STEPHEN KOTKIN ON TRUMP AND RUSSIA
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Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power & Peace By Hans Morgenthau
Volume 98, Number 4
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE AMERICAN CENTURY? The Self-Destruction of American Power 10 Washington Squandered the Unipolar Moment Fareed Zakaria
Democracy Demotion 17 How the Freedom Agenda Fell Apart Larry Diamond
Globalization’s Wrong Turn 26 And How It Hurt America Dani Rodrik
Faith-Based Finance 34 How Wall Street Became a Cult o Risk Gillian Tett
The Republican Devolution 42
COVER: Partisanship and the Decline o American Governance Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson MARC
BURCKHARDT It’s the Institutions, Stupid 52 The Real Roots o America’s Political Crisis Julia Azari
July/August 2019
FA.indb 1 5/17/19 6:40 PM ESSAYS American Hustle 62 What Mueller Found—and Didn’t Find—About Trump and Russia Stephen Kotkin
The New Tiananmen Papers 80 Inside the Secret Meeting That Changed China Andrew J. Nathan
A World Safe for Autocracy? 92 China’s Rise and the Future o Global Politics Jessica Chen Weiss
Europe Alone 109 What Comes After the Transatlantic Alliance Alina Polyakova and Benjamin Haddad
The Global Economy’s Next Winners 121 What It Takes to Thrive in the Automation Age Susan Lund, James Manyika, and Michael Spence
Africa’s Democratic Moment? 131 The Five Leaders Who Could Transform the Region Judd Devermont and Jon Temin
With Great Demographics Comes Great Power 146 Why Population Will Drive Geopolitics Nicholas Eberstadt
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George Herring on Amanda Sloat on the Madawi al-Rasheed Vietnam’s lessons for increasingly messy on the new Saudi leaving Afghanistan. Brexit breakup. diaspora.
July/August 2019
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K America’s Forgotten Colony 158 Ending Puerto Rico’s Perpetual Crisis Antonio Weiss and Brad Setser REVIEWS & RESPONSES China’s Feminist Fight 170 #MeToo in the Middle Kingdom Susan Greenhalgh and Xiying Wang
How Should a Liberal Be? 177 Walter Bagehot and the Politics o Progress Sebastian Mallaby
The Last War—and the Next? 183 Learning the Wrong Lessons From Iraq Jon Finer
Ready for Robots? 192 How to Think About the Future o AI Kenneth Cukier
“Foreign Aairs . . . will tolerate wide dierences of opinion. Its articles will not represent any consensus of beliefs. What is demanded of them is that they shall be competent and well informed, representing honest opinions seriously held and convincingly expressed. . . . It does not accept responsibility for the views in any articles, signed or unsigned, which appear in its pages. What it does accept is the responsibility for giving them a chance to appear.” Archibald Cary Coolidge, Founding Editor Volume 1, Number 1 • September 1922
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FA.indb 5 5/17/19 6:40 PM July/August 2019 · Volume 98, Number 4 Published by the Council on Foreign Relations
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FA.indb 6 5/17/19 6:40 PM CONTRIBUTORS One o the United States’ foremost foreign policy experts, FAREED ZAKARIA is the host o CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, where he has interviewed a wide variety o world leaders, from Barack Obama to Vladimir Putin. A columnist for The Washington Post (and a former editor at Foreign A airs), Zakaria is also the author o several best-selling books, including The Post-American World. In “The Self-Destruction o American Power” (page 10), he argues that American hegemony’s death was self-inicted, the result o Washington’s bad habits and bad behavior.
As a Ph.D. student at the University o Cambridge, GILLIAN TETT spent a year living in a remote mountain village in Tajikistan studying marriage rituals and looking after goats. She then used her anthropological back- ground in her work as a nancial journalist, warning o the dangers in the system before the crisis o 2008. Now American editor-at-large for the Financial Times, in “Faith-Based Finance” (page 34), Tett argues that to avoid another crisis, we need to make sure that the nancial system is the servant o the broader economy rather than its master.
ANDREW NATHAN has devoted his career to studying Chinese politics, Chinese foreign policy, and international human rights. In 2001, Nathan, a professor at Columbia University, co-edited a sensational inside account o the decisions that led to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. In “The New Tiananmen Papers” (page 80), Nathan reveals previously unpublished documents that shed new light on a moment that came to dene modern China.
When JESSICA CHEN WEISS returned from studying abroad in Beijing while an undergraduate at Stanford, she was struck by how badly Americans and Chinese understood each other, and she founded a student exchange program to help bridge the gap. Since receiving her Ph.D. from the University o California, San Diego, she has held academic positions at Princeton and Yale, and she is now a professor at Cornell. In “A World Safe for Autocracy?” (page 92), Weiss argues that China’s actions are making the world safer for autocracies.
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WHAT HAPPENED TO THE AMERICAN CENTURY?
generation ago, the United Dani Rodrik and Gillian Tett assess States was condently leading Washington’s management o global- Athe world into what was sup- ization and nance, respectively. The posed to be a new millennium o peace, apotheosis o neoliberalism and the prosperity, freedom, and community. push for hyperglobalization produced Now, the globe is heading into turbulence, greater economic integration between and the United States is a Leonard countries but also political disintegra- Cohen song; that’s how it goes, and tion within them—and thus led to a everybody knows. How could things fall populist backlash. The culture o apart so quickly? American nance, meanwhile, colonized In retrospect, the decline appears the world and then dragged it into inevitable. What seems to need explaining crisis—and it will do so again, unless today are Washington’s n-de-siècle the nancial system becomes the fever dreams o lasting benign U.S. servant o the broader economy rather hegemony, not the current reality o than its master. perpetual conict at home and abroad. Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson turn But those who lived through the era their focus inward, examining Washing- know that nothing was written, that ton’s declining capacity to use govern- history could have played out di er- ment to provide broad public goods. ently. So we decided to o er an autopsy They call out not just rising inequality, o the last decades o American global changing demographics, and regional leadership—the years when U.S. elites economic divergence but also changes in squandered the inheritance and good the Republican Party and its agenda. name bequeathed to them. Julia Azari looks at domestic dysfunc- Fareed Zakaria starts by tracing the tion, too, but spreads the blame further, course o the United States’ post–Cold arguing that today’s problems stem from War hegemony—rising from the fall o earlier bungled, incomplete reforms that the Berlin Wall to the fall o Baghdad, produced a democracy at once broadly sinking ever since. External shocks and inclusive and utterly ine ective. challenges hurt, poor strategic choices In the early 1990s, the era o Ameri- hurt even more, and indi erence most can postwar dominance segued into an o all. Larry Diamond follows with a era o American post–Cold War look at trends in democratization, dominance. Now that era is segueing showing how the undertow o the third into something else, as yet unknown. wave sucked the world into a new era o Sic transit gloria mundi. personalized authoritarianism. —Gideon Rose, Editor
03_Comment_div.indd 8 5/20/19 3:30 PM 5/17/19 6:40 PM 52 34 42 Hacker and Paul Pierson Pierson and Paul Hacker s the Stupid Institutions, ’ Faith-Based Finance Faith-Based Gillian Tett The Republican Devolution Jacob S. It Azari Julia
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the last elites them. the inheritance decades of American squandered and good name Over leadership, global U.S. bequeathed to The Self-Destruction o American Power Fareed Zakaria Fareed Democracy Demotion Larry Diamond Turn Wrong Globalization’s Dani Rodrik
ILLUSTRATION BY THE HEADS OF STATE MARC BURCKHARDT FA.indb 9 THE AMERICAN CENTURY? AMERICAN THE TO HAPPENED WHAT Buy CSS Books https://cssbooks.netReturn to Table of Contents
position—mishandled its hegemony and The Self- abused its power, losing allies and emboldening enemies. And now, under Destruction of the Trump administration, the United States seems to have lost interest, indeed American Power lost faith, in the ideas and purpose that animated its international presence for Washington Squandered the three-quarters o a century. Unipolar Moment A STAR IS BORN U.S. hegemony in the post–Cold War Fareed Zakaria era was like nothing the world had seen since the Roman Empire. Writers are fond o dating the dawn o “the ometime in the last two years, American century” to 1945, not long after American hegemony died. The age the publisher Henry Luce coined the So U.S. dominance was a brief, term. But the post–World War II era heady era, about three decades marked was quite dierent from the post-1989 by two moments, each a breakdown one. Even after 1945, in large stretches o sorts. It was born amid the collapse o the globe, France and the United o the Berlin Wall, in 1989. The end, or Kingdom still had formal empires and really the beginning o the end, was thus deep inÁuence. Soon, the Soviet another collapse, that o Iraq in 2003, Union presented itsel as a superpower
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE AMERICAN CENTURY? and the slow unraveling since. But was rival, contesting Washington’s inÁuence the death o the United States’ extraor- in every corner o the planet. Remem- dinary status a result o external causes, ber that the phrase “Third World” or did Washington accelerate its own derived from the tripartite division o demise through bad habits and bad the globe, the First World being the behavior? That is a question that will United States and Western Europe, and be debated by historians for years to the Second World, the communist come. But at this point, we have enough countries. The Third World was every- time and perspective to make some where else, where each country was preliminary observations. choosing between U.S. and Soviet As with most deaths, many factors inÁuence. For much o the world’s contributed to this one. There were deep population, from Poland to China, the structural forces in the international century hardly looked American. system that inexorably worked against The United States’ post–Cold War any one nation that accumulated so much supremacy was initially hard to detect. power. In the American case, however, As I pointed out in The New Yorker in one is struck by the ways in which 2002, most participants missed it. In Washington—from an unprecedented 1990, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher argued that the world was FAREED ZAKARIA is the host of Fareed dividing into three political spheres, Zakaria GPS, on CNN. dominated by the dollar, the yen, and the
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deutsche mark. Henry Kissinger’s 1994 stabilize the global Ãnancial system. book, Diplomacy, predicted the dawn o a It organized a $120 billion international new multipolar age. Certainly in the bailout for the worst-hit countries, United States, there was little triumph- resolving the crisis. Time magazine put alism. The 1992 presidential campaign three Americans, Treasury Secretary was marked by a sense o weakness and Robert Rubin, Federal Reserve Chair weariness. “The Cold War is over; Japan Alan Greenspan, and Deputy Treasury and Germany won,” the Democratic Secretary Lawrence Summers, on its hopeful Paul Tsongas said again and cover with the headline “The Commit- again. Asia hands had already begun to tee to Save the World.” speak o “the PaciÃc century.” There was one exception to this THE BEGINNING OF THE END analysis, a prescient essay in the pages o Just as American hegemony grew in the this magazine by the conservative early 1990s while no one was noticing, commentator Charles Krauthammer: so in the late 1990s did the forces that “The Unipolar Moment,” which would undermine it, even as people had was published in 1990. But even this begun to speak o the United States as triumphalist take was limited in its “the indispensable nation” and “the world’s expansiveness, as its title suggests. “The sole superpower.” First and foremost, unipolar moment will be brief,” Kraut- there was the rise o China. It is easy to hammer admitted, predicting in a see in retrospect that Beijing would Washington Post column that within a very become the only serious rival to Wash- short time, Germany and Japan, the ington, but it was not as apparent a two emerging “regional superpowers,” quarter century ago. Although China had would be pursuing foreign policies grown speedily since the 1980s, it had independent o the United States. done so from a very low base. Few Policymakers welcomed the waning countries had been able to continue that o unipolarity, which they assumed process for more than a couple o dec- was imminent. In 1991, as the Balkan ades. China’s strange mixture o capital- wars began, Jacques Poos, the president ism and Leninism seemed fragile, as the o the Council o the European Union, Tiananmen Square uprising had revealed. declared, “This is the hour o Europe.” But China’s rise persisted, and the He explained: “I one problem can country became the new great power be solved by Europeans, it is the Yugo- on the block, one with the might and the slav problem. This is a European ambition to match the United States. country, and it is not up to the Ameri- Russia, for its part, went from being both cans.” But it turned out that only the weak and quiescent in the early 1990s to United States had the combined power being a revanchist power, a spoiler with and inÁuence to intervene eectively enough capability and cunning to be and tackle the crisis. disruptive. With two major global players Similarly, toward the end o the outside the U.S.-constructed interna- 1990s, when a series o economic panics tional system, the world had entered a sent East Asian economies into tail- post-American phase. Today, the spins, only the United States could United States is still the most powerful
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country on the planet, but it exists in a undertaken with a small number o world o global and regional powers that troops and a light touch. Iraq, it was can—and frequently do—push back. said, would pay for itself. And once in The 9/11 attacks and the rise o Baghdad, Washington decided to destroy Islamic terrorism played a dual role in the Iraqi state, disbanding the army and the decline o U.S. hegemony. At Ãrst, purging the bureaucracy, which produced the attacks seem to galvanize Washington chaos and helped fuel an insurgency. and mobilize its power. In 2001, the Any one o these mistakes might have United States, still larger economically been overcome. But together they than the next Ãve countries put together, ensured that Iraq became a costly Ãasco. chose to ramp up its annual defense After 9/11, Washington made major, spending by an amount—almost $50 consequential decisions that continue billion—that was larger than the United to haunt it, but it made all o them Kingdom’s entire yearly defense budget. hastily and in fear. It saw itsel as in When Washington intervened in mortal danger, needing to do whatever Afghanistan, it was able to get over- it took to defend itself—from invading whelming support for the campaign, Iraq to spending untold sums on including from Russia. Two years later, homeland security to employing torture. despite many objections, it was still The rest o the world saw a country able to put together a large interna- that was experiencing a kind o terror- tional coalition for an invasion o Iraq. ism that many had lived with for years The early years o this century marked and yet was thrashing around like a the high point o the American impe- wounded lion, tearing down international rium, as Washington tried to remake alliances and norms. In its Ãrst two wholly alien nations—Afghanistan and years, the George W. Bush administra- Iraq—thousands o miles away, despite tion walked away from more interna- the rest o the world’s reluctant acquies- tional agreements than any previous cence or active opposition. administration had. (Undoubtedly, that Iraq in particular marked a turning record has now been surpassed under point. The United States embarked on a President Donald Trump.) American war o choice despite misgivings ex- behavior abroad during the Bush pressed in the rest o world. It tried to administration shattered the moral and get the ¤ to rubber-stamp its mission, political authority o the United States, and when that proved arduous, it as long-standing allies such as Canada dispensed with the organization alto- and France found themselves at gether. It ignored the Powell Doctrine— odds with it on the substance, morality, the idea, promulgated by General Colin and style o its foreign policy. Powell while he was chairman o the Joint Chiefs o Sta during the GulÊ War, OWN GOAL that a war was worth entering only i So which was it that eroded American vital national interests were at stake and hegemony—the rise o new challengers overwhelming victory assured. The Bush or imperial overreach? As with any large administration insisted that the vast and complex historical phenomenon, challenge o occupying Iraq could be it was probably all o the above. China’s
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rise was one o those tectonic shifts in The greatest error the United States international life that would have committed during its unipolar moment, eroded any hegemon’s unrivaled power, with Russia and more generally, was no matter how skillful its diplomacy. to simply stop paying attention. After The return o Russia, however, was a the collapse o the Soviet Union, more complex aair. It’s easy to forget Americans wanted to go home, and they now, but in the early 1990s, leaders in did. During the Cold War, the United Moscow were determined to turn their States had stayed deeply interested country into a liberal democracy, a in events in Central America, Southeast European nation, and an ally o sorts o Asia, the Taiwan Strait, and even the West. Eduard Shevardnadze, who Angola and Namibia. By the mid-1990s, was foreign minister during the Ãnal it had lost all interest in the world. years o the Soviet Union, supported Foreign-bureau broadcasts by ¤ fell the United States’ 1990–91 war against from 1,013 minutes in 1988 to 327 Iraq. And after the Soviet Union’s minutes in 1996. (Today, the three main collapse, Russia’s Ãrst foreign minister, networks combined devote roughly the Andrei Kozyrev, was an even more same amount o time to foreign-bureau ardent liberal, an internationalist, and a stories as each individual network vigorous supporter oÊ human rights. did in 1988.) Both the White House Who lost Russia is a question for and Congress during the George H. W. another article. But it is worth noting Bush administration had no appetite that although Washington gave Moscow for an ambitious eort to transform some status and respect—expanding Russia, no interest in rolling out a new the G-7 into the G-8, for example—it version o the Marshall Plan or becom- never truly took Russia’s security ing deeply engaged in the country. concerns seriously. It enlarged ¤¬¢£ Even amid the foreign economic crises fast and furiously, a process that might that hit during the Clinton administra- have been necessary for countries tion, U.S. policymakers had to scramble such as Poland, historically insecure and and improvise, knowing that Congress threatened by Russia, but one that has would appropriate no funds to continued on unthinkingly, with little rescue Mexico or Thailand or Indone- concern for Russian sensitivities, and sia. They oered advice, most o now even extends to Macedonia. Today, it designed to require little assistance Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggres- from Washington, but their attitude sive behavior makes every action was one o a distant well-wisher, not taken against his country seem justiÃed, an engaged superpower. but it’s worth asking, What forces Ever since the end oÊ World War I, produced the rise o Putin and his foreign the United States has wanted to trans- policy in the Ãrst place? Undoubtedly, form the world. In the 1990s, that they were mostly internal to Russia, seemed more possible than ever before. but to the extent that U.S. actions had Countries across the planet were an eect, they appear to have been moving toward the American way. The damaging, helping stoke the forces o GulÊ War seemed to mark a new mile- revenge and revanchism in Russia. stone for world order, in that it was
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prosecuted to uphold a norm, limited in its scope, endorsed by major powers and legitimized by international law. But right at the time o all these positive developments, the United States lost Think Global. interest. U.S. policymakers still wanted to transform the world in the 1990s, but Think Pardee. on the cheap. They did not have the political capital or resources to throw themselves into the eort. That was one reason Washington’s advice to foreign countries was always the same: economic shock therapy and instant democracy. Anything slower or more complex— anything, in other words, that resembled the manner in which the West itsel had liberalized its economy and democra- tized its politics—was unacceptable.
Before 9/11, when confronting chal- P A R D lenges, the American tactic was mostly E E S C H to attack from afar, hence the twin O O L S approaches o economic sanctions and TU DE NT precision air strikes. Both o these, as LEA DING OUP. the political scientist Eliot Cohen wrote A STUDY GR o airpower, had the characteristics o modern courtship: “gratication without Earn a commitment.” specialization in O course, these limits on the United INTERNATIONAL States’ willingness to pay prices and bear burdens never changed its rhetoric, COMMUNICATION which is why, in an essay for The New with an MA in York Times Magazine in 1998, I pointed International A airs. out that U.S. foreign policy was dened by “the rhetoric o transformation but the reality o accommodation.” The result, I said, was “a hollow hegemony.” That hollowness has persisted ever since. PARDEE SCHOOL PARDEE THE FINAL BLOW bu.edu/PardeeSchool @BUPardeeSchool The Trump administration has hollowed out U.S. foreign policy even further. Trump’s instincts are Jacksonian, in that Frederick S. Pardee he is largely uninterested in the world School of Global Studies except insofar as he believes that most
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countries are screwing the United more consistently in the pursuit o States. He is a nationalist, a protection- broader interests and ideas, it could have ist, and a populist, determined to put continued its inÁuence for decades “America Ãrst.” But truthfully, more (albeit in a dierent form). The rule for than anything else, he has abandoned extending liberal hegemony seems the Ãeld. Under Trump, the United simple: be more liberal and less hege- States has withdrawn from the Trans- monic. But too often and too obviously, PaciÃc Partnership and from engaging Washington pursued its narrow with Asia more generally. It is uncou- self-interests, alienating its allies and pling itsel from its 70-year partnership emboldening its foes. Unlike the United with Europe. It has dealt with Latin Kingdom at the end o its reign, the America through the prism o either United States is not bankrupt or impe- keeping immigrants out or winning rially overextended. It remains the votes in Florida. It has even managed single most powerful country on the to alienate Canadians (no mean feat). planet. It will continue to wield immense And it has subcontracted Middle East inÁuence, more than any other nation. policy to Israel and Saudi Arabia. But it will no longer deÃne and domi- With a few impulsive exceptions—such nate the international system the way it as the narcissistic desire to win a Nobel did for almost three decades. Prize by trying to make peace with What remains, then, are American North Korea—what is most notable about ideas. The United States has been a Trump’s foreign policy is its absence. unique hegemon in that it expanded its When the United Kingdom was the inÁuence to establish a new world order, superpower o its day, its hegemony one dreamed oÊ by President Woodrow eroded because o many large structural Wilson and most fully conceived oÊ by forces—the rise o Germany, the United President Franklin Roosevelt. It is the States, and the Soviet Union. But it world that was half-created after 1945, also lost control o its empire through sometimes called “the liberal interna- overreach and hubris. In 1900, with a tional order,” from which the Soviet quarter o the world’s population under Union soon defected to build its own British rule, most o the United King- sphere. But the free world persisted dom’s major colonies were asking only through the Cold War, and after 1991, it for limited autonomy—“dominion expanded to encompass much o the status” or “home rule,” in the terms o globe. The ideas behind it have produced the day. Had the country quickly stability and prosperity over the last granted that to all its colonies, who three-quarters o a century. The question knows whether it would have been able now is whether, as American power to extend its imperial life for decades? wanes, the international system it spon- But it didn’t, insisting on its narrow, sored—the rules, norms, and values—will selÃsh interests rather than accommo- survive. Or will America also watch the dating itsel to the interests o the decline o its empire o ideas?∂ broader empire. There is an analogy here with the United States. Had the country acted
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democracy in Russia. More recently, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE AMERICAN CENTURY? Democracy Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has gone down a similar path. Demotion Elected executives have been the principal agents o democratic destruc- tion in some countries; in others, the How the Freedom Agenda military has. The generals seized Fell Apart control o the government in Egypt in 2013 and in Thailand in 2014, and they Larry Diamond continue to wield de facto power in Myanmar and Pakistan. Across Africa, or three decades beginning in the the trend has been for elected autocrats, mid-1970s, the world experienced such as President Uhuru Kenyatta Fa remarkable expansion o democ- o Kenya and President John Magufuli racy—the so-called third wave—with oÊ Tanzania, to manipulate elections, authoritarian regimes falling or reform- subvert independent institutions, and ing across the world. By 1993, a majority harass critics and political opponents o states with populations over one to ensure their continued grip on power. million had become democracies. Levels More concerning still is the wave o o freedom, as measured by Freedom illiberal populism that has been sweeping House, were steadily rising as well. In developed and developing countries most years between 1991 and 2005, alike, often in response to anxiety over many more countries gained freedom immigration and growing cultural than lost it. diversity. The harbinger o this trend But around 2006, the forward momen- was Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor tum o democracy came to a halt. In every Orban, who has presided over the Ãrst year since 2007, many more countries death o a democracy in an ¥ member have seen their freedom decrease than state. Similar trends are under way have seen it increase, reversing the post– in Brazil, the Philippines, and Poland. Cold War trend. The rule oÊ law has taken Illiberal, xenophobic parties have been a severe and sustained beating, particu- gaining political ground in such hal- larly in Africa and the postcommunist lowed European liberal democracies states; civil liberties and electoral rights as Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, have also been declining. and Sweden; one such party made a Adding to the problem, democracies serious bid for the presidency o have been expiring in big and strategi- France; and another captured a share o cally important countries. Russian national power in Italy. In the United President Vladimir Putin, for example, States, an illiberal populist now occupies has long been using the power granted the White House. to him through elections to destroy There are Áickers oÊ hope in places such as Ethiopia, Malaysia, and Nigeria, LARRY DIAMOND is a Senior Fellow at the and democracy is hanging on against Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford the odds in Tunisia and Ukraine. But University. overall, the trend is undeniably worri-
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some. Twelve years into the democratic private sector, a benign regional neigh- slump, not only does it show no signs o borhood, and prior experience with ending, but it is gathering steam. democracy. But the democratic recession A quarter century ago, the spread o has been much deeper and more pro- democracy seemed assured, and a major tracted than a simple bend in the curve. goal o U.S. foreign policy was to Something is fundamentally dierent hasten its advance—called “democratic about the world today. enlargement” in the 1990s and “democ- The Iraq war was the initial turning racy promotion” in the Ãrst decade o point. Once it turned out that Saddam this century. What went wrong? In Hussein did not, in fact, possess short, democracy lost its leading propo- weapons o mass destruction, the Bush nent. Disastrous U.S. interventions in the administration’s “freedom agenda” Middle East soured Americans on the became the only way to justify the war idea o democracy promotion, and a retrospectively. Whatever support for combination o fears about democratic the intervention that had existed among decline in their own country and the American public melted away as economic problems encouraged them to Iraq descended into violence and chaos. turn inward. Today, the United States I this was democracy promotion, most is in the midst o a broader retreat from Americans wanted no part o it. global leadership, one that is ceding space A series o other high-proÃle shocks to authoritarian powers such as China, reinforced the American public’s wari- which is surging to superpower status, ness. Elsewhere in the Middle East, and Russia, which is reviving its military President George W. Bush’s vow to stand might and geopolitical ambitions. behind people who stood up for free- Ultimately, the decline o democracy dom rang hollow. In Egypt, for example, will be reversed only i the United States the administration did nothing as its again takes up the mantle o democracy ally, President Hosni Mubarak, intensi- promotion. To do so, it will have to Ãed political repression during and after compete much more vigorously against the contested 2005 elections. In January China and Russia to spread democratic 2006, the Palestinian Authority held ideas and values and counter authoritar- democratic elections, partially in response ian ones. But before that can happen, it to pressure from the United States, has to repair its own broken democracy. that resulted in an unexpected victory for the militant group Hamas. And then, AMERICANS LOOK INWARD during Barack Obama’s presidency, the A temporary dip in the remarkable pace so-called Arab Spring came and went, o global democratization was inevi- leaving behind only one democracy, in table. During the latter part o the third Tunisia, and a slew o reversals, crack- wave, democracy spread to many downs, and state implosions in the rest countries in Africa, Asia, and eastern o the Middle East. Europe that lacked the classic favorable As a result o these blunders and conditions for freedom: a developed setbacks, Americans lost enthusiasm for economy, high levels o education, a democracy promotion. In September large middle class, entrepreneurs in the 2001, 29 percent o Americans surveyed
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Mission accomplished: after voting in the Iraqi parliamentary elections in December 2005
agreed that democracy promotion should Pessimism about the state o Ameri- be a top foreign policy priority, according can democracy has been compounded to a poll by the Pew Research Center. by economic malaise. Americans were That number fell to 18 percent in 2013 shaken by the 2008 Ãnancial crisis, which and 17 percent in 2018. According to a nearly plunged the world into a depres- 2018 survey by Freedom House, the sion. Economic inequality, already worse George W. Bush Institute, and the Penn in the United States than in other Biden Center, seven in ten Americans still advanced democracies, is rising. And the favored U.S. eorts to promote democ- American dream has taken a huge hit: racy and human rights, but most Ameri- only hal the children born in the 1980s cans also expressed wariness o foreign are earning more than their parents interventions that might drain U.S. did at their age, whereas when those born resources, as those in Vietnam and Iraq did. in 1940 were around age 30, 92 percent More important, Americans expressed o them earned more than their par- preoccupation with the sorry state o ents did at their age. Americans have their own democracy, which two-thirds been losing conÃdence in their own agreed was “getting weaker.” Those futures, their country’s future, and the surveyed conveyed worry about problems ability o their political leaders to do
HUSSEIN HUSSEIN MALLA in their society—with big money in anything about it. politics, racism, and gridlock topping the A sense that the United States is list. In fact, hal o those surveyed in decline pervades—and not just said they believed that the United States among Americans. The United States’
AP / was in “real danger oÊ becoming a global standing took a nosedive follow- nondemocratic, authoritarian country.” ing President Donald Trump’s inaugu-
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ration. Among 37 countries surveyed As the White House’s rhetorical and in 2017, the median percentage o those symbolic emphasis on freedom and expressing favorable views o the democracy has waxed and waned over the United States fell to 49 percent, from past four decades, nonproÃts and govern- 64 percent at the end o Obama’s presi- ment agencies, such as the National dency. It will be hard for the United Endowment for Democracy, the U.S. States to promote democracy abroad Agency for International Development, while other countries—and its own and the State Department’s Bureau o citizens—are losing faith in the Ameri- Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, can model. The United States’ retreat have taken over the detailed work o from global leadership is feeding this democracy assistance. The United States skepticism in a self-reinforcing down- has devoted around $2 billion per year ward spiral. over the last decade to programs promot- ing democracy abroad—a lot o money, GIVING UP THE LEAD but less than one-tenth o one percent o Promoting democracy has never been the total federal budget. easy work. U.S. presidents from John F. Although the U.S. government should Kennedy to Ronald Reagan to Obama spend more on these eorts, the funda- struggled to Ãnd the right balance mental problem is not a question o between the lofty aims o promoting resources. Instead, it is the disconnect democracy and human rights and the between the United States’ admirable harder imperatives o global statecraft. eorts to assist democracy, on the one They all, on occasion, chose to pursue hand, and its diplomatic statements, state not just pragmatic but even warm visits, and aid Áows that often send the relations with autocrats for the sake o opposite message, on the other. Barely a securing markets, protecting allies, year after he vowed in his second inaugu- Ãghting terrorism, and controlling the ral address to “end tyranny,” George W. spread o weapons o mass destruction. Bush welcomed to the White House Often, presidents have backed the Azerbaijan’s corrupt, autocratic president, forces o freedom opportunistically. Ilham Aliyev, and uttered not a word Obama did not set out to topple Mubarak, o public disapproval about the nature o but when the Egyptian people rose up, his rule. On a visit to Ethiopia in 2015, he chose to back them. Reagan did not Obama twice called its government foresee needing to abandon loyal U.S. “democratically elected,” even though the allies in the Philippines and South ruling coalition had held sham elections Korea, but events on the ground left earlier that same year. him no other good option. George The trap oÊ heaping praise on H. W. Bush probably did not imagine friendly autocrats while ignoring their that Reagan’s prediction o the abuses is hard to avoid, and all previous demise o Soviet communism would presidents have occasionally fallen into come true so quickly, but when it did, it. But most o them at least sought to he expanded democracy and gover- Ãnd a balance, applying pressure when nance assistance programs to support they felt they could and articulating a and lock in the sweeping changes. general principle o support for free-
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dom. That is what has changed since people in its net. Freed from American the election oÊ Trump, who doesn’t even pressure, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi pretend to support freedom. Instead, has launched a thorough, brutal crack- Trump has lovingly embraced such down on all forms o opposition and dictators as Putin, the North Korean dissent in Egypt, leaving the country leader Kim Jong Un, and Crown Prince more repressive than it was at any time Mohammed bin Salman o Saudi during Mubarak’s 29 years o rule. Arabia, known as MBS, while treating And MBS has literally gotten away with European and other democratic allies murder: he faced almost no repercus- with derision and contempt. sions after evidence emerged that he Trump’s disregard for democratic had ordered the brutal assassination and norms is contributing to a growing and dismemberment o the journalist Jamal dangerous sense oÊ license among dicta- Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in tors worldwide. Consider the case o Istanbul in October 2018. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. The growing assertiveness o two In early October 2017, I received a major authoritarian states is also setting distressing e-mail from Nicholas Opiyo, back democracy. In the past decade, one o Uganda’s leading human rights Russia has rescued the regime o Presi- lawyers. In late September o that year, dent Bashar al-Assad in Syria, conquered soldiers had entered Parliament and and annexed Crimea, and destabilized beaten up members resisting a deeply eastern Ukraine. China, meanwhile, has unpopular constitutional amendment that been investing extraordinary sums o would allow Museveni, who had then money and diplomatic energy to project been in power for over 30 years, to rule its power and inÁuence around the world, for life. “It appears to me the whole both on land and at sea. A new era o region is in a steep democratic recession global competition has dawned—not just partly because o the loud silence from between rival powers but also between their western allies,” Opiyo wrote. “In rival ways o thinking about power. the past, the state was a little reluctant To add to the threat, the competition to be this [brutal] and violent and had between democratic governments and some measure o shame. It is all gone.” authoritarian ones is not symmetrical. Autocrats around the world are China and Russia are seeking to penetrate hearing the same message as Museveni: the institutions o vulnerable countries U.S. scrutiny is over, and they can do and compromise them, not through the what they please, so long as they do not legitimate use o “soft power” (transpar- directly cross the United States. Rodrigo ent methods to persuade, attract, and Duterte, the president o the Philip- inspire actors abroad) but through “sharp pines, had surely taken this message to power,” a term introduced by Christo- heart as he purged his country’s chie pher Walker and Jessica Ludwig o the justice, arrested his leading foe in the National Endowment for Democracy. Senate, and intimidated journalists and Sharp power involves the use o informa- other critics oÊ his ostensible war on tion warfare and political penetration drugs, a murderous campaign that has to limit free expression, distort the caught both political rivals and innocent political environment, and erode the
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integrity o civic and political institutions and that is certainly Putin. China’s in democratic societies. In the words leadership is playing a longer game o o Malcolm Turnbull, the former prime penetrating democratic societies and minister o Australia, it is “covert, coercive, slowly undermining them from within. or corrupting.” In Australia and New It has at its disposal a broader range Zealand, the Western democracies that o methods and a far more lavish base o have been most aected by these tactics, resources than Russia does—not least there is almost no Chinese-language o which is a vast, interconnected media source that is independent o bureaucracy o party, state, and formally Beijing, and former oceholders earn nonstate actors. lucrative beneÃts by promoting Chinese Countering these malign authoritarian interests. Australia has had some success campaigns o disinformation, societal pushing back with legislation. But penetration, and ideological warfare will China’s eorts to penetrate media, civic be critical for the defense o democracy. organizations, and politics meet less Democratic governments must begin by resistance in more vulnerable emerging- educating their own citizens, as well as market democracies, such as Argentina, mass media, universities, think tanks, Ghana, Peru, and South Africa. And corporations, local governments, and China’s inÁuence eorts are now extend- diaspora communities, about the danger ing to Canada and the United States, posed by these authoritarian inÁuence threatening the independence and operations and the need for “construc- pluralism o Chinese-language media and tive vigilance,” according to “China’s community associations there, as well as InÁuence and American Instruments,” a freedom o speech and inquiry within 2018 report by a group o China experts Canadian and American think tanks and convened by the Hoover Institution and universities. the Asia Society, which I co-edited with Orville Schell. The response must be REBOOTING DEMOCRACY constructive in that it must avoid over- PROMOTION reaction or ethnocentrism and seek to There is no technical Ãx for what ails put forward democratic values as much democracy promotion. The problem is as possible. But it must be vigilant in its big and deep and has been long in the awareness and scrutiny o China’s and making. So must be the response. To Russia’s far-Áung eorts to project their begin with, American leaders must inÁuence. Thus, democratic societies recognize that they are once again in a must insist on rigorous transparency in global contest o values and ideas. all institutional exchanges, grants, Both the Chinese Communist Party and contracts, and other interactions with the Kremlin are Ãghting cynically and China and Russia. And democracies vigorously. The Kremlin’s central tactic must demand greater reciprocity in their is to destroy the very premise that there relations with these countries: for can be objective truth, not to mention example, they cannot allow supposedly universal values. I there is no objective independent journalists and broadcast truth, and no deeper moral value than media from these authoritarian jugger- power itself, then the biggest liar wins— nauts unlimited access to their countries
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while their own journalists are severely restricted or denied visas and their cable news networks are completely shut out o China’s and Russia’s broadcast markets. Democracies, and democratic institutions such as universities and think tanks, must also coordinate more closely with one another to share infor- Media mation and protect against divide-and- rule tactics. Beyond this, the United States must and Mass go back to being present in, and knowledgeable of, the countries on the frontlines o authoritarian states’ battles for hearts and minds. This means a Atrocity dramatic ramping up o programs such The Rwanda as the Fulbright scholarships (which Genocide the Trump administration has repeat- and Beyond edly proposed cutting); the Boren Foreword Fellowships, which support U.S. students Roméo Dallaire studying critical languages abroad; Editor and other State Department programs Allan Thompson that send Americans to live, work, lecture, perform, and study abroad. It 25 years since the Rwanda must also go back to welcoming people from those countries to the United genocide, there is still States—for example, by bringing many much to learn more journalists, policy specialists, civil society leaders, elected representatives, and government ocials to the United When human beings are at their worst — as they States for partnerships and training most certainly were in Rwanda during the 1994 programs. This is precisely the wrong genocide — the world needs the institutions of journalism and the media to be at their best. Media moment for the United States to turn and Mass Atrocity: e Rwanda Genocide and Beyond inward and close its doors to foreigners, revisits the case of Rwanda, but also questions claiming that it needs to focus on its what the lessons of Rwanda mean now, in an age own problems. of communications so dramatically in uenced by social media and the relative decline of traditional To confront the Chinese and Russian news media. global propaganda machines, the United States will need to reboot and greatly
expand its own public diplomacy eorts. CIGI Press books are distributed by McGill-Queen’s University Press (mqup.ca) China is audaciously seeking to control and can be found in better bookstores and through online book retailers. the global narrative about itself, its intentions, and its model o governance. Russia is spreading its own line—pro-
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moting Russia and Putin as the defenders allocated resources; the initiative is only o traditional Christian values in an era now gaining momentum under a new o gay rights, feminism, and cultural secretary o state, Mike Pompeo, who pluralism—along with general contempt understands its importance. for democracy and blatant lies about the What the United States needs now is United States. Washington must push not just a single program but an infor- back with information campaigns that mation agency staed by a permanent, reÁect its values but are tailored to local nimble, technologically innovative corps contexts and can reach people quickly. o information professionals—or, in the At the same time, it must wage a longer words o James Clapper, the former struggle to spread the values, ideas, director o national intelligence, “a ¬ knowledge, and experiences o people on steroids.” The purpose o a revived living in free societies. It will need to use ¬ would not be to one-up China and innovative methods to bypass Internet Russia in the game o disinformation. Ãrewalls and inÃltrate authoritarian Rather, it—along with the U.S. Agency settings—for example, distributing texts for Global Media, which oversees such and videos that promote democracy in independent U.S. foreign broadcasting local languages on thumb drives. It must as the Voice o America and Radio Free also create new tools to help people in Europe/Radio Liberty—would observe autocracies safely and discreetly circum- the dictum o the famed journalist vent Internet censorship and control. Edward R. Murrow, who was director The United States once had a good o the ¬ under President John F. instrument to wage such a battle o Kennedy: “Truth is the best propaganda information and ideas: the U.S. Informa- and lies are the worst.” And the truth tion Agency. In 1999, however, it was is that people would prefer to live in shut down in a deal between the Clinton freedom. The most eective way to administration and Senator Jesse Helms counter Chinese and Russian propaganda o North Carolina, a conservative is to report the truth about how the Republican who sought to cut back on two gigantic countries are really governed. American engagement abroad. To spare These facts and analyses must then be cuts to other budgets for U.S. global broadly and innovatively conveyed, engagement, the Clinton administration within China, Russia, and other closed reluctantly agreed to shut down the societies, and also within more open ¬. Its budget and operations were societies that, as targets o Chinese and moved—never very eectively—into the Russian propaganda eorts, are no State Department, and a critical tool longer receiving a full and true picture for promoting democracy was severely o the nature o those regimes. damaged. In 2016, the Obama adminis- Transparency can also play a role in tration created the Global Engagement the Ãght for democracy. The soft under- Center, a group within the State belly o all malign autocracies, including Department charged with countering China and Russia, is their deep and foreign propaganda and disinformation. incurable corruption. No state can truly But Rex Tillerson, Trump’s hapless Ãrst control corruption without instituting secretary o state, failed to spend the the rule oÊ law. But that would be
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unthinkable for both countries—because eorts to suppress the vote o racial and in China, it would mean subordinating ethnic minorities. the party to an independent judiciary, and because in Russia, the regime is THE AMERICAN EXAMPLE an organized crime ring masquerading This is not the Ãrst time that global as a state. Yet leading democracies have freedom has been under threat. Back in some leverage, because much o the 1946, as the Cold War was coming into staggering personal wealth generated by view, the diplomat George Kennan sent corruption pours into the banks, corpo- his famous “Long Telegram” from the U.S. rate structures, and real estate markets o embassy in Moscow. Kennan urged the the United States and Europe through United States to grasp with clarity the legal loopholes that beneÃt only a privi- diuse nature o the authoritarian threat, leged few. These loopholes allow strengthen the collective military resolve dictators and their cronies to stash and and capacity o democracies to confront launder dirty money in and through and deter authoritarian ambition, and do anonymous shell companies and anony- whatever it could to separate the corrupt mous real estate purchases. The United authoritarian rulers from their people. States, for its part, can legislate an end to But Kennan also understood some- these practices by simply requiring that thing else: that the greatest asset o the all company and trust registrations and all United States was its democracy and real estate purchases in the United that it must Ãnd the “courage and self- States report the true beneÃcial owners conÃdence” to adhere to its convictions involved. It can also ban former U.S. and avoid becoming “like those with ocials and members o Congress from whom [it is] coping.” Kennan advised: lobbying for foreign governments and “Every courageous and incisive measure enhance the legal authority and resources to solve internal problems o our own o agencies such as the Treasury Depart- society . . . is a diplomatic victory over ment’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Moscow worth a thousand diplomatic Network to detect and prosecute money notes and joint communiqués.” laundering. Today, as the United States confronts Finally, i the United States is going not a single determined authoritarian to win the global battle for democracy, it rival but two, Kennan’s counsel deserves has to start at home. People around the remembering. The United States stands world must once again come to see the at a precipice, facing a time when United States as a democracy worthy o freedom and democracy will be tested. emulation. That will not happen i It remains, within the world’s vast web Congress remains gridlocked, i Ameri- o alliances and organizations, the can society is divided into warring indispensable democracy. Now, as much political camps, i election campaigns as ever, the fate o American democracy continue to drown in “dark money,” i the is bound up with the global struggle for two parties brazenly gerrymander freedom. And the outcome o that strug- electoral districts to maximum partisan gle depends on Americans renewing the advantage, and i one political party quality o their own democracy and their comes to be associated with unrelenting faith in its worth and promise.∂
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deals, such as the North American Free Globalization’s Trade Agreement, took o around the same time. Wrong Turn In Ãnance, the change was marked by a fundamental shift in governments’ attitudes away from managing capital And How It Hurt America Áows and toward liberalization. Pushed by the United States and global organi- Dani Rodrik zations such as the International Mon- etary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Develop- lobalization is in trouble. A ment, countries freed up vast quantities populist backlash, personiÃed o short-term Ãnance to slosh across Gby U.S. President Donald borders in search oÊ higher returns. Trump, is in full swing. A simmering At the time, these changes seemed to trade war between China and the United be based on sound economics. Openness States could easily boil over. Countries to trade would lead economies to allocate across Europe are shutting their borders their resources to where they would be to immigrants. Even globalization’s the most productive. Capital would Áow biggest boosters now concede that it from the countries where it was plentiful has produced lopsided beneÃts and that to the countries where it was needed. something will have to change. More trade and freer Ãnance would Today’s woes have their roots in the unleash private investment and fuel global
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE AMERICAN CENTURY? 1990s, when policymakers set the world economic growth. But these new on its current, hyperglobalist path, arrangements came with risks that the requiring domestic economies to be put hyperglobalists did not foresee, al- in the service o the world economy though economic theory could have instead o the other way around. In predicted the downside to globalization trade, the transformation was signaled just as well as it did the upside. by the creation o the World Trade Increased trade with China and other Organization, in 1995. The ´¢£ not only low-wage countries accelerated the made it harder for countries to shield decline in manufacturing employment themselves from international competi- in the developed world, leaving many tion but also reached into policy areas distressed communities behind. The that international trade rules had not Ãnancialization o the global economy previously touched: agriculture, services, produced the worst Ãnancial crisis since intellectual property, industrial policy, the Great Depression. And after the and health and sanitary regulations. crash, international institutions promoted Even more ambitious regional trade policies o austerity that made the damage even worse. More and more o DANI RODRIK is Ford Foundation Professor of what happened to ordinary people International Political Economy at the John F. seemed the result o anonymous market Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and President-Elect of the Interna- forces or caused by distant decision- tional Economic Association. makers in foreign countries.
