Michael Mandelbaum on America's Foreign Policy and the Future of the International Order

Speaker 1 Welcome to the Global Governance Podcast where we explore the future of governance. Each episode will look at a different global issue and how governance plays a key role in its solution. From climate change to gender equality, from corruption to peace and security, we invite experts to explore a thought provoking game of what if and why not, positing a world in much closer international cooperation. And now your host, Augusto Lopez Claros. Enjoy. Speaker 2 Michael Mandelbaum is the Christian Hester Professor at Meritos of American Policy at the School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University, 1 of America's leading scholars of international relations. He's the author of more than 20 books, including The Meaning of Sports, Mission Failure, and The Four Edges of American Foreign Policy. His influential essay on the End of War, published at the turn of the century, argued that major Interstate war had become increasingly unlikely among the world's principal powers. His latest book, The American Way of Foreign Policy, offers a sweeping interpretation of the enduring principles that have shaped US engagement with the world. Michael, welcome back to our podcast. It is really a pleasure and an honour to have you here as a guest. Thank you very much for making the time available to talk to us. Your new book argues that beneath the apparent swings in American Poland policy, there has in fact been a remarkable continuity stretching back more than two centuries. What do you see as the, as the, as the defining characteristics of of what we could call the American way of foreign policy and how how they endure despite changes of administration and ideology over the over the last many decades? Speaker 3 Well, thank you, Augusto. It's a great pleasure to be with you again and with your viewers. And thank you for mentioning my book, which I will hold up in front of me. So anybody who's interested in ordering it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Oxford University Press will know what to look for. The book argues that from the 18th century to the 21st, 3 enduring features have marked American foreign policy and have distinguished American foreign policy from the foreign policy of other countries. The first of them is that the United States has conducted what I call an unusually ideological foreign policy. That is, the spread of American political ideas, principally individual liberty and democracy, has had an unusually large role in the nation's relations with other countries. Most countries, most of the time have conducted foreign policies geared to power, and the United States has certainly conducted such policies as well. But in addition, and more than other countries, it has sought to make the world safer for liberty and democracy. So that's the first enduring feature. The second enduring feature is that the United States has conducted an unusually economic foreign policy, by which I mean that more than other countries, it has used economic instruments in pursuit of political goals. For most countries, most of the time, the opposite has been the case. Most of them have used political instruments, above all armed force, in pursuit of economic goals. A familiar example of this is the acquisition of empires, which the metropolitan country has then tried to use to its own economic advantage. And The third distinguishing feature of American foreign policy, and an enduring feature from the 18th century to the present, is that the United States has conducted an unusually democratic foreign policy, By which I mean that the public and public opinion has, from the beginning, had an unusually broad and deep impact on America's relations with other countries. For most other countries, for most of the time, a small elite has been responsible for conducting its relations with other countries. But that was never true of the United States. It was democratic from the beginning. So these are the three features that have endured over the course of four different centuries, and they've done so, as I explained, in The American Way of Foreign Policy, because they are, in effect, baked in. They're part of America's DNA, it's political DNA, and they don't change from one administration to another. Speaker 2 Thank you, Michael for that and very interesting sort of historical overview. And obviously, as would be inevitable with this conversation, I will bring you to the present because, you know, I think that your your remarks were very interesting. You know, might come as a bit of a surprise to some, some people who have been following developments in the latest, you know, recent past. In his, you know, very widely discussed speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos last January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney argued that we are living through, and I quote, a rupture in the world order and entering an area of unconstrained great power rivalry in which middle powers will increasingly, he argue, need to work together to preserve a rules based international system, which as you know, has been very much, you know, to a great extent an American creation at least in the post war period. Do you share Carney's diagnosis, and is the United States adapting successfully to this new geopolitical environment, or is this still pursuing a foreign policy shaped by assumptions that perhaps no longer whole? Speaker 3 I would not use the word rupture. I think that's too strong. But the international order is certainly under pressure from 2 directions for 2 reasons that have nothing to do with Donald Trump. 