HOW WASHINGTON GOT CHINA WRONG

MARCH/APRIL 2018 /   •  


Letting Go Trump, America, • 
 and the World   

FOREIGNAFFAIRS.COM

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Fletcher_Paul_FA_full_2018_v1.indd 1 1/18/18 7:52 PM Volume 97, Number 2 LETTING GO Trump’s Lucky Year 2 Why the Chaos Can’t Last Eliot A. Cohen

The World After Trump 10 How the System Can Endure Jake Sullivan

The Rise of Illiberal Hegemony 20 Trump’s Surprising Grand Strategy Barry R. Posen

The Post-American World Economy 28 Globalization in the Trump Era Adam S. Posen

COVER: Giving Up the High Ground 39 America’s Retreat on Human Rights PÂTÉ Sarah Margon

March/April 2018

02_TOC.indd 1 1/18/18 10:31 PM STUDY WITH PURPOSE

“It’s never been more important to study international relations at a school that understands that truth is elusive but real; that history cannot be rewritten to suit today’s preferences; that tradeos are inescapable facts of economic life; and that leaders are those who inspire, not those who inflame.”

 ELIOT COHEN, PhD Director of the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies and Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies

NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS FOR SUMMER COURSES AND CERTIFICATE PROGRAMS IN INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS, INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, AND MORE

sais-jhu.edu/summer18 ESSAYS Just and Unjust Leaks 48 When to Spill Secrets Michael Walzer

The China Reckoning 60 How Beijing De ed American Expectations Kurt M. Campbell and Ely Ratner

Life in China’s Asia 71 What Regional Hegemony Would Look Like Jennifer Lind

Green Giant 83 Renewable Energy and Chinese Power Amy Myers Jae

How to Crack Down on Tax Havens 94 Start With the Banks Nicholas Shaxson

Iran Among the Ruins 108 Tehran’s Advantage in a Turbulent Middle East Vali Nasr

The President and the Bomb 119 Reforming the Nuclear Launch Process Richard K. Betts and Matthew C. Waxman

ON FOREIGNAFFAIRS.COM

Julia Gurganus on Volha Charnysh on Elizabeth Saunders Russia’s strategy in Poland’s right-wing on Donald Trump’s Afghanistan. extremists. on-the-job learning.

March/April 2018

02_TOC_Blues.indd 3 1/19/18 6:38 PM 135672400_NUMAIR_ForeignAffairs_0320.indd 2 3/21/17 9:59 AM Mugabe’s Misrule 129 And How It Will Hold Zimbabwe Back Martin Meredith

The Clash of Exceptionalisms 139 A New Fight Over an Old Idea Charles A. Kupchan

REVIEWS & RESPONSES Stranger in Strange Lands 150 Joseph Conrad and the Dawn o Globalization Adam Hochschild

Still Crazy After All These Years 156 America’s Long History o­ Political Delusion James A. Morone

Future Fights 162 Planning for the Next War Stephen Peter Rosen

Recent Books 168

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March/April 2018

02_TOC_Blues.indd 5 1/19/18 6:38 PM March/April 2018 · Volume 97, Number 2

Published by the Council on Foreign Relations

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02_TOC.indd 6 1/18/18 10:31 PM CONTRIBUTORS

In 2011, JAKE SULLIVAN became the youngest-ever director o policy planning at the U.S. State Department. The next year, the Obama administration sent him to Oman for the rst o many top-secret meetings that would lay the foundation for the Iran nuclear deal. A former adviser to both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, Sullivan is now a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Interna- tional Peace and a visiting lecturer at Yale. In “The World After Trump” (page 10), he argues that the liberal international order is more resilient than it appears.

In 1998, after graduating from college, SARAH MARGON moved to Budapest, where she worked with refugees from the war in Kosovo. She went on to work at the Open Society Institute, Oxfam America, and the Center for American Progress and served as a foreign policy adviser to Democratic Senator Russ Feingold o• Wisconsin. Margon is currently the Washington director for Human Rights Watch. In “Giving Up the High Ground” (page 39), she argues that the Trump administration is accelerating a global decline in the respect for human rights.

One o the United States’ preeminent political philosophers, MICHAEL WALZER has focused his work on the importance o social context for conceptions o justice and the practical implications o moral philosophy. His 1977 book, Just and Unjust Wars, examined the moral basis for war and the ethical limitations that apply to those who wage it. A professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Walzer explores the distinctions between the right and the wrong kinds o whistle-blowing in “Just and Unjust Leaks” (page 48).

ADAM HOCHSCHILD has spent his career in search o instances when, as he once put it, “people felt a moral imperative to confront evil.” He has written about South African race relations, survivors o the Soviet gulag, British antislavery activists, conscientious objectors to World War I, and Americans who volunteered to ght in the Spanish Civil War. His 1998 book, King Leopold’s Ghost, which detailed Belgian colonialism in the Congo, won the Mark Lynton History Prize. In “Stranger in Strange Lands” (page 150), Hochschild examines the life and work o Joseph Conrad.

02_TOC_Blues.indd 7 1/19/18 6:39 PM LETTING GO

obody really knew what to Jake Sullivan examines the surprising expect when Donald Trump resilience o the liberal international order, Nbecame U.S. president. Would which has managed to take a licking and he disrupt the status quo or maintain it? keep on ticking—so far. Other countries Blow himsel up or escape unscathed? appreciate what the United States created, One year in, the answer is yes. even i Washington doesn’t. I you squint, U.S. foreign policy Barry Posen suggests that consciously during the Trump era can seem almost or not, the Trump administration is normal. But the closer you look, the more following a new grand strategy, one o you see it being hollowed out, with the illiberal hegemony. It has “pared or forms and structures still in place but the abandoned many o the pillars o liberal substance and purpose draining away. internationalism” but “still seeks to retain The best analogy might be to health the United States’ superior economic and care—something else the administration military capability and role as security came in hell-bent on overhauling, only arbiter for most regions o the world.” to nd it more diŽcult than expected. Adam Posen sees the global economy In foreign policy, too, the Trump adminis- moving forward calmly and steadily, with tration came to power promising a revolu- broad-based growth nally kicking in. tion. But the White House has failed to But here, too, problems have been kill the existing approach outright and has deferred, and a prolonged abdication o grudgingly contented itsel with hopes U.S. leadership will cause real trouble. that it will die o neglect anyway. And Sarah Margon traces the decline In the board game Diplomacy, the o human rights as a concern in this rules state that “i a player leaves the White House, as even the pretense o game, or otherwise fails to submit orders,” caring about other countries’ misbehav- the player’s country is deemed to be ior has been dropped and the president in “civil disorder.” The country’s pieces embraces a new crop oˆ friendly tyrants. stand in place, defend themselves i Trying to rule the world by dominance attacked, and let the game proceed rather than persuasion has not worked around them. That’s basically what’s well in the past, and there is little doubt happening with the United States now. that i tried again, it will fail again. The Confronted with this unprecedented rules oˆ Diplomacy note that civil disor- situation, Eliot Cohen concedes that to der does not have to be permanent: “A date, the administration’s foreign policy player who temporarily fails to submit might be considered “a highly erratic, orders may, o course, resume play i obnoxious version o the Republican he returns to the game and still has some normal.” But he argues that this is units left.” What the world will look because the bill for the administra- like when that eventually happens is tion’s unconventional behavior has not anybody’s guess. yet arrived. —Gideon Rose, Editor

03_Comment_div_Blues.indd 2 1/19/18 6:39 PM LETTING GO

The Trump administration ostentatiously walked away from the maintenance of world order as an animating principle of U.S. foreign policy. —Eliot Cohen

Trump’s Lucky Year The Post-American World Economy Eliot A. Cohen 2 Adam S. Posen 28

The World After Trump Giving Up the High Ground Jake Sullivan 10 Sarah Margon 39

PÂTÉ The Rise o Illiberal Hegemony

Barry R. Posen 20

MA18_Book.indb 3 1/18/18 10:20 PM Being in oce has done little to Trump’s moderate Trump’s belligerent rhetoric,

GO improve his commitment to facts, or Lucky Year alter his views on trade and interna- tional agreements. Over the course o­ 2017, he insulted foreign leaders on Why the Chaos Can’t Last Twitter, openly undermined his secre- LETTING tary o­ state, and attacked the ‡ and Eliot A. Cohen the ˆ. He continued to praise dicta- tors, such as Egyptian President Abdel hen Donald Trump became Fattah el-Sisi and Philippine President president o­ the United States, Rodrigo Duterte, and refused to men- Wmany wondered just how tion Article 5 o­ the North Atlantic ab normal his administration, and partic- Treaty—which enshrines the idea that ularly his foreign policy, would be. After an attack against one — member is all, as a candidate, Trump had evinced a an attack against all—when visiting partiality for foreign strongmen, derided — headquarters in Brussels. His U.S. allies as a gang o§ freeloaders, pro - subordinates gamely echoed the promise posed banning Muslims from entering o­ “America šrst,” assuring both the the United States, sneered at Mexicans, public and themselves that Trump’s use and denounced free-trade agreements o­ that phrase had nothing to do with such as the North American Free Trade Charles Lindbergh’s isolationist and Agreement and the nascent Trans-Pacišc anti-Semitic America First Committee, Partnership, while demonstrating little founded in 1940. understanding o­ most other dimen- Still, the world did not blow up. sions o­ international politics. Scores World War III did not break out. A case o§ former senior Republican foreign can be made that all things considered, policy ocials, mysel­ included, repu- Trump has ended up being a highly diated his candidacy on the grounds o­ erratic, obnoxious version o­ the Repub- both his character and his bent toward lican normal. He has been strong on populist isolationism. His inaugural defense (he increased the Pentagon’s address conšrmed fears that he viewed budget, although not as signišcantly the world in darkly narrow, zero-sum as it had hoped), willing to use force terms. “We’ve made other countries rich (he launched cruise missiles at Syria while the wealth, strength, and con šdence as punishment for its use o­ chemical o­ our country has dissipated over the weapons), and committed to allies (enthu- horizon,” he said. He went on: “From this siastically in the case o§ Israel and Japan, day forward, it’s going to be only America grudgingly in the case o­ the Europeans). šrst. America šrst.” Although he has been more o­ an eco- nomic nationalist than some might like, ELIOT A. COHEN is Robert E. Osgood the thinking goes that he remains within Professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins the bounds o­ © tradition. University and the author of The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Yet this reassuringly non-apocalyptic Military Force. foreign policy was a product o­ good

2   

04_Cohen_pp2_9_Blues.indd 2 1/19/18 6:40 PM Trump’s Lucky Year

Adult supervision? Trump with Mattis and Kelly at the White House, October 2017 fortune, not restraint, and o the resis- postwar governmental consensus on tance o subordinates rather than the U.S. foreign policy. To be sure, in its boss’ growth. Trump was remarkably pronouncements, the Trump adminis- lucky in 2017. He did not experience tration ostentatiously walked away from any external shocks and paid no visible the promotion o† human rights and the price for alienating the United States’ maintenance o world order as animating friends. But at the same time, no part principles o U.S. foreign policy. Speak- o the world is conspicuously better o­ ing at the ‡ˆ, Trump himsel identi‚ed for his e­orts. Instead, the preexisting the sovereignty, security, and prosperity ‚ssures in the international system are o the American people as his sole objec- either the same or getting worse; no tives. But congressional mandates and U.S. adversary is noticeably weaker, and the sheer inertia o previous policies got in some are getting stronger; and the the way o “America ‚rst.” And so human president’s behavior has devalued the rights violators were still sanctioned, the currency o the United States’ reputa- United States agreed to ship antitank tion and credibility. Sooner or later, his missiles to Ukraine, and relations with

YURI luck will run out. And when it does, the Mexico were uneasily patched up. The

GRIPAS true costs o the Trump presidency will executive branch predominates in foreign become clear. policy, but Congress set limits, particu-

/ REUTERS larly with regard to Russia, and the courts IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE had their say, blocking Trump’s attempt In some ways, 2017 demonstrated the to rewrite U.S. immigration law by sheer di culty o reversing the massive executive ‚at.

March/April 2018 3

04_Cohen_pp2_9_Blues.indd 3 1/19/18 6:40 PM Eliot A. Cohen

In addition to the intrinsic limits on o his directives has practically invited presidential power, there was the resis- passive resistance, such as when the tance o‚ what some o Trump’s support- service chiefs and his own secretary o‚ ers darkly call “the deep state.” This is a defense politely ignored his tweet about misnomer: there is no U.S. equivalent banning transgender individuals from o‚ what the Turkish military was 30 years serving in the military. Trump has expe- ago, or what the Pakistani military and rienced the very limitations on his power intelligence service remain today. The that President Harry Truman anticipated United States does not even have what for his successor, Dwight Eisenhower: the British historian Ronald Robinson “He’ll sit here, and he’ll say, ‘Do this! termed “the o£cial mind,” the suŸocat- Do that!’ And nothing will happen. . . . ing convictions o‚ a mandarin class o‚ He’ll •nd it very frustrating.” career professionals. But there is no Some have put their faith in the doubt that career diplomats, intelligence administration’s “grownups”—Secretary o£cials, civil servants, and military o‚ State Rex Tillerson and the three leaders share a deeply rooted consensus generals, John Kelly (White House chie‚ about U.S. foreign policy and security. o‚ staŸ), James Mattis (secretary o‚ And this consensus unquestionably defense), and H. R. McMaster (national diverges from Trump’s worldview in security adviser). These o£cials, the its support for free trade, U.S. alliances argument goes, have placed their guiding (particularly  ¯), and the U.S.-led and restraining hands on the shoulders global order. Many o Trump’s senior o‚ the impulsive and poorly read com- political appointees do not share his mander in chief. This argument has some worldview. Moreover, the Trump admin- merit. After all, Mattis genially talked istration has been one o‚ the slowest on Trump out o‚ advocating torture by record to •ll positions—candidates for suggesting that he always got more out less than 40 percent o‚ the key roles o‚ prisoners by oŸering them beer and had been con•rmed by the end o‚ 2017. cigarettes—a mild but eŸective •b, given (Trump had roughly 300 o£cials con- that generals do not usually interrogate •rmed by the end o his •rst year in o£ce, jihadists. When the memoirs are •nally whereas, for example, U.S. President written, we may learn o‚ more disasters George W. Bush had nearly 500.) As a averted in this way. O‚ the grownups, result, there has been plenty o‚ room Tillerson is the least important, his for o£cials to continue the policies they background as the reclusive § o‚ prefer rather than pursue those that might ExxonMobil having turned out to be poor please the president. preparation for leading the State Depart- The internal feuding and incompe- ment and explaining U.S. foreign policy tence o‚ some o Trump’s staŸ have made to the American people. He also appears the machinery o‚ government even less to have the least in©uence with Trump. responsive to the White House. Trump The benign junta, as it were, oª Kelly, may have succeeded in real estate and Mattis, and McMaster is a diŸerent entertainment, but he has no experience matter: closer to the president and more in bending vast and complex organiza- visibly respected by him. But there are tions to his will. The informal nature important diŸerences among them.

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MA18_Book.indb 4 1/18/18 10:21 PM Trump’s Lucky Year

McMaster has been the most visibly at A YEAR OF TRUMP odds with the president when it comes to For the Trump administration, 2017 was a Russia, but he also most overtly endorses year o adjusting, however haphazardly, Trump’s view o international politics as to a world that many inside and outside a jungle. Kelly is clearly more sympathetic the president’s camp consider increas- to Trump’s views on immigration, the ingly dangerous. There was no major press, and congressional oversight than crisis along the lines o the Bay o Pigs the others. And Mattis shoulders a unique or 9/11, but enough disturbing events burden: running the largest organiza- are in train. tion in the United States, which limits the Throughout Trump’s €rst year in o‚ce, time he can spend reining in his errant North Korea continued developing nuclear boss. Furthermore, because Mattis under- weapons and the intercontinental ballistic stands that he is the main barrier between missiles it would need to carry them to Trump and a truly catastrophic military the United States. Fiery rhetoric on both decision, he will likely hold his dissents sides (including Trump’s threats o “€re in reserve. In other words, the generals and fury”) and heightened sanctions on may not always be inclined to curb Trump’s Pyongyang did not bring the confrontation worst instincts, for in some cases, they any closer to resolution. And through its share them, albeit to a milder degree. rhetoric and continued military buildup, And being human, they, too, can be including in the South China Sea, China distracted, exhausted, and outmaneu- made clear that it would not act as the vered. They form at best a partial, and United States’ sheri‘ in East Asia. Mean- not necessarily a permanent, brake. while, McMaster’s insistence on the What is not known is what will denuclearization o North Korea and happen i and when the president decides his repeated talk o “preventive war” on a course o action that his advisers made peaceful and honorable accommo- deem deeply dangerous but nonethe- dation seem further o‘ than ever. In less legal. With over a century o drilled the coming year, the United States will obedience to the commander in chie face a choice: either war (by accident or under their collective belt, the generals plan) aimed at disarming or even over- might not be willing to subvert decisions throwing the North Korean regime or a with which they disagree, as other wily humiliating abandonment o the reddest politi cal appointees have done in the o redlines. past (the most important case being As the year unfolded, it became James Schlesinger’s quiet maneuvering increasingly apparent just how actively as secretary o defense to ensure that Russia had intervened in the 2016 U.S. U.S. President Richard Nixon could not presidential election. Allegations about make any wild moves without his author- the Trump team’s possible connections ization). Nor is it clear how many o the to Moscow dominated the news, as federal grownups will stay beyond two years. prosecutors doggedly pursued senior McMaster and Tillerson could conceivably campaign o‚cials and even secured a exit before the end o 2018, and their plea bargain from Trump’s dismissed replacements would probably be even less national security adviser, Michael Flynn. likely to resist the president’s impulses. Meanwhile, the president remained

March/April 2018 5

04_Cohen_pp2_9_Blues.indd 5 1/19/18 6:40 PM Eliot A. Cohen

remarkably cordial toward Russian as a tool o‚ geopolitics are accelerating. President Vladimir Putin and apparently China’s rise is, i‚ anything, more disturb- ordered no retaliation for Moscow’s ing than it was a year ago. astonishing eŸort to disrupt U.S. politics In the ongoing war against jihadists, and discredit the United States’ demo- the Trump administration scored a major cratic processes. Ultimately, Congress and success by completing the campaign to the State Department overrode the White help Iraq eliminate the physical footprint House to impose more sanctions on o‚ the Islamic State, or   . Although Russia. But the situation remains unstable: Trump was quick to take credit—and the antitank missiles that the United States his administration did indeed increase sent to Ukraine will surely kill Russians, resources and lift restrictions on U.S. and Putin is unlikely to react well to that. military commanders—at most his And a Europe increasingly preoccupied administration expanded and acceler- with its own populist and secessionist ated an eŸort launched by the Obama movements presents more opportunities administration. At the end o‚ the year, for Russian subversion.   no longer held territory in Iraq, but In April, Trump hosted Chinese this did not destroy the group any more President Xi Jinping at his Florida than killing Osama bin Laden •nished resort, Mar-a-Lago, and in November, oŸ al Qaeda. The contest with jihadists Xi reciprocated in Beijing. The state will go on well after the Trump presi- visits were successful in the sense o‚ dency, and the administration has not being cordial and theatrical, but Trump’s articulated a clear strategy for success. National Security Strategy, released in Meanwhile, vast swaths oª Mosul, Iraq’s December, still identi•es China as one second-largest city, lie in ruins. Shiite o‚ the United States’ major competitors, militias are operating there and in other and the president continued complain- predominantly Sunni regions o‚ the coun- ing about China’s trade surpluses and try. And in October, the Iraqi government failure to rein in North Korea. The admin- seized the contested governorate o‚ istration’s consistent support for Japan, Kirkuk, a move that shocked and angered including its decision to increase sales o‚ the United States’ Kurdish allies. advanced weaponry to Tokyo, is unlikely Next door in Syria, the regime o‚ to warm the relationship with China. Nor Bashar al-Assad has won its war for is its standoŸ with North Korea: Beijing’s survival thanks to assistance from Iran, apprehension about what might happen Hezbollah, and Russia, while U.S.-backed on the Korean Peninsula, re©ected in rebels found themselves isolated and Chinese military aircraft patrolling close outgunned. Israel now faces an embold- to South Korea and the quiet preparation ened Hezbollah and the possibility o‚ a o‚ refugee camps near the North Korean more permanent Iranian military pres- border, suggests that a U.S.–North Korean ence in Syria. Trump did improve rela- con©ict could expand into something tions with Egypt, but, re©ecting Russia’s much larger. In the meantime, China’s new assertiveness in the Middle East, steady acquisition o‚ military power, its the Egyptian government is now buying menacing posture toward Taiwan, and Russian military hardware and allowing its use o‚ economic aid and investment Russian military aircraft to deploy from

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MA18_Book.indb 6 1/18/18 10:21 PM Trump’s Lucky Year

Egypt. For that matter, the Israeli prime trading order than China. And Trump’s minister spent more time in Moscow than approach to trade will likely alienate he did in Washington in 2017. Trump old friends, such as Canada, and critical inherited these predicaments from his allies, such as South Korea. predecessor, but he did not, and perhaps Elsewhere, crises percolated, most could not, turn them around. notably in Venezuela, as a state o‚ over In the Persian Gulf, Trump more 30 million people continued its decline •rmly aligned the United States with into chaos. But in Latin America (with Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gul‚ states the exception oª Mexico), as in other and against Iran. He signaled his desire parts o‚ the world, there was not so much to walk away from the Iran nuclear deal friction as absence: the United States and showed little interest in the ferocious was simply not playing much o‚ a role proxy war that the Arab states are waging one way or another. And throughout in Yemen against Iran. The administra- his •rst year, Trump acquired a global tion appears to be placing its bets on the reputation for being unreliable, tem- new Saudi crown prince, Mohammed peramental, and deceitful. According to bin Salman, an ambiguous •gure who the Pew Research Center, 93 percent o‚ is promising to open opportunities for Swedes polled said they had con•dence women and modernize his society while in U.S. President Barack Obama, but aggressively confronting Iran and shaking only ten percent said they felt the same down wealthy members and associates o‚ about Trump. O‚ course, this may say the royal family. The administration has more about Sweden than the United been noticeably silent about such excesses, States, but in Canada, Germany, and as well as about the de facto Saudi kidnap- the United Kingdom, the numbers were ping o‚ the Lebanese prime minister almost as bad. And foreign o£cials have in November. begun talking openly about how, in the On trade, shortly after taking o£ce, words o‚ Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Trump decisively dropped the Trans- minister oª foreign aŸairs, “our friend Paci•c Partnership. (Large international and ally has come to question the very economic arrangements led by China worth o‚ its mantle o‚ global leader- took its place.) More consequentially, he ship.” The costs o‚ such a deterioration began renegotiating the North American in U.S. standing are long term. They Free Trade Agreement, which he had may not be visible yet, but they will repeatedly threatened to abandon alto- come into the open in a moment o‚ gether. Even though Trump promised acute stress. to replace multilateral trade agreements Meanwhile, the Trump administra- with bilateral ones, he has failed to follow tion has not solved any o‚ the problems through. Indeed, he denounced the it inherited, nor does it appear to have free-trade agreement with South Korea any solutions in view. After denouncing even as the United States prepared to excessive involvement abroad, it increased, potentially wage war alongside that not decreased, the deployment oª forces country. Taken together, these actions to active war zones. In Afghanistan, for made the United States appear less example, Trump raised the number o‚ U.S. committed to an open international troops with no clear objective beyond

March/April 2018 7

MA18_Book.indb 7 1/18/18 10:21 PM Eliot A. Cohen

persistence. Other moves were dramatic another, this crisis will come to a head but essentially meaningless. The admin- by the beginning o 2019. It may end istration’s unilateral recognition o with a body blow to U.S. prestige and Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was bemoaned reputation, as Washington accepts what by foreign policy experts, but there is it has declared to be an unacceptable no evidence that Abu Dhabi, Cairo, or danger. Or it could devolve into a war Riyadh cared much about it. At most, that kills hundreds o thousands, even it was a minor pinprick to an Israeli- millions, o people. Palestinian peace process that had †at- Con†ict with Russia has also become lined years before. more likely. The curious tension between the president’s sympathetic rhetoric and TROUBLE AHEAD his administration’s more hostile actions I¤ Trump’s ’rst year was unnerving but has increased the risk that a contemptu- largely uneventful, there is reason to ous and irritated Russia will poke back in think his second will be considerably eastern Europe. The Kremlin’s anxieties more di¥cult. Not only are foreign policy about legitimacy in the midst o economic challenges beginning to pile up; a year stagnation exacerbate the situation. At o the Trump administration has left the same time, the United States could the United States in a worse position ’nd itsel in ’ghts with Iran and in a to handle them. more adverse relationship with China. The con†ict with North Korea is The combination o these and other moving toward some kind o climax. It tensions, and not just each individually, is entirely plausible that Kim Jong Un, constitutes a second source o worry. the country’s supreme leader, will order I any con†ict goes hot, Washington’s the test o a nuclear-armed ballistic antag onists in other realms will exploit missile in 2018. In response, the United the opening. U.S. President Franklin States might shoot down a test missile, Roosevelt could conceive and execute even i it is unarmed. Such a move, or strategy against Japan and Germany some minor incident in territorial waters simultaneously, but Trump is no Roo- or along the demilitarized zone, could sevelt, and the polarized United States o degenerate into a devastating war. One 2018 is not the uni’ed United States o hundred years after the end o¤ World 1942. “One war at a time,” as President War I, it is wise to remember that small Abraham Lincoln supposedly cautioned violent events can trigger much, much William Seward, his pugnacious secretary larger ones. The United States, having o state, who was keen for a ’ght with declared that it will not accept a nuclear- the United Kingdom. A United States armed North Korea, might very well use preoccupied with combat on, say, the force to make its word good. The public Korean Peninsula would probably be less statements o¤ Trump and McMaster do aggressive in containing Russia in Europe. not indicate any interest in a strategy o And i¡ foreign leaders know one thing containment and pressure over the long about the Trump administration, it is that term. Even the more cautious Mattis it seems uniquely incapable o¡ focusing. has spoken o “storm clouds” gathering The ’nal source o instability for U.S. over the Korean Peninsula. One way or foreign policy in 2018 will be domestic.

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04_Cohen_pp2_9_Blues.indd 8 1/22/18 10:34 AM Trump’s Lucky Year

Elections in November may cost the have much o a backup bench. And Republicans control o one or both perhaps worst o all, he thinks he knows houses o Congress. There are also likely what he is doing. He does not seem to to be major developments in the inves- realize that he has not faced any tests tigations led by former †‡ Director comparable to the 9/11 attacks or the Robert Mueller, now the special counsel 2008 recession, and there is no reason looking into Russia’s interference in the to believe that he has developed the 2016 election and any possible links knowledge or judgment to handle such between the Trump campaign and a challenge when it does arise. What Russia. These could be indictments o he attributes to genius, most observers senior Œgures in the administration or correctly attribute to luck. And there Mueller’s Œring by Trump. Watergate is a good chance that 2018 will be the took over two years from the break-in year his luck runs out.∂ to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. There may be no crime here and no resignation or impeachment, but the rhythm feels similar. Moreover, these elections and investigations are taking place against the backdrop o a polar- ized and angry electorate. The resulting turmoil will a’ect the conduct o“ foreign policy by giving antagonistic powers openings to take advantage o a country consumed with domestic scandals or by tempting a desperate president to look elsewhere for glory or distraction. Nixon launched a celebratory tour o the Middle East in June 1974, shortly before the House Judiciary Committee recom- mended his impeachment to the full House. Trump, who is, i nothing else, a masterly reality television showman, might choose to divert attention in a more dramatic fashion. Trump appears to believe that he achieved great things during his Œrst year in o—ce and that his critics have been proved both vicious and wrong. In fact, he has demoralized the institutions o the U.S. government on which he depends. He has disappointed anyone, at home or abroad, who expected him to mature. He is exhausting his Œrst group o appointees, and he does not

March/April 2018 9

04_Cohen_pp2_9_Blues.indd 9 1/19/18 6:40 PM order or a period with no real order at all. The World But the existing order is more resilient

GO than this assessment suggests. There is no After Trump doubt that Trump represents a meaning- ful threat to the health o both American democracy and the international system. How the System Can Endure And there is a nonnegligible risk that he LETTING could drag the country into a constitu- Jake Sullivan tional crisis, or the world into a crippling trade war or even an all-out nuclear war. Yet despite these risks, rumors o‚ the he warnings started long before international order’s demise have been Donald Trump was even a presi- greatly exaggerated. The system is built Tdential candidate. For at least a to last through signi•cant shifts in global decade, a growing chorus oª foreign policy politics and economics and strong enough experts had been pointing to signs that to survive a term oª President Trump. the international order was coming apart. This more optimistic view is oŸered Authoritarian powers were ©outing not as comfort but as a call to action. long-accepted rules. Failed states were The present moment demands resolve radiating threats. Economies were being and a£rmative thinking from the foreign disrupted by technology and globalization; policy community about how to sustain political systems, by populism. Mean- and reinforce the international order, not while, the gap in power and in©uence just lamentations about Trump’s destruc- between the United States—the leader tiveness or resignation about the order’s and guarantor o‚ the existing order—and fate. No one knows for certain how things the rest o‚ the world was closing. will turn out. But fatalism will become a Then came Trump’s election. To those self-ful•lling prophecy. already issuing such warnings, it sounded The order can endure only i‚ its the death knell o‚ the world as it was. Even defenders step up. It may be durable, many o‚ those who had previously resisted but it also needs an update to account pessimism suddenly came to agree. As they for new realities and new challenges. saw it, the U.S.-led order—the post– Between fatalism and complacency lies World War II system o‚ norms, institu- urgency. Champions o‚ the order must tions, and partnerships that has helped start working now to protect its key manage disputes, mobilize action, and elements, to build a new consensus at govern international conduct—was ending home and abroad about needed adjust- for good. And what came next, they ments, and to set the stage for a better argued, would be either an entirely new approach, before it’s too late.

JAKE SULLIVAN is a Senior Fellow at the A RESILIENT ORDER Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In a world where the major trends seem to He served in the Obama administration as spell chaos, it is fair to place the burden o‚ Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. Depart- ment of State and as National Security Adviser proo‚ on those who claim that the current to the Vice President. order can continue. Yet well before

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MA18_Book.indb 10 1/18/18 10:21 PM The World After Trump

Missing link: Trump at an ASEAN summit in the Philippines, December 2017

Trump, it had already demonstrated its Some context is important. The U.S.- capacity to adapt to changes in the nature led order was built at a unique moment, and distribution o power. Three basic at the end o€ World War II. Europe’s factors account for such resilience—and and Asia’s erstwhile great powers were demonstrate why the emphasis now reduced to rubble, and a combination o should be on protecting and improving dominance abroad and shared economic the order rather than planning for the prosperity at home allowed the United aftermath o its demise. States to serve as the architect and First, most o the world remains invest- guarantor o a new order fashioned in its ed in major aspects o the order and still own image. It had not just the material counts on the United States to operate at power to shape rules and drive outcomes its center. The passing o U.S. dominance but also a model many other countries need not mean the end o U.S. leadership. wanted to emulate. It used the opportu- That is, the United States may not be nity to build an order that bene ted itsel able to direct outcomes from a position o as well as others, with clear advantages JONATHAN preeminent economic, political, and for populations at home and abroad. As military inuence, but it can still mobi- the international relations scholar G. John lize cooperation on shared challenges and Ikenberry has put it in this magazine, / REUTERS ERNST shape consensus on key rules. In the years the resulting system was “hard to over- ahead, although Washington will not be turn and easy to join.” The end o the the only destination for countries seeking Cold War and the fall o the Soviet capital, resources, or inuence, it will Union served to reinforce and extend remain the most important agenda-setter. American preeminence.

March/April 2018 11

05_Sullivan_pp10_19_Blues.indd 11 1/22/18 10:36 AM Jake Sullivan

This precise state o
ažairs was never and their continued participation sends a going to last forever. Other powers would similar message. For example, leaders eventually rise, and the basic bargain o
the major emerging powers eagerly would one day need to be revisited. That ac cepted U.S. President Barack Obama’s day has arrived, and the question now is, invitation to join the rst Nuclear Secu- do other countries want a fundamentally rity Summit, in 2010; less eagerly but still dižerent bargain or simply some adjust- willingly, they joined the global sanctions ments? A comprehensive 2016 ¦ regime against Iran’s nuclear program. analysis found that few powers display an Richard Fontaine and Daniel Kliman o
appetite for dismantling the international the Center for a New American Security order or transforming it into something quote a Brazilian o˜cial who captured a unrecognizable. And while Trump’s broader sentiment among emerging election has forced countries to contem- powers: “Brazil wants to expand its room plate a world without a central role for in the house, not tear the house down.” the United States, many still view the And indeed, Brazil has taken on a leading president as an aberration and not a new role in defending important aspects o
American normal, especially given that the the order, such as the multistakeholder United States has bounced back before. system for Internet governance. Emerging Even China has concluded that it powers’ quest for a greater voice in regional largely bene ts from the order’s contin- and global institutions is not a repudiation ued operation. Around the time o
o
the order but evidence that they see Trump’s inauguration, breathless reports increasing their participation as preferable interpreted Chinese President Xi Jinping’s to going a dižerent way. comments on an open international economy and climate change as indica- FROM DOMINANCE TO LEADERSHIP tors that China planned to somehow take The second factor accounting for the over for the United States. But what Xi order’s resilience is that the United States was really signaling was that China does has managed the transition from domi- not want near-term radical change in the nance to leadership more ežectively than global system, even as it seeks to gain most appreciate. Over the past decade, more in©uence by taking advantage o
U.S. diplomacy has facilitated a shift the vacuum left by Trump. And to the from formal, legal, top-down institutions extent that Beijing has set out to con- to more practical, functional, and regional struct its own parallel institutions, approaches to managing transnational particularly when it comes to trade and issues—“coalitions o
the willing” (in the investment, thus far these institutions real, non-Iraq-war sense o
the term). This largely supplement the existing order shift has not only expanded the prospects rather than threatening to supplant it. for shared problem solving; it has also Other emerging powers chafe at certain made the rules-based order less rigid, features o
the order, and some seek a more and therefore more lasting. prominent place in institutions such as Consider climate change. Formal legal the ª Security Council. Yet rhetorical structures, such as the Kyoto Protocol, ©ourishes aside, they, like China, talk in which failed largely because the United terms o
reform rather than replacement— States refused to participate and emerging

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05_Sullivan_pp10_19_Blues.indd 12 1/19/18 7:15 PM The World After Trump

powers were exempt, have given way to less party to some o‚ these platforms, but it formal structures, such as the Paris climate has helped promote them with technical accord. Unlike Kyoto, Paris achieved broad- and diplomatic support. Viewed from this based participation because its substantive perspective, Beijing’s establishment o‚ the commitments are voluntary and states Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is have ©exibility in how to meet them. It largely in line with the “variable geometry” can survive a temporary U.S. withdrawal that the United States has encouraged. because other countries had already (Washington erred in resisting the ¿ fac tored their targets into their national rather than working to shape its standards.) energy plans and because the United States And on global health, the World Health can meet or exceed its own targets even Organization has recognized the need for without the help o Washington (points more ©exible arrangements to deal with Brian Deese, a former climate adviser to major health crises, including public- Obama, has made in this magazine). private partnerships, such as the Global On nuclear proliferation, formal Fund to Fight À , Tuberculosis and Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review Malaria and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. conferences have not advanced the ball on Meanwhile, various emerging regional new legal norms. But during the negotia- and subregional arrangements are playing tions that led to the Iran nuclear deal, the larger roles in local problem solving. P5+1 (the •ve permanent members o‚ One could add other examples to the the  Security Council plus Germany) list, but the point is this: the overall trend joined together to develop a rules-based toward practicality and ©exibility, encour- plan to address a major global prolifera- aged by the United States, has generated tion problem. The resulting agreement, more resilience in the rules-based order. the Joint Comprehensive Plan o‚ Action, For one thing, more practical and ©exible involved practical commitments from the approaches are better suited to handle negotiating parties but also incorporated the diŸuse and complex nature o‚ trans- key international institutions—the Inter- national challenges today. For another, the national Atomic Energy Agency and the rest o‚ the world can continue to partici- Security Council—for oversight and pate even when the United States pulls enforcement. And although Trump may back. The new structures are designed to eventually withdraw from the agreement, extract greater participation and contribu- the broad participation and buy-in that it tions from a greater number o‚ actors in a achieved, and the fact that it is working greater number o‚ places—even when the as intended, have thus far constrained most important o‚ those actors temporarily him from doing so, despite his claim that relinquishes its leadership role. it is “the worst deal ever.” There is a concern about whether On trade and economics, although this trend will water down rules. But the universal rule-making in the World Trade record so far suggests this is not the case. Organization has stalled, “plurilateral” For example, the 11 nations currently and regional initiatives o‚ various shapes pursuing the Trans-Paci•c Partnership and sizes have proliferated, from the East without U.S. participation might produce African Community to Latin America’s a trade agreement with weaker labor or Paci•c Alliance. The United States is not environmental provisions than those in

March/April 2018 13

MA18_Book.indb 13 1/18/18 10:21 PM Jake Sullivan

the U.S.-brokered version, which the over whelmingly approved new sanctions, Trump administration withdrew from tying Trump’s hands. (The administration last year. But those provisions would still subsequently surprised most observers represent an improvement over existing by announcing that it would provide rules, and a new baseline against which lethal assistance to Ukraine, a move future rules would be measured. Nor is pushed by top members o Trump’s this broader trend mutually exclusive national security team.) with action in the  system. The rise o‚ Perhaps most important, Trump has informal mechanisms o‚ cooperation has found that whatever his contempt for not detracted from basic global standard- the rules-based order, he needs it. Here setting on issues such as civil aviation. he follows a line o‚ American politicians To the contrary, the informal and the who have chafed at perceived limits on formal can be mutually reinforcing. U.S. freedom o‚ action but ultimately Progress conceived in smaller formats recognized that the order protects and outside the  system can help catalyze advances U.S. interests. To counter universal action. North Korea, he needs both strong Asian alliances and a working relation- BINDING TRUMP ship with Beijing (contrary to every- Finally, although Trump has created a thing he said during the campaign). To temporary vacuum o‚ global leadership defeat the Islamic State (also known as and keeps raising questions about his   ), he needs the allies and partners basic •tness for o£ce, he has thus far that made up the coalition, built during been unable to do the level o‚ systemic the Obama administration, that helped damage in foreign aŸairs that he threat- eject   from Mosul and Raqqa. Trump ened on the campaign trail. He has— has therefore been forced to embrace again, thus far—been constrained by elements o‚ the order he would Congress, by his own national security rather dismiss. team, and by reality. Trump’s own lack oª focus has Consider the U.S. alliance system, a helped. The international relations central feature o‚ the U.S.-led order. expert Thomas Wright is correct to Trump continues to deride U.S. allies warn that “since World War II, the as free riders. But Washington’s policy foreign policy o‚ every administration toward its alliances in both Europe and has been de•ned by the character and Asia has been marked more by continuity opinions o‚ its president,” not anybody than change. Trump’s advisers have helped else. And Trump’s worst impulses may ensure that, as have outside advocacy and yet win out, with disastrous conse- congressional oversight. And European quences. But unlike his predecessors, leaders have sought to sustain the alliance, Trump has displayed relatively little despite their misgivings about Trump, by interest in translating his impulses into working around him. Similarly, whatever consistent policy actions. That can the administration’s desire to ease pressure potentially allow the system around on Russia for violations o‚ Ukraine’s him, including voices outside govern- territorial integrity—a foundational norm ment, to play a more powerful con- o‚ the rules-based order—Congress straining role than usual.

14   

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FA 14a_19_Fisher.indd 1 1/22/18 11:57 AM The World’s Leading MA Program in Security Studies Georgetown University

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ORDER BEGINS AT HOME National Endowment for Democracy The system’s resilience should not be the calls the “sharp power” o‚ authoritarian end to a comforting story; it should be states, a mix o‚ strategies to undermine the starting point o‚ a badly needed eŸort political pluralism and open elections. to reinforce and update the international Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order and address the real threats to its interference in the U.S. presidential long-term viability. That must begin with election likely helped secure Trump’s the most serious challenge today: growing victory, and in the years ahead, Russian disillusionment with some o‚ its core “active measures” and Chinese in©uence assumptions. This disillusionment has operations will continue seeking to desta- been stoked by forces o‚ nativism and bilize democratic systems. illiberalism, but it is rooted in the lived And when it comes to the interaction experience o‚ many who have seen few between economic and political reform, the promised bene•ts ©ow to them. Chinese Communist Party has been trying The United States built the order to prove—including to receptive audiences on three foundational propositions: in developing-world governments—that that economic openness and integra- economic openness is perfectly compatible tion lead to greater and more widely with a closed political system. Unlike the shared prosperity; that political open- Soviet Union, which relatively few aspired ness, democratization, and the protec- to emulate, China oŸers what many tion o human rights lead to stronger, see as an attractive alternative. Xi has more just societies and more eŸective described his country’s model as a “new international cooperation; and that option for other countries.” Audiences economic and political openness are in Africa and Asia, and even some in mutually reinforcing. All three propo- Europe, are paying attention. sitions are now contested. These trends preceded Trump, and As the political scientists JeŸ Colgan they are now being compounded by new and Robert Keohane have argued in these threats to democracy, including a whole- pages, the link between globalization and sale assault on the very idea o‚ truth. But shared prosperity is no longer clear. The they are not irreversible. The year 1989 current international economic system is did not bring the end o history in one “rigged,” in their telling, and a new set direction; neither did 2016 in the other. o‚ rules is needed to better advance the The liberal part o‚ the rules-based interests o‚ middle classes around the international order has always been world. Meanwhile, a growing reaction imperfect and will remain so. As Ikenberry in the West treats global integration as has pointed out, the current order is a threat to national identity and eco- actually a blend o‚ the traditional West- nomic vitality. phalian system (founded on state sover- On the merits o‚ the open political eignty) and a more liberal variant that model, democracy is now on the emerged •rst with British hegemony in defensive—from within, thanks to self- the nineteenth century and then deepened in©icted wounds and the gathering under U.S. leadership in the twentieth. strength o‚ populist political parties, This combination has always involved an and from without, thanks to what the uneasy balance between sovereignty and

March/April 2018 15

MA18_Book.indb 15 1/18/18 10:21 PM Jake Sullivan

noninterference, on the one hand, and TROUBLE FROM WITHOUT universal values and multilateral coopera- Along with weaknesses within the tion, on the other. A shift in emphasis West, the order is facing challenges toward the former does not spell the from without, starting with renewed end o– the entire order. great-power competition. Indeed, the Moreover, the developments o– the Trump administration’s National Security past two years—Brexit, Trump’s elec- Strategy explicitly makes competition— tion, the rise o– right-wing parties in in opposition to order—an organizing Europe, foreign interference in demo- principle. It taunts previous administra- cratic politics—have served as a wake-up tions for seeing great powers as “benign call. There are new and urgent conversa- actors and trustworthy partners” and tions in Western democracies not just assuming that “competition would give about how to resist pressure from abroad way to peaceful cooperation.” But the but also about how to address social and Trump team is wrong to frame this as an economic dislocations at home and the either-or proposition. As a prescriptive distributional consequences o– global- matter, abandoning the postwar order is a ization and automation. Whether this strange concession for a status quo power brings about a genuine recovery o– to make, since the order’s existence is a strength for liberal democracy over major competitive advantage. Defending time remains to be seen. But there are it, and mobilizing its assets, is essential promising signs. Trump’s excesses have for contending with Russia and China. generated energetic e›orts to push back And as a predictive matter, it is by no against them. In Europe, the œ has means inevitable that great-power proved more cohesive, and its economic competition will upend the order in foundation stronger, than most antici- the foreseeable future. To understand pated, and although populist movements why this is the case, it’s necessary to continue to make some progress, they distinguish between the two primary have also met considerable resistance (as great-power competitors. the French far-right candidate Marine Russia under Putin does want to Le Pen discovered). Democratic nations undermine U.S. leadership, as well as have not lost the wherewithal to manage the cohesion o” Washington’s democratic and alleviate the strains o– authoritar- allies. But so far, the Kremlin has proved ian populism. I– the West can succeed to be more o– a spoiler than an existential in restoring some o– the appeal o– the threat. Yes, Putin brazenly violated democratic model, the weaknesses and Ukraine’s territorial integrity, but he contradictions in the authoritarian was met with a common transatlantic model—which, after all, rests on the response that kept him from pulling Kiev systematic suppression o” basic human back into Moscow’s orbit, as well as with freedoms and is usually accompanied new ™ forward deployments to resist by debilitating corruption—will come further Russian aggression. Yes, Putin’s back into sharper focus. In this regard, intervention in Syria assisted Syrian the major disconnect between Beijing’s President Bashar al-Assad’s butchery outward projection o– con£dence and on an industrial scale and gave Russia a its deep insecurity at home is telling. brokering role there, but that has not

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translated into a broader role as security damental global challenge—especially i manager for the region, and it likely Beijing succeeds in building a sphere o never will. And on the global level, Russia inuence in East Asia. That China aims simply does not have the power to deci- to change the balance o power in Asia, sively shift the course o international reducing the United States’ role and trade and investment regimes or scuttle increasing its own, is evident in its multilateral eorts to deal with such military buildup, its activities in the challenges as climate change. That will South China Sea, its coercive economic be increasingly true going forward, given diplomacy, and the expansion o its Russia’s fragile economy and unfavorable inuence through such eorts as the demographic trends. The United States Belt and Road Initiative. And the has to avoid the trap o underestimating Trump administration is helping in this Putin, but also the temptation to over- cause, by neglecting Asian security and estimate him. economic institutions. China is a dierent story. It has far But the United States and its partners greater capacity to upend the global have plenty o cards to play. The demand order—but will be cautious in attempt- for an enduring U.S. presence in Asia, ing to do so in the near term. For all o from key treaty allies and others resis- Xi’s rhetoric, China cannot be expected tant to Chinese hegemony, will likely to replace the United States at the block any aspirations Beijing has for an center o a newly constituted order. As Asian Monroe Doctrine, or anything the China scholar David Shambaugh close to it. Even in areas where China has noted, Beijing remains a “partial has made signi†cant strides, such as the power.” Its basic global strategy has South China Sea, the United States and been to act, to borrow a phrase from the its partners still have the capacity to former U.S. o’cial Robert Zoellick, as protect regional prerogatives and global amended by Hillary Clinton as secretary norms such as freedom o navigation and o state, as a “selective stakeholder,” unim peded lawful commerce. Ultimately, picking and choosing which responsi- a return to an eective Asia strategy, bilities to take on based on a narrow anchored in Washington’s historical cost-bene†t analysis. This strategy alliances and contemporary partner- proceeds from the assumption that the ships, could sustain the U.S. role in United States will remain the burden Asia and manage regional competition bearer o• last resort. while pro moting global cooperation China will clearly seek greater with Beijing. inuence in the operation and evolution Finally, the paroxysms o violence o the order. Other emerging powers across the arc o instability from North will, too. That will require adjustments Africa to South Asia have led some by both the United States and emerg- observers to conclude that disorder in ing powers, but not something funda- the Middle East could threaten the entire mentally new. global order. But Middle Eastern instabil- That still leaves the question o whether ity has been a feature, not a bug, o the China’s competitive posture in its region system since the fall o the Ottoman will over time translate into a more fun- Empire after World War I. In just one

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30-year stretch—the period from the A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY early 1970s to the ›rst decade o this None o this is an argument for compla- century—the region saw the Yom Kippur cency. In Washington, checking Trump’s War, the Lebanese civil war, the Iranian destructive instincts requires constant Revolution, the dawn o the modern age work, which will only get harder as he o terrorism with the siege o¡ Mecca, looks more often to the global stage to the Soviet invasion o Afghanistan, the score points. And the internal constraints Iran-Iraq War, the ›rst Lebanon war, often come down to a few individuals two Palestinian intifadas, the Persian who could easily be replaced by less Gul¤ War, the war in Iraq, and a Yemeni responsible voices. Internationally, the civil war. di culties are accelerating, not abating, Today, it is true that the combination among them the technology-driven o weak state structures, violent ideolo- challenge to state supremacy itself. The gies, and Iranian-Saudi competition has resilience o the rules-based order o†ers transformed a number o¤ local conŽicts just a window o opportunity to get things into a regional crisis. In addition to the right. It will eventually close. horri›c human toll, this has had the Many o the most crucial steps require spillover e†ects o sending refugees that the United States get its own house Žowing to Europe and inspiring jihadist in order, which would create more fertile attacks across the West. At the same time, ground for consensus building on national the United States is no longer as willing security. But there is also a clear task for or able to play the external role it played foreign policy leaders, in both parties: to before, for reasons relating to both the strengthen and adapt the postwar interna- supply side (reduced U.S. willingness tional order so that it responds to current to invest resources, especially troops) needs and reŽects new realities but still and the demand side (reduced regional secures a central U.S. role. That will enthusiasm for U.S. involvement). Yet require new ideas and productive advo- the roiling waters o the Middle East cacy to ensure that globalization delivers have not swamped the whole system. more widely shared prosperity. It will U.S.-led e†orts against  have rolled require e†ectively managing strategic back the biggest threat to the interna- competition with Russia and China by tional community, the existence o a protecting U.S. prerogatives without terrorist state in the heart o the Mid- descending into all-consuming rivalry dle East. Europe is learning to manage or outright conŽict. And it will require the refugee crisis. And despite Tehran’s convincing governments and citizens advances on several fronts, the basic around the world that in spite o the power politics o the region tilt toward current president, a strong majority o the eventual emergence o an uneasy, Americans remain committed to working sometimes messy balance between Iran closely with other nations to secure and its proxies on one side and a Saudi- shared interests through common action led Sunni bloc on the other. E†ective and rules. statecraft can help manage, contain, A temporary American absence is and reduce regional instability survivable; sustained American absence over time. is not. In the long run, the international

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order will still need leadership, even in two terms o Trump might not be 1x the best-developed areas o‚ international versus 2x, but more like 1x versus 10x. cooperation. Who is going to make sure For one thing, Obama needed two terms that countries increase their emissions to get to the ideas he campaigned on in reductions under the Paris accord when 2008, and i‚ the same proves true for the next round o‚ pledges comes in 2023? Trump, his second term could be cataclys- Who is going to pull the world powers mic. For another, his reelection would together to execute a follow-on agree- con•rm that Trumpism is in fact the ment to the Iran nuclear deal? American new normal in the United States, not an leadership is even more critical in emerg- aberration, causing other countries to take ing areas where the rules have not yet been more decisive steps to rearrange their developed or where previous solutions no relationships and commitments. It would longer work. How will updated trade and be an especially severe blow to the long- investment arrangements account for the term health o‚ U.S. alliances; many o‚ endurance o‚ state-managed economies, the United States’ friends would more the changing nature o‚ work, and rising seriously contemplate following through income inequality? What should be done on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s to counter trends in state fragility that comment about going their own way. could lead to even more profound migra- On the other hand, the election o‚ a new tion ©ows in the future? What new president in 2020 would say something norms will govern cyberspace and quite diŸerent—and allow the United arti•cial intelligence? States to resume its leadership role. The world cannot count on undiŸer- The U.S. foreign policy community entiated collective action. Nor can it should prepare for this world after count on China, which has neither the Trump. It is tempting to conclude that instincts nor the inclination to take on all hope is lost. That conclusion, however, such a role in the foreseeable future. The is not only unproductive; it is also wrong. United States is the only country with the In every dimension—from technology su£cient reach and resolve, and some- to security, development to diplomacy, thing else as well: a historical willingness economic dynamism to human capital— to trade short-term bene•ts for long-term the United States’ advantages are still in©uence. It has been uniquely prepared signi•cant. The opportunity remains to accept a leadership role o‚ an interna- to reconstitute the old consensus on tional order in which it feels as though new terms.∂ the maxim from Thucydides’ famous Melian Dialogue is often inverted: the strong suŸer what they must and the weak do what they can. All o‚ this underscores the United States’ window o‚ opportunity. Taking advantage o‚ this window does require getting past the current presidency, which is why Trump must not be handed another term. The diŸerence between one and

March/April 2018 19

MA18_Book.indb 19 1/18/18 10:21 PM complaints about allies and skepticism The Rise of o‚ unfettered trade to claim that the