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Trading up? Shipping containers in Shanghai, China, May 2012 Politicians and policymakers down- Yet there was nothing inevitable about played these problems, denying that the the path the world followed beginning new terms o the global economy en- in the 1990s. International institutions tailed sacriÃcing sovereignty. Yet they played their part, but hyperglobalization seemed immobilized by these same was more a state o mind than a genu- forces. The center-right and the center- ine, immutable constraint on domestic left disagreed not over the rules o the policy. Before it came along, countries new world economy but over how they had experimented with two very dier- should accommodate their national ent models o globalization: the gold economies to them. The right wanted standard and the Bretton Woods system. to cut taxes and slash regulations; the The new hyperglobalization was closer left asked for more spending on in spirit to the historically more distant education and public infrastructure. and more intrusive gold standard. That Both sides agreed that economies is the source o many o today’s problems. needed to be refashioned in the name It is to the more Áexible principles o o global competitiveness. Globaliza- Bretton Woods that today’s policymakers tion, exclaimed U.S. President Bill should look i they are to craft a fairer Clinton, “is the economic equivalent o and more sustainable global economy. ALY a force o nature, like wind or water.” SONG British Prime Minister Tony Blair THE GOLDEN STRAITJACKET mocked those who wanted to “debate For roughly 50 years before World War I, / REUTERS globalization,” saying, “you might as plus a brie revival during the interwar well debate whether autumn should period, the gold standard set the rules o follow summer.” economic management. A government
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on the gold standard had to Ãx the value the United Kingdom returned to it in o its national currency to the price o 1925 at its pre-war rate. But the British gold, maintain open borders to Ãnance, economy was only a shadow o its and repay its external debts under all pre-war self, and four years later, the circumstances. I those rules meant the crash o 1929 pushed the country over the government had to impose what econo- edge. Business and labor demanded mists would today call austerity, so be it, lower interest rates, which, under the however great the damage to domestic gold standard, would have sent capital incomes and employment. Áeeing abroad. This time, however, the That willingness to impose economic British government chose the domestic pain meant it was no coincidence that economy over the global rules and the Ãrst self-consciously populist abandoned the gold standard in 1931. movement arose under the gold stan- Two years later, Franklin Roosevelt, the dard. At the tail end o the nineteenth newly elected U.S. president, wisely century, the People’s Party gave voice to followed suit. As economists now know, distressed American farmers, who were the sooner a country left the gold suering from high interest rates on standard, the sooner it came out o the their debt and declining prices for their Great Depression. crops. The solution was clear: easier The experience o the gold standard credit, enabled by making the currency taught the architects o the postwar redeemable in silver as well as gold. I international economic system, chie the government allowed anyone with among them the economist John May- silver bullion to convert it into currency nard Keynes, that keeping domestic at a set rate, the supply o money would economies on a tight leash to promote increase, driving up prices and easing international trade and investment the burden o the farmers’ debts. But made the system more, not less, fragile. the northeastern establishment and its Accordingly, the international regime backing for the gold standard stood in that the Allied countries crafted at the the way. Frustrations grew, and at the Bretton Woods conference, in 1944, 1896 Democratic National Convention, gave governments plenty o room to set William Jennings Bryan, a candidate for monetary and Ãscal policy. Central to the presidential nomination, famously this system were the controls it put on declared, “You shall not crucify man- international capital mobility. As kind upon a cross o gold.” Keynes emphasized, capital controls The gold standard survived the were not merely a temporary expedient populist assault in the United States until Ãnancial markets stabilized after thanks in part to fortuitous discoveries o the war; they were a “permanent gold ore that eased credit conditions arrangement.” Each government Ãxed after the 1890s. Nearly four decades later, the value o its currency, but it could the gold standard would be brought adjust that value when the economy ran down for good, this time by the United up against the constraint o international Kingdom, under the pressure o similar Ãnance. The Bretton Woods system grievances. After eectively suspending was predicated on the belie that the the gold standard during World War I, best way to encourage international trade
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and long-term investment was to enable recipe for less globalization. But during national governments to manage their the Bretton Woods era, the global economies. economy was on a tear. Developed and Bretton Woods covered only inter- developing economies alike grew at national monetary and Ãnancial ar- unprecedented rates. Trade and foreign rangements. Rules for trade developed direct investment expanded even faster, in a more ad hoc manner, under the outpacing the growth o world ³²¡. The auspices o the General Agreement on share o exports in global output more Taris and Trade (³¬¢¢). But the same than tripled, from less than Ãve percent philosophy applied. Countries were to in 1945 to 16 percent in 1981. This success open up their economies only to the was a remarkable validation o Keynes’ extent that this did not upset domestic idea that the global economy functions social and political bargains. Trade best when each government takes liberalization remained limited to care o its own economy and society. lowering border restrictions— import quotas and taris—on manufactured BACK TO THE SPIRIT OF THE GOLD goods and applied only to developed STANDARD countries. Developing countries were Ironically, the hyperglobalists used the essentially free to do what they very success o the Bretton Woods wanted. And even developed countries system to legitimize their own project had plenty o Áexibility to protect to displace it. I the shallow Bretton sensitive sectors. When, in the early 1970s, Woods arrangements had done so much a rapid rise in garment imports from to lift world trade, investment, and developing countries threatened living standards, they argued, imagine employment in the developed world, what deeper integration could achieve. developed and developing nations But in the process o constructing negotiated a special regime that allowed the new regime, the central lesson o the former to reimpose import quotas. the old one was forgotten. Globalization Compared with both the gold became the end, national economies the standard and the subsequent hyper- means. Economists and policymakers globalization, the Bretton Woods and came to view every conceivable feature ³¬¢¢ rules gave countries great free- o domestic economies through the lens dom to choose the terms on which they o global markets. Domestic regulations would participate in the world econ- were either hidden trade barriers, to be omy. Advanced economies used that negotiated away through trade agree- freedom to regulate and tax their ments, or potential sources o trade economies as they wished and to build competitiveness. The conÃdence o generous welfare states, unhindered by Ãnancial markets became the para- worries o global competitiveness or mount measure o the success or failure capital Áight. Developing nations o monetary and Ãscal policy. diversiÃed their economies through The premise o the Bretton Woods trade restrictions and industrial policies. regime had been that the ³¬¢¢ and Domestic autonomy from global other international agreements would economic pressures might sound like a act as a counterweight to powerful
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protectionists at home—labor unions was to encourage exports and attract and Ãrms serving mainly the domestic foreign investment. Do that, and the market. By the 1990s, however, the gains would prove so large that everyone balance o political power in rich would eventually win. This technocratic countries had swung away from the consensus served to legitimize and protectionists toward exporter and further reinforce the power o globalizing investor lobbies. corporate and Ãnancial special interests. The trade deals that emerged in the An important element oÊ hyper- 1990s reÁected the strength o those globalist triumphalism was the belie lobbies. The clearest illustration o that that countries with dierent economic power came when international trade and social models would ultimately agreements incorporated domestic converge, i not on identical models, at protections for intellectual property least on suciently similar market rights, the result o aggressive lobbying economy models. China’s admission to by pharmaceutical Ãrms eager to cap- the ´¢£, in particular, was predicated ture proÃts by extending their monop- on the expectation in the West that the oly power to foreign markets. To this state would give up directing economic day, Big Pharma is the single largest activity. The Chinese government, lobby behind trade deals. International however, had dierent ideas. It saw investors also won special privileges in little reason to move away from the kind trade agreements, allowing them (and o managed economy that had pro- only them) to directly sue governments duced such miraculous results over the in international tribunals for alleged previous 40 years. Western investors’ violations o their property rights. Big complaints that China was violating its banks, with the power o the U.S. ´¢£ commitments and engaging in Treasury behind them, pushed countries unfair economic practices fell on dea to open up to international Ãnance. ears. Regardless o the legal merits o Those who lost out from hyper- each side’s case, the deeper problem globalization received little support. lay elsewhere: the new trade regime Many manufacturing-dependent could not accommodate the full range communities in the United States saw o institutional diversity among the their jobs shipped o to China and world’s largest economies. Mexico and suered serious economic and social consequences, ranging from A SANER GLOBALIZATION joblessness to epidemics o drug addic- Policymakers can no longer resuscitate tion. In principle, workers hurt by trade the Bretton Woods system in all its should have been compensated through details; the world can’t (and shouldn’t) the federal Trade Adjustment Assis- go back to Ãxed exchange rates, perva- tance program, but politicians had no sive capital controls, and high levels o incentives to fund it adequately or to trade protection. But policymakers can make sure it was working well. draw on its lessons to craft a new, Economists were brimming with healthier globalization. conÃdence in the 1990s about globaliza- Trump’s in-your-face unilateralism is tion as an engine o growth. The game the wrong way forward. Politicians
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should work to revive the multilateral trade regime’s legitimacy rather than squelching it. The way to achieve that, however, is not to further open markets and tighten global rules on trade and investment. Barriers to trade in goods and many services are already quite low. The task is to ensure greater popular support for a world economy that is open in essential respects, even i it falls short o the hyperglobalist ideal. Bring the Building that support will require REAL WORLD new international norms that expand the space for governments to pursue to your classroom domestic objectives. For rich countries, this will mean a system that allows them to reconstitute their domestic social contracts. The set o rules that Case Studies permit countries to temporarily protect sensitive sectors from competition badly needs reform. For example, the American foreign policy allows countries to impose tempo- rary tari s, known as antidumping Global institutions duties, on imports being sold by a foreign company below cost that Terrorism & security threaten to harm a domestic industry. The should also let governments International trade respond to so-called social dumping, the Women, peace and security practice o countries violating workers’ Health and science rights in order to keep wages low and attract production. An anti-social- and more... dumping regime would permit coun- tries to protect not merely industry Join our Faculty Lounge for prots but labor standards, too. For premier access to this unique developing countries, the international rules should accommodate governments’ online library of nearly 250 need to restructure their economies to case studies and simulations accelerate growth. The should also — and make diplomacy part loosen the rules on subsidies, invest- of your course ment, and intellectual property rights that constrain developing countries’ ability to boost particular industries. https://casestudies.isd.georgetown.edu/ I China and the United States are to resolve their trade conict, they need to
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acknowledge that the dierences tercyclical capital regulation,” that is, between their economies are not going restricting capital inÁows when the away. The Chinese economic miracle economy is running hot and taxing was built on industrial and Ãnancial outÁows during a downturn. Govern- policies that violated key tenets o the ments should also crack down on tax new hyperglobalist regime: subsidies for evasion by the wealthy by establishing a preferred industries, requirements that global Ãnancial registry that would foreign companies transfer technology record the residence and nationality o to domestic Ãrms i they wanted to shareholders and the actual owners o operate in China, pervasive state Ãnancial assets. ownership, and currency controls. The Left to its own devices, globalization Chinese government is not going to always creates winners and losers. A key abandon such policies now. What U.S. principle for a new globalization should companies see as the theft o intellec- be that changes in its rules must pro- tual property is a time-honored prac- duce beneÃts for all rather than the few. tice, in which a young United States Economic theory contributes an impor- itsel engaged back when it was playing tant idea here. It suggests that the scope catch-up with industrializing England for compensating the losers is much in the nineteenth century. For its part, greater when the barrier being reduced China must realize that the United is high to begin with. From this per- States and European countries have spective, whittling away at the remain- legitimate reasons to protect their social ing, mostly minor restrictions on trade contracts and homegrown technologies in goods or Ãnancial assets does not from Chinese practices. Taking a page make much sense. Countries should from the U.S.-Soviet relationship focus instead on freeing up cross-border during the Cold War, China and the labor mobility, where the barriers are United States should aim for peaceful far greater. Indeed, labor markets are coexistence rather than convergence. the area that oers the strongest eco- In international Ãnance, countries nomic case for deepening globalization. should reinstate the norm that domestic Expanding temporary work visa pro- governments get to control the cross- grams, especially for low-skilled work- border mobility o capital, especially o ers, in advanced economies would be the short-term kind. The rules should one way to go. prioritize the integrity o domestic Proposing greater globalization o macroeconomic policies, tax systems, labor markets might seem to Áy in the and Ãnancial regulations over free face o the usual concern that increased capital Áows. The International Mon- competition from foreign workers will etary Fund has already reversed its harm low-skilled workers in advanced categorical opposition to capital con- economies. And it may well be a politi- trols, but governments and interna- cal nonstarter in the United States and tional institutions should do more to western Europe right now. I govern- legitimize their use. For example, ments aren’t proposing to compensate governments can make their domestic those who lose out, they should take this economies more stable by using “coun- concern seriously. But the potential
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economic gains are huge: even a small other countries, but the domestic increase in cross-border labor mobility economy in question will pay the bulk would produce global economic gains o the economic cost. Governments that would dwar those from the com- adopt such policies presumably because pletion o the entire current, long-stalled they think the social and political round o multilateral trade negotiations. beneÃts are worth the price tag. In any That means there’s plenty o scope for individual case, a government might compensating the losers—for example, well be wrong. But international institu- by taxing increased cross-border labor tions aren’t likely to be better judges o Áows and spending the proceeds directly the tradeos—and even when they’re on labor-market assistance programs. right, their decisions will lack demo- In general, global governance should cratic legitimacy. be light and Áexible, allowing govern- The push into hyperglobalization ments to choose their own methods o since the 1990s has led to much greater regulation. Countries trade not to levels o international economic inte- confer beneÃts on others but because gration. At the same time, it has pro- trade creates gains at home. When duced domestic disintegration. As those gains are distributed fairly professional, corporate, and Ãnancial throughout the domestic economy, elites have connected with their peers countries don’t need external rules to all over the globe, they have grown enforce openness; they’ll choose it o more distant from their compatriots at their own accord. home. Today’s populist backlash is a A lighter touch may even help symptom o that fragmentation. globalization. After all, trade expanded The bulk o the work needed to faster relative to global output during mend domestic economic and political the three and a hal decades o the systems has to be done at home. Clos- Bretton Woods regime than it has since ing the economic and social gaps 1990, even excluding the slowdown widened by hyperglobalization will following the 2008 global Ãnancial require restoring primacy to the domes- crisis. Countries should pursue interna- tic sphere in the policy hierarchy and tional agreements to constrain domestic demoting the international. The great- policy only when they’re needed to est contribution the world economy can tackle genuine beggar-thy-neighbor make to this project is to enable, rather problems, such as corporate tax havens, than encumber, that correction.∂ economic cartels, and policies that keep one’s currency artiÃcially cheap. The current system o international rules tries to rein in many economic policies that don’t represent true beggar- thy-neighbor problems. Consider bans on genetically modiÃed organisms, agricultural subsidies, industrial poli- cies, and overly lax Ãnancial regulation. Each o these policies could well harm
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the Japanese banking crisis, Saving the Faith-Based Sun, I presumed that one o the ways to “Ãx” Japanese Ãnance was to make it Finance more American. Within Ãve years, this supposed success had been reduced to ashes. The How Wall Street Became a brilliant innovations with strange Cult of Risk abbreviations, it turned out, had con- tributed to a massive credit bubble. Gillian Tett When it burst, investors around the world suered steep losses, mortgage borrowers were tossed out o their hat caused the global Ãnan- homes, and the value o those once cial crisis? And how can the mighty U.S. banks shriveled as markets WUnited States avoid a froze and asset prices tumbled. repeat? Those questions have sparked Instead o a beacon for the brilliance o endless handwringing among economists, modern Ãnance, by 2008, the United policymakers, Ãnanciers, and voters States seemed to be a global scourge. over the last decade. Little wonder: the Why? Numerous explanations have crisis not only entailed the worse been oered in the intervening years: Ãnancial shock and recession in the the U.S. Federal Reserve kept interest United States since 1929; it also shook rates too low, Asia’s savings glut drove the country’s global reputation for up the U.S. housing market, the banks
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE AMERICAN CENTURY? Ãnancial competence. had captured regulators and politicians Before the crisis, Wall Street seemed in Washington, mortgage lenders to epitomize the best o twenty-Ãrst- made foolish loans, the credit-rating century Ãnance. The United States had agencies willfully downplayed risks. the most vibrant capital markets in the All these explanations are true. But world. It was home to some o the most there is another, less common way o proÃtable banks; in 2006 and early looking at the Ãnancial crisis that also 2007, Goldman Sachs’ return on equity oers insight: anthropologically. Just as topped an eye-popping 30 percent. psychologists believe that it is valuable American Ãnanciers were unleashing to consider cognitive biases when dazzling innovations that carried trying to understand people, anthro- newfangled names such as “collateralized pologists study half-hidden cultural debt obligations,” or ²£s. The patterns to understand what makes Ãnanciers insisted that these innova- humans tick. That often entails examin- tions could make Ãnance not only more ing how people use rituals or symbols, eective but safer, too. Indeed, Wall but it can also involve looking at the Street seemed so preeminent that meaning o the words they use. And in 2003, when I published a book about although Ãnanciers themselves do not spend much time thinking about the GILLIAN TETT is U.S. Chair of the Editorial Board and American Editor-at-Large for the words they toss around each day, those Financial Times. words can be distinctly revealing.
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FA.indb 35 5/17/19 6:40 PM Buy CSS Books https://cssbooks.net Gillian Tett
Consider “Ãnance,” “credit,” and relative to what professionals who didn’t “bank.” Today, those terms are usually work in Ãnance, such as doctors and associated with abstract concepts engineers, were paid. They found that in involving markets and money, but their the early twentieth century—before the historical roots, or etymology, are rather Roaring Twenties—Ãnanciers were paid dierent. “Finance” originates from the around 1.5 times as much as other edu- Old French word £ner, meaning “to cated professionals, but the Ãnancial end,” in the sense o settling a dispute boom pushed this ratio up to almost 1.7 or debt, implying that Ãnance is a times. After the Great Depression hit, means to an end. “Credit” comes from it fell, and stayed around 1.1—almost the Latin credere, meaning “to believe.” parity—during the postwar years. But it And “bank” hails from the Old Italian soared again after a wave o deregula- word banca, meaning “bench” or “table,” tion in the late 1970s, until it hit another since moneylenders used to ply their peak o 1.7 times as much in 2006—just trade at tables in the market, talking before the crash. to customers or companies. “Company” I you show these statistics to people also has an interesting history: it comes outside Ãnance, they sometimes blame from the Latin companio, meaning the latest uptick in bankers’ pay on greed: “with bread,” since companies were, in pay rose when the markets surged, the essence, people who dined together. argument goes, because Ãnanciers were All o this may sound like a historical skimming proÃts. I you show them to curiosity, best suited to Trivial Pursuit. Ãnanciers (as I often have), they usually But the original senses should not oer another explanation for the recent be ignored, since they reveal historical surge: skill. Wall Street luminaries tend echoes that continue to shape the culture to think they deserve higher pay because o Ãnance. Indeed, thinking about the Ãnance now requires greater technical original meanings o “Ãnance,” “credit,” competence. and “bank”—namely, as activities that In truth, both explanations are describe banking as a means to an end, correct: as bankers’ pay has swelled, the carried out with trust, by social groups— Ãnancial sphere has exploded in size helps explain what went wrong with and complexity, enabling Ãnanciers to American Ãnance in the past and what skim more proÃts but also requiring might Ãx it in the future. greater skill to manage it. In the United States in the immediate postwar dec- FINANCE ades, the Ãnancial sector accounted for I you want to understand the word between ten and 15 percent o all “Ãnance,” a good place to start is not with business proÃts and around 3.5 percent words but with some extraordinary o ³²¡. Subject to tight government numbers compiled by the economists controls, the industry was more akin to Thomas Philippon and Ariell Reshe on a sleepy utility than a sphere o aggres- a topic dear to bankers’ hearts: their pay. sive proÃt seeking. By the early years After the crisis, Philippon and Reshe o this century, the economic footprint set out to calculate how this had Áuctu- o Ãnance had more than doubled: it ated over the years in the United States, accounted for almost 30 percent o all
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business proÃts and nearly eight per- would accurately reÁect its underlying cent o ³²¡. Deregulation had un- risk. And since the risks would be leashed a frenzy o Ãnancial innovation. shared, Ãnance would be safer. One o these innovations was deriva- It was a compelling sales pitch, but a tives, Ãnancial instruments whose value deeply Áawed one. One problem was derives from an underlying asset. that derivatives and securitization were Derivatives enabled investors to insure so complex that they introduced a brand themselves against risks—and gamble new risk into the system: ignorance. on them. It was as i people were It was virtually impossible for investors placing bets on a horserace (without the to grasp the real risks o these products. hassle o actually owning a horse) and Little to no actual trading took place with then, instead o merely proÃting from the most complex instruments. That the performance o their horses, creat- made a mockery o the idea that Ãnancial ing another market in which they could innovation would create perfect free trade their tickets. Another new tool markets, with market prices set by the was securitization, or the art o slicing wisdom o crowds. and dicing loans and bonds into small Worse still, as the innovation became pieces and then reassembling them into more frenzied, Ãnance became so new packages (such as ²£s) that could complex and fast growing that it fed on be traded by investors around the itself. History has shown that in most world. The best analogy here is culinary: corners o the business world, when think o a restaurant that lost interest innovation occurs, the middlemen get cut in serving steaks and started oering up out. In Ãnance, however, the opposite sausages and sausage stew. occurred: the new instruments gave There were (and are) many beneÃts birth to increasingly complex Ãnancial to all this innovation. As Ãnance grew, chains and a new army o middlemen it became easier for consumers and who were skimming o fees at every companies to get loans. Derivatives and stage. To put it another way, as innova- securitization allowed banks to protect tion took hold, Ãnance stopped looking themselves against the danger o like a means to an end—as the word concentrated defaults—borrowers all £ner had once implied. Instead, Wall going bust in one region or industry— Street became a never-ending loop o since the risks were shared by many Ãnancial Áows and frantic activity in investors, not just one group. These tools which Ãnanciers often acted as i their also enabled investors to put their profession was an end in itself. This money into a much wider range o was the perfect breeding ground for an assets, thus diversifying their portfolios. unsustainable credit bubble. Indeed, Ãnanciers often presented derivatives and securitization as the magic CREDIT wands that would conjure the Holy The concept o credit is also crucial in Grail o free-market economics: an understanding how the system spun out entirely liquid world in which everything o control. Back in 2009, Andy Haldane, was tradable. Once that was achieved, a senior ocial at the Bank o England, the theory went, the price o every asset tried to calculate how much information
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an investor would need iÊ he or she sophisticated endeavor, full o cutting- wanted to assess the price and risk o a edge computing power and analysis, ²£. He calculated that for a simple but it ran on a pattern o trust that, in ²£, the answer was 200 pages o docu- retrospect, looks as crazily blind as the mentation, but for a so-called ²£- faith that cult members place in their squared (a ²£ o ²£s), it was “in excess leaders. It should not have been sur- o 1 billion pages.” Worse still, since a prising, then, that when trust in the ²£-squared was rarely traded on the underlying value o the innovative open market, it was also impossible Ãnancial instruments started to crack, to value it by looking at public prices, as panic ensued. investors normally do with equities or bonds. That meant that when investors BANK tried to work out the price or risk o Why did nobody see these dangers? a ²£-squared, they usually had to trust To understand this, it pays to ponder the judgment oÊ banks and rating agencies. that third word, “bank,” and what it (and In some senses, there is nothing the word “company”) says about the unusual about that. Finance has always importance o social patterns. These relied on trust. People have put their patterns were not often discussed before faith in central banks to protect the the 2008 crisis, partly because it often value o money, in regulators to ensure seemed as i the business o money was that Ãnancial institutions are safe, leaping into disembodied cyberspace. in Ãnanciers to behave honestly, in the In any case, the Ãeld o economics had wisdom o crowds to price assets, in fostered a belie that markets were almost precious metals to underpin the value o akin to a branch o physics, in the sense coins, and in governments to decide that they were driven by rational actors the value o assets by decree. who were as unemotional and consistent What was startling about the pattern in their behavior as atoms. As a result, before the 2008 crash, however, was wise men such as Alan Greenspan (who that few investors ever discussed what was Federal Reserve chair in the period kind o credit—or trust—underpinned leading up to the crisis and was lauded the system. They presumed that share- as “the Maestro”) believed that Ãnance holders would monitor the banks, even was self-correcting, that any excesses though this was impossible given the would automatically take care o complexity o the banks and the prod- themselves. ucts they were peddling. They assumed The theory sounded neat. But once that regulators understood Ãnance, again, and as Greenspan later admitted, even though they were actually little there was a gigantic Áaw: humans are better informed than shareholders. never as impersonal as most economists Financiers trusted the accuracy o credit imagined them to be. On the contrary, ratings and risk models, even though social patterns matter as deeply for these had been created by people with today’s bankers as they did for those a proÃt motive and had never been Renaissance-era Italian Ãnanciers. tested in a crisis. Modern Ãnance Consider the major Wall Street banks might have been presented as a wildly on the eve o the crisis. In theory, they
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had risk-management systems in place, the lack o oversight. (And a few with Áashy computers to measure anthropologists, such as Karen Ho, did all the dangers o their investments. But do studies on Wall Street, noting these the Wall Street banks also had siloed patterns.) Sadly, however, these dangers departments that competed furiously went largely unnoticed. Few people against one another in a quasi-tribal way ever pondered how the original, social to grab revenues. Merrill Lynch was meanings o “bank” and “company” one case in point: between 2005 and might matter in the computing age, and 2007, it had one team earning big how tribalism was undermining neat bonuses by amassing big bets on ²£s market theories. that other departments barely knew about (and sometimes bet against). IS PAST PROLOGUE? Traders kept information to themselves A decade after the crisis, it may be tempt- and took big risks, since they cared ing to see this story as mere history. more about their own division’s short- In 2019, Wall Street is conÃdent again. term proÃts than they did about the No, the market is not as complacent as long-term impact o their trades on the it was before 2008; Ãnanciers are still company as a whole—to say nothing o (somewhat) chastened by the 2008 crash the impact on the wider Ãnancial and hemmed in by tighter scrutiny and system. Regulators, too, suered from controls. Regulators forced banks to tribalism: the economists who tracked hold more capital and imposed new macroeconomic issues (such as inÁa- constraints on how they make loans or tion) did not communicate much with trade with their own money. Formerly the ocials who were looking at micro- gung ho investment banks, such as level trends in the Ãnancial markets. Goldman Sachs, are moving into the Then there was the matter o social retail banking sector, becoming ever so status. By the early years o the twenty- slightly more like a utility than a hedge Ãrst century, Ãnanciers seemed to be fund. The return on equity o most such an elite tribe, compared with major banks is less than hal o pre- the rest o society, that it was dicult crisis levels: that o Goldman Sachs was for laypeople to challenge them (or for just above ten percent in early 2019. them to challenge themselves). Like Everyone insists that the lessons o the priests in the medieval Catholic Church, credit bubble have been learned—and they spoke a language that commoners the mistakes will not be repeated. did not understand (in this case, Ãnan- Maybe so. But memories are short, cial jargon, rather than Latin), and they and signs o renewed risk taking are dispensed blessings (cheap money) that widespread. For one thing, Ãnanciers had been sanctioned by quasi-sacred are increasingly performing riskier leaders (regulators). I an anthropologist activities through nonbank Ãnancial had been let loose in a bank at that time, institutions, such as insurance compa- he or she might have pointed out the nies and private equity Ãrms, which dangers inherent in treating bankers as face less scrutiny. Innovation and a class apart from wider society and the Ãnancial engineering have resurfaced: risks raised by bankers’ blind spots and the once reviled “synthetic ²£s” (²£s
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composed o derivatives) have returned. trading desks that compete furiously with Asset prices are soaring, partly because one another. Regulators remain frag- central banks have Áooded the system mented. Moreover, as Ãnance is being with free money. Wall Street has lobbied disrupted by digital innovation, a new the Trump administration for a partial challenge is arising: the ocials and rollback o the postcrisis reforms. ProÃts Ãnanciers who understand how money have surged. And although pay in Ãnance works tend to sit in dierent govern- fell after 2008, it has since risen again, ment agencies and bank departments particularly in the less regulated parts o from those who understand cyberspace. the business. A new type o tribal fracture looms: What’s more, American Ãnance now between techies and Ãnanciers. looks resurgent on the global stage. Policymakers need to ask what Wall In Europe, U.S. banks’ would-be rivals Street’s mighty money machine exists have been hobbled by bad government for in the Ãrst place. Should the Ãnan- policy decisions and a weak economy cial business exist primarily as an end in the eurozone. In Asia, the Chinese in itself, or should it be, as in the banking giants are saddled with bad original meaning o “Ãnance,” a means loans, and Japan’s massive Ãnancial sector to an end? Most people not working is still grappling with a stagnant econ- in Ãnance would argue that the second omy. Ironically, a drama that was “made vision is self-evidently the desirable in America” has left American banks one. Just think o the beloved Ãlm It’s a more, rather than less, dominant. Wonderful Life, in which the banker Indeed, the biggest threat to Wall Street played by Jimmy Stewart sees his today comes not from overseas com- mission not as becoming fabulously rich petitors but from domestic ones, as U.S. but as realizing the dreams oÊ his technology companies have set their community. When Ãnance becomes an sights on disrupting Ãnance. end in itself, the public is liable to It would be foolish to imagine that the get angry. That’s one reason for the wave lessons o the crisis have been fully o populism that has washed over the learned. Today, as before, there is still a globe since the crisis. tendency for investors to place too much But does the United States really faith in practices they do not under- know how to build a Ãnancial system that stand. The only solution is to constantly is the servant, not the master, o the question the basis o the credit that economy? Sadly, the answer is probably underpins credit markets. Just as there no; at present, it is hard to imagine was in 2007, there is still a temptation what this would even look like. No matter to assume that culture does not matter what, however, i American Ãnanciers— in the era o sophisticated, digitally along with regulators, politicians, enabled Ãnance. and shareholders—wish to reduce the That is wrong. Banks and regulators odds o another crash and another today are trying to do a better job o populist backlash, they would do well joining up the dots when they look to tape the original meanings o at Ãnance. But tribalism has not disap- “Ãnance,” “bank,” and “credit” to their peared. Wall Street banks still have computer screens.∂
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more intense version o the ruinous The Republican politics that plagued Barack Obama’s presidency after 2010. Solutions to Devolution pressing national problems would still be stuck in partisan gridlock. Narrow, powerful interests would still dominate Partisanship and the Decline debates and decisions. And popular of American Governance resentment—rooted in economic and demographic shifts and stoked by those Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson seeking to translate voter anger into proÃt or votes—would still be roiling elections and governance alike. t is a measure o the chaos o For a generation, the capacity o the Donald Trump’s presidency that just United States to harness governmental Imonths after the longest govern- authority for broad public purposes has ment shutdown in U.S. history, nobody been in steep decline, even as the need in Washington seems to remember it. for eective governance in a complex, Congressional Republicans transitioned interdependent world has grown. seamlessly from backing the president Almost every aspect o today’s crisis is as he inÁicted gratuitous harm on the part o this long-term shift. In 2017, for economy in pursuit oÊ his unpopular example, the Trump administration border wall to acquiescing as he declared pulled the United States out o the Paris a phony emergency to usurp Congress’ climate accord, but Trump’s short-
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE AMERICAN CENTURY? constitutional power o the purse. sighted decision was only the latest Now, they are back in their familiar role example o the country’s halting and o defending his eorts to thwart an grossly inadequate approach to climate independent investigation into the links change. The current radicalized debate between his 2016 campaign and a over immigration reÁects heightened hostile foreign power bent on subvert- racial and cultural resentment, but it also ing U.S. elections. stems from three decades o failure to American governance, it seems, is in a reach a consensus on reasonable reforms bad way. But the crisis did not begin to the nation’s antiquated border and when Trump entered oce. I Hillary citizenship laws. Rising death rates Clinton had won the presidency in 2016, among middle-aged white Americans in Washington would hardly be humming large swaths o the country are not along. Instead, it would be mired in a merely a contributor to the backlash that elected Trump; they are also a symptom JACOB S. HACKER is Director of the Institu- tion for Social and Policy Studies and Stanley B. o the virtual collapse o the federal Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale government’s ability to address major University. public problems. PAUL PIERSON is Co-Director of the Success- What went wrong? Skyrocketing ful Societies Program at the Canadian Institute inequality, regional economic divergence, for Advanced Research and John Gross Professor of Political Science at the University and demographic changes have all played of California, Berkeley. their part. But there is one overriding
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Preaching to the choir: Sean Hannity at the Republican National Convention, July 2016
culprit behind the failure o the U.S. FROM GOLDEN AGE TO BROKEN AGE political system: the Republican Party. Even with the best leadership, the last Over the last two and a hal decades, the few decades would have presented big has mutated from a traditional challenges. Like many wealthy coun- conservative party into an insurgent force tries, the United States has undergone a
DINA that threatens the norms and institutions disruptive transition from an industrial
LITOVSKY o American democracy. I Americans are manufacturing economy to a postindus- to once again harness the combined trial knowledge economy. Along with powers o democracy and markets for the the decline o unions, the deregulation
/ REDUX public good, they must have a clear o nance, and the federal government’s picture o what has gone wrong with the retreat from antitrust enforcement, that Republican Party, and why. transition has tilted opportunity and
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wealth toward those at the very top o media—is neatly lined up in the red or the economic pyramid. It has also the blue column. Political scientists concentrated growth in cities and sucked continue to debate how much o this is it out o rural areas and small towns true ideological polarization, in which Yet even as yawning inequality has partisan disagreements reÁect funda- made structural reform more pressing, mentally dierent values and world- many white Americans have seen the views, and how much o it is merely an United States’ inevitable march toward increased alignment o partisanship with a majority-minority society as an even other divides in an ever more diverse greater threat. and unequal society. But this debate is American political institutions have secondary to the basic change. Once, always posed diculties for those many cultural, racial, ethnic, and geo- seeking to tackle problems like these. graphic divides cut across parties. Today, The U.S. system o checks and balances, it is partisanship all the way down. with its separate branches and levels In this transformed context, previ- o government, requires a high level o ously muted weaknesses o the American compromise to function. Historically, system are coming to the fore: the the system also facilitated compromise opportunities for self-aggrandizement by because its frictions and fragmenta- a president unconstrained by norms o tion—famously celebrated by James restraint or by the other branches o Madison at its birth—encouraged a government; the lack o a clear, circum- proliferation o interests and perspec- scribed role for the federal courts, which tives rather than the emergence o a are now Ãlling up with partisan judges single dominant cleavage. With rare and armed with lifetime appointments; the unpleasant exceptions, as in the run-up politicization o a late-to-develop admin- to the Civil War, the two major parties istrative state; the endless opportunities featured internal divides large enough for obstruction in a bicameral legislature; to permit cross-party bargaining. the huge tilt o the Senate toward rural Durable coalitions even emerged from states. Although state and city govern- time to time that transcended the main ments often have greater freedom to act, party divide. These crosscutting cleav- intense partisanship at those levels and ages allowed public ocials to overcome gridlock at the federal level are pushing the system’s tendencies toward gridlock them, too, toward more polarized and less and confront (albeit often incompletely eective governance. The laboratories and haltingly) many o the biggest o democracy have become laboratories o challenges the nation faced. That process division, testing grounds for policy transformed the United States into one o approaches, electoral maps, and voting the richest, healthiest, and best-educated rules explicitly designed to cripple one societies the world has ever seen. side o the partisan Ãght. No longer. Almost every element o In short, the U.S. political system today’s political systemÏfrom electoral still requires compromise but no longer jurisdictions to economic regions, from facilitates it. On the contrary, it is public ocials to advocacy organiza- generating a doom loop o polarization tions, from the mass public to the mass as partisan forces run up against institu-
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tional guardrails and emerge from the Even that harsh portrait now seems collision not chastened but even mild, as the ’s voters, activists, and more determined to tear them down. politicians rally around a leader who engages in relentless race baiting, THE GREAT RADICALIZATION shocking assaults on press freedom, and Yet the diagnosis o polarization—true nonstop denigration o the rule o law. enough as far as it goes—obscures what The problem is not simply that makes that polarization so destructive. Republicans have moved much further Elite discourse frequently implies that to the right than Democrats have moved the two parties are mirror images o each to the leftan asymmetry evident not other, as i both were moving at the just in congressional voting patterns but same rate toward the political fringes, also in the relative position o each shedding norms and principles as they party’s presidential, vice-presidential, did so. But this is simply not what is and judicial nominees. The problem happening. The core problem is not equal is also that Republicans have proved polarization but asymmetric polarization. willing to play what the legal scholar The Democratic Party has moved Mark Tushnet has dubbed “constitutional modestly leftward, mostly due to the hardball.” Since at least Newt Gingrich’s decline in the party’s presence in the House speakership in the 1990s, Repub- South. But it still aspires to solve prob- licans in Washington have deployed lems and so is relatively open to compro- strategies designed to disrupt and mise. (For example, Obama’s signature delegitimize government, including the health-care law, now so reviled by Repub- constant use o the Senate libuster, licans, was built in considerable part from repeated government shutdowns, past Republican proposals.) By contrast, attempts to hold the U.S. economy the Republican Party has moved dramati- hostage by refusing to raise the debt cally rightward and now represents a ceiling, and the unwillingness to accept radically disruptive force that the U.S. Democratic appointments to key political system is ill equipped to contain. positionsmost dramatically in the This trend well predates Trump. case o Merrick Garland’s failed Four years before Trump became the nomination to the Supreme Court. ’s champion, two respected observers Things are no better at the state o Washington politics, Thomas Mann level, where anti-Democratic strategies and Norman Ornstein, reluctantly have often become antidemocratic concluded that the had become “an ones. In Texas, Republicans gerryman- insurgent outlier.” It was, they lamented, dered districts by reapportioning ever more “ideologically extreme; House seats just ve years after the last contemptuous o the inherited social and line redrawing, rather than following economic policy regime; scornful o established norms and waiting for the compromise; unpersuaded by conven- decennial census. In North Carolina tional understanding o facts, evidence, and Wisconsin, Republican-controlled and science; and dismissive o the legislatures attempted to strip power legitimacy o its political opposition, all from state oces after elections in but declaring war on the government.” which voters opted for Democrats. In
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state after state, Republicans have These norm-exploding stances raise the launched systematic eorts to disenfran- specter o democratic backsliding o a chise young, low-income, and nonwhite kind that seemed impossible only a few voters who they worried were unlikely years ago. Yet they are less a departure to support the ³£¡. And in several from the recent history o the Republican states, Republican elected ocials have Party than a hastening o its march down overridden voter initiatives to expand an alarming path. health care (Maine), enfranchise ex- felons (Florida), and implement ethics WHAT HAPPENED? reforms (South Dakota). The standard explanations for the The radicalism o the ³£¡ means Republican Party’s radicalization focus that it is no longer a conventional on race and culture, seeing in the United conservative party. It now displays char- States the same forces o resentment acteristics o what scholars o compara- that have driven right-wing populism tive politics call an “antisystem party”— in other rich democracies. The parallels one that seeks to foment tribalism, are real, but the right-wing backlash distort elections, and subvert political in the United States looks dierent institutions and norms. Although these from its foreign counterparts in at least tendencies appeared well before two respects. Trump’s election, they have grown only First, although energized by popular stronger under his presidency. anger, the radicalized ³£¡ depends In short, Madison’s formula for heavily on an organized network ensuring moderation has stopped work- o powerful, well-funded right-wing ing. Extremism on the right, rather than groups that are closely tied to the provoking a moderating reaction, has Republican establishment. The billion- become self-reinforcing. Positions that aire Koch brothers, raising unprec- were once at or beyond the outer edented resources from the extremely fringe o American conservatism have wealthy and extremely conservative, become Ãrst acceptable and then have built a virtual shadow party. Republican orthodoxy. More than ever Through organizations such as Ameri- before, the Republican Party is dismissive cans for Prosperity, they have poured o climate change, hostile to both the a few billion dollars over the past welfare state and the regulatory state, decade into grass-roots mobilization and committed to tax cuts for the and campaigning on behal oÊ hard- rich—positions that make it an outlier right Republicans and hard-right even among conservative parties in policies such as the Trump tax cuts. rich democracies. Trump’s presidency The powerful U.S. Chamber o Com- has reinforced the ³£¡’s insurgent merce has undergone a massive nature, as he and his allies have expansion, moved far to the right, and launched attacks on the foundations o become an increasingly integrated democracy—the press, the courts, part o the Republican Party. The law enforcement, the political opposi- American Legislative Exchange Council tion—with virtually no pushback or has done much the same at the state even complaints from within their party. level. Although some o these groups,
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such as the National Rie Association and prominent evangelical organiza- tions, promote social conservatism, e the main focus is economic policies that remove constraints on business Marlboro and reduce taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Mentality The second dierence follows from by the rst. Mostly due to the power o these organized groups, the Republican Robert G. Pelley Party has embraced the rich and dis- Best Interna onal Novel of the Year? missed worries about inequality to an extent unmatched by right-wing parties Superbly researched, The Marlboro Mentality abroad. Typically, right-wing populists takes place about 25 years from now and shows how American myths drive its foreign policy. are welfare-state chauvinists, advocating greater benets for native-born work- Major decisions are being made in Moscow, ers. Republicans, not so much. Beneath Washington, Beijing and Beirut. U.S. troops are on the Canadian border. This is a tale of possible the labels o “repeal Obamacare” and war, a sociological study and a great love story— “cut taxes,” their economic priorities with a surprise ending! 2019-May-June-FA-Tromblay-Spying_Foreign Affairs 3/5/19 2:25 PM Page 1 are radically inegalitarian and wildly unpopular. Even voters don’t want Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others. to slash Medicaid or eliminate health insurance protections for patients with preexisting conditions, and they have scarcely a greater appetite for budget- busting tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. Indeed, Trump won the nomination in part by hinting at a more moderate stance on economic issues. In oce, however, he has popu- lated his administration with veterans o the Koch network and business lobbyists, joining hands with Republi- can elites. Together, they have doubled down on the ’s plutocratic economic agenda, undercutting the capacity home run. Tromblay brings a keen o the government to address national “Aeye and a felicitous writing style to concerns. To maintain the support this important study of how the FBI and the DHS seek to make the US a safer place. o the Republican base, meanwhile, they ” —Loch Johnson, University of Georgia have intensied partisan conict over hc $75 $37.50 for Foreign Affairs readers! noneconomic issues, especially racial ones. The conversion o a populist back- lash into plutocratic governance is further enabled by the presence o a TEL: 303-444-6684 • www.rienner.com
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formidable right-wing media network. Norquist explained the math to attend- Partisan media outlets aren’t unique ees at the Conservative Political Action to the right, but the outrage machine is Conference a few years back: “While much larger, more inÁuential, and less you don’t redistrict states, the nice tempered by countervailing voices on the people who drew the map o the United conservative side o the spectrum. States districted in such a way that Indeed, the greatest victory o right-wing we have all those lovely square states outlets has been their ability to discredit out West with three people who live in alternative sources o information. them—two are Republican senators, The center-right media space has emptied, and one’s a Republican congressman.” and right-wing news and opinion have The same problem aects the House cut themselves (and their audiences) o Representatives, although in a less o from mainstream sources that try to obvious way. Democrats, whose support- uphold the norms o accuracy and ers are clustered in cities, waste votes nonpartisanship. The news consumption by running up huge margins o victory in o the most active elements o the urban districts, whereas Republicans, Republican base is increasingly limited whose supporters are spread more to a handful o ideologically convivial eciently across districts, win a greater outlets—especially Fox News, which is number o seats by narrower margins. now essentially a form oÊ Trump admin- Urban concentration hurts Democrats istration state ¢¦. This media isolation at the state level, too, giving Republicans both encourages and enables the con- an edge in state legislatures—an edge frontational, tribal politics o the ³£¡. they’ve then used to gerrymander both The Ãnal major contributor to the state and federal districts to further ³£¡’s radicalization has been electoral increase their advantage. geography. Over the last quarter century, Thus, bias feeds on bias, allowing as prosperity has become concentrated the ³£¡ to Áout majority sentiment in urban and coastal areas, nonurban while sustaining, or even expanding, its areas have grown more Republican, and political power. In recent House elec- urban areas, more Democratic. This tions, Republicans’ share o congressio- has not only hardened geographic nal seats has exceeded their share o political divides. It has also given the the two-party vote by roughly Ãve per- Republicans a signiÃcant electoral edge, cent. In 2012, they even gained a House because the U.S. electoral system—its majority with a popular-vote minority. severely malapportioned Senate; its With much greater regularity, Republi- single-member, winner-take-all House cans have achieved Senate majorities districts; and its Electoral College— with a minority o national votes (calcu- rewards parties whose supporters are lated by adding up all the votes from widely distributed across large swaths the three two-year election cycles that o sparsely populated territory. elect the entire chamber). Nowhere is this rural advantage Republicans have also lost the clearer than in the Senate, with its huge popular vote in six o the past seven bonus for people living in low-population presidential elections. Yet despite states. The anti-tax activist Grover all these losses, conservative justices
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now have a solid majority on the Su- voting, and encouraging aggressive preme Court. There, they have enabled interventions by activist judgesÏthat blatant vote rigging in Republican- undermine not just eective governance controlled areas (by invalidating a key but also representative democracy itself. provision o the Voting Rights Act) and empowered the plutocratic forces BREAKING THE DOOM LOOP behind the Republican Party (by gut- What might foster a better-functioning ting campaign Ãnance regulations and democracy? It is hard to see a route supporting a comprehensive attack on to a well-functioning democracy that already battered labor unions). Now, the does not involve a serious electoral Court looks poised to allow the Trump rebuke o the Republican Party—one administration to add a question about bigger and broader than the losses it citizenship to the 2020 census—a experienced in 2018. But even with such measure achieved by circumventing a rebuke, any Democratic president, no normal procedures and opposed by matter how moderate and open to career ocials at the Census Bureau— compromise, would face monolithic which would almost certainly reduce the Republican opposition in Congress and count o noncitizens and thereby the the conservative media. The Senate’s electoral representation o Democratic- stark and growing rural bias ensures that leaning areas. the Republican Party’s strength in the All these trends have fed on one chamber will exceed its popular support, another. As inequality has grown, it has and Republican senators will be armed empowered economic elites and given with the Ãlibuster and the knowledge their political allies an incentive to that legislative obstruction has delivered substitute antisystem resentment for them political gains in the past. real eorts to provide economic oppor- Any Democratic president would tunity. Democrats certainly deserve also face a conservative Supreme Court, some o the blame here: both the whose newest members are Federalist Clinton and the Obama administrations Society stalwarts chosen for their did little to address the dislocations combination o extreme social conserva- caused by trade or the growing geo- tivism and Ayn Rand–style libertarian- graphic divergence in economic out- ism. Before these judges, reforms comes. But the biggest barrier to passed by any Democratic-controlled serious action has been the Republican Congress (assuming they survived a Party. In the absence o an eective Ãlibuster) would face a highly uncertain response, places left behind by the fate, however obvious their constitu- knowledge economy have proved fertile tionality might have been in the past. terrain for fear-mongering by right- As bleak as the situation looks, there wing media and, increasingly, Republican are reasons for guarded optimism. The campaigns. And as the ³£¡ has alienated Ãrst is that eective governance, di- the racial and ethnic minorities that make rected to real public needs, can deliver up a growing share o the electorate, it has far-reaching rewards. The potential for found itsel drawn to countermajoritarian such rewards, in turn, can create oppor- strategiesÏgerrymandering, restricting tunities for skilled politicians to build
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broad political coalitions. To take just one be enhanced. After all, a public sector that example, moving the United States’ lacks the funding and expertise to deliver inecient health-care system closer to the on ambitious policies is a public sector best-performing foreign models would that continually vindicates the arguments reduce pressure on both public and o those trying to cripple it. private budgets while softening inequality Reform will still face Ãerce opposi- and making millions o Americans tion at every turn. But i democracy is healthier and better o. Climate change protected, the forces o reaction cannot presents not only an existential threat but win forever. Social tolerance continues also an inspiring opportunity to create to increase, especially among young well-paid jobs rebuilding the United Americans, and Trump’s presidency has States’ crumbling infrastructure and to only accelerated this trend. Moreover, jump-start a technological revolution in the United States is growing less white green energy. What’s more, ³£¡ policies and less rural with every passing year. such as the 2017 tax cuts hand out so The 2018 midterm elections showed much cash to so few people that reversing that Trump has galvanized young and them would be an easy way to oer broad nonwhite voters and spurred his oppo- gains. In short, the problem is not a nents to organize to defend democratic shortage o good policy ideas; it is a values. The ³£¡ has turned to a polar- system that cannot turn them into reality. izing and countermajoritarian strategy Another reason for optimism comes precisely because it knows that it is from the growing number o politicians in a race against time: every election and policymakers who recognize that the cycle, as the party’s older, white voting immediate priority is updating the United base shrinks as a share o the elector- States’ antiquated electoral and political ate, Republicans’ revanchism appeals to institutions. After winning the 2018 fewer and fewer Americans. The party’s elections, House Democrats put a package rhetoric conjures up a mythical past be- o such reforms—given the honorary cause the ³£¡ as currently constituted designation o H.R. 1—at the top o their cannot survive in a democratic future. legislative agenda. The reforms proposed Eective governance is elusive not are mostly sensible Ãrst steps to increase because the problems Americans face voter turnout, limit gerrymandering, and are insuperable but because asym- curb the role o money in politics. But metric polarization has collided with more important than the speciÃcs is the aging political institutions that are fact that political reform now occupies the poorly equipped to handle a radicalized leading edge o progressive thinking. Republican Party. Reforming these The common theme o these proposals is institutions won’t be easy, nor will Re- that in a democracy, popular majorities publicans naturally move back toward should decide elections and the winners the center. But there are powerful o those elections should be able to forces pushing for change, and there govern. Opportunities for minorities to are ample opportunities for improv- obstruct normal lawmaking should be ing American society just waiting to limited, and the government’s ability to be seized—i Americans can get their carry out important public policies should government working again.∂
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improve it in the context o changing It’s the political realities. The result is a democracy that is simultaneously Institutions, inclusive and ineective. For all the talk o unresponsive politi- Stupid cians and apathetic voters, the democ- racy part o the U.S. political system may be in the best shape ever. Voter The Real Roots of America’s suppression remains a major problem, Political Crisis but other trends suggest health. The 2018 midterm elections boasted higher Julia Azari turnout than any midterm contest since 1966. Turnout among voters aged 18 to 29 was up by 16 percentage points merican democracy, most compared with where it stood in the 2014 observers seem to agree, is in midterms. What’s more, voters sent a Acrisis. Some pin the blame remarkably heterogeneous cast o on President Donald Trump, citing his politicians into power. The new Con- assaults on the country’s democratic gress is the most ethnically and racially norms and institutions—the electoral diverse ever, with many new members system, the independent judiciary, becoming the Ãrst o their identity group the rule oÊ law, and the media. “This is to represent their state. In Colorado, not normal,” former President Barack voters elected the Ãrst openly gay
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE AMERICAN CENTURY? Obama declared in a September 2018 governor in U.S. history. The current speech rebuking his successor. Others crop o 2020 presidential hopefuls see Trump as merely the culmination includes six women, six people o color, o a long decline in American democ- and one openly gay man. The types o racy, a story that began decades ago with Americans long excluded from the halls growing political polarization, congres- o power are entering them in greater sional inÃghting, and economic and numbers than ever before. Things are far social inequality. Whatever the precise from perfect, but they are better. cause, however, there is a consensus Accompanying this more inclusive about the eect: a broken system. political system, however, is a crisis in Yet the real story o American democ- governance. Under the divided govern- racy is not one o disrepair but one ment o the Obama years, Congress o partial repair. The problems that ail could rarely agree on a budget, much it today have been brought about not by less craft major new legislation. As a neglect but by incomplete eorts to result, the president resorted to execu- tive orders and other unilateral tools to JULIA AZARI is an Associate Professor and Assistant Chair in the Department of Political make policy. After Trump’s inaugura- Science at Marquette University and a Distin- tion put a temporary end to divided guished Visiting Scholar at the John W. Kluge government, Congress in 2017–19, as Center at the Library of Congress. She is the author of Delivering the People’s Message: The measured by its legislative output, was Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate. more productive than it had been in
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recent years, but according to the Pew This clash manifests itsel at both the Research Center, about one-third o the national and the local levels. In Con- bills it passed were ceremonial. The gress, it can derail popular legislation. inexperience o the Trump administra- Because every state gets two senators, tion has only added to the crisis, with states with small populations—most o the chaos in the federal government which are rural and predominantly leading to incoherent policy. white—wield disproportionate power in What went wrong? How did American the Senate, whose rules make it espe- democracy become so dysfunctional, cially easy for the minority to thwart even as it became more participatory? the will o the majority. (Two-fths o The answer lies in the mismatch between the chamber can stop legislation in its the United States’ political institutions tracks by failing to end a libuster.) and its political realities. Simply put, the Even legislation supported by a major- structures o American democracy have ity o the public is often stalled or never failed to keep pace with the changes in introduced in the rst place. Consider politics and society. That has happened gun control. At a time when mass in three areas: political representation shootings dominate the news, many gun remains tied to states and districts, even safety measures enjoy the backing o a as the political conversation has gone majority o Americans. And yet attempt national; elections remain relatively after attempt to pass them has failed. de-emphasized in the Constitution, even Lobbying groups (namely, the National though they have come to matter more Rie Association) have garnered nearly and more in practical terms; and institu- all the blame, but the structure o tions remain formally colorblind, even Congress plays a role, too. Members o though race shapes so much about Congress do not represent national contemporary political life. And so constituencies; they represent their American democracy remains fraught states and districts. Control enough o with tension and unable to deliver the those, and a group representing a policies people want. minority o all Americans can override the views o everyone else. THINK NATIONAL, VOTE LOCAL A system in which congressional When they designed a political system for legislation reects a mosaic o local a new country tying together a collection interests is not inherently bad—it o colonies, the founders mostly imagined makes governing a large and diverse that Americans’ chie attachment would country possible—but it is less respon- be to their state. What resulted was a sive to public opinion on national system in which political representation issues. Immigration is, by denition, was rooted in geographic location—spe- handled at the national level, and yet cically, states and districts. Nowadays, actions on that issue that many Ameri- however, voters care far more about cans support, such as extending some national politics. Yet even as American protections to undocumented immi- politics becomes increasingly dominated grants who entered the country as by national issues and gures, the politi- children, have proved nonviable. cal structures are still local in nature. Americans have a national debate and
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national media but few opportunities the rural plains and the West, and as to express a truly national will in the the civil rights movement took hold, policymaking process. northern liberals stood at odds with On the ip side, at the local level, southern segregationists. the mismatch between local representa- Those days are, for the most part, tion and national politics means that gone. To make matters worse, national those with minority views often nd parties are having a harder time themselves outvoted. In other words, controlling the presidential nomination conservatives living in blue districts or process, which makes it even more liberals in red ones may have little dicult for them to ensure that dier- say. Nationally, the country is competi- ent interests within each party are tive, in that control o at least one represented. In an attempt to counter house o Congress is often up for grabs accusations that it is out o touch with in an election. But o the 435 House voters, in the lead-up to the 2020 seats, only 50 or so are competitive. primaries, the Democratic National It’s a similar picture at the presidential Committee has drastically reduced the level. As the political scientist Alan power o superdelegates, the party Abramowitz has observed, even though elites whose votes at the national the overall popular vote for presidential convention are not dictated by primary elections often shows a tight race, results, and lowered the threshold for the vote shares in the largest states are candidates to join the televised much more lopsided than they were debates. The nationalization o party at midcentury. In the 1960 presidential politics has led to the weakening o election, for example, the race in both party politics, and that, in turn, has California and Texas was close. In 2016, widened the disconnect between local Hillary Clinton won California by concerns and national power structures. 30 points, and Trump took Texas with a nine-point margin. With the races THE ELECTORAL OBSESSION in so many states a foregone conclu- Another area highlighting the tension sion, the sliver o Americans living between old institutions and new political in swing states ends up deciding high- realities involves elections. Voting played stakes contests. a surprisingly modest role in the original National party organizations used to U.S. Constitution. The document moderate this problem. The platforms provided for the direct election o mem- and presidential nominees they pro- bers o the House o Representatives, duced were mostly reections o the but senators were to be chosen by state concerns o state and local party legislatures, and states could decide for leaders. As a result, the parties allowed themselves how to allocate their Electoral for regional variation in their members’ College votes in presidential elections. positions. Within the Democratic The setup was only natural: when the Party, for example, East Coast politi- Constitution was written, neither mass cians in the late nineteenth century communication nor quick transportation took more business-friendly positions existed, and so the concept o a truly than their populist counterparts in national election was unthinkable.
