HOW GREAT POWERS RULE: ORDER ENFORCEMENT IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

By

Yoav Gortzak, M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University 2006

Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Randall L. Schweller, Adviser

Professor Richard K. Herrmann ______

Professor Alexander Thompson Adviser Graduate Program in Political Science

ABSTRACT

The problem of international order stands at the heart of the study of international relations. Thus far, however, it has been portrayed primarily as a problem of emanating from the interactions among the most powerful states in the international system.

Scholars of international relations have paid little attention to another dimension of this problem, that is, how dominant states impose their desired international order on weaker but recalcitrant states. Despite a scholarly consensus that hegemony is exercised primarily through the use of coercion and positive inducements, IR scholars have devoted little attention to how dominant states choose between these influence tools to impose their desired international order upon weak but recalcitrant states.

This dissertation addresses this gap in the international relations literature by exploring the determinants of such choices. In doing so, it argues that in contrast to the commonly held view in the field, the interactions between the powerful and weak in the international system cannot simply be understood in terms of coercive capabilities, reputational considerations, or the domestic political costs and benefits facing policymakers of dominant states. Instead, this study argues that the conventional wisdom does not take sufficient account of the role of social conventions, such as norms and identities, in international order enforcement.

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By way of an examination of three in-depth cases studies drawn from the 19th

Century Pax Britannica, and the post-Cold War period of American international dominance, this study shows that social conventions can help determine what constitute legitimate and illegitimate challenges to the established social order and what constitute appropriate responses to such deviations. Ultimately, however, the choice of enforcement strategies is a function of both social conventions and material constraints as the availability of coercive capabilities and domestic political constraints do limit the range of strategies that are available to policymakers seeking to enforce international order.

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FOR MY PARENTS,

FOR MAYA,

AND FOR

EDAN

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

During the long process that ultimately produced this dissertation I was very fortunate to receive support and encouragement from a variety of individuals. At the

Hebrew University, professor Yaakov Vertzberger was an outstanding and inspirational mentor. At the Ohio State University, I am indebted to my dissertation committee that guided and advised me. Alex Thompson and Rick Herrmann provided me with valuable insights, comments, and encouragement. No graduate student could wish for a better adviser than Randy Schweller, my dissertation chair. Over the last seven years Randy has been there for me as both an adviser and a friend, always readily accessible and exceedingly generous with advice and support.

Other people at the Ohio State University made my years there enjoyable and rewarding both intellectually and socially. Professors Don Sylvan, Goldie Shabad, and

Paul Beck were always there with friendly words of advice and encouragement. I also owe a lot to my fellow grad students in the department. I thank Eileen Braman, Bridget

Coggins, Javonne Paul, Khalilah Brown-Dean, Sara Dunlap, Paul Fritz, Yoram Haftel,

Jeff Martinson, Pat McDonald, Amy Oakes, Brent Strathman, and Kevin Sweeney for making a foreign student feel right at home in Columbus, Ohio. Bridget, Yoram, and Paul are deserving of particular praise. Bridget always opened up her home to me on my frequent and long visits to Columbus, Yoram was always there with sound advice, incisive comments and moral support. Without Paul, however, there is no doubt that my

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dissertation would not have been finished at all. He did not only read everything I have

ever written in graduate school and provide great insights and comments. He was also

always there when I needed help to overcome assorted bureaucratic obstacles. Without

such good friends, grad school would have been infinitely harder to bear.

My debts of gratitude extend far beyond Columbus. In Seattle, I was lucky

enough to find Elizabeth Kier, Jon Mercer, and Rob Farley who were always willing to

discuss my work and who were generous with advice on all matters.

Finally, this dissertation would not have been written without the love and support of my family. I am deeply grateful to my parents for supporting all my endeavors.

Although my mother will unfortunately never get to read this dissertation, our many conversations over the years have done much to shape my thinking and writing. It is impossible to describe how much I miss her. Thankfully, I have been blessed with having another amazing woman in my life. Maya has gracefully endured my seven years of graduate school and has been a constant source of inspiration, love, and support. Last but certainly not least, I want to thank my son Edan. In the year since he was born, I published two articles and finished my dissertation. I can only wish that he will continue to have such a positive and profound impact on my productivity as he has on all other aspects of my life.

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VITA

September 22, 1970 …………………….. Born – Amsterdam, Holland

1998 …………………………………... B.A. International Relations, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

2001 …………………………………… M.A Political Science, The Ohio State University

2001 -2004 ………………………….. Instructor, The Ohio State University

PUBLICATIONS

1. Yoav Gortzak, “How Great Powers Rule: Coercion and Positive Inducements in International Order Enforcement,” Security Studies 14, No.4 (Summer 2005).

2. Yoav Gortzak, Yoram Z. Haftel, and Kevin Sweeney, “Offense-Defense Theory: An Empirical Assessment,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, No.1 (Feb. 2005).

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: Political Science

Minor Field: International Relations

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………….ii Vita …………………………………………………………………………………….. iv List of Tables ………………………………………………………………………...... viii List of Figures …………………………………………………………………………...ix

Chapters:

1. Introduction ………………………………………………………………………1

1.1 The question ………………………………………………………………... 1 1.2 The literature: the forgotten problem of international order enforcement …………………………………………… 3 1.2.1 The insignificance of asymmetric interactions ………………….. 6 1.2.2 The conventional wisdom: the heavy hand of hegemony? ………. 11 1.2.3 Alternative perspectives: domestic politics and social conventions ………………………………………………………13 1.3 Outline of the study ……………………………………………………… ...16

2. Capabilities, Domestic Politics, and Social Conventions ……………………….19

2.1 Costs, capabilities, and reputation: a realist explanation …………………...22 2.2 Domestic politics and international order enforcement …………………….30 2.3 Social conventions: norms, identities, and international order enforcement ………………………………………..34 2.3.1 Social conventions: preferences over outcomes and strategy ……..36 2.3.2 International norms and international order enforcement …………42 2.3.3 Identity and international order enforcement ……………………..44 2.4 Research design …………………………………………………………….50 2.4.1 Summary of hypotheses and observable implications ……………52

3. China challenges the Pax Britannica: the Napier ‘fizzle’ and the Opium war, 1834-1839 ……………………………………………………...60

3.1 The Pax Britannica …………………………………………………………..60

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3.2 Challenging the Pax Britannica: China and British trade …………………..63

3.3 The Realist perspective: geopolitics, relative capabilities, and reputation ………………………………………………………………67 3.3.1 Geopolitical considerations and the availability of coercive capabilities …………………………………………………….68 3.3.2 Perceptions of geopolitical threats ………………………………...74 3.3.3 Imperial overstretch ……………………………………………….77 3.3.4 Perceptions of relative capabilities ……………………………….79 3.3.5 Reputation ………………………………………………………...82 3.4 Domestic balance of power, interest groups, and the Opium war …………..83 3.5 Legitimacy and order enforcement ………………………………………….92 3.6. Conclusions ……………………………………………………………….108

4. From diplomatic isolation to positive inducements: the denuclearization of Ukraine ………………………………………………..113

4.1 The Pax Americana and the threat of nuclear proliferation ………………..113 4.2 Positive inducements and counterproliferation: Ukraine ………………….115 4.3 Realism: available capabilities and reputational considerations …………...116 4.3.1 First cut: peer competitors and simultaneous challenges ………...117 4.3.2 The menu of choice: coercion and counterproliferation …………120 4.3.3 Counterforce strategies ………………………………………….120 4.3.4 Countervalue strategies …………………………………………122 4.3.5 Economic coercion ………………………………………………123 4.3.6 The Availability of the counterforce option: requirements and forces ………………………………………………..124 4.3.6(1) The nuclear counterforce option …………...... 124 4.3.6(2) Conventional counterforce ……………………………128 4.3.7 Countervalue strategies ………………………………………….131 4.3.8 Economic coercion ………………………………………………133 4.3.9 The realist model: conclusions ………………………………….134 4.4 Domestic politics and the denuclearization of Ukraine …………………...136 4.5 The sociological perspective: legitimate and illegitimate fears ……………140 4.5.1 Diplomatic pressure: suspicion and distrust …………………….142 4.5.2 Reassessment: Ukraine’s legitimate fears ……………………….150 4.6. Conclusions: the importance of identity and international norms ………..155

5. From “gradual escalations” to the Agreed Framework: The Case of North Korea ………………………………………………………158

5.1 Introduction ……………………………………………………………...... 158

5.2 The Realist explanation: lack of capabilities and positive inducements …………………………………………………..159

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5.2.1 Coercive capabilities: peer competitors and imperial overstretch …………………………………………160 5.2.2 The use of force: military, political, economic, and human costs …………………………………………………165 5.3 The role of domestic politics: limiting but not determining …………….…176 5.4 The Sociological model: “engagement by necessity” …………………...…184 5.4.1 Legitimate and illegitimate pursuit of nuclear weapons………….186 5.4.2 DPRK identity: unreformed rogue or adjusting state? …………...194 5.4.3 Conclusions: power and social conventions …………………….199

6. Conclusions ……………………………………………………………………203

6.1 The limits of coercive capabilities ……………………………………...…204 6.2 Domestic politics and international order enforcement ………………..….206 6.3 Legitimacy matters ………………………………………………………....207 6.4 Identities matter ……………………………………………………….…..209 6.5 The process matters: bureaucratic actors and contested identities …………211 6.6 Implications ………………………………………………………………..213 6.7 Suggestions for future research …………………………………………….215

Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………..218

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LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1. Ukrainian Nuclear Arsenal ………………………………………………… 125

2. Distance From U.S. Airbases in Europe to Ukraine ………………………...131

3. U.S. Active Duty Personnel by Region, 1991-1995 ………………………..162

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

1. Capabilities as Percentage of Systemic Capabilities …………………………71

2. Great Power Warships as Percentage of Total, 1830-1840 …………………..72

3. Distribution of Capabilities as Percentage of Systemic Capabilities ………..11

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Question

The problem of international order has long stood at the heart of the study of international relations. Indeed, according to Stanley Hoffman how “states create and maintain order in a world of sovereign powers has been the fundamental and so far insoluble problem of international relations.”1 Thus far, however, international relations

(IR) scholars have portrayed the problem of order and stability almost exclusively in

terms of the interactions among the great powers in the system. Stability is seen to

depend primarily upon the alleviation of the recurring struggle for primacy among the

great powers, a struggle that has its roots in the anarchical nature of the international

system and that is fueled by frequent shifts in the distribution of capabilities.2

Preoccupied by this great power competition for primacy, IR scholars have paid

much less attention to other potentially important dimensions of international order and

1 Stanley Hoffman, World Disorders: Troubled Peace in the Post-Cold War Era, (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998): 32.

2 For some, representative, views on the primary challenges to the stability of international order – especially in the post-Cold War world -- see Ethan B. Kapstein and Michael Mastanduno, eds., Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies after the Cold War, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, eds., The Perils of Anarchy: Contemporary Realism and International Security, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), Part I, Christopher Layne, “From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing,” International Security, Vol. 22, No.1, Summer (1997): 86-125, and G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 1

stability. While they have, for instance, extensively studied how dominant great powers

do -- and should -- respond to existential challenges to their international order from peer

competitors, students of international relations have yet to seriously examine how such

powers choose to respond to non-existential challenges to their desired international

orders posed by recalcitrant but weaker states; those that have neither the capabilities nor

the intentions to overthrow the political order that the dominant state seeks to promote,

but that fail to abide by one or all of the values embedded in that order.

Despite a scholarly consensus that hegemony is exercised primarily through the use of both coercion and positive inducements, IR scholars have thus far made no serious attempts to explicitly study how dominant states choose between these influence tools to obtain compliance from the weak but unruly. This dissertation seeks to help fill this gap in the literature on international order by exploring the determinants of such choices.

What determines the choice of coercion and positive inducements in international order enforcement? Contrary to the prevailing but largely untested wisdom in the field, this study argues that the choice of coercion or positive inducements cannot be explained solely or even primarily as a function of available (coercive) capabilities or reputational considerations. Neither can such choices be attributed primarily to the domestic political costs and opportunities facing policymakers. Such realist and domestic politics explanations, I argue, overlook the role played by ideas about legitimate behavior in the choice of coercion and positive inducements in international order enforcement.

This study shows that much like in domestic settings, social conventions can also influence the choice of coercion and positive inducements in the enforcement of order at the international level. In particular, I argue that perceived identities of deviant states can

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play an important role both in determining whether policymakers will resort to coercion

or to positive inducements in order to obtain compliance from the weak. Just like in other

social settings, who deviates from established norms and why are often important factors

in determining the responses to deviant behavior in the international system.

In arguing that social conventions have important consequences for how powerful states choose to enforce international order, however, this study does not claim that material capabilities or domestic political considerations are irrelevant to international order enforcement. Rather, it is premised on the notion that like in domestic societies both material capabilities and social conventions play an important role in the enforcement of social order. After all, even in domestic settings those in power will sometimes feel compelled to offer concessions to deviant individuals or groups to elicit their compliance with the established order. In contrast to the stark distinction often made between social conventions and power in the international relations literature, this study shows that these are not mutually exclusive but that they can interact to produce policy choices in international order enforcement.

1.2 The Literature: The Forgotten Problem of International Order Enforcement

The story of international politics is most often told in terms of the rise and fall of

Great Powers, and the effects of such shifts in the distribution of capabilities upon a continuous struggle for international primacy.3 Great Powers, the story goes, have

historically competed with one another for the ability to shape the international system, or

parts thereof, in their own image. Rising great powers have sought to expand their

3 Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), and Paul M. Kennedy, the Rise and Fall of The Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, (New York: Random House, 1987). 3

influence over the international system, thereby triggering counter-balancing coalitions by their peers.4 Because of the high stakes involved – i.e. the opportunity for the victor to create an international order congenial to its interests and values – this continuous pattern of Great Power competition has repeatedly been punctuated by bouts of extreme violence between rising revisionist states on the one hand, and declining status quo powers on the other. Given the enormous consequences of such conflagrations for international stability and order, it is not surprising that this seemingly incessant struggle for international dominance, i.e. the struggle for who gets to set the rules in the international system, has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention.

This preoccupation with the struggle for international primacy has focused attention on three main questions in the context of the study of international order. First, under what conditions do changes in the distribution of power among the Great Powers lead to conflict and war in the international system?5 Second, when and why do great powers seek to expand their influence in the international system?6 Third, how can dominant great powers “manage” the rise of great power challengers successfully?7

4 See: John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, (New York: Norton, 2001), and Jack L. Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).

5 See, Gilpin, A.F.K. Organski and Jacek Kugler, The War Ledger, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), Bruce M. russet, and John R. Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organization, (New York: Norton, 2001).

6 IR scholars disagree as to the reasons why great powers seek to extend their influence over the international system. This, indeed, is one of the central disagreements in the recent debate between ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ realists. The former argue that in an anarchical environment states can either seek to dominate or risk being dominated. This logic undergirds Mearsheimers’s argument in Tragedy of Great Power Politics. Defensive realists argue that states tend to expand because of misperceptions or because of domestic coalition formation (or what Zakaria calls domestic pathologies). For an example of such an argument see Snyder (1991). One of the reasons why this is an important question is that Great Power expansion can obviously create conflicts of interests and produce countervailing coalitions. Both are potential recipes for large scale violence. See Mearsheimer, “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics”, 4

While these are clearly questions of great theoretical and substantive importance, they deal with only two phases of international orders; their rise and demise.8 The IR literature has much less to say about the third phase of international order: the periods of dominance during which a great power seeks to administer its desired international order.9 More specifically, only few attempts have been made to systematically study how dominant great powers seek to produce compliance with their desired international order from the weak but unruly.

Snyder, “Myths of Empire”, Fareed Zakaria, “Realism and Domestic Politics – Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition,” International Security, Vol. 17, No.1 (1992): 177-98. For a more elaborate argument see, Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).

7 G. John Ikenberry, “After Victory”, Alastair I. Johnston, and Robert S. Ross, (eds.), Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power, (London: Routledge, 1999), Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise,” in The Perils of Anarchy: Contemporary Realism and International Security, Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller (eds.), (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995): 130-178, Steven E. Lobell, “The Grand Strategy of Hegemonic Decline: Dilemmas of Strategy and Finance,” Security Studies 10, No.1, Autumn (2000): 92-119, and Charles A. Kupchan, Jason Davidson, and Mira Sucharov (eds.), Power in Transition: The Peaceful Change of International Order, (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2001).

8 Even studies that do address the perpetuation of hegemony, or international order, have concerned themselves primarily with the first two phases of international order, i.e. challenge and decline. Thus, in his study of post-war international order, Ikenberry argues that the US restrained itself after WW II, and created a web of participatory international institutions in order to “lock in” its liberal policy preferences in anticipation of its decline. The “stickiness” of the created institutions, coupled to their legitimacy, would safeguard the continued dominance of American foreign policy goals long after it had lost its ability to enforce its interests unilaterally. See, G. John Ikenberry, “After Victory.” As Peter Taylor argues, “scholarly interest in questions like hegemony tends to rise when things go wrong. Thus, failed or faltering hegemonies are the context of most major studies of hegemony.” Quoted in Christopher Chase-Dunn, Peter Taylor, Giovanni Arrighi, Robert Cox, Henk Overbeek, Barry Gills, Andre Gunder Frank, George Modelski, and David Wilkinson, “Hegemony and Social Change,” Mershon International Studies Review, 38, No. 2, October (1994): 363.

9 See, Torbjorn L. Knutsen, The Rise and Fall of World Orders, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999).

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Despite the broadly accepted notion that “the use of threats and promises…is the dominant form through which hegemonic power is exercised,”10 I am not aware of any study that explicitly examines how dominant states choose between these policy tools in their efforts to obtain compliance from the weak.11

Why have IR scholars generally neglected to study how the strong choose to respond to challenges from the weak? Three possible answers come to mind. First, the interactions between the strong and the weak in the international environment may simply not be important enough in order for IR scholars to divert scarce resources towards their study. Second, great powers rely almost exclusively on coercion to impose their will upon the weak, thereby rendering a study of the determinants of choice superfluous. Third, the determinants of choice are already well understood. None of these arguments, however, survives closer scrutiny.

10 Ikenberry, G. John, and Charles Kupchan, “Socialization and Hegemonic Power,” International Organization, 44, Issue 3, (Summer 1990): 283.

11 In particular, as this study argues, no systematic study exists of what James and Lake call the “first face” of hegemony, which is “characterized by the use of positive and negative sanctions aimed directly at foreign governments in an attempt to influence their choice of policies. Through inducements or threats, the hegemon seeks to alter the international costs and benefits of particular state actions. Economic sanctions, foreign aid, and military support (or lack thereof) exemplify the strategic use of direct and overt international power that is central to this first face.” Scott C. James and David A. Lake, “The Second Face of Hegemony: Britain’s Repeal of the Corn Laws and the American Walker Tariff of 1846,” International Organization, Vol. 43, No.1,Winter (1989): 4. Different aspects of the question of order enforcement have been studied as the article by James and Lake shows. For some other examples of studies that have addressed various aspects of international order enforcement (but not how the powerful choose between various policies in response to challenges from the weak) see Alden W. Craddock, The Heavy Hand of Hegemony: Hegemonic Governance Through the Use of Force, (Ph.D. Dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1995); Alexander L. George, Bridging the Gap: Theory and practice in Foreign Policy, (Washington D.C.: United States Institute for Peace Press, 1993); Richard N. Haass, The Reluctant Sheriff: The United States after the Cold War, (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1997), and Ian Hurd, “Legitimacy and Authority in International Politics,” International Organization 53, No. 1, Winter (1999): 379-408. 6

1.2.1 The insignificance of asymmetric interactions

The most obvious explanation for the lack of scholarly interest in international governance, or order enforcement, is that the interactions between the strong and the weak may simply be of limited importance. Their study may be of only marginal utility in advancing our understanding of international order and stability. After all, it is commonly believed that great power rivalries are the primary driving force behind international politics in general, and the creation and maintenance of international order in particular.

The struggles among the world’s titans — not the relatively insignificant confrontations between the those who seek to dominate and those who are believed to have no other choice but to submit to domination -- have historically defined, shaped, and reshaped the nature of world politics.12 Given the dynamics of great power competition under conditions of anarchy, it is argued, periods of hegemony are necessarily fleeting, as new great powers are certain to emerge and challenge any dominant great power.

Dominant great powers never get to enjoy an extended period of predominance. In dialectic fashion, their rise to the top helps sows the seed of their own decline, by triggering counterbalancing coalitions among their peers.13 Such transitions of international power, moreover, have often been associated with massive upheaval and system-wide violence and bloodshed.

When considered from this point of view, the efforts by the strong to get the weak to “suffer what they must” are truly insignificant. The consequences of these efforts also pale in comparison to those often associated with the efforts of the declining powerful

12 Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1979).

13 Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion.” 7

state trying to ward off a rising challenger. A closer examination of both the historical

record and recent events, however, shows that important dimensions of international

order and stability are not always directly related to great power struggles for primacy.

International politics are not always dominated by great power competitions for primacy,

and patterns of conflict and cooperation in the international system appear to be closely

related to how the dominant states choose to respond to challenges from the weak.

In the first decades after the Napoleonic war, for instance, British policy makers were continuously engaged in efforts to impose the Pax Britannica, Britain’s desired international order, upon weaker actors in the international system. Although it continued to worry about its major geopolitical rivals, it was not until the mid-1840s that Britain found itself once more engaged in a serious struggle for systemic dominance with its traditional rivals, Russia and France, while still trying to impose its desired extra- continental order upon weaker states unwilling to accept its rule. Thus, between 1815 and

1845, and even thereafter, British policy makers were heavily involved in the expansion of British commerce, the promotion of free trade (from the 1840s onward), the eradication of slavery, the suppression of piracy, and in imposing its will upon those that were unwilling to accept these central tenets of the Pax Britannica.14

14 See, Mark R. Brawley, Liberal Leadership: Great Powers and Their Challengers in Peace and War, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), John Gallagher, and Ronald Robinson, “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” Economic History Review, Vol. 6, No.1 (1953): 1-25, Ronald Hyam, Britain’s Imperial Century 1815-1914: A Study of Empire and Expansion, (New York: Barnes and Nobles, 1976), and Oded Lowenheim, “Do Ourselves Credit and Render A Lasting Service to Mankind”: British Moral Prestige, Humanitarian Intervention, and the Barbary Pirates,” International Studies Quarterly 47, No.1, March (2003), pp. 23-48. According to the Correlates of War dataset on extra-systemic wars, Britain was involved in 18 of the 31 extra-systemic wars fought between 1816 and 1860. Out of the 118 Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) identified by the MID dataset (version 3.01) Britain was involved in 37 out of 118 MIDs in the same period (30%). These numbers give some indication of the importance of the choices Britain made between the use of threats and promises in this period.

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The British efforts to suppress piracy in the Mediterranean and to eradicate the

Trans-Atlantic Slave trade necessitated the stationing of significant naval forces in the

Mediterranean and off the coast of Africa. While the British attempt to suppress piracy

were not altogether unwelcome to the other Great Powers, the increasingly aggressive

methods by which the British sought to eliminate the slave-trade -- which included a push

for general boarding rights of neutral ships, created significant friction between Britain

and other major seafaring powers.15

More recently, we can see that in the post-Cold War era US policy makers have

been preoccupied primarily with challenges posed by so-called “rogue states.” The latter

are actors that are unable to compete directly with the US for global primacy, but that fail

to abide by, and pose threats to, the American-led liberal world order. The US responses

to these challenges have obviously had far-reaching consequences for contemporary world politics, and will most likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future.16

The American efforts to contain, and ultimately depose, Saddam Hussein did more than just generate tension in the bilateral US-Iraqi relationship, it also produced disputes between the US and other great powers such as Russia and China and, significantly, created friction between the US and its European allies. Finally, the military requirements of the containment policy, in the form of a semi-permanent military

15 Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, (London: The Ashfield Press, 1983): 164- 166.

16 On the general effects of US policies toward rogue states and their effect upon US interactions with its European allies in particular see Ivo H. Daalder, “The United States and Europe: From Primacy to Partnership?” in Eagle Rules? Foreign Policy and American Primacy in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Robert J. Lieber , (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2002): 70-96, Richard N. Haass, ed., Transatlantic Tensions: The United States, Europe, and Problem Countries, (Washington DC: Brookings Institutions, 1999), and Eric Rouleau, “The View From France: America’s Unyielding Policy Towards Iraq,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 1, January/February (1995): 59-72. 9

presence in Saudi Arabia, were at least partly responsible for the rise, and increasing appeal, of fundamentalist Muslim terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.

The US response to the Iraqi (and Iranian) efforts to develop weapons of mass

destruction stand in stark contrast to its response to Ukraine’s initial unwillingness to

relinquish its nuclear weapons in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The astute offer of financial inducements defused rising tensions between Ukraine and

Russia and, by extension, promoted regional stability in Eastern Europe.

How the US has chosen to respond to challenges to its desired international order

has therefore profoundly affected the nature of post-Cold War international politics.17

While scholars have warned of the inevitable rise of new great power challengers to post-

Cold War American pre-eminence, moreover, they usually acknowledge that American

primacy is likely to persist into the foreseeable future.18 In the absence of severe Great

Power competition, the primary challenges that the US will encounter during its

increasingly extended ‘Unipolar moment,’ are likely to be those posed by states that are

unable to challenge American primacy directly, but that are unwilling to accept US

values and interests, or abide by US rules. How the US will choose to respond to future

17 John Lewis Gaddis, for example, argues that the American-led military intervention against Milosevic in Kosovo generated a great deal of anxiety and animosity in Russia and China. Both were worried that humanitarian intervention of this kind would prove to be a precedent, something they did not relish given their own problems with domestic minorities. How the US responded to Milosevic, therefore, sent an unwelcome message. John L. Gaddis, “Order Versus Justice: An American Foreign Policy dilemma,” In Order and Justice in International Relations, eds. Rosemary Foot, John L. Gaddis, and Andrew Hurrell, , (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003): 155-176.

18 Layne is certainly not the only one who warns of America’s inevitable decline. See Kennet N. Waltz, “The Emerging Structure of International Politics,” In The Perils of Anarchy: Contemporary Realism and International Security, eds. Sean M. Lynn-Jones Michael E. Brown, and Steven E. Miller, (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1995): 42-77. Wohlforth, however, argues persuasively that unipolarity is likely to persist much longer than either Layne or Waltz argue. See William C. Wohlforth, "The Stability of a Unipolar World." International Security 24, no. 1 (1999): 5-41 10

challenges of this nature will help us explain fundamental patterns of cooperation and conflict during the coming period of American primacy.

Contrary to the impression created by the contemporary IR literature, therefore, dominant great powers are not solely preoccupied with warding off challenges to their

predominant positions posed by their peer competitors. They are also actively engaged in

international order enforcement or governance.19 How they choose to enforce order,

moreover, can affect more than just the level of bilateral conflict and cooperation

between the dominant state and the weaker challenger, or deviant actor, but may also

affect the interactions between the great powers.20 In the absence of other great power

challenges, moreover, patterns of international conflict and cooperation are especially

likely to be influenced by how dominant states choose to enforce their desired

international order.

1.2.2 The Conventional Wisdom: The Heavy Hand of Hegemony?21

A second reason for the relative neglect of the issue of international order enforcement in the IR literature may be the result of the widespread notion among contemporary IR scholars – especially scholars of the realist persuasion-- that coercion is the dominant, if not the only, strategy by which the strong seek to impose their will upon

19 Certainly policymakers of dominant states seem to think so. See, for example the title of a recent book by an erstwhile member of the Clinton Administration, David J. Rothkopf, Running the World: The inside story of the National Security Council and the architects of American power, (New York: Public Affairs, 2005).

20 See, Ivan Eland, “The Empire Strikes Out: The “New Imperialism” and its Fatal Flaws,” Policy Analysis, No. 459, (2002), and Jack L. Snyder, “Myths of Empire, Then and Now,” Columbia International Affairs Online, 2002, available online at: http://www.ciaonet.org/special_section/iraq/papers/sjn01.html.

21 Craddock, “The Heavy Hand of Hegemony”

11

their weaker counterparts in the international system.22 The long history of European (and non-European) Imperialism seems to offer plenty of empirical support for Thucydides’ famous dictum that in international relations the ‘strong do what they can, while the weak submit to what they must.’

As the use of inducements is considered to be a rare, even non-existent, event in international politics it would appear that there is no “puzzle” present to generate scholarly investigations.23 If all great powers use only coercion all of the time in order to impose their will upon the weak, a study of why great powers choose threats and promises in their efforts to impose their rule upon the weak will by definition be both nonsensical and a definite waste of time and resources.24

While the realist IR literature therefore implies that coercion is the primary tool that great powers use to influence the weak, a brief glance at the historical record reveals

22 Some scholars have pointed out that IR scholars in general are too preoccupied with coercion as the sole influence tool in international affairs. See for example George and Smoke, who argued more than twenty years ago that, “to date deterrence theory has focused too narrowly on the role of threat in influence among nations. Except occasionally, when theorists have pointed out the need to couple ‘promises’ with ‘threats’ to make the latter work, the emphasis has been almost exclusively upon the engineering of proper threats... more generally, theory needs to give as much attention to the role of “inducement” or “promise” as to that of threat.” Alexander L. George, and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974): 80-81

In a more recent study, James Davis notes that there is no theoretical reason to believe a priori that force is more common or the most appropriate tool of statecraft. He argues that the focus on deterrence and compellence was the result of WW II and the Cold War, which pitted the US against expansionary great powers that would only listen to the threat, or the use, of force. James W. Davis, Threats and Promises: The Pursuit of International Influence, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

23 Daniel W. Drezner, “The Trouble with Carrots: Transaction Costs, Conflict Expectations, and Economic Inducements,’ Security Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1-2, (1999/2000): 188-218. 24 It is possible that this focus on coercion fuels the current scholarly efforts to study British imperial rule, i.e. how it ruled its colonies, to provide lessons for modern-day American policy-makers. If formal imperial rule – or extreme punitive measures— is the dominant outcome of challenges from the weak, one may indeed do well to try and learn from the British efforts to rule its formal empire. For one example of such work, that has explicitly focused on learning lessons from British imperial rule for contemporary US leaders see, Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, (New York: Basic Books, 2003).

12

no shortage of attempts by great powers to influence the weak through the use of positive inducements.25 Although it is certainly possible that the use of the latter is indeed relatively rare in international order enforcement, scholars have failed to provide much empirical evidence in support of this assertion.26 Even if the use of positive inducements is rare, however, the mere fact that the strong sometimes use positive inducements in their attempts to enforce their desired international order raises the question as to why they sometimes do choose to ‘buy’ compliance from much weaker states.27

Following realist assumptions and logic, which flows directly from Thucydides’ dictum, the answer to this question should lie in the availability of coercive capabilities.

Only when they cannot translate their aggregate preponderance into local superiority, will leaders of powerful states offer positive inducements to weaker states in return for their cooperation. In short, the conventional wisdom suggests that the choice of coercion and positive inducements in international order enforcement should be a function of coercive capabilities: when they can, the powerful will coerce the weak, when the must, they will

‘buy’ their compliance.

25 See Thomas A. Breslin, Beyond Pain: The Role of Pleasure and Culture in the Making of Foreign Affairs, (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2002), Stephen R. Rock, Appeasement in International Politics, (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2000), Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society: A Comparative Historical Analysis, (London: Routledge, 1992).

26 Scholars usually point out that coercion is much more prevalent than positive inducements, without offering evidence in support of this assertion. For examples see O’Brien and Pigman, and Drezner. The former argue that in its attempts to open up the world to British commerce, “coercion... was used rather readily to open up Third World markets.” Patrick K. O’Brien, and Geoffrey A. Pigman, “Free Trade, British Hegemony, and the International Order in the Nineteenth Century,” Review of International Studies, Vol. 18, No.2, Summer (1992): 102. Drezner asks why carrots are only rarely used in international politics, without offering any assessment of the veracity of that claim. Drezner, “The Trouble with Carrots.”

27 This is especially important given the argument that the astute choice of punishments and rewards can have important consequences for peace and stability. Even if coercion is the main tool used by the powerful, we would still want to know why this is the case. 13

1.2.3 Alternative Perspectives: Domestic Politics and Social Conventions

While the conventional wisdom in the field therefore suggests that the logic of

choice of enforcement strategies is relatively straightforward and well understood, a

closer review of the literature yields at least two additional plausible theoretical

perspectives that can shed light upon the question at hand.

First, the recent literature on post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy suggests that in

the absence of clear and existential threats to the dominant state policymakers are forced

to pay more attention to the domestic constraints and incentives in the formulation of

foreign policy.28 The lack of external threats emboldens domestic interest groups and leads them to actively promote their parochial agendas.29 They will also become more

willing to make policymakers pay a political price for the failure to heed their demands.

In sum, this domestic politics perspective suggests that in the absence of a clear,

overwhelming, and unifying external threat, the choice of coercion and positive

inducements in international order enforcement will be mostly a function of the domestic

political costs associated with the divergent policy tools. While a number of single-case

studies have argued that this is indeed the case in contemporary U.S. foreign policy, this

argument has also yet to be tested in a comparative analytical framework.30

28 For a more general theoretical statement of this position see and the state-society interaction in the formation of policy preferences see Andrew Moravcsik, "Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics," International organization 51, No. 4 (Autumn, 1997): 513-553.

29 Andrew Bennett, “Who Rules the Roost? Congressional-Executive Relations on Foreign Policy after the Cold War,” in Eagle Rules? Foreign Policy and American Primacy in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Robert J. Lieber, (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2002): 48; Huntington, “The Erosion of American National Interests,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 5, (September/October 1997): 28-50, and James Schlesinger, “Fragmentation and Hubris,” National Interest, Fall 1997: 3-9. 30 See for example the case studies in Richard N. Haass and Meghan O’Sullivan (eds.), Honey and Vinegar: Incentives, Sanctions, and Foreign Policy, (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2000). 14

Second, the materialist assumptions that underpin both the realist and the

domestic politics perspectives have recently been challenged by a growing body of work

that highlights the effects of social norms and identities on international politics. This so-

called sociological perspective argues that socially constructed norms and identities (i.e.

social conventions) are important determinants of state behavior and will often trump the

influence of material incentives and constraints such as the availability of coercive

capabilities and domestic political costs. In recent years, sociological arguments have

been employed to explain a wide variety of important phenomena in international

relations. To my knowledge, however, such arguments have yet to be applied in a

systematic manner to the question of order enforcement, especially to the use of coercion and positive inducements in international order enforcement.

Yet there are two good reasons to believe that social conventions will play an

important role in how powerful states choose to enforce their desired international order.

First, the enforcement of political order is an inherently social enterprise, whether at the

domestic or international level. The enforcement of social order in all societies, no matter

how rudimentary, is a function of both social rules and norms and coercive capabilities.

There is no reason to believe that this will not be the case in the international system.

15

Second, because challenges from the weak are inherently non-existential in

nature, we should expect that responses to such challenges will be driven more by social

conventions concerning appropriate behavior than by the systemically imposed incentives

and constraints that are said to govern the interactions between the great powers.

Although some studies have alluded to the possibility that social conventions may affect how the powerful choose to respond to challenges from the weak, however, I am not

aware of a study that explicitly examines how and when they do so.31

In sum, a review of the IR literature yields at least three potential theoretical

answers to the question of how dominant states choose to respond to challenges to their

desired international order posed by weak but recalcitrant actors. Although all three

perspectives appear eminently plausible, none has thus far been fully specified in the context of the study of international order enforcement, or tested in a comparative theoretical framework. In this dissertation I undertake these tasks.

1.3 Outline of the Study

The rest of this study is composed of 5 chapters. The following chapter discusses the three theoretical perspectives outlined above and presents testable hypotheses derived from each perspective. In addition, this chapter outlines the research design used to test these hypotheses and the evidence used to test them.

The next three chapters present the empirical analysis. In particular, they present three case-studies of international order enforcement episodes: (1) the British responses

31 Thus, according to Gilpin (31) “Dominant powers have had very different sets of ideologies and interests that they have sought to achieve and incorporate into the rules and regimes of the system. Rome and Britain each created a world order, but the often oppressive rule of the Pax Romana was in most respects different from the generally liberal rule of the Pax Brittanica. Napoleon and Hitlerite Germany gave very different governances to the Europe they united. The Pax Americana differs from what a Pax Sovietica would contain." See also, Adam Watson, “The Evolution of International Society,” 42. 16

to two Chinese challenges to the Pax Britannica in the 1830s; (2) the U.S. efforts to persuade Ukraine to relinquish its nuclear arsenal after it achieved independence, and; (3)

the American efforts to convince North Korea to remain a member of the nuclear Non

Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and to stop producing plutonium in the early 1990s. All three

cases are clear instances in which a weaker state challenged one or more of the key tenets

of the international order that a dominant state sought to promote. Moreover, in each case

we find variation on the dependent variable, that is, both coercion- and incentive-based

responses. Together, therefore, these three cases provide us with six observations on the

dependent variable and offer an outstanding opportunity to examine the strengths and the

weaknesses of the three theoretical perspectives discussed in the theoretical chapter.

Chapter 3 examines the British responses to two Chinese challenges to the

economic international order that Britain sought to promote in the decades following the

Napoleonic wars. It shows that while British policymakers showed great forbearance to

Chinese threats against their representative and British merchants in Canton in 1834, they

responded forcefully to similar Chinese actions during the Opium Crisis of 1839. As the

empirical analysis shows, these different responses cannot be attributed to variations in

the coercive capabilities available to British policymakers or to shifts in the distribution

of domestic political power in Britain. Instead, the historical evidence suggests that these

variations can best be explained as a function of the changes in the British perceptions of

the legitimacy of China’s actions and its changing views of China’s standing as an equal

and full member of the international society.

Chapter 4 examines the efforts by the Bush- and Clinton-administrations to

convince Ukraine to relinquish its nuclear arsenal upon gaining its independence in the

17

aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. This analysis shows that although the Bush administration did not actually choose to compel Ukraine to relinquish its arsenal, it held out the prospects of diplomatic isolation and economic decline to

Ukrainian leaders if the latter would not honor their early commitments to denuclearization. The reason for the Bush administration’s failure to offer the security assurances and economic assistance that Ukrainian leaders asked for in return for denuclearization, was the belief –greatly reinforced by Russian leaders such as

Gorbachev, Shevardnadze, and Yeltsin -- that Ukraine’s reluctance to disarm were the result of atavistic hyper-nationalist Ukrainian fears of Russia or that Ukrainian demands

for economic assistance were a cynical effort to extort money from the U.S. by

reactionary holdovers of the former Soviet regime.

The shift in American policy towards a broadly incentive-based policy, by contrast, coincided with changing views of Ukraine’s identity and a greater understanding of Ukraine’s security and economic concerns. Thus, Ukraine was no longer regarded as an irrational hyper-nationalist state, but rather as an unstable and economically struggling member of international society living in the shadow of an increasingly assertive neighbor that failed to recognize its independence. A broad incentive-based policy to convince Ukraine became not only acceptable, it was now also considered the most effective way to help Ukraine overcome the economic and social problems that threatened its independence.

Chapter 5 chronicles the American responses to North Korea’s announcement in

1993 that it would leave the NPT and its 1994 decision to remove irradiated fuel rods from the nuclear processor at Yongbyon, which if reprocessed would generate a

18

significant amount of plutonium usable for the production of nuclear weapons. This counter-proliferation episode highlights the conditions under which material capabilities trump social conventions in international order enforcement. Whereas American policymakers adopted what Leon Sigal calls a “crime and punishment” attitude towards

North Korea, American responses to North Korea’s actions were ultimately significantly inhibited by the availability of coercive policy tools. Yet, a look at the available evidence shows that American choices were also significantly affected by American perceptions of

North Korean intentions, which were ultimately derived from perceptions of the DPRK’s basic character (or identity).

Chapter 6 summarizes and compares the main findings of this study, discusses their theoretical and practical implications, and offers suggestions for future research.

19

CHAPTER 2

CAPABILITIES, DOMESTIC POLITICS, AND SOCIAL CONVENTION

By what means do the strong choose to impose their rule upon the weak? How do they choose between coercion and positive inducements in response to behavior that challenges rules and norms they seek to promote in the international system? Why do they sometimes fail to respond at all to challenges from the weak? As discussed in the introductory chapter, the contemporary IR literature does not offer obvious, compelling, or empirically tested answers to these questions. In fact, the IR literature seems to offer no serious attempts to answer them.

Despite a strong interest in the mechanics of international influence -- as evidenced in large, and growing, bodies of literature on deterrence, statecraft, and international sanctions – IR scholars have devoted little attention to the systematic study of what David Baldwin calls the ‘logic of choice’: that is to say, the logic by which policymakers choose from among various policy tools in their efforts to achieve their foreign policy goals.32 Due to their overwhelming interest in uncovering the conditions

under which various foreign policy tools “work,” it appears that scholars have neglected

32 I use David Baldwin’s phrase here to indicate that there may be more than one ‘logic’ of choice. Baldwin, by contrast, argues that there is only one logic of choice that has thus far been ignored by those participating in the contemporary sanctions-debate. His critiques are discussed later in this chapter. 20

the systematic study of the determinants of their choice.33 This is especially true when it comes to the question of how the strong choose to impose their will upon the weak.34

In other words, the bodies of IR literature that are most interested in the question of international influence are focused primarily on explaining and predicting the effects of various influence strategies on target states, and not on uncovering why they are chosen. Although the contemporary sanctions literature has recently been singled out as a prime example of the failure to examine such choices in a systematic fashion,35 a similar observation can also be made about the classical ‘influence’ literature in international relations, that is, the deterrence literature.36

33 The recent sanctions-debate has centered primarily around the question as to whether and when economic sanctions, and positive inducements, work. See, Gary C. Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, and Kimberley Ann Elliot, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered: History and Current Policy, (Washington D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1990), Robert A. Pape, “Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work,” International Security 22, No. 2, Fall (1997): 90-136, David Cortright, ed., The Price of Peace: Incentives and International Conflict Prevention, (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), Haass and O’Sullivan, “Honey and Vinegar”; Davis, “Threats and Promises, and Rock, “Appeasement in International Politics.”