GO administration has eŸectively withdrawn Illiberal Hegemony from the world and even adopted a grand strategy o‚ restraint. Some have gone so far as to apply to Trump the most feared Trump’s Surprising epithet in the U.S. foreign policy estab- LETTING Grand Strategy lishment: “isolationist.” In fact, Trump is anything but. Barry R. Posen Although he has indeed laced his speeches with skepticism about Washington’s n the campaign trail, Donald global role, worries that Trump is an Trump vowed to put an end isolationist are out o‚ place against the Oto nation building abroad and backdrop o‚ the administration’s accel- mocked U.S. allies as free riders. “‘America erating drumbeat for war with North •rst’ will be the major and overriding Korea, its growing confrontation with theme o‚ my administration,” he declared Iran, and its uptick in combat operations in a foreign policy speech in April 2016, worldwide. Indeed, across the portfolio echoing the language o‚ pre–World o hard power, the Trump administra- War II isolationists. “The countries we tion’s policies seem, i‚ anything, more are defending must pay for the cost o‚ ambitious than those oª Barack Obama. this defense, and i‚ not, the U.S. must Yet Trump has deviated from tradi- be prepared to let these countries defend tional U.S. grand strategy in one impor- themselves,” he said—an apparent refer- tant respect. Since at least the end o‚ the ence to his earlier suggestion that U.S. Cold War, Democratic and Republican allies without nuclear weapons be allowed administrations alike have pursued a to acquire them. grand strategy that scholars have called Such statements, coupled with his “liberal hegemony.” It was hegemonic mistrust oª free trade and the treaties and in that the United States aimed to be institutions that facilitate it, prompted the most powerful state in the world by worries from across the political spectrum a wide margin, and it was liberal in that that under Trump, the United States the United States sought to transform would turn inward and abandon the the international system into a rules- leadership role it has played since the based order regulated by multilateral end o World War II. “The US is, for institutions and transform other states now, out o‚ the world order business,” into market-oriented democracies freely the columnist Robert Kagan wrote days trading with one another. Breaking with after the election. Since Trump took o£ce, his predecessors, Trump has taken much his critics have appeared to feel vindicated. o‚ the “liberal” out o‚ “liberal hegemony.” They have seized on his continued He still seeks to retain the United States’ superior economic and military capability BARRY R. POSEN is Ford International and role as security arbiter for most Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts regions o‚ the world, but he has chosen Institute of Technology. to forgo the export o‚ democracy and

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MA18_Book.indb 20 1/18/18 10:21 PM The Rise of Illiberal Hegemony

No retreat: U.S. marines in Afghanistan, July 2017

abstain from many multilateral trade pursued ongoing wars against the Taliban agreements. In other words, Trump has in Afghanistan and the Islamic State ushered in an entirely new U.S. grand (or ‚ƒ‚ƒ) in Iraq and Syria with more strategy: illiberal hegemony. resources and more violence than its predecessors. It has also announced plans NO DOVE to invest even more money in the Depart- Grand strategy is a slippery concept, ment o‡ Defense, the budget o which and for those attempting to divine the still outstrips that o all o the United Trump administration’s, its National States’ competitors’ militaries combined. Security Strategy—a word salad o a When it comes to alliances, it may at document—yields little insight. The ‰rst glance seem as iŠ Trump has devi- better way to understand Trump’s ap- ated from tradition. As a candidate, he proach to the world is to look at a year’s regularly complained about the failure worth o actual policies. For all the talk o U.S. allies, especially those in ‹ŒŽ‘, o avoiding foreign adventurism and to share the burden o collective defense. entanglements, in practice, his adminis- However uninformed these objections OMAR tration has remained committed to were, they were entirely fair; for two SOBHANI geopolitical competition with the world’s decades, the defense contributions o greatest military powers and to the the European states in ‹ŒŽ‘ have fallen

/ REUTERS formal and informal alliances it inherited. short o the alliance’s own guidelines. It has threatened new wars to hinder Alliance partisans on both sides o the the emergence o new nuclear weapons Atlantic ‰nd complaints about burden states, as did its predecessors; it has sharing irksome not only because they

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06_BarryPosen_pp20_27b_Blues.indd 21 1/22/18 10:38 AM Barry R. Posen

ring true but also because they secretly planned to spend $10 billion on the , •nd them unimportant. The actual and in its budget for the 2018 •scal year, production o‚ combat power pales in the Trump administration increased the comparison to the political goal o‚ gluing funding by nearly $1.5 billion. Meanwhile, the United States to Europe, no matter all the planned new exercises and deploy- what. Thus the handwringing when ments in eastern Europe are proceeding Trump attended the May 2017  ¯ apace. The U.S. military commitment to summit and pointedly failed to mention  ¯ remains strong, and the allies are Article 5, the treaty’s mutual-defense adding just enough new money to their provision, an omission that suggested own defense plans to placate the president. that the United States might not remain In other words, it’s business as usual. the •nal arbiter o‚ all strategic disputes In Asia, the United States appears, across Europe. i‚ anything, to be more militarily active But Trump backtracked within weeks, than it was during the Obama adminis- and all the while, the United States has tration, which announced a “pivot” to continued to go about its ally-reassurance the region. Trump’s main preoccupation business as i‚ nothing has changed. Few is with the maturation oª North Korea’s Americans have heard o‚ the European nuclear weapons program—a focus at Reassurance Initiative. One would be odds with his campaign musings about forgiven for thinking that the nearly independent nuclear forces for Japan 100,000 U.S. troops that remained and South Korea. In an eŸort to freeze deployed in Europe after the end o‚ the and ultimately reverse North Korea’s Cold War would have provided enough program, he has threatened the use o‚ reassurance, but after the Russian invasion military force, saying last September, for o‚ Ukraine in 2014, the allies clamored for example, “The United States has great still more reassurance, and so was born strength and patience, but i‚ it is forced this new initiative. The  is funded not to defend itsel‚ or its allies, we will have in the regular U.S. defense budget but no choice but to totally destroy North in the Overseas Contingency Operations Korea.” Although it is di£cult to tell i‚ appropriation—the “spend whatever it Pyongyang takes such threats seriously, takes without much oversight” fund Washington’s foreign policy elite certainly orig inally approved by Congress for the does, and many fear that war by accident global war on terrorism. The  has or design is now much more likely. The paid for increased U.S. military exercises Pentagon has backed up these threats with in eastern Europe, improved military more frequent military maneuvers, includ- infrastructure across that region, outright ing sending long-range strategic bombers gifts o‚ equipment to Ukraine, and new on sorties over the Korean Peninsula. At stockpiles o‚ U.S. equipment in Europe the same time, the administration has adequate to equip a U.S. armored division tried to put economic pres sure on North in case o‚ emergency. At the end o‚ 2017, Korea, attempting to convince China to Washington announced that for the •rst cut oŸ the ©ow o‚ critical materials to the time, it would sell particularly lethal country, especially oil. antitank guided missiles to Ukraine. So Across the Paci•c, the U.S. Navy far, the U.S. government has spent or continues to sustain a frenetic pace o‚

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MA18_Book.indb 22 1/18/18 10:21 PM operations—about 160 bilateral and multilateral exercises per year. In July, the United States conducted the annual Malabar exercise with India and Japan, bringing together aircraft carriers from all three countries for the rst time. In November, it assembled an unusual Tug otilla o three aircraft carriers o­ the NEGOTIATING SECURITY Korean Peninsula during Trump’s visit to Asia. Beginning in May 2017, the navy increased the frequency o its freedom- of-navigation operations, or ‹ŒŽŒ‘s, in of which its ships patrol parts o the South China Sea claimed by China. So busy is the U.S. Navy, in fact, that in 2017 IN EURASIA alone, its Seventh Fleet, based in Japan, experienced an unprecedented four ship collisions, one grounding, and one airplane crash. During his trip to Asia in November, War Trump dutifully renewed U.S. security Fen Osler Hampson and Mikhail Troitskiy commitments, and Prime Minister Shinzo Editors Abe o Japan seems to have decided to allow no daylight between him and the president, including on North Korea. Given Trump’s litany o complaints about As tensions rise in the the unfairness o U.S. trade relationships Great Game writ large in Eurasia, and in Asia and his e­ective ceding o the as narratives polarize irreconcilably, economic ground rules to China, one some hysterically so, Tug of War offers a timely, coherent set of dispassionate, might be surprised that U.S. allies in well-informed essays which together the region are hugging this president so shed valuable light on the complex closely. But free security provided by a circumstances, record and prospects of military superpower is a di—cult thing negotiated solutions — and the many to replace, and managing relations with deep pitfalls in their paths. one that sees the world in more zero-sum economic terms than usual is a small — Christopher Westdal, Former Canadian Ambassador price to pay. to Russia and Ukraine The Trump administration has CIGI Press books are distributed by McGill-Queen’s increased its military activities across University Press (mqup.ca) and can be found in better the Middle East, too, in ways that should bookstores and through online book retailers. please the critics who lambasted Obama for his arm’s-length approach to the region. Trump wasted no time demonstrating his intent to reverse the mistakes o the

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past. In April 2017, in response to scenes, the Trump administration seems evidence that the Syrian government to have been at least as supportive o‚ had used chemical weapons, the U.S. the Saudi intervention in Yemen as was Navy launched 59 cruise missiles at its predecessor. The Obama adminis- the air base where the attack originated. tration lent its support to the Saudis Ironically, Trump was punishing Syria in order to buy their cooperation on for violating a redline that Obama had the Iran deal, and given that Trump drawn and a chemical weapons disarma- despises that agreement, his backing ment agreement that Obama had struck o‚ the Saudis can be understood only as with Syria, both o‚ which Trump pillo- an anti-Iran eŸort. Barring a war with ried his predecessor for having done. North Korea—and the vortex o‚ policy Nevertheless, the point was made: there’s attention and military resources that a new sheriŸ in town. con©ict would create—it seems likely The Trump administration has also that more confrontation with Iran is in accelerated the war against   . This the United States’ future. Pentagon does not like to share informa- The Trump administration’s defense tion about its activities, but according to budget also suggests a continued commit- its own •gures, it appears that the United ment to the idea o‚ the United States as States sent more troops into Iraq and the world’s policeman. Trump ran for Syria, and dropped more bombs on those o£ce on the proposition that, as he put it countries, in 2017 than in 2016. In Afghan- on Twitter, “I will make our Military so istan, Trump, despite having mused big, powerful & strong that no one will about the mistakes o‚ nation building mess with us.” Once in o£ce, he rolled during the campaign, has indulged the out a defense budget that comes in at inexplicable compulsion o‚ U.S. military roughly 20 percent more than the 2017 leaders (“my generals,” in his words) to one; about hal‚ the increase was requested not only remain in the country but also by the administration, and the other hal‚ escalate the war. Thousands o‚ additional was added by Congress. (The fate o‚ this U.S. troops have been sent to the country, budget is unclear: under the Budget and U.S. air strikes there have increased Control Act, these increases require the to a level not seen since 2012. support o‚ the Democrats, which the Finally, the administration has sig- Republicans will need to buy with in- naled that it plans to confront Iran more creased spending on domestic programs.) aggressively across the Middle East. To take but one small example o‚ its appe- Trump himsel‚ opposed the 2015 nuclear tite for new spending, the administration deal with Iran, and his advisers appear has ramped up the acquisition o‚ precision- eager to push back against the country, as guided munitions by more than 40 percent well. In December, for example, Nikki from 2016, a move that is consistent with Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the Â, the president’s oft-stated intention to wage stood in front o‚ debris from what she current military campaigns more inten- claimed was an Iranian missile and sively (as well as with an expectation o‚ alleged that Tehran was arming rebels in imminent future wars). Yemen, where Iran and Saudi Arabia Trump also remains committed to the are engaged in a proxy war. Behind the trillion-dollar nuclear modernization

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program begun by the Obama adminis- the cause. I‚ realized, these goals would tration. This program renews every leg do more than legitimate the project o‚ a o‚ the nuclear triad—missiles, bombers, U.S.-led liberal world order; they would and submarines. It is based on the Cold produce a world so consonant with U.S. War–era assumption that in order to values and interests that the United States credibly deter attacks against allies, U.S. would not even need to work that hard nuclear forces must have the ability to to ensure its security. limit the damage o‚ a full-scale nuclear Trump has abandoned this well-worn attack, meaning the United States needs path. He has denigrated international to be able to shoot •rst and destroy an economic institutions, such as the World adversary’s entire nuclear arsenal before Trade Organization, which make nice its missiles launch. Although eŸorts at scapegoats for the disruptive economic damage limitation are seductive, against changes that have energized his political peer nuclear powers, they are futile, since base. He has abandoned the Paris climate only a few o‚ an enemy’s nuclear weapons agreement, partly because he says it need to survive in order to do egregious dis advantages the United States econom- damage to the United States in retalia- ically. Not con•dent that Washington tion. In the best case, the modernization can su£ciently dominate international program is merely a waste o‚ money, institutions to ensure its interests, the since all it does is compel U.S. competi- president has withdrawn from the tors to modernize their own forces to Trans-Paci•c Partnership, launched a ensure their ability to retaliate; in the combative renegotiation o‚ the North worst case, it causes adversaries to develop American Free Trade Agreement, and itchy trigger •ngers themselves, raising let the Transatlantic Trade and Invest- the risk that a crisis will escalate to nuclear ment Partnership wither on the vine. war. I Trump were truly committed to In lieu o‚ such agreements, Trump has America •rst, he would think a bit harder declared a preference for bilateral trade about the costs and risks o‚ this strategy. arrangements, which he contends are easier to audit and enforce. PRIMACY WITHOUT A PURPOSE Pointing out that recent U.S. eŸorts Hegemony is always di£cult to achieve, to build democracy abroad have been because most states jealously guard their costly and unsuccessful, Trump has also sovereignty and resist being told what to jettisoned democracy promotion as a do. But since the end o‚ the Cold War, foreign policy goal, aside from some the U.S. foreign policy elite has reached stray tweets in support o‚ anti-regime the consensus that liberal hegemony is protesters in Iran. So far as one can tell, diŸerent. This type o‚ dominance, they he cares not one whit about the liberal argue, is, with the right combination o‚ transformation o‚ other societies. In hard and soft power, both achievable and Afghanistan, for example, his strategy sustainable. International security and counts not on perfecting the Afghan economic institutions, free trade, human government but on bludgeoning the rights, and the spread o‚ democracy are Taliban into negotiating (leaving vague not only values in their own right, the what exactly the Taliban would negotiate). logic goes; they also serve to lure others to More generally, Trump has often praised

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foreign dictators, from Vladimir Putin and Iraq. Within  ¯, a supposed oª Russia to Rodrigo Duterte o‚ the guardian o‚ democracy, Hungary, Poland, Philippines. His plans for more restric- and Turkey are turning increasingly tive immigration and refugee policies, authoritarian. The European Union, the motivated in part by fears about terror- principal liberal institutional progeny ism, have skated uncomfortably close to o‚ the U.S. victory in the Cold War, has outright bigotry. His grand strategy is suŸered the loss o‚ the United Kingdom, primacy without a purpose. and other member states ©aunt its rules, Such lack o‚ concern for the kinder, as Poland has done regarding its standards gentler part o‚ the American hegemonic on the independence o‚ the judiciary. A project infuriates its latter-day defenders. new wave o‚ identity politics—nationalist, Commenting on the absence o liberal sectarian, racist, or otherwise—has swept elements in Trump’s National Security not only the developing world but also Strategy, Susan Rice, who was national the developed world, including the United security adviser in the Obama adminis- States. Internationally and domestically, tration, wrote in December, “These liberal hegemony has failed to deliver. omissions undercut global perceptions o‚ American leadership; worse, they WHAT RESTRAINT LOOKS LIKE hinder our ability to rally the world to None o‚ this should be taken as an our cause when we blithely dismiss endorsement o Trump’s national security the aspirations o‚ others.” policy. The administration is overcommit- But whether that view is correct or ted militarily; it is cavalier about the threat not should be a matter o‚ debate, not a oª force; it has no strategic priorities matter oª faith. States have long sought to whatsoever; it has no actual plan to ensure legitimate their foreign policies, because more equitable burden sharing among even grudging cooperation from others U.S. allies; under the guise o‚ counter- is less costly than mild resistance. But in terrorism, it intends to remain deeply the case o‚ the United States, the liberal involved militarily in the internal aŸairs gloss does not appear to have made hegem- o‚ other countries; and it is dropping too ony all that easy to achieve or sustain. For many bombs, in too many places, on too nearly 30 years, the United States tested many people. These errors will likely the hypothesis that the liberal character produce the same pattern o‚ poor results o‚ its hegemonic project made it uniquely at home and abroad that the United States achievable. The results suggest that the has experienced since the end o‚ the experiment failed. Cold War. Neither China nor Russia has become I Trump really wanted to follow a democracy, nor do they show any sign through on some o his campaign musings, o‚ moving in that direction. Both are he would pursue a much more focused building the military power necessary engagement with the world’s security to compete with the United States, and problems. A grand strategy o‚ restraint, both have neglected to sign up for the as I and other scholars have called this U.S.-led liberal world order. At great cost, approach, starts from the premise that the Washington has failed to build stable United States is a very secure country and democratic governments in Afghanistan asks what few things could jeopardize that

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security. It then recommends narrow politics, especially nationalism, and policies to address those potential threats. therefore do not expect other peoples to In practice, restraint would mean welcome U.S. eŸorts to transform their pursuing a cautious balance-of-power societies, especially at gunpoint. Thus, strategy in Asia to ensure that China other than those activities that aim to does not •nd a way to dominate the preserve the United States’ command region—retaining command o‚ the sea o‚ the sea, restraint’s advocates •nd to keep China from coercing its neigh- little merit in Trump’s foreign policy; bors or preventing Washington from it is decidedly unrestrained. reinforcing them, while acknowledging During the campaign, Trump tore China’s fears and, instead o‚ surround- into the United States’ post–Cold War ing it with U.S. forces, getting U.S. grand strategy. “As time went on, our allies to do more for their own defense. foreign policy began to make less and It would mean sharing best practices less sense,” he said. “Logic was replaced with other nuclear powers across the with foolishness and arrogance, which globe to prevent their nuclear weapons led to one foreign policy disaster after from falling into the hands o‚ nonstate another.” Many thought such criticisms actors. And it would mean cooperating might herald a new period o‚ retrench- with other countries, especially in the ment. Although the Trump administra- intelligence realm, to limit the ability o‚ tion has pared or abandoned many o‚ nihilistic terrorists to carry out spectac- the pillars o liberal internationalism, ular acts o‚ destruction. The United States its security policy has remained consis- still faces all these threats, only with the tently hegemonic. Whether illiberal added complication o‚ doing so in a world hegemony will prove any more or any in which its relative power position has less sustainable than its liberal cousin slipped. Thus, it is essential that U.S. remains an open question. The foreign allies, especially rich ones such as those policy establishment continues to avoid in Europe, share more o‚ the burden, so the main question: Is U.S. hegemony that the United States can focus its own o‚ any kind sustainable, and i‚ not, what power on the main threats. For example, policy should replace it? Trump turns the Europeans should build most o‚ the out to be as good at avoiding that military power to deter Russia, so that the question as those he has condemned.∂ United States can better concentrate its resources to sustain command o‚ the global commons—the sea, the air, and space. Those who subscribe to restraint also believe that military power is expensive to maintain, more expensive to use, and generally delivers only crude results; thus, it should be used sparingly. They tend to favor free trade but reject the notion that U.S. trade would suŸer mightily i‚ the U.S. military were less active. They take seriously the problem o‚ identity

March/April 2018 27

MA18_Book.indb 27 1/18/18 10:21 PM damage has already begun to show. His The Post-American administration has hobbled the World

GO Trade Organization, encouraged China World Economy and other autocratic regimes to lean on their smaller neighbors for economic loyalty, undercut agreements on tax Globalization in the evasion and climate change, and pushed LETTING Trump Era even major U.S. allies to negotiate free- trade and cross-border investment deals Adam S. Posen without the United States. I‚ the United States continues its retreat from economic leadership, it will n the aftermath o World War II, impose serious pain on the rest o‚ the the United States set about building world—and on itself. Unless the Trump Ia global, rules-based economic order. administration chooses to launch a full- At the heart o‚ that order, it put the blown trade war, the consequences will liberal values oª free trade and the rule not come immediately. But a sustained o law. Over the next seven decades, the U.S. withdrawal will inevitably make order, backed by U.S. power and bol- economic growth slower and less certain. stered by its growing legitimacy among The resulting disorder will make the other countries, prevented most economic economic well-being o‚ people around disputes from escalating into mutually the world more vulnerable to political destructive trade wars, let alone military predation and con©ict than it has been con©ict. That allowed even the smallest in decades. and poorest countries to develop their social and economic potential without WELCOME TO THE CLUB having to worry about predation by One o‚ the great lessons o‚ economic strong er neighbors. By taking much o‚ history is that bullying is bad for pros- the fear out o‚ the global economy, the perity. Good institutions—the rule o‚ U.S.-led order allowed market decisions law, clear property rights, stable means to be driven by business, not bullying. o‚ exchange, e£cient tax collection, Today, that order is under threat. the provision o‚ public goods, checks U.S. President Donald Trump has rejected on o£cial corruption—are the funda- the idea that the world’s economies all mental prerequisites for sustained bene•t when they play by the rules. economic growth. The bene•ts o‚ such Instead, he has decided that putting institutions should not be oversold. “America •rst” means withdrawing They do not lead inexorably to prosper- from supposedly bad deals, on which he ity or democratic freedom. But without believes the system is based. So far, them, long-term saving and investment, Trump has failed to follow through on which form the backbone o‚ growth, his most destructive ideas. But the cannot be maintained. The U.S.-led postwar order extended ADAM S. POSEN is President of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Follow these kinds o‚ institutions to the interna- him on Twitter @AdamPosen. tional economic sphere, at least in part.

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The best way to think about the rules- or economic depression, both o‚ which based order is as a club that promotes can spread i‚ the entire community does a common set o beliefs to which its not work together to •x problems, even i‚ members adhere: the ability to export they initially aŸect only one member. The to, import from, and invest in markets liquidity provided by the U.S. Federal around the world should not be deter- Reserve in emergencies is essential to mined by military power or alliance such •nancial •re•ghting. structures; other countries’ economic The club analogy is not perfect. growth should be welcomed, not treated Although the members are nation-states, as a threat; property rights should be underlying each state are millions o‚ secure from invasion, expropriation, or people, households, and businesses. theft; and technical knowledge should These, not the states’ rulers, are the ©ow freely, subject to the enforcement ultimate bene•ciaries o‚ the global o‚ patents and trademarks. Together, economic order. That is what gives these values provide the basis for sustained the liberal order its ethical weight. investment and business relationships, as well as household income growth. LEADING FROM THE MIDDLE The club oŸers some shared facilities, All these attributes are in large part for which dues are collected. These start the result o‚ U.S. leadership. But i‚ with the institutions founded at the the United States chairs the club, that Bretton Woods Conference in 1944— does not mean it can issue commands the International Monetary Fund (Ç), or demand loyalty. Washington cannot the World Bank, and what became the force a state to become a member; it World Trade Organization (ȯ)—but can only make membership more go far beyond them. The order maintains attractive than remaining outside the common systems for settling transac- club. Nor can it easily restrict what a tions, converting currencies, invoicing member government does within its in widely accepted units, and applying own country or in areas outside o‚ the tariŸs and customs rules. It also estab- order’s agreed values, short o‚ issuing a lishes forums where experts can meet credible threat to kick that country out to discuss specialized topics and groups o‚ the system. But i‚ such threats come that set international standards, such too often or seem too arbitrary, then as §  (the Internet Corporation for other members will fear for their own Assigned Names and Numbers). Criti- status and band together to resist U.S. cally, the club’s facilities now include pressure. Finally, the United States frameworks for settling international can collect club dues only to the commercial disputes. degree that members think that mem- The club includes some mutual insur- bership is worth it and that others are ance against both man-made and natural paying roughly their fair share. disasters. In part, this takes the form o‚ This reality contradicts the wide- development assistance and emergency spread but misguided belie‚ that the aid, which ©ow disproportionately to United States provides global public poorer members. But it also involves goods while others free-ride, let alone cooperation in the face oª •nancial crises Trump’s view that the global system

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has played American voters for fools. the rules, the system itsel‚ will be imper- In reality, the United States supplies iled. The United States has to want to by itsel‚ only two essential aspects o‚ lead, and the other members have to want the economic order. First, Washington it to do so. extends an umbrella o‚ security guaran- Thus, U.S. leadership is not the tees and nuclear deterrence over U.S. inevitable result o‚ the relative size o‚ allies. Second, the U.S. military ensures the U.S. economy and the U.S. military. free navigation o‚ the seas and airspace Over the last 70 years, it has persisted for commerce, subject to some interna- even as the share o‚ the world economy tional rules that are largely set by the made up by the U.S. economy has shrunk United States. Both o‚ these are classic from 50 percent to 25 percent. Policy- public goods in that one actor, the United makers should not fear that China or States, provides them, and can do so the  will replace Washington as the essentially on its own, and every country global economic leader as their econo- bene•ts, whether or not it contributes. mies surpass that o‚ the United States. In fact, when it comes to the rest o‚ So long as the U.S. economy remains the order’s institutions and bene•ts, very large (which it will) and at the the United States has often been the technological frontier (which it probably one free-riding in recent years. It has will), and the United States maintains frequently failed to pay its dues to inter- its commitment to globally attractive national organizations on time, as others values, the country will be capable o‚ do. It has spent a far smaller share o‚ its remaining the leader. ÀÉ on aid than other wealthy countries. It is a tribute to the appeal o‚ the liberal It has failed to respond adequately to rules-based order—and to Washington’s climate change, even as other countries ability to position itsel‚ as at least better have begun to shift toward greener than the alternative—that U.S. leader- growth. It has behaved irresponsibly ship has retained such indulgent support. by excessively deregulating its •nancial system and its mortgage market, despite DO THEY REALLY MEAN IT? pressuring other countries to curtail their Washington’s retreat will not immediately own growth for the sake o‚ stability. send the world into recession. Unless This reality is the opposite o‚ the the Trump administration decides to concern voiced by Trump’s “America mount an actual trade war with China or •rst” slogan. The United States has been Mexico, it may not even do any obvious given a pass on many responsibilities harm over the next year or two. This is precisely because it leads the system partly because even major economic and other countries want it to keep policies take time to aŸect economies doing so. as a whole. It is also because the global So far, the bene•ts o‚ U.S. leader- economy is in the midst o‚ an extremely ship have been large enough that other broad and balanced recovery. That breadth countries are willing to ignore a certain makes the current expansion the most amount o hypocrisy. But at some point, resilient o‚ any since at least the 1980s. i‚ the United States goes from occasional All the engines o‚ the world economy free-riding to ostentatiously violating are running well, mostly without

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Enjoy it while it lasts: at the New York Stock Exchange, December 2017 overreliance on debt in either the private Some skepticism over the Trump or the public sector. administration’s course is justi ed, since Other countries are also mostly taking past administrations have rarely followed a wait-and-see approach to Trump’s any stated strategy consistently. What is threats to the global economic system. more, even i
the document does reect The administration’s National Security Trump’s intentions, a number o factors— Strategy, which was released in Decem- the midterm elections later this year, ber, challenges almost all the fundamen- unexpected developments from the tal aspects o
the United States’ global ongoing investigations into possible role and the values that the country has coordination between the Trump cam- professed for the last 70 years. It breaks paign and the Russian government, down the wall between economics and pushback from Congress, even reasoned national security and explicitly commits persuasion by the president’s economic the U.S. government to bilateral bully- advisers and world leaders—could stop ing instead o
enforcing and obeying the the administration from following this rules. Advancing what it calls “principled mistaken path. ANDREW KELLY realism,” the strategy promises to “inte- I
that strategy really does guide grate all elements o
America’s national U.S. policy, however, then it will do power—political, economic, and military.” serious harm. The United States would

/ REUTERS The United States will “pursue bilateral restrict access to its market in a variety trade agreements” rather than broad ones, o
arbitrary ways, by blocking foreign a recipe for economic coercion rather investment, withdrawing from trade than cooperation. agreements, imposing “buy American”

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restrictions on government purchases, especially its unfettered speculative and politicizing •nancial supervision ©ows and unchecked accumulation o‚ and access to international payments private wealth. In many countries, this systems. Inevitably, given greater politi- backlash has led to greater tolerance for cal discretion over the economy, some state-owned enterprises (reinforced by U.S. politicians will demand payments, China’s example o‚ state-led growth), perhaps even bribes, from companies the protection o‚ special interests from for proceeding with normal commercial trade competition, and the promotion transactions. All but the last already occur o‚ companies with their headquarters in to some limited degree, but successive their home country as national champi- U.S. administrations since World War II ons. All o‚ these can have positive eŸects have pushed against these tendencies in moderation, but the current trend is at home and abroad. Reversing that likely to go too far without the restraint approach would hurt the United States’ that comes when the United States economic productivity and its citizens’ enforces the rules. Even under the purchasing power. At least as important, Obama administration, the United it wouldn’t stop there. Adopting such States was slow to put new issues, such policies would encourage autocrats to as women’s empowerment, refugee follow suit and even democratic allies resettlement, Internet privacy, and to retaliate in kind. environmental concerns, on the interna- Finally, the extent o‚ the damage will tional agenda. Yet the best way to deal depend on how willing and able other with these issues would be to bring other governments are to uphold the values countries’ concerns about the United and structures o‚ the current system: States’ errors to a discussion at the G-20. China and the Â, primarily, but also For other countries to give up on U.S. other major economies that have long leadership, let alone for the United supported the rules-based order, such States itsel‚ to abandon the system, as Australia, Canada, Japan, and Mex- would only worsen these problems. ico. In all likelihood, there will be no The most immediate response to immediate disaster, because the system the Trump administration’s retreat has oŸers bene•ts to members who volun- come on trade. The prospect o‚ the tarily comply with its rules. Even without United States’ withdrawal from the the United States, almost all the other global trading system has spurred members o‚ the order still publicly several large economies to conclude subscribe to its stated values: open bilateral or regional trade agreements. markets, equal treatment o‚ all mem- In the past year, the  has all but bers for economic purposes, and the concluded substantive trade deals with peaceful settlement o‚ disputes. Canada, Japan, Singapore, and Vietnam, Some o‚ the shift away from U.S. and it has accelerated negotiations economic leadership predates the Trump with Mexico and the South American administration. Since the global •nancial trading bloc Mercosur. With surprising crisis, widespread disdain has emerged speed, the 11 nations remaining in the for the excesses o‚ turbocharged Anglo- Trans-Paci•c Partnership after the American •nancialized capitalism, United States withdrew in early 2017

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have moved forward with much o‚ the regimes will be vulnerable to future agreement, with Australia and Japan economic shocks. In the event o‚ a taking the lead. Regional trade talks major downturn, large countries will in Asia and Africa involving China and likely fail to act together i‚ the United negotiations among Latin American States does not contribute. The system countries have also gained pace; although is not designed to withstand a full-on these types o‚ negotiations tend to result assault by Washington. I Trump wants in lower-quality agreements that would to tear down the order, it will be di£cult allow only limited liberalization and for other countries to limit the damage. resolve few regulatory issues, they will divert trade from elsewhere, including BEGGARTHYNEIGHBOR the United States. Left-wing critics o‚ the U.S.-led liberal The Trump administration has begun economic order often argue that the attacking international institutions from system encourages countries to race to  ¯ to the Â. By blocking the appoint- the bottom, exploiting poorer popula- ment o‚ new trade-dispute judges to sit tions along the way. This criticism has on the ȯ’s seven-member appellate particular merit when it comes to envi- body, the administration is preventing ronmental protections and labor rights, the ȯ from functioning normally. Here, areas in which the United States does the rest o‚ the world has been slower not do enough domestically and so lowers to respond. A few world leaders, such global standards. But until recently, a as Argentine President Mauricio Macri, combination o‚ peer pressure and formal who defended the ȯ at the organiza- agreements encouraged by the United tion’s biennial meeting in December, States had increasingly limited the extent have spoken out. Canada has •led a to which countries undercut one another. ȯ case against the many unilateral Over the last decade, international eŸorts, trade measures the Trump administra- led in part by the Obama administration tion is pursuing, which may set a prec- working through the G-20, had begun edent for action by other countries. But to rein in two o‚ the most pernicious most have remained silent, possibly beggar-thy-neighbor policies, currency because they do not wish to provoke manipulation and the creation o‚ Trump into directly withdrawing from tax havens. or further attacking the organization. I‚ the U.S. government walks away Some nontrade aspects o‚ the liberal from its leadership role, this picture will rules-based order can continue to func- change dramatically. Today, tax competi- tion in the absence o‚ U.S. leadership. tion largely takes the form o‚ constructive Most institutions and forums will not pressure to bring rates and coverage some- work as well, or as consistently, or as what in line with those o‚ comparable adaptably, but they will persist. The economies. The United States, along systems that allow international •nancial with some other countries, is disadvan- cooperation have been largely spared taged under the current system, but from attack so far, in part because o‚ the only international cooperation has a Federal Reserve’s legal independence. hope o‚ plugging the holes rather than Yet without U.S. leadership, even these just driving every country’s revenues

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down. I‚ the United States tries unilater- politicized. Whether a developing ally to use its tax code to attract corporate country gets access to •nancing might headquarters away from other countries, come to depend on whether it sits inside the incentives to race to the bottom by a major country’s sphere o‚ in©uence allowing tax evasion will strengthen. The and is willing to accept (or unable to tax bill signed by Trump in December resist) political domination by that has many complex provisions, but overall, country. The Ç and the World Bank it appears to privilege domestic pro- will remain, but without backing from duction in a way likely to both reduce rich countries, they will likely not be economic e£ciency and promote tax able to counterbalance this kind o‚ polit- con©ict internationally. icization in large parts o‚ the world. More broadly, either opportunistic To avoid facing such political pres- multinational companies will pit coun- sures, many emerging-market countries tries against one another as governments will make renewed attempts to hedge compete to attract jobs or countries will against situations in which they need designate national champions that will assistance by keeping larger currency demand protection and subsidies. Either reserves, even i‚ that comes at the cost way, companies’ shareholders will cap- o‚ domestic investment. They will also ture more o‚ national incomes, shifting try to secure patrons who will promise resources away from individual taxpayers them relatively unconditional assistance and workers and shrinking governments’ when it is needed. With those promises abilities to deal with social issues and in hand, countries will have less need o‚ invest in long-term projects. Beggar-thy- help from international institutions and neighbor policies will beggar everyone. thus will be more willing to keep inter- Another goal o‚ the postwar liberal national monitors out o‚ their decisions. order was to give the governments o‚ This combination will make •nancial developing countries a voice. Global crises more frequent and, by interfering governance has never been truly equal; with international cleanup eŸorts, more the United States and other major coun- likely to do lasting political and eco- tries have always played a dominant role. nomic damage. The division between And deadlock often stymies institutions middle-income countries and countries in which all member countries have an that remain poor will grow even starker equal vote, such as at the ȯ. But the as inconsistencies in the system will Ç, the World Bank, and other multi- hurt the poorest and smallest countries lateral development institutions have the most. generally applied consistent criteria across countries when apportioning lending THE POSTREALITY ECONOMY and aid, authorized by their collective Less obvious but no less destructive membership. eŸects o‚ the U.S. withdrawal from In contrast, in a world in which economic leadership will come on the national security links and bilateral macroeconomic side. These have begun relationships displace general rules with recent eŸorts to compromise and multilateral institutions, aid and economic statistics. The United States crisis •nancing will grow increasingly has always taken pride in the fact that it

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MA18_Book.indb 34 1/18/18 10:21 PM relies on independent agencies to report data about its economy. That has allowed it to press other countries to disclose information properly and promptly, given rise to a set o deni- Global tions and techniques to help them do so, and created the basis for formal Environmental agreements on economic surveillance among technocrats. Objective, standard- ized economic data allow policymakers Politics to adjust their policies based on more K
O’N
  S€‚ D. VD


†, E ‰†Š than gut feelings or salesmanship. The Global Environmental Politics Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the  ­, with (GEP) examines the relationships strong support from the United States, between global political forces and environmental change. help develop and maintain this statistical regime; their regular reports on mem- More timely now than ever. ber countries’ policies and performance Subscribe today. give voters and investors independent expert assessments to consider. Yet over the past year, British and mitpressjournals.org/gep U.S. politicians have begun to dispar- age their own technocrats’ ndings. In London, government ministers have dismissed oŠcial agencies’ skeptical analyses o‹ Brexit, and in Washington, Republican members o Congress have rejected legally required assessments o legislation by the Congressional Budget OŠce and the Joint Committee on Taxation. In some cases, they have even attempted to prevent analyses and data from being released to the public. Politicians will always present numbers in a rosy light and push back against criticism, often with some justication. But when they demand loyalty over objectivity and suppress ndings they do not like, they legitimate tactics that were once the preserve o autocrats. Other self-interested politicians will follow this lead. It is impossible to put a number on the damage this could do by allowing wrong-headed policies, distorting

GLEP FA jan 2018.indd 1 1/5/201835 10:17:24 AM

FA 35_rev.indd 1 1/19/18 2:45 PM MA18_Book.indb 35 1/18/18 10:21 PM Adam S. Posen

and deterring investment by raising retirement incomes. Emerging econo- uncertainty, and reducing the ability mies need investment from wealthier o‚ publics to hold their governments countries to build roads, bridges, and accountable. hospitals; develop Internet and other As the United States turns away communications networks; and train from the liberal rules-based order and doctors, teachers, and other profes- economic decisions grow more inter- sionals. But i‚ politicians and national twined with political power, uncertainty security threats interfere with invest- will rise and returns on investment will ment between countries or among fall. Governments will work to trap diŸerent sectors o‚ the economy, that investment at home, either to create win-win exchange will become more domestic jobs or to fund a corrupt tenuous, leaving both retirees and political system. Those eŸorts will workers around the world worse oŸ. always come at an economic cost. I‚ they did not, governments would not TRADE ON have to prevent money from ©owing The international free-trade regime abroad. Policies that restrict foreigners’ forms the most visible—and the most ability to invest in a particular country reviled—aspect o‚ the postwar eco- are more o‚ a mixed bag. Limits on nomic order. But it is here that U.S. some kinds oª foreign investment can withdrawal might actually do the least help prevent destabilizing surges o‚ harm. The United States is more capital into and out o‚ economies. But dispensable to the rules-based trading such policies can easily go too far since regime than it is in other economic foreign direct investment brings a wide spheres, and the other major trading range o bene•ts for advanced and countries are responding to U.S. developing economies alike. withdrawal by deepening their own I‚ governments begin to restrict trade agreements. International trade capital ©ows, investors will •nd it has persisted throughout recorded harder to diversify their investments human history, even when some global across the global economy. That will economies have left the system (as expose households and businesses to China did from the mid-•fteenth greater losses from volatility within century to the mid-eighteenth century, their particular country or region. Laws Japan did from the mid-seventeenth that make it more di£cult for house- century to the mid-nineteenth century, holds to get their savings into or out and the Soviet Union did throughout o‚ an economy will reduce the level o‚ its existence). Trade can be limited, investment and shift it toward more but never completely squelched. liquid assets, such as cash and govern- U.S. withdrawal will still hurt. ment bonds. Worthwhile business Countries have already begun to shift ventures will struggle to raise capital. their trade ©ows, supply chains, and Wealthy but aging societies in Europe, business relations away from the U.S. North America, and Northeast Asia market. This process will only accelerate need to invest in growing emerging- as the United States retreats. Although market countries to sustain their the U.S. economy’s sheer size will make

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it impossible for other countries to will be tempted to sell out its values for completely divert trade around it, economic gain. It may restrict the spread that size will also worsen the global o biotechnologies and agricultural inno- economic losses from the United vations, as many  countries have an States’ withdrawal. anti-science opposition to them; attempt I‚ the United States entirely aban- to split up the Internet in order to advan- dons the global free-trade system, the tage European companies in search, result will be a massive reduction in shopping, and social networking; and the size o‚ global markets. That would acquiesce to demands from Beijing to leave consumers with less variety and transfer militarily useful technology or worse quality in the products they buy, recognize its territorial claims in return leave companies less able to take advan- for preferential access to Chinese mar- tage o‚ economies o‚ scale, and leave kets. The United States has sometimes countries more likely to diverge from failed to stand on principle on these mat- the common technologies and stan- ters, but U.S. leadership with European dards that make modern life possible. support remains the only way to make Global competition would wither. The any progress on such issues. Otherwise, United States itsel‚ would suŸer as the incentives for each major economy companies pursued opportunities in will be to pander and compromise. places where new trade deals expanded markets and the politics were more THE HOUSE THAT WE BUILT favorable. Among the biggest losers The United States has at times failed would be Americans themselves, as they to live up to its ideals as the leader o‚ the would soon pay more than they do now liberal economic system. That failure has for almost everything and miss out on grown more frequent since 9/11, as many the new jobs and growth that would Americans have felt threatened by the otherwise have come from the rise o‚ growth o‚ terrorism and the economic developing economies. rise o‚ China. That trend also re©ects a As the leader o‚ the global economic recurrent nativism in the U.S. electorate order, the United States has, albeit insuf- and Congress that predates—and contrib- •ciently, pushed to enshrine tougher uted to—Trump’s election. The United standards for anticorruption, environ- States has played too dominant a role in mental protection, and human rights some areas o‚ global economic discussion in major trade deals such as the Trans- and been reluctant to allow other countries Paci•c Partnership. There is still room to help set the agenda, partly in an eŸort for improvement, but trade deals without to pander to domestic nationalists by the United States, especially those that maintaining the symbolism o‚ dominance. include China but not the Â, will likely But far worse than a lackluster leader is score far worse on all these counts. Even one that abandons its role altogether or the  may compromise more readily even works actively to subvert the system’s than before when it becomes the leading values. A return to bullying would only high-income economy in the global harm economic growth. trading system. Without the United The United States’ motivation for States to counterbalance it, Brussels building the postwar economic system

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was as much preventing con©ict as little better. This miracle took place promoting growth. In setting out the without conquest or even much con©ict, rules by which all members would and with greater protections for private conduct business, the architects o‚ the property and human rights than ever system hoped to separate economic before. The liberal order constructed from military competition. U.S. with- and led by the United States made such drawal need not result in economic or progress possible by giving countries, physical wars, but it will raise the risk businesses, and individuals the opportunity o‚ stumbling into con©ict by accident. to build their economic lives without fear Without agreed-on rules, even minor o‚ a foreign power taking away what economic disputes have the potential they had made. That U.S. leadership to set oŸ escalating counterattacks. I‚ has not, as some have charged, hurt the the norm o‚ separation between economic United States. The country’s rampant and military confrontations breaks down, inequality and wage stagnation are economic frictions, such as Chinese theft largely the result o‚ domestic political o‚ intellectual property or restrictions choices and failures. A world in which on trade with a nuclear Iran or North the United States ceases to lead—or, Korea, could turn into outright con©ict. worse still, attacks—the system it built It is plausible that as the United will be poorer, nastier, less fair, and States retreats and thereby weakens more dangerous for everyone.∂ its economy, the Trump administration will blame the economic damage not on its own actions but on foreign govern- ments, creating a self-perpetuating cycle o‚ anger. When other major countries step forward to preserve the open economic order, or defend them- selves against U.S. economic aggression, Washington may interpret that as an attack on U.S. primacy. The Trump administration might even misinterpret the current forbearance by China or the  as a sign o‚ weakness and an invitation to escalate confrontations. Today, a smaller share o‚ the world’s population than ever lives in poverty, and a larger share than ever lives a middle- class existence. This is not solely the result o‚ China’s astonishing rise. In Chile, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Vietnam, and the countries o‚ the former Soviet Union, economic growth has brought hundreds o‚ millions o‚ people out o‚ what amounted to subsistence or

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Troubled Waters Environmental Politics in the Middle East e Great Game in West Asia Transitional Justice in the Middle East Mehran Kamrava (2018) Harry Verhoeven, ed. (2018) Mehran Kamrava, ed. (2017) Chandra Sriram, ed. (2017) Cornell University Press, $29.95 Hurst Publishers, £25.00 Oxford University Press/Hurst, $34.95 Oxford University Press/Hurst, $35.00

e Changing Security Dynamics Arab Migrant Communities Critical Issues in Healthcare Policy Target Markets: International Terrorism of the Persian Gulf in the GCC and Politics in the GCC Meets Global Capitalism in the Mall Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, ed. (2017) Zahra Babar, ed. (2017) Mamtani & Lowenfels, eds. (2018) Suzi Mirgani (2017) Oxford University Press/Hurst, $34.95 Oxford University Press/Hurst, $39.95 Georgetown University Press, $19.95 Transcript Press, $37.00

e Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) at Georgetown University in Qatar is a premier research institute devoted to the academic study of regional and international issues. cirs.georgetown.edu drugs” has taken the lives o‚ over 12,000 Giving Up the Filipinos. Trump praised Duterte for LETTING GO doing an “unbelievable job on the drug High Ground problem.” When they met in Manila in November, Trump laughed heartily after Duterte cut oŸ questions from reporters America’s Retreat on and called them “spies”—this in a country Human Rights where journalists and activists sometimes end up dead. Before heading to China, Sarah Margon Trump congratulated President Xi Jinping, who had just further cemented his repressive rule at a Communist Party o U.S. president has spoken congress, for his “great political victory.” about human rights the way All U.S. presidents have, to varying NDonald Trump has. During the degrees, downplayed or even overlooked campaign, he praised Saddam Hussein concerns about human rights in order to for his approach to counterterrorism in get things done with unsavory foreign Iraq: “He killed terrorists. He did that partners. But none has seemed so eager so good. They didn’t read them the rights. as Trump to align with autocrats as a They didn’t talk. They were a terrorist. matter o‚ course. The harm goes beyond It was over.” He promised to loosen the mere words. In country after country, restrictions on interrogating terrorism the Trump administration is gutting suspects: “I would bring back a hell o‚ a U.S. support for human rights, the rule lot worse than waterboarding.” He went o law, and good governance, damaging out o his way to compliment Russian the overarching credibility o‚ the United President Vladimir Putin’s abusive rule: States. Within the United States’ borders, “In terms o leadership, he is getting an meanwhile, the Trump administration A.” And in a television interview shortly has unleashed an assault on nondiscrim- after his inauguration, when asked why ination and equal justice. he respected Putin—“a killer,” in the Even before Trump was elected, interviewer’s words—Trump responded, human rights were under attack across “We’ve got a lot o killers. What, do the globe. With crisis, con©ict, and you think our country’s so innocent?” instability gripping much o‚ the world, As president, he has kept at it. Last repressive leaders from Ethiopia to April, he chose to congratulate Turkish Russia to Thailand have used these President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for developments to justify tightening their winning a disputed referendum that hold on power—cracking down harder expanded his authoritarian rule. In a call on dissent while rejecting the rule o‚ that same month, he spoke to Philippine law and ©outing international norms. President Rodrigo Duterte, whose bloody Now, with Trump in o£ce, there’s little campaign under the guise o‚ a “war on reason to believe that such initiatives will be met with much criticism or conse- SARAH MARGON is Washington Director of Human Rights Watch. Follow her on Twitter quences from the United States. Indeed, @sarahmargon. the Trump administration’s chaotic and

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virtually values-free approach to foreign the global human rights framework. policy is bolstering this global deteriora- Under Trump, the United States has tion while corroding the institutions and walked away from (or threatened to alliances needed to reverse it. walk away from) a number o‚ vital global commitments, institutions, and initia- WRONG ON RIGHTS tives that would provide an opportunity The •rst year o Trump’s presidency was to share the burden o‚ combating global marked by a frenzy o‚ activity on domestic challenges while respecting rights. The issues. His administration instituted harsh administration has threatened to with- new immigration rules that are ripping draw from the  Human Rights Council, apart families and communities. Between largely because the Palestinian territories late January and early September 2017, the (and therefore Israel) are a permanent total number o‚ immigrants arrested item on its agenda. It’s true that the inside the country (versus at the border) council has ©aws, but it has also success- increased by 43 percent compared with fully documented and exposed many the number arrested during the equiva- human rights issues o‚ concern to U.S. lent time period under President Barack law and policymakers. Walking away Obama in 2016. These are people who would not only weaken the council but have been uprooted from communities also limit the available avenues for where they have families and deep ties. Washington to promote human rights. The president has also issued a series o‚ From the Â’s negotiations on the travel bans, all o‚ which use classic scape- compact for global migration to the goating tactics and bigotry to incite fears Paris agreement on climate change, about Muslims and refugee-resettlement the Trump administration has repeat- programs. Although the courts blocked edly suggested multilateral institutions the original and most draconian versions are o‚ no use to the United States, even o‚ this ban, in late 2017, they did allow a though the country was instrumental revised version to proceed. in creating the Â, as well as many o‚ The president has empowered bigots the norms and laws that guide thinking by making racially charged statements, about human rights today. including referring to white supremacists When it comes to human rights, marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, as symbolism matters, and under this “very •ne people.” He has sought to end administration, human rights activists what he calls the “very dangerous anti- have been made to feel as though they police atmosphere in America,” which is aren’t important. The president and his a direct rebuke to activists calling for racial top national security o£cials have met justice in policing. He has also gravely with very few frontline activists and have harmed women’s rights by attacking held very few meetings with civil society reproductive choice, halting an equal- before or during overseas trips—a practice pay measure, and weakening protec- that previous presidents often used so as tions against gender-based violence on to hear directly from ordinary citizens college campuses. about the challenges they were facing. On foreign policy, meanwhile, the Words matter, too, and Trump’s administration has dismissed or damaged fulsome praise o‚ strongmen, many o‚

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Roughed up: police detaining a demonstrator during a protest in Ankara, February 2017 whom he has hosted at the White House Watch’s Middle East advisory commit- with great fanfare and little condemna- tee), has written, “It was no coincidence tion, has been taken by many as permis- that days later, Bahraini police used the sion for brutality. Last April, he con- deadliest force we have seen in decades, gratulated Egyptian President Abdel killing ve protesters.” Fattah el-Sisi, a military dictator who Similarly, politicians looking to has overseen a vicious crackdown on discredit the free press have latched on government critics, for doing “a fantastic to the term “fake news,” one o Trump’s job.” The next month, counter to a prom- favorite phrases. In Syria, President ise made to the White House, Sisi signed Bashar al-Assad rejected an Amnesty a draconian law regulating civil society. International report documenting the Perhaps he was emboldened by Trump’s brutal killing o„ 13,000 military prisoners, comment in Saudi Arabia a week earlier: saying, “You can forge anything these “We are not here to lecture—we are not days. We are living in a fake-news era.” here to tell other people how to live.” In Myanmar, where security forces have On that same visit to Saudi Arabia, undertaken a campaign o„ ethnic cleansing

UMIT Trump told Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, against Rohingya Muslims, a government

BEKTAS the king o™ Bahrain, “There won’t be oŠcial went so far as to say, “There is no strain with this administration,” which such thing as Rohingya. It is fake news.”