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Over time, however, changes to the congressional rules empowered the Constitution sought to make American majority party in the House. Yet the politics more democratic. Passed in American political system, with its many the wake o the Civil War, the 15th points o conÁict, was not designed Amendment allowed nonwhite men to for the purpose oÊ handing one or another vote. The 17th Amendment, ratiÃed in party total victory. It was designed for 1913, provided for the direct election compromise—and without parties in o senators, and successive amend- mind at all. ments extended the franchise to How much should elections matter? women and people aged 18 to 21 and Nearly everyone agrees that ocials banned the poll tax. Direct popular should be selected and held accountable election became not only the norm for through free and fair elections. But all national positions but also the when it comes to resolving debates guiding principle behind reforms to the over policy, the role o elections is far primary process, policy referendums, less clear. My own research on how and ballot initiatives. Elections now presidents and their teams interpret occupy a central place in the American election results shows that they once political system. served as a source o power—a tool o Yet the increased emphasis on elec- persuasion that the president could use tions has had a decidedly negative side to build a legislative coalition for eect: it has crowded out the policy- preferred policies. But in more recent making process. Politics has become decades, election results have become increasingly focused on position taking a source o justiÃcation for policy and performative conÁict. Electoral choices themselves. Whereas President pressure, especially from primary chal- Lyndon Johnson and his inner circle lengers, can distract legislators from saw his 1964 victory as a means o doing the business o governing. The leverage over Congress, President presidential election cycle has extended Ronald Reagan and his aides conceptu- into a years-long “permanent cam- alized the 1980 victory as a triumph for paign,” pulling presidential hopefuls conservatism that justiÃed the broad away from their day jobs. policy direction o the administration. Polarization only exacerbates the The new way o thinking about problem. Decades ago, critics faulted the elections does not square well with the political party system for denying voters system created by the Constitution, distinct policy alternatives. So similar whereby presidents are elected every were the Democratic and Republican four years while terms for members o Parties, they argued, that the system was the House o Representatives last two insuciently responsive to public years and those for senators last six. preferences. But then came a number o Does a rebuke to the president’s party changes that upended this situation. The in a midterm election negate the previ- parties themselves experienced an ous victory? I voters choose a divided ideological sorting, with conservatives government, what are they really asking leaving the Democratic Party and liberals for? The body politic has yet to oer leaving the Republican Party. Changes to clear answers to these questions.
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During Obama’s last six years in o ce, Congress consumed itsel with budget showdowns and passed Not all readers little legislation o signicance. In the view o congressional Republicans, are leaders, from the Tea Party iconoclasts to the leadership, they were merely doing but all leaders what their voters had sent them to Washington to do: oppose Obama. Yet are readers. Obama was elected with a majority o - Harry S. Truman the popular vote in both 2008 and 2012, and so from the Democrats’ perspective, it was the Republican Congress that was opposing the will o SIGN UP for the the people. In a country with a popu- Foreign Affairs lace that is divided and a political Books & Reviews system that equates electoral victory with governing legitimacy, the correct newsletter course o action for elected leaders remains unclear. These questions have become even more urgent in the Trump era. The surprise result o the 2016 election appeared to indicate that the electorate had rejected the Democratic agenda (even though Clinton won the popular vote), and yet the Republicans’ losses in the 2018 midterm elections sent the exact opposite message. One response to the mixed messages would be to craft a bipartisan agenda to address shared priorities, but that seems largely beyond reach. Now, as Democrats absorb the report compiled by Robert Mueller, the special counsel appointed to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election, they are debating the question o what standard should be met before Congress should consider removing an elected president. The Constitution oers very little in terms o answers—yet another instance o an institution failing to keep pace with ForeignAffairs.com/newsletters political realities.
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THE MYTH OF COLORBLINDNESS almost always applied to black women Finally, it is impossible to talk about the living in cities.) Finally, as the political functioning o American democracy scientists Michael Tesler, John Sides, without considering the role o race. Many and Lynn Vavreck show in their book, o the United States’ political institu- Identity Crisis, attitudes about race and tions were designed to preserve a racial immigration motivated many o hierarchy. The Constitution counted Trump’s voters. slaves as three-Ãfths o a person for the In other words, race has deeply purpose o apportioning seats in the shaped—and continues to shape—both House o Representatives, and because American institutions and American the Electoral College allocated votes political behavior. That is problematic using the same formula, it enhanced the enough on its own, but even worse, inÁuence o slave states before the the United States is stuck with institu- Civil War. The Federal Housing Admin- tions that fail to appreciate this fact. istration, created in 1934 to insure Civil rights legislation, particularly the private mortgages, systematically discrim- 1964 Civil Rights Act, focuses on inated against black neighborhoods, preventing discrimination, a laudable making it extremely dicult for their goal but not an entirely eective tool residents to obtain home loans and thus for solving matters o structural racism, to accumulate wealth. such as unequal access to housing and The legacies o such discrimination high-quality schools. Since the 1960s, are not hard to Ãnd. Decades o racist laws have moved even further toward public policies account for current the colorblind model, with armative disparities in wealth between blacks action in university admissions and and whites, as the writer Ta-Nehisi proactive support for voting rights both Coates pointed out in his seminal 2014 suering setbacks in the courts. article in The Atlantic, “The Case for Not surprisingly, then, generations Reparations.” Racism lurks behind o white Americans have been raised contemporary political behavior, too. with the idea that they are living in a As research by the political scientists race-blind society. To the extent that Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, racism does exist, the argument goes, and Maya Sen has found, the legacy o the problem has to do with individuals slavery still shapes politics in the South rather than the system. In reality, o today: whites who live in counties that course, systematic racial disparities once had a high share o slaves tend to persist, with black Americans experienc- support Republicans and are more ing far worse outcomes than their white likely to oppose armative action. counterparts in terms oÊ health, educa- Race has also long shaped the divergent tion, income, and criminal justice. language politicians use to describe Yet it is controversial to acknowledge rural and urban constituencies, with the this reality—something that Obama former depicted as idyllic and deserv- discovered when he became president. ing o greater attention and the latter In 2009, after the Harvard professor as chaotic and undeserving. (Think o Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who is black, was the “welfare queen” trope, which is mistaken for a burglar outside his own
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home and arrested, Obama said that the more overtly than ever before. The police had “acted stupidly.” Conserva- Trump years have heightened each o tives rallied to the defense o the police, these tensions, perhaps forcing more and Obama backtracked and hosted reckoning with some o them than Gates and the arresting ocer for a “beer would have happened otherwise. But summit” at the White House. Three Trump did not create the forces behind years later, after Trayvon Martin, an the country’s political dysfunction. He unarmed black teenager, was shot by a merely came to power amid these neighborhood vigilante in Florida, institutional contradictions and increased Obama remarked, “I I had a son, he’d the stakes o resolving them. look like Trayvon.” Critics again took All these problems suggest not that the president to task for commenting American institutions are failing but on what they viewed as a local law that reforms and gradual political change enforcement matter. However mundane have led to a situation in which dier- Obama’s remarks were, they violated ent parts o the system undermine the norm o colorblindness. A 2016 one another. The narrative o decay, so survey by the Pew Research Center found popular in discussions o the current that most white Americans see racism moment, implies that American democ- as an individual, as opposed to systemic, racy has fallen from the peaks it reached problem. Many o them apparently do in some kind o golden age. But such not appreciate being told otherwise. a golden age never existed, and the very In the Trump era, race has been idea o what democracy means has front and center in American politics. shifted substantially from the American Trump called for a ban on Muslim founding—and even from the middle immigration during his campaign and o the twentieth century. Politics is enacted a corresponding travel ban once now national, elections are central, and in oce. He introduced a policy o diversity and inclusion are (for the most separating immigrant families at the part) expected. U.S.-Mexican border. He said that any The tensions in American democracy player who kneeled during the today also challenge a fundamental national anthem to protest police brutal- assumption behind the design o the ity against African Americans was a Constitution: that politics will develop “son o a bitch.” And yet the myth o a around the incentives created by insti- postracial society persists. tutions. Instead, the modern mismatch between political institutions and A SYSTEM IN TENSION political realities suggests that social Each o these institutional tensions has change can happen in spite o rules and been exacerbated by the modern presi- power arrangements. When Congress dency. Presidents oer national mes- refused to pass anti-lynching legislation sages through mass communication and after the Reconstruction era, activists now social media. They have dimin- focused their eorts on moving public ished the head-of-state aspect o their opinion and achieving victories in the role in favor o being campaigner in courts. Social movements can radically chief. And they have weighed in on race change both politics and society with-
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out altering the formal provisions o the all-consuming. Other reformers have Constitution. suggested ending the single-member, All o this suggests that reformers winner-take-all system o sending should push for solutions that reconcile representatives to Congress and switch- political tensions rather than create ing to multimember districts, with the more o them. Institutions that help seats allotted according to the percent- connect local concerns to national power age o the vote each party receives. structures, such as stronger political Political minorities would have their parties, are one example. In the area o views represented, and multiple parties elections, progress on the more dicult could form. But although proponents work o converting campaign rhetoric claim that this reform would temper into workable policy proposals might polarization, it could also further ease frustrations about an unresponsive fragment an already divided country. political system. After one party’s As they think about how to work victory, instead o seeking to repudiate through the current tensions, Americans or punish their opponents, legislators may simply have to face a dicult and citizens should think about incre- truth: that even major institutional mental policy gains. Changes in reform may not be enough to Ãx Ameri- this vein might also remind voters and can politics. The problem, in other politicians alike that while elections words, might be not ill-Ãtting struc- are essential for democracy, they aren’t tures but the fundamental diculty its only lifeblood. At the same time, o coming to any sort o consensus in a those seeking to address racial dispari- country as divided and massive as ties, at least in the political arena, can the United States. Building governing take advantage o the country’s coalitions requires a sense o civic obsession with electoral democracy. interconnectedness and shared fate, They may Ãnd it useful to frame Ãghts something that is sorely lacking at the for broader access to the ballot box in moment. No amount o tinkering terms o a commitment to the role with electoral rules, for example, will o elections, even as these struggles are fully address racism; that will take also about racial equality. serious reckoning with the economic and Other reforms have the potential to social dimensions o the problem. The alleviate some tensions at the expense good news is that the 2018 midterms o others. For example, eliminating the brought encouragement in all the right Electoral College—an increasingly areas: engaged voters choosing a popular idea among Democrats—would diverse group to represent them. And ensure that the winner o the popular so the United States Ãnds itsel at a vote won the presidency and thus turning point. It can embrace the reduce the mismatch between localized possibility o change, update its institu- rules and national politics. But this tions, and address past wrongs. Or the change would also run the risk o country, like its politicians, can keep feeding into the mania surrounding failing to deliver on its promises.∂ elections. Presidential campaigns would likely become even longer, costlier, and
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ESSAYS
Mueller’s report is certainly thorough— but also worryingly incomplete. —Stephen Kotkin
American Hustle Africa’s Democratic Moment? Stephen Kotkin 62 Judd Devermont and Jon Temin 131
DOUG The New Tiananmen Papers With Great Demographics Comes
MILLS Andrew J. Nathan 80 Great Power Nicholas Eberstadt 146 / THE A World Safe for Autocracy?
NEW Jessica Chen Weiss 92 America’s Forgotten Colony Antonio Weiss and Brad Setser 158 YORK Europe Alone
TIMES Alina Polyakova and Benjamin Haddad 109
/ REDUX The Global Economy’s Next Winners Susan Lund, James Manyika, and Michael Spence 121
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American Hustle What Mueller Found—and Didn’t Find— About Trump and Russia Stephen Kotkin
obert Mueller III played lacrosse and majored in government at Princeton. He graduated in 1966 and soon thereafter vol- R unteered for and was accepted into the Marine Corps. He won a Bronze Star for heroism in the Vietnam War and later attended law school at the University oÊ Virginia. He has since spent nearly a hal century in either private legal practice or law enforcement, in- cluding 12 years as director o the µ. Mueller epitomizes the old ´¬¡ establishment. Donald Trump graduated from the Wharton School at the Univer- sity o Pennsylvania in 1968. He dodged the Vietnam War, reportedly by asking a podiatrist to dishonestly attest to the presence oÊ bone spurs in Trump’s heels. Trump sought fame and fortune in the private sector, entering his father’s successful real estate business, which he took from New York City’s outer boroughs to the glitzier, riskier pre- cincts o Manhattan and the casino capital o Atlantic City. He tried his hand at running an airline and a get-rich-quick university before Ãnally Ãnding his true calling: playing a fantasy version oÊ himsel on a reality television show. Trump is as American as apple pie. These two lives—establishmentarian and upstart—collided in May 2017, when the U.S. Department o Justice appointed Mueller as special counsel to investigate, as the order deÃning his mandate put it, “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign o President Donald Trump,” along with “any matters that arose or may arise from the investigation.” In the two years that followed, Mueller and his investigators interviewed around
STEPHEN KOTKIN is Founding Co-Director of Princeton University’s Program in History and the Practice of Diplomacy and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
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500 witnesses, issued some 2,800 subpoenas and some 500 search-and- seizure warrants, indicted 34 individuals and three Russian businesses, and secured guilty pleas from or convictions oÊ Trump’s one-time cam- paign chair and former national security adviser, among others. In March o this year, Mueller delivered to the Department o Justice a 448-page report in two volumes, a redacted version o which Attorney General William Barr made public a few weeks later. The Ãrst volume scrutinizes the evidence o a possible criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, which, the report states, interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election “in sweeping and systematic fashion,” by spreading disinformation over social media and stealing and disseminating personal e-mails belong- ing to senior Ãgures in the presidential campaign oÊ Trump’s oppo- nent, Hillary Clinton. The second volume examines evidence o possible obstruction o justice by the president in relation to the in- vestigation—that is, whether Trump violated the law by attempting to make it harder for Mueller to get to the truth. The Ãrst volume reaches a more or less straightforward conclusion. “Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would beneÃt from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would ben- eÃt electorally from information stolen and released through Russian eorts,” the report states, “the investigation did not establish that members o the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” The cam- paign did not break the law in its numerous interactions with Rus- sians. But as the report makes clear, Trump and his senior advisers, including members oÊ his family, were aware that the Kremlin was trying to help them, and, rather than sound the alarm to U.S. author- ities, they were thrilled about the assistance. The second volume’s Ãndings appear more complex. Owing to the Department o Justice’s long-standing internal opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted, Mueller decided that he did not have the legal authority to charge the president. As a result, the report does not render a traditional prosecutorial judgment regarding obstruction o justice on Trump’s part. Whether Trump committed a crime is left open to interpretation. After receiving the report, Barr and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, who had appointed Mueller and had overseen all but the Ãnal two months o the investigation, ruled that Trump’s conduct
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did not constitute obstruction o justice. Still, Mueller’s accessibly written compendium o substantiated facts delivers an unambiguous ethical indictment o Trump’s campaign and presidency. Mueller’s chronicle o prevarication, moral turpitude, and incom- petence is dispiriting, but his presentation o rigorous legal reasoning and strict adherence to statutes, case law, and procedural rules is in- spiring. The text serves as an x-ray, revealing a venal politician and a corrupt political system. At the same time, it embodies many o the values that make the United States great: integrity, meticulousness, professionalism, public service, and the rule o law. O course, showmanship, a buccaneering spirit, and go-for-broke instincts are also among the traits that made America what it is. Trump, in his nonpareil fashion, characterized the Mueller report as both “total exoneration” and “total bullshit.” Trump is a phenomenon. Only a gen- uinely formidable personality could withstand such intense, unremit- ting investigative pressure and hostility, even i he has brought no small degree o it on himself. Trump lacks the facility to govern eectively, but he knows how to command the attention o the highly educated and dominate the news cycle. There is a reason he proved able, in a single election cycle, to vanquish both the entrenched Bush and Clinton dynasties. Trump’s aws and transgressions are now well documented. Yet he has not perpetrated a catastrophe remotely on the scale o the Iraq war or the global nancial crisis. The report makes clear that Trump the politician resembles Trump the businessman. Before he became president, whenever he got into trouble (which he constantly did), he would sue, obtaining a settle- ment to extricate himself. He and his businesses got involved in around 3,500 lawsuits, in a majority o them as the plainti. I all else failed, Trump would declare bankruptcy. Between 1991 and 2009, his compa- nies went through six corporate bankruptcies under Chapter 11. But although he had to relinquish many o his properties, he avoided hav- ing to le for personal bankruptcy. His presidency is eectively a seventh bankruptcy. But once again, it might not be a personal one. Instead, it might be America’s bank- ruptcy: a chance for the country to cut its losses and start afresh. That would require an acknowledgment by Trump’s supporters that Mueller’s portrait is damning. Trump’s opponents, meanwhile, would have to admit that their portrait o him as a singular threat to the republic lacks context and perspective. (Imagine, for example, i
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a special counsel had investigated President Lyndon Johnson’s cam- paigns and White House years while Johnson was still in oce: the results would not have been pretty.) Trump’s campaign and his presidency, too, are x-rays, revealing much o what has gone awry in American politics and society in re- cent years. His undisciplined depredations could present an oppor- tunity for the United States to prove itselÊ better than Trump and, even more importantly, to rise above the conditions in which he tri- umphed and holds sway.
A THOROUGH REPORT BUT INCOMPLETE Mueller’s report conÃrms that the president has performed yeoman’s work in corroding norms o democracy and basic decency, but that de- bilitation far predates him, and it is mirrored by not a few oÊ his po- litical adversaries. Trump Ãts into a longer and wider arc obscured by the tellingly derogatory use o the label “populism.” His carnival-barker, conÃdence-man persona is anything but alien to the United States. His marketing prowess, applied to the political world, is outrageously good. Consider the take on the Mueller investigation that Trump tweeted in June 2017: “They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction o justice on the phony story. Nice.” Pithy—and, in its self-serving way, prophetic. Trump’s rise looks like a great American hustle, despite the inter- national links. Candidate Trump appears to have desperately wanted to build a high-margin Trump Tower in Moscow at least as much as he wanted to be elected president. Mueller’s report also captures the parallel pursuits o the innumerable wannabes, hangers-on, and swindlers who gravitated toward Trump and his campaign. Like a crime thriller, the report brims with shady characters, and, true to form, some o them beat the rap (or at least they have so far). But they’ve gotten away with it owing not to their criminal ingenuity. “The evidence was not sucient to charge that any member o the Trump Campaign conspired with representatives o the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election,” the report concludes— but only because doing so was simply beyond them. As Trump’s son- in-law and adviser Jared Kushner privately related to congressional interns back in July 2017, “They thought we colluded, but we couldn’t even collude with our local oces.” It’s a pitiful yet accurate exculpa- tion: not guilty by reason o ineptitude.
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What’s more, as I have been arguing for years, Russian intelli- gence organizations had no need to collude with the omnishambolic Trump campaign. They could manage entirely on their own to hack e-mail accounts, line up cutouts such as WikiLeaks to disseminate damaging material, impersonate Americans on social media, and study elementary research available in open sources about battle- ground states and swing voters. The Mueller report conÃrms this point, despite some lingering ambiguity over the Trump campaign’s links to WikiLeaks, which is a genuinely valuable asset for Russia. As for obstruction o justice, which Trump attempted in plain sight for months on end, the report states that “the president’s eorts to inÁuence Russia had no need to the investigation were mostly unsuc- collude with the cessful, but that is largely because the omnishambolic Trump persons surrounding the President de- campaign. clined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.” (Note the “mostly.”) Many administration ocials knew that Trump was pushing them to engage in illegal acts, or at least “crazy shit,” in the words o Donald McGahn, the former White House lawyer and an unwitting star o the report. But in scene after gripping scene, Mueller demonstrates how Trump is merely a would-be mobster, worried sick that his capos are wearing a wire. Forget about burying his enemies in concrete: Trump inspires none o the fear, let alone loyalty, o a real crime boss, instead imploring staers over and over to carry out his orders, then shrinking from punishing them when they drag their feet. It turns out there really is a “deep state” out to thwart Trump after all, but its operatives are not alleged liberal Trump haters in the µ but Trump appointees in his administration—and when they secretly man- age to thwart him, they shield him from prison. In revealing all o this, Mueller’s report is certainly thorough—but also worryingly incomplete. Mueller decided not to issue subpoenas when they seemed guaranteed to be tied up in court, apparently mind- ful o moving expeditiously in order to wrap up before the 2020 cam- paign took o. The report notes that some evidence that Mueller obtained was inadmissible and that some witnesses invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, destroyed evidence, or relied on encrypted communications that deliberately lacked long-term retention. Mueller also cites instances o what could be construed as
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witness tampering: Trump, the report notes, “engaged in eorts” to “prevent the disclosure o evidence to [the special counsel], including through public and private contacts with potential witnesses.” The lies told by people connected to the Trump campaign, the report states, “materially impaired the investigation o Russian election interference.” The report is incomplete in another way: its primary focus is the criminal investigation into Russia’s interference, rather than the µ’s parallel counterintelligence investigation—which is where the whole story began. Russia conducted a cyber-assault on U.S. democracy, dem- onstrating for other potential adversaries, not to mention potential American copycats, that it could be done. This is a clear and present danger. But when investigators discovered the Trump campaign per- sonnel’s eagerness to interact with Russian operatives, the counterintel- ligence probe was complicated by the need for a criminal investigation. The sections o the report that treat what Russia intended and achieved are its most heavily redacted parts. The public version o the report attributes the interference to orders from “the highest levels” o the Russian government, but not to President Vladimir Putin speciÃ- cally. In that sense, Mueller’s report bears almost no resemblance to the last detailed, U.S. government-funded report on a crime commit- ted by a foreign adversary against the United States: the one produced by the 9/11 Commission. That report included a rigorous analysis o how al Qaeda planned and carried out the attacks, explored the nature o U.S. security failures and ongoing vulnerabilities, and put forward a panoply o recommended Ãxes. The public version o Mueller’s re- port oers nothing like that. Many o the sections on the role that technology played in making the Russian interference possible are heavily redacted: close to two-thirds o the text dealing with Russia’s activities in cyberspace is blacked out. As a result, it provides limited insight into the relationships, i any, among the many dierent actors on the Russian side, not all o whom were government functionaries. Take the infamous episode that took place on July 27, 2016, when Trump, in a campaign speech, requested Russian assistance in under- mining Clinton by obtaining personal e-mails that she had declined to turn over during an investigation into her use o a private server while she was secretary o state. “Russia, i you’re listening, I hope you’re able to Ãnd the 30,000 e-mails that are missing,” Trump said. Mueller reveals that within approximately Ãve hours, ocers o Russia’s mili- tary intelligence agency targeted Clinton’s home oce for the Ãrst
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time, sending malware hidden in e-mails to 15 accounts associated with her oce. “It is unclear,” the report notes enigmatically, how they were able “to identify these email accounts, which were not public.”
TRUTHFUL HYPERBOLE How and when did the United States enter the Twilight Zone o the Mueller report and the reactions to it? In a sense, it started with two parallel fantasies o the Cold War era. The Ãrst was the ¬’s. Even though the U.S. diplomat George Ken- nan, in his “Long Telegram,” had proposed a policy o containment that would eventually produce an internal evolution or the implosion o Soviet communism, not everyone got the memo. The ¬ dreamed o something else. Many individuals and groups inside and outside the U.S. government, including the intelligence services, tried to roll back the Soviet menace, backing armed insurgents who sought to bring down the Soviet regime and its allies. Those measures usually backÃred. But then, in 1985, a sorcerer named Mikhail Gorbachev popped up in Moscow. Nested at the pinnacle o power in a hypercentralized system, the Soviet leader relaxed censorship to rally support for re- forms, encouraging Soviet journalists to publish one previously sup- pressed revelation after another, which profoundly blackened the regime’s image. Gorbachev introduced legal free-market mechanisms, unhinging the planned economy, as well as competitive elections, al- lowing the populace to demonstrate disapproval o the Communist Party’s monopoly. He also demanded that the Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe reform, which destabilized the entire empire. To pro- tect himsel against a coup, he even sabotaged the central control over the entire system exercised by the party apparatus, which alone held the federal state together; in other words, unintentionally, he created a voluntary federal union o states that could chose to secede. The general secretary o the Communist Party did what the ¬ had dreamed about but could never accomplish: he destroyed that system. The ¶³ also had a dream. During the Cold War, its operatives fantasized about weakening and maybe even unraveling ¤¬¢£ and subverting the cohesiveness o the West. Its agents wanted to dilute the alliances o the United States in East Asia, too, by trying to drive a wedge between the United States and South Korea or Japan. The ¶³ worked overtime to discredit the U.S. political system, planting stories to erode Americans’ faith in the impartiality o U.S. courts
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and judges, to undermine trust in American media, and to have the American public believe that the U.S. political system was rigged. Moscow aimed to divide Americans into tribes, hoping that griev- ances would turn into dysfunction and maybe even social collapse. But the United States is a politically diverse nation, and its wide political dierences are normal and unthreatening, because the coun- try has the democratic institutions to allow their expression and com- petition. Neither the ¶³ nor its post-Soviet successors were ever going to destroy the U.S. system from without, try as they might. Then came Trump. Obviously, the Gorbachev-Trump analogy is imperfect. The United States is not a communist regime but a consti- tutional order with the rule oÊ law, a dynamic market economy, and an open society. Indeed, one reason that most Republicans have not gone berserk over Trump’s behavior is that they believe, correctly, that U.S. institutions are resilient. (Other reasons include the fact that they agree with Trump’s policies, fear electoral defeat without his support, and depend on him to keep the White House out o Democratic hands—a goal supported by almost hal the electorate.) Still, a specu- lative juxtaposition o Gorbachev and Trump can help one fathom how the µ’s counterintelligence investigation eectively morphed into a criminal probe o the Trump campaign, and then o the presi- dent himself, eventually leading to the Mueller report. Trump was voicing lines straight out o the ¶³ playbook: the press is the enemy o the people, American law enforcement is corrupt, ¤¬¢£ is obsolete, U.S. trading partners are rip-o artists. All the while, Trump’s family and associates were meeting secretly with Russians and lying Ãrst about the fact o those meetings and later about their sub- stance. These meetings took place in the context oÊ Trump’s decades- long attempts to do business in Russia and other countries o the former Soviet Union. Overpriced real estate is, to an extent, a business built on money laundering, with all-cash buyers needing to wash funds o dubi- ous provenance and looking for partners who neglect to perform due diligence. Any serious investigation oÊ Trump with subpoena power that looked into his businesses would pose a grave legal threat to him and his family. (The Mueller report brieÁy mentions Trump’s attempted property deals in Georgia and Kazakhstan. It remains unclear whether these or related matters are part o the 12 ongoing criminal investiga- tions that the special counsel’s oce handed o to other authorities, the details o which are blacked out in the public version o the report.)
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Trump’s connections to Russia were hardly a secret during the cam- paign. In June 2016, Kevin McCarthy o California, who was then the Republican House majority leader and is now the minority leader and a staunch Trump supporter, stated behind closed doors to party colleagues in a secretly taped meeting, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” (Dana Rohrabacher was a curiously pro-Putin Republican U.S. representative from California.) When some o those present laughed, McCarthy added: “Swear to God!” The most revealing example o the Trump team’s attitude toward Russia was the campaign’s infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a group o Russians who promised that they had dirt on Clinton. The meeting was arranged by Donald Trump, Jr., and attended by Kushner The phantasm of an all- and Paul Manafort, who was running the campaign at the time. Steve Ban- powerful Kremlin has non, the former Breitbart impresario diverted too much who became Trump’s campaign chair a attention from Americans’ few months after the meeting and who later served as the chie White House own failings. strategist, told the journalist Michael Wol that the meeting was “treasonous.” Bannon added, “Even i [they] thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all o that, [they] should have called the imme- diately.” Bannon was right, even i he went on to suggest not that the meeting should have been refused but that it should have been organ- ized far away (“in a Holiday Inn in Manchester, New Hampshire”) and that its contents, i damaging to Clinton, should have been dumped “down to Breitbart or something like that, or maybe some other more legitimate publication.” Given the fact o such contacts, there is no question that an inde- pendent investigation o the Trump campaign was abundantly war- ranted. And yet the Trump-Russia story sent much o the media on a bender that was crazed even by today’s debased standards. In their coverage, Trump’s antagonists in the commentariat sometimes sank to his level. “I play to people’s fantasies,” Trump wrote in The Art of the Deal. “People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole.” In the past two years, the main source o “truthful hyperbole” has been not Trump alone but also elite media personalities, such as £¤¥¦’s
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Rachel Maddow, who have stoked liberals’ desire for the Trump-Russia story to be the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular po- litical scandal in U.S. history. Among the more comical fulminations has been the claim that the Russians further polarized Americans. In reality, during the 2016 campaign, U.S. citizens created and shared far more divisive material online than the Russians ever could—and American journalists lucra- tively disseminated even more. Likewise, the indignant posturing about just how unprecedented it was for a hostile foreign power to interfere so brazenly in another country’s election conveniently ig- nores countless other instances o countries doing just that. The ¶³ did it to the United States during the Cold War. The British did it to the United States even earlier, in 1939, even accessing sensitive poll- ing data. And the United States has done it all over the world. Great powers meddle in other countries because they can, and they will do so unless and until they pay a heavy price for it. The phantasm o an all-powerful, all-controlling, irredeemably evil Kremlin has diverted too much attention from Americans’ own fail- ings, and their duties to rectify them. Today in Russia, conspiracy theories still abound about how the ¬ brought down the Soviet Union and how Gorbachev was in reality an unwitting (or perhaps a witting) agent o the Americans. Never mind that Gorbachev was a proud product o the Soviet system. Gorbachev’s reformed commu- nism, too, was utterly homegrown. Acknowledging all o that, instead oÊ latching on to a canard about Gorbachev, would have compelled Russian society to come to grips more fully with the internal factors that caused the Soviet system’s implosion. Likewise, in the United States, the obsession with Russian interference and the madcap specu- lation that Trump is a Kremlin asset have helped occlude many o the domestic problems that made Trump’s homegrown victory possible. Meanwhile, Trump’s supporters have spun a conspiracy theory al- leging that the investigation oÊ Trump’s campaign was a sinister plot hatched within the µ. The rival tales—Trump as a Russian asset, the µ as the deep state—uncannily mirror each other, and continue to shape politics. It is as i Mueller never wrote his report.
EXPECTATIONS GAME Leadership no longer gets enough attention from historians. Too few in the Ãeld seek to better understand when and how individuals Ãnd ways
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From Russia with love: Trump and Putin at a news conference in Helsinki, July 2018 to transform a political conjuncture—to perceive and seize opportuni- ties that others fail to recognize, to turn impossible situations into break- throughs. No small degree o luck is involved, but a vision o the future and supreme tactical adroitness are decisive. Also, those transformative individuals usually occupy the highest positions in political and social life: presidents (Ronald Reagan), secretaries o state (George Marshall), Federal Reserve chairs (Paul Volcker), movement leaders (Martin Luther King, Jr.). The oce o the special counsel—a temporary employee o the Department o Justice—does not lend itsel to such transformative powers. Those who hoped that Mueller would rescue the republic freighted his role beyond its capacity. But did taxpayers nonetheless have a right to expect more than what Mueller delivered? Rarely have Americans been treated to so much truthful—and at- tributed—information about the workings o their government’s ex- ecutive branch. For all the media malpractice, the Mueller report vindicates much o the investigative reporting o The New York Times,
GRIGORY The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Unlike those publica- tions, Mueller was under no obligation to protect his sources by
DUKOR granting anonymity. Notwithstanding the enormous leverage derived from the ability to subpoena witnesses and levy criminal charges, / REUTERS moreover, the special counsel bent over backward to be fair to Trump by presenting exculpatory evidence alongside the incriminating, em- ploying a high bar to dene what would count as “coordination” o a
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criminal nature. Mueller also refrained from imputing corrupt mo- tives to the president, even though Trump reneged on multiple prom- ises to testify in person and then suered improbably severe amnesia when replying to written questions. Arguably, this fair-mindedness renders the picture oÊ Trump’s behavior all the more damning. The Mueller report models the civic virtues that could enable American leaders to renew the country. The tools they would need are readily at hand, in the form o the country’s formidable democratic institutions and sound underlying mores o moderation, fairness, and common sense. That will not happen, o course, certainly not in the near term. For now, politics trumps technocracy. Mueller acted as a restrained professional awash in a foam o partisan blather. But as it turned out, he is not a master tactician. (By contrast, Barr managed to publish almost the entire report—the sections on Trump’s squalid be- havior are the least redacted—without incurring the wrath o the president, who instead blamed Mueller for the embarrassing revela- tions.) The public version o the report oers no victory for either the pro-Trump camp or the anti-Trump one, nor—what is genuinely dis- appointing—any possible reconciliation o the two. It has served mostly to intensify the deadlock. Perhaps the circumstances permitted nothing more. From the get-go, Mueller was tasked with a criminal prosecution that could not be pros- ecuted. Predictably, any decision not to charge Trump was going to be taken by the majority o Republicans as an exoneration, even though the report literally says that it “does not exonerate him.” No less predictably, Mueller’s explicit refusal to absolve Trump was going to be taken by the majority o Democrats as a de facto indictment. Mueller did something more, as well. He addressed Congress, a step the special-counsel regula- tions do not discuss. The report contains 21 pages on the president’s executive authority, the separation o powers, and the Constitution, as well as pointed advice: “The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the president’s corrupt exercise o the powers o of- Ãce accords with our constitutional system o checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.” Some Democrats and Trump critics have seized on this as an “impeachment referral.” However the current stando plays out between a stonewalling White House and an overzealous Democratic-controlled House o Representatives, Trump’s tax returns and many o the other impor- tant documents and testimony that Congress is seeking will eventu-
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ally become public. The adversarial political and legal system will conduct oversight and, i necessary, hold the president accountable, within the remedies established by the Constitution and, above all, through the sentiments o the electorate.
ONE BIG SURPRISE Ultimately, what have we learned? The report might seem merely to recapitulate, albeit in more granular detail, what we already knew. But in fact, it contains an enormous surprise. A few observers, mysel included, had long assumed that during the 2016 campaign, Russians who were operating at the behest o the Kremlin (or were seeking to ingratiate themselves with it) were not trying to collude with the Trump cam- paign. Rather, they were trying to gain unfettered access to the cam- paign’s internal communications in order to obtain operational secrets and compromising material (kompromat) on Trump and his people or to implicate them in illegal acts. I took the real story oÊ Trump and Russia to be one o penetration and assumed that Russian intelligence eaves- dropped on the cell phones not just o Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, but also oÊ Trump himsel and his family. I assumed that Russian intelligence had implanted devices on the cables running underneath and into Trump Tower and wondered about those Russian-owned apart- ments upstairs, not far from Trump’s operations. (Trump did not return to the tower for the Ãrst seven months oÊ his presidency, as i it were not a secure facility; in 2017, when he accused the Obama administration o wiretapping phones in the tower, I took it to be a typical Trumpian false- hood about something that was true in another way.) The idea that such surveillance was under way during the campaign seemed like a no- brainer. After all, ocials in Russia whom I have known for a long time were bragging about it, and the tradecraft was elementary. So imagine my astonishment when I read in Mueller’s report that Russians approaching the Trump campaign could not Ãgure out whom to contact, who was in charge, or who mattered. Russian op- eratives and intermediaries were coming at the campaign from all angles, exploring channels with individuals who had no inÁuence whatsoever on policy positions, to the extent that the campaign even had any. The reality was that no one was in charge and no one mat- tered except Trump, and he swiveled one way, then the next, capri- ciously, in his executive chair. But the Russians essentially failed to gain access to him, even when the campaign and the White House
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Áung open the doors. (The report reveals that the Russian ambassa- dor to the United States at the time, Sergey Kislyak, rejected Kush- ner’s suggestion that they communicate using secure facilities at the Russian embassy in Washington.) I was wrong, in an important way. Petr Aven, a principal in Russia’s largest private bank and a former Russian government ocial, told the special counsel’s investigators about the Ãrst time after Trump’s election that Putin convened his regu- lar quarterly meeting o Russia’s top 50 or so oligarchs. “Putin spoke o the diculty faced by the Russian government in getting in touch with the incoming Trump Administration,” Aven testiÃed, according to the report. “According to Aven, Putin indicated that he did not know with whom formally to speak and generally did not know the people around the President-Elect.” O course, this could have been misdirection, dis- information that Putin wanted spread widely. But that is not how Muel- ler treats it. “As soon as news broke that Trump had been elected President, Russian government ocials and prominent Russian busi- nessmen began trying to make inroads into the new Administration,” the report states. “They appeared not to have preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with senior ocials around the President-Elect.” This is the report’s great revelation: Putin, supposedly, could help Trump get elected but could not talk to him, despite the publicly expressed eagerness oÊ Trump and his people to enter into contact and make deals. In fairness to the Russians, they did manage to convey “peace plans” for Ukraine to Trump’s family members, only for the propos- als to languish in inboxes while the Russians repeatedly begged to know—on behal o “the boss” (Putin)—i there had been any move- ment on the issue. Genuinely important players in the campaign, such as Donald Trump, Jr., and Kushner, turned out to have an un- derwhelming grasp o foreign policy and no sense oÊ how to make anything happen in government. Putin and his operatives appear to have been no more prepared for Trump’s victory than Trump and his people were. To be sure, it re- mains possible that Russian intelligence did surveil the internal com- munications o the Trump operation. But i so, the information they gleaned delivered little operational value, at least in terms o enabling useful dialogue to advance Russian interests. Trump world may be too disorganized to manipulate. But Russian intelligence may be less skill- ful than it is typically made out to be, particularly when attempting to
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operate on U.S. soil and under counterintelligence surveillance, as opposed to when acting anonymously from afar via computers.