34 There is much more debate on how states respond to challenges by states of equivalent or greater capabilities. The debate about when states “balance” or “bandwagon” can, for example, be seen in terms of the choice between the choice of influence strategies in response to challenges by stronger states. 35 David A. Baldwin, “The Sanctions Debate and the Logic of Choice,” International Security, Vol. 24, No.3 (1999/2000): 29.

36 For a review of the deterrence literature, and its focus on the conditions under which deterrence works see, Jack S. Levy, “When Do Deterrent Threats Work?” British Journal of Political Science 18, No. 4, October (1988): 485-512. For a more recent review article see Paul K. Huth, “Deterrence and International Conflict: Empirical Findings and Theoretical Debates,” Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 2, (1999): 25-48. Huth states that “Rational deterrence theory focuses on how military threats can reduce the attacker’s expected utility for using force by persuading the attacker that the outcome of a military confrontation will be both costly and unsuccessful.” (29).

21

Both the deterrence- and the sanctions literature, it appears, are more interested in

uncovering the conditions under which punishments, and more recently rewards, are

likely to work, than in examining how policy makers actually choose between various

policy tools in their efforts to influence the behavior of other, especially weaker, actors in

the international system.37

Notwithstanding the absence of systematic efforts to investigate the means by

which the strong choose to respond to challenges from the weak, however, a review of

the contemporary IR literature offers at least three general theoretical perspectives that

can be used to generate diverging ‘models’ of international order enforcement.

First, a realist perspective, which suggests that in choosing to respond to challenges from the weak, autonomous and goal-oriented policymakers are driven by calculations of relative costs and effectiveness. The relative costs of alternative enforcement strategies, in turn, are determined by geopolitical concerns, available coercive capabilities and reputational considerations;

Second, a domestic politics perspective – often present in a growing body of work on post-Cold War US foreign policy - which highlights the effects of parochial interest groups on the foreign policy choices of dominant states that do not face existential threats to their security. According to this perspective, policymakers are driven by domestic

37 Only a handful of studies have explicitly examined how policymakers choose between various influence strategies to achieve their foreign policy goals. Daniel Drezner’s work on international sanctions is an exception. However, Drezner examines only economic means of statecraft. See Drezner, “The Trouble with Carrots,” and Daniel W. Drezner, The Sanctions Paradox: Economic Statecraft and International Relations, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Another obvious example of a study that examines why states choose economic sanctions is Baldwin’s Economic Statecraft. Note, however, that Baldwin’s study does not explicitly address the choice of punishments or rewards in international relations, but that he seeks to explain why rational actors sometimes choose economic sanctions, even when the latter do not always “work”. See, David A. Baldwin, Economic Statecraft, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). 22

costs and benefits, rather than international constraints and incentives, in choosing from

among available international enforcement strategies, and;

Third, a sociological perspective, which can be derived from a growing body of

literature that draws attention to the effects of international and domestic social

conventions on state behavior. In particular, this perspective suggests that how the strong

choose to respond to challenges from the weak is determined primarily by socially

constructed conventions that determine appropriate behavior and not by rational

calculations of relative costs measured in terms of relative capabilities, reputational

considerations, or domestic consequences.

All three theoretical perspectives can be found, in various degrees of explicitness,

in the bodies of literature that are most relevant to a study of the nexus between international order enforcement and international statecraft: that is, the growing literature on post-Cold War US foreign policy and the sanctions literature. Each perspective rests upon different assumptions about the motivations that drive policy choices in world politics. Each has been used to explain particular responses of strong states to challenges

from the weak, but none has thus far been explicitly specified or tested in a comparative

analytical framework. In this chapter, I outline these theoretical perspectives, identify

their basic assumptions about the factors that motivate state behavior, and use the latter to

generate hypotheses about how the strong respond to challenges from the weak in the

international system.

23

2.1 Costs, Capabilities, and Reputation: A Realist explanation

Although Realism is mostly concerned with the interactions among great powers, its emphasis on states as unitary, cost-sensitive, and goal-oriented (rational) actors, trying to thrive and survive in a harsh anarchical environment, also offers a number of plausible hypotheses as to how the strong choose to impose their desired international order upon the weak. The notion of instrumental rationality posits that in pursuit of their foreign policy goals policymakers will be both goal-oriented (i.e. interested in choosing effective policies in pursuit of their goals) and cost-sensitive. They will, therefore, in each situation prefer to employ the strategy that they believe is most likely to achieve their goals at the lowest possible cost. They will also consider all available policy options in an agnostic manner, uninhibited by moral or ethical considerations and regardless of the motivations that drive the behavior of their antagonists.

In combination with the realist focus on relative material capabilities and the reputational concerns that are mandated by the logic of anarchy, the assumptions of cost- sensitivity and goal-oriented behavior generate a number of predictions about the policy

choices of those seeking to enforce order in the international environment.38 Two central

arguments in particular are of interest here:

38 For the basic assumptions of Realism, see, Joseph M. Grieco, “Realist International Theory and the Study of World Politics,” In New Thinking in International Relations Theory, eds. Michael W. Doyle and G. John Ikenberry, ( Boulder: Westview Press, 1997): 163-201.The underlying core assumptions of the realist paradigm are a matter of considerable debate. See the debate between Jeffrey W. Legro and Andrew Moravcik, “Is Anybody Still a Realist?” International Security 24, No. 2, Fall (1999): 5-55 and various respondents in “Brother Can You Spare a Paradigm? (Or Was Anybody Ever a Realist?), International Security 25, No.1, Summer 2000: 165-193. It appears, however, that realism is at the very least based upon a ‘weak’ rationality assumption, i.e. states are considered to be cost-sensitive and goal-oriented. See, Robert Jervis, “Realism in the Study of World Politics,” International Organization 52, No.4, (Autumn 24

First, when a dominant state responds to behavior that deviates from the rules and norms it seeks to promote, its policymakers will be sensitive to material costs, as material capabilities are necessary to resolve conflicts in one’s favor in an anarchical environment.

That is, calculations of the relative material costs of alternative policy options will have a major effect on the choice of punishments and rewards in international statecraft. In particular, states will choose the least costly policy option available to them in order to achieve their goals. In this context, David Baldwin has noted that, ceteris paribus, threats are costless when they succeed, but costly when they fail. Conversely offers of rewards are costly primarily when they succeed. Going beyond this assertion, Daniel Drezner argues that punishments (economic sanctions, in particular) are a priori less costly than rewards (economic inducements), as the latter transfer benefits from the sender to the target state, without the added certainty of a successful outcome. These benefits, in turn, may improve the target state’s ability to better withstand future influence attempts.39

1998): 971-991. Only two of the respondents to Legro and Moravcik, namely Jeffrey Talliaffero and William Wohlforth, take issue with the rational actor assumption that these scholars ascribe to realism.

39See David A. Baldwin, “The Power of Positive Sanctions,” World Politics 24, No. 1 (October 1971): 19- 38, and Drezner, “The Trouble With Carrots.” It is important to note that there are obviously costs involved in developing the ability to coerce. This is especially true when it comes to the use of force, which requires the maintenance of expensive military capabilities. Once they are in place, however, military capabilities can be used to coerce multiple challengers, and no additional material costs are involved in using them for coercion. One of the basic premises of this study is, of course, that the use of coercion is costly in its own right when applied to often and inappropriately, as it may increase international hostility and the chance that force will be used in the first place. On the distinction between the reduced costs of using force for coercion and the expenditure of force see Edward Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century A.D. To the Third (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). 25

Following this logic, therefore, we should expect that dominant states will prefer

to use threats of negative sanctions to elicit compliance with the international rules and

norms they promote, especially in situations in which threats are most likely to succeed.

In an anarchical environment, such as the international system, realists should logically

expect this to be the case when states are involved in disputes with what they believe, or

know, to be weaker and therefore more vulnerable opponents.

Because capabilities, and not justice, are the ultimate arbiter of disputes in the

anarchical international system, it is logical for the strong to assume that weak states,

who are obviously also cost-sensitive, will capitulate in the face of demands backed up

by overwhelming coercive capabilities. Given the high probability that the weak will

eventually capitulate in the face of overwhelming capabilities, threats of punishments will

be the primary means by which the strong choose to impose their will upon the weak.40

Second, the tendency to resort to coercion is strengthened because of the condition of anarchy that prevails in the international system. The latter, according to realists, increases the importance of reputational considerations in the choice of punishments and rewards. Because disputes in an anarchical environment are decided not by who is right, but by who is more powerful, dominant states should have a strong desire to maintain a reputation for strength and resolve. Such a reputation allows them to deter challenges to their interests, and to achieve their foreign policy goals successfully through the use of threats, instead of the more expensive use of punishments or rewards.

40 This tendency should be reinforced, because in realist theory policymakers are relatively autonomous from their societies. This means that their calculations of costs is driven by international constraints and incentives, and not by calculations of domestic costs.

26

The central role that reputational concerns play in the policy choices of dominant

great powers is rooted deeply in realist thought and can be gleaned from Thucydides’

narration of the Melian dialogue. In the latter, the Athenians negotiators invoked the

necessity of maintaining a reputation for strength to explain to the citizens of Melos why

Athens could not simply allow them to remain neutral. Because it was generally known, the Athenians stated, that actors maintain their independence “because they are strong, and that if we do not molest them it is because we are afraid; so besides extending our empire we should gain in security by your subjection, the fact that you are islanders and weaker than others rendering it all the more important that you should not succeed in baffling the masters of the sea.”41

Reputational considerations also explain why dominant states may choose to

inflict punishments even after their initial threats fail, and even when policymakers

recognize that positive inducements will be less costly in material terms than actually

carrying out the threat of punishments. Policymakers will be concerned that an offer of positive inducements, while potentially effective in the short term, will send a signal of weakness to both their target and other potential challengers. Failure to carry out a threat, realists believe, will reduce the credibility of future threats.

41 Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982): 352. While Jonathan Mercer has shown that reputations for resolve are very hard to acquire, he does not necessarily disagree that considerations of reputation often drive leaders’ decisions. See John Mercer, Reputation and International Politics, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996). The importance of reputation on state behavior is a central focus of the deterrence literature, which is strongly associated with realism. For the importance of maintaining a reputation for strength and resolve see Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960) and Arms and Influence, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966). 27

Given these arguments about the central role of relative costs, anarchy,

capabilities and reputational considerations, when should we expect dominant states to

choose punishments and rewards in their efforts to enforce international order? That is,

how should we expect them to respond to challenges from weaker states?

The realist perspective suggests that the desire to produce behavioral change in

the target state at minimal cost should make dominant states prefer threats when trying to

impose their rule upon the weak. When threats fail, dominant states will choose to impose

punishments in order to modify the behavior of the challenger. While the use of rewards

may become viable at this point in terms of material costs, the realist perspective predicts

that considerations of reputation will diminish the attractiveness of this option. Dominant

states will fear that if they do not bear the cost of imposing punishments at an early stage,

that they will then incur greater costs later on. Thus, they have a strong incentive to use

negative sanctions when their initial threats fail.

It is only when they believe that they cannot issue credible threats or when their

threats have been ignored, therefore, that policymakers will begin to consider using

positive inducements. Even then, however, they will only use positive inducements when no adverse reputational consequences are expected. If they believe that the offer of rewards will create a reputation for weakness that will lead to other challenges, policymakers will prefer to incur the higher costs associated with punishments even when they believe that rewards would be less costly and equally effective.42Ultimately,

therefore, dominant states should prefer the use of negative sanctions in their efforts to

impose their rule upon the weak. They will use rewards only under the following, limited,

42 The concept of relative gains, moreover, suggests that dominant states will prefer to offer non-tangible inducements first, before transferring tangible rewards that may add to the capabilities of the target state. 28

conditions: when policymakers believe that they cannot issue credible threats to stop

continued non-compliance, and when they anticipate no adverse reputational

consequences.

When will these conditions obtain? As dominant states, by definition, enjoy a

clear aggregate preponderance in capabilities over weaker states, the only situations in which they should choose positive inducements is when circumstances do not allow them to translate their aggregate preponderance into local superiority. There are three

situations in which this is likely to happen:

First, a serious geopolitical threat, posed by a rival great power, may force the

dominant state to concentrate its capabilities to meet that threat. As a result, it may have

insufficient resources available to deal with relatively minor challenges to its desired

international order.43 This is especially true when the military capabilities necessary for

successful coercion cannot be held in reserve, but have to be kept within close proximity

of their intended target in order to make the threat credible. The existence of a significant

geopolitical rival, even one that doesn’t pose a direct threat, may also limit the ability of a

dominant state to use coercion against weaker actors in the international system in

another way. They can offer their support to the weaker state, thereby greatly enhancing

its power and increasing the costs of coercion for the dominant state.

A second possible reason for the failure of a dominant state to achieve local

military preponderance may be the result of what Arnold Wolfers identified as the

43 In normal times, only a fraction of a dominant state’s potential resources are translated into military capabilities. Thus, the ‘supply’ of coercive capabilities is limited and can run out in the short term, leaving a dominant state unable to respond to all challenges it faces. See Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990).

29

paradoxical effects of increasing power.44 The latter emerge when increasing capabilities

allow a state to extend its influence over larger parts of the international system, a process which simultaneously increases the demands upon its capabilities and resources. Even the most powerful states in the international system possess only finite military resources at any given time. It is possible, therefore, that these military resources will be stretched thin by the need to respond to a number of challenges at the same time.

Third, situation-specific conditions may affect the ability of the dominant state to translate its preponderance into local superiority. Such conditions may include geographical limitations on the use of military power (i.e. the weaker state is out of reach of the coercive capabilities of the dominant state) or the fact that the weaker state has significant ties to other states that may make military action or other forms of coercion against it much more costly.

Of course, dominant states do not have to use military threats to issue threats or to punish wayward states. When they lack the resources to make credible military threats, leaders of dominant states may try to use economic coercion instead. In fact, the use of economic coercion might be preferable as the imposition of economic sanctions does not directly degrade the military capabilities of the dominant state.45

44 Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962).

45 Indeed, one of the catalysts for the contemporary sanctions debate was the widely shared belief that the use of force has become too expensive in modern times, and that economic tools would become the dominant means of statecraft. David A. Baldwin, Economic Statecraft (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985) and A. Cooper Drury, “Sanctions as Coercive Diplomacy: The U.S. President’s Decision to Initiate Economic Sanctions,” Political Research Quarterly 54, No.3 (Summer 2001): 485-508. 30

The logic, however, remains the same. Absent the ability to issue a credible

threat, the dominant state will consider positive inducements, but only when

policymakers believe that their reputation for resolve will not suffer.

Only in the absence of the capabilities to issue a credible threat, or the perception

of a lack of coercive capabilities, will the dominant state consider positive inducements,

and then only when it does not fear adverse reputational consequences. Thus the realist

perspective would predict that policymakers will first contemplate using the least costly

coercive strategy available, before moving towards the most costly one, before they will

consider positive inducements. In considering the latter, moreover, they will first want to

choose the least costly option available, before moving to more costly incentives.

In sum, the realist perspective offers a general “model” of how dominant states

choose between punishments and rewards in their efforts to enforce their desired

international order. It posits that the assumption of instrumental rationality and the logic

of anarchy condition policymakers to resort threats and negative sanctions first. Only

when the latter are unlikely to bring success, and when they fear no detrimental

reputational consequences, will policymakers offer positive inducements to weaker states

that challenge their desired order.

2.2 Domestic politics and international order enforcement

A review of the literature on post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy suggests that

material capabilities and international concerns may not be the most dominant factor in

determining how the powerful respond to challenges from the weak. A number of

scholars have recently argued that the absence of a major external threat may undermine the utility of the unitary actor assumption posited by the realist model. Existential threats

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to a state’s survival are said to have a unifying effect, as they strengthen the hands of policymakers and reduce the willingness and ability of parochial interest groups to manipulate the foreign policy process to their own advantage. The absence of such sobering threats, on the other hand, offers the latter an opportunity to run rampant and may reduce the autonomy of key policymakers to pursue the national interest.46

Given the absence of a serious unifying threat, therefore, a dominant state may be unable to pursue a coherent grand strategy, and will be much less likely to resemble the unitary actor portrayed in the realist model.47 Under these conditions, we should expect its foreign policy process to be more vulnerable to manipulation by parochial interest groups that seek to exploit the state’s resources to achieve their private interests.

According to Samuel Huntington this will be especially true for culturally fragmented societies, that have no overarching unifying goals and aspirations, such as the US.48

Not only does Huntington argue that U.S. national interests are currently defined through a competition among parochial interest groups, he claims that policy decisions are also a product more of domestic politics than of international constraints and incentives:

“For an understanding of American foreign policy it is necessary to study not the interests of the American state in a world of competing states but rather the play of economic and ethnic interests in American domestic politics. At least in recent years, the latter has been a superb predictor of foreign policy stands. Foreign policy, in the sense of

47 Andrew Bennett, “Who Rules the Roost? Congressional-Executive Relations on Foreign Policy after the Cold War,” in Eagle Rules? Foreign Policy and American Primacy in the Twenty-First Century, ed., Robert J. Lieber, (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2002): 48.

48 Huntington, “The Erosion of American National Interests,” Foreign Affairs 76, No. 5, (September/October 1997): 28-50.

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actions consciously designed to promote the interests of the United States as a collective

entity in relation to similar collective entities, is slowly but steadily disappearing.”49

Huntington’s argument is echoed in recent articles by James Schlesinger and

others.50 Unlike Huntington, however, Schlesinger does not seem to put the blame solely

on the wave of multiculturalism that has swept American society. More than Huntington, he highlights the fact the in the absence of a clear and imminent threat, the American public is simply uninterested in foreign policy. This lack of interest has detrimental consequences for US foreign policy. “With the disappearance of the Soviet threat and the fading of public attention, the field has been left open to domestic interest groups that have their own special axes to grind, unhindered by any commonly accepted vision of the national interest.... domestic constituencies, most notably ethnic groups, have acquired an

excessive influence over our foreign policy”51

Although both Huntington and Schlesinger argue that the problem of parochial

interest groups is especially severe in the United States, their argument should logically be applicable to any great power that finds itself in a similar position. The absence of a unifying existential threat, on the one hand, makes it harder for policy makers to mobilize

49 Huntington, “The Erosion of American National Interests.”

50 Schlesinger, “Fragmentation and Hubris,” National Interest, Fall 1997: 3-9. For a study that highlights the apathy among Americans, which allows small interest groups to take over the foreign policy arena see James M. Lindsay, “The New Apathy: How an Uninterested Public is Reshaping Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 79, No. 5 (September/October 2000): 2-8. For a paper that suggests that the elimination of a unifying threat may make the American public more involved in foreign policy, although it may not make that foreign policy more coherent. See Jack Citrin, Ernst B. Haas, Christopher Muste, and Beth Reingold, “Is American Nationalism Changing? Implications for Foreign Policy,” International Studies Quarterly 38, No.1 (March 1994): 1-31. For an account of congressional influence on US foreign policy see Rebecca K.C. Hersman, Friends and Foes: How Congress and the President Really Make Foreign Policy (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000). See also, Meghan L. O’Sullivan, Shrewd Sanctions: Statecraft and State Sponsors of Terrorism, (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003): 19-24.

51 Schlesinger, “Fragmentation and Hubris.” 33

societal resources for foreign policy. On the other hand it also opens up the foreign policy

sphere to competing interest groups that seek to harness the capabilities of the state for

their own purposes. The implications of the domestic politics argument for international

order and international order enforcement are threefold:

First, although policymakers may want to actively enforce their desired

international order, they will be severely limited in the policy tools that are available for

them to do so, as there will be little societal support for costly enforcement strategies. As

a result, in the absence of a parochial interest group that has a stake in a particular issue,

we should expect policymakers to rely primarily on persuasion to produce compliance

with their desired international norms and rules. Inaction (in tangible terms), in other

words, should be the most common response to challenges from the weak.52

Second, we should see a dominant state respond actively to challenges only when

the latter affect the interests of powerful parochial interest groups. Only groups with sufficient political clout will be able to put pressure on policymakers to act. While all interest groups may try to appeal to policymakers to protect their interests, only those with sufficient political leverage will be able to influence policymakers. The domestic balance of power will determine whose voice will be heard, and heeded.

Third, the choice of enforcement strategy will ultimately reflect the interests and preferences of the most powerful domestic interest group that has a stake in the issue, rather than of the policymakers in charge. Interest groups may not only have preferences over outcomes, they may also have preferences over what policies are adopted to achieve

52 This may also account for why relatively innocuous challengers are described in extremely threatening terms. If this was not the case, it would be very difficult to justify the mobilization of resources for international order enforcement. For an example of this argument see Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: America’s Search for a New Foreign Policy (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995). 34

their desired outcomes. For example, the use of economic sanctions may not benefit

exporters of goods to the target state. Thus, the latter are more likely to support swift and

powerful military action, rather than extended periods of economic sanctions. Better yet,

offers of positive inducements may bring with them economic benefits for such groups.

A domestic politics explanation of international order enforcement, therefore,

posits that how the strong respond to challenges is determined primarily by the domestic political process, rather than by international constraints and incentives, such as the balance of capabilities. The choice of enforcement strategies can best be explained by a an examination of the domestic balance of power in the dominant state, and the role of parochial interest-groups in the policy process. The more policy makers are beholden to various political interest groups, the more they will feel obliged to adopt their policy preferences in response to challenges to international order.

The modal response to challenges from the weak, according to the domestic politics perspective, should be non-response, as policymakers will be hard-pressed to garner domestic political- and material support for costly foreign policy initiatives.

Deviation from this modal response will be a function of the preferences and relative power of domestic interest groups whose interests are challenged.

Unlike the realist perspective, the domestic politics perspective does not offer specific predictions about the conditions under which dominant states will choose positive inducements or negative sanctions to impose their rule upon the weak. Instead, it offers a hypothesis about the factors and policy processes behind these choices. That is, it offers a causal mechanism that diverges from the realist focus on unitary actors who, unencumbered by societal pressures, deftly choose policies based upon their evaluation of

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relative capabilities and reputational consequences. By contrast, the domestic politics

perspective posits that in order to explain the choice of enforcement strategies, we should fix our attention on the interests, preferences and demands of parochial interest groups,

the domestic balance of power, and policymakers’ dependence on various interest groups.

Although policymakers may evaluate costs and benefits when choosing to respond to

challenges from the weak, they will look inward toward their society rather than to the

international system to assess these costs and benefits.

2.3 Social Conventions: Norms, Identities, and International Order Enforcement

Although the realist and domestic politics models differ about the specific factors

that govern the choice of enforcement strategies, they both assume that policy choices are driven by instrumentally rational cost-benefit calculations. This assumption has recently been criticized for not taking into account the extent to which policymakers are influenced by the social context in which they operate. State behavior, critics claim, is to a large extent governed by socially constructed norms, values, and rules that provide non-

material standards, constrains and incentives for behavior. 53

Such identities and norms (social conventions) have recently been used to explain a variety of important international phenomena, which cannot be easily accounted for by an exclusive focus on material capabilities and reputational considerations, or by the bargaining process among domestic interest groups. Scholars have linked international norms respectively to the efforts by states to procure modern conventional weaponry in

53 Peter J. Katzenstein. ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University press, 1996); John S. Duffield, “Political Culture and State Behavior: Why Germany Confounds Realism,” International Organization 53, No. 4 (Autumn 1999): 765-803.

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the absence of strategic necessity,54 to the emergence of a nuclear- and chemical weapons taboo55, and to changing purposes of foreign military intervention.56 Cultural norms, which are seen to reflect actor-specific characteristics (identities), have been found to influence states’ negotiation- and bargaining styles,57 their proclivity to resort to third- party arbitration and peaceful conflict settlement, and their propensity to engage in multilateral action and international war.58

This ‘sociological’ logic and a number of recent studies suggest that social conventions (ideas about what constitutes appropriate behavior) may also have an impact on how dominant states choose to enforce international order. After all, the creation and enforcement of political and social order is inherently governed by socially constructed rules, norms, and values.

2.3.1 Social Conventions: Preferences over Outcomes and Strategy

Socially constructed constraints, incentives, and guidelines – embedded in identities and social norms -- are believed to influence state behavior in two primary ways. They generate and shape state interests and preferences, such as the desire to create

54 Dana P. Eyre and Mark C. Suchman, “Status, Norms, and the Proliferation of Conventional Weapons: An Institutional Theory Approach,” in Katzenstein, ed., “The Culture of National Security,” 79-113.

55 Richard Price and Nina Tannenwald, “Norms and Deterrence: the Nuclear and Chemical Weapons Taboos,” in Katzenstein, ed., “The Culture of National Security,” 114-152.

56 Martha Finnemore, “Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention,” in Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., “The Culture of National Security, “ 153-185. See also Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs About the Use of Force, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003). 57 Raymond Cohen, Negotiating Across Cultures: International Communication in an Interdependent World (Washington D.C.: United States Institute for Peace, 1997).

58 Spencer R. Weart, Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Bruce M. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

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a liberal commercial order, or to spread democracy (or, although this is less often emphasized, less savory political principles such as fascism or Soviet style communism).

That is, they are the wellspring of preferences over outcomes.59 It is primarily in this context that norms and identity have drawn the most attention from scholars in the field.

Social conventions, however, can also affect state behavior by determining or influencing the means by which states choose to pursue those interests.60 That is, they condition the preferences individual actors, or groups, hold over the policies by which they pursue their goals.61 In the words of Legro and Kowert, norms and identities can

“shape the instruments or means that states find available and appropriate. In other words, norms shape actors’ awareness and acceptance of the methods and technologies on which they might rely to accomplish their objectives.”62 In the latter capacity in particular, norms may help explain how dominant states choose to respond to challenges from weak but recalcitrant states.

59 James Lee Ray, “The Abolition of slavery and the End of International War,” International Organization 43, No. 3 (Summer 1989): 407-439. Audie Klotz, “Norms Reconstituting Interests: global Racial Equality and U.S. Sanctions against South Africa, “ International Organization 49, No. 3, (Summer 1995): 451- 478. John Gerard Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order,” International Organization 36, No.2, (Spring 1982): 379-415. 60 For an example of the effects of culture on the use of accommodative policies in international politics see Thomas A. Breslin, Beyond Pain: The Role of Pleasure and Culture in the Making of Foreign Affairs, (Westport: Praeger, 2002). Others have identified cultural norms as important constraints on the use of force in foreign policy. See for example, Thomas U. Berger, “Norms, Identity, and National Security in Germany and Japan,” in: Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., “The Culture of National Security,” 317-356, and Peter J. Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).

61 As Finnemore argues, “Socially constructed rules, principles, norms of behavior, and shared beliefs may provide states, individuals, and other actors with understandings of what is important or valuable and what are effective and/or legitimate means of obtaining those valued good. These social structures may supply states with both preferences and strategies for pursuing those preferences.” Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).

62 Paul Kowert and Jeffrey Legro, “Norms, Identity, and Their Limits: A theoretical Reprise,” in: Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., “The Culture of National Security,” 463. 38

How do identities and norms affect the means by which states seek to influence

their counterparts? In particular, how can identities and norms affect how dominant states

respond to challenges to their desired international order? They may do so by influencing

how policymakers interpret, i.e. assign meaning to, and classify behavior that deviates

from the rules they seek to promote and enforce. As “constructivists point out, facts or

events do not speak for themselves but must be interpreted. Because actors often attach different meanings to the same behavior, an act or statement can generate multiple interpretations.”63 Social norms and identities provide standards of evaluation for

interpreting deviant behavior. They can also help identify the appropriate responses to

remedy such behavior, and delimit the set of policy tools that policymakers will consider

appropriate in any particular situation.64 A domestic analogy can demonstrate these

functions of social conventions in the enforcement of social order.

Many, if not most, societies discourage their members from killing one another,

whether out of moral or practical considerations or both. But even in societies with a strong norm against killing, transgressions of the norm do not always draw similar

responses from the authorities or other members of the society. Neither do all societies

respond in similar fashion to transgressions of this almost universal norm. In the United

63 Elizabeth Kier and Jonathan Mercer, “Setting Precedents in Anarchy: Military Intervention and Weapons of Mass Destruction,” International Security 20, No.4, (Spring, 1996): 87.

64 It appears that the IR literature is built upon the notion that transgressions against norms will only produce punitive responses. This, however, seems a relatively misguided assumption. While it may be true, as Friedrich Kratochwil has pointed out, that society seldom rewards people for following a norm or a rule, there is more than one way to get those who transgress to modify their behavior. While punishments may be the modal response, the choice of ‘enforcement’ strategy may vary from situation to situation, and from one society to another. Thus, for example, mass demonstrations and riots are usually not considered acceptable behavior in society, yet sometimes states choose to crack down on such behavior, at others they offer positive incentives to stabilize society. Thus, transgressions of norms and rules do not always generate punitive responses, although they often may. Friedrich V., Kratochwil, Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the conditions of practical and legal reasoning in international relations and domestic affairs, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989): 58. 39

States, for one, not all forms of killing are judged to be equally reprehensible or socially

unacceptable. Under some conditions, American society (like other societies) accepts the

notion of justifiable killing by individual members of society even when they do not act

in an official capacity. It regards self-defense, for example, as an acceptable justification

for taking an aggressor’s life. Killing someone for profit, on the other hand, is not

deemed justifiable.

Although the two acts are not physically distinguishable from one another (i.e. we cannot distinguish one from another by empirical observation alone), premeditated murder and killing out of self-defense are imbued with significantly different meaningsand elicit divergent societal responses. In the United States, self-defense is considered a legitimate act, even though the outcome may be generally considered to be undesirable. Premeditated murder is illegitimate and can therefore not be accepted under any circumstance, although the punishments reserved for such behavior may vary even among different states. The societal response to what is empirically indistinguishable behavior, i.e. taking someone else’s life, is conditioned by social conventions that allow one to differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate behavior and that outline appropriate responses to each.

The key distinction between the two types of behavior revolves around their legitimacy, or social acceptability. In fact, most societies make such distinctions in one way or another. While all societies have some core rules and norms that are deemed immutable, most societies also allow for exceptions to such rules.

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In his broad review of how social order enforcement in both advanced and

‘primitive’ societies, for instance, Robert Edgerton finds that while deviance is usually

punished by societies, rules and norms are rarely uniformly enforced and that most

societies allow for exceptions to even their most sacred rules.65

The standards for legitimizing such exceptions, i.e. for making some deviations

socially acceptable, vary from society to society, as does the extent to which these

standards are formally codified. Common examples of allowable lapses are, for

examples, those caused by “temporary conditions such as illness, intoxication, or

emotional stress,” or “more lasting circumstances such as age, sex, or physical

disability.”66 There can be significant variation in the nature of responses that are

considered to be appropriate to deal with socially deviant behavior. While the death-

penalty may be acceptable in some societies, for instance, it is rejected as an appropriate

form of punishment in others. Such social conventions, moreover, may not be immutable.

They may not only be different from society to society, but may also change over time.67

Some international relations scholars may question the relevance of this discussion to the issue of international order enforcement. After all, the international system has limited resemblance to domestic political orders, one of the reasons being that it lacks many of the authoritative and explicitly codified laws that help define socially deviant behavior and that regulate responses to such behavior. There is, however, good

65 Robert B. Edgerton, Rules, Exceptions, and Social Order, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

66 Edgerton, 6.

67 For example, while the use of force is considered to be an appropriate tool for the enforcement of social order in the United States, in “contemporary Japan... it is a social fact, shared by the police and military, that security policy should be pursued only by peaceful means.” Peter J. Katzenstein, “Cultural Norms and National Security,” 16. 41

reason to believe that social conventions do play a similar role in conditioning the efforts of the strong in their attempts to enforce their desired international order. The reason for this is that despite scholarly skepticism regarding the actual existence of a society of international states, leaders of dominant states have demonstrated repeatedly that they do think of the international system or parts thereof as a society. Moreover, an important implication of Edgerton’s findings is that human beings may simply be conditioned to apply social conventions to interpret and assess challenges to social order, whether at the domestic or international level; that is, they are conditioned to examine the “why” behind deviant behavior and also to identify “who” deviates in order to decide whether such behavior is socially acceptable and in order to formulate appropriate responses.

The preceding discussion generates three propositions about international order enforcement. First, social conventions, such as norms and identities, may have an important effect on how order is enforced in the international system, just as they do in other social settings were order is pursued and enforced. Second, how dominant states respond to behavior that challenges their desired international order will be a function of how policymakers evaluate the legitimacy of that behavior. Their evaluations, in turn, will be influenced by socially constructed standards that may vary across time, space, and from one individual actor to another. Third, a challenge to the established order will as a rule elicit a punitive response. A challenge that is considered a legitimate exception, however, will either fail to draw a response, or will generate offers of positive inducements aimed at eliminating the deviant behavior in the future. When will the latter be the case? When the results (i.e. social costs) of the deviant behavior, no matter how legitimate it is deemed to be, are unacceptable to the dominant state.

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By what standards do policymakers assess the legitimacy of challenges to their desired international order? The sociological literature in IR and contemporary US foreign policy yields two primary standards by which leaders of dominant states will assess the social acceptability of deviant behavior and identify and choose appropriate responses. First, they may be guided by the prevailing norms of the international system in which they operate. After all, even the most dominant states rarely create new political and social orders from scratch. While newly ascendant dominant states may choose to promote particularistic substantive interests and norms, such a liberal trade or religious values, they will not necessarily reject all existing norms and rules in the system.68

Second, the sociological literature highlights the central role of identity or the ‘basic character’ of states as a general taproot of state preferences, interests and, therefore, behavior.69 Identities can also influence how dominant states will evaluate and respond to challenges to their desired order. In what follows, both standards are discussed in more detail to generate hypotheses about their role in the choice of punishments and rewards in international order enforcement.

68 As John Ikenberry points out, dominant states may also have an interest in creating formal restraints on their behavior in order to assuage the fears of exploitation that may inspire potential great power challengers and secondary states to challenge their dominance. G. John Ikenberry, “ After Victory.”

69 See Ted Hopf, “The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory,” International Security 23, no. 1 (Summer 1998): 171-200 and Ronald J. Jepperson, Alexander Wendt, and Peter J. Katzenstein, “Norms, Identity, and Culture in National Security,” in Katzenstein, ed., “The Culture of National Security.” 33-78.

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2.3.2 International Norms and International Order Enforcement

One often cited source for norms that affect state behavior is the international environment.70 Norms at this level are not generated by, and do not reflect, the unique attributes and identities of the individual actors in the system, but are instead products of the interactions between actors that become codified as international norms. The international environment can therefore influence state behavior by “creating expectations concerning the kinds of conduct that are normal among states in particular situations. Conventions are established defining the way states should react to other states.”71 In other words, social conventions do not only specify appropriate behavior, but can also guide appropriate responses to behavior that deviates from the common norm. Such conventions can be created on purpose through formal and informal agreements between the members of the international system, but can also emerge more or less spontaneously as inadvertent by-products of the interactions between states, and through the actions of transnational and sub-national normative entrepreneurs.72

70 The literature distinguishes between constitutive norms, which define state identities, and regulative norms that regulate behavior. For a discussion of this distinction see, John G. Ruggie, “What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-Utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge,” International Organization 52, No. 4, (Autumn 1998: 855-85. For an example of constitutive norms see Dana P. Eyre and Mark C. Suchman, ”Status, Norms and the Proliferation of Conventional Weapons.” They argue that the possession of advanced conventional weapons is an integral part of what is means to be a modern state in the contemporary international system. For an example of regulative norms see Richard Price and Nina Tannenwald, “Norms and Deterrence,” and Martha Finnemore, “The Purpose of Intervention.”

71 Evan Luard, War in International Society: A Study in International Sociology, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986): 15-16.

72 For the origins of international norms see Audi Klotz, “Norms Reconstituting Interests,” Finnemore, “The Purpose of Intervention,” Price and Tannenwald, “Norms and Deterrence,” Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norms Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization 52, No. 4, (Autumn 1998): 887-917, and Michael Byers, “Custom, Power, and the Power of Rules: Customary 44

General norms that regulate conflict resolution processes and conflict behavior in

the international system may be particularly influential in determining how the strong

choose to impose their rule upon the weak. These can include restraints on specific influence tools, such as the contemporary nuclear- and chemical weapons taboos and acceptable uses of military intervention for international debt-collection. They can also include established procedures for conflict resolution, however, such as the emphasis on peaceful conflict resolution in the U.N. era, the norm on Great Power consultation about military intervention on the continent during the 19th Century Concert of Europe, and the

laws of war that specify not only whom soldiers may kill, but also when and how.73

International norms may therefore have a more pronounced effect on the nature of

the enforcement strategies chosen than on how dominant states evaluate behavior that

deviates from their desired international order. That is, they may circumscribe the choices

available to policymakers once they have determined whether punitive measures, or

positive inducements, are the most appropriate response to a particular challenge. Thus,

policymakers that choose coercion as the appropriate enforcement strategy in a particular

situation may be limited to economic or diplomatic coercion, as military force may

simply be considered inappropriate.74

International Law from an Interdisciplinary Perspective,” Michigan Journal of International Law 17, 1995: 109-180

73 See Price and Tannenwald, “Norms and Deterrence,” and Finnemore, “The Purpose of Intervention.” Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1978): 41.

74 The legality of naval blockades, for example, was determined by international norms in the 19th century. Only under specified conditions were such blockades considered legitimate.

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2.3.3 Identity and International Order Enforcement

As argued previously, the sociological literature also highlights the central role of

identity, or the ‘basic character’ of states, as a wellspring of state preferences, interests

and behavior. As such, it also raises the possibility that identity may play an important

role in how dominant states choose to enforce international order. In what follows, I will

discuss two dimensions of identity that may be important in this context: (1) the identity

of the challenger, or perceptions thereof, (2) the particular culture of the dominant state.

(1) Shared and diverging identities (In-groups and out-groups). A number of studies show that how states respond to, and interact with, others may be a function of the identity of the ‘other.’ That is to say, they may evaluate and interpret the behavior of those who belong to their “in-group” differently than they do similar behavior of those that belong to “out-groups.”75As a result, they may also respond differently to basically

similar challenges, depending upon the identity of the challenger. Individuals use

identities as cognitive short-cuts to interpret the behaviors of others and to formulate their

own responses.

75 For an extensive review of the social psychology literature on intergroup relations, and the concepts of “in-groups” and “out-groups,” see Marilynn B. Brewer and Rupert J. Brown, “ Intergroup Relations,” in: Daniel T. Gilbert, Susan T. Fiske, and Gardner Lindzey, eds., The Handbook of Social Psychology, 4th edition, Vol. 2, (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998): 554-594. For an application of social identity theory, which is based upon the in-group/out-group distinction, to international politics see Jonathan Mercer, “Anarchy and Identity,” International Organization 49, No. 2, Spring (1995): 229-252.

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In this case, we would hypothesize that such categorization determines the enforcement strategies that a dominant state will choose. “Once an individual assigns an identity to someone else, the other person becomes a member of a class assumed to have a particular set of associated discursive practices. Otherwise incomprehensible or meaningless behavior becomes meaningful and the individual ascribes intentions and motives according to the identity classification scheme.” 76

Richard Payne, for example, argues that the use of force in social interactions is part and parcel of American culture, but that coercion is reserved primarily for those who are perceived to be culturally distant. Those who are considered culturally similar, on the other hand, can expect the US to employ much more benign influence attempts when their interests diverge from US interests and desires.77 There is no reason to believe that this argument would only apply to the United States. In other words, cultural distance may play an important role in how states perceive the behavior of others, and in conditioning their responses to such behavior. The idea that diverging identities may play an important role is echoed in Henry Nau’s recent study, in which he argues that knowledge of the balance of power is not enough to understand post-Cold War US foreign policy. Knowledge of what he calls the balance of identity is also needed in order to explain US foreign policy.78 Nau’s argument is closely related to the contemporary

76 Ted Hopf, Social Construction of International Politics: Identities & Foreign Policies, Moscow, 1955 & 1999, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002): 6.

77 Richard J. Payne, The Clash with Distant Cultures: Values, Interests, and Force in American Foreign Policy, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). 78 Henry R. Nau, At Home Abroad: Identity and Power in American Foreign Policy, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002). Nau argues that converging identities between liberal states should produce more benign interactions. However, it is not always clear whether Nau believes that this should be the case, or that it actually is the case.

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democratic peace argument. In its most basic version the latter holds that liberal states do not go to war with one another.79 However, some have argued that shared liberal values have an even broader effect on the interactions between states. When conflicts of interest occur between two liberal states,

“the norms governing the domestic decision-making processes of liberal systems are expected to regulate their interactions in international institutions. Democracies externalize their internal norms when cooperating with each other. Power asymmetries will be mediated by norms of democratic decision-making among equals emphasizing persuasion, compromise, and the non-use of force or coercive power. Norms of regular consultation, of joint consensus-building, and of nonhierarchy legitimize and enable a habit of mutual influence on each other’s preferences and behaviors. These norms serve as key obligations translating the domestic decision-making rules of democracies to the international arena. This is not to suggest that consultation norms exist only in alliances among democracies. But consultation means “codetermination” when democracies are involved.”80

The notion that diverging identities matter for the interactions among states is certainly not new. Moreover, it is not restricted to US foreign policy. In The Standard of

‘Civilization’ in International Society, Gerrit Gong examines the development of a

‘standard of civilization,’ by which, in the 19th Century, states distinguished between

‘civilized’ and ‘barbaric,’ or ‘savage’ nations. According to Gong, “it was expected that members of the same society of ‘civilized’ states would share sufficiently in fundamental, underlying assumptions about the world; in customary, historically proven institutions; and in ordinary, everyday life-styles, so as to feel part of a common society and a shared

79 See Bruce M. Russett, “Grasping the Democratic Peace”; Spencer R. Weart, “Never At War”; and, John M. Owen, Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).