/ REUTERS the Bahraini regime evidently viewed The term has become a catch phrase as a green light to intensify repression. for government oŠcials in China, the As Nabeel Rajab, an imprisoned Bahraini Philippines, Russia, and Venezuela who activist (and member o™ Human Rights wish to shield themselves from scrutiny

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08_Margon_pp39_45B_Blues.indd 41 1/22/18 10:39 AM Sarah Margon

and create a climate oª fear that vili•es expanded the scope oª funds aŸected by dissenting voices. Indeed, according to this restriction, raising the amount o‚ aid the Committee to Protect Journalists, at stake from $600 million to $9 billion. which has been keeping a database o‚ The United States is by far the imprisoned journalists since the early world’s largest health donor, so the rule 1990s, the number o‚ people charged will in©ict untold harm on women, girls, with reporting “false news” rose to a and their families. It will likely hinder record high in 2017. hard-fought progress on health care in poor and middle-income countries, THE WAR ON WOMEN particularly those that rely heavily on Perhaps it should not be surprising U.S. resources. AŸected health programs that a man who was caught on tape may have to cut not only their family- bragging about sexual assault has put in planning oŸerings but also services linked place policies that set back the rights to child health, including vaccinations o‚ women and girls around the world. and the prevention and treatment o‚ But the swiftness o‚ the rollback has been ËÌ/ À , malaria, and tuberculosis. startling. In keeping with Republican As research by Human Rights Watch tradition, the Trump administration has in Africa has found, the new rule already cut oŸ U.S. funding for the  Popu- means fewer health services o‚ all types, lation Fund, which provides lifesaving not just the loss o‚ safe abortion care. maternal care for women, falsely claim- To take one example, Family Health ing that it promotes forced abortions. Options Kenya, an organization set to And the reversal o‚ so many domestic lose U.S. funds, has curtailed outreach policies in support o‚ gender equality services such as family planning, cervi- no doubt undermines U.S. credibility cal cancer testing, and ËÌ testing for overseas when it comes to empowering impoverished communities, and it has women and girls. already closed one clinic. Organizations But perhaps the greatest threat to in Kenya that have no choice but to women will come from Trump’s expan- agree to the new restrictions because sion o‚ the so-called Mexico City policy, they depend on these funds worry that also known as “the global gag rule,” a more women will die from unsafe long-standing policy oª Republican abortions, a leading cause o‚ maternal administrations that imposes conditions mortality in the country. In Uganda, on health-care organizations receiving the policy presents a di£cult choice U.S. aid. To keep their U.S. funding, for organizations with multiple public these organizations must certify that health campaigns: Should they keep they are not using their other funds to the funds and focus just on •ghting provide abortions (except in cases o‚ ËÌ/ À , or should they reject the rape, incest, or to save a woman’s life) funds and work to end injuries and and that they are not oŸering informa- deaths from back-alley abortions? tion about or referrals for abortions or Trump’s policy is not only an assault advocating them. Otherwise, they lose on women’s health; it is also likely to be all their U.S. funding. In one o his •rst self-defeating. A 2011 Stanford Univer- acts as president, Trump dramatically sity study found that when a more

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limited version o‚ the Mexico City would prioritize economic interests policy was last in place, during the over values. George W. Bush administration, sub- In the •ght against the Islamic State, Saharan Africa actually saw abortions or   , the Trump administration has increase. This happened particularly demonstrated a noted antipathy toward in parts o‚ the continent that had few the laws o‚ war. As a candidate, Trump health-care options and relied heavily promised to “bomb the shit out o ”   , on U.S. funds. Although the researchers and as president, he has lessened the could not conclusively explain this uptick, White House’s oversight o‚ air strikes in their leading interpretation was that Iraq and Syria while giving commanders an overall decline in family-planning in the •eld more control, even as they resources led to more unplanned preg- shifted to more intense urban warfare. nancies and more abortions. It stands to In recent years, the Department o‚ reason that an expanded version o‚ the Defense has sought to make the details policy will lead to even more preventable o‚ its campaign against   somewhat maternal deaths, due to an increase in more transparent. The Pentagon regularly both unplanned pregnancies and unsafe publishes information on its website abortions—to say nothing o‚ its eŸect about war costs, and even posts videos on eŸorts to combat ËÌ/ À , malaria, o‚ air strikes. It also publishes a monthly and child malnutrition. report examining civilian casualties. But over the last year, human rights ON THE WARPATH groups, the Â, and journalists have Because the United States is the world’s found growing evidence that a dramati- preeminent military power, its use o‚ cally higher number o‚ civilians are being force is watched closely, especially killed by U.S. forces or U.S.-led coali- when the White House has unequivo- tion forces in Iraq and Syria (as well cally pushed for a greater reliance on as Afghanistan) than what is o£cially hard power. Indeed, the Trump admin- reported. In some cases, these investi- istration has increased defense spending gations have found serious violations o‚ while reducing foreign aid. It has reversed the laws o‚ armed con©ict. An exhaustive a policy to phase out the use o‚ cluster inquiry by The New York Times Magazine bombs, a particularly indiscriminate concluded that the campaign against explosive. It has signed secret changes   may be the least transparent war that undo the Obama administration’s in recent U.S. history. The magazine more restrictive policies regarding the reported that one civilian is killed for use o‚ drone strikes and commando every •ve coalition air strikes—more raids, a shift that will inevitably lead than 31 times the rate the coalition to less transparency and accountability has acknowledged. and more civilian deaths. It has also Parts o‚ this strategic shift began accelerated arms sales, including to during the Obama administration. In governments with poor track records December 2016, the Pentagon removed on human rights, and has signaled its the requirement for a “strike cell” in intention to loosen restrictions on arms Baghdad, which had served as a collection exports—a shortsighted move that point for information about planned

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targets for air strikes in Iraq—an extra promote human rights, there was always check to avoid civilian casualties. But a common understanding that doing so the Trump administration exacerbated was a key part o‚ what de•ned the United the problem by speeding up the tempo States—and what Americans believed was o‚ operations without doing enough to the right thing for their government to do. mitigate civilian harm. The Pentagon Not so under Trump. Although some also failed to consistently ensure that lower-level U.S. o£cials appear commit- there had been adequate checks on ted to keeping human rights a priority, intelligence collection before approving others have concluded that this may be an air strike, and it has used munitions impossible. In November, for example, and •repower generally not considered Elizabeth Shackelford, a U.S. Foreign appropriate for urban warfare. Investi- Service o£cer who most recently served gations to assess allegations o‚ civilian in Kenya, resigned from the State Depart- harm in the aftermath o‚ a lethal strike ment in protest, writing, “Our govern- have become deeply inadequate, hampered ment has failed to demonstrate a com- in part by the lack o‚ a clear process for mitment to promoting and defending gathering information from those closest human rights and democracy.” No one to the ground, such as local activists, who is actually running U.S. foreign emergency responders, and nongovern- policy seems to believe that the advance- mental organizations. ment oª fundamental rights should be one o‚ its central pillars. SAVING THE SYSTEM Given the United States’ historically Human rights concerns have always spotty record on promoting human rights, competed with national security con- there are those who think that other siderations. For too long, Washington governments can pick up the slack. But has adopted policies in the name o‚ in reality, the loss o‚ the United States protecting national security that come as a champion, however inconsistent at the expense o human rights, forget- its support can be, is likely to further ting the long-term costs o‚ doing so. encourage governments to treat their The Obama administration’s arms sales citizens poorly, con•dent that no mean- to Saudi Arabia, despite the Saudi-led ingful rebuke will follow. It is also likely coalition’s unlawful air strikes against to create a leadership vacuum, and the civilians in Yemen, is a prime example countries that aim to •ll it—such as o‚ the harm this approach can do, with China, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela—will thousands o‚ civilians killed and anti- no doubt seek to spread their no-strings- American sentiment on the rise in the attached approach to global aŸairs. country. Another is the § ’s secret So what is to be done? Realistically, post-9/11 torture and rendition pro- the next few years are likely to be hard gram, which the Bush administration on human rights. But despite the absence launched in violation o‚ international o‚ U.S. leadership, there have been obligations and U.S. law and which has some bright spots, with rights-minded undermined Washington’s credibility countries stepping up. At the  Human on human rights. But even as the United Rights Council, for example, the Nether- States struggled with how and when to lands managed to overcome opposition

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from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Uzbekistan—for corruption and Emirates, and the United States to human rights abuses. launch an independent investigation But these eŸorts can only go so far. into the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen. Petition gathering by like-minded Similarly, Iceland took the lead in draft- countries is less eŸective without the ing and collecting support from 38 other most powerful country on earth. State countries for a joint statement at the and local governments can only do so council condemning Duterte’s bloody much to work around the federal govern- “war on drugs.” As long as Trump is in ment. And although Congress controls power, such ad hoc coalitions o like- the power o‚ the purse, it has far less minded countries will need to become in©uence on foreign policy than the the norm. executive branch. And all the while, the There is also much that other parts White House’s attacks on immigrants, o‚ the U.S. government can do to protect health care, minority communities, and human rights. Just as some cities and the justice system will continue to dimin- states have decided to comply with the ish American credibility on human rights Paris climate agreement despite the overseas. Simply put, unless it changes federal government’s withdrawal, they course dramatically, the Trump adminis- can also •nd ways to protect immigrants tration—and the president himself— caught up in the Trump administra- will remain one o‚ the greatest threats tion’s dragnet and keep families and to human rights in decades.∂ communities intact. Congress, for its part, has already resisted a number o‚ presidential initia- tives in the interest o human rights. In May, a bipartisan group o‚ 15 senators sent Trump a letter urging him to “ensure that America remains a leader in advo- cating for democracy and human rights.” Congressional committees are using aid allocations and authorization bills to push back against the executive branch. Individual members o‚ Congress are drafting legislation, holding hearings, and meeting with foreign o£cials to stand up for human rights in the Democratic Republic o‚ the Congo, Egypt, Russia, and elsewhere. In December, the Treasury Department, under pressure from Congress, imposed sanctions on 13 individuals—from Belgium, China, the Dominican Republic, Gambia, Guatemala, Israel, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, Sudan, and

March/April 2018 45

MA18_Book.indb 45 1/18/18 10:21 PM A GLOBAL CAMPAIGN CONFRONTING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS

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DOWNLOAD SURVEY AT ASIAFOUNDATION.ORG ESSAYS

If American citizens are good democrats, they will always be suspicious of government o‘cials. But they ought to be suspicious of whistleblowers, too. —Michael Walzer

Just and Unjust Leaks Iran Among the Ruins Michael Walzer 48 Vali Nasr 108

The China Reckoning The President and the Bomb Kurt M. Campbell and Ely Ratner 60 Richard K. Betts and Matthew C. RAFAEL Waxman 119 Life in China’s Asia MARCHANTE Jennifer Lind 71 Mugabe’s Misrule Martin Meredith 129 Green Giant

/ REUTERS Amy Myers JaŠe 83 The Clash o Exceptionalisms Charles A. Kupchan 139 How to Crack Down on Tax Havens Nicholas Shaxson 94

MA18_Book.indb 47 1/18/18 10:21 PM Just and Unjust Leaks When to Spill Secrets Michael Walzer

ll governments, all political parties, and all politicians keep secrets and tell lies. Some lie more than others, and those AdiŸerences are important, but the practice is general. And some lies and secrets may be justi•ed, whereas others may not. Citizens, therefore, need to know the diŸerence between just and unjust secrets and between just and unjust deception before they can decide when it may be justi•able for someone to reveal the secrets or expose the lies—when leaking con•dential information, releasing classi•ed doc- uments, or blowing the whistle on misconduct may be in the public interest or, better, in the interest o‚ democratic government. Revealing o£cial secrets and lies involves a form o‚ moral risk- taking: whistleblowers may act out o‚ a sense o‚ duty or conscience, but the morality o‚ their actions can be judged only by their fellow citizens, and only after the fact. This is often a di£cult judgment to make—and has probably become more di£cult in the Trump era.

LIES AND DAMNED LIES A quick word about language: “leaker” and “whistleblower” are over- lapping terms, but they aren’t synonyms. A leaker, in this context, anonymously reveals information that might embarrass o£cials or open up the government’s internal workings to unwanted public scrutiny. In Washington, good reporters cultivate sources inside every presidential administration and every Congress and hope for leaks. A whistleblower reveals what she believes to be immoral or illegal o£cial conduct to her bureaucratic superiors or to the public. Certain sorts o‚ whistle-blowing, relating chie©y to mismanagement and corruption, are protected by law; leakers are not protected, nor are whistleblowers who reveal state secrets.

MICHAEL WALZER is Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study.

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Before considering the sorts o‚ o£cial deception where the stakes are high and the whistleblower’s decisions and the public’s judgment o‚ them are especially di£cult, it’s important to look at the way secrets and lies aŸect everyday politics, where the dilemmas are simple—and, most o‚ the time, not much is at stake. Consider the many politically engaged men and women who insist that they are not running for of- •ce even while they are secretly raising money and recruiting help for a campaign. They don’t want assaults on their records to begin before they have developed the resources they will need to counterattack. Citizens expect deception o‚ this sort and commonly see through it: the practice is tolerable even i‚ it is not fully justi•able. But what about a candidate who tries to conceal political positions she has held in the past or who lies about her policy commitments for the future? Someone inside the candidate’s campaign who exposes such lies is disloyal, but the disclosure is certainly not unjust. The leaker is a good citizen even though she may not be a desirable colleague in a conventional political enterprise. Now imagine a politician who is particularly ruthless: she wins the election and then uses the power o‚ the government to destroy records o her previous actions, removing documents from archives and threatening people who know too much. Anyone breaking the silence or leaking the documents would be a public hero—and a welcome colleague to the vast majority o‚ citizens who are sure that they would never destroy records or threaten anyone. Self-aggrandizing deception and ruthless attempts to cover it up invite moral exposure. But now consider a politician who shouts lies at election rallies and solicits money from unsavory characters in order to defeat a particularly awful opponent—a neo-Nazi, for example, who threatens to dismantle the institutions o‚ democratic government. Here is a politician with dirty hands. She has gotten her hands dirty for a good cause—but the good cause doesn’t wash them clean. She is a lying and possibly corrupt politician. Still, I wouldn’t defend someone inside her campaign who exposed the lies or revealed the source o‚ the campaign funds and claimed something like a Kantian categorical imperative. “I had to do it,” the leaker might say. “No, you didn’t,” I would respond. Lying to one’s fellow citizens and seeking funds that the candidate doesn’t dare talk about are certainly practices that should not be generalized. I‚ all candidates acted in that way (and far too many do), democracy itsel‚ would be at risk. But i‚ democratic institutions were already at risk,

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most citizens would want to make an exception for a politician they were sure would defend those institutions—even i‚ she did not adhere to democratic norms while seeking o£ce.

THE SECRET SHARER Government secrets and deceptions are equally common but often harder to judge than the secrets and deceptions o‚ individual candidates or elected o£cials. A relatively easy case can help establish some o‚ the contours. It was militarily necessary and therefore justi•ed for the U.S. government to keep the date o‚ the 1944 D-Day invasion secret from the Germans and, in order to ensure secrecy, to withhold the information from almost everyone else, too. Governments justi- •ably conceal such information from anyone who does not need to know it. Similarly, Washington’s and London’s eŸorts to deceive the Germans about the location o‚ the invasion were also justi•ed, as were all the lies that o£cials told as part o‚ those eŸorts. Providing that information to the press would not have been a good thing to do; in fact, someone who revealed it would probably have been charged with treason. But contemporary U.S. military operations often do invite whistle- blowing—as in cases in which the people being kept in the dark are not U.S. enemies, who know a good deal about what’s going on since their operatives or soldiers are already engaged with American ones. Rather, it’s the American people who don’t know. Think o‚ drone attacks or special operations that the public has never been told about, in places that most Americans have never heard of; recent U.S. military activities in Niger oŸer a good example. Soldiers die, and o£cials struggle to explain the mission—and, with even greater di£culty, the reasons for concealing it in the •rst place. In the wake o‚ such incidents, it’s plausible to argue that the truth should have been revealed earlier on by someone with inside knowledge. The whistleblower in this case would be a good citizen, one might argue, because the use oª force abroad should always be the subject o‚ democratic debate. Still, such a disclosure might not be justi•ed i‚ the operation was defensible—necessary for national security, for example, or intended to help people in desperate trouble—and i‚ blowing the whistle would shut down any prospect o‚ success. A disclosure might also be unjusti•ed i‚ it put the lives o‚ U.S. operatives or armed forces at risk. Government o£cials usually claim that both

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the operation and U.S. personnel have been endangered. The case at hand, they regularly insist, is just like D-Day. But U.S. leaders often choose secrecy for a very diŸerent reason: they fear that an operation would not survive public scrutiny or a democratic decision-making process. Or an operation has been debated and democratically approved but has taken on a diŸerent character in the •eld. Mission creep is common and often results in an entirely new mission, U.S. leaders often choose diŸerent from the one that citizens debated and Congress voted on. The secrecy out of fear that an new mission may be strategically and operation would not morally justi•able, but the democratic survive a democratic process has been cut short or avoided altogether. I‚ the operation is kept secret, decision-making process. however, Americans don’t know that it hasn’t been democratically authorized; they don’t know that it is going on at all. And obviously, they can’t weigh o£cial justi•cations, since they have never heard a government o£cial justify the operation. By contrast, a potential whistleblower knows that the operation is going on and that it hasn’t been democratically authorized. But who is she to judge its strategic or moral value? In recent years, many govern- ment whistleblowers have been very young people—members, perhaps, o‚ a generation o‚ “digital natives,” who believe that everything should be revealed. But government employees and contractors take oaths or sign agreements that commit them to obey secrecy rules; their superiors and fellow workers trust them to protect the con•dentiality o‚ their common enterprise, whatever it is. I‚ the enterprise is clearly illegal or monstrously immoral, a govern- ment employee or contractor should certainly break that promise, violate the trust o her coworkers, and blow the whistle. O£cials or operatives engaged in illegal or immoral activities don’t deserve her protection. This argument is similar to one often made in the case o‚ humanitarian intervention: i‚ a massacre is going on, anyone who can stop it should stop it, regardless o‚ the costs imposed on the killers. I‚ the U.S. government is engaged in an illegal and immoral operation, anyone who can stop it should. Consider a rough analogy. U.S. soldiers are required by international law and by the Uniform Code oª Military Justice to refuse to obey illegal commands—and they should assume that monstrously immoral

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commands are always illegal. Discipline and obedience are more crucial to a military than they are to a civilian bureaucracy, and yet soldiers are commanded to disobey illegal orders even on the battle•eld. Citizens might excuse a soldier who obeyed an illegal order under coercion or who evaded rather than de•ed the order—as did the U.S. soldiers at the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam who shot into the air, deliberately missing the civilians they had been ordered to kill. There are civilian equivalents o‚ this kind o‚ evasion, such as slowing down the work required to prepare for an operation or doing the work so badly that the operation has to be postponed or canceled. Whistle-blowing, by contrast, is closer to deliberate disobedience on the battle•eld. There is a diŸerence between the two contexts, however: a soldier often has to decide whether to obey in an instant; a whistleblower has more time. Bureaucracies move slowly, so a whistleblower, thinking about a clearly illegal or immoral operation, can appeal to her superiors to stop the operation. She can deliberate at length about the costs o‚ what she is preparing to do. She can talk to coworkers whom she trusts (although there probably won’t be any). Publicly blowing the whistle may mean losing her job and perhaps going to prison. Yet assuming she has exhausted the options for internal dissent, this is her obligation. And i‚ she blows the whistle, her fellow citizens should recognize the value o‚ what she has done, after the fact. But what i‚ the operation isn’t clearly illegal or morally mon- strous? What i‚ there are arguments to support it, and the would-be whistleblower has heard them, even though her fellow citizens haven’t? How can she claim the right to judge the o£cial account o‚ what’s going on and the justi•cations o her coworkers and superiors, many o‚ whom have more experience than she has? Such a situation is very diŸerent from the case o‚ a soldier on the battle•eld, who can see pretty clearly the meaning o‚ what she is being ordered to do—who might even look into the eyes o‚ the innocent civilians she has been told to kill. Whistle-blowing generally involves decision-making under condi- tions o‚ uncertainty. Americans elect o£cials and ask them (and their appointees) to make decisions under those conditions. These o£cials may not be any more quali•ed than ordinary citizens, but they have been given and they have accepted a charge and the responsibilities that go with it—which include, crucially, the obligation to worry about the consequences o‚ their decisions. O£cials have at their

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disposal a multitude o researchers, analysts, and advisers, who pre- sumably reduce the uncertainty and help with the worrying. By con- trast, a whistleblower is usually alone; her uncertainties are private, and the public cannot know how much she worries. Indeed, one o the things the public should be concerned about is how well a whistle- blower understands the uncertainties. Is she a good worrier? It can be dangerous when whistleblowers make their decisions on the basis o some ideological
xation or long-standing prejudice. That’s a danger for ocials, too—but they are being watched by coworkers (and, to an extent, by Congress and the media), whereas whistle- blowers act in the shadows.

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A WHISTLE IN THE DARK Does it make a diŸerence i‚ whistleblowers are (or claim to be) con- scientious? “Conscience” originally meant what the word suggests: “co-knowledge,” shared, as the early Protestants said, between a man and “his God.” But in the case o‚ a whistleblower, the knowledge is uncertain and limited to the individual: good enough, perhaps, to justify someone’s refusal to serve in the military, but not good enough to justify decisions that aŸect large numbers o‚ other people. I am sure that many whistleblowers have consciences, but they have to defend their actions in other terms. I‚ American citizens are good democrats, they will always be suspi- cious o‚ government o£cials, and that will make them receptive to the information that whistleblowers provide. But they ought to be suspicious o‚ whistleblowers, too. Citizens may not need to know the information that a whistleblower provides—indeed, the whistle- blower might be acting for pro•t or publicity and not out o‚ a desire for more democratic decision-making or a concern for law and morality. Sometimes, however, whistle-blowing opens a debate that should have started long before and exposes government activities that many citizens strongly oppose. Imagine a military or intelligence operation that originally made a lot o‚ sense and that the government has successfully defended to the public but that has expanded in ways that U.S. citizens didn’t anticipate and haven’t been told about. The operation now requires a degree oª force far greater than o£cials had originally planned for, and its geographic range has expanded. The potential whistleblower knows what is going on, and she knows that there hasn’t been any- thing resembling a democratic decision. Is that enough knowledge to justify revealing details about the operation to the media? Probably not: she has to make some judgment about the character o‚ the expanded operation, and she has to consider the possible consequences o her revelations—and she is, remember, no better a judge than anyone else. Arguably, the goal o‚ empowering citizens by supplying them with crucial but secret information justi•es whistle-blowing—as long as there are good reasons to believe that secrecy isn’t a legitimate requirement o‚ the mission and as long as the revelation results in no negative consequences for U.S. personnel in the •eld. Those two quali•cations, however, will probably mean that whistle-blowing can-

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not be justi•ed in many cases. But now imagine that the expanded operation involves terrible brutality or potential danger to civilians abroad or in the United States. And the whistleblower believes that ordinary Americans would recognize the brutality or the danger, and so she isn’t merely acting on her own judgment: she is assuming that most o her fellow citizens would judge the situation in the same way—and giving them the chance to do so. This is the best way to think about whistle-blowing: it involves a kind o‚ moral risk-taking, and it can be justi•ed only after the fact, i‚ other citizens recognize its morality. O‚ course, its morality will always be contested, with government o£cials arguing that an important mis- sion has been undercut and that agents in the •eld have been endangered. This Soldiers are obligated to might be true, or it might be a lie, which would justify further whistle-blowing. disobey illegal orders; civil The whistleblower hersel‚ is counting servants are not obligated on her fellow citizens to defend her to blow the whistle when judgment—to a£rm it, in fact, and say, “Yes, this is an operation that we should they see wrongdoing. have been told about, and it is one that we would have rejected.” I‚ most o her fellow citizens agree—or, rather, most o‚ those who are paying attention, since majority rule would not work here—then exposing the operation was likely justi•ed. The case is the same i‚ U.S. citizens are both the objects o‚ the operation and the ones from whom it is being concealed. The best- known contemporary American whistleblower, the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, revealed the large- scale surveillance o‚ Americans by their own government. He bet that most o his fellow citizens would not think that the danger they faced was great enough to warrant such a massive invasion o‚ their privacy. With some di£culty, I can imagine circumstances in which large- scale secret surveillance by an otherwise democratic state might be justi•able or at least defensible. But what Snowden revealed was an operation that could not be justi•ed by any actually existing danger; this was something that American citizens needed to know about. Unfortunately, however, Snowden revealed much more than what Americans needed to know—and not only to his fellow citizens: in addition to sharing secrets about the surveillance o‚ American citi- zens with journalists from The Washington Post and The Guardian, he

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provided the South China Morning Post with information about U.S. intelligence operations against non-American targets in mainland China. That disclosure put Americans at risk, and Snowden had no reason to believe that what the United States was doing in China was either illegal or immoral—or anything other than routine. Judgments in cases like this one will obviously be shaped by political views, but not, one hopes, by partisan loyalties. Many liberals and Democrats, along with some conservatives and a few Republicans, condemned the domestic surveillance that Snowden revealed and defended his decision to do so. The •rst year o‚ the Trump adminis- tration, however, has seen many leaks that have derived from and invited partisanship. Consider the leaked details o‚ the president’s May 2017 conversation with Russian o£cials in the Oval O£ce, after he had •red ¿ Director James Comey, who had been investigating whether Donald Trump’s election campaign had coordinated with the Kremlin. “I just •red the head o‚ the ¿. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Trump said, according to a source quoted by The New York Times. “I faced great pressure because oª Russia. That’s taken oŸ.” The Washington Post reported that during the same meeting, Trump shared highly classi•ed information with the Russians that “jeopardized a critical source o‚ intelligence on the Islamic State.” The leakers to the Times and the Post certainly meant to raise questions about the president’s competence on foreign policy. Americans who already doubted Trump’s abilities welcomed the leak. The president’s supporters obviously did not. There is no way to make an objective judgment here—not, at least, about the leakers. But the journalists who reported this and many other leaks, and who worked hard to make sure o‚ their accuracy, were doing their job and ought to be commended. They did not confront a moral dilemma. Leaks o‚ this sort are grist for the mill o‚ a free press.

BUREAUCRATIC OUTLAWS As for whistle-blowing, as opposed to leaking, a truly detached and fully informed observer would probably be able to make an objective judgment about any particular revelation. But that sort o‚ judgment isn’t likely in the fraught world o‚ politics and government—although a consensus might take shape, slowly, over time, as in the case o‚ the Pentagon Papers: it seems likely that most Americans have come to believe that the military analyst Daniel Ellsberg did the right thing

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in sharing the documents with the press. Whistleblowers such as Ellsberg appeal to their fellow citizens, and there really isn’t any further appeal to make. I‚ the citizens don’t agree among themselves about the justi•ability o‚ the disclosure, there can be no de•nitive verdict. But suppose that most Americans recognize the brutality or the danger that has driven the whistleblower to act. Her action was justi•ed, but she has violated the commitments she made when she took her job, and she may have broken the law. When soldiers disobey an illegal order, Democracies live they are in fact obeying the o£cial army code. But there is no o£cial code uneasily with secrecy, that orders civil servants to refuse to and governments keep secrets about an illegal or immoral keep too many secrets. operation. Soldiers are obligated to dis- obey; civil servants are not obligated to blow the whistle. They are, however, protected from o£cial retaliation and punishment by the Whistleblower Protection Act o‚ 1989 i‚ they reveal a range o‚ illegal government actions: gross mismanagement, the waste o‚ public funds, or policies that pose a substantial and speci•c danger to public health and safety. I‚ whistleblowers are •red or demoted for revelations such as those, they can •le an appeal to the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board. These appeals are most often denied—but not always. In 2003, Robert MacLean, an employee o‚ the Transportation Security Administration, told an Ç ¿§ reporter that in an eŸort to reduce spending on hotels, the ¯ would be removing air marshals from many long-distance ©ights. He was subsequently •red. After appealing the decision—•rst to the Ç É¿, then to a federal appeals court—he was •nally reinstated in 2013. The Supreme Court upheld that decision in 2015. It was a rare judicial victory for whistle-blowing. But blowing the whistle on government action abroad or on security- related surveillance at home isn’t protected by the Whistleblower Protection Act. And revealing classi•ed information is not legal even i‚ public health and safety are at issue. I‚ a whistleblower reveals secrets that the government doesn’t believe should be revealed, she has broken the law, regardless o her intentions or public sentiment about her actions. She is a disobedient civil servant, a bureaucratic outlaw. Citizens might well consider her action a form o‚ civil disobedience. But an act must meet certain conditions for that term to apply. First,

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the whistleblower must have tried to convince a superior that the government’s operation was illegal or immoral. Before going outside the government, she must have done the best she could inside, among her coworkers. Second, she must act in person and in public, without any attempt to hide who she is—even though this means that she won’t see any more secrets. Many leaks can come from a single concealed leaker, but whistle-blowing is almost certainly a one-time act. I‚ internal dissent doesn’t work, then going public is a kind o‚ principled resignation. Third, the whistleblower must take responsibility for the revelation she has made; she must not hand secret documents to agents about whose subsequent behavior she can’t be reasonably con•dent. She has a purpose for blowing the whistle, and she has to do her best to make sure that her purpose, and no other, is served. Snowden ini- tially chose The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The New York Times (among other media outlets) as venues for his leaked secrets, and this seems the right kind o‚ choice since these are newspapers whose publishers have had, along with a desire to sell papers, a long- standing commitment to democratic government. But Snowden showed less careful judgment in choosing to share information with the South China Morning Post, an organization that he had no reason to believe was committed to democratic decision-making in the United States. A similarly ©awed judgment also aŸected the case o‚ another well- known American whistleblower, Chelsea Manning, who in 2010 provided a massive trove o‚ classi•ed diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks. In contrast to newspapers with long records o‚ public service, Wiki- Leaks is the wrong kind o‚ intermediary between a whistleblower and the American people. Its directors may or may not have democratic commitments, but they also have narrowly partisan and personal aims, about which the public has learned a great deal in recent years.

TOUGH CALLS A civil whistleblower is making the same appeal to her fellow citizens that civil rights activists in the 1960s made—in similar de•ance o‚ the law and with a similar willingness to accept legal punishment. Whistle- blowers can and probably should be punished for revealing state secrets, even i‚ the secrecy is unjust. Judges and juries should try to make the whistleblower’s punishment •t her crime, and her crime must be weighed against the government’s subversion o‚ the democratic

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process and the illegality and immorality o‚ the revealed operation: the more signi•cant the subversion and the greater the brutality or danger, the milder the sentence should be. There must be some punishment for people who break secrecy laws, to serve justice when someone blows the whistle recklessly and to deter others from doing so. The fear o‚ punishment focuses the mind and forces a potential whistleblower to think hard about what she is doing. Citizens should respect a whistleblower’s willingness to pay the price o her disobedience, and at the same time, they should make their own judgments about whether what she did was right or wrong. Her action may require a complicated verdict: for example, perhaps she was right to open the democratic debate but wrong in her assumption o‚ what the outcome o‚ the debate should be. In any case, the public owes her a re©ective response—not knee-jerk hostility or knee-jerk support. Democracies live uneasily with secrecy, and governments keep too many secrets. Greater transparency in government decision-making would certainly be a good thing, but it has to be fought for democrati- cally, through the conventional politics o‚ parties and movements. Whistle-blowing probably does not lead to greater transparency; in the long run, it may only ensure that governments bury their secrets more deeply and watch their employees more closely. Still, so long as there are secrets, whistle-blowing will remain a necessary activity. Whistleblowers have a role to play in a democratic political universe. But it is an uno£cial role, and one must recognize both its possible value and its possible dangers.∂

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MA18_Book.indb 59 1/18/18 10:21 PM The China Reckoning How Beijing De•ed American Expectations Kurt M. Campbell and Ely Ratner

he United States has always had an outsize sense o‚ its ability to determine China’s course. Again and again, its ambitions Thave come up short. After World War II, George Marshall, the U.S. special envoy to China, hoped to broker a peace between the Nationalists and Communists in the Chinese Civil War. During the Korean War, the Truman administration thought it could dissuade Mao Zedong’s troops from crossing the Yalu River. The Johnson admin- istration believed Beijing would ultimately circumscribe its involve- ment in Vietnam. In each instance, Chinese realities upset American expectations. With U.S. President Richard Nixon’s opening to China, Washington made its biggest and most optimistic bet yet. Both Nixon and Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, assumed that rapprochement would drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow and, in time, alter China’s conception o‚ its own interests as it drew closer to the United States. In the fall o‚ 1967, Nixon wrote in this magazine, “The world cannot be safe until China changes. Thus our aim, to the extent that we can in©uence events, should be to induce change.” Ever since, the assumption that deepening commercial, diplomatic, and cultural ties would transform China’s internal development and external behavior has been a bedrock o‚ U.S. strategy. Even those in U.S. policy circles who were skeptical o‚ China’s intentions still shared the underlying belie‚ that U.S. power and hegemony could readily mold China to the United States’ liking.

KURT M. CAMPBELL is Chairman of the Asia Group and was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Aairs from 2009 to 2013. ELY RATNER is Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and was Deputy National Security Adviser to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden from 2015 to 2017.

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The era of good feelings: Xi and Obama in California, June 2013 Nearly hal a century since Nixon’s rst steps toward rapproche- ment, the record is increasingly clear that Washington once again put too much faith in its power to shape China’s trajectory. All sides o the policy debate erred: free traders and nanciers who foresaw inevitable and increasing openness in China, integrationists who argued that Beijing’s ambitions would be tamed by greater interaction with the international community, and hawks who believed that China’s power would be abated by perpetual American primacy. Neither carrots nor sticks have swayed China as predicted. Diplomatic and commercial engagement have not brought political and economic openness. Neither U.S. military power nor regional balancing has stopped Beijing from seeking to displace core components o the U.S.-led system. And the liberal international order has failed to lure or bind China as powerfully as expected. China has instead pur- KEVIN sued its own course, belying a range o American expectations in

LAMARQUE the process. That reality warrants a clear-eyed rethinking o the United States’ approach to China. There are plenty o risks that come with such a / REUTERS reassessment; defenders o the current framework will warn against destabilizing the bilateral relationship or inviting a new Cold War. But building a stronger and more sustainable approach to, and rela-

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tionship with, Beijing requires honesty about how many fundamental assumptions have turned out wrong. Across the ideological spectrum, we in the U.S. foreign policy community have remained deeply in- vested in expectations about China—about its approach to economics, domestic politics, security, and global order—even as evidence against them has accumulated. The policies built on such expectations have failed to change China in the ways we intended or hoped.

THE POWER OF THE MARKET Greater commercial interaction with China was supposed to bring gradual but steady liberalization o‚ the Chinese economy. U.S. President George H. W. Bush’s 1990 National Security Strategy described enhanced ties with the world as “crucial to China’s prospects for regaining the path o‚ economic reform.” This argument predominated for decades. It drove U.S. decisions to grant China most-favored- nation trading status in the 1990s, to support its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, to establish a high-level economic dialogue in 2006, and to negotiate a bilateral investment treaty under U.S. President Barack Obama. Trade in goods between the United States and China exploded from less than $8 billion in 1986 to over $578 billion in 2016: more than a 30-fold increase, adjusting for in©ation. Since the early years o‚ this century, however, China’s economic liberalization has stalled. Contrary to Western expectations, Beijing has doubled down on its state capitalist model even as it has gotten richer. Rather than becoming a force for greater openness, consistent growth has served to legitimize the Chinese Communist Party and its state-led economic model. U.S. o£cials believed that debt, ine£ciency, and the demands o‚ a more advanced economy would necessitate further reforms. And Chinese o£cials recognized the problems with their approach; in 2007, Premier Wen Jiabao called the Chinese economy “unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable.” But rather than opening the country up to greater competition, the Chinese Communist Party, intent on main- taining control o‚ the economy, is instead consolidating state-owned enterprises and pursuing industrial policies (notably its “Made in China 2025” plan) that aim to promote national technology champi- ons in critical sectors, including aerospace, biomedicine, and robotics. And despite repeated promises, Beijing has resisted pressure from Washington and elsewhere to level the playing •eld for foreign

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companies. It has restricted market access and forced non-Chinese •rms to sign on to joint ventures and share technology, while funneling investment and subsidies to state-backed domestic players. Until recently, U.S. policymakers and executives mostly acquiesced to such discrimination; the potential commercial bene•ts were so large that they considered it unwise to upend the relationship with protectionism or sanctions. Instead, they fought tooth and nail for small, incremental concessions. But now, what were once seen as merely the short-term frustrations o‚ doing business with China have come to seem more harmful and permanent. The American Chamber o‚ Commerce reported last year that eight in ten U.S. companies felt less welcome in China than in years prior, and more than 60 percent had little or no con•dence that China would open its markets further over the next three years. Cooperative and voluntary mechanisms to pry open China’s economy have by and large failed, including the Trump administration’s newly launched Comprehensive Economic Dialogue.

THE IMPERATIVE OF LIBERALIZATION Growth was supposed to bring not just further economic opening but also political liberalization. Development would spark a virtuous cycle, the thinking went, with a burgeoning Chinese middle class demanding new rights and pragmatic o£cials embracing legal reforms that would be necessary for further progress. This evolution seemed especially certain after the collapse o‚ the Soviet Union and demo- cratic transitions in South Korea and Taiwan. “No nation on Earth has discovered a way to import the world’s goods and services while stopping foreign ideas at the border,” George H. W. Bush proclaimed. U.S. policy aimed to facilitate this process by sharing technol- ogy, furthering trade and investment, promoting people-to-people exchanges, and admitting hundreds o‚ thousands o‚ Chinese students to American universities. The crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989 dimmed hopes for the emergence o‚ electoral democracy in China. Yet many experts and policymakers in the United States still expected the Chinese government to permit greater press freedoms and allow for a stronger civil society, while gradually embracing more political competition both within the Communist Party and at local levels. They believed that the information technology revolution o‚

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the 1990s would encourage such trends by further exposing Chinese citizens to the world and enhancing the economic incentives for open- ness. As U.S. President Bill Clinton put it, “Without the full freedom to think, question, to create, China will be at a distinct disadvantage, competing with fully open societies in the information age where the greatest source o‚ national wealth is what resides in the human mind.” Leaders in Beijing would come to realize that only by granting individual freedoms could China thrive in a high-tech future. But the fear that greater openness would threaten both domestic stability and the regime’s survival drove China’s leaders to look for an alternative approach. They took both Events of the last decade the shock o Tiananmen Square and the dissolution o‚ the Soviet Union have dashed even modest as evidence o‚ the dangers o‚ democ- hopes for China’s political ratization and political competition. liberalization. So rather than embracing positive cycles o‚ openness, Beijing responded to the forces o‚ globalization by put- ting up walls and tightening state control, constricting, rather than reinforcing, the free ©ow o‚ people, ideas, and commerce. Additional stresses on the regime in this century—including an economic slow- down, endemic corruption in the government and the military, and ominous examples o‚ popular uprisings elsewhere in the world—have spurred more authoritarianism, not less. Indeed, events o‚ the last decade have dashed even modest hopes for political liberalization. In 2013, an internal Communist Party memo known as Document No. 9 explicitly warned against “Western constitutional democracy” and other “universal values” as stalking- horses meant to weaken, destabilize, and even break up China. This guidance demonstrated the widening gap between U.S. and Chinese expectations for the country’s political future. As Orville Schell, a leading American expert on China, put it: “China is sliding ineluctably backward into a political climate more reminiscent oª Mao Zedong in the 1970s than Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s.” Today, an ongoing crack- down on journalists, religious leaders, academics, social activists, and human rights lawyers shows no sign o‚ abating—more than 300 law- yers, legal assistants, and activists were detained in 2015 alone. Rather than devolving power to the Chinese people, as many in the West predicted, communications technologies have strengthened the

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hand o‚ the state, helping China’s authorities control information ©ows and monitor citizens’ behavior. Censorship, detentions, and a new cybersecurity law that grants broad government control over the Internet in China have stymied political activity inside China’s “Great Firewall.” China’s twenty-•rst-century authoritarianism now includes plans to launch a “social credit system,” fusing big data and arti•cial intelligence to reward and punish Chinese citizens on the basis o‚ their political, commercial, social, and online activity. Facial recogni- tion software, combined with the ubiquity o‚ surveillance cameras across China, has even made it possible for the state to physically locate people within minutes.

THE DETERRENT OF PRIMACY A combination o‚ U.S. diplomacy and U.S. military power—carrots and sticks—was supposed to persuade Beijing that it was neither possible nor necessary to challenge the U.S.-led security order in Asia. Washington “strongly promot[ed] China’s participation in regional security mechanisms to reassure its neighbors and assuage its own security concerns,” as the Clinton administration’s 1995 National Security Strategy put it, buttressed by military-to-military relations and other con•dence-building measures. These modes o‚ engagement were coupled with a “hedge”—enhanced U.S. military power in the region, supported by capable allies and partners. The eŸect, the think- ing went, would be to allay military competition in Asia and further limit China’s desire to alter the regional order. Beijing would settle for military su£ciency, building armed forces for narrow regional contin- gencies while devoting most o‚ its resources to domestic needs. The logic was not simply that China would be focused on its self- described “strategic window o‚ opportunity” for development at home, with plenty o‚ economic and social challenges occupying the attention o‚ China’s senior leaders. American policymakers and academics also assumed that China had learned a valuable lesson from the Soviet Union about the crippling costs o‚ getting into an arms race with the United States. Washington could thus not only deter Chinese aggres- sion but also—to use the Pentagon’s term o‚ art—“dissuade” China from even trying to compete. Zalmay Khalilzad, an o£cial in the Reagan and both Bush administrations, argued that a dominant United States could “convince the Chinese leadership that a challenge would be di£cult to prepare and extremely risky to pursue.” Moreover, it was

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unclear whether China could challenge U.S. primacy even i‚ it wanted to. Into the late 1990s, the People’s Liberation Army (ÉÐ ) was considered decades behind the United States’ military and those o‚ its allies. Against this backdrop, U.S. o£cials took considerable care not to stumble into a confrontation with China. The political scientist Joseph Nye explained the thinking when he led the Pentagon’s Asia o£ce during the Clinton administration: “I‚ we China has set out to build treated China as an enemy, we were guaranteeing an enemy in the future. I‚ its own set of regional and we treated China as a friend, we could international institutions. not guarantee friendship, but we could at least keep open the possibility o‚ more benign outcomes.” Soon-to-be Secretary o‚ State Colin Powell told Congress at his con•rmation hearing in January 2001, “China is not an enemy, and our challenge is to keep it that way.” Even as it began investing more o‚ its newfound wealth in military power, the Chinese government sought to put Washington at ease, signaling continued adherence to the cautious, moderate foreign policy path set out by Deng. In 2005, the senior Communist Party o£cial Zheng Bijian wrote in this magazine that China would never seek regional hegemony and remained committed to “a peaceful rise.” In 2011, after a lively debate among China’s leaders about whether it was time to shift gears, State Councilor Dai Bingguo assured the world that “peaceful development is a strategic choice China has made.” Starting in 2002, the U.S. Defense Department had been producing a congressionally mandated annual report on China’s military, but the consensus among senior U.S. o£cials was that China remained a distant and manageable challenge. That view, however, underestimated just how simultaneously insecure and ambitious China’s leadership really was. For Beijing, the United States’ alliances and military presence in Asia posed unacceptable threats to China’s interests in Taiwan, on the Korean Peninsula, and in the East China and South China Seas. In the words o‚ the Peking University professor Wang Jisi, “It is strongly believed in China that . . . Washington will attempt to prevent the emerging powers, in particular China, from achieving their goals and enhancing their stature.” So China started to chip away at the U.S.-led security order

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in Asia, developing the capabilities to deny the U.S. military access to the region and driving wedges between Washington and its allies. Ultimately, neither U.S. military power nor American diplomatic engagement has dissuaded China from trying to build a world-class military o‚ its own. High-tech displays o‚ American power in Iraq and elsewhere only accelerated eŸorts to modernize the ÉÐ . Chinese President Xi Jinping has launched military reforms that will make Chinese forces more lethal and more capable o‚ projecting military power well beyond China’s shores. With its third aircraft carrier report- edly under construction, advanced new military installations in the South China Sea, and its •rst overseas military base in Djibouti, China is on the path to becoming a military peer the likes o‚ which the United States has not seen since the Soviet Union. China’s leaders no longer repeat Deng’s dictum that, to thrive, China will “hide [its] capabilities and bide [its] time.” Xi declared in October 2017 that “the Chinese nation has gone from standing up, to becoming rich, to becoming strong.”

THE CONSTRAINTS OF ORDER At the end o World War II, the United States built institutions and rules that helped structure global politics and the regional dynamics in Asia. Widely accepted norms, such as the freedom o‚ commerce and navigation, the peaceful resolution o‚ disputes, and international cooperation on global challenges, superseded nineteenth-century spheres o‚ in©uence. As a leading bene•ciary o‚ this liberal interna- tional order, the thinking went, Beijing would have a considerable stake in the order’s preservation and come to see its continuation as essential to China’s own progress. U.S. policy aimed to encourage Beijing’s involvement by welcoming China into leading institutions and working with it on global governance and regional security. As China joined multilateral institutions, U.S. policymakers hoped that it would learn to play by the rules and soon begin to contribute to their upkeep. In the George W. Bush administration, Deputy Secretary o‚ State Robert Zoellick memorably called on Beijing to become “a responsible stakeholder” in the international system. From Washington’s perspective, with greater power came greater obligation, especially since China had pro•ted so handsomely from the system. As Obama emphasized, “We expect China to help uphold the very rules that have made them successful.”

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In certain venues, China appeared to be steadily, i‚ unevenly, taking on this responsibility. It joined the Asia-Paci•c Economic Cooperation organization in 1991, acceded to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1992, joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and took part in major diplomatic eŸorts, including the six-party talks and the P5+1 negotiations to deal with nuclear weapons programs in North Korea and Iran, respectively. It also became a major contributor to  counterpiracy and peacekeeping operations. Yet Beijing remained threatened by other central elements o‚ the U.S.-led order—and has increasingly sought to displace them. That has been especially true o‚ what it sees as uninvited violations o‚ national sovereignty by the United States and its partners, whether in the form o‚ economic sanctions or military action. Liberal norms regarding the international community’s right or responsibility to intervene to protect people from human rights violations, for example, have run headlong into China’s paramount priority o‚ defending its authoritarian system from foreign interference. With a few notable exceptions, China has been busy watering down multilateral sanctions, shielding regimes from Western opprobrium, and making common cause with Russia to block the  Security Council from authorizing interventionist actions. A number o‚ nondemocratic governments— in Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere—have bene•ted from such obstruction. China has also set out to build its own set o‚ regional and interna- tional institutions—with the United States on the outside looking in—rather than deepening its commitment to the existing ones. It has launched the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the New Devel- opment Bank (along with Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa), and, most notably, the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi’s grandiose vision for building land and maritime routes to connect China to much o‚ the world. These institutions and programs have given China agenda- setting and convening power o‚ its own, while often departing from the standards and values upheld by existing international institutions. Beijing explicitly diŸerentiates its approach to development by noting that, unlike the United States and European powers, it does not demand that countries accept governance reforms as a condition o‚ receiving aid. In its own region, meanwhile, Beijing has set out to change the security balance, incrementally altering the status quo with steps just

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small enough to avoid provoking a military response from the United States. In the South China Sea, one o‚ the world’s most important waterways, China has deftly used coast guard vessels, legal warfare, and economic coercion to advance its sovereignty claims. In some cases, it has simply seized contested territory or militarized arti•cial islands. While Beijing has occasionally shown restraint and tactical caution, the overall approach indicates its desire to create a modern maritime sphere o‚ in©uence. In the summer o‚ 2016, China ignored a landmark ruling by a tribu- nal under the  Convention on the Law o‚ the Sea, which held that China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea were illegal under international law. U.S. o£cials wrongly assumed that some combination o‚ pressure, shame, and its own desire for a rules-based maritime order would cause Beijing, over time, to accept the judgment. Instead, China has rejected it outright. Speaking to a security forum in Aspen, Colorado, a year after the ruling, in July 2017, a senior analyst from the § concluded that the experience had taught China’s leaders “that they can defy international law and get away with it.” Countries in the region, swayed by both their economic dependence on China and growing concerns about the United States’ commitment to Asia, have failed to push back against Chinese assertiveness as much as U.S. policymakers expected they would.

TAKING STOCK As the assumptions driving U.S. China policy have started to look increasingly tenuous, and the gap between American expectations and Chinese realities has grown, Washington has been largely focused elsewhere. Since 2001, the •ght against jihadist terrorism has con- sumed the U.S. national security apparatus, diverting attention from the changes in Asia at exactly the time China was making enormous military, diplomatic, and commercial strides. U.S. Presi- dent George W. Bush initially referred to China as a “strategic competitor”; in the wake o‚ the September 11 attacks, however, his 2002 National Security Strategy declared, “The world’s great powers •nd ourselves on the same side—united by common dangers o‚ ter- rorist violence and chaos.” During the Obama administration, there was an eŸort to “pivot,” or “rebalance,” strategic attention to Asia. But at the end o‚ Obama’s time in o£ce, budgets and personnel remained focused on other regions—there were, for example, three times as

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many National Security Council staŸers working on the Middle East as on all oª East and Southeast Asia. This strategic distraction has given China the opportunity to press its advantages, further motivated by the increasingly prominent view in China that the United States (along with the West more broadly) is in inexorable and rapid decline. Chinese o£cials see a United States that has been hobbled for years by the global •nancial crisis, its costly war eŸorts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and deepening dysfunction in Washington. Xi has called on China to become “a global leader in terms o‚ comprehensive national strength and international in©u- ence” by midcentury. He touts China’s development model as a “new option for other countries.” Washington now faces its most dynamic and formidable competi- tor in modern history. Getting this challenge right will require doing away with the hopeful thinking that has long characterized the United States’ approach to China. The Trump administration’s •rst National Security Strategy took a step in the right direction by inter- rogating past assumptions in U.S. strategy. But many oª Donald Trump’s policies—a narrow focus on bilateral trade de•cits, the abandonment o‚ multilateral trade deals, the questioning o‚ the value o‚ alliances, and the downgrading o human rights and diplomacy— have put Washington at risk o‚ adopting an approach that is confron- tational without being competitive; Beijing, meanwhile, has managed to be increasingly competitive without being confrontational. The starting point for a better approach is a new degree o humility about the United States’ ability to change China. Neither seeking to isolate and weaken it nor trying to transform it for the better should be the lodestar o‚ U.S. strategy in Asia. Washington should instead focus more on its own power and behavior, and the power and behavior o‚ its allies and partners. Basing policy on a more realistic set o‚ assumptions about China would better advance U.S. interests and put the bilateral relationship on a more sustainable footing. Getting there will take work, but the •rst step is relatively straight- forward: acknowledging just how much our policy has fallen short o‚ our aspirations.∂

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or now, the United States remains the dominant power in East Asia, but China is quickly closing the gap. Although an economic Fcrisis or domestic political turmoil could derail China’s rise, i current trends continue, China will before long supplant the United States as the region’s economic, military, and political hegemon. As that day approaches, U.S. allies and partners in the region, such as Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea, will start to face some di€cult questions. Namely, should they step up their individual defense e„orts and increase their cooperation with other countries in the region, or can they safely decide to accept Chinese dominance, looking to Beijing as they have looked to Washington for the past hal century? It may be tempting to believe that China will be a relatively benign regional hegemon. Economic interdependence, one argument goes, should restrain Chinese aggression: because the legitimacy o the Chinese Communist Party (‹‹Œ) rests on economic growth, which depends on trade, Beijing would maintain peaceful relations with its neighbors. Moreover, China claims to be a di„erent sort o great power. Chinese o€cials and scholars regularly decry interventionism and reject the notion o “spheres o in“uence” as a Cold War relic. Chinese President Xi Jinping has said that his country has “never engaged in colonialism or aggression” thanks to its “peace-loving cultural tradition.” In this view, life in China’s Asia would not be so di„erent from what it is today. But this is not how regional hegemons behave. Great powers typically dominate their regions in their quest for security. They develop and wield tremendous economic power. They build massive

JENNIFER LIND is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. Follow her on Twitter @profLind.

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militaries, expel external rivals, and use regional institutions and cul- tural programs to entrench their in
uence. Because hegemons fear that neighboring countries will allow external rivals to establish a mil- itary foothold, they develop a profound interest in the domestic politics o their neighborhood, and even seek to spread their culture to draw other countries closer. China is already following the strategies o previous regional hege- mons. It is using economic coercion to bend other countries to its will. It is building up its military to ward oƒ challengers. It is intervening in other countries’ domestic politics to get friendlier policies. And it is investing massively in educational and cultural programs to enhance its soft power. As Chinese power and ambition grow, such eƒorts will only increase. China’s neighbors must start debating how comfortable they are with this future, and what costs they are willing to pay to shape or forestall it.