1 is that the relatively peaceful international order of the immediate post Cold War era of the 25 years from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the to, to 2015 and possibly even to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That era, that unusually peaceful era, has been overtaken by events, and those events are the belligerents, the interest in overturning the system, forcibly if necessary, on the part of China and Russia. China has put itself in opposition to the current order because it's stronger, it has greater leverage now. Russia has done so because it has Putin, and that seems to be his mission for Russia. So the the security order is under the kind of pressure it hasn't felt since the Cold War. And As for the economic order, that too is under pressure, but it's under pressure in the first instance because of the workings of globalization. When every country joined the global economy, that had many benefits. But as we know, the global free market economy is prone to mishaps, especially financial mishaps. And a big one came along in 2008 and caused serious damage. In addition, globalization means greater and greater and freer and freer volumes of trade, and trade is good for everybody. It's a win win activity. It's mutually beneficial for the countries engaged in it. We've known that since David Ricardo demonstrated it in 1817. But it's also the case that trade, although it creates many winners, also creates losers. And those losers are bound to be unhappy about their losses. And typically they organize to try to limit the kind of trade that injuries them. Add to that the fact that although China trades very widely and China's international trade is in no small part responsible for its remarkable surge of prosperity since 1979, it is not a rule following free trader. So China has taken advantage of free trade in ways that unfairly penalize other countries. So for these broad reasons, because of these two broad forces or these two sets of broad forces, the post 1945 and especially the post 1990 international order is under pressure. Now, it has to be said that the current American administration doesn't seem to view this trend with as much alarm and dismay as some of us might feel, and is not doing all that it might do to keep that order intact. I must say I must add one other point, and that is that I'm skeptical that middle powers such as Canada can do much to prop up the order. They will certainly, if and as the order further deteriorates, take steps to protect themselves. But they really don't have the power, even if they were to cooperate more than they have in the past, to keep the world committed to its its liberal security and economic rules. I, I, I fear that that's the case. It would be a good thing if they had enough power to bolster the the liberal international order, but I fear they do not. Speaker 2 If I could just ask a follow up question, Michael, then, then how do you see this this evolving in, in coming years? Because you know, we do we do have to establish, you know, global powers, both political, economic, China and the United States. And then and then at least you know, I live in Europe. I have been here in Spain for the last several years and in Europe there is a very important debate taken place about whether the European Union, you know, could be the core of that middle power set and and sort of offer an alternative model of international cooperation based on the rule of law, based on respect for human rights, based on a sort of commitment to the to the principles and the ideas that were embedded in 1945 in the UN Charter and so on and so forth. Do you think that they are being a little naive and that essentially we are moving into a world in which we're going to have the US and China setting the rules of the game, not always following, you know, these principles of rule of law, respect for human rights, transparency, etcetera, etcetera? Speaker 3 Well, the European Union is the obvious source of support for the post 1945 order and the European Union has it in its power to do more to support that order. But in order to support that order, it would have to cooperate far more closely than it does now. Now it has moved in recent years to closer cooperation, but first, that cooperation remains limited. Second, the European Union has no significant military force. And although some members of the European Union, notably Germany, have promised to increase their defense spending, they have a very long way to go before they can be serious players in the global security order. Third, the major countries of the European Unions have strong populist movements within their borders. This is true of Great Britain, it's true of France, it's true of Germany, the three most important countries in Europe. But Great Britain is of course no longer a member of the European Union and those populist movements could take control of the government in future elections. And they do not seem sympathetic either to the cause of greater integration or to the rules based international order of the post 1945 and 1990 period. So although there is some reason to hope that the European Union can do more and will do more, I'm not sure how optimistic 1 can be. I will say that the the best way of protecting this order is through cooperation between the United States, the European Union and other interested middle powers, mainly in East Asia. The current American administration has not seemed particularly interested in such cooperation, but I hope that it will change its mind and that succeeding, succeeding administrations, we'll also be interested in greater cooperation in defense of rules and values that the United States shares with Europe and with other countries, and the promotion of which, as I argue in The American Way of Foreign Policy, is the oldest and most deeply rooted American tradition in international affairs. Speaker 2 Thank you, Michael, for those sobering, sobering