80 Thomas Risse-Kappen, “Collective Identity in a Democratic Community: The Case of NATO,” in Katzenstein, ed., “The Culture of National Security,” 368. 48

civilization.” States that guaranteed certain basic rights, that possessed a basically efficient state bureaucracy, were able to defend themselves, and acted in accordance with international law, were considered ‘civilized.’81 Gong’s study clearly implies that different responses were reserved for those states who met the ‘standard of civilization,’ and for those who did not, as international law was thought to apply to the former, but not to the latter.82 “Thus, ‘differences in civilization’ minimized the legal protection of

‘uncivilized’ countries outside the pale of international law, while providing ready excuse for the ‘civilized’ countries to exercise military force in the cause of ‘civilizing’ them.”83

In short, these studies imply that perceptions of shared or diverging identity, are an important standard by which states assess the behavior of others, and may therefore help determine their responses to such behavior.84 Thus, it is also possible that in

81 Gerrit W. Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’ in International Society, (London: Clarendon Press, 1984): 21. Gong outlines 5 different criteria for ‘civilization’ in Chapter 1. According to David Strang, mutual state recognition may also depend upon the identity of the states involved. Thus, while there are ‘objective’ measures of statehood that may be shared by states, recognition may be based upon other factor, such as their domestic political identity. David Strang, “Contested sovereignty: the social construction of colonial imperialism,” in State Sovereignty as Social Construct, eds., Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): 24.

82 For a study that highlights the importance of technological and scientific achievements as the most important measure of equality, i.e. civilization, see Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989). Identity politics may have significant effects on other important aspects of international relations as well. Michael Fischerkeller argues that cultural judgments influence states’ perceptions of the balance of power, i.e. he argues that the identity of the opponent plays an important role in states’ perceptions of its capabilities regardless of the ‘objective’ balance. Michael P. Fischerkeller, “ David versus Goliath: Cultural Judgments in Asymmetric Wars,” Security Studies 7, No. 4 (Summer 1998): 1-43.

83 Gerrit Gong, “The Standard of ‘Civilization’,” 68.

84 As James Lee Ray argued, “rationalizations in defense of international wars, too, often depend on invidious comparisons between groups of human beings, on “us versus them” distinctions. Colonial wars of conquest, for example, were justified as necessary for the purpose of spreading civilization (or restoring law and order) to inferior peoples. Even international wars between “modern” states have been based on invidious comparisons, those devised by Adolf Hitler being the most infamous. James Lee Ray, “The Abolition of Slavery and the End of International War, “ International Organization 43, no. 3 (Summer 1989): 423.

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responding to challenges to their desired international order, dominant states may

differentiate between those who they include in their in-group, and those who they

consider outsiders. Behavior by the former will be justified even when it deviates from

the established rules and norms. Similar behavior by the latter, however, will be

considered illegitimate and will elicit punitive responses. The factors that determine the

existence of a shared identity may vary significantly, not only from state to state, but also

from one era to another.85 The basic principle remains the same, however. Physically

indistinguishable behavior that deviates from the established rules may be interpreted

differently, depending upon the perceived identity, or identifying characteristics, of the

challenger. Actions by those who are perceived to share the identity of the dominant state

are considered to be legitimate. Similar actions on part of actors that are not considered to

be part of the ‘in-group’ are considered to be illegitimate.

(2) Cultural Norms and International Order Enforcement. Another plausible

source for social conventions that may affect how states interact in general, and how the strong may choose to respond to challenges from the weak, in particular, can be found in cultural norms that are unique to the dominant actor. In this context, a number of scholars have highlighted the effects of domestic identities and norms on the means by which states seek to achieve their foreign policy goals. Japan’s failure to assume great power status, for instance, and its renunciation of the use of military force in the post-WW II era, has been attributed to its national cultural norms. A similar argument has been made

85 According to Henry Nau, convergence of identities can be measured by the purposes to which societies believe force can be used legitimately. This is the one dimension that determines national identity, and convergence along this dimension, or divergence, will affect the nature of state interactions. Particularly, it will affect the influence tools that state will choose to resolve their conflicts of interest. Nau, “At Home Abroad.” 50

to explain Germany’s restraint in the wake of the end of the Cold War.86 The failure to pursue great power status, and the near total rejection of the use of force in international relations on the part of these states - a rejection which seem more fundamental to

Japanese foreign policy than that of Germany - is therefore not attributable to exogenous factors such as the distribution of power, or to international norms. Instead, it has been attributed to norms that emanate from the identity and culture of the relevant state.87 It is certainly not inconceivable that similar norms could limit the policy options available to dominant states that are confronted with challenges from the weak.88

In sum, the sociological perspective raises the possibility that how dominant states choose to respond to challenges from the weak may be determined by social conventions that determine the appropriateness of both deviant behavior and responses to such behavior. More specifically, the sociological approach suggests that responses to challenges from the weak will be a function of the perceived legitimacy of such

86 On Japan see Katzenstein, “Cultural Norms and National Security.” For Germany see Duffield, “Political Culture and State Behavior.” For a study that addresses both see Thomas U. Berger, “Norms, Identity, and National Security in Germany and Japan, “ in Katzenstein, ed., “The Culture of National Security,” 317-56.

87 In a similar argument, Paul Kennedy notes that appeasement, “has been a particularly British form of diplomacy since the middle of the nineteenth century.” Paul. M. Kennedy, “The Tradition of Appeasement in British Foreign Policy, 1865-1939,” in Strategy and Diplomacy, 1870-1945: eight studies, (London: Allen and Unwin, 1983): 15-39. For another study of great powers that showed a penchant for the use of positive inducements see Thomas A. Breslin, Beyond Pain: The Role of Pleasure and Culture in the Making of Foreign Affairs, (Westport: Praeger, 2002).

88 This possibility is recognized, but not fully developed, in Gilpin’s study War and Change in World Politics. In the latter, Gilpin argued that “dominant powers have had very different sets of ideologies and interests that they have sought to achieve and incorporate into the rules and regimes of the system. Rome and Britain each created a world order, but the often oppressive rule of the Pax Romana was in most respects different from the generally liberal rule of the Pax Brittanica. Napoleon and Hitlerite Germany gave very different governances to the Europe they united. The Pax Americana differs from what a Pax Sovietica would contain.” See, Gilpin, 37. See also Robert Kagan, “The Benevolent Empire,” Foreign Policy, No. 111, Summer (1998): 24-35, in which the author distinguishes American hegemony, from other attempts by dominant state to impose their rule upon the world. The difference, Kagan argues, derives from America’s “democratic form of government,” which can be contrasted with Soviet hegemony that “reflected Stalin’s approach to governance.” (27) 51

challenges. When behavior that deviates from the norm is considered socially acceptable

it will garner neither a response nor condemnation. When such behavior is deemed

inappropriate or illegitimate, however, it will draw punitive responses. Positive

inducements, aimed at stopping the behavior in question, will only be offered when the

deviant behavior can be legitimately justified and when its continuation is considered too

costly in social terms. A variety of standards for evaluating deviant behavior and

identifying appropriate responses have been suggested in the literature, including

international norms, shared identities, and cultural norms specific to the dominant state.

2.4 Research Design

The preceding sections offer three different causal arguments about the choice of

coercion and positive inducements in international order enforcement. In the following

chapters, these arguments are subjected to empirical scrutiny in three case studies of

international order enforcement: the British responses to two Chinese challenges to the

Pax Britannica in the 1830s, and the American responses to two nuclear proliferation

challenges in the first half of the 1990s, Ukraine’s failure to relinquish the nuclear arsenal

that it had inherited after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and North Korea’s threat to

leave the NPT and its efforts to produce plutonium at its nuclear processor Yongbyon.

These three cases have been chosen because they: (1) allow for both cross- national and cross-temporal comparisons; (2) they offer variation on the dependent variable; that is, they include cases of punishments, rewards, and non-response, thereby reducing the likelihood of systematically biased conclusions89; (3) they involve two

89 Political scientists have warned against selecting cases on the dependent variable, that is extreme values of the dependent variable, because this may produce systematically biased errors in estimating the causal effects of the independent variables. See Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba, Designing 52

different issue areas; and (4) offer significant ‘within-case’ variation on the dependent

variable (i.e. shifts in enforcement strategies either from punishments and rewards or vice versa). This increases the utility of these cases by increasing the number of observations.

In this case, therefore, the three cases in question offer a total of 6 observations on the

dependent variable. Having variation on the dependent variable within each case is also

important because the ‘models’ do not always offer different predictions. Thus, both the

realist and the sociological model predict that coercion will be the default enforcement

strategy. However, all three theoretical perspectives should obviously predict that shifts

in the dependent variable should be associated with and preceded by corresponding

changes in the explanatory variables.

Finally, the arguments laid out in the preceding chapter basically revolve around

actor motivations. Are policymakers driven by calculations of relative capabilities and

reputation, domestic political costs, or by social conventions regarding the acceptability

of international behavior? Because it is impossible to obtain direct and conclusive

evidence of actor motivations the causal arguments made here can only be tested by

examining the observable implications that should logically follow from them. The

strength of the various explanations will lie not only in obtaining positive evidence of

these observable implications, but also in the lack of supporting evidence for the

alternative competing models.

Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research, (Princeton: Princeton University Press), and Barbara Geddes, “How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get: Selection Bias in Comparative Politics,” in: Political Analysis 2, (1990): 131-150. Collier and Mahoney, however, argue that this will not be the case in “a selection procedure designed to produce a sample that reflects the full variance of the dependent variable.” David Collier and James Mahoney, “Insights and Pitfalls: Selection Bias in Qualitative Research,” World Politics 49, No.1 (1996): 62. 53

The main hypothesis and the observable implications of each model are summarized in the following section, together with the kinds of evidence used to evaluate them.

2.4.1 Summary of Hypotheses and Observable Implications

H1: The choice of coercion and positive inducements is a function of coercive capabilities and reputational concerns.

The realist argument posits that dominant states will resort to coercion as their default response to challenges from the weak. They will only offer positive inducements when they have no viable coercive option available and when they do not fear detrimental effects to their reputation. Thus, we should see that positive inducements should be associated with significant constraints on the coercive capabilities of the dominant states and a stated belief that the policy choice will have no effect on its reputation for power.

To measure such constraints or lack thereof each case study examines: (1) data from the Correlates of War project to determine whether the dominant state was faced with a rising great power challenger that imposed restraint on its use of its coercive capabilities; (2) data from the Militarized International Disputes data set to evaluate whether the dominant state was involved in a number of simultaneous peripheral challenges that could have constrained its available coercive capabilities; (3) examines the vulnerability of the weaker state to military and economic coercion both in geographical as well as geopolitical terms, and; (4) whether the dominant states

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possessed the particular coercive resources necessary to exploit those capabilities. The

main reason for this is that aggregate measures of relative capabilities do not offer

sufficient information as to the specific means of coercion that may be necessary in any

particular case. A fair test of the realist argument, therefore, does not only examine

whether the dominant state possessed overwhelming aggregate resources but whether it

possessed the specific resources necessary to successfully coerce a weaker state in a

given situation. In addition to data from the datasets mentioned above, I rely upon primary and secondary sources to examine whether policymakers believed that they had sufficient coercive capabilities available to successfully coerce the weaker state. Finally, such sources are also used to examine leaders’ perceptions of the reputational effects of their policy choices.

H2: The choice of coercion and positive inducements is a function of domestic political costs and benefits.

The domestic politics model posits that the choice of coercion and positive inducements will reflect policymakers’ assessment of the domestic political costs of their various policy options. This means that we should see domestic interest groups actively involved in promoting a particular policy, we should see that leaders abandon policies that carry domestic costs, and that they will adopt policies that they would not choose out of their own volition. To assess the concern of policymakers with the domestic political costs of their policy choices I examine: (a) whether a domestic interest group (including general public opinion) existed that had a strong preference for a particular enforcement strategy or an aversion for another; (b) whether the policies adopted by the policymakers

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were consistent with the preferences of the particular interest group or with public opinion (c) the timing of any policy changes (Because both dominant states under examination in this study are democracies, we should expect policy changes to take place when policymakers are most vulnerable to retribution, i.e. at the voting booth), and; (d) whether policymakers failed to adopt their favored policies.

H3: The choice of coercion and positive inducements is a function of the legitimacy of the “deviant” behavior and social conventions governing the appropriate responses to such behavior.

The sociological model suggests that dominant states will use positive inducements in response to challenges from the weak when that behavior is considered legitimate given the circumstances and when a continuation of the deviant behavior is considered to be very costly whether in material or social terms. To assess the utility of this explanation I rely upon both primary and secondary sources to examine whether:

(a) policymakers consider the motivations behind the deviant behavior; (b) available

‘objective’ measures of identity divergence between the dominant state and the weaker state such as the freedom house survey; (c) policy choices were consistent with the stated perception of the legitimacy of the deviant behavior; (d) policymakers refer to dimensions of the basic character of the weaker state, such as its lack of cultural, political, ‘civilizational,’ or technological sophistication; (e) such representations were consistent with the enforcement strategies chosen, and;

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(f) policymakers appealed to international or domestic norms in rejecting particular policy options even though these options were not constrained for the reasons provided in the realist and domestic politics models.

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CHAPTER 3

CHINA CHALLENGES THE PAX BRITANNICA: THE NAPIER ‘FIZZLE’ AND THE OPIUM WAR, 1834-1839

“I may say without any vain glorious boast... that we stand at the head of moral, social and political civilization. Our task is to lead the way and direct the march of other nations”

Lord Palmerston90

3.1 The Pax Britannica

At the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Great Britain emerged as the

dominant great power in the international system. Although not endowed with an

abundance in natural resources and manpower — both important building blocs of

national power in the 19th century and after -- Britain’s economic prowess, its naval

superiority, and its leading role in the victory over France, allowed it to establish what is

known today as the Pax Britannica; a period of global British pre-eminence – although

not outright domination – marked by an absence of major great power wars and severe

revisionist challenges on the European continent and beyond.91 While its potential

90 Cited in Martin Lynn, “British Policy, Trade, and Informal Empire in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 3 (1999), 103.

91 This does not mean that there was no Great Power competition at all. Especially within Europe and in the Middle East, Britain was frequently engaged in balancing against real or perceived threats by the other Great Powers, in particular France and Russia. See, Kenneth Bourne, Palmerston: The Early Years, 1784- 58

European rivals were almost exclusively concerned with continental power politics, Great

Britain also took the opportunity to create and maintain an extra-European international order in its own image.92 The Pax Britannica therefore consisted of two key components; the maintenance of a stable balance of power on the European continent and the creation and governance of an extra-continental international order congenial to British interests.93

Together with the elimination of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, which led to a long and sustained diplomatic and naval anti-slave trade campaign, the primary goal of this British-led international order was the creation and maintenance of an international economic order favorable to British commercial interests.94

Until the early 1840s, this meant the promotion of safe access to foreign markets for British merchants and efforts to obtain for them similar terms as those available to

1841, (London: Allen Lane, 1982), especially chapter 11. According to Adam Watson, however, in the first thirty years following the Napoleonic Wars, the conflicts between the great powers were confined primarily to disagreements as to how to manage the system, and did not involve serious” ‘bilateral conflicts of direct interest. The aristocratic statemen who managed the affairs of Europe during those three decades felt a solidarity of purpose: they feared the dangers that threatened their world, but not each other.” Adam Watson, “The Evolution of International Society,” 242.

92 Patrick K. O’Brien, “The Pax Britannica and American Hegemony: Precedent, Antecedent, or Just Another History?” in Two Hegemonies 1846-1914 and the United States 1941-2001, eds. Patrick K. O’Brien and Armand Clesse. (Burlington: Ashgate, 2002): 3-66.

93 Michael W. Doyle, Empires (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), 235, and Hyam, “Britain’s Imperial Century.” Because it was not more than primus enter pares among the great powers, Britain remained at all times vigilant against attempts by its Great Power rivals to extend their influence beyond the European continent. Thus, it is generally acknowledged that the Eastern Question, i.e. the imminent or feared breakup of the Ottoman empire was the “most persistent and the most serious international problem with which European diplomats had to deal during the nineteenth century,” as it provided opportunities for both France and Russia to expand their influence. Muriel E. Chamberlain, Lord Palmerston (Cardiff: GPC Books, 1987): 36. See also Harry G. Gelber, Opium, Soldiers and Evangelicals: Britain’s 1840-1842 War with China, and its Aftermath, (Houndsmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004): 23-24.

94 According to John Halstead, the spread of “good government” and Christianity were also among the goals of British imperialism. John P. Halstead, The Second Empire: Trade, Philanthropy, and Good Government, 1829-1890 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1983). The spread of free trade (commerce) and Christianity were seen by many Victorians as related and worthy goals. See, Brian Stanley, “’Commerce and Christianity’: Providence Theory, the Missionary Movement, and the Imperialism of Free Trade, 1842- 1860,” The Historical Journal 26, No.1 (March 1983): 71-94.

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traders of other nationalities. That is, British leaders “sought to secure most favored nation treatment – which meant that British exports would obtain access to foreign markets on the most favourable terms granted to the exports of any other country.”95 In the first two decades of the Pax Britannica, therefore, British policymakers were mostly interested in promoting fair and safe trade for British merchants, not necessarily free trade. As Britain’s Foreign Minister, Lord Palmerston stated, “the business of government is to open and secure the roads for the merchants.”96

Neither Palmerston nor his colleagues believed that it was their job to determine the exact terms under which British merchants would have to operate. That is, they believed that sovereign governments had the right to decide whether to allow free trade or to impose restrictions on trade. As long as they allowed safe access to their markets, protected their lives and property, and treated British merchants the same way as they did merchants of other nationalities, British policymakers were content. It was only from the mid-1840s, beginning with the abolition of the corn-laws, that British governments started to explicitly promote free trade and the liberal economic order for which the Pax

Britannica has since become known. From the end of the Napoleonic wars until the mid-

1840s, however, four types of actions constituted challenges to the international economic order that British policymakers sought to maintain.

95 Patrick Karl O’Brian, and Geoffrey A. Pigman, “Free trade, British Hegemony,” Review of International Studies 18, No.2, Summer (1992): 92. Ronald Hyam, “Britain’s Imperial Century.” 63.

96 Quoted from P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, “The Political Economy of British Expansion Overseas, 1750- 1914,” The Economic History Review 33, Issue 4, (Nov. 1980): 463-490. See also Martin Lynn, “British Policy, Trade, and Informal Empire in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, ed. Wm. Roger Lewis.(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999): 105. 60

First, disruption of the flow of international trade by pirates looking for private gains.97 Second, threats posed by other states against major trade routes and the British bases protecting these routes (in particular when it concerned the vital routes between

Britain and India). Third, the use of force by foreign rulers against British merchants trying to gain a foothold in their markets. Fourth, failure on part of those rulers to treat

British merchants the same as traders from other countries.98 In this chapter I examine the

British responses to two challenges of this latter kind, posed by China in the 1830s.

3.2 Challenging the Pax Britannica: China and British Trade

During the 1830s, China challenged the Pax Britannica twice. In 1834, in response to the uninvited arrival in Canton of the new British superintendent for trade,

Lord Napier, the Chinese imperial government suspended all foreign trade in Canton, thereby denying British merchants even the limited access to the Chinese markets they had previously enjoyed. Not only did the Chinese authorities at Canton refuse to recognize Lord Napier as an official representative of the British Crown, they also threatened him and the rest of the foreign merchant community in Canton with physical harm. It is commonly accepted knowledge today, and it was certainly believed at the time, that the Chinese harassment of Lord Napier, who fell ill during the siege in Canton, contributed to his death in Macao in October of 1834.

Napier’s successors as superintendents for trade, first on their own initiative and then on instructions they received from London, responded with great forbearance to the

97 On the importance of suppressing piracy for the maintenance of the Pax Britannica see C.J. Bartlett, Great Britain and Sea Power, 1815-1853, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963).

98 D.C.M. Platt, Finance, Trade, and Politics in British Foreign Policy 1815-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), Chapter 1. It is important to note, as Platt does, that the British government did not necessarily protect the investments of British merchants and subjects overseas. That is, it would protect the lives and property of British subjects, but would not guarantee their investments. 61

Chinese closure of the markets, and to their siege of the foreign factories in Canton.

Above all, they sought to appease the authorities at Canton, in order to keep trade flowing

smoothly.99 By adopting a conciliatory approach and removing themselves from Canton,

they hoped to stabilize the all-important tea trade at Canton, despite the restrictive nature

of the Canton commercial system.100 In other words, the Chinese challenge to the Pax

Britannica in 1834 produced an accommodative response from Britain. Instead of forcing the issue, British representatives in China were ordered to lay low and to avoid antagonizing the Chinese authorities lest they would once more suspend trade.

The Opium crisis of 1839, on the other hand, precipitated an entirely different

British response. The crisis originated in a blockade of the foreign factories at Canton,

which itself followed a two-year long campaign by Chinese imperial authorities to

eradicate the Opium trade in China. While the opium trade had been prohibited for a long

period of time in China, the use of opium in the country – most of which was smuggled

in from India through Canton – had reached almost epidemic proportions in the 1830s.

99 It is important to note that even Lord Napier had already acquiesced in Chinese demands to leave Canton for Macao when he realized that only by doing so the Chinese authorities would allow a resumption of the tea trade.

100 For the importance of the tea trade for British revenues see: J.Y. Wong, Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism, and the Arrow War (1856-1860) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China 1800-1842 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951). 62

Not only did the use of opium have obvious pernicious effects on those addicted to the drug, including government officials and large numbers of military personnel, it also led to a severe drain of silver from the Chinese economy. Although the use and sale of opium were officially prohibited by the Emperor, the opium smuggle was a booming business and was tolerated and often encouraged by local Chinese officials in Canton who reaped handsome financial rewards from their complicity in the opium trade.

Frustrated by the continuation of the illegal influx of the drug into the Empire, the

Chinese emperor finally decided in 1836 to actively eliminate the Opium smuggle. The ensuing anti-opium campaign initially focused on the ‘demand side’ of the opium trade.

Chinese authorities pursued both dealers and addicts, in an effort to eliminate the market for foreign opium. While this campaign was partially successful, the Imperial authorities decided that it was not enough. After a two year campaign against the demand side of the trade, a special Imperial envoy, Commissioner Lin Tse-Hsu, arrived at Canton to eliminate the supply of opium that continued to pour in from India and elsewhere.

In an effort to eradicate the opium trade, however, Commissioner Lin also suspended regular foreign trade and resorted to intimidation by laying siege to the foreign factories at Canton. His primary goal in doing this was to convince the foreign merchants to surrender the opium that they kept on supply ships beyond the reach of the Chinese authorities. In other words, in his efforts to eradicate the illegal opium trade, Lin held

British traders and the legitimate tea trade hostage. It was only after Charles Elliot, the

British superintendent of trade, acquiesced and arranged for the transfer of a large amount of opium from the British opium traders to Lin, that the latter lifted the siege of the foreign merchants in Canton. Not content with this, Lin demanded that British traders

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would sign personal bonds promising that they would cease their opium-smuggling activities or be put to death if caught smuggling opium again. Charles Elliot summarily rejected this demand.

In contrast to the conciliatory response of 1834, the British government responded to Lin’s actions with the use of force. In what is now widely known as the first “Opium war,” the British government sent a naval expedition to China to demand changes in the restrictive Canton trade system, and to provide for safe access for British merchants to

Chinese markets. In addition, the Britain demanded compensation for the opium Lin had extorted from the British merchants and destroyed and for the costs of the expedition itself. By the end of the Opium War, Britain had successfully forced the Chinese emperor to sign a treaty that abolished the Canton system of trade, that opened up four more ports to foreign trade, and that ceded Hong Kong in perpetuity to Britain.

During the 1830s China therefore twice challenged a major tent of the Pax

Britannica, safe and equal access to foreign markets. In both cases, Chinese authorities suspended trade and threatened British subjects with physical harm. In one case, Chinese behavior was directly associated with the death of an official representative of the British

Crown. Both cases generated different British responses. In the first case, British policymakers responded by appeasing China, in the second case it chose to use military coercion to impose its will upon China. What explains these divergent responses?

Can the difference in British responses be explained by one of the three theoretical perspectives outlined in Chapter 2? That is, can changes in available coercive capabilities, shifts in the power of domestic interest groups, or changing perceptions of the legitimacy of China’s behavior (and of China’s character itself) explain British

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actions? In what follows, I address these questions. In doing so, I compare the two cases, and examine whether: (1) British concerns about capabilities and reputation can best account for these divergent outcomes; (2) Whether parochial domestic interest groups had a decisive effect on the choice of policy tools, or; (3) whether British responses were driven by socially constructed standards of appropriate behavior.

3.3 The Realist Perspective: Geopolitics, Relative Capabilities and Reputation

The realist perspective posits that the choice of punishments and rewards in international order enforcement should be a function of the capabilities available to policymakers and of their reputational concerns. In their efforts to make the weak comply, dominant great powers will choose coercion when they believe that they can issue credible threats, and will use positive inducements only when two conditions hold:

first, when they believe that they are not capable of issuing credible threats and, second,

when the use of positive inducements will not tarnish their reputation for resolve. In other

words, the responses to challenges from the weak should be decisively affected by

broader geopolitical considerations. If this is not the case, realists expect dominant states

to use coercion as the least costly and most effective response.

When confronted with two different responses to similar challenges, therefore, we

should expect these differences to be a result of changes in geopolitical conditions, shifts

in relative capabilities, or reputational considerations. Thus, we should find evidence that

when reports of Lord Napier’s troubles in Canton reached London in early 1835, British

policymakers believed that they did not have the necessary resources to successfully

make China open its markets and to stop threatening British merchants. In addition, we

should find that that they believed that Britain’s reputation would not be tarnished by an

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accommodative response to China’s actions. Finally, we should find that in 1839, British

policymakers were not facing similar constraints. An assessment of the realist “model” of

international order enforcement should therefore first and foremost examine the

availability of sufficient coercive capabilities thereof in both episodes, before examining

the perceptions British policymakers held of their relative capabilities and the

reputational consequences of their actions.

3.3.1 Geopolitical considerations and the availability of coercive capabilities

One of the factors that may have affected the ability of British policymakers to

use coercive methods against China in 1834 or, conversely, may have increased their

capacity to do so in 1839, was the overall geopolitical contexts in which these crises took

place. In other words, given the fact that the coercive resources of even the most

powerful states are finite at any given point in time, it is possible that British

policymakers were faced with other, more severe, threats or challenges in 1834-35,

threats that took precedence over the crisis in far-away China and that affected Britain’s

ability to translate its bilateral preponderance into effective threats of coercion. By

identifying potential geopolitical threats to British interests and security during this

decade, we can examine whether the latter was the case in 1834 and not during the

opium-crisis of 1839. In other words, did the geopolitical environment put greater strains

on British coercive capabilities in 1834, than it did five years later?

Over the course of the 19th Century, British leaders were concerned about four primary geopolitical or existential threats. First, they were concerned about potential bids for mastery of the European continent by a rival great power. Second, they were concerned about attempts to invade Great Britain itself. Third, they were concerned about

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a direct threat to Britain’s control over India, and other serious imperial expansionist

behavior by its great power rivals. Fourth, they were concerned about losing the naval superiority upon which the Pax Britannica was founded. Any of these four potential challenges would have generated a serious British response and would have made serious demands on its available coercive capacity. That is, any threat of this magnitude would have caused British policymakers to deploy the bulk of Britain’s available coercive capabilities, i.e. its navy, to meet it head on. This, in turn, would have impeded their ability to respond decisively to challenges to the Pax Britannica posed by weaker but

recalcitrant states such as China.

Did Britain face such challenges during the 1830s? More importantly, was

Britain faced with significant geo-strategic challenges in 1834 and not five years later?

Positive answers to these questions would offer initial support for the realist perspective.

The following sections address these questions by examining whether such potential challenges existed or whether British policymakers believed this to be the case.

Any successful bid to pose an existential threat to the Pax Britannica would obviously have required sufficient military capabilities on the part of a challenger. In order to make a bid for hegemony of continental Europe, a great power needed to have sufficient land forces, while a direct threat to the British isles would require sufficient naval capabilities. The same was true for any significant imperial adventure. As a result, we can assume that British policy makers would be concerned about the rise of a rival great power, and that they would be especially worried about significant improvements in the military- and naval capabilities of another great power.

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A sudden shift in military and naval capabilities in favor of one of its rivals would likely have necessitated an immediate response on the part of British policymakers. It would have caused them to mobilize and concentrate Britain’s military and naval capabilities in order to meet the rising threat. A dramatic shift in the distribution of naval and military capabilities would also have necessitated redeployment of existing forces.

After all, at any single moment in time the coercive capabilities of even the most powerful state are finite. Consequently, a sudden shifts in capabilities in the favor of one of the major rivals, would most likely have reduced the level of resources available to

British policymakers for responding to challenges to their desired international order from insignificant actors such as China.

In its most straightforward form, the realist explanation suggests that a decline in

Britain’s relative capabilities would have decreased its ability to use coercion in its efforts to enforce its desired international order, while positive shifts would have increased both its ability and willingness to use coercion to do so. Keeping this in mind, we would expect to find that prior to 1834-35 Britain underwent a period of relative decline. Conversely, we would expect the years preceding the Opium crisis to have been marked by a positive shift in Britain’s relative capabilities.

At first glance, an examination of the distribution of capabilities during this decade does not offer much support for the realist explanation. More specifically, an investigation of the distribution of capabilities among the great powers in the international system during this decade does not show evidence of significant changes.

This suggests that the distribution of capabilities cannot explain the divergent British responses to China’s cessation of trade at Canton in 1834 and 1839.

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As we can see from figure 1, no significant shifts in the distribution of capabilities can be detected during the decade in question. Britain enjoyed a slight lead throughout the decade.101 In other words, judging from these relatively crude measures of national capabilities we can identify no particular pattern that should have alarmed British leaders, and that would have generated concerns about the rise of a great power rival that could pose an existential threat to the Pax Britannica or Britain itself.

Figure 1 Capabilities as Percentage of Systemic Capabilities

101 Figure 1 uses the Correlates of War (COW) data set on national capabilities to compute the relative capabilities of all the great powers as a percentage of the total capabilities in the system. The data set was generated by using EUGene, which uses the COW II national capabilities data set. See Scott C. Bennett, and Allan Stam, “Eugene: A Conceptual Manual,” International Interactions, Vol. 26 (2000): 179-204. For more information on the COW data set see J. David Singer, Stuart A. Bremer, and John Stuckey, “Capability Distribution, Uncertainty, and Major Power War, 1820-1965, in Peace, War, and Numbers, ed. Bruce M. Russett. (Beverley Hills: Sage, 1972): 19-49. 69

The broad measures of relative capabilities presented in figure 1, however, may

fail to shed light upon important aspects of the story. They may, for example, assign too

much weight to components of latent national capabilities that had little direct effect on the threat perceptions of British policymakers at the time. As mentioned earlier, British leaders would have been interested primarily in shifts in overall military, and especially naval capabilities, rather than overall measures of national power. A closer examination of the distribution of military capabilities during the decade under examination, however, similarly fails to yield evidence of major shifts in the distribution of capabilities. Thus, in terms of naval capabilities we can see that Britain maintained its lead throughout the decade (Figure 2).

Figure 2 Great Power Warships as % of Total, 1830-1840

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As figure 2 indicates, we can detect no sharp increase in the naval capabilities of

Britain’s main rivals during this period, nor do we witness a steep drop-off in British

naval capabilities that should have raised concerns among British policy makers about possible naval weakness vis-à-vis its major naval rivals during the China crisis of

1834.102

On the other hand, we find no evidence of a decline in the relative naval

capabilities of Britain’s rivals around the time of the Opium crisis of 1839, which should

have afforded British policy makers more leeway in using its navy to coerce China.

Overall, no significant changes took place in the numerical distribution of naval

capabilities during this decade. If anything, we can see a relative decline of French naval

capabilities between 1834 and 1836, while a modest increase in Russian naval

capabilities can be observed between 1837 and 1839. Britain remained superior not only

in numerical sense, however. According to Paul Kennedy, British naval supremacy was

not really challenged at all in the first decades after the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

Indeed, he states that between 1815 and 1860 “Britain’s naval rivals ... were in no state to

present any threat which would necessitate a much larger shipbuilding programme and

standing fleet.

102 The numbers in figure two are taken from Modelski and Thompson’s study on sea power. They include all ships of the line with 60 or more guns. See George Modelski and William R. Thompson, Seapower in Global Politics, 1494-1993, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988).

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Although there was occasional worry about the size and design of newer

American and French vessels, Britain’s numerical and general strategical supremacy

remained”103 Neither observation lends support to a hypothesis that the British responses

to the Chinese challenges during these years were influenced by broader geostrategic

concerns emanating from a bid for hegemony by a rival great power.

An examination of other measures of military capabilities during this period also generates little support for the notion that the British choice of enforcement strategies was determined by geopolitical concerns. In other words, while Britain clearly did not possess a preponderance in military capabilities, as measured in terms of the size of its armed forces, we can see that its nearest rivals were either stagnant or in decline during the 1830s. Neither Russia nor France, nor any other great power for that matter, increased the size of their armed forces. While Russia still possessed the largest armed forces among the great powers, the size of its army actually declined by more than 40% between

1833 and 1838.104 This can hardly count as an indication that any of Britain’s rivals had

serious plans to change the status quo in Europe, or elsewhere during this period.105 It is

only in the last two years of the decade, that we see an increase in the size of the French

and Russian armed forces. If anything, these developments should have made Britain feel

more secure, and less concerned about the designs of its major rivals during the first half

of the decade, and should have increased its anxiety only towards the end of that period.

103Paul Kennedy, The rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, (London: The Ashfield Press, 1983): 157. 104 Calculations based on the Correlates of War data set of national capabilities.

105 Although one has to keep in mind of course, that even in its much reduced state, Russia still had more than half a million people under arms. Thus, it would not necessarily need to increase the size of its armed forces in order to make threaten the balance of power in Europe. However, it does not seem logical that a state that has far-reaching plans to upset the status quo in Europe would reduce the size of its armed forces almost by half, thereby making it easier for a coalition to balance any attempt at expansion. 72

If we follow the strictly materialist logic of the realist perspective on international

order enforcement, we should therefore have expected Britain to act more aggressively in

its efforts to enforce its desired international order in the earlier crisis, and follow a more

accommodative path in the later part of the decade. While these raw measures of the

distribution of power do not warrant overly confident conclusions, they do at a minimum

suggest that broad geopolitical factors may not have had an important effect on how

Britain responded to China’s challenges both 1834 and 1839.

3.3.2 Perceptions of Geopolitical Threats

While the objective measures of capabilities do not offer much support for the

realist perspective on international order enforcement, it could be that British

policymakers perceived the rise of significant geostrategic threats that may have inhibited

their responses to China’s challenge in 1834. One way to examine the threat perceptions

of British policy makers during the 1830s, is by examining the way in which they

deployed their available military resources. It is plausible to assume that strategic

concerns will be reflected in the way that a country deploys its military resources.

After all, if British leaders perceived a rising geopolitical threat, such as a serious bid by one of its rivals for the mastery of Europe, a direct threat to invade Great Britain or a Russian attempt to penetrate India, one can assume that they would have responded by deploying Britain’s naval and land forces in such a way as to deter or reverse such a move. It is also safe to assume, moreover, that British policymakers would have sought to increase the level of resources devoted to the navy and the military in order to meet a potential existential threat to Britain’s security or its desired international order.

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A redeployment of naval and military forces, and a significant increase in military

expenditure would indicate the perception of a significant geopolitical threat, and would

have likely reduced the resources available for the enforcement of the Pax Britannica. An

examination of the deployment of Royal Navy forces during the 1830s does not lend

much support to the notion that the perception of a serious geopolitical threat affected

British policies vis-à-vis China.106 While Britain faced a number of crises around the

European continent and in the Mediterranean during the first half of the decade, and at times showed some concern about Russian and French ship-building programs, British actions during this period do not reveal evidence of great distress.107

Among the crises that faced Britain over the course of the decade were perceived

Russian attempts to expand its influence over the Ottoman Empire and into the Middle

East, civil war in Portugal, and the French efforts to meddle in the Belgian war of

independence. For obvious reasons, Lord Palmerston, the dominant figure in British foreign policy during this decade, considered all three potential strategic threats. As such, they preoccupied most of his attention over the course of the decade.108

Despite continuous concern about these issues, and some short-lived fears of

naval decline, however, British leaders did not feel it was necessary to make significant

106 Only two stations saw significant changes in the number of ships at their disposal. All Royal navy ships were withdrawn from the West African Coast between 1836 and 1840. Judging from the figure, however, most of these ships were simply redeployed around the African coast. Bartlett, “Great Britain and Sea Power,” 341. 107 According to Bartlett British decision makers began to fear Britain’s naval decline toward the mid- 1830s after receiving reports of ship-building programs in Russia and France. Additional reports, however, showed that these concerns were exaggerated. Moreover, these fears started around 1836, that is, after the first China crisis, and did not produce a significant redeployment of the Royal Navy. Bartlett, “Great Britain and Sea Power,” 107.

108 Sir Charles Webster, The Foreign Policy of Palmerston 1830-1841: Britain, the Liberal Movement and the Eastern Question (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1951). See also Bartlett, “Great Britain and Sea Power.” 74

changes in the deployment of the Royal Navy. The latter remained widely dispersed among its various stations spread across the world. Moreover, in a sign that they did not seriously fear a direct threat from their great power rivals, British leaders only kept a small percentage of the Royal Navy in home waters during this decade.109 It seems relatively clear, therefore, from the British responses that these threats and crises were not deemed severe enough to transfer a larger proportion of available ships to the area, or to embark upon a serious expansion of the Royal Navy.110 Moreover, in another sign that they did not fear serious geopolitical challenges, British policy makers did not drastically increase the naval estimates, or the overall defense budget, during most of the 1830s.

Judging by the way in which they deployed the Royal Navy, therefore, and from their failure to significantly increase the navy estimates during this period, it appears that we can safely conclude that British leaders were relatively unconcerned about any serious geopolitical threats during the 1830s.111 While diplomatic crises with the other great powers may have preoccupied Palmerston’s attention during the decade under investigation, they did not escalate into conflicts that demanded a full mobilization of

109 During the 1830s, Britain never kept more than 8% of its commissioned ships in home waters. Bartlett, “Great Britain and Seapower,” 341.

110 According to Bartlett the size and strength of the Royal Navy diminished steadily in the two decades following the Napoleonic wars, as ships were sold out of service and many of the ships of line were not in good shape. Bartlett also points out, however, that this decline did not concern British policy makers too much as “by 1835, Melville’s successors had seen the effective battlefleet fall to fifty-eight, with no real indications of uneasiness.” Bartlett, “Great Britain and Seapower,” 26-27.

111 An examination of British military expenditures during this period shows a similar lack of concern until the first half of the 1830. According to the Correlates of War dataset (v.3.0), British military expenditures dropped significantly in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, reaching their nadir in 1834. They started to rise again after this year, climbing by about 25% in the second half of the decade. Singer, Bremer, and Stuckey, "Capability Distribution." If anything, this would indicate that British leaders were more concerned about geopolitical threats at the end of the decade, rather than in the first half, thereby casting more doubts on the effect of geopolitics on the choice of enforcement strategies in the case at hand.

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Britain coercive capabilities on land or on water. As a result, it seems highly doubtful that the British responses to China during the 1830s were conditioned in any significant measure by shifting geopolitical considerations in Europe or elsewhere.112

3.3.3 Imperial Overstretch

Major geopolitical challenges, however, are not the only possible factors that can

affect the ability of a state to employ its available coercive capabilities. Being faced with

a number of smaller challenges, may have a similar effect. It is possible, therefore, that

Britain was faced with a number of simultaneous peripheral challenges in 1835, that left

it without the necessary resources to respond forcefully to the Napier episode. It is

conceivable that due to overwhelming demand upon its naval and military resources,

British policy makers simply did not have the necessary resources available to

successfully coerce China in 1834-1835. Thus, while its choice of positive inducements

during that crisis may not have been affected by serious geopolitical challenges on the

European continent or by existential threats to the British isles, British naval capabilities,

the key component of its coercive power, may have been stretched thin by the outbreak of

a number of simultaneous low-level challenges to the Pax Britannica.

A short examination of the historical record, however, provides little support for

the argument that British resources were stretched too thin in 1834 and 1835 for it to use

coercion against China. This is especially the case, when we compare the Napier and

Opium crises during the decade. The record indicates, that if anything, it was during the

Opium crisis, in the latter part of the decade, that Britain faced a number of simultaneous

challenges, a situation that did not stop it from using military force.

112 Neither did China have any great power patron that could neutralize British threats, or could have forced Britain to ‘buy’ Chinese compliance. 76

According to the Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) data-set, Great Britain was

involved in thirteen militarized disputes with system-members during the 1830s.113 Of

these disputes, five took place between 1831 and 1833, and only two took place at

approximately the same time as the first China crisis.114 By contrast, Britain was involved

in four MIDs between the years of 1838-1839 when the Opium crisis in China erupted.

