NATO meeting in Vilnius: Ukraine and NATO

Ukraine will be a central topic at the summit, but any immediate membership for Ukraine in the alliance is highly unlikely. Unfortunately, so is any meaningful discussion of the longer-term role of Russia in a postwar European security order.

Full post: https://brucemillerca.substack.com/p/nato-meeting-in-vilnius-ukraine-and

Russia, NATO, China and the tensions over Ukraine

Sarah Rainsford reminds us that Russia concerns about further NATO expansion on its border is a key issue at play in the current Ukraine-Russia tensions. (Russia-Ukraine border: Why Moscow is stoking tensions BBC News 11/28/2021) It's not the only one. And of course the Russians would be glad to magnify the significance of that concern in the service of diplomacy and propaganda.

But it's unthinkable that it's not a real concern on their part, aside from the fact that they've been saying it for years. It's kind of a banal thought exercise, and oversimplified, but it might help to imagine how the US would regard Canada or Mexico joining a mutual defense treaty with Russia or China. In the world of today, it's hard to imagine that it would be regarded in the mainstream, and by most hardcore "restraint" advocates, as a very real and legitimate national security concern.

Rainsford reports:

["Most analysts"] see the Kremlin sending a message that it's ready to defend its "red lines" on Ukraine: above all, that it must not join Nato.

"I think for Putin it's really important. He thinks the West has begun giving Ukraine's elite hope about joining Nato," political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya at R.Politik told the BBC.

"The training, the weapons and so on are like a red rag to a bull for Putin and he thinks if he doesn't act today, then tomorrow there will be Nato bases in Ukraine. He needs to put a stop to that."

Ukraine's desire to join the security bloc is nothing new, nor is Russia's insistence on vetoing that ambition in what it sees as its own "back yard".

But Moscow has been rattled recently by the Ukrainian military using Turkish drones against Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine; the flight near Crimea of two nuclear-capable US bombers was an extra irritant.

There's also concern that the so-called Minsk agreements, a framework for ending Ukraine's seven-year-old conflict that's too contentious to actually implement, could be jettisoned for something more favourable to Kyiv. [my emphasis]

On the other hand, Russia's actions in 2014 would seem to have already effectively block Ukraine from joining NATO. Or rather, from NATO allowing Ukraine to join. Because Russia not only controls but has formally annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, unquestionably in violation of international law. Russia also controls the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, though without formally annexing them.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg made this comment on NATO's relation to Ukraine on 11/30/2021 (Doorstep statement NATO):

Our presence in Eastern part of the Alliance is, of course, defensive.

It was actually the increased presence of NATO troops in this Eastern part of the Alliance, in the Black Sea region, and in the Baltic region was triggered by Russia's use of force against Ukraine back in 2014, with the illegal annexation of Crimea, and with the continued destabilization of Donbas, Eastern Ukraine. So there's no doubt that this was a defensive response to what we saw back then.

I think it is important to distinguish between NATO Allies and partner Ukraine. NATO Allies, there we provide [Article 5] guarantees, collective defence guarantees, and we will defend and protect all Allies.

Ukraine is a partner, a highly valued partner. We provide support, political, practical support. Allies provide training, capacity building, equipment and I am absolutely certain that Allies will recommit and reconfirm their strong support to Ukraine also during the meeting today.

But as I said there's a difference between a partner Ukraine and an Ally like for instance Latvia. [my emphasis]

There are other closely-related issues, such as Russian pipelines serving Western Europe and its ambitions to hold Belarus as more oriented toward Russia than towards Poland and the West - the latter a situation which certainly seems to be the case at the moment!

What I have not seen much remarked on in recent news analyses of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is how it plays in Russia-China-USA relations. After all, the US from the Nixon Administration to the fall of the USSR pursued a balancing strategy of US China to balance against the Soviet Union. Russia and China have generally good relations right now. With the "New Cold War" against China getting a lot of attention during the Biden-Harris Administration, China can't be entirely sorry to see the US and NATO engaged with tensions with Russia involving Ukraine.