words. If I could go back with you to a paper that you wrote, oh, some 25 years ago where you suggested that major war among the world's leading powers, you know, had become increasingly improbable. And I must admit that when I read the paper, I, I, I was very, very sympathetic to the arguments that you put forward. And I thought that they were very much on target. So now, of course, looking at today's world, you know, with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, growing tensions over Taiwan, we have just, you know, we're in the middle of a war on the Persian Gulf, renewed nuclear competition and so on, the erosion of arms controls agreement. One question to you obviously is, you know, if you if you were invited to rewrite that essay. OK. And there is, you know, 25 years have gone by. It's a very long time, you know, how would you do it? What would be your main arguments in respect of that idea that you shared with us, you know, back then about the prospects of major war between sovereign nation? Speaker 3 Well, thank you. That's a very good question. Let me by way of preference, say that the ongoing war in the Persian Gulf didn't really doesn't really qualify for the argument that I made because it's not a major war. And I would also say that although it's controversial and I have my own criticisms of the way the United States is conducting it, it is a war in defense of the liberal international order in the sense that it's a war whose basic purpose, whatever the other purposes may be, is to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And if Iran should get nuclear weapons, that could have catastrophic consequences, for reasons that I can elaborate on later. But so that war stands to one side of my argument. But it's a very fair question. And when I wrote that article, I think it was the the late 1990s, before the journal of the of the British think tank that the journal called survival. That was a time when the world seemed much more tranquil than it does now, because Russia seemed to be on the path to democracy and with it a peaceful foreign policy. And China was becoming increasingly involved in the global order. And many of us believed that as economic interdependence involving China grew, China would become more peaceful. Well, those trends did not continue. China did not become more peaceful. Boris Yeltsin's presidency gave way to that of Vladimir Putin, and Putin has shown himself to be a warmonger. So I could not, I could not write this article with the same confidence today that I did more than 1/4 century ago. The world has changed and the prospects for major war, war between the great powers fading away, is not as bright at or does not seem as bright as it was in the past. Having said that, I know some hopeful signs within this less than hopeful context. One is that in the Ukraine war, which does involve a great power or a would be great power, Russia first has not used nuclear weapons, seems to be deterred from using them. One has to keep one's fingers crossed, of course, but that's so far is the case. And 2nd and most important, Russia is losing. No Russia, no matter how nationalistic, can now conclude that Russia has been strengthened by its war against Ukraine, which has now gone on longer, I think, than the Russian war did in World War 2. So it may be that at the at the end of all this, the outcome of the war started by Russia with its attack on Ukraine will end up reinforcing my thesis in the obsolescence of of the modern war. But but we don't know that that will happen. That's a hope. It's not a reality, and therefore the question that you asked, which implies that I might not write the article the same way today, it is correct. I don't think I would write it in the same way today if I wrote it at all. Speaker 2 Thank you. Thank you, Michael. Your reference to Iran's aspirations for nuclear weapons brings me to to my next question. And by the way, you know, you alluded to the possibility of elaborating on the concern that you have about Iran and nuclear weapons, and my question will invite you to, to comment on that as well. But but my question basically has to do with deterrence, right? You know, the for decades, many scholars have argued that nuclear deterrence may direct war between major powers. Unlikely, irrational, in fact. And yet, of course, as you know, history has taught us that war sometimes began through miscalculation, through accident, through political escalation, rather than the liberal choice, through irrationality, it seems to me. I mean, I think Russia is a very good example of that in the last few years. I conceive no strategic benefit, whether economic, political or military justifying Russias attack on on the Ukraine. So my question is how concerned are you that a major nuclear war could occur, I don't know, in the next in the next decade? You know, the, the nuclear scientists who published this clock, the atomic clock one once a year, the last time around, put it I, I can't remember, you know, less than a minute to midnight, right? I mean, it's the closest to Bentai that has ever been. So at least there are some people, serious people, nuclear scientists, who are supposed to know about these things, who are greatly concerned about this particular issue. Speaker 3 Yes, well, I think we're, I think concern is justified. I wouldn't put the atomic clock at one minute to midnight, but it probably has moved a bit closer to midnight as a result of Russia's war. I would note that Russia still seems to be deterred from using nuclear weapons, and it is reported that even the Chinese, who now function as Russia's lifeline, have warned the Russians not to use nuclear weapons. But there's no doubt that a nuclear armed country engaging in a war of aggression, the course and outcome of which are