’s unilateral “disengagement” from the treatment of Hamas in the West Bank. The Gaza Strip in 2005 and extending to last growth of even more radical critics in Sinai November’s miniwar between Hamas and and Gaza poses a political risk to Hamas Israel—has only compounded Abbas’s and and makes it more likely that Hamas will the pa’s growing sense of marginalization. fall back on violence. Even though Gaza remains beyond the Among other things, this means the reach of Abbas and his pa, this has not conditions laid out by the so-called quartet, insulated them from the fallout of events comprised of the United States, European there. Ironically, events such as Operation Union, Russia and the un—that Hamas Cast Lead, the Gaza flotilla disaster, disarm, recognize Israel’s right to exist and controversies surrounding the so-called abide by past agreements—are simply no Goldstone report on military abuses in the longer viable. For one thing, demanding 2008–2009 Gaza war, and Operation Pillar that Hamas unilaterally disarm while Israel of Defense, while principally involving continues to impose realities on the ground Hamas, proved particularly damaging to through force of arms, including a blockade Abbas and Fatah. This was equally true on Gaza and an occupation in the West of the most recent round of fighting in Bank, would be seen by most Palestinians November 2012. Whereas Hamas emerged as tantamount to surrender. Indeed, Hamas from the conflict militarily weakened but leaders are convinced, perhaps rightly, that politically strengthened, earning the respect were it not for its arms it would probably and sympathy of both Palestinians and not have survived all these years. Arabs across the region, the crisis served to highlight Abbas’s powerlessness and lthough recent developments in the growing irrelevance. A Sinai-Gaza theater have clearly put Although the Brotherhood’s downfall Hamas on the defensive, they do not change in Egypt has improved Abbas’s prospects, the continued irrelevance of Mahmoud Ab- it may not be sufficient given that bas’s Palestinian Authority in Gaza. Not expectations are so much higher for Abbas’s long after Hamas handily defeated his Fatah Fatah leadership than for the Hamas faction in the 2006 pa elections, Abbas’s regime in Gaza. As the pa president and Fatah forces were expelled from Gaza by head of the plo, Abbas remains (at least

52 The National Interest The Deepening Chaos in Sinai theoretically) the leader of all Palestinians, Gaza or through its Sinai networks. including those in Gaza and even in the This approach carries two risks—one diaspora. Thus, whereas outside Gaza obvious, the other more subtle. The obvious Hamas must do little more than survive risk is that Hamas may not moderate. It and claim it could do better if it had more could use any respite to better arm itself power, Abbas’s leadership must do much and otherwise make itself more formidable. more; in addition to delivering tangible Yet such an approach would jeopardize improvements in the lives of West Bank the diplomatic gains Hamas has made in Palestinians, Abbas is also expected to bring recent years and decrease its popularity about an end to the Israeli occupation, among ordinary Palestinians—very real establish an independent state with its costs. In any event, the military balance capital in Jerusalem and find an equitable between Hamas and Israel would remain solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. overwhelmingly in favor of Israel. Indeed, worsening conditions in Gaza, far The more subtle risk is that the policy from enhancing the position of Abbas and succeeds in making Hamas emphasize Fatah, as many U.S. policy makers have politics over violence and, in so doing, believed, actually erode the pa’s overall helps Hamas to supplant the West standing in the eyes of Palestinians. It is Bank leadership of Abbas with a more worth noting that the reverse is decidedly confrontational though less violent not the case; failures in the West Bank do approach. The result would be a Hamas- not hurt, and usually help, Hamas. led Palestinian polity whose leadership Given its interconnectedness with other likely would be less interested in peace and issues, any solution to the Sinai problem generally more hostile to Israel. involves tradeoffs. Egyptian, Palestinian One way—perhaps the only way— and Israeli interests all are involved, and of to mitigate these risks is to push for course the militants in Sinai also will have “normalizing” Hamas firmly within the their say. Different options involve working framework of Palestinian reconciliation, more with Hamas to solve the problem, the outlines of which were agreed to by encouraging the Palestinians as a whole to Fatah and Hamas along with other take action via a unity deal and providing Palestinian factions in April 2011. The more incentives for Egypt to act. deal, which has been reaffirmed and One potential approach to Sinai is to expanded in subsequent agreements, calls work through Hamas and Gaza. But can for the formation of an interim government this be done? Hamas now is at a crossroads, comprised of independents and technocrats holding on to “resistance” while trying not affiliated with either Fatah or Hamas, to gain recognition as a credible political but approved by both, thereby avoiding actor and a legitimate government. The U.S. and international bans on dealing tension between these two goals can be with Hamas members. Affording Hamas increased by allowing Hamas to gain a formal role in the pa and the plo further credibility and legitimacy through would give Hamas what it seeks most, more diplomatic recognition and a chance international recognition and legitimacy, to improve Gaza’s economy in exchange but in a way that is both controlled and for rejecting violence. Hamas would not conditional. Implicit in the deal is a Hamas disarm or recognize Israel, but it would cease-fire with Israel and Hamas’s tacit stop its own attacks and use its influence acceptance of Abbas’s authority to negotiate to hinder others from doing so, whether in with Israel—a huge potential gain for Israel.

The Deepening Chaos in Sinai September/October 2013 53 All of this remains highly theoretical, the pa to return to Gaza without Hamas’s however, as implementation of the permission, which can only happen Palestinian unity deal continues to be in the context of internal reconciliation. held up by both Hamas and Fatah, each Meanwhile, the current security vacuum of which seems to believe it can wait out in Sinai, which has exposed Hamas’s the other. The internal stalemate is further vulnerability, particularly vis-à-vis Egypt, buttressed by lingering differences over the presents an opportunity for Abbas that fate of Hamas militias in Gaza and Fatah’s he is keen to exploit. With Hamas now security cooperation with Israel in the West weakened by events in Egypt, this may Bank, although these obstacles may not be the most opportune moment to push be insurmountable. A more inclusive and reconciliation on terms more favorable to representative plo may make it harder to Abbas and Fatah. reach a deal with Israel, but such a deal More can be done from the Egyptian side would be far more credible and durable. of the border as well. Restrictions on Egypt’s Conversely, a deal signed by a weak and ability to deploy in the Sinai, outlined in noncredible Palestinian leadership is the security annex to the Camp David unlikely to hold, and Hamas and other accords, limit the numbers and types of spoilers could undermine it at will. forces Egyptians may deploy there. Such If the prospect of participating in (and restrictions are seen across the board—by perhaps ultimately controlling) official the Egyptian military, Islamists and secular Palestinian institutions is not enough to political groups—as an affront to Egyptian induce Hamas to go along, more immediate sovereignty and national pride. Moreover, practical realities might. As noted they are often cited as a serious challenge previously, the Gaza blockade continues to to Egypt’s ability to deal effectively with the pose a challenge from both the Egyptian growing threats in the Sinai. Although Israel and Israeli sides of the border. Since neither has resisted the idea of formal changes to the Israel nor Egypt trusts Hamas to police the treaty, it has on several occasions allowed border, reopening Gaza’s border crossings Egypt to increase its armed deployments in will require a return of Abbas’s Palestinian areas adjacent to the Gaza Strip, whether Authority there. Yet since Abbas has vowed through separate agreements (such as after never to return to Gaza “on the back of an the 2005 Israeli “disengagement” from Israeli tank,” there is no realistic way for Gaza) or on an ad hoc basis.

54 The National Interest The Deepening Chaos in Sinai Israelis note that troop allowances in may influence the course of others in the the current treaty are sufficient to quell region. A clash would place the U.S.-Israeli the unrest in the Sinai, and where they are alliance in the spotlight, further discrediting not, Israel has allowed augmentations on Washington with many Egyptians and with a case-by-case basis. But this offers only a Arabs in general. technical solution to what is essentially a The United States can play an important political problem. Doing so would leave the role in helping reduce instability emanating Egyptian government and military open to from the Sinai. Part of the role is continuing allegations of being Israel’s lackey. So unless vigilance in the region to prevent any Egypt can find some political cover and unrest from Sinai from escalating into a portray the crackdown as part of a broader broader clash that would sour Egyptian- deal in which it extracted concessions from Israeli relations. The United States can also Israel, it will be politically difficult for it to encourage Israel to allow a renegotiation marshal the necessary forces for a sustained of the annex to the Camp David accords. period of time. As discussed above, the treaty itself is not a serious limit to an Egyptian crackdown. he United States also has interests in However, by giving Egypt’s government and T Sinai beyond America’s desire that its its military a political “win,” it increases allies be free from violence and generally their desire and ability to crack down in a well governed. The return of the Sinai Pen- sustained way. insula to Egyptian sovereignty was central The United States can also encourage to the success of the American-brokered Israel to explore options with Hamas Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, which in turn that fall short of an all-out deal for either has formed the cornerstone of America’s side but decrease the risk of violence and diplomatic and security posture in the re- Hamas’s use of the Sinai as an outlet for gion for more than three decades. Some of its illicit networks. Gaining stability in the terrorist groups in Sinai loathe not only the Sinai is vital for Israel’s security and Israel and the Egyptian government but also relations with Egypt. And since the Sinai’s the United States. In addition, instability in fate is intimately bound up with that of Sinai and radical politics there are potential Gaza, further reducing the blockade of sources of unrest in Egypt that could fur- Gaza will also need to be on the agenda ther complicate its already-troubled demo- if Hamas is to make more concessions on cratic transition. Most important, the Unit- stopping smuggling. ed States wants to prevent any renewal of Finally, in the long run, U.S. policy the Israeli-Egyptian conflict, even one that toward Egypt should also include support falls well short of outright war. Such a clash for governance and development initiatives would put the United States in a difficult in the Sinai. Such steps will reap fruit only position between its closest Middle East in the long term, but they will make various ally and the most populated and influential bilateral arrangements more likely to hold Arab country—and one whose transition over time. n

The Deepening Chaos in Sinai September/October 2013 55 Erdogan, the Anti-Ataturk

By Aram Bakshian Jr.

his November 10, at precisely his own newly minted, custom-designed 9:05 a.m., for the seventy-fifth time Turkish Republic, with inspired eloquence Tin the history of the Turkish Re- and brute force, he dragged his fellow public, the nation will grind to a halt. In countrymen, many of them literally kicking Istanbul, for sixty seconds sirens will drone, and screaming, into the twentieth century. ferryboat horns will blare in the Golden The Turkish language was modernized and Horn and traffic will freeze. Throughout systematized. The Latin alphabet replaced the country, millions of ordinary Turks will an archaic Arabic script. Massive industrial, stand still and mute to mark the death an- education and infrastructure initiatives niversary of their nation’s founding father. It were launched and a new sense of Turkish is an impressive moment, and deservedly so. identity—part authentic, part invented Mustafa Kemal, known to history as Kemal in rewritten history textbooks—replaced Ataturk (“Father of the Turks”), was an in- the old Ottoman way of thinking. In most domitable blend of soldier, diplomat, politi- respects, this was a great plus for the vast cian, intellectual and nation builder. One majority of poor urban and rural Turks. of the twentieth century’s most remarkable Under the Ottoman Empire, even in the leaders, he was a man of iron will and in- glory days when it ruled large chunks of credible vision. Europe, Asia and Africa, and was mistress A war hero even as the Ottoman Empire of the Mediterranean, most ordinary he served crumbled around him, Ataturk Turks were part of the impoverished was instrumental in defeating an invading peasant masses. Commerce, finance and British army at Gallipoli. At the end of other professions were monopolized by World War I, when the victorious Allies a small, educated elite, many—in some occupied Istanbul and began to partition cases, most—of them non-Muslim Greeks, Ottoman territory, he took to the Armenians and Jews. Anatolian heartland, forged a new citizen The end of the empire changed all army, routed Greek forces that had seized that. At times it was not a pretty picture; Smyrna (now Izmir) and much adjoining transforming the truncated remains of Turkish territory, and then drove the Allied the multiethnic Ottoman Empire into a occupation forces out of Istanbul. But that cohesive, racially rooted nation-state was was only the beginning. As president of achieved at great human cost and more than a little tampering with historical Aram Bakshian Jr. is a contributing editor at The truth. While Ataturk had condemned the National Interest. He served as an aide to Presidents extermination of Armenians during World Nixon, Ford and Reagan and writes frequently on War I by his Young Turk predecessors, politics, history and the humanities. calling it a “shameful act,” he presided