ECONOMIC CENTRALITY Over the past few decades, China has become the number one trading partner and principal export destination for most countries in East Asia. Beijing has struck a number o regional economic deals, including free-trade agreements with Australia, Singapore, South Korea, the Association o Southeast Asian Nations, and others. Through such arrangements, which exclude the United States, Beijing seeks to create a Chinese-dominated East Asian community. Beijing is also building an institutional infrastructure to increase its in
uence at the expense o U.S.-led institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (” ) and the World Bank, and Japanese-led ones, such as the Asian Development Bank. In 2014, China, along with Brazil, Russia, and India, set up the $100 billion New Development Bank, which is headquartered in Shanghai. In 2015, China founded the $100 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which 80 countries have now joined. Furthermore, Xi’s much-heralded Belt and Road initiative will promote Chinese trade and ¦nancial cooperation throughout the region and provide massive Chinese investment in regional infrastruc- ture and natural resources. The China Development Bank has already committed $250 billion in loans to the project. Such policies mimic the economic strategies o previous regional hegemons. China was the predominant economic and military power in East Asia until the nineteenth century. It granted or withheld trade

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Changing of the guard: Chinese naval o‘cers in Shanghai, December 2013 privileges according to an elaborate system o‚ tribute, in which other countries had to send diplomatic missions, bestow gifts, and kowtow to the Chinese emperor. The Chinese then determined the prices and quantities o‚ all goods traded. Imperial China consolidated its economic power by investing in agriculture and railroads, extracting minerals, and encouraging close commercial integration throughout the region. In Latin America, the United States followed the same playbook to establish itsel‚ as the region’s central economic player. In the nineteenth century, American •rms ©ocked to the region in search oª fruit, minerals, sugar, and tobacco. The U.S. company United Fruit managed to gain control o‚ the entire fruit export trade in Central America. Finance was another powerful tool; as the Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano has argued, a U.S. “banking invasion” diverted local capital to U.S. •rms. Washington encouraged American banks to assume the debts o‚

CARLOS European creditors to minimize the in©uence oª European rivals. For almost 100 years, Washington used diplomacy to advance its economic BARRIA interests through initiatives promoting U.S. regional trade and invest- ment, such as the Big Brother policy in the 1880s, “dollar diplomacy” / REUTERS in the early 1900s, and the Alliance for Progress in the 1960s. The United States also built a regional institutional architecture to

advance its agenda. In 1948, it created the Organization o‚ American

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States (headquartered in Washington, D.C.) to promote regional security and cooperation. American in©uence ensured that the  remained silent on, or even legitimized, various U.S. military and political inter- ventions in Latin America. Other development institutions, including the Ç, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Export-Import Bank o‚ the United States, also advanced U.S. interests. Through “tied aid,” such organizations required sponsored projects to hire U.S. vendors. The Ç, as Galeano has argued, was “born in the United States, head- quartered in the United States, and at the service o‚ the United States.” Another regional hegemon, Japan, pursued similar strategies in its empire that dominated the region in the early twentieth century. Vowing to eject the Western colonial powers, Tokyo declared itsel‚ the head o‚ a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” To feed its industrial economy and military, Tokyo extracted raw materials from countries it conquered. To promote Japan’s centrality, and to prevent economic activities by rival countries, it reformed Economic dominance lets and managed local economies in a regional network, standardizing the regional hegemons use region’s currency in a “yen bloc” and economic coercion to dispatching Japanese banks through- advance their agendas. out the area so that they controlled the majority o‚ the region’s bank deposits. Tokyo also created the Southern Development Bank, which provided •nancial services and printed currency in occupied territories. Similarly, in Eastern Europe after World War II, the Soviet Union relied on economic and •nancial statecraft to dominate the region. Moscow blocked all trade with Western Europe and forbade Eastern European states from accepting aid under the 1948 Marshall Plan. Instead, it created the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance to manage and integrate the regional economy. Soviet investment, trade agreements, and trade credits made Eastern European countries economically dependent on Moscow, both as their primary export market and as their supplier o‚ raw materials and energy. And by sell- ing raw materials at below-market prices, Moscow encouraged local political leaders to become dependent on its subsidies. Economic dominance lets regional hegemons use economic coercion to advance their agendas. In Latin America, the United States has

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long sought to coerce countries through sanctions. In addition to the long-standing (and failed) U.S. embargo o‚ Cuba, Washington used •nancial pressure to weaken President Salvador Allende in Chile in the 1970s and embargoed Nicaragua to undermine the Sandinista government in 1985. Similarly, in Eastern Europe, Moscow sought to control independent-minded leaders, imposing sanctions against Yugoslavia in 1948, Albania in 1961, and Romania in 1964. Beijing has already begun to employ such economic coercion. In 2017, China punished South Korea and the Japanese–South Korean business conglomerate Lotte for cooperating with the U.S.-built ¯Ë À missile defense program. (Lotte had sold the land on which ¯Ë À was deployed to the South Korean government.) Beijing banned Chinese tour groups from visiting South Korea, Chinese regulators closed 80 percent oª Lotte supermarkets and other Korean-owned businesses (ostensibly for •re-code violations), and state-run media urged boycotts oª Korean products. Beijing has also used economic coercion against Japan (banning the export o‚ Chinese rare-earth metals to the country after a 2009 ship collision) and Norway (embargoing Norwegian •sh exports after the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010). And in 2016, when Mongo- lia hosted the Dalai Lama, Beijing imposed extra fees on commodities moving through the country and froze all diplomatic activity—including negotiations about a $4 billion Chinese loan. “We hope that Mongolia has taken this lesson to heart,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement. Apparently it has: the Mongolian government has an- nounced that the spiritual leader will not be invited back. Such coercion will be less necessary in the future as leaders pre- emptively adjust their policies with Beijing in mind. Consider the Philippines: in the past, the country has stood up to China—for example, •ling a complaint about Chinese territorial assertiveness with an international tribunal at The Hague in 2013. But more recently, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who has received $24 billion in investment pledges from Beijing, has warmed relations with China and distanced his country from the United States.

THE PURSUIT OF MILITARY HEGEMONY Following the example o‚ previous hegemons, China is also expanding its regional military reach. Since the 1990s, Chinese military spending has soared, and the §§É is modernizing weaponry and reforming its

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military organizations and doctrine. The People’s Liberation Army (ÉÐ ) has adopted the doctrine o‚ “anti-access, area denial” to push the U.S. military away from its shores and airspace. China has also built the region’s largest coast guard and controls a vast militia o‚ civilian •shing vessels. In 2017, the ÉÐ opened its •rst overseas military base in Djibouti; it will likely build more bases along the African east coast and the Indian Ocean in coming years. Meanwhile, in the South China Sea, China has built six large islands that house air force bases, missile shelters, and radar and communications facilities. Already, the U.S. military •nds itsel‚ constrained by the expanding bubble o‚ Chinese air defenses, by China’s growing ability to •nd and strike U.S. naval vessels, and by an increased missile threat to U.S. air bases and ports. Beijing is using these capabilities to more forcefully assert its territorial claims. By transiting disputed waters and massing ships there, Beijing is pressuring Japan militarily over a cluster o‚ small islands called the Diaoyu by China and the Senkaku by Japan. Else- where, to deny access to disputed areas, the ÉÐ swarms •shing and coast guard vessels, and •res water cannons at other countries’ ships. Last summer, after asserting ownership o‚ an oil-rich area in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone, Beijing threatened to use military force i‚ Vietnam did not stop drilling. Vietnam stopped drilling. Contemporary China’s quest for regional military dominance follows the behavior o‚ previous regional hegemons, including China itself. As the historian Peter Perdue has argued, modern China is a product o‚ invasions that subdued all o‚ modern Xinjiang and Mon- golia, and reached Tibet, as well. Chinese dynasties, he has written, “never shrank from the use oª force,” including the “righteous ex- termination” o‚ rival states and rebels. Throughout Asia, Chinese military garrisons subdued invaders and pirates. Subsequent hegemons dominated their regions through military force, too. Starting in the late nineteenth century, the United States began to build what would become the Western Hemisphere’s preemi- nent military. In that period, the United States acquired territory through numerous wars against Mexico and Spain. Over the next few decades (often to advance the United States’ commercial interests), U.S. forces invaded Latin American countries more than 20 times, most often the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, and Nicaragua. During the Cold War, the United States repeatedly used military

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force to counter leftist movements in Latin America: it blockaded Cuba in 1962, sent troops to the Dominican Republic in 1965, mined Nicaraguan harbors in the 1980s, and invaded Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989. Japan also built and maintained its empire through military force. Its nineteenth-century military modernization yielded stunning victories over China and Russia. Through these and other military campaigns, Japan seized territories such as Korea and Taiwan and wrested colonial possessions from France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Japanese military then administered the empire, •ghting counterinsurgencies and suppressing independence movements. In Europe after World War II, the Soviet Union dominated its sphere o‚ in©uence with the region’s most powerful army. It stationed troops in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland. To shape the region to its liking, the Kremlin was willing to use force. It dispatched Soviet troops to quell uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. These hegemons did not tolerate the presence o‚ rival great powers in their regions. Likewise, China today is cha•ng against the U.S. presence in Asia and actively working to undermine it. Chinese o£cials and defense white papers criticize U.S. alliances as outdated and desta- bilizing. Xi himself, calling for a new “Asian security architecture,” has argued that these relationships fail to address the region’s complex security needs. Meanwhile, by cultivating close ties with Seoul and encouraging the Philippines’ tilt toward China, Beijing has sought to draw U.S allies away.

NOSY NEIGHBOR Beijing is also interfering in the domestic politics o‚ other countries. Citing China speci•cally, Canadian intelligence o£cials have warned oª foreign agents who might be serving as provincial cabinet ministers and government employees. And in 2016, a scandal erupted in Australia after it was revealed that Sam Dastyari, a senator who had defended Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, had •nancial ties to a Chinese •rm, prompting new laws banning foreign political donations. Historically, regional hegemons have intervened extensively in domestic politics to support friendly governments and undermine parties and leaders perceived as hostile. Within China’s tribute system, the emperor delegated the administration o‚ subservient states to

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local leaders, an approach known as “using barbarians to govern bar- barians.” But local independence went only so far. As the sixteenth- century statesman Chang Chu-cheng said oƒ such vassals, “Just like dogs, iƒ they wag their tails, bones will be thrown to them; iƒ they bark wildly, they will be beaten with sticks; after the beating, iƒ they submit again, bones will be thrown to them again; after the bones, iƒ they bark again, then more beating.” Japan similarly intervened in domestic politics during its imperial heyday. In the Philippines, for example, it abolished all political parties except for the pro-Japanese one. Elsewhere, it delegated con- trol to friendly local leaders and police, and trained such leaders at institutes in Japan. Iƒ o‰cials in China, Korea, and Manchuria did not cooperate, Tokyo relied on a Japanese paramilitary organization that intimidated, blackmailed, and assassinated local leaders. For its part, the United States meddled in Latin American politics countless times. Through the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, Washington claimed the right to intervene in its neighbors’ a™airs. It relied on covert and overt, violent and nonviolent methods to support anticommunist leaders and to undermine or depose leftist ones. The U.S. diplomat Robert Olds explained the approach in blunt terms in 1927: “Central America has always understood that govern- ments which we recognize and support stay in power, while those which we do not recognize and support fall.” During the Cold War, the U.S. military and the ¢ funded, armed, and trained anticom- munist forces throughout Latin America at institutions such as the U.S. Army School oƒ the Americas in Panama. U.S.-trained forces sought to depose leftist governments in Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Washington also supported coups in Guatemala in 1954 and Chile in 1973. Moscow was similarly busy in Eastern Europe. After World War II, the Soviet Union installed communist parties in its neighbors’ governments, in which advancement depended on loyalty to Moscow. Under Stalin, Soviet secret police harassed, tortured, and murdered opposition leaders. After Stalin, the Soviets relied on subtler tac- tics, such as bringing foreign elites to train in communist party schools and to build networks with Soviet and regional politicians. Through the Brezhnev Doctrine, Moscow claimed the authority to intervene in its neighbors’ politics in order to defend socialism from hostile forces.

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PLAYING HARDBALL FOR SOFT POWER China today is seeking to increase its in©uence in East Asia and beyond through extensive educational and cultural activities. The media is central to this eŸort. The state-run media organizations Xinhua and the China Global Television Network have bureaus all over the world. Hollywood studios regularly seek Chinese funding for their projects, as well as distribution rights in China’s vast mar- ket. Wary o‚ oŸending the §§É, studios have started preemptively censoring their content. Censorship has also begun to infect the publishing industry. To gain access to China’s vast market, publishers are increasingly required to censor books and articles containing speci•c words or phrases (for example, “Taiwan,” “Tibet,” and “Cultural Revolution”). Prominent publishing houses, including Springer Nature—the world’s largest academic book publisher—have succumbed to Beijing’s demands and are increasingly self-censoring. Beijing also promotes Chinese in©uence in education. China has become the world’s third most popular destination for foreign study, welcoming more than 440,000 students from over 200 coun- tries in 2016. Many students receive support from the Chinese gov- ernment. Overseas, in 142 countries, Beijing has created more than 500 Confucius Institutes to promote Chinese language and culture. A study by the U.S.-based National Association o‚ Scholars argues that Confucius Institutes are decidedly nontransparent about their connections to the §§É. Their teachers must observe §§É restrictions on free speech and are pressured to “avoid sensitive topics,” such as human rights, Tibet, and Taiwan. The §§É also in•ltrates college campuses abroad. Beijing enlists members o‚ the 60-million-strong Chinese diaspora: at universities around the world, Chinese Students and Scholars Associations dem- onstrate in support o‚ visiting Chinese leaders and protest the Dalai Lama and other speakers the §§É deems hostile. Beijing also monitors and silences Chinese critics abroad by mobilizing harassment on so- cial media and by threatening their families back home. In Australia, concerns about Chinese interference and espionage at universities led intelligence o£cials to issue warnings about an “insidious threat” from foreign governments seeking to shape local public opinion. Past regional hegemons similarly promoted their in©uence through culture and education, and by co-opting leaders o‚ civil society. As the China expert Suisheng Zhao writes, “Chinese culture was seen as a

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great lasting power to bridge periods o disunity and to infuse new governments . . . with values supportive o the traditional Chinese order.” China spread its language, literature, Confucian philosophy, and bureaucratic traditions to Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and other coun- tries. Chinese emperors also followed the advice o one minister in the Han dynasty who proposed subduing barbarians with “„ve baits”: silk clothing and carriages, sumptuous food, entertainments and female attendants, mansions with slaves, and imperial favors such as banquets and awards. U.S. hegemony in Latin America also relied heavily on soft power. In 1953, the U.S. government created the U.S. Information Agency, which, according to President Dwight Eisenhower, would show countries that U.S. objectives “are in harmony with and will advance their legitimate aspirations for freedom, progress, and Past regional hegemons peace.” U.S. ˜™ stations started Latin American channels that broadcast promoted their inuence American „lms and programs. The through culture and U.S. government built news agencies education. and radio stations and in„ltrated or intimidated opposition media outlets. In Chile and the Dominican Repub- lic, for example, the ž and the Ÿ engaged in an intense propaganda e¡ort against undesirable political candidates, spreading misinfor- mation and silencing opposition media. Likewise, imperial Japan created the East Asia Development League to shape regional perceptions and guide the activities o Japanese people living in the empire. Tokyo controlled civil society by creating and in„ltrating organizations such as youth groups, martial arts clubs, student unions, secret societies, and religious organizations. Its Greater East Asia Cultural Policy sought to erad- icate Western culture. For example, Tokyo banned Coca-Cola on the grounds that it had been invented “to bring the people under the soul- and mind-shattering in¦uence o the insidious drug, and so to make them more apt for Anglo-American exploitation.” Tokyo prohibited the use o§ European languages and established Japanese as the area’s o©cial language, dispatching hundreds o teachers throughout Asia. Japan transmitted its culture through radio programs, newspapers, and comic books, as did cultural institutes that spon- sored exhibitions, lectures, and „lms.

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The Soviet Union secured its inuence in Eastern Europe through extensive cultural activities. As the writer Anne Applebaum details in her book Iron Curtain, Soviet-backed communist parties took over radio stations and newspapers and intimidated or shut down indepen- dent media. The Soviets created inuential youth organizations and co-opted writers, artists, and other intellectual leaders by oer- ing well-paid jobs, lavish houses with servants, and free education for their children. Moscow also created a vast organization known as ­€‚ (a Russian acronym for All-Union Society for Cultural Relations With Foreign Countries) to disseminate Soviet ideas and culture and bring Western intellectuals under communist inuence. V­€‚ brought thousands oŠ visitors to the Soviet Union and sponsored scienti‹c research, ‹lm- making, athletics, ballet, music, and publishing. It also spent lavishly at international fairs and expositions—such as the Brussels World’s Fair oŠ 1958—to showcase Soviet technology and culture.

CONTEMPLATING LIFE IN CHINA’S ASIA When examining China’s current behavior in the context oŠ previous regional hegemonies, some common themes stand out. First, economic interdependence has a dark side. Although interdependence raises the cost oŠ conict, it also creates leverage. China’s centrality in regional trade and ‹nance increases its coercive power, which Beijing has already begun to exercise. Second, history shows that regional hege- mons meddle extensively in their neighbors’ domestic politics. Indeed, Beijing has already begun to reverse its much-touted policy oŠ non- intervention. As China grows stronger, its neighbors can expect Beijing to increasingly interfere in their domestic politics. East Asian countries need to decide whether this is something they are willing to accept. In particular, Japan, the only country with the potential power to balance China, faces an important choice. Since World War II, Japan has adhered to a highly restrained national secu- rity policy, spending just one percent oŠ its ˜™š on defense. For obvious historical reasons, the Japanese people are suspicious oŠ military state- craft, and they worry about a lagging economy and the expense oŠ caring for an aging population. They may decide to continue devoting their wealth to butter rather than guns. This would be a perfectly valid choice, but before making it, the Japanese people should contemplate their life in China’s Asia. Beijing

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and Tokyo are already embroiled in a bitter territorial dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. To gain control o‚ the islands, weaken the U.S.-Japanese relationship, and advance other interests, Beijing can be expected to use greater military and economic coercion and to meddle in Japanese politics. Beyond a hegemon’s normal reasons to intervene, China harbors deep historical resentment toward Japan. Imagine i‚ the United States had actually hated Cuba. I‚ Japan decided that Chinese hegemony would be unacceptable, its national security policy would need to change. The United States’ global interests and commitments allow Washington to devote only some o‚ its resources to Asia. It would not have the capability, let alone the will, to balance Beijing alone. Japan would need to become more like West Germany: a U.S. ally that, although outgunned and directly threatened by a hostile great power, mobilized substantial military might and was a true partner with the United States in securing its national defense. Tokyo and Washington could use diplomacy to oŸer countries an alternative to Chinese regional dominance. To do so, they should look to a core group o‚ maritime countries with similar values and overlapping interests—namely, Australia, India, New Zealand, and the Philippines. Other potentially interested actors, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, should be welcomed, too. But the •rst step on this path is a Japanese—and broader East Asian— debate about the prospect o living in China’s Asia.∂

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READY FOR THE FUTURE

By Yoshimasa Hayashi, Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology s Japan deals with an ageing population and nds itself in the midst of a fourth industrial revolution, the country’s universities, as core stakeholders in fostering human resources and Adriving innovation, are asked to play important roles in strengthening our society. To face the challenges of universities towards more lation is resulting in a combining all these attri- the future, the Japanese internationalization, shortage of workers. butes and deal with a re- government formulated through the Top Global Japan, nevertheless, duction of jobs with these the Japan Revitalization University Project. has developed effective demographic changes. Strategy in 2013, Anybody can learn more technologies. We are a On behalf of the govern- launched the Top Global about this program from: stable society with a well- ment, I invite research- University Project, and set https://tgu.mext.go.jp/ organized government. I ers and students from to double the numbers of en/index.html. am convinced that Japan around the world to both inbound and out- The government is also has the capability to be- come to Japan and learn bound student exchang- encouraging Japanese come a leading problem- in a cutting-edge envi- es. students to study abroad solving nation by skillfully ronment. n through government scholarships and a public- Kobe: Crossroads of Industry and Culture private study abroad ini- ver since our port began vative companies to this bustling tiative called “Tobitate!” operating 150 years ago, seaside metropolis. or “Young Ambassador “EKobe has Amid so much Program.” been very much optimism about To support some na- open to the world. the future, Kobe The city, in terms has intensified its tional universities in their of industry, has de- e orts to develop e orts to raise the qual- veloped over the clean energy. ity of their educational years to the times In December, and research activities and the needs of its the city conduct- people,” Mayor Kizo ed the world’s to world-class standards, Hisamoto said. first test to sup- MEXT established the In the past ply energy from Designated National few years, Kobe Kobe Mayor Kizo Hisamoto hydrogen power. Yoshimasa Hayashi, Minister University system. In has been home It has also col- of Education, Culture, Sports, 2017, Tohoku University, to Japan’s largest Biomedical laborated with the government Science and Technology Innovation Cluster, which hosts of Aberdeen in Scotland to de- University of Tokyo and more than 340 companies on velop a marine industry cluster. Based on this long-term Kyoto University were the Port Island, joining heavy indus- “We’ve made the most of strategy, the Ministry first schools to receive tries manufacturing as major pil- international knowledge to of Education, Culture, this DNU status. lars of the city’s economy. develop Kobe into a thriving, This growth would not have multi-faceted city. Looking to the Sports, Science and A successful society been possible if it weren’t for the future, we intend to continue Technology (MEXT) has must be both stable and highly skilled and talented work- this pioneering spirit,” Hisamoto provided financial sup- be receptive to new ideas ers who live in Kobe. said. port to improve the study so that advanced technol- The mayor is now focused on www.city.kobe.lg.jp/foreign/ environment at univer- ogy, such as AI and ro- e orts to attract new and inno- english/index.html sities in order to attract botics, can be applied in more international stu- daily life. Advancements dents, among others. The in technology will further ministry has also support- change labor markets. In ed the e orts of Japanese Japan, a shrinking popu-

FA-JAPAN 2018.indd 1 18/01/2018 13:29 [Global Media Inc. / www.gmipost.com] SSPONSOREDPONSORED RREPORT Japanese SMEs look further afield JAPAN

ntil recently, small through clients here aged them from ex- players and demand Japanese compa- in Japan,” President panding overseas and sharply declined. Many Unies were viewed Kensaku Kashiwagi said. promoting the “Made in companies decided to as businesses that pre- However, Shimizu Japan” brand. open in other Asian mar- fer to transact only with Densetsu Kogyo “The strength of small kets. That is why we now other Japanese com- President Hiroyuki companies lies in being have a branch oce in panies. Many of them Shimizu was steadfast in able to quickly adapt Singapore and a plant in expanded their interna- maintaining his compa- and deliver customer re- Malaysia,” says President tional presence mainly ny’s international opera- quests. Customers keep Norio Okubo. to support long-running tions following a slump demanding for better, so “It is not very easy to relationships with their in the demand for coat- we keep innovating for do business overseas. loyal customers. ing technology in the the better,” Shimizu ex- To ensure international As continuing global- automotive and medical plained. growth, companies need ization makes the busi- equipment sectors. “In Japan, there is a to modernize products ness landscape increas- “When our U.S. sub- philosophy called ma- and processes. But Japan ingly competitive, many sidiary faced some chal- gokoro, which means will remain important of these Japanese SMEs lenges in the past, most sincerity or devotion. It because we still lead in have had to accept the of the executives wanted is the ultimate made- technological innovation need to expand overseas to close it down. But I in-Japan asset. And and high-quality manu- if they are to survive and believed in the market we’ve made it a point to facturing,” Okubo added. grow sustainably. and decided to run the center our operations Meanwhile, President Showa Denki, a man- operations myself un- around this philosophy,” Masayoshi Funahashi ufacturer of wind ma- til it became protable,” Kashiwagi said. of Shachihata, a leading chines such as electric Shimizu recalled. With the compelling maker of writing instru- blowers and fans, is an “Now, after our cus- need for Japanese com- ments and stampers, example of how these tomers in the U.S. expe- panies to find stronger attributes the compa- SMEs are seeing their rience our service, they and more sustainable ny’s success to its abil- global potential. tell their Japanese coun- growth prospects, pack- ity to design pens, mark- “I started our over- terparts to reach out aging products maker ers and stampers that seas business in 2010 to us in Japan for their Ohishi Sangyo has iden- address and adapt to the by myself, after finding coating needs,” Shimizu tied Southeast Asia as ever-changing consum- out through internal re- added. its most promising mar- er taste. search that 38% of our For Shimizu and ket. “Using skills we have products ended up be- Kashiwagi, leading an “In the last 20 years, cultivated, we have de- ing exported overseas SME has not discour- Japan lost a lot of big veloped our latest ma-

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chine, the QuiX, where you can easily customize your stamps,” Funahashi JAPAN Japanese SMEs look further afield said. “The domestic market is diminishing and com- petition grows more sti . That is why I expect more potential from our international operations. In fact, we mostly o er our latest markers to the international markets  rst,” Funahashi said. Helping out small companies that want a bigger global presence but don’t have the re- sources, trading compa- ny Yashima Sangyo has Shachihata’s Headquarters in Nagoya acted as a major connec- Japanese companies to Aso in April 2017,” neurs turn their ideas tor between Japanese introduce themselves ACCJ Representative into reality. and foreign businesses. to foreign markets, and Christopher LaFleur said. “We are making Kobe “Our company aims help raise the pro le of “Its focus on setting into a city where start- to introduce Japanese Japanese quality in man- high trade and invest- ups can thrive. Kobe has quality products to the ufacturing,” he added. ment standards and re- developed into a thriv- global market, and vice Some local govern- ducing market barriers ing, multi-faceted city versa. We aim to be a ment units and non- aligns with the need we and we, with the rest partner in global ex- profit organizations, see on both sides, and of Japan, will continue pansion for companies such as the American we hope the positive that pioneering spirit for worldwide,” President Chamber of Commerce agenda will continue,” he years to come,” Mayor Masatoshi Takamuku in Japan and the City of also said. Kizo Hisamoto said. said. Kobe, have joined the ef- Already known as one Recently, Kobe col- “Many SMEs have the forts to promote bilateral of Japan’s most dynam- laborated with US-based right products with the trade and cooperation. ic cities and the base seed investment fund perfect quality, but  nd “With this, we ap- yof man major global 500 Startups in an ac- global expansion to be plaud the launch of the companies, Kobe has in- celerator program. It challenging. My dream U.S.-Japan Economic tensi ed e orts to spur was the first such col- is to have an exhibition Dialogue by Vice further growth through laborative program with for the ‘Made in Japan’ President Pence and programs aimed speci - a Silicon Valley venture brand as a means for Deputy Prime Minister cally at helping entrepre- capital fund in Japan.

FA-JAPAN 2018.indd 3 18/01/2018 13:29 [Global Media Inc. / www.gmipost.com] SSPONSOREDPONSORED RREPORT Abenomics at work JAPAN in manufacturing

s the world ea- one of the companies well positioned to ex- been in the business gerly awaits in charge of eliminat- pand further globally. for 80 years. We are a Athe 2020 Tokyo ing utility poles on the It eyes China and the supplier of Japanese Olympics, which got streets, and installing US as its next big mar- wood for the Tokyo the unflagging sup- underground wires and kets. Stadium and it is excit- port of Prime Minister cables. We are proud to Although nearly all ing to be part of the Shinzo Abe, construc- contribute to the prep- its business is domes- Tokyo 2020 infrastruc- tion materials develop- aration of Japan’s land- tic, construction ma- ture because it will er Kanaflex, like many scape for the influx of terials wholesaler JK surely have an impact other Japanese compa- tourists for Tokyo 2020,” Holdings values its role on people from all over nies, works in the back- President Shigeki in the construction of the world,” President ground to prepare for Kanao said. the Olympic Stadium, Keiichiro Aoki said. the influx of thousands Given its impres- always the centerpiece However, Aoki is of tourists from across sive track record and venue of the Summer studying the feasibil- Japan and the rest of unique products, Games. ity of setting up opera- the world. Kanaflex has done well “Ninety percent tions outside Japan for “We were selected in the United States of our business is in its housing materials by the National Diet as for over 30 years and is Japan but we have segment.

FA-JAPAN 2018.indd 4 18/01/2018 13:29 SPONSORED REPORT [Global Media Inc. / www.gmipost.com]

As the third “ar- row” of the economic Abenomics at work stimulus plan dubbed JAPAN Abenomics, the eco- nomic empowerment in manufacturing of women has become more visible in recent years, with very im- pressive results. “I just became CEO two years ago. Before that, for over five years, our financial condition was not good,” recalled Akiko Mitani, the CEO of Nikko Company, which makes ceramic The government’s economic stimulus plan dubbed Abenomics has remained e ective in providing goods and wastewater Japanese companies the much needed shot in the arm. treatment systems. by the government as empowerment among my,” Watanabe said. To turn things one of Japan’s Top 100 women in the work- To complement around for the Global Niche compa- force. While there is that objective, she es- 110-year-old company, nies, an achievement still a long way to go tablished the group Mitani encouraged her that has given much for us here in Japan, Monozukuri-Nadeshiko employees to under- pride to President there is no denying the for female CEOs within stand the company’s Hiroki Watanabe. importance of wom- the manufacturing in- importance to the lives “I want to cultivate en’s role in the econo- dustry. of all Japanese. That shift in mindset led to increased productivity and profitability. For the next five years, Mitani plans to lead the company in growing its business around the world. “We have been ex- porting our products for over 50 years. While we will continue to focus on our biggest markets, such as the US and Middle East, I see great potential in Southeast Asia as our comprehensive business field as well,” Mitani explained. For Fuji Denshi, a unique manufacturer of induction heating machines, tapping the talent of its female workforce has also yielded positive results. In fact, it was named

FA-JAPAN 2018.indd 5 18/01/2018 13:29 [Global Media Inc. / www.gmipost.com] SSPONSOREDPONSORED RREPORT Local impact, global outlook JAPAN n recent years, Japanese universi- Ities have focused on two main objectives: contributing to the lo- cal community and globalizing its instruc- tion. In Nagano Prefecture, Shinshu University has topped the Nikkei Global ranking several times in terms of local contributors. “Everyone is working together to revitalize the economy. There is true synergy between A view of Toyo Eiwa University’s campus in Yokohama the government, the universities,” President the expertise from university develops a private sector and the Kunihiro Hamada di erent  elds to de- full English-only cur- said. velop new industries riculum to increase its The national univer- that will help the lo- pool of international sity established five cal community in the students and partners. research institutes for next years,” Hamada “We also send stu- the  elds of biomedi- also said. dents abroad to see cal, carbon, mountain, In Yokohama, Toyo di erent cultures,” said and energy & environ- Eiwa University aims President Akufumi mental sciences, as to further incorpo- Ikeda, who believes well as  ber technol- rate diversity and that this exposure is ogy. open-mindedness especially important “We have already re- among its students. to its students be- organized our faculties Globalization is the cause it also allows as we aim to combine ongoing focus, as the them to understand their own heritage and share it with peo- ple around the world. “With our students being all female and Japan encouraging women to play bigger roles in the economy, making our students venture out into the world is our way of making an impact on the country,” Ikeda said .

FA-JAPAN 2018.indd 6 18/01/2018 13:29 Green Giant Renewable Energy and Chinese Power Amy Myers JaŠe

n 1997, in need o‚ increasing oil and gas imports to fuel its accel- erating economy, China launched a new energy policy. Intent Ion replicating Washington’s close relationships with large oil- producing countries, its diplomats toured oil-state capitals, oŸering investment and arms in exchange for guaranteed supplies. O‚ partic- ular interest were governments that had been ostracized by Western powers—an opening, Beijing believed, that would allow it to level the energy playing •eld with the United States and have the added bene•t oª fueling con©icts that would distract the U.S. military just as it was trying to refocus on Asia. Yet many o‚ China’s forays turned out badly. New partners defaulted on loans and failed to deliver the promised oil. The practice o‚ investing in dangerous places where others would not put the lives o‚ Chinese workers at risk. At home, several leaders o large energy corporations have been purged in so-called anticorruption drives. Meanwhile, the United States has enjoyed a domestic energy boom that is rapidly turning it into a major exporter o‚ oil and natural gas and cushioning its economy against oil-price shocks. Beijing has begun to worry that, given the United States’ decreasing reliance on supplies from the Persian Gulf, Washington might intervene more slowly to quell disturbances in the Middle East that threaten to disrupt the ©ow o‚ oil. Accordingly, since assuming o£ce in 2012, Chinese President Xi Jinping has turned to a new strategy: a pivot to renewable energy. China already dominates the global solar-panel market, but now it is

AMY MYERS JAFFE is David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environ- ment and Director of the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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expanding its support for oil-saving technologies, funding the devel- opment and production o‚ everything from batteries to electric cars. The goal is not just to reduce China’s dependence on foreign oil and gas but also to avoid putting the country at an economic disadvantage relative to the United States, which will see its own growth boosted by its exports o‚ oil and gas to China. China’s aims are also strategic. By taking the lead in green energy, Beijing hopes to make itsel‚ an energy exporter to rival the United States, oŸering other countries the opportunity to reduce their purchases oª foreign oil and gas—and cut their carbon emissions in the process. Iª Beijing’s new energy strategy succeeds, it will help both the global •ght against climate change and China’s ambition to replace the United States as the most important player in many regional alliances and trading relationships. That ambition has been bolstered by the Trump administration’s backward-looking approach to energy policy: its focus on coal, oil, and natural gas; its abandonment o‚ the international organizations that shape global energy markets; and its rejection o‚ the Paris climate accord. Such moves are helping pave the way for China to become the renewable energy superpower o‚ the future. Washington needs to respond before it is too late.

OIL SHOCK Beginning in the •rst decade o‚ this century, breakneck economic growth in China created a need for foreign oil and gas, driving China’s transformation from a regional power to a global one. Hampered by competition for resources from large Western oil companies, Beijing focused on so-called rogue states, where, because o Western sanctions, those rival companies could not invest. It •rst targeted Iran, Iraq, and Sudan, then Russia and Venezuela. The results have been less than stellar. In Iran, Western and then  sanctions hindered Chinese eŸorts for several years by limiting the amount o‚ money Chinese •rms could spend in Iran. And even since the Iran nuclear deal relaxed sanctions, other problems have cropped up. In early 2016, for example, two Chinese national oil companies, Sinopec and the China National Petroleum Corporation, •nally managed to get production moving at two •elds in Iran’s Khuzestan Province, but they now have to worry about Saudi-backed Arab separatists, who have recently bombed oil facilities there.

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China has encountered similar problems in Iraq, where a lack o‚ security has plagued oil projects. And in the more secure Kurdish region, estimates o‚ oil reserves have been reduced by hal‚ since initial surveys. Together with low oil prices, that means that Sinopec is unlikely to make a pro•t on its investments there. Chinese exploration for natural gas in Saudi Arabia has also come up dry. In Africa, Chinese projects have fared little better. Prolonged civil wars in Sudan and South Sudan have severely restricted the amount o‚ oil that Chinese •rms operating there can extract. Beijing has faced interna- China’s increasing tional condemnation for its support o‚ the Sudanese government, which has dependence on foreign oil been sanctioned by the United States has made its leaders uneasy. for war crimes. And attacks on Chinese oil workers in Ethiopia, Libya, Nigeria, Sudan, and South Sudan have forced the Chinese government to evacuate its personnel and have led to political criticism at home. China has struggled even in relatively stable places. Last Sep- tember, a Chinese conglomerate invested $9 billion in the Russian state-controlled oil giant Rosneft in return for a 14 percent owner- ship stake. But Rosneft is saddled with nearly $50 billion in debt and has undertaken a program o‚ ambitious international spending driven less by a coherent pro•t strategy than by Russia’s strategic interests. This decision, on top o‚ the uncertainty caused by U.S. sanctions on Russia, led Rosneft’s share price to decline by 23 percent during 2017, which translates into a multibillion-dollar loss for the Chinese conglomerate. The story is similar in Venezuela. From 2007 to 2014, Chinese •rms provided around $60 billion in oil-backed loans to Caracas. But Venezuelan crude oil exports to China reached just 450,000 barrels a day in 2017, only hal‚ the volume the Chinese had anticipated. One o‚ the largest lenders, the China Development Bank, currently receives barely enough oil and re•ned oil products from Venezuela to cover the interest payments on its loans. All told, China’s $160 billion in spending on oil and gas assets has bought it less energy that it might have expected. Its foreign oil re- sources are projected to produce roughly two million barrels a day by 2028. By comparison, just over a decade ago, Saudi Arabia spent $14 billion to add two million barrels a day o‚ new production. China’s

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oil imports pale in comparison with the United States’ domestic oil production, which stood at 9.8 million barrels a day at the end o‚ 2017 and could reach over 20 million barrels a day in the next decade. More- over, China’s own oil production, currently 3.9 million barrels a day, is falling fast due to mismanagement, depleted •elds, and low prices. China currently imports around 70 percent o‚ the oil it uses. By 2030, that •gure is expected to reach 80 percent. Meanwhile, the United States will likely become a net exporter o‚ oil and natural gas by the 2030s, i‚ not sooner. When it does, other energy producers will lose their long-standing leverage over U.S. policy. (In 1973, for example, ɧ placed an embargo on oil exports to countries, including the United States, that had supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War.) And the U.S. economy, which boasts hundreds o‚ thousands o‚ new oil and gas jobs, will be better shielded than China’s economy from a sudden drop in the global oil supply. China’s increasing dependence on foreign oil has made its leaders uneasy. Its 12th •ve-year energy plan, which ended in 2015, noted “a profound adjustment in energy supply patterns” resulting from the de- velopment o‚ new oil and gas sources in Canada and the United States. It characterized China’s energy security situation as “grim,” in contrast to that o‚ the United States. Such trends have also changed Beijing’s calculus in the Middle East. Although Washington is still saddled with the responsibility o‚ protecting the region’s oil ©ows, an oil cutoŸ caused by con©ict there would now do more damage to China’s economy than to that o‚ the United States. Beijing has to take account o‚ the growing risk that Washington will abdicate its protector role in the region or, at the least, force China and other countries to foot more o‚ the bill.

THE BIG GREEN BANG This new reality has prompted China to ramp up its investment in renewable energy and low-carbon technologies. It is not only looking for domestic energy security but also banking on green energy products as major industrial exports that will compete with Russian and U.S. oil and gas. China aims to make itsel‚ the center o‚ the clean energy universe, selling its goods and services to help other countries avoid the environmental mistakes it now admits were part o‚ its recent economic growth. There is a precedent for this approach. Beginning around ten years ago, a booming solar power industry in Germany helped China’s nascent

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solar-panel manufacturing sector get oŸ the ground. The Chinese government plans to repeat that success on a grander scale. It hopes that demand for clean energy technology from countries looking to reduce their carbon emissions will create jobs for Chinese workers and strong relationships between foreign capitals and Beijing, much as oil sales linked the Soviet Union and the Middle East after World War II. China’s bet on That means that, in the future, when the United States tries to sell its lique•ed renewable energy is natural gas to countries in Asia and designed to improve Europe, it may •nd itsel‚ competing its national security. not so much with Russian gas as with Chinese solar panels and batteries. According to the International Energy Agency, the Chinese public and private sectors will invest more than $6 trillion in low-carbon power generation and other clean energy technologies by 2040. The Chinese renewable energy sector already boasts 125 gigawatts o‚ installed solar power, over twice the •gures for the United States (47 gigawatts) and Germany (40 gigawatts). Chinese •rms now have the capacity to manufacture 51 gigawatts’ worth o‚ photovoltaic solar panels every year, more than double total global production in 2010. The U.S. Department oª Energy estimates that the Chinese govern- ment has provided as much as $47 billion in direct funding, loans, tax credits, and other incentives to solar-panel manufacturers since 2008. Over the last decade, Chinese exports have contributed to an 80 per- cent drop in global solar-panel prices. Future Chinese investment in battery technology is likely to have a similar eŸect on battery prices. Overall, China currently generates 24 percent o‚ its power from renewable sources; the United States generates 15 percent. China is also betting big on electric vehicles, heavily subsidizing their development and production. In 2015, Chinese public subsidies for electric vehicles totaled more than ten times the amount provided by the U.S. government. Over 100 Chinese companies currently make electric cars and buses. The Chinese car manufacturer ¿ÑÀ is now the largest producer o‚ electric vehicles in the world, with another six Chinese •rms also ranking in the top 20. In 2015, China surpassed the United States in annual and cumulative electric car sales. There are over one million electric cars on Chinese roads today, almost double the number in the United States. By 2020, China aims to have •ve

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million in operation. China could eventually boast as many as 100 mil- lion electric vehicles. In September, Chinese o£cials con•rmed that the government is developing a timetable to end the use o‚ gas-powered cars in China, in line with other countries, such as France and the United Kingdom, that are aiming to eliminate them by 2040. Beijing is also working to dominate the •nancing o‚ green energy. In late December, it announced that it intends to create the world’s largest carbon market, in which •rms trade credits for the right to emit greenhouse gases. China already buys more “green bonds”—which fund projects designed to prevent climate change or mitigate its eŸects—than any other country and is actively promoting so-called green •nance within its •nancial sector by encouraging its major banks, including the People’s Bank o‚ China, to accelerate the issuance o‚ green bonds and other kinds o‚ credits for clean energy. The Chinese government has started to promote cooperation on green •nance between Chinese and foreign businesses through bilateral eŸorts, such as the UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue. It is also playing up its environ- mental standards to attract multinational lenders to pay for its ambitious $1.4 trillion Belt and Road Initiative, an infrastructure program designed to expand Beijing’s in©uence in Asia. China’s bet on renewable energy and electric transport is also designed to improve its national security. Chinese analysts have long decried the risks o‚ shipping oil through sea-lanes that are dominated by the U.S. military and increasingly threatened by the growing navies o‚ regional powers such as India and Japan. Replacing foreign oil with domestic sources o‚ renewable energy would remove this problem. Meanwhile, ©exible energy microgrids (which generate and distribute power in self-contained grids that can detach from centralized systems during a crisis) and multifuel transportation systems (which move away from sole reliance on oil-based gasoline and diesel) will help China withstand cyberattacks and limit the eŸects o‚ natural disasters and wars. Advanced clean energy technologies will also likely fuel autonomous weapons, such as drones, arti•cial intelligence, and satellite-based equipment that can disable U.S. satellites and global positioning systems, all o‚ which China is trying to master.

FALLOUT China’s energy pivot promises to reshape the international order. Its most direct impact will be on the global response to climate change.

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Here comes the sun: solar panels in Zhejiang Province, China, December 2014 Just as China’s big move into solar-panel manufacturing brought down the costs o‚ that technology, so the prices o batteries, electric cars, and carbon capture and storage will likely collapse as China invests. The energy pivot is also already changing how China deals with the rest o‚ the world. It is courting countries in Europe, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia with the promise o‚ cheap loans, upgraded energy and transport infrastructure, and freedom from energy shortages and energy- related pollution. Russia’s history o heavy-handed threats to cut oŸ supplies o‚ oil and gas to its neighbors has made Beijing’s job all the easier. Helping countries generate clean, abundant energy will allow China to compete more aggressively with the United States by under-

CHINA cutting Washington’s ability to use its new oil and gas exports to forge closer relations with other countries. Chinese o£cials have even argued NETWORK STRINGER that by assisting countries in developing green business models and providing access to reliable energy and modern infrastructure to poorer countries, China can help redress inequality among nations and create more consistent global economic growth, lowering the risks o‚ terrorism and con©ict. / REUTERS Not all the eŸects o‚ China’s move into clean energy are likely to prove so benign. I‚ China comes to depend largely on domestic energy, it will become less willing to oŸer preferential loans to failing oil states.

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That could prove disastrous for some countries, especially i‚ China’s renewable energy technology exports also eliminate a signi•cant pro- portion o‚ the world’s demand for oil and gas. This story has already played out in Venezuela. In 2016, China refused to extend new loans to Caracas, cutting oŸ Venezuela’s most important remaining •nan- cial lifeline and pushing the country deeper into debt, poverty, and political breakdown. As China sells more and more renewable energy technology and electric vehicles at home and abroad, other oil states, such as Angola, Nigeria, and Russia, could experience similar fates. Even countries in the Persian Gul‚ could suŸer i‚ they do not reform their economies. The result could well be more dangerous failed states with disenfranchised populations.

AMERICA’S ENERGY CHALLENGE China’s new energy strategy raises serious questions for U.S. energy and climate policy. The Trump administration argues that the United States can maintain U.S. energy dominance by selling its vast sup- plies o‚ oil and natural gas to the rest o‚ the world, as long as domestic producers are unfettered by excessive government regulation. But the success o‚ that vision will rely on international energy and carbon rules. I‚ the United States abdicates its global role, those might be set by other countries. Although President Donald Trump has announced that the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, the country cannot formally do so until 2020. That means that the United States still holds leadership positions in the bodies that will play a large part in determining global energy-market regulations, energy- and carbon- pricing policies, and possibly even which fuels—coal, oil, gas, nuclear, or renewables—will be favored globally. But i‚ the United States leaves those groups, they may well design a global energy architec- ture that favors China’s interests. That could allow China to sell its energy technology products abroad free o‚ tariŸs, while fees on carbon emissions would hamper U.S. oil and gas exports. It could also make Chinese, rather than U.S., requirements for energy-product labeling and e£ciency and for zero-emission vehicles the global standards. And i‚ Chinese •nancial institutions help set the rules and standards for green •nancing, they could stack the deck in their own favor, hurting U.S. banks in what is set to become a multitrillion-dollar industry in the coming decades.

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To keep the United States’ options open, the Trump administration needs to •nd a creative way to meet the country’s original pledge in the Paris agreement to reduce its emissions by roughly 27 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. There is still time to do so. A majority o‚ U.S. states and major cities will continue to implement the initiatives they set out in alignment with the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era policy designed to get states to cut their carbon emissions, which the Trump administration rescinded in October. U.S. car and truck manufacturers and ride-sharing companies are engaging China to sell their products and services to Chinese consumers. By recommitting to the Paris agreement, even with a less ambitious strategy, the Trump administra- tion would avoid needlessly antagonizing countries that care about the accord and maintain U.S. in©uence in global rule-making on energy. The United States should also work both inside and outside the framework o‚ the Paris agreement to create trade rules and carbon- market systems that would favor U.S. oil and natural gas exports in the immediate term and lay the groundwork to promote U.S. clean technology companies in the long run. A good model exists in the agreement •nalized in November among Alaska, Sinopec, the Bank o‚ China, and China’s sovereign wealth fund, which will result in a Chinese investment o‚ up to $43 billion to develop natural gas re- serves in northern Alaska. Natural gas could replace coal in countries such as China and India, reducing carbon dioxide emissions. And tying China to U.S. resource extraction would help cement U.S.- Chinese energy cooperation and ensure that the United States’ en- ergy exports will remain competitive with those o‚ other countries trying to sell oil and gas to China. So far, the Trump administration has shown little sign that it has a real vision for sustaining U.S. energy dominance. It seems inclined to expand rules set by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States in order to safeguard U.S. advantages in arti•cial in- telligence and other digital technologies important to protecting U.S. energy infrastructure. That could be worthwhile, but the ad- ministration will need a much broader vision, one that goes beyond a proposed small tariŸ on imported solar panels and looks at the rest o‚ the U.S. clean technology complex, which includes new batteries, energy-saving digital products, and alternative-fuel vehicles. The administration has begun the process o‚ rewriting the Clean Power Plan. It has suggested improving the e£ciency o‚ power plants by

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reducing leaks and using new digital technologies to improve control systems. But that will not be enough. It also needs to devise policies to help innovation and promote the adoption o‚ technologies that can rival Chinese products, such as smart meters and solar panels or wind turbines with connected batteries to store the energy generated. New regulations on the power generation industry should reward states, counties, and cities that want to shift to clean energy and issue green bonds. Rick Perry, the secretary o‚ energy, has argued that natural gas and renewable sources o‚ energy are less reliable than fossil fuels or nuclear power and so the administration should subsidize coal and nuclear power in key markets to prevent interruptions in supply. But this argu- ment fails to realize that new technologies can create a ©exible, responsive grid capable o bouncing back quickly in the aftermath o‚ sudden surges in demand, natural disasters, or cyberattacks. The administration should also think creatively about how to best tap the United States’ increasing surplus o‚ cheap natural gas to lower the country’s emissions and meet its pledge under the Paris agreement. Washington should consider supporting new uses for natural gas, such as to power long-distance trucks or to make hydrogen fuel for other vehicles. Doing so while minimizing emissions will require enforcing rules governing the leakage o‚ methane from oil and gas production, transport, and disposal. Those rules have bipartisan support in Congress as well as support from many industry players. But the Department o‚ the Interior has delayed their implementation and even suggested that it is considering scrapping them altogether. There is some good news. The Republican tax reform bill signed by Trump in December left federal support for renewable energy and cred- its for electric cars intact (an earlier version o‚ the bill had eliminated them). But these programs don’t do enough to meet the challenge o‚ China’s massive public investments. Washington should embrace additional policies to promote private- sector investment in clean technology, such as allowing renewable energy investors to form master limited partnerships (ÇÐÉs), a type o‚ publicly traded entity that avoids double taxation for its shareholders. Currently, ÇÐÉs are restricted to companies that extract or process natural resources or lease real estate. The tax bill slashed the tax rate for ÇÐÉs, making them even more attractive, but failed to extend the structure to renewable energy production, even though a bipartisan congressional group proposed doing just that last October.

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The United States’ withdrawal from the Paris accord will likely be accompanied by lackluster U.S. participation in Mission Innovation, a global initiative involving the European Union and 22 major countries, including China and the United States, to accelerate the transition to clean energy by doubling the public R & D budgets o‚ the participating countries. Failing to take part would be a mistake. China is building an energy system that will help its economy and allow its military to better withstand cyberattacks and natural disas- ters. The United States should do the same. That means developing and installing new technologies, such as smart grids, solar panels, and wind turbines, at U.S. military bases to reduce the damage from potential interruptions in power supplies or attacks on power sources. During the Cold War, the United States realized the likely eco- nomic and military consequences o losing the space race, and it rose to the task. Meeting the challenge o‚ China’s pivot to renewable energy will be no diŸerent. The United States risks frittering away its dominance o‚ the global energy market. But with strong leader- ship and a long-term commitment, it can secure its energy future for decades to come.∂

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MA18_Book.indb 93 1/18/18 10:21 PM How to Crack Down on Tax Havens Start With the Banks Nicholas Shaxson

n October 17, 2008, during the throes o‚ the global •nancial crisis, o£cials from the U.S. Department o‚ Justice summoned OSwiss banking regulators and executives from ¿ , Switzerland’s largest bank, to a closed-door meeting in New York to discuss the bank’s role in helping American clients evade taxes. It was a sensitive moment: the Swiss government had bailed out ¿ the previous day. The bank’s game plan was simple, a company insider later told Reuters: “Admit guilt, settle the case quickly, and move on.” But the Swiss were in for a nasty surprise. Four months earlier, U.S. authorities had imprisoned Bradley Birkenfeld, a former ¿ wealth manager who had begun to spill the institution’s secrets. Cooperating with U.S. investigators, Birkenfeld described a culture o‚ deception at the bank, which circumvented many countries’ laws and the bank’s own regulations, making use o‚ encrypted computers and oŸshore shell companies and trusts. (Birkenfeld also claimed to have relied on less sophisticated methods, such as hiding diamonds in a toothpaste tube to smuggle them across borders.) Birkenfeld claimed that ¿ , seeking to make inroads with “high net worth individuals”—Silicon Valley entrepre- neurs, Russian oligarchs, Saudi princes, Chinese industrial magnates— sponsored events popular with global economic elites, such as the America’s Cup yacht race and the Art Basel festival in Miami. In his confessional book, Lucifer’s Banker, he describes organizing what he touts as the largest-ever exhibit oª Rodin sculptures. “I can’t even remember how many o‚ those art lovers ended up in our vaults,” Birkenfeld writes.

NICHOLAS SHAXSON is a writer on the sta of the Tax Justice Network and the author of Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Oshore Banking and Tax Havens. Follow him on Twitter @nickshaxson.

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According to Birkenfeld, other ¿ bankers also used such events to introduce themselves to ultrarich attendees and pitch their bank as a safe harbor where vast quantities o‚ wealth could reside, out o‚ the reach o‚ pesky tax collectors. The Department o‚ Justice estimated that in 2004 alone, Swiss bankers visited the United States 3,800 times to •nd and retain clients. The investigation found that ¿ had helped U.S. clients hide up to $20 billion. But U.S. clients accounted for less than two percent o‚ the assets o‚ the bank’s wealth-management division, which was handling around $1.3 trillion globally by the time the •nancial crisis hit in 2007. Secrecy was a global game for Swiss banks, and the playing •eld extended far beyond Switzerland and the United States. One former Swiss banker told me that she would regularly travel to Latin America for work and would always arrive with butter©ies in her stomach, uncomfortable with the deceptions she had to carry out. On the immigration form, she would write that she was traveling for pleasure, “though my suitcase would be full o business suits and portfolio evaluations.” She would remove client names and numbers from documents so that i‚ the authorities found them, they wouldn’t be able to connect the dots between assets and depositors. She attended polo matches, operas, and champagne dinners, earning the trust o‚ potential customers. “That is where it happens,” she said—meaning the establishment o‚ a mutually bene•cial relationship in which her bank would help wealthy elites hide their often ill-gotten gains in exchange for hefty wealth- management fees. “I felt like I was prostituting myself,” she said. U¿ was a major player, but just one part o‚ a vast system o‚ oŸ- shore tax havens that still thrives. Havens facilitate tax evasion, undermine the rule o law, and abet organized crime. They contribute to the economic inequality that has sapped people’s faith in democracy and fueled populist backlashes. They corrupt market economies by favoring large multinationals over smaller local companies for reasons that have nothing to do with productivity, entrepreneurship, or gen- uine wealth creation. They have supercharged the pro•ts o‚ sys- temically important global banks, helping make such institutions “too big to fail” and “too big to jail.” They help wealthy elites in poor countries loot their treasuries and stash the spoils elsewhere, generating illicit cross-border •nancial ©ows o‚ around $1 trillion each year, according to the Washington, D.C.–based research •rm Global Financial Integrity.