GET OVER IT The American public needs to understand not only what the Russians did but also what they did not do. Russia did not chose the respective party’s presidential candidates, and it did not invent the Electoral Col- lege. Clinton ran the only possible Democratic campaign that could have lost, and Trump ran the only possible Republican campaign that could have won. Whatever the marginal impact o Russia’s actions, it was made possible only by crucial actions and inactions in which Russia was never involved. Above all, Russia did not design the preposterous patchwork and vulnerabilities o the United States’ election machinery. Putin, moreover, did not plant a sleeper agent in a Harvard dormi- tory in 2002 and then have him study psychology and computer sci- ence, develop social networking algorithms, drop out in 2004, insinuate himsel into Silicon Valley, and set up a private company that attains phenomenal prot by monetizing Americans’ love o oversharing and constant need to feel outraged. Nor did Putin force the very media outlets that this Russian sleeper agent’s company was helping put out o business to praise that agent to the skies. Nor did he compel investors to pour money into this latent Russian weapon, thereby expanding its reach and power. No: Facebook fell into Pu- tin’s lap in 2016, and it is still there. In Mueller’s report, U.S.-based technology rms do garner some attention: one section is titled “Op- erations Through Facebook”; another, “Operations Through Twit- ter.” But there is nothing about what authorities should do to mitigate the vulnerabilities that social media create. It remains unclear whether the public will ever learn more about the crucial counterintelligence investigation into Russian intrusion. F personnel worked with Mueller’s oce and obtained information from it, “not all o which is contained in this Volume,” the report notes. But the report is silent on what became o that information. I the counter- intelligence investigation is ongoing and involves sensitive sources and methods, then Barr may well be right to refuse to comply with Congress’ demand for the full report and for Mueller’s underlying materials—a refusal that caused the House to threaten to hold him in contempt. In the end, the Mueller report provides no answer to the puzzle o what motivates Trump’s obsequiousness toward Russia. In discussing
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Trump’s sensitivity to any mention o Russian interference and his bi- zarre public statements accepting Putin’s denials, the report refers to Trump’s insecurities over how his election could be seen as illegitimate, as well as to his wish to build a windfall Trump Tower in Moscow. The report contains no section analyzing Trump’s long-standing envy o strongman rulers. Nor does the report address the mutual failures o the U.S.-Russian relationship. The three presidents who preceded Trump, all o whom served two terms, could not Ãgure out how to manage U.S.- Russian relations over the long run. Each tried engagement, or a “reset,” followed by some version o attempted isolation, culminating in sanctions and no visible way forward. In important ways, Russian interference in U.S. domestic politics stemmed directly from those failures; so, in part, have Trump’s conciliatory gestures. But Trump did not even get his reset: despite his over-the-top expressions o admiration for Putin, his admin- istration went straight to the phase o sanctions and recriminations. In this light, the Russian attack on American democracy cannot be viewed as even a tactical success. Instead o getting his dismemberment o Ukraine legally recognized or sanctions lifted, Putin got slapped with additional sanctions. The cyber-intrusions and special operations to disseminate stolen e-mails were a technical success, but their contribu- tion to Trump’s victory was at most marginal. The Kremlin did get Washington to obsess about Russia in unhealthy ways, and Moscow’s actions did play a part in launching a fury-raising investigation o a U.S. president. But the United States has resilient institutions (as opposed to Russia’s corrupt ones), a gigantic economy (as opposed to Russia’s medium-sized one), and a powerfully self-organized civil society (as opposed to Russia’s persecuted one). That is why highly educated, en- trepreneurial Russians continue to immigrate to the United States. This is also why, notwithstanding the unmet, unrealistic expectations o the Mueller report, the Trumpian moment is an opportunity. The best o the United States is there to be rediscovered, reinvented, and repositioned for the challenges the country faces: the dilemmas posed by bioengineering, rising seas and extreme weather, the overconcentra- tion o economic power, and the geopolitical rivalry with China. Above all, what the country needs is massive domestic investment in human capital, infrastructure, and good governance. Trump’s instinctive exploi- tation oÊ Washington’s recent failures oers an emphatic reminder that the country must attend to those elements o American greatness. At a high cost, Trump could nonetheless be a gift, i properly understood.∂
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The New Tiananmen Papers Inside the Secret Meeting That Changed China Andrew J. Nathan
n April 15, 1989, the popular Chinese leader Hu Yaobang died o a heart attack in Beijing. Two years earlier, Hu had been Ocashiered from his post as general secretary o the Chinese Communist Party for being too liberal. Now, in the days after his death, thousands o students from Beijing campuses gathered in Tian- anmen Square, in central Beijing, to demand that the party give him a proper sendo. By honoring Hu, the students expressed their dissat- isfaction with the corruption and inÁation that had developed during the ten years o “reform and opening” under the country’s senior leader, Deng Xiaoping, and their disappointment with the absence o political liberalization. Over the next seven weeks, the party leaders debated among themselves how to respond to the protests, and they issued mixed signals to the public. In the meantime, the number o demonstrators increased to perhaps as many as a million, including citizens from many walks oÊ life. The students occupying the square declared a hunger strike, their demands grew more radical, and dem- onstrations spread to hundreds o other cities around the country. Deng decided to declare martial law, to take eect on May 20. But the demonstrators dug in, and Deng ordered the use o force to commence on the night o June 3. Over the next 24 hours, hun- dreds were killed, i not more; the precise death toll is still unknown.
ANDREW J. NATHAN is Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science at Columbia Univer- sity. This essay is adapted from his introduction to Zuihou de mimi: Zhonggong shisanjie sizhong quanhui “liusi” jielun wengao (The Last Secret: The Final Documents From the June Fourth Crackdown; New Century Press, 2019).
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Last stand: protesting in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, June 1989 The violence provoked widespread revulsion throughout Chinese so- ciety and led to international condemnation, as the G-7 democracies imposed economic sanctions on China. Zhao Ziyang, the general sec- retary o the Chinese Communist Party, had advocated a conciliatory approach and had refused to accept the decision to use force. Deng ousted him from his position, and Zhao was placed under house ar- rest—an imprisonment that ended only when he died, in 2005. A little over two weeks later, on June 19–21, the party’s top decision- making body, the Politburo, convened what it termed an “enlarged” meeting, one that included the regime’s most inÁuential retired el- ders. The purpose o the gathering was to unify the divided party elite around Deng’s decisions to use force and to remove Zhao from oce. The party’s response to the 1989 crisis has shaped the course o Chi- nese history for three decades, and the Politburo’s enlarged meeting
MANUEL VIMENET shaped that response. But what was said during the meeting has never been revealed—until now. On the 30th anniversary o the violent June 4 crackdown, New Cen- tury Press, a Hong Kong–based publisher, will publish Zuihou de mimi:
AGENCE / Zhonggong shisanjie sizhong quanhui “liusi” jielun wengao (The Last Se- cret: The Final Documents From the June Fourth Crackdown), a group o speeches that top ocials delivered at the gathering. New VU
/ REDUX Century obtained the transcripts (and two sets o written remarks) from a party ocial who managed to make copies at the time. In 2001, this magazine published excerpts from The Tiananmen Papers, a series
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o ocial reports and meeting minutes that had been secretly spirited out o China and that documented the Ãerce debates and contentious decision-making that unfolded as the party reacted to the protests in the spring o 1989. Now, these newly leaked speeches shed light on what happened after the crackdown, making clear the lessons party leaders drew from the Tiananmen crisis: Ãrst, that the Chinese Com- munist Party is under permanent siege from enemies at home collud- ing with enemies abroad; second, that economic reform must take a back seat to ideological discipline and social control; and third, that the party will fall to its enemies i it allows itsel to be internally divided. The speeches oer a remarkable behind-the-scenes look at authori- tarian political culture in action—and a sign o what was to come in China as, in later decades, the party resorted to ever more sophisti- cated and intrusive forms o control to combat the forces oÊ liberaliza- tion. Reading the transcripts, one can see serving ocials closing ranks with the elderly retired ocials who still held great sway in the early post-Mao period. Those who had long feared that Deng’s re- forms were too liberal welcomed the crackdown, and those who had long favored liberal reforms fell into line. The speeches also make clear how the lessons taken from Tianan- men continue to guide Chinese leadership today: one can draw a di- rect line connecting the ideas and sentiments expressed at the June 1989 Politburo meeting to the hard-line approach to reform and dis- sent that President Xi Jinping is following today. The rest o the world may be marking the 30-year anniversary o the Tiananmen crisis as a crucial episode in China’s recent past. For the Chinese government, however, Tiananmen remains a frightening portent. Even though the regime has wiped the events o June 4 from the memories o most o China’s people, they are still living in the aftermath.
THE PARTY LINE Participants in the enlarged Politburo meeting were not convened to debate the wisdom o Deng’s decisions. Rather, they were summoned to perform a loyalty ritual, in which each speaker armed his support by endorsing two documents: a speech that Deng gave on June 9 to express gratitude to the troops who had carried out the crackdown and a report prepared by Zhao’s hard-line rival, Premier Li Peng, de- tailing Zhao’s errors in handling the crisis. (Those two documents have long been publicly available.)
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It is not clear who, exactly, attended the Politburo meeting. But at least 17 people spoke, and each began his remarks with the words “I completely agree with” or “I completely support,” referring to Deng’s speech and Li’s report. All agreed that the student demonstrations had started as a “disturbance” (often translated as “turmoil”). They agreed that only when the demonstrators resisted the entry o troops into Bei- jing on June 2 did the situation turn into a “counterrevolutionary riot” that had to be put down by force. Each speech added personal insights, which served to demonstrate the sincerity o the speaker’s support for Deng’s line. Through this ceremony o armation, a divided party sought to turn the page and reassert control over a sullen society. In analyzing why a “disturbance” had occurred in the Ãrst place, and why it evolved into a riot, the speakers revealed a profound para- noia about domestic and foreign enemies. Xu Xiangqian, a retired marshal in the People’s Liberation Army, stated: The facts prove that the turmoil o the past month and more, which Ãnally developed into a counterrevolutionary riot, was the result o the linkup o domestic and foreign counterrevolutionary forces, the result o the long-term Áourishing oÊ bourgeois liberalization. . . . Their goal was a wild plan to overturn the leadership o the Chinese Com- munist Party, to topple the socialist People’s Republic o China, and to establish a bourgeois republic that would be anticommunist, anti- socialist, and in complete vassalage to the Western powers.
Peng Zhen, the former chair o the Standing Committee o the National People’s Congress, echoed those sentiments: For some time, an extremely small group o people who stubbornly promoted bourgeois liberalization cooperated with foreign hostile forces to call for revising our constitution, schemed to destroy [Deng’s] Four Cardinal Principles [for upholding socialism and Com- munist Party rule] and to tear down the cornerstones o our country; they schemed to change . . . our country’s basic political system and to promote in its place an American-style separation o three powers; they schemed to change our People’s Republic o democratic central- ism led by the working class and based on the worker-peasant alliance into a totally westernized state o capitalist dictatorship.
Others put an even Ãner point on this theme, evoking the early days o the Cold War to warn o American subversion. “Forty years
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ago, [U.S. Secretary o State John Foster] Dulles said that the hope for the restoration [o capitalism] in China rested on the third or fourth [postcommunist] generation,” railed Song Renqiong, the vice chair o the party’s Central Advisory Commission. “Now, the state o political ideology among a portion o the youth is worrisome. We must not let Dulles’ prediction come true.”
THE FALL GUY Many speakers contended that ideological rot had set in under Hu, Zhao’s predecessor. Hu had served as general secretary from 1982 to 1987, when Deng’s reform policy began to introduce foreign trade and investment, private enterprise, and elements o market pricing. Along with these reforms, China had seen an inÁux o pro-Western ideas among journalists, writers, academics, students, the newly emerging class o private entrepreneurs, and even the general public. The conser- vatives who had prevailed on Deng to remove Hu from oce had blamed Hu for failing to stem this trend. They had hoped that Zhao would do better. Instead, they charged, Zhao did not pay sucient attention to ideological discipline, and the party lost control over public opinion. The speakers at the Politburo meeting believed that most o the people who had joined in the demonstrations were misguided but not hostile to the regime. They had been manipulated by “an extremely small number oÊ bad people,” as one put it. Song Ping, an economic planner and Politburo member, even claimed that Zhao and his re- formist allies had hatched a nefarious plot to split the party, overthrow Deng, and democratize China. Several other speakers supported this idea, without oering proof. The speakers also railed against foreign enemies who they alleged had colluded to worsen the crisis. According to Song, “During the stu- dent movement, the United States stuck its hands in, in many ways. The Voice o America spread rumors and incitement every day, trying to make sure that China would stay in chaos.” Vice President Wang Zhen expressed a widely shared view that Washington’s interference was just the latest move in a decades-long plot to overthrow communism: After the October Revolution [o 1917], 14 imperialist countries inter- vened militarily in the newborn Soviet regime, and Hitler attacked in 1941. After World War II, U.S. imperialists supported Chiang Kai- shek in the Chinese Civil War and then invaded Korea and Vietnam.
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Global Data Shock Russian Nuclear Strategic Ambiguity, Orthodoxy Deception, and Religion, Politics, Surprise in an Age of and Strategy Information Overload Dmitry Adamsky Robert Mandel
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Now they’d like to achieve their goal the easy way, by using “peaceful evolution”: . . . buying people with money, cultural and ideological subversion, sending spies, stealing intelligence, producing rumors, stimulating turmoil, supporting our internal hostile forces, every- thing short o direct invasion.
By demonizing domestic critics and exaggerating the role o for- eign forces, the victorious conservatives revealed their blindness to the real problems aecting their regime. Prime among them was the alienation that the party’s atavistic methods o political control had produced in students, intellectuals, and the rising middle class. In- stead, they blamed the reforms. The party’s now ascendant conserva- tive faction had been worried about Deng’s policies all along, as Zhao recounted in his secretly composed and posthumously published memoir, Prisoner of the State. He had battled conservative critics throughout his tenure as premier (from 1980 to 1987), when he served as the chie implementer o Deng’s vision, and Deng had often been forced to compromise on his ambitions in order to placate hard-liners. The conservatives who condemned Zhao at the Politburo meeting often did so by attacking policies that were actually Deng’s. Wang, for example, warned that economic reforms were leading China into a convergence with the West, but he pretended that these reform ideas were Zhao’s, not Deng’s. (He and others referred to Zhao as “com- rade” because Zhao was still a party member.) Wang said: We need to acknowledge that the reform and opening that Comrade Xiaoping talked about was dierent in its essence from the reform and opening that Comrade Zhao Ziyang talked about. Comrade Xiaoping’s reform and opening aimed to uphold national sovereignty and ethnic respect, uphold the socialist road, uphold the combination o planned economy and market regulation, continue to protect the creative spirit oÊ bitter struggle and to direct investment toward basic industries and agriculture. Comrade Zhao Ziyang’s reform and open- ing was to take the capitalist road, increase consumption, generate waste and corruption. Comrade Zhao Ziyang was deÃnitely not the implementer o Comrade Xiaoping’s reform-and-opening policy but the distorter and destroyer o it.
Speakers also pilloried Zhao for failing to adequately support the People’s Liberation Army, even though military aairs had been un-
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der Deng’s control. Marshal Nie Rongzhen defended the military’s centrality to the stability o the state in stark terms: In recent years, with the relaxation o the international situation and under the inÁuence o the bourgeois liberal thought trend, our aware- ness o the need for dictatorship [that is, armed force as a guarantee o regime stability] weakened, political thought work became lax, and some comrades mistakenly thought that the military was not important and lashed out at military personnel. There The Politburo speeches were some conÁicts between military betrayed the lack of units and local authorities in places solutions that the party where they were stationed. At the same time, some o our comrades in the mili- leadership was able to oer tary were not at ease in their work and for China’s problems. wanted to be demobilized and return home, where they thought they had better prospects. All this is extremely wrong. I think these comrades’ thinking is clear now, thanks to the bloody lesson we have just had: the barrel o the gun cannot be thrown down! Although policy disagreements among the party’s leadership had paved the way for the Tiananmen crisis, the armed crackdown did noth- ing to set a clear path forward. Indeed, the Politburo speeches betrayed the lack o solutions that the party leadership was able to oer for China’s problems, as members fell back on hollow slogans, with calls to “strengthen party spirit and wipe out factionalism” and to “unify the masses, revitalize the national spirit, and promote patriotic thought.” Owing to this paucity o genuine policy thinking, the consensus that formed in the wake oÊ Tiananmen was fragile from the start. A few days after the Politburo meeting, the party gathered its full 175-person Central Committee, together with alternates, members o the Central Advisory Commission, and high-ranking observers, for the Fourth Plenum o the 13th Central Committee. Zhao’s successor as general secretary, Jiang Zemin, delivered a speech in which he tried to fudge the dierences between Deng and the conservatives. He claimed that Deng had never wanted to loosen ideological discipline: “From 1979 to 1989, Comrade Xiaoping has repeatedly insisted on the need to expand the education and the struggle to Ãrmly support the Four Cardinal Principles and oppose bourgeois liberalization. But these important views o Comrade Xiaoping were not thoroughly
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implemented.” Jiang pledged to unify the party and to seek advice from “the old generation o revolutionaries.” Despite Jiang’s promises, the former Politburo member Bo Yibo worried that the new leadership would continue to face opposition. “We cannot aord another occurrence” o division, he warned. “In my view, history will not allow us to go through [a leadership purge] again.” After 1989, the conservatives remained ascendant for three years, until the aging Deng made his attention-getting “trip to the South” in 1992. By visiting “special economic zones” (places where the govern- ment allowed foreign-invested, export-oriented enterprises to operate) and issuing statements such as “whoever is against reform must leave oce,” Deng forced Jiang and his colleagues to resume economic liber- alization. This was Deng’s last political act. It helped usher in rapid economic growth but did nothing to revive political liberalization.
CORE BELIEFS After coming to power in the wake o the Tiananmen crisis, Jiang spent more than a dozen years as general secretary, from 1989 to 2002. But like Zhao, he was never able to achieve complete control over the party. Indeed, none o Zhao’s successors was able to do so—until Xi. Zhao’s failure on this count was discussed at the enlarged Politburo meeting in a way that reveals why the Chinese system tends toward one-man rule, despite the costs and risks o concentrated power. The words o President Yang Shangkun are especially interesting because he was Deng’s most trusted lieutenant and personal represen- tative and in that capacity had participated as an observer and media- tor in a series o crucial Politburo Standing Committee meetings during the Tiananmen crisis. He also served as Deng’s emissary to the military during the crackdown. Yang faulted Zhao for failing to make himsel what would later be called a “core” (hexin) leader—that is, for failing to build a working consensus among all the other senior acting and retired leaders, even though many o them fundamentally dis- agreed with him. Zhao, he complained, “did not accept the opinions raised by others, nor did he perform any serious self-criticism. On the contrary, he kept the other members at a distance and did things by himself, which pushed the work o the Standing Committee into a situation where there was only a practical division oÊ labor and not a collective leadership. This was a serious violation o the supreme or- ganizational principle o collective leadership o the party.”
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What does it mean to establish an eective collective leadership? Peng, the former chair o the Standing Committee o the National People’s Congress, explained how it worked as an ideal: In the party, . . . we should and must implement complete, true, high- level democracy. In discussing issues, every opinion can be voiced, whoever is correct should be obeyed, everyone is equal before the truth. It is forbidden to report only good news and not bad news, to refuse to listen to diering opinions. I a discussion does not lead to full unanimity, what to do? The minority must follow the majority. Only in this way can the Four Cardinal Principles be upheld, the en- tire party uniÃed, the people uniÃed.
But the party has seldom, i ever, achieved this ideal. Zhao, his crit- ics agreed, never found a way to work with those who disagreed with him and instead listened to the wrong people. “He took advice only from his own familiar group o advisers,” Song Ping charged. “[We should not] lightly trust ill-considered advice to make wholesale use oÊ Western theories put forward by people whose Marxist training is superÃcial, whose expertise is inÃrm, and who don’t have a deep un- derstanding o China’s national conditions.” Zhao’s detractors complained that instead o trying to persuade them, Zhao would turn to Deng for support. Wan Li, chair o the Standing Committee o the National People’s Congress, complained that at a meeting in December 1988, Zhao ignored critical comments. “Worse,” Wan declared, “he went and reported to Comrade Xiaoping what [the critics] had said, and then . . . bragged about how Comrade Xiaoping supported him. Isn’t this using Comrade Xiaoping to sup- press democracy?”
THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD These vivid portrayals oÊ life at the top—rife with factionalism and backstabbing—demonstrate the dilemma created by the party’s leader- ship doctrine. The leader must solve problems decisively while also accepting, and even inviting, criticism and dissent from a host o elders and rivals who, given the complexity o China’s problems, are bound to have dierent ideas about what to do. Mao Zedong did not do so (he purged a long series o rivals instead), and neither did Deng, who con- tended with powerful equals who frequently forced him to rein in his reform ideas. Deng devised the idea o a core leader after the Tianan-
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men crisis to encapsulate this demand, reÁecting his and other senior leaders’ anxiety that an inability to work together would cripple the leading group going forward, as it had done in the recent crisis. Although the Ãrst post-Tiananmen leader, Jiang, claimed the label o “core,” he did not establish true dominance over the system, and his successor, Hu Jintao, did not even claim the label. Xi has made him- sel a true core and awarded himsel the label in 2016, after four years in oce. He achieved that position by purging all possible rivals, packing the Politburo and the Central Military Commission with people loyal to him, creating an atmosphere o fear in the party and the military with an anticorruption campaign that targeted his oppo- nents, and moving quickly to crush any sign o dissent from lawyers, feminists, environmental campaigners, and ordinary citizens. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, the Chinese political system abhors genuine democracy and presses its leaders toward dictatorship. Yet centralized leadership has not resolved the abiding contradiction between reform and control that generated the Tiananmen crisis 30 years ago. The more China pursues wealth and power through domes- tic modernization and engagement with the global economy, the more students, intellectuals, and the rising middle class become unwilling to adhere to a 1950s-style ideological conformity, and the more conserva- tive party elites react to social change by calling for more discipline in the party and conformity in society. That tension has only worsened as Xi has raised incomes, expanded higher education, moved people to the cities, and encouraged consumption. China now has a large, pros- perous middle class that is quiescent out o realistic caution but yearns for more freedom. Xi has responded by strengthening the state’s grip on the Internet and other media sources, intensifying propaganda, con- straining academic freedom, expanding surveillance, Ãercely repress- ing ethnic minorities in western China, and arresting lawyers, feminists, and other activists who dare to push for the rule oÊ law. Marshal Nie was right when he told the post-Tiananmen Politburo meeting that “the counterrevolutionary riot has been paciÃed, but the thought trend oÊ bourgeois liberalization is far from being eliminated. The battle to occupy the ideological front will remain a bitter one. We must resolve to Ãght a protracted battle; we must prepare for several generations to battle for several decades!” The party did indeed pre- pare, and the battle rages on today, with Xi counting on the power concentrated in his hands to stave o divisions within the party and
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opposition in society. So far, he seems to have succeeded: economic development has continued, and another episode o dissent on the scale o the Tiananmen incident seems unthinkable today. But Xi’s form oÊ leadership creates its own dangers. Within the party, there is much private grumbling about the demand for loyalty to a vacuous ideology and what is in eect a ban on the discussion o policy. In the wider society, the intensity o control builds up psycho- logical forces o resistance that could explode with considerable force i the regime ever falters, either in its performance or in its will to power. What is more, Xi’s placing himsel in an unassailable power posi- tion, with no rivals and no limitation on his time in oce—in 2018, Xi pushed through the removal o constitutional term limits on the state presidency—has created the conditions for a future succession crisis. When the question o succession arises, as it must in one form or another, according to the Chinese constitution, whoever is serving as vice president should succeed Xi as state president. But there is nothing on paper, and no informal norm or custom, that says who should succeed him as general secretary o the party or as chair o the Central Military Commission, positions that are far more powerful than that o state president. There is no evidence that Xi has desig- nated a successor, as Mao did, and this may be because Mao’s experi- ence showed how a designated successor can become a rival waiting in the wings. On the other hand, failing to name an heir is equally prob- lematic i one wishes to see a smooth power transition. Had Deng sided with Zhao 30 years ago and chosen a less aggres- sive response to the Tiananmen demonstrations, the Chinese Com- munist Party might very well still be in control today, because nothing that Zhao said during the crisis, or in the several publications that re- Áected his views during the period oÊ his house arrest, indicated that he wanted to open China up to multiparty political competition. Zhao claimed that the ruling party could trust the people and therefore could allow the press to report the truth (or at least more o it), could con- duct dialogue with the students and other petitioners, could loosen the constraints on civil society organizations, could make the courts more independent, and could give more power to an elected legislature. He thought those changes would make the party more legitimate, not less, and would make one-party rule more stable. But China took another path. Today it has a regime that is stronger on the surface than at any time since the height o Mao’s power, but also more brittle.∂
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A World Safe for Autocracy? China’s Rise and the Future o Global Politics Jessica Chen Weiss
he Chinese people, President Xi Jinping proclaimed in 2016, “are fully conÃdent in oering a China solution to humani- Tty’s search for better social systems.” A year later, he declared that China was “blazing a new trail for other developing countries to achieve modernization.” Such claims come as the Chinese Commu- nist Party (¡) has been extending its reach overseas and reverting to a more repressive dictatorship under Xi after experimenting with a somewhat more pluralistic, responsive mode o authoritarianism. Many Western politicians have watched this authoritarian turn at home and search for inÁuence abroad and concluded that China is engaged in a life-and-death attempt to defeat democracy—a struggle it may even be winning. In Washington, the pendulum has swung from a consensus supporting engagement with China to one calling for competition or even containment in a new Cold War, driven in part by concerns that an emboldened China is seeking to spread its own model o domestic and international order. Last October, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence decried China’s “whole-of-government” eort to inÁuence U.S. domestic politics and policy. In February, Christopher Wray, the director o the µ, went further: the danger from China, he said, was “not just a whole-of-government threat but a whole-of-society threat.” Such warnings reÁect a mounting fear that China represents a threat not just to speciÃc U.S. interests but also to the very survival o democracy and the U.S.-led international order.
JESSICA CHEN WEISS is Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University and the author of Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations.
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The view from Beijing: a Chinese-built bridge in Maputo, Mozambique, May 2018
This fear gets the challenge from Beijing wrong. Not since the days o Mao Zedong has China sought to export revolution or topple democ- racy. Under Xi, the ¡ has promoted “the Chinese dream,” a parochial vision o national rejuvenation that has little international appeal. Chi- na’s remarkable economic growth under previous leaders came from WANG experimentation and Áexibility, not a coherent “China model.”
TENG Since 2012, China’s growing authoritarianism and resurgent state dominance over the economy have dashed Western hopes that China / XINHUA would eventually embrace liberalism. And China’s actions abroad have oered alternatives to U.S.-led international institutions, made EYEVINE / the world safer for other authoritarian governments, and under- mined liberal values. But those developments reÁect less a grand
/ REDUX strategic eort to undermine democracy and spread autocracy than the Chinese leadership’s desire to secure its position at home and abroad. Its eorts to revise and work around international institu-
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tions are the result o pragmatic decisions about Chinese interests rather than a wholesale rejection o the U.S.-led international order. Beijing’s behavior suggests that China is a disgruntled and increas- ingly ambitious stakeholder in that order, not an implacable enemy o it. In seeking to make the world safer for the ¡, Beijing has re- jected universal values and made it easier for authoritarian states to coexist alongside democracies. And within democracies, the ¡’s attempts to squelch overseas opposition to its rule have had a cor- rosive inÁuence on free speech and free society, particularly among the Chinese diaspora. These are real challenges, but they do not yet amount to an exis- tential threat to the international order or liberal democracy. Suc- cessfully competing with China will require more precisely understanding its motives and actions and developing tough but nu- anced responses. Overreacting by framing competition with China in civilizational or ideological terms risks backÃring by turning China into what many in Washington fear it already is.
NOT MADE FOR EXPORT Although Xi has proudly advertised in his rhetoric a Chinese example that other societies could emulate, he has also qualiÃed such state- ments. In 2017, two months after touting China’s modernization at the 19th Party Congress, he told a high-level gathering o foreign leaders that “managing our own aairs well is China’s biggest contri- bution to building a community with a shared future for humanity.” He went on: “We will not ‘import’ a foreign model. Nor will we ‘ex- port’ a China model, nor ask others to ‘copy’ Chinese methods.” That statement was a reiteration o the Chinese leadership’s line ever since it began to reform and open up the economy in the late 1970s. Chinese ocials have consistently stressed the unique character o China’s development path. And no wonder: neither China’s economic nor its political model is well suited for export. As the economist Barry Naughton has noted, China has beneÃted from at least three unique economic conditions: an enormous internal market, abundant labor, and a hierarchical authoritar- ian government committed to a transition away from a planned economy. None o these conditions will be easy for other developing states to copy. I there is a general principle underlying China’s development, it is pragmatism and a willingness to experiment, rather than any particular
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economic orthodoxy. In the words o the political scientist Yuen Yuen Ang, “directed improvisation,” rather than state control, brought about China’s economic miracle. The introduction o markets and competi- tion into a state-run economy drove much o China’s growth before 2012, when the state began reasserting its dominance over the economy. Other authoritarian-minded leaders may look to the ¡’s long reign with envy, but they will have trouble emulating China’s political system. Xi and his predecessors have relied on the ¡’s pervasive reach in Chinese society to maintain their rule, backstopped by an internal security apparatus that by 2011 cost more than the Chinese military. Despite its Marxist-Leninist roots, the ¡ has been ideo- logically opportunistic, embracing capitalism and alternately rejecting and celebrating traditional Chinese philosophies such as Confucian- ism. Responsiveness to public criticism has also helped the ¡ sur- vive policy mistakes and improve governance. But the party’s recent moves to dominate society and curtail public discussion risk returning China to a more brittle past. Last year, the Chinese leadership proclaimed “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” as its guiding ideology, enshrining it in the Chinese constitution and promoting it to Chinese citizens with a smartphone app. Xi’s signature “Chinese dream” is a nationalist vision focused on delivering wealth and power to the Chinese people, with the ¡ in command. As the legal scholar Marga- ret Lewis has written, “China’s Party-state structure is rooted in a par- ticular history that does not lend itsel to an easy copy-and-paste abroad.”
A HELPING HAND FOR AUTOCRATS Yet China has still made it easier for authoritarianism to thrive else- where. The country’s four decades o rapid economic growth have demonstrated that development does not require democracy. In the words o the political scientist Seva Gunitsky, “Material success . . . often creates its own legitimacy: regimes become morally appealing simply by virtue o their triumph.” Beijing also supports autocracies in more direct ways, especially through international institutions. Along with Russia, China has reg- ularly used its veto in the ¤ Security Council to shield other au- thoritarian countries from international demands to protect human rights and to block interventions that would force governments to end abuses. China has styled itsel as a conservative defender o interna-
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tional norms, protecting state sovereignty against what it sees as un- lawful humanitarian interventions. China’s growing economic clout has also led other states, particularly those in Africa and Latin Amer- ica that trade heavily with China, to join Beijing in opposing human rights resolutions in the ¤ General Assembly. But China has not always used its power in the ¤ Security Coun- cil to defend authoritarian states from Neither China’s economic international pressure. It has voted several times for ¤ sanctions resolu- nor its political model is tions against Iran and North Korea well suited for export. and has pushed other countries, in- cluding Myanmar and Sudan, to curb political violence. “Despite its equivocations,” the political scientist Joel Wuthnow has pointed out, “China cannot be simply described as a patron o rogue regimes.” For example, in the early years o this century, when the Sudanese government was carrying out a campaign o genocidal violence in Darfur, China sold weapons to the regime and tried to temper inter- national sanctions. But under international pressure in advance o the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China prevailed on Khartoum to accept a peacekeeping force that included Chinese peacekeepers. In 2011, Beijing surprised many international observers by voting for sanctions against Libya and in favor o referring the Libyan dic- tator Muammar al-Qaddaà to the International Criminal Court. China then chose not to block a ¤ Security Council resolution au- thorizing the military intervention in Libya that led to QaddaÃ’s vio- lent ouster. Having learned from that experience, during the civil war in Syria, China has reserved its veto for those resolutions it be- lieves threaten forcible regime change. China’s overall approach to the ¤ reÁects a conservative position on the balance between sover- eignty and human rights, tempered by a desire to avoid the political costs o taking unpopular stands. Critics often accuse Beijing o supporting authoritarian countries by providing them with unconditional loans and aid. There is some truth to this claim, but the picture is more complicated than critics usually suggest. China’s ocial development assistance tends to fol- low its political interests rather than target particular types o govern- ments according to their level o democracy or corruption. China also provides an attractive alternative source o Ãnance to governments
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unable or unwilling to meet the requirements o other international lenders. Indeed, compared with other international sources o Ãnance, Chinese loans may actually operate more eectively in badly gov- erned places, as they are often tied to speciÃc infrastructure projects, such as new roads, schools, power plants, or sewage systems. Com- plaints that Beijing’s lending props up dictators can also ring hollow given the long record o the U.S. government, international banks, and multinational oil and mining corporations sustaining strategically important or resource-rich dictatorships. China has also begun to introduce requirements on Chinese compa- nies aimed at reducing the negative eects o investments on local com- munities and curtailing vanity projects, although Beijing’s diplomatic and strategic interests can still override these concerns. Under interna- tional pressure, the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has adopted norms about the environmental and social consequences o its policies similar to those in developed countries. In April, Christine Lagarde, the managing director o the International Monetary Fund, applauded Beijing’s announcement o a debt-sustainability framework in response to international criticism o Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative. Chinese aid and Ãnance may not improve governance in the develop- ing world, but it’s not clear that they will worsen it either. China also rightly gets heat from Western observers for exporting surveillance and censorship technologies. China’s heavy investments in these technologies have made it cheaper for other authoritarian and would-be authoritarian regimes to mon- itor their citizens. Chinese companies have sold surveillance systems, includ- China’s four decades of ing ¬-powered facial recognition tech- rapid economic growth nology, to several countries, including have demonstrated that Ecuador, Iran, Kenya, Venezuela, and development does not Zimbabwe. Some government ocials around the world look to China’s exam- require democracy. ple when it comes to managing the In- ternet and social media. As Tanzania’s deputy minister for transport and communications noted in 2017, “Our Chinese friends have man- aged to block such media [Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram] in their country and replaced them with their homegrown sites that are safe, constructive, and popular. We aren’t there yet, but while we are still us- ing these platforms, we should guard against their misuse.”
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Yet as with Chinese lending, the story o Chinese technology is more complicated than it Ãrst appears. The diusion o digital au- thoritarianism is not the same thing as an intentional eort to remake other governments in China’s image. And repression is not the only use for many o the technologies China exports. The Chinese tele- communications company Ó¢¥, for instance, has been criticized for helping develop Venezuela’s new national identity card system, which the Venezuelan authorities realized, after a visit to Shenzhen in 2008, would allow them to monitor citizens’ behavior. But China isn’t the only exporter o electronic identiÃcation systems. A recent article published by the Council on Foreign Relations, for example, praised British-made electronic ² cards that would “allow Rwandans to e- ciently access government services.” When the U.S. Commerce De- partment considered banning the export o technology that could be used for surveillance, many U.S. technology companies pointed out that such technology also protects digital networks from intruders. Although these systems can help governments monitor and control their people, how exactly they are used depends on local politics. Cameras can replace more brute-force methods o surveillance, as in Ecuador, which, beginning in 2011, installed a monitoring system with China’s help. But as The New York Times reported, many Ecua- dorians have complained that the system hasn’t done enough to cut crime, as the authorities haven’t hired enough police ocers to moni- tor the footage or respond to crimes caught on camera. And the Ec- uadorian administration that came to power in 2017, which has pledged to reverse some o its predecessor’s autocratic policies, has begun an investigation into alleged abuses o the monitoring system, including inviting the Times to review its records. Ultimately, the political eects o technology can cut both ways. Just as the Internet did not bring democratic freedom to every coun- try, so surveillance technology does not magically enable governments to control society. Technology can empower the state, but strong democratic institutions can also constrain the power o technology. Many Western leaders also worry that Beijing is working to under- mine democratic systems. The openness o democratic societies has allowed their adversaries, primarily Russia, to sow discord, paralyze debate, and inÁuence elections. Although there is no evidence that China has illegally interfered in U.S. elections, despite allegations by U.S. President Donald Trump, some o the ¡’s overseas activities
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have stiÁed open discussion, particularly among the Chinese diaspora. Yet Beijing’s aim is to advance its interests and portray Chinese ac- tions in a positive light, not to export a particular form o government. Beijing has devoted resources to improving China’s image, some- times in worrying ways. Since 2004, Beijing has funded several hun- dred Confucius Institutes, which teach Mandarin, around the world. Concerns that the institutes infringe on academic freedom have led universities Most people around the to close a number o them and academ- ics to call for greater transparency in world still prefer U.S. their operations. Beijing has also leadership to the prospect of strengthened what it calls its “discourse Chinese leadership. power” by investing in English-language print and broadcast media, including the China Daily insert in The Des Moines Register that Trump criticized last year. The danger is that many people may not notice that the news they are reading or watching is paid for by the Chinese government. Beijing has become more aggressive in its use o what the National Endowment for Democracy experts Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig have called “sharp power.” It has threatened to ban airlines, hotels, and other international corporations from operating in China unless they toe the party’s line on Taiwan and Tibet. Last year, for example, American Airlines, Delta, and United all removed references to Taiwan from their websites at the insistence o the Chinese government. Beijing has also used a variety o tactics to co-opt and intimidate the Chinese diaspora. In particular, it has bought or leaned on Chinese- language media outlets abroad in order to suppress criticism o the ¡. Some o the most alarming evidence o China’s inÁuence has come from Australia and New Zealand. In Australia, a storm o con- troversy around Beijing-linked political donations, pressure, and compromising relationships recently resulted in new laws against foreign interference. These eorts to coerce the Chinese diaspora, combined with Beijing’s campaign to shape the international media narrative about China, go well beyond so-called soft power. Although the ¡’s primary purpose is not to undermine democracy, its activities threaten the healthy functioning o democratic civil society and the public’s access to alternative sources o information. Yet Western countries should recognize that the threat comes from the ¡, not the Chinese people or the Chinese diaspora. I
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governments pass and enforce laws against foreign interference, Chinese eorts need not constitute an existential threat to liberal democracy.
HOW THE PARTY HURTS ITSELF In making the world safer for the ¡’s interests, Beijing has pro- jected a parochial, ethnocentric brand o authoritarian nationalism. That vision may be intended to help preserve the ¡’s domestic rule, but it is more likely to repel international audiences than attract them. Xi’s signature slogan, “the Chinese dream,” reÁects a self-centered ¡ rhetoric that is likely to prevent Chinese political concepts from gaining universal appeal. Growing repression at home is also tarnishing China’s image abroad. Over the past two years, the ¡ has built a dystopian police state in the northwestern region o Xinjiang and a network o intern- ment camps to detain as many as one million o the Muslim Uighur community. The scale and intensity o the ¡’s attempt to “reeducate” the Uighurs have drawn condemnation from the international human rights community, as well as statements o concern from the Organi- zation o Islamic Cooperation and political leaders in Indonesia, Ma- laysia, and Turkey, all three o which are Muslim-majority countries important to Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative. Polls o global public opinion suggest that most people around the world still prefer U.S. leadership to the prospect o Chinese leader- ship. In a survey o people in 25 countries conducted by the Pew Re- search Center last year, respondents were asked to state whether U.S. or Chinese leadership would be better for the world. An average o 63 percent said they would prefer U.S. leadership; just 19 percent opted for Chinese leadership. Even within China, many Chinese citizens are dubious o the ¡’s heavy-handed nationalist propaganda and the personality cult grow- ing around Xi. In 2012, the year Xi took the helm, a massive wave o anti-Japanese protests swept China. Since then, the Chinese govern- ment has kept a tight leash on grass-roots activism and promoted state-led nationalism in its place. The ¡ has rolled out new holidays to commemorate World War II, blockbuster Ãlms to celebrate China’s military prowess, and a smartphone app, Study the Great Nation, to promote “Xi Jinping Thought.” Blanketing the airwaves and the Internet with propaganda may foster the appearance o conformity, but it can also hide public disenchant-
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ment. In my conversations with Chinese citizens and scholars, many said they felt paralyzed by the political climate; one scholar in Beijing even said that he was afraid o speaking honestly for fear o retaliation in “a new Cultural Revolution.” An extensive crackdown on corruption has also stiÁed policy initiatives at lower levels o government, as ocials fear that taking any action will lead to retribution. Echoing the dismay o many Chinese elites at Xi’s move to scrap presidential term limits, the Chinese law professor Xu Zhangrun published an online critique o Xi’s turn toward one-man rule, which led to Xu’s suspension from Tsinghua University. Xu wrote that “people nationwide, including the entire bu- reaucratic elite, feel once more lost in uncertainty about the direction o the country” under Xi and warned that “the rising anxiety has spread into a degree o panic throughout society.” Despite this discontent, opin- ions polls in China show that the public is still quite hawkish, putting pressure on the leadership to stand tough in international disputes. Overseas, China’s policies are arousing fear and suspicion in the very societies whose goodwill China needs i it is to maintain access to foreign markets, resources, and technology. In the South China Sea, Beijing has artiÃcially enlarged islands to support advanced military capabilities and claimed the right to Ãsh and extract oil and gas, stoking resentment and anti-China protests in the Philippines and Vietnam. Its actions have even aroused suspicion in countries, such as Indonesia, that do not have competing territorial claims in the South China Sea. China’s state-directed eorts to dominate emerging technologies, such as its Made in China 2025 program, have added to fears that open trade, investment, and research will undermine U.S. national security. In the United States and Europe, trade deÃcits and a back- lash against globalization have made China an easy target for resur- gent nationalism. Many politicians, especially those who otherwise support free trade, have found it convenient to bash China.
GETTING CHINA RIGHT I Beijing were truly bent on destroying democracy and spreading authoritarianism, containment might be the right response. But a U.S. strategy o countering Chinese inÁuence everywhere it appears in the name o Ãghting an ideological battle against a hostile civiliza- tion would be dangerously misguided. Such a strategy would damage U.S. economic growth and innovation, limit the freedom and open- ness o U.S. society, and risk becoming a self-fulÃlling prophecy.
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Democracy has retreated across the globe, but critics often exagger- ate Beijing’s role in that trend. The ¡ welcomes democratic dys- function abroad, as it makes the party look better by comparison. But democratic backsliding does not reÁect a grand strategic plan in Bei- jing. The best approach for those who wish to counter the spread o authoritarianism is to defend and restore democracy. The United States should recommit itsel to certain basic principles: the rule o law, fair elections, free speech, and freedom o the press. Where Chi- nese actions violate those principles, the United States should con- front those responsible and join other like-minded governments to protect shared values. By recommitting to working with democratic allies and multilateral institutions, the United States could renew faith in its leadership. When Chinese actions do not violate democratic principles, the United States should work with China to address common problems. Other countries will not be able to solve the greatest challenge hu- manity faces—climate change—without China’s help. Under Xi, the Chinese public has acquired a taste for international leadership. Gov- ernments should welcome that trend when Chinese leadership prom- ises to advance the global good, while criticizing Chinese actions when they fall short. Such a strategy has the added beneÃt oÊ being more likely to win support from those within China who are seeking change. At home and abroad, the ¡ is Ãghting a defensive ideological battle against liberal norms o democracy and human rights, but so far at least, it is not engaged in a determined eort to spread autocracy. In order to respond to Beijing’s actions eectively, the United States and its allies will need to be more precise about what exactly China is doing. In the end, the best way to respond to China is to make democ- racy work better. That would set an example for others to follow and allow the democratic world to compete with the true sources o Chi- na’s international power: its economic and technological might.∂
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SETTING DOWN A NEW PATH hen France elected its youngest-ever president in 2017, millions of its citizens were eager to see huge changes they hoped would jump start their declining economy. But, over the past Wtwo years, the road has been rocky for Emmanuel Macron, who had faced the unenviable task of implementing drastic economic measures without eliminating state subsidies.