56 The National Interest Erdogan, the Anti-Ataturk over a brutal but less horrific forced mass is at risk, threatened by a rising Islamist transfer of populations in which Anatolian tide led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Greeks—who, like the Armenians, had Erdogan, an unashamed—and historically lived there for centuries before the arrival uninformed—admirer of an idealized of the first nomadic Turkic invaders—were version of the Ottoman-Islamic past that driven from their homes. The same fate, it exists mainly in his own imagination. It is is worth noting, awaited a smaller number both significant and ironic that the mass of ethnic Turks living in Greek territory. anti-Erdogan protests that swept Turkey The only substantial minority that this June were initially triggered by his remained in modern Turkey were the arbitrary decision to destroy Gezi Park, Kurds, fellow Muslims but with their one of Istanbul’s few remaining green areas, own language and customs, who are still a to replace it with a “replica” of Ottoman- source of considerable friction today. Even era military barracks and a shopping mall. they were subjected to a clumsy attempt Other plans included building an enormous at what might be called bureaucratic new mosque in adjoining Taksim Square, assimilation. The republic invented a new site of the Monument of the Republic. name for them: until a few years ago, they Why this nostalgia for a romanticized, were officially classified as “mountain not to say imaginary, Ottoman-Islamic Turks,” denied a legitimate identity of their past? Perhaps it begins with a deep sense of own. grievance on the part of Turkish Islamists, A charismatic speaker and popular hero, shared by their brethren throughout the Ataturk stumped the republic, defining a Middle East—the belief that a golden new sense of “Turkishness” and denouncing age of Islamic dominance was destroyed anything and everything he considered by the forces of Western Christianity and divisive or reactionary—from fez and veil Western technology. Whatever is driving to traditional Ottoman music and religious this nostalgia for a romanticized past of orders. Like Peter the Great in Russia two Islamic vibrancy and power, it has become centuries before, he was determined to a compelling force in modern Turkish overcome centuries of backwardness and politics. The late Samuel P. Huntington of decline, by brute force if necessary—and Harvard, a leading political scientist of our it often was. Also like Peter the Great, time, called Turkey a “torn country”—a he had seen the greater world outside his nation belonging culturally to a particular homeland, and he liked what he saw. Once civilization but whose leaders wish to firmly in power in the mid-1920s, he would redefine it as belonging to another. Hence, declare: any effort to understand the dynamics of Turkish politics today must begin by I have no religion, and at times I wish all re- probing the rise to power and remarkable ligions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak national stewardship of Kemal Ataturk, as ruler who needs religion to uphold his govern- well as the leadership vacuum that ensued ment; it is as if he would catch his people in upon his death. a trap. My people are going to learn the prin- ciples of democracy, the dictates of truth and e was one of many bright, young the teachings of science. Superstition must go. H Ottoman officers of his generation who had been posted as military attachés in Only it didn’t. Today, many informed Europe before World War I. These young observers feel that Ataturk’s achievement men often came home dazzled by Western

Erdogan, the Anti-Ataturk September/October 2013 57 Like Peter the Great in Russia two centuries before, Ataturk was determined to overcome centuries of backwardness and decline, by brute force if necessary—and it often was.

society and technology, with a newfound the republican struggle following World contempt for traditional Ottoman culture War I, his mission was modernizing and and religion and with an indiscriminate zeal Westernizing Turkey. for all things Western and modern. At the While a new class of privileged, dawn of the twentieth century, this often Westernized Turks rose to the top of meant embracing fashionably “enlightened” republican society and replaced most of free thinking, anticlericalism, and the rather the old minority-dominated commercial naive belief that science and rational mate- and professional elites, millions of poor rialism could solve all of society’s ills if only city dwellers and the vast majority of the the right people (i.e., themselves) could take rural peasantry remained poverty stricken, charge from their elders. uneducated and, for better or worse, true In 1908, they did, pressuring the to their old customs and Muslim faith in reactionary Sultan Abdul Hamid II to a quiet, low-key way. The shallow tide of hold parliamentary elections and embrace Western modernity swept over them but constitutional government. When he tried did not carry them with it. If Ataturk— to renege a year later, Young Turk officers who played as hard as he worked and was and their troops deposed him, replacing a notoriously heavy drinker—had not him with Sultan Mehmed V, an elderly died early, he might have completed his nonentity who served as a ceremonial modernizing mission by sheer force of figurehead. But rather than arresting the character. But his passing in 1938 at the imperial decay, the Young Turks actually relatively young age of fifty-seven left a void accelerated it, suffering a string of no successor could fill. His loyal wartime humiliating defeats in the first Balkan War, aide, Ismet Inonu—a brave soldier and losing most of what was then European a staunch patriot, but a leader of limited Turkey. The humiliation only ended when vision—succeeded him, but Ataturk’s initial the Christian victors—Serbia, Greece, reforms froze in place. Montenegro and Bulgaria—turned on each When he died on the morning of other in the second Balkan War and the November 10, 1938, in his small, modest Turks managed to reclaim some of their bedroom in Istanbul’s vast old Dolmabahce lost territory. Total disaster followed after Palace, all the clocks in the building were the Young Turks plunged their creaky old stopped. They remain so to this day. Like empire into World War I on the side of the the static moment of mourning each year Central powers, proclaiming a jihad against commemorating Ataturk’s death, the the ultimately victorious Allies. stopped clocks in the Dolmabahce Palace Unlike Enver Pasha and the other serve as an unintentional reminder of what members of the Young Turk junta, Kemal that premature death meant to Turkey: Ataturk put no stock in jihads. While he the beginning of a long era of suspended would sometimes invoke the name of Allah animation, of social and political inertia to rally the masses during the early days of bordering on stasis.

58 The National Interest Erdogan, the Anti-Ataturk Even with the strongest of wills and best by the military after a hastily improvised of intentions, Ataturk’s successors would trial. have had a hard time continuing his work. The sad case of Menderes—a genuine He had died at the worst possible time. In reformer but also a rabble-rousing populist 1938, the Western democracies were still who jailed opposition journalists and reeling from the Great Depression. To many politicians and openly appealed to voters politicians and intellectuals, Communism on religious lines—starkly illustrates the and fascism—both with a heavy emphasis fault line in modern Turkish politics. On on police-state tyranny and centrally the one hand, all too often the advocates managed economies—seemed to be the of needed economic and social reform have wave of the future. Europe was also about also been political demagogues willing to to plunge into a disastrous Second World War, and Turkey’s leaders would have their hands full simply protecting the sovereignty and neutrality of their impoverished, militarily vulnerable nation. Ataturk’s whole life had been spent broadening his understanding and seeking sensible new solutions. The Turkish future he envisioned was one of expanded education, opportunity and prosperity for the poor, uneducated Turkish masses with gradually evolving democratic institutions as progress was made. While his rhetoric remained in place, most of his vision died with him. Until free-market economic reforms were ushered in by Turgut Ozal, who served as a genuinely reformist prime minister and then president from 1983 to his suspicious death in 1993, Turkey did remain a secular state—but it also remained a 1930s-style corporate state based on crony capitalism, government corruption, and a senior military and moneyed class that defended its own play the religion card and trample on the special privileges at least as zealously as rights of their political opponents. On the it protected the secular state. When other hand, when the republic has been politicians—Islamist or otherwise—got in “rescued” from such men by the military, the way, they were removed by force. One and the secular nature of the state has been of them, Adnan Menderes, an economic preserved (along with the special privileges reformer who courted religious voters by of the “rescuers”), desperately needed promising to remove restrictions on the economic and social reforms have been traditional Arabic-language call to prayer either tabled or rescinded. and to allow new Muslim schools and the This pattern is far from unique to Turkey. building of new mosques, was not only The same scenario has played out repeatedly removed in a coup d’état but also hanged in Muslim countries as different as Egypt,

Erdogan, the Anti-Ataturk September/October 2013 59 Pakistan and Bangladesh. What makes it superficial glimpse at the medieval particularly tragic in the case of Turkey is A world would seem to bear out this that—unlike new postcolonial nations with wistful view of history. As the doyen of artificial borders and no strong patriotic Near and Middle Eastern historians Ber- tradition to draw on—it possesses most of nard Lewis has pointed out, “In the course the raw materials for a healthy, modern civil of the seventh century, Muslim armies ad- society. Indeed, Turks have been trying to vancing from Arabia conquered Syria, Pal- “modernize” since at least the last quarter of estine, Egypt, and North Africa, all until the eighteenth century. then part of Christendom, and most of the Admittedly, the results have been mixed new recruits to Islam, west of Iran and Ara- at best. Sultan Selim III, who reigned bia, were indeed converts from Christian- from 1789 to 1807, attempted to revive ity.” Further gains would be made in Spain, the empire and modernize the obsolete much of which was overrun by Muslim Ottoman military system only to be North African Arabs and more recently overthrown by the traditional Janissary converted Berber tribesmen. Eventually corps and murdered shortly afterward. other non-Arab converts to Islam, most Sultan Mahmud II, who reigned from notably primitive but tough Tartar and 1808 to 1839, managed to establish a “new Turkic nomad warriors, would carve out model” army of sorts, abolish the Janissaries Muslim empires in large parts of Eastern and modernize the civil service. But the Europe, Russia, the Levant, India and the empire had already begun to disintegrate, Balkans. with Greece gaining full independence and More important than this military Egypt remaining nominally Ottoman but success was the fact that, in the early autonomously ruled by its own hereditary years of the Muslim surge, cities like dynasty of Khedives. The Western-oriented Baghdad, Damascus, Alexandria and, to technocrats of the “Tanzimat” reform era a lesser extent, Cordoba were centers of of the mid-nineteenth century and the a cultural flowering that preceded and— later Young Turk movement that overthrew by preserving, recovering and building the reactionary Sultan Abdul Hamid on classical knowledge lost in most of the II had both tried to inject new life into surviving Christian West—helped make the Ottoman Empire to little or no avail; possible the brilliant achievements of the indeed, it was Young Turk leader Enver European Renaissance. This, in turn, led Pasha’s insistence on entering World War to the development of the modern Western I on the side of the Central powers that civilization that would, in a few centuries, sealed the empire’s fate. leave the Islamic world behind in the Only with the death of the empire, dust. Was the rise of the Christian West which left a smaller but more cohesive core responsible for the decline of the Muslim Turkish nation, was Ataturk able to succeed East? Or was the relatively short period where the best and brightest of Ottoman during which Muslim-conquered cities in soldiers, sultans and statesmen had failed. the formerly Christian world of antiquity And yet a strong residue of sentiment became centers of progress and learning a remained in the country that resisted any mere blip on the screen, a temporary, albeit impulse toward Westernization and longed benign, “hijacking” of more advanced, more for a return to that golden age of Islam that populous societies by a primitive, desert- lit up the world before the West’s inexorable sprung society of warrior-conquerors that rise. overran them?

60 The National Interest Erdogan, the Anti-Ataturk Today, many informed observers feel that Ataturk’s achievement is at risk, threatened by a rising Islamist tide led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Surely it is no coincidence that nearly “The Ottoman experience,” writes Turkish all of the cultural blossoming under early historian M. Sükrü Hanioglu in his Islamic rule occurred in places far from Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, Mecca and Medina (the cradles of Islam), “provides a superb opportunity to examine and with centuries of history rooted in the the impact of modernity in a non-European Greco-Roman and early Christian past. setting.” Leaders like Ataturk who lived Other centers of high Islamic culture like through the imperial collapse attempted to Persia and Mughal India were also homes build a modern Turkish alternative. It was to ancient civilizations long predating a daunting task, and even its partial success Islam. Thus, the intellectual, spiritual and was a remarkable achievement, remaining aesthetic roots of the short-lived golden so to this day. age of Islamic culture were almost entirely pre-Islamic in their origins and nature. t the height of the Cold War, it used Even the system of “Arabic” numerals that A to be said that Vienna, which had re- revolutionized mathematics was not really pulsed a Turkish attack at the height of Arabic at all; it was borrowed from India by Ottoman power, was two different cities. Arab traders. Approached from the Communist-domi- The decline of Islam’s golden age nated East, Vienna was a bustling, modern occurred as Islam tightened its grip on metropolis compared to anything Hungary, the cultures it had overrun and, in the Poland or Czechoslovakia had to offer. But case of Europe, as a rapidly progressing approached from the West, Vienna seemed Christendom began to push back the more like a charming but antiquated relic Islamic advance. The more pervasive Islam than a living center of modern commerce became in the territories it had conquered, and culture. Earlier this year, while review- the more those territories fell behind, ing Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s perhaps because of the Islamists’ belief novel Silent House, it occurred to me that that their religion contains a complete, the same is true, though in a very different hermetically—and prophetically—sealed way, of contemporary Turkey: formula for the running of every aspect of human society. Such a mind-set has a built- Straddling the great divide between Europe and in hostility to the spirit of inquiry and the Asia, Christendom and Islam, Turkey wears desire to subject prescribed notions of faith two faces. Viewed from the East, it looks like and fate to the tests of intellectual rigor. Ask a prosperous pillar of stability and civic order, no new questions and you will discover no especially when compared to any of its Mus- new answers. lim neighbors. Viewed from Western Europe, The decline of the once-mighty Ottoman however, it presents a different picture, that Empire mirrored the earlier decline in of a country dangerously divided: on the one the rest of the Islamic world, culturally, hand, a pampered and often corrupt pseudo- militarily, economically and intellectually. Western economic and social elite relying on

Erdogan, the Anti-Ataturk September/October 2013 61 the Turkish military to protect both its privi- open up the economy to competition and leges and its secular values; on the other hand, growth, and bring basic services such as a growingly militant and sometimes violent improved schools and sanitation to the mass movement of Islamists—many of them poorer regions of the country, just as he had poor urban immigrants from the backward, ne- done to Istanbul’s poorer neighborhoods as glected countryside—determined to purge their a reforming mayor. country of alien “impurity” and turn it into a Erdogan kept many of his promises. theocracy by whatever means necessary. Government graft and cronyism still exist, but the swag is no longer the privileged For ten years now the latter of these preserve of a small, old elite. Corruption two flawed factions has had the upper has not been eliminated, but it has been hand, thanks mainly to one man—the determined, driven visionary, Erdogan, who wants to remake Turkey in his own image and his own imagination. A powerful orator and skilled political organizer with a strong autocratic streak, boundless energy and an obsessive sense of his (self-perceived) historic mission, Erdogan was described by one observer I spoke with in Istanbul this May as

a strange joke played on Turkey by history. If Kemal Ataturk had had an evil twin, it would have been someone exactly like Mr. Erdo- gan. Most of his views are mirror opposites of Ataturk’s, but he is the first overwhelming, larger-than-life figure in Turkish public life since the Ghazi [Ataturk] himself.