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Before the global •nancial crisis, few o£cials in the developed world made much noise about tax havens. But their existence was hardly a secret, and many major •nancial •rms involved in the oŸshore system employed former o£cials as executives or lobbyists. At the time that ¿ was under investigation, its vice chair o‚ investment banking was Phil Gramm, a former Republican senator from Texas who had served as the chair o‚ the Senate Banking Committee. (I sent Gramm an e-mail asking him what he knew about ¿ ’ activities in this area at that time; a representative said he was not available to comment.) Whatever political cover the bank may have believed it enjoyed, the Department o‚ Justice o£cials told the Swiss that i‚ they wanted to avoid criminal charges o‚ defrauding the United States, they would need to supply the names o‚ U.S. tax evaders who held assets at ¿ . For the Swiss, this represented an excru- Havens undermine the rule ciating choice between violating the o£cial policy o banking secrecy that of law, abet organized their country had upheld for more than crime, corrupt market seven decades and risking a criminal in- economies, and sap people’s dictment that could conceivably destroy ¿ . Ultimately, in February 2009, the faith in democracy. Swiss government gave its blessing to a settlement in which ¿ admitted defrauding the United States and paid a •ne o‚ $780 million. Crucially, Switzerland also agreed to implement emergency laws to bypass Swiss courts and allow ¿ to deliver the names o‚ 280 high-level U.S. tax evaders. But the Department o‚ Justice wasn’t done: it immediately hit ¿ with a new fraud charge. The bank eventually coughed up 4,450 names. The Department o‚ Justice widened the net to include other Swiss banks, and to date, more than 55,000 U.S. taxpayers have voluntarily come forward with information about their Swiss deposits. By January 2016, U.S. authorities had recovered some $8 billion from these banks’ clients in back taxes, interest, and penalties, plus $1.4 billion in penalties paid by the banks themselves. More is likely to have been recovered since then. The episode marked a powerful victory in the •ght against tax havens and provided crucial lessons in how to crack down on them, a task that has taken on renewed urgency in recent years. Last November, the International Consortium oª Investigative Journalists, in partnership

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with 95 news organizations all over the world, published the “Paradise Papers” reports, the result o‚ a giant data leak from the Bermuda- based o£ces o‚ an oŸshore law •rm, Appleby, which shed light on how the ultrarich avoid taxes and escape other laws and rules. This was a sequel to the §Ò’s 2016 “Panama Papers” reports, which revealed the secrets o‚ another company that specialized in hiding assets, the Panamanian law •rm Mossack Fonseca, and exposed a sordid world o‚ criminality and creative tax shenanigans—alongside plenty o‚ perfectly legal behavior. And in 2014, the §Ò published the “LuxLeaks” papers, another huge data leak, which revealed how the accounting •rm PwC helped its clients lawfully avoid paying taxes by using Luxembourg as a platform for exploiting loopholes in other countries’ tax codes. These revelations have turned a harsh spotlight on the questionable •nancial practices o‚ prominent multinationals such as Disney; the commodity trading giant Glencore and its rival, Koch Industries; celebrities such as Harvey Weinstein and Shakira; criminals connected to the notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán; and political •gures as varied as U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Queen Elizabeth II. What these investigations have shown is that tax havens aren’t an exotic side- show to the world economy: they lie close to its heart. Outrage over tax havens has never been more widespread and deep-seated than it is today. But addressing the harm they cause will not be easy; tax havens enjoy the protection o‚ powerful forces, and the reforms that would be required to rein them in are fairly radical. Successfully tackling the problem will require mobilizing public anger against rigged systems that disadvantage ordinary people.

TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN There is no generally agreed-on de•nition o‚ “tax haven,” but its meaning can be boiled down to two ideas: elsewhere and escape. Very wealthy people put their money or assets elsewhere—in places usually referred to as “oŸshore”—to escape the rules at home that they don’t like. Those rules may be tax laws, disclosure requirements, criminal statutes, or •nancial regulations. In exchange, the private-sector enablers o‚ the system earn hefty fees from their clients, and haven governments pro•t from taxes, which they typically levy not on the capital nominally ©owing through these places but on the incomes or consumption o‚ the local resident professionals who handle that capital.

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A commonly cited estimate o‚ the total amount o‚ wealth held oŸ- shore, calculated by the economist Gabriel Zucman, is $8.7 trillion—a •gure equal to around ten percent o‚ global ÀÉ. Zucman arrived at that •gure using a novel method: tracking mismatches between cross- border assets and liabilities in countries’ balance-of-payments records. He has said that the $8.7 trillion •gure probably does not fully re©ect the volume o hidden assets, because it Havens exist in almost excludes non•nancial assets owned oŸ- shore, such as art, or racehorses, or real every region of the world, estate. But in e-mail exchanges with me, with each providing a he agreed there were further assets his diŠerent mix of oŠshore data miss. His method doesn’t account for some fairly common tax-evasion tools, services. such as certain insurance products de- signed to hide assets, or for situations in which recorded assets and liabilities technically reside in the same jurisdiction but are nevertheless “oŸshore” because the owner is else- where. (One example: U.S. securities held by a custodian bank in the United States but owned by a Brazilian.) Also, although banks don’t mind revealing aggregate •gures o‚ their assets and liabilities, which form the basis o‚ Zucman’s numbers, tax or criminal authorities seek client-level data, which banks are far more reluctant to hand over. It’s safe to assume that i‚ authorities could see that information, they would discover many more hidden assets. Using a model that is more inclusive than Zucman’s, the economist James Henry has estimated that tax havens hold between $24 tril- lion and $36 trillion. Even that estimate represents only the stock o‚ individual wealth held oŸshore and does not fully take into account the assets that corporations park outside their home coun- tries. (Corporate and individual wealth overlap, o‚ course, since individuals hold corporate assets, but the two forms o‚ wealth are taxed diŸerently.) U.S. Fortune 500 corporations alone hold around $2.6 trillion oŸshore. The  Conference on Trade and Development has estimated that developing countries lose out on somewhere between $70 billion and $120 billion in annual tax revenue due to multinationals arti•cially shifting pro•ts to tax havens. And rich countries are hardly immune: according to a 2014 U.S. Senate report, the United States loses around $150 billion in tax revenue each year owing to oŸshore tax schemes.

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The global oŸshore system is constantly evolving. Havens exist in almost every region o‚ the world, with each providing a diŸerent mix o‚ oŸshore services. In Asia, Hong Kong serves as China’s oŸshore gateway to the world—a low-tax platform for capital to ©ow in and out o‚ China, often with minimal scrutiny. Singapore, meanwhile, acts as a haven o‚ choice for wealthy elites from Australia, Indonesia, and Malaysia. In Europe, Switzerland is not the only player. A U.S. Senate investigation published in 2013, for example, showed how Apple had routed some $74 billion through Ireland in the preceding four years, escaping almost all taxes on its pro•ts earned outside the United States. Meanwhile, Luxembourg provides exotic tax-avoidance products, such as shell companies, alongside more mainstream tax- escape facilities. And the Netherlands acts as an oŸshore stepping- stone for investment funds shifting capital between diŸerent countries stripping out taxes along the way. Then there is the massive British network, which resembles a spider web, with the City oª London in the middle, surrounded by an array oª British territories and dependencies: the British Virgin Islands, Ber- muda, Gibraltar, the Cayman Islands, Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle o‚ Man. The British Virgin Islands specialize in secretive shell companies and trusts. Bermuda is a big player in oŸshore “captive insurance,” wherein a multinational owns a company ostensibly for insurance pur- poses but typically with the real goal o‚ cutting its tax bill. Gibraltar is a favored destination for dodgy money from the former Soviet Union, and the Cayman Islands and Jersey cater to the tax-avoidance needs o‚ investors in hedge funds and private equity •rms, among others. Such places enjoy some level o‚ autonomy from the United Kingdom, but London ultimately calls the shots and guarantees their legal systems. Another crucial tax haven is the United States. Delaware, Nevada, Wyoming, and other states encourage people to set up shell companies, which allow their owners to hide behind walls o‚ secrecy so thick that foreign crime •ghters cannot penetrate them—and neither, usually, can the Internal Revenue Service or the Department o‚ Justice. Much o‚ U.S. President Donald Trump’s wealth is reportedly held by Delaware companies, which would make it easier for him to hide con©icts o‚ inter- est. The amount o‚ assets held in shell companies based in the United States can only be guessed at; it is likely in the trillions. The U.S. federal government, for its part, turns a blind eye to this state-level phenomenon and even provides another layer oª •nancial

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secrecy for foreigners. Federal enforcement eŸorts focus on •nding U.S. tax cheats in overseas havens. Under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act ( ¯§ ), Washington requires foreign •nancial insti- tutions to disclose their American clients’ •nancial information to the U.S. Treasury and imposes a 30 percent withholding tax on certain payments to foreign •nancial institutions that don’t comply. But Washington is stingy when it comes to sharing information in the other direction, often refusing to reveal data on the assets that foreigners hold in the United States to law enforcement authorities elsewhere. As a result, the United States hosts large amounts o‚ criminal and foreign “dark money,” some o‚ which •nds its way into the political system via campaign spending. In 2011, the Florida Bankers Association estimated that hundreds o billions o‚ dollars had come to the United States in pursuit o‚ this secrecy. The sums are larger now. Notice that nearly all the places mentioned above are either rich countries or satellites o‚ rich countries. Tax havens need to persuade asset holders that they are safe, reliable, and trustworthy. Nobody wants

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MA18_Book.indb 100 1/18/18 10:21 PM to hide assets in a banana republic. There are havens in less wealthy coun- tries and places without rich-country protectors—the Bahamas, Belize, Mauritius, and the Seychelles, for example—but they cannot oŸer mainstream ultrarich depositors the same level o‚ protection as the big players, and so those places tend to go down mar- ket, attracting more illicit money. All tax havens share an impor- tant feature: they are “captured states,” in which powerful global forces prevent local democratic institu- tions from interfering in the elaborate game o‚ oŸshore •nance. This is especially true o‚ smaller tax havens, such as Jersey or Vanuatu, where local legislators are often ordinary folks—former •shermen or hoteliers, for example—who lack the skills, knowledge, or con•dence they would need to push back against the ©ood o‚ money, in©uence, and •nancial expertise that suŸuses the oŸshore system and that has drowned entire societies. Locals often fear that chal- lenging oŸshore players will lead the rich to take their money elsewhere. Haven residents who dare criticize the oŸshore sector are routinely ostracized as traitors and even frozen out o‚ employment. And i‚ oŸshore players don’t get the laws they want, they have been known to turn to bribery, which can be especially eŸective in small jurisdictions. As a result o‚ all o‚ this, local authorities often serve as rubber stamps for laws and regulations proposed by oŸshore private-sector actors. Most tax havens attract little genuine foreign invest- ment as a result o‚ their oŸshore strategies. What they generally get instead is “hot money”—rootless capital that ©its from place to place in search o‚ the most welcoming home. The constant fear in havens that such assets will ©ee creates a race to the bottom, as authorities strain to make themselves ever more accommodating. In March

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2009, in the depths o‚ a global •nancial crisis that was brought on in large part by lax regulation, Robert Kirkby, then the technical director o‚ Jersey Finance, the o£cial lobbying body for Jersey’s •nancial sector, proudly described this dynamic. Explaining how Jersey dealt with private-sector demands to loosen regulations related to the risky securitization o‚ various kinds o‚ assets, he told me, “You can lobby onshore, but there are lots o‚ stakeholders, you have to get past them all, and it takes a long time.” In Jersey, he boasted, “we can change our company laws and our regulations so much faster.” That may sound like a form oª free-market e£ciency—but those stakeholders and onshore rules that such places bypass represent the lifeblood o‚ the rule o law and accountability.

“A LOT OF THIS STUFF IS LEGAL” It’s fair to ask why tax havens persist and why they have so many defend- ers i‚ they are so clearly deleterious. OŸshore advocates make a number o‚ arguments. But none survives scrutiny. O£cials in tax havens point out that those places are sovereign nations (or autonomous territories) with every right to set their own tax laws. That’s true. But by the same logic, countries harmed by havens have every right to take strong countermeasures against them. O£cials in havens also note that people have a right to privacy and need relie‚ from unjust laws. But the people who use tax havens are overwhelmingly rich and powerful. Providing them with special forms o‚ protection and immunity from •scal and legal obligations while leaving everyone else to shoulder the responsibilities and burdens o‚ society creates one rule for the 0.1 percent and another rule for everyone else. Defenders o‚ oŸshoring also correctly argue that the practice is not always illegal and arguably bene•ts ordinary investors alongside the ultrarich. Most large private pension and equity funds touch the oŸshore system in some way. So do “tax e£cient” corporate cash management operations, which circulate capital around a multinational’s many global subsidiaries, and “tax neutral” investing platforms, which host pools o‚ capital from various diŸerent places and then spread it out around the world, seeking out the highest after-tax returns. I‚ such assets were taxed in havens, too, it would be unfair “double taxation.” In this sense, defenders argue, havens serve as frictionless, e£cient •nancial conduits, removing obstacles from the path o‚ capital as it ©ows in pursuit o‚ investment opportunities around the globe.

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Yet this isn’t the full story. For one thing, the facilities that prevent “double taxation” are the same ones that allow accounting tricks to produce “double nontaxation,” in which no taxes are paid anywhere. What is more, a lot o‚ common tax avoidance that gets labeled “legal” actually is not: often, it’s not clear whether a particular oŸshore strategy or structure is lawful until it has been tested in court. Law •rms that set up shell companies for their clients may not be breaking any laws them- selves, but many o‚ their clients are. More broadly, what is legal isn’t necessarily legitimate. As U.S. President Barack Obama said in 2016, in reaction to the Panama Papers revelations: “The problem is that a lot o‚ this stuŸ is legal, not illegal.” Tax havens are a pure distillation o‚ all that is wrong with •nancial globalization: they encourage capital to move across borders, but in the wrong directions. Many developing countries have found that when they open up to global •nance, investment doesn’t ©ow in to their capital-starved economies—instead, after being looted by elites, money ©ows out, into tax havens. Indeed, this represents one o‚ the main reasons why •nancial globalization has failed to improve the lot o‚ many poor countries.

TO CATCH A TAX CHEAT No magic bullet can solve this vast political and economic conundrum. Any serious eŸort to do so would run headlong into some o‚ the world’s most powerful interests. So fairly radical solutions are required— as is constant vigilance, since the o£cials, bankers, accountants, and lawyers who prop up the oŸshore system will always seek new ways to subvert the rules. One tactic that some economists (and many lobbyists) advocate would be sure to fail: trying to reduce the incentive for major companies and rich people to park their money oŸshore by lowering corporate and income tax rates. For one thing, as rich countries have steadily lowered their corporate tax rates since the 1970s, corporate investment has stag- nated and tax avoidance has skyrocketed. Major •rms now sit on huge piles o‚ uninvested cash—Apple alone had nearly $300 billion at last count. Cutting corporate taxes would simply add to such piles. The same applies to lowering taxes for superwealthy individuals. There is little point in trying to “compete” with tax havens. After all, why would corporations or rich people pay a bit less when they can pay a whole lot less, or even nothing, by going oŸshore?

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What lower taxes might attract, however, is more hot money, which brings few bene•ts to economies but is associated with a raft o‚ costs: •nancial instability; asset bubbles; increased economic, political, and geographic inequality (which saps long-term growth); and the potential, especially in smaller open economies, for “Dutch disease,” in which •nancial in©ows push up real exchange rates and damage productive parts o‚ an economy. I‚ governments want to cut havens out o‚ the game, they will have to take far more drastic steps. By late 2017, U.S. taxes on the estimated $2.6 trillion in pro•ts held overseas by Fortune 500 companies were supposedly being “deferred” until such time as the companies decided to “repatriate” them. As Kimberly Clausing, Reuven Avi-Yonah, and other tax experts have recommended, the United States should simply eliminate such deferrals and tax accumulated oŸshore earnings directly, with exemptions for taxes already paid in other countries. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, such an approach to taxing multinationals could raise up to $750 billion for the U.S. Treasury. But the tax bill Trump signed into law last year went in precisely the opposite direction, levying a one-time tax on accumulated oŸshore earnings at a hugely reduced rate o between eight and 15.5 percent and exempting future foreign pro•ts from tax—thus increasing the incentive for multinationals to keep relying on tax havens. Advocates for the tax bill cheered in January when Apple announced that it would make a $38 billion tax payment on the cash that it held overseas and would spend $30 billion in capital expenditures over the next •ve years. Other technology companies will likely follow suit. But Apple’s announcement did not say that the investments had any- thing to do with the tax reforms. Moreover, the reforms will yield less than hal‚ o‚ the revenue the United States could have raised by simply taxing Apple’s roughly $246 billion in oŸshore pro•ts at the full cor- porate rate and then continuing to tax them every year. Instead, Wash- ington will get a relatively modest short-term payment and next to nothing in the future. An even more far-reaching solution is called “formulary apportion- ment” and would divide a multinational’s total global income between individual countries according to a formula based on the company’s sales, assets, and payroll in each country where it operates. After the income was so divided, each country could tax its share at whatever rate it liked. Countries could adopt this measure unilaterally, calculating

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and then taxing their share o‚ a multinational’s income, but inter- national coordination would help iron out complexities. Many U.S. states and Canadian provinces already use a version o‚ this model. It’s not without its drawbacks, but it could make a huge diŸerence i‚ properly implemented. Other solutions are already being tested. In 2014, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development set up a useful (although imperfect) global information-sharing scheme called the Common Reporting Standard, in which participating countries automatically share •nancial information about one another’s taxpayers. The § is technically similar to the  ¯§ in the United States but with a big diŸerence: unlike  ¯§ , the § doesn’t impose a hefty 30 percent tax on payments to •nancial institutions that don’t comply with it. Most large countries and even most large tax havens have agreed to partici- pate in the § , with one glaring exception: the United States. Wash- ington claims that it does participate, in eŸect, since the § is similar to  ¯§ —but this ignores the fact that although  ¯§ involves vague promises to share information with other countries, it actually oŸers other countries very little. To give the § teeth, the —the largest non-U.S. entity represented by the §À—should impose its own 30 percent tax on payments to •nancial institutions that don’t comply with the § . This would target U.S. banks, which would likely pres- sure Washington to provide the necessary information. On the level o‚ U.S. states, the activist Ralph Nader and others have long argued that letting individual states incorporate companies has resulted in a race to lower standards, as states turn themselves into permissive corporate havens in order to attract businesses and maxi- mize incorporation fees. Nader has argued for a federal law that would create “a modern federal chartering agency with comprehensive author- ity.” Limiting corporate chartering to the federal level, Nader contends, would “put an end to the wheeling and dealing that corporations use against state governments.” Another tactic would be to require all countries and territories to establish standardized central registers that would record who owns the various assets they hold—and, ideally, publish that information. The United Kingdom has the power to impose such a rule on every node in its spider web o‚ tax havens, and the  could force all its member states to do the same thing. Large, powerful countries could also blacklist tax havens that refused to take this step by imposing sanctions

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ranging from blocking foreign aid to cutting oŸ recalcitrant govern- ments or •nancial institutions from international payment systems. (The trouble with blacklists, however, is that the big players usually have the political muscle to lobby their way oŸ the lists, leaving behind only the minnows.) Alongside these measures, the ¿ case illustrates an immensely power ful principle for those seeking to tackle tax havens. For decades, countries had tried and failed to crack open Switzerland’s famed banking secrecy. The •ght launched by U.S. law enforcement against the bank didn’t exactly pit the United States against Switzerland: rather, it was chie©y a contest between the rule o law, on the one hand, and wealthy tax evaders and other criminals, on the other. Switzerland was merely the main battle•eld. U.S. authorities did not threaten the country’s government, at least not directly. I‚ authorities in one country go after another country, then elected o£cials and the public in the target country might rally against foreign “bullies.” That is what happened in 2008, when Peer Steinbrück, then the German •nance minister, publicly threatened to “take a whip” to Switzerland, albeit without providing detailed proposals. In the wake o‚ a furious response from the Swiss public, the Germans backed oŸ. In tackling tax havens, private companies often make much better targets than governments. Banks can be regulated and penalized. So can the so-called Big Four accounting •rms: Deloitte, Ñ, ÖÉÇ, and PwC, which are as responsible as any other group for putting together the nuts and bolts o‚ the oŸshore system. Little focuses the minds o‚ bankers and accountants like the threat o‚ jail or the loss o‚ a license to operate in a big economy.

TRUMP TIME? Fatalists argue that crackdowns on tax havens are pointless, like squeezing a balloon: its shape changes, they argue, but its volume stays the same. That is false. Crackdowns are more like squeezing a sponge: yes, there is some displacement, but also a reduction in volume. The real problem with crackdowns is usually that governments lack the political will to carry them out. In the United States, it seems unlikely that this will change much in the Trump era. But Trump could, in theory, revive his now tattered populist image and drive up his ©agging approval ratings by announcing a crackdown on tax havens. He has, in fact, already expressed interest in doing so. When

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I interviewed him by telephone in 2016 for an article I was writing for Vanity Fair, he told me that, i‚ elected, he would “•x” tax havens and address the issue o banking secrecy. “I fully understand the tax-haven situation, and much o‚ it will be ended,” he said. “It is very easy to end it.” But when I asked him how, he cut short the interview. Whether or not Trump acts, it seems likely that the oŸshore system will come under ever-stronger attack, as public fury rises about in- equality and as large multinationals and private elites remain untaxed, unaccountable, and out o‚ touch. Until recently, few people paid attention to tax havens, and those who did considered them to be colorful sideshows to the global economy: the province o‚ a few Ma•osi, drug runners, tax-cheating celebrities, and European aristocrats. But the Panama and Paradise Papers helped expose the truth: the oŸshore system is a cancer on the global economy. Tax havens are formidable bastions o‚ wealth and power, but because they hurt nearly everyone, the campaign against them could conceivably draw together a vast array o‚ allies. Ma•a bosses and drug runners use tax havens, so law enforcement and tough-on-crime politicians should want to shut them down. Every major private-sector •nancial institution uses tax havens and is signi•cantly implicated in the oŸshore system, so campaigners against the outsize in©uence o Wall Street should be laser-focused on the problem. U.S. banks go oŸshore to escape rules they don’t like, accelerating their path toward too-big-to-fail, too-big-to-jail status. So policymakers worried about •nancial stability should pay more atten- tion to the role o‚ tax havens. Politicians use tax havens to hide bribes and bypass disclosure laws, which means that anticorruption campaigners ought to join the fray. Dictators and their cronies in poor countries use havens to stash their looted treasure, so international development organizations should contribute more to •ghting the oŸshore system. The list o‚ potential partners in the •ght against the oŸshore system is long, and could grow longer. It is a cause that could attract voters on the right worried about crime and the corruption o‚ markets and voters on the left worried about inequality and growing corporate power. Politicians o‚ all stripes would be wise to get ahead o‚ the story.∂

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ver the last seven years, social upheavals and civil wars have torn apart the political order that had de•ned the Middle OEast ever since World War I. Once solid autocracies have fallen by the wayside, their state institutions battered and broken, and their national borders compromised. Syria and Yemen have descended into bloody civil wars worsened by foreign military interventions. A terrorist group, the Islamic State (also known as   ), seized vast areas oª Iraq and Syria before being pushed back by an international coalition led by the United States. In the eyes o‚ the Trump administration, and those o‚ a range o‚ other observers and o£cials in Washington and the region, there is one overriding culprit behind the chaos: Iran. They point out that the country has funded terrorist groups, propped up Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and aided the anti-Saudi Houthi rebels in Yemen. U.S. President Donald Trump has branded Iran “the world’s leading state sponsor o‚ terrorism,” with a “sinister vision o‚ the future,” and dismissed the nuclear agreement reached by it, the United States, and •ve other world powers in 2015 as “the worst deal ever” (and refused to certify that Iran is complying with its terms). U.S. Secretary o‚ Defense James Mattis has described Iran as “the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East.” And Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir has charged that “Iran is on a rampage.” Washington seems to believe that rolling back Iranian in©uence would restore order to the Middle East. But that expectation rests on a faulty understanding o‚ what caused it to break down in the •rst place. Iran did not cause the collapse, and containing Iran will not

VALI NASR is Dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

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bring back stability. There is no question that many aspects oª Iran’s behavior pose serious challenges to the United States. Nor is there any doubt that Iran has bene•ted from the collapse o‚ the old order in the Arab world, which used to contain it. Yet its foreign policy is far more pragmatic than many in the West comprehend. As Iran’s will- ingness to engage with the United States over its nuclear program showed, it is driven by hardheaded calculations o‚ national interest, not a desire to spread its Islamic Revolution abroad. The Middle East will regain stability only i‚ the United States does more to manage con- ©ict and restore balance there. That will require a nuanced approach, including working with Iran, not re©exively confronting it.

MORE NORMAL THAN YOU THINK Too often, politicians and analysts in the West reduce Tehran’s interests and ambitions to revolutionary fervor. Iran, the charge goes, is more interested in being a cause than a country. In fact, although Tehran certainly has its dyed-in-the-wool hard-liners, it also has many prag- matic, even moderate, politicians who are keen to engage with the West. In domestic politics, the two camps are locked in a long-running tug o‚ war. But when it comes to foreign policy, there is a growing consensus around the imperatives o‚ nationalism and national security. It was this consensus that led Iran to sign and then implement the nuclear deal. Some observers see Iran today, with its use o‚ militias and insurgents abroad, as the United States saw the Soviet Union or China at the height o‚ its revolutionary fervor—as a power intent on using asym- metric means to upset the existing order and sow chaos. Iran’s goal is to “expand its malign in©uence,” Mattis said at his con•rmation hear- ing, “to remake the region in its image.” But Iran is closer to modern Russia and China than to their revolutionary predecessors. Like them, it is a revisionist power, not a revolutionary one. It opposes a regional order designed to exclude it. Iran’s methods often defy international norms, but the national interests they serve, even when at odds with those o‚ the United States, are not uncommon. Iran’s view o‚ the world is shaped less by the likes oª Lenin and Mao than by those o‚ Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. And it is driven less by revolutionary zeal than by nationalism. What characterizes Iran’s current outlook harks back not just to the Iranian Revolution in 1979 but also to the Pahlavi dynasty, which ruled

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the country for the •ve decades leading up to the revolution. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah, envisioned Iran dominating the Middle East, with the help o‚ a nuclear capability, a superior military, and exclusive control over the Persian Gulf. For a time, the Islamic Repub- lic eschewed such nationalism in favor Iran worries that it is o‚ more ideologically driven aspirations. But nationalism has, over the last de- outgunned by its cade and a half, been on the rise. Today, traditional rivals. Iran’s leaders interlace their expressions oª •delity to Islamic ideals with long- standing nationalist myths. Like Rus- sia and China, Iran has vivid memories o‚ its imperial past and the aspirations o‚ great-power status that come with them. And like those two countries, Iran sees a U.S.-led regional order as a roadblock in the way o‚ its ambitions. Such nationalist ambitions come alongside more acute national security concerns. The Israeli and U.S. militaries pose clear and pres- ent dangers to Iran. The U.S. invasions o‚ Afghanistan and Iraq put hundreds o‚ thousands o‚ U.S. troops on Iran’s borders and convinced Tehran that it would be foolish for it to think that Iranian forces could thwart the U.S. military on the battle•eld. But the U.S. occupation o‚ Iraq showed that, once the initial invasion was over, Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents would do just that, persuading the United States to withdraw. The use o‚ those militants, who relied on training and weapons provided by Iran to kill and injure thousands o‚ U.S. soldiers during the Iraq war, also helps explain the Trump administration’s antipathy toward Iran. Iran sees threats from the Arab world, as well. From 1958, when a revolution overthrew the Iraqi monarchy, to 2003, Iraq posed an ongoing threat to Iran. The memory o‚ the eight-year Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s shapes Iran’s outlook on the Arab world. Many senior Iranian leaders are veterans o‚ that war, during which Iraq annexed Iranian territory, used chemical weapons against Iranian troops, and terrorized Iranian cities with missile attacks. And since 2003, brewing Kurdish separatism in Iraq and Syria and growing Shiite-Sunni tensions across the region have reinforced the percep- tion that the Arab world endangers Iran’s security. Iran also worries that it is outgunned by its traditional rivals. In 2016, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Iran

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Hired guns: a Hezbollah ghter on the Lebanese-Syrian border, July 2017 spent three percent o its  on its military, less than the propor- tions spent by Saudi Arabia (ten percent), Israel (six percent), Iraq (ve percent), and Jordan (four percent), putting Iran in eighth place in the Middle East in terms o defense spending as a percent- age o . Iran’s spending lags in absolute terms, as well. In 2016, for example, Saudi Arabia spent $63.7 billion on defense, ve times Iran’s $12.7 billion. To compensate for this handicap, Iran has adopted a strategy o “forward defense.” This involves supporting friendly militias and insurgent groups across the Middle East, including Hamas and Hezbollah, both o which threaten Israel’s borders. Iran’s most vaunted military unit is the Quds Force, the part o the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (—˜™) charged with training and equipping such proxies. Hezbollah has proved a particularly ešective ally, as it has

ALI achieved the only instances o Arab military success against Israel. In

HASHISHO 2000, it forced Israeli troops to withdraw from southern Lebanon, and in 2006, it blunted Israel’s ošensive there. A similar logic underlies Iran’s long-range missile program (and, / REUTERS before the 2015 agreement, its nuclear ešorts). Tehran has intended for these programs to serve as a protective umbrella over its other forces, a strategy successfully employed by Pakistan against India. Iran has

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agreed to freeze its nuclear program; the idea now is that, with a fully developed missile program, even a signi•cantly more powerful country could not attack Iran or its proxies without facing devastating retaliation.

SURROUNDED BY CHAOS Iª Iran’s behavior appears more threatening today than it once did, that is not because Iran is more intent on confronting its rivals and sowing disorder than before but because o‚ the drastic changes the Middle East has experienced over the last decade and a half. Gone is the Arab order on which Washington relied for decades to manage regional aŸairs and limit Iran’s room for maneuver. A chain o‚ events, starting with the U.S. invasion oª Iraq in 2003, culminated in the implosion o‚ the Arab world, as social unrest toppled rulers, broke down state institutions, and triggered ethnic and sectarian strife that in some cases escalated into full-©edged civil war. In many ways, the instability has enhanced Iran’s relative power and in©uence throughout the region; with so many other power centers weakened, Tehran looms larger than before. In Iraq, working through an array oª Kurdish and Shiite political forces, Iran shapes alliances, forges governments, settles disputes, and decides policies. As a result, Iraq is in©uenced more deeply by Iran than by any other country, including the United States. In Syria, Iran has combined Hezbollah •ghters with Shiite volunteers from across the Middle East to make an eŸective military force, which it has used to wage war on the opposition. As Assad has gained the upper hand in the civil war, Iran’s in©uence in Damascus has surged. And in Yemen, with very little investment, Iran has managed to bog Saudi Arabia and its allies down in a costly war, diverting Saudi resources away from Iraq and Syria. But the instability has also produced new threats. Arab public opin- ion is highly critical oª Iran’s support for the Assad regime in Syria. According to a Zogby poll published in 2012, soon after Iran entered the Syrian con©ict, the country’s favorable rating in the Arab world plummeted to 25 percent, down from a high o‚ 75 percent in 2006. And the meteoric rise o‚   , which is virulently anti-Shiite and anti- Iranian, brought into sharp relie‚ Sunni resistance to Iranian in©uence. Yet   ’ fate has also con•rmed the eŸectiveness oª forward defense in Tehran’s eyes. Without Iran’s military reach and the strength o‚ its network o‚ allies and clients in Iraq and Syria,   would have quickly swept through Damascus, Baghdad, and Erbil (the capital oª Iraqi

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Kurdistan), before reaching Iran’s own borders. Although Iran’s rivals see the strategy o‚ supporting nonstate military groups as an eŸort to export the revolution, the calculation behind it is utterly conventional: the more menacing the Arab world looks, the more determined Iran is to stay involved there. The new regional context has also heightened the risk o‚ direct con©ict between Iran and the United States or its Arab allies. But here, too, Iran’s leaders sense that they have the advantage. Iran has come out o‚ the •ght against   stronger than before. The § has trained and organized Iraqi Shiites who confronted   in Iraq, Shiite vol- With so many other power unteers who traveled from as far away as Afghanistan to •ght in Syria, and centers weakened, Tehran Houthi forces battling the pro-Saudi looms larger than before. government in Yemen. Together with Hezbollah, these Shiite groups form a force to be reckoned with. After the •ghting ends, they will continue to shape their home countries as they enter local politics, entrenching Iran’s in©uence in the Arab world. As a result, Sunni Arab states will no longer be able to manage the region on their own. Over the past year, escalating tensions with Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration’s saber rattling against Iran, and the admin- istration’s ban on travel from several Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, have touched oŸ a nationalist reaction. The de•ance toward the United States is matched by worry about the growing threat from the reinvigorated U.S.-Saudi relationship. Tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia have been on the rise since the signing o‚ the nuclear deal, but since the Trump administration took o£ce, they have taken an ominous turn. In May 2017, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s •rst deputy prime minister and minister o‚ defense, warned that the battle for in©uence over the Middle East ought to take place “inside Iran.” Iran is also no longer immune to the kinds o‚ terrorist attacks that have hit Arab and Western capitals. Last June,   gunmen and suicide bombers attacked the Iranian parliament building and the mausoleum oª Iran’s •rst supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, killing 18 people. The sense o‚ danger from the threats swirling around the country has led many Iranians to accept the logic oª forward defense. During the early years o‚ the Syrian civil war, Iran’s rulers went to great lengths

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to downplay Iranian involvement and hid Iranian casualties. Now, they publicly celebrate them as martyrs. During antigovernment protests in late December and early January, some marchers shouted slogans questioning Iran’s involvement in Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinian territories. Forward defense, the demonstrators claimed, channeled scarce resources to distant con- ©icts, away from pressing needs at home. The protests suggested that nationalism is tempered by its economic cost. But despite the public criticism, Iran is not about to collapse under the pressure o‚ imperial overreach. Iranians are skeptical o‚ their government’s regional ambi- tions, but they do not doubt the imperative o‚ defense. They worry about the threat posed by Sunni extremists to sacred Shiite cities in Iraq and Syria, and even more so to Iran itself. In any case, Iran’s rulers are not moved by the criticism. Many o‚ them saw foreign hands behind the protests. They are convinced that rather than retreat, Iran must show strength by protecting its tur‚ in the Middle East.

FROM NEGOTIATION TO CONFRONTATION The Obama administration responded to the disintegrating order in the Middle East by distancing the United States from the region’s unending instability. In a clear break with past U.S. policy, it refused to intervene in Syria’s civil war and moved beyond the old strategy o‚ containment to forge a nuclear deal with Iran. That deal angered the Arab world and aggravated regional tensions, but it also reduced the threat that would have continued to tether the United States to the Middle East just when it was trying to break free. The success o‚ the nuclear deal suggested that the United States might reimagine its relationship with Iran. Arab allies concluded that Washington would no longer be committed to containing the country and worried that it would turn away from them. Tehran agreed. With the Arab world in free fall, it reasoned, a containment strategy against Iran was unsustainable, and the nuclear deal would make it unnecessary. But despite these expectations, the United States did not fundamen- tally change its approach to the region. The Obama administration sought to assuage Arab angst by signing large arms deals with Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Those in Tehran who had supported the nuclear deal were disappointed: Iran had given up an important asset only to see the conventional

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military gap with its regional rivals widen. In 2015, Saudi Arabia and its allies for the •rst time proved willing to use that military superiority, with devastating eŸect, in Yemen—a signal that was not lost on Iran. Tehran responded by doubling down on its missile program. The Trump administration has reversed course on the nuclear deal and is pivoting back to the old U.S.-Arab alliance system, with Saudi Arabia as its anchor. The deal may limp along, but the opening that it presented Iran and the United States has closed. A return to contain- ment will be di£cult, however. Two important building blocks are missing: Iraq and Syria are weak and broken, unable to control their own territories and ruled by governments that are closer to Iran than to the United States’ Arab allies. The two countries cover most o‚ the Levant and for several decades had imposed order on its competing sects, ethnicities, and tribes. Since World War I, along with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, they had served as pillars o‚ the Arab order. After 1958, Iraq, in particular, acted as both a shield against Iranian in©uence and a spear in Iran’s side. Ultimately, the United States’ position in the Middle East re©ects its broader retreat from global leadership. The United States lacks the capacity to roll back Iranian gains and •ll the vacuum that doing so would leave behind. The shortcomings o‚ U.S. policy were on full display during last year’s referendum on independence held by Iraqi Kurdistan. Although Washington called on the Kurds not to hold the vote, it could not stop them, and after they voted for independence, it played little role in managing the ensuing crisis. Instead, Iran defused the standoŸ, which threatened to escalate into open con©ict between Baghdad and Erbil. Tehran compelled Kurdish leaders to back away from independence, surrender control over the contested city o‚ Kirkuk, and even submit to a change in leadership in the Kurdistan Regional Government. Nor can the United States’ principal Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, pick up the slack. It has successfully rallied Sunni Arab public opinion in opposition to Iran’s meddling in Syria and the rest o‚ the Arab world. And between 2013 and 2016, it, along with Qatar and Turkey, put Iran and its clients on their heels in Syria by supporting various anti-Assad opposition groups. But then the Saudi eŸort fell short. Saudi Arabia quarreled with Qatar and Turkey, and the Assad regime survived the Sunni-led opposition. And in Yemen, the Houthis have stood their ground in the face o‚ the vast military muscle o‚ the Saudi-led coalition.

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Iran still worries about Saudi Arabia’s newfound assertiveness. Prince Mohammed is waging war in Yemen and isolating Qatar, and he even attempted to strong-arm Lebanon’s prime minister, Saad Hariri, into resigning in November. Breaking with his predecessors, he has also shown a willingness to play A consensus has emerged a role in Iraq, where he is wooing Iraqi Shiite politicians, including the maver- in Tehran around closer ties ick militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. with Russia. Yet Saudi Arabia will have a hard time continuing this aggressive strategy. The crown prince has to manage a tricky succession from his father, King Salman, and pull oŸ an ambitious program o‚ social and economic reforms, all while confronting Iran. Nor does Iran feel as isolated as Washington and its allies would like. Last June, Saudi Arabia led a coalition o‚ Arab states to impose a diplomatic and economic boycott on Qatar, punishing it for cozying up to Iran and for supporting terrorist groups and the Sunni Islamist organization the Muslim Brotherhood. But the eŸort to isolate Qatar has only pushed it closer to Iran, providing Tehran with a beachhead on the southern shores o‚ the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia’s move also damaged relations with Turkey. Ankara’s ruling Justice and Development Party has ties to the Muslim Brother- hood, and the country has its own aspiration to lead the Sunni world. The U.S.-Saudi vision o‚ regional order does not re©ect Turkey’s interests and ambitions. All o‚ this has accelerated Turkey’s pivot toward Iran and Russia. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has found ways around his disagreements with Tehran and Moscow to forge a partnership with the two in order to shape events in Syria. This new axis was on full display last November, when Erdogan joined Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in Sochi to decide Syria’s fate. The rise in tensions between Iran and the United States is happening in the context oª Russia’s entry into the Middle East, which began in earnest in 2015, when Russia intervened in the Syrian civil war on behal‚ o‚ the Assad regime. U.S. o£cials have steadfastly downplayed Moscow’s interest in Syria and dismissed the idea that Russia will gain in©uence by extending its reach into the region. But Russia has emerged as the main arbiter o‚ Syria’s fate, and as its role has grown beyond Syria, it has become the only power broker in the Middle East that everyone talks to.

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Russia could not have made these gains without Iran. Iranian ground presence gave Russia its victory in Syria. And in Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, Iran and Russia have worked together closely to counter U.S. in©uence. The two countries see themselves as great powers at odds with U.S. alliances built to contain them. Russia under stands Iran’s value to its broader ambitions. Iran sits at an important geographic location and is an energy-rich country o‚ 80 million people, with a net- work o‚ allies and clients that spans the Middle East—all outside the United States’ sphere o‚ in©uence. That makes Iran a prize for Putin, who is eager to push back against the United States wherever he can. By working together in the Syrian civil war, the Iranian and Russian militaries and intelligence communities have built deep ties with one another, which will help Iran withstand future U.S. coercion. Over the past year, as the United States has backed away from the nuclear deal and put increased pressure on Iran, a consensus has emerged in Tehran around closer ties with Russia. Iran is looking to increase trade with Russia and buy sophisticated weaponry from it to counter rising military spending within the Saudi-led bloc. It may even sign a defense pact with Russia, which would include close military and intelligence cooperation and Russian access to Iranian military bases, something Iran has resisted in the past. In the end, U.S. policy may end up empowering Russia without diminishing Iran’s in©uence.

TIME TO TALK Based as it is on a warped understanding o‚ the causes o‚ the disorder in the Middle East, the Trump administration’s Iran policy is caught in a self-defeating spiral. The assumption that the United States and its Arab partners will be able to contain Iran quickly and painlessly, and that doing so will bring stability to the region, is dangerously wrong. Right now, the United States does not have enough troops in the Middle East to aŸect developments in Iraq or Syria, let alone suppress Iran. Committing the necessary military resources would force Trump to go back on his disavowal o‚ costly military adventures. And those resources would have to come at the expense o‚ other pressing issues, such as managing North Korea and deterring China and Russia. Nor should Washington put its hopes in its regional allies. They are not able to expel Iran from the Arab world, nor would they be able to replace its in©uence i‚ they did. Any regional con©agration would inevitably compel the United States to intervene.

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Even i‚ the United States did muster the necessary resources to contain Iran, doing so would not bring stability. Iran is an indispens- able component o‚ any sustainable order in the Middle East. Military confrontation would only encourage Tehran to invest even more in forward defense, leading to more Iranian meddling and more insta- bility. Stable states, such as Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, could stumble, and weak ones, such Iraq and Lebanon, could descend into the kind o lawlessness and violence that have characterized Libya and Yemen in recent years. On top o‚ that, the United States would have to contend with humanitarian crises and terrorist groups that would pick up where   left oŸ. Rather than conceive o‚ a regional order designed to contain Iran, the United States should promote a vision for the Middle East that includes Iran. It should convince Tehran that it would be better oŸ working with Washington and its allies than investing its hopes in a Russian-backed regional order. To achieve that, the United States would have to rely more on diplomacy and less on force. Washington should •nd ways to reduce tensions by engaging Iran directly, picking up where the nuclear deal left oŸ. It should also encourage Iran and Saudi Arabia to cooperate to resolve regional crises, starting with those in Syria and Yemen. Given the trust Saudi Arabia now places in the Trump adminis- tration, the United States should do what the Obama administration failed to: lead an international diplomatic eŸort to broker a regional deal that would end con©icts and create a framework for peace and stability. This task should not be left to Russia. Such an eŸort would be di£cult, especially since Washington has thrown away any dip- lomatic capital generated by the nuclear deal. But the alternative— escalating confrontation—would only drive the Middle East deeper into disarray.∂

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A BRIGHT ECONOMIC OUTLOOK By H.E. Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign A airs ince June 2017, the Government of Qatar has accelerated its plans to move from a hydrocarbon to a diversified, knowledge-based economy. In line with Qatar National Vision 2030, our Sroadmap launched in 2009 to achieve sustainable economic growth, we have strengthened international relationships with trade partners, opened new trade routes, increased our international investments and created new incentives for local and foreign businesses.

The catalyst for this rules that allow visa-free does not and will not use transformation has been entry to citizens of over 80 economic tools to harm the illegal blockade im- countries. trading partners, nor do posed on us by our neigh- As a testament to our we leverage business bors. The blockade has commitment to economic deals for political gain. inspired national pride development, we are Ultimately, we are com- and patriotism in Qatar building strategic partner- mitted to creating a dy- and given us the chance ships with international namic and more diversi- to tell the world who we investors as we look for- fied economy in which are, what we stand for and ward to foreign invest- the private sector plays what we believe in. ment in Qatar, as well as a prominent role. This While the blockading opportunities to bolster has been boosted by countries attempted to foreign economies. the opening of our new use economic means to H.E. Mohammed Bin The United States and Hamad Port, south of the curtail our sovereignty Abdulrahman Al-Thani, Deputy the United Kingdom re- capital Doha, which now through closing borders, Prime Minister and Minister of main key partners for in- handles 27 percent of splitting up families, and Foreign A airs ternational investment trade in the region. attempting to harm our In recent months, we and collaboration. Qatar Since its opening last currency, we have re- have made it easier for has invested $27 bil- September, we have es- mained committed to foreign investors to gain lion in the US with nearly tablished new shipping keeping business and a foothold in the Qatari $10 billion more slated routes to Oman, Kuwait, politics separate. Put sim- market by removing bar- for projects in the years Turkey, Pakistan, and India. ply, we will never stoop to riers to investment and ahead. Qatari investment The illegal actions their level and put our re- providing greater in- in the UK has amounted of our neighbors have gion’s citizens at risk. centives through our to £40 billion, and we an- served as an impetus for The fundamentals of our Investment Free Zones, nounced in March that we us to accelerate our eco- economy remain strong including those located will invest an additional nomic plans and renew and we have not scaled at Hamad International £5 billion in the next three our commitment to diver- back our domestic or in- Airport. to ve years. sification and sustained ternational trade or made We have also fast- Since the start of the growth. changes to our long-term tracked major labor re- blockade, we have con- We fully expect to see investment strategy. Our forms in partnership with tinued to honor all of our a strong return of the assets and foreign invest- the International Labor business agreements and Qatari economy this year ments comprise more Organization and opened we have not missed or and growth over the than 250 percent of our the door for expatriates to delayed a single shipment years to come and we GDP and we remain the gain permanent residency of energy to our regional will continue to build world’s largest exporter of in Qatar, a rst for the re- and international partners strategic partnerships LNG, GTL and the second gion. This is in addition to that rely on Qatar for their with our friends around largest producer of helium. the introduction of new sources of energy. Qatar the world. n

FA-QATAR 2018.indd 1 18/01/2018 13:29 [Global Media Inc. / www.gmipost.com] SSPONSOREDPONSORED RREPORT Educating Media Professionals and Old School, New School Engaging Thought Leadership in the idely known as an oil-rich state, Qatar has built a reputa- Middle East tion over the years as a more diversi ed economy with a QATAR By Everette E. Dennis, Dean Wglobalized outlook on development. Apart from the usual and CEO of Northwestern petrochemical players, the country boasts large local agships as University in Qatar well as new contributors to its nation-building project. Established in 1964, Qatar Insurance Company (QIC) is the orthwestern University largest insurance company in the MENA region by Gross Written in Qatar (NU-Q) began Premium and market capitalization. Group President and CEO Nits tenth year of op- Khalifa Abdulla Turki Al-Subaey wants the company to become erations in the fall of 2017, fully among the world’s top 50 insurance companies by 2030. ensconced in a new 515,000 Dennis delivers keynote address at “We are a Qatar-based composite insurer with an underwrit- square foot building, hailed as OSCE conference in Vienna. ing footprint across the Middle East and the rest of the world. The one of the world’s largest and group is the leading insurance group in the region in terms of total most advanced communication and media centers where en- assets, gross written premi- gaged innovation in teaching, research and thought leadership ums and net income,” said Al- continues apace. Subaey. Designed by architect Antoine Predock, the building features the With 73 percent of its gross infrastructure of a television network and a Hollywood studio with a robotic newsroom, massive video installations, a state of the art written premium generated cinema, black box theater and the largest sound stage in the region from outside of the Middle along with classrooms, auditorium, executive education center and East, QIC’s strategy is under- even a digital museum, called the Media Majlis at NU-Q, which will pinned by continued global open in September 2018. expansion and diversi cation. A diverse, cosmopolitan student body from Qatar and 40 other “QIC’s international busi- countries comes to NU-Q to study media industries and technology ness is a critical element of as well as journalism and strategic communication imbedded in a the group’s overall insurance liberal arts context. Graduates work in media industries, business, and reinsurance operations. government, and other elds. Thirty-four percent of the rst four We have grown in recent years graduating classes have matriculated for advanced study to the both organically and through world’s top graduate schools, such as Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard acquisition, and we will con- and London School of Economics. tinue to do so,” said Al-Subaey. The resident faculty is made up of media professionals, renowned While QIC is primarily non- Qatar Insurance Company (QIC) scholars, and others including award-winning documentary and life insurance and reinsurance narrative lmmakers. The curriculum, modeled on and validated President and CEO Khalifa group, the group is looking to Abdulla Al-Subaey by Northwestern’s home campus, has also developed specialties in expand into life and medical Middle East Studies, Media and Politics, Strategic Communication, insurance and is open to partnerships with global players to gain and other specialties. NU-Q is dedicated to the advancement of freedom of expression access to new distribution platforms and geographic markets. and independent media through its current undergraduate instruc- “We are focusing on the Asia-Paci c markets. We already have tion with degrees granted by Northwestern’s home campus in the operations in Shanghai and Singapore through leading specialist United States. insurance and reinsurance group Antares, which we acquired in NU-Q also has a signature institutional research project, Media 2014 and we want to expand our presence beyond,” explained Al- Use in the Middle East, now in its fth year, the only longitudinal Subaey. study of its kind in the world, and a partner in the World Internet In the next two years, Al-Subaey plans to implement structural Project. Along with the course Media Industries in the Middle East, changes and adopt new technology to improve customer service. NU-Q maintains an interactive website where these massive data “During the past half century, QIC has served as a trusted insur- sets are available to scholars, media professionals, and the public. ance partner to businesses and individuals both locally and region- (www.mideastmedia.org) ally. Now, it is spreading its wings globally beyond the regions,” Northwestern University in Qatar carries out its work sensitive shared Al Subaey. to local culture and traditions and fully conscious of the tensions Focused on communication and journalism and embedded in separating tradition and modernity, while building connections to the liberal arts, Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) has attract- the realities of a digital and global society. Being at the epicenter ed around 300 students coming from 40 dierent countries, half of of geopolitics and higher education has yielded great bene ts for them Qatari nationals. individuals, institutions, and society itself. n “We have a uniquely diverse student body, which creates a glob- al environment for our students. In a country with little tradition for journalism and media education, we have seen interest in our programs grow over several years. Due to a recent diplomatic crisis, our students have a front row seat to a situation that is multifaceted and has many causes, all with a central communication and media component,” said NU-Q Dean and CEO Everette Dennis. Following the diplomatic embargo declared by some of its neighbors in June 2017, Qatar, with its population of 2.6 million, has displayed extraordinary agility and resilience in negotiating the challenges posed by the crisis. “We have various print and digital media outlets, television and radio outlets and a booming lm industry. So we have a ‘media city’ in Qatar and NU-Q is well positioned to provide talent for that in- dustry. Our graduates are being employed to help tell the story of Qatar’s evolution and change,” explained Dennis. n

FA-QATAR 2018.indd 2 18/01/2018 13:29 SPONSORED REPORT [Global Media Inc. / www.gmipost.com] QATAR

FA-QATAR 2018.indd 3 18/01/2018 13:29

The President and the Bomb Reforming the Nuclear Launch Process Richard K. Betts and Matthew C. Waxman

n November 2017, for the •rst time in 41 years, the U.S. Congress held a hearing to consider changes to the president’s authority to Ilaunch nuclear weapons. Although Senator Bob Corker o Tennessee, the Republican chair o‚ the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, insisted that the hearing was “not speci•c to anybody,” Democrats used the opportunity to air concerns that President Donald Trump might stumble into nuclear war. After all, he had threatened to unleash “•re and fury” on North Korea, and he subsequently boasted in a tweet about the size o‚ the •gurative “nuclear button” on his desk in the Oval O£ce. General C. Robert Kehler—a former head o‚ U.S. Strategic Command, the main organization responsible for •ghting a nuclear war—tried to calm senators’ fears about an irresponsible president starting such a war on a whim. He described how the existing process for authorizing the launch o‚ nuclear weapons would “enable the pres- ident to consult with his senior advisers” and reminded the senators that o£cers in the chain o‚ command are duty-bound to refuse an illegal order. What Kehler could not assure the senators, however, was that the process that enabled the president to seek the concurrence o‚ the secretary o‚ defense or senior o£cers actually required him to do so, or even required that he consult with advisers. Nor could he assure them that o£cers receiving a launch order would dare to assert their own judgment over his about its legality, or that the president

RICHARD K. BETTS is Director of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. MATTHEW C. WAXMAN is Liviu Librescu Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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would listen to them i‚ they did. When asked by Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland, whether the president could ignore a military lawyer’s advice that an order to launch a nuclear attack was illegal, Kehler said that would present “a very interesting constitutional situation.” He continued: “I would say, ‘I have a question about this, and I’m not ready to proceed.’” Pressed by Cardin about what would happen next, Kehler responded, “Well, I don’t know.” The implication was worrisome: although common sense and careful o£cial planning dictate a process to prevent an imprudent and impulsive president from starting a nuclear war, there is nothing stopping a determined president from overriding it. Details o‚ the current nuclear launch process are classi•ed, but in general, they are designed to ensure that the president can quickly order a launch. That’s why wherever the president goes, he is accom- panied by a military o£cer carrying the “football,” a briefcase contain- ing strike options and codes used for communicating with the chain o‚ command and con•rming that an order is authentic. Once an order is issued, it reaches o£cers manning the missile silos, bombers, and sub- marines responsible for carrying out an attack. Before issuing the order, however, the president is expected to confer in person or over a secure line with senior military and civilian advisers. But that is merely assumed. The secretary o‚ defense has no formal role in the authorization, and the president can bypass him i he wishes. That needs to change: any presidential order to launch nuclear weapons that is not in response to an enemy nuclear attack should require the concurrence o‚ the secretary o‚ defense and the attorney general. This reform is not aimed at a particular president; it addresses a problem that could arise in any administration. Moreover, adding these checks would not only limit the commander in chie ’s power but also buttress it, protecting the launch process from interference by unauthorized parties.