Beyond the headline-grab- As the country’s capital, health, energy, mobility, in forming minds capable of bing yellow vest movement, Paris naturally stands at among others.” navigating a world constant- Macron remains resolute in the center of this economic This is in line with national ly moving,” he added. making France more com- growth. With around 12 mil- policy: “While we want to Following that path the, petitive and more aligned lion residents, the region achieve better results and be Université Bourgogne with stronger, less regulated accounts for nearly 30% of more equitable, at the core, Franche-Comté (UBFC) be- economies elsewhere in the the country’s GDP and has the sector needs to better es- came a multidisciplinary world. the highest concentration of tablish its world leadership,” research university follow- This year, France climbed Fortune 500 companies in said Minister of National ing the merger of seven in- to the top five in the AT Europe. Education Jean-Michel stitutions in the Bourgogne Kearney Direct Investment Away from Paris, sev- Blanquer. Franche-Comté Region, Confidence Index, its high- eral regions across France “As the backbone of the which represented a total of est-ever ranking. have exhibited their own economy, education is crucial CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE “France is an open and strengths for attracting for- welcoming country with no eign investment and em- less than 28,000 foreign com- bracing the new economy. panies employing around “The digital and tech- 2 million people. 2018 was nological transformation the best year in the last ve occurring in France is felt years. We attracted 1,323 just as strongly here in new foreign investment Strasbourg. We have built projects, which means 25 a strong reputation for our international companies per competence in innova- week took the decision to tion,” said Eurometropolis invest in France. The num- of Strasbourg President bers speak for themselves. Robert Hermann. France’s image is improving This change could not thanks to reforms being im- have happened without the plemented,” Business France realization of France’s edu- CEO Christophe Lecourtier cational sector to also adapt said. to the rapid changes around Another objective of the the world. Some universi- Macron government is to be- ties merged to forge a more come a major contributor to visible global presence and global innovation. It has pro- stronger research capabili- vided strong support to “La ties. French Tech,” the name given Minister of Higher to the French startup ecosys- Education, Research and tem. The latest surveys show Innovation Frederique Vidal around 60% of young people shared the logic behind this: want to start their own busi- “There is a national strategy ness, up from just 13% in for research and higher edu- 2009. To date, France has es- cation. It is highly important tablished more than 300 in- to be at an international level cubators and 50 accelerators in order to tackle world is- across the whole country. sues concerning climate,
FA-FRANCE 2019.indd 1 21/05/2019 15:42 [Global Media Inc. / www.gmipost.com] SSPONSOREDPONSORED RREPORT Buy CSS Books https://cssbooks.net 60,000 students and 8,000 sta . abroad will help UBFC raise en- if those schools have their solutions to the most pressing “UBFC is responsible for the rollment of foreign students, own strengths. Artois formed world issues,” said President implementation of specific which surged 140% in its eight an alliance with its neighbors: Eric Labaye. structuring projects and pro- English-taught master degree Université du Littoral-Côte- In a fast-changing world, en- grams common to the mem- programs last year. In 2019, d’Opale and Université de gineering schools must ensure FRANCE bers’ academic, research and it will double the number of Picardie Jules Verne. its students remain relevant communication strategies. A such programs, all centered on “We want more exchanges long after they graduate. striking feature of UBFC is the three areas: advanced materials, for international research and “It is important for us to pro- use of a common scientific waves and smart systems; ter- for our masters and doctoral vide holistic growth for the signature. By going under the ritories, environment, and food; programs. We want to be more students. We not only train UBFC brand, our members in- and comprehensive individual visible in our major domains of students to get a general sense crease the region’s excellence care. research and applied learning of all key digital areas, but we and visibility in the global edu- While alliances can be given our expertise in fields also ensure that in the evolu- cation sector,” International successful models, Artois such as artificial intelligence, tion of technologists, the hu- Affairs Director Yevgenya University President social links, environmental en- man dimension of innovation Pashayan-Leroy said. Pasquale Mammone stressed ergy efficiency, and heritage is also considered,” President The increased visibility that partnerships ourish only and cross-cultural awareness,” of Institut Superieur Mammone noted. d’Electronique de Paris (ISEP) “Our ambition is two-fold: Jean-Luc Archambault said. We want to develop our inter- “We value applied learning. national activities and we want In fact, our engineers were in- to continue helping our own volved in 30 of the 100 start- region. Artois University is part ups formed in France last year,” of the administrative board of Archambault added. the region’s bodies tasked to Meanwhile, industry collabo- boost our industries here in ration and internationalization Northern France,” he added. are priorities for ENSEA, a grad- For its part, the University uate school focused on electri- of Bordeaux realized the mer- cal engineering. its of internationalization earlier “This year, we are proud to than its counterparts. For sev- say that 100% of our students eral years now, it has focused received international expe- on cultural exchange as well as rience,” Director Laurence adopting English as its medium Hafemeister said. of instruction. “This was a huge jump from UB runs several multidisci- our previous rate of 30%. It plinary international summer shows how much we value schools that lets students ex- providing our students the perience life in one of the most right multi-cultural environ- renowned regions of France. ment to reach their full poten- Regarded as the most tial. We aim to open opportu- prestigious scientific and nities for them, whether here engineering school, Ecole with our students or abroad for Polytechnique wants to sup- the French ones,” she added. ply France and the world with Already with 150 internation- future innovators. al partnerships and 30 double “Sustainable development is degree programs, ENSEA still at the core of our teaching and wants more academic and in- research. We aim to provide dustry partners.
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Buy CSS Books https://cssbooks.net By setting up ve certi ed create even more opportuni- competitiveness clusters (life ties for interdisciplinary col- sciences and therapeutic in- laboration and strengthen the FRANCE Feel the pulse of novation, urban vehicle inno- city’s reputation as an incuba- vation and mobility solutions, tor of global innovation. water quality innovation, en- Located just a few steps Europe in Strasbourg ergy efficiency, fiber-based away from NextMed is eco-materials), Eurometropolis Research Institute Against aims to create an ecosystem Digestive Cancer (IRCAD ocated only a few hours over 20% of the total student that encourages conver- France), a world-renowned from Paris, Brussels, population. gence and interdisciplinary pioneer in less invasive surgi- LFrankfurt and Munich, With four Noble Prize win- collaboration, similar to that cal techniques. Celebrating Strasbourg in the northeastern ners in Physiology or Medicine found in its sister city, Boston, its 25th anniversary this year, region of Alsace plays a large working within its walls, the Massachusetts. IRCAD allows surgeons from symbolic role in the post-war University of Strasbourg is un- “We strongly value our re- anywhere in the world to ob- European project which, over disputedly the city’s leading lationship with the city of tain high-level surgical train- several decades, has evolved academic and research insti- Boston and the United States ing. into one of the world’s most tution. Because around one- as a whole. Eli Lilly, for in- “We have gone to great successful political and eco- third Alsatians are aged 25 and stance, continues to massively lengths to create a collab- nomic blocs. under, the city has nurtured invest here with its largest orative environment within With a population of 35 mil- a robust startup climate that manufacturing site in nearby our city as we o er the foun- lion, Strasbourg is home to the attracts investors, both from Fegersheim. We have many dational elements that can European Parliament, Council France and further a eld. other American companies generate the kind of glob- of Europe, European Court of “We are at the heart of located here as well and that ally game-changing innova- Human Rights, as well as 75 Europe. While we are a city number is growing,” Hermann tion we want to be known diplomatic representations full of history and culture, said. for,” Eurometropolis of and consulates. we also have significant Drawing inspiration from Strasbourg Vice President Dubbed the Capital of strengths in technological in- Boston, Strasbourg an- Catherine Trautmann, a for- Europe, the city’s metropolitan novation, anchored by our nounced an ambitious project mer member of the European composition is strengthened universities,” Eurometropolis to transform 1.5 hectares in its Parliament and a long-time by the more than 11,000 for- of Strasbourg President city center into a techno park advocate of innovation and eign students who make up Robert Hermann said. called NextMed, which aims to entrepreneurship.
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Europe Alone What Comes After the Transatlantic Alliance Alina Polyakova and Benjamin Haddad
peaking at the Munich Security Conference in early 2019, for- mer Vice President Joe Biden had a reassuring message for Eu- Sropean politicians, diplomats, and military leaders worried about American disengagement: “We will be back.” Biden’s speech was met with applause and relief. Wait out the tenure o U.S. President Don- ald Trump, he seemed to be saying, and sooner or later, leaders can return to the transatlantic consensus that deÃned the post–World War II era. Patience is the name o the game. Biden was feeding a common but delusional hope. A new U.S. ad- ministration could assuage some o the current transatlantic tensions by, say, removing taris on European steel and aluminum or rejoining the Paris climate agreement. But these Ãxes would not deal with the prob- lem at its root. The rift between the United States and Europe did not begin with Trump, nor will it end with him. Rather than giving in to nostalgia, U.S. and European leaders should start with an honest assess- ment o the path that led them to the current crisis—the Ãrst step to building a more mature and forward-looking transatlantic partnership. The main threat to the transatlantic relationship is not a hostile White House or a decoupling o interests. Today’s crisis is Ãrst and foremost a result o the power asymmetry between the United States and Europe. For a long time, both sides accepted this imbalance, even cultivated it. Europe remained submissive in exchange for a spot un-
ALINA POLYAKOVA is Director of the Project on Democracy, Authoritarianism, and Emerging Technology and a Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution and Adjunct Professor of European Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced Interna- tional Studies. BENJAMIN HADDAD is Director of the Future Europe Initiative at the Atlantic Council and the author of Le paradis perdu: L’Amérique de Trump et la fin des illusions européennes (Paradise Lost: Trump’s America and the End of European Illusions).
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derneath the U.S. defense umbrella. For all their current hectoring about “burden sharing,” American leaders have long preferred Euro- pean free-riding to European chaos. But the end o the Cold War, 9/11, and the rise o China eventually shifted Washington’s security priorities elsewhere, leaving Europe alone and mortal. Today, the continent is “a vegetarian in a world o carnivores,” as Sigmar Gabriel, then Germany’s foreign minister, put it. The Trump administration’s Europe policy, alternating between indierence and hostility, has given this revelation a newfound urgency. For now, European visions o “strategic autonomy” from the United States, often invoked by the European Commission’s president, Jean- Claude Juncker, and French President The rift between the Emmanuel Macron, remain just that— visions. So far, a European army exists United States and Europe only in white papers. But even such did not begin with Trump, tentative proposals fuel skepticism, i nor will it end with him. not outright opposition, in Washing- ton. The fear, it seems, is that Europe’s desire to go its own way in security matters will put the continent in direct competition with the United States. U.S. policymakers would prefer Europeans to spend more on military power within the conÃnes o ¤¬¢£, an idea that is based on the assumption that a more capable Europe would still follow the United States’ lead. Yet the hope that Europe can be pushed to invest in its defense without developing more autonomous security interests is fanciful. U.S. policymakers have to make a choice. Do they prefer to maintain a weak and divided European continent that is aligned with their interests and dependent on U.S. power? Or are they ready to deal with a more forceful and autonomous partner that will some- times go against their favored policies? Europe, for its part, has a similar choice to make. It cannot claim the mantle o independent global leadership and continue to rely on the United States for its security, including in its immediate neighborhood. Reversing the trend toward European irrelevance and disunity is the responsibility o European policymakers. But the United States should not oppose these eorts, even i they end up making Europe a more dicult partner. In the long run, a strong continent that is able to defend its interests and Ãght its own battles will beneÃt Washing- ton more than a divided and weak one. The transatlantic alliance can
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and should remain the bedrock o the Western model oÊ liberal demo- cratic values and principles. But it will have to transform to meet the growing economic, security, and political challenges from China and Russia. Rather than pining for the return o a transatlantic partner- ship that will surely continue to fray, the United States and Europe must now invest in and accept the consequences o autonomy.
SLOW BURN Tales o a golden age o transatlantic unity are written with the ben- eÃt oÊ hindsight. In truth, the relationship has always been tumultu- ous. France and the United Kingdom developed their own nuclear strike capabilities in the 1950s and 1960s, against the initial objections o U.S. leaders. France even left ¤¬¢£’s integrated military command in 1966, returning only in 2009. West Germany sought a détente with East Germany in the 1970s, leading others to fear that the transatlan- tic ties uniting the West against the Eastern bloc were eroding. Events in the Middle East, above all, have sparked disagreements between the United States and Europe for decades, long before the U.S. with- drawal from the Iran nuclear deal. Nor did U.S. disengagement from Europe start with Trump’s inau- guration. Since the end o the Cold War, the United States has shown itsel willing to dismiss Europeans’ concerns and reticent to dispense blood and treasure on European soil. In 2001, President George W. Bush withdrew the United States from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol de- spite hard lobbying by Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor. France and Germany refused to join the Bush administration’s “coali- tion o the willing” in the Iraq war, a split that seemed to mark a new low in transatlantic relations. President Barack Obama poured salt on the wounds. His adminis- tration “pivoted” to Asia and pursued a “reset” with Russia. At the same time, it canceled plans to build a U.S. missile defense system in Poland with radar stations in the Czech Republic and later withdrew two U.S. Army brigades from Europe. It was only after Russia an- nexed Crimea in 2014 that the Obama administration reversed course, eventually reinstating one o the brigades and setting up the European Reassurance Initiative (now known as the European Deterrence Ini- tiative), a Pentagon fund for operations to defend European allies. But even then, Obama had harsh words for Europe, calling France and the United Kingdom “free riders” in an interview with The Atlantic.
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Put in perspective, today’s troubles are not so unusual. The current dierences between the United States and Europe over the Iran nu- clear deal pale in comparison to the split that arose when Washington opposed the British and French invasion o Egypt during the 1956 Suez crisis, the breakdown over Iraq in 2003, and the recurring dis- agreements over the Israeli-Palestinian conÁict. And yet today’s Zeit- geist o crisis and disintegration feels appropriate, likely because the Trump administration makes for a convenient scapegoat. As the jour- nalist James Kirchik put it, “blaming Trump for their problems is the one thing Europeans can agree on.” European leaders, o course, could have read the writing on the wall long before the Trump presidency and come up with a strategy for keeping the United States engaged. Instead, they have remained com- placent in their own weakness and complicit in the deterioration o the relationship, to the point where each policy disagreement—compounded by Trump’s undiplomatic rhetoric—now feels existential. Rather than lamenting the causes o an early death, both sides would be better o accepting that the alliance must change, working toward the goal o a more balanced relationship, and mitigating the inevitable fallout.
AN END TO COMPLACENCY? Europe’s predicament is clear. Without a common vision for defense, and with destabilizing pressures on its periphery, the continent will soon serve as a theater, rather than a participant, in a great-power com- petition. Russia actively supports European far-right parties and regu- larly interferes in European elections. In Ukraine, Russia has illegally annexed Crimea and fomented a slow-burning war that has killed 13,000 Ukrainians and displaced 1.5 million. Farther south, the Syrian civil war has driven millions o refugees to Europe’s shores, causing a split over immigration policy and fueling the rise o populist parties. China, for its part, has invested heavily in Europe’s ports and technol- ogy infrastructure, in part because it hopes to drive a wedge between the United States and Europe. The more internally divided Europe is, the more it will Ãnd itsel at the mercy o these opportunistic great powers. This is a recipe for a Europe once again roiled by nationalism, an ¥ that is irrelevant, and a transatlantic alliance in which Europe has little inÁuence and the United States lacks a strong partner. The only prudent way to avoid this nightmare scenario is for Europe to shed its culture o complacency in favor o autonomy. It must de-
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velop the ability to better defend itsel and pursue common European interests. The ¥’s foreign service outlined this goal in its 2016 Global Strategy, and leaders have echoed the same sentiment in speeches all over the continent. But that doesn’t mean getting there will be easy. For one, Europe will have to do more to secure neighboring regions. As the Syrian civil war has demonstrated, many European countries lack the military capacity and political will to do so. Take German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose rebuke oÊ Trumpism led many ob- servers to christen her “the new leader o the free world.” At this year’s Munich Security Conference, Merkel, usually cautious, criticized Trump’s announcement that the United States would pull out o Syria (a decision that his administration later walked back). “Is it a good thing to immediately remove American troops from Syria,” Merkel asked, “or will it not strengthen Russia and Iran’s hands?” The chancel- lor had a point: sudden U.S. disengagement from Syria might create a dangerous power vacuum, much as it did in Iraq in 2011. But Merkel’s critique rang hollow: as she took the stage to attack U.S. policy in Syria, not a single German soldier was Ãghting on the ground there. For a more assertive European security strategy, look instead to Paris. France not only committed its air force to the Ãght against the Islamic State, or , in Syria; it also pushed the United States for more joint action there. French strategists still fume over the “redline” episode in the summer o 2013, when the Obama administration ignored its own warning that chemical warfare in Syria would trigger U.S. military ac- tion. French President François Hollande, who had all but sent orders to French jets to start Áying toward Syria, felt betrayed when Washing- ton did not follow through. Looking back on the incident in 2016, Hol- lande’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, called the United States’ backtracking “a turning point, not only for the crisis in the Middle East, but also for Ukraine, Crimea, and the world.” Yet France, with its lim- ited military capacity and growing domestic woes, cannot act on its own without more backing from its European neighbors. The Europeans will also have to overcome their internal foreign policy divisions. Concerns about Chinese spying, technology theft, and hidden subsidies have led the European Commission to call China “a systemic rival” and introduce a system that screens foreign invest- ment in infrastructure, energy, defense, and the media for potential threats to European security—an initiative supported by France and Germany. Yet the screening system still lacks teeth, as it issues only
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recommendations and gives ¥ member states, many o which lack comparable national-level protections, the Ãnal say. Furthermore, Brussels’ newfound tough stance papers over divisions among mem- ber states. Italy’s populist government, for instance, is going down a dierent path, having recently become the Ãrst major European econ- omy to join Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. And the United King- dom has reportedly decided to allow the Chinese technology company Huawei to participate in building the British 5G network, despite pressure by the United States not to use any equipment manufactured by the Chinese telecommunications giant. Similar divisions plague the continent’s energy policy. Austria and Germany are moving toward completing the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would deliver Russian gas to Germany via the Baltic Sea. I completed, Nord Stream 2 would exacerbate Eu- rope’s dependence on Russian gas by doubling Russia’s export capacity. Crucially, it would allow Moscow to circumvent Ukraine entirely, thus depriving Ukraine oÊ billions in revenues from gas transit fees. The project has exposed deep divisions between the economic ambitions o individual member states and the interests o the bloc as a whole. For all these obstacles, there is still a great deal more consensus on the ¥’s foreign policy than analysts usually acknowledge. Despite pushback from incipient populist movements and domestic business interests, the ¥ has stayed Ãrm on its sanctions on Russia. Following Russian interference in U.S. and European elections, the ¥ has also taken the lead in proposing and coordinating policy to counter disin- formation, putting Europe ahead o the United States in addressing this problem. In particular, ¥ states have begun sharing more intel- ligence and have expanded a task force that monitors and exposes Russian dis- Europe must shed its information. The ¥ has also remained steadfast in its attempts to keep the culture of complacency in Iran nuclear deal alive, against U.S. ob- favor of autonomy. jections. To convince Tehran to stay in compliance with the deal and to protect European companies doing business with Iran, the ¥ has even pursued the establishment o a special-purpose Ãnancial vehicle to circumvent U.S. extraterritorial sanctions against European companies continuing to trade with Iran. Even iÊ Tehran revamps its nuclear program, as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani threatened in May, the European eort to save the
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nuclear deal shows that the continent is able to pursue a foreign policy independent from the United States. After a rude awakening to growing security issues, from the war in Ukraine to terrorist attacks and unsecured borders at the onset o the refugee crisis, European states have also begun increasing their defense investments, putting an end to the continuous decrease that had taken place since the 1990s. Although some countries, most notably Germany, still lag behind, recent trends point in the right direction. In 2016, 22 out o 28 ¥ member states increased their defense spend- ing, and the continent’s combined defense spending increased again the following year. Lithuania and Sweden even reinstated compulsory military service. In addition to greater spending at the national level, European gov- ernments are working together to build a common and ecient de- fense industry. Europe’s defense spending is second only to that o the United States, but it is beset by redundancies and ineciencies. To address this matter, in 2017, the bloc established the Permanent Structured Cooperation, or ¡¥£, a series o projects designed to avoid inecient or overlapping military investments and coordinate eorts on cyberwarfare and energy security. That same year, Euro- pean governments created the European Defence Fund, which helps Ãnance transnational defense projects. These defense investments won’t come without hurdles. As the creation o the European Defence Fund has signaled, the continent is seeking to develop its own defense industry. Yet national interests in military strategy often still diverge. Germany, for instance, banned its arms manufacturers from exporting weapons to Saudi Arabia after the murder o the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whereas France con- tinues to look to Saudi Arabia as an arms export market. Moreover, a growing European defense industry would compete with U.S. busi- nesses, adding another point o tension to the transatlantic relation- ship. Already, Washington has come under Ãre for pressuring European countries to purchase U.S.-made military equipment. In March, the French defense minister, Florence Parly, made the point that the mutual-defense provision o the ¤¬¢£ treaty does not require Euro- pean countries to buy American Ãghter jets. “It’s called Article 5, not Article F-35,” she quipped. Still, U.S. fears that Europe’s homegrown defense push is incom- patible with ¤¬¢£ are overblown. Europe’s eorts aim to address
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shortcomings in areas left vulnerable by the United States’ withdrawal from the region since the end o the Cold War. European leaders have gone out o their way to emphasize that attempts to integrate Euro- pean defense will strengthen, rather than compete with, ¤¬¢£. In- deed, the alliance has been reenergized since Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. It has carried out operations to signal its commit- ment to protect eastern Europe and has prepared rapid-response troops to shore up ¤¬¢£’s eastern Áank. N¬¢£ has also refocused on its core mission: collective territorial deterrence. And despite Trump’s public dismissals o the alliance, his administration raised spending on the European Deterrence Initiative, which clearly serves a purpose similar to ¤¬¢£’s, to $6.5 billion in Ãscal year 2019—an increase o more than $3 billion in two years.
POWER POLITICS On defense, Europe should continue to invest in ¤¬¢£ and develop a foreign policy that puts security interests above the continent’s aver- sion to foreign military engagements. More and more, Europe will need to send troops abroad to secure itselÊ by stabilizing its periphery and neighboring regions. The Balkans, for example, remain a tinder- box, especially as some states—most recently North Macedonia—join ¤¬¢£, whereas others, such as Serbia, seek favor with Russia. The situation in Syria remains fragile, and i the war there heats up, Eu- rope may have to consider military intervention to avoid another wave o refugees. European autonomy, however, is not measured in defense and se- curity terms alone. Europe should not get bogged down in the tech- nicalities o defense procurement policies or seek to create a counter weight to U.S. military power. Instead, a new European strat- egy should maximize those areas where the ¥ already has a comparative global advantage: its economic weight, its uniÃed currency, and its political and soft power. To use these advantages to their fullest extent, however, Europeans will need to intellectually reconcile themselves to power, a dicult proposition for a continent where several generations o policymak- ers, protected by the United States’ security umbrella, have come to deÃne themselves by the notion that technical cooperation could sim- ply replace relations o force on the international stage. The ¥ likes to think o itsel as a normative power, leveraging its regulatory ex-
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pertise and vast, integrated single market to shape global norms and rules on everything from environmental protection to data privacy. That U.S. companies have adopted the terms o the General Data Protection Regulation, the ¥’s ambitious data privacy law, shows how eective the bloc is at exporting its norms. Yet the ¥ has at times underestimated the importance oÊ hard power in supporting soft power. When Brussels was negotiating a free-trade agreement with Ukraine in 2014, it in essence sent well-meaning economists to a deeply geopolitical Ãght. E leaders thought o the European Neigh- borhood Policy, with its comprehensive package o reforms, as a sim- ple tool to promote good governance in ¥ border states. What they failed to appreciate was that its signiÃ- cance was more geopolitical than any- Europeans will need to thing else. Most Ukrainians saw the intellectually reconcile agreement not as a collection o tech- themselves to power, a nocratic tweaks but as an opportunity to anchor their country more fully in di¦cult proposition for Europe and thus challenge Russia. And their technocratic leaders. indeed, when Ukrainians overthrew their president after he refused to sign an association agreement with the ¥, Russian President Vladimir Putin reacted by invading eastern Ukraine and seizing Crimea. Ironically, for all the talk o Putin’s anachronistic, Machiavellian understanding o power, the Russian president was much more attuned than Brussels to the real signiÃcance o the ¥’s technocratic instruments. Europe’s timid support for Ukraine, even after Ukrainians protested—and in some cases died—while brandishing the ¥ Áag, likely emboldened Moscow to invade Ukraine, intervene in Syria, and meddle in several Western elections. Instead o mostly standing by, Europe should have seen the Euromaidan revolution as an opportunity to take a principled stance against a revisionist Russia. Europe’s eorts to reconcile itsel to power will have to include an understanding o the geopolitical role its single market can play in ensuring European sovereignty. From breaking Russian gas monopo- lies to blocking Chinese investments, the European Commission can use its regulatory bureaucratic instruments to ensure that Europe is not a theater for the actions o predatory great powers. To do so, law- makers will have to overcome their dogmatic attachment to openness and put a more realistic defense o European citizens at the core o
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the ¥’s economic policies. The same applies to immigration and asy- lum laws. More robust border controls, a basic pillar o sovereignty, would help bridge the gap between Brussels and citizens all over the continent, many o whom are concerned that ¥ institutions have not been able to protect them against what they see as unruly migrants.
NO MORE NOSTALGIA As far as Washington is concerned, a more autonomous Europe will inevitably mean more headaches and disagreements. Consider the European eorts to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Iran. Although such endeavors are largely symbolic at this stage, they could lead to a more ambitious attempt to promote the euro as an alternative reserve cur- rency, reducing Europeans’ dependence on the U.S. dollar and the U.S. Ãnancial system. This would compel the United States to rely less on the brute force o its Ãnancial dominance and more on diplo- macy and persuasion—an impulse that is anathema in U.S. diplomatic culture. Yet that is the price one pays for having serious, reliable allies. It is unrealistic to imagine that after asking a partner to take on a larger portion o its own security, your interests will magically align. U.S. policymakers simply cannot expect Europe to both increase its defense spending and remain politically passive. The good news is that Europe’s willingness to pull its own weight will, paradoxically, go a long way toward ensuring a new transatlantic relationship. It will alleviate the frustrations and resentment that free- riding has fueled on the American side and remedy the weakness and dependence on the European side. In many cases, the United States will greatly beneÃt from European actors defending their security on their own in areas that are only peripheral to U.S. interests. U.S. support for French-led operations against al Qaeda–linked groups in the Sahel, for instance, is proo that European leadership can serve the United States well. And given that the American public has shown little appetite for getting more involved in Middle Eastern conÁicts, a greater European capacity to promote stability in a region whose problems often aect Europe directly would allow Washington to lead from behind. Above all, policymakers on both sides o the Atlantic should adjust their expectations downward. Europe will never be as central to the United States as it once was and will have to focus on ensuring the survival o its own model before claiming global ambitions. The United States should help the Europeans in this undertaking as best it can.
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But the Trump administration, with its confrontational stance, has al- ready forfeited some o the inuence Washington used to have. By forgoing its role as a trust builder among Europeans and, with the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the , losing its historic ally within the community, the United States has seen most o its ability to shape positive outcomes in Europe evaporate. Instead, it has focused on building strong bilateral ties with individual countries, such as Ger- many under Obama and Poland under Trump. A new U.S. president might not label the European Union a “foe,” as Trump has. But merely paying lip service to common values and shared history is unlikely to translate into an increased willingness to protect European interests. Observers should neither lament this state o aairs nor yearn for what used to be. I Europe can choose its own path, the transatlantic relationship will mature into a more balanced alliance. By 2030, could be stronger and more capable than it is today. The could take military action to end future wars on its periphery. It could invest in Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, and the Balkans, thus pushing back against Chinese and Russian inuence there. From developing best practices for the use o articial intelligence to responding to unfair Chinese trade practices to ghting climate change, the United States and Europe together are still indispensable when it comes to shaping the norms and rules o tomorrow. The trans- atlantic alliance is unlikely to look like it once did. There may be more distance and distrust. Siblings often grow apart when they come o age; they make choices, choose partners, and embrace careers that the other doesn’t necessarily approve of. But in the end, the ties that bind are stronger than the individual choices that divide.∂
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The Global Economy’s Next Winners What It Takes to Thrive in the Automation Age Susan Lund, James Manyika, and Michael Spence
he countries that once led the world toward economic open- ness are retreating into protectionism. Over the past two and Ta hal years, the United States has abandoned the Trans- PaciÃc Partnership and imposed taris on steel, aluminum, and a wide range o Chinese goods. The United Kingdom is in the process oÊ leaving the world’s largest free-trade area. And rising nationalist sentiment is threatening to repeat these self-destructive acts else- where. The rich world is turning inward. Its timing couldn’t be worse. Even as critics o free trade gain the upper hand, globalization, wholly o its own accord, is transforming in rich countries’ favor. Economic growth in the developing world is boosting demand for products made in the developed world. Trade in services is up. Companies are moving production closer to their customers so they can respond faster to changes in demand. Auto- mation has slowed the relentless search for people willing to work for ever-lower wages. And the greater complexity o modern goods means that research, design, and maintenance are coming to matter more than production.
SUSAN LUND is a Partner at McKinsey & Company and a leader of the McKinsey Global Institute.
JAMES MANYIKA is a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company and Chair of the McKinsey Global Institute.
MICHAEL SPENCE is William R. Berkley Professor of Economics and Business at New York University. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001.
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All these trends play to the strengths o developed countries, where skilled work forces, large quantities o capital, huge customer bases, and dense clusters oÊ high-tech companies combine to power modern economies. Middle-income countries, such as China and Mexico, may also beneÃt from the next era o globalization (although changing trade and investment patterns may well leave sections o their work forces behind, just as they did in rich countries over the past two decades). The poorest countries, meanwhile, will see their chie advantage—cheap labor—grow less important. Rich countries have chosen a spectacularly poor time to begin clos- ing themselves o from trade, investment, and immigration. Rather than pulling up the drawbridge just as the beneÃts o globalization have begun to Áow back toward the developed world, they should Ãgure out how to take advantage o these changing patterns o global- ization. Making sure that everyone, not just the already successful, beneÃts will be a daunting task. But the one way for rich countries to ensure that everyone loses is to turn away from the open world just as they are becoming the masters o it.
THAT WAS THEN . . . In the 1990s and the early years o this century, growth in trade soared, especially in manufactured goods and natural resources. In 2001, China’s entry into the World Trade Organization helped cre- ate a vast new manufacturing center for labor-intensive goods. The digital revolution allowed multinational companies to stretch their supply chains around the world. This spurt o globalization was fu- eled in part by trade in intermediate goods, such as raw materials and computer chips, which tripled in nominal value, from $2.5 tril- lion in 1995 to $7.5 trillion in 2007. Over that period, the total value o goods traded each year grew more than twice as fast as global ³²¡. Then came the Great Recession. Global trade Áows plummeted. Most analysts assumed that once the recovery gained steam, trade would come roaring back. They were wrong. From 2007 to 2017, exports declined from 28 percent to 23 percent o global gross out- put. The decline has been most pronounced in heavily traded goods with complex global value chains, such as computers, elec- tronics, vehicles, and chemicals. A decade after the Great Reces- sion, it is clear that trade is not returning to its former growth rates and patterns.
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Back in business: at an Amazon warehouse in Florence, New Jersey, August 2017
In part, that’s because the global economy is rebalancing as China and other countries with emerging markets reach the next stage o development. After several decades o participating in global trade mainly as producers, emerging economies have become the world’s major engines o demand. In 2016, for example, carmakers sold 40 percent more cars in China than they did in Europe. It is expected that by 2025, emerging markets will consume two-thirds o the world’s manufactured goods and, by 2030, they will consume more than hal o all goods. China’s growing demand means that more o what is made in China is being sold there. In 2007, China exported 55 percent o the con- sumer electronic goods and 37 percent o the textiles it produced; in 2017, those Ãgures were 29 percent and 17 percent, respectively. Other emerging economies are following suit. Developing countries also now rely less on intermediate imports. BRYAN China Ãrst stepped onto the global trading scene in the 1990s by im-
ANSELM porting raw materials and parts and then assembling them into Ãn- ished goods for export. But things have changed. In several sectors,
/ REDUX including computers, electronics, vehicles, and machinery, China now produces far more sophisticated components, and a wider range o them, than it did two decades ago.
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Trade is becoming more concentrated in speciÃc regions, particu- larly within Europe and Asia. That is partly the result o greater do- mestic demand from emerging-market countries, but it is also being driven by the increased importance o speed. Proximity to consumers allows companies to respond faster to changing demand and new trends. Many companies are creating regional supply chains near each o their major markets. Adidas, for example, has built fully automated “Speedfactories” to produce new shoes in Germany and the United States rather than making them in its traditional locations in Indone- sia. Zara has pioneered the “fast fashion” industry, refreshing its store merchandise twice a week. More than hal o the company’s thousands o suppliers are concentrated in Morocco, Portugal, Spain, and Tur- key, where they can serve the European Trade in services will take and U.S. markets. Zara can get new de- signs from the drawing board to a store up an ever-greater share of in Manhattan in just 25 days. the global economy. The growth o new technologies, such as Internet connectivity and arti- Ãcial intelligence (¬), are also changing trade patterns. From 2005 to 2017, the amount o data Áowing across borders every second grew by a factor o 148. The availability o cheap, fast digital communication has boosted trade. E-commerce platforms allow buyers and sellers to Ãnd each other more easily. The Internet oÊ Things—everyday prod- ucts with Internet connections—lets companies track shipments around the world and monitor their supply chains. Yet not all new technologies lead to more trade. Some, such as ro- botics, automation, ¬, and 3-D printing, are changing the nature o trade Áows but not boosting the overall amount o trade. Factories have used robots for decades, but only for rote tasks. Now, techno- logical advances, such as ¬-powered vision, language comprehension, and Ãne motor skills, allow manufacturing robots to perform tasks that were once out o their reach. They can assemble intricate compo- nents and are starting to work with delicate materials, such as textiles. The rise o automation means companies don’t have to worry as much about the cost oÊ labor when choosing where to invest. In recent decades, companies have sought out low-paid workers, even i that meant building long, complex supply chains. That is no longer the dominant model: today, only 18 percent o the overall trade in goods involves exports from a low-wage country to a high-wage one. Other
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factors, such as access to resources, the speed at which Ãrms can get their products to consumers, and the skills available in the work force, are more important. Companies are building fully automated facto- ries to make textiles, clothes, shoes, and toys—the labor-intensive goods that gave China and other developing countries their start in global manufacturing. Exports from low-wage countries to high-wage countries fell from 55 percent o all exports o those kinds o cheap, labor-intensive goods in 2007 to 43 percent in 2017.
. . . THIS IS NOW Trade in goods may be slowing relative to global economic growth, but trade in services is not. Since 2007, global trade in services has grown more than 60 percent faster than global trade in goods. Trade in some sectors, including telecommunications, information technol- ogy, business services, and intellectual property, is now growing two to three times as fast as trade in goods. In 2017, global trade in services totaled $5.1 trillion, still far less than the $17.3 trillion o goods traded globally. But those numbers understate the size o the services trade. National accounts do not, for example, separate out R & D, design, sales and marketing, and back-oce services from the physical pro- duction o goods. Account for those elements, and services make up almost one-third o the value o traded manufactured goods. And companies have been turning more and more to foreign providers for those services. Although directly measured services are only 23 per- cent o total trade, services now account for 45 percent o the value added o traded goods. Trade in services will take up an ever-greater share o the global economy as manufacturers and retailers introduce new ways o pro- viding services, and not just goods, to consumers. Car and truck man- ufacturers, for example, are launching partnerships with companies that develop autonomous driving technologies, rent out vehicles, or provide ride-hailing services, as they anticipate a shift away from the traditional model o one-time vehicle purchases. Cloud computing has popularized pay-as-you-go and subscription models for storage and software, freeing users from making heavy investments in their own hardware. Ultrafast 5G wireless networks will give companies new ways to deliver services, such as surgery carried out by remotely operated robots and remote-control infrastructure maintenance made possible by virtual re-creations o the site in question.
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For decades, manufacturing Ãrms made physical things. Today, that is no longer a given. Some multinational companies, including Apple and many pharmaceutical manufacturers, have turned themselves into “virtual manufacturers”—companies that design, market, and distrib- ute but rely on contractors to churn out the actual product. That change reÁects a broader shift toward intangible goods. Across many industries, R & D, marketing, distribution, and after-sales services now create more value than the physical goods, and they’re growing faster. The economist Carol Corrado has shown that Ãrms’ annual invest- ment in intangible assets, such as software, brands, and intellectual prop- erty, exceeds their investment in buildings, equipment, and other physical assets. In part, that’s because products have become more complicated. Software now accounts for ten percent o the value o new cars, for ex- ample, and McKinsey expects that share to rise to 30 percent by 2030. Goods still matter. Companies still have to move goods across bor- ders, even when services have played a big role in their production. Taris on goods disrupt and distort these Áows and lower productiv- ity. That means they act as taris on the services involved, too. Taris on intermediate goods raise costs for manufacturers and result in a kind o double taxation for Ãnal exports. In short, the argument for free trade is just as strong today as it was three decades ago.
THE GOOD NEWS FOR THE WEST Middle-class Americans and Europeans bore the brunt o the job losses caused by the last wave o globalization. With the notable ex- ception o Germany, advanced economies have experienced steep falls in manufacturing employment over the past two decades. In the United States, the number o people working in manufacturing de- clined from an estimated 17.6 million in 1997 to a low o 11.5 million in 2010, before recovering modestly to about 12.8 million today. Yet advanced economies stand to beneÃt from the next chapter o globalization. A future that hinges on innovation, digital technology, services, and proximity to consumers lines up neatly with their strengths: skilled work forces, strong protections for intellectual prop- erty, lucrative consumer markets, and leading high-tech Ãrms and start-up ecosystems. Developed countries that take advantage o these favorable conditions will thrive. Those that don’t, won’t. Manufacturing jobs are not yet Áowing back to the rich world in vast numbers, but there are some encouraging signs. Several major compa-
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nies, such as Adidas, Fast Radius, and Lincoln Electric, have opened U.S. facilities in recent years. Apple has announced a major expansion in Austin, Texas, and is planning new data centers and research facilities in other cities across the United States. Companies based in the devel- oping world are also investing more in the United States and Europe. The growth in trade in services is providing another boost for ad- vanced economies. The United States, Europe, and other advanced economies together already run an annual surplus in trade in services o almost $480 billion, twice as high as a decade ago, demonstrating their competitive advantage in these industries. New technology will let companies remotely deliver more services, such as education and health care. Countries that already specialize in exporting services, such as France, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, are in a good position to capitalize on these trends. Finally, as the developing world gets richer, it will buy more cars, computers, airplanes, and machinery from the developed world. Ad- vanced economies send more than 40 percent o their exports to emerg- ing markets, almost double the share they sent 20 years ago. Those exports added up to more than $4 trillion worth o goods in 2017 alone. The picture for advanced economies is not uniformly rosy, how- ever. Some industries will face Ãerce new competition from the de- veloping world. Homegrown companies in Brazil, China, and other middle-income countries are branching out into higher-value-added industries, such as supercomputing, aerospace, and solar panel manu- facturing, and relying less on imported parts from the developed world. Chinese companies are beginning to manufacture the com- puter chips they used to buy from abroad. (Although for smartphones, China still imports chips.) China’s total annual imports o intermedi- ate goods from Germany for vehicles, machines, and other sophisti- cated products peaked in 2014 at $44 billion; by 2017, the Ãgure was $37 billion. Japan and South Korea have also seen their exports o intermediate goods to China in those industries decline. The Made in China 2025 initiative aims to build the country’s strengths in cutting- edge areas such as ¬, 5G wireless systems, and robotics.
STUCK IN THE MIDDLE Middle-income countries, such as Brazil, China, Hungary, Mexico, Morocco, Poland, South Africa, Thailand, and Turkey, will reap some o the beneÃts o the new globalization, but they will also face new
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diculties. Such countries now play important roles in the complex value chains that produce vehicles, machinery, electronics, chemicals, and transportation equipment. They both supply and compete with the companies based in countries with advanced economies that have traditionally dominated those industries. A number o middle-income countries enjoy a Ãxed advantage: geo- graphic proximity to major consumer markets in advanced economies. As automation makes labor costs less important, many multinational companies are choosing to build new Emerging economies have factories not in countries with the low- est wages but in countries that are closer become the world’s to their main consumer markets and major engines of demand. that still oer lower wages than rich countries. Mexico Ãts the bill for the United States; Morocco, Turkey, and eastern European countries do the same for western European countries, as do Malaysia and Thailand for richer Asian countries, such as Japan and the wealthier parts o China. Other middle-income countries are poised to beneÃt from the shift from goods to services. Costa Rica, for example, is now a major exporter oÊ business services, such as data entry, analytics, and information tech- nology support. Its exports in those sectors have grown at an average annual rate o 34 percent over the last ten years, and they are worth $4.5 billion today, or 7.6 percent o Costa Rica’s ³²¡. The global annual trade in outsourced business services—everything from accounting to cus- tomer support—totals $270 billion and growing. That represents a lu- crative opportunity for middle-income countries such as Costa Rica. Yet since ¬ tools could handle much o the work involved in these services, workers will need to be able to assist customers with more complex troubleshooting or sales i they are to stay ahead o the machines. Middle-income countries also have huge opportunities to beneÃt from new technologies—not only by adopting them but also by build- ing them. China, for instance, is a world leader in mobile payments. Apps such as WeChat Pay and Alipay have allowed Chinese consum- ers to move straight from using cash for transactions to making smart- phone payments, skipping credit cards altogether. China’s third-party payment platforms handled some $15.4 trillion worth o mobile pay- ments in 2017—more than 40 times the amount processed in the United States, according to the consulting Ãrm iResearch. In addition to making transactions cheaper and more ecient, payment apps also
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create huge pools o data that their creators can use to oer individu- ally tailored loans, insurance, and investment products. In every country, the rise oÊ big data raises dicult legal and ethical questions; in China, especially, ocial use o such data has come under scrutiny. No two countries are likely to come to exactly the same conclusions, but all will have to grapple with these issues. In addition, e-commerce, mobile Internet, digital payments, and online Ãnancial services tend to contribute to more inclusive growth. A 2019 report by the Luohan Academy, a research group established by Alibaba, found that the beneÃts o the current digital revolution are likely to be more evenly distributed than those o previous tech- nological revolutions. That’s because digital technologies are no lon- ger restricted to rich people in rich countries. Today’s technologies have made it easier for people everywhere to start businesses, reach customers, and access Ãnancing. The report found that in China, dig- ital technologies have accelerated growth in rural areas and inland provinces, places that have long lagged behind the coasts. Even as middle-income countries shift to higher-value manufac- turing and services, their manufacturing workers are likely to face struggles similar to those o American and European workers who have been displaced by digital technologies. Factory workers in China, Mexico, and Southeast Asia may bear the brunt o job displacement as wages rise and automation proceeds. A study by the economist Robert Atkinson found that China, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Thailand are adopting industrial robots faster than their wage levels would predict. Although automation will raise productivity growth and product quality, these countries will need to help displaced work- ers and avoid the mistakes made by the West.