China has been pursuing closer relations with Ukraine for years. (Nicolas Tenzer, Europe can't ignore Chinese encroachment in Ukraine EUObserver 11/22/2021) So China definitely figures into this mix. In this case, both Russia and China have reason to be concerned about closer Ukrainian ties to the West. Although that doesn't mean China's and Russia's interests are completely aligned on Ukraine. Putin's government presumably has concerns about China gaining what it sees as excessive influence in Ukraine, too.

The Ukrainian government is not a passive pawn in all this. They are pursuing their own goals which also don't match up precisely with those of NATO, Russia, and China. See:

• Dan De Luce and Veronika Melkozerova, Fed up with the U.S., Ukraine cuts deals with China and shuts up about the Uyghurs NBC News 11/29/2021
• Emil Filtenborg and Stefan Weichert, Should Ukraine take Chinese cash for its huge roads upgrade project? Euronews 09/30/2021
• Maxim Samorukov and Temur Umarov, China’s Relations with Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova: Less Than Meets the Eye Carnegie Institute Moscow 12/31/2020
•  Valbona Zeneli and Nataliia Haluhan, Why China is Setting its Sights on Ukraine The Diploma 10/04/2019

NATO, the US, and exit from Afghanistan

Stephen Walt calls attention to an article that looks at some merdy detail that aren't necessarily relevant to the current politics of the failure of the Afghanistan War but are important in the historical record: Sara Bjerg Moller, Five Myths About NATO and Afghanistan Lawfare 09/05/2021.

Sara Moller punctures myths re NATO &#Afghanistan: "European politicians now feigning shock at the U.S. withdrawal timeline (or opposition to it) have about as much credibility as Captain Renault did upon discovering gambling in Rick’s Café Américain." https://t.co/rieRxumi3o

— Stephen Walt (@stephenWalt) September 5, 2021

Walt is referring to one of her points about an endless phenomenon, the jockeying between the US and European allies over how the alliance should work and who is pulling their weight and who not. In the current moment, people who are skeptical of NATO military interventions have an obvious reason to be calling attention to the sad outcome of the Afghanistan War. (Aside from the fact that it was obviously a disaster.) And people who want to see European military capacities built up also have an incentive to point to American deficiencies in Afghanistan - including sloppy claims about the withdrawal - in order to promote their point. Politics is politics, after all.

Moller explains on the last point:

Several commentators as well as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair have accused the U.S. government of leaving “European countries in the lurch” as it went about the late-summer withdrawal. Some European politicians have even gone so far as to claim that they were opposed all along to the U.S. withdrawal timetable and spoke out against it during meetings with U.S. government officials earlier this year. But neither claim passes muster.

For starters, there was nothing hasty or precipitous about the U.S. withdrawal timeline, which had been in the works since the February 2020 Doha agreement. Second, President Biden announced in early April 2021 his administration’s plans to complete America’s military exit from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Third, NATO allies were briefed on the plans at a joint meeting of foreign and defense ministers on April 14 of this year by none other than Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin themselves. [my emphasis]

It seems obvious to me that better European defense coordination in the context of the European Union would be a good thing. Not least because it might bring a little more practical realism to issues like French military intervention in the African Sahel.

Moller makes four other points, none of them quite so relevant to the politics of the moment. One is about the historic invocation of the NATO alliance's collective defense clause:

It is true that NATO invoked Article V—which stipulates that an armed attack against one or more members “shall be considered an attack against them all” and entreats allies to take “such actions” as they deem necessary—in the aftermath of al-Qaeda’s attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. But neither of the two missions the transatlantic alliance undertook in Afghanistan—the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Resolute Support—were Article V missions. Those now claiming that, by leaving Afghanistan, the United States is not only abandoning Afghans but also jeopardizing European allies’ confidence in U.S. security guarantees are either unaware of — or worse, deliberately rewriting — history.

It is still accurate to describe the Afghanistan War as a US-NATO intervention, or a US-led NATO intervention, or a US-led intervention. But the precedents on treaties can be important. The neocon and general unilateral nationalists of the Cheney-Bush Administration viewed NATO as more of a hindrance and annoyance in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks than as an asset. They were more worried about European allies constraining US action than magnifying it. She explains, "it was not until Oct. 4, 2001, that the North Atlantic Council formally invoked Article V, paving the way for NATO allies to send Airborne Early Warning and Control Force aircraft (AWACs) to patrol U.S. skies and offer other assistance, such as intelligence sharing, to Washington." (my emphasis)

The two major "NATO-led" operations in Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF, originally formally authorized by the UN) and the subsequent Resolute Support Mission. Neither was legally considered an Article V action under the NATO treaty.