Like Ataturk, whose father was a minor government official, Erdogan rose from obscure origins through intelligence, drive and unbounded ambition. But there the similarity ends. Ataturk was, at most, an agnostic who felt that Islam, as practiced democratized. And Erdogan has devoted in the Ottoman Empire, was an enemy of billions of lira to development projects, progress; Erdogan is a devout Muslim who especially in poor, rural areas where they often waxes nostalgic about the good old are most needed. As a self-made business imperial days. But that was after his party— millionaire himself, he also understood— the Justice and Development Party (akp)— and delivered on—economic and regulatory came to power in 2002 with a 34 percent reforms following the earlier example of plurality in the national parliamentary Turgut Ozal, mentioned above. Under elections. On his way to the premiership, Erdogan’s leadership—although not entirely Erdogan had run as a democratic reformer, due to it—in less than a decade the Turkish promising to fight entrenched corruption, economy became the eighteenth largest in

62 The National Interest Erdogan, the Anti-Ataturk the world and per capita income nearly largely ceremonial post to an “imperial” tripled, which helps to explain the akp’s presidency his friends liken to that of strong showings in the 2007 and 2011 Charles de Gaulle and his opponents liken elections (it received nearly 50 percent of to that of Vladimir Putin. If he can get the vote in the latter). It can truly be said the desired changes, he intends to run for that, as prime minister, Erdogan delivered the presidency and, if elected, would be on much of his public agenda. The problem eligible to run again for a second five-year is with his private agenda. According to Der term, giving him ten years as an elected Spiegel he once said, “Democracy is like a autocrat. As Ilter Turan, a political scientist train. We shall get out when we arrive at the at Istanbul’s Bilgi University, told the station we want.” New York Times, Erdogan “has a highly After his party’s record victory in the majoritarian understanding of democracy. 2011 elections, Erdogan seems to have He believes that with 51 percent of the vote decided he was approaching his station. he can rule in an unrestrained fashion. He Wall Street Journal correspondent Joe doesn’t want checks and balances.” Parkinson summed it up rather neatly: ll of these factors help to explain how Since [the 2011 elections], the prime minister A what began as the protest of a few en- has sought to impose further restrictions on vironmentalists to save a small wooded park alcohol consumption and abortion and repeat- in Istanbul metastasized in hours into mass edly called for all women to have at least three protests involving hundreds of thousands— children to grow Turkey’s population. He has possibly millions—of Turkish citizens in held forth on what citizens should eat at the major cities across the country. In Wash- family dinner table, and intervened to censor ington before my recent trip to Turkey, and sex scenes in prime-time television series. His in Istanbul days before the demonstrations government has sought to muzzle the press; began and were brutally suppressed, I talked Turkey now jails more journalists than Iran or with Gareth Jenkins, a British journalist China. who has resided in Istanbul since 1989. Jenkins is an expert on the Erdogan gov- He has also denounced raki, an anise-based ernment’s mass arrests and show trials of liquor similar to the Greek ouzo—Turkey’s civilian and military critics of its regime, as alcoholic beverage of choice for centuries— well as its mounting efforts to intimidate declaring ayran, a drink made from diluted journalists by arresting and trying report- yogurt, the new national beverage. He has ers and applying economic pressure—fines, even declared war on white bread, his per- litigation and the threat of the same—to sonal preference being the brown variety. newspaper and broadcast owners. On the brighter side, unlike the unhinged Some of the allegations of planted Latin American dictator in Woody Allen’s evidence and rigged trials would be funny comedy classic Bananas, he has yet to order were it not for the human price paid by everyone to wear their underpants over the innocent victims. In one case, a retired rather than under their trousers. general returned to his home to find it had More significantly, Erdogan has pushed been ransacked and to learn he was about for constitutional changes that would to be charged with conspiring to overthrow reduce parliamentary powers—and those the state. He knew he was innocent, but of the prime minister—while transforming he was told that investigators had found the office of the president from a incriminating documents in his home that

Erdogan, the Anti-Ataturk September/October 2013 63 named him as a plotter. It turned out that demonstrations made it clear that time the “evidence”—which must have been is not on his side. The prodemocracy planted and was probably concocted—had demonstrators, overwhelmingly nonviolent nothing to do with him, but contained the and well behaved, were also overwhelmingly similar name of another retired general who young, the vanguard of a rising generation was probably innocent as well: two cheers of Turks who care about personal freedom for the gang that couldn’t frame straight. and will not be bullied into silence. They When I asked Jenkins why Erdogan’s power represent a new political demographic that plays seemed to be growing more and more can’t be pinned down as strictly right wing blatant, he mentioned that in November or left wing, observant Muslim or secular. 2011 the prime minister underwent And they are a generation of young people emergency surgery for the removal of a with access to electronic communications malignant growth in his intestines, that he no tyranny can fully block, with a strong had a second operation in February 2012, awareness of their rights and of those who and that he is now heavily medicated and would deny them those rights. subject to frequent health checks—with But you can’t beat something with a distinct possibility that his cancer will nothing. The absence of strong, credible return. Heavy medication could explain opposition leaders has left the political some of Erdogan’s odder statements in stage to the highly skilled Erdogan, who recent weeks, such as his declaration that sometimes reminds this observer of a cross “there is now a menace which is called between Huey Long, Margaret Thatcher Twitter. . . . To me, social media is the and Juan Peron. In the short term, worst menace to society” and that “the growing doubts and divisions among his death of 17 people happened” during the parliamentary followers may put more of a Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New brake on his aspirations than any number York. (The latter was a totally false claim; of peaceful demonstrators. But, as Jenkins there were no fatalities at all.) He also points out, even if most of the protesters repeatedly has claimed that anti-Erdogan represent a specific section of society, the demonstrators desecrated an Istanbul demonstrations that swept the country “are mosque by smoking and drinking beer arguably Turkey’s first ever spontaneous, in it, even after the imam of the mosque grassroots political movement . . . the insisted that no such thing happened and participants [are] feeling empowered, that the demonstrators had been invited determined but also bewildered by what to take shelter in the mosque, suffering is happening. They have never been here from police-inflicted injuries and tear-gas before. And neither has Turkey.” inhalation. One thing is certain. Except for the ones Whatever Erdogan’s physical in the Dolmabahce Palace, the clocks in life expectancy may be, the mass Turkey have started ticking again. n

64 The National Interest Erdogan, the Anti-Ataturk The Power of Realism

Subscribe today at NationalInterest.org Reviews & Essays

tactical and strategic brilliance. The conten- Roosevelt and His tion of this book appears to be that the five men featured—Sumner Welles, William J. Diplomatic Pawns Donovan, Harry Hopkins, Wendell Willkie and W. Averell Harriman—were indispens- By Conrad Black able to making it to the encounter with des- tiny and making the experience a national and international success. Michael Fullilove, Rendezvous with Destiny: Unfortunately, that case is not really How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraor- made, and I don’t think it is accurate. The dinary Men Took America into the War and author generally grasps Roosevelt’s methods into the World (New York: Penguin, 2013), and recognizes him for the deft cynic 480 pp., $29.95. that he was, almost always in the service of broadly good objectives. He also was his is certainly an interesting ultimately, at the summit of his career, and meticulously researched book, the indispensable man to the victory of Tagreeably written and rigorous in its democracy, though he shared that honor, assertion of historical facts. The only reser- at least in 1940 and 1941, with Winston vation that arises is that the basic premise Churchill. And on the last page of the seems to confer too much importance on book, Michael Fullilove writes, “For the the five people who are its subjects, in their most part, [Roosevelt] moved his envoys shared roles as special envoys for President around the globe with great skill and élan.” Franklin D. Roosevelt between March 1940 His envoys “were instruments of his will.” and July 1941. This was a terribly compli- But Fullilove also declares, “Sometimes, cated and intense period in international especially in his moments of irresolution, relations, in which the United States moved they shifted his thinking.” There is not to confirm President Roosevelt’s prediction a jot of evidence, here or anywhere, that (in his speech accepting renomination in any of these five ever shifted his thinking Philadelphia on June 27, 1936), that “this at all. It is undoubtedly true that Harry generation of Americans has a rendezvous Hopkins was an informative observer of the with destiny.” Roosevelt led it to that ren- determination of the British to persevere dezvous with astonishing agility and both and of the high qualities of Churchill as a war leader, but these were not exactly Conrad Black is a writer and former newspaper revelations when Hopkins made his first publisher whose most recent book is Flight of the visit to Britain in January 1941. Indeed, Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America as the author records, Hopkins advised from Colonial Dependence to World Leadership Churchill and his entourage, “The (Encounter Books, 2013). He is chairman emeritus President is determined that we shall win of The National Interest. the war together. Make no mistake about

66 The National Interest Reviews & Essays it. He has sent me here to tell you that Hopkins did more than carry out missions at all costs and by all means he will carry for his chief, very important though you through, no matter what happens to those assignments sometimes were. him.” Roosevelt sent Hopkins with that As this book recounts, when Willkie, message; he did not adopt that policy after the industrialist and 1940 Republican listening to Hopkins tell him about the presidential candidate, asked Roosevelt why state of British morale and war capability he employed such a controversial man as and Churchill’s strong personality. Hopkins, fdr said that it was important to Even before Hopkins arrived in London, have someone around who wasn’t asking for the United Kingdom had won the Battle of anything and only wanted to serve, which Britain, smashed the Italian navy, sunk the Howe and Hopkins did. But when Hopkins Bismarck and was threatening to sweep the remarried and moved out of the White Italians out of North Africa. Hopkins’s role House, he lost access to Roosevelt, and was to buck up the British and assure them they were not close again. It was Roosevelt’s that help was coming, as Roosevelt had nature to use people and discard them, with already conceived the lend-lease program a smile and a joke and a kind word, but and it was proceeding through Congress. absolutely ruthlessly. His mentor Al Smith, Even Roosevelt, inscrutable though party chairman Jim Farley, fixer Thomas he was behind his apparently guileless Corcoran, all of the original so-called brain bonhomie and overwhelming charm, liked trust, nearly all those who supposedly had company, and he sought it from women any influence with him—all departed less opinionated and more deferential (and eventually as if through the trapdoor on a physically alluring) than Eleanor (Missy gallows. LeHand, Margaret Suckley, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd), and from his senior political y making his book effectively a snap- loyalist and adviser, Louis McHenry Howe, B shot of America starting in early 1940, until he died in 1936. Three years later, Fullilove inadvertently incites the inference Roosevelt invited the unhealthy widower, that Franklin D. Roosevelt entered this Hopkins, who had been a remarkably critical phase of the war with unformed capable welfare and workfare administrator ideas about the correlation of forces in the for Roosevelt when he was governor of world. In fact, Roosevelt knew Western New York and in the New Deal, to take Europe well and spoke French and German Howe’s place as a resident of the White fluently. He attended school in Germany, House and confidential sounding board. and from his first visit to a performance The night before the Pearl Harbor attack, of the “Ring” cycle at Wagner’s Festspiel- he reviewed with Hopkins the decrypted haus at Bayreuth with his mother in 1896 Japanese message, scheduled for delivery he considered Germany to be a nation of the following day, and said, “This means delusional warmongers. As soon as Hitler war.” There is no known instance where was installed as chancellor, while he was

Reviews & Essays September/October 2013 67 preparing for his own inauguration, he said and Canadians anything they wanted with to his entourage that it would be impossible an indefinite repayment, and he extended to maintain peace with him on satisfactory U.S. claims on territorial waters from three terms. This view was bolstered in May 1933 to 1,800 miles into the Atlantic and ordered when he met with Hitler’s finance minister, the U.S. Navy to attack on detection any Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, whom German ship. This was a novel definition of fdr considered “extremely arrogant.” The neutrality, and no one else—certainly not president listened to Hitler’s speeches with the well-disposed amateur Willkie—would his staff in his office and translated them have thought of, much less accomplished, for the others. When Albert Einstein visited such a thing. So artfully conceived and Roosevelt, they spoke in German. brilliantly executed a plan of genius was not Thus, Roosevelt saw the war coming as the distillation of the findings of talented early as 1933 and came to his conclusions special envoys; they each had a part to play about Hitler even before Churchill did. It is but had no idea what their leader thought inconceivable that after the outbreak of the or what his overall design was. war in Europe, Roosevelt intended to retire, Roosevelt knew that if Germany were though he was determined to try to make able to consolidate its hold on all that it it look like he was a reluctant draftee to a had conquered by the summer of 1940— third-term nomination, as he was breaking including most of France, Poland and a tradition as old as the Republic. Based Scandinavia, plus Benelux, Bohemia and on the votes in Congress on peacetime Moravia—it would have a population as conscription, increased defense spending, great as America’s and an economic strength lend-lease aid and protection of arms almost as great. Within a generation, this shipments to Britain through 1941, it is greater Germany would dominate Europe clear that no one but Roosevelt would and be a mortal threat to the position of the have thought in such terms and no one United States as the world’s most powerful else could have brought congressional and country. fdr had warned the French not to public opinion with him. While unctuously allow the remilitarization of the Rhineland claiming to be neutral, he gave the British by Germany in 1936 and had warned Stalin