CONSTRAINING AND CONFIRMING There are two sets o‚ scenarios in which a U.S. president might order a nuclear strike. The •rst is relatively straightforward and uncontro- versial: launching a retaliatory attack after or during an enemy nuclear attack. In that case, given the need to respond quickly, the commander in chie ’s power should remain unhampered. The concern arises when considering the other set o‚ scenarios: the •rst use o‚ nuclear weapons,

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Hail Mary: carrying the “nuclear football” in Washington, D.C., February 2017 either as an initial knockout blow or during the course o‚ a conventional war. What i‚ the commander in chie‚ ordered such an attack without su£cient cause, consultation, or legal justi•cation? Starting a nuclear war is the most momentous national security decision imaginable. Some observers have called for a ban on nuclear •rst use altogether, and the Obama administration considered declaring a no-•rst-use policy near the end o‚ its second term. But for better or worse, U.S. and  ¯ strategic doctrine has always rested on this option (originally, to counter the Soviets’ perceived superiority in conventional forces), and there is no consensus for taking it oŸ the table. In the event that the president wanted to be the •rst in a con©ict to use nuclear weapons, two procedural problems could arise: insu£cient deliberation and insubordination. On the one hand, the president might order a launch without adequate consideration or without con- KEVIN sulting responsible advisers, and the military chain o‚ command might

LAMARQUE simply comply. On the other hand, he might order a launch and o£cers might refuse to comply, either doubting the order’s authenticity or resisting it on moral or other grounds. Either possibility is dangerous. / REUTERS The •rst risks unnecessary and catastrophic escalation. The second may seem less dangerous—to some it may even seem desirable—but a refusal by uniformed o£cers to comply would deeply damage the

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hallowed norms o‚ civilian control o‚ the military. Currently, i‚ the president orders a launch, there are technical means to ensure the authenticity o‚ the order, but the system is not designed to deal with an order that appears to be irrational. Relying on ad hoc disobedience o‚ orders o‚ questionable legality is not the right solution to this prob- lem, since it is both unreliable and fraught with bad constitutional and policy implications. A third and very diŸerent problem—the possibility o‚ unauthorized parties tampering with the system to inject a false launch order or block a legitimate one—has received less attention. Such a problem is unlikely. The U.S. nuclear command-and-control system has been carefully designed with redundant bul- It is time to add new warks against imaginable accidents— but so have nuclear power plants, and checks to the process for still there were unanticipated disasters nuclear £rst use. at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, all o‚ which would pale in comparison to a single mistaken use o‚ nuclear weapons. When it comes to nuclear weapons, even extremely low odds o‚ a mistake should be reduced in any reasonable way possible. Whether an unauthorized launch stemmed from an unhinged military aide in charge o‚ the football, unforeseen technical glitches that accidentally mimicked a presidential order, malicious hackers who managed to penetrate the command-and-control system, or malfunctioning sensors that generated false warnings o‚ an attack, a requirement that o£cials in addition to the president sign oŸ on a nuclear launch would serve as a valuable safeguard. It would make it harder for a wayward president, a provoca- teur, or a malfunction to start a nuclear con©agration, while preserving the president’s option to •re nuclear weapons •rst when sensible o£cials consider it necessary. Given the de•ciencies in the existing process, it is time to add new checks for nuclear •rst use: certi•cation from the secretary o‚ defense that a given order is valid (meaning de•nitely from the commander in chie ) and from the attorney general that it is legal (that is, within the president’s authority and proper legal bounds). Requiring written con•r- mation from the secretary o‚ defense that the president has, in fact, commanded a launch would supplement the existing technical means for ensuring an order’s authenticity. More important, it would guarantee the secretary’s involvement in the decision-making. Requiring written

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con•rmation from the attorney general that an order is legal—or, alternatively, that there has been a meaningful review o‚ the order’s legality—would further widen the circle o‚ cabinet-level discussion. For both o£cials, provisions would need to be made for alternates to perform their roles when needed. These proposed requirements could be implemented either by the executive branch, through an executive order, or by the legislative branch, through a new law. The executive-branch route would be more politically and legally palatable to those who oppose legislative restrictions on presidential decision-making or fear that it would lead to further congressional meddling. True, executive orders can be waived by the president, but once it was institutionalized in two cabinet departments, it would be di£cult to undo this requirement quickly and without raising major alarms internally. Codifying these requirements instead through legislation would have virtues and risks. For one thing, statutory requirements would give commanders below an irrational president greater con•dence to resist an unjusti•ed launch order. There is, however, a danger that even i‚ such a statute were not watered down during the legislative process, the executive branch might label it unconstitutional and announce that it would refuse to be bound by it, at least in certain circumstances. The legal issues raised by such a law are unlikely to ever be resolved by the courts, which have tended to punt on tough questions about war powers and leave them to the other branches. That said, the executive branch often adopts practices mandated by Congress even without conceding its legal position. (For example, presidents regularly submit noti•cations to Congress about the use o‚ U.S. forces, as required by the 1973 War Powers Resolution, even when questioning the constitutionality or applicability o‚ the law.) I‚ Congress did pass reforms to the nuclear launch process, it should be prepared to exercise •rm oversight and, i‚ necessary, use its other powers, such as threatening to withhold certain funding, to ensure that the executive branch followed through. Adding new certi•cations to the launch process should appeal to a broad range o‚ opinions—both o‚ those who want to move toward a ban on •rst use and o‚ those who are worried about the credibility o‚ U.S. nuclear deterrence, including whether the command-and-control system will function as intended in crises. The fact that the safeguards would both constrain and empower the president as commander in

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chie‚ should increase the odds o‚ a viable political coalition for reform. Still, the proposal would no doubt be controversial. But the most likely criticisms do not hold up.

IS THIS REALLY A PROBLEM? The •rst criticism o‚ additional checks is that they represent a solution to a problem that does not exist. Granted, the image o‚ a president simply pushing a button to launch hundreds o‚ missiles at a moment’s notice, unchallenged, is naive. And although the details o‚ command and control are classi•ed, some o‚ the most informed critics o‚ reform insist that consultation and concurrence are solidly built into the stan- dard operating procedure. As a practical matter, however, senior o£cials might not be immediately available when called on to confer with the president, a problem that has come up in past exercises and false- warning incidents. More to the point, the president can change or revoke the procedural plans that his subordinates have designed, reject the counsel o‚ top advisers, or issue orders directly to o£cers in the chain o‚ command—who in some circumstances could be no more senior than a colonel. O£cers are bound to disobey orders that are obviously illegal, but when the legality o‚ a command seems uncertain, they are not expected to resist. O£cers might be especially inclined to defer to the commander in chie‚ in a crisis or even merely in a situation o‚ increased tension, when an order for action, however unwise it may sound, would not seem to be a completely nonsensical bolt from the blue. (The current strain with North Korea represents just such a situation.) I‚ the presi- dent said that the United States needed to launch an anticipatory •rst strike to prevent an enemy attack that could kill many Americans, there is no guarantee that o£cers o‚ any rank would assert that their interpretation o‚ the law should take precedence over his. Besides, those who count on o£cers in the chain o‚ command to resist illegal nuclear orders rarely consider what that would mean the day after, for presidential authority over the military or for the credibility o‚ the nuclear deterrent. I‚ a four-star general who headed U.S. Strategic Command does not know what would happen i‚ the president insisted on a suspect order, as Kehler admitted, then there certainly is a problem. And some o‚ the most knowledgeable civilian experts on command-and-control procedures—such as Bruce Blair, a scholar at Princeton (and former

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missile launch control o£cer in the U.S. Air Force), and Scott Sagan, a political scientist at Stanford—are •rmly convinced that the current system is inadequate. The current reliance on the president’s optional consultation with top advisers is only a speed bump in slowing a pre- cipitous launch authorization. What’s needed is a circuit breaker. Lengthening the time in which an irrational launch order could be held up, as required certi•cation by the secretary o‚ defense and the attorney general would do, would buy time for the most extreme solution, i‚ it appeared necessary: the as-yet-untested process, author- ized by the 25th Amendment, by which cabinet o£cers can legally remove a president who has gone oŸ the deep end. What about the opposite problem—that unauthorized parties could manage to block the legitimate use o‚ nuclear forces? It’s hard to know how signi•cant that risk is. But even i‚ the current system is immune to such interference—and to the similar danger o‚ an unforeseen malfunction—there is no guarantee that it will remain so, especially in the age o‚ rapidly evolving technology and burgeoning failures in cybersecurity. The record in military history o‚ disastrous surprises that had been considered impossible before the fact does not inspire con•dence.

TYING THE PRESIDENT’S HANDS? A second line o‚ criticism contends that these reforms would danger- ously tie the president’s hands. Skeptics fear that even a short lag in the process could give an enemy an advantage, whether during a tense standoŸ or in the course o‚ a conventional con©ict. It’s impor- tant to remember, however, that the measures would apply only to •rst use, meaning that there is no risk that a president would be unable to retaliate quickly against an enemy nuclear attack in progress. That said, the one situation in which additional steps in the process could present a problem would be i‚ a president felt it necessary to launch a preemptive nuclear strike—that is, one intended to interdict an imminent attack by an enemy making immediate preparations for nuclear war. It’s important to distinguish this from a preventive war, one waged in anticipation o‚ a possible enemy attack sometime in the future. Preventive wars are almost never a good idea, given the uncertainty about whether the threat will ever come to pass, and because they are usually seen by the rest o‚ the world as aggression, not defense. A nuclear one started by the United States, in©icting

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epochal devastation without immediate provocation, would brand the country as an international outlaw. A preemptive attack, in contrast, could be more legitimate, since i‚ an enemy attack really was about to begin, a U.S. •rst strike might block the damage it could in©ict. Preemption is still very risky, how- ever, since it may be impossible in the heat o‚ a crisis to determine whether the enemy’s war preparations are intended for oŸense or defense. Figuring out which mistake is the greater risk—launching an unnecessary attack or falling victim to aggression—has long been a central strategic dilemma for decision-makers. During the Cold War, the United States handled the dilemma by constructing a nuclear force capable o‚ surviving a •rst strike and •ring back eŸectively, creating a sense o‚ certain retaliation, which would make Moscow refrain from initiating a nuclear attack under any circumstances, since it knew that doing so would be suicidal. Thus, there would be no need for preemption, even in a crisis. No strategy is foolproof, but such deterrence should still work today, even against a reckless adversary such as the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who, for all his bluster, still wants to stay in power (and alive). I‚ U.S. intelligence did report a major increase in the readiness o‚ North Korean forces, the argument for a preemptive strike would grow stronger, but should not override the reasons for nuclear restraint. Rather, policymakers should make an eŸort to maximize the capabili- ties for preemption with conventional forces. Doing so may require technical and operational innovations, along with the deployment o‚ additional forces near the scene in peacetime, and it would raise the risk oª failing to destroy 100 percent o‚ the enemy’s arsenal. But the alternative risk—starting an unnecessary nuclear war—is worse.

UNCONSTITUTIONAL? The third likely criticism would come from those who believe that limiting the president’s nuclear authority—i‚ done through legislation— would violate the Constitution. Imposing conditions on his authority to direct military o£cials and exercise tactical and operational control over U.S. forces, the argument runs, would encroach on his executive powers, including as commander in chief. But the proposed requirements are justi•ably within Congress’ authority. The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war and regulate the military, provisions that arguably include the power

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to place limits on when the president may resort to nuclear •rst use. New requirements would also raise separate concerns about encum- bering the president’s direct command o‚ military forces or intruding on his power to determine how to conduct military operations, but Congress may arguably legislate measures such as these to ensure that the president’s commands are lawfully and properly carried out, without taking military options completely oŸ the table. In the past, the enormous stakes o‚ nuclear decision-making were used to justify expanded presidential powers, but today, the better argument is that the special challenges o‚ nuclear decisions justify giving Congress some authority to regulate them. To be clear, this proposal leaves open many constitutional and legal questions. Under what circumstances may a president resort to a nuclear •rst strike without explicit authorization from Congress? What international law applies to a proposed strike, and how should it be interpreted in the context at hand? But the aim right now should not be to answer such questions de•nitively; rather, it should be to ensure that before a nuclear attack is launched, the answers are carefully considered, formalized, and communicated reliably down the chain o‚ command. Instead o‚ settling the thorny ques- tions in advance, they would be left for the attorney general to answer when certifying the legality or legal review o‚ a given proposed attack. Moreover, merely institutionalizing this process o‚ requiring the attorney general’s o£cial opinion would allow time for reconsidera- tion. And in the event that the attorney general refused to certify that a strike was legal, the process would give the chain o‚ command the con•dence needed to resist an irrational president who wished to start a nuclear war without reasonable grounds. In other words, it would put insubordination on •rmer legal footing, should it come to that.

THE BALANCE OF RISKS Requiring additional checks for the •rst use o‚ nuclear weapons would serve as a hedge against a low-probability, high-consequence event: an impetuous commander in chie lurching into catastrophe. At the same time, it would help guard against interference by hostile parties seeking to sabotage the chain o‚ command, and it would improve decision- making and implementation in the very unlikely event that a nuclear •rst strike were truly necessary. Political and legal opposition to this proposal will inevitably be strong. Much o‚ that will concern the

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question o‚ the extent o‚ the president’s war powers, but merely adding a delay to the process for •rst use does not require resolving this long-standing constitutional debate. I‚ only by ensuring and formalizing deliberation, these reforms would buy time for respon- sible o£cials to take action. And although critics will inevitably point to the political, strategic, and legal risks o‚ this proposal, the problem o‚ an inadvertent nuclear war has no risk-free solution. Adding new steps to the authorization process would balance these risks better than the current system does. Questions about how and when to use nuclear weapons may seem like an academic relic o‚ the Cold War era, a time when they consumed defense planners. Indeed, after the Soviet Union collapsed, such ques- tions faded away as smaller security problems took center stage. But now, as tensions grow with the established nuclear powers o‚ China and Russia and with the new nuclear power oª North Korea and the potential one oª Iran, such debates have returned to the fore. As the United States adapts its nuclear strategy to the twenty-•rst century, it should adapt its nuclear decision-making procedures, too. The founders put a high premium on checks and balances out o‚ a healthy appreciation for the limits o‚ any individual’s virtue or wisdom. There is every reason to apply this logic to the process o‚ starting a nuclear war—the ultimate presidential power.∂

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MA18_Book.indb 128 1/18/18 10:21 PM Mugabe’s Misrule And How It Will Hold Zimbabwe Back Martin Meredith

n a radio broadcast that Robert Mugabe made from exile in 1976, during the guerrilla war he was leading to overthrow white- Iminority rule in Rhodesia, he set out his views about the kind o‚ electoral democracy he intended to establish once he had gained control o‚ Zimbabwe, as the new state was to be named. “Our votes must go together with our guns,” he said. “After all, any vote we shall have shall have been the product o‚ the gun. The gun which produces the vote should remain its security o£cer—its guarantor. The people’s votes and the people’s guns are always inseparable twins.” As Zimbabwe’s leader for 37 years, Mugabe never deviated from this attachment to brute force. Whatever challenge his regime faced, he was always prepared to overcome it by resorting to the gun. So proud was he o his record that he once boasted that in addition to his seven university degrees, he had acquired “many degrees in violence.” What propelled Mugabe to use violence so readily was his obsession with power. Power for Mugabe was not a means to an end but the end itself. His overriding ambition was to gain total control, and he pursued that objective with relentless single-mindedness, crushing opponents and critics who stood in his way, sanctioning murder, torture, and lawlessness o‚ every kind. “I will never, never, never, never surrender,” he said after unleashing a campaign o‚ terror to win an election held in 2008. “Zimbabwe is mine.” To sustain himsel‚ in power, Mugabe came to rely on a cabal o‚ army generals, police chiefs, senior civil servants, and political cronies will- ing to do his bidding. In return, he gave them license to amass huge personal wealth, derived mainly from bribes and the looting o‚ state assets. As the bedrock o‚ the Mugabe state, they became accustomed

MARTIN MEREDITH is a journalist, historian, and biographer. He is the author of The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence.

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to using methods o‚ violence and intimidation as a matter o‚ routine, able to act with impunity. Ensconced in the presidential residence in Harare, the capital, Mugabe intended to rule for life. At the age o‚ 93, although prone to falling asleep in meetings and a×icted by memory lapses, he still clung to power with the same determination and ruthlessness that had marked his political career from the start. In his dotage, however, he succumbed to the blandishments o‚ his 52-year-old wife, Grace, an avaricious and menacing •gure with ambitions to establish hersel‚ at the head o‚ a Mugabe dynasty. During a vicious struggle over the succession, Mugabe was persuaded in November 2017 to dismiss Grace’s main rival, Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, his chie‚ enforcer and a key player in the security estab- lishment. Fearing that their own positions were under threat, the generals who had underwritten Mugabe’s rule for so long decided to stage a palace coup, placing him under house arrest. For six days, Mugabe tried to hold on to the trappings o‚ o£ce, but after losing the support o his party, he accepted a lavish retirement package and agreed to resign, paving the way for Mnangagwa to take control. Mugabe may have gone, but the Mugabe state lives on. The apparatus o‚ vote rigging and repression is still in place. The plight o‚ Zimbabwe, moreover, remains pitiful, a once prosperous country not only reduced to economic ruin but also trapped in a culture o‚ corruption and violence that Mugabe fostered since gaining power in 1980 and that is now deeply embedded among the ruling elite. There is little hope o‚ much change for the better.

FROM TEACHER TO REVOLUTIONARY Before he entered politics, Mugabe seemed set on an illustrious career as a teacher. Like many other independence leaders in Africa, he was a product o‚ the mission-school system. As a pupil at Kutama Mission School in rural Rhodesia, then a British colony, he devoted much o his time to studying, encouraged by Jesuit teachers who recognized his in- tellectual ability and his aptitude for self-discipline. His Jesuit upbring- ing instilled in him a self-con•dence that he never lost. Yet he was also secretive and solitary, preferring books to sports or other school activi- ties. “His books were his only friends,” his brother Donato once recalled. Mugabe left Kutama in 1945 with a teaching diploma and took up a series o‚ teaching posts. After winning a scholarship to study in

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No country for old man: Mugabe and his wife, November 2017 South Africa, he returned to Rhodesia in 1952 more politically aware o‚ the injustices o‚ white rule, but he still preferred to continue his studies rather than engage in political activity. To his political friends in the 1950s, he remained an aloo‚ and austere •gure, a supporter o‚ the African nationalist cause but one who kept his distance. In 1958, with three academic degrees to his credit, he took up a post at a teacher-training institute in newly independent Ghana. As the •rst black African colony to gain independence, Ghana was brimming with optimism and ambition at the time. Its leader, Kwame Nkrumah, harbored grand plans for a new socialist order and was keen to support the liberation o‚ the rest o‚ Africa from European rule. Mugabe reveled PHILIMON BULAWAYO in this environment but nevertheless remained committed to his work as a teacher. The pivotal moment came in 1960, when he returned to Rhodesia for a brie‚ visit, fully expecting to go back to Ghana, but found himsel‚ caught up in nationalist agitation against white rule. Galvanized into / REUTERS action by street protests, he abruptly resigned from his teaching post and threw himsel‚ into the nationalist fray with the same dedication he had hitherto devoted to education.

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Mugabe was among the •rst nationalists to advocate armed struggle, convinced that nothing else would overcome white intransigence. But he was simultaneously helping organize attacks against black political opponents. When the nationalist movement split in 1963, setting oŸ internecine warfare between two rival factions, Ø  (the Zimbabwe African National Union) and Ø É (the Zimbabwe African People’s Union), Mugabe played a prominent role in orchestrating violence carried out by Ø Â’s youth group against Ø ÉÂ. Z É was politically aligned with the Soviet Union and tended to focus on the urban proletariat, whereas Ø  supported Mao Zedong’s China and was agrarian in outlook. Gang violence between the two factions eventually gave Rhodesia’s white rulers su£cient pretext to arrest nationalist leaders and crush the nationalist movement in 1964 in the name o law and order. When a guerrilla war against white rule broke out in 1972, Ø  and Ø É fought separately in diŸerent parts oª Rhodesia. Meanwhile, many o‚ the personal hatreds and antagonisms engendered in the nationalist movement in the 1960s continued to fester and came to the fore after independence in 1980, with disastrous consequences. Like Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Mugabe endured long years o‚ imprisonment. And like him, he suŸered the anguish o losing a son and was refused permission to attend the funeral. But whereas Mandela used his prison term to open a dialogue with South Africa’s white rulers in order to defeat apartheid, Mugabe emerged from 11 years in prison bent on revolution. In 1975, he escaped into exile in neighboring Mo- zambique, intent on taking control o‚ Ø Â’s war eŸort, determined to overthrow white society by force and replace it with a one-party Marxist regime. In 1979, after seven years o‚ civil war in which at least 30,000 people had died, a negotiated settlement under British auspices was within reach, but Mugabe still hankered for military victory—“the ultimate joy,” as he described it at the time. Only an ultimatum from African presidents who had until now backed him forced him to compromise, accepting a cease-•re and a British-run transition to independence. “As I signed the document, I was not a happy man at all,” he recalled.

THE DICTATOR After winning a majority in Zimbabwe’s inaugural elections in February 1980, Mugabe became prime minister o‚ a coalition government amid a rising sense o‚ optimism. He made strenuous eŸorts to achieve a good

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working relationship with his former white adversaries, pledging to strive for reconciliation and racial harmony. Instead o‚ the angry Marxist ogre that the white minority had been led to expect, he impressed them as a model o‚ moderation. Even the recalcitrant white leader Ian Smith, who had previously denounced Mugabe as “the apostle o‚ Satan,” found him “sober and responsible.” On the international stage, Zimbabwe was accorded star status. In the •rst year o‚ independence, Zimbabwe was awarded more than $1 billion in aid, enabling Mugabe to em- bark on ambitious health and education Within weeks of taking programs. The white population, too, bene•ted from the growing prosperity. o‘ce, Mugabe decided to Mugabe paid particular attention to settle some old scores, not the concerns o‚ white farmers—the against former white backbone o‚ the agricultural economy— reassuring them with large increases in adversaries but against commodity prices. “Good old Bob!” they black opponents. cheered. “We are the darling o‚ the world,” Mugabe told a meeting o‚ white farmers, “and since we are on honeymoon and honeymoons don’t always last long, we ought to take advantage o‚ it!” Zimbabwe’s honeymoon was indeed brief. Within weeks o‚ taking o£ce, Mugabe decided to settle some old scores, not against former white adversaries but against black opponents. Although Mugabe’s party, Ø ÂÙÉ (the additional two letters stand for “Patriotic Front”), had won the February 1980 elections with a substantial ma- jority, the outcome left his Ø É rivals with a stronghold in Matabele- land, a region that makes up the western hal‚ o‚ the country. Mugabe made clear his intention o‚ provoking a showdown, licensing his closest colleagues to speak out about the need to “crush” Ø ÉÂ. In October 1980, he secretly arranged for North Koreans to train a special military brigade as a strike force. It was given the name Gukurahundi, after a Shona word meaning “the rain that blows away the chaŸ before the spring rains.” In 1983, using “dissident” activity in Matabeleland as a pretext, Mugabe unleashed the Gukurahundi on a campaign o‚ mass murder, torture, arson, rape, and beatings directed mainly against the civilian population there. One o‚ the key •gures in the campaign was Mnangagwa, then the minister o‚ state security, who described the “dissidents” as “cockroaches”

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that needed to be eliminated. Over a four-year period, an estimated 20,000 civilians were killed. Z É eventually capitulated and agreed to disband. Having demolished his Ø É rivals and established a de facto one- party state, Mugabe went on to accumulate huge personal power, giving himsel‚ the right to hold o£ce as president for an unlimited number o‚ terms. He based his regime on a vast system o‚ patronage, controlling appointments to all senior posts in the civil service, the defense forces, the police, and parastatal organizations. One by one, all these institu- tions—and, eventually, the judiciary—were subordinated to his will. His secret police harassed, intimidated, and murdered his opponents. As a reward for their loyalty, Mugabe allowed the new elite to engage in a scramble for property, farms, businesses, and contracts. “I am rich because I belong to Ø ÂÙÉ,” boasted one o his cronies, the multimil- lionaire businessman Philip Chiyangwa, in the press. “I‚ you want to be rich, you must join Ø ÂÙÉ.” The scramble became ever more frenetic, spawning corruption on a massive scale. One after another, state corpo- rations—the national oil company, the national electric company, the national telecommunications company—were plundered. Fraud, theft, and embezzlement in government departments became endemic. In the most notorious case, a state fund set up to provide compensation for those who had suŸered during the liberation war was looted so thor- oughly by Mugabe’s colleagues that nothing was left for genuine vic- tims. A land redistribution program •nanced by the British government was halted when it was discovered that Mugabe had been handing out farms intended for peasant resettlement to ministers and o£cials. By the mid-1990s, Mugabe had become an irascible dictator, brooking no opposition, contemptuous o‚ the law and human rights, and indif- ferent to the incompetence and corruption around him. Whatever good intentions he had started out with had long since evaporated. Surrounded by sycophants, he had become increasingly detached from reality, living in heavily forti•ed residences and venturing out only with retinues o‚ armed bodyguards and in large motorcades. He spent much o his time abroad, enjoying the role o‚ revolutionary hero.

CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE Ordinary people suŸered the brunt o‚ government mismanagement. By 2000, Zimbabweans were generally poorer than they had been at independence; average wages were lower; unemployment had tripled;

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and life expectancy was falling. More than two-thirds o‚ the population lived in abject poverty. Veterans o‚ the liberation war held particular grievances over government neglect and Mugabe’s failure to deliver on promises o land reform. Popular opposition to Mugabe’s regime spread to many parts o‚ the country. Aiming to challenge Ø ÂÙÉ in parliamentary elections in 2000, a coalition o labor unions, lawyers, journalists, and church groups launched a new party, the Movement for Democratic Change (ÇÀ§), and mobilized support to oppose Mugabe’s plans to extend his powers even further in a referendum over a proposed new constitution. White activists played a signi•cant role in the “no” campaign. White farmers, in particular, were alarmed by Mugabe’s proposal to allow the government to seize land without compensation. The result was a stunning defeat for Mugabe: 55 percent voted against the proposed constitution. Shaken to the core, the ruling elite suddenly saw their grip on power slipping and, with it, all the wealth, salaries, perks, contracts, commissions, and scams they had enjoyed for 20 years. Mugabe attributed his defeat principally to the whites. In a carefully coordinated operation, starting ten days after the refer- endum result was announced, Mugabe launched a campaign o‚ terror against white farmers and hundreds o‚ thousands o black farm workers whom he accused o‚ supporting the opposition. Gangs armed with axes and machetes invaded white-owned farms across the country. Government and army trucks were used to transport them to the farms and keep them supplied with rations. They were called “war veterans,” but the majority were too young to have participated in the war 20 years earlier. Large numbers were unemployed youths paid a daily allowance. They assaulted farmers and their families, threatened to kill them, and forced many to ©ee their homes. They stole tractors, slaughtered cattle, destroyed crops, and polluted water supplies. The police refused to take action. Black farm workers and their families were subjected to mass beatings and taken away en masse to “reeducation centers.” Mugabe fanned the ©ames, describing white farmers as “enemies,” and as the election approached, his target became the ÇÀ§ and opposition o‚ any kind. “The ÇÀ§ will never form the government o‚ this country, never ever, not in my lifetime or even after I die,” he declared. Violence and intimidation erupted across the country. One ÇÀ§ candidate, Bless- ing Chebundo, who was running for Mnangagwa’s seat in Parliament, endured several murder attempts. On his way to work, Chebundo was

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surrounded by a gang o‚ Ø ÂÙÉ thugs who poured gasoline on him and tried to set him on •re, but failed because in the scu×e, their matches had been doused in gasoline. Even though he was forced to remain in hiding throughout the campaign, he nevertheless managed to in©ict on Mnangagwa a humiliating defeat. After months o‚ systematic intimidation, Ø ÂÙÉ scraped through with a narrow victory. But there was to be no respite from Mugabe’s tyranny. He pursued his vendetta against At one point, Zimbabwe’s white farmers relentlessly, seizing cattle ranches, dairy farms, tobacco estates, in¤ation rate reached and safari properties. When the Supreme 500 billion percent. Court declared his actions illegal, Mugabe swiftly removed independent judges and replaced them with loyalists. A chaotic land grab ensued as Mugabe’s cronies, party o£cials, and army and police commanders scrambled to snap up choice properties. Among the bene•ciaries were his wife, Grace, and his brother-in-law. The farm seizures spelled the end o‚ commercial agriculture as a major industry. The impact on food supplies was calamitous. To survive, Zimbabwe became increasingly dependent on food imports and foreign food aid. Over a •ve-year period from 1999 to 2004, the economy shrank by one-third, precipitating a mass exodus. It was not only whites who ©ed abroad but also a large part o‚ the black middle class— doctors, nurses, teachers, and other professionals who saw no future for themselves in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. The same pattern o‚ violence, intimidation, and vote rigging prevailed from one election to the next. In 2005, Mugabe targeted the mass o‚ dis- aŸected Zimbabweans living in slums and shantytowns on the fringes o‚ urban centers, strongholds o‚ the ÇÀ§. In a campaign called Operation Murambatsvina, using a Shona word meaning “drive out the rubbish,” police squads bulldozed and sledgehammered one community after an- other. According to a  investigation, some 700,000 people lost their homes, their source o livelihood, or both. Mugabe claimed that the aim o‚ the campaign was merely slum clearance. But his real purpose was to make clear the fate o‚ anyone who voted against him. In the run-up to presidential and parliamentary elections in 2008, the ÇÀ§’s leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, became a direct victim oª Mugabe’s tactics. When Tsvangirai arrived at a police station to investigate reports that supporters held there had been beaten, he, too, was seized, held

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down, and beaten so badly that doctors thought his skull had been fractured. “I told the police, ‘Beat him a lot,’” Mugabe subsequently said at a gathering o‚ African presidents. “He asked for it.” Despite the fearful consequences, ÇÀ§ supporters continued to defy Mugabe’s regime. The 2008 parliamentary elections gave opposition parties, led by the ÇÀ§, a clear majority. The simultaneous presidential election also gave Tsvangirai a narrow lead over Mugabe, but election o£cials, after weeks o‚ prevarication, manipulated the •gures to ensure that a second round o‚ voting was needed. The campaign o‚ terror that Mugabe unleashed to win the second round was more intense than any previous election episode. In a military-style operation, youth militias, police agents, army personnel, and party thugs moved into opposition areas, setting up torture camps and indoctrination centers. The campaign was o£cially called Operation Mavhoterapapi?—“Operation Whom Did You Vote For?” Among the people, it was known simply as chidudu—“the fear.” Villagers were beaten en masse and told to vote for Mugabe next time or they would be killed. Scores o‚ ÇÀ§ organizers were abducted and murdered; hundreds were tortured. Some 200,000 people were forced to ©ee their homes. Mugabe vowed that he would “go to war” to prevent an ÇÀ§ victory. “We are not going to give up our country because o‚ a mere x,” he said. “How can a ballpoint pen •ght with a gun?” Five days before the voting was due to start, Tsvangirai withdrew. A fractious coalition government was eventually formed, but Mugabe refused to implement any major reform that would restore a semblance o‚ democracy, leaving Tsvangirai and the ÇÀ§ humiliated and discredited by the time o‚ the next election, in 2013. The economy, meanwhile, continued its downward slide. At one point, in©ation reached 500 billion percent, according to calculations by the International Monetary Fund, rendering the currency worthless.

MUGABEISM AFTER MUGABE The damage in©icted on Zimbabwe by Mugabe’s 37-year rule is immense. Mugabe vitiated the courts, trampled on property rights, rigged elec- tions, hamstrung the independent press, and left Zimbabwe bankrupt and impoverished. One-quarter o‚ Zimbabweans live abroad in order to survive; four million depend on food aid; vast numbers o‚ children are stunted by malnutrition; life expectancy, at 60 years, ranks among the lowest in the world.

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No wonder the downfall oª Mugabe brought crowds onto the streets in celebration. But the sense o‚ euphoria has been replaced by appre- hension. As a member oª Mugabe’s inner circle since independence, Mnangagwa, now 75 years old, is well known for his ruthlessness. His involvement in the Gukurahundi atrocities and in Ø ÂÙÉ’s habitual election violence has made him the most feared politician in Zimbabwe. At his inauguration as president in December 2017, he praised Mugabe as “a father, a mentor, a comrade-in-arms, and my leader.” He also approved a lavish retirement package for Mugabe and his wife that in- cludes bodyguards, housekeepers, gardeners, waiters, cooks, chauŸeurs, diplomatic passports, •rst-class air ©ights, and private health insurance. In recent years, as Mugabe’s deputy, Mnangagwa sought ways out o‚ Zimbabwe’s economic morass, courting multilateral •nancial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and proposing reforms to encourage foreign investors to return. As president, he has promised to compensate white farmers, even though the treasury is empty. But although he oŸers a more pragmatic approach than Mugabe, Mnangagwa has also made clear his deter- mination that Ø ÂÙÉ, and its wealthy elite, will remain in control. “The dogs may keep on barking, but Ø ÂÙÉ will keep on ruling,” he said after Mugabe’s resignation. To this end, he has appointed to his cabinet several former generals notorious for their brutality, including Perence Shiri, former commander o‚ the Gukurahundi, and Constantino Chiwenga, a former defense forces chief; both have been heavily involved in orchestrating election violence and farm seizures. The key test oª Mnangagwa’s intentions will come in the run-up to the next elections, which are due later this year. He has promised that the elections will be “free and fair.” Yet Ø ÂÙÉ’s government has a long record o‚ rigging elections. It is practiced not only in controlling the work o‚ election o£cials and law enforcement agencies but also in manipulating a defective electoral roll system that contains millions o‚ ghost voters. Much will depend on the willingness o Western governments to insist on credible elections that are strictly monitored as a condition for helping Zimbabwe emerge from decades o‚ misrule. Meanwhile, the state Mugabe created lives on. With Mnangagwa and the generals at the helm, Ø ÂÙÉ continues to control every lever o‚ government. Just as Mugabe envisioned more than four decades ago, the vote still goes with the gun.∂

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any Americans have recoiled at President Donald Trump’s “America •rst” foreign policy. Critics charge that his pop- Mulist brand o‚ statecraft undermines the United States’ role as an exceptional nation destined to bring political and economic liberty to a waiting world. Trump exhibits isolationist, unilateralist, and protectionist instincts; indiŸerence to the promotion o‚ democracy; and animosity toward immigrants. How could Americans elect a president so at odds with what their country stands for? Yet “America •rst” is less out o‚ step with U.S. history than meets the eye. Trump is not so much abandoning American exceptionalism as he is tapping into an earlier incarnation o‚ it. Since World War II, the country’s exceptional mission has centered on the idea o‚ a Pax Americana upheld through the vigorous export o‚ U.S. power and values. But before that, American exceptionalism meant insulating the American experiment from foreign threats, shunning international entanglements, spreading democracy through example rather than intrusion, embracing protectionism and fair (not free) trade, and pre- serving a relatively homogeneous citizenry through racist and anti- immigrant policies. In short, it was about America •rst. That original version o‚ American exceptionalism—call it American Exceptionalism 1.0—vanished from mainstream politics after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But it retained allure in the heartland and is today making a comeback across the political spectrum as Americans have tired o‚ their nation’s role as the global policeman and grown skeptical o‚ the bene•ts o‚ globalization and immigration. To

CHARLES A. KUPCHAN is Professor of International Aairs at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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be sure, as a grand strategy, “America •rst” is headed for failure. The United States and the rest o‚ the world have become too interdependent; solving most international challenges requires collective, not unilateral, action; and immigration has already ensured that a homogeneous United States is gone for good. A brand o‚ exceptionalism dating to the eighteenth century is ill suited to the twenty-•rst. Still, the contemporary appeal o‚ “America •rst” and the inward turn it marks reveal that the version o‚ excep- tionalism that has guided U.S. grand strategy since the 1940s is also past its prime. Trump’s presidency has exposed the need for a new narrative to steer U.S. foreign policy. The nation’s exceptional mission is far from complete; a world tilting toward illiberalism sorely needs a counterweight o‚ republican ideals. How the United States rede•nes its exceptional calling will determine whether it is up to the task.

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM 1.0 From its earliest days, the exceptionalist narrative has set the boundaries o‚ public discourse and provided a political and ideological foundation for U.S. grand strategy. The original conception o‚ American excep- tionalism was based on •ve national attributes. The •rst was geography: protective oceans kept predatory powers at bay, and ample and fertile land sustained a growing population and generated wealth, helping the United States become the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere. But the nation’s geopolitical ambition would stretch no farther. Exceptional geographic bounty enabled, even mandated, a grand strategy o‚ isolation from other quarters. As President George Washington a£rmed in his Farewell Address, the country enjoyed a “detached and distant situation. . . . Why forgo the advantages o‚ so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground?” The United States did experiment with a broader imperialism in 1898, colonizing the Philippines and taking hold oª Hawaii and a number o‚ other Paci•c islands, and it intervened in Europe during World War I. But these episodes provoked a sharp backlash and consolidated the stubborn isolationism o‚ the interwar decades. Second, in part because o‚ its geographic isolation, the United States enjoyed unparalleled autonomy, both at home and abroad. Although the founders were keen to expand overseas commerce through trade deals, they were deeply averse to binding strategic commitments. As

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Washington said in his Farewell Address, “The great rule o‚ conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.” After reneging in 1793 on the revolution-era alliance with France that had helped the United States gain independence, the country would not enter into another alliance until World War II. Third, Americans embraced a messianic mission: they believed that their unique experiment in political and economic liberty would redeem the world. As the pamphleteer Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, A brand of exceptionalism “A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days o‚ dating to the eighteenth Noah until now. The birthday o‚ a century is ill suited to the new world is at hand.” But the United twenty-£rst. States was not to ful•ll this mission through intervention. When liberal revolutions unfolded in Europe and Latin America in the early 1800s, Secretary o‚ State John Quincy Adams asserted that the United States “goes not abroad, in search o‚ monsters to destroy.” The country should be “the well-wisher to the freedom and independence o‚ all,” he insisted, but only through “the countenance o her voice, and the benignant sympathy o her example.” Fourth, the United States enjoyed unprecedented social equality and economic mobility. Americans had replaced monarchy and aristoc- racy with equality o‚ opportunity. Yeoman farmers and small-town shopkeepers were the foot soldiers o‚ manifest destiny—the notion that democracy and prosperity would stretch from coast to coast. As the United States became a leading commercial power, it defended its emerging industrial base through tariŸs and insisted on fair and recip- rocal trade, not free trade. And when necessary, it was prepared to use deadly force to defend the commercial rights o‚ its citizens, as made clear in the Barbary Wars o‚ the early 1800s and in the War o‚ 1812. Finally, Americans believed their nation had been endowed with not just exceptional land but also exceptional people: Anglo-Saxons. Re©ecting a view commonplace in the early United States, the Congregational minister Horace Bushnell declared, “Out o‚ all the inhabitants o‚ the world, . . . a select stock, . . . the noblest o‚ the stock, was chosen to people our country.” The racial dimension o‚ American exceptionalism manifested itsel‚ in the campaigns against

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Native Americans, the enslavement and segregation o‚ African Americans, and frequent bouts o‚ anti-immigrant sentiment. Through the Alien and Sedition Acts o‚ 1798, Congress extended the timeline for immigrants to become U.S. citizens and granted the federal government the power to imprison or deport those it deemed disloyal. Restrictions on immigration kicked in during the second hal‚ o‚ the 1800s and intensi•ed during the interwar period. And the fear o‚ diluting the population with “inferior peoples” curbed the country’s desire to acquire signi•cant territory in the Caribbean and Central America after the Civil War.

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM 2.0 Then came the attack on Pearl Harbor, which, as Arthur Vandenberg, a Repubican senator and one-time isolationist, wrote in his diary, “ended isolationism for any realist.” So began the era o‚ American Exception- alism 2.0. I‚ the United States could no longer shield itselª from the world and share the American experiment by example, it would have to run the world by more actively projecting its power and values. Ever since the 1940s, internationalists have enjoyed political dominance, while isolationists have become political pariahs—“wacko birds,” as Senator John McCain o‚ Arizona once labeled his fellow Republican Senator Rand Paul oª Kentucky and others who take that stance. Under American Exceptionalism 2.0, an aversion to foreign entan- glement gave way to a strategy o‚ global engagement. The Cold War set the stage for the country’s core alliances in Europe and Asia, as well as a global network o‚ diplomatic and military outposts. Unilateralism yielded to multilateralism. In 1919 and 1920, the Senate rejected U.S. participation in the League oª Nations three times; in 1945, it rati•ed the  Charter by a vote o‚ 89 to 2. The United States also assumed a leading role in the panoply o‚ institutions that have undergirded the postwar rules-based international order. And it con tinued to pursue its messianic mission, but through more intrusive means, from the successful occupations and transformations o‚ Germany and Japan after World War II to the ongoing and less successful forays into Afghanistan and Iraq. The American dream remained central to this updated version o‚ exceptionalism, but it was to be ful•lled by the factory worker instead o‚ the yeoman farmer. The postwar industrial boom generated bipartisan support for open trade. And especially after the civil rights movement o‚

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True believers: watching a Veterans Day parade in New Hampshire, November 2015 the 1950s and 1960s, postwar American exceptionalism lost its racial tinge, replaced by a conviction that the melting pot would successfully integrate a diverse population into one civic nation. Preaching plural- ism and tolerance became part o spreading the American way.

THE RETURN OF AMERICA FIRST Postwar presidents through Barack Obama have been staunch defenders o American Exceptionalism 2.0. “The United States has been, and will always be, the one indispensable nation in world a airs,” Obama a‡rmed in a 2012 commencement speech at the U.S. Air Force Academy. But just minutes after taking o‡ce, Trump promised something di erent. “From this moment on,” he proclaimed in his inaugural address, “it’s going to be America ‹rst.” Because o the America First Committee, which was founded in 1940 to oppose U.S. intervention in World War II, this phrase evokes

BRIAN SNYDER anti-Semitism and isolationism. But there is more to Trump’s “America ‹rst” than its ugly pedigree. Trump’s political success stems in no small part from his ability to exploit a version o American exceptionalism that resonates with the nation’s history. As the writer / REUTERS Walter Russell Mead has argued, populist foreign policy—what Mead calls a “Jacksonian” approach—has always maintained its appeal in the heartland, Trump’s electoral base. Whether Trump

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himsel‚ actually believes in the exceptional nature o‚ the American experiment is unclear (his illiberal instincts and behavior suggest he may not). Nonetheless, he has proved quite successful at reanimating core elements o‚ American Exceptionalism 1.0. Trump has cloaked himsel‚ in isolationist garb, repeatedly ques- tioning the value o‚ core U.S. alliances in Europe and Asia and promising in a campaign speech outlining his “America •rst” foreign policy that the United States will be “getting out o‚ the nation-building business.” So far, his bark has been worse than his bite, as these pledges have proved easier said than done. The United States remains the strategic stabilizer oª Europe and Northeast Asia and continues to be mired in the broader Middle East. And when it comes to Iran and North Korea, Trump, i‚ anything, errs on the hawkish side. Still, Trump’s vision is nonetheless isolationist. In his “America •rst” campaign speech, he promised to let allies that did not increase their own military spending “defend themselves.” And he pledged to bring to an end the era in which “our politicians seem more interested in defending the borders oª foreign countries than their own.” Trump wants to roll back multilateralism. As a candidate, he vowed that “we will never enter America into any agreement that reduces our ability to control our own aŸairs.” Once in o£ce, he pulled the United States out o‚ the Trans-Paci•c Partnership, the Paris climate agreement, and  §. He refused to certify the nuclear deal with Iran and continues to take aim at the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization. As for the United States’ messianic mission, Trump is disdainful o‚ the activist brand o‚ democracy promotion embraced under American Exceptionalism 2.0. As he explained in that same campaign speech, he sees today’s instability in the Middle East as a direct result o‚ the “dangerous idea that we could make Western democracies out o‚ countries that had no experience or interests in becoming a Western democracy.” But Trump does not stop there; indeed, he forsakes even American Exceptionalism 1.0, by showing little patience for republican ideals. He tra£cs in untruths, denigrates the media, and expresses admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and other autocrats. According to Trump, the American dream has given way to what he called “American carnage” in his inaugural address. He claimed that the wealth o‚ the country’s middle class “has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.” Taking a page

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from American Exceptionalism 1.0, he has promised protectionist policies to “bring back our jobs . . . bring back our borders . . . bring back our dreams.” Trump also wants to return to the more homogeneous America o‚ the past. Restricting immigration; ending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or À § (the Obama administration’s program that shielded undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children); insulting Hispanic Americans; sending back Haitians, Salvadorans, and others displaced by natural disasters; and equivocating on neo-Nazis in Charlottesville—all these moves are not-so-subtle paeans to the days when Christians oª European extraction dominated the United States. For Trump, making America great again means making it white again.

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM IN CRISIS “America •rst” helped Trump win the presidency, but as a guiding principle for U.S. foreign policy, it is leading the nation astray. As Trump has already found out, a daunting array o‚ threats makes it impossible for the United States to return to the era o‚ “entangling alliances with none,” as Thomas JeŸerson put it. The rules-based inter- national order that the United States erected may limit the country’s room for maneuver, but dismantling it is a recipe for anarchy. In today’s globalized economy, protectionism would worsen, not improve, the plight o‚ the U.S. middle class. And with non-Hispanic whites projected to fall below 50 percent o‚ the population by the middle o‚ this century, there is no going back to Anglo-Saxon America. But the political appeal o‚ “America •rst” also reveals serious cracks in American Exceptionalism 2.0, which still dominates the U.S. foreign policy establishment. Trump’s success stems not just from his skill at activating traditional elements o‚ American identity but also from his promises to redress legitimate and widespread discontent. The United States has overreached abroad; after all, it was Obama, not Trump, who insisted that “it is time to focus on nation building here at home.” The middle class is hurting badly: stagnant wages, inequality, and socio- economic segregation have put the American dream out o‚ reach for many. And the nation has yet to arrive at an eŸective and humane policy for controlling immigration, raising important questions about whether the melting-pot approach remains viable. American Exceptionalism 2.0 is also failing to deliver overseas. With help from the United States, large swaths oª Europe, Asia, and

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the Americas have become democratic, but illiberal alternatives to the American way are more than holding their own. The collective wealth o‚ the West has fallen below 50 percent o‚ global ÀÉ, and an ascen- dant China is challenging the postwar architecture, meaning that Washington can no longer call the shots in multilateral institutions. It was easy for the United States to advocate a rules-based international order when it was the one writing the rules, but that era has come to an end. Today, U.S. ideals are no longer backed up by U.S. prepon- derance, making it harder to spread American values.

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM 3.0 With American Exceptionalism 2.0 stumbling and Trump’s eŸort to revert to the original version not viable, the United States can either abandon its exceptionalist narrative or craft a new one. The former option may seem tempting amid the nation’s political and economic trials, but the costs would be too high. American exceptionalism has helped the country sustain a domestic consensus behind a grand strategy aimed at spreading democracy and the rule o law. With illiberalism on the rise, the globe desperately needs an anchor o‚ republican ideals—a role that only the United States has the power and credentials to •ll. Failing to uphold rules-based governance would risk the return o‚ a Hobbesian world, violating not just the United States’ principles but also its interests. Indeed, it is precisely because the world is potentially at a historical in©ection point that the United States must reclaim its exceptionalist mantle. Doing so will require adjustments to all •ve dimensions o‚ the exceptionalist narrative. For starters, the United States should •nd the prudent middle ground between the isolationism o‚ American Exceptionalism 1.0 and the overreach that has accompanied Pax Americana. Some scholars have suggested that the United States embrace “oŸshore balancing,” letting other countries take the lead in keeping the peace in Europe, Northeast Asia, and the Persian Gulf, with Washington intervening only in a strategic emergency. But this approach goes too far. The United States’ main problem o late has been shot selection, embroiling itsel‚ in unnecessary wars o‚ choice in the strategic periphery—namely, the Middle East—where oŸshore balancing is indeed the right approach. But in the core strategic theaters oª Europe and Asia, a U.S. retreat would only unsettle allies and embolden adversaries, inviting arms races and intensifying rivalries.

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The United States needs to end its days as the global policeman, but it should remain the arbiter o‚ great-power peace, while emphasizing diplomatic, rather than military, engagement outside core areas. The United States must also rebalance its alliances and partnerships. Trump is not alone in his antipathy to pacts that, as he said, “tie us up.” Congress has lost its appetite for the treaty-based obligations that laid the foundation for the postwar order. But the United States cannot aŸord to drift back to unilateralism; only collective action can address many o‚ today’s international challenges, including terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and climate change. The United States should therefore view itsel‚ as the leader o‚ an international posse, defending rules-based institutions when possible and put- ting together “coalitions o‚ the The United States can willing” when only informal coop- eration is available. either abandon its Although Trump’s diplomacy lacks exceptionalist narrative or tact, he is right to insist that U.S. craft a new one. allies shoulder their fair share. The United States should continue cata- lyzing international teamwork, but Washington must make clear that it will ante up only when its partners do. And in areas where the United States transitions to an oŸshore-balancing role, it should help organizations such as the Gul‚ Cooperation Council, the Association o‚ Southeast Asian Nations, and the African Union become more capable stewards o‚ their respective regions. Washington should also encourage emerging powers such as Brazil, China, India, and South Africa to provide the much-needed public goods o humanitarian as- sistance, peacekeepers, and development aid. Although the United States’ messianic mission should remain at the core o‚ its exceptionalist narrative, the country must transition from crusader back to exemplar. Recent eŸorts at regime change in the Middle East, far from clearing the way for democracy, have unleashed violence and regional instability. Leading by example hardly means giving up on democracy promotion, but it does entail engaging in a world o‚ political diversity and respectfully working with regimes o‚ all types. Still, Americans must always defend universal political and human rights; to do otherwise would be to abandon the ideals that inform the nation’s identity. Trump’s failure on this count is not serving to reclaim an earlier version o‚ American exceptionalism but denigrating it.