Another of her five points argues that the US-NATO mission is Afghanistan was not a "national-building" effort. This is the only one of the five where I think she might be splitting the hairs a bit too closely. As she writes, "there is no internationally agreed upon legal definition of nation-building, evidence for what constitutes nation-building is often in the eye of the beholder." But the public diplomacy of the Cheney-Bush, Obama-Biden, and Trump-Pence Administrations presented the US effort there as defending democratic governance, the rule of law, democracy, and human rights (especially women's rights). The US did stand up a pro-US, pro-India government in late 2001 based on the former Northern Alliance rebels that stayed in place until last month. For the future, it's important to understand both how the national-building aspect failed as well as what a fraud the claims around "nation building" were. How that government figured into the strategic rivalry between Pakistan and India is a key reason it fell.

Another of her points addresses the argument that, well, some NATO allies could have left troops in Afghanistan after the US withdraw. Oh, please. As she notes, "it was neither politically nor militarily feasible for any NATO ally, either on its own or in combination with others, to maintain any kind of mission in Afghanistan after the U.S. departure."

Finally, she dismisses the argument that pulling out of Afghanistan would undermine European allies' confidence in the US commitment to the NATO alliance. "If anything, America’s treaty allies should take comfort from the fact that Washington is finally shedding a costly military misadventure and choosing instead to focus on addressing contemporary challenges facing the alliance, like Russia and China."

Trump's America First militarism - now that is a threat to European confidence in the US commitment to NATO. But not exiting from a clearly failed intervention in a country that does not represent vital interests of the US or its European allies.

Center for American Progress proposes a new post-MAGA approach to Europe for the US

David Herszenhorn reports on a new report issued by the safely establishment Democratic think tank Center for American Progress (CAP), Biden urged to push EU to be a military power Politico EU 06/2/2021.

At the CAP website, Max Bergmann, James Lamond, and Siena Cicarelli are credited as the authors of The Case for EU Defense: A New Way Forward for Trans-Atlantic Security Relations 06/01/2021.

This is certainly an interesting development! It looks like a trial balloon. A safely establishment Democratic think tank like the Center for American Progess wouldn't go this far off the farm without some encouragement from the Biden-Harris Administration. I assume it will at least make some long-comfortable clichés a little more complicated.

After the 1989 revolutions in eastern Europe, the US began to pursue a policy of encouraging the rapid expansion of the European Union and of NATO. The EU nations also wanted to expand the Union. And their desire to do so had similar motivations as those of the US: to provide assistance in development, to expand the EU free trade zone under the neoliberal rules of the EU agreements, to create and incentive for former Warsaw Pact and Yugoslavian countries to set up liberal democratic systems with imparital rule of law structures.

But the US also saw EU expansion as a way to weaken the cohesion of the EU as an independent power bloc in order to protect the United States new status as the "unipolar" world's hegemon. All this was what classical "realist" theory would have led one to expect. Once the Cheney-Bush Administration took power and the 9/11 attacks became the justification for the Global War on Terror, their determination to strengthen the US as the unipolar power. That was the era when Republicans re-christened French fries as "freedom fries" as a display of contempt for the European allies of the US.

A similar calculation was seen in NATO, in an even more pronounced way. NATO was expanded to include the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland in 1999; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia in 2004; Albania and Croatia in 2009; Montenegro in 2017; and North Macedonia in 2020. The new countries were eager to gain access to NATO. During the Cheney-Bush years, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously mocked the older NATO allies who criticized the invasion of Iraq as "old Europe", while the aspiring members were more willing to provide nominal support to the invasion. This obviously increased tensions within the NATO of 2003, where Britain was faithfully, even slavishly supportive of the Iraq War, and reduced the liklihood of the EU building a strong common European defense force separate from NATO. AS the CAP report relates of this period, "the eastward expansion of the EU further complicated efforts to push ahead on EU defense, as eastern EU members remained acutely aware of their dependence and reliance on American military power to ensure their independence."