During the same time-span, Britain was also involved in two extra-systemic wars, the

British-Zulu War of 1838, and the British-Afghan War of 1838. In fact, the Opium Crisis

“coincided with an avalanche of other foreign troubles for Britain,” such as the uprising

of Mehmet Ali in Egypt against the Sultan, smaller crises with France in Africa and

Latin-America, and crises in Naples Portugal and with the United States.115 In other

words, involvement in near-simultaneous disputes did not prevent British policy makers

from using military force against China during the Opium Crisis. On the other hand, even

in the absence of simultaneous disputes British policymakers refrained from using force

during the first China crisis of the 1830s.

3.3.4 Perceptions of relative capabilities

It could still be argued that even without the simultaneous occurrence of other

disputes, British policymakers could have believed that Britain’s naval and land forces

113 System members are defined as “diplomatically recognized member states of the global system.” See: Daniel M. Jones, Stuart A. Bremer, and J. David Singer, “ Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1816-1992: Rationale, Coding Rules, and Empirical Patters,” Journal of Conflict Management 15, No. 2 (1996):168. MID dataset version 3.0 was used to obtain these data. See Faten Ghosn, and Glenn Palmer. 2003. "Codebook for the Militarized Interstate Dispute Data, Version 3.0." Available on-line at http://cow2.la.psu.edu

114 The disputes in question are: The Belgian War of Independence of 1831 and its aftermath (dispute numbers 25, 501, and 368), the British attempt to intervene in the Portuguese Civil War of 1831, and the dispute in the Mediterranean in 1833 (dispute numbers 137 and 153 respectively). Two disputes, with Russia and Columbia respectively took place in 1836. 115 Kenneth Bourne, ”Palmerston: The Early Years,” 586.

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were stretched too thin and were therefore insufficient to successfully coerce China. That is, British policy makers may have overestimated the level of resources that would be necessary to successfully coerce China. While some contemporary authors have indeed argued that Britain did not have the tools available to successfully coerce China in 1834, an examination of the historical record shows that this view was not shared by British officials at the time.116 On the contrary, they thought only a modest naval and land force was needed to coerce China successfully.

Lord Napier, for instance, believed that only force would convince the Chinese

Imperial authorities to open up their country to foreign trade. He believed, moreover, that a minimal application or threat of force would suffice to make the Chinese Emperor acquiesce in demands for a commercial treaty that would serve to protect and promote

British interests. In a letter to Lord Palmerston, Napier laid out a plan to convince the

Chinese emperor to re-open his country to foreign trade, which he argued had been allowed by the current Emperor’s predecessors. He suggested that if the Emperor did not agree to British demands, “three or four frigates and brigs, with a few steady British troops... would settle the thing in a space of time inconceivably short.” 117

116 Headrick suggests that until the advent of the gunboat, Britain really couldn’t make an impression upon the Chinese empire. Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981) Graham makes a similar argument about the inability of Britain to exert naval force efficiently until the arrival of steam-powered gunboats. There is no evidence, however, that British policy makers agreed with this assessment. Gerald S. Graham, The China Station: War and Diplomacy 1830-1860 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) The fact that they chose to initiate a war with China before steam-powered gunboats were available in 1839, indicates that they did not.

117 Lord Napier, Letter to Palmerston, August 14, 1834, Correspondence Relating to China (Sessional Papers 36 (1840). Napier’s assessment seemed to be based on a solid understanding of the lack of military prowess of the Chinese armed forces, (and a less solid belief that the Manchu emperors did not enjoy popular support). Priscilla H. Napier, Barbarian Eye: Lord Napier in China, 1834, Prelude to Hong Kong, (London: Brassey’s, 1995): 102. See also Graham, “China Station, “ 56-57; Glenn Melancon, Britain’s China Policy and the Opium Crisis: Balancing Drugs, Violence and National Honour, 1833-1840, 78

In general, therefore, the British had a low opinion of the Chinese army and naval

forces. The Chinese Repository, an English-language newspaper published in Canton,

had the following to say: “What terms can convey an adequate idea of the monstrous

burlesque which the imperial navy presents to our astonished gaze? Powerless beyond the

power of description to ridicule or portray, yet set forth with all the braggadocio and

pretence for which the Chinese are so famous, the marine of this vast empire presents a

state of things unparalleled among even the most savage states or islands that we know

of: we query much whether a couple of New Zealand war canoes would not be an

overmatch for all that could be brought against them.”118

British officials both in England and Canton, therefore, believed that limited naval and land forces would be required in order to resolve the obstacles to trade in China.

These forces also appeared to have been available in both 1835 and 1839. A look at the deployment of naval vessels at the East Indies Station of the Royal Navy, based in India but also responsible for operations in China, shows that Britain had more ships available during the 1834 Crisis than at the outset of the Opium War.119

While British policymakers 1834 were therefore confident about Britain’s ability

to prevail in a military confrontation, and that only limited resources were necessary for

that purpose, some policymakers actually had doubts about whether Britain had the

resources available in 1839 to coerce China. According to Melancon, “at the time of the

(Burlington: Ashgate, 2003), 41; J.F. Davis, Letter to Lord William Bentinck, October 24, 1834, Correspondence Relating to China, 46.

118 Maurice Collis, Foreign Mud, Being an Account of the Opium Imbroglio at Canton in the 1830s and the Anglo-Chinese War that Followed (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1968).

119 Bartlett, “Great Britain and Seapower,”341.

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opium crisis, Auckland confronted a major threat to British India’s security along the northwest frontier aggravated by Tsar Nicholas I’s attempts to extend Russian influence

in Central Asia.” This threat to India made John Cam Hobhouse, the director of the board

of control, doubt “whether Britain had the resources to send an army from India to China

while Auckland (Governor-general of India) was at war in Afghanistan.”120 Clearly,

however, Hobhouse’s concerns (which were apparently shared by Auckland, the

Governor-General) did not affect the decisions of the Melbourne cabinet, as a punitive

expedition was sent to China. As such, it is difficult to sustain an argument that Britain’s

divergent responses to the Napier crisis and the Opium crisis were affected by a lack of

available coercive capabilities, or a consensus among British policymakers that they did

not have the resources available to successfully coerce China.

3.3.5 Reputation

Hobhouse’s doubts concerning the availability of the naval and military resources

for a Chinese expedition raise questions as to the role of reputation in the use of force in

1839. Did concerns about the possible diminution of Britain’s reputation drive the use of force in 1839? Did British policymakers believe they had to coerce China, despite a lack of available resources, or suffer severe reputational consequences? While conservative critics of the Melbourne’s cabinet did accuse the ministry of having ruined the British

120 Glenn Melancon, “Honour in Opium? The British Declaration of War on China, 1839-1840,” The International History Review 21, No. 4 (1999) 865.

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reputation for power and resolve in the Far East, there is no evidence that reputational

considerations significantly affected the British policy choices during the Opium crisis.121

While I have not been able to uncover conclusive evidence on this point, the answer to this question appears to be negative. In one of the only written records remaining of the cabinet decision to send a punitive expedition to China, an account found in Hobhouse’s private diary, neither the issue of reputation nor the lack of capabilities were raised by the participants in the debate.122

In sum, the divergent British responses cannot be easily attributed to a

combination of shifts in the availability of coercive capabilities and reputational

considerations. While they most certainly had to deal with more important geopolitical

issues, such as the settlement of Belgian independence, and recurrent crises in the Middle

East, British policymakers did not make significant adjustments in the deployment of the

Royal Navy during the 1830s that would have inhibited their ability to coerce China.

Moreover, they firmly believed that China was militarily weak and incompetent, and that it could be coerced relatively easily with a small naval force and limited land forces.

There is no evidence that this perception changed over time. If anything, some British

policymakers voiced concerns about available capabilities in 1839, but this did not stop

the Melbourne cabinet from sending a punitive expedition to China. Although it is

impossible to discount the possibility that reputational considerations affected the

initiation of war in 1839, I have found no evidence that this decision to coerce China was

the result of a fear of adverse reputational consequences of inaction.

121 Melancon, “Honour in Opium?” 866. 122 Lady Dorchester, ed., Recollections of a Long Life: By Lord Broughton (John Cam Hobhouse), with Additional Extracts from His Private Diaries,” Vol.5, (London: John Murray, 1911): 227. 81

3.4 Domestic balance of power, Interest Groups, and the Opium War

After the abolition of the East India Company’s monopoly on the trade with

China in 1833, private British merchants flocked in ever greater numbers to Canton,

drawn by what they believed to be the unlimited potential for trade offered by the

Chinese economy. By all accounts, however, the trading system at Canton was highly

restrictive. Uninterested in foreign trade, and wary of the potentially destabilizing

influence of ‘foreign barbarians’ on Chinese society, the Imperial authorities not only

restricted all foreign trade in China to this single port, it also prohibited foreign traders to

interact commercially with anyone except a select group of Chinese merchants, the so-

called Hong merchants.

This system made foreign merchants dependent on a small group of people that

could manipulate prices, and made trade unpredictable as the Hong merchants themselves

were mercilessly squeezed by both local authorities and the central government in

Peking. In addition, the customs system at Canton was non-transparent and obviously

corrupt, making foreign trade at Canton all but predictable. As Chinese law did not

provide foreign merchants with the opportunity to directly appeal to the authorities,

moreover, there was a general sense among foreign merchants that the Canton system

posed a major obstacle to trade with China.123

123 The account about the Canton system is based upon the following sources: Maurice Collis, Foreign Mud, The Opium Imbroglio at Canton in the 1830s and the Anglo-Chinese War, (New York: Norton, 1968); Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China 1800-1842, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951); W.C. Costin, Great Britain and China, 1833-1860 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968); Peter W. Fay, The Opium War, 1840-1842: Barbarians in the Celestial Empire in the Early Part of the Nineteenth Century and the War by Which they Forced Her Gates Ajar (New York: Norton, 1976); Melancon, “Honour in Opium?”; Chung Tan, China and the Brave New World: A Study of the Origins of the Opium war (1940-42) (Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1978); Wen-Tsao Wu, The Chinese Opium Question in British Opinion and Action (New York: The Academy Press, 1928), and Hosea B. Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1910-1918). 82

As a result of the perceived inequities of the so-called Canton system, British

merchants and industrialists lobbied extensively for their government to intervene. As

early as 1830, British merchants at Canton drew up a petition to the Parliament to

demand action. In this document, the petitioners argued that the restrictions on trade with

China could only be removed by force, as “the total failure of both Embassies to Pekin

[i.e. the Macartney and Amherst Missions] will forcibly suggest to your Honourable

House how little is to be gained in China by any refinements of diplomacy.”124

The British merchants at Canton demanded that London would send an official

representative to put an end to the arbitrary Canton system and, most importantly, to force open the artificially closed Chinese markets. But while the industrialists and merchants were successful in their efforts to overthrow the monopoly of the East India

Company, and a superintendent for trade was duly dispatched to Canton in 1834, the

mercantile-industrial lobby was less successful in achieving its other goals. Their wish

for forcible action against the Chinese authorities, although supported by Lord Napier

who had been chosen as the first superintendent of trade, remained unfulfilled until 1839.

It was then, that an alliance of industrialists and merchants is said to have finally managed to persuade the Melbourne cabinet of the need for forcible intervention.125

At first glance, therefore, it appears that the domestic politics explanation offers a

plausible explanation for the divergence in the British responses to the Napier episode

and the Opium crisis. This divergence can be attributed to a shift in the domestic balance

124 Greenberg, “British Trade,” 178.

125 See especially, Greenberg, “British Trade”; Tan, “China and the Brave New World,” and Collis, “Foreign Mud.” In fact, some of these scholars argue that Palmerston looking all along for an opportunity to initiate a war against China, but that this opportunity came only in 1839. This is hard to imagine, as friction between the Chinese authorities and British subjects at Canton was a constant, and a number of other episodes could have been exploited if Palmerston were truly interested in a ‘forward policy’. 83

of power that took place in Britain between 1835 and 1839. Where in 1835 the industrialist-mercantile lobby did not have sufficient political leverage to force the British government to adopt a “forward policy” vis-à-vis China, it appears that it had managed to acquire the necessary political power to do so by 1839.

A closer examination of the available evidence, however, indicates that while it appears to be plausible, the domestic politics explanation does not actually garner a great deal of empirical support. In particular, this examination shows that the domestic politics explanation rests upon two primary arguments: (1) that a significant shift in the domestic balance of power took place between 1835 and 1839, and that a politically weak Whig cabinet changed its China policies to elicit political support from Radical politicians in parliament; (2) that the Melbourne cabinet adopted a belligerent policy as a result of the lobbying efforts by the industrialist-merchant alliance and because of its political weakness. Neither argument finds much in the way of empirical support.

A significant shift in the domestic distribution of power did take place during the early 1830s, as reform-minded Radicals – including the representatives of previously underrepresented industrial and mercantile interests – managed to gain an increasing number of seats in Parliament. Over the course of the decade, the Whigs gradually lost their majority in the House of Commons to the Conservative party under Peel and to

Radicals.126 By the end of the 1830s, the Whigs formed a minority government,

ostensibly reliant upon the support of the Radicals to remain in power. It is therefore not

altogether surprising that some would argue that it was the desire to curry favor with the

126 Robert Stewart, Party and Politics, 1830-1852 (Houndmills: Macmillan Education, 1989), 49.

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Radicals, who were supposed to be closer in political terms to the Whigs, that informed

the actions of the Melbourne ministry in response to the Opium-crisis.127

By supporting the demands of the rising mercantile and industrial classes, the

argument goes, the Melbourne cabinet was able to generate support from the Radicals on

the cheap. Such support was especially important given the weak position of the Whig

government at the time of the Opium-crisis, following a year in which it was plagued by

political failure and setbacks. The Whig cabinet, locked in a fierce battle for political

mastery with a resurgent Conservative party, was desperately searching for political

allies, and found them in the Radical representatives of the mercantile-industrial lobby. In

return for their political support, the latter demanded a forceful opening of China to

British trade and compensation for losses incurred at the hands of Chinese authorities

The above, however, appears to offer an inaccurate portrait of the Melbourne

Cabinet that governed between 1835 and 1841. While it is certainly the case that in the four months that they were out of office, between November 1834 and April 1835, the

Whigs cooperated with the Radicals to remove the Conservative Peel Cabinet from office, it is hardly true that upon return to power they offered major concessions in return for continued Radical support. In reality, the Melbourne cabinet willingly accepted

Radical parliamentary support, but was unwilling to pay a political price for it.128

127 Melancon, “Honour in Opium?” 128One can, moreover, divide the Radicals in British parliament into ‘English’ and ‘Irish’ sections, of which the latter were much more interested in reforms in Ireland, and were not necessarily representative of industrial or mercantile interests. According to Adelman, the Melbourne cabinet between 1835 and 1841 was dependent primarily on support from the Irish Radicals, while the English Radicals felt forced to support the Melbourne cabinet because the alternative, a Conservative government, was far more abhorrent to them. See, Paul Adelman, Victorian Radicalism: The Middle-Class Experience 1830-1914, (London: Longman, 1984): 14. 85

The evidence also indicates, moreover, that as a minority government the Whigs

depended upon tacit cooperation with Peel in order to govern, and were highly reluctant

to offer political concessions in return for Radical support. This was primarily because the Radical causes, as Hobhouse noted, simply “were not those of our supporters in the

country.”129 As a result, Radical support for the Melbourne administration had all but

disappeared by 1839, by which time it had become abundantly clear that the Melbourne

cabinet would not support Radical causes in order to stay in power.

Thus, while a shift in the distribution of political power did take place in Britain

between 1835 and 1839, it appears unlikely that this shift actually translated into

increased influence of the industrialist-mercantile lobby on British foreign policy vis-à-

vis China. The Melbourne cabinet was simply not in the habit of offering costly

concessions in return for support from the Radicals.130 Given that the revenue from the

tea-trade was significant, it is unlikely that the Melbourne cabinet would have viewed a

‘forward policy’ in China as a cheap way of garnering Radical support.

129 Ian Newbould, Whiggery and Reform, 1830-1841: The Politics of Government (London: Macmillan, 1990): 235. It was also not needed, however, as the leader of the Conservative Party would rather support the Melbourne cabinet, rather than to let it become more extreme by having to turn to Radical support. “Unprincipled alliances with incompatible groups like the radicals, simply for the purpose of gaining short- term victory over the government, were therefore to be avoided.” T. A. Jenkins, Parliament, party and politics in Victorian Britain, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996): 47.

130 One possible reason for this is that the two-party system was not as rigid as is often assumed. In other words, it was much more common for members of parliament to vote their personal preferences on particular issues and not follow their party’s preference. Thus, while the Whigs may have lost their majority in the House of Commons, this did not automatically means that they could not count on votes from Tory MPs. Party allegiance was mostly confined to the most basic and fundamental questions about politics, and did not extend to all issues. T. A. Jenkins, “Parliament, party and politics,” 30-31. 86

An examination of the available evidence also fails to find support for the second

argument upon which the domestic politics explanation is based, i.e. that a reluctant

Melbourne cabinet was persuaded, or pressured, to adopt an aggressive forward policy by

the industrialist-mercantile lobby in 1839.

Some historians have argued that the Melbourne cabinet’s decision to send an

expedition to China came only after consultation with a number of influential members of

the industrialist-mercantile lobby starting in the third week of September, 1839, and

continuing until a decision was made in February of 1840.131 These scholars have especially highlighted a series of meetings between William Jardine, a prominent British merchant who had just returned from Canton, and Palmerston, the foreign minister. Over the course of these meetings, the former allegedly convinced Palmerston that commercial relations with China had to be put on a new and equitable basis, and that China should pay for the opium it had impounded by extortion.

As evidence of the successful attempts by Jardine and his colleagues to convince

Palmerston of their preferred strategy, scholars often cite a letter written by the latter in which he thanks his friend, MP John Abel Smith, “for the assistance which you and Mr.

Jardine so handsomely afforded to us,” and in which he states that it “it was mainly owing to them we were able to give to our affairs, Naval, Military, and Diplomatic, in

China those detailed instructions which have led to these satisfactory results...”.132

131 See Tan, “China and the Brave New World,” and Frank A. Welsh, A Borrowed Place: The History of Hong Kong, (New York: Kodansha International, 1993): 89-90.

132 Welsh, “A Borrowed Place,” 90.

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Together, these meetings and Palmerston’s letter of gratitude, appear to form the

primary basis for the claim that the industrialist-mercantile lobby managed to convince

Palmerston of the validity of their claims. An examination of both primary and secondary sources, however, casts doubts upon these claims. Three points should be taken into consideration when assessing the arguments made concerning the influence of Jardine and his colleagues on the decisions of the Melbourne cabinet to send a punitive expedition to China.

First, already on the 7th of August 1839, before Jardine had even arrived from

Canton, Palmerston had already indicated to a group of merchants and bankers that “the

Ministry would send out a ‘naval force capable of acting in a way that will be felt by the

Chinese.”133 Palmerston, moreover, already seems to have made up his mind about the appropriate response to the crisis at hand. After Palmerston, “on 21 September, received

Elliot’s dispatches describing events up to 29 May, he wrote to Melbourne two days later

to explain the government’s options... Palmerston’s himself preferred to demand both

compensation and a treaty.”134

133 Melancon, “Honour in Opium?” 867.

134 Melancon, “Honour in Opium?” 868-869.

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Second, the timeline provided by Tan, which posits that the final decision on

sending an expedition to China was made by Palmerston in February of 1840, is suspect.

According to the diary of John Cam Hobhouse, for instance, the cabinet meeting in which

the decision about the China expedition was made took place on October 1, 1839. Thus

there does not seem to be much support for the contention that it took Jardine and his

colleagues a number of months to convince Palmerston that military action was

imperative in response to the Opium crisis.135

Third, Palmerston’s letter of gratitude to John Abel Smith is open to a radically different interpretation than that provided by those historians who use it as proof of the

Jardine’s ability to convince Palmerston of the proper course of action vis-à-vis China. It could instead, and probably should, be read as a letter of gratitude for providing the cabinet with the technical and military knowledge necessary to execute the planned expedition in the most effective manner possible. Palmerston and his colleagues had only limited knowledge of China, its mode of government, and the strategic and tactical problems involved in a punitive expedition to that country. Jardine, on the other hand, had just returned from an extended stay in Canton, and due to his experiences in China as a merchant, had a lot of useful information to impart. Indeed, he arrived for his first meeting at Palmerston’s office with a number of maps and charts, that the latter borrowed from him for future use. It is very much possible, that it is to this kind of assistance that

Palmerston referred in his letter to John Abel Smith in November, 1842.136

135 Chung Tan, “China and the Brave New World” and Lady Dorchester, ed., “Recollections of a Long Life.”For a timeline that puts the decision somewhere between September 21st, and October of 1839 see W.C. Costin, “Great Britain and China”. 136 This line of argument is supported by Brian Inglis in his study of the Opium War. Inglis argues that the John Abel Smith did not have such close connections to Palmerston as is often suggested by others. As 89

In sum, following both logic and the available empirical evidence, it appears that

the Melbourne cabinet, and in particular its foreign minister Palmerston, needed very

little persuasion in the Fall of 1839 to send a punitive expedition to China. As Kenneth

Bourne argues, “everyone in the Cabinet agreed that the limits of tolerance [vis-a-vis

China’s legitimate claim against opium smuggling] had been passed when they heard that

the Chinese had obtained the merchants’ opium from Elliot by force. A military response

was therefore never in doubt.”137 In effect, the Cabinet had already made up their mind to

do so before it met with the representatives of the industrialist-mercantile lobby.

Although a casual observation of the distribution of power between the main

political actors in the British parliament would suggest that the Whigs relied upon an

alliance with the Radicals, a number of whom represented the industrialist-mercantile

interest groups, a more thorough investigation of the evidence shows otherwise. Worried

about the ultimate goals of the Radicals, a steadily weakening Whig ministry relied upon

a tacit alliance with its main rival, the Conservative Party under Peel, to govern Britain.

The Melbourne Cabinet accepted Radical support when it was offered, but was not prone

to offer significant concessions in return for such support.

This knowledge casts doubts upon the extent of influence the industrialist-

mercantile alliance had upon the Melbourne cabinet at the time of the opium crisis. The

decision-making time line suggests that the Melbourne cabinet had already decided upon

evidence he points at the fact that Palmerston failed to show up for a scheduled meeting with Smith and Jardine on September 16th, 1839. Moreover, Inglis also suggests that Jardine believed that Palmerston had already made up his mind about sending an expedition to China before the two met, and that Palmerston was primarily interested in technical assistance that Jardine could offer. “Although Palmerston made no direct avowal of his intentions, it was immediately clear to Jardine that he had an expeditionary force in mind, and needed the help of the firm’s maps and charts to form some idea of what would be involved.” Brian Inglis, The Opium War (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1976): 123-124.

137 Kenneth Bourne, “Palmerston: The Early Years,” 587. 90

a punitive expedition to China prior to the much cited meetings between Palmerston on

the one hand, and William Jardine and John Abel Smith on the other. Just like in 1835,

therefore, the mercantile lobby does not seem to have been the key factor in determining

the British response to a Chinese challenge to the Pax Britannica. If anything, the lobby

may have provided the cabinet with support for a policy that it had already decided to undertake for reasons of its own.

3.5. Legitimacy and order enforcement

How, then, can we explain the different British responses? Why did the cessation

of trade and physical intimidation of a representative of the British crown and British

subjects produce an accommodating response in 1834, but a violent response in 1839? In

what follows, I will argue that an examination of the available evidence suggests that

these differences can best be attributed to diverging British perceptions of the legitimacy

of Chinese behavior in each episode and the appropriate response to such actions, as

judged against what British policymakers believed to be internationally accepted

standards of appropriate behavior. The nature of the British responses, moreover, appears

to have been closely associated with shifting perceptions of the motivations and character

of the Chinese Imperial authorities. These conclusions, although admittedly based to a

substantial degree on inference and indirect evidence, are based primarily on the

published correspondence between the foreign ministers, Palmerston and the Duke of

Wellington, on the one hand, and the British representatives in Canton, on the other.

Due to the great geographical distance and a relative lack of knowledge about the

Chinese affairs, it is safe to assume that much, if not all, of the information that

Palmerston received about China and its actions came from his superintendents of trade

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at Canton.138 Thus, it is also relatively safe to assume that their perceptions about the

situation in China were based upon the reports they received from the latter, and that these perceptions were also reflected in their responses and instructions to the

superintendents in place.

A review of the correspondence between the British representatives in Canton and

their superiors in London, indicates that the latter were mostly concerned with

maintaining the existing commercial order in Canton, however oppressive and backward

the Canton-system appeared to the British merchants operating there. While they may not

have believed that the Canton-system was the most desirable way to organize trade

relations, there is no evidence to suggest that they rejected China’s right to regulate its

international commercial relations as it saw fit. Thus, as long as Chinese authorities

allowed British traders to trade, provided physical security for British traders, and treated

British subjects the same as those of other nations, British policymakers were not inclined

to intervene.139 These sentiments are clearly reflected in the instructions given to Lord

Napier, the first superintendent for trade sent to Canton in the wake of the abolition of the

Company’s monopoly on trade with China.140 Napier was instructed “to watch and

protect the interests of Our subjects resident at, or resorting to, the Empire of China for

the purposes of trade,” to mediate disputes, to protect British traders “in the peaceable

138 And from the British merchants at Canton and the representatives of the East India Company that had long been stationed in Canton to regulate the tea trade. Palmerston and his colleagues would have been much more inclined to rely upon information provided by their own representatives and semi-official EIC representatives, than private British merchants who, in general, did not enjoy stellar reputations.

139 This seems to fit into the general approach of British government to international trade during the period under examination. See Platt, “Finance, Trade, and Politics.”

140 Royal Sign Manual Instruction, December 31, 1833, “Correspondence Related to China.” Palmerston also reiterated these expectations to both Napier and his successors on a number of occasions.

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prosecution of all lawful enterprises in which they may be engaged in China,” and to

“protect Our subjects aforesaid from all unlawful exactions or hindrances, in the

prosecution of their commercial undertakings.”141 He was to do so, moreover, without

engaging in “conduct, language, and demeanour, as might needlessly excite jealousy or

distrust amongst the inhabitants of China, or the officers of the Chinese Government, or

as might unnecessarily irritate the feelings, or revolt the opinions or prejudices of the

Chinese people or Government.”142

In the short time between his arrival in China, in June of 1834, and his death in

October of the same year, however, Lord Napier seemed to have forgotten the

instructions he had received from his superiors in London. These included the protection of the legitimate interests of law-abiding British traders at Canton, and an explicit

warning not to upset the Chinese authorities while doing so. In other words, he was

expected to maintain what was regarded as a legitimate, albeit not optimal, commercial

status quo that would assure a steady supply of tea for the British market.143

Having quickly come to the conclusion that the Chinese government was both

incompetent and venal, and that it lacked widespread support among a population that

was highly interested in foreign trade, Napier soon started to advocate a hard line against

China in order to open it up to foreign trade. In a number of increasingly belligerent

letters, he advocated the forcible imposition of a new system of trade upon China, by

141 Royal Sign Manual Instruction, December 31, 1833, “Correspondence Related to China.” [Italics added].

142 Royal Sign Manual Instruction, December 31, 1833, “Correspondence Related to China.“

143 Although the opium trade was an important source of revenue for the Indian government, and it provided the silver with which the British acquired the tea, it was not mentioned in Napier’s instructions.

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force if necessary.144 In his reports, Napier sought to convince his superiors that China

did not deserve to be treated as a sovereign equal because of the venality, lack of

popularity, and incompetence of its rulers. The “Tartar Government, being in the extreme

degree of mental imbecility and moral degradation … is not in a position to be dealt with

or treated by civilized nations, according to the same rules as are acknowledged and practiced among themselves.”145

Napier’s arrival in Canton precipitated a crisis. Although he had already broken

with Chinese custom upon arrival --by proceeding straight to Canton, instead of stopping

at Macao to receive permission for the trip up the Bogue river to Canton, Napier refused

to respond to queries by the Chinese authorities as to the nature of his visit. He also

refused to interact with the latter by way of the Hong merchants as had been the custom

when the East India Company held the monopoly on British trade at Canton. Instead, he demanded to interact as an equal with the governor or viceroy of Canton, and displayed considerable arrogance in his interactions with the local authorities.

Anxious in their desire to impose control over the situation, and to not let the arrival of Napier challenge the established system of intercourse with foreigners, the

Chinese authorities then decided to suspend all trade in Canton and physically isolate the foreign factories until Napier would move to Macao. Under heavy pressure, and increasingly weak because of illness, Napier ultimately decided to relent and leave

Canton. With the removal of Napier, who died only a few days after having arriving from

Macao, the Chinese authorities once more opened the city to foreign commerce.

144 “Correspondence Relating to China,” 9-27.

145 Letter from Napier to Lord Grey, August 21, 1834, “Correspondence Relating to China,” 27. 94

Why did the British government fail to take action against the intimidation of

Napier, the threats against the foreign factories in Canton, and the interruption of trade by the Chinese authorities? Although evidence is scarce, and any inferences must be considered tentative at best, there are a number of indications that suggest that Napier’s

superiors harbored doubts concerning his sense of judgment. They seem to have reached

the conclusion that Napier had gone beyond the instructions that he had received, and in

doing so had unnecessarily provoked the Chinese authorities.146

For one, while Napier advocated the use of force against China to open up its

markets to free trade, his reports gave no indication that the Chinese authorities had acted

inappropriately before his arrival. He offered no proof that they had threatened the lives

or property of British subjects. Neither had they violated what Napier’s instructions had

identified as two other standards of behavior that China (like any other sovereign member

of international society) was expected to abide by. As Napiers instructions stated:

“We do require you constantly to bear in mind and to impress, as occasion may offer, upon Our subjects resident in, or resorting to China, the duty of conforming to the laws and usages of the Chinese Empire, so long as such laws shall be administered towards you and them with justice and good faith; and in the same manner in which the same are or shall be administered towards the subjects of China, or towards the subjects or citizens of other foreign nations resident in, or resorting to China.”147

Second, both Wellington and Palmerston seemed to have believed that Napier was

unnecessarily aggressive and showed bad judgment. Even Napier may have sensed that

146 A contributing factor may have been the fact that Napier, who they had not deemed a suitable candidate for the position in the first place had been forced upon them by the King. Glenn Melancon, “ Britain’s China Policy.”

147 Royal Sign Manual Instruction, “Correspondence Relating to China.”

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others believed that his judgment was clouded by his proclivity to advocate the use of

force. In one of his letters to Palmerston, he tries to dispel this reputation by asserting that

despite his previous naval career, he did not “delight in war” and that his

recommendations were based on a judicious assessment of the situation.148 Apparently,

however, this effort to convince Palmerston (or the Duke of Wellington, who actually

received these letters having replaced Palmerston for 4 months as Foreign Minister in the

first Peel cabinet) of his sound judgment seemed to have failed. Palmerston called

Napier’s actions “foolish Pranks,” while Wellington found it necessary to pointedly

remind the latter of his original instructions, which stated clearly that “it is not by force

and violence that His Majesty intends to establish a commercial intercourse between the

subjects and China; but by the other conciliatory measures so strongly inculcated in all

the instructions which you have received.”149

In effect, Wellington – and later Palmerston – seemed to have concluded that

Napier was the chief cause of the interruption of trade in 1834, and that he had ignored his explicit instructions not to upset the Chinese authorities and to do anything that might jeopardize the existing trade at Canton. While the Chinese authorities had used coercion to get Napier to leave Canton, it appears that both Wellington and Palmerston believed that their actions were driven by Napier’s untoward behavior, and not by any intentional

design to violate norm of acceptable behavior vis-à-vis foreign merchants and

government representatives.

148 Lord Napier, letter to Viscount Palmerston, August 14, 1834, “Correspondence Relating to China, “ 14.

149 Duke of Wellington, letter to Lord Napier, February 2, 1835, “Correspondence Relating to China, “ 26.

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Others, moreover, shared this view. “The Gentleman’s Magazine, for instance,

thought Napier had shown ‘pugnacity and defiance’. It was the Chinese who had been

reasonable.”150Palmerston’s sense that Napier had fundamentally misunderstood the

situation, and had acted with unjustifiable rashness, can only have been reinforced by the

dispatches sent by his successor J.F. Davies.

The latter was much more moderate in his actions, and suggested that, given the

right approach, the Emperor of China would be amenable to the abolition of the Canton

system and the extension of trade. He appeared to believe that it was the local authorities

at Canton that were the main obstacle to British commerce, and that the behavior of these

local authorities was not necessarily condoned by the Emperor himself151 These sentiments were echoed by Charles Elliot, promoted to superintendent in late 1836, who

wrote that an opening of trade would be more likely to be achieved ‘by placing ourselves

unobtrusively in a situation which shall induce approaches from the Chinese

authorities.”152

Although they did not appreciate the failure of the Chinese authorities to treat

Napier as the official representative of a monarch of equal status as the Chinese emperor,

both Wellington and Palmerston failed to support Napier’s pleas for forceful action.

Given the character of the instructions that they had sent Napier, both Wellington and

Palmerston appeared to have considered the actions by the Chinese authorities to be

150 Cited in Gelber, “Opium, Soldiers and Evangelicals,” 17.

151 J.F. Davis, letter to Viscount Palmerston, October 28, 1834, “Correspondence Relating to China,” 80. See also Costin, “Great Britain and China,“ 26.

152 Charles Elliot, letter to Viscount Palmerston, January 27, 1837, “Correspondence Relating to China,” 150.

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justified because Napier had not followed the prevailing customs at Canton and because

they believed that full members of the international system had the privilege to determine

the specific conditions upon which trade within their borders was conducted.153 In other

words, Napier had tried to use a battering ram to open China, an act that was rightfully

resented by the Chinese authorities. It was not surprising therefore that Napier’s actions

had drawn a sharp, although unfortunate, response from the Chinese.

Chinese behavior during the Opium crisis, however, was a different matter altogether. While some historians have argued that the British response was dictated solely by concerns about the potential loss of the lucrative opium revenue, the evidence suggests that Palmerston and his colleagues responded primarily to the nature in which the Chinese authorities chose to deal with the opium trade, and not to the anti-Opium campaign per se.154

153 The correspondence with Napier’s successors, such as J.F. Davis, who had a low opinion of some of the independent British merchants at Canton, may also have contributed to Palmerston’s view of the situation. Davis wrote that, “The Crude and ill-digested Petition to His Majesty from a portion of the English traders at Canton (for some of the most respectable houses declined signing it) is said to have been drawn up by a casual visitor from India, totally unaquainted with this country.” J.F. Davis, letter to Viscount Palmerston, January 19, 1835, “Correspondence Relating to China,” 80.

154 For studies that cite the threat to the opium trade as the primary reason for the violent British response see especially Tan, “China and the Brave New World” and Wu, “The Chinese Opium Question.” For a contrary claim that minimizes the effects of Lin’s actions on the opium revenue see David Edward Owen, British Opium Policy in China and India, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934): 168-170.

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Although they would have certainly preferred the Opium trade to continue

unabated, British policymakers recognized the legitimate right of the Chinese government to ban the opium trade and to prevent opium from being smuggled into

China. As Palmerston wrote to Charles Elliot in June of 1838, when the anti-Opium campaign was in full swing and British smugglers were becoming increasingly desperate;

“Her Majesty’s Government cannot interfere for the purpose of enabling British subjects to violate the laws of the country to which they trade.”155

While these instructions can be, and have indeed been, interpreted as mere

posturing on Palmerston’s part, the fact of the matter is that the British government did

not intervene on behalf of the British merchants until after Commissioner Lin laid siege

to Canton and only after Palmerston had been led to believe that Lin had held the

innocent merchant community hostage in order to force a few wayward opium smugglers

to give up their property which was beyond his physical control.156 If the continuation of

the Opium trade was indeed the primary motivation of British policy vis-à-vis China it is

difficult to explain why Palmerston remained idle while the Opium trade at Canton

ground to an almost complete halt during 1838.

What then did prompt the violent British reaction? The available evidence

suggests that the nature of the British reaction was driven by the belief – strongly fostered

by Elliot’s dispatches – that the Chinese government had without provocation attacked

innocent traders in order to put pressure on others who had broken Chinese laws and that

155 Viscount Palmerston, letter to Charles Elliot, June 15, 1838, “Correspondence Relating to China, “258.

156 While it has since become clear that most of the British merchants, if not all, at Canton were involved in the Opium trade, Palmerston probably did not know this. Elliot had reported in January of 1839 that with respect to the foreign merchants at Canton there were only few who practiced or countenanced the trade in opium. See Charles Elliot, letter to Viscount Palmerston, January 2, 1839, “Correspondence Relating to China. “ 99

the anti-Opium campaign was not actually intended to eradicate the opium trade but was

a maneuver to extract “some considerable fees for the price of its future relaxation.” In

fact, Elliot noted that Commissioner Lin remained in the area “superintending an

elaborate examination, careful repackage, and classification of the opium into three sorts

... carefulness which does not accord reasonably with destructive intentions. In my judgment, the main body of this opium, in fact all that is salable, will be turned to the most advantageous account; and I confess I have a suspicion that the present spoliatory measures will end in the legalization of the trade, upon the footing of a Government monopoly”157

Based upon the information furnished by Charles Elliot, therefore, it would have

been hard for Palmerston not to conclude that the Chinese central authorities, in order to

improve their own finances, had acted in a duplicitous manner and had not met its

obligation as an equal and full member of international society to enact its laws in good

faith, that is to say, to offer predictable and non-arbitrary rules to regulate foreign

commerce and to provide security for the lives and property of law-abiding individuals

engaged in legitimate trade. China’s behavior, Elliot emphasized, was not only a drastic

departure from the past. For “the first time, in our intercourse with this Empire,” Elliot

wrote to Palmerston, “ its government has taken the unprovoked initiative in aggressive

measures against British life, liberty and property, and against the dignity of the

Crown.”158

157 Charles Elliot, letter to Viscount Palmerston, April 6, 1839, “Correspondence Relating to China,” 385- 386.

158 Cited in Ian Hernon, The Savage Empire: Forgotten Wars of the 19th Century, (Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2000): 72. Italics added. 100

Commissioner Lin’s actions as a special envoy from the Chinese Emperor had

persuaded the previously moderate Elliot that the Chinese Imperial authorities could no

longer be trusted to provide security for British merchants engaged in legitimate trade

and that conciliatory responses would not work. He reported to Palmerston that,

“It is my first duty to express a plain conviction, that no efforts of Her Majesty’s Government, either of negotiation purely, or of negotiation supported by arms, could recover, for trade to be carried on at Canton, such a degree of confidence as would restore its late important extent. All sense of security has been broken to pieces. In fact, my Lord, the first truth deducible from the actual proceedings of this Government is strikingly momentous; namely, that a separation from the ships of our country, on the main land of China, is wholly unsafe.”159

Although Elliot’s motives in describing the situation in this way may not have

been devoid of self-interest, it is clear that his superiors considered his reports to be

reliable.160 This is not surprising as Elliot was considered competent and had close ties to

some of the key Whig politicians of the era. Moreover, he had proven himself to be

exceedingly conciliatory towards the Chinese authorities in his two years as

superintendent of trade. There was therefore no reason for Elliot’s superiors to doubt

either the veracity of his reports or the soundness of his judgments. This is evidenced by

the fact that Elliot’s views seem to have been accepted wholeheartedly by Palmerston and

159 Charles Elliot, letter to Lord Palmerston, April 3, 1939, 1840, Parliamentary Papers, “Correspondence relating to China, “ 384.

160 Elliot’s dispatches do not appear to have been totally truthful. Moreover, it appears that he panicked and exceeded the bounds of his authority by promising the opium traders that they would be reimbursed. He therefore had an incentive to put the blame for the Opium crisis squarely on Lin’s shoulders. 101

his colleagues. They are clearly echoed in a letter, addressed to the “Minister of the

Emperor of China,” in which Palmerston outlined the British grievances.

In this letter, Palmerston stated that although no commercial treaty existed

between Britain and China, for many years “British Subjects have continued to resort to

China for purposes of trade, placing full confidence in the justice and good faith of the

Emperor,” but that these law-abiding merchants had now been subjected to “violent

outrages” at the hands of Chinese officers because in its sudden zeal to eradicate the

opium trade, the Chinese government “determined to seize peaceable British Merchants,

instead of seizing the contraband opium; to punish the innocent for the guilty, and to

make the suffering of the former, the means of compulsion upon the latter.” When Elliot

protested against these actions, Commissioner Lin, “in violation of the Law of Nations …

imprisoned the Superintendent as well as the Merchants, and, continuing to deprive them

all of the means of subsistence, he threatened to put them all to death by starvation.”161

As a clear indication that Lin’s actions had decisively changed Britain’s view of

China’s status as a sovereign and equal, or ‘civilized,‘ member of the international

system, China would no longer be allowed to regulate its own trade. In addition to

demands for restitution for the opium impounded and a promise to treat British officers with the respect due to them, Palmerston demanded “security for the future, that British

Subjects resorting to China for purposes of Trade … shall not again be exposed to

violence and injustice while engaged in their lawful pursuits of Commerce. For this

purpose, and in order that British Merchants trading to China may not be subject to the

arbitrary caprice either of the Government of Peking, or its local Authorities at the Sea-

161 Cited in Morse, “The International Relations of the Chinese Empire,” 621-623.

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Ports of the Empire, the British Government demands that one or more sufficiently large

and properly situated Islands on the Coast of China… shall be permanently given up to

the British Government as a place of residence and commerce for British Subjects; where their persons may be safe from molestation, and where their Property may be secure.”162

In sum, the evidence suggests that the key difference between the British

responses to the Napier and the Opium crises can be found in different perceptions of the

legitimacy of Chinese behavior. In the former, Chinese authorities were seen to respond

to a provocation by a ‘rogue’ British representative who had ignored his instructions from

London. While British policymakers were not impressed with what they perceived as

Chinese arrogance they believed that China, as an equal member of international society,

had the right to defend itself against such encroachments. In the Opium Crisis, however,

China was believed to have attacked law-abiding merchants at Canton without

provocation in a duplicitous effort to enrich the Chinese imperial authorities.