68 The National Interest Reviews & Essays It was Roosevelt’s nature to use people and discard them, with a smile and a joke and a kind word, but absolutely ruthlessly.

in the last week of August 1939 not to by the way you have led public opinion by sign a nonaggression pact with Hitler. He allowing it to get ahead of you.” had admonished the British ambassador in Washington, Sir Ronald Lindsay, against hat this history demonstrates is that “this ‘We who are about to die, salute thee’ W the envoys chronicled by Fullilove attitude,” and asked the British king and were not pathfinders guiding their presi- queen to visit the United States as an add- dent and countrymen to destinations that on to their trip to Canada in June 1939, only became discernible as a result of their partly to warm relations between the two research. They performed important tasks countries and partly because he considered assigned them by the president, whom they successive British prime ministers—Ramsay served in furthering a plan of favorable en- MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville gagement and retrieval of civilization that Chamberlain—to be hopelessly irresolute. he had been silently preparing for years This caused him to welcome the return of and started to execute with the quarantine Churchill to government in 1939 and to speech. Obviously, details of it had to be enter into direct contact with him, even adapted and timed to events that Roosevelt though his recollection of their one previous could not foresee or control. meeting, in 1919, was not a happy one. fdr did not require the advice of From the time of his 1937 “quarantine” Hopkins or Donovan or Willkie to speech in Chicago, in which the president reassure him that helping Britain stay in posited the idea of resisting the Axis powers the war against Germany was a good idea. through economic sanctions, Roosevelt As for Willkie, Roosevelt liked him as a tried to prod the British and French into progressive Republican, unlike the other being more resistant to German and Italian gop leaders who had succeeded his distant aggression. He laboriously explained cousin, Theodore, in leading that party. when importuned by the leaders of those Herbert Hoover and Alf Landon were countries that it was hard for him to be supporting the isolationists—as was Senator as purposeful as they might wish when Robert Taft, son of the former president— they, Hitler’s immediate neighbors, were and Roosevelt had fought a bruising so steeped in passivity and addicted juridical battle with the 1916 Republican to appeasement. For the next four years presidential candidate, Chief Justice Charles after the quarantine speech, he steadily Evans Hughes. Warren Harding and Calvin ratcheted up American opinion, but after Coolidge had died—and were isolationists each oratorical escalation he deftly insisted anyway. (Roosevelt had run for vice that nothing had changed. Strangely, president along with James M. Cox against King George VI understood Roosevelt’s the Harding/Coolidge ticket in 1920.) He technique better than Churchill or many of welcomed a Republican nominee whom he Roosevelt’s own circle. He wrote Roosevelt did not regard as a member of the political on June 3, 1941: “I have been so struck flat-earth society. Roosevelt had thought

Reviews & Essays September/October 2013 69 about trying to rationalize American politics four distinct blocs of public opinion in his by expelling the segregationist South from country. About 10–15 percent of Americans his party, as he had tried partially to do with were Communist or Nazi sympathizers, some Southern Democrats in his attempted sheltering behind Charles Lindbergh; purge of 1938, and attract moderate they professed to be neutral, but wanted Republicans in their place. Willkie might a German victory. Some 15–20 percent, have played a role in that, but events of the represented by the catastrophic former war prevented him from pursuing such a ambassador to Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy, course. wanted to help Britain but were pessimistic Likewise, there is no reason to believe about that country’s chances and did not William J. Donovan did more than want to run any risk of war. Another 10–15 confirm Roosevelt in his well-established percent thought war was inevitable and opinion that Britain had to be assisted in victory for the democracies essential and every politically feasible way to remain in achievable; they simply wanted to get the war and serve as America’s first line of on with it. This group included much of defense against the Nazi threat. Curiously, Roosevelt’s cabinet, including Secretary Fullilove does not mention Donovan’s most of War Henry Stimson, Secretary of the important service prior to the U.S. entry Navy Frank Knox, Secretary of the into World War II—namely, his trip to the Treasury Henry Morgenthau and Secretary Balkans in December 1940, in which he of the Interior Harold Ickes. Finally, the advised the government in Belgrade that remaining 50–60 percent wanted to give the United States would assist Yugoslavia, all possible aid short of war to Britain and and this was soon broadened to include Canada even if that risked being drawn lend-lease aid, if Belgrade did not cave to into the war, though they preferred to stay the Germans. This information, amplified out of the war, at least for a time. Roosevelt by the efforts of the British intelligence had the support of almost all of this last service, helped produce the coup that group, as well as all of those who favored overthrew the pro-German government in war and a chunk of the Kennedy faction. Belgrade in February 1941, which, along This represented 70–75 percent of the total, with Mussolini receiving a good thrashing a formidable achievement in such political from the Greeks, caused Hitler to delay the crosscurrents. Hopkins left Churchill in invasion of the Soviet Union by almost six no doubt that Roosevelt himself was in the weeks while the Wehrmacht subdued those war camp with Stimson and the others, but countries, a decisive time in the first year of he knew from American history, including the Russo-German war. Wilson’s experience in World War I, that he Similarly, the book does not mention had to lead a united people into war. that Hopkins explained to Churchill the It is true that in his brief visit to Stalin political equation in the United States at in July 1941, after his second Churchill the beginning of 1941. There were, he said, visit, Hopkins did bring back some

70 The National Interest Reviews & Essays impressions of Stalin and of Soviet staying and Churchill in their present leadership power that were valuable to both Churchill capacities, in Newfoundland, but that was and Roosevelt. Yet even here, Hopkins already in train when he returned for his was reporting, not altering the president’s second visit in June 1941. policy to assist Russia. His observations Roosevelt considered Willkie, with had nothing to do with Roosevelt’s some reason, to be a political innocent in determination, already formed as Fullilove Babylon, in domestic politics and even acknowledges, to extend a great deal of more so in foreign affairs, though he assistance to Stalin. Still, Roosevelt and was grateful for his support in aiding the Churchill both thought it might be difficult democracies. Willkie went on to tour the for Stalin to hang on much more than the world and write a rather naive paean to first year before making a separate peace world fellowship called One World, and was on the lines of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, but unduly entranced by Madame Chiang Kai- with borders well to the east of where this shek, whom Roosevelt, though also taken conflict began. But Hopkins was not so by her charms, regarded with considerable much increasing Roosevelt’s insight into suspicion. On his world tour, Willkie European affairs as conveying for him the message that the British could count on American assistance. Hopkins was in London to reinforce the resolve and morale of the British, not to tell Roosevelt what he already knew. Hopkins concluded his first visit, in February 1941, with the famous and stirring adaptation from the Book of Ruth: “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God, even unto the end.” Hopkins came with this mandate and successfully conveyed his message. Churchill wept. It had already been a lonely and brave struggle, and the prospect of the approaching might of the New World was a vision of inexpressible consolation. Hopkins was also useful in setting up the first meeting between Roosevelt

Reviews & Essays September/October 2013 71 Roosevelt saw the war coming as early as 1933 and came to his conclusions about Hitler even before Churchill did.

repeatedly shot from the hip, calling for a ed to a coalition government without the second front in Western Europe to alleviate president himself yielding a scintilla of his pressure on Stalin, long before the Western own authority or flexibility of movement. Allies were in any position to launch such The week before the 1940 Republican con- an attack as anything other than a sacrificial vention, he had brought into his govern- distraction to the German Wehrmacht. He ment Stimson, a former cabinet member of also demanded the preemptive dissolution Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover, of the British and French empires. along with Knox, the 1936 Republican Churchill famously replied, “I have not candidate for vice president. Stimson took become the king’s first minister to preside over the War Department, while Knox be- over the liquidation of the British Empire.” came secretary of the navy. Then, within And Charles de Gaulle responded in even three months of winning a third term, fdr more precise and dismissive acerbities. sent his Republican opponent to Britain as Willkie’s use to Roosevelt was to bring his special envoy. In the meantime, New in Republican support and divide the Hampshire’s Republican governor John G. opposition. When he was no longer of use Winant had been appointed ambassador to to the wily president, Roosevelt discarded Britain, and Donovan, a former gop can- Willkie like so many others, though he didate for New York governor, had been ef- issued a gracious statement when his former fectively established as head of intelligence. opponent died in 1944, aged only fifty-two. He had also engaged Hoover’s war secretary, Willkie made a good impression on the General Patrick Hurley, as another special British, as all Roosevelt’s emissaries did, but adviser. All of these men—except Hurley, his principal accomplishment in London who was a reactionary Bull Moose—carried was physically delivering Roosevelt’s out their assigned missions very competent- message to Churchill, including the famous ly, and all had great symbolic value. quote from Longfellow: Again, there is no reason to imagine that Roosevelt expected much, if anything, from Sail on, Oh ship of state! Sumner Welles’s trip to Rome, Berlin, Paris Sail on, Oh Union strong and great. and London in March 1940. The president Humanity, with all its fears, didn’t feel he should be completely inactive, With all its hopes for future years, but the author’s supposition that he Is hanging breathless on thy fate. harbored ideas of delaying the anticipated German spring offensive is completely Churchill read those lines over the radio in unsubstantiated. The descriptions of the a world broadcast. details here are interesting, but nothing was unearthed that did other than reinforce he real importance of Willkie and Roosevelt’s concern that the democracies T Donovan was that they contributed to were not strong enough to defeat Germany. Roosevelt’s effort to present what amount- The British and French, both stronger at

72 The National Interest Reviews & Essays the start of World War I in 1914 than they administration, as Truman’s ambassador in were in 1940, could not defeat Germany London and commerce secretary, as one- without the intervention of the United term governor of New York, as Kennedy’s States, even with Russia as an ally. And ambassador at large or as cochairman of they certainly could not do so with the Johnson’s Vietnam peace delegation. He Russians as a neutral with friendly ties to may deserve some credit for the Limited Hitler under the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Test Ban Treaty, but the Laotian neutrality Roosevelt had always doubted that agreement transformed that country into the appeasement policy would succeed, the infiltration super highway of the Ho and he considered the men of Munich, Chi Minh Trail, and he was not even able Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier, to be to negotiate the shape of the table at the morally bankrupt and discredited, along Vietnam peace talks in 1968. with their coteries of appeasers, still thick He was apparently a competent in the ranks of both governments. Nothing businessman and a diligent public servant happened during Sumner Welles’s trip to who had an interesting career, but this alter that perception. Roosevelt considered effort to portray him as a “wise man” Welles his best career foreign-policy aide, who played a seminal role in thirty years and he liked this fellow alumnus of Groton of successful American foreign policy is School (Welles, Harriman, Dean Acheson rubbish. There is no record that Roosevelt’s and the able ambassador to Japan, Joseph view of anything was altered by Harriman. Grew, also were graduates of that school), The British lavished immense attention on but Welles was an executant of Roosevelt’s him, as they did on any official American as orders and not more. part of Churchill’s desperate and perfervid As for Harriman, he was, as the author campaign of ingratiation, waged with the volunteers, a highly motivated but rather conviction that U.S. entry into the war pedestrian son of a very wealthy man. He was the only imaginable deliverance for hung around the fringes of the Roosevelt Britain. To this end, Churchill and his administration for two terms reviewing wife seemed not to notice the affair their parades of New Deal workfare participants daughter-in-law, Pamela Digby Churchill, and had to prevail upon his sister and had with Harriman (and subsequently friends to champion him to Roosevelt, with the leading American media figure in who did not even wish him to attend the London, Edward R. Murrow, guru to such Atlantic Conference with Churchill in July future stars of American television news 1941. Although perfectly adequate, by as Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid); or all accounts, as lend-lease coordinator in their daughter Sarah Churchill’s affair with Britain and an improvement over Laurence Ambassador Winant. (As I observed on Steinhardt as ambassador to the Soviet these relationships in my biography of fdr, Union, Harriman was always a journeyman. Churchill was “an indulgent parent and a He never achieved much in the Roosevelt full-service ally.”)