THE DEVELOPING COUNTRY CHALLENGE In a world o increasing automation, the prospects for low-income countries are growing more uncertain. In the short term, export-led, labor-intensive manufacturing may still have room to grow in some low-wage countries. Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam are achieving solid growth in labor-intensive manufacturing exports, taking advan- tage o China’s rising wages and the country’s emphasis on more so- phisticated and proÃtable products. To make the old model o export-led manufacturing growth work, countries will need to invest in roads, railways, airports, and other logistics infrastructure—and
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eventually in modern, high-tech factories that can compete with those in the rest o the world. Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam have taken some positive steps but will need to do more. Whether services can drive the kind o rapid growth in early stage developing countries that manufacturing once did remains to be seen. Some low-income countries, such as Ghana, India, and the Philip- pines, have thriving service industries catering to businesses around the world. But even in those countries, the services-export sector em- ploys few people and contributes little to ³²¡. Like middle-income countries, low-income ones will need to shift to higher-value activities to stay ahead o automation. Tradable services, such as transportation, Ãnance, and business services, enjoy high productivity growth and can raise living standards, but less tradable ones, such as food prepara- tion, health care, and education, which employ millions more people, thus far show little productivity growth, making them a poor engine for long-term prosperity. Technology may enable some people in low-income economies to jump ahead in economic development without retracing the paths taken by those in advanced economies. Internet access allows workers everywhere to use online freelance platforms, such as UpWork, Fiverr, and Samasource, to earn supplemental income. A large share o the freelancers on these platforms are in developing countries. Khan Academy and Coursera teach languages and other skills. Google Translate is removing language barriers. Kiva and Kickstarter help aspiring entrepreneurs fund their start-ups. And telemedicine ser- vices make better health care available to people in remote places. But using those services requires widespread access to aordable high- speed Internet. Countries need to invest in digital infrastructure and education i they are to succeed in a global digital economy. Although many countries have achieved near-universal primary schooling, get- ting students to complete secondary school and making sure they re- ceive a high-quality education when there are the next hurdles. Trade has done more than almost anything else to cut global pov- erty. I developing countries shift strategies to take advantage o the next wave o globalization, trade can continue to lift people out o poverty and into the middle class. It is advanced economies, however, that need to change their outlook the most dramatically. They are shutting themselves o from the outside world at the very moment when they should be welcoming it in.∂
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Africa’s Democratic Moment? The Five Leaders Who Could Transform the Region Judd Devermont and Jon Temin
n the 60-plus years since the countries o sub-Saharan Africa started becoming independent, democracy there has advanced Iunevenly. During the Cold War, many African states turned into Soviet- or U.S.-backed dictatorships. Afterward, some nascent de- mocracies made notable gains, but others ended up backsliding. Even as some countries in the region have grown into success stories, most have failed to embrace true democracy, despite a deep hunger for it among their populations. Today, a mere 11 percent o Africans live in countries that Freedom House considers free. But change is afoot. Whereas from 2010 to 2014, the region expe- rienced nine transfers o power from one leader to another, since 2015, the region has experienced 26 o them. Some o these transi- tions amounted to one leader relinquishing his or her seat to a hand- picked successor, but more than hal featured an opposition candidate defeating a member o the incumbent party. O the 49 leaders in power in sub-Saharan Africa at the beginning o 2015, only 22 o them remained in power as o May 2019. Just one o the newcomers, Emmerson Mnangagwa o Zimbabwe, entered oce through a coup (although once someone is chosen to succeed Omar al-Bashir in Su- dan, the count will grow to two). Gone are the decades when power
JUDD DEVERMONT is Director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and Interna- tional Studies. From 2015 to 2018, he served as National Intelligence Oicer for Africa at the Oice of the Director of National Intelligence. JON TEMIN is Director of Africa Programs at Freedom House. From 2014 to 2017, he served on the Policy Planning Sta at the U.S. Department of State.
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regularly changed hands through coups—87 times between 1950 and 2010, according to one count. Africa’s new set oÊ leaders includes former military dictators turned democrats, party loyalists who steadily moved up the ranks, and a few political outsiders, among them a disc jockey, a business magnate, and a former soccer star. Five o them will prove espe- cially pivotal: Abiy Ahmed o Ethio- The leaders of £ve key pia, João Lourenço o Angola, Cyril Ramaphosa o South Africa, Félix African states could shape Tshisekedi o the Democratic Repub- the region for years to come. lic o the Congo, and Muhammadu Buhari o Nigeria. These leaders pre- side over countries that make up nearly hal the population o sub- Saharan Africa, include four o the region’s Ãve largest economies, and have some o the continent’s strongest militaries. And all o them claim to reject the corruption and misrule associated with their predecessors. This is not the Ãrst time Africa has seen a wave o new leaders who inspired optimism. In the 1990s, a fresh cohort o rebels turned poli- ticians presented themselves as democratic reformers, including Isaias Afwerki o Eritrea, Paul Kagame o Rwanda, Meles Zenawi o Ethi- opia, and Yoweri Museveni o Uganda. But the accompanying enthu- siasm proved misplaced: all made turns toward authoritarianism and, with the exception o Meles, who died in oce in 2012, remain in power to this day. Whatever their lofty promises, it turns out, those who come to power through the gun rarely transform into demo- crats. Today’s class o new leaders seeking a break with the past en- tered oce peacefully, through elections—however imperfect—or other constitutional processes. Their legitimacy comes not from their military prowess but from their reformist agendas. As the leaders o Ãve key African states, Abiy, Lourenço, Ramaphosa, Tshisekedi, and Buhari could shape the region for years to come. The choices they make when it comes to navigating domestic challenges, pursuing reforms, and wielding their inÁuence beyond their borders will go a long way toward determining whether the region stagnates or thrives. And although revanchist forces always threaten tentative gains, there is good reason for optimism: the popular pressures that led to change in these countries, through protest and the ballot box, will press the leaders to follow through on their promises.
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Five guys: Abiy, Lourenço, Ramaphosa, Tshisekedi, and Buhari Given its diplomatic, military, and economic weight in Africa, the
LEFT United States has the power to nudge these leaders to choose trans-
TO formation over stasis. For too long, however, Washington has em-
RIGHT: REUTERS: braced the false comfort o the status quo. Worried about rocking the boat in a seemingly fragile region, it has supported trusted but awed partners instead o pushing leaders to make real change. It’s time for a new approach. As a new cohort o leaders takes the reins o power TIKSA in Africa’s most inuential countries, the United States should have NEGERI, the courage to stand with the people calling for change. POOL, SUMAYA FRESH FACES Ethiopia, a country o some 100 million people, has seen the most dra-
HISHAM, matic transformation. In 2015, the ruling party and its allies swept every seat in parliamentary elections, revealing the sorry state o the coun-
OLIVIA try’s ostensibly multiparty political system. The next year, tens o thousands o Ethiopians took to the streets to protest their country’s ACLAND, closed political space and uneven allocation o resources. Lacking the political heft to steer Ethiopia through the crisis, the prime minister, AFOLABI Hailemariam Desalegn, resigned in February 2018, and the ruling party
SOTUNDE chose Abiy to succeed him. Abiy swiftly ushered in a series o audacious and previously unimaginable reforms. He has released thousands o political prisoners; made peace with Ethiopia’s archenemy, Eritrea;
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lifted restrictions on civil society; and begun the process o privatiz- ing the country’s telecommunications company and national airline. Although his actions have proved wildly popular among Ethiopi- ans, setting o a craze known as “Abiymania,” the dizzying pace o his reforms has unsettled the political elite. Many o its members are o the Tigrayan ethnic minority, a group from the country’s north that has long dominated national politics and the security sector, and they see Abiy’s reforms as coming at their expense. In October 2018, he claimed to have stared down a coup attempt by the military. More- over, by loosening the state’s tight grip on its population, Abiy’s re- forms have exacerbated communal tensions that used to be contained. Ethnic violence—often triggered by competing claims to land and resources—has escalated under his leadership, displacing nearly three million people inside the country’s borders. Abiy has called the vio- lence “shameful” but has been unable to stop it. Yet he remains popu- lar at home and abroad, and his twin goals o political pluralism and a market-based economy are exactly what have been missing from Ethiopia for the past two decades. A new leader is upending Angola’s politics, too. For nearly 40 years, the country was ruled by José Eduardo dos Santos, who stole Angola’s substantial oil revenues to enrich his family and associates. In 2016, dos Santos, 73 years old and in poor health, announced that he would step down, and the next year, he endorsed a successor from the ruling party: Lourenço, a former defense minister. In oce, Lourenço quickly deÃed expectations that he would do the bidding o the dos Santos family, instead pursuing corruption investigations and breaking its near monopoly on the economy and politics. In a country ruled by a formerly Marxist political party, Lourenço has broken with precedent by seeking warmer ties with the United States and even with his country’s former colonizer, Portugal. He has also broken a taboo against accepting international assistance that comes with conditions attached by welcoming an aid package from the International Monetary Fund. Although he has not turned away from China, he has promised to cease providing it with oil as collat- eral for credit lines, a practice that left Angola in considerable debt. And whereas his predecessor rarely deployed troops to multilateral peacekeeping missions, he has Áexed Angola’s muscle in regional cri- ses, contributing soldiers to a South African–led peacekeeping op- eration in Lesotho and insisting on a political transition in Congo.
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It is possible that Lourenço is merely a canny politician building a new patronage structure beholden to him. His anticorruption inves- tigations have targeted dos Santos’ family and key allies while spar- ing other power brokers. But he seems to grasp that reform is the best way for his country to end its decades o underperformance, and Angolans appear to agree. IÊ he succeeds, then Angola—a mineral- and oil-rich country o 30 million people with an 87,000-strong mil- itary—could realize its potential as a regional powerhouse. Ramaphosa faces greater structural challenges as he seeks to move South Africa away from the corrupt legacy oÊ his predecessor, Jacob Zuma. Zuma allowed cronies to hijack ministries and state-owned companies Sometimes new leaders to line their pockets, authorized a dis- astrous military deployment to the can untether themselves Central African Republic, and enter- from their patrons. tained a shady deal with Russia for a nuclear power plant. For Africa’s most advanced economy, the ane- mic growth, weakening currency, and periodic rolling power outages had become a national embarrassment, and in February 2018, Zuma’s party, the storied African National Congress, forced him to resign, replacing him with Ramaphosa. Ramaphosa has pledged to attract $100 billion in new investments over the next Ãve years and reform the country’s decrepit state-owned corporations. Equally important, he has established a commission to investigate corruption under his predecessor, which has already unearthed considerable abuses by for- mer oceholders. In May 2019, Ramaphosa won a fresh electoral mandate. To do so, however, he had to appease left-leaning constituents, signaling sup- port for land expropriation without compensation, a step that threat- ens to scare o foreign investors. Moreover, his party remains riddled with corruption and ideological divisions, which will constrain full- throated reform. Yet Ramaphosa still represents South Africa’s best hope for revitalization, and there is so much low-hanging fruit that even partial reforms could prove game changing. South Africa began its two-year term as a nonpermanent member o the ¤ Security Council in 2019 and is set to take over the chairmanship o the Afri- can Union in 2020. Ramaphosa now has an opportunity to reverse Zuma’s ignoble record o supporting autocrats and stiÁing human rights campaigns, and he has made some improvements on this front.
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Last year, he reversed his country’s vote in the ¤ General Assembly in order to condemn human rights abuses in Myanmar. South Africa is the only African member o the G-20 and the most powerful mem- ber o the Southern African Development Community. I Ramaphosa manages to clean up his country’s politics and reform its economy, South Africa could act as an engine o growth for the whole region. And iÊ he expands its global voice, too, the country could serve as a global champion o conÁict resolution, drawing on its experience o ending apartheid 25 years ago. Congo’s road to reform is far rockier. Even though he is steering his country through its Ãrst peaceful transfer o power, Tshisekedi became president in dubious circumstances. Most observers agree that another opposition candidate actually won the elections held in December 2018, even though Tshisekedi was declared the victor. The surprise result fueled speculation that Tshisekedi had struck a deal that would allow Joseph Kabila, the country’s outgoing authoritarian leader, to retain inÁuence out o power. Any such deal will continue to constrain Tshisekedi. So will his party’s lack o a majority in par- liament, which means that he has to negotiate with Kabila to appoint his prime minister and cabinet. Yet as Lourenço has shown in Angola, sometimes new leaders can untether themselves from their patrons. So far, Tshisekedi has freed about 700 political prisoners, appointed a competent national secu- rity adviser who is not beholden to Kabila, and pledged to revive the Congolese economy. Despite Tshisekedi’s limited room for maneu- ver, in Congo’s ever-shifting political landscape, he may be able to pick o defectors from Kabila’s coalition and expand his own power base. He also has the beneÃt o strong support from the United States and other inÁuential countries, which chose to overlook the undemocratic nature oÊ his ascent. The size o western Europe, Congo boasts vast stores o natural re- sources and the potential to generate up to 100,000 megawatts oÊ hydro- power (second only to China and Russia in this regard). IÊ Tshisekedi earnestly tries to address Congo’s endemic insecurity, contain its devas- tating Ebola outbreak, and responsibly manage its immense mineral wealth, he can reap dramatic dividends that should prove popular among Congolese. The prospect o a stable Congo—a long-standing basket case that borders nine countries—could obviate the need for the 20,000-strong ¤ peacekeeping mission there and reduce regional tensions.
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Nigeria, with a population o nearly 200 million people, has long been Africa’s would-be heavyweight, full o potential but plagued by poor leadership, corruption, and insecurity. Change was supposed to come in 2015 with the election as president o Buhari, who, even though he was a military head o state in the early 1980s, campaigned on a promise to Ãght corruption. In a few ways, Buhari has made good on his promise, Ãghting some corruption, increasing infrastructure investment, and streamlining govern- ment Ãnances. But he has turned out to be less dynamic than hoped. He has Ethiopia’s profound spent several months in London over improvements in the last four years for medical treat- individual rights could ment and has failed to inspire Nigeri- ans outside his base in the country’s have a spillover eect north. Only 35 percent o Nigerians across East Africa. turned out for the February 2019 elec- tions that gave him a second term, the lowest participation rate on record since the country’s transition to civilian rule, in 1999. The pri- vate sector is especially wary oÊ his economic instincts and failed to respond to his win with a stock market rally—a Ãrst for Nigeria. Crucially, however, he has opened up space for a new cadre o re- formers, in the cabinet and at the state level, who are now waiting in the wings. Buhari has never Ãt into Nigeria’s political class. He never sought to build a patronage network, and he has consistently pressed for cleaner government and a strong work ethic among civil servants. However inconsistently, he has promoted Nigerian leaders who share these values and sidelined politicians who do not. Nigeria’s energetic vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, exempliÃes the country’s potential. During Buhari’s trips to London, Osinbajo has stepped in as acting president and showcased a pragmatic and inclu- sive style oÊ leadership. Notably, he agreed to devalue the naira to narrow the gap between ocial exchange rates and black-market rates, and he traveled to the oil-rich Niger Delta to lower tensions there. His successful stints in power have increased his proÃle as a potential candidate in elections in 2023. Other up-and-comers in- clude Peter Obi, a former governor and the opposition’s most recent vice-presidential candidate, who has won plaudits for his economic management oÊ his state, and Kashim Shettima, a former governor who ably facilitated humanitarian assistance to war-ravaged north-
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eastern Nigeria. Reform under Buhari will continue to be slow, but he has set the stage for the next generation oÊ leaders to quicken the pace o change.
THE PATH TO PROGRESS Two main obstacles stand in the way o these countries’ democratic progress. The Ãrst is economic stagnation. Africa’s overall ³²¡ is fore- cast to grow by around three percent in 2019, dragged down by even slower growth rates in Angola, Nigeria, and South Africa, all o which have been hit hard by the recent slump in commodity prices. I growth rates don’t improve, it will be nearly impossible for these countries’ new leaders to sustain reforms and reduce dangerous levels o unem- ployment. But even in a period o weak commodity prices, Lourenço, Buhari, and Ramaphosa can undertake reforms that would boost growth. Nigeria should shift to a single exchange rate to attract foreign investment; it and South Africa should reform their bloated state- owned companies; and it and Angola should reduce their reliance on oil revenues. Abiy and Tshisekedi, by contrast, have the wind at their backs, with Ethiopia’s economy growing at over seven percent (thanks largely to a more attractive climate for investors) and Congo’s growing at over Ãve percent (in part due to public investments in infrastruc- ture). All Ãve leaders have pledged to diversify their economies, re- duce corruption, and attract foreign investment. Their predecessors said the same things, but unlike them, these leaders face real pressure to deliver on these promises or face the wrath o their people. The second obstacle is political. Each o the Ãve leaders is engaged in a high-wire act, trying to pursue reforms without triggering a back- lash. Abiy, Lourenço, Ramaphosa, and Tshisekedi are mindful o the still powerful reactionary forces within their coalitions that are associ- ated with the ancien régime. I these leaders move too fast, rivals may clip their wings or lead a party revolt. (Buhari, by contrast, is at risk o moving too slowly and providing an opening to his opponents.) Abiy has already encountered Ãrsthand the consequences o charging ahead, with several politicians tied to the previous regime loudly op- posing his reforms. Ramaphosa, for his part, presides over an African National Congress divided between factions loyal to him and those loyal to Zuma and risks the ire o the senior party ocials who stand to lose from a crackdown on large-scale corruption. Tshisekedi is in the most precarious position o all. Kabila, his predecessor, is still
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relatively young, and his party remains dominant. He will not go qui- etly into retirement, especially iÊ his substantial wealth is threatened. These leaders will need to discern when to press forward and when to slow down, getting the buy-in o would-be opponents without abandoning bold aspirations. Abiy, for instance, could build more internal consensus before rushing to announce his next big idea, a step that would preempt political pushback and pave the way for swifter implementation. Ramaphosa will need to respond delicately to demands for land expropriation, addressing the legitimate con- cerns oÊ his base without scaring o investors and threatening com- mercial agriculture. I the Ãve leaders get the economics and politics right, then they could set o a virtuous cycle o reform. First, economic prospects improve, the result o a combination o economic diversiÃcation, in- creased foreign investment, and reduced corruption. That, in turn, strengthens their hand and helps them navigate political obstacles. As their popularity increases, they have more incentive to double down on existing reforms and build support for new ones. Investor conÃdence increases, economic growth accelerates, and the old guard becomes further marginalized. I this cycle repeats across enough o the Ãve countries, a broader narrative o regional reform could take hold, building pressure on other African countries to follow the same path. Ethiopia’s profound improvements in individual rights, for example, could have a spillover eect across East Africa, emboldening antigovernment protesters in Uganda and elsewhere and convincing the military dictatorship in Er- itrea to open up. In Congo, Tshisekedi has denounced his predeces- sor’s human rights record and promised that he “will be making a clean break with everything.” IÊ he really does, the new standard he will be setting for governance in central Africa could increase the pressure on neighboring leaders, most o whom have been in power for two or more decades, to walk back some o their most egregious abuses o power. Something similar could happen economically. Stagnation in An- gola, Nigeria, and South Africa brings down Africa’s overall growth rates, but under better economic management, the three largest econo- mies in sub-Saharan Africa could drive up foreign investment outside their borders as companies use these markets as gateways to the re- gion. Corruption in all the countries also inhibits growth, and i Abiy,
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Buhari, Lourenço, and Ramaphosa continue their eorts to Ãght it— and iÊ Tshisekedi follows through on his still notional promises to do the same—then they could reassure skittish foreign investors about the economic potential o the entire region. Reforms could also supercharge promising moves toward regional economic integration. As o April 2019, 52 countries had signed up for the African Continental Free Trade Area, an agreement aimed at unit- ing the region’s 1.2 billion people and combined ³²¡ o $3.4 trillion into a single market. Owing to poor infrastructure and high trade bar- riers, Africa suers from particularly weak economic integration, with just 17 percent o its countries’ exports staying within the region, com- pared with 69 percent for Europe and 59 percent for Asia. According to an estimate from the Brookings Institution, removing taris would increase the value o intra-African trade by $50–$70 billion. Although Nigeria, which is in dire need o economic liberalization, has yet to sign the treaty, the momentum for reform and integration is growing. Transformation in these Ãve countries could reverberate beyond the continent, too. Historically, the African states large enough to enjoy sustained global inÁuence have been crippled by internal dys- function. Moving beyond domestic distractions would give these countries a chance to Ãnally punch their weight internationally. To actually do so, however, they will need to adopt more assertive foreign policies. That means better leveraging existing forums and leadership posts, such as South Africa’s seat on the Security Council (where, by some estimates, more than 60 percent o resolutions concern Africa). It also means taking the lead on regional Áash points. There are tenta- tive signs o progress on this front: Angola has put its thumb on the scale to resolve political disputes in Congo and Lesotho, and Ethiopia has done the same for one between Kenya and Somalia. The Ãve leaders can also defend basic rights and weigh in on global issues. When it comes to violations o democratic principles, rather than turning a blind eye, they should increase the pressure on viola- tors, both through policies such as sanctions and through their per- sonal connections with other leaders. And when it comes to global priorities—such as climate change, counterterrorism, migration, trade, human rights, and data privacy—they should demand a seat at the table. To date, few African governments have been more than pro forma participants in the global debate over these issues, even though they greatly aect the continent.
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AMERICA IN AFRICA Just as the developments in Africa’s largest states can change how the region deals with the rest o the world, they can also change how the United States deals with the region. U.S. policy toward Africa has long been decidedly risk averse, aimed at preserving relations with predictable partners in the pursuit o stability. This is particularly true when it comes to the region’s heavyweights. Washington has been willing to lean forward when freedom is at stake in smaller countries— for example, supporting the ouster o tiny Gambia’s longtime dictator in 2017—but is much more restrained in countries with greater inÁu- ence. The Obama administration shied away from making forceful statements about democratic backsliding and repression in Ethiopia and Uganda because the two countries were counterterrorism allies, and it refused to abandon the narcissistic leaders o South Sudan even as they led the country to ruin. The Trump administration declined to call the military takeover in Zimbabwe in 2017 a coup and has taken a hands-o approach to the protest movement in Sudan. It is time for a bolder approach that embraces change. Opportuni- ties to support such fundamental reforms in such strategically impor- tant states are rare, and they give the United States a chance to endear itsel to growing populations that are increasingly Ãnding their po- litical voice. To start, the United States should increase its diplomatic, Ãnancial, and technical support to those states doggedly reforming on their own initiative, beginning with Angola and Ethiopia. But the United States needs to target this support carefully: in- stead o applauding individual leaders, it should seek to strengthen institutions. Tempting as it may be for Washington to throw its po- litical weight behind reform-minded leaders such as Lourenço and Abiy, it must not feed into cults o personality. Those, after all, are the lifeblood o dictators, and all the praise o the would-be reform- ers o the 1990s probably ended up encouraging their authoritarian turn. Rather, the United States should focus its attention on promot- ing reforms in the most important parts o each state, such as the security services, the Ãnance ministry, the judiciary, and the legisla- ture. The goal should be reforms that outlive the reformers. U.S. Ãnancial support should also be rebalanced. For now, the li- on’s share is focused on public health and humanitarian relief, with relatively little devoted to supporting democratic governance, pro- moting human rights, or reforming regressive legislation. More aid
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should go to the latter set o tasks, and most aid should be tied more closely to tangible progress. The Millennium Challenge Corpora- tion, a U.S. aid agency established in 2004, oers a promising model. The « negotiates “compacts” worth several hundred million dol- lars with countries that meet certain governance criteria. Although Ethiopia is the only one o the Ãve countries currently in the « program, the United States can and should apply the principles behind it U.S. policy toward Africa to assistance to all Ãve, making support has long been decidedly conditional on reforms. It should use risk averse. this approach at the subnational level, too. In Nigeria, for example, the United States should consider striking deals with the most dynamic o the country’s 36 states, some o which boast economies larger than entire African countries. But support cannot be limited to governments. As encouraging as some o the reformers may be, equally important are the civil society leaders, human rights defenders, and journalists who provide an es- sential check on government authority. In Angola, Congo, and Ethi- opia, such Ãgures have suered from decades o repression and would beneÃt immensely from more outside help. South Africa shows just how eective such elements can be: it was the media, civil society, and the judiciary that shone a light on the massive corruption o Zuma and his cronies, building pressure for his removal. Political leaders get the headlines, but civil society leaders often deserve just as much credit for reform. Finally, i the United States wants to reinforce new openings un- der new leaders, it needs to stop treating Africa as an afterthought. Washington tends to relegate the region to one-o engagements and staid forums, i not ignore it entirely. Congo last had an Oval Oce visit in 2007, South Africa in 2006, Angola in 2004, and Ethiopia in 2002. The Trump administration has devoted even fewer resources and less attention than its predecessors to sub-Saharan Africa: the current secretary o state has yet to visit the region, and unlike the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, the Trump administra- tion has no signature initiatives centering on it. (The White House’s Prosper Africa initiative has yet to get o the ground.) Optics and invitations matter. The Trump administration should work with France to invite Africa’s new leaders to the G-7 summit in Biarritz in
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August 2019. It should invite key reformers, such as Abiy, to deliver an address to Congress and encourage leaders o other branches o African governments to meet their U.S. counterparts. It should re- vive the moribund strategic dialogue with South Africa and start its Ãrst one with Ethiopia. And it should Ãll key ambassadorial posts that have been left vacant since before Donald Trump took oce, including those in South Africa and Tanzania. What makes this moment in Africa unique is the conÁuence o new leaders coming to power in the most inÁuential countries, each with a mandate for reform and renewal. Success is never guaranteed, and the path to lasting progress is littered with obstacles. But in each country, there is a plausible route to reform that just a few years ago did not exist. Where it ultimately leads is worth the journey: a future in which hundreds o millions o Africans live in freedom and prosperity.∂
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and other financial ve- capabilities. With years of in hard assets, some in PORTUGAL hicles, working with com- collective legal experience Portugal are not neglect- panies like Apollo, Oaktree in both domestic and in- ing the importance of its and Signal Capital. ternational markets, we human resources. Since “We develop and grow are a bridge, an ideal part- 2002, I Have the Power activity in all sectors but ner for future clients and (IHTP) has o ered training especially in real estate. investors into Portugal,” and coaching programs We went from zero to 1 Managing Partner geared to improve the in- billion euros in manage- Ricardo Reigada Pereira terpersonal, leadership ment twice with a 12% says. and communication skills market share. We manage Another law firm earn- of its clients. the biggest Por tuguese ing preferred adviser sta- “Our vision, which is fund with around 700 tus by foreign investors, the foundation of our million euros and more individual and institutions, company and brand, is to than 23,000 unit-holders,” is CMS Rui Pena & Arnaut. Home Tailors CEO David solve the challenges of Executive Director Pedro Established in 1964, it is Carapinha the future. Starting with Coelho says. well known for its full-suite estate funding and broker- the education of children Square Asset of services in the elds of age and is a highly sought and continuing at every Management has proved energy, IT and intellectual out partner of foreign stage and every age of its global status by win- property as well as its pro- investors. their lives, we don’t teach ning the MSCI award eight found expertise in labor “We distinguish our- technical education, rather years in a row for over- and corporate law. selves by offering our human education,” CEO seeing the highest return “We have a very strong clients quality, compre- Adelino Cunha said. balanced portfolio. To private sector. We have hensive service, with our Today, IHTP is present in achieve long-term growth, a very stable political pro cient experts. We sup- 53 countries around the it plans to diversify its system. We are a coun- port Golden Visa investors, world with 70 consultants products, clients and mar- try you can trust, and we providing the best real es- across Portugal, France, kets, starting with a new are always interested in tate solutions,” CEO David Brazil and the United fund-raising structure in receiving and welcom- Carapinha says. States. Luxembourg for institu- ing foreign people,” says tional clients. Managing Partner José Meanwhile, RRP Luis Arnaut, who is also Advogados, set up in president of Lisbon’s 2016, has established its Tourism Agency. position as one of the As the head of the capi- leading law practices in tal’s main tourism pro- Portugal. Amid the in ux motion agency, Arnaut of foreign investment, the oversaw tourism in Lisbon young law firm employs grow 80% between 2015 many experts in various and 2017, far above the elds who provide sound 12% national average dur- advice and innovative ing the same period. solutions. Founded in 2017, Home “We possess both Tailors specializes in real
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With Great Demographics Comes Great Power Why Population Will Drive Geopolitics Nicholas Eberstadt
emographics may not be destiny, but for students o geo- politics, they come close. Although conventional measures Do economic and military power often receive more atten- tion, few factors inÁuence the long-term competition between great powers as much as changes in the size, capabilities, and characteristics o national populations. The United States is a case in point. In 1850, the United States was home to some 23 million people, 13 million fewer than France. Today, the U.S. population is close to 330 million, larger than the British, Dutch, French, German, and Italian populations combined. For more than a century, the United States has had the world’s largest skilled work force, and by measures such as mean years o adult schooling, it has long had among the world’s most highly educated populations. These favorable demographic fundamentals, more than geography or natu- ral resources, explain why the United States emerged as the world’s preeminent economic and military power after World War II—and why it still occupies that position today. Yet past performance is no guarantee o future results. Thanks in large part to demographics, rival states such as China have become gen- uine great-power competitors over the past few decades. The United States, meanwhile, has eroded or squandered its demographic edge in a number o ways, even as its traditional allies in Europe and Asia have struggled with population stagnation or decline. So far, the damage to U.S. power has been limited by the fact that the United States’ main geopolitical rivals face serious demographic problems o their own. Gaz-
NICHOLAS EBERSTADT is Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute.
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Keep ’em coming: at a daycare center in New York City, May 2010 ing further into the future, however, population growth and rising levels o education may propel new countries toward great-power status. Demographics oer a clue to the geopolitical world o the future— and how Washington should prepare for it. To maintain the United States’ edge, American leaders must take steps to slow or reverse the negative demographic trends now eating away at the foundations o
RUTH FREMSON U.S. power. They must also begin to rethink Washington’s global strategy, recognizing that the future o the U.S.-led international or- der lies with the young and growing democracies o the developing world. With wise domestic policy and farsighted diplomacy, U.S. / THE leaders can ensure that their country’s still considerable human re-
NEW sources reinforce American power long into the coming century. YORK PEOPLE POWER TIMES For premodern empires and kingdoms, a larger population meant
/ REDUX more people to tax and send o to war. But thanks to modern eco- nomic development, demographics are more important now than ever before. Since the Industrial Revolution, technological innovations
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and other improvements in human productivity have led to a long- term decline in the price o natural resources and basic commodities such as food. At the same time, they have greatly increased the re- turns to skilled labor. In fact, most global economic growth since World War II can be attributed to two factors: improvements in hu- man capital—a catchall term for education, health, nutrition, training, and other factors that determine an individual worker’s potential— and favorable business climates, which allowed the value o those hu- man resources to be unlocked. Human capital, in particular, has an extraordinary impact on economies. For each year o increased life expectancy today, for instance, a country sees a permanent increase in per capita income o about four percent. And for each additional year o schooling that a country’s citizens obtain, the country sees, on aver- age, a ten percent increase in per capita ³²¡. Vast disparities between human capital development in dierent countries have produced gaps in economic productivity that are larger today than at any previous point in history. For example, in 2017, ac- cording to World Bank estimates, Ireland’s per capita ³²¡ was roughly 100 times as high as that o the Central African Republic (when ad- justed for relative purchasing power). Yet such disparities are not set in stone: thanks to technological breakthroughs, nations can now aug- ment their human capital faster than ever before. It took Sweden from 1886 to 2003 to raise its life expectancy from 50 years to 80 years; South Korea accomplished the same feat in less than hal the time, between the late 1950s and 2009. Despite the possibility o such rapid and often unexpected im- provements in human capital, demography as a whole is a fairly pre- dictable social science. Unlike economic or technological forecasts, population projections tend to be reasonably accurate for at least a few decades, since most o the people who will be living in the world o 2040, for example, are already alive today. And although such projec- tions cannot predict the future, they can oer a rough guide to the emerging contours o international politics—the changing realm o the possible in world aairs. Policymakers who want to plan for the long term should be paying attention.
POPULATION PROBLEMS IN THE PRC Today, the international arena is dominated by one superpower (the United States) and two great powers (China and Russia). Recent
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U.S. misadventures abroad and political turbulence at home have naturally led some to suggest that American power is on the wane. A look at demographic projections for China and Russia, however, sug- gests that fears that the United States will lose its position o primacy anytime soon are misplaced. China is the United States’ main international rival, and at Ãrst glance, it is an impressive rival indeed. It is the world’s most populous country, with almost 1.4 billion people, and over the past four decades, it has seen the most rapid and sustained burst o economic growth in human history. Adjusting for relative purchasing power, the Chinese economy is now the largest in the world. China’s Unfavorable demographic growth since the 1970s is usually attrib- trends are creating heavy uted to the policies o Deng Xiaoping, headwinds for the Chinese who pushed the country in a more economy. market-friendly direction after becom- ing the paramount leader in 1978. But demographics also played a critical role. Between 1975 and 2010, China’s working-age population (those aged 15–64) nearly doubled, and total hours worked grew even faster, as the country abandoned the Maoist policies that had made paid labor both less available and less appealing. Overall health and educational attainment rose rapidly, as well. Given this impressive record, many—apparently including China’s leadership—expect that China will surpass the United States as the world’s leading power sometime in the next two decades. Yet the country’s longer-term demographic prospects suggest otherwise. Over the past two generations, China has seen a collapse in fertility, exacerbated by Beijing’s ruthless population-control programs. The one-child policy, introduced in 1979, was ended in 2015, but the dam- age had already been done. China’s total fertility rate (¢µ) has been below the replacement level o 2.1 children per woman since at least the early 1990s. According to the ¤ Population Division, China’s ¢µ now stands at 1.6, but some analysts, such as Cai Fang, a Chinese demographer and member o the Standing Committee o the Na- tional People’s Congress, believe it may be as low as 1.4—more than 30 percent below replacement. In major cities such as Shanghai, fer- tility may stand at one birth per woman or less. With decades o extremely low fertility in its immediate past, dec- ades more o that to come, and no likelihood o mass immigration,
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China will see its population peak by 2027, according to projections by the U.S. Census Bureau. Its working-age population has already been shrinking for the past Ãve years, and it is set to decrease by at least 100 million between 2015 and 2040. The country will see a particularly large decline in its working-age population under 30, which may plunge by nearly 30 percent over these years. Although this rising generation will be the best educated in Chinese history, the country’s overall growth in educational attainment will slow as the less educated older generations come to make up a larger and larger share o the total population. The Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Hu- man Capital estimates that by 2040, China’s adult population will have fewer average years o schooling than that o Bolivia or Zimbabwe. As China’s working population slumps, its over-65 population is set to explode. Between 2015 and 2040, the number o Chinese over the age o 65 is projected to rise from about 135 million to 325 million or more. By 2040, China could have twice as many elderly people as children under the age o 15, and the median age o Chi- na’s population could rise to 48, up from 37 in 2015 and less than 25 in 1990. No country has ever gone gray at a faster pace. The process will be particularly extreme in rural China, as young Chi- nese migrate to the cities in search o opportunity. On the whole, China’s elderly in 2040 will be both poor and poorly educated, dependent on others for the overwhelming majority o their con- sumption and other needs. Taken together, these unfavorable demographic trends are creating heavy headwinds for the Chinese economy. To make matters worse, China faces additional adverse demographic factors. Under the one- child policy, for instance, Chinese parents often opted for an abortion over giving birth to a girl, creating one o the most imbalanced infant and child sex ratios in the modern world. In the years ahead, China will have to deal with the problem o tens o millions o surplus men, mostly from disadvantaged rural backgrounds, with no prospects o marrying, having children, or continuing their family line. China will also face a related problem over the next generation, as traditional Chinese family structures atrophy or evaporate. Since the beginning o written history, Chinese society has relied on extended kinship networks to cope with economic risks. Yet a rising generation o urban Chinese youth is made up o only children o only children, young men and women with no siblings, cousins, aunts, or uncles.
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The end o 2,500 years o family tradition will be a departure into the unknown for Chinese civilization—and Beijing is manifestly un- prepared for this impending great leap.
THE RUSSIAN PARADOX For Russia, the demographic outlook may be even worse. The Kremlin sees itsel as helming a global power, yet its grandiose self-conception is badly mismatched with the human resources at its disposal. From the standpoint o population and human capital, Russia looks like a power in the grip o all but irremediable decline. In some respects, Russia is a typical European country: it has an aging, shrinking population and diculties assimilating the low- skilled immigrant work force on which its economy increasingly de- pends. When it comes to human capital, however, Russia faces an acute crisis. After fully hal a century o stagnation or regression, Russia has Ãnally seen an improvement over the last decade in the overall health o its people, as evidenced by measures such as life expectancy at birth. But the situation is still dire. In 2016, according to the World Health Organization, 15-year-old Russian males could expect to live another 52.3 years: slightly less than their counterparts in Haiti. Fifteen-year-old Russian females, although better o than the males, had a life expectancy only slightly above the range for the ¤’s roster oÊ least developed countries. In addition to its health problems, Russia is failing in knowledge production. Call it “the Russian paradox”: high levels o schooling, low levels oÊ human capital. Despite an ostensibly educated citizenry, Russia (with a population o 145 million) earns fewer patents each year from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Oce than the state o Alabama (population: Ãve million). Russia earns less from service exports than Denmark, with its population o six million, and has less privately held wealth than Sweden, with a population o ten million. And since Russia’s working-age population is set to age and shrink between 2015 and 2040, its relative economic potential will diminish, too. Ambitious revisionist states such as Russia can, for a time, punch above their weight in international aairs. Yet for all o Russian Pres- ident Vladimir Putin’s foreign meddling and military adventurism, his country is facing demographic constraints that will make it ex- traordinarily dicult for him and his successors to maintain, much less seriously improve, Russia’s geopolitical position.
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THE AMERICAN ADVANTAGE Relative to its principal rivals, the United States is in an enviable po- sition. This should come as no surprise: the United States has been the most powerful country in the world since World War II, and its demographic advantages—its large and highly educated population, relatively high fertility rates, and welcoming immigration policies— have been crucial to that success. The United States’ most obvious demographic advantage is its size. It is the world’s third most populous country, and it is likely to remain so until 2040. No other developed country even comes close—the sec- ond and third largest, Japan and Germany, have populations that are two-Ãfths and one-fourth the size o the U.S. population, respectively. Between 1990 and 2015, the United States generated nearly all the population growth for the ¤’s “more developed regions,” and both ¤ and U.S. Census Bureau projections suggest that it will generate all o these regions’ population growth between 2015 and 2040. In fact, ex- cluding sub-Saharan Africa—the only region where the rate o popula- tion growth is still increasing—the U.S. population is on track to grow slightly faster than the world population between now and 2040. The United States beneÃts from what might be called “American demographic exceptionalism.” Compared with other developed countries, the United States has long enjoyed distinctly high immi- gration levels and birthrates. Between 1950 and 2015, close to 50 mil- lion people immigrated to the United States, accounting for nearly hal o the developed world’s net immigration over that time period. These immigrants and their descendants made up most o the United States’ population growth over those decades. But U.S. fertility is also unusually high for an aØuent society. Apart from a temporary dip during and immediately after the Vietnam War, the United States’ birthrates after World War II have consistently exceeded the developed- country average. Between the mid-1980s and the Ãnancial crisis o 2008, the United States was the only rich country with replacement- level fertility. Assuming continued levels o immigration and near- replacement fertility, most demographers project that by 2040, the United States will have a population o around 380 million. It will have a younger population than almost any other rich democracy, and its working-age population will still be expanding. And unlike the rest o the developed world in 2040, it will still have more births than deaths.
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Yet the United States’ demographic advantage is not merely a func- tion o numbers. For over a century, the United States has beneÃted from a large and growing cadre oÊ highly skilled workers. Research by the economists Robert Barro and Jong-Wha Lee on educational at- tainment suggests that between 1870 and 2010, Americans were the world’s most highly educated people in terms o average years o schooling for the working-age population. In 2015, by their estimate, 56 million men and women in the United States aged 25 to 64 had undergraduate degrees or graduate degrees: twice as many as in China and almost one-sixth o the global total. The United States leads the world in research and development, as measured by international pat- ent applications and scientiÃc publications, and in wealth generation, with Americans having accumulated more private wealth since 2000 than the Chinese have in recorded history.
THE TASK AHEAD Despite these advantages, all is not well for the United States. Warn- ing lights are Áashing for a number oÊ key demographic metrics. In 2014, U.S. life expectancy began slowly but steadily dropping for the Ãrst time in a century. This drop is partly due to the surge in so-called deaths o despair (deaths from suicide, a drug overdose, or complica- tions from alcoholism), especially in economically depressed regions o the country. Yet even before the decline began, U.S. progress in public health indicators had been painfully slow and astonishingly ex- pensive. Improvements in educational attainment have also been stalled for decades: as o 2010, American adults born in the early 1980s had, on average, 13.7 years o schooling, only fractionally higher than the average o 13.5 years for their parents’ generation, born in the early 1950s. Meanwhile, employment rates for American men o prime working age (25–54) are at levels not seen since the Great Depression. Further, it is possible that consensus projections for U.S. popula- tion growth are too optimistic. Such projections generally assume that U.S. fertility will return to replacement levels. But U.S. fertility fell by about ten percent after 2008 and shows no sign o recovering. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2017, the United States’ ¢µ stood at 1.77, the lowest level since the 1970s and below those o European countries such as France and Sweden. Most demographic projections also assume that the United States will maintain net immigration at its current level o roughly one million
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per year. But immigration is an intrinsically political phenomenon. In the past, the United States has decided to all but shut o immigration in response to domestic turbulence, and it may do so again. Even with these troubling signs o decline, no rival is likely to over- take the United States in terms o raw human potential anytime soon. China and India, for instance, may have more college-educated work- ers than the United States does by 2040, but the superior quality o U.S. higher education will weigh heavily in the United States’ favor, and the United States will almost certainly still have the world’s larg- est pool o workers with graduate degrees. I U.S. demographic and human resource indicators continue to stagnate or regress, however, Americans may lose their appetite for playing a leading role in inter- national aairs. Isolationism and populism could thrive, and the U.S. electorate could be unwilling to bear the considerable costs o main- taining the international order. There is also a nontrivial risk that the United States’ relatively disappointing trends in health and education will harm its long-term economic performance. To avoid these outcomes, the United States will need to revitalize its human resource base and restore its dynamism in business, health, and education. Doing so will be immensely dicult—a far-reaching undertaking that is beyond the powers o the federal government alone. The Ãrst step, however, is for Americans o all political persua- sions to recognize the urgency o the task.
AGING ALLIES Even as they try to put U.S. demographic trends back on track, American policymakers should also begin considering what U.S. strategy should look like in a world in which demographic advantages no longer guarantee U.S. hegemony. One appealing solution would be to rely more on traditional U.S. partners. Japan’s ³²¡ is nearly four times as large as Russia’s on an exchange-rate basis, and although its total population is slightly smaller than Russia’s, it has a larger cadre oÊ highly skilled workers. The current population o the ¥ is around 512 million, nearly 200 million more than that o the United States, and its economy is still substantially larger than China’s on an exchange-rate basis. The trouble is that many oÊ Washington’s traditional allies face even more daunting demographic challenges than does the United States. The ¥ member states and Japan, for instance, all have healthy, well-
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educated, and highly productive populations. Yet the ¥ and Japan have both registered sub-replacement fertility rates since the 1970s, and their fertility rates began to drop far below the replacement level in the 1980s. In both the ¥ and Japan, deaths now outnumber births. Their working-age populations are in long-term decline, and their overall populations are aging at rates that would have sounded like sci- ence Ãction not so long ago. The main demographic dierence be- tween the ¥ and Japan is that Europe has embraced immigration and Japan has not. Both approaches have their drawbacks. For ¥ members, immigra- tion has postponed the shrinking o their work forces and slowed the aging o their populations. Yet the ¥’s record o integrating newcom- ers, particularly Muslims from poorer countries, is uneven at best, and cultural conÁicts over immigration are roiling No rival is likely to politics across the continent. Japan has overtake the United States avoided these convulsions, but at the in terms of raw human cost o rapid and irreversible population potential anytime soon. decline. As in China, this is leading to an implosion o the traditional Japanese family. Japanese demographers project that a woman born in Japan in 1990 has close to a 40 percent chance oÊ having no children oÊ her own and a 50 percent chance o never having grandchildren. Japan is not just graying: it is becoming a country o elderly social isolates, with rising needs and decreasing family support. Population decline does not preclude improvements in living stan- dards, but it is a drag on relative economic and military power. Accord- ing to the U.S. Census Bureau, the United States’ working-age population is set to grow by about ten percent between 2015 and 2040. Over the same period, Germany’s and South Korea’s working-age pop- ulations are expected to shrink by 20 percent, and Japan’s, by 22 percent. The number o young men aged 15 to 24, the group from which military manpower is typically drawn, is projected to increase over that period by three percent in the United States but to fall by 23 percent in Ger- many, 25 percent in Japan, and almost 40 percent in South Korea. This decline, combined with the budgetary politics o the modern welfare state—borrowing money from future generations to pay for the current beneÃts o older voters—means that most U.S. treaty al- lies will become less willing and able to provide for their own defense
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over the coming decades. The United States, in other words, will be- come ever more valuable to its aging security partners at the same time as they become less valuable to Washington—all while the United States’ own demographic advantage is beginning to erode.