In other words, not only had China failed to provide physical security for

legitimate and law-abiding foreign merchants, it had done so intentionally and for financial gain. For this, British policymakers demanded satisfaction. Because it had willingly failed to behave in a way expected of a sovereign member of the international society, China had also demonstrated that it was not entitled to the privileges accorded to

‘civilized’ states of equal rights and status.163 Its right to control its foreign trade relations

was summarily revoked and positive inducements were no longer considered an

appropriate way to convince China to liberalize its markets. British traders would no

162 Cited in Morse, “The International Relations of the Chinese Empire,” 624.

163 For a discussion of the standards of ‘civilization’ and how they developed over the course of the 19th century see Gerrit W. Gong, “The Standard of ‘Civilization’,” 15. 103

longer be left under the control of the Chinese government, which had proven itself unwilling to provide a safe environment for those seeking to do legitimate business.

In final analysis, therefore, the available evidence suggests that the disparate

British responses to the Chinese challenges can best be explained by a focus on British assessments of the nature and underlying causes of China’s actions as judged against socially constructed standards of appropriate behavior for equal members of the international society. Although the paucity of direct evidence precludes one from making definitive statements about the validity of this sociological explanation, confidence in this conclusion is bolstered by the failure of the realist and the domestic politics models to account for the variation in British responses and by the fact that this variation cannot simply be attributed to variation in material incentives as has been suggested elsewhere.

According to the latter argument, both the British and Indian governments enjoyed and were dependent upon the revenue generated by the Opium trade. They would have been sorely disappointed by the cessation of the trade in case the Chinese anti-

Opium campaign would have succeeded. If the fear of losing the revenues from opium was the primary motivation behind the Opium war, however, it is difficult to understand why the British cabinet did not take action in 1835, when the Chinese authorities also cut off the trade at Canton. After all, when the Duke of Wellington received Napier’s dispatches he could not have known that the Chinese authorities would open up the trade again. If China had stopped all trade with foreign merchants, the Opium trade would also have come to an end.

Yet neither the Duke of Wellington nor Lord Palmerston believed that coercive steps against China were called for in response to the Napier incident. A look at the 104

relative importance of the opium revenue for the government of India shows that this

cannot be attributed to changes in the relative importance of the opium trade in these

years. In 1834-1835, Opium constituted 4.73% of the total revenue of the Indian

government, and in 1838-1839 this figure was 7.75%. While Opium could therefore be

considered a significant part of the Indian revenue in 1839, this was also the case, although a little bit less so, five years earlier. And while in hindsight this seems like a

great difference, British policymakers in 1835 did not have the benefit of hindsight and

could not have predicted that they would become increasingly dependent on opium

revenues in the future.

If British policymakers were solely motivated by fears of the termination of the

Opium trade, moreover, we should have expected Britain to intervene earlier in 1838

when the anti-Opium campaign had succeeded in bringing the opium trade in China to a

halt. While the Melbourne cabinet was clearly embarrassed by Elliot’s promise of

compensation to the British opium traders in Canton, moreover, war hardly made sense in

material terms. Lin had allowed foreign trade at Canton to resume after the opium had

been handed over and, as one parliamentary critic pointed out, even certain victory in the

war with China would be more costly than useful. War would destroy a market for 2

million pounds of British goods for a number of years, and more importantly, might

affect the trade in tea “an article which was no longer a commodity or a luxury, but

almost one of the necessaries of life.”164

In this context it is also important to note that there is no real evidence that

Palmerston and his colleagues decided upon punitive actions against China because they

164 Mr. Hogg, cited in Hansard’s Parliamentary debates, House of Commons 53, 1840, April 9th, Col. 847. 105

believed that the crisis heralded the definitive end of the opium trade. On the contrary, they were most probably convinced that the Opium trade would continue, although in a different form than before. After all, Charles Elliot had written in his dispatches that while the price of opium had dropped precipitously in the year preceding the Opium crisis, the crisis itself once more caused the price of opium to increase. In other words,

Elliot believed that the trade would continue because Lin’s actions had actually helped resurrect an otherwise moribund smuggle.165

In sum, where in the first crisis China was seen as a sovereign states engaged in a legitimate attempt to regulate trade within its borders, the Opium crisis was different. In the latter, China was seen as a corrupt, arbitrary and therefore untrustworthy actor that could not be relied upon to regulate trade within its borders when left to its own devices.

The crisis seemed to have changed British perceptions of the character (identity) of the

Chinese government as a whole. That is, where earlier British representatives tended to explain Chinese excesses at Canton as unauthorized by the central government,

Commissioner Lin was clearly a representative of the Emperor. Thus, his actions were seen to reflect the motivations of the Chinese emperor.

The result was that, in British eyes, China was now seen as a backward, uncivilized, despotic state that could not be trusted to treat foreign merchants in a fair and

165 It is also interesting that the British government did not intervene in the anti-Opium campaign before Lin laid siege to the foreign factories at Canton. The “demand side” campaign that Lin had pursued was very effective, and had actually caused a significant drop in the demand for opium. Yet, the British did not intervene until Lin decided to act directly against the British merchants at Canton. There is also some evidence to suggest that the Indian government would have foregone the opium cultivation if the market for opium in China was eliminated. According to an official of the Indian government, “”India, as India, appears to be only concerned in the Chinese question, inasmuch as... if the Chinese will not eat opium [sic], the Indian revenue must materially suffer; but it is presumed that it is quite out of the question to suppose that the British Government would be justified in compelling the Chinese to eat opium.” Owen, “British Opium Policy,” 173. 106

predictable manner. Perceptions of the legitimacy of China’s behavior and especially the

causes to which this behavior was attributed, rather than available capabilities,

reputational concerns, or domestic political considerations, seem to have been the

primary determinant of the varying British responses to two similar Chinese challenges to

the Pax Britannica in the 1830s.

3.6 Conclusions

In 1834 and 1839 China acted in ways that were clearly incommensurate with the international order that Britain sought to promote and enforce, by threatening and using coercion against British officers of the crown and private merchants at Canton. British policymakers responded in strikingly different manner to these basically similar challenges. An examination of these different responses to challenges to the Pax

Britannica indicates that financial imperatives and interests alone cannot account for the different responses observed. That is, the threat to the opium trade alone cannot easily account for the British responses. Neither were these latter simply a function of changing

British geopolitical interests, available coercive capabilities, or domestic political calculations. While the paucity of the empirical evidence does not allow us to state so conclusively, the historical record does strongly suggest that how British policymakers interpreted the ‘deviant’ actions of the Chinese government, i.e. whether these actions were appropriate or inappropriate in the social context of the international system, was instrumental in determining their responses. More specifically, perceptions of the causes of Chinese behavior seemed to have been the primary determinants of British responses.

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When the Chinese actions were perceived to be a reaction against overly aggressive

behavior on the part of Lord Napier, i.e. when China’s transgression against the

established norm was considered to be an unfortunate but justifiable act given the

circumstances, the British government chose to appease China’s sensibilities to persuade it to return to the status quo ante. By contrast, when Chinese authorities were perceived to act in an arbitrary and unreasonable manner, driven by a greedy despotic government,

British policymakers decided that the use of force was the most appropriate response to

Chinese actions. Moreover, it led them to believe that British merchants could no longer be left under the authority of the Chinese government, a belief reflected in the terms of the Treaty of Nanking that followed the Opium War.

Although the analysis presented in the preceding pages does not yet offer a solid foundation for far-reaching and definitive conclusions, it does suggest the following preliminary observations about how the strong respond to challenges from the weak:

(1) Available capabilities do not necessarily determine how the strong choose to respond to challenges from the weak when they are not faced by other pressing geopolitical challenges. At the very least, the evidence presented in this chapter implies that geopolitical considerations, relative capabilities, and reputational considerations are not always instrumental in determining the actions of states, in particular of powerful states confronted with challenges from the weak.

(2) A similar conclusion can be drawn about the effects of parochial interest groups. The two cases examined in this chapter should have been an easy case for the domestic politics perspective. The Melbourne cabinet was weakened by the time of the Opium

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crisis, and there was a strong lobby operating on behalf of the British merchants in

Canton. Yet, the parliamentary weakness of the Melbourne cabinet did not seem to affect

its willingness to offer concessions in foreign policy to appease domestic constituencies.

There is simply no evidence that Palmerston and his colleagues adjusted their policy

preferences in response to pressure from domestic interest groups.

(3) The causes to which policymakers attribute the behavior of the challenger, i.e.

whether the behavior can be justified by circumstances beyond the control of the actor or

whether the behavior is considered intentional can have an important effect on how the

strong choose to respond to challenges from the weak. It seems clear that British

policymakers framed the two crises in distinctly different terms. The Napier incident

seems to have been attributed to the overzealous behavior of their emissary, and as such

elicited no punitive response. Conversely, the behavior of the Chinese imperial

authorities during the Opium crisis was viewed as unprovoked, arbitrary and driven by

greed and corruption.

(4) Closely related to the previous point is the potential importance of how the

situation is framed by policymakers. The two cases examined in this chapter show that

there may be considerable room for political entrepreneurs and advisers to shape the

framework in which decisions are made to obtain their desired policy outcomes.

Conversely, a failure to frame the challenge in the appropriate way could also produce

the reverse.

Thus, Lord Napier called for an opening of China to foreign trade by force, something that clearly did not resonate with British policy makers who believed that independent

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states had the right to impose restrictions on foreign trade and who believed that

conciliatory approaches were more appropriate than the use of force. Thus, Napier’s

references to the despotic and backward nature of the Chinese government did not yield

the desired response, as British policymakers did not believe that identity of a

government –whether liberal and enlightened or despotic and anachronistic- affected its right to determine how foreign trade would be conducted on its soil. Napier’s

aggressiveness coupled to the fact that he had not been their choice as their representative

in Canton also appeared to have a detrimental effect on how Wellington and Palmerston

regarded his actions and policy recommendations.

By contrast to Lord Napier, Charles Elliot was known for his moderation.166 He

had even angered Palmerston by submitting too much to Chinese demands during his

tenure as superintendent. When Elliot then described Chinese behavior as unpredictable,

arbitrary and corrupt, and called for military intervention, his representation of the

challenge was accepted and became the basis for the British response to China’s

actions.167 It is important to note, that Elliot made sure to describe Chinese behavior in

terms of the arbitrary application of Chinese law to British subjects and in the lack of

predictability of the behavior of the Chinese authorities. Moreover, by describing Chinese

behavior as “robbery,” a concept clearly derived from domestic conceptions of

criminality and social deviance, Elliot made it easy for Palmerston to draw inferences

166 For example, even after the Opium war had broken out, Elliot still preferred a diplomatic approach. In explaining why he believed it important to be lenient towards the Chinese he stated, “they love both their country and their profit, and I believe we shall do better by continuing to enlist the latter motive on our side, than by raising up the other against us.” Cited in Costin, “Great Britain and China,” 95.

167 It is quite possible that herein lies the most important role of parochial interest groups. Such groups can use their political power to help policymakers frame the situation and can thereby affect their responses to challenges from the weak. 110

about the actions of the Chinese government, and the motives that drove the latter. Elliot, in other words, made sure to impugn the motivations behind Lin’s actions in terms that

resonated with Palmerston and the British public, and identified a clear link between the

character of the Chinese imperial government and its inexcusable behavior. The fact that

Elliot was closely related to key members of the British political and social upper-class also could not have hurt his credibility.

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CHAPTER 4

FROM DIPLOMATIC ISOLATION TO POSITIVE INDUCEMENTS: THE DENUCLEARIZATION OF UKRAINE

4.1 The Pax Americana and the Threat of Nuclear Proliferation

With the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States remained the only superpower in the international system. Having vanquished its chief ideological and geopolitical foe, the U.S. was now free to promote its desired order in the international system; an order based upon the notions of economic and political liberalism, and a stable supply of energy sources to fuel the international economy. In the absence of a peer competitor that could threaten either American primacy or survival, American policymakers in the post-Cold War era have been preoccupied primarily with responding to second-order challenges to the Pax Americana, i.e. with enforcing international order.168

One of the main second-order challenges to the Pax Americana (until the terrorist

attacks on 9/11) that U.S. policymakers identified in the wake of the dissolution of the

Soviet Union and the aftermath of the first Persian Gulf War was the horizontal

proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (whether of the nuclear, biological or

168 For the need to re-assess American security policies in the absence of a major existential threat see Ashton B. Çarter and William J. Perry, Preventive defense: a new security strategy for America, (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1999). 112

chemical kind) and of the means to deliver them.169 The proliferation of WMD threatens the Pax Americana in three ways. First, it increases the risks associated with regional conflicts, which may lead to major disruptions of the international economic order.

Second, in the hands of terrorists and American enemies, weapons of mass destruction

may pose a direct threat to the U.S. homeland. Third, the spread of WMD can limit the

U.S. ability to project power in the international system, by dramatically increasing the

cost of military intervention. This may encourage ‘deviant’, ‘rogue’ or ‘outlaw’ states to

threaten American allies and interests in strategically important parts of the world.

Altogether, therefore, it is not surprising that counterproliferation has attained an

important position in post-Cold War American foreign policy. This concern is clearly

reflected in official documents, statements by policymakers and U.S. behavior in the

post-Cold War era. According to the Department of Defense Annual report of 1991, for

instance, countering weapons of mass destruction was henceforth to be regarded as a high

priority. Presidential executive order 12938, “declared a national emergency to deal with

proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and the means of delivering

such weapons.”170

169 Michael J. Mazarr, "Going Just a Little Nuclear: Nonproliferation Lessons from North Korea," International Security 20, No.2 (Fall 1995): 92.

170 General Accounting Office, Report to the Chairman and Ranking Minority Member, Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, Weapons of Mass Destruction: DOD’s Actions to Combat Weapons Use Should Be More Integrated and Focused, May 2000, GAO/NSIAD-00-97: 30 113

A 1997 policy document, entitled A National Security Strategy for the New

Century, identified proliferation of NBC weapons as “a major threat to our security and

that of our allies and other friendly nations. Thus, a key part of our strategy is to seek to

stem the proliferation of such weapons and to develop an effective capability to deal with

these threats. The president order also noted that, “Countries weapons programs, and their levels of cooperation with our nonproliferation efforts will be among our most important criteria in judging the nature of our bilateral relations.”171

In their efforts to reverse or prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass

destruction, U.S. policymakers have used both positive inducements and coercion. The

following two chapters attempt to explain the variation in these responses by way of two

case studies. Using the theoretical framework developed in the chapter 2, the following

chapters examine the U.S. efforts to counter nuclear proliferation in the early 1990s: the

denuclearization of Ukraine and its effort to freeze and rollback the North Korean

(DPRK) nuclear program in 1994. In both cases, the United States initially used coercive

diplomacy to obtain its goal of denuclearization and then shifted to the use of positive

inducements. The following chapters examine whether these shifts were due to changes

in the availability of coercive capabilities and reputational considerations, shifts in the

domestic political costs associated with one or the other strategy, or shifts in the

perceived legitimacy of Ukraine’s and the DPRK’s behavior.

4.2 Positive Inducements and Counterproliferation: Ukraine .

In the immediate aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, American

policymakers had one overriding goal when it came to the non-Russian successor

171 Barry R. Schneider, Future War and Counterproliferation: U.S. Military Responses to NBC Proliferation Threats, (Westport: Praeger, 1999): 53. 114

republics. It was to make sure that Russia would be the sole republic to emerge as a nuclear weapons state from the Soviet debacle. This meant that they had to persuade

Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine (the three republics in addition to Russia who had

Soviet nuclear weapons stationed on their territory when the union imploded) to relinquish the nuclear arsenals that they had inherited from the Soviet Union.

By all accounts, the American efforts started on a positive note. All three republics initially agreed, signing the Lisbon Protocol in which they promised to adhere to the START I treaty and to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear weapons states in the shortest time possible. Despite this promising start, it ultimately proved much harder to get Ukraine, in particular, to live up to its obligations under the

Lisbon Protocol. Ukrainian president Kravchuk repeatedly reneged on his promises of a speedy dismantlement of the nuclear weapons systems that remained on Ukrainian soil. It took over two years for the Ukrainian parliament to ratify the START I treaty and to agree to accede to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state. Two more years passed before the last warheads were finally removed from Ukraine in 1996.

Although the U.S. eventually managed to persuade Ukraine to relinquish its nuclear arsenal, Bernauer et al. note that, “Ukraine’s denuclearization was not free of charge. In addition to investing an enormous amount of time and effort in negotiations,

Ukraine received a package of positive incentives encompassing security assurances, dismantlement assistance and economic aid, and compensation in the form of nuclear fuel and debt relief.”172 While the Bush administration initially resorted to implicit threats and

172 Thomas Bernauer, Stefan Brem, and Roy Suter, “The Denuclearization of Ukraine,” in The Politics of Positive Incentives in Arms Control, eds. Thomas Bernauer and Dieter Ruloff. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999): 112. 115

diplomatic pressure (sweetened with promises of modest compensation for the actual

costs of removing the weapons from Ukrainian soil), the Clinton administration

ultimately used a comprehensive incentive-based policy to persuade a weaker state to

comply with its desired international order.

As discussed in Chapter 2, the three theoretical models offer diverging predictions

for the choice of enforcement strategies and for why a dominant state may abandon one

for the other. The realist model expects the choice to be a function mostly of available

coercive capabilities, cost sensitivity, and reputational considerations. Policy shifts,

therefore, should be a function of a change in the availability of coercive capabilities

and/or reputational considerations. The domestic politics model suggests that

policymakers will be driven by the domestic political costs associated with their policy

choices. As such, policy shifts should be a function of the changing domestic political

costs of a policy option. Finally, the sociological model suggests that dominant states will

be guided by social conventions that determine whether deviance from their desired

norms is appropriate under the circumstances. This means, that a policy shift should be preceded by a change in the (perceived) appropriateness of the behavior in question. The following chapter evaluates these claims as they pertain to American attempts to induce

Ukraine to relinquish its nuclear arsenal.

4.3 Realism: available capabilities and reputational considerations

According to the realist model, the use of coercion and positive inducements is primarily determined by the availability of coercive capabilities and reputational concerns. When the dominant state can translate its aggregate preponderance into local superiority or when it believes that it can do so rather easily, we should expect it to use

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coercion. In their interactions with weaker states, therefore, we should expect dominant states to use coercion as a default strategy. Positive inducements will only be offered to weaker states when coercion seems unfeasible, when it does not work, and when policymakers do not fear detrimental reputational consequences.

A first-cut assessment of the realist argument in this case should therefore focus on the availability of coercive capabilities and, more importantly, whether any changes took place in the availability of these resources between early 1992 and the spring of

1993, when the U.S. shifted from a mildly coercive strategy (which relied on diplomatic pressure for the most part) to a full-blown incentive-based one. In the case of Ukraine we should find that -- despite America’s overwhelming aggregate preponderance over

Ukraine -- American policymakers either did not have the necessary capabilities available to successfully coerce the latter, that the costs of coercion were out of proportion to the benefits, or that they believed this to be the case.

To assess these claims, I first examine aggregate data to see whether the shift from coercion to positive incentives was associated with a shift in the systemic distribution of capabilities or with the potential demands imposed on the U.S. military by simultaneous peripheral challenges. I then discuss the range of coercive policy tools that were theoretically available to American policymakers and outline the material capabilities that would have been required for their successful implementation.

4.3.1 First Cut: Peer Competitors and Simultaneous Challenges

The United States obviously had a tremendous aggregate military preponderance over Ukraine. In the period between 1992 and 1994, for instance, the U.S. expenditure on its military was on average 50 times higher than that of Ukraine. Based on relative

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capabilities alone, therefore, one would expect the U.S. to have had few qualms about

exploiting its preponderance of power. It is, however, possible that the failure of the U.S. to use military threats against Ukraine was caused by the lack of availability of the necessary coercive resources. In other words, those resources could have been needed elsewhere to address other threats and challenges. The U.S. could have been faced, for instance, with a rising peer competitor, forcing it to conserve and concentrate its military power in response. It could also be that the U.S. was suffering from imperial overstretch, that is, that it was engaged in number of simultaneous peripheral challenges that simply did not leave enough of its coercive capabilities free to successfully coerce Ukraine. The available evidence, however, supports neither proposition.

An examination of the distribution of material capabilities in the international system during the 18 months that it took the U.S. to shift from a coercive strategy to an incentive-based policy does not show evidence of a significant shift in the distribution of capabilities to the detriment of the United States (see Figure 3). Such a shift would have indicated the potential rise of a great power challenger and could have explained

American reluctance to threaten or use military force in its efforts to convince Ukraine to denuclearize and a shift towards a more incentive-based policy.173

173 Data shown is from the Composite Index of National Capabilities as compiled by the Correlates of War Project. See Singer, Bremer, and Stuckey, "Capability Distribution, Uncertainty, and Major Power War, 1820-1965." 118

Figure 3 Distribution of Capabilities as Percentage of Systemic Capabilities

American policymakers also did not show any indication that they were

concerned about a rising peer competitor. Although the U.S. expenditures rose from 1991

to 1992 (most probably as a results of the Persian Gulf War), American military

expenditures declined from 1992 onward.174 Allowing a defense budget to decline is

certainly not consistent with a fear of the rise of a serious geopolitical threat.

Was the U.S. military then simply involved in too many peripheral conflicts at the same time? Was its military power stretched thin because of a large number of commitments in the periphery? This does not seem to be the case either. There is no evidence, for example, of an excessive demand on America’s military in the first half of

1993, certainly not to the extent that it would have affected its ability to respond to

174 American military expenditures in current dollars were $305 billion in 1992, $298 billion in 1993, and $288 billion on 1994. See SIPRI military expenditure database http://www.sipri.org/contents/milap/milex/mex_database1.html. 119

another threat or challenge. One serious new U.S. military deployment did come at the

end of 1992, and therefore coincided more or less with the decision to offer incentives to

Ukraine. However this deployment of approximately 25000 troops to Somalia for

operation Restore Hope could not have formed much of a strain on the U.S. military. It

involved barely 1.5% of the total American armed forces.175 The units deployed,

moreover, were sent in without heavy armor or equipment. Clearly this could not have

affected the American ability to deploy its armed forces against Ukraine if it had desired

to do so. All in all, aggregate data of relative capabilities and the number of second-order

challenges the U .S. was faced with at the time cannot explain or predict the shift from a

coercive strategy in the last year of the Bush administration.

4.3.2 The Menu of Choice: Coercion and Counterproliferation

While the aggregate data on relative capabilities and the number of peripheral

challenges therefore do not offer an immediate explanation for the shift to the use of

positive inducements, it is quite possible that case-specific attributes of the Ukrainian case ruled out the use of military threats, the use of military power, and economic sanctions. To assess this possibility, the following sections outline the three coercive strategies that American policymakers could have theoretically considered (counterforce strategies, counter value strategies, and economic coercion), the requirements for their

successful use, and the American ability to meet those requirements.

4.3.3 Counterforce Strategies

Counterforce strategies refer to military strikes aimed at destroying the WMD

capabilities of the target state (in this case the nuclear arsenal and/or infrastructure of the

175 Department of Defense records at http://web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/military/history/309hist.htm.

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target states) directly. In terms of the conditions that are necessary for counter-force

strategies to succeed, two stand out in particular: possession of accurate intelligence

about the targets that need to be destroyed and possession of adequate and appropriate

military resources to successfully destroy them. The absence of either intelligence or

sufficient military capabilities will make counter-force strikes unfeasible.176

These requirements are not easy to meet even when a state possesses a preponderance of aggregate power. The Gulf War anti-SCUD campaign, for instance, showed that the absence of accurate intelligence and sufficient striking capabilities severely hinder counterforce strategies. The Air campaign against mobile SCUD launchers appears to have met near total failure. Although coalition pilots claimed the

destruction of large numbers of mobile SCUD launchers, the authoritative Gulf War

Airpower Survey found “no indisputable proof that Scud mobile launchers – as opposed

to high-fidelity decoys, trucks, or other objects with Scud-like signature, were destroyed

by fixed-wing aircraft.”177

Even when information is available about all the targets, moreover, it is not

always necessarily the case that the available military technology can actually ensure

their destruction or that sufficient strike capabilities are available to destroy the chosen

targets. Thus, while the dominant state may be militarily superior to the target state, it

may not have the specific capabilities available to engage in effective counter-force

strikes. Target states can, for instance, house their WMD capabilities out of reach of

176 Some observers insist upon another requirement, the destruction of the entire WMD infrastructure and arsenal of the target state. The reasoning behind this is that a failure to destroy the latter is to run the risk of retaliation in the near or long-term future.

177 Cited Schneider, “Future War and Counterproliferation,” 155. 121

available strike capabilities or store them in near impenetrable caves and underground

bunkers. Both the availability of accurate intelligence and of appropriate strike

capabilities, therefore, may affect the availability of counter-force strategies to the

dominant state.

4.3.4 Countervalue Strategies

Countervalue strategies involve striking militarily at targets of importance to the

target regime or even the removal of the target regime altogether by the use of military

force. That is, by applying military pressure against the target-state, the sender state may

hope to extract concessions from the former or, in the most extreme case, to destroy its

ability to make independent decisions by removing it from power altogether.178 In effect, countervalue military strategies are indirect means to an end. They seek to impose significant costs upon the target state’s policymakers in order to convince them to capitulate and comply with the demands of the sender state.

Clearly, intelligence plays an important role as well in the use of countervalue military coercion. However, the intelligence necessary for such coercion is much less specific and less hard to come by than the kind of intelligence that will make precision attacks against WMD targets feasible. High value targets can include major components of military power and societal infrastructure (power supply, energy supply, transportation) that are easily identifiable and difficult to hide.

178 Counterforce and countervalue strategies are roughly equivalent to Robert Pape’s denial and punishment strategies respectively. The main difference being that counterforce strategies in the context of counter- proliferation refers only to the nuclear weapons themselves, while the punishment strategies are not necessarily aimed at inflicting punishment on the population of the target state. See Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win: Air power and Coercion in War, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996). 122

The requirements of counter-value attacks, however, also include the ability to

credibly threaten continued punishment, so that enough pressure can be exerted on its

leadership of the target state. The sender state must be able to continue in its military

operations until the target state has acquiesced and surrendered its WMD capabilities.

When occupation is deemed unavoidable, the necessary logistical infrastructure is

required to project the desired level of military force. Countervalue strategies therefore

require more staying power than counterforce strikes and demand a much more extensive

military infrastructure in the proximity of the target. This is especially true when it

pertains to attempts to physically remove a target regime from power. Finally, for a non-

invasive counter-value policy to be successful, there must be sufficient high value targets

available for the sender state to attack. A country that is dependent largely upon

agriculture, for example, will be less vulnerable than a highly developed industrial state,

which will boast a high number of high-value and vulnerable targets.

4.3.5 Economic Coercion

Economic coercion involves undertaking actions that impose severe economic

costs on the target state until it complies with the demands to dismantle its WMD

infrastructure and arsenal. Economic coercion may include the use of sanctions and of

blockades to deny the target state access to important goods and services. This includes

restricting access to the sender state’s own markets. In its most basic form, economic

coercion consists of strategies that impose significant economic costs upon the target state without resorting to the direct use of military force against the latter.

For economic coercion to be a viable policy option, the dominant state has to have a considerable degree of economic leverage. In other words, the target state should be

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either economically dependent upon the dominant state, or the dominant state should be able to significantly affect the economic interactions between the target state and other states in the system in its effort to impose economic costs upon the target state.

4.3.6 The availability of the Counter Force option: requirements and forces

Did U.S. policymakers possess the material capabilities to adopt counter force strategies? In other words, did they have the capabilities available to destroy Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal in a direct military strike? To answer these questions, two kinds of counter-force strategies, a nuclear- and a conventional option, are examined.

4.3.6(1) The Nuclear Counter-Force Option

Upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine inherited a sizable nuclear arsenal, making it in effect the third largest nuclear power in the world at the time. More specifically, after having returned all of its tactical nuclear weapons to Russia between the end of 1991 and June 1992, Ukraine possessed approximately 1800 nuclear warheads divided between ICBM’s and strategic bombers. Figure 1, shows the exact distribution of these warheads according to type and location.

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Estimated CIS Strategic Nuclear Weapons Located in Ukraine179 Base Delivery Vehicles Estimated Warheads Assumptions Locations Warheads 6 MIRVs Khmel’nitskiy 90 SS-19 ICBMs 540 10 MIRVs Pervomaysk 46 SS-24 ICBMs 460 6 MIRVs Pervomaysk 40 SS-19 ICBMs 240 Subtotal 176 1,240 16 AS-15 ALCMs Uzin 22 TU-95H Bear Bombers 352 12 AS-15 ALCMs Priluki 20 TU-160 Blackjack 240 Subtotal 42 592

Total 218 1,832

Table 1 Ukrainian Nuclear Arsenal

In effect, therefore, this means that a counter-force strike would have had to hit at least 176 missile silos in two separate locations and the 42 strategic bombers (plus the storage facilities containing their ordinance) located on two separate airfields. A conventional strike with fixed-wing aircraft, moreover, would also have to deal with

SEAD missions to pave the way to the targets for attack aircraft. The latter would

179 William H. Kincade, “Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine: Hollow Threat, Wasting Asset,” Arms Control Today 23, No.6 (July 1993): 13-18. For another, less accurate, estimate see Nadia Schadlow, “The Denuclearization of Ukraine: Consolidating Ukrainian Security,” in Ukraine in the World: Studies in the International Relations and Security Structure of a Newly Independent State, ed. Lubomyr A. Hajda. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998): 271. 125

obviously not have been necessary if stand-off capabilities such as ballistic missiles or air-to-surface missiles could have been employed instead.

How many nuclear warheads would have been necessary for a decisive preemptive first strike on Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal? This depends to a large extent on the

“hardness” of the targets involved. The better silos are protected against attacks, of course, the more force will be needed to destroy them or to render them inoperable.For the sake of the following analysis, it will be assumed that the missiles silos in Ukraine were of the hardest variety (i.e. able to withstand up to 25 000 psi overpressure) available in the Soviet Union. This also seems to have been the baseline operating assumption of

U.S. warplanners during the Cold War. As such, it is safe to assume that they would have used this assumption to determine the number of warheads necessary to destroy

Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal when given the order to do so. Given this assumption, we should expect that two accurate warheads would have to been assigned to each missile silo in order to offer a good chance for their destruction. In practical terms, this means that an attack on 176 missile silos would have required a strike with a minimum of 352 high-yield warheads of type W88 (Trident II) or W87-0 (MX), which would result in a double shot kill probability of .846 and .925 respectively.180

180 Matthew G. McKinzie, Thomas B. Cochran and Robert S. Norris, The U.S. Nuclear War Plan: A Time For Change, Natural Resources Defense Council, (June 2001): 44. Accessed online at http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/warplan/. There is reason, however, to doubt that Soviet missiles silos ever reached the levels of ‘hardness’ used to test this argument, or that U.S. planners actually believed this to be the case. According to the Center for Defense Information, for example, Soviet SS-19 missiles are “based in silos estimated hardened to withstand 2,500-4,000 pounds per square inch (psi) overpressure, with some hardened to 6,000-7,000 psi, the hardest in the world. Even so, the days of secure silo-basing are long gone. A U.S. D-5 SLBM warhead would have little difficulty destroying such a silo — because of their high accuracy, U.S. warheads can "crater" a silo with their blast. Such accuracy could even destroy even the theoretical "super-hard" silos (50,000 psi protection was deemed possible) thought up in the 1980s.” See: http://www.cdi.org/issues/nukef&f/database/rusnukes.html#ss19stiletto. 126

To disable the strategic bombers and associated warheads, a strike should aim to

destroy the bombers themselves, to render the runways inoperable and, where possible, to destroy storage and other facilities. Although I have not been able to obtain satellite

images of the Uzin and Priluki airbases where Ukraine’s strategic bombers were based,

the NRDC study simulating a nuclear attack against Russia once more provides a useful

point of reference. In that study, McKinzie et al., project that three 100-kt W76 warheads

should be sufficient to render inoperable a strategic bomber base. For the purposes of this

study, I will assume that a similar level of force would have been necessary for a nuclear

counter-force strike against Priluki and Uzin air force bases.

All in all, therefore, a nuclear counterforce strike against the Ukrainian nuclear

would require 352 nuclear warheads of types W88 or W87-0 and 6 warheads of type

W76. A quick glance at the nuclear weapons arsenal of the United States between 1992

and 1994 shows that at the end of 1994, the U.S. possessed 50 silo-based

MX/peacekeeper MIRVed missiles carrying 10 W87 warheads each, and 50 MIRVed

TRIDENT D-5 SLBM’s carrying 8 W88 warheads each. Altogether, therefore, the U.S.

possessed 900 warheads of the type necessary to destroy the Ukrainian nuclear arsenal in

a single strike, when 352 of such warheads would have sufficed. In addition, the U.S.

arsenal contained 118 SLBMs carrying 8 W76 warheads each. Six of those warheads

would have been sufficient to eliminate the Ukrainian nuclear bomber force.181

In terms of material capabilities therefore, the U.S. clearly did possess the

necessary assets for a nuclear counterforce strike against Ukraine. It possessed the

necessary intelligence, the required ordinance, and the delivery systems. Ukrainian

181 All information on American nuclear arsenal obtained from the NDRC:Nuclear Notebook, available online at http://www.thebulletin.org/article_nn.php?art_ofn=jf95norris. 127

leaders, moreover, did not have operational control over the nuclear weapons based on

their soil. They could not, therefore, retaliate against an American strike, removing one

more strategic obstacle to the use of nuclear weapons against an adversary, i.e. the fear of

retaliation. Based on available capabilities alone, therefore, the U.S. could credibly have threatened and executed a nuclear counter-force strike.

4.3.6 (2) Conventional Counter-Force

Could the U.S. have eliminated the Ukrainian nuclear arsenal using a conventional counterforce strategy? An answer to this question will have to address two

major issues. First, could conventional ordnance destroy silo-based missiles and strategic

bombers? Second, could the U.S. deliver such ordinance against the targets in

question?182

Two factors are important in determining the ability of any weapons system to

destroy missiles silos: accuracy and power. Enough information is publicly available to conclude that the U.S. possessed highly accurate weapons. Laser guided bombs have

been used by the U.S. since the Vietnam war and had become both more accurate and

powerful over the years. The Gulf War clearly demonstrated the accuracy of U.S. aerial

ordnance as its warplanes delivered conventional laser- and electro-optically guided

ordinance with devastating effects against both static and mobile Iraqi targets.183

182 According to William Kincade, the Ukrainian nuclear arsenal was indeed vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike, even one with conventional weapons. William H. Kincade, “Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine.”

183 GPS guided air launched cruise missiles (AGM-86C) were also available. While these were highly accurate, however, they carried only a non-penetrating 1000 lb warhead designed to hit ‘soft targets.’ Thus, these CALCMs would not be very effective against hardened missile silos or aircraft shelters. Michael Russell Rip and James M. Hasik, The Precision Revolution: GPS and the Future of Aerial Warfare, (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2002): 156.

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Accuracy, therefore, would not be a great problem in a counter-force strike against the

Ukrainian nuclear arsenal.184 As the locations of the missile silos were known as well,

intelligence was also not a problem.

Were the available conventional weapons at the disposal of the United States

powerful enough? Although some scholars have suggested that Ukraine’s nuclear missile

arsenal was vulnerable to both nuclear and conventional pre-emptive strikes, there are

reasons to doubt this assertion.185 The most powerful conventional bunker-penetrating

ordnance in the U.S. arsenal during the first half of the 1990s was the laser-guided

penetrator GBU-28, a bomb with a powerful 5000 lb penetrating warhead that was

developed to destroy hardened Iraqi bunkers during the first Gulf War. Although its exact

capabilities and penetrating power are classified, it is doubtful that even the GBU-28

would have been able to do significant damage to the most hardened Soviet silo, even if

the hardness of the latter did not approximate the ‘super hard’ levels assumed in the previous section. According to Stephen Younger, former director of the Defense Threat

Reduction Agency, some “targets, like missile silos and command and control structures, are sufficiently hard that no conventional weapons will have the energy to defeat them.”186

184 For a discussion of the development of aerial precision weapons and the strengths and weaknesses of various conventional precision guided munitions see, George and Meredith Friedman, The Future of War: Power, Technology, and American World Dominance in the 21st Century, (New York: Crown Publishers, 1996): 253-281.

185 William H. Kincade, “Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine,”15-16.

186 Stephen M. Younger, Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century, Los Alamos National Laboratory, LAUR- 00-2850, June 2000:9. Accessed online http://www.stopthebombs.org/nuke/Younger.pdf.

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Even if the GBU-28 was capable of destroying hardened ICBM silos, moreover, the United States simply did not possess enough of these warheads during the period under examination. According to a GAO report from 1995, only 125 units of the GBU-28 were in production at that time. Not nearly enough to destroy the 176 missiles silos at

Permaysk and Khmel’nitskiy.187

Finally it appears that even if we assume that the GBU-28 was capable of destroying Soviet missile silos and that it was available in sufficient quantities, the U.S. would still have been hard pressed to deliver these weapons effectively against their targets. The reason for this is that the missile silos at Khmel’nitskiy and Pervomaysk were not within direct striking range of either the F-15E or F-111F, the only planes in the

U.S. arsenal equipped to deliver the GBU-28 (see table 1 below).188 More accurately, the only air bases from which the U.S. could attack the Ukrainian nuclear arsenal were located on the soil of its NATO allies. It is unlikely that the latter would have allowed the

U.S. to make use of these bases for staging a preventive strike against Ukraine.189

187 It is unclear how many GBU-28s were actually in the U.S. inventory during the period under examination. The GAO report of 1995 only lists the GBU-28 as being in production. See Government Accounting Office, Weapons Acquisition: Precision Guided Munitions in Inventory, Production, and Development, Report to Congressional Committees GAO/NSIAD-95-95, June 1995, accessed online at http://archive.gao.gov/t2pbat1/154416.pdf.

188 The F15E has a maximum combat range of 1150 miles and the F-111F of 1330 miles. See http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-15-specs.htm and John Wegg, General Dynamics Aircraft and their Predecessors, (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1990): 238.

189 For the 1986 strikes against Libya (operation El Dorado Canyon), for example, most NATO members refused to extend over-flight privileges to American bombers on their way to Libya and back. This forced American F-111 bombers taking off from their English bases to fly around Spain and to rely on extensive aerial refueling operations. Assuming that Britain would allow the same bases to be used for a strike against Ukraine, this would greatly increase the distance that the attack planes would have to travel to attack targets in Ukraine. 130

Base Pervomaysk Khmel’nitskiy Uzin Priluki

Mildenhall (UK) 1400 mi 1200 mi 1330 mi 1400 mi

Lakenheath (UK) 1400 mi 1200 mi 1330 mi 1400 mi

Spangdahlem(GER) 1090 mi 880 mi 1060 mi 1130 mi

Ramstein (GER) 1060 mi 850 mi 1030 mi 1100 mi

Aviano (IT) 900 mi 750 mi 930 mi 1000 mi

Incirlik (TUR) 780 mi 950 mi 910 mi 950 mi

Table 2 Distance from U.S. Airbases in Europe to Ukraine

In sum, a conventional counterforce strike against Ukraine would have been exceedingly difficult to execute successfully. Not only is it doubtful that the conventional ordnance in the U.S. arsenal at the time was actually capable of destroying a hardened

Soviet ICBM silo of the type that housed the SS-19s and SS-24s on Ukrainian soil, the

U.S. did not possess a sufficient quantity of the relevant munitions. Neither could it hold the Ukrainian nuclear arsenal at risk from American soil or from international waters.

This would have made the U.S. dependent upon the acquiescence if not outright permission of its NATO allies for executing what amounted to a preventive strike against

Ukraine. Such permission was not likely to have been granted.

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4.3.7 Counter-value Strategies

In essence, a review of American capabilities shows that it only had one counter-

value military strategy that was realistically available, as a full-scale invasion of Ukraine

to remove the regime by the use of force was simply physically beyond the capabilities of

the United States. This is not because of the size and strength of the Ukrainian defense

forces –formidable as those may have looked on paper – but simply because the U.S. did

not have a staging area from which to initiate a full-scale war. In fact, if the U.S. had

been in the possession of such staging area, there is little reason to believe that it could

not have militarily overwhelmed the Ukrainian army, which was in no better state than

the Iraqi army of the beginning of the decade (although without the combat experience).

Having said that, however, the size of Ukraine and of its armed forces did preclude a

purely amphibious operation, which itself would have to be staged from the Black Sea.190

Another counter-value strategy in the form of a prolonged counter-value

campaign, such as the one waged over the skies of Kosovo (Operation Allied Force) also

seems to have been beyond the capabilities of the United States. The U.S. certainly

possessed the assets for such a large-scale operation. A look at the Allied Force campaign

shows that U.S. planes flew the majority of the ‘shooter’ sorties against ground and air massive SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses) operations which are a key component of U.S.AF doctrine and constituted a large part of Operation Allied Force.

This would have made such a campaign prohibitively expensive. All in all, geographic

190 Ukraine inherited a very large conventional army after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which included “6500 battle tanks, more than 7000 armoured combat vehicles, 1500 combat aircraft, 270 attack helicopters, and 350 combat ships and support vessels.” Alyson J.K. Bailes, Oleksiy Melnyk and Ian Anthony, Relics of Cold War: Europe’s Challenge, Ukraine’s Experience, SIPRI Policy Paper No.6, (Stockholm: SIPRI, 2003), p. 37. The Ukrainian armed forces, however, could hardly be considered an integrated fighting force, as that had not been the intention of the Soviet High Command. Its various units, however, could probably put up a stiff shore defense if called upon, however. 132

factors more than anything else ruled out a conventional counter-value campaign using conventional ordnance and direct attack precision-guided munitions.