The Obama-Biden Administration had friendly relations with the European allies. But it didn't abandon the basic policy of regarding the EU as a potential "peer competitor" whose increased political and especially military cohesion would be unwelcome to the EU.

The CAP report suggests a definite shift in that perspective. As Politico EU reports:

There is general agreement among critics and proponents of EU military integration that national armed forces in Europe are not up to scratch — especially in Germany, the EU’s richest and politically most powerful member.

On this point, the authors of the new report readily agree. “Today, much of Europe’s military hardware is in a shocking state of disrepair,” they wrote. “European forces aren’t ready to fight with the equipment they have, and the equipment they have isn’t good enough.”

But the authors also insist the U.S. should accept its part of the blame. “This is a European failure,” they wrote. “But Washington has played a critical, if underappreciated, role in precipitating this failure.” And they pointed to the unsparing push for increased NATO spending — something Donald Trump did louder and more aggressively than his predecessors — as central to the flawed outcome.

“For more than two decades, both Republican and Democratic administrations have vigorously pressed European capitals to bolster their national forces in support of NATO,” they wrote. “But this focus on national defense spending levels, embodied by the 2014 commitment by NATO members to spend two percent of their GDP on defense, simply hasn’t worked. European defense today remains anemic, despite noticeable increases in spending.”

This implies a shift to regarding the EU's potential as a "peer competitor" as a danger to be avoided to not only less of a risk, but potentially promoting American interests in some significant degree. The CAP report is blunt on this point: "U.S. opposition to EU defense efforts since the 1990s has been a strategic mistake that has undermined both the EU and NATO." That is a frank criticism of Democratic and Republican administrations.

I would assume that part of the consideration here is that the Trump Administration and its MAGA policy, which included notable hostility toward EU countries, led to a realization among many European leaders that they could no longer count on the kind of close support that the NATO countries had maintained for decades, despite significant tensions at time, such as the Anglo-French-Israeli attempt to seize the Suez Canal in 1956.

But the CAP report also suggests that its authors are drawing a similiar lesson from the American perspective, i.e., that a future MAGA administration might be happy to use US dominance in NATO to sabotage the EU's ability to defend itself in a potential confrontation with Russia or in other situations judged to require military intervention to protect European security. And there is an implied calculation that the longterm common security interests of the US and European might be better served with an EU military arrangement that would not be so subject to disruption by a new MAGA government in Washington. They write:

There is ... an increasing sense that Europe must stand up for its owninterests in an era of greater geopolitical competition and questions about American reliability. A ECFR survey, conducted after the 2020 U.S. residential election, revealed that “[o]ne of the most striking findings … is that at least 60 per cent of respondents in every surveyed country—and an average of 67 per across all these countries — believe that they cannot always rely on the US to defend them and, therefore, need to invest in European defence.” [my emphasis]

There are some significant reservations I have about the CAP analysis. One is that they argue that because citizens of EU countries are also citizens of the EU as such, e.g., they vote directly for members of the European Parliament. And that therefore EU citizens seem to see defense as much more an EU responsibility than a national responsibility. I'm not at all sure how well founded that assumption is.

Another concern is the report's stated hope for the result that more US support for EU self-defense efforts: "It would no doubt win admiration within the EU and put the United States where it should be, which is on the opposite sides of China and Russia." Being on the "opposite" side of Russia and China is hardly a sensible goal. Russia and China won't be on the same side of all issues. And there are issues like nuclear arms control and nonproliferation and climate change where the US and the EU have the strongest incentive to find effective ways of cooperating with those two countries, even when serious disagreements on other important issuews continue.

A third is that the report does not engage with the issue of EU democratization, or addressing the "democratic deficit," as it is often called. The EU's integration strategy has relied on the hope that economic integration would lead to greater political integration and reinforce democracy and the rule of law in individual nations. But EU laws and institutions are far more effective in enforcing economic regulations than political ones. The EU is currently struggling with serious democratic and rule-of-law backsliding in Poland and even more so in Hungary. The economic ties complicate enforcing the EU treaty requirements in such situations. Strenthening military integration without first improving the mechanisms for requiring member countries to maintain the minimal democratic and rule-of-law requiresment for intial membership would likely make the democratic-deficit problem even more difficult to solve.