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Domestic renewal is also essential to restoring faith in the American way both at home and abroad. The United States cannot serve as a global beacon i‚ its electorate is deeply divided and it cannot provide opportunity for many o‚ its citizens. Still, i‚ the United States could recover from the internal discord o‚ the Civil War and the hardship o‚ the Great Depression, it can surely bounce back from today’s malaise. Renewing the American dream—a key step toward overcoming political polarization—requires a realistic plan for restoring upward mobility, not a false promise to bring back an industrial heyday that is gone for good. Manufacturing employment has suŸered mainly because o‚ automation, not open trade or immigration. Adjusting the terms o‚ trade can help. But rebuilding the middle class and restoring economic optimism in areas hurt by deindustrialization will also require ambitious plans to better educate and retrain workers, expand broadband Internet access, and promote growth sectors, including renewable energy, health care, and data processing. Finally, a new version o‚ American exceptionalism must embrace the idea that the United States’ increasingly diverse population will integrate into an evolving national community imbued with the country’s long- standing civic values. As sectarian passions cleave the Middle East, Hindu nationalism unsettles India, and discord over the future o‚ immigration and multiculturalism test European solidarity, the United States must demonstrate unity amid diversity. The melting-pot approach o‚ American Exceptionalism 2.0 is the right one, but sustaining it will require deliberate measures. Reversing socioeconomic segregation and immobility will take heavy investment in public schools and community colleges. EŸective border control, a rational approach to legal immi- gration, and a fair but •rm way to deal with undocumented immigrants would assure Americans that diversity is the product o‚ design, not disorder. Fluency in English is critical to helping newcomers enter the mainstream. And national service and other programs that mix young Americans could encourage social and cultural integration and produce a stronger sense o‚ community. I‚ nothing else, the rise o Trump has demonstrated that American Exceptionalism 2.0 has run its course. But try as he might, Trump will fail in his bid to respond to today’s challenges by going back to the past. Looking beyond Trump, the United States will need a new exceptionalism to guide its grand strategy and renew its unique role as the world’s anchor o liberal ideals.∂

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Joseph Conrad lived in a far wider world than even the greatest of his contemporaries. —Adam Hochschild BETTMANN

/ GETTY Stranger in Strange Lands Future Fights Adam Hochschild 150 Stephen Peter Rosen 162 IMAGES Still Crazy After All These Years Recent Books 168 James A. Morone 156

19_Review_div_149_Blues.indd 149 1/19/18 7:19 PM countries, even the tottering Austro- Stranger in Hungarian Empire, won enclaves or concessions in China. Meanwhile, the Strange Lands United States fought a ruthless war in the Philippines, killing several hun- dred thousand Filipinos to establish Joseph Conrad and the Dawn an American colony. o‚ Globalization It is startling, however, how seldom such events appear in the work o‚ the Adam Hochschild era’s European writers. It would be as i‚ almost no major nineteenth-century American novelist dealt with slavery or no major twentieth-century German The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a one wrote about the Holocaust. It’s not Global World that Europeans were unaware. Hundreds BY MAYA JASANOFF. Penguin Press, o‚ thousands o‚ them had lived or worked 2017, 400 pp. in the colonies, and the fruits o‚ empire were everywhere on display: in palatial n the late nineteenth century and mansions and grand monuments built the •rst decade o‚ the twentieth, with colonial fortunes, in street names Inothing reshaped the world more such as Rue de Madagascar in Bordeaux than European imperialism. It redrew the and Khartoum Road in London, in shops map, enriched Europe, and left millions full oª foreign trinkets and spices. In o‚ Africans and Asians dead. For example, 1897, more than one million visitors in 1870, some 80 percent o‚ Africa south came to see a world’s fair on the outskirts o‚ the Sahara was under the control o‚ oª Brussels that featured 267 Congolese indigenous kings, chiefs, or other such men, women, and children, living in rulers. Within 35 years, virtually the entire huts and paddling canoes around a pond. continent, only a few patches excepted, There were similar human exhibits at was made up oª European colonies or fairs in the United States. protectorates. France, Germany, Italy, Writers, however, were largely silent. Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom Mark Twain was a forthright critic o‚ had all seized pieces o‚ “this magni•cent imperial cruelty in the Philippines and African cake,” in the words oª King Africa, but only in some shorter pieces Leopold II oª Belgium—who took an in the last decade and a hal‚ o his life. enormous slice for himself. George Orwell would be profoundly In Asia in these same years, the British disillusioned by his years as a police tightened their grip on the Indian sub- o£cer in British-ruled Burma, but he continent, the French on Indochina, and did not return from there and begin the Dutch on what today is Indonesia. writing until 1927; Burmese Days, his Japan, Russia, and hal‚ a dozen European debut novel, appeared in 1934. I‚ turn- of-the-century writers approached ADAM HOCHSCHILD is the author of Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, imperialism at all, it was usually to 1936–1939. celebrate it, as did John Buchan and

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Rudyard Kipling in the United Kingdom writer. Although Conrad “wouldn’t have and similar literary cheerleaders in known the word ‘globalization,’” JasanoŸ France and Germany. writes, “with his journey from the prov- The standout exception was Joseph inces o‚ imperial Russia across the high Conrad. In his novel Nostromo, the seas to the British home counties, he American mining tycoon Holroyd embodied it.” And despite some racial declares, “We shall run the world’s stereotypes in his portrayals o‚ Afri- business whether the world likes it or cans and, to a lesser extent, Asians, he not.” Conrad’s most searing portrait recog nized a multiethnic world: hal‚ o‚ o‚ such business is Heart of Darkness, what he wrote, she points out, is set in published in 1899. No one who reads South east Asia. No other writer o his that book can ever again imagine the time was dealing so trenchantly with colonizers o‚ Africa as they liked to encoun ters between Europeans and the portray themselves: unsel•shly spread- non-European world. ing Christianity and the bene•ts o‚ Conrad’s involvement with imperial- commerce. “To tear treasure out o‚ the ism, political rebels, and the life o‚ the bowels o‚ the land was their desire,” says sea just when steam was replacing sail Marlow, Conrad’s narrator and alter ego, made him attuned to dimensions o‚ the “with no more moral purpose at the back world that remain relevant today. “The o‚ it than there is in burglars break ing heirs o‚ Conrad’s technologically displaced into a safe.” The Congo at this time was sailors are to be found in industries the privately owned colony oª Leopold II, disrupted by digitization,” JasanoŸ whose ruthless regime conscripted huge writes. “The analogues to his anarchists numbers o‚ Congolese as forced laborers— are to be found in Internet chat rooms to gather ivory, wild rubber, food for the or terrorist cells. The material interests king’s soldiers, •rewood for the steam- he centered in the United States emanate boats that plied the rivers, and much today as much from China.” Conrad was more. But the novelist does not imply not a theorist o‚ globalization, even under that there was anything uniquely Belgian another name, but JasanoŸ’s take on about this burglary, represented by him is a bracing reminder that in an age Mr. Kurtz, the rapacious ivory hunter when writers often worked on a geo- who is the book’s villain. “All Europe graphically limited stage—think o‚ contributed to the making oª Kurtz.” Wessex, for instance, the name Thomas Conrad lived in a far wider world Hardy gave to the part oª England where than even the greatest o his contem- he set nearly all his novels—Conrad’s poraries, such as Marcel Proust or James stage spanned the globe. And there are Joyce, and this is what animates The Dawn still very few major novelists about whom Watch, the gracefully written new book one could say that today. about him by the Harvard historian Maya JasanoŸ. Born Joze Teodor Konrad A LONG WAY FROM HOME Korzeniowski to Polish parents, he left Conrad’s life, so much o‚ it lived in far home at age 16 to sail the world on mer- corners o‚ the world, has kept critics chant ships for two decades, then settled and biographers busy for decades, their in the United Kingdom and became a task made all the more challenging by

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the web o‚ evasions he spun in several you hear, to make you feel . . . before all, unreliable memoirs o his own. The Dawn to make you see.” Watch is by no means as comprehensive Exploring Conrad’s world, particu- a biography as others, particularly the larly the changes in ocean commerce masterful Joseph Conrad: A Life by that occurred over his lifetime, leads Zdzislaw Najder (2007); in fact, it’s JasanoŸ down some fascinating byways. not really a full biography so much as The switch from sail to steam meant a meditation on the novelist’s life and fewer jobs: there weren’t all those sails several o his major works. Still, the to set and furl, and steamships were book is a great pleasure to read, for larger and could carry much bigger JasanoŸ is driven to understand the cargoes. Hence it was a tough employ- world that shaped a writer she loves. To ment market, and Conrad seems to draw closer to his maritime experience, have spent as much time looking for a she traveled by container ship from berth as actually serving in one. Once Hong Kong to England; by a 134-foot, he was able to sign on to a British long- two-masted sailing vessel from Ireland haul sailing ship as •rst or second mate, to Brittany; and by riverboat down a he was likely to •nd that more than thousand miles o‚ the Congo River. 40 percent o‚ the crew were foreigners Yet she mentions these voyages only like him: the wages were lower than modestly, using them not to boast o‚ many British workers earned onshore, her enterprise but to evoke Conrad’s but princely to someone from Asia or life on the water: the remarkable width eastern Europe. (JasanoŸ found the o‚ the Congo River, for instance, or the same thing to be true today for the rhythm o‚ mariners’ talk when you are Filipino crew o‚ the container ship she out o‚ sight o land for days at a time traveled on.) And she points out that and your senses focus on the sea, the even during the long twilight o‚ the sunrise, the weather. sailing vessel, the cost o‚ coal meant Jasano‚ has also visited many o‚ that transport by sail was still •nancially the places where Conrad lived, and competitive on routes o‚ more than she sketches them with a novelist’s eye: 3,500 miles, which was one reason “Marseille, city o‚ olive oil, orange Conrad still often worked on such ships, trees, sweet wine, and sacks o‚ spice, much to the later bene•t o his readers. mouth open to the Mediterranean and eye cocked toward the Atlantic, city o‚ THE VICTIMS OF EMPIRE Crusaders, revolutionaries, the Count Nowhere is Conrad’s encounter with oª Monte Cristo.” She brings the same the world outside Europe more power- skillful pen to people who shaped the fully rendered than in Heart of Darkness, world Conrad lived in, such as King probably the most widely read, acclaimed, Leopold II, who, she writes, had “a nose and written about short novel in English. like a mountain slope and a beard like a The book gains its power from being waterfall foaming over his chest.” Her closely based on six months Conrad descriptive powers make for a •tting spent in the Congo in 1890. He had homage to a writer who said that the signed up for what he expected to be work o‚ the written word was “to make an adventurous post as a steamboat

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MA18_Book.indb 152 1/18/18 10:21 PM captain, but as he trained for the job, he was horri•ed by the greed and brutality he saw, fell ill with dysentery and malaria, Not all readers and cut short his stay to return to Europe. Many o‚ the details in Heart of Darkness— are leaders, the slave laborers in chains, the rotting bodies o‚ those who had been worked to but all leaders death—can be found in the diary Conrad kept during the •rst weeks o his stay. are readers. What gave him such a rare ability to - Harry S. Truman see the arrogance and theft at the heart o‚ imperialism? And to see that King Leopold’s much-promoted civilizing mission was founded on slave labor? Much SIGN UP for the o‚ it surely had to do with the fact that he Foreign Affairs himself, as a Pole, knew what it was like Books & Reviews to live in conquered territory. Through- out the nineteenth century, the land newsletter that is Poland today was divided among three neighboring empires, Austria- Hungary, Prussia, and Russia. The last, where most o‚ Conrad’s family lived, was the most repressive; when he was three, Cossacks charged into churches to break up memorial services for a Polish nationalist hero. Furthermore, for the •rst few years o his life, tens o‚ millions o‚ peasants in the Russian empire were the equivalent o‚ slave laborers: serfs. Conrad’s poet father, Apollo Korzeniowski, was a Polish nationalist and an opponent o‚ serfdom, although both he and his wife came from the class o‚ country gentry that had sometimes owned serfs. For his nationalist activities, Korzeniowski was thrown into a harsh Warsaw prison and then herded into exile in northern Russia by the tsar’s police. His wife and four-year-old son went with him, and their time in the frigid climate exacerbated the tuberculosis that would kill Conrad’s mother when he was only seven. His father died only a ForeignAffairs.com/newsletters few years later, and his funeral procession,

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in Austrian-occupied Krakow, turned into violent revolution falls into the hands a huge demonstration oª Polish nation- o‚ narrow-minded fanatics. . . . The alism. Small wonder that this boy who noble, humane, and devoted . . . the grew up among exiled prison veterans, unsel•sh and the intelligent may begin talk o‚ serfdom, and the news o‚ relatives a movement—but it passes away from killed in uprisings was ready to distrust them. They are not the leaders o‚ a imperial conquerors who claimed they had revolution. They are its victims.” the right to rule other peoples. In Russia, this turned out to be all Few Europeans o‚ Conrad’s time too true. But this clumsy novel, with its were outspokenly hostile to imperialism, wooden dialogue and stick-•gure cast, and virtually all o‚ them were on the would have been a far better one had left. Paradoxically, however, in everything Conrad demonstrated more empathy else about his politics, Conrad was deeply for such “noble, humane, and devoted” conservative. He hated labor unions. characters, no matter how misled they For all his disgust with Russian and turn out to be. It is just that more Belgian imperialism, he believed that capacious vision that gives greater British imperialism was splendid. Heart depth to later novels dealing with the of Darkness was enthusiastically welcomed Soviet tragedy, such as Boris Pasternak’s by the largely British “Congo reformers,” Doctor Zhivago and Vasily Grossman’s who were agitating against King Leopold’s Life and Fate. forced-labor regime, but Conrad was Conrad brilliantly saw many o‚ the wary o‚ identifying himsel‚ with their injustices o‚ the world as it existed. movement, even though one o‚ its key But what gave him such a skeptical •gures was the Irishman Roger Casement, view o‚ anyone who aspired to change with whom he had bonded when they it? JasanoŸ suggests that this came brie©y shared a house in the Congo. from “the failure o his father’s political Conrad had no use for the socialist objectives,” but there is evidence to idealism in which so many British suggest otherwise. In Conrad’s A intellectuals—including several close Personal Record, he speaks o his father friends—had great faith. In his two as “simply a patriot” and not a revo- most self-consciously political novels, lutionary. And Korzeniowski’s political The Secret Agent, about anarchists in objectives were achieved during his London, and Under Western Eyes, about son’s own lifetime, when Poles •nally Russian revolutionaries in St. Petersburg won their own homeland. Such a goal and Geneva, almost all the characters are is certainly more benign than the venal or hopelessly naive. Both groups dreams Conrad eviscerates in The are in•ltrated by police informers. Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes: In one sense, Conrad’s dour vision the anarchist vision o‚ the destruction served him well. Although Under Western o‚ all governments and the Bolshevik Eyes was published six years before the one o‚ the dictatorship o‚ the proletariat. Russian Revolution, he virtually predicted Conrad himsel‚ advocated Polish nation- its fate. The novel’s narrator at one point hood and honored the memory o his says: “In a real revolution the best father; on a visit to Korzeniowski’s characters do not come to the front. A grave decades after his death, the

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novelist surprised his family by archconservatism o his political kneeling in prayer. views may well have stemmed from Conrad’s sweeping dismissal o‚ all his morti•cation over these youthful radicals and reformers surely came from indiscretions and his desire to prove elsewhere. In his late teens, when he himsel‚ sober and responsible in the was living in Marseille, he lost all his eyes o his much-loved father •gure, money by investing in the running o‚ Bobrowski. contraband goods—possibly guns—to In the best o his work, however, Spain. He received a loan from a friend Conrad rose above the quirks and and attempted to recover his losses at the torments o his own life. He etched a casinos but gambled it all away. Deeply deeper picture o‚ the connections depressed, he •red a pistol into his chest between the world’s North and South in an attempt at suicide, but, even more and portrayed the corrosive eŸect o‚ humiliating, the bullet missed his heart, the lust for riches more powerfully and he survived. than any other writer o his day—and Rushing to Marseille to bail him perhaps o‚ our day as well.∂ out o‚ trouble was his uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski, his mother’s brother, who had acted as a guardian since the death o‚ Conrad’s father. In person and in a long string o letters over the years, Bobrowski sternly disapproved o‚ the young Conrad’s ambitions as impractical and romantic and kept urging his ward to do something sensible, such as returning to Krakow and going into business. Happily, he did not prevail. Conrad also suŸered a later acute embarrassment, which JasanoŸ men- tions only in passing. In the 1890s, he invested and lost almost all his savings, plus a modest inheritance, in a South African gold mine. Ironically, the South African gold rush was a get-rich-quick bonanza o‚ the type that Conrad had written about so harshly in Nostromo, where the rush was for silver, and Heart of Darkness, where it was for ivory. More awkward still, these losses came just as he was getting married and starting a family. Small wonder that the plot o‚ one o his best novels, Lord Jim, revolves around a man trying to live down an early disgrace. The

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MA18_Book.indb 155 1/18/18 10:21 PM announces a “City upon a Hill,” with Still Crazy After nothing less than the future o‚ all Chris- tianity at stake. The Puritan ministers All These Years Increase Mather and his son, Cotton, hunt witches in Salem Village. Andersen’s story runs through P. T. Barnum, Henry America’s Long History o‚ David Thoreau, Walt Disney, Ronald Political Delusion Reagan, and, •nally, Trump himself, who beats them all by managing an James A. Morone average o‚ over •ve untruths a day. As Andersen shows, fantastical thinking has always played an outsize role in American culture. But something Fantasyland: How America Went seems diŸerent today. Running beneath Haywire; A 500-Year History the parade o‚ con artists and manias that BY KURT ANDERSEN. Random Andersen deftly catalogs glints some- House, 2017, 480 pp. thing more dangerous than illusions: a bitter contest over national identity that n the spring o‚ 2011, Donald Trump political institutions may no longer be began suggesting that U.S. Presi- able to contain. Ident Barack Obama had not been Americans have wrestled over their born in the United States. “Why doesn’t national character many times before. he show his birth certi•cate?” Trump What has changed? The answer lies in asked on ¿§’s The View. “I would love how the political parties have reorganized to see it produced,” he told Fox News’ debates over race, immigration, and the On the Record. “I’m starting to think that American self. For a long time, the party he was not born here,” he announced system sti©ed tribal questions; now, it on ¿§’s Today Show. Despite plenty in©ames them. o‚ evidence to the contrary, Trump kept repeating his nonsense. To this day, polls AMERICAN GODS show that some 70 percent o‚ registered Fantasyland begins with an inventory o‚ Republicans doubt Obama’s citizenship. magical thinking. Two-thirds o‚ Ameri- Welcome to what Kurt Andersen calls cans believe in angels and demons; a “Fantasyland.” third think climate change is a hoax, that In his new book, Andersen takes a humans roamed among the dinosaurs, or dizzy, mordant trip through •ve centuries that pharmaceutical cartels are hiding o‚ magical thinking, bringing a novelist’s the cure for cancer. The fantasies don’t gaze to make-believe Americana. The sit in any one cultural corner, Andersen “hucksters” and the “suckers” tumble observes. Many o‚ those who believe, through the pages. John Winthrop against all scienti•c evidence, that geneti- cally modi•ed foods are unsafe to eat JAMES A. MORONE is John Hazen White snicker at those who deny Darwin’s theory Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science and Urban Studies at Brown o‚ evolution. And most creationists, in University. turn, dismiss the Mormon belie‚ that an

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The show that never ends: a poster advertising the Barnum & Bailey Circus, 1895

angel revealed the contents o‚ the Book o‚ fractured Americans’ shared understand- Mormon on golden plates to Joseph Smith. ing o‚ reality. The leitmotiª for Andersen’s tour Today, the mass media over©ow o‚ American chimeras comes from an with malicious fantasies and conspir- unnamed senior adviser in the George W. acy theories. During the 2016 election, Bush White House who, speaking claims that Democratic Party o£cials with the journalist Ron Suskind in 2002, were implicated in a child sex ring run mocked the chumps in the “reality-based out o‚ a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C., community” clinging to the notion that emerged from a white supremacist “solutions emerge from your judicious website and quickly went viral. This study o‚ discernible reality.” Not anymore, kind oª fevered public discourse didn’t boasted the adviser. Now, “we create our just spring up; it was unleashed, in part, own reality.” by policy decisions. For nearly four This attitude, as Andersen shows, was decades, starting in 1949, the Federal TIME LIFE PICTURES / GETTY IMAGES PICTURES / GETTY LIFE TIME nothing new. But two recent shifts in the Communications Commission enforced social cosmos, he argues, have tipped a policy known as the Fairness Doctrine, American society into a more intense which required media outlets to pres- and destabilizing Fantasyland. First, the ent both sides o‚ controversial issues— 1960s culture o‚ “do your own thing, •nd producing the bland news regime that your own reality, it’s all relative” liberated many Americans now remember with everyone to nourish his or her own favorite nostalgia. Then, in 1987, the Reagan fantasies. Second, a new era o‚ information administration repealed the rule and and communication threw opinions onto fended oŸ congressional eŸorts to the airwaves alongside actual news and reinstate it.

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The change coincided with the right to point to the 1960s. But under- emergence o‚ transformative media neath the story o‚ a “do your own thing” tech nologies. In the late 1980s and early culture lies a deeper tale o how the 1990s, cable channels sprang up on tele- white majority has responded to the twin vision, serious content moved into the dangers o‚ racial equality and immigrant newly opened Ç radio bands, and a power. Amid the upheaval o‚ the 1960s, series o‚ provocative talk-show hosts leaders o both parties •nally acquiesced seized the freed-up space on the Ç to black demands for racial justice—and dial. The policy shift and the techno- promptly faced a white backlash. The logical change combined to produce a Republican Party lurched into a rebellion fresh kind o‚ content: heated, partisan, against its own elites. Barry Goldwater, and often fantastical. Rumors sprang the party’s nominee in the 1964 presi- from the dark corners o‚ the new World dential election, was the •rst leader o‚ Wide Web and crept into established that revolution. He preached free-market broadcast media. Anderson surveys all liberty but remained silent as segregation- sorts o‚ collateral damage: one quickly ists lined up behind him. At the same discredited study o‚ 12 people published time, Democrats faced their own racial by Andrew Wake•eld in 1998 led to reckoning as white voters, especially those dangerous anti-vaccine hysteria and in the South, turned away from the party. the return o‚ dormant diseases such as The Democratic nominee has lost the whooping cough. A surge o‚ racial white vote in every presidential election fantasies convinced millions that anti- after 1964. white bias was a greater problem than Goldwater’s coalition o‚ small- anti-black bias and that American government conservatives and segrega- Muslims were scheming to replace tionists had a long, bipartisan provenance. U.S. jurisprudence with Islamic law. Back in the antebellum United States, The new media ecosystem ©ourished supporters o‚ slavery •ercely resisted mainly on the right. Although liberals federal projects. I‚ the national govern- have tried to emulate conservative news ment was powerful enough to build roads shows, they have never had much success. or mental hospitals, they reasoned, it As Andersen observes, the 45 million might be powerful enough to meddle Americans who listen to right-wing with their racial order. In 1842, former talk radio are older, whiter, and more President John Quincy Adams, then an conservative than the country as a whole. antislavery representative from Massa- Above all, they are angry. According to a chusetts, told his constituents that slavery 2015 Wall Street Journal/¿§ News poll, “palsied” the hand o‚ national government 98 per cent o‚ those who regularly tune and stood in the way o‚ “the prospective in are convinced that the country is promotion o‚ the general welfare.” going in the wrong direction. These clashing attitudes about federal power were vividly illuminated when NATION OF IMMIGRANTS the North and the South split in 1861. The history behind that anger helps With the slave states gone, the Union explain just how and why the United Congress passed a cascade o‚ previously States has gone haywire. Anderson is blocked national programs: land-grant

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colleges, railroads, a homestead act, from the shadows after all this time was banking bills, a progressive income tax, an unprecedented intersection o‚ racial and the •rst national currency. The politics and immigration. Confederate constitution, in contrast, Until the 1960s, the political parties forbade its central government from sorted views on immigration very diŸer- engaging in any “internal improvements.” ently from those on race. Before the Alexander Stephens, the Confederate Civil War, the pro-slavery Democrats vice president, explained the twin corner- embraced new Americans, hustled them stones o‚ the ©edgling state: slavery for into the franchise, and turned an indulgent blacks and no national projects under the eye on their cheating at the polls, guise o‚ interstate commerce. Guarding beating up abolitionists, or sparking the racial hierarchy meant binding the race riots. Year after year, the Demo- central government. cratic Party platform denounced aboli- That pattern persisted long after tionists, welcomed “the oppressed o‚ every slavery ended. Men and women •ghting nation,” and attacked the rival party’s to preserve segregation in the middle long history o‚ anti-immigrant prejudice. o‚ the twentieth century learned that On the other side, the same people who raw racism provoked a national backlash. fought against slavery often despised Calling for liberty and bashing the gov- immigrants and worked to limit their ernment, in contrast, brought them allies. political participation. Even Abraham The leaders o‚ the powerful libertarian Lincoln quietly incorporated nativists streak that runs through mainstream into the new Republican Party, although American conservatism, from Goldwater, he refused to make concessions to them. through Reagan, down to the present, As the historian David Potter wrote, “No always seem to wink at the bigots. O‚ event in the history o‚ the Republican course, many conservatives dispute that party was more crucial or more fortu- idea; after all, they point out, every nate than this sub rosa union. By it, the coalition has its lunatic fringe, and the Republican party received a permanent big-government liberals o‚ the New Deal endowment o‚ nativist support which were long enmeshed with the segregation- probably elected Lincoln in 1860 and ists o‚ the “Solid South.” which strengthened the party in every But with Trump, what seemed fringe election for more than a century to come.” burst onto center stage, trumpeting racial These twin alliances—Whigs (and, later, animosity to cheering partisans. Anderson Republicans) joining with slavery’s critics bluntly sums up the Trump campaign’s and nativists and Democrats siding with strategy: “Fuck the dog whistles.” You’re segregationists and immigrants—kept the “living in hell,” Trump told African two issues o‚ slavery and immigration Americans during the •rst presidential largely separate. debate. “You walk down the street, and Once again, the 1960s changed every- you get shot.” For a time, Trump refused thing. In 1965, Congress passed the Hart- to denounce the Ku Klux Klan or disavow Celler Act, which opened the door to a the white supremacist leader David Duke, new wave o‚ immigrants (immigration who had urged his supporters to vote for to the United States had been radically Trump. What allowed racism to burst curtailed in the 1920s). The main

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opposition to the act came from segre- Although most Americans expect politics gationists who feared that, unlike the to turn on diŸerences over public policy, predominantly European immigrants the two political parties are now con•g- o‚ the past, new arrivals to the United ured to bring tribal issues to the surface. States were more likely to be nonwhite. They repeatedly thrust the same perilous New tensions arose as the immigrant question into politics: Who counts as a generation that arrived after the act true American? swelled into one o‚ the largest in U.S. By underscoring the question o‚ history. Those tensions were increas- national identity, party con©ict now ingly channeled into party politics as strains the United States’ political institu- the parties aligned themselves along tions: regular order in Congress, the norms racial, ethnic, and national-origin lines. that once held the presidency in check, The Democratic Party championed civil the impartiality o‚ the courts and o‚ the rights and sponsored open immigration; news media. Everything from the churches over time, African Americans, Asian to the Boy Scouts has been caught up Americans, and Spanish speakers drifted in the struggle. Mix this broad con©ict (or were pushed) into its ranks. At the over identity with the United States’ same time, white natives moved deci- long history oª fantasy, and the result is sively to the Republicans. a nation that has, indeed, gone haywire. Exacerbating matters still further, the U.S. Census Bureau began to publicize an BAD TRIP explosive demographic prediction after Andersen ends his book with the wan the 2000 census: the United States was hope that American fantastical thinking inexorably becoming a majority-minority has peaked and that the American people nation. That oversimpli•ed matters will somehow stumble their way to because the bureau uses a standard “balance and composure.” What are the reminiscent o‚ the “one-drop rule,” classi- chances o‚ that happening? The racialized fying people o‚ mixed ethnic heritage as history that runs parallel to the story minorities. But there is no denying that oª Fantasyland oŸers two very diŸerent the face o‚ the nation is changing. Noth- prospects for the future. ing symbolized that change more than On the one hand, national institutions Obama. Nothing gave voice to the are generally resilient, and even in today’s fretful backlash more than Trump. media landscape, it remains di£cult for The political realignment over race most people—Trump excluded, it seems— and immigration meant that by the early to simply lie without consequences. years o‚ this century, for the •rst time, race Politics may continue to swing wildly and ethnicity mapped neatly onto party back and forth for some time, but the identi•cation. Take just one marker o‚ the basic demographic trends that worried divide: almost 90 percent oª Republican Republican leaders after their defeat in members o‚ the House oª Representa- the 2012 presidential election have not tives are white men; among Democrats, changed. Every year, the United States the •gure is 43 percent. The political grows a little less white; white nationalism system that once diŸused the issue o‚ oŸers no long-term prospect o‚ political national identity now exacerbates it. success. Rather, each party will have to

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face up to some stubborn realities. In this scenario, the pressure o‚ racial Republicans will need to •nally and and ethnic change could result in the old forcefully divorce their small-government South’s racial politics going national. message from implicit (and sometimes Andersen’s history makes it easy to explicit) appeals to white supremacy. imagine the tall tales that might justify Democrats will need to earn the allegiance voter suppression, already a •nely honed o‚ their voters by squarely addressing the feature o‚ U.S. politics. Politicians gerry- issue o‚ economic opportunity rather mander districts, deny suŸrage to felons, than running on antipathy toward the purge voting lists shortly before elections, Republican Party. impose restrictive registration require- O‚ course, on either side, an impas- ments, enact voter À laws, close polling sioned base might not permit its party places, and reduce voting times, all o‚ to make the necessary adjustments. which make it harder for many black, There is plenty o‚ precedent for that. Hispanic, poor, and young people to American politics has often operated cast their ballots. Fantasies about mas- with a dominant majority party and an sive voter fraud could ratchet up the (often regional) minority one. The party restrictions. Trump’s victory, achieved that fails to keep up with the times may with almost three million fewer votes •nd itsel looking like the Democrats after than his opponent got, might mark the the start o‚ the Civil War (the party beginning o‚ minority rule. put just two men in the White House Whichever o‚ these visions proves in 72 years) or the Republicans after the more accurate, American politics is not start o‚ the Great Depression (just one likely to calm down anytime soon, as the president in 36 years). nation continues to confront its changing On the other hand, democracies can identity. Yet there is ultimately some- break. As the political scientists Robert thing soothing about Andersen’s lively Mickey, Steven Levitsky, and Lucan history. It is a litany oª falsehood, fantasy, Ahmad Way warned in this magazine and folly. But it is also the tale o‚ a country last year, it is exceedingly di£cult for a that has managed to survive and thrive large democracy to negotiate a change in for •ve centuries despite all the lies it its dominant ethnic group. The United tells itself.∂ States tried to achieve something like that after the Civil War, during Recon- struction, when Republicans sought to impose racial equality on Southern society. Resurgent white power fended oŸ the reforms and constructed bluntly authoritarian regimes that stripped the vote from almost all black people and many whites across the Southern states. By the mid-1930s, for example, Missis- sippi had over two million citizens, but only about 6,000 o‚ them cast ballots in midterm congressional elections.

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MA18_Book.indb 161 1/18/18 10:21 PM what they know how to do with no regard Future Fights for the future. It is not enough to follow U.S. President Barack Obama’s injunction “Don’t do stupid shit.” Policymakers must Planning for the Next War be able to choose among alternative ideas. In The Future of War, Lawrence Stephen Peter Rosen Freedman, professor emeritus at King’s College London (and a member o‚ this magazine’s panel o‚ regular book review- The Future of War: A History ers), comprehensively examines how BY LAWRENCE FREEDMAN. Allen people have done this in the past. But Lane, 2017, 400 pp. his analysis will disappoint those seeking practical advice. Although Freedman oŸers a useful corrective to current ormer U.S. Secretary oª Defense tendencies, he may have overlooked Robert Gates has been known to some o history’s more useful lessons. Fquip that Washington’s predic- tions about its future wars have been FUTURE WARS: A RETROSPECTIVE one hundred percent right, zero percent To survey how Americans and Europeans o‚ the time. In early 1950, o£cials said have thought about the future o‚ war that the United States would not •ght over the past 150 years, Freedman consults in Korea. In 1964, U.S. President Lyndon many diŸerent sources, discussing •ction Johnson promised that he would not writers such as Tom Clancy, H. G. Wells, send American troops to •ght wars in and Jules Verne and Vietnam War movies Asia. Iraq was not on any American’s list such as the John Wayne classic The Green o‚ enemies in 1990; after all, the United Berets, in addition to the works o‚ political States had assisted that country in its scientists and military professionals, war against Iran just a decade before. such as Charles Edward Callwell and And few people—not even Khalid Sheik B. H. Liddell Hart. He also covers related Mohammed, one o‚ the architects o‚ topics, such as civilian and military casual- the 9/11 attacks—anticipated the U.S. ties, failed and fragile states, and the invasion o‚ Afghanistan in 2001. morality o humanitarian intervention, So why bother thinking about the and provides potted histories o‚ campaigns future o‚ war at all? The answer, for in the former Yugoslavia and Somalia, better or worse, is that there is no other which are occasionally interesting even choice. I bureaucracies do not carefully when not closely related to the subject consider possible future scenarios, they at hand. This wide scope is commend- will make choices that merely re©ect their able, as no discipline or mode o‚ thought implicit or explicit assumptions about has a monopoly on insight. But the book’s what kinds o‚ wars they will •ght. Worse breadth may also explain some small yet, they may simply carry on doing factual errors that detract from its author- ity. (Small Wars, the classic book by the STEPHEN PETER ROSEN is Beton Michael Kaneb Professor of National Security and military strategist Callwell, displays Military Aairs at Harvard University. con siderable respect for insurgents, not

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Eye robot: a military robot in London, February 2009 the imperial arrogance asserted by wars would be determined the same way. Freedman. Robot swarms do not require Even gures such as the Polish banker central control, as Freedman writes; they Ivan (Jan) Bloch and the British politician respond to cues from their environment Norman Angell, who saw in the early and one another. The actor Peter Sellers 1900s that sudden victories were no said that his character Dr. Strangelove longer possible, predicted short con icts, was modeled on the German American assuming that no one would tolerate engineer Wernher von Braun, not the bloody stalemates. After World War I, American strategist Herman Kahn, as scholars anticipated the use o‚ poison Freedman has it.) gas and economic warfare, but not the In setting up his main argument, adoption oƒ blitzkrieg. The Cold War Freedman approvingly quotes the politi- nuclear stando‡ led some to argue that cal theorist Hannah Arendt: “Predictions nuclear proliferation and deterrence would o‚ the future are never anything but stabilize the global system, a prediction projections o‚ present automatic processes whose accuracy scholars are still debating. LUKE and procedures, that is, o‚ occurrences that The collapse o‚ the Soviet Union

M are likely to come to pass i‚ men do not produced the famous “end oƒ history” AC

GREGOR act and i‚ nothing unexpected happens.” thesis, which heralded democratic peace He goes on to survey the long history o‚ and the permanent triumph oƒ Western this awed thinking. After the seemingly liberalism. The September 11 attacks led / REUTERS decisive battles o‚ the Franco-Prussian observers to hypothesize about religious War and the Russo-Japanese War, theorists wars o‚ terror, neglecting the reemergence assumed that the outcomes o› future o‚ great-power military competitions.

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Freedman concludes that although advancement created a revolution that there will be many eŸorts to portray the expanded the battle•eld and compressed future o‚ war, “i‚ there is a lesson from the time within which campaigns would this book it is that while many will deserve occur. With the advent o‚ railroads in to be taken seriously, they should all be the American Civil War, combat could treated skeptically.” But perhaps historical cover continent-sized areas in a matter study can oŸer more constructive wisdom. o‚ days or weeks, not months or years. There are some alternative ways to think And later, aviation brought war to about the subject that have proved useful European cities before the defending in the past. And examining the successes— armies were defeated. not just the failures—might help strategists According to the in©uential American constructively plan for future wars. strategist Andrew Marshall, an under- standing o‚ this pattern helped the Soviet THE EVOLUTION OF WAR Union identify the disruptive potential I‚ a country cannot say with con•dence o‚ digital information technology before where or with whom it will •ght, it still its impact on war was widely recognized, may be possible to narrow down how it in the wake o‚ the 1990–91 Gul War. will •ght. There are some constants, The Soviet general staŸ had famously but the character o‚ war does change— assessed that the antitank potential o‚ sometimes quickly, but more usually American precision weapons was equal to slowly. For example, the political scientist that o‚ tactical nuclear weapons, without Stephen Biddle has described how the the drawbacks. The recognition that the increasing lethality oª •repower has Soviet military industrial complex was forced the steady dispersal o‚ troops on unable to compete in the area o‚ digital the battle•eld. This in turn has expanded information processing led the general staŸ the battle•eld, gradually eliminating what to urge Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had been rear guards and diminishing the to seek some sort o‚ rapprochement with time interval between the onset o‚ war the West, which would enable the Soviets and attacks on the enemy’s heartland. to catch up in an area that was critical to Identifying these kind o‚ trends has military competition. historically helped countries prepare for Today, the diŸusion o‚ digital military future wars. During the tsarist era, the technology has given not only the Chinese Russian military was not in the fore- and the Russians but also the Iranians front o‚ military modernization. But and their proxy Hezbollah the ability to perhaps because they led a backward reach out over long distances and strike institution, Russian military thinkers at targets with precision. This poses a were uniquely conscious o how others problem for the U.S. military, which were changing. These Russians (and later will need to •gure out how to •ght its Soviets) understood that revolutions in way into areas defended with precision military aŸairs would regularly alter the weapons. Freedman neglects the impli- pace and geographic extent o‚ war. First cations o‚ this diŸusion o‚ precision came railroads and ri©es; then internal strike weapons, instead focusing on combustion engines, radios, and airplanes; robots, drones, cyberwar fare, and then missiles and nuclear weapons. Each hybrid warfare.

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MA18_Book.indb 164 1/18/18 10:21 PM PLANNING FOR THE UNKNOWN Still, an awareness o‚ general trends in the character o‚ war does not necessarily mean that a country will know how to prepare. For advice on this front, strate- gists might consult the work oª Burton Klein, who tackled the question o‚ military procurement during periods o‚ uncertainty as an analyst at the  À Franklin Williams Corporation in the 1950s. Internship When World War II ended, the United The Council on Foreign Relations is seeking States did not know who its friends or talented individuals for the Franklin Williams its enemies would be. The Cold War Internship. alliance structures had not yet emerged, The Franklin Williams Internship, named after and there was still hope for cooperative the late Ambassador Franklin H. Williams, was established for undergraduate and graduate relations with the Soviet Union. Wash- students who have a serious interest in ington also did not know what to buy. international relations. Ballistic missiles had been used in World Ambassador Williams had a long career of War II, but so had manned bombers and public service, including serving as the primitive cruise missiles. The United American Ambassador to Ghana, as well as the States had already developed atomic Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Lincoln University, one of the country’s historically bombs, but now scientists suggested that black colleges. He was also a Director of the superbombs might be possible. Council on Foreign Relations, where he made After re©ecting on the practices o‚ the special efforts to encourage the nomination of U.S. defense establishment during that black Americans to membership. period, Klein concluded that ©exibility The Council will select one individual each should be the principal goal o‚ defense term (fall, spring, and summer) to work in the Council’s New York City headquarters. spending during uncertain times. In his The intern will work closely with a Program eyes, there were two kinds oª ©exibility. Director or Fellow in either the Studies or The •rst could be obtained by investing the Meetings Program and will be involved in expensive, multipurpose forces that with program coordination, substantive and business writing, research, and budget were not optimized for any one mission— management. The selected intern will be for example, an aircraft carrier task force. required to make a commitment of at least 12 The second kind oª ©exibility derived hours per week, and will be paid $10 an hour. from information rather than capabilities. To apply for this internship, please send a According to Klein, countries could get résumé and cover letter including the se- ahead o‚ the curve by investigating mester, days, and times available to work to the Internship Coordinator in the Human diŸerent technologies and investing in Resources Office at the address listed below. prototypes o‚ weapons: some might be The Council is an equal opportunity employer.

failures, but others might be war winners. Council on Foreign Relations Such an approach would show strategists Human Resources Office many diŸerent ways to face many dif- 58 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10065 tel: 212.434 . 9400 fax: 212.434 . 9893 ferent threats and allow them to iron out [email protected] http://www.cfr.org problems in advance.

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During this period, the United States the use o‚ cavalry and the integration made prototypes o‚ dozens o‚ missiles o‚ artillery •re and infantry movements. and airplanes, many o‚ which it did not But Russia was big, and the tsar’s army buy. The Department oª Defense also had many more horses than Napoleon’s. bought information about large-scale I‚ the war could be extended and pro- production for military purposes, so that tracted, France would run out o horses. i‚ and when an enemy emerged, it could And without cavalry, Napoleon would quickly build the necessary forces. be blind on the battle•eld, reducing Unfortunately, this approach—known his operational superiority. as “industrial mobilization planning”— Russia in 1812 is not the only case o‚ a became a lost art in the United States foreseeable war, as the historian Williamson after the emergence o large arsenals Murray demonstrates in a 2014 book that o‚ thermonuclear weapons led policy- he co-edited titled Successful Strategies. makers to believe that it was no longer Murray suggests that strategists can reduce necessary. the problem oª forecasting the character o‚ a future war by focusing on what can KNOW THY ENEMY be known with certainty about the enemy. Freedman is right that it is always di£- For example, the Union had a demographic cult to predict the future. But sometimes advantage over the Confederacy. In a war the problems facing a particular nation o‚ attrition, it would win i‚ the forces o‚ the can be foreseen. Throughout history, South were constantly engaged—hence successful preparations for war with a General Ulysses S. Grant’s famous order known enemy have fallen into roughly to General George Meade: “Wherever two camps: the Clausewitzian type and Lee goes, there you will go also.” the Sun-tzu type. The Clausewitzian In some cases, it may be possible to go approach relies on general information beyond an enemy’s obvious characteristics about the enemy’s and one’s own capabil- to understand its plans and thwart them ities. The Sun-tzu approach depends on even before the war begins. As Sun-tzu a close and detailed study o‚ the enemy. observed, the acme o‚ strategy is to defeat In his classic book On War, Clausewitz the enemy’s strategy. O‚ course, such an gives examples o how the general char- approach requires a detailed understand- acteristics o belligerents can be used ing o‚ or intelligence about the enemy’s to identity what he calls the enemy’s plans, which is not always possible. Still, “centre o‚ gravity.” The magni•cent it has been successfully executed in the 2009 book by the historian Dominic recent past. The military analyst Peter Lieven, Russia Against Napoleon, illustrates Swartz has written about how a careful the Clausewitzian approach in action. reading o‚ Soviet naval doctrine and the Lieven documents how a simple assess- exploitation o‚ still classi•ed intelligence ment o‚ geography and national strengths sources showed the U.S. Navy that it and weaknesses allowed Russian o£cials had completely misunderstood how the to successfully prepare for war against an Soviet navy planned to •ght a submarine invading France in 1812. Napoleon was war. A corrected understanding helped clearly a superior general, and his army the U.S. Navy develop a new strategy. was superior, as well—particularly in Instead o‚ using U.S. attack submarines

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to protect American transatlantic convoys who are able to adapt rapidly to changing from Soviet submarines, the Americans conditions. Finally, it should revive the began to use their attack submarines to art o‚ industrial mobilization planning, so threaten Soviet ballistic missile submarines, that when threats become better de•ned, in order to keep the Soviet navy on the the United States can make the best use o‚ defensive. In the event o‚ war, Washing- its still formidable production capabili- ton planned to force the Soviet attack ties. And since the industrial age is over, submarines to stay close to home instead mili tary mobilization will need to involve o‚ going out to sink American convoys. newly dominant production technologies, This strategy worked—the threat posed such as chip fabrication and 3-D printing. by American attack submarines led the Freedman may be right that a •xation Soviet navy to hold their ballistic missile on the recent past makes mispredicting submarines close to port, in “bastions,” hard to avoid. But even so, consider- where they would be protected by Soviet ing history can still help o£cials use- attack submarines. fully plan for a wide range oª future contingencies.∂ LOOKING AHEAD The United States is currently experi- encing another period o‚ uncertainty. What is the greatest threat to American security today? China? Russia? Islamist extremism? O£cials and experts disagree. Are nuclear weapons obsolete or the wave o‚ the future? Again, reasonable experts disagree. But acknowledging the unknowns does not mean that strategic policymaking is impossible. As a practical matter, the United States should practice the arts o‚ planning just discussed. I‚ general trends in the character o‚ war persist, they will greatly constrain the ability o‚ the United States to intervene militarily at intercontinental distances, at least in the way Washington has become accustomed to doing. As other states gain the ability to conduct precision strikes, building up the •xed logistical bases and resources necessary for industrial-era war in the theater o‚ operations will no longer be possible. The United States should also prior- itize funding research and development and focus on building a smaller military with higher-quality personnel, soldiers

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MA18_Book.indb 167 1/18/18 10:21 PM o‚ rivals, and self-restraint in the use o‚ Recent Books institutional prerogatives. Political and Legal Safe Passage: The Transition From British G. John Ikenberry to American Hegemony BY KORI SCHAKE. Harvard University Press, 2017, 400 pp.

How Democracies Die World power transitions are rare but BY STEVEN LEVITSKY AND DANIEL perilous moments when hegemonic ZIBLATT. Crown, 2018, 320 pp. leadership passes hands. From the ancient struggles between Athens and ince the mid-twentieth century, Sparta to the world wars o‚ the twenti- most people in Europe and North eth century, these grand shifts have SAmerica have taken for granted often been bloody. The passage o‚ the stability o‚ their liberal democratic leadership from the United Kingdom institutions. In the postwar decades, to the United States, however, stands some democracies did collapse, but they out as unusually peaceful. Although tended to be weak states in poor countries this story has been told many times, outside the advanced Western world, Schake provides a fresh and insightful such as Argentina, Brazil, Ghana, Peru, account that focuses on key moments and Thailand. Today, as Levitsky and when American and British elites revised Ziblatt argue in this important study, their judgments about each other and democracies are dying in slower and more their changing geopolitical fortunes. subtle ways—and Western democracies, She argues that the transition was peace- including the United States, are not ful mostly because it unfolded slowly immune. The risk comes not from power- over a century, during which the hungry generals or revolutionary parties United States became an empire and but from elected o£cials who come to the United Kingdom became a democ- o£ce—often riding a nationalist, popu- racy. A shared political heritage and list, anti-elite, anticorruption wave— common liberal democratic values and proceed to take small steps toward helped an increasingly beleaguered authoritarianism. The threat is so danger- United Kingdom decide that it could ous precisely because each step is often cede leadership to the United States legal. Delivering a powerful wake-up and harness U.S. power to the pursuit call, Levitsky and Ziblatt see signs o‚ o‚ its own interests. The book is most erosion in “the soft guardrails” o‚ democ- fascinating in its details, illuminating racy in the United States. Decades o‚ the myriad struggles between London extreme polarization have taken their and Washington over the rules and toll on the respect for constitutional institutions that would form the basis checks and balances and on traditional for Pax Americana. American political norms, such as mutual toleration, acceptance o‚ the legitimacy

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The Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling designed to tame state power. In this America With the World insightful book, Hurd argues that BY STEWART PATRICK. Brookings international law is actually best under- Institution Press, 2017, 352 pp. stood as a tool o‚ state power—less an externally imposed constraint than a For more than a century, the grand debate resource that governments employ to over the United States’ global role has authorize and legitimize what they want tended to pivot on one question: Can to do. He arrives at this contrarian view Washington best advance its interests and by closely examining the role o‚ inter- values through international institutions or national law in contemporary disputes through its own national eŸorts and ad hoc over war, torture, and drones. In Hurd’s partnerships? At times, as Patrick illumi- portrait, governments pragmatically— nates in this cogent and timely book, this and sometimes cynically—interpret debate has turned into “sovereignty wars,” international law to suit their purposes. heated controversies over whether the They look for legal arguments that will United States should accept constraints on justify their actions and create a “vo- its autonomy and freedom o‚ action. The cabulary o‚ virtue” to describe their U.S. Senate’s debate over President policies. Governments have steadily Woodrow Wilson’s League oª Nations expanded what quali•es as self-defense, was the •rst and most dramatic •ght o‚ this for example, in order to give themselves kind. But more recent arguments over the permission to use force. Nevertheless, North American Free Trade Agreement, Hurd notes, in often small and subtle the International Criminal Court, the ways, international law also construc- Trans-Paci•c Partnership, and the Paris tively shapes how states think about agreement on climate change have proved and pursue their interests. almost as profound and consequential. Cutting through the hyperbole and in©amed rhetoric that tends to surround Beyond Gridlock this subject, Patrick argues that when the BY THOMAS HALE AND DAVID United States signs a treaty or ties itsel‚ to HELD. Polity, 2017, 280 pp. other countries, it is exercising its sover- eign authority, not abdicating it. Washing- Conventional wisdom holds that the ton’s long-term eŸorts to build and operate Western-centered postwar system o‚ within a world o‚ rules and institutions have multilateral cooperation is in crisis. In made it easier, not harder, for the United areas as diverse as security, trade, devel- States to be the captain o‚ its own future. opment, the environment, and public health, the challenges o‚ managing interdependence have multiplied and How to Do Things With International Law cooperation has receded. In an earlier BY IAN HURD. Princeton University book, Hale and Held described the Press, 2017, 200 pp. problem as “gridlock”: a world order marked by dysfunctional international Scholars and policymakers have tradition- institutions and countries less willing ally seen international law as a framework or able to coordinate polices and provide

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global public goods. In this new book, father, Corneo, an economist who is the authors reassess that bleak outlook. keeping the faith, albeit not without Reporting on research conducted by a reservations. Corneo takes seriously consortium o‚ experts, the book identi•es the many criticisms o‚ capitalism as it is some areas o‚ eŸective cooperation, practiced today but insists that detractors such as the World Trade Organization’s must confront the question o‚ which alter- dispute-settlement mechanism and the native systems could realistically meet Chemical Weapons Convention. It also contemporary society’s economic needs. notes that, as older frameworks weaken, In this sweeping and informative discus- new types o‚ multilateral cooperation sion o‚ the role o‚ economy in society, he have emerged. For example, although explores alternative systems, both hypo- the ȯ’s Doha Round o‚ trade talks thetical and real, and •nds them all has stalled, China is building trade and inferior to capitalism. The book then investment ties across Central Asia and addresses how the modern welfare state Southeast Asia. The Paris agreement on has tempered capitalism’s worst features climate change signaled another form but has eroded since the late twentieth o‚ progress. As Hale and Held see it, century—a development that is respon- the institutions o‚ global governance sible for much o‚ today’s public disillu- are inadequate, but small innovations sionment with the free-market system. and experiments in cooperation—often Corneo considers how the welfare state pursued regionally, in coalition with might be revived under current condi- civil society groups, or by transnational tions, which would require new incen- technical elites—show promise. tives for politicians and civil servants to construct a sturdier safety net.

Economic, Social, and Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of Environmental the Intangible Economy BY JONATHAN HASKEL AND STIAN WESTLAKE. Princeton University Richard N. Cooper Press, 2017, 288 pp.

In the context o business spending, Is Capitalism Obsolete? A Journey Through “investment” is a word with diverse Alternative Economic Systems meanings, which often leads to confu- BY GIACOMO CORNEO. sion. Economists usually use it to refer TRANSLATED BY DANIEL STEUER. to expenditures on tangible things, Harvard University Press, 2017, 312 pp. such as buildings and equipment—a kind o‚ spending that raises future apitalism is increasingly unpop- earnings. The authors o‚ this informa- ular, especially in Europe. This tive book, by contrast, de•ne it more Cintriguing book opens and closes broadly as expenditure today in the with a spirited dialogue between a young expectation o‚ material rewards in the woman skeptical o‚ capitalism and her future. Haskel and Westlake note that

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in all rich countries, “intangible low (even negative) interest rates, vast investment”—spending on things central bank purchases o bonds, and such as research and development and “forward guidance”—statements that branding—has been growing relative central banks make to inform the public to tangible investment. The data are o likely future decisions—made sense often sketchy, but the authors report to stimulate economic recovery in the that intangible investment now ex- wake o‚ the crisis. Such steps, which ceeds the tangible kind in Finland were once unconventional, and are and Sweden, and does so by even now more common, may become quite larger margins in the United Kingdom normal in future. This is something and the United States. The authors o‚ a niche subject, but Ubide’s presen- explore how the changing nature o‚ tation o‚ these ideas does not rely on investment will aŸect companies, overly technical language. investment analysts, economists, and governments, and they oŸer sugges- tions for all. This is a useful exposition Vaccines: What Everyone Needs to Know o‚ a number o‚ widely used but poorly BY KRISTEN A. FEEMSTER. Oxford understood terms and concepts. University Press, 2017, 208 pp.