Reviews & Essays September/October 2013 73 s an Australian, Fullilove works in tating for what was in fact the status quo, A some interesting and relevant Austra- so desperate was he to get the United States lian material, which gives a refreshingly into the war, even via the back door in the detached perspective, but he seems a little Pacific. uncertain of the exact nature of American Roosevelt verbally outlined to the politics in this period. He refers to Roos- Japanese emissaries a modus vivendi in evelt’s famous address in Boston on Octo- which the embargo on oil, scrap metal ber 30, 1940, as “infamous,” presumably and rice would be partially lifted, while because he said: “I have said this before, the Japanese would send no more forces but I shall say it again and again and again: to China or Indochina and some Japanese Your boys are not going to be sent into exports to the United States, such as silk, any foreign wars.” Always before he had would be resumed. In the end, Roosevelt added the qualifier, “except in case of at- did not repeat this proposal or put it in tack.” But he paid no price for this, as he writing. The Japanese were interested, made the point that if the United States as their decrypted diplomatic messages were attacked it ceased to be a foreign war. confirmed, but with the Germans at the Fullilove seems to have bought the idea gates of Moscow and Leningrad Roosevelt that this was an impetuous commitment. concluded it might be necessary for the He seems not to realize just how compli- United States to enter the war now, to cated Roosevelt’s path to war was. At the assure that Stalin remained in the war. If Atlantic Conference, Churchill urged Roo- Stalin made a separate peace with Hitler, sevelt to impose an absolute embargo on it would require many hundreds of the sale of oil to Japan, which was at that divisions and scores of thousands of aircraft point dependent on the United States for to invade Hitler’s Europe successfully. 80 percent of its oil, including aviation Although Acheson wasn’t an envoy, the fuel. Roosevelt said he would retain the author would have done well to work right to approve individual applications him into his narrative. He was fired by for export, tanker load by tanker load, so Roosevelt as assistant treasury secretary in as not to put Japan absolutely to the wall, 1934 for indiscretions of which he was, in forcing it to choose between a humiliating fact, innocent. But the president brought exit from China and Indochina or going to Acheson back into government after he war to assure an oil supply (from the Dutch publicly wrote during the 1940 election East Indies, subsequently Indonesia). When campaign that fdr had the constitutional he returned to Washington, he discovered authority to lend fifty destroyers to Britain that Dean Acheson, the assistant secretary without congressional approval. Roosevelt of state for economic affairs, had laid down did so and recalled Acheson to government a practice, in the absence of a presidential in consequence. Acheson, of course, policy, of declining to permit any exporta- remained in government and served with tion of oil to Japan. So Churchill was agi- great distinction under President Harry

74 The National Interest Reviews & Essays Truman as George Churchill and Roosevelt, C. Marshall’s deputy was manipulating whom, secretary of state and and there the answer was later as secretary of state. neither. Both wanted Fullilove sets a toe in America in the war and these waters with his knew it had to happen question, attributed for the war to end to the compiler of the satisfactorily. The rest Churchill-Roosevelt was tactics, well within correspondence, Warren Roosevelt’s purview. His Kimball: “Who was judgment was accurate, manipulating whom?” his decisions correct, his The answer, of course, execution brilliant. These was that Churchill, five envoys were among Stalin and Roosevelt the most prominent of were all, to some degree, trying to his many helpers and well worth attention. manipulate each other. Churchill sought a But it was these broader strategic resurrection of a power balance in Europe, questions that Roosevelt had to weigh. He reinforced by an alliance with America, retained Acheson’s complete embargo on in which Britain would play its centuries- oil exports to Japan; the Japanese responded old role as custodian of the fulcrum. Stalin by attacking the United States and other sought the long-dreamed Russian advance targets across the Pacific. By that time, into Western Europe. And Roosevelt sought Roosevelt already had advised Stalin that the rout of the isolationists at home, the Japanese forces had moved south from engagement of the United States in Europe the Siberian border, enabling Stalin to and the Far East, and the gathering of most ship twenty divisions from the Far East of the countries in those theaters into a across the Trans-Siberian railway as final gentle and cooperative subordinacy to the reinforcements in the successful defense United States. America’s nature would be of his two largest cities. Of course, the disguised by an international organization Soviet Union remained in the war, though that the Western powers would dominate there were peace talks with the Germans through their economic and military power in Stockholm in 1943. This is the same and moral force, as well as through the Roosevelt who stayed in the Soviet embassy votes of the quiescent Latin Americans at the Tehran Conference, rather than the and the commendably supportive British British, although he assumed (correctly) dominions. that his rooms were bugged by the Soviets, None of these powerful men could win because he needed to get Stalin’s support all he wanted, but Roosevelt was the big for the cross-channel landings in France, winner. Kimball only meant who, between as opposed to Churchill’s hobbyhorse of

Reviews & Essays September/October 2013 75 moving up the Adriatic. Roosevelt was bulked in Roosevelt’s reasoning when he concerned that if the Western Allies did resigned himself to a Japanese attack on not invade northwestern Europe in 1944, America to bring it into the war before either Stalin would make his peace with Stalin and Hitler signed a separate peace, Hitler or he would advance so far into it would have been a very daunting and Europe that he would bag most of Germany almost-insuperable task to dislodge the and possibly be able to promote putsches Third Reich from control of Western and by the powerful French and northern Central Europe. Historian A. J. P. Taylor Italian Communist parties. Churchill and was essentially correct when he credited his advisers thought the cross-channel Roosevelt’s strategic genius and said, “He operation premature, and were convinced made the United States the greatest power that Stalin supported that option only in the world at virtually no cost.” Of because he thought that the Germans course it was a great cost—but it paled would push the Allies into the sea, as in comparison to what all the other great they had at Dunkirk, Greece, Crete and powers endured. Dieppe. Roosevelt thought that this might In pretending that its five featured envoys have been Stalin’s motive, but he had more achieved more than they did and operated confidence in the ability of the Allies to in a more spontaneous policy-making conduct a successful amphibious invasion environment than they did, Fullilove’s and thought it the only way of winning book inadvertently gives an oversimplified the war strategically, by bringing most of notion of great-power grand strategy in Germany, as well as France, Italy and Japan, World War II. In doing so, it shortchanges under Western occupation and back into somewhat the president who sent them, the West as democratic allies, even though respectfully treated though he is. It also the Soviets were taking the vast majority pushes the basically unsound notion, largely of the casualties incurred in subduing Nazi advanced by Doris Kearns Goodwin, that Germany. these matters were more collegial than they This global conflict, from beginning were. This isn’t the place for a review of to end, was a war of intricate grand other books. But Roosevelt made all the strategy on all sides. Hitler recognized, decisions and was little influenced by based on Roosevelt’s actions, that he was advice; Eleanor was not a copresident, as almost at war with the United States in Goodwin suggests in No Ordinary Time, mid-1941, and if he did not move to any more than Lincoln’s men profiled in eliminate the Soviet Union he could find Team of Rivals had much influence on their himself at war with the combined might president. But both were excellent books, of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. It and so is this an interesting and a good was a huge gamble, but he had built his book. Anyone who keeps these limitations career on gambles. If Hitler had flattened in mind will find Fullilove’s Rendezvous with Stalin before America entered the war, as Destiny a very rewarding read. n

76 The National Interest Reviews & Essays in increasingly militarized efforts to press Tracing China’s its claims to disputed territory, and it has also used economic tools, including threats Long Game Plan to slow or halt commerce in certain goods, to this end. Where Chinese political elites By Jacqueline Newmyer Deal once at least paid lip service to democratic values and international norms, now they actively tout their model as an alternative Orville Schell and John Delury, Wealth to the so-called Western system. How did and Power: China’s Long March to the successive generations of U.S. policy makers Twenty-First Century (New York: Random get China so wrong? House, 2013), 496 pp., $30.00. One answer is that they ignored indicators from modern Chinese history ince the 1990s, U.S. policy toward and the ccp’s record that would have called China has been premised on the idea into question the notion of inevitable S that increasing Chinese wealth and Chinese liberalization and assimilation international stature would lead naturally to international institutions. Better to domestic political liberalization. Early in late than never, Orville Schell and John the previous decade, the Bush administra- Delury probe those indicators in their tion also held out hope that China would excellent and erudite new book, Wealth become a “responsible stakeholder” in the and Power: China’s Long March to the international community. The interven- Twenty-First Century. Schell, a former dean ing years have witnessed marked growth in of the University of California, Berkeley’s China’s economic and diplomatic heft, with Graduate School of Journalism and current the country emerging as the second-biggest director of the Asia Society’s Center on economy in the world. Its leaders refer to U.S.-China Relations, and Delury, a Yale- it as a “great power” alongside the United trained historian based at Yonsei University States. And yet the Chinese Communist in Seoul, combine scholarly learning with Party (ccp) retains its monopoly on po- a reportorial appreciation of colorful, litical authority, and since the run-up to the revealing details. They breathe life into their 2008 Beijing Olympics the party-state has history through biographical sketches of clamped down on domestic human-rights pillars of Chinese intelligentsia and politics activists, lawyers and other advocates of from the nineteenth century through the liberal reform. Abroad, China has engaged twentieth, and they argue that national rejuvenation—defined in terms of fuqiang Jacqueline Newmyer Deal is president and ceo (“wealth and power”)—has been the goal of the Long Term Strategy Group, a Washington- of these figures all along. Chinese elites based defense consultancy, and a senior fellow at over the past two centuries have attempted the Foreign Policy Research Institute. to convert the shame of their country’s

Reviews & Essays September/October 2013 77 nineteenth-century humiliation, when sharply with contemporary Western norms, outside powers repeatedly exploited China’s it would have been familiar to nineteenth- military inferiority, into energy to fuel century European statesmen such as Otto China’s ascent and redress its anguished von Bismarck. Such an outlook precludes past. If some of these elites from time to support for genuine political liberalization, time promoted Western political values, which would entail popular sovereignty. they did so only fleetingly, at moments Instead, China’s leading thinkers and when they believed liberal democracy could statesmen have tended to see themselves as enrich and strengthen the state. Schell and essential to their country’s effort to prevail Delury’s introduction identifies a common in the global rat race—and, accordingly, as theme across these cases: entitled to amass their own personal wealth and power. Unlike democratic political reform in the West, which developed out of a belief in cer- chell and Delury thus explain why tain universal values and human rights as S China has not democratized, and this is derived from a “natural,” if not God-given, a significant accomplishment. But they also source, and so were to be espoused regardless illuminate the domestic underpinnings of of their efficiency, the dominant tradition of China’s foreign and security policy. While reform in China evolved from a far more utili- the authors focus almost exclusively on Chi- tarian source. Its primary focus was to return nese internal developments, their analysis China to a position of strength, and any way provides critical context for understanding that might help achieve this goal was thus contemporary Chinese strategy and its roots worth considering. . . . Reformers have been in the work and thought of key Chinese interested in democratic governance at various figures over the century and a half since the stages in China’s tortuous path, not so much Opium Wars. For example, the authors pro- because it might enshrine sacred, inalienable file the nineteenth-century reformer whose political liberties but because it might make blueprint for both naval modernization and their nation more dynamic and thus stronger. a “charm offensive” vis-à-vis Southeast Asia and Russia seems to guide Beijing today. Among Chinese elites, concerns And from the book’s treatment of Deng about power, understood as a function Xiaoping’s economic guru, Zhu Rongji, the of economic and military capacity, have careful reader may detect how and why Zhu trumped any serious appreciation of human let Western interlocutors deceive themselves rights or the rule of law, whether at home into thinking he was a true free marketeer, or abroad. They see the world through when in fact he had no intention of aban- power-hungry lenses. It is a dog-eat-dog doning state-sponsored capitalism. Since the competition out there, and the unit of emergence of the modern state at the end of account is the state, not the individual or the last dynasty, China’s leading thinkers and citizen. While this perspective contrasts statesmen have set their sights on reestablish-

78 The National Interest Reviews & Essays Where Chinese political elites once at least paid lip service to democratic values and international norms, now they actively tout their model as an alternative to the so-called Western system.

ing the Middle Kingdom as the preeminent the Chinese Civil War and ended up on power in its orbit, and they have seen this Taiwan. While the last Qing ruler abdicated goal as a zero-sum endeavor, requiring them in 1911, China remained divided and weak to steal, plot and use force against rivals or through the period of Japanese incursions even potential rivals and their allies. and the civil war following the end of The book chronicles the pioneers World War II. of China’s rise from its low point in the The book then turns to ccp chiefs Mao late Qing period, when Western states Zedong (1893–1976) and Deng Xiaoping and Japan inflicted defeat after defeat on (1904–1997), as well as Zhu Rongji, who the demoralized, disintegrating dynasty. arguably engineered China’s economic As reflected in the officially sanctioned growth in the 1990s. The final profile history curriculum for all Chinese students focuses on Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel today, the catalogue of horrors includes Peace Prize laureate who has been in prison the Opium Wars of 1839–1842 and since 2008. Liu differs from the preceding 1856–1860, the first Sino-Japanese War characters in that he is a genuine democrat. of 1894–1895, the Boxer Rebellion in “Despite the episodic emergence of 1900 and the Paris Peace Conference after brilliant and courageous liberal dissenters, World War I in 1919, which transferred their demands for democracy have not to Japan Germany’s colonial leases over ended up being the main motive force of Chinese ports on the Liaodong and modern Chinese history, at least so far,” Shandong peninsulas. (China’s curriculum write Schell and Delury, adding that the downplays the Taiping Rebellion, a civil stronger driver seems to have been the urge war that ravaged the country from 1850 to to restore China’s past wealth and power. 1864, but this purely domestic conflict was They end their book, however, on a note of another major blow to the Qing.) Among characteristic Western optimism: the figures profiled in the book’s coverage of this period are the nineteenth-century But as these goals now become realized, will reformist intellectuals Wei Yuan (1794– not more and more Chinese demand to enjoy 1857) and Feng Guifen (1809–1874); the their newfound affluence in a more open and last effective Qing dynasty ruler, Empress law-abiding society where they have a greater Dowager Cixi (1835–1908); a turn-of-the- role in deciding who leads them and how they century thinker and coiner of the phrase are governed? Is it not also probable that the “sick man of Asia” for his homeland named yearning of Chinese leaders for international Liang Qichao (1873–1929); the founder respect will end up being just as strong a mag- of China’s Nationalist Party, Sun Yat-sen net drawing them, too, toward a more consul- (1866–1925); the father of the May Fourth tative, even democratic, form of governance? movement in 1919, Chen Duxiu (1879– 1942); and Sun’s Nationalist successor Despite such questions, Schell and Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975), who lost Delury will leave careful readers wary.