The CAP report briefly argues that pushinhg for a military union might actually facilitate the securing of democratic norms in EU countries.

It also addresses the austerity-policy problem, but seems to assume that austerity economics is a particular problem of Germany's. Germany's political elite is stubbornly committed to it. But it's a more general problem among the wealthier "core" countries of the EU:

CAP also uses this recent example, which provides a disturbing example of EU willingness to use military force, although CAP does add with disapproval that this example has the EU being "overly aggressive" ab out a situation of which I would definitely be more critical:

... stereotypes of EU pacifism are incongruent with the EU’s overly aggressive approach to countering migration. In the half-decade since the migration crisis, the EU has turned Frontex—a small, bureaucratic EU agency that coordinated EU border policy—into a 10,000-strong armed force. In early 2020, when Turkey initiated a migration crisis, Frontex was accused of ramming migrant vessels, potentially committing human rights abuses. Rather than condemning Frontex or the Greek coast guard for this horrific act, the heads of the EU flew to Greece to demonstrate EU solidarity with this hard-line approach. EU leaders, perceiving migration as a threat to the union, were seemingly willing to take inhumane, hard-line steps to protect its union. Contrary to EU skeptics’ characterizations of it as a postmodern state that has repudiated the use of force and is strictly committed to vague notions of international law over defending its borders, the EU actually went too far and potentially violated international humanitarian law. This is not the approach of a confident global power upholding global norms, but it is hardly the response of political actors from Venus [a favorite polemic neoconservative stereotype of NATO allie like Germany and France]. [my emphasis]

It will be interesting to see the follow-up reactions to the CAP report from Democrats in Congress and the Biden Administration.

Russian pullback from the buildup against Ukraine

Steven Rosenberg analyses the current drawdown of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border, What is Russia doing? BBC News 04/23/2021:

Although Russia has shrugged off the build-up as training exercises in response to "threatening" actions from Nato, it is also said to be planning to cordon off areas of the Black Sea to foreign shipping. Ukraine fears its ports could be affected.
Russia said all along that these were nothing more than military exercises.
But Moscow knew very well that its troop movements close to Ukraine and in annexed Crimea were making a lot of people very nervous: in Ukraine, Europe and in America.

And that was the point.

Here is an English-language Deutsche Welle report on the drawdown, Russia withdraws troops from Ukraine border 04/22/2021:

Clara Ferreira Marques reports on one important element of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the need for Russia to supply water to Crimea, the Ukrainian area that Russia illegally annexed in 2014: (Crimea’s Water Crisis Is an Impossible Problem for Putin Bloomberg Opinion 03/19/2021):

Ukraine dammed the North Crimean Canal seven years ago, cutting off the source of nearly 90% of the region’s fresh water and setting it back to the pre-1960s, when much was arid steppe. Add a severe drought and sizzling temperatures last year, plus years of underinvestment in pipes and drilling, and fields are dry. In the capital Simferopol and elsewhere, water has been rationed.

Tiny Crimea gave Putin a boost, when, following protests that overthrew Kyiv’s Russia-friendly government, he seized a territory that belonged to Moscow for centuries but had been part of an independent Ukraine since 1991. The annexation of the territory that’s equal to less than 0.2% of Russia’s total helped lift Putin’s national popularity to record levels in the year or so that followed. That bump has since faded.

Today locals, who were made ambitious promises in 2014, are struggling with the fallout from a wide-ranging nationalization drive that's not always served their interests, a poorly handled, muffled coronavirus crisis — and dry taps. Sanctions-inflated prices, high even after a $3.7 billion bridge over the Kerch Strait linked the territory to Russia, have meanwhile eaten away at pension and salary increases. Opinion polls are hard to come by, but anecdotal evidence reveals building frustration. [my emphasis]

Another major assumption on which Putin's foreign policy has relied is to prevent any additional countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, from becoming part of NATO. The former Soviet Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania became full NATO members in 2004. As Laurence Peter report in 2014 (Why Nato-Russia relations soured before Ukraine BBC News 09/03/2014):

In 1999 - nearly 10 years after the Berlin Wall fell - Nato admitted three former Warsaw Pact countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.