MAKING NEW FRIENDS Yet even as population trends sap the strength o traditional powers in Europe and East Asia, they are propelling a whole new set o coun- tries, many o them potential U.S. allies and partners, toward great- power status. By courting these rising powers, U.S. policymakers can strengthen the international order for decades to come. Washington should begin by turning its attention to South and Southeast Asia. As Japan and South Korea lose population, for in- stance, emerging democracies such as Indonesia and the Philippines will continue to grow. By 2040, Indonesia could have a population o over 300 million, up from around 260 million today, and the Philip- pines’ population could reach 140 million—which would be possibly larger than Russia’s. Both countries, moreover, are young and increas- ingly well educated. In 2015, China had almost four times as many people aged 20 to 39 as Indonesia and the Philippines did combined; by 2040, it is projected to have only twice as many. Both Indonesia and the Philippines are likely to come into increasing confrontation with an expansionist China, and as they do, they may discover an in- terest in deeper security cooperation with the United States. Indonesia and the Philippines, however, pale in comparison to In- dia. India is on track to overtake China as the world’s most populous country within the next decade, and by 2040, India’s working-age population may exceed China’s by 200 million. India’s population will still be growing in 2040, when China’s will be in rapid decline. By that time, about 24 percent o China’s population will be over 65, compared with around 12 percent o India’s. India has its own demo- graphic and human resource problems—compared with China, it still has poor public health indicators, low average educational attainment, and egregiously high levels o illiteracy. Despite years o attempted reforms, India still ranks 130th out o 186 countries on the Heritage Foundation’s Index o Economic Freedom. Yet by 2040, India may have a larger pool oÊ highly educated workers aged 20 to 49 than China, and its advantage will be increasing with every year. The United States and India have already begun defense cooperation in
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the interest o countering China; American leaders should make it a priority to deepen this partnership in the years ahead. The United States today has many advantages over its interna- tional rivals, thanks in no small part to its favorable demographics. Yet U.S. power cannot be taken for granted. It would be a geopolitical tragedy i the postwar economic and security order that the United States built really were to fade from the scene: no alternative arrange- ment is likely to promise as much freedom and prosperity to as many people as the U.S.-led international order does today. Thankfully, it is a tragedy that can be averted. I the United States can begin to repair its human capital base and forge new alliances for the twenty-Ãrst century, it can strengthen—with the aid o demographics—Pax Amer- icana for generations to come.∂
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America’s Forgotten Colony Ending Puerto Rico’s Perpetual Crisis Antonio Weiss and Brad Setser
hen Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in September 2017, Americans on the mainland were horriÃed by the Wscale o the damage—thousands o deaths, hundreds o thousands displaced, millions left without electricity, and, by some estimates, economic losses as high as $90 billion. What few registered, as the hurricane’s toll and the shocking inadequacy o the U.S. govern- ment’s response became clear, was an underlying cause o Puerto Ri- co’s condition: that the island is still eectively a U.S. colony. Since 1898, when Washington took possession o it at the end o the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico has been neither granted sovereignty nor fully integrated into the United States. Instead, it has remained an “unincorporated territory,” a place that is simultaneously a part of, yet apart from, the rest o the country. Residents o Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens, subject to federal laws and eligible for the draft, but they do not enjoy the same political rights as their fellow Ameri- cans. They have only one, nonvoting member in the House o Repre- sentatives, and although they can vote in U.S. presidential primaries, they have no Electoral College votes in the general election. Without any say in the federal policies that govern it, Puerto Rico has for decades been neglected by Washington. Such neglect has been costly: even before Maria, Puerto Rico’s economy had been in sustained decline for years. Between 2004 and 2017, economic
ANTONIO WEISS is a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. He previously served as Counselor to the Secretary at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
BRAD SETSER is Steven A. Tananbaum Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. He previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Economic Analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
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The 51st state? At a political rally in San Juan, November 2012 output dropped by 14 percent. I Puerto Rico were measured as a country, that decline would rank among the worst in recent history for a nation not at war. This economic crisis has sparked a wave o out-migration: Puerto Rico’s population has fallen from over 3.8 million in 2006 to less than 3.2 million today. The island has a pov- erty rate double that o Mississippi, the poorest U.S. state: around 45 percent o Puerto Rico’s residents and 56 percent o its children live below the federal poverty line. The status quo cannot continue. The United States’ continued eco- nomic and political neglect o the island is a stain on the country’s moral authority. Puerto Rico did not choose to enter the United States—it was conquered in an expansionist war, and its wishes have been ignored ever since. For the United States to remain a voice for democracy and self-determination on the international stage, it must end its unjust colonial relationship with Puerto Rico and the damag- ing purgatory that the island’s current status represents. RICARDO ARDUENGO The decision over the island’s future should be left to the people o Puerto Rico themselves, as it is a question not just o economics but also o identity, heritage, and values. But however complex the process, the U.S. government must commit to working with Puerto Rico to resolve
AP / the island’s status once and for all. Americans on the mainland must stand ready to support whatever choice the Puerto Rican people make—
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whether that’s revising the current commonwealth status, becoming an independent nation, or joining the federal union as the 51st U.S. state.
A QUESTION OF STATUS In 1898, the United States won the Spanish-American War and forced Spain to cede control o Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. Sovereignty over Puerto Rico was transferred to Congress, which un- der Article 4 o the U.S. Constitution has plenary power over all “Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.” Imme- diately, the federal government had to determine the constitutional standing o the newly acquired territories. In a series o controversial decisions known as the Insular Cases, the Supreme Court resolved this question by distinguishing between incorporated territories—those destined for eventual statehood, such as Hawaii—and unincorporated territories, including Puerto Rico. Although the Court ruled that the fundamental personal free- doms guaranteed by the Constitution extended to individuals in the unincorporated territories, those territories would not automatically enjoy the full scope o constitutional protections, such as birthright citizenship and the right to a trial by jury. There was a clear racial dimension to the rulings: in the opinion for the Court in the 1901 case o Downes v. Bidwell, Justice Henry Billings Brown worried that i Puerto Rico were recognized as part o the United States, then its inhabitants, “whether savages or civilized,” would be “entitled to all the rights, privileges and immunities o citizens.” In a prescient dis- sent, Justice John Marshall Harlan attacked the majority ruling for allowing Congress to “engraft upon our republican institutions a co- lonial system such as exists under monarchical governments.” The United States initially appointed a colonial government in Puerto Rico. But local resistance led to the Jones Act o 1917, which granted the inhabitants o the island U.S. citizenship and created a popularly elected Puerto Rican Senate. In 1947, Congress passed leg- islation allowing Puerto Ricans to elect their own governor. Three years later, driven in part by a desire to comply with ¤ rules related to the self-government o territories, it permitted the Puerto Rican legislature to draft its own constitution, subject to congressional ap- proval. Since ratiÃcation o its constitution in 1952, Puerto Rico has ocially been called a “commonwealth” in English, yet its Spanish title o “free associated state” implies a degree o autonomy that Wash-
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ington, despite patchwork reforms, has consistently failed to grant it. The question o status has long deÃned Puerto Rico’s own politics. Its main political parties are centered on their support for statehood or commonwealth status, and policies are routinely designed and dis- carded in view o their implications for one or the other position. The island has held Ãve nonbinding referendums on its status. The Ãrst two, in 1967 and 1993, indicated a preference for the commonwealth option, but in the third, held in 1998, “none o the above” won just over hal the vote. More recent votes have appeared to show greater sup- port for statehood. In 2017, for instance, in a referendum designed by the current, pro-statehood government, statehood received 97 percent o the vote, but turnout was a mere 23 percent, as both pro-independence and pro-commonwealth parties boycotted the referendum. The federal government, for its part, has been largely content to maintain the colonial relationship. In response to the 1967 referendum, in 1970, U.S. President Richard Nixon created an ad hoc advisory group on Puerto Rico, which recommended that residents o Puerto Rico be allowed to vote in U.S. presidential elections. But that pro- posal failed to receive congressional support, and a later recommenda- tion to grant the island greater autonomy was rejected by Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, who favored statehood. Over the past three decades, Congress has periodically considered legislation to address the status o Puerto Rico, but the only measure ever passed was a small appropriation in 2014 that provided federal funding for a vote without any commitment to act on the results. And so the status quo prevails.
A HISTORY OF NEGLECT The United States has not only asserted political sovereignty over Puerto Rico; it has fundamentally shaped the island’s economy. Puerto Rico’s currency is the U.S. dollar, its major banks are supervised by U.S. regulators, and its commerce with the 50 states is governed by U.S. law. When a foreign good enters Puerto Rico, it clears U.S. cus- toms and faces no further duties or trade restrictions. The federal minimum wage has applied in Puerto Rico since 1983. Puerto Rican residents can move freely within the United States, and Americans can visit Puerto Rico without a passport. Yet the island is not fully integrated with the mainland: for income tax purposes, Puerto Rico is legally oshore. Companies operating in Puerto Rico pay no federal income tax on proÃts earned on the island. And although Puerto Ri-
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can residents pay local and U.S. payroll taxes, most do not pay federal income tax. As a result, they receive only some o the federal beneÃts available to Americans on the mainland—Social Security, for exam- ple, but not Supplemental Security Income. At times, Puerto Rico has beneÃted from its economic ties with the United States. After World War II, a number o manufacturers opened factories in Puerto Rico, drawn by the Puerto Rico is still island’s low wages, increasingly skilled work force, and tari-free access to the eectively a U.S. colony. U.S. market. Average annual growth topped Ãve percent in both the 1950s and the 1960s, and income levels, although low compared with those on the mainland, were far higher than those in the rest o the Carib- bean. Many viewed Puerto Rico as the capitalist and democratic an- swer to communist Cuba. Yet the island’s postwar boom was not built to last. Puerto Rico’s growth was heavily dependent on federal policies that shielded it from international competition. These policies began to change after the 1970s, when the United States became more deeply integrated into the global economy. In 1973, when the United States abandoned its oil import quota system, which had privileged Puerto Rican oil imports and thus helped stimulate the island’s economic development, Puerto Rico’s sizable petrochemicals industry collapsed. As Puerto Rico’s traditional manufacturing sectors were exposed to global competition, the island became more and more dependent on its status as an oshore tax haven for U.S. Ãrms. A 1976 change to the U.S. tax code, Section 936, allowed Ãrms to repatriate income earned in Puerto Rico to the U.S. mainland without paying taxes. This made the island an attractive destination for U.S. companies, particularly those in the pharmaceutical industry, which could transfer intellectual property rights for a valuable drug to a Puerto Rican subsidiary, man- ufacture the drug in Puerto Rico, charge a high markup on its sales to customers on the mainland, and then repatriate the tax-free proÃt. Over time, other high-proÃt industries reliant on intellectual prop- erty also took advantage o Puerto Rico’s tax status—but they failed to generate much local employment. As a result, even with these tax incentives, Puerto Rico in the 1970s and 1980s never replicated the rapid, broad-based growth o the 1950s and 1960s. By the time the United States repealed Section 936 (through
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a ten-year phaseout ending in 2006), the federal policies that had sup- ported the Puerto Rican economy—high external taris, oil import quotas, and tax-free repatriation o oshore proÃts—were all gone. When the island’s real estate bubble burst in 2008, Puerto Rico’s econ- omy collapsed, and then continued to decline even as the mainland recovered. Not surprisingly, the island’s government began facing per- sistent revenue shortages and budget deÃcits, which it Ãnanced through excessive (and often hidden) borrowing and through sales o whatever marketable assets remained in its already depleted public pension system. Between 2005 and 2017, the island’s total public debt rose from $35 billion to over $70 billion, or $20,000 for every Puerto Rican. The last time that Puerto Rico tried to issue bonds, in 2014, the three major U.S. credit-rating agencies scored them as junk. Puerto Rico has made its share o policy mistakes. The island’s government never fully mastered its own Ãnances, lacking modern systems to control and monitor spending by its constituent parts. It entered into shortsighted, opaque tax agreements with multinational corporations that sacriÃced long-term revenue in order to address short-term budget shortfalls. It cut public investment as the economy shrank, weakening the island’s infrastructure, and forwent critical ini- tiatives, such as modernizing Puerto Rico’s dangerously outdated electrical grid. But the U.S. government also bears a great deal o re- sponsibility for the island’s plight. When federal policies that aided Puerto Rico’s economic development were repealed, no enduring re- placements were put in place. Washington largely ignored Puerto Rico until it was clear that the island was in severe Ãnancial distress and would default on its debt without the protections granted to U.S. municipalities when they Ãle for bankruptcy. In 2016, well before Ma- ria, Congress passed legislation to create a process akin to bankruptcy that would allow the island’s debt to be restructured in court. It also established an oversight board responsible for supervising the island’s Ãnances and ensuring that it would eventually regain access to credit markets. Although necessary to gain bipartisan support for the bill, the creation o the board—with seven members appointed by the U.S. president—was a stark reminder o the island’s colonial status. Yet Congress did nothing to address Puerto Rico’s incomplete inte- gration into the federal safety net, leaving the island’s residents more exposed to poverty than U.S. citizens on the mainland. Residents o Puerto Rico do not receive the federal Earned Income Tax Credit,
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which supplements the income o poor Americans. E¢ beneÃts can be substantial: on the mainland, a family with two children earning the Puerto Rican median income o $20,000 would receive around $5,600 in tax credits every year. And although Puerto Rico participates to varying degrees in other federal safety net programs, including Medicaid and Medicare, a 2014 study by the Government Accountability Oce estimated that Puerto Rico received between $1.7 billion and $5.4 bil- lion less in annual federal beneÃts than it would i it were a state.
FIRST THINGS FIRST The Ãrst priority for both U.S. and Puerto Rican policymakers must be to reduce the commonwealth’s overwhelming debt burden, which, mea- sured both in per capita terms and relative to ³¤¡, is far higher than that o any U.S. state. Puerto Rico’s contracted debt service amounts to around 20 percent o its annual revenue, compared with below Ãve percent for the average state. Now that Puerto Rico has entered the bankruptcy-like process set out by Congress in 2016, it should be able to reduce its debt. But there is no guarantee that once Puerto Rico, the oversight board, and various creditor groups agree to a debt restructur- ing, the island will emerge with a truly sustainable debt burden. After the debt has been restructured, the island must gain access to federal funds to rebuild its critical infrastructure. Since Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico has been promised substantial federal disaster aid over the coming decades. Although the total amount o this aid could reach over $80 billion, only halÊ has been authorized by federal agen- cies, and just over $10 billion had reached the island by the start o 2019. It is crucial that this money be used to modernize the island’s outdated infrastructure rather than to service legacy debts. The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, for example, currently uses 40-year- old power plants that burn oil to generate much o Puerto Rico’s elec- tricity. This electricity is then delivered across the island’s uneven and forested terrain via large transmission lines, which are vulnerable to hurricane-force winds. Puerto Rico’s electrical grid is thus exposed both to higher oil prices and to damage from natural disasters. Puerto Rico needs to improve its electricity generation, reduce its depen- dence on imported energy by investing in renewables, and create a resilient power grid that can withstand future hurricanes. Puerto Rico’s government should also take measures to improve the environment for business, while recognizing that now is not the time
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to implement austerity measures or punitive labor-market reforms. The economic stimulus provided by post-Maria reconstruction should result in a short-term increase in the island’s tax revenues, allowing the government to avoid some previously planned budget cuts, in- cluding in its educational and health-care systems. Proposals to re- duce Puerto Rico’s minimum wage, advocated by some economists, or increase its at-will employment, pushed by the oversight board but rejected by Puerto Rico’s elected representatives, would be less likely to stimulate economic growth than measures such as the introduction o a federally sponsored ¥¢.
THE ROAD AHEAD The immediate economic crisis must be addressed through an ambi- tious program to restructure Puerto Rico’s debt, rebuild its infrastruc- ture, and revitalize its economy. But the path forward will be sustainable only i the island’s political status is Ãnally resolved. Although it is for the people o Puerto Rico to decide their future, the federal government has a responsibility to work with them to develop options for a referen- dum and clarify how each option would be implemented i chosen. The federal government must also make clear that the vote will result in ac- tion. Washington must commit, for the Ãrst time, to respect the will o the Puerto Rican people, regardless o which path they choose. None o the options for addressing Puerto Rico’s status is straight- forward. Each raises complex economic, cultural, and constitutional issues and would require a multiyear transition process, designed to- gether with the people o Puerto Rico. Yet however challenging it may appear, the task is a necessary one. The Ãrst option for resolving Puerto Rico’s status is to revise the cur- rent commonwealth arrangement. The initial step for such a revision would be to address the island’s broken economic model. The federal government, for instance, must be willing to provide additional funds for Puerto Rico’s health-care system, which currently relies on Aord- able Care Act and Hurricane Maria relie appropriations that will soon run out. A revised arrangement should also ensure that any corporate tax incentives be tied to the creation o jobs in Puerto Rico, rather than providing multinational companies with a convenient tax haven. Such changes to the economic relationship could be enacted through congressional legislation, but they would not by themselves end the island’s colonial status, as a future Congress could overturn
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or change them without Puerto Rico’s consent. A revised arrange- ment would need to provide Puerto Rico with greater control over its destiny, through increased local autonomy, a more meaningful voice in the development o national policy, or both. Accomplishing this would arguably require an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as over a century o federal actions and judicial decisions, including two recent Supreme Court cases, have suggested that Congress will con- tinue to have absolute authority over Puerto Rico under the current constitutional arrangement. An amendment should enshrine Puerto Rican residents’ equal status as American citizens with speciÃc rights to self-government, voting representation in presidential elections, and equal treatment in social safety net programs. There is some precedent for such an amendment: the 23rd Amendment, ratiÃed in 1961, guaranteed residents oÊ Washington, D.C., representation in the Electoral College. Yet a constitutional amendment requires approval by two-thirds oÊ both houses o Congress or two-thirds o the states and then ratiÃcation by three-quarters o the states—a high bar, but one that has been cleared 27 times. The second option, independence, has relatively limited support within Puerto Rico, judging from the most recent polls. Indepen- dence would oer full policy autonomy, including, i Puerto Rico so desired, an independent central bank, a Áoating currency, and the ability to craft its own labor, tax, and trade policies. These would, in theory, allow Puerto Rico to set economic policies based on its own needs, rather than those o the broader United States. In practice, however, autonomy would require thorough reform. The beneÃt o a Áoating currency, for example, would be limited so long as Puerto Rico’s debt was still denominated in dollars, as any depreciation o the island’s currency would increase the cost o its debt. Full independence would come at a cost, as Puerto Rico receives substantial economic beneÃts from being part o the United States. Before any referendum, the federal government and Puerto Rico would have to agree on how independence would be carried out, in- cluding a realistic timeline, a plan to replace or maintain the func- tions currently carried out by the federal government, and clarity about how the federal beneÃts that currently Áow to Puerto Rican residents would be funded during the transition and maintained by the Puerto Rican government after independence. The two parties would also have to deÃne their future trade relationship and deter-
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mine whether Puerto Rican residents would retain their U.S. citizen- ship and the right to travel freely to the United States. At the opposite pole from independence is statehood. Statehood provides a clear alternative to Puerto Rico’s current patchwork o par- tial federal taxation and access to federal beneÃts. But it has been nearly 60 years since the last state, Hawaii, was admitted to the federal union, and there are several open questions related to possible Puerto Rican statehood that should be resolved prior to any referendum. A crucial question is how the United States would respond to a vote in favor o statehood, as admission requires a joint resolution o Congress signed by the president. Washington must make clear that it is prepared to embrace Puerto Rico as a member o the union, in- cluding by granting it full congressional representation. Puerto Rico would immediately become the 30th-largest state by population, with two senators and perhaps Ãve representatives. Statehood would also give Puerto Rican residents access to full federal beneÃts, including the ¥¢, Medicaid, and Medicare. There has long been skepticism that statehood could gain sucient bipartisan support, given Republican fears that most Puerto Ricans would vote for Democrats. But although U.S. President Donald Trump has voiced his opposition to statehood, previous Republican presidential candidates and party platforms have consistently supported it. In 2018, for instance, the Republican leadership o the House Committee on Nat- ural Resources, which has jurisdiction over U.S. territories, called on the Department o Justice to oversee a Puerto Rican plebiscite on statehood. I Puerto Rico became a state, its residents would receive full fed- eral beneÃts, equal to those enjoyed by citizens on the mainland. Puerto Rico’s population is already aging, and with a low birthrate and high levels o out-migration, the island will soon have the oldest pop- ulation in the United States. It would beneÃt in particular from ex- panded access to federal health-care funding. Many Puerto Rican families would also receive signiÃcant ¥¢ beneÃts when Ãling fed- eral income taxes. Access to the ¥¢ would not only alleviate poverty but also, by adding incentives for lower-income individuals to work, increase the island’s labor-force participation rate, which, at about 40 percent today, is only two-thirds o the average on the mainland. Perhaps the most dicult economic aspect o statehood would be the integration o Puerto Rico into the U.S. tax system. Even after the repeal o Section 936, Ãrms operating in Puerto Rico can avoid
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U.S. corporate income tax, paying the much lower “global minimum” rate applied to foreign intangible income. I Puerto Rico were a state, however, Ãrms operating there would be subject to the federal income tax, eliminating their incentive to shift operations to the island. Indi- vidual residents o Puerto Rico would also have to pay federal income tax, making it hard for the island to maintain its high local individual income tax rate, which currently has a top marginal rate o 33 percent. Statehood could put at risk nearly $5 billion o Puerto Rico’s annual revenue, or about one-third o its total. To help the island continue to cover its debt and pension obligations, the federal government would have to make up for a portion o the lost revenue, at least during the initial transition to statehood. At its core, status is a question o ideology and identity. Resolving Puerto Rico’s status is not an alternative to restructuring its debt or revitalizing its economy. It is, however, a critical step in allowing Puerto Rico to chart a sustainable long-term economic course. And for the United States, which has ruled Puerto Rico as a colony for over a century, giving the people o Puerto Rico the chance to decide their own future is not only a wise policy decision—it is, for a country that prides itsel as the leader o the free world, a moral imperative.∂
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REVIEWS & RESPONSES
In China, the term “feminism,” once a battle cry, has become a pejorative. —Susan Greenhalgh and Xiying Wang DAVID
GRAY China’s Feminist Fight The Last War—and the Next?
/ REUTERS Susan Greenhalgh and Xiying Wang 170 Jon Finer 183
How Should a Liberal Be? Ready for Robots? Sebastian Mallaby 177 Kenneth Cukier 192
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Beginning in 2012, they dared to take to China’s Feminist the streets to engage in performance art, including forming Áash mobs, and then Fight posted videos o their activities online to promote discussion and raise awareness about gender among the general public. #MeToo in the Middle Based on interviews with these young Kingdom women, including the group that came to be known as the Feminist Five, Hong Susan Greenhalgh and Fincher describes a collective awakening Xiying Wang in which they came to see their lives as “worth something,” a realization that led them to believe they had a right to ask for more than their society seemed willing Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist to oer. In recent years, young Chinese Awakening in China feminists have advocated a national law BY LETA HONG FINCHER. Verso, on domestic violence; criticized sexual 2018, 240 pp. harassment, sexual assault, and misogyny in the media and culture; challenged s the #MeToo movement spreads gender discrimination in college admis- around the globe, women’s sions, job recruitment, and workplace Arights advocates are looking for practices; and appealed for more public cases to cheer, stories o women standing restrooms for women. Such activism up to sexual harassment and assault and “tapp[ed] into a groundswell o dissatis- saying, “Enough is enough.” Chinese faction among hundreds o thousands women who are doing just that are the o educated urban women who were focus o Betraying Big Brother, a deeply just beginning to wake up to the ram- aecting book by the journalist and pant sexism in Chinese society,” Hong China specialist Leta Hong Fincher. The Fincher writes. main characters in her tale are a small But the story then takes a disturbing group o relatively well-o, college- turn. In March 2015, one day before educated young women in China’s major International Women’s Day, the Femi- cities who connect with one another nist Five were detained by China’s through social media. Coming o age in aggressive state security apparatus and an era o economic progress and promise, held for 37 days, during which they were these women had high hopes for their often treated roughly. They had been lives and careers. But their aspirations preparing to hand out stickers decrying were dealt a blow by widespread sexism. sexual harassment in public spaces—for instance, the widespread phenomenon
SUSAN GREENHALGH is John King and o men groping women on public Wilma Cannon Fairbank Research Professor of transportation. Their ordeal created a Chinese Society at Harvard University. scandal in China, where the news spread XIYING WANG is a Professor in the Faculty of quickly on social media despite being Education at Beijing Normal University. mostly ignored or trivialized by the
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mainstream press. The story received dren—or perhaps even to rise up collec- extraordinary attention abroad, as well: tively against the Communist Party’s major Western news organizations oppression—will inevitably reverberate covered it, human rights groups con- throughout the global economy.” demned the Feminist Five’s detention, Such far-reaching claims add a sense and prominent Ãgures, such as Hillary o drama and high stakes to the book, Clinton and the feminist activist Eve but they have a wobbly basis in fact. Ensler, expressed support for the group. What is more, Hong Fincher’s account Ms. magazine added the group to its list o the women’s stories is embedded in o the year’s most inspiring feminists. an overly simpliÃed portrait o contem- Nevertheless, the state’s repressive porary China. Although the book gives tactics essentially worked. After being voice to the justiÃed outrage the released, the Feminist Five remained crackdown provoked in many observers, under constant surveillance and faced it is important to look closely at how threats to themselves and their families. Hong Fincher’s tale is constructed and Three went to the United Kingdom or how her picture o China sometimes Hong Kong to pursue master’s degrees deviates from reality and from conven- in human rights, law, or social work. One tional scholarship on the country. left Beijing for the southern Chinese city o Guangzhou to start a new non- WHOSE BETRAYAL? governmental organization, which was In what seems like a gesture o solidar- quickly closed down because o its work ity, Hong Fincher borrowed the deli- on the still sensitive issue o sexual ciously provocative phrase “betraying harassment. Most o the Ãve turned their big brother” from Wei Tingting, one o feminist activism into a part-time the Feminist Five, and made it the voluntary mission, while holding down book’s title. Hong Fincher’s use o the day jobs, such running an online store or term suggests that Wei intended it as working at an education agency. an expression o deÃance against Hong Fincher’s vivid, blow-by-blow China’s party-state. But that is not how account o the women’s experiences is a Wei meant it. In Prison Notes, a blog Wei valuable work o journalism, and she published in 2015, in which she wrote oers interesting evidence o a wider about her experience oÊ being jailed, feminist awakening. But she ventures well she recalled discretely masturbating in beyond reportage, using the story to her cell while guards tromped by make a sweeping argument about the outside—an act she describes as allow- future o Chinese politics. This small ing her to take “joy in betraying big group o women, she argues, “was capable brother.” In repurposing that phrase, o posing what the Chinese Communist Hong Fincher conÁates a relatively Party perceived to be a serious challenge low-risk, private expression o individ- to its rule.” Portraying the episode as a ual autonomy with far more dangerous harbinger o signiÃcant social change acts o public dissent. By suggesting in China, she contends that “any major that the women were opposed to the demographic shift as a result o women state, the book’s title could jeopardize choosing to reject marriage and chil- their future work and even their safety.
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In a private conversation with one o the story, it is one committed by the Chinese authors o this review (Wang), Wei Communist Party, which cracked down conÃded that she felt uncomfortable on young feminists who were only with the title and was considering asking trying to advance its ocial agenda. Hong Fincher to change it. This sort o distortion extends beyond DAUGHTERS AND CITIZENS the book’s title. Throughout, Hong As Hong Fincher describes it, the basic Fincher inaccurately elevates the Femi- story oÊ her book is a “conÁict between nist Five’s protest against sexual harass- the patriarchal, authoritarian state and ment and sexism to a direct and open ordinary women who are increasingly fed challenge to the Chinese state. But the up with the sexism in their daily lives”— notion o Chinese women collectively a conÁict pitting good feminists against a and openly challenging the state—either bad party-state (which she generally today or in the long history o women’s reduces to “the government”). Although movements in China—lies beyond the this narrative oers a sense o moral realm o political plausibility. clarity, it requires limiting the cast to Today, as in the past, most Chinese two main actors (feminist activists and feminists, including the Feminist Five, the state), Áattening out both in the believe that their agenda is consistent process, and omitting other relevant with the Chinese Communist Party’s actors: corporations, nongovernmental long-standing ocial policy and the organizations, and communities such as Chinese constitution’s guarantee o villages and neighborhoods. “equal rights for men and women.” The In this way, the book’s plot recalls Feminist Five’s activism aimed to turn classic tropes o the Cold War: a cruel, that goal into reality, but it never power-hungry communist party-state, escalated into an attempt to contest the unwilling to brook any popular challenge legitimacy o party rule. Rejecting to its authority, oppresses its people and strategies such as the protests and dem- provokes heroic resistance. There is an onstrations used by Western feminists, undeniable element o truth to such they chose the mild tactics o perfor- stories today, as the harsh authoritarian mance art to express their ideas. They regime o Chinese President Xi Jinping seldom directly critiqued government cracks down on dissidents and rights policies; instead, they submitted advocates o all sorts. In Xi’s China, the proposals to China’s legislature, advo- invisible line that separates what is cated a new law on protecting women, permissible from what is impermissible and skillfully referred to China’s is moving; with every new arrest, the ratiÃcation o international agree- party-state seems to shift it. The Femi- ments, such as the Convention on the nist Five believed that their activities fell Elimination o All Forms o Discrimi- on one side o the line. For reasons that nation Against Women. They deliber- are hard to know for certain, the state ately chose topics, such as domestic security apparatus concluded otherwise. violence, on which their positions were The trouble with accounts o this in the line with national policy. I kind, including Hong Fincher’s, is that there is a betrayal involved in this they tend lionize their subjects and rob
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Silenced: portraits of the Feminist Five at a protest in Hong Kong, April 2015
them o their distinctive personalities. By in victimization. According to her, the framing the women only as courageous, women’s early childhood experiences o heroic activists, Hong Fincher’s book being mistreated and physically abused obscures more complex feelings o frustra- set them on a path to feminist advocacy. tion, conÁict, and uncertainty that also That was the case for one o the Ãve, Li motivated their actions. By hanging her Tingting (who also goes by the name story on a great divide between the state Li Maizi), and Hong Fincher implies and society, the author also ignores ways that Li’s experience was typical. Yet in which the two are mutually constituted. many o China’s young feminists, includ- These young women do not position ing some featured in the book, were themselves outside o and in opposition to not abused in their youth—far from it: the state. Instead, their ideas, their they were treasured as only daughters. dreams, their fears—their very identi- And Hong Fincher’s analysis sits uneas- ties—have been heavily inÁuenced since ily with the Ãndings o other specialists childhood by the politics and practices on Chinese feminism. For example, o the party-state. one o the authors o this review (Wang)
TYRONE One cost o ignoring this dynamic is has conducted extensive interviews with that Hong Fincher struggles to convinc- more than 20 victims o domestic
/ REUTERS SIU ingly explain why her subjects turned to violence in China, many o whom had gender-based activism in the Ãrst place also endured childhood abuse. These and came to identify as “feminists”—a women tended to normalize the abuse, label that was, until recently, distinctly trivializing their suering by seeing it unpopular in China. She Ãnds the answer as simply their fate. Neither their
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childhood trauma nor the domestic in dierent major cities, multiplying violence they suered as adults made their impact. them more likely to become feminists. Hong Fincher also relies on an Rather than looking for clues in her essentially psychological explanation to subjects’ childhoods to understand why account for the party-state’s reaction to they rose up, Hong Fincher would have the feminist challenge. She portrays done better to attend to the historical this highly complex, internally dieren- context in which they came o age and tiated institution as a monolith popu- Áesh out the larger forces that shaped lated by male leaders whose emotions their lives. Most o today’s young female (primarily fear) led them to crack down activists were born in the 1980s. As the on the activists. “The Chinese govern- Ãrst generation born under China’s ment . . . reduces women to their roles one-child policy, they were the precious as dutiful wives, mothers and baby daughters o their families, and they breeders in the home, in order to reaped the rewards oÊ huge investments minimize social unrest,” she writes, made by the state and by Chinese adding later that “China’s all-male rulers professionals seeking to create a cohort have decided that the systematic subju- oÊ healthy, well-educated, sophisticated gation o women is essential to main- young people to lead China to prosperity taining Communist Party survival.” and power. They beneÃted from a Gender subordination is indeed a massive expansion o the educational fundamental aspect o Chinese gover- system and typically excelled at top nance; however, many actors within the universities; quite a few went abroad for system don’t seem to be aware o it. advanced degrees. Many gained a feminist That includes those in power and most consciousness by taking courses in male elites and intellectuals, who seem gender and feminist studies or by joining to believe that gender equality was projects organized by women’s rights achieved long ago. A more satisfying organizations. Eyes opened, it became analysis than Hong Fincher’s would begin dicult to tolerate the pervasive dis- by acknowledging the centrality o what crimination and the glass ceiling they Chinese intellectuals starting in the late encountered in the workplace. Rather nineteenth century referred to as “the than accept a life o disappointment, they woman question” in China’s political rejected the plans their parents and history, and would then examine the many teachers had for them—landing a good laws, policies, and programs that the job, Ãnding a good husband, and becom- state has enacted over the years to ad- ing mothers—as too limited. They vance women’s rights and gender equality. chose instead to take the risky step o Recent laws run the gamut, from the making their voices heard. They were Law on the Protection oÊ Women’s Rights aided in no small part by the rapid and Interests (1992), to the Law on expansion o the Internet and the rise Maternal and Infant Health Care (1994), o social media. By skillfully document- to the Anti–Domestic Violence Law ing their activities and spreading their (2016). These statutes have many Áaws, messages via social media, they were including limited enforcement, but at able to closely coordinate their actions least they put worthy goals on the books.
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Hong Fincher also fails to recognize the internal diversity and contradictions o a state made up o multiple bureauc- Not all readers racies, some o which push for women’s social, economic, and political advance- are leaders, ment, and others that push against it. She focuses on parts o the state that but all leaders have brutally harmed women, primarily the security forces and the birth-planning are readers. apparatus. She is right to fault the - Harry S. Truman abuses o such forces, which in the latter case include the forcible imposi- tion o often unwanted birth-control measures, especially in the 1980s and SIGN UP for the 1990s. But Hong Fincher casts even Foreign Affairs positive steps these state agencies have Books & Reviews taken in a negative light. For example, she notes that the Birth Planning newsletter Association has gathered nationwide statistics on sexual harassment but dismisses the eort because the associa- tion is “nongovernmental.” In fact, it is a party-led organization, and its eorts show that some parts o the party-state are actively seeking to assess and address the problem o sexual harass- ment and promote women’s status and well-being.
HALF THE SKY? Perhaps the best way to understand Betraying Big Brother is as a political tract, a feminist call to arms for women everywhere to join together to Ãght the patriarchy. This comes through most clearly in the many instances when Hong Fincher claims “sisterhood” with the book’s subjects, women whose life experiences are profoundly dierent from her own. In a related misstep, she sometimes treats the category “Chinese women” as undierentiated, as though all women living in China were o a ForeignAffairs.com/newsletters kind. Although she acknowledges that
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the young, college-educated women she current issues, has been further marginal- proÃles are a privileged group, she ized; the top journal on women’s and nonetheless uses their experiences to gender studies now prioritizes articles stand in for those o “all Chinese women” on historical issues and cultural critiques or even “all women.” This neglects a rather than discussions o contemporary fundamental insight o feminist thought: aairs. The women’s federation, for its that women’s identities are multiple part, has turned its focus to “family and overlapping and that such intersec- values,” emphasizing women’s roles as tionality can produce meaningful mothers, wives, and daughters—a far divisions based on race, ethnicity, class, cry from the egalitarian Mao-era slogans, age, and sexual orientation, among others. such as “Women hold up hal the sky.” Women often form political alliances In the meantime, on some measures, across such divisions, but the multiplicity the situation facing China’s women (not o their identities must be recognized, and to mention people o nonnormative individuals must be allowed to deÃne and genders and sexualities) has become articulate their own identities. grimmer. On the World Economic O course, shared experiences and a Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, common purpose can serve to justify China fell from 63rd out o 115 coun- collective action. Without such claims, tries in 2006 to 103rd out o 149 coun- there would be little basis for joint tries in 2018. The term “feminism,” action. But although a worldwide femi- once a battle cry, has become a pejora- nist uprising against the forces o tive. The Chinese mass media depict patriarchy may sound like an admirable feminists as the most undesirable goal, it relies on assumptions that have women in society, and feminist writings little merit: that sexism and misogyny are routinely attacked and censored take similar forms everywhere, for online. In this climate, feminist scholars example, or that women everywhere and activists have little choice but to bide face common obstacles. That is why their time, strategically deploying safer most Western feminists gave up on the terms—“gender perspective,” “gender idea o a global struggle decades ago. equality,” “gender mainstreaming”—to What, then, are the prospects for advance the cause until the political envi- the Ãght for gender equality in China? ronment changes and feminism (or The state’s crackdown on the Feminist something similar) becomes a politically Five deepened the divides between safe and supported project again.∂ overtly state-aligned feminists (such as those aliated with the All-China Women’s Federation), gender-studies scholars, and younger feminists. Some senior gender experts have blamed the Feminist Five for making their work more dicult, as the topic o women’s rights has become politically sensitive and less legitimate since 2015. Gender studies, especially sociological work on
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Now, Grant has written a delightful How Should a biography oÊ Walter Bagehot, the great nineteenth-century Englishman in Liberal Be? whom Grant perhaps recognizes a grander version oÊ himself: the would-be Victorian sage is paying tribute to the Walter Bagehot and the authentic one. From 1861 until his death Politics o Progress in 1877, Bagehot served as the third and most famous editor o The Economist. Sebastian Mallaby He was a conÃdant oÊ William Glad- stone, the dominant liberal politician o the era, and his words exercised such sway over successive governments that Bagehot: The Life and Times of the he was regarded as an honorary cabinet Greatest Victorian minister. After Bagehot’s death, a BY JAMES GRANT. Norton, 2019, 368 pp. contemporary remarked that he might have been the most fascinating conver- n James Grant, it sometimes seems, sationalist in London. the nineteenth century has been Like Grant, Bagehot was a vivid Iresuscitated. Towering, gaunt, wordsmith and a cult Ãgure. Unlike bow-tied, and pinstriped, he writes with Grant, Bagehot was generally a modern- a sly wit that recalls the novels o izer, a believer in progress, and there- William Thackeray. His signal achieve- fore an opponent o the gold standard. ment is a fortnightly cult publication (Bagehot’s views on certain matters, bearing the antique title Grant’s Interest such as gender and race, were far from Rate Observer. He is a nostalgic believer enlightened.) In his slim 1873 volume, in the nineteenth-century gold stan- Lombard Street, Bagehot explained how dard. He eyes modern banking innova- central banks should quell Ãnancial panics tions with stern, starch-collared suspi- by printing currency and lending it cion, as though peering at them through liberally—“to merchants, to minor bank- a monocle. Even traditional Ãnancial ers, to ‘this man and that man,’ whenever instruments elicit a wry scorn. “To the security is good.” To Grant’s evident suppose that the value o a common dismay, this formulation has proved wildly stock is determined purely by a corpo- inÁuential ever since. In his memoir o ration’s earnings,” Grant once wrote, “is the 2008 Ãnancial crash and the bank to forget that people have burned bailouts that followed, Ben Bernanke, witches, gone to war on a whim, risen the former chair o the U.S. Federal to the defense o Joseph Stalin and Reserve, cited Bagehot more than any believed Orson Welles when he told living economist. them over the radio that the Martians I the tension between the hard- had landed.” money biographer and the soft-money subject permeates Grant’s book, it is not SEBASTIAN MALLABY is Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the only theme that captures one’s the Council on Foreign Relations. attention. For just as Bagehot was the
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Liberal lion: a line engraving of Bagehot, 1877 father o the lender-of-last-resort doc- moderation.” He believed, as Grant trine, so was he a progenitor o a wider writes, “in progress, religious liberty, lim- political tradition. What U.S. President ited government, clean elections, non- Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister entanglement in foreign wars, [and] free Tony Blair called “the Third Way,” and trade.” Like other liberals o the time, he what others sometimes label “the radical “opposed the brutal laws to punish free GRANGER center,” Bagehot summed up in his speech, crush delinquent debtors, hang favorite political watchword: “animated shoplifters, and maim poachers.” Even as
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he deÃned the political center, Bagehot for and occasionally maltreated by their rejected the mystical traditionalism o Confederate owners.” After President conservatives and the leveling demo- Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipa- cratic ideals o revolutionaries. For the tion Proclamation, Bagehot accused him modern reader, living at a time when o encouraging a slave uprising. “To arm classical liberal values are in retreat, it is savages against your antagonist is to instructive to contemplate a giant who make war like savages, and to descend to embodied them. the level o savages,” he wrote. Contemptuous o slaves, Bagehot LIBERAL REALISM was also heartily misogynistic. Address- Although Bagehot has much to teach his ing the question o the economic role o political heirs, his liberalism was often women, he declared himsel “very selective—a reminder that even the favorable to their employment as labor- greatest liberals are not always right and ers or in other menial capacity.” But he not always liberal. doubted that the female temperament Bagehot believed in progress and was capable o taking on responsibility. change but did not fancy too much o “I am sure the nerves o most women them. As a young man in Paris in the early would break down under the anxiety,” he 1850s, he witnessed Louis-Napoléon, asserted. In a prelude to his biography, the French president and a nephew o Grant quotes the British historian G. M. Napoleon I, disband Parliament and take Young, who saw in Bagehot “the most the title o “emperor.” Bagehot defended precious element in Victorian civilization, the crackdown and the attendant execu- its robust and masculine sanity.” The tions, regarding them as a necessary second adjective was perhaps more Ãtting response to the red specter and claiming than the Ãrst. that they commanded support among Yet there is a lesson in Bagehot’s the “inferior people.” As Grant summa- failings. For him, gradualism was a virtue: rizes Bagehot’s perspective, “The the iniquities o the status quo had to overexcitable French were incapable o be balanced against the risks o rapid governing themselves in a parliamentary change, which might outstrip the system; their national character did not human capacity for adaptation. In the allow it.” Democracy be damned. France cases o slavery and women, Bagehot needed a tyrant. got that balance very wrong. It was true Nearly a dozen years later, at the that white Northerners in the United onset o the American Civil War, Bage- States abused free black laborers, but it hot’s liberal values had apparently not certainly did not follow that slavery deepened. He sided with the Confeder- was more desirable; and one wonders ates, partly because the Union’s taris on what Bagehot’s contemporary Florence British manufacturers irked him. Claim- Nightingale, the pioneering British ing to abhor slavery, he nonetheless nurse known for her bravery during the wondered i there were “any grounds for Crimean War, would have had to say assuming that, as a body, the negroes about the allegedly frail nerves o would prefer being their own masters women. But in other instances, Bagehot with Northern treatment to being cared balanced continuity and change in a
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more defensible way, proving the vital much o a good thing can sour the public principle that there is more to wisdom on the project o an open society. Like- than principles. wise, trade and technological progress Thus it was with the Victorian debate are the drivers o prosperity, but their over the franchise. The democratic beneÃts must be weighed against the fact principle logically implied that everyone that citizens resent upheaval. A system should have the vote; Bagehot nonethe- that permits Ãnanciers to price and insure less feared that a universal franchise risk should serve economic growth, would undermine democracy in practice. yet such a system can collapse under He favored relaxing the requirement its own weight, with society suering that voters own property, but gradually. the consequences. It would be counterproductive to extend Liberalism, in other words, should not rights to those who were not ready to consist only o fealty to liberty, equality, exercise them. In 1866, when Gladstone, and fraternity, the seductive abstractions then the chancellor o the exchequer, o the French Revolution. It should introduced a bill that would allow more also be about outcomes. A liberal has a working-class men to vote, Bagehot responsibility to ask what works, what is criticized the proposal as overreach. ecient, and what produces results. The bill, he charged, would “enfranchise Unless a political credo improves society’s a very large number o persons who will fortunes, it deserves to be discarded. consider their votes, and whose wives will consider their votes, as so much BAGEHOTIAN BANKING saleable property.” This was not a frivo- Bagehot’s pragmatism—his focus on lous concern. Grant recounts a hilarious what worked rather than what principle interlude in which Bagehot stood dictated—underlies his most lasting unsuccessfully for Parliament. Despite intellectual contributions. It runs Bagehot’s express instructions that he through Lombard Street, Bagehot’s Ãnan- wanted a clean race, his election agents cial treatise, whose defense oÊ bailouts so bought votes on his behal and then deeply oends Grant’s hard-money brazenly demanded repayment. standards. Grant scolds Bagehot for “his Herein lies an uncomfortable mes- embrace o the dubious notion, so sage for today’s liberals. A policy can corrosive to Ãnancial prudence, that the be attractive in principle but mistaken central bank has a special obligation to the in practice. Consider the 2003 U.S. citizens who present themselves as invasion o Iraq: in principle, removing borrowers and lenders, investors and a dictator and replacing him with a speculators. No other class o person democratic regime might have been a enjoys access to the government’s money good idea; in practice, it was not. machinery.” Grant also has a soft spot Following the same logic, i Bagehot were for Bagehot’s contemporary antagonist, alive today, he might favor immigration the justly forgotten Thomson Hankey, restrictions in advanced democracies. who worried about the moral hazard In principle, liberal immigration policies created by central banks acting as lenders enhance individual freedom and pro- oÊ last resort. “The most mischievous mote economic growth. In practice, too doctrine ever broached,” Hankey called it.
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In principle, o course, Grant and Hankey have a point. It seems oensive that the Federal Reserve should bail out Wall Street fat cats and yet allow hard-pressed homeowners to suer the disaster o foreclosure. It seems evident that bailouts only weaken borrowers’ incentives to restrain themselves, thus compounding the fragility o nance. The Internship But the answer to these arguments is Program that in practice, bailouts work: by fur- nishing a panicked system with money, The Council on Foreign Relations is seek- they prevent a freeze in payments that ing talented individuals who are consider- ing a career in international relations. would cause a depression. For this Interns are recruited year-round on a semester practical reason, governments repeatedly basis to work in both the New York City and suspended the gold standard during Washington, D.C., offices. An intern’s duties nancial crunches, even as the authori- generally consist of administrative work, ties, acknowledging that the likes o editing and writing, and event coordination. Grant and Hankey were correct in The Council considers both undergraduate principle, fervently pretended that each and graduate students with majors in Interna- tional Relations, Political Science, Economics, suspension was a one-time exception. or a related field for its internship program. The British government made suppos- A regional specialization and language skills edly one-o exceptions in 1847, 1857, may also be required for some positions. In and 1866. Even in 1971, when U.S. addition to meeting the intellectual require- President Richard Nixon abandoned ments, applicants should have excellent the dollar-gold link, his administration skills in administration, writing, and re- search, and a command of word processing, claimed that the break was temporary. spreadsheet applications, and the Internet. Back in the 1870s, Bagehot’s contribu- To apply for an internship, please send a tion to this debate was to observe what résumé and cover letter including the se- was happening, rather than comment on mester, days, and times available to work what theoretically ought to be happen- to the Internship Coordinator in the Hu- man Resources Office at the address listed ing. In principle, a gold standard that below. Please refer to the Council’s Web ruled out the possibility o bailouts site for specific opportunities. The Coun- might be expected to deter reckless cil is an equal opportunity employer. nancial risk-taking. In practice, it did not: “In a great country like this,” Bagehot remarked, “there will always be some unsound banks, as well as some insolvent merchants.” Because reckless behavior persisted, the central bank had Council on Foreign Relations Human Resources Office to respond. And respond it did, even as 58 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10065 it refused to admit that it was bound to tel: 212.434 . 9400 fax: 212.434 . 9893 do so—“though the practice is mended [email protected] http://www.cfr.org the theory is not,” as Bagehot put it.