Reviews & Essays September/October 2013 79 Their account of China’s internal ways and embrace realpolitik, which evolution explains why its persistent means, in part, learning from enemies and authoritarianism is no accident but rather appropriating their winning ways. Chinese reflective of deeply held beliefs within the leaders have understood for decades that, elite that stretch back at least a century during this period of learning and building and a half. The work also reveals that up forces, China must defer to stronger these beliefs are likely to preclude China powers. But, in accordance with the logic from becoming what Westerners call a of realpolitik, Beijing also would try to

responsible stakeholder. With the exception divide hostile coalitions and exploit weaker of Liu Xiaobo, the book’s central figures powers. Finally, Chinese reformers in the have tended to view wealth and power as late nineteenth century revived two classical inextricably linked—and as the lodestars Confucian principles related to harmony of international relations. In their minds, and shame that live on today, serving as success in interstate commerce naturally a reminder of the fundamentally illiberal, produces geopolitical dominance, antidemocratic premises of Chinese politics. furnishing the resources for a robust Schell and Delury thus clarify that ccp military and facilitating global influence. leaders are steering the country down a path Further, they have believed that in order outlined more than a century and a half to reassert Chinese primacy in a world ago, when China was still an empire and dominated by wealth and power relations, international relations could realistically China must strengthen itself—or “self- be characterized as the clash of colonial strengthen” (ziqiang)—in all possible titans. China hatched its current approach

80 The National Interest Reviews & Essays to domestic politics as well as to foreign realpolitikers had no patience for what they relations in this nineteenth-century context. considered the moralistic blather of the Confucians. Since they put little stock in t was in the mid-1800s that Wei Yuan ar- good intentions, wealth and strength alone I ticulated many of the themes that came were the ultimate arbiters of a policy’s suc- to define the work of China’s twentieth-cen- cess or failure.” tury modernizers. When the first Opium Realpolitik in this context refers to a War broke out, Wei found himself in a purely pragmatic, results-based approach ringside seat. Having repeatedly failed the not only to domestic rule but also to imperial civil-service exam after a promising foreign relations. As Schell and Delury early academic career, he wound up advis- note, Wei believed that Western powers ing provincial officials and accumulating a like the British “promote trade by sending small fortune as an investor in the salt trade out soldiers,” so that “soldiers and trade in the city of Yangzhou along the Yangtze are mutually dependent.” This idea was River. There in 1842, he witnessed British to persist in the minds of Chinese elites, warships steaming past after a successful including Sun Yat-sen, who wrote in 1894: attack on Shanghai. Wei’s response to the trauma of China’s defeat at the hands of a In the West the interests of the state and those British force of only a few thousand men of commerce flourish together. . . . National combined precepts from ancient Chinese defense cannot function without money, and philosophy with insights from his observa- money for the military will not accumulate tion of modern statecraft and warfare. Wei without commerce. The reason why Westerners did not turn to the traditional reservoir are ready to pounce like tigers on the rest of the of Chinese thought, Confucianism, but world and why they bully China is also due to rather drew on a rival school called “Le- commerce. galism.” Where Confucianism propounds “benevolence, ritual propriety, and social Wei’s emphasis on wealth and power harmony” as the “only legitimate and ef- and his attraction to Legalism—or, at fective basis for good government,” Legal- least, his skepticism about Confucianism’s ism stresses the need to “enrich the state claim to a monopoly on civilized ways— and strengthen its military power” (fuguo may have helped him resist the traditional qiangbing, which is alternately translated as Chinese impulse to reject all things “rich country, strong army” and from which foreign as inferior. In a treatise on the the term fuqiang is derived as an abbrevia- first Opium War, Wei argued that China tion). In the place of the Confucians’ rule needed to accumulate wealth and power by virtue, Legalists argue for rule by law, to recover its imperial greatness. In other defined as a system of incentives wielded by words, it needed “self-improvement and a ruler to ensure his subjects’ loyalty. Schell self-strengthening” (zixiu ziqiang), which and Delury write, “These ancient Chinese it could only achieve by “borrowing”—

Reviews & Essays September/October 2013 81 Military modernization is not the only aspect of today’s China worth watching, but it would be reckless to exclude it from efforts to parse China’s future.

that is, acquiring and copying— then stumbled, and he lived at a time of technology from abroad while enacting great tumult, the period of the second governmental reforms at home. This Opium War and China’s enormous internal impulse to appropriate certain Western conflagration, the Taiping Rebellion. Schell means and employ them toward the end and Delury highlight the query Feng posed of strengthening China against the West in the wake of China’s defeat at the hands of would become a key theme of Chinese French and British coalition forces, and in modernizers, as would the Legalist spirit of the aftermath of a civil war that left twenty realpolitik. With weak states condemned million dead and effectively sounded the to be prey for strong states, China must death knell for the Qing dynasty: “Our work to amass its own wealth and power, territory is eight times that of Russia, ten deferring as necessary to its superiors times the size of America, one hundred while trying to learn from and, where times bigger than France, and two hundred possible, weaken them. Schell and Delury times England. Why is it that they are small point out that Wei endorsed the idea of and strong, yet we are big and weak?” Feng weakening China’s Western adversaries by offered his response in an 1860 manifesto, playing them off against each other, or “yiyi Dissenting Views from a Hut near Bin,1 that zhiyi” (“using barbarians to control other echoed Wei: “If we use Chinese ethics and barbarians”), a classic Chinese stratagem. teachings as the foundation, but supple- Finally, self-strengthening would require ment them with foreign countries’ tech- intelligence about foreign states to identify niques for wealth and power, would it not their points of vulnerability, and diplomatic be ideal?” For those who remained skepti- finesse to divide up hostile alliances. After cal, Feng reasoned, “If a system is no good, the first Opium War, Schell and Delury even though it is from antiquity, we should explain, Wei regretted that the Qing had reject it; if a system is good, then we should possessed too little knowledge of foreign follow it, even if it originates from uncivi- relations in the outside world to exploit lized peoples.” the tensions between Britain on the one Consistent with Wei’s recommendation hand and France and the United States on that China improve its knowledge of the other—despite the fact that both the French and the Americans had offered the 1 As Schell and Delury explain, though Feng was dynasty support. actually writing from Shanghai, the place name Bin (near present-day Xian) would have evoked ei’s intellectual heir, Feng Guifen, for Chinese readers the ancient Zhou dynasty king W built on Wei’s ideas of self-strength- Wu, a symbol of resistance to foreign barbarians. ening and copying “techniques and meth- By situating himself in a hut, Feng acknowledged ods” from foreign powers. Like Wei, Feng the boldness of his endeavor—daring to advise the had proceeded all the way to the point of imperial court on statecraft and strategy from his the imperial-level civil-service exams and perch as a mere provincial official.

82 The National Interest Reviews & Essays foreign powers (e.g., to facilitate playing government, republicanism, and the them off against each other), Feng lobbied overthrow of the Qing: “The future of the throne to sponsor education in foreign China is like building a railroad. Thus if studies. Schell and Delury note that his we were now building a railroad would we request was granted despite opposition use the first locomotive ever invented [i.e., from Confucian proponents of the classical dynastic rule] or today’s improved and most Chinese curriculum. Today, China sends efficient model?” Yet Sun evinced only a more students abroad than any other practical interest in republicanism. In his country, and China may also train the famous 1924 declaration of the “Three largest number of English linguists of any Principles of the People,” he qualified non-English-speaking state. While some his support for rights and liberty with of this effort is in the service of diplomacy concern about unity and the collective: and commerce, much of it is also part of “The individual should not have too much self-strengthening—building up China’s liberty, but the nation should have complete military power. A recent report by the liberty. When the nation can act freely, nonprofit Project 2049 Institute disclosed then China may be called strong.” Later that the part of the Chinese military in his life, Sun came to admire another thought to house its cyberunits is the largest foreign political model, Leninism, because employer of well-trained linguists in China. of its ability to generate party discipline, Feng’s message about self-strengthening underscoring his merely instrumental gave rise to an eponymous reform embrace of republicanism as the most movement in Beijing, and in 1896 promising new political technology to the provincial official Zhang Zhidong deploy in the service of China’s essence. even successfully petitioned the Empress Dowager Cixi for permission to establish he thinking of the late Qing and Re- a “Self-Strengthening Army.” Meanwhile, T publican eras has influenced Chinese Feng’s endorsement of Wei’s notion of statesmen from Mao and his successor copying from the West helped to ensure Deng Xiaoping to the current generation that this concept would endure. As Schell of ccp officials. They all have spoken of and Delury note, Zhang also formulated exploiting xiyong (Western function) while the self-strengtheners’ famous motto: preserving zhongti (Chinese essence). Mao “Zhongxue weiti, xixue weiyong” (“Chinese talked of adapting Marxism to China’s learning should remain the core, but circumstances; Deng advocated import- Western learning should be employed for ing Western market-based economic know- practical use”). By the beginning of the how while building socialism “with Chinese twentieth century, Sun Yat-sen was using characteristics”; and the latest incarnation self-strengthening language to argue for of this approach involves aggressively “bor- the adoption of not only Western know- rowing” Western industrial and military how but also the latest Western form of technology. Witness China’s massive efforts

Reviews & Essays September/October 2013 83 to extract U.S. intellectual property using Wei’s conception of self-strengthening and cybertechniques along with more tradition- its requirements, his view of realpolitik as al forms of espionage.2 Imitation is said to the means and datong as the goal lived on be the sincerest form of flattery, but in this well after Wei’s lifetime. case it should be interpreted as evidence of At the end of the nineteenth century, a consistent and enduring ambition on the China suffered its most devastating defeat part of Chinese elites. The goal, again, is up to that time when it lost to Japan in not to become like the United States inso- the first Sino-Japanese War. On the heels far as the United States is a democracy and of this trauma, the reformist scholar Liang supporter of the post–World War II inter- Qichao, an intellectual heir of Wei Yuan national system. It is rather to preserve ccp and Feng Guifen, penned a preface to a rule and make China as strong as possible new edition of Wei’s work on Legalism so that Beijing can establish a new global and statecraft. He wrote: “Those who order on its own terms. open themselves to the new will prosper What would a Chinese-dictated world and grow strong. But those who confine order look like? The details are murky, themselves to the old will diminish and but it is nonetheless possible to identify become weak.” Liang Qichao’s mentor, certain contrasts with the current order. Kang Youwei, an adviser to Cixi’s nephew Rather than starting with the dignity of when he reigned as emperor for 102 days the individual and the entitlement of all in 1898, published in that same year a human beings to certain fundamental book called Datong Shu (Book of Grand rights, protected by law, the Chinese order Harmony). Even as Kang was engaged in would be premised upon the existence of the practical task of advising a weak Qing the collective and the priority of its stability. emperor on how to reform and shore up Where Washington promotes liberty, his regime, he was conjuring a harmonious Beijing would substitute the aim of datong utopia. Kang had studied in the same (“Grand Harmony” or “Great Unity”). scholarly circle as Wei Yuan and was in Part of Wei Yuan’s unorthodox approach agreement on the linearity of history, the to Confucianism was that he believed ultimate goal of datong and the usefulness that instead of proceeding cyclically, of realpolitik in the intervening period. with the rise and fall of dynasties, history Mao later told the sympathetic Western was actually linear, progressing toward a reporter Edgar Snow that he was a big fan utopian era of “Grand Harmony.” Schell of Liang and Kang and as a young man and Delury explain that Wei belonged to a school of thinkers who contended that 2 In addition to revealing Western technical secrets, even Confucius understood history this Chinese spying serves the aim of helping Beijing way, and he secretly authorized the use better understand its rival, consistent with the of realpolitik methods “to keep the world lesson that Wei Yuan drew from the first Opium orderly” until the arrival of datong. As with War.