Life has been made immeasurably The Paradox of Risk: Leaving the better by the sharp decline in the Monetary Policy Comfort Zone incidence o‚ infectious diseases, an BY ÁNGEL UBIDE. Peterson improvement made possible through Institute for International Economics, inoculations, especially o‚ children, 2017, 170 pp. which protect people from contracting diseases and have led to the elimination Many books have been written on the or near elimination o‚ maladies such as origins, dynamics, and lessons o‚ the smallpox and polio. Yet public wariness •nancial crisis and recession o‚ 2007–9. o‚ vaccines persists and has even in The year 2008 was arguably the worst some cases increased—perhaps, ironically, •nancial year since 1931—which was a owing in part to the decline in disease very bad year indeed. This important incidence produced by vaccines. This book distinguishes itsel by focusing useful, fair-minded, and extremely on how central banks—speci•cally, the informative book explains how vaccines U.S. Federal Reserve, the European are produced and how they work; Central Bank, the Bank oª England, discusses the diverse reasons behind and the Bank o‚ Japan—took unconven- some parents’ hesitancy to inoculate tional actions to avert another Great their children; explores the prospect o‚ Depression. Ubide, an economist with employing vaccines for not only pre - extensive practical experience in wealth venting but also curing some diseases, management, discusses misconceptions including À and even some cancers; about the role o‚ monetary and •scal and examines the potential for the total policies in contributing to and helping elimination o‚ particular diseases, such end the crisis; he argues that extremely as measles.

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Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Military, Scienti•c, and Making of the Modern World BY JOSHUA B. FREEMAN. Norton, Technological 2018, 448 pp. Lawrence D. Freedman This fascinating book is a history o‚ the large factory’s importance as a symbol o‚ modernity from early-eighteenth- century Europe to early-twenty-•rst- The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a century Asia. It tells the stories o‚ Nuclear War Planner companies (mostly private but also BY DANIEL ELLSBERG. Bloomsbury, some state-owned enterprises), oŸers 2017, 432 pp. sociological portraits oª factory workers, and considers the portrayal oª factories efore he became famous for in art, literature, and •lms. The earliest leaking the Pentagon Papers, large factories were established in BEllsberg was a bright analyst at England in the 1720s, produced silk the  À Corporation who worked on yarn, and employed around 300 people. some o‚ the most perplexing problems By 1945, Ford’s River Rouge facility in in U.S. national security. This candid Dearborn, Michigan, employed 85,000 and chilling memoir describes how he people, who mainly worked on building came to recognize that the U.S. mili- bombers. Today, some factory complexes tary’s approach to preparing for nuclear in China employ over 100,000 workers. war was terrifyingly casual. I‚ war came, Building factories on a large scale has the United States was ready to obliter- sometimes involved erecting whole cities ate not only the Soviet Union but also for their employees, which has intro- China, as a matter o‚ course—a plan duced a myriad o logistical problems; that would have immediately produced this was often the case in the Soviet 275 million fatalities and then led to Union. In their heyday, big factories another 50 million, owing to the eŸects signaled and celebrated the arrival o‚ o‚ radiation. And those numbers do not a modern technological age and new even include the lives that would have opportunities for laborers. Later, they been lost by the United States and its facilitated the organization o‚ dis- allies. Ellsberg was appalled, but he satis•ed workers. In recent decades, understood the logic o‚ deterrence and factories have declined in size in Europe the policy challenges that had allowed and the United States, not least because such an approach to develop. This gives large and densely concentrated facilities his account credibility and poignancy: at increase the risk o‚ disruption to value one point, he drafts an alternative chains owing to human events or war plan that would still have horri•c natural phenomena such as earthquakes consequences—just not as awful as the and storms. one it would replace. His experiences have led Ellsberg to argue that how- ever much he might like to see nuclear weapons abolished, the •rst step in

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addressing the danger must be to make The Virtual Weapon and International Order them harder to use. BY LUCAS KELLO. Yale University Press, 2017, 336 pp.

The Pentagon’s Wars: The Military’s Digital World War: Islamists, Extremists, Undeclared War Against America’s Presidents and the Fight for Cyber Supremacy BY MARK PERRY. Basic Books, BY HAROON K. ULLAH. Yale Univer- 2017, 368 pp. sity Press, 2017, 336 pp.

Ignore the ož-putting title and subtitle The debate about how digital commu- o‹ this book, which suggest that it alleges nications technology is transforming a militaristic conspiracy against elected conˆict takes place on a spectrum: on leaders. In reality, the book is an enthrall- one end sit those warning o‹ a “cyber– ing, gossipy account o‹ the interplay Pearl Harbor”; on the other sit a variety between senior U.S. military and politi- o‹ skeptics who point to the di“culty o‹ cal leaders since the end o‹ the Cold gaining a lasting political bene”t from War. The events covered in the book are cyberattacks. Kello situates himsel‹ already well known (the U.S.-led wars closer to the ”rst group and argues that in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq), the emergence o‹ cyberweapons in the as are the personalities, including gener- twenty-”rst century has been as revolu- als such as Wesley Clark, Tommy Franks, tionary in its implications as the intro- David Petraeus, and Colin Powell. What duction o‹ nuclear weapons was in the Perry adds are accounts o‹ personal twentieth. Atomic arsenals threatened rivalries and interservice competition unprecedented mass destruction, but and details about how Presidents Bill they mostly ”t within traditional models Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack o‹ interstate war. Cyberweapons, on the Obama looked to the generals to get other hand, do not kill directly but can the advice they wanted—which was not interfere with systems that do, and they always the advice they really needed. empower nonstate actors as much as Clinton’s ”rst term opened with a states. Using familiar examples—the public spat with Powell over whether Stuxnet virus, which the United States gay people should be allowed to serve and Israel directed against Iranian nuclear in the military, yet when it came to enrichment facilities; North Korea’s the wisdom o‹ a war with Iraq a decade hacking o‹ Sony Pictures; the Russian later, senior o“cers kept their misgiv- cyberattack on Estonia in 2007; and ings to themselves. The book demon- Russian interference in the U.S. presi- strates that far from forming a cabal dential election in 2016—Kello addresses against the White House, U.S. military the danger o‹ escalation, the prospects leaders have often failed to challenge for cyberdefense and cyberdeterrence, civilian leaders who were making and the problem o‹ crafting legal rem- poor decisions. edies for malevolent behavior. Ullah zeroes in on one part o‹ the virtual battle”eld. Drawing on obser- vations he made while working for the

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U.S. State Department during the more credible strategy that was showing Obama administration, he presents a results, until it was undermined by series o‚ case studies from the Muslim Congress, which failed to back the world. He reveals the sophistication military, and the press, which stoked and enthusiasm with which Islamists public opposition to the war. In his have exploited social media to prosely- latest book, Daddis is having none o‚ tize, nurture new recruits, and spread this. He argues that the changes Abrams propaganda or news o‚ a coming dem- made were less signi•cant than many onstration. Violent jihadists also use assumed, and he shows that the narra- encrypted sites to discuss how to carry tive o‚ military victory snatched away out acts o‚ terror in the real world. The by Congress and antiwar sentiment potential for social media to circumvent misses a vital point. The real problem o£cial censorship, especially in coun- had less to do with U.S. military strat- tries where Internet access is wide- egy than with the South Vietnamese spread, means that it can provide a vital government’s failure to develop an outlet for public frustrations and can authentic national identity that could be used to support a variety o‚ causes. sustain it through the next stage o‚ But as Islamist leaders have learned, it what had already been a long civil war. is di£cult to impose message discipline online; radical groups often wind up arguing among themselves. The most The United States powerful lesson Ullah draws—illustrated best by the example oª Egypt in the Walter Russell Mead years after the revolts o‚ 2011—is that when it comes to seizing power, as opposed to merely expressing and stoking disaŸection, the winners tend National Security Strategy of the United to be strong leaders with a clear pur- States of America pose and an eŸective organization. White House, 2017, 68 pp.

he 2017 U.S. National Security Withdrawal: Reassessing America’s Final Strategy attempts to integrate Years in Vietnam TPresident Donald Trump’s BY GREGORY A. DADDIS. Oxford aversion to trade agreements with his University Press, 2017, 320 pp. emphasis on American sovereignty at the expense o‚ multilateral institutions In 2014, Daddis, a U.S. Army veteran, and his skepticism about the prospects published a well-regarded book on for democratization in the developing General William Westmoreland’s period world with a policy o‚ U.S. global o‚ command during the Vietnam War, engagement. The authors articulate a which spanned from 1964 to 1968 and Jacksonian view o‚ world order, in which ended when he was replaced by General a sovereign United States, secure in its Creighton Abrams. The conventional military, technological, and economic wisdom holds that Abrams developed a power, frustrates revisionist great

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powers, maintains a global alliance president in 1896. This was a frustrating system, and actively counters terrorism time. The Civil War did not end with and other threats to the homeland. the triumph o‚ democracy and racial The keys to this strategy are domestic: brotherhood but rather in an ugly and reviving the economy through tax ultimately losing •ght against the forces cuts and deregulation and promoting o‚ white supremacy. The Industrial U.S. energy production. U.S. military Revolution left Americans divided by spending will increase. China, as the class; meanwhile, mass immigration most important economic and security led to ethnic polarization. It was a time competitor to the United States, will when U.S. institutions and ideologies be the central concern o‚ American were unable to cope with the problems strategy. There are many reasons to the country faced and when populist be skeptical that this approach can movements surged as governments succeed—or that Trump will prove failed to meet public needs. The rich disciplined enough to follow it. But history o‚ those years can be di£cult the political pressures to which it to follow; readers will thank White for responds are real and won’t go away the clear prose and strong narrative anytime soon. The post–Cold War drive that makes this complicated story foreign policy era is over, and as U.S. easier to understand. policymakers think about what comes next, they will •nd that the domestic political dynamics that helped shape The Iran Nuclear Deal: Bombs, this strategy statement will remain Bureaucrats, and Billionaires relevant even when the Trump admin- BY DENNIS C. JETT. Palgrave istration comes to an end. Macmillan, 2018, 481 pp.

Despite occasional cries from the The Republic for Which It Stands: The academy that domestic politics are—or United States During Reconstruction and should be—irrelevant to foreign policy, the Gilded Age, 1865–1896 practitioners and policymakers know BY RICHARD WHITE. Oxford that the two are irrevocably linked. In University Press, 2017, 968 pp. this book on the politics o‚ the Iran nuclear deal, Jett takes an interesting, White’s fascinating and comprehensive i‚ imperfect, look at the domestic actors book could not be more timely. When that sought to in©uence U.S. policy questions o‚ race, economic inequality, before and after the international nego- and the rise o‚ giant corporate monopo- tiations that led to the deal. Jett, whose lies and a plutocratic elite dominate belie‚ that no truly rational argument U.S. politics, it is time to take another can be made against the agreement shines look at Reconstruction and the Gilded forth on every page, gets at least one Age, the period o‚ American history important thing right: although some stretching, roughly, from the assassina- o‚ the most prominent individuals and tion oª President Abraham Lincoln in organizations that opposed the deal 1865 to William McKinley’s election as were Jewish, the U.S. Jewish community

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was deeply divided over Iran policy, the agency, in which ©awed planning with most Jewish Americans siding with can lead to serious mistakes. The Ghosts President Barack Obama and supporting of Langley is not the last word on the the agreement. That said, Jett’s inability § , but it contains information and to grasp the salience o‚ the procedural perspectives that those concerned for and policy arguments that opponents the future o‚ this important institution o‚ the deal brought forward leads to a would do well to consider. somewhat one-sided account o‚ a com- plex debate. At its weakest, the book reads like a collection o‚ talking points; Western Europe at its best, it helps readers understand the complicated links between domestic Andrew Moravcsik politics and foreign policy that presidents and diplomats neglect at their peril.

Go, Went, Gone The Ghosts of Langley: Into the CIA’s BY JENNY ERPENBECK. New Heart of Darkness Directions, 2017, 320 pp. BY JOHN PRADOS. New Press, 2017, 320 pp. his brilliantly understated novel traces with uncommon delicacy There are few government agencies as Tand depth the interior transfor- controversial as the § , and few research- mation o‚ a retired German classicist ers have brought as much passion and named Richard. One day, he stumbles determination to understanding it as upon a group o‚ unauthorized African Prados. His story begins with the O£ce migrants encamped in the center o‚ o‚ Strategic Services (the precursor to Berlin. First, he sees only the immedi- the § , established during World War II), ate life-and-death challenges they face. continues through the disastrous As many Germans have done recently, § -backed Bay oª Pigs invasion o‚ Cuba, he helps mobilize churches, organiza- and gains energy and detail when it arrives tions, and individuals to assist them. at the Iran-contra scandal o‚ the Reagan Most o‚ the refugees disappear anyway. years and the George W. Bush adminis- But Richard gets to know the ones that tration’s use o‚ “enhanced interrogation remain. He witnesses their struggle to techniques” after the 9/11 attacks. Prados’ retain vivid memories o lost families, research and unrelenting search for the loves, communities, and cultures—with- truth are admirable, and his conclusions out which they •nd it di£cult to main- command respect, i‚ not always assent. tain their dignity. In the end, Richard He highlights serious problems at the comes to realize that his life, too, is lived agency but says very little about any on “the surface o‚ the sea,” beneath which successes it has enjoyed. The secrecy and lie many things “one cannot possibly isolation o‚ the § can lead to excessive endure.” He, too, must cope with trou- suspicion among outsiders; it can also bling traumas and decide which memories lead to a hothouse environment inside to foster and which to repress. Erpenbeck

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possesses an uncanny ability to portray mine their electoral success. Meanwhile, the mundane interactions and routines such tactics tend to degrade solidarity that compose everyday life, which she in society as a whole—blocking inclu- elevates into an intimately moving med- sion, fostering anti-Muslim sentiment, itation on one o‚ the great issues o‚ empowering conservative religious our times. Her economical prose lends leaders, and undermining the in©uence existential signi•cance to the most oª Muslim women. In the long term, commonplace conversations, de•ned the best way to resolve these dilemmas less by what they include than by what may be to dilute ethnic enclaves and they omit. challenge traditional social structures.

Dilemmas of Inclusion: Muslims in European Civil Service in (Times of) European Politics Crisis: A Political Sociology of the BY RAFAELA M. DANCYGIER. Changing Power of Eurocrats Princeton University Press, 2017, 264 pp. BY DIDIER GEORGAKAKIS. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, 329 pp. The participation oª Muslims in European politics has spawned a Many believe that the civil servants heated debate often dominated by who manage the —labeled “Eurocrats” anti-immigrant prophets o‚ doom. by critics—are too numerous, unaccount- Dancygier sheds a cooling light on able, powerful, and pampered. In this the issue. With a sophisticated analysis book, Georgakakis debunks that myth. o‚ thousands o‚ elections in Austria, The population oª Eurocrats (around Belgium, Germany, and the United 40,000) is no larger than the number o‚ Kingdom, she shows that European public servants typically employed by a political parties have been ruthlessly major European city—and thus only pragmatic in attracting Muslim votes. •ve percent o‚ the average per capita As soon as a pool oª Muslim voters number o‚ public employees in the  reaches a signi•cant size, parties select member states. In recent years, more- candidates who can best appeal to over, civil-service reforms have much them. Yet this poses di£cult political diminished the power and perks that dilemmas. The easiest Muslims for a Eurocrats enjoy. Ironically, the British party to attract, and those who will government led the eŸort to impose a oŸer the most electoral advantage, distinctively Anglo-Saxon bureaucratic tend to be those who are geographically model on Eurocrats, only to suŸer concentrated—and thus also the least criticism from Brexiteers who view the assimilated and most conservative. Brussels bureaucracy as a foreign impo- Often, the traditional bases oª European sition. More broadly, the in©uence o‚ parties hold diŸerent views on gender, the most independent part o‚ the Â, religion, and sexuality than the typical the European Commission, has waned Muslim in such enclaves. So tailoring relative to that o‚ national governments, messages to new Muslim voters can technocratic bodies, and the elected fragment parties and ultimately under- European Parliament. No wonder

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Eurocrats today are less idealistic than For those who enjoy long afternoons they used to be: fewer now believe with friends in a good café, dishing dirt that they are spearheading a grand, on the rich or famous, this book is a open-ended experiment in suprana- must-read. tional governance. Despite its academic verbosity and occasionally awkward prose, this book details an important Absolute Power: How the Pope Became the and overlooked transformation in how Most In¤uential Man in the World contemporary Europe is governed. BY PAUL COLLINS. PublicAŸairs, 2018, 384 pp.

The Gourmands’ Way: Six Americans in U.S. President Donald Trump, Chinese Paris and the Birth of a New Gastronomy President Xi Jinping, and German BY JUSTIN SPRING. Farrar, Straus Chancellor Angela Merkel need not and Giroux, 2017, 448 pp. panic. Collins, a former priest, never advances the hyperbolic claim in this Spring recounts the experiences o‚ Julia book’s subtitle. His more modest aim Child, Alice B. Toklas, and four other is instead to show how popes have mid-twentieth-century culinary writers consolidated their hold within the who introduced Americans to •ne French Catholic Church itsel‚ since the turn cooking. The book’s aim is neither to o‚ the nineteenth century. In the pro- illuminate French culinary culture nor cess, he argues, the papacy has sup- to explain why so many Americans were pressed reformist elements, local par- receptive to it in the postwar era. It is ishes, and women everywhere. Yet this rather to examine the six authors’ indi- blinkered vision o‚ the church treats vidual foibles and the idiosyncratic papal power as resulting entirely from ways in which they led each one to infallible theological pronouncements become a gastronomic guru. In doing and the bureaucratic in©uence o‚ the so, the book serves heaping portions Roman Curia, the Vatican’s administra- o‚ snarky gossip, sharp criticism, and tive body. The reader gets little sense insight into the commercial side o‚ o‚ even the most obvious social and cookbooks and cuisine. Obsessively cultural trends that surround and detailed, the book spares no one, and shape any religion. Such developments its vivid prose keeps the reader going have transformed modern Catholicism through a seemingly inexhaustible beyond recognition. The declining catalog o‚ moneygrubbing schemes, number o‚ active Catholics in Europe lovers’ spats, and personal weaknesses. and North America, for example, has Intermittently visible behind the left more developing-world believers, biographical pastiche lies the uniquely who tend to be more conservative, in romantic atmosphere oª Paris, the city control. South America is now home that attracted all the main characters to more Catholics than any other con- with its unique mix o‚ deeply rooted tinent, and Catholicism is growing cultural traditions, tolerance o bohe- most rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa. mian lifestyles, and class snobbery. For a full understanding o‚ the

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church’s role in the world, readers slights, and his obvious receptivity to should look elsewhere. personal ©attery—all o‚ which help explain why his eŸorts often came up short. Lula’s Brazil sought to punch Western Hemisphere above its weight. The more recent near collapse o‚ the country’s political Richard Feinberg sys tem and economy has at least mo- mentarily returned Brazil to mere middle-power status. In Rethinking Global Democracy in Acting Globally: Memoirs of Brazil’s Brazil, Fraundorfer •nds reasons for Assertive Foreign Policy hope that multilateral institutions will BY CELSO AMORIM. Hamilton do a better and more evenhanded job Books, 2017, 486 pp. at tackling pressing global problems by sharing power with civil society Rethinking Global Democracy in Brazil organizations and aŸected local com- BY MARKUS FRAUNDORFER. Row- munities. Fraundorfer closely exam- man & Little•eld, 2017, 250 pp. ines four recent cases in which such interactions took place, all involving uring the 2003–10 presidency Brazil: the development o‚ the World oª Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Health Organization–backed interna- Dthe energetic foreign minister tional drug purchase facility called Amorim traveled widely to expand Unitaid; the promulgation o‚ rights- Brazil’s global in©uence. In his highly based doctrines by the Â’s Committee on intelligent and richly detailed memoir, World Food Security; the establishment the wily, sharp-tongued diplomat seeks o‚ the eight-nation pro-transparency to justify his controversial and ill-fated Open Government Partnership; and attempt to insert Brazil into negotiations the NETmundial global meeting, a over Iran’s nuclear program and to explain one-oŸ eŸort to advance ethical his more sure-footed and well-informed Internet governance. During the reign but equally unsuccessful eŸort to secure oª Lula’s Workers’ Party, Brazil served a deal during the World Trade Organi- as a fascinating laboratory for these zation’s failed Doha Round o‚ trade democracy-expanding innovations. negotiations. He blames others for Brazilian representatives, including both outcomes: France, Russia, and the Amorim, possessed the expertise and United States foiled his Iranian gambit, credibility to play leading roles in all and protectionist nations (particularly four international exercises. To his credit, India and the United States) impeded Fraundorfer recognizes that such exper- the trade accord. Amorim sought to iments are extremely fragile, typically establish Brazil as a trusted, balanced entail only voluntary commitments, interlocutor and as a prestigious player produce more doctrinal posturing than on the world stage. Yet in his caustic policy implementation, and depend on the asides, Amorim reveals his own skewed goodwill o‚ progressive governments— sensibilities, his sensitivity to perceived which is currently in short supply.

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Paladares: Recipes From the Private Res- contemporary Cuban interior design what taurants, Home Kitchens, and Streets of Cuba Paladares does for today’s Cuban cuisine. BY ANYA VON BREMZEN AND MEGAN Taking readers inside a diverse range o‚ FAWN SCHLOW. Abrams, 2017, 352 pp. professionally photographed high-end homes, Mallea perceptively reveals sophis- Havana Living Today: Cuban Home ticated blends o‚ eclectic prerevolutionary Style Now architecture, vintage furniture, and BY HERMES MALLEA. Rizzoli, •xtures accented with contemporary 2017, 224 pp. design concepts and inspired by cutting- edge Cuban artists. But it’s not just the Cuba, like its cuisine, is a grand fusion o‚ homes that are revealed; it’s also the people African, Amerindian, French, and especially who own them, members oª Havana’s Spanish in©uences. Prior to the country’s wealthiest one percent: the remnants o‚ 1959 revolution, Cuban chefs produced a prerevolutionary elites, well-heeled Cubans rich cuisine. Once in power, however, the returning from aboard, internationally revolutionary leader Fidel Castro closed renowned artists, expatriates, diplomats, private restaurants, and government and the owners o‚ new local businesses, canteens took on a Soviet-style blandness. including paladares and inviting boutique Even worse, the end o‚ Soviet subsidies in guesthouses. (The book notably omits the the 1990s resulted in severe food scarcities, luxury homes o‚ the revolutionary elites.) and many Cubans suŸered signi•cant Each fashionable residence represents “the weight loss. In recent years, however, with owner’s personal triumph over the island’s Cuba under the more relaxed rule oª Raúl cultural and economic constraints,” Mallea Castro, private restaurants (paladares) are writes. Looking ahead, Mallea believes reemerging, and the country is experienc- that these elegant living spaces portend ing a rebirth o‚ its culinary culture. Von an exciting rebirth o‚ Cuban design, even Bremzen and Schlow introduce readers to as he warns o‚ the need to balance the the brave owners and innovative chefs who pursuit o‚ international design trends with run these new business ventures, who the preservation o‚ the authentic Cuban struggle to locate essential ingredients and identity ©owering in Havana today. avoid the glare o‚ government inspectors. Von Bremzen’s well-researched background- ers on the many mouth watering, simple Hunter of Stories recipes—illustrated by Schlow’s handsome BY EDUARDO GALEANO. photographs—provide an education in TRANSLATED BY MARK FRIED. culinary history. The new Cuban cuisine, Nation Books, 2017, 272 pp. like the island’s political economy, is very much a work in progress. But Paladares Galeano (1940–2015) exempli•ed the liter- reveals the spirit and promise o‚ a vibrant ary left that held sway in Latin America nation, brimming with entrepreneurial from the 1960s through the 1980s. Sales o‚ improvisation and artistic creativity, the Uruguayan’s most famous polemic, striving to rejoin global currents. Open Veins of Latin America, spiked in 2009, In Havana Living Today, Mallea, a when Hugo Chávez, the populist strong- Cuban American architect, does for man president o Venezuela, handed a

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copy to U.S. President Barack Obama at a caught up in the last century’s most summit meeting. Hunter of Stories collects dramatic moments. At the center bite-sized anecdotes and narratives, gener- stands the author’s grandfather, Max, ally just a few paragraphs long, many with a taciturn, somewhat mysterious man, ironic intent. They often revisit the central who was a key organizer for the turn-of- theme o‚ Galeano’s work: the majesty and the-century Russian Bund, a Jewish wisdom o‚ the indigenous people o‚ the Marxist movement. Hunted by the Americas juxtaposed against the grave tsar’s police and twice exiled to Siberia, injustices imposed on the oppressed he later became a dapper marketing masses by the most powerful, be they representative for the London-based Spanish conquistadors, military dictators, Yost Typewriter Company. His wife, hypocritical “democrats,” large U.S. Frouma, had ©ed revolutionary Russia corporations, or the International Mon- for the United Kingdom, but most o‚ etary Fund. Galeano, a self-proclaimed her family had remained, suŸered, and eternal optimist, had a passion for giving survived. Mazower’s father, William, voice to the weak and illiterate and for grew up thoroughly English, a middle- recording the heroism o‚ the vanquished: class secular Jew in Depression-era and “the eternal battle o‚ indignation against wartime England. His hal brother, indignity,” he called it. Galeano was also a André, in an ironic contrast, joined the close observer o‚ the marvels and rhythms extreme right and wrote anti-Semitic o‚ the natural world. Contemplating his tracts. Mazower engagingly weaves own sickness and old age, this passionate together these lives and traces how they rebel and storyteller once viewed an aston- crossed paths with Felix Dzerzhinsky, ishing sunset and lamented: “It would be the founder o‚ the Soviet secret police; so unfair to die and see it no longer.” Maxim Litvinov, Stalin’s foreign minister; the poet T. S. Eliot; the anar- chist Emma Goldman; and a host o‚ Eastern Europe and Former other prominent interwar political and Soviet Republics literary •gures.

Robert Legvold Orders to Kill: The Putin Regime and Political Murder BY AMY KNIGHT. Thomas Dunne What You Did Not Tell: A Russian Past Books, 2017, 384 pp. and the Journey Home BY MARK MAZOWER. Other Press, The number o‚ prominent political 2017, 336 pp. •gures, journalists, and dissidents murdered in Vladimir Putin’s Russia hat one might expect to be raises a fundamental question: Have merely a charming family these crimes occurred, Knight asks, W portrait, albeit one blessed because Putin has “created an environ- by Mazower’s silk-textured writing, turns ment for the violence but may not be out to be a riveting account o‚ people personally involved?” Or do “the political

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motives o‚ the Putin government that the country known as the Donbas, hover over the killings and the vast which broke out in the aftermath o‚ amount o‚ circumstantial evidence” the revolution. In the •rst hal‚ o‚ the suggest Putin’s direct participation? She book, Shore shares the vivid accounts comes down squarely on the side o‚ the o‚ those who took part in the Maidan more sinister explanation. The book is a uprising and their re©ections on how detailed examination o‚ the most the drama rede•ned their lives and the dramatic cases, beginning with the bleak realities o‚ Ukraine. The second 1998 murder o‚ Galina Starovoitova, a hal‚ records the simple but searing charismatic liberal politician, and includ- thoughts and impulses o‚ those who ing a multitude o‚ others, among them fought or were caught up in the war. the killings o‚ the former intelligence Most o‚ them were on the Ukrainian o£cer Alexander Litvinenko and the side; those who came from the pro- opposition politician Boris Nemtsov. In Russian separatist regions provide each case, she details the events leading homely but telling insights into what up to the murder, lays out the evidence, the war meant to them and the people and describes the subsequent arrests and among whom they grew up. Literature trials. And in each case, neither Knight oŸers added resonance: for Shore, echoes nor those close to the victim are satis•ed from novels and short stories run through with the verdict. As she recognizes, the the tales she hears; for some o‚ those evidence, with the partial exception o‚ who lived through these events, poetry the Litvinenko case, is largely circum- was a sustaining force. stantial. But the book’s value is that Kuzio’s core theme is Russia’s Knight supplies enough o‚ it for aggression in Ukraine. He examines readers to decide for themselves. Russia’s motivations from many angles— a renewed imperialist nationalism, The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History historical “Ukrainophobia,” anti-Semitism of Revolution (both in Russia and in the Donbas), and BY MARCI SHORE. Yale University criminal pro•teering. He disagrees with Press, 2018, 320 pp. those who explain Russian actions in terms o‚ geopolitical competition with Putin’s War Against Ukraine: Revolution, the United States and  ¯ and, even Nationalism, and Crime more so, those who see Russia as simply BY TARAS KUZIO. Self-published, avenging the abuse and discrimination 2017, 490 pp. it believes it has suŸered at Western hands. Instead, he locates the explanation in These two books take radically diŸer- what he calls “Ukrainian-Russian identity ent approaches to exploring Ukraine’s relations,” by which he means the process dramatic recent history. Shore’s book is through which Russian identity has written at the deepest human level and evolved toward a more primal nationalism, is built on the testimony o‚ those who including chauvinism toward Ukraine, participated in the 2014 revolution that while Ukraine has gravitated toward rocked Ukraine or who experienced Europe and its values. Complicating •rsthand the war in the eastern part o‚ everything, the Donbas, for long-standing

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historical and cultural reasons, aligns permits. Within months, as public order with Russia. The depth with which collapsed, vigilantism and mob violence Kuzio explores these factors, along with took over. The breakdown, according to the corruption rampant in the Donbas Hasegawa, greatly abetted the Bolsheviks’ and the wider region’s diseased politics, seizure o‚ power, not least by leaving represents his book’s most unique value. the public indiŸerent to the outcome o‚ the revolution. Once in power, the Bolsheviks did little to restore public Crime and Punishment in the Russian safety, treating the disorder as another Revolution: Mob Justice and Police in hammer wrecking the old system—until Petrograd it threatened their own position. Then, BY TSUYOSHI HASEGAWA. Harvard they reacted with a brutality that set a University Press, 2017, 368 pp. precedent for what would follow in the decades ahead. Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil Engelstein, in this culmination o‚ War, 1914–1921 her life’s work, examines the October BY LAURA ENGELSTEIN. Oxford Revolution in extraordinary breadth University Press, 2017, 856 pp. and depth. She places it in the context o‚ the powerful currents generated by As Hasegawa notes in his compelling the collapse o‚ the Russian empire and book, approaches to the history o‚ the ravages o World War I, and also Russia’s October Revolution o‚ 1917 broadens the frame to capture what was have evolved over time. Social history happening outside the major Russian eventually supplanted political history, cities, with whole chapters devoted to but then gave way to history “across the Finland, Ukraine, Volhynia (which divide,” which welds together the events included parts o‚ present-day Belarus, that took place before and after the Poland, and Ukraine), and the Baltic revolution. Hasegawa adopts the social- region. At its most profound, the book history approach and focuses on less penetrates the deep subterrain o‚ this studied elements oª Russian society. history. Whatever else the revolution Engelstein’s book, meanwhile, is very was when it began in early 1917, it much an example o‚ the “across the expressed a popular desire for democ- divide” approach. racy, even i‚ diŸerent social segments The story o‚ the October Revolu- had diverging views o‚ democratic tion, Hasegawa argues, is thoroughly rule. The October Revolution closed bound up with the collapse o law and that door. Regardless o‚ whether one order that followed the dissolution o‚ sees Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ the tsarist police after the February commitment to social and economic Revolution. In Petrograd, all forms o‚ justice as genuine, their most important crime soared. Quality o life also legacy was a new authoritarian state deteriorated, because the police had that they pursued with single-minded been responsible for a wide range o‚ determination. Violence was its author. public services, from sanitary inspec- Engelstein develops these themes with tions and garbage collection to issuing great subtlety.

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Middle East Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman BY ITAMAR RABINOVICH. Yale John Waterbury University Press, 2017, 304 pp. In 1995, near the end o his tenure as Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin was Hezbollah: The Political Economy of assassinated by a right-wing Jewish zealot. Lebanon’s Party of God As with all high-pro•le assassinations, BY JOSEPH DAHER. Pluto Press, one asks, futilely, what might have been. 2016, 248 pp. Rabin had guided Israel through the Oslo Accords and a treaty with Jordan and had hat is original about Daher’s engaged in a long-distance dance with useful treatment oª Hezbollah President Hafez al-Assad o‚ Syria before W is his emphasis on the trans- concluding that Assad was not ready for formation o‚ its base, which used to draw peace. In this thorough book, Rabinovich, on the lower-middle class and the clergy who served for a time as Rabin’s point but is now more closely aligned with a person on Syria and as Israel’s ambassa- new Shiite capitalist class. As a result, dor to the United States, portrays Rabin Hezbollah is comfortable with Lebanon’s as old school: a military man from 1941 neoliberal economic policies. Daher on. He was harsh in his treatment o‚ explores the group’s changing relation- Palestinians during the war in 1948 and ship with organized labor and Lebanese then again, 40 years later, during the •rst civil society, the rising levels o‚ corruption intifada. He pushed for the development in the party, and the role oª Hezbollah’s oª Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Yet he saw military apparatus in the Syrian civil Israel’s security as inextricably linked to war. Daher sees Hezbollah as an increas- peace with all its neighbors. He was not ingly status quo force that uses its reli- in favor o‚ giving up all o‚ the West Bank, gious and military power to enhance its occupied by Israel in 1967, but he knew that national and regional in©uence, rather hanging on to it would mean that Israel than to merely confront Israel, which would remain forever a garrison state. Had had been its traditional primary objec- he survived, Rabin would have been at tive. There is one major lacuna in Daher’s loggerheads with Likudniks and neocon- narrative, however, which partly prevents servatives in Washington, who have long him from clinching all his arguments: wanted to separate the Palestinian issue he makes no comprehensive analysis o‚ from broader questions o‚ regional security. Hezbollah’s •nances, which depend on support from Iran; the Lebanese Shiite diaspora in the United States, Latin Egypt America, and West Africa; and the BY ROBERT SPRINGBORG. Polity levying o‚ a tithe on Shiites at home. Press, 2017, 272 pp.

Much ink has been spilled on “deep states.” Springborg takes readers inside one. Under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi,

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Egypt’s deep state is deeper and darker Riedel, a former National Security than ever before. In one o his more Council staŸer and § analyst, relies surprising claims, Springborg depicts on unclassi•ed sources to present a the Egyptian state under King Farouk lucid account o‚ an often troubled in the 1940s in relatively ©attering terms relationship. He makes clear that Saudi and asserts that a succession oª Egyptian leaders have shared a sincere commit- autocrats have led the country down a ment to the Palestinian cause and a path to politically vicious, economically consistent desire to see Washington unsustainable authoritarianism. Sisi has involved in seeking Arab-Israeli peace. built on this dubious inheritance. Eco- Riedel echoes others who have depicted nomic strategy has been sacri•ced to the Saudi monarchy as shocked by U.S. prop up the intelligence services and to President Barack Obama’s abandonment enrich the military, which controls much oª Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak during o‚ the economy. Consumer subsidies, the uprising that rocked Egypt in 2011. debt servicing, and civil-service wages But it is hard to believe that successive take up 90 percent o‚ the budget. The Saudi leaders had not closely followed military lives oŸ external and internal the fates o‚ a parade oª fallen autocrats rents. Springborg examines how the who had enjoyed American support— presidency, the military, and the intel- the shah oª Iran, Suharto oª Indonesia, ligence apparatus manipulate and control Ferdinand Marcos o‚ the Philippines, Parliament, the judiciary, and the bureau- Augusto Pinochet o‚ Chile, and oth- cracy. He then shows how the regime ers—and drawn the logical conclusion. deals, in turn, with citizens (Muslims and Copts), labor, and students. He ends with a kind oª Malthusian portrait The Hazaras and the Afghan State: oª Egypt as living so far beyond its Rebellion, Exclusion, and the Struggle for neglected means that it will surely fall Recognition oŸ a cliŸ. BY NIAMATULLAH IBRAHIMI. Hurst, 2017, 288 pp.

Kings and Presidents: Saudi Arabia and The Hazaras o‚ Afghanistan are Shiites the United States Since FDR who are widely believed to have roots in BY BRUCE RIEDEL. Brookings Mongolia and are thus both ethnically Institution Press, 2017, 272 pp. and religiously distinct from the Pashtun Sunnis who dominate the country. In The U.S.-Saudi alliance is peculiar. It the 1890s, Afghanistan’s Pashtun leader, began with a 1945 meeting between U.S. Abdur Rahman Khan, perpetrated what President Franklin Roosevelt and King can be legitimately termed a genocide Ibn Saud and has always rested, as Riedel against the Hazaras: killing, enslaving, states, “on shared interests, but no shared and dispossessing the bulk o‚ the popu- values.” The terms o‚ the arrangement lation. For decades afterward, the Hazaras have not changed: Washington oŸers were at the bottom o‚ what Ibrahimi, in Riyadh security protection in exchange this sympathetic but nonpolemic book, for aŸordable oil for the world economy. calls a caste system. Despite the absence o‚

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an o£cial census, the Hazaras today are clarity how the Allies handled di£cult estimated to represent somewhere between issues, such as the boundaries o‚ necessary ten and 20 percent o‚ Afghanistan’s violence in war and the limits o‚ command roughly 30 million inhabitants. Their responsibility, thus forging new precedents homeland, in the middle o‚ the country, for international law. It also shows how is grossly underdeveloped. Ibrahimi has attitudes toward the trials changed as undertaken •eld and archival research to Japan became a Western ally during the trace the eŸorts o‚ the Hazaras to protect Cold War, leading to the release o‚ all their identity and patrimony and to •nd a Japanese prisoners by the late 1950s. For legitimate place in the Afghan state. The several reasons, the trials did not produce Hazaras were recognized as a group by the kind o‚ acceptance o historical guilt the 2004 Afghan constitution. They hold among Japanese that the trials o‚ Germans ministerial positions and have elected yielded in Germany. The Japanese were representatives to the national assembly. less inclined to view their actions as It takes a strong state, Ibrahimi avers, to unprovoked aggression, because many mitigate ethnic politics, but a strong state thought the West had started the con©ict will almost inevitably be an instrument when it tried to strangle Japan’s access o‚ the Pashtuns, the group to which the to resources. The Japanese had not •ercely anti-Shiite Taliban belong. committed ethnic genocide, so they were tried only for the kinds o‚ crimes that the Allies themselves had commit- Asia and Paci•c ted before or during the war, leading many to see the trials as victors’ justice. Andrew J. Nathan Authoritarian Legality in China: Law, Workers, and the State Japanese War Criminals: The Politics of BY MARY E. GALLAGHER. Cambridge Justice After the Second World War University Press, 2017, 264 pp. BY SANDRA WILSON, ROBERT CRIBB, BEATRICE TREFALT, AND The Contentious Public Sphere: Law, DEAN ASZKIELOWICZ. Columbia Media, and Authoritarian Rule in China University Press, 2017, 440 pp. BY YAÝWEN LEI. Princeton University Press, 2017, 304 pp. lthough studied less often than the Nuremberg trials, the pros- China’s 2008 Labor Contract Law and Aecution o‚ Japanese war criminals 2011 Social Insurance Law set high after World War II was a major undertak- labor-protection standards for factories ing. The United States and its European and for local governments that had allies tried 5,707 people; 4,524 were found powered their export-driven economies guilty. (Few data are available regarding with cheap, temporary migrant labor people prosecuted by the Chinese and the from rural areas. Yet the central govern- Soviets.) This legal and political history ment has not enforced the laws, empow- explores with exemplary nuance and ered the o£cial labor union to enforce

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them, or tolerated the formation o‚ censorship, corruption, unsafe con- independent unions. Instead, workers sumer products, and environmental can pursue their rights only by under- pollution. As in labor relations, so, too, taking mediation or arbitration or by on the Web and on social media: the suing in court. Gallagher argues that government struggles to keep control the government’s purpose in providing over social forces it has created. “expansive rights that are weakly pro- tected” is to use workers as a “strategic lever” to force enterprises and local Thailand: Shifting Ground Between the authorities to take on higher labor and US and a Rising China welfare costs without giving workers BY BENJAMIN ZAWACKI. Zed Books, the tools to create fundamental change. 2017, 448 pp. As is true elsewhere in the Chinese system, o£cials use laws more to Zawacki indicts U.S. policy in Thailand articulate policy goals than to regulate since the turn o‚ the century for ceding behavior. But such “authoritarian legal- in©uence to a rising China. Thailand is ity” has created its own inconsistency: important to the United States for trade workers expect more protection than and for the U.S. military facilities the they actually get, so labor protests have country hosts, and to China for the increased. The regime now faces a choice access route it provides to the South between giving workers more power to China Sea and the Bay oª Bengal. Even •ght for their interests or cutting back though Thai elites are polarized between on legal protections. Gallagher says the populist Red Shirt movement and the government is considering the the royalist-cum-militaristic Yellow latter option. Shirt movement, both sides approve o‚ Lei likewise explores what she calls Chinese-style authoritarian capitalist the “authoritarian dilemma o‚ modern- development, and this has led to more ization.” Even the Chinese Communist trade, cooperation on infrastructure, Party’s idiosyncratic version o‚ the rule and weapons sales between China and o law must be administered by legal Thailand. Zawacki believes that the professionals, and even government- erosion o‚ U.S. in©uence could have dominated mass media require profes- been stemmed i‚ the State Department sional journalists; those are two groups and the Pentagon, backed by academia, that tend to have their own ideas about had •elded a cadre o Thai experts who how to serve the public. The govern- spent the time necessary to understand ment’s legal-education campaigns have the country and build trust. He himsel‚ made citizens more conscious o‚ their has done so. Although the book over- rights, and Internet portals such as Sohu whelms the reader with details in some and Sina have created new networks o‚ places, Zawacki’s frank interviews with discourse. The result has been waves o‚ scores oª former and current o£cials public criticism on the Internet—which oŸer insight into the reasons why Thai authorities refer to as “public opinion elites have shifted from a pro-U.S. incidents”—in which citizens make alignment to a tilt toward China. use o legal concepts to criticize

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The China Mission: George Marshall’s The Broken Ladder: The Paradox and Un£nished War, 1945–1947 Potential of India’s One Billion BY DANIEL KURTZÝPHELAN. BY ANIRUDH KRISHNA. Cambridge Norton, 2018, 416 pp. University Press, 2017, 314 pp.

In the 1940s, China was •lled with Krishna examines the wasted potential towering personalities who left behind o‚ the two-thirds o‚ the Indian popu- highly quotable archives. Kurtz-Phelan, lation that is eŸectively locked up in the executive editor o‚ this magazine, villages by a lack o‚ education, networks, has produced an intimate portrait o‚ and job opportunities. The belie‚ that U.S. General George Marshall’s year- they can’t move up in society is well long mediation eŸort, launched in founded but also self-reinforcing, and 1946, to stave oŸ civil war between the Krishna argues that India will never Nationalists and the Communists. The succeed without tapping this reservoir book is at once a character study o‚ the o‚ talent. With a mix o‚ data and vivid charismatic and dedicated Marshall; a anecdotes, he shows why the problem narrative account o‚ the mission’s mirac- can’t be •xed with macro-level policies, ulous early successes and prolonged, such as easing licensing requirements, painful collapse; and a meditation on the courting foreign investment, and build- impossibility o‚ reconciling parties that ing roads and schools. The bottom-up are determined to remain enemies. In policies that he suggests—local control Kurtz-Phelan’s telling, most o‚ the blame o‚ school boards, village-level mentor- for the peace eŸort’s failure falls on the ship programs, internships for village Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, children in cities, more rural libraries, who refused to remedy the misrule that empowered •eld-level o£cials and ultimately doomed his regime. But a new local institutions to hold them deeper obstacle was Washington’s accountable—are rooted in his devel- inability to uphold the mediator’s core opment experience and aim to trans- requirement o‚ neutrality. Both Chiang form a culture o hopelessness. But it’s and the Chinese Communist Party chief, not clear who will carry out those steps Mao Zedong, could see that Marshall’s in a country whose government and true purpose was to get the Communists elites remain wedded to a city-centric to accept continued Nationalist rule so development model. that China would remain aligned with the United States. This might have been a reasonable goal i‚ one believed the Communists could not win the civil war. But Mao did not accept that premise— and he turned out to be right.

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The Away Game: The Epic Search for Soccer’s Next Superstars The Internship BY SEBASTIAN ABBOT. Norton, 2018, Program 304 pp. The Council on Foreign Relations is seek- ing talented individuals who are consider- n 2007, Qatar, in an eŸort to build ing a career in international relations. up its national soccer team, began a Interns are recruited year-round on a semester project to identify the most talented basis to work in both the New York City and I Washington, D.C., offices. An intern’s duties young soccer players in Africa and bring them to Doha for training. The generally consist of administrative work, editing and writing, and event coordination. eŸort was led by a Barcelona-based The Council considers both undergraduate talent scout whose claim to fame was and graduate students with majors in Interna- that he had discovered perhaps the most tional Relations, Political Science, Economics, famous soccer player o‚ the current era, or a related field for its internship program. the Argentine forward Lionel Messi. A regional specialization and language skills Abbot’s book follows the fortunes o‚ may also be required for some positions. In three young African players who partic- addition to meeting the intellectual require- ments, applicants should have excellent ipated in the Qatari program and for skills in administration, writing, and re- whom soccer represented a ticket out search, and a command of word processing, o‚ poverty. In the end, none o‚ the three spreadsheet applications, and the Internet. made it: it turns out that it is hard to To apply for an internship, please send a predict who will be the next Messi, résumé and cover letter including the se- particularly in countries where it is easy mester, days, and times available to work to the Internship Coordinator in the Hu- to forge a birth certi•cate and convince man Resources Office at the address listed a scout that a 12-year-old is actually 16. below. Please refer to the Council’s Web African recruits have become stars on site for specific opportunities. The Coun- many o‚ the world’s top professional cil is an equal opportunity employer. teams, but a far more common trajectory for them involves shameless exploitation by a motley assortment oª •xers, coaches, scouts, and other intermediaries who all hope to pro•t oŸ the players. Abbot’s Council on Foreign Relations book is an excellent introduction to this Human Resources Office shady world. 58 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10065 tel: 212.434 . 9400 fax: 212.434 . 9893 [email protected] http://www.cfr.org

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the cross-border networks in central Searching for Boko Haram: A History of and western Africa on which jihadist Violence in Central Africa groups rely. The book reminds readers BY SCOTT M ACEACHERN. Oxford that jihadist rebellions have long been a University Press, 2018, 248 pp. feature o‚ the region’s politics. During the precolonial era, Muslim extremists African Border Disorders: Addressing used violence to enforce “purer” forms Transnational Extremist Organizations oª Islam and to subjugate local non- EDITED BY OLIVIER J. WALTHER Muslim populations. Later, during AND WILLIAM F. S. MILES. the colonial period, jihadists fought Routledge, 2017, 210 pp. against the inÞidel invaders. Echoes o both periods can be detected today. These two exceptional books oŸer Groups such as Boko Haram deny the signi•cant new insights into the rise o‚ legitimacy o‚ modern borders (even as jihadist violence in Africa. MacEachern they exploit them to great advantage), situates Boko Haram, the Islamic State because their ideology harks back to a a£liate based in Nigeria, in the history “golden age” before foreigners drew the o‚ a complex region that includes parts lines. And just as civilians in colonial oª four countries: southern Chad, north- times suŸered from both British and ern Cameroon, northeastern Nigeria, French “paci•cation” campaigns and and southeastern Niger. This is a border- jihadist violence, so, too, do Nigerians land between the Sahara to the north, today often fear the violence o‚ the where Islam prevails, and the savanna Nigerian army as much as the brutality and forest areas to the south, which oª Boko Haram. are home to various animist traditions. Boko Haram’s leadership is currently thought to have retreated to the Mandara Economic Development in Africa Report Mountains, on the Nigerian-Cameroonian 2017: Tourism for Transformative and border, which MacEachern demonstrates Inclusive Growth have long been a haven for smugglers, BY THE UN CONFERENCE ON slave traders, and various militias. His TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT. UN book explores the interesting parallels Conference on Trade and Development, between Boko Haram and Hamman 2017, 206 pp. Yaji, a notorious warlord who, in the early twentieth century, struck out from This  report makes available a trove his stronghold in the Mandaras to attack o‚ interesting data on the recent devel- local communities and enslave young opment o‚ tourism in Africa. The num- women—just like Boko Haram. It comes ber o‚ international tourists arriving on as no surprise, then, that local residents the continent increased from 24 million interpret Boko Haram through the between 1995 and 1998 to 56 million lens o‚ the story oª Hamman Yaji, as between 2011 and 2014; the revenue MacEachern reports. they generated in the respective periods The contributors to Walther and rose from $14 billon to around $47 billion. Miles’ strong edited volume focus on Tourism now accounts for 8.5 percent

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o‚ the continent’s ÀÉ. Such numbers lowing a coup in 1983 and ruled until are still relatively small, and the bene•ts he was ousted by Compaoré in 1987. o‚ tourism are distributed unevenly: the Sankara’s status as a Third World poorer countries o‚ central and western revolutionary icon rests on his per- Africa receive far fewer visitors than sonal charisma, his considerable skill the middle-income countries o‚ north- as an orator, and the relative success o‚ ern and southern Africa. But the report the socialist reforms his regime put in makes a strong case for the potential place, which Harsch describes in o‚ tourism, a relatively labor-intensive extremely favorable terms. Harsch industry that can create signi•cant ends the book on a note o‚ tempered employment possibilities, including for optimism. The army has run the coun- skilled workers. In addition, the report try for most o‚ its postcolonial history suggests that growth in tourism is likely and has instilled in the Burkinabe to boost other sectors o‚ African econo- state a paternalistic culture o‚ control mies, in part by spurring investment in that is not compatible with its limited human capital and in physical and capacities. But Harsch believes that the communications infrastructure. protests that helped topple Compaoré invigorated civil society in a way that will force greater accountability in Burkina Faso: A History of Power, Protest, future governments.∂ and Revolution BY ERNEST HARSCH. Zed Books, 2017, 352 pp.

Harsch’s is the •rst English-language political history oª Burkina Faso to appear in many years. It is a superb introduction to this small, landlocked country in the Sahel region, covering the precolonial era, the era oª French colonization, and the postcolonial period, culminating in a popular uprising in 2014 that forced out the country’s longtime dictator, Blaise Compaoré. The heart o‚ the book is a glowing assessment o‚ the regime o‚ Thomas Sankara, an idealistic junior military o£cer who took power fol-

Foreign AŠairs (ISSN 00157120), March/April 2018, Volume 97, Number 2. 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 o£ces. ”•–—˜™–—š›: Send address changes to Foreign AŠairs, P.O. Box 60001, Tampa, FL 33662-0001. 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 Tampa, FL, address indicated above.

March/April 2018 191

MA18_Book.indb 191 1/18/18 10:21 PM A Brave New Foreign Policy? Foreign A airs Brain Trust We asked dozens o experts whether they agreed or disagreed that U.S. foreign policy has changed dramatically over the past year. The results from those who responded are below:

15

10

5

0 STRONGLY DISAGREE NEUTRAL AGREE STRONGLY DISAGREE AGREE

DISAGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 8 AGREE, CONFIDENCE LEVEL 10 John Mearsheimer Rachel Vogelstein R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow and Director Professor of Political Science, of the Women and Foreign Policy Program, University of Chicago Council on Foreign Relations

“If you look beyond President Trump’s hot “e Trump administration’s retreat from rhetoric, U.S. foreign policy certainly global leadership and erratic decision-making has changed in a handful of ways, but not have eroded trust in the United States and in most ways, and certainly has not fueled doubts about our role in the post– changed dramatically.” World War II international order.”

See the full responses at ForeignAairs.com/USForeignPolicyChanges

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