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The stability o the Ãnancial system thus Which brings one back to the liberal- depended on the actions o a central bank ism o the present. Bagehot’s rumina- that formally denied responsibility for it. tions on the theatrical branch point to It would be better, Bagehot urged, to the role o emotion in politics. The recognize reality. Banks would inevitably United Kingdom’s largely ornamental need bailing out, so the important monarchy mattered precisely because it question was how to do it properly. To bypassed reason, making it devilishly this end, Bagehot propounded his famous potent. “So long as the human heart is formula: central banks should lend strong and the human reason weak,” liberally but at high interest rates and Bagehot explained, “royalty will be against good collateral. To an extent strong because it appeals to diused that Grant is unwilling to acknowledge, feeling, and republics weak because they this formula has worked well. Even the appeal to the understanding.” I that Fed’s enormously openhanded 2008 judgment is accurate, this century’s bailouts were made on terms that were largely postmonarchical democracies are suciently Bagehotian to generate a in trouble. Today’s most potent emo- proÃt for taxpayers. tional manipulation comes not from scenic royals but from online provoca- GRACE NOTES OF DEMOCRACY teurs and conspiracy theorists. Their Bagehot’s second lasting achievement eorts serve not to legitimize sages like was his 1867 book, The English Constitution. Bagehot but to sow skepticism about As he had done with central banking, he the expert establishment. took aim at a phenomenon that had Grant has written a gem o a book: not been codiÃed (the British having entertaining, wry, and gloriously eccen- never adopted an ocial constitution) tric. Readers learn that the mud in to explain how it actually functioned. London was 57 parts horse dung and Bagehot’s central observation was that the that Bagehot played “zestful games o British government consisted o two cup-and-ball” wearing—yes—a mono- parts: the “ecient” and the “digniÃed,” cle. Along the way, they get a nasty or “theatrical.” The ecient segment— feeling that even the greatest liberals the cabinet, administrative departments, have feet o clay and that the Victorian and the committees o Parliament—did version o the radical center enjoyed a the work. The theatrical segment—the deference that is inconceivable today. queen, the nobility, and the decorative But there is also a positive lesson to be rich—might appear, “according to abstract drawn, one that is less about policies theory, a defect in our constitutional than about temperament. Liberals, as polity,” but these apparently superÁuous Bagehot himsel put it, should be “heed- adornments played the vital role o less oÊ large theories and speculations.” inspiring deference from the “vacant Their duty, above all, is to be right—not many.” The wisdom oÊ learned states- theoretically but practically.∂ men—here Bagehot was no doubt think- ing oÊ himself—could be turned into government policy thanks to the nar- cotic properties oÊ bejeweled duchesses.
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part: failing to prepare for the invasion’s The Last War— aftermath, misunderstanding Iraqi culture and politics and sidelining or and the Next? ignoring genuine experts, disbanding the Iraqi army and evicting Baath Party members from the government, ignor- Learning the Wrong Lessons ing and even denying the rise o sectar- From Iraq ian violence, and sapping momentum by rotating troops too frequently. Jon Finer Years in the making and admirably candid, the study has largely been ignored by the media and the policy community. That may be because o its daunting The U.S. Army in the Iraq War. Vol. 1, length and dry, “just the facts” narrative. Invasion, Insurgency, Civil War, 2003– Or because some understandably prefer 2006, and vol. 2, Surge and Withdrawal, independent accounts to authorized 2007–2011 after-action reports. Or because, com- EDITED BY JOEL D. RAYBURN AND pared with other major conÁicts in U.S. FRANK K. SOBCHAK. Strategic history, so few Americans experienced Studies Institute and the U.S. Army this one Ãrsthand. Or because the study War College Press, 2019, 742 and 716 pp. declines to focus on more timely and contested questions, such as whether it arlier this year, the U.S. Army was ever in the realm o possibility to published two volumes that invade a large and diverse Middle Eastern Eamount to the most comprehen- country—one that posed no direct threat sive ocial history o the Iraq war. to the United States—at an acceptable They cover the conÁict’s most impor- cost. But the study also comes at a time tant episodes: the U.S. invasion in when many o the supposed lessons o 2003, the death spiral into civil war that Iraq are increasingly contested, with took shape in the aftermath, the more signiÃcant implications for a debate that hopeful period that began with the is raging between and within both major surge o U.S. forces in 2007, and the political parties over the most consequen- withdrawal that saw the last U.S. forces tial foreign policy choice any country leave Iraq at the end o 2011. faces: when and how to use military force. Blandly titled The U.S. Army in the In this critical debate, the Iraq study Iraq War and based on 30,000 pages o does seem to take a side, intentionally or newly declassiÃed documents, the study otherwise. For that reason, and to better recounts a litany o familiar but still understand what the institution charged infuriating blunders on Washington’s with Ãghting the controversial war believes it has learned, two o the study’s JON FINER is Adjunct Senior Fellow for U.S. claims are worthy o further reÁection, Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign particularly for those who believed that Relations and served as Chief of Sta and Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. Depart- the Iraq debacle would lead to an era o ment of State during the Obama administration. American military restraint. The Ãrst
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claim, which runs through the study like systematic erosion o what was once a subplot, is that the war’s “only victor” conventional wisdom: that, in the future, was “an emboldened and expansionist the United States should be far warier Iran,” which gained vast inÁuence over o potential conÁicts like the one in its main regional adversary when Iraq’s Iraq. An alternative view o the Iraq war dictator was toppled and replaced by has Áourished since the arrival o U.S. leaders with close ties to Iran. Washing- President Donald Trump, driven by ton “never formulated an eective both some oÊ his most ardent critics and strategy” for addressing this challenge, some oÊ his closest advisers. And it may the study concludes, in part because it help bring about the next U.S. conÁict imposed “artiÃcial geographic boundar- in the Middle East. ies on the conÁict” that “limited the war in a way that made it dicult to reach MUNICH, SAIGON, BAGHDAD its desired end states.” Put more suc- What policymakers learn from history is cinctly: the United States erred not by o more than mere academic interest. waging a war far more expansive than Just as generals reputedly prepare to Ãght its national interests warranted but by the last war, foreign policy ocials lean failing to take the Ãght far enough, heavily on historical analogies in including into neighboring Iran. addressing current threats. U.S. ocials The study’s second notable claim, frequently use—and often abuse—his- mentioned only in passing in its penul- tory to help bolster their arguments timate paragraph, is even more contro- during critical debates. In doing so, as the versial: that “the failure o the United historian Ernest May put it, they become States to attain its strategic objectives “captives o an unanalyzed faith that in Iraq was not inevitable.” Rather, it the future [will] be like the recent past.” “came as a by-product o a long series o The British appeasement o Hitler decisions—acts o commission and in 1938 has been particularly compelling omission—made by well-trained and in policy debates, with allusions to intelligent leaders.” In other words: the “another Munich,” referring to the city failure o the Iraq war—which cost where European powers acceded to somewhere between $1 trillion and $2 some o Hitler’s earliest territorial claims, trillion, led to the deaths o nearly 4,500 providing an easy caricature o sup- Americans and perhaps hal a million posed weakness. In 1965, as President Iraqis, spawned a grave humanitarian Lyndon Johnson considered whether to crisis, and incubated the most virulent deploy 100,000 U.S. troops to Vietnam, terrorist franchise the world has ever the National Security Council held a seen, all with no clear strategic beneÃt— fateful meeting. His team in the Cabinet was one o execution, not conception. Room was divided on the issue, until Couched as impartial assessments, the U.S. ambassador in Saigon, Henry these claims—about how the United Cabot Lodge, Jr., eectively ended the States’ military restraint empowered its debate: “I feel there is a greater threat main regional adversary and about the oÊ World War III i we don’t go in. Can’t supposed feasibility o Ãghting a better we see the similarity to [the British] war—contribute to the deliberate and indolence at Munich?”
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ment.” In the decade that followed, President Ronald Reagan sought to overcome what he and others called “the Vietnam syndrome” and shake the United States free from what he believed was an exces- sive reluctance to confront global threats. But it was not until 1990 that the United States faced an act o aggres- sion so stark that the debate shifted again. In August 1990, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait. “International conÁicts attract histori- cal analogies the way honey attracts bears,” noted Alexander Haig, a former U.S. secretary o state and former su- preme allied com- mander o ¤¬¢£, in a New York Times op-ed that December. “Which By the 1970s, the Vietnam quagmire analogy, Munich or Vietnam, . . . has that resulted in part from that reading more to tell us?” His answer was the oÊ history began to compete with Munich former, which meant that Saddam had as the dominant historical analogy. to be confronted. Rather than ignore or Just as Munich became a shorthand for contest the Vietnam analogy, Haig policy approaches that were overly passive, twisted it to suit his purposes. And to Vietnam became a warning against leave no doubt, Haig also drew a those deemed too interventionist. Reluc- somewhat contrarian lesson from tant to plunge the United States back Vietnam, arguing that it suggested the into conÁict, President Jimmy Carter United States should not stop at liberat- pursued détente with the Soviet Union. ing Kuwait: it must destroy the Iraqi In response, critics attacked him for regime entirely. “The Vietnam analogy “tapping the cobblestones o Munich” instructs us not that we should refrain and fostering a “culture o appease- from using force,” he wrote, “but that i
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our purposes are just and clear, we should Obama, whose rise was fueled by his use it decisively.” early opposition to the Iraq war, drew In the end, President George H. W. new lessons from his predecessor’s Bush followed only hal o Haig’s failures in Iraq. Obama’s understanding advice, evicting Saddam’s army from o what had gone wrong encouraged Kuwait but stopping short o marching his wariness o wielding U.S. power, on Baghdad. In his victory speech, especially in the Middle East; his com- Bush boasted, “We’ve kicked the mitment to diplomacy as the tool o Ãrst Vietnam syndrome once and for all.” resort and openness to engaging even the most dicult adversaries; and his WHICH IRAQ LESSON? conviction that U.S. military action That cure cemented the United States’ should come only as part o the broadest status as the world’s sole superpower possible coalition and in accordance but had some unforeseen side eects. with international law. The country has now spent nearly three Those lessons guided Obama’s ap- decades engulfed in Iraq in various proach to the two most dicult problems ways. Iraq has provided the leading he faced during the last several years o historical analogies for foreign-policy his term—the mounting Iranian nuclear makers in the past four U.S. adminis- threat and the Syrian conÁict. On Iran, trations and has informed their under- Obama resisted the drumbeat o another standing o the extent and limits o reckless war and instead made a deal American power, even as other crises that removed an immediate nuclear threat have Áared and faded. from the world’s most volatile region President Bill Clinton quietly contin- without the United States having to Ãre a ued the conÁict with Saddam after the shot. In Syria, Obama avoided a major end o the 1990–91 GulÊ War by bombing military escalation in favor o a varied ap- Iraqi targets throughout his tenure, proach, with elements o diplomacy, imposing unprecedented sanctions, and humanitarian assistance, and force, which shifting the United States’ ocial policy ultimately failed to quell a devastating to regime change. His secretary o state, conÁict. In each case, the Iraq war Madeleine Albright, coined the phrase weighed heavily in internal debates. “the indispensable nation” to justify further U.S. intervention in Iraq. A few A BIG, FAT MISTAKE years later, to bolster the case for an inva- Although it would be hard to imagine a sion, ocials serving President George presidential candidate more dierent W. Bush used his father’s supposed from the incumbent he sought to replace, strategic error o not proceeding to Trump also argued that the United Baghdad, along with a healthy dash o States should avoid Middle Eastern the Munich analogy. They also massively “quagmires” and called the Iraq war “a exaggerated the threats posed by Sad- big, fat mistake.” As president-elect, he dam’s weapons programs and the Iraqi told an audience at Fort Bragg oÊ his leader’s purported ties to terrorist groups. commitment to “only engage in the use Repulsed by that sales job and the o military force when it’s in the vital Ãasco it helped promote, President Barack national security interest o the United
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States,” pledged to “stop racing to His comments reÁected a view topple . . . foreign regimes that we commonly expressed by critics o the know nothing about,” and promised to Obama administration—many o them end what he termed a “destructive cycle Iraq war proponents: that by withdraw- o intervention and chaos.” Early in his ing from Iraq in 2011, after the Iraqi presidency, he called the 2003 invasion parliament declined to endorse legal “the single worst decision ever made.” protections for U.S. troops, Obama had By the end o 2016, an aversion to committed a politically motivated military adventurism in the Middle blunder that robbed the United States East seemed a rare area oÊ bipartisan o a durable success, i not victory. The consensus. The lessons o Iraq were withdrawal, such critics allege, allowed relatively clear, and the prospects for al Qaeda in Iraq to metastasize into another U.S. war in the region remote. and take control o nearly a third o Iraq’s Since then, however, the Trump territory, including Mosul, the country’s administration’s policies and personnel third-largest city. choices have helped erode that consen- The U.S. Army’s ocial history o sus and have raised the specter o the Iraq war makes a version o that another conÁict. In January 2018, Secre- same argument: tary o State Rex Tillerson delivered a speech explaining why keeping U.S. At one point, in the waning days o the Surge, the change o strategy and the troops on the ground in Syria, and sacriÃces o many thousands o possibly increasing their numbers, was Americans and Iraqis had Ãnally tipped essential to national security. He put the scales enough to put the military forward a standard set o arguments in campaign on a path towards a measure favor o a U.S. presence: the need to o success. However, it was not to be, conclusively defeat the Islamic State as the compounding eect o earlier (also known as ), help end the mistakes, combined with a series o Syrian civil war, counter Iranian inÁu- decisions focused on war termination, ence, stabilize Syria so that refugees ultimately doomed the fragile venture. could return, and rid the country o any remaining chemical weapons. This conclusion neglects a few incon- He then made a more counterintuitive venient facts. The troops were with- case for deploying more U.S. forces to drawn pursuant to a George W. Bush– Syria, where they would be in harm’s way, era status-of-forces agreement between operating under dubious legal authority, Washington and Baghdad. Under its own and tasked with a mission arguably far internal pressure to end the war, the more ambitious than their number could Iraqi government would not even consider achieve: to “not repeat the mistakes o allowing anything beyond a relatively the past in Iraq.” One could be forgiven small number o U.S. forces in a non- for believing Tillerson had somehow combat role. I’ rise had less to do with misspoken by invoking the Iraq war as the absence o U.S. troops than with the an argument for, rather than against, civil war that erupted next door in Syria, further U.S. military intervention in a just as American forces were withdraw- controversial conÁict. He had not. ing. And whatever one thinks o the deci-
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sion to withdraw U.S. troops, that would 2003 invasion. It was precisely Trump’s hardly seem to negate the original sin o discomfort with military intervention— invading Iraq in the Ãrst place. Still, this and concern that it could lead to a new revisionist argument has gained adher- period o isolationism—that Ãrst ents over time and has also spawned a turned o many oÊ his hawkish critics, new, unlikely lesson o Iraq: that an such as Max Boot o the Council on aversion to military force in 2011, rather Foreign Relations and David Frum o than a fetish for it in 2003, was to blame. The Atlantic. Through their criticism o This belie sits uneasily with Trump’s Trump, many Never Trumpers have professed distaste for military adventur- regained some o the prominence they ism in the Middle East, and it has led to a lost in the wake o the Iraq disaster, as Ãerce tug o war inside the Trump has the view that the Iraq war was administration over the use o force in the noble in purpose, waged poorly by Bush, region. Trump’s more hawkish advisers salvaged by the surge, and then ulti- have often carried the day. As a result, mately lost by Obama. despite his noninterventionist instincts, It is little wonder, then, that Ameri- Trump has escalated the U.S. military’s cans’ ideas about what lessons their involvement in every theater o conÁict country should take from the Iraq war he inherited: Afghanistan, Libya, Niger, may be shifting. According to polls, in Syria, Yemen—and even Iraq itself. 2008, Ãve years after the invasion, 56 Last spring, Trump appointed as his percent o the country had decided that national security adviser John Bolton, the war—which had by then claimed a man who remains perhaps the Iraq hundreds o thousands oÊ lives, dis- war’s most fervent and least repentant placed millions, and badly damaged the champion. (As recently as 2015, Bolton United States’ global standing—was a said that toppling Saddam was the right mistake. By 2018, however, that num- thing to do.) Tillerson, a relative ber had fallen to 48 percent. By com- moderate, was replaced as secretary o parison, a majority o Americans state by the far more hawkish Mike continue to believe that the U.S. war in Pompeo. Elliott Abrams, George W. Vietnam was a mistake. By 1990, 17 years Bush’s top Middle East adviser, is now after the Paris Peace Accords formally Trump’s special envoy for Venezuela. ended the conÁict, that number had And Joel Rayburn, one o the editors o reached 74 percent. the U.S. Army’s study o the Iraq war, left that role to take two senior posi- MAXIMUM PRESSURE tions in the Trump administration, Ãrst The most immediate test o this ongo- in the White House and then in the ing debate about Iraq is the emerging State Department. crisis between the United States and Iran. Ironically, Trump has resurrected Although the Iraq analogy was once a Iraq hawks on both sides o the polar- trump card for opponents o U.S. ized debate about his presidency. intervention, today it is also invoked by Among his most prominent critics are those portraying Iran as unÃnished “Never Trump” Republicans—many o business o the earlier conÁict. As the whom were staunch supporters o the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., once
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wrote, for policymakers pursuing an CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF agenda, history is “an enormous grab bag WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT with a prize for everybody.” HISTORY HAVE EVER SUF- Just over two years ago, a war with FERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO Iran in the near term seemed almost LONGER A COUNTRY THAT unthinkable. The Obama administra- WILL STAND FOR YOUR DE- tion saw Iran’s nuclear program as the MENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE greatest threat and sought to take it o & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!” the table, which would also make In February, Pompeo, who had addressing other threats from Iran less advocated regime change in Iran as a risky. The 2015 nuclear agreement member o Congress, told a group o locked up Iran’s program for more than Iranian Americans that the administra- a decade. And Iran adhered to the deal. tion is “careful not to use the language One o the clearest and most imme- o regime change,” but he has also diate consequences o the 2016 U.S. pointed to supposed signs that U.S. presidential election, however, was a pressure “will lead the Iranian people to reversal o U.S. policy toward Iran, rise up and change the behavior o the including the decision to withdraw the regime.” In May, he admitted on a United States from the nuclear deal and podcast that better behavior on the part resume sanctions against Iran and its o the regime was unlikely and upped business partners. The Trump adminis- the ante, arguing, “I think what can tration is now pursuing a strategy it change is the people can change the calls “maximum pressure.” In April, government.” And last year, he named Trump designated Iran’s Islamic Revo- 12 issues that Iran would need to agree lutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist to discuss in any future negotiation, organization, the Ãrst government which included steps unthinkable under entity to earn that distinction. In May, Iran’s current leadership, such as aban- the administration announced that any doning all uranium enrichment and nation importing Iranian oil—the support for militant proxies. lifeblood o Iran’s economy—would be Iran draws on its own historical sanctioned, with the aim o eliminating lessons when it comes to dealing with Iranian exports. the United States, starting with the Trump and his ocials have in- U.S.-backed coup against its elected dulged in rhetoric that gives the distinct prime minister in 1953. To the surprise impression that the administration’s o many, after Trump pulled the goal is regime change, by force i United States out o the nuclear deal, necessary. Last July, after Iranian Iran Ãrst adopted a form o strategic President Hassan Rouhani warned the patience. It seized the moral high United States not to “play with the ground by working with the same lion’s tail” by increasing pressure on Asian and European partners that had Iran, Trump tweeted, “Iranian Presi- once sat on Washington’s side o the dent Rouhani: NEVER, EVER table during the negotiations on the THREATEN THE UNITED STATES nuclear deal and that still strongly AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER support the agreement.
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But in May, after Washington took a and to draw the most hawkish conclu- series o provocative steps, Rouhani sions possible from the mixed evidence announced that Iran would begin on Iraq’s pursuit o weapons o mass reducing its adherence to some o its destruction. Today, the Trump adminis- commitments under the deal, particu- tration is reportedly pressuring the larly with regard to the stockpile o intelligence community, which has long enriched uranium it is allowed to judged that Iran is in strict compliance maintain, and would set a two-month with the nuclear deal, for assessments deadline for countries to provide Iran that would bolster the case for a Ãrmer with relie from U.S. sanctions. He also approach. “The Intelligence people said that Iran was not abandoning the seem to be extremely passive and naive deal and remained open to negotiations. when it comes to the dangers o Iran. Although Trump has also said that he They are wrong!” Trump tweeted earlier is open to talks, the prospects o a this year. In May, with the administra- conÁict between the United States and tion pointing to intelligence indicating Iran are now as high as they have been that Iran might be planning attacks since early 2013, before the nuclear against U.S. forces, anonymous U.S. negotiations began to progress, when ocials warned that the threat was being there were frequent reports that both hyped. “It’s not that the administration countries (and Israel) were preparing for is mischaracterizing the intelligence, so a military clash. It is easy to imagine any much as overreacting to it,” one told number o incendiary scenarios. U.S. the The Daily Beast. In addition, as in forces are currently deployed in rela- 2003, the United States is increasingly tively close proximity to Iranian troops isolated from all but a small handful o or their proxies in at least three coun- countries that support its approach. tries: Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. A missile It is unclear whether this brinkman- strike from Iranian-backed forces in ship will lead to conÁict, stalemate, or Yemen that killed a large number o renewed dialogue. Regardless, some Saudis or a fatal rocket attack against contemporary realities should drive Israel launched by Iranian proxies in decision-making. Iran is roughly four Lebanon or Syria would lead to heavy times as large as Iraq in terms o territory pressure on Washington to retaliate, and has roughly four times the popula- perhaps against Iranian targets. tion Iraq had in 2003. Iran’s geography There are also profound similarities is more complex than that o Iraq, and between the current situation and the its governance is at least as challenging. period that preceded the U.S. invasion Although Iran menaces its neighbors o Iraq, starting with an impression- and funds terrorist proxies, Washington able president, inexperienced in world has yet to articulate any threat to the aairs. In the aftermath o the 9/11 United States severe enough to justify a attacks, the Bush White House pushed war and lacks clear legal authority to the intelligence services to look for wage one. For these and other reasons, evidence o Iraqi involvement—none not even the most bellicose proponents materialized, and there had been o confronting Iran have suggested a hardly any reason to suspect it would— full-scale assault.
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But for those who believe that a especially true in Iraq, where, in re- smarter war plan in Iraq would have sponse to mounting tensions in mid- produced better results, a limited war May, the United States ordered the with Iran, perhaps designed to restore departure o all “nonemergency” U.S. deterrence supposedly forfeited government personnel and Germany during the Iraq war, remains Ãrmly on reportedly suspended its military the table. In mid-May, the Pentagon training program. was reportedly drawing up plans for Some variation in how analysts view the deployment o 120,000 troops to Iraq may be inevitable, since they draw the region, about two-thirds o the on dierent experiences o the war. As total number sent to Iraq during the a journalist covering the invasion and 2003 invasion. the descent into civil war for The Wash- Distorting the lessons o the Iraq war ington Post, I became convinced that the may also be the best way to convince a Iraq cause was hopeless one evening in U.S. president with anti-interventionist late 2005, when my Iraqi driver asked me instincts o the wisdom o confronting to call the U.S. Army ocer in charge o Iran. “During the Iraq War, Iran was his Baghdad neighborhood and request most aggressive when the U.S. failed to that he stop delivering candy to the respond with strength to Iranian mal- driver’s daughter, because i she told her feasance,” claimed one o the editors o friends about it, his family could be the army’s Iraq study in a recent op-ed branded as collaborators. It was a stark he co-authored in The Hill. The authors lesson in the futility o good intentions. added: “History makes clear there must The authors o the U.S. Army’s ocial be consequences for Iran when Tehran history o the Iraq war warn that “above attacks Americans. Otherwise, we all, the United States must not repeat the should expect more o the same.” It isn’t errors o previous wars in assuming that hard to imagine that argument, which the conÁict was an anomaly with few hinges on notions o strength and useful lessons.” Although history is often weakness, appealing to Trump. abused and all conÁicts are dierent, that But such claims ignore something still seems to be sound advice. But else that U.S. policymakers should have following it requires, at a minimum, some learned from recent conÁicts: once agreement on what those lessons are. under way, wars evolve and escalate in Eroding the tenuous consensus on what unforeseen ways. To see how even a war went wrong in Iraq makes another damag- with expressly limited objectives can ing conÁict more likely.∂ spiral out o control, look no further than the Obama administration’s experience in Libya. In the case o Iran, perhaps the biggest wildcard is how the Iranians might respond to U.S. force. Unlike Iraq in 2003, Iran has the ability to wage asymmetric war against American forces, diplomats, and allies across the Middle East and beyond. That is
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with a new phrase: they were reluctant Ready for Robots? to invite Norbert Wiener to the program. Wiener was one o the founders o the nascent Ãeld, a child prodigy who had How to Think About the graduated from college at age 14 and Future o AI received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard four years later. To describe his Kenneth Cukier work on how animals and machines rely on feedback mechanisms for control and communication, Wiener had chosen to use the word “cybernetics,” a term that Possible Minds: Twenty-£ve Ways of derives from the ancient Greek word for Looking at AI “helmsman.” He titled his 1948 book EDITED BY JOHN BROCKMAN. Cybernetics, and after it became a surprise Penguin Press, 2019, 320 pp. bestseller, other researchers began applying the term to their attempts to get computers to process information n 1955, John McCarthy coined the much in the way that a human brain does. term “artiÃcial intelligence” (¬) in a There was no question that Wiener Igrant proposal that he co-wrote with was brilliant. The trouble was that he his colleague Marvin Minsky and a group also happened to be a pugnacious o other computer scientists seeking know-it-all who would have made the funding for a workshop they hoped to summer at Dartmouth mÙserable. So hold at Dartmouth College the following McCarthy and Minsky avoided Wiener’s summer. Their choice o words set in term, in part to make it easier to justify motion decades o semantic squabbles shutting him out. They weren’t studying (“Can machines think?”) and fueled cybernetics; they were studying artiÃ- anxieties over malicious robots such as cial intelligence. ©¬¨ 9000, the sentient computer in the It wasn’t only Wiener’s personality Ãlm 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the cyborg that was a problem. The Dartmouth assassin played by Arnold Schwarzeneg- program was aimed at practitioners, and ger in The Terminator. I McCarthy and Wiener’s work had in recent years taken Minsky had chosen a blander phrase— a more philosophical bent. Since the say, “automaton studies”—the concept publication o Cybernetics, Wiener had might not have appealed as much to begun to consider the social, political, and Hollywood producers and journalists, ethical aspects o the technology, and he even as the technology developed apace. had reached some dark conclusions. He But McCarthy and Minsky weren’t worried about Frankenstein monsters, thinking about the long term. They had a composed o vacuum tubes but endowed much narrower motive for coming up with sophisticated logic, who might one day turn on their creators. “The hour is very KENNETH CUKIER is Senior Editor at The late, and the choice o good and evil knocks Economist and a co-author of Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, at our door,” he wrote in 1950. “We Work, and Think. must cease to kiss the whip that lashes us.”
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Thought experiment: an AI robot at a summit in Geneva, Switzerland, June 2017
Wiener later backed away from his A MIND OF ITS OWN? most apocalyptic warnings. But today, Ironically, even though McCarthy and as has begun to invade almost every Minsky’s term entered the lexicon, the aspect o life in developed societies, most promising technique today, many thinkers have returned to the big called “deep learning,” is based on a questions Wiener started asking more statistical approach that was anathema than hal a century ago. In Possible Minds, to them. From the 1950s to the 1990s, 25 contributors, including a number o most o was about programming the most prominent names in the eld, computers with hand-coded rules. The explore some o the eye-opening possi- statistical approach, by contrast, uses bilities and profound dilemmas that data to make inferences based on presents. The book provides a fascinat- probabilities. In other words, went ing map o ’s likely future and an from trying to describe all the features overview o the dicult choices that will o a cat so that a computer could recog- shape it. How societies decide to weigh nize one in an image to feeding tens o DENIS caution against the speed o innovation, thousands o cat images to an algo-
BALIBOUSE accuracy against explainability, and rithm so the computer can gure out the privacy against performance will deter- relevant patterns for itself. This “ma- mine what kind o relationships human chine learning” technique dates back to beings develop with intelligent ma- the 1950s but worked only in limited / REUTERS chines. The stakes are high, and there cases then. Today’s much more elabo- will be no way forward in without rate version—deep learning—works confronting those tradeos. exceptionally well, owing to staggering
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advances in computer processing and an might be seen as minor annoyances, like explosion o data. ants at a picnic,” writes W. Daniel Hillis, The success o deep learning has a computer scientist, in his contribution revived Wiener’s fears o computer to Possible Minds. “Our most complex monsters running amok, and the biggest machines, like the Internet, have already debates in ¬ today revolve around safety. grown beyond the detailed understanding The Microsoft founder Bill Gates and o a single human, and their emergent the late cosmologist Stephen Hawking behaviors may be well beyond our ken.” famously fretted about it. At a confer- The trouble comes in how to specify ence in 2014, the technology entrepreneur such a system’s goal, or what engineers Elon Musk described ¬ as “summoning call its “value alignment.” The fear is the demon.” Others, such as the ¬ not necessarily that ¬ will become researchers Stuart Russell and Max conscious and want to destroy people Tegmark, along with the engineer Jaan but that the system might misinterpret Tallinn, believe that ¬ represents a its instructions. serious threat to humanity that requires Russell has dubbed this “the King immediate attention. Midas problem,” from the ancient Greek Broadly speaking, there are two myth about the king who received his types o ¬. The Ãrst is artiÃcial general wish to turn everything he touched into intelligence, known as ¬³: systems gold—only to realize that he couldn’t eat that can think, plan, and respond like a or drink gold. The canonical illustration human and also possess “superintelli- o this in the literature is an ¬³ system gence.” An ¬³ system would know much that is able to perform almost any task o the information that exists, be able that is asked o it. I a human asks it to to process it at lightning speed, and make paper clips and fails to specify how never forget any o it. Imagine Google many, the system—not understanding with a mind (and maybe a will) o its that humans value nearly anything more own. The second form o ¬ is narrow than paper clips—will turn all o earth ¬: systems that do discrete tasks very into a paper clip factory, before coloniz- well, such as self-driving cars, voice ing other planets to mine ore for still recognition technology, and software more paper clips. (This is dierent from that can make medical diagnoses using the threat o narrow ¬ run amok; unlike advanced imaging. The fear about ¬³ ¬³, a narrow ¬ system programmed to is that it may evolve on its own, outside produce paper clips would not be oÊ human control. The worry about capable o doing anything more than narrow ¬ is that its human designers will that, so intergalactic stationary products fail to perfectly specify their intent, is out.) It’s a ludicrous example, but one with catastrophic consequences. that’s bandied about seriously. No consensus exists among experts about whether ¬³ is even possible. But MAKING AI SAFE FOR HUMANS those who believe that it is worry that i On the other side o the debate are an ¬³ system did not share human values critics who dismiss such fears and argue (and there is no inherent reason why it that the dangers are minimal, at least would), it might cause trouble. “Humans for now. Despite all the optimism and
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attention surrounding them, current ¬ systems are still rudimentary; they’ve only just begun to recognize faces and decipher speech. So as Andrew Ng, an ¬ researcher at Stanford, puts it, worrying about ¬³ is similar to worrying about ¡¢ “overpopulation on Mars”: it presup- poses a whole lot that would need to Subscriber Services happen Ãrst. Researchers should be trying www.foreignaairs.com/services to make ¬ work, he contends, rather ¢¥¨: ÚÛÛ.ÚÜÝ.ÞÞßÝ than devising ways to stunt it. ¤¢¥¤¬¢£¤¬¨ ¢¥¨: ÚàÞ.Üáâ.ÜÛãâ The psychologist Steven Pinker goes Academic Resources a step further, arguing that the dire www.foreignaairs.com/classroom concerns over ¬³ are “self-refuting.” ¥ä«¬¨: [email protected] The bleak scenarios, he argues, ¢¥¨: ÚÛÛ.âãá.ÛÛÛÜ depend on the premises that (1) Submit an Article humans are so gifted that they can www.foreignaairs.com/submit design an omniscient and omnipotent Bulk and Institutional Subscriptions ¬, yet so idiotic that they would give it ¥ä«¬¨: jchung@foreignaairs.com control o the universe without testing how it works; and (2) the ¬ would be Advertise in Foreign Aairs so brilliant that it could Ãgure out how www.foreignaairs.com/advertise to transmute elements and rewire ¥ä«¬¨: ewalsh@foreignaairs.com ¢¥¨: ÜãÜ.àßà.ÝÞÜâ brains, yet so imbecilic that it would wreak havoc based on elementary Permissions blunders o misunderstanding. www.foreignaairs.com/permissions
The idea that an out-of-control ¬³ ¤¢¥¤¬¢£¤¬¨ ¥²¢£¤ system would harm humanity depends on Foreign Aairs Latinoamérica speculation as much as science; commit- www.fal.itam.mx ting substantial resources to preventing ¥ä«¬¨: [email protected] that outcome would be misguided. As Pinker notes, dystopian prophecies ignore Rossia v Globalnoi Politike the role that norms, laws, and institutions (Russian) www.globalaairs.ru play in regulating technology. More ¥ä«¬¨: globala[email protected] convincing arguments take those factors into account and call for basic safeguards, Foreign Aairs Report (Japanese) implemented rigorously. Here, the history www.foreignaairsj.co.jp o cybersecurity oers a useful parallel. ¥ä«¬¨: general@foreignaairsj.co.jp When engineers created the Internet, they overlooked the need to build strong security into the software protocol. Today, this poses a major vulnerability. A designers should learn from that mistake
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and bake safety into ¬ at the outset, rather prevent mistakes. It would be hard to than try to sprinkle it on top later. know, however, when to make these Russell calls for “provably beneÃcial extra safety steps obligatory. Surely, the ¬,” a concept that can be applied to algorithms that guide a self-driving both ¬³ and narrow ¬. Engineers, he car should be regulated in this way. But writes, should provide ¬ systems with a what about the ones that determine clear main purpose—for example, which videos a website such as YouTube managing a city’s power grid—and also will recommend to users? Yes, regula- explicitly program them to be uncertain tions could oer societal beneÃts—such about people’s objectives and to possess as the downgrading o Flat Earth the ability to learn more about them Society videos on YouTube—but i an by observing human behavior. In so algorithm commissar had to approve doing, the systems would aim to “maxi- every line o a company’s code, it could mize human future-life preferences.” start to feel like overreach. That is, a power-grid ¬ should Ãnd ways Missing almost entirely from Possible to lower power consumption instead Minds is any discussion o another of, say, wiping out humans to save on dilemma relating to the regulation o ¬: electricity bills. Thinking in these terms how to weigh privacy against eciency “isn’t scaremongering,” writes Tegmark. and accuracy. The more data an ¬ “It’s safety engineering.” system has access to, the better it The cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett performs. But privacy regulations often proposes a more creative solution to discourage the collection and use o the safety conundrum. Why not require personal data. Minimizing the quantity ¬ operators to be licensed, just as and type o data that can be used in ¬ pharmacists and civil engineers are? systems may seem wise in an era when “With pressure from insurance compa- companies and countries are vacuum- nies and other underwriters,” he writes, ing up all the personal data they can regulators could “oblige creators o ¬ and paying little attention to the risks systems to go to extraordinary lengths o misuse. But i regulations winnowed to search for and reveal weaknesses and the amount o data that was processed, gaps in their products, and to train leading to less accurate performance those entitled to operate them.” He for products such as medical diagnos- cleverly suggests an “inverted” version tics, society might want to reconsider o the Turing test. Instead o evaluating the tradeo. a machine’s ability to imitate human behavior, as the test normally does, INTO THE UNKNOWN Dennett’s version would put the human Another tension in ¬, and one that runs judge on trial: until a person who is through Possible Minds, is the transpar- highly trained in ¬ can spot the Áaws ency and explainability oÊ how ¬ in a system, it can’t be put into produc- systems reach their conclusions. This is tion. The idea is a thought experiment, actually a technical concern, not an but a clarifying one. epistemological or normative one. That The beneÃt o such standards is that is to say, the question is not whether systems would undergo inspections to people are clever enough to understand
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how a system works; it is whether the then moves to more speciÃc features. It system’s operation is knowable at all. As might start to analyze an image by iden- Judea Pearl, a major Ãgure in computer tifying an edge, and then identifying a science and statistics, writes in his contri- shape, and then identifying spots on the bution: “Deep learning has its own surface o the shape. In this way, it can dynamics, it does its own repair and its own eventually detect the contents o an optimization, and it gives you the right image. After pattern matching from an results most o the time. But when it enormous batch o previously inputted doesn’t, you don’t have a clue about what images (whose contents are usually went wrong and what should be Ãxed.” identiÃed and labeled), the system can Nontransparent systems can reach predict the contents with a high prob- correct answers: human minds occasion- ability o success. Hence, a deep-learning ally do get things right, after all. But system can identify a cat without with ¬, i the system fails, it might do so having to be told which speciÃc features in unexpected, mysterious, and cata- to look for, such as whiskers or pointy strophic ways. I we cannot understand ears. Those features are captured by the how it works, can we fully trust it? This system itself, through a series o dis- is dierent from ¬’s “black box” prob- crete statistical functions. The system is lem, in which bias in the data may lead trained by the data, not programmed. to unfair outcomes, such as discrimina- Its answers are inferences. tory loan, hiring, or sentencing decisions. And it works. That’s the good news. That’s a problem that is possible to Ãx The bad news is that the mathematical by requiring, as a Ãrst step, that such functions are so complex that it is systems are open to inspection by a impossible to say how a deep-learning competent authority. But the fundamen- machine obtained its result. There is tal unknowability o ¬ systems presents such a jumble o dierent paths that a deeper, more unsettling problem. The can lead to a decision that retracing the scientiÃc project emerged in the seven- machine’s steps is basically infeasible. teenth century when empirical evidence Moreover, the system can be designed was placed above knowledge based on to improve based on feedback, so unless faith, which at the time was usually one freezes its performance and pre- sanctioned by the Catholic Church. Does vents such changes, it is impossible to the advent o ¬ mean we need to place review how it reached its output. As our trust once again in a higher power George Dyson, a historian o comput- that we cannot interrogate for answers? ing, writes in his essay, “Any system The trouble is that the mathematics simple enough to be understandable behind deep learning is inherently will not be complicated enough to obscure. Deep-learning systems (also behave intelligently, while any system known as “neural networks,” since they complicated enough to behave intelli- are loosely modeled on the neurons and gently will be too complicated to connections in the brain) have many understand.” Althoughåa lot o research nodes arranged in layers that are all is going into “explainable ¬,” so far interconnected. Such a system models the math bears out what might be reality at a basic level o abstraction and named “Dyson’s Law.”
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The implications are signiÃcant. Soci- gies, at their most advanced levels, do ety faces a tradeo between performance not merely assist human knowledge; and explainability. The dilemma is that they surpass it. the most obscure systems also oer the best performance. Sadly, this matter is BRAVE NEW WORLD poorly treated in Possible Minds. Many o A sense o respect for the human mind its contributors vaunt transparency as a and humility about its limitations runs value in itself. But none delves into the through the essays in Possible Minds. “As complexity o the issue or grapples platforms for intelligence, human brains with the notion that transparency might are far from optimal,” notes Frank create ineciency. Consider a hypotheti- Wilczek, a Nobel laureate in physics. At cal ¬ system that improves the accuracy the same time, the book is Ãlled with a o a diagnostic test for a fatal medical healthy deprecation o the glistening condition by one percent. Without the new tool. “Current ¬ machine-learning technology, there is a 90 percent chance algorithms are, at their core, dead o making an accurate diagnosis; with it, simple stupid. They work, but they work there is a 91 percent chance. Are we by brute force,” writes the computer really willing to condemn one out o 100 scientist Alex Pentland. people to death just because, although So ¬ is good, but bad, too. It is clever we might have saved him or her, we but dim, the savior o civilization and the wouldn’t have been able to explain exactly destroyer o worlds. The mark o genius, how we did? On the other hand, i we as ever, is to carry two contradictory use the system, nine out o 100 people thoughts in one’s mind at the same time. might feel they’ve been misdiagnosed by an inscrutable golem. FOR THE RECORD This raises deeper questions about “The New Revolution in Military the relationship between humans and Aairs” (May/June 2019) misstated the technology. The reliance on ever more company at which the author, Christian complex technological tools reduces our Brose, works. It is Anduril Industries, autonomy, since no one, not even the not Anduril Strategies. people who design these tools, really “A World Safe for Capital” (May/ understands how they work. It is almost June 2019) incorrectly referred to axiomatic that as computing has ad- Geneva as the Swiss capital. The capital vanced, humans have become increas- o Switzerland is Bern. ingly divorced from “ground truth,” the Nicolas van de Walle’s review o reality o the world that data try to Secessionism in African Politics (May/June represent but can do so only imperfectly. 2019) misstated the year in which the The new challenge is qualitatively island o Anjouan rejoined the Com- dierent, however, since ¬ technolo- oros. It was 2001, not 2002.∂
Foreign Aairs (ISSN 00157120), July/August 2019, Volume 98, Number 4. Published six times annually (January, March, May, July, September, November) at 58 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10065. Print subscriptions: U.S., $54.95; Canada, $66.95; other countries via air, $89.95 per year. Canadian Publication Mail–Mail # 1572121. Periodicals postage paid in New York, NY, and at additional mailing oces. £¡¤¥¦¤: Send address changes to Foreign Aairs, P.O. Box 324, Congers, NY 10920. From time to time, we permit certain carefully screened companies to send our subscribers information about products or services that we believe will be o interest. I you prefer not to receive such information, please contact us at the Congers, NY, address indicated above.
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Buy CSSA Books WORLD https://cssbooks.net OF READING Enjoy these titles on pressing topics in current events, history, politics, and economics. Please use the information under each listing for details on how to order.
Antidemocracy in The Identitarians America The Movement Truth, Power, and against Globalism and the Republic at Risk Islam in Europe EDITED BY ERIC KLINENBERG, JOSÉ PEDRO ZÚQUETE CAITLIN ZALOOM, AND SHARON MARCUS “The Identitarians: The Move- ment against Globalism and “Antidemocracy in America is es- Islam in Europe describes the sential reading for understand- Identitarians as a ‘quickly grow- ing the deep divisions within ing ethnocultural transnational American society, which are not movement that, in diverse forms, new and have led us to this criti- originated in France and Italy cal moment in U.S. political cul- and has spread into southern, ture.” —Alondra Nelson, author central, and northern Europe’ of The Social Life of DNA: Race, at the beginning of the 2000s.” Reparations, and Reconciliation —The Week After the Genome Visit: fam.ag/antidemocracy Visit: fam.ag/identitarians Columbia University Press University of Notre Dame Press
Stubborn Structures The Lands in Between Reconceptualizing Russia vs. the West Post-Communist Regimes and the New Politics EDITED BY BÁLINT MAGYAR of Hybrid War MITCHELL A. ORENSTEIN This volume explores post- communist politics in The Lands in Between explores East-Central Europe and why Russia launched its hybrid Eurasia, focusing on the illicit war on the West and how relationships woven into Western institutions responded; institutions in every level of o¢ering an original analysis society. Moving beyond the of how hybrid war a¢ects aged, one-dimensional domestic politics in Europe and labels used to describe the North America. region, this book provides a more nuanced vocabulary.
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Kissinger on Kissinger The Third Revolution Reflections on Diplomacy, Xi Jinping and the Grand Strategy, and New Chinese State Leadership ELIZABETH C. ECONOMY WINSTON LORD The Third Revolution argues
In this series of riveting that Xi Jinping’s dual- interviews, America’s senior reform trajectories—a more statesman reflects on authoritarian system at home diplomacy, grand strategy, and and a more ambitious foreign leadership, particularly during policy abroad—provide Beijin times of great global tension. with new levers of influence Former U.S. Secretary of that the United States must State George P. Shultz raves, learn to exploit to protect its “Kissinger on Kissinger will own interests. inform and inspire current and future generations.”
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A Harmful Sanctions Strategy? Foreign A airs Brain Trust We asked dozens o experts whether they agreed or disagreed that Washington’s use o sanctions is do- ing more harm than good. The results from those who responded are below.
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0 STRONGLY DISAGREE NEUTRAL AGREE STRONGLY DISAGREE AGREE
DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9 STRONGLY AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 9 Elizabeth Rosenberg Henry Farrell Senior Fellow, Associate Professor of Political Science and Center for a New American Security, International Aairs, and former Senior Adviser, George Washington University U.S. Department of the Treasury “The current use of sanctions grossly “The increasingly intensive use of U.S. sanctions overestimates U.S. power and underestimates the over the last decade has been a powerful means for likelihood that non-U.S. countries and rms will cultivating economic leverage, building coalitions of nd or create alternative payment channels.” like-minded partners, and signaling policy objectives to adversaries.”
See the full responses at ForeignA airs.com/USSanctionsUse
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