84 The National Interest Reviews & Essays would “read and reread those books until motif of chi (“shame” or “humiliation”) [he] knew them by heart.” As the Chinese- endures to this day in China. In 1927, educated, Kentucky-based political scientist Chiang Kai-shek, Sun Yat-sen’s successor Shiping Hua has pointed out, subsequent as head of China’s Nationalist movement, ccp leaders have not hesitated to hold established National Humiliation Day, out datong as the ideal while endorsing and the holiday continues to be observed. alternative near-term goals that seem more As Schell and Delury point out, many of attainable for the present. He argues that the most popular tourist destinations for “the persistence of Grand Harmony as an Chinese domestic travelers commemorate ideal also suggests that China’s evolution moments of Chinese defeat and devastation in the direction of Western-style liberal at the hands of Western or Japanese forces. democratic capitalism is not very likely.” These sites often take liberties with history; The recurrence of datong across successive the state-run Opium War Museum, for generations of ccp elites, including the example, erroneously includes the United virulently anti-Confucian Mao, reflects States in the ranks of China’s opponents. A an entrenched Chinese tradition that puts regime that persistently highlights national the collective ahead of the individual and humiliation and manipulates history to endorses realpolitik at home and abroad galvanize the population for struggle is not pending the arrival of the ever- elusive Grand Harmony. Despite the focus of China’s late nineteenth-century reformers on modernization and their generally heterodox stance toward Confucianism, datong was not the only classical Confucian principle that they revived. Scholar-activists such as Wei and Feng also emphasized the traditional Confucian virtue of humiliation and packaged it into a force for modernization. Wei recalled the Confucian aphorism, “Humiliation stimulates effort; when the country is humiliated, its spirit will be aroused.” And Feng wrote, “Once one feels a sense of shame, nothing is better than self- strengthening.” Like datong, the

Reviews & Essays September/October 2013 85 If China continues on its present trajectory of economic and military expansion, it will become a bolder actor in the world, not a more democratic or responsible one.

a regime on the verge of recognizing the n alternative vision of China’s future individual rights of its citizens or embracing A comes from a rare source that Schell the current international order. and Delury mention but neglect to mine Although many of the figures covered by fully. Wei Yuan’s Illustrated Treatise on Sea Schell and Delury considered democracy a Powers was published in 1843, four months source of the West’s strength and therefore after the signing of the Treaty of Nanking, mustered at least an instrumental interest which removed British warships from the in it, none ended up a democrat—again, Yangtze. This is the treatise in which Wei with the exception of Liu Xiaobo, currently remarked on the mutual dependence of imprisoned and not likely to gain much British military and commercial power. But of an audience in China. Although Feng as the scholar Jane Kate Leonard has ob- Guifen admired Abraham Lincoln’s served, Wei goes well beyond this diagnosis 1860 election, he was, in Schell and of British success and presents a blueprint Delury’s words, more of a “participatory for Chinese naval modernization and geo- authoritarian” than a democrat. Liang political strategy. Elements of it could have Qichao started out in favor of democracy come from an official planning document before deciding that China wasn’t ready from the 1980s, so closely does Chinese for it. As noted, despite Sun Yat-sen’s behavior over the past several decades track endorsement of republicanism, he never with Wei’s recommendations. fully embraced the premises of the liberal Wei begins from the idea that Western social contract and eventually came to states derive their power from a network of admire Leninist party organization. Chiang bases that facilitate domination of maritime Kai-shek was out of the same mold: communications and trade. He cites not “While Chiang splattered his speeches and only the British ports in Africa, India, writings with references to ‘constitutional Ceylon and Singapore, which conferred democracy,’ ‘liberty,’ and ‘freedom,’” write influence over the Strait of Malacca, but Schell and Delury, “he did so in much also the Dutch facility at Batavia, which the same way as had Sun. . . . For him, afforded access to the Sunda Strait between these were vague, long-term aspirations, Java and Sumatra. He further concluded nowhere near as important in China’s that China was not in imminent danger of immediate struggle for survival and national invasion, so long as the Western powers had rejuvenation.” The pattern is of flirtation not penetrated mainland Southeast Asia, with, but never true conversion to, liberal- Nepal or Japan. (Had he lived long enough, democratic principles. Accordingly, Wealth Wei might have seen Japan’s assault on and Power’s query as to whether China’s Southeast Asia at the outset of World War leaders’ quest for international prestige II as a prelude to Japan’s further incursions might lead them to democratize seems to into China and thus judged his assessment represent a wisp of optimism rather than a to have been validated.) That said, Wei realistic projection for China’s future. believed that the Western powers’ network

86 The National Interest Reviews & Essays of bases in the region clearly destabilized the old tributary order—at China’s expense— and positioned the West to threaten the Chinese coast. Against the backdrop of this analysis, Wei’s Treatise proceeds to prescribe a course of diplomatic and military actions through which China might fortify itself. The Treatise recommends that China focus its diplomatic efforts on mainland Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, along with Japan, which later demonstrated its Western country that China most fears. But ability to rebuff the West in the Russo- the essence of Wei’s recommendations still Japanese War of 1904–1905, and Nepal. resonates and even seems to explain China’s Following the logic of yiyi zhiyi, Wei recent diplomatic choices. Consider China’s argued that Beijing should play external charm offensive vis-à-vis Southeast Asia over powers off against each other and use the past few decades and the more recent diplomacy with tributary states to weaken inroads that China has made in India’s them. For instance, he suggested trying traditional sphere of influence, including to balance the British presence at Hong Nepal. Consider, too, Beijing’s apparently Kong by giving France and the United tightening relations with Moscow, which States access to Guangzhou (then called deny other potential rivals the opportunity Canton). He further recommended seeking to form an anti-Chinese coalition with support against the other Western powers Russia. Finally, there also seems to be a from Russia—going so far as to advocate modern-day analogue to Wei’s argument encouragement of Russian action against that pressure on British positions in other the British in Afghanistan and northwestern parts of Asia would yield dividends for India, which would allow the Nepalese to the Chinese in their near abroad. In the destroy the British at Bengal. Such a chain context of Beijing’s efforts to cultivate a of events would leave the British position range of partners in the Middle East and in Singapore exposed, so that Thailand, in Afghanistan, including America’s enemies, conjunction with Vietnam, could attack. it would seem possible to substitute the The world and the map have clearly United States for Britain and the Middle changed in the 170 years since Wei penned East for India and perceive the same indirect this plan. Japan has been locked in an logic in operation—the need to divert and alliance with the United States since 1945, weaken the great power most threatening to and the British no longer govern Hong China’s East Asian ambitions. Kong or India, are no longer on the ground Complementing this diplomatic strategy, in force in Afghanistan and are not the Wei offered a set of naval-modernization

Reviews & Essays September/October 2013 87 recommendations that track even more to three thousand kilometers from the closely with China’s military modernization mainland, well into the second island chain. over the past few decades. The blueprint Meanwhile, China’s first aircraft carrier begins with measures to shore up China’s has undergone flight trials, and several coastal defenses in the short term. Next is additional carrier keels have been laid. the development of long-term defenses, Finally the entire Chinese military has been along with a reorganization of the military shrinking in size as part of the effort to and the promotion of innovation within boost the quality of the force through the it. Finally, the country would be prepared acquisition of new technologies, along with to emerge as a serious naval power— improvements in training and personnel defending its key ports, possessing a policies. network of strengthened bases, acquiring Certainly, military modernization is and developing advanced military not the only aspect of today’s China technologies, and fielding a naval force worth watching, but it would be reckless that is smaller but qualitatively better to exclude it from efforts to parse China’s than its predecessor. Since the early future. Schell and Delury do an outstanding 1980s, the People’s Liberation Army Navy job of uncovering the thought and work (plan) has pursued a strategy that exactly of key Chinese reformers and leaders from mirrors the Wei concept. Successive plan the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, leaders have progressed from boosting the and their coverage of the late Qing period defense of China’s ports to increasing the includes discussions of Li Hongzhang and distances from China’s coast over which Zeng Guofan, self-strengthening military Chinese forces can operate and interdict commanders favored by the Empress hostile forces. Today’s terminology for this Dowager Cixi. If China’s twenty-first- effort refers to “island chains,” with the century self-strengthening effort continues “first island chain,” bordered by Okinawa, as planned, with emphasis placed on both Taiwan and the Philippines, a nearer- economic and military power, it might term goal than the “second island chain,” be worth including more contemporary bounded by the Ogasawara island chain, Chinese defense intellectuals in a future Guam and Indonesia. According to this edition of the book—such as, perhaps, vision, the plan’s final step would be to Admiral Liu Huaqing, the so-called Alfred push out to the blue waters of the Pacific Thayer Mahan of China, who articulated and Indian Oceans under the protection of the island-chain strategy in 1982. In the its new aircraft carriers. meantime, following the logic of Schell China already has fielded precision and Delury, we can say definitively that, if missiles that can range targets in Guam, China continues on its present trajectory and the latest open-source estimates of economic and military expansion, it will indicate that the country is on the verge become a bolder actor in the world, not a of being able to hit moving targets up more democratic or responsible one. n

88 The National Interest Reviews & Essays adventures, debt and eroded liberty. James The Limits of U.S. Madison warned in the 1790s:

Financial Warfare Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, per- haps, the most to be dreaded, because it com- By Michael Scheuer prises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debt and taxes; and armies, and debts, and Juan C. Zarate, Treasury’s War: The Un- taxes are the known instruments for bringing leashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare the many under the domination of the few. In (New York: PublicAffairs, 2013), 512 pp., war, too, the discretionary power of the Execu- $29.99. tive is extended.

merica’s Founding Fathers believed Elsewhere, he added, “War is in fact the little else would matter if the gov- true nurse of executive aggrandizement.” A ernment they were forming did Juan C. Zarate’s new book, Treasury’s War: not reliably protect the new republic from The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial foreign and domestic threats while also en- Warfare, shows how great a regression the suring the liberty and growing prosper- Republic has undergone since the only- ity of those it was to govern and defend. necessary-wars principle of the Founders’ If that were not the Republic’s main and era. Zarate, who served in the George W. institutionalized organizing principle, the Bush administration as assistant secretary Founders believed, their effort to give it life of the treasury for terrorist financing would fail. The keys to success in ensur- and financial crimes and is now a senior ing national survival, liberty and prosperity adviser at the Center for Strategic and were: stay out of debt; steer clear of foreign International Studies, offers a detailed study entanglements, alliances and wars that did about what might be called “all war, all not concern the United States; and avoid the time.” The author is described on the situations—whether products of ill-consid- dust jacket of his book as “a chief architect ered policies, fatuous and feckless idealism, of modern financial warfare,” and he or leaders’ inattention—that would lead unveils a catalogue of America’s financial- to unnecessary wars and foreign military warfare adversaries, including Al Qaeda and other Islamist fighters; organized Michael Scheuer spent twenty-two years in the criminal groups, narcotics cartels and cia and is the author, most recently, of Osama people smugglers; North Korea and Iran, Bin Laden (Oxford University Press, 2011). He is with a short stopover in Libya; computer working on a forthcoming book on the Founding hackers; and obstructive, turf-conscious Fathers’ prescription for a noninterventionist bureaucrats. What emerges is a stark reality: foreign policy. the Treasury Department is at war—and

Reviews & Essays September/October 2013 89 those involved in this financial warfare genuinely impressed by the tactical victories revel in it. Traveling the world to recover scored by those Zarate ably led and justly hoards of embezzled money, stop terrorist honors. plots and confound North Korea’s money managers, these financial warriors thwart arate has written a useful and alarm- the bad guys through an array of tools Z ing book. Useful, because he instructs ranging from old-fashioned publicity—to his readers about the wide range of lethal “name and shame” evildoers—to electronic enemies the U.S. government has acquired whizbangs. And they do so in an amiable in recent decades and, at times, motivated. way, which is fitting for a group of men And alarming because, as Zarate implies, and women portrayed as if they are all the U.S. government has no national-se- “above average,” in the mold of the children curity strategy worth the name. Resting of Lake Wobegon. Based on Zarate’s complacently on the illusion that the tacti- characterization, they are all brilliant, cal victories Zarate details will adequate- hard-driving, friendly, striking, optimistic, ly defend the United States, Washington, garrulous, savvy, confident, eloquent, under either party, continues to pursue a re- masterful and so on. lentlessly interventionist foreign policy that It must be said that Zarate and others cultivates more enemies and complements in Treasury’s war have accomplished some the strategies that our myriad foes have remarkable things for U.S. security— designed to seek our defeat. Sadly, at book’s temporarily denying North Korea ready end Zarate turns out to be an advocate of access to international financial markets; intervention. attacking the essential components of Iran’s The rub in the book arises when it economy such as banks and oil; dismantling becomes apparent that there is no clear parts of the financial networks of Al Qaeda and attainable set of strategic objectives and other Islamist insurgent groups; and that provides a framework for the war recovering many billions of dollars stashed waged by Zarate and his team—or their away by Saddam Hussein and Muammar el- successors. There is nothing, that is, that Qaddafi for the debauched retirements they even faintly resembles what the Founders never reached. Perhaps most interesting, saw as the sine qua non for the Republic’s Zarate explains how successful he and survival—a government organized on the others at Treasury were in forging ties to single principle of defending and furthering powerful private-sector U.S. and European the security, liberty and prosperity of interests—banks, financial managers Americans. As smart as Zarate’s team and and organizations providing security for their allies may have been and as hard as international financial transactions—that they may have worked, their attacks are allowed effective joint attacks on targets pinpricks—often quickly healed—that hit designated by the U.S. president. The the financial interests of a wide array of reader will come away from Treasury’s War America’s enemies. The clear inadequacy

90 The National Interest Reviews & Essays of this pinprick offensive is not their fault; they and all Americans are cosufferers of the national-security mess our bipartisan governing apparatus has cooked up since the Cold War’s end. Throughout this nearly five-hundred- to every entity Washington has designated page book, the reader perceives no such an enemy. thing as a “U.S. national-security strategy,” Consider Zarate’s slate of enemies. notwithstanding documents that are so Despite the successes against North entitled and published with some regularity Korea so well described in Treasury’s War, and fanfare. What the reader sees is Pyongyang can still bring the world to Washington—under both parties—running a fretful standstill with its saber rattling, an uncoordinated, politically correct, ad behind which it is gradually improving the hoc foreign and military policy that strikes quality of its nuclear weapons and their out at numerous targets without sufficient long-range delivery systems. It is true that power to destroy any of them. At this stage Al Qaeda and other Islamist insurgents have in its history, America’s security motto suffered since 1996 from telling attacks should be: “We take no enemy off the at the hands of Treasury, the cia and U.S. table.” special forces. And yet, Islamist elements In the context of this amateurish foreign have defeated U.S.-led multinational policy, successes like those scored by Zarate armies in Afghanistan and Iraq and are and Treasury’s warriors certainly are better quickly growing in manpower, geographic than nothing, but they are not war winners. dispersion, and—thanks to the Arab Like the U.S. use of drones, renditions, Spring—access to veteran mujahideen and special forces and interrogations against sophisticated weaponry. All of this means Islamists, and the law-enforcement methods that Osama bin Laden’s strategy of bleeding used against mafia groups and drug cartels, the U.S. economy remains alive and viable. the operations heralded by Zarate reside Meanwhile, Iran continues to build toward on the periphery of the main components a nuclear capability, sucking up the pain of genuine national power—namely, and soldiering on despite the severe damage military force and a prosperous, low-debt Western aggression has done to its economy economy. They are at best a complement via sanctions and cyberattacks. Tehran also to, and not a replacement for, these crucial maintains a capability to wreak terrorist ingredients of American strength. Indeed, havoc inside the United States—thanks notwithstanding the clear tactical successes to more than four decades of open U.S. scored through the methods Zarate borders—if we and/or the Israelis attack describes, the United States today is losing Iran.