uncertain, does raise the specter of things getting out of control. As does the prospect of China's attacking Taiwan launching an attack across the Taiwan Strait, which would in all probability involve the United States and other countries and and could get out of control. So we have to hope that deterrence holds across the Taiwan Strait. The the greatest danger that I see, and this brings me to the Iran war, is the spread of nuclear weapons to many more countries. Because the more countries that have nuclear weapons, the more likely they are to be used. Partly because just on the basis of probability, but also because countries that get nuclear weapons will not have the same disincentives that the United States and the Soviet Union had during the Cold War. And the the danger from Iranian nuclear weapons is twofold. First, we can't be sure that this is an entirely sober, realistic, rational regime. It's ideology is, after all, a kind of apocalyptic version of Shia Islam, and we can't be sure that the people who have control it should Iran get nuclear weapons, would be sober about using them, even though they would court annihilation if they did. The second danger is that if Iran got nuclear weapons, other countries in the Middle East would be sorely tempted to get them as well. Saudi Arabia would get a bomb. Turkey would likely go into the nuclear business. Egypt might well get a bomb. The the small states of the Persian Gulf, such as Qatar, might be able to purchase a bomb in a submarine on which to mount it. And if the Middle East became nuclearized, that would be dangerous because the nuclear arsenals would be small, unlike those of the United States and the Soviet Union, which were large and not necessarily able to absorb a first strike, and therefore they would be on hair trigger alert on the principle of use it or lose it. The first rumor of a nuclear attack could prompt one of these countries to launch an attack on its adversary. And because the distances or between and among the nuclear powers are small, this could have catastrophic consequences. And furthermore, should Iran get nuclear weapons, and should nuclear weapons spread around the Middle East, that would create pressure for countries in other parts of the world to get nuclear weapons of their own. The South Koreans are already apparently seriously considering this. The Japanese have long had a kind of allergy to nuclear weapons because of their experience in World War 2. But if the rest of the world got nuclear weapons, they would feel the need for some kind of protection against China, which has conducted very aggressive policies toward Japan. And there's even a chance that Taiwan would equip itself with nuclear weapons in order to deter China. It certainly has the technical and scientific know how to build a nuclear weapon. So Iran getting nuclear weapons, which is it is obviously determined to do, could set off what might be called a nuclear cascade. And that would make the world a far more dangerous place and one far more susceptible to one or more nuclear wars. That's why I said initially that whatever one may think about the way the American and Israeli wars against Iran have been conducted, the purpose, the central purpose of that war was and remains a very important one. Speaker 2 Thank you, Michael. That's, that's a very interesting and again a very sovereign scenario on a nuclear proliferation and the dangers of it. Something is that has happened of course over the last quarter century. Is that now in addition to nuclear rivalry, you know, we have cyber warfare, we have artificial intelligence, we have the space competition, we have our controls regimes. I mean, you know, we have added these these sort of additional risk factors, right? And of course, we have also the underlying back in the, in the underlying background climate stress and so on and declining confidence in international institutions just in terms of the changing nature of warfare and, and, and the emergence of these new technologies. You know, how does this change the scenario that you have just outlined? You know, extrapolate a little bit and let's assume that the pace of technological change accelerates over the next decade, right? You know, are we entering an age in which we are going to recognize the increasing ineffectiveness of of military power as a deterrent and we're going to see a kind of a democratization of political power because of technology? I'm, I'm thinking of course of Ukraine and its ability to resist Russia so effectively during the last four years. Speaker 3 Yes, well, you, you've posed crucial questions for the future. A couple of initial comments. First, we don't know what's going to happen because we haven't seen the full, the full effect of advances in technology. So countries will in effect make it up as they go along. We already have a kind of arms race in cyber warfare. We know that countries are busy developing tools not just to interfere with the with, with, with the internets of other countries, but also to protect their own and, and that is presumably mostly classified and and will continue the impact of AI of artificial intelligence. I think we just don't know. We we read that we are on the threshold of a technological change greater than any the world has seen since the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. I don't know whether that's the case. I don't. I'm not sure how one could judge that way. We just have to go through it and find out whether that most extreme prediction turns out to be true. AI will certainly have applications to warfare, and some of them are troubling both from a strategic and a moral point of view. It's in a final comment. It's even conceivable that some of these advances will make the world in a way safer, because countries having cybernetic tools or