Ultimately, therefore, the only conventional counter-value strategy that was

realistically available to U.S. policymakers was a campaign using stand-off conventional cruise missiles.191 Such a campaign would have been economically expensive and of

doubtful efficacy. American policymakers, however, did show that they believed in such

‘cruise-missile’ diplomacy during the 1990s, making this option a viable one. There is no

evidence to suggest, however, that American policymakers ever considered the threat or

use of military force whether for counterforce or countervalue campaigns.

4.3.8 Economic coercion

Given the organization of the Soviet economy, it is not surprising that Ukraine’s

foreign economic ties were mostly with the former republics of the Soviet Union. The

United States had very little direct leverage over Ukraine when it came to trade and could

not unilaterally impose severe economic hardship upon Ukraine. It could close its own

markets to Ukraine’s exports, but it was not a main target for such exports. All in all,

bilateral trade between the United States and Ukraine was not very important in the years

immediately following Ukraine’s declaration of independence. In 1991, trade between

Ukraine and the United States constituted 6% of Ukraine’s total trade, in 1992 and 1993 the percentages were 5.9% and 5.2% respectively.192 In other words, trade with the

191 This would have limited the target-set to “soft targets.” For a comparison of the relative effectiveness and advantages of cruise missiles over tactical manned aircraft see General Accounting Office, Cruise Missiles: Proven Capability Should Affect Aircraft and Force Structure Requirements, Report to Committees, April 1995, GAO/NSIAD-95-116. Accessed online at: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi- bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=gao&docid=f:ns95116.pdf. 192 These figures were obtained from the data set created by Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, available online at www.yale.edu/unsy/jcr/jcrdataoct02.htm. The data set is described in Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, “Expanded Trade and GDP data,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46, No. 5 (October 2002): 712-724. 133

United States was not a major lifeline for the Ukrainian economy at the time. A unilateral

trade embargo by the United States, therefore, would have little chance of succeeding.

Ukraine was very vulnerable to economic coercion, however, although its greatest

economic vulnerability was not directly vis-à-vis the United States. It was related to its

almost total dependence upon foreign sources of energy, in particular oil and gas.

Throughout the 1990s, for instance, Russia was “Ukraine’s most important supplier of oil

(100 percent), gas (81 percent), and raw materials (50 percent).”193 Russia, moreover, was not necessarily averse from exploiting Ukraine’s dependence to achieve its political goals. As Mitchell Reiss points out, “Russia raised oil and gas prices 170 times during

1992 and 1993 and threatened to cut off fuel supplies over half a dozen times."194

In sum, while the United States did not have much direct leverage over Ukraine’s

well-being, and could not unilaterally impose significant economic costs upon the

Ukrainian government, the latter was vulnerable to economic pressure because of its

reliance on foreign energy sources. American policymakers, therefore, did have an

economic coercion option, although it would involve coordination with, and the agreement

of, Russia. By 1993, however, the latter was increasingly pushing the United States to

take a harder line against Ukraine, indicating that such cooperation would have been

forthcoming if the United States would have asked for it.

193 Paul D’Anieri, Robert Kravchuk, Taras Kuzio, Politics and Society in Ukraine, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999): 174

194 Mitchell Reiss, Bridled Ambition: Why Countries Constrain their Nuclear Capabilities (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1995): 101. 134

4.3.9 The Realist Model: Conclusions

The previous analysis shows that U.S. policymakers had only limited coercive

tools at their disposal because of international political and geographical constraints.

Although such tools were theoretically available, it is hard to argue that the failure to

strike preventively against Ukraine poses a serious challenge to the realist model. A

nuclear counter-force strike, while technically feasible, would have been hard to isolate to

Ukrainian territory and could have precipitated Russian retaliation. A conventional

counter-force strike, on the other hand, could only have been undertaken with the

cooperation of at least some European states. There is little reason to believe that such cooperation would have been forthcoming. Thus the failure to use preventive counter-

force strike is not inconsistent with the realist model.

It is difficult to argue, however, that the realist model obtains much positive

support. For one, there is no evidence that American policymakers even contemplated the

use of a counter-force strike to disarm Ukraine. For the realist model to find support, we should have found some evidence that American policymakers at least considered these options. I have found no evidence to support this scenario, however.

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Stronger yet, former American policymakers have used primarily normative

arguments to explain why they believe that preventive strikes are not considered to be

feasible policy options against nuclearizing states. Philip Zelikow, for one, has argued

that one major obstacle to the use of preventive counter-force strikes against new nuclear

states lies in the fact that the international community does not condone military strikes

against those who are not overtly aggressive.195

The failure to use counter-force strikes therefore does not necessarily undermine the realist model. More damaging to the realist model is the failure on the part of

American policymakers to use or contemplate other coercive measures that were more readily available. There is simply no evidence, for example, that American policymakers seriously considered the use of “cruise missile” diplomacy or that they seriously contemplated the use of economic coercion against Ukraine when it became obvious that coercive diplomacy alone would not succeed in achieving the desired goal of Ukrainian denuclearization. The realist model expects an escalation to more costly coercive strategies if they are available. Instead, the U.S. shifted to an incentive-based strategy. At the end of the day, therefore, U.S. policymakers did not use coercive strategies that were available to them in order to impose their will upon a weaker actor in the international system.

195 Philip Zelikow, “Offensive Military Options,” in New Nuclear Nations: Consequences for U.S. Policy, eds. Robert D. Blackwill and Albert Carnesale. (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993): 162-195. 136

This failure cannot be easily attributed to their preoccupation with significant geopolitical threats or with inhibitions emanating from the need to respond to a number of simultaneous crises. All in all, therefore, the realist model does not offer a convincing

explanation for the American use of positive inducements in its efforts to convince

Ukraine to denuclearize.

4.4 Domestic Politics and the Denuclearization of Ukraine

In contrast to the realist perspective, the domestic politics model posits that policy choices are driven primarily by considerations of domestic political costs. Thus,

American policymakers chose to use positive inducements to curry favor with a powerful

domestic interest group that had the ability to impose significant political costs upon

them. To assess this model, I will first examine whether a powerful pro-Ukrainian

interest group existed in the United States during the relevant years, before examining whether American policy choices were designed to appease such a group.

At first glance, the domestic politics perspective seems to offer a plausible account for the use of positive inducements in the efforts to procure Ukrainian cooperation on the nuclear issue. After all, the United States ended up committing a significant amount of economic resources in an effort to convince a weaker state to fulfill its freely undertaken international obligation at a time when the U.S. itself was mired in an economic recession and when large expenditures of foreign aid were decidedly unpopular in the eyes of the general public. Given Ukraine’s poor bargaining position – it never had operational control over the nuclear weapons on its soil and did not have the resources to operate and maintain an independent nuclear force -- it seems eminently possible that the American willingness to expend significant resources to secure

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Ukraine’s compliance with START I and the NPT was a result of undue influence on the policy process by politically powerful pro-Ukrainian interest groups that had a significant stake in the issue and with whom American policymakers needed to curry favor.

This initial perception, moreover, is reinforced by the fact that in December of

1991 the Bush administration had already seemingly given in to a powerful Ukrainian lobby on the issue of the recognition of Ukrainian independence. While in August of

1991 President Bush had resisted calls for early recognition of Ukrainian independence and had publicly supported the continued existence of a centrally governed Soviet Union

(under Mikhail Gorbachev), he reversed course less than 5 months later. According to

Susan Fink this change of policy was directly related to the actions of a small but powerful Ukrainian-American lobby which “relied upon organization, communication, access to decision makers, and the power of election-year politics” to achieve its aims.”196 The power of this lobby was revealed in the painful electoral defeat of the

Republican candidate in the Pennsylvania senatorial elections of November 1991, a defeat that Bush attributed to the ire of the East European ethnic vote. Similarly, it is possible that fear of electoral retribution by a powerful Ukrainian-American lobby may have driven the use of positive inducements in American efforts to denuclearize Ukraine.

A closer examination of the evidence, however, does not seem to offer much support for this hypothesis. There is in fact little evidence to suggest that American policymakers would have adopted a more negative approach to Ukrainian denuclearization in the absence of a Ukrainian-American lobby or that their policy choices were driven by fear of a powerful Ukrainian-American lobby.

196 Susan D. Fink,”From “Chicken Kiev” to Ukrainian Recognition: Domestic Politics in U.S. Foreign Policy toward Ukraine,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 21, no.1/2 (June 1997): 12. 138

An examination of the negotiations between the U.S. and Ukraine on

denuclearization, for instance, shows that shifts in this process were not associated with

the American election cycle, the primary means by which interest groups can ultimately

exert influence over the policy process.

Because Ukrainian leaders initially moved quickly to rid Ukraine from its nuclear arsenal, the Bush administration held out the promise of some compensation in return for disarmament almost from the outset. It was in no rush to actually start the flow of economic aid to Ukraine, however, in absence of clear indications that the latter would abide by its commitments to adhere to the START I treaty and accession to the NPT.

Instead, it resorted to diplomatic pressure and veiled threats of economic and political isolation when the Ukrainian government did not move the denuclearization process

along fast enough. This mildly coercive approach (with the offer of some economic

incentives added for good behavior) did not change during the election year of 1992 as

the domestic politics explanation would lead us to expect. The Bush administration did

not suddenly promise positive incentives to Ukraine during his election-campaign and neither did it start to disburse economic aid during the year in order to curry favor with

the Ukrainian-American lobby. If anything, the Bush administration remained unwilling

to do so before Ukraine had officially ratified the START I treaty and joined the NPT.

Secretary of State James Baker certainly was not beyond trying to bully his

Ukrainian counterpart into submission. Thus, “when Ukraine’s foreign minister hesitated about signing of on the Lisbon protocol, Baker threw a fit and told him that if Ukraine did not sign, it would have no U.S. support… he made it clear that if Ukraine did not

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relinquish these weapons, then relations with the west would sour immediately.”197 Such

behavior is hardly consistent with an argument that the Bush administration’s policy

toward Ukraine was driven by fear of the loss of the American-Ukrainian vote.

Finally, the Bush administration failed to take advantage of an opportunity to

court the American-Ukrainian lobby on the cheap by using the funding that had become

available through the Nunn-Lugar act of November 1991 (funding that it did not need to

obtain directly from Congress on its own initiative). In other words, the Bush

administration had funds available to offer Ukraine, but chose not to do regardless of the

purported benefits of doing so in electoral terms.

While the Bush administration, therefore, did not appear to court the Ukrainian-

American vote in obvious ways during 1992, it is noteworthy that the shift to a more

expansive incentive-based policy took place a number of months after the Clinton administration had taken office in the late spring of 1993. It is therefore also hard to argue that this policy shift was directly associated with the American election cycle. It can also not be regarded, for instance, as a side-payment for electoral support from the

Ukrainian-American lobby as the Clinton administration originally continued its

predecessor’s approach vis-à-vis Ukraine.198 Other actions taken by the administration

also offer no indication that it was particularly beholden to a powerful American-

Ukrainian lobby. Thus, in July 1993 the Clinton administration blocked the transfer of

$350 million dollars in economic aid to Ukraine, which had been allocated by the U.S.

197 James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy toward Russia after the Cold War, (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003): 56

198 Besides, the Clinton administration initially chose to continue the Bush administration’s approach to Ukrainian denuclearization. See Mitchell Reiss, “Bridled Ambition,” 106.

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Congress on the initiative of Senator Mitch McConnell.199 This is hardly an action that is

consistent with a strong determination to win over pro-Ukrainian interest groups.

In sum, there is little empirical support for the hypothesis that American policymakers were driven primarily by domestic considerations in their choice of influence strategies vis-à-vis Ukraine. While the Ukrainian-American lobby may well

have attempted to influence U.S. policies toward Ukraine, the actions of American

policymakers during 1992 and 1993 offer no indication that they felt obligated to respond favorably to such influence attempts at the expense of their own preferred strategies.

4.5 The Sociological Perspective: Legitimate and Irrational Fears

The sociological perspective posits that dominant states will usually rely on coercion to respond to deviations from acceptable international behavior, unless such deviant behavior is considered to be socially acceptable due to extenuating circumstances. Positive inducements will only be offered to a ‘deviant’ actor when its behavior is considered legitimate given the circumstances and when the behavior itself is associated with great social and/or material costs. The sociological model also suggests

that identity politics are intimately related to the assessment of the legitimacy of the

deviant state’s behavior. Policymakers will derive motivations and assess the social

acceptability of deviance from their perceptions of the identity of the perpetrator.

An examination of the American efforts to convince Ukraine to relinquish its

nuclear weapons shows that American perceptions of the motivations behind Ukrainian

recalcitrance were strongly associated with the use of positive inducements in its efforts

to convince Ukraine to relinquish its nuclear arsenal. Moreover, these perceptions were at

199 Roman Popadiuk, American-Ukrainian Nuclear Relations, McNair Paper 55, (Washington DC: Institute for National Strategic Studies, 1996): 47-48. 141

least in part influenced by perceptions of Ukraine’s identity. Initially, U.S policymakers

were very reluctant to offer Ukraine any positive inducements to relinquish its nuclear

arsenal. While they showed a willingness to help defray the costs of dismantling the

Ukrainian nuclear arsenal, American policymakers threatened that Ukraine’s failure to rid

itself of its nuclear weapons would create an important obstacle to full membership in

international society and would do serious damage to the quality of Ukrainian-American

relations. When Ukrainian leaders seemed to renege on their commitment to disarm,

prominent members of the Bush administration appear to have initially attributed such

recalcitrance to irrational nationalist fears of Russia or to cynical efforts to blackmail the

United States on the part of untrustworthy holdovers from the old Communist regime.

Ultimately, however, when it became obvious that diplomatic pressure would not yield the desired result and when Ukrainian backtracking came to be perceived as the result of both legitimate Ukrainian fears of Russian imperialism and concerns about the costs of denuclearization, the U.S. adopted a broad incentive-based policy that included economic aid and political reassurances. It was this latter policy that ultimately yielded the desired result of Ukrainian denuclearization.

4.5.1 Diplomatic Pressure: Suspicion and Distrust

The post-Cold war American-Ukrainian relationship got off to a rocky start due to the concerns shared by key American policymakers (particularly president George Bush and secretary of state James Baker) that the Ukrainian efforts to secede from the Soviet

Union had little to do with a desire to create a liberal and peaceful independent state. In fact, uninhibited by a great deal of knowledge of Ukrainian politics and history and relying largely upon information provided to him by Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev,

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president Bush initially tried to stem the tide and convince Ukraine to remain part of the

Soviet Union. In a now infamous speech deliver in Kiev in August of 1991 -- a speech

that has since become known as the “Chicken Kiev” speech -- Bush warned Ukrainians

that the U.S. would not support what he termed “suicidal nationalism based on ethnic

hatred” and indicated that he had little hope in the liberalizing intentions of the new

Ukrainian leadership when he stated that “Americans will not support those who seek

independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism.”200

Bush’s initial failure to support the Ukrainian independence movement was

driven by his fear of the instability that would ensue from the break-up of the Soviet

Union. This fear seems to have been directly related to his perception of the nature of

those seeking independence. As his “Chicken Kiev” speech indicated, he had little hope

that the leaders of the secessionist movements would be tolerant or rational. Instead, he

believed them to be either opportunistic holdovers from the communist regime with

despotic tendencies or irrational ethno-nationalists. Thus, president Bush anticipated that

“Ukrainian independence would lead inevitably to an extremist regime that would be in

conflict with its non-Ukrainian population, and inevitably, with Russia.”201

Both Bush and James Baker consequently feared that the breakup of the Soviet

Union, precipitated in large part by Ukraine’s desire to leave the union, would produce similar results to the violent breakup of Yugoslavia. These fears were exacerbated by the thought that this time the antagonists would possess large stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

200 “The Denuclearization of Ukraine: Consolidating Ukrainian Security,” in Ukraine in the World: Studies in the International Relations and Security Structure of a Newly Independent State, ed. Lubomyr A. Hajda (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998) and Susan D. Fink, “From “Chicken Kiev” to Ukrainian Recognition.”

201 Sherman W. Garnett, “Ukraine’s Decision to Join the NPT,” Arms Control Today 25, no. 1(January/February 1995): 9-10 143

As a result, the Bush administration’s first priority was to convince Ukraine to give up its nuclear arsenal. Ukraine’s willingness to do so, or lack thereof, became a litmus test for its suitability and readiness to become part of the west. Thus, according to Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister Tarasyuk, Ukraine’s willingness to denuclearize came to be considered a “kind of pass allowing it to join the international community of civilized countries” and “an indispensable condition for Ukraine’s participation in international

economic and scientific-technical relations on an equal basis.”202 Ukrainian failures to

follow through rapidly on its denuclearization pledges, on the other hand, were at worst

taken as evidence of its bad character and unwillingness to become part of the liberal

international community and at best taken as proof of its immaturity.203

In the early months of 1992, the Bush administration pressed ahead with its

efforts to denuclearize Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. It sought a firm commitment

from all three countries to adhere to the START I treaty and to sign the NPT as non-

nuclear member states. This commitment they received when all three states signed the

Lisbon Protocol in May 1992. After a short honeymoon period, however, during which

Ukrainian leaders cooperated with the removal of tactical warheads from Ukraine, the

latter began to show increasing reluctance to bid farewell to the strategic warheads on

their soil.

202 Quoted in Neazvisimaya Gazeta. Cited in “Ukraine’s Nuclear Arms: The Underlying Issues,” Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press 45, no.2 (February 10, 1993): 13.

203 John W. R. Leppingwell, “Introduction: The Problem of Former Soviet Nuclear Weapons,” RFE/RL Research Report 2, no.8 (19 February 1993): 1.

144

As reasons for this reluctance, they cited fears of Russian imperialism and the

desire to be fairly compensated for the value of the nuclear warheads that they were about

to give up and the need for additional economic assistance from the West to deal with the broader implications of dismantling the nuclear complex. 204

In response American policymakers became increasingly annoyed and

apprehensive of Ukraine’s intentions. Doubts resurfaced as to the sincerity and reliability

of Ukraine’s leaders.205 Together with the foot-dragging over the dismantlement of the

nuclear weapons, Kravchuk’s failure to seriously commit to economic and political

reforms helped reinforce the earlier perceptions of Ukraine as the “spoiler republic”

within the Commonwealth of Independent States.206

It appears that these perceptions of Ukraine caused American policymakers to

initially discount or to reject the validity of Ukrainian fears of Russia’s imperialist ambitions. As a result, they did not take seriously Ukrainian demands for security assurances, interpreting them either as attempts to squeeze more economic aid out of the

United States and the west or as a pretext to continue to maintain a nuclear arsenal for nationalist reasons. At best, Ukraine’s demands for security assurances were attributed to irrational fears or regrettable but understandable atavistic hatreds.207 As one Western

204 Mitchell Reiss, “Bridled Ambition,” 100.

205 Francis X. Clines, “Soviet Turmoil; Apparatchik to Nationalist: Ukrainian’s Fancy Footwork,” New York Times, sec A, August 30, 1991. In a visit to the U.S. in September 1991, for example, Kravchuk resisted calls by American scholars for rapid economic reform raising doubts about his ultimate intentions. He was also being vague about his plans for the nuclear weapons on Ukrainian soil. See Clifford Krauss, “Ukraine Chief Faces Hurdles in Quest for U.S. Recognition,” New York Times, sec. A, September 30, 1991.

206 Taras Kuzio, Ukrainian Security Policy, (Westport: Praeger, 1995): 59.

207 Sherman W. Garnett, “Ukraine’s Decision to Join the NPT,” 7.

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diplomat argued: “When you look at the history of the Soviet Union and think that in the early 1930’s, two to three million of the most productive Ukrainian farmers were killed in the name of collectivization, can you really imagine Russia and Ukraine working easily side by side? ... There are poisons that have to work their way out of the system.” In other words, many in the West shared the opinion that the Ukrainians held historical grudges against Russia, grudges that were not necessarily relevant in the present time.208

Russian leaders -- who sought to put pressure on Ukraine by “conveying to the

United States an image of Ukraine being unreliable, inexperienced, and potentially dangerous”-- fostered these perceptions of Ukraine.209 These, and even less flattering, characterizations of Ukraine were accepted quite readily by American policy makers because: “American diplomats were overwhelmingly Russophiles – they read, spoke, and studies Russian, not Ukrainian. During the cold war, they had served in Moscow, not

Kiev, or Lviv. Ukraine was an outlying province infrequently visited and rarely considered. Consequently, many U.S. officials willingly believed the Russian interpretation of Ukrainian-Russian affairs, an interpretation that invariably portrayed

Kiev as foolish, malevolent, and untrustworthy.”210

At the same time, during the latter part of 1991 and the early months of the following year, Russian leaders took great pains to show their best side to their U.S. counterparts. As opposition leaders, before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Boris

Yeltsin and his colleagues avoided “language that could be associated with ethnic

208 Craig R. Whitney, “Forums are Seen as Way to Defuse Chaotic Nationalism After Communism,” New York Times, sec. A, January 16, 1992.

209 Bernauer, Brem, and Suter, “The Denuclearization of Ukraine,” 139.

210 Mitchell Reiss, “Bridled Ambition,” fn 126

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nationalism. Eager to differentiate their cause and identity from the independence

movements in Yugoslavia, their quest for sovereignty was consciously devoid of any

ethnic dimension and their tactics were peaceful.”211 As the president of newly

independent Russia, moreover, Yeltsin initially “adopted a radically pro-Western – or

more accurately — pro-American foreign policy.”212

Finally, the initially negative perceptions of Ukraine were reinforced by the bombastic nationalist rhetoric that emanated from some corners of the Ukrainian parliament. The voices calling for Ukraine to retain a nuclear deterrent were heard clearly in the United States and Kravchuk’s failure to stand up to those voices was also duly noted. In fact, the nationalist voices in the Rada were taken at face value by American policymakers lacking detailed knowledge of the political landscape in Ukraine. As a result, American policymakers failed to understand Ukrainian intentions, especially

Kravchuk’s continuous commitment to denuclearization which was obscured to the west

among other reasons by the “the fiery rhetoric of the Ukrainian nationalist parties in the

Rada and constant Russian harping about the malignancy of Ukraine’s intentions.213

Thus, in the first year of Ukraine’s independence U.S. policymakers made serious efforts to convince Ukraine to relinquish its nuclear arsenal. Their efforts concentrated on attempts to convince Ukraine to sign and ratify the START I treaty and to accede to the

NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state. Although it offered Ukraine economic assistance to dismantle its nuclear weapons and transport them to Russia, it resorted primarily to

211 James M.Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, “Power and Purpose,” 21.

212 James M.Goldgeier and Michael McFaul,”Power and Purpose,” 40.

213 Sherman W. Garnett, “Ukraine’s Decision to Join the NPT,” 7. 147

diplomatic pressure and implicit threats when progress to denuclearization stalled. Key

U.S. policymakers were highly suspicious of Ukraine’s intentions and attributed delays in

Ukraine’s ratification of START I and accession to the NPT to bad intentions and character on its part, rather than to legitimate fears of Russian imperialism, legitimate claims to an equal share of Soviet property, and its need for broader economic aid to implement social and economic reforms. Russian policymakers who enjoyed close relationships with their American counterparts actively promoted these views of Ukraine and supported a hard line approach toward Ukraine.

It is important to note, however, that the Bush administration was not unified in its position on how to approach Ukraine during the final months of the Soviet Union’s existence and the first year of its independence. While the policymakers that were closest to the Soviet and Russian leadership, in particular Secretary of State James Baker, held more negative views of the Ukrainian leadership and were more inclined to take a harder line with the latter, the senior policymakers who had a more adversarial relationship with their Soviet (and later Russian) counterparts, like Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, advocated a much broader up-front incentive-based policy towards Ukraine. 214

Strategic calculations alone can hardly account for the diverging policies that were advocated by the State Department and the Department of Defense. After all, given the geopolitical situation in Eastern Europe, Ukraine would have had every incentive to seek a closer relationship with the United States even in the absence of an incentive- based U.S. approach to its denuclearization. Ukraine feared Russian imperialism, was

214 At the Pentagon and the National Security Council, Baker was widely considered to have a “monopoly on the president’s ear.” Michael R. Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War, (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993): 333 148

militarily weak and was engaged in some significant disputes with Russia over the Black

Sea Fleet and the Crimea. Thus, DOD could also have supported a less conciliatory approach to Ukraine than it espoused.

What, then, accounts for the different policy preferences? Significantly, it appears that Dick Cheney was one of the top officials in the Bush administration that had become convinced early on of the legitimate democratic credentials of the Ukrainian opposition.

As Susan Fink argues, the Ukrainian-American lobby arranged a number of meetings between prominent members of Rukh (the democratic Ukrainian party) and American government officials from both the executive and legislative branches in 1990 and 1991.

Although Gorbachev and Shevardnadze warned Bush, Baker and Scowcroft to avoid such meetings (which apparently they did), those policymakers that participated came away impressed by their guests. By all accounts, Dick Cheney was one of these officials.

After an 80-minute meeting with Mykhailo Horyn in September of 1990, the

Secretary of Defense found Horyn to be “very “believable”, even-measured, truly democratic and “unscarred” by his experience in the gulag.” After this meeting,

“Ukrainian-Americans noticed the change in the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) position on Ukraine … DOD’s stand was similar to that of Congress: supporting the pro- democratic movement in Ukraine was the only way to ensure good relations with what could emerge as the second largest state in Europe.”215

It is clear, therefore, that at least one of the issues that divided top policymakers in the Bush administration was the character of the Ukrainian leadership and the independence movement as a whole. Where some, such as Bush and Baker, were highly

215 Fink, “From “Chicken Kiev” to Ukrainian Recognition,” 34. 149

suspicious of the democratic and liberalizing credentials of the Ukrainian independence

movement, others such as Cheney were more acceptant. As their diverging policy

preferences cannot be attributed solely to differing strategic calculations, moreover, it

appears that these diverging perceptions of the character of the Ukrainian leadership

played a significant role in the different policy preferences that various key policymakers

advocated vis-à-vis Ukraine when it came to the dismantlement of its nuclear arsenal.

Because the individuals that held a more negative view of the Ukrainian

leadership’s intentions had better access to the president (who was also friendly with the

Soviet and Russian leadership), it appears that their view prevailed. During 1992,

therefore, U.S. efforts to convince Ukraine to denuclearize focused on diplomatic

pressure and threats of diplomatic isolation, rather than on a broad incentive-based policy that would help alleviate Ukrainian fears of foreign dominant and help Ukraine deal with the broader economic impact of denuclearization.

4.5.2 Reassessment: Ukraine’s Legitimate Fears

The shift to a broad incentive-based policy to convince Ukraine to live up to its commitments under the Lisbon protocol came in the late spring of 1993 as a result of an interagency policy review conducted at the direction of Strobe Talbott. While the lack of progress on Ukrainian denuclearization was certainly a part of the reason for this policy review, the policy shift that was adopted in its wake seems to have been driven by four main factors: First, a reassessment of the underlying motives behind Ukraine’s recalcitrance. Second, the fact that independent Ukraine had not turned into a rabidly anti-Russian ethno-nationalist state. While Ukrainian leaders failed to implement significant political and economic reforms, they also did not adopt extremist

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discriminatory policies vis-à-vis minorities on their soil, as President Bush had both

feared and expected. Moreover, towards the end of 1992, the Ukrainian government did

begin to implement economic reforms. “In December 1992 and January 1993, dozens of

new decrees were enacted. The Law on Privatization was strengthened, welfare payments

were slashed, and retail trade was opened to private competition.”216Third, the increasingly assertive behavior on the part of Russia vis-à-vis the former members of

Soviet Union and a growing distrust of Russian motives. Fourth, growing expertise on

Ukraine and its motives in U.S. foreign policy circles.

While key members of the Bush administration had shown little understanding for

Ukraine’s demands for security assurances and its complains about Russian expansionist ambitions, it became clear over the course of 1992 and in the early months of 1993, that

Ukraine had quite legitimate reasons to fear Russia. For one, most Russian politicians, on either side of the political divide, explicitly failed to accept Ukraine’s independence as an enduring fact of life, often referring to Ukrainian sovereignty as a passing phase.

Moreover, irredentist claims were frequently expressed in Russia. “During 1992, it became clear that Russia’s Parliament sought to detach Crimea from Ukraine and annex it to Russia and that a growing nationalist movement inside Crimea sought the same objective. Russia’s ambassador to Ukraine states that if enough Russian speakers (i.e., not just ethnic Russians) wanted to join Russia, Russia would act to support them.” 217

216 Paul D’Anieri, Robert Kravchuk, Taras Kuzio, Politics and Society in Ukraine, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999): 191.

217 Stephen J. Blank, Proliferation and Nonproliferation in Ukraine: Implications for European and U.S. Security: 8. 151

In addition, Russian behavior in the “near abroad” became increasingly assertive in this period, giving credence to Kiev’s complaints about Russian imperialism. Russia had already intervened in the domestic politics of a number of former Soviet republics, and there was little indication that it would not do so in the future. Russian ambitions took a more ominous turn in February 1993, when Yeltsin “first publicly raised the possibility of Russia playing a larger role in settling regional disputes, by using military force if necessary, in places where Moscow had a “special responsibility.”218

Altogether, therefore, by the end of 1992 some key perceptions of Ukrainian (and

Russian) motives and behavior had changed. People such as Strobe Talbott, who later would play a key role in America’s Ukrainian policy came to argue that real fear, not just nationalist paranoia or political and economic opportunism, was driving much of

Ukraine’s behavior. “The brutal fact is that many Russians that we would consider good guys, liberals, reformers – in their gut, do not accept the independence of Ukraine. And believe me Ukrainians know that. That is one reason why Ukrainians know there is no state on the face of the Earth that has more need for security guarantees against Russia than Ukraine.”219 In June 1993, Les Aspin told Ukrainian leaders that, “Ukraine is a small country with a big enemy, and we should show that it also has a big friend. Any arrangement that keeps the Russians farter to the east is a good thing.”220

A factor that may have helped in the reassessment of Ukraine’s behavior was the fact that Ukraine had not turned out the way Russian leaders had led Bush and Baker to

218 Reiss, “Bridled Ambition,” 101.

219 Strobe Talbott, “Crisis or Kiosks in the Former Soviet-Union,” Arms Control Today 22, No.10 (December 1992): 16.

220 Goldgeier and McFaul, “Power and Purpose,” 168.

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expect. While Kravchuk had failed to implement significant economic reforms in his first year in office, Ukraine had certainly not developed into the rabidly ethno-nationalist revisionist or irredentist state that Bush and Baker had feared when the Soviet Union disintegrated. On the contrary, the Ukrainian parliament did much to make sure that minorities were not excluded from the political process or persecuted and Ukrainian leaders made few demands of their neighbors.221 In addition, as mentioned above, it appeared that the Ukrainian government, especially under influence of Prime Minister

Kuchma, was taking steps towards greater economic liberalization.

In the meantime, Russia’s motives and the veracity of its claims about Ukraine were increasingly being questioned. Thus, when senators Nunn and Lugar came to Kiev at the end of November 1992, they had come to the conclusion that many of the reports about Ukrainian backtracking on its commitments to ratify the START treaty were actually spread by Russia with the intentions of giving Ukraine a bad name. ”That much of the hysteria regarding Ukraine’s nuclear intentions was fueled by Russia was a perspective that the Senators carried in the back of their minds. At various time Russia had claimed to U.S. officials that Ukraine was developing launch codes, that Ukraine would be able to fire missiles in 12-18 months, that Ukraine cannot properly maintain the missiles, that nuclear accidents were a possibility and that Moscow believed that Kiev wanted to go nuclear.”222

221 In the period under examination, Ukraine definitely did not develop into a paragon of liberal and democratic values. According to the Freedom House survey, however, it rated between 3 and 4 on its scale of political and civil freedoms between 1991-1993, making it “partly free” (States that score between 1.0- 2.5 are considered “free,” those that score between 3.0 and 5.5 are considered “partly free,” and those scoring between 5.5-7.0 are considered “not free.”). See http://www.freedomhouse.org/ratings/index.htm.

222 Roman Popadiuk, American-Ukrainian Nuclear Relations, McNair Paper 55, (Washington D.C.: Institute for National Strategic Studies, 1996): 51-52. 153

Increasing mistrust of Russia was shared by some, although certainly not all, of

the key policy makers in the Clinton administration (most notably President Clinton

himself seemed to have a great deal of faith in Boris Yeltsin’s reformist credentials).

National Security Adviser Anthony Lake was one of the officials who did not trust

Russia’s leaders. His view of the latter was “pretty dark. He thought … that they were

thugs, that they were reforming thugs, which was good, but they were basically

communists who had changed their suits from red to blue.”223

Finally, one of the key differences between the Bush and Clinton administrations was the growing expertise on Ukraine among those involved in formulating policy in the

latter. The Bush administration’s foreign policy team was hampered by a lack of

knowledge of Ukrainian history and politics. This situation had slowly changed by the

time that the Clinton administration took office. This change had a significant influence

on the development of American policy vis-à-vis Ukraine. As Sherman Garnett argues,

“It is only as the U.S. government’s own capabilities to understand Ukraine grew and

important outside experts and prominent statesmen added their voices to the Ukrainian-

American community, that U.S. policy began to become more balanced and subtle.

Starting at the Pentagon but including all key government agencies, groups of analysts and policymakers appeared who dealt exclusively with Ukraine. By 1993, a small group of such people was in place.”224

223 Goldgeier and McFaul, “Power and Purpose,” 121.

224 Sherman Garnett, “U.S.-Ukrainian relations: Past, Present, and Future,” in Lubomyr A. Hajda, ed., “Ukraine in the World,” 104-105.

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In sum, the policy-shift from implicit threats and diplomatic pressure to an

broadly construed incentive-based strategy to convince Ukraine to relinquish its nuclear

legacy seems to have been largely the result of a reassessment of the underlying sources

of Ukraine’s recalcitrant behavior. In contrast to the Bush administration, the Clinton

administration ultimately understood and acknowledged that Ukraine’s behavior was

driven largely by legitimate fears of Russian expansionism. In the words of an American

government official, commenting on Ukrainian-Russian relations and America’s role,

"Our policy was not to get involved in bilateral issues [between Ukraine and Russia], but

the Russians were throwing the gauntlet down to the Ukrainians and we didn't say

anything," said a U.S. official. "You can see a lot of things the Ukrainians are validly

concerned about."225 Or as former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Roman Popadiuk, states,

”What the West initially failed to grasp was the powerful historical basis of Ukraine’s

approach. And while the West eventually came to appreciate Ukraine’s concerns, Kiev did not see the West as willing to defend Ukraine. Ukraine needs to be visibly assured of its security.”226

4.6 Conclusions: The Importance of Identity and International Norms

The preceding examination of the American efforts to convince Ukraine to

relinquish its nuclear arsenal suggests that neither the realist nor the domestic politics

models offer convincing explanations for the choice of positive inducements in U.S.

efforts to convince Ukraine to denuclearize. Instead American policy choices were much

more consistent with the predictions of the sociological model. Both international norms

225 Steve Coll, “Reborn Ukraine Faces Growing Pains In Its Quest For Global Respect,” Washington Post, sec. A, June 20, 1993.

226 Popadiuk, “American-Ukrainian Nuclear Relations,” 51. 155

and perceptions of Ukraine’s identity seem to have played key roles in U.S. efforts to

obtain its compliance with its desired nonproliferation regime.

While the U.S. certainly faced serious geopolitical and geographic obstacles to the use of military coercion, it did have several coercive options available, including conventional countervalue options and economic coercion. Yet the former was seemingly never considered, while the latter was only vaguely entertained. The failure to use these coercive options against a weaker opponent cannot be attributed to a lack of availability, as the realist model would predict. Moreover, although the failure to contemplate a nuclear counterforce strike cannot be regarded as extremely damaging to the realist model (because of its potential effect on U.S.-Russian relations), there is little reason to believe that U.S. policymakers would have contemplated this option if such a strike had not affected its relationship with Russia. In fact, as Philip Zelikow points out, American policymakers are reluctant to use even conventional counter-force strategies because of international normative considerations.

Domestic political calculations also do also not seem to have played an instrumental role in determining American policy vis-à-vis Ukraine. Although it may be true that American recognition of Ukraine was influenced in part by domestic political considerations, there is simply no evidence that the American-Ukrainian lobby had a great deal of influence on the policy process as it pertained to the denuclearization of Ukraine.

This is especially true when it comes to the core of the domestic politics argument.

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The policy choices of the Bush administration vis-à-vis Ukraine were simply not

consistent with an administration that feared electoral losses. Secretary of State James

Baker did not hesitate to use implicit threats to produce Ukraine’s compliance.

The case study presented in this chapter does show that international norms can

play an important role in how the strong respond to challenges from the weak. Norms

about when the use of military force is acceptable seem to have clearly influenced the

menu of policy choices that was available to American decision makers. The latter did

not even contemplate the threat or the use of force in this case. Moreover, like in the

previous chapter, this case study also shows that perceived identities can have an

important effect on how the strong interpret deviant behavior by the weak. These

perceptions seem to have significantly affected American responses to Ukraine’s

reluctance to dismantle the strategic nuclear arsenal it had inherited after the dissolution

of the Soviet Union.

When Ukraine’s reluctance to relinquish its nuclear arsenal was attributed to its identity as an irrational ethno-nationalist state, U.S. policymakers were highly reluctant to

offer positive incentives to procure its compliance with the non-proliferation regime. It

was only when the perceptions of Ukraine’s intentions changed, i.e. when American

policymakers recognized that Ukraine had legitimate reasons to fear Russian

expansionism, that American policymakers became willing to offer a broad package of

political and economic incentives in return for Ukraine’s compliance with the non-

proliferation regime.

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Although we have no direct evidence of a causal relationship between these factors, it is interesting to note that the shift in American policies came only after it was clear that Ukraine did not fit the profile of a regressive ethno-nationalist state and when it had began to implement some economic reforms.

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CHAPTER 5

FROM “GRADUAL ESCALATION” TO THE AGREED FRAMEWORK: THE CASE OF NORTH KOREA

5.1 Introduction

In March of 1993, in response to the resumption of large-scale joint American-

South Korean military exercises (TEAM SPIRIT), North Korea (DPRK) announced its withdrawal from the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Coupled to increasing evidence of

North Korean attempts to obtain plutonium from its nuclear plant at Yongbyon, the North

Korean announcement could lead American policymakers to only one conclusion;

Pyongyang had decided to join the ranks of the nuclear powers.227 Over the course of the

next 18 months the Clinton administration attempted to dissuade North Korea from leaving the NPT, to accept I.A.E.A. inspections, and to freeze and ultimately roll-back its

nuclear program. To achieve these goals it embarked on a policy of “gradual escalation,”

which relied on diplomatic pressure first and which envisioned the eventual imposition of

economic sanctions in case the DPRK failed to comply with American demands.228

227 U.S. policymakers had good reasons to be suspicious of the purposes of the nuclear plant at Yongbyon, regardless of the fact that the IAEA had found that North Korea had reprocessed more plutonium than it had admitted in its safeguard declarations. The plant at Yongbyon “was much larger than an average research plant, yet was not attached to any power grid that would allow it to serve as an energy producer. It was also of a design nuclear engineers consider most suitable for one deadly task – making plutonium, a by- product of a nuclear reactor that is a favorite material of bomb builders.” See Michael J. Mazarr, North Korea and the Bomb: A Case Study in Nonproliferation, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995): 36 228For a statement of the initial American reaction, which centered around coercive strategies see Douglas Jehl, “U.S. Seeking Pressure to Compel North Korea to Honor Treaty,” New York Times, sec. A, March 13, 1993.

159

Notwithstanding this initial use of coercion to convince the DRPK to denuclearize, American efforts to freeze North Korea’s nuclear program ultimately resulted in the signing of the Agreed Framework in October 1994. Under the provisions of this agreement, North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear program and to remain in the

NPT. This agreement represented a significant shift in U.S. policy. In return for remaining in the NPT and for freezing its nuclear program, the agreement stipulated that the DPRK would receive an array of American concessions, including the provision of what were considered to be more proliferation-resistant Light Water Reactors (LWRs), a supply of heavy oil as an interim energy source, and American security assurances.229

This chapter examines the American efforts to convince the DPRK to remain in the NPT and to freeze and ultimately eliminate its proliferation-prone nuclear program. In particular, it aims to discover whether the realist, the domestic politics, or the sociological models (or a combination thereof) offer credible explanations for the initial American policy choices and, more importantly, for the shift from coercion to positive inducements.

In other words, it asks whether American policy choices in the North Korean nuclear crisis of 1993-1994 can best be attributed to the availability of coercive options, cost- sensitivity, domestic political considerations, or to social conventions regarding the acceptability of North Korean actions.

5.2 The Realist Explanation: Lack of Capabilities and Positive Inducements

According to the realist model of international order enforcement, dominant states should only resort to the use of positive inducements when they do not have the necessary coercive capabilities available, that is, when they cannot translate their

229 Rock, “Appeasement in International Politics,” 128. 160

aggregate preponderance into local superiority due to context-specific circumstances.

Moreover, they will offer positive inducements only if they believe that in doing so they will not tarnish their reputation for resolve. Finally, the realist model also expects dominant states to choose the least costly strategy available in its efforts to achieve its

foreign policy goals and predicts that leaders will not use coercion in complete disregard

of the material and political costs associated with their policy choices.