More former Soviet bloc countries joined Nato in 2004: the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Russia was particularly riled by the expansion of Nato to the Baltic states, which were formerly in the USSR and viewed from Moscow as part of the "near abroad". That phrase, commonly used by Russian politicians, implies that ex-Soviet states should not act against Russia's strategic interests. [my emphasis]

Peter also reported, "In early 2008 Nato also held out the prospect of future Nato membership to Georgia. The Kremlin saw that as a direct provocation, just as it saw closer Nato ties with Ukraine." And in both Georgia and Ukraine, Russia is now supporting small, pro-Russian "independent republics" on the territories of Georgia and Ukraine. And they occupied and formally annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. As a practical matter, this blocks those countries from joining NATO. Because to incorporate them into NATO, the NATO allies would either have to formally accept the Crimean annexation and the "independent" mini-republics, or commit themselves to defending the whole current legal territories of Georgia and Ukraine. Which means NATO would be committed to engaging in a war with Russia to push its forces out of the occupied areas.

It's entirely possible and very likely that Western diplomats have spun some theoretical scenarios in which Georgia and Ukraine could become NATO members without that being a de facto declaration of war on Russia. That's part of what diplomats do. But it's hard to see how that could actually be pulled off in the real world.

Recommendations for a Biden-Harris peace policy

Benjamin Friedman and Stephen Wertheim gives some foreign policy suggestions to the incoming Biden-Harris Administration in Say No, Joe: On U.S. foreign policy, there’s no going back to the status quo. Foreign Policy 11/25/2020.

He also appeared on The Majority Report on 12/02/2020 talking about the same topic, Why Biden Can't Go Back to the Foreign Policy Status-Quo w/ Stephen Wertheim - MR Live - 12/2/20, starting just after 18:00:

In the article, he and Friedman make the broad topical points, here quoted as a bullet-point list:

First, the Biden administration should not pursue global military dominance.

Second, the Biden administration must deliver on its promise to end what are often referred to as the United States’ “forever wars.”

Third, the U.S. military cannot police the Middle East, and Biden should not ask it to try.

Fourth, Biden must resist NATO expansion.

Finally, the next administration must temper U.S. militarism toward China.

0Changing NATO is not easy. The end of the Soviet Union would have been an appropriate time to redefine that alliance and made a more serious effort to establish a more stable relationship with Russia. The expansion of NATO eastward was bound to provoke Russian reactions like those we have seen in Georgia and Ukraine. But that's now the proverbial water under the bridge.

Here is Friedman and Wertheim write on NATO policy:

For all his rebukes of European allies, Trump only increased U.S. security commitments to the continent. On his watch, the United States sent lethal weapons to Ukraine, intensified revolving military deployments in the Baltic States, and welcomed Montenegro and North Macedonia into NATO. That trend needs to stop, not least because the accession of the next candidates in line for NATO—Ukraine and Georgia—could provoke a dangerous response from Russia. The Biden administration should welcome initiatives from France and other European states to assume the primary responsibility for dealing with security challenges in their own region. By doing so, the United States would not only cut down on costs but also diminish the risk of being pulled into a World War III. [my emphasis]

There have been indications recently, including Russia's tilt toward Azerbaijan in this year's military conflict with Armenia, that Putin's government is shifting to a more cautious and defensive foreign policy phase. It would certainly be worth a serious attempt to come to some relationship with Russia in which they allow their ethnic enclaves in Georgia and Ukraine to revert to those countries and returns Crimea to Ukraine. Some more-or-less explicit

Even that would be a very difficult diplomatic project. But it's worth a real effort.

It's also worth repeating the sentence of the last quote: "For all his rebukes of European allies, Trump only increased U.S. security commitments to the [European] continent."

Whatever else Trump's America First policy may have been, a more restrained posture in European affairs it was not. Particularly when it comes to expanding risks of involvement in military conflicts.