AI tools will not be tempted to use force. It would be an irony and and conceivably a benefit if it turned out to be true that AI and and cybernetics make nuclear weapons, for example, obsolete. I don't know whether there's any chance of that, but it certainly seems a possibility, if only a remote one. It's also true that war has become more democratic in the sense that drones are easy to manufacture, difficult to defend because they're relatively cheap, and so attacking countries can send many of them and there and thereby give some advantage to weaker countries. But it must also be said that this dialectic of advantages to the weak and then advantages to the strong because of the March of technology has gone on for a very long time and will continue. Even now there are attempts to develop anti drone or counter drone technologies which are just as cheap as drones. So that kind of dialectic, that kind of arms race is destined to go on as it almost always has. Speaker 2 Thank you, Michael. Very interesting observations. Let me shift gears a little bit and ask you, you know, if you were advising the next American president, what 3 strategic priorities would you recommend to reduce the risk of greater power conflict while at the same time, you know, preserving what we have built since 1945. A A a kind of a rules based international order. Under pressure now for sure, but still worth preserving it seems to me. Speaker 3 Well, of course, the first thing I would advise would be for the new president to read my book, which would give him the proper background of the foreign policy of the country that whose foreign policy is about to conduct. I think the American Way of Foreign Policy is is a useful primer for American foreign policy. But there are several things that I think would be helpful. First, I think we need to revive cooperation with our traditional allies and partners, our allies in part and partners in security affairs, which means NATO and America's security alliances and also America's trading partners, because the international trade order has been the bulwark of liberal internationalism. A second, in pursuit of that, I think 2 important policies are worth pursuing by the United States. In security terms. I think the United States needs more military force, especially more usable weaponry, and that is certainly true of America's allies. It's encouraging that the NATO allies have committed themselves to spend more on defense, but they have to fulfill those commitments because the countries that wish to take down the international order of the post 1945 and 1990 period, Russia and China are arming themselves rapidly and we in the West need to counter that. Third, I think, and this is a a longer term perspective and it's true of both the European Union and the United States, we need to get our own economic houses in order. Deficits across the West, in the European Union and in the United States are simply too high. Ultimately, they will become unsustainable. This will have adverse political consequences and will make it all the more difficult for the United States, the Europeans and others to defend the liberal international economic and security order that has done so much good for ourselves and for the world. Speaker 2 I couldn't agree more with you on the, you know, putting our fiscal house in order. And as I said before, I am in Europe and I am always amazed at the extent to which this particular conversation never takes place, especially ahead of elections. It is as though the political parties have come to a kind of a understanding that we're not going to talk in the context of forthcoming elections about the kind of belt tightening and the kind of restructuring that needs to take place, you know, to put our our fiscal house in in order. But that's a separate issue altogether. Although I share your concern, I think that it's the Achilles heel of of, you know, Western democracies, what is happening on the fiscal side and the unsustainable debt burdens that you see emerging in US and the UK and other countries in Western Europe, to say nothing of Japan, which you know, has very high, high levels of public debt. Let me let me post a closing question, Michael, in what has been a really delightful, as usual and very insightful and and fascinating conversation. You know, the 20th century witnessed remarkable institutional innovation after two catastrophic world wars, of which perhaps you know, the UN Charter is, is, is, you know, the greatest and the most important symbol. Do you believe that today's international system still possesses the political imagination, the political will, the the sort of appropriate understanding of the risks that we face today to undertake comparable reforms before another major catastrophe forces us to take those reforms under a far more dire set of circumstances? Speaker 3 I hope we do, and to use a cliche, time will tell whether we do. In the immediate post war period, it was the United States, for various historical reasons, that took the lead in designing and implementing this system. The United States is less relatively powerful now than it was in 1945, but it's still the most powerful Western country. And therefore, if the needed adjustments are to take place, the United States will have to take the lead. But the Europeans and the democracies in East Asia are now far more capable than they were, and they have to contribute more to the maintenance of this order. So what we need is cooperation, and cooperation at a much higher level. Whether we. Will be able to obtain it? I don't know. I hope so, but there are no guarantees. Speaker 1 Thank you for listening to the Global Governance Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and family. To learn more, please visit globalgovernanceforum.org and join the conversation.