In the context of the North Korean case, this means that we should see that

American policymakers preferred to use coercion to obtain compliance from North

Korea, that the costs of using military force outweighed those of economic sanctions, and

that ultimately the latter were not available or that they were significantly more expensive

than the use of positive inducements. While the available evidence shows that the shift

from coercion to positive inducements cannot be attributed to rising geopolitical

challenges or the simultaneous occurrence of other regional, the realist model does

appear to offer a plausible explanation for American policy choice. As the following

sections will show, cost-sensitivity affected not only the choice between punishments and

rewards but also the particular coercive strategies undertaken by the US.

5.2.1 Coercive Capabilities: Peer competitors and Imperial overstretch

The failure of the U.S. to resort to the use of military force or threats thereof

cannot be easily understood by looking at aggregate data alone. The aggregate military

capabilities of the United States and its South Korean ally were far greater than those of

North Korea. During the North Korean nuclear crisis, moreover, American policymakers

did not face significant other challenges, such as a rising peer challenger or the

occurrence of simultaneous peripheral military conflicts that imposed a significant burden

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on America’s war-fighting capabilities. In short, in objective terms the U.S. had sufficient

coercive capabilities available to threat or use military force against North Korea.

In the period between 1990 and 1994, for instance, there were no significant shifts

in the international distribution of capabilities (see Figure 3, Chapter 4).230 The United

States, in other words, did not face a fast rising peer competitor whom it had to confront

by concentrating its coercive capabilities.231 Most significantly, there was no sharp

difference in the distribution of capabilities between 1993 (when the US adopted a

coercive approach) and 1994, when the US signed the Agreed Framework. That is, the

shift from coercive diplomacy to the use of positive inducements was not associated with

the sudden rise of a peer competitor to the U.S. in the international system.

American policymakers, moreover, did nothing to indicate that they feared the

rise of a peer competitor, certainly not in the military sphere.232 On the contrary, after the

Gulf war of 1991 the United States reduced its defense budget and cut its troop levels.

Between 1990 and 1994, the American defense budget was reduced from $306 billion to

$288 billion and the size of the armed forces personnel was reduced from 2.2 million to

1.7 million.233 As table 1 indicates, moreover, there is no evidence of serious troop redeployments that would indicate concern with a rising existential threat or even a

230 Data shown is from the Composite Index of National Capabilities as compiled by the Correlates of War Project. See Singer, Bremer, and Stuckey. "Capability Distribution, Uncertainty, and Major Power War, 1820-1965."

231 One of the reasons that China seems like a strong and viable peer competitor appears to be the weight attributed to demographics in the Composite Index of National Capabilities.

232 There was significant concern among American policymakers, scholars, and commentators that the United States was losing its position as the most powerful economy in the international system. There was real fear that Japan would overtake the U.S., fears that clearly proved unfounded in subsequent years.

233 See SIPRI military expenditure database www.sipri.org/contents/milap/milex/mex_database1.html. 162

serious regional threat during the North Korean nuclear crisis or in the years immediate following or preceding the crisis.234

1991 1992 1993 1994 1995

U.S. 1.53 million 1.46 million 1.39 million 1.32 million 1.28 million

Europe 285000 205000 166000 138000 118000

East Asia 105000 98000 99000 98000 89000

North Africa, 35000 21000 11500 8322 8800

Near East,

South Asia

Sub-Saharan 296 547 7000 4752 3400

Africa

Western 19500 18113 17500 36288 17132

Hemisphere

Total 1.96 million 1.8 million 1.7 million 1.61 million 1.52 million

Table 3 U.S. Active Duty Personnel by Region, 1991-1995

Finally, in the years since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has adopted a military strategy explicitly designed to meet two serious regional challenges simultaneously, a strategy that offers a clear indication that it does not fear the near-term resurgence of

234 Data obtained from Department of Defense records at http//web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/military/history/309hist.htm.

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great power rivals.235 This strategy reflects the belief that with the demise of the Soviet

Union, great power competition within the international system has become remarkably

muted.236 In sum, given the available evidence on American military capabilities, the

distribution of relative capabilities in the international system, and American defense

policies, it is highly unlikely that the prospect of great power competition for

international primacy affected the availability of American military resources. Neither

did the Clinton administration believe that this was the case. Failure to use military force

can also not be attributed to a perceived need to conserve military capabilities for a

potential great power conflict.

Was the shift to positive inducements a result of the sudden onset of a number of

simultaneous peripheral crises that reduced the ability of American policymakers to

coerce North Korea? An examination of America’s involvement in other low-intensity conflicts during this period shows that while the U.S. was involved in a number of militarized disputes, these did not change in intensity or number during the period under observation. In other words, ‘imperial overstretch’ or involvement in other regional disputes did not seem to affect the U.S. ability to deploy military forces to the Korean peninsula.

235 Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, Report on the Bottom-Up Review, (Washington DC: Department of Defense, 1993). This plan has recently been criticized for being unnecessarily pessimistic about the necessary force levels required by the United States. See Michael O'Hanlon, "Prudent of Paranoid? The Pentagon's Two-War Plans," Survival 43, No.1 (Spring 2001): 37-52.

236 Some scholars have also recognized this change. The most well-known statement to this effect is John E. Mueller, Retreat from Doomdsay: The obsolescence of major war, (New York: Basic Books, 1989). See also Robert Jervis, "Theories of War in an Era of Leading-Power Peace," Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, American Political Science Review 96, No. 1 (March 2002): 1-14. It is difficult to predict, of course, whether this era of Great Power peace will be permanent or whether it will be more similar to the 19th Century Concert of Europe, which saw an (until then) unprecedented period of Great Power peace on the European continent. 164

According to the Militarized International Disputes dataset, for example, the U.S. was

involved in 5 militarized disputes between 1993 and 1994. Four of these disputes,

however, were related to North Korea in some way.

In the 18 months that it took to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis, there were

four new military deployments: (1) the initial deployment of approximately 25000 troops

to Somalia (Operation Restore Hope) at the end of 1992 (subsequently reduced to 5000

by the Clinton administration in May 1993); (2) a deployment of approximately 20000

troops to Haiti (Operation Uphold Democracy) in September 1994; (3) operation Vigilant

Warrior in response to Saddam Hussein’s attempt to intimidate Kuwait in October of

1994 (deployment of 170 planes and approximately 6500 troops to Kuwait), and: (4)

operation Quiet Resolve in response to the genocide in Rwanda in July 1994 (2500

troops).

Did these crises diminish America’s ability to coerce North Korea? It is doubtful.

After all, the Clinton administration resorted to coercive diplomacy (or at least believed it

did so) despite having 25000 men committed to Somalia. It did not, moreover, resort to

more coercive measures when it reduced the number of troops it had committed to

Somalia in May of 1993. While the move to positive inducements (which was made

official by the signing of the Agreed Framework in October 1994) did coincide with

operations Uphold Democracy and Vigilant Warrior, these deployments did not involve any combat of a serious nature (if at all). Because of the mobility of the units involved, moreover, they could have been easily redeployed if the situation called for such a

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measure.237 Finally, these deployments represented barely 2% of the active service

personnel available to American policymakers and did not involve deployment of heavy equipment. It is difficult to argue, therefore, that the occurrence of a number of simultaneous peripheral crises had a serious impact on the ability of American policymakers to concentrate sufficient military power against North Korea if they had decided to use force or the threat thereof to resolve the nuclear crisis with the DPRK.

In sum, the failure of American policymakers to use military force or the threat thereof to coerce North Korea into continued adherence to the NPT and compliance with

IAEA demands for special inspections cannot be easily understood by looking solely at

the disparities in aggregate and military capabilities between the United States and North

Korea. Neither can it be explained by two of the conditions identified by the realist

model, such as the rise of a great power rival or involvement in a number of resource-

consuming peripheral conflicts.

A closer look at the strategic and tactical context on the Korean peninsula,

however, shows that the political, economic and military costs of using military force

would have been exorbitantly high. The costs associated with the military option can

account not only for the choice of economic sanctions – or at least, the threat of such

sanctions – as the main enforcement mechanism, but also for the reluctance to impose

such sanctions early. Prospects of a violent end to the crisis, moreover, also offer a plausible explanation for the shift to positive inducements. Knowing that neither

237 In discussing the effects that a full-scale conflict with the DPRK would have on America’s military posture around the world, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Shalikashvili stated that such an event would not affect the deployment of troops in Haiti, although it would strain U.S. resources elsewhere. Joel S. Wit, Daniel B. Poneman, Robert L. Gallucci, Going Critical: The first North Korean nuclear crisis, (Washington D.C.; Brookings Institution Press, 2004): 181. 166

sanctions nor a military strike would achieve the goal of denuclearizing North Korea at a

reasonable cost, American policymakers decided to offer positive inducements to North

Korea instead.

5.2.2 The Use of Force: Military, Political, Economic, and Human Costs

While the United States clearly possessed the world’s most powerful military force, a review of the military options theoretically available to American policymakers shows that the strategic environment on the Korean peninsula would have made any military operation both very costly and highly unlikely to succeed. As outlined in chapter

4, the key requirements for a successful counter-force strike are capabilities and accurate intelligence. In contrast to the Ukrainian case, where intelligence was plentiful but military options were limited by a lack of direct accessibility, the U.S. did possess the necessary assets to launch a pre-emptive strike against the North Korean nuclear facilities that were known to U.S. policymakers. The nuclear facilities at Yongbyon were in range of both conventional and non-conventional American weapon systems and given their

proximity to the sea, the U.S. would not even have to rely on South Korean support or

acquiescence in order to execute a pre-emptive strike. As Secretary of State William

Perry stated in his testimony in the U.S. Senate, “obviously there was an alternative, theoretical alternative [to positive inducements and economic sanctions], of going in an taking out the nuclear reactor. We considered that option. We looked very carefully at what would be required to do that. I can tell you flatly that we know how to do that.”238

238 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, North Korea Nuclear Agreement: Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, 104th Congress, First session, January 24 and 25,1995: 16. There was considerable doubt among American military planners that this was indeed the case, however. See Leon V. Sigal, Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998): 76 167

Even if a pre-emptive attack would have a high likelihood of success, however,

American political and military leaders did not possess enough information about the

North Korean nuclear program to be confident that it would be seriously stymied,

damaged, or destroyed if the facilities at Yongbyon were to be made inoperable. In fact,

there was considerable doubt that this would be the case. North Korea was “believed to

have buried vital nuclear facilities, along with other high-value installations, in tunnels and caverns dug into mountains.” These facilities, moreover, were not considered to be vulnerable to American conventional (or non-conventional) weapons. “If you put them deep enough underground, we can’t get down to it,” [U.S. air force chief of staff, general

Merill] McPeak said.” It depends on how rocky is rocky? We did some quick work during Desert Storm where we had to go after rather tough bunker facilities, so we’re able

to get some distance into the ground with specially designed hard case munitions, but in

general I think burying something pretty deep is a good approach as far as air-delivered

munitions go.”239

The previous paragraph does not only highlight the problems associated with

destroying deeply buried targets. It also emphasizes the importance of accurate

intelligence for a successful pre-emptive strike. American policymakers simply did not

have the required information. In the words of General McPeak, “we can’t find nuclear

weapons now except by going on a house-to-house search.” 240 This could obviously not be done unless the U.S. decided upon a full-scale invasion of North Korea.

239 Barton Gellman, “Trepidation at Root of U.S. Korea Policy: Conventional War seen Catastrophic for South,” Washington Post, sec. A, December 12, 1993.

240 Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, “Going Critical,” 104. 168

A final problem associated with a pre-emptive strike against Yongbyon was the

North Korean reaction that it would provoke. South Korean and American policymakers

alike believed that it was very plausible that even a limited attack against North Korea

would produce a massive response, and would probably lead to a costly general war.

According to Don Oberdorfer, “South Korean Defense minister Kwon Yong Hae

“warned that even a “surgical strike” against the Yongbyon reactor would lead to a major

escalation of hostilities on the peninsula. The result, Kwon said, could be a general war

that would wreak death and destruction on South Korea and immediately involve the

military forces of the United States, Such an attack, even if completely successful, would

probably not destroy any plutonium that might already be hidden way in North Korea.”241

The anticipated costs of a general war did more than mitigate against a pre-

emptive counter-force strike. It quite obviously also made other military options much

less attractive to American policymakers who not relish the prospects of war on the

Korean peninsula. Although American military planners believed that the United States would eventually prevail in a military conflict with North Korea, they believed that such victory would come at great cost. One of the reasons for this was the fact that in contrast with the Gulf War of 1991, the U.S. did not have sufficient forces available on the

Korean peninsula to win such a conflict.

241 Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1997): 283.

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There was every indication that the North Koreans would not allow the U.S. the

opportunity to build up such a force as Saddam had allowed it to do. The North Koreans

had taken to heart the lessons from the Gulf War. Allowing the U.S. to build up its forces

would mean certain defeat for North Korea as it had for Saddam’s army. They would not

allow it to happen, but would embark on a pre-emptive strike themselves.242

Such a pre-emptive North Korean attack would have had disastrous results. As

Wit et al. point out “the bulk of Pyongyang’s million troops were deployed just north of

the DMZ, a mere 30 miles from Seoul, which accounted for a quarter of the South’s

population and nearly half of its economic output. Thousands of North Korean artillery tubes could unleash a destructive barrage before a single infantryman started to march south … According to one Pentagon planning document, it might take up to four months of “very high intensity conflict.”243 The bottom line is that as General Luck, the

commander of the American forces in Korea pithily stated, the U.S. would win a war

with North Korea at the cost of “a million and a trillion,” respectively, in human

casualties and American dollars.244 In light of these loss projections, it is certainly not

surprising therefore that military options were only briefly considered, if at all, and

generally quickly rejected by American policymakers as being too costly.

The rejection of the use of force is also understandable given the fact that beyond

the direct conflict with the DPRK, the use of a military option would also have almost

inevitably embroiled the United States in a conflict with Communist China (PRC).

242 See Oberdorfer, “The Two Koreas,” 326.

243 Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, “Going Critical,” 101-102.

244 Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, “Going Critical,” 180-81.

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Although the PRC -- North Korea’s primary Cold War ally -- had in recent years shifted

course and gradually improved its relationship with both the United States and South

Korea, it remained opposed to the use of coercion against North Korea. Even as it

nominally shared the American interest in the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,

the Chinese Communist leadership certainly would not have accepted the use of force to settle the nuclear crisis. To underscore this point, the Chinese army held exercises in

1994 that simulated landings on the Korean peninsula in order to signal to the U.S. and

the ROK that it would not idly stand by should they decide to attack the DPRK.245

Clearly, the prospect of a direct military confrontation with China did little to enhance the

attractiveness of a military option to American policymakers.

Altogether, therefore, there were two main reasons for the decision by American

policymakers to forego both the use and even threats of military coercion. First, the

strategic environment on the Korean peninsula -- especially the positioning of the North

Korean army within artillery range of the South Korean capital Seoul -- left North Korea

in a position in which it could unleash a debilitating first blow against South Korean

civilian and military targets. Although U.S. planners believed that the U.S. would be able

to overcome the DPRK, they were deterred by the material and human costs that such a

conflict would generate. Secondly, North Korea could rely upon China to curb any moves

toward a military solution to the crisis. China had made it clear that it would not condone

a military option and, more importantly, had indicated that it would not remain on the

sidelines in the event that the U.S. and the ROK would decide upon a military operation.

245 These exercises are reported in the MID’s dataset. See Faten Ghosn, Glenn Palmer, and Stuart Bremer. 2004. "The MID3 Data Set, 1993–2001: Procedures, Coding Rules, and Description." Conflict Management and Peace Science 21:133-154. 171

In essence, therefore, only one coercive option was available to American

policymakers: economic sanctions. It is not surprising that in the absence of a viable

military option, the Clinton administration decided upon a policy of “gradual escalation”

in which economic sanctions would be the most extreme punishment. Also in this

context, the role of China loomed large. Because North Korea had long followed a policy

aimed at economic self-sufficiency, there were only a few points on which it was

vulnerable to external economic pressure. In particular, it had extensive economic ties

with China, and it relied upon a large contingent of ethnic Koreans residing in Japan for a

continuous stream of foreign currency. In other words, in order to impose effective

sanctions, American policymakers needed to obtain the cooperation of both China and

Japan. It could not act unilaterally. Here again, therefore, “China’s position had a

decisive impact on U.S. diplomacy.246 Early ideas entertained by the Clinton

administration about a hard-line response to North Korea’s proliferation challenge after

March 12 were discarded once the centrality of China’s position was recognized. With the end of the Cold War, U.S. officials saw an opportunity to conduct the first truly international diplomatic campaign to promote nonproliferation. The U.S. response to

North Korea’s announced withdrawal from the NPT was therefore a product of multilateral diplomacy as much as of unilateral policymaking. Had China been an advocate rather than a staunch opponent of economic sanctions, the course of U.S. and international diplomacy after March 12 might have been entirely different.”247

246 Douglas Jehl, “Seoul Eases Stand on Nuclear Inspections of North,” New York Times, sec. A, March 30, 1993.

247 Mazarr, “North Korea and the Bomb,” 115.

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The need for cooperation from China, Japan, and South Korea in order to impose

credible economic sanctions on North Korea therefore further constrained American

policy makers. It had to convince its potential partners, especially China, that it had exhausted the diplomatic option before they would agree to participate in a multilateral sanctions regime.248 Until June 1994, China gave no indication that it would accept a

U.N. Security Council resolution to impose sanctions on the DRPK. On the contrary, it

had made clear to American policymakers that it would not endorse such a resolution.

China’s initial refusal to go along with a coercive strategy had an important effect on

American policy choices, especially in terms of the decision to pursue the diplomatic

option for more than a year before its decision to call for sanctions against the DPRK in

the U.N. Security Council. According to one American official, “[To some extent] the

diplomatic effort was forced on us by tactical considerations. The only way we could build a consensus at the UN Security Council to impose sanctions was to demonstrate that the North Koreans were unwilling to make a deal.”249

The evidence presented thus far is certaintly consistent with the predictions of the

realist model. American policymakers preferred to use coercion when first confronted

with the North Korean challenge. Both strategic and geopolitical circumstances, however,

limited the coercive options that were available to them. Neither a pre-emptive strike nor

a significant counter-value campaign were attractive given the extraordinary costs that

248 Richard P. Cronin, “The United States and Asia in 1993: Year of Asia and the Pacific,” Asian Survey 34, No.1 (January 1994): 106.

249 Drezner, “The Sanctions Paradox,” 280

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those options were anticipated to generate in human and material terms.250 This left

economic sanctions as the only coercive weapon in the American arsenal. Because

economic sanctions would have had no chance of success without the cooperation of

China, Japan and South Korea, however, U.S. policymakers were ‘forced’ to make an

effort at resolving the dispute in a diplomatic fashion.251 It was only in June 1994, when

North Korea once more defied the IAEA and the United States by removing spent fuel

from the Yongbyon reactor, that the U.S. decided to call for economic sanctions.252 At this point China had signaled that it would not longer oppose a Security Council resolution calling for sanctions (although it would probably abstain from voting).

The question that remains to be answered, however, is whether the realist model can also explain the shift toward positive inducements. After all, if the threat of economic sanctions made Kim Il Sung blink and return to the negotiating table, why would the

United States then offer him positive inducements in return for compliance with its

demands? The realist model would expect the shift to positive inducements only under

two conditions; (1) when no other strategy will produce the desired outcome at

reasonable costs, and; (2) when the dominant state does not fear detrimental reputational

consequences from offering concessions to a weaker state. Both of these conditions were

seemingly fulfilled in this case.

American policymakers did not believe that economic sanctions would produce

North Korean compliance with their non-proliferation demands, and there was the

250 Leon V. Sigal, “Disarming Strangers,” 9.

251 Douglas Jehl, “U.S. agrees to discuss arms directly with North Korea,” New York Times, sec. A, April 23, 1993.

252 Michael R. Gordon, “White House asks global sanctions of North Koreans,” New York Times, sec. A, June 3, 1994. 174

distinct possibility that the imposition of sanctions would lead to a general war.253 As the

military option was also not available, this pretty much left American policymakers with

no choice but to offer positive inducements to keep North Korea from actually acquiring

nuclear weapons.254 In essence, therefore, the choice of positive inducements was largely the result of “the perceived unsuitability of the alternatives: military counter-proliferation and economic sanctions.”255 Moreover, even the provision of LWR’s at American

expense would have been a lot cheaper than the costs of war with the DPRK. The costs of

building those reactors, however, would not fall on the U.S. The only monetary cost that

the U.S. incurred under the Agreed Framework was for the provision of the heavy oil that

was supposed to provide an interim energy source for North Korea until the LWR’s

would come on-line. All in all, therefore positive inducements were much less costly than

the other options.256

What about the reputational costs of offering concessions and positive

inducements to a weaker actor? Although reputation was clearly an issue in the

formulation of policy vis-à-vis North Korea, American policymakers essentially appear

to have discounted the notion that the use of positive inducements in this particular case

253 David E. Sanger, “North Korea, Fighting Inspection, Renounces Nuclear Arms Treaty,” New York Times, sec. A, March 12, 1993.

254 Mitchell Reiss, “Bridled ambition,” 281-82.

255 Curtis H. Martin, “Rewarding North Korea,” The Journal of Peace Research 39, No.1 (January 2002): 61. Robert Litwak calls the U.S. strategy one of “limited engagement by necessity.” See Robert S. Litwak, “Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Containment after the Cold War, (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Press, 2000): 220.

256 American policymakers may also have anticipated that the Agreed Framework would outlast the DPRK. There was a general sense that North Korea was on the verge of imploding (or exploding) and that the LWR’s would not be finished before this would happen. T.R. Read, “Travelers tell of food riots, uprisings in North Korea,” Washington Post, sec. A, August 19, 1993.

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would be detrimental to America’s reputation for resolve or that it would send a signal to

other would-be proliferators that the proliferation could be a lucrative business.257

Although this may have been a case of wishful thinking, Secretary of Defense William

Perry dismissed the notion that others would draw the wrong conclusions from the North

Korean case because it was clearly extraordinary. “It seems to me,” Perry stated publicly,

”that this situation is about sui generis, about as unique as I can imagine. There is no

other country in the world that is posing the combination of threat which we see from

North Korea today. The combination of a very large and threatening army with an

existing, in place nuclear program … There is no other nation in the world that is in that

position. There is no other nation that I would contemplate making this sort of proposal

to.”258

In summary, therefore, the evidence presented in the preceding section is

generally consistent with the expectations generated by the realist model. The latter can

account for the choice of enforcement strategies and explains why the U.S. preferred

economic sanctions to military force. The eventual choice to use positive inducements to

get North Korea to remain within the nonproliferation regime is also consistent with the

realist model. There is only one important aspect of the case that the realist model does

not explain well. It does not offer a good explanation for the American failure to respond

positively to earlier suggestions of a package deal offered by the DPRK in June 1993. It

257 Critics of the Clinton administration certainly believed that the reputation of the United States was at stake, and that an accommodative approach to North Korea would diminish U.S. reputation for resolve. For an example see Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Policy Toward North Korea: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the committee on Foreign Relations, 103rd Congress, second session, March 3, 1994: 2-3.

258 William Perry cited in Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, North Korea Nuclear Agreement: Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, 104th Congress, First session, January 24 and 25, 1995: 42. 176

was during this first round of U.S.-DPRK negotiations that the latter suggested freezing its nuclear program in return for proliferation-resistant LWR’s. The Clinton administration, however, ignored this offer at the time. Given the fact that the costs of coercion were already known at the time one is left to wonder why the U.S. did not accept the North Korean offer. If cost-sensitivity was important and reputational concerns were not a determining factor in the eventual use of positive inducements in the Fall of

1994, we should have expected U.S. policymakers to accept a similar deal under similar conditions. Yet, they did not.

This seems to indicate that other factors, besides the cost and availability of coercive means and reputational considerations, were at play in determining American responses to North Korea’s challenge to the non-proliferation regime. In what follows, I examine whether domestic political factors or social conventions can account for this lag in the shift between coercion and positive inducements.

5.3 The role of domestic politics: limiting but not determining

The domestic politics model posits that in the absence of an existential threat to the dominant state, calculations of domestic political costs will have a decisive influence on the choice of international order enforcement strategies. Policymakers are expected to choose enforcement strategies that will minimize domestic political costs and maximize political gains. In this section, I examine the extent to which the preoccupation with domestic political costs affected the Clinton administration’s efforts to denuclearize the

DPRK. In doing so, this section examines (a) whether the shift from coercive diplomacy to positive inducements was associated with the sudden rise of a powerful domestic interest group that favored an incentive-based policy or conversely the decline of a

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powerful group favoring coercion-based strategies, (b) whether the Clinton

administration’ adopted a policy that ran contrary to its own preferences in response to

domestic political pressure, or (c) whether shifts in the administration’s policies toward

the DPRK were associated with shifts in public opinion regarding the use of coercion or

positive inducements.

This examination finds that domestic political considerations did affect the

Clinton administration’s policies at the margins. They did not, however, determine the

core decision between the use of coercion and positive inducements. American public

opinion made general war an unattractive policy option, while congressional and public

opposition to a ‘deal’ with North Korea constrained the kind of incentives the Clinton

administration could offer to the DPRK and the nature of the agreement it sought.

There is very little evidence that any domestic interest group was actively trying

to influence American policy toward North Korea. More important, there were only few

voices that called for an incentive-based strategy toward North Korea throughout the

nuclear crisis.259 The latter, moreover, belonged primarily to private individuals and

scholars who had little direct influence over the policymaking process. I have found no

evidence that an economic interest group in the U.S. actively pushed for an incentive-

based policy. This is altogether not that surprising given the fact that for almost half a

century North Korea had pursued a policy of self-sufficiency (Juche), which is premised

on minimizing dependence on foreign trade. In addition, after the Korean War the U.S.

had imposed severe restrictions on trade with North Korea. As such, American trade with

259 See for example William J. Taylor, “Heading off a Korea Showdown,” Washington Post, sec. A., November 19, 1993.

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North Korea was almost non-existent, and few if any American corporations or individuals had strong ties to, or business interests in, North Korea.260 Thus, there was no obvious constituency that would pressure an American administration to pursue an incentive-based policy vis-à-vis North Korea. Neither was there an obvious (economic) interest group that would benefit from such a policy. The Agreed Framework, moreover, did not offer immediate benefits to any American business interests as the LWRs that were promised to North Korea were to be financed mostly by South Korea in cooperation with Japan.261

In terms of public opinion, the Clinton administration was dealing with a mostly uninterested public. North Korea was not an issue that generated a great deal of passion or interest.262 As Mitchell Reiss writes,

260 The U.S. had imposed economic sanctions on North Korea after the latter invaded South Korea in June 1950. Most of those sanctions were still in place in 1993/1994. For an overview of American sanctions on North Korea see Dianne E. Rennack, North Korea: Economic Sanctions, Congressional Research Service, Report RL 31696, Jaunary 24, 2003. Accessed online at http://www.fas.org/man/crs/RL31696.pdf.

261 The primary contractor for the construction of the two LWR’s was the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO). American companies were allowed to bid on parts of the contract, but were subject to American laws regarding trade with North Korea. See http://www.kedo.org/Index.asp. 262 Except for during the moments of highest tension in the crisis, such as in June 1994 when 46% of respondents to a poll answered “North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons,” in answer to a question listing the most serious foreign policy issues facing the United States today. See the American Enterprise 5, No. 4, (July/August 1994): 83.

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Unlike Operation Desert Shield/Storm, which addressed a clear-cut, immediate threat to a vital national interest easily understood by most Americans – oil supplies—the North Korean dispute was in many ways much harder to comprehend. The DPRK had violated an international agreement that was virtually unknown to the American people. If Pyongyang posed a longer-term risk to stability in Northeast Asia and more generally to international security by its export of nuclear technology and materials to countries around the world, this was but a distant and still hypothetical threat.263

According to available opinion polls, the American public was generally opposed to the massive use of force (i.e. general war) in order to resolve the nuclear crisis and to disarm North Korea, although it may have condoned strikes against nuclear reactors.264

This does not mean, however, that American public opinion was in favor of an accommodative approach to the DPRK. One poll found that as many as “78% of the public would support economic sanctions if North Korea would not allow inspections of its nuclear production facilities” and 56 % of the population “would favor increasing the number of U.S. troops and military assistance to South Korea” in order to support efforts to inspect the North Korean nuclear facilities.265

Did public opinion shift in the summer of 1994? There is no reason to believe that this was the case. In fact, according to Don Oberdorfer the Agreed Framework was “was greeted coolly by the American public, which had not been prepared for such a broad

263 Reiss, “Bridled Ambition,“ 281-282.

264 In general, the public seemed to have been averse to going to war on the Korean peninsula. According to a poll conducted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations in October 1994, only 37% of the American population was in favor of American military intervention in case of an invasion of South Korea by the DPRK. See John E. Reilly (ed.) American Public Opinion and U.S. foreign Policy 1995, (Chicago: The Chicago Council on Foreign relations 1995): 21.

265 The American Enterprise 5, No 4 (July/August 1994): 83. 180

accord with a pariah nation.“266 Signing an agreement in which the US offered

concessions to North Korea was therefore clearly not an act that indicated a great deal of

concern about, or fear of, a public backlash. While the Clinton administration did develop

a reputation for being extremely sensitive to public opinion, the latter was clearly not the

most decisive factor in its decision to pursue the incentive-based approach toward North

Korea.267 In this context, it is also important to note that the Agreement was announced approximately two weeks before the mid-term elections of 1994, another indication that the Clinton administration did not seriously consider public opinion when deciding to forge ahead with the Agreed Framework.

Although public opinion was relatively muted on the North Korean issue, and no serious parochial economic interest groups sought to seriously influence the administration’s response to the North Korean proliferation challenge, there was

considerable pressure brought to bear on the administration by members of Congress, former foreign policy officials, and political commentators. The majority of these individuals was highly critical of any softening in America’s stance vis-à-vis North Korea and supported a coercive policy toward North Korea.

266 Oberdorfer, “The Two Koreas,” 259.

267 The Clinton administration had by this time acquired a reputation for indecision in foreign affairs and for being overly sensitive to public opinion, which was deemed to be risk- and cost averse. Thus according to the Economist, “Flashes of resolution [in the administration’s foreign policy] are soon blacked out, or obscured with conditions and deadlines. This tactic of caution is less diplomatic than political. Mr.Christopher understands that part of his job is to protect his president's back at home; he must not get him into traps abroad. That is fair enough; Jim Baker did the same for George Bush. But Mr Baker and Mr Bush also shared a genuine enthusiasm for foreign affairs which could, if necessary, override concern for polls at home. In Mr Christopher's and Mr Clinton's case, the dull discretion of the courtier feeds the disinterest of his prince. Domestic "political viability" is the chief indicator the two men seem to watching.” The Economist, “Foggy Bottom Fumbling: Why Bill Clinton needs to overhaul his foreign-policy team,” October 16, 1993: 17. 181

Although most critics realized that a general war was not in the interest of the

United States, some critics called for pre-emptive strikes against the nuclear facilities at

Yongbyon.

For many critics of the Clinton administration, the decision to even engage in any

kind of high-level negotiations with the DPRK was seen as a concession of great

magnitude. Such negotiations, it was argued bestowed recognition upon a rogue state that

was conspicuously flouting international obligations that it had voluntarily assumed by

signing the NPT. Political commentator Charles Krauthammer was certainly not alone

when he described the Clinton administration’s response to North Korea as “all carrot

and no stick. As inducement to be nice, we have already given the North Koreans their

first direct high-level talks with the United States. We have dangled diplomatic

recognition. We are now dangling an offer to cancel joint U.S. military exercises with

South Korea. These are gestures of weakness”268

The opposition to an accommodative approach to North Korea was strong in both

houses of Congress and was bipartisan in nature. As Leon Sigal argues, “diplomacy had

few defenders” even among “non-hawks.”269 In July of 1994, for instance, “the Senate, by 95 to 0, passed an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1995 barring aid to

North Korea unless the President certified that it did not possess nuclear arms, had halted

its nuclear program, had come into full compliance with both the Nonproliferation Treaty and its safeguards agreement, and did not export weapons-grade plutonium or

268 Charles Krauthammer, “North Korea’s nuclear bomb: It’s Clinton’s crisis and he is not ready to lead,” Washington Post, sec. A, November 5, 1993.

269 Leon Sigal, “Disarming Strangers,“ 127.

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missiles.”270 The Agreed Framework itself was certainly not well-received by former policymakers, political commentators and by members of Congress from both sides of the aisle.271

At a hearing before the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the

Committee on Foreign Relations of the U.S. Senate, Senator Robb (D-Virginia) voiced his skepticism about the agreement: “In past hearings, I have expressed concern that in these negotiations, North Korea was getting a very advantageous deal for merely returning to the “status quo ante” –adherence to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to which it was already bound. I still firmly believe that.”272 Republican Senator majority leader Bob Dole was unimpressed with the agreement, arguing that it was always possible to reach an agreement by giving up too much in return. Senator John McCain

(R-Arizona) accused the Clinton administration of appeasement.273

270 Leon Sigal, “Disarming Strangers,“ 178.

271 There were some exceptions. Among them Jessica Mathews, “A Sound Beginning with North Korea,” Washington Post, sec. A, October 21, 1994.

272 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Implications of the U.S.-North Korea Nuclear Agreement: Hearing before the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Relations, 103rd Congress, Second session, December 1, 1994:2.

273 Wit, Poneman and Gallucci, “Going Critical,” 336.

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The administration, however, had anticipated such resistance. As Wit et al. note, the expected resistance from Congress

“was one key factor in the principals’ decision to structure the presidential guarantee to the North in a manner that would not require congressional approval. It was also reflected in arrangements for initial fuel oil deliveries without seeking new authorities from Congress … the Pentagon was ready to fund the initial oil deliveries,” for which congressional approval was not needed.274

In other words, the Clinton administration realized that its incentive-based strategy would not be palatable to Congress but still decided to go ahead and offer North

Korea positive inducements in return for cooperation with the non-proliferation regime.

To make sure that its desired policy could be implemented it defined the deal it struck with North Korea in such a way that it would not have to be ratified by the Senate. In short, domestic pressures did not play a central role in affecting the core decision between coercive or incentive based strategies in this case. The administration did not surrender to domestic pressure for coercion.

This does not mean, however, that domestic politics had no effect whatsoever on the administration’s efforts to denuclearize North Korea. Domestic constraints, for example, significantly curtailed the scope and nature of positive inducements that the administration could offer to North Korea.

274 Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, “Going Critical,” 336.

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On January 20, 1995, “the State Department announced the easing of several economic

sanctions against North Korea, as anticipated in the Agreed Framework. However, these

were less than the administration had previously planned because of opposition to

concessions on the part of the Republicans who were now in control of Congress … The

Agreed Framework, while working as planned in North Korea, was on thin ice politically

in the United States.”275

Domestic constraints also could have affected the scope and nature of the coercive

strategies that the Clinton administration could have considered. As mentioned above, the

American public would very likely not have given support for a full-scale war with North

Korea in order to keep the latter from acquiring nuclear weapons. The fear of a domestic backlash clearly acted as an added constraint on policymakers contemplating the use of force. As a Pentagon official told Leon Sigal, “You had to show that you had done everything you could. You had to convince the American public and the world that you had gone the last mile for peace… 276

In summary, the domestic politics model does not appear to offer a very convincing explanation for the policy choices of the Clinton administration during the

North Korean nuclear crisis of 1993/1994. The Clinton administration shared the notion that coercion was the most appropriate strategy, but was willing to defy public opinion

and pressure from the Congress when it decided to use an incentive-based strategy to

convince North Korea to freeze and eventually roll-back its nuclear arsenal. The shift

from coercion to positive inducements was not associated with the rise of domestic

275 Oberdorfer, “The Two Koreas,” 364.

276 Leon Sigal, “Disarming Strangers,” 84. 185

interest groups lobbying for such a policy choices nor with a shift in public opinion about the use of coercion vis-à-vis North Korea. There is no evidence to suggest that the

Clinton administration failed to adopt its desired policy as a result of domestic political considerations. Domestic political calculations did impose some constraints upon the

Clinton administration, mainly in terms of the scope and nature of the coercive options that were available and the nature of the inducements that it could offer North Korea.

5.4 The Sociological Model: “Engagement by Necessity”

The sociological model suggests that the U.S. responses to North Korea’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons should have been a function of the social acceptability of its actions. As such, we should expect that the variation in the U.S. response should have been preceded by a shift in the (perceived) acceptability of North Korea’s proliferation challenge. The model further suggests that a shift from a punitive to an incentive-based policy should have been closely associated with (perceptions of) North Korea’s basic character (i.e. identity) and that prevailing social conventions regarding the appropriate remedies to socially deviant behavior could have influenced American responses.

The following section assesses the utility of the sociological model in this case by examining: (1) whether the shift from coercion to incentive-based strategies was associated with a shift in perceptions of the legitimacy of North Korea’s behavior; (2) whether the shift in the American response to North Korea was associated with

(perceived) changes in the DPRK’s basic character, that is, did the latter move from being a member of an ‘out-group’ to being seen as an ‘in-group’ member.

This assessment of the sociological model may seem superfluous given that the first section of this chapter argues that the realist model offers a plausible account of the

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eventual shift from a coercive strategy to an incentive-based one. It appears that this shift

was essentially a straightforward case of what Robert Litwak has called “engagement by

necessity,” forced upon American policymakers by a lack of viable coercive options. Yet

there remain two good reasons to evaluate the sociological model.

First, because (as the research design section in Chapter 2 points out) the true

motivations behind policy choices are very difficult to determine conclusively, our

confidence in explanations that have found support increases when other plausible

explanations for behavior can be dismissed. Thus, our confidence in the realist account of

the US responses to North Korea’s proliferation challenge would increase if the sociological model found no support whatsoever.

Second, as mentioned earlier, the realist model has a hard time explaining an important aspect of the case at hand. As North Korean leaders had made it clear from the

outset of the crisis that they would regard the imposition of economic sanctions as a

declaration of war, one is left to wonder why American policymakers pursued a coercive

approach for more than a year before they adopted an incentive-based strategy. Given the

anticipated costs of coercion, the realist model would have expected American

policymakers to accept that deal at an earlier stage. It is possible, that the sociological

model can help explain this initial failure to offer positive inducements and the shift to

positive inducements.

In the following sections I argue that the evidence suggests that this is indeed the

case. These sections show that while they were eventually trumped by a lack of feasible

coercive options, social conventions did play an important role in the formulation of U.S.

policy during the crisis. The prevailing belief among Clinton administration officials was

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that North Korea’s quest for nuclear weapons was not driven by legitimate reasons. As

such, they would not consider “rewarding” North Korea for its bad behavior by offering

positive inducements for adhering to the nonproliferation regime. As a result of these beliefs, it seems, American policymakers failed to acknowledge earlier North Korean proposals for a deal involving LWR’s in return for a freezing of the DPRK’s nuclear program, that is, the same deal that eventually formed the core of the Agreed Framework.

Instead they pursued coercive measures even when it was clear that the price for such measures could be the outbreak of general war on the Korean peninsula. Only the acute war scare of June 1994, interrupted by the personal diplomacy of ex-president Jimmy

Carter, made them grudgingly reconsider these proposals, partly under the influence of

some officials who did not subscribe to the majority view of North Korean intentions.

5.4.1 Legitimate or Illegitimate Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons.

Did North Korea pursue nuclear weapons in order to implement its revisionist

plans to unify South Korea by force? Or was it driven by an understandable and

acceptable concern over threats to its own survival (that is, to the continued existence of

the Communist regime) after the balance of power on the Korean peninsula had shifted

decisively in the ROK’s favor? More importantly, did American perceptions of North

Korean motivations change over time? Such a shift would offer the strongest evidence of the utility of the sociological mode. After all, the model predicts that the social acceptability (i.e. legitimacy) of an act of social deviance should produce variation in the responses to such behavior.

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The evidence strongly suggests that the question of the DPRK’s motivations took

center stage in the debate among American policymakers and that it played an important

role in how policymakers believed the U.S. should respond to North Korea’s proliferation

challenge. It appears, however, that there was no absolute consensus on North Korean

intentions or about the most appropriate response to its proliferation challenge.277

The conventional wisdom, shared by most officials and intelligence analysts, was that the North Korean quest for nuclear weapons was driven not by a legitimate quest for

security, but by irredentist aims or misplaced paranoia. As Leon Sigal states, the majority in the American foreign policy establishment (officials, analysts, but also the news media) believed that North Korea was “motivated to build bombs by hostility to the outside world.”278

Although North Korea’s true motivations were shrouded in secrecy and were therefore largely a matter of speculation, North Korea was often “portrayed as the Libya or Iraq of the mid-90s: a lurking, unpredictable regime run by a mysterious zealot, secretly pursuing nuclear weapons and ready to pounce on its neighbors at a moment’s notice.” 279 Concerns about North Korea’s intentions were inspired by its violent and

often unpredictable past behavior and its harsh anti-American and anti-South Korean

rhetoric, which helped perpetuate its negative image.280 Most American officials simply

did not believe that North Korean motivations had changed or softened over time. They

277 Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, “Going Critical,” 250.

278 Sigal, “Disarming strangers,” 11.

279 David E. Sanger, “North Korea’s Nuclear Program Provokes no Panic in the South,” New York Times, sec. A, December 21, 1993.