Reviews & Essays September/October 2013 91 It is apparent that there is no clear and attainable set of strategic objectives that provides a framework for the war waged by Zarate and his team—or their successors.

And gangsters of all kinds, as Treasury’s ow do we fix this problem, which is War documents, continue to steal, hack, H really asking how we ensure the Re- suborn, corrupt and kill. The Latin public’s survival? Well, most helpful would American drug cartels are expanding be to accept the fact that the Founders were their manpower, monetary resources not dead, white, misogynist slave drivers, and firepower, challenging the state in but rather smart, often-ruthless and practi- Mexico, spreading into Central America, cal fellows who were completely devoted to establishing smuggling networks in an “America First” national-security policy. West Africa, corrupting banking systems If we can embrace this historical reality, throughout the Western Hemisphere, and if the nsa and Department of Educa- and, in alliance with Latino street gangs, tion do not discover the heresy and lock us showing signs of increasing influence and up, we can begin to see that today’s U.S. control in some towns and cities across the government and the bipartisan political es- southwestern United States. Again, much of tablishment that runs it are contributing this is facilitated by the open U.S. southern significantly and knowingly to America’s border. Zarate’s book also explains the vulnerability. Then perhaps we can begin to symbiotic relationship between organized formulate a commonsense national-security criminal organizations (mafias, hackers- strategy, which would incorporate all of the are-us groups, people smugglers, etc.) and enthusiasm described by Zarate and some globalism’s characteristic communication of the methods. systems and portable high-tech gear. He To get on the same page as the Founders makes the excellent point that even as the and then employ what might be called the U.S. government has used cutting-edge “Founders’ Rules” in America’s defense, electronic and computer equipment to Washington must do five things, aiming to hurt these organizations, they are growing shape a world in which Treasury’s economic increasingly capable themselves in this field. tools, special forces, military drones With seemingly unlimited cash, they can and cia covert actions have a chance to acquire state-of-the-art skills and equipment control a suppressed and greatly damaged to defend and attack. Zarate wisely notes enemy. This would supplant the current, that these malefactors have an advantage unachievable mission of defeating a rapidly over America because they do not care at growing enemy that is too often motivated all about collateral damage or breaking by U.S. adventures overseas. any laws. And he posits the troubling and The five imperatives are: extinguish the probably accurate thought that it is only national debt; attain energy security; win a matter of time before nonstate actors the very few wars America needs to fight; pose a potentially catastrophic threat to take risks to defend America and annihilate U.S. economic, financial and infrastructure its enemies; and end an interventionist interests that depend on the Internet and foreign policy meant to install secular other electronic-communications systems. democracy around the world.

92 The National Interest Reviews & Essays Zarate’s book admirably underscores is time to put that issue on the back burner. the dire national-security threat posed President Obama’s politically motivated by the almost-unfathomable level of our delay of the Keystone XL pipeline and national debt. With much of it held by his war on the coal industry cruelly cost adversaries and competitors in China jobs and degrade U.S. national security. and on the Arabian Peninsula, the debt It is time to ignore the ecozealots, the cripples our ability to shift or even find politicians who pander to them and their resources to meet emergencies or reequip media supporters, while simultaneously our badly worn military. It also prevents squaring away our future energy security us from effectively challenging China’s and ending our humiliating and war- obviously official and highly damaging causing dependence on effete but oil-rich hacking campaign against U.S. government Arab despots. agencies and corporations. Further, it forces Although Zarate never says so explicitly, us to acquiesce in the well-financed and his book makes clear that human beings are, unending campaign of Saudi Arabia (about as ever, hardwired for war and lesser violent which Zarate is far too positive) to spread conflicts. Therefore, the wars that America its murderous form of Sunni Islam around must fight—and there are very few—must the world, including in the United States. be decisively won. The widespread idea, No viable national-security policy is embraced by Zarate, that the world has possible until the debt issue is resolved. moved away from using military power to Until then, our national security depends win wars and that America can now prevail on the unlikely success of Ben Bernanke’s by employing the pinprick tools described monthly flood of backed-by-nothing fool’s above is nothing less than lethal nonsense. currency and the prattling of foreign- Since the mid-1990s, America definitively monster-seeking politicians such as John has proven that such tools can hurt its McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsay enemies but cannot win wars; indeed, in Graham, bent on rattling sabers that have the long run they make matters worse by become dull blades following the U.S. prolonging wars and ensuring our enemies debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan. survive, grow and—as Zarate accurately In noting the importance of energy notes—learn how to turn our own pinprick security, Zarate rightfully stresses the tools against our very vulnerable economic pleasing prospect of substantial near-term and financial sectors. If we fix the debt and advances in that direction via shale oil and stop causing or intervening in unnecessary natural gas. Washington must realize these wars with countries that pose no threat to possibilities for both the energy security us (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, etc.), we can they will yield and the jobs they will refit the U.S. military and await a chance produce. The United States already does to unleash our forces against our most more than any other great power to reduce lethal enemy, the Islamists, in a manner environmental degradation, and for now it that focuses on destruction of their fighters,

Reviews & Essays September/October 2013 93 their infrastructure, and their supporters indiscriminate and enemy-erasing lethality and abettors. applied as fast as possible is, after all, the My own guess is that this necessary only mercy in war. war will come in West Africa, where Al In Treasury’s War, Zarate also makes Qaeda and related Islamist groups are clear that U.S. politicians and senior civil cooperating with Latin American drug servants have yet to realize that the Cold cartels and organized criminal organizations War is over, and that with it went the near to solidify their positions in and near areas “certainties” they once enjoyed about the that produce oil, strategic minerals and intentions and capabilities of America’s uranium, which are life-and-death national major nation-state opponent, the Soviet interests for the economies of America and Union. Once their leaders at last absorb several of its European allies. When this war this reality, America’s defenders can begin to occurs, it should be formally declared by take well-considered but dangerous risks on Congress—a quaint but clear constitutional America’s behalf. As much as Washington’s requirement—and then fought with as few bipartisan elite hates it, regular risk-taking is allies as possible. It should be waged as the now the order of the day. U.S. military sees fit under a presidential Zarate describes a policy advancement directive that simply orders it to annihilate that occurred when Treasury Secretary Paul the enemy as quickly and thoroughly as O’Neill allowed him and his team to work possible and then come home. Intense, on an 80 percent rule, meaning U.S. action could be undertaken against the enemy when there was an 80 percent confidence level in the intelligence being used. But this formula was soon replaced by a near 100 percent confidence requirement. In reality, such high confidence levels are rarely achievable in the post–Cold War world, and when they are it is almost always regarding nation-states, which operate from fixed addresses and use communications systems and other assets that can be monitored by a broad range of U.S. intelligence tools. In assessing Soviet intentions and capabilities during the Cold War, we often had very high levels of confidence. But that world has changed, and Zarate demonstrates that senior political leaders and civil servants still don’t understand that. Nonstate actors—precisely those detailed

94 The National Interest Reviews & Essays Interventionism-cum-empire building of the kind Zarate supports is a mistake that has severely undermined America’s honor and dignity.

by Zarate—are not vulnerable to many he most essential reform needed to U.S. intelligence tools that are effective T craft a viable national-security strategy against nation-states because they have no is a decision by our bipartisan governing fixed addresses, tank parks, airfields, fiber- elite and senior civil servants to stop waging optic cables, communications satellites, their war of cultural intervention—often navies or electrical grids. Therefore, if backed by bayonets—against populations America’s defenders secure a 25–30 percent that don’t embrace Western norms and prac- confidence level that the United States is tices, and particularly against the Muslim being threatened by a nonstate actor, close world. The catalogue of meddling is ex- attention should be paid. If those men tensive: intervening in Russian politics to and women then become 35–40 percent criticize their gay- and human-rights poli- certain that trouble is coming our way, U.S. cies; lecturing Latin American regimes on political and bureaucratic leaders should their democratic failings; hectoring societies destroy the threat, even if they have to risk whose level of women’s rights is not to our being wrong, causing collateral damage, and liking; and intervening militarily, diplomati- then suffering condemnation by domestic cally and economically in the Muslim world political opportunists, the media, human- when we have no national interest at risk, rights groups and foreigners—all of whom such as in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and the can stoop to criticize precisely because they Arab-Israeli conflict. These U.S. actions do are not responsible for America’s security. more than any other factor to motivate the It should be noted that today’s Islamist most lethal of the enemies Zarate describes. threat to the United States is so enormous Oblivious to their penchant for self-inflicted because President Clinton’s administration overseas disasters, U.S. foreign-policy of- wanted Cold War–level confidence—75–80 ficials are, in Alexander Hamilton’s words, percent certainty or more—in the “political doctors whose sagacity disdains the intelligence about bin Laden before it would admonitions of experimental instruction.” act to protect Americans. Not surprisingly, If these U.S. interventionist actions against that level never came, and Clinton took no foreign cultures continue, Washington will chance on Americans’ behalf. The result was help give birth to a worldwide collection of September 11. When U.S. Navy seals killed enemies requiring military countermeasures bin Laden in May 2011, U.S. government of such magnitude that they eventually will officials told the media that the chance bin damage liberty, prosperity and democracy in Laden was in Abbottabad was at best 50 the only place those things really matter— percent. Against Islamists, narcotraffickers, inside the United States. mafias and other nonstate actors, that is Despite Zarate’s experience in fighting a truly excellent level of confidence. If nonstate actors and seeing their continued we do not act when or before that level is growth into more numerous, skilled reached, we will always be chasing but never and ruthless foes, he still enthusiastically defeating nonstate actors. encourages U.S. political leaders to

Reviews & Essays September/October 2013 95 continue and strengthen the interventionist interventionist policy, Zarate urges the orientation of U.S. foreign policy that reinforcement of failure. It is “a mistaken makes the job of all America’s defenders— opinion,” Benjamin Franklin once intelligence and military—more difficult argued, “that the honor and dignity of and perhaps impossible. He writes: a government is better supported by persisting in a wrong measure once entered The goal of our national security should not be into, than by rectifying an error as soon just the defense and promotion of our interests, as it is discovered.” Interventionism-cum- but the creation of conditions globally that are empire building of the kind Zarate supports commensurate with American interests and is a mistake that has severely undermined values. The rule of law, freedom of expression, America’s “honor and dignity.” freedom of the press, the flow of information, More than two hundred years ago, George respect for human rights, protection of minori- Washington said that U.S. foreign policy ties, the empowerment of women, free trade, must focus on observing “good faith and systems that empower entrepreneurs and indi- justice towards all nations” and facilitate vidual expression, the accountability of govern- the cultivation of “peace and harmony with ments, and transparent civil institutions are all.” The only path toward such a policy, all goals that the United States and American Washington argued, was to abide by a hard- society should be promoting. and-fast rule that “no nation has a right to intermeddle in the internal concerns of There is much in Zarate’s book that another; that everyone had a right to form enlightens us, and he gets many things right and adopt whatever government they liked and proposes some innovative ideas. But best to live under themselves.” Washington’s unfortunately he concludes by endorsing warning against U.S. intervention abroad the same old Wilsonian recipe for endless remains today, as scholar Richard Norton overseas intervention that energizes many Smith wrote two decades ago, “a brilliantly of the nonstate and state actors he correctly drawn road map to national survival sees as American enemies that must and a fully realized independence.” This be defeated. As the Founders explained, is particularly true given that the United foreign policy is not about building an States today faces the same condition that empire—an ambition, as John Dickinson confronted it in Washington’s time: namely, noted, that is “fatal to republican forms as he put it, “a people . . . already deeply in of government”—but about defending debt, and in a convalescent state from the America, protecting its material interests, struggle we have been engaged in ourselves.” and, at the margin, letting foreigners At day’s end, America owes the world observe and perhaps choose to copy no more than the respect Washington domestic behaviors that produce thrift, pledged—and owes itself no less than prosperity and liberty. the survival, liberty and prosperity his By endorsing an already-failed noninterventionism assured. n

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