280 Robert Carlin, “North Korea,” in Nuclear Proliferation After the Cold War, eds. Mitchell Reiss and Robert S. Litwak. (Washington D.C.: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1994): 135. 189

still believed that North Korea sought the unification of the Korean peninsula under the

banner of DPRK (by force if necessary), and that it believed that nuclear weapons were

the only way in which it could still achieve that goal.281 As Paul Wolfowitz argued in

testimony on Capitol Hill, “The North Korean Government is the same government and

its leader, Kim Il-Sung, the same leader that started the Korean war 43 years ago … From

this perspective, a simple view would hold that it would be a bad thing for Kim Il-Sung to

have nuclear weapons because he might use them.”282 In sum, the conventional wisdom among administration officials, government analysts and political commentators was that there was “no firm evidence that North Korea has completely abandoned its doctrine of forceful unification.”283 These beliefs about North Korean intentions and therefore the

legitimacy of its purported quest to acquire nuclear weapons, moreover, appeared relatively stable throughout the crisis.284

As mentioned before, however, there was no complete agreement among

American officials, analysts and scholars on North Korea’s underlying motivations. A number of individuals – both within the Clinton administration and outside of it -- had a

more charitable opinion of North Korean intentions. Some analysts and administration

officials, for instance, believed that the North Korean leadership was driven primarily by

security concerns or by domestic political considerations related to the succession of

281 Chuck Downs, Over the Line: North Korea’s Negotiating Strategy, (Washington D.C.: The AEI Press, 1999): 248. This view of North Korea was certainly shared by (conservative) political commentators. See George F. Will,” … Nor time to Waste on Korea,” The Washington Post, sec. A, June 9, 1994.

282 House of Representatives, Tensions on the Korean Peninsula: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, Committee on Foreign Relations.

283 David C. Kang, “Rethinking North Korea, Asian Survey 35, No. 3 (March 1995): 254.

284 Curtis H. Martin, “Rewarding North Korea,” Journal of Peace Research 39, no.1 (Jan. 2002): 54. 190

power in the DPRK. Others believed that North Korea’s bid for nuclear weapons was a

desperate attempt to engage the United States, which had rejected its earlier conciliatory

gestures. These individuals believed that North Korean actions were both rational and

understandable responses to the difficult position in which North Korea found itself after

the end of the Cold War. They argued that North Korean behavior was becoming more

consistent with the international status quo, and that it would be willing to forego nuclear

weapons if its security concerns were met.285 As a result, these individuals advocated incentive-based approaches to North Korea’s proliferation challenge.

Interestingly enough, those who had the most knowledge of North Korea held the more optimistic views concerning its intentions. Brigadier General (ret.) James Grant, the former director of intelligence of U.S. forces in Korea, cited four reasons behind North

Korea’s insistence on maintaining a large and expensive military: “regime and state survival and continuity; external respect and independence of action; controlling the nature and pace of internal change; and the eventual peaceful unification of the Korean peninsula under terms acceptable to North Korea.”286 State Department analysts who had

studied North Korea for considerable time echoed this assessment. Robert Carlin, one of

the Korea specialists directly involved in the negotiations on the Agreed Framework,

argued that the DPRK had already in the mid-1980s shown signs of becoming less aggressive and revisionist.

285 R. Jeffrey Smith, “North Korean Behavior Puzzling; Are they just wily negotiators, or outlaws seeking nuclear arms,” Washington Post, sec. A, May 24, 1994.

286 Cited in Selig S. Harrison, Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002): 132. 191

From this time onward, he argued, North Korea “pushed forward a dialogue with Seoul

in which it has slowly recognized the legitimacy of the government of South Korea …

redefined the nature of reunification, and moved to accept … a long-term presence of

U.S. forces on the peninsula.287

In other words, within the Clinton administration and without, there were some

who attributed more benign intentions to North Korea’s withdrawal from the NPT. They

believed that North Korean was no longer bent on the forceful unification of the Korean

peninsula, but that North Korea had turned into a defensive state. Whereas, “Pyongyang’s calls for unification used to be seen by Seoul as a sure recipe for revolutionizing/communizing the South, it has now become Pyongyang’s turn to feel threatened by Seoul’s call for inter-Korean dialogue.”288 Weakened by its lack of allies,

and suffering from a serious economic downturn, the North Korean leadership feared that

it would follow in the footsteps of East Germany (that is, that it would be swallowed up

by its wealthier capitalist neighbor).

Although this group consisted of North Korea experts, however, it was a largely

marginalized minority within the administration and did not have much support among

senior officials. Wit et al., for instance, note that “Robert Carlin, the department’s [state

department] chief North Korea watcher, had spent twenty years analyzing Pyongyang,”

but was a “controversial figure in the intelligence community because of his view that

287 Robert Carlin, “North Korea,” in Reiss and Litwak, “Nuclear Proliferation,” 132.

288 Samuel S. Kim, “North Korea in 1994: brinkmanship, breakdown, and breakthrough,” Asian Survey 35, No.1 (Jan. 1995): 25.

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negotiations could be productive.”289 It was not until the spring of 1994, when Bob

Gallucci was appointed ambassador-at-large and put officially in charge of the negotiations with the DPRK, that their ideas seemed to have gained some traction.

After his appointment to ambassador-at-large with the negotiations with North

Korea as his sole responsibility, Gallucci sought to increase his limited knowledge of the

Koreas.290 It appears that through his conversations with government experts and independent scholars, Gallucci became more sympathetic to the notion that North Korean actions were driven by insecurity rather than revisionist aims.291 As such, he seems to have become more amenable to a conciliatory response to the North Korean proliferation challenge.292 Until the spring of 1994, however, Gallucci’s position in the bureaucratic process was very weak. Besides the fact that he had a great number of other responsibilities in addition to the negotiations with North Korea, his access and influence were limited. During the first year of the crisis, for instance, Gallucci reported to two

Under-Secretaries in the State Department and “rarely saw Warren Christopher. Riding back to his office with a colleague after briefing Congress, Gallucci discovered that neither one had ever discussed North Korea with the secretary.

289 Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, “Going Critical,” 52.

290 Sigal, “Disarming Strangers,” 109.

291 Don Oberdorfer suggests that this process started with the beginning of the negotiating process in June 1993 when the American negotiators were excited because “Pyongyang’s negotiators proved to be open to argument and logic rather than the extraterrestrials that some had expected.” Oberdorfer, “The Two Koreas,” 286.

292 It is important to note that Gallucci himself does not admit to this in his account of the first North Korean nuclear crisis. Both Sigal and Harrison, however, base their statements on what they argue are personal conversations with Gallucci.

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This remained true for most of 1993 as the crisis simmered … Gallucci’s weak bureaucratic position would hamper his ability to influence policy throughout the first year of the crisis.”293

Did the more positive view of North Korea’s intentions and appropriate responses

become more commonplace among key administration officials as the summer of 1994

approached? In other words, did it become the dominant perception of North Korea?

While this would offer support for the sociological argument, there is little evidence that

this was the case. As Harrison recounts, “Gallucci was much more open to the views of

nongovernment outsiders than many other high-level officials … He knew little about

either North or South Korea and wanted to know more.” When told by Harrison that

North Korea was driven by nationalist pride and security concerns and that positive

inducements would be the most appropriate strategy to deal with the DPRK, however,

“He [Gallucci] threw up his hands, describing the bureaucratic obstacles that would make

adoption of such a strategy difficult.”294

There is no evidence that senior administration officials -- or for that matter a

majority of less senior officials – changed their opinion of North Korea's intentions over

the course of the nuclear crisis. As Leon Segal argues,

293 Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, “Going Critical,” 48-49.

294 Harrison, “Korean Endgame,” 209.

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“Shared images of nuclear diplomacy still impeded deal-making with North Korea. Most vocal members foreign policy establishment remained committed to the crime-and-punishment approach in the belief that a communist rogue state like North Korea was not about to give up bomb-making. Diplomats who had direct dealings with North Korea became disabused of that belief. They began to sense the possibility of a deal.”295

While the more benign view of North Korea’s intentions therefore did not become

widely shared among the foreign policy establishment, there is reason to believe that

those who subscribed to it gained influence in the immediate aftermath of the war-scare

of June 1994. That crisis, in which the U.S. and North Korea came very close to an all- out armed conflict as a result of North Korea’s decision to extract spent fuel from its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, acted as a catalytic event. It made the Clinton administration reassess the potential consequences of continued coercion – although administration officials claimed that it was the threat of sanctions that had made North

Korea come back to the negotiating table – and offered an opportunity to those who believed that a deal could be struck with North Korea.296 According to Deputy Assistant

Secretary of State Thomas Hubbard, going to “the brink of disaster … [W]as probably the cathartic moment that we needed … Seizing the moment, a determined Robert

Gallucci led the administration to abandon the crime-and-punishment approach once and for all and engage in concerted give-and-take.”297

In sum, the evidence suggests that the general perception of North Korean

intentions was negative. Few people with in the American foreign policy establishment

295 Sigal, “Disarming Strangers,” 84. 296 Michael R. Gordon, “A Shift on North Korea,” New York Times, sec. A, June 18, 1994.

297 Sigal, “Disarming Strangers,”168. 195

believed that North Korea’s quest for nuclear weapons was induced by insecurity or other acceptable reasons. By contrast, the common perception was that the North Korean quest for nuclear weapons was driven either by hostile intentions vis-à-vis its Southern neighbor or by irrational paranoia of its reclusive leadership. While we can observe no significant change in this perception of North Korean intentions over time, the evidence indicates that the acute threat of war offered the opportunity for those who had more benign views of North Korean intentions to put their imprint on the American response. It took less than 6 months for these individuals to agree on and sign the Agreed Framework with North Korea, an agreement based upon a wide array of positive inducements.

5.4.2 DPRK Identity: Unreformed Rogue or Adjusting State?

What informed these beliefs about North Korean motivations? The sociological model suggests that deviant behavior may be interpreted and explained differently as a function of the (perceived) identity of the perpetrator. Behavior by members of the dominant state’s “in-group” will be explained differently and will draw different responses than similar behavior by those belonging to so-called “out-groups.” Initial support for this argument would be found if policy shifts, from coercion to positive incentives and vice versa, were preceded by a change in (some) fundamental characteristics of the deviant state or in perceptions thereof.

As discussed above, however, there was no consensus among the members of the

American foreign policy establishment concerning North Korean intentions or about the appropriate response to its proliferation challenge. As such, a more useful assessment of the sociological model should focus on whether the different groups also had diverging

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perceptions of the fundamental character of North Korea or the North Korean ruling regime. After all, if we find that these two groups shared a common perception of North

Korea’s identity (whether as a member of an “in” or “out” group), the latter could not have caused the difference in the enforcement strategies they advocated.

The general conception among the American foreign policy establishment

(including not only administration officials, lawmakers and segments of the media) was that North Korea could not be considered a “normal” state or a “respectable” member of the community of nations.298 Thus, according to Senators Nunn and Lugar: “within the community of nations, civilized behavior included renunciation of state-sponsored terrorism and of exports of ballistic missile technology to such pariah states as Iran. As long Pyongyang promotes terrorism and provides advanced military technologies to terrorist states, it will invite political isolation.”299 In other words, although this statement does not say so explicitly, it implies that the quest for nuclear weapons in and of itself did not necessarily prevent North Korea from being regarded as a respectable member of the international society. Rather, it was North Korea’s lack of willingness to accept other accepted norms of behavior that distinguished it from other states in the system.300

298 According to Elaine Sciolino, “for more than a year, Washington’s policy was based on the assumption that the leaders in Pyonynang were Stalinist totalitarians so untrustworthy and unpredictable that their behavior had to be punished, not rewarded.” Elaine Sciolino, Clinton Ups Atom Stakes,” New York Times, sec. A, October 20, 1994.

299 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Policy Toward North Korea: Hearing before the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the Committee on foreign Relations, 103rd Congress, second session, March 3, 1994: 12.

300 Chuck Downs, for instance, argued that North Korea’s failure to accept IAEA safeguards showed a lack of responsibility towards its own population and to the international community in general. Chuck Downs, “Over the Line,” 226.

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While Senators Nunn and Lugar emphasized North Korea’s disregard for internationally accepted norms of behavior to determine its status as a pariah state, others focused on attributes of the North Korean regime that made it different from ‘normal’ states. Thus, according to one observer North Korea “works more like a cult than a country – one built around the 80-year-old Kim Il Sung, known to his people as the

“great leader.”301 Another compared the North Korean regime to David Koresh’ Branch

Davidians. Like the latter, “the North Koreans have invested their leaders with mystical properties and are following him blindly.”302 In other words, these arguments suggest that

North Korea did not possess the attributes of a modern (law abiding) state.303

301 T.R. Reid, “North Korea’s New Nuclear Deadline Nears: Reasons for Pyongyang’s Sudden Pullout from Non-Proliferation Treaty,” Washington Post, sec. A, March 30, 1993. 302 Editorical, “Standoff in North Korea,” Washington Post, sec. A, May 7, 1993.

303 Not all would have agreed with this assessment, however. According to one editorial, the U.S. “working premise is that North Korea is a difficult but finally “normal” state.” The editorial also disagreed with such an assessment. Opinion Editorial, “North Korea’s Pursuit of a Bomb,” Washington Post, sec. A, November 22, 1993. This assessment of the American ‘working premise’ may in itself have been the result of a lack of agreement within the Clinton administration about this issue.” R. Jeffrey Smith, “North Korean’s Behavior Puzzling: Are they just wily negotiators, or outlaws seeking nuclear arms?” Washington Post, sec. A, May 24, 1994.

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Others questioned the rationality and maturity of the North Korean regime. Even

when Kim Il Sung’s rationality was grudgingly acknowledged, this was certainly not the

case with his son Kim Jong Il, who was both his designated successor and chief architect behind the regime’s nuclear diplomacy.304 Thus, both Kim Jong Il’s rationality and

maturity were called into question, and in fact he was considered to be “dangerously

immature.”305

Finally, the nature of North Korea’s political regime was also used to set it apart

from other states. Thus, according to Senator Craig Thomas, North Korea was “one of the

world’s greatest anachronisms. While the rest of the world has embraced democracy,

North Korea appears to cling to its outmoded oppressive Stalinist system. While other

countries have moved toward open borders and open trade, North Korea remains the most

closed society in the world.”306

By contrast to the depictions of North Korea as an outcast that did not meet the

criteria of a “responsible” members of the international society, those who held a more

benign view of North Korea’s intentions tended to focus on the positive aspects of North

Korea’s character and behavior. While they certainly did not deny that the North Korean

regime was outdated and oppressive, they focused on the changes that North Korea was

making and its efforts to become a “normal” state.

304 See statements by Paul Wolfowitz before the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Relations, Tensions on the Korean Peninsula:Subcomittee on Asia and the Pacific, 103rd Congress, First Session, November 3, 1993: 3.

305 R. Jeffrey Smith, “N. Korean Strongman: ‘Crazy’ or ‘Canny’?” Washington Post, sec. A, September 26, 1993. On the perceived irrationality of Kim Il Sung see Curtis H. Martin, “Rewarding North Korea,” 54.

306 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, , North Korea: An Overview: Hearing before the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, 104th Congress, Second session, September 12, 1996: 1. 199

Thus, Selig Harrison, a key proponent of a conciliatory approach to North Korea,

mentioned that the “ atmospherics during my 1987 visit [to North Korea] all suggested the beginning of a turn outward. Photos and statues of Kim I Sung depicted him not in a

Mao jacket but in a Western suit. Eight hotels … punctuated a skyline previously monopolized by museums and monuments, and four new hotels were under construction.”307 Others also noted North Korea’s efforts at (economic) reform, noting its

“policy of limited accommodation … and a cautious economic opening. The new leaders

are more moderate and internationalist than their predecessors.”308 John Merill, an analyst for the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, also cited North Korean attempts at reform. In support of his thesis he cites not only North Korea’s willingness to

reopen dialogue with South Korea and its increasing cooperation on repatriation of remains of American MIA’s from the Korean war. Most importantly, Merill argued,

North Korea was trying to cautiously shift its economy from one geared solely to sustain

its military power to a more consumer-friendly system. Moreover, he notes that North

Korean officials increasingly pointed at both the PRC and Singapore as the models that it wanted to emulate in the international system. Thus he cites a DPRK economic official who on a trip overseas “extolled a “Singapore model” of development, combining

“freedom of business activities” with “good order, discipline, and observation of laws.”309

307 Harrison: 29.

308 Mark J. Valencia, “Engaging the DPRK Economically,” in Peace and Security in Northeast Asia: The Nuclear Issue and the Korean Peninsula, eds. Young Whan Kihl and Peter Hayes. (New York: Armonk, 1997): 67. See also Robert Carlin, “North Korea,” 129-144. 309 John Merill, “North Korea in 1993: In the eye of the Storm,” Asian Survey 34, No. 1 (January 1994): 14.

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That this was not simply rhetoric, Merill suggests, could be derived from the fact that

North Korea “passed new laws on banking and the leasing of land by foreigners – the

latest in a series of measures over the last two years to put in place a legal framework for

economic opening.”310

In sum, the evidence presented here suggests that the two camps within the

American foreign policy establishment held divergent perceptions of North Korea’s basic

character. Those who attributed malign intentions to North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear

weapons emphasized how North Korea’s basic character did not meet the standards

required of “civilized” members of international society. They used North Korea’s

failure to abide by international norms, the nature of its political regime, and the

rationality and maturity of its leaders to distinguish North Korea from responsible

members of the international community. By contrast, those who held more benign views

of the DPRK’s intentions tended to highlight the ‘normalcy’ of North Korea as a member

of the international system or pointed out that the North Korea regime sought to become

a more respectable member of international society by pursuing limited reforms in the

economic and political sphere.

The question remains, however, whether the perceptions of North Korea’s character were related to perceptions of its intentions. Although there is no direct evidence that this was the case, there is some reason to believe that it was. Thus, Leon

Sigal argues that in their assessments of North Korea, C.I.A. analysts, “were more inclined to take an “essentialist” view of North Korea, ascribing its behavior to the very

310 Merill, “North Korea in 1993,” 16. 201

nature of the beast.”311 Robert Carlin, moreover, suggests that “what observers think

about the North’s nuclear program is, to a large extent, a function of what they think they

know about North Korea.”312

5.4.3 Conclusions: Power and Social Conventions

The American responses to the North Korean proliferation challenge in the early

1990s clearly highlight the limitations of the sociological model. The evidence presented in the preceding pages show that senior American policymakers refrained from using coercion primarily because of material factors. They rejected the use of military force because of the strategic context on the Korean peninsula, which would have ensured a long and costly conflict with North Korea and possibly with the PRC as well. Although they preferred to impose economic sanctions on North Korea, they realized that they were dependent upon the cooperation of China, Japan and South Korea. It was for this reason that they opted for a policy of “gradual escalation.” The availability of coercive options, or rather the lack of such options, clearly played a key role in how the Clinton administration chose to respond to the North Korean proliferation challenge.

Does this mean that social conventions had no influence on the American response? The evidence suggests that they did. North Korean motivations were central to the debate about the appropriate response to its proliferation challenge. The majority of the American foreign policy establishment believed that North Korea sought to acquire nuclear weapons out of revisionist motivations or because of unwarranted paranoia. They

311 Sigal, “Disarming Strangers,” 235 (italics added).

312 Robert Carlin, “North Korea,” 130. Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci (381) insist that consensus on North Korea’s political regime – which was universally considered to be an evil tyranny --- did not produce consensus on its intentions. 202

were, therefore, in no mood to “reward” North Korea for its deviance from the nuclear

nonproliferation regime. These beliefs can account for the Clinton administration’s

failure to respond positively to North Korea’s package offer of June 1993.

Although the costs of coercion were clear to American policymakers, they still

were unwilling to pursue an incentive-based approach. Instead, for more than a year they

were willing to run considerable risks of an open confrontation with North Korea by

pursuing a coercive strategy. Thus when a U.S. diplomat was told that Pyongyang’s

compliance could “be bought … If the price is right.” The response was, “I don’t want to

buy them … I want to destroy them.”313

In other words, social conventions did significantly affect the American response to the nuclear crisis, even if American policymakers ultimately refrained from their preferred enforcement strategy because of a lack of coercive options. 314 The evidence

presented in the preceding sections suggests that if the minority view of North Korean

intentions had prevailed in Washington D.C., the North Korean proliferation challenge

would have drawn a different response in 1993. Although it is impossible to know

whether the offer of positive inducements at that time would have prevented future North

Korea proliferation efforts (indeed as we know now, those efforts continued regardless of

the Agreed Framework), it would certainly have prevented a crisis which almost caused a

large-scale military confrontation on the Korean peninsula in June 1994. While the

evidence suggests therefore that American policy-choices were significantly affected by

313 Selig S. Harrison, “The North Korean nuclear crisis: from stalemate to breakthrough,” in Dealing with the North Korean Nuclear Problem, eds. Taewoo Kim and Selig S. Harrison. (Seoul: Hanul Academy, 1995): 180.

314 Senior administration officials may also have gone along with the Agreed Framework because they believed that the North Korean regime would not survive much longer. T.R. Read, “Travellers tell of food riots, uprisings in North Korea,” Washington Post, sec. A. August 19, 1993. 203

available coercive policy options and by cost-sensitivity, it belies the realist claim that

such factors were the only or even the most fundamental determining factor in the

Clinton administration’s response to the North Korean proliferation challenge.

To what extent were the American perceptions of North Korea’s actions driven by beliefs about its identity? Although far from conclusive, the evidence presented in this paper indicates that those who held pessimistic views of North Korea’s identity also held dim views of North Korea’s basic character. The latter, they argued, did not meet the

standards required of a responsible member of international society. Those who held

more positive views of North Korean intentions also seemed to emphasize the

“normality” of North Korea and its actions (although not of its repressive political

system). While it is impossible to assess the exact impact of these perceptions of North

Korea’s identity on the American responses it appears that the North Koreans believed

that it certainly did matter how they were perceived.

According to Thomas Hubbard, one of the American negotiators, “Kang really worked hard to convince us that this was a major change in North Korea’s approach to the world. He told us it had Kim Jong Il’s blessing and was designed to open up North

Korea. In a similar Kim Jong U of North Korea’s External Economic Commission was quoted as saying, “We have opened the doors, and we will open them wider.”315

315 Drezner, “The Sanctions Paradox,” 254. 204

CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSIONS

The problem of international order has long preoccupied students of international relations. Thus far, however, it has been portrayed almost exclusively in terms of a recurring struggle for international primacy among the most powerful states in the international system. As both recent events and the historical record show, however, how dominant great powers respond to challenges from weak but recalcitrant states can also have important consequences for international order and stability. The prudent and timely offer of positive inducements or the judicious application of coercive power can both prevent and resolve such smaller challenges, which, when left alone, can potentially threaten the stability of the entire international order that the dominant state seeks to maintain. Although International Relations scholars have argued that dominant states enforce their order primarily through the use of coercion and positive inducements, they have seldom examined how they choose between these strategies in their efforts to obtain compliance from the weak but unruly. This dissertation offers a systematic exploration of the determinants of these choices.

It finds that in contrast to the conventional but untested wisdom, such choices cannot be attributed solely or even primarily to the availability of coercive capabilities,

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reputational considerations or domestic and international cost-sensitivity. It argues that

such materialist explanations do not take sufficient account of the role played by

assessments of the behavior, motivations, and identities of weaker challengers. Certainly

for the British and American policymakers examined in this study, answers to the

questions of why a state deviated from the expected norm and who deviated from their

desired norm appear to have mattered in determining their responses. Moreover, the

evidence from the case studies presented in the preceding chapters suggests that the

question of why a state is believed to deviate from the desired norm is often directly

derived from its perceived identity.

In what follows, I first discuss the major findings and implications of this study in

greater detail, before concluding with a number of suggestions for ways in which this

study should and could be expanded to increase our understanding of the problem of

international order.

6.1 The Limits of Coercive Capabilities

Although the North Korean case makes clear that the availability of coercive

resources, or the lack thereof, can significantly affect how dominant states respond to

challenges from the weak, the evidence presented in this study highlight the limitations of

the realist model for the study of international order enforcement. In both the British case and the U.S.-Ukrainian case, the dominant states refrained from using coercion and even offered positive incentives in their efforts to obtain compliance from much weaker states, despite having coercive capabilities at their disposal. Shifts from positive inducements to

coercion and vice versa were not affected significantly by the coercive capabilities

available to the decisionmakers in question.

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Moreover, in the case of the North Korean proliferation challenge, American policymakers refused to offer positive inducements even when the conditions specified by the realist model were all present. They failed to respond positively to a North Korean

‘package-deal’ despite the fact that they had no feasible coercive tools available, despite the fact that they did not believe that the offer of positive inducements would tarnish their reputation for resolve and, most significantly, despite the fact that the costs of coercion were high and known at the time. At the very least this means that cost-sensitivity is also not always the primary determinant of the choice of coercion and positive inducements in international order enforcement.

All this does not mean, however, that relative capabilities and cost-sensitivity have no role to play in international order enforcement. As the North Korean case shows, they can impose significant constraints on policymakers that have a clear preference for coercion. Thus, policymakers that have decided to coerce a weaker state may find themselves unable to do so in the most effective way. Does this mean that social conventions are epiphenomenal and of marginal utility in explaining state behavior as some realists contend? There are two aspects of the North Korean case that cast doubts on such assertions in the context of international order enforcement. First, as mentioned earlier, even when the realist model predicted the use of positive inducements in June

1993, American policymakers refrained from offering North Korea an incentive-based

‘package-deal’ to resolve the crisis. Instead they continued their attempts to build a coalition that would support a coercive strategy based on economic sanctions. Thus even when they were constrained by capabilities U.S. policymakers were still largely guided by their ideas about the legitimacy of North Korea’s quest for nuclear weapons.

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Second, there are good reasons to believe that the North Korean case had some unique attributes. Due to the particular strategic environment on the Korean peninsula, the DPRK possesses a disproportionate ability to inflict damage on its southern neighbor and on the dominant state and its desired international order.

In sum, while available capabilities, cost-sensitivity, and reputational consideration can certainly play a role in how dominant states respond to challenge of the weak, the evidence presented in this study shows that the realist model cannot be regarded as a useful general model of international order enforcement. Policymakers do not only consider the availability of coercive capabilities or the relative costs of various enforcement strategies when formulating their response to challenges to their desired international order posed by weak but recalcitrant states.

6.2. Domestic Politics and International Order Enforcement

In none of the cases examined in this study did policymakers appear to give priority to domestic political considerations in responding to a challenge to their desired international order. British policymakers successfully resisted calls from the mercantile- industrial lobby for forceful intervention in China before the Opium crisis. While this lobby applauded and supported Lord Palmerston’s response to the Opium Crisis in 1839, the evidence does not seem to support the notion that Palmerston’s decisions were mainly driven by a desire to curry favor with the mercantile-industrial lobby. In neither of the

American cases did domestic political considerations determine the choice of enforcement strategies. The Bush administration did not offer positive incentives to

Ukraine in the run-up to the elections of 1992, although such an offer could have helped him at the polls. Neither did the Clinton administration refrain from signing the generally

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unpopular Agreed Framework with North Korea shortly before the mid-term elections of

1994. In other words, domestic political costs do not seem to be a primary determinant of

the core choice between coercion and positive inducements in international order

enforcement.

As the North Korea case indicates, however, domestic political considerations

can help shape the menu of particular policy options that are available to policymakers.

The Clinton administration, for instance, declined to call the Agreed Framework a treaty,

as the latter would be subject to ratification by the U.S. Senate. It also made sure to pay

for the first heavy oil shipments to North Korea -- shipments that were part of the

agreement, from funds already appropriated from the previous year -- fearing that

Congress would not appropriate the funds it needed. In other words, although the Clinton

administration was willing to defy public opinion and resistance in the Congress when it

came to pursuing an incentive-based policy toward North Korea, the exact nature of this

policy was significantly influenced by domestic political constraints.

6.3 Legitimacy matters.

One of the central findings of this study is that dominant state responses to

challenges from the weak are not merely reducible to material factors. In contrast to both

the realist and domestic politics models, the case-studies presented here show that

policymakers do take into account why weaker states challenge their desired international order and respond accordingly. Thus, the British cases show that the key difference between the British responses to the ‘Napier Fizzle’ and the Opium Crisis was the perception that the latter was driven by greed, and the former was driven by a legitimate, although unfortunate, attempt by the Chinese authorities to maintain control over the

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terms under which foreigner traded on Chinese soil. Thus, even when the military

balance strongly favored Britain in both crises, British policymakers refrained from using military coercion to produce Chinese compliance. Instead, they decided upon a policy of quiet accommodation by removing their official representatives from Canton.

Similarly in the case of Ukrainian denuclearization, it appears that the American responses varied as a function of the perceived legitimacy of Ukrainian claims about foreign threats to Ukraine’s survival as the key reason for its failure to relinquish its nuclear arsenal. While those claims were first attributed to ethno-nationalist paranoia, they came to be accepted as legitimate when Russia’s failure to accept Ukraine’s independence was eventually recognized. Before this recognition, the U.S. pursued a strategy of diplomatic pressure. Thereafter it turned to positive inducements. Although the coercive strategies available to American policymakers were basically limited to economic sanctions and ‘cruise-missile’ diplomacy, there is no evidence to suggest that they seriously contemplated these strategies before turning to a broad incentive-based policy. Realist logic would have expected them to escalate from diplomatic pressure to the least costly coercive tool before turning to positive inducements.

Finally, while the lack of available coercive options clearly played an important role in determining the U.S. response to North Korea’s nuclear proliferation challenge, the evidence presented in Chapter 5 shows that ideas about the appropriateness of the

DPRK’s quest for nuclear weapons was instrumental in determining the American response. While coercion was not an attractive option because of the cost associated with such a strategy, a majority of American policymakers were initially unwilling to resort to incentive-based strategies because this would “reward” North Korea for its deviant

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behavior. The war scare of June 1994, however, caused them to reconsider and paved the way for a minority of Clinton administration officials that did believe that North Korea’s

quest for nuclear weapons was driven by security fears, rather than expansionist aims.

6.4 Identities matter

The cases presented in this study, moreover, suggest that who the challenger is

can have an important effect on how policymakers interpret the challenge and in

determining the appropriate response. Thus, for Palmerston com suis, the belief that the

Chinese imperial government had threatened the lives and property of legitimate British

traders in Canton in pursuit of financial gain was taken as evidence that China did not

meet the standards required of responsible members of “civilized” international society. It

was this shift in perception that paved the way not only for the use of coercion, but also

for the imposition of the harsh terms of the Treaty of Nanking, which essentially forced

China to accept the British economic international order. The Opium crisis, therefore,

settled a long-standing debate between those who believed that it did not meet the

standards to be included as a full member of ‘civilized’ international society (such as

Lord Napier and a great number of British merchants at Canton) and those who believed

that it did (such as Charles Elliot and Lords Palmerston and Elliot).

The American efforts to convince Ukraine to denuclearize ranged from diplomatic

pressure to a broad incentive-based strategy. Although the evidence is not conclusive in

this case, we can see that variations in American responses were closely associated with

shifts in the perceptions of the basic character of Ukraine itself. Thus, senior members of

the Bush administration feared that like the states that had recently emerged from the

former Yugoslavia, Ukraine would also be driven by irrational ethno-nationalist

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sentiments. While there is no direct evidence linking the two factors, the Bush

administration relied primarily on diplomatic pressure to obtain Ukraine’s commitment to

dismantle the nuclear arsenal on its soil. This shift toward an incentive-based strategy, by

contrast, coincided with the increased realization that Ukraine had not turned out to be a

suicidal ethno-nationalist state as the Bush administration had foreseen.

The North Korean case shows both the limits and the utility of the sociological explanation. On the one hand, it shows that the majority within the American foreign policy establishment would have preferred to coerce North Korea, but that available capabilities seriously limited the U.S. ability to do so. On the other, the case shows that there was serious debate within the Clinton administration as to what would be the most appropriate response to North Korea’s proliferation challenge. To a large extent, moreover, this debate revolved around North Korea’s motivations for seeking nuclear weapons. Those who believed that North Korea was driven by revisionist aims advocated coercion as the appropriate response and also tended to highlight the DPRK’s “rogue” character. They emphasized North Korea’s repressive domestic regime, the lack of maturity and irrationality of its leadership, its unwillingness to accept other accepted international norms of behavior, and its unpredictably violent behavior of the past.

By contrast, those who believed that North Korea was driven primarily by understandable security fears sought to emphasize that North Korea, although clearly a repressive dictatorship, was otherwise a ‘normal’ and not a ‘rogue’ state. They tended, moreover, to point out that North Korea was undergoing a cautious process of reform in an effort to become a more integral member of international society. These advocates of an incentive-based approach cited North Korea’s improved behavior (renunciation of

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terrorism, the nuclear talks with South Korea, and efforts to engage the United States), its

growing acceptance of international commerce, and the rationality behind Kim Jong Il’s

nuclear diplomacy to bolster their case.

In sum, the evidence from the case-studies presented in this study strongly

suggest that ideas about what constitute appropriate deviations from acceptable norms

played an important role in determining the British and American responses to challenges

to their desired international order. Policymakers debated the intentions of weaker

challengers and formulated their responses based upon these perceived intentions. The

evidence further suggests that perceptions of the identity of the offending state were

important standards for assessing both its intentions and the appropriate response. It also

suggests, however, that no single basic objective characteristic can be used to distinguish

what dominant states will consider responsible and equal members of the community, i.e.

those that are part of their in-groups, from those who are not. Thus, in contrast to what

the democratic peace literature suggests, the mere existence of shared democratic

institutions is not necessarily enough to produce an in-group. Moreover, divergent

political institutions are not enough to predict that the dominant state will consider a

challenger as not belonging to its in-group.

6.5 The process matters: bureaucratic actors and contested identities

Another key observation that emerges from the cases presented in this study, is that both the intentions and identities of weaker challengers are rarely a matter of consensus or a matter of ‘objective’ fact. The evidence presented in this study suggests, instead, that the political process through which identities and intentions are ‘assigned’ is of key importance to understanding how dominant states respond to challenges from the

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weak. Thus, while they both assessed the intentions behind the actions of China’s

imperial court, Lord Napier and Charles Elliot disagreed both about the fundamental

character of the Chinese imperial rulers and how Britain should interact with it. Their

policy preferences clearly diverged, as did their advice for their superiors in London. The

latter chose to accept Elliot’s interpretation in 1839, but rejected Napier’s assessment.

Why? By virtue of his family ties Charles Elliot had direct access to the highest

echelons of the British ruling elite who seem to have trusted his judgment. He also had a

history of promoting a tolerant accommodative approach toward China. Thus, when he changed his opinion about the trustworthiness of the Chinese imperial government, his superiors seemed ready to accept it. Napier, on the other hand, was forced on Palmerston by the British monarch after the latter had rejected him for the position of British representative to Canton. Napier, moreover, had shown no moderation and a lack of good judgment by calling for a forceful British policy vis-à-vis China before his arrival there.

Similar observations emanate from the cases drawn from the Pax Americana.

Members of the Defense Department had more positive views of the character of the

Ukrainian leadership than those prevalent among State Department officials who, in the absence of available knowledge on Ukraine, relied primarily on information they received from the Russian counterparts. Most important, however, was the fact that both

President Bush and Secretary of State Baker seemed to have held negative opinions of

Ukraine, strongly reinforced by their trusted Russian counterparts. Thus, when the different views on how the U.S. should respond to the Ukrainian challenge collided, it was not surprising that the State Department view seemed to have gotten the upper hand.

By early 1993, however, independent State Department expertise on Ukraine had been

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developed and opinions about its intentions and basic character had changed. Moreover,

at least some of the senior foreign policy officials in the Clinton administration – among them National Security Adviser Anthony Lake --had serious misgivings about Russia and

its intentions vis-à-vis its neighbors.

Finally, those who saw North Korea as a normal state driven by security concerns

were a largely marginalized group of State Department analysts (and independent

scholars) who disagreed with the majority view of North Korea that prevailed among the

majority of the members of the American Foreign Policy establishment. Ironically,

therefore, the experts on North Korea were generally ignored and most of the time lacked

an advocate who could influence the policy process in a meaningful way. In sum,

therefore, while perceived identities do matter in how the strong respond to challenges from the weak, they seldom do so in an easily predictable manner. To fully understand how the strong respond to challenges from the weak requires knowledge of the policy process, the distribution of power among various bureaucratic actors, and the debates regarding the motivations and character of the weaker challenger.

6.6 Implications

The most important implication that emanates from these findings concerns the issue of the prudent use of coercion and positive inducements in international order enforcement. As I mentioned above, the judicious use of coercion and positive inducements is generally considered one of the keys to the successful resolution of challenges to international order and stability. The results of this study suggest, however,

that dominant states are not necessarily all that well prepared to make such judicious

choices and to choose the most effective enforcement strategy available. This is

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especially true when the challenger’s behavior is considered illegitimate as a function of its identity, rather than of an objective assessment of its motivations. While this may of course sometimes produce the most effective policy, (i.e. when the objective assessment of a challenger’s motivations coincide with the hegemon’s perceptions of them) there is no reason to believe that it will always be the case.

Second, while this study highlights the limits of purely material explanations for the choice of coercion and positive inducements in international order enforcement, it also shows the pitfalls of considering politics in the absence of coercive power and cost- sensitivity. The North Korean case in particular offers a reminder that the ability to coerce is part and parcel of international order enforcement, as it is in any other social context. Rather than pose a stark distinction between sociological and materialist approaches, therefore, this study suggests that any study that examines the maintenance of social order, whether at the international or domestic level, should take both power and purpose into account. In the context of international order enforcement, this study suggests that even while relative capabilities and cost-sensitivity may not determine the core choice between coercion and positive inducements, they do play a major role in shaping such decisions. The question that one should ask, therefore, in the context of international order enforcement is not whether social conventions or coercive capabilities matter, but rather when do they matter and how do they interact?

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6.6 Suggestions for Future Research

This study suggests that social conventions can play an important role in

determining how dominant states respond to challenges from the weak. It does not, however, offer a complete answer to the question at hand and certainly does not deal with all the important aspects of international order enforcement. There are a number of ways in which this study can and should be extended to increase our understanding of how dominant states choose to respond to challenges from the weak but unruly.

First, although the evidence presented in this study suggests that policymakers rely on social conventions to interpret and respond to challenges from the weak, no systematic attempt is made to uncover the origins of these social conventions. Knowing those origins, however, should allow one to predict with more certainty as to how a dominant states will respond to a challenge. This is especially true if policymakers rely upon domestic conceptions of social order and its enforcement when confronted with challenges to their desired international order.

There is reason to believe that the latter is indeed the case. For example, the notion that intentions matter may be acceptable to the Western dominant states investigated in this study, but may not be a more widespread phenomenon. 316 Thus, in

“western criminal law,” for example, “Mens Rea, the intent or state of mind of the

316 The possibility that the domestic conceptions of law and order affect how policymakers act internationally is also raised by Kier and Mercer in their discussion about the role of precedents in American foreign policy. American policymakers may be strong believers in the importance of precedence they argue because “precedents serve as the foundation for the U.S. judicial system.” Another reason “why American decision-makers may be too quick to invoke precedent as a reason for policy. Most American policy-makers are lawyers and their graduate training – which focused on case law and precedent – may influence how they view international politics. Since most French decision-makers are not lawyers, and since French law does not place the same emphasis on precedents as does the law in common-law nations, we speculate that French policy-makers do not place the same emphasis on precedents as do Americans.” Kier and Mercer, “Setting Precedents In Anarchy,” p. 97-98. 217

offender, is typically considered … in determining liability ... All Western systems of criminal law recognize mitigating conditions such as accident, coercion, duress, insanity, and even sleepwalking. Similarly, they recognize that the offender’s intent may exacerbate his crime, as in the case of malicious, willful, or reckless actions.”317

According to Gerrit Gong, Chinese conceptions of international order were drawn from Confucian concepts of social order and social control, which “prescribed a hierarchy of order on the model of the extended family. As the Middle Kingdom, China assumed the position of the benevolent father or elder brother, who governed younger members of the family according to Confucian principles. In return for the proper ritual observances and dutiful respect, China attempted to observe fair if patriarchal relations with its non-Chinese neighbours.”318 In other words, the Chinese employed a single model of social order for both the domestic and the international realm.

All this suggests that it would be potentially fruitful to examine in more depth whether and how domestic conceptions of social order and its enforcement affect the choice of positive inducements and coercion in international order enforcement. Thus, the study should be extended to non-Western dominant state in order to see how the findings obtained in this study hold across similar cases of dominance.

Second, as this study indicates, policymakers may well interpret the motivations behind behavior of those actors who they consider part of their ‘in-group’ differently from motivations of those that are not defined that way. As the case-studies in this study show, however, such perceptions may change over time, as happened in the British cases

317 Edgerton, “Rules, Exceptions, and Social Order,“ 31.

318 Gong, “The Standard of ‘Civilization’ in International Society,” 131. 218

and in the case of Ukrainian denuclearization. This indicates that the process of identity- convergence is crucial to understanding how dominant states choose to enforce order. To

increase our ability to predict and explain the stability of any international order,

therefore, we should develop a better understanding of the process by which identities

converge or diverge. This study suggests two plausible explanations that should be

investigated further. First, specialist knowledge, or lack thereof, may guide this process.

Thus while earlier assessments of the identity of the challenger may be affected by a lack

of accurate information about its character and intentions, a gradual accumulation of

expert knowledge may produce readjustments. Second, the bureaucratic process may have an important effect on whether identity-convergence is perceived or not.

Finally, although this study highlights the limitations of the domestic politics model, it leaves potential scope-conditions of the domestic politics model unclear. While it finds no support for the domestic political argument in the cases under investigation, this could be partly a result of these cases themselves. In particular, none of the cases examined included a condition in which a powerful domestic interest group held different policy preferences from the foreign policymakers. In order to better understand what the possible effects of domestic political considerations are on the choice of coercion and positive incentives in international order enforcement, a future project should examine at least one such case to better determine when domestic politics may trump both capabilities and social conventions in international order enforcement.

219

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