US foreign policy after the election

The quality of US foreign policy will continue to deteriorate and even more rapidly if Donald Trump is reelected - or otherwise remains as President for another term. I much prefer to think about how a Biden Administration might make some pragmatic improvements and repair some of the mess the current administration has made.

Either way, I've been thinking through some of the major themes under which I'm looking at both possibilities.

Nuclear nonproliferation (including nuclear arms reduction) and climate change are the two greatest threats not only to the United States but all of humanity. Those two priorities should frame the whole of US foreign policy.

As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists noted earlier this year (Closer than ever: It is 100 seconds to midnight 01/23/2020):

Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers—nuclear war and climate change—that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society’s ability to respond. The international security situation is dire, not just because these threats exist, but because world leaders have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing them to erode.

In the nuclear realm, national leaders have ended or undermined several major arms control treaties and negotiations during the last year, creating an environment conducive to a renewed nuclear arms race, to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and to lowered barriers to nuclear war. Political conflicts regarding nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea remain unresolved and are, if anything, worsening. US-Russia cooperation on arms control and disarmament is all but nonexistent. ...

This situation—two major threats to human civilization, amplified by sophisticated, technology-propelled propaganda—would be serious enough if leaders around the world were focused on managing the danger and reducing the risk of catastrophe. Instead, over the last two years, we have seen influential leaders denigrate and discard the most effective methods for addressing complex threats—international agreements with strong verification regimes—in favor of their own narrow interests and domestic political gain. By undermining cooperative, science- and law-based approaches to managing the most urgent threats to humanity, these leaders have helped to create a situation that will, if unaddressed, lead to catastrophe, sooner rather than later. [my emphasis]

NATO is an important alliance not least because it exists, and has a key institution in the world for over six decades. Whatever criticisms we want to make of its history, it was a key institution for a Europe that has not had a major war since 1945. And even if we think significant changes in the alliance may be needed, treating it like a Mob protection racket as the current President has done is clearly not a good way to handle it.

Foreign policy realists like George Kennan and Stephen Walt warned that expanding NATO after 1989 would be problematic because Russia would inevitably regard it as a military threat and act accordingly. The expansion of NATO to include Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, all of which were part of the former Soviet Union, was a particularly risky step. But to quote one of Trump's most infamous statements in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is what it is. A redefined NATO in the context of a larger strategic understanding with Russia would be very desirable. But incredibly difficult. Something way beyond the capability of a team of wreckers and grifters like the current administration.

Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) President Richard Haass comments in Present at the Disruption: How Trump Unmade U.S. Foreign Policy (Foreign Affairs 95:5 Sept-Oct 2020) on "Trump’s reluctance to reaffirm U.S. fidelity to NATO’s Article 5, the treaty’s collective-defense provision." This is a strong sign to the NATO allies that bipartisan commitment to the NATO alliance has been at the least drastically reduced. While American pundits and Democratic consultants making campaign ads may want to pretend that the current President is some kind of bizarre aberration in an otherwise conservative and sensible Republican Party, NATO governments cannot afford to make that assumption. As Haass remarks, "Alliances are predicated on reliability and predictability, and no ally is likely to view the United States as it did before."

The reality that China is the most powerful rising world power and in future decades will have an economy significantly larger than any other country. And that means they will have a greater influence on the terms of world trade and their military clout will increase and that other countries around the world will have to make decisions about how to work with and balance against China's power. That much is not really in question, it's the way the international system works.

But the general political discussion in American politics is painfully superficial, dominated by vague ideas about trade policy and melodramatic rhetoric that sometimes sound like a rehash of primitive slogans out of the 1950s that even then were promoting a poorly-informed policy. So, for instance, we hear a lot about China's threatening moves in the South China Sea. Apparently every TV pundit knows there could be a confrontation of some kind between the US and China in the South China Sea. I doubt that many of them could say much more than that what the US interests there are. Haass notes in his essay that the Trump Administration "has been mostly passive as China has solidified its control of the South China Sea."

Vietnam is one of the countries bordering on the South China Sea. Which should be a reminder to Americans that misunderstandings, exaggerated fears, and blinding ideology on the part of American policymakers have produced bad results in that area in the past. Jacob Stakes in The Chinese Military Threat Is Real (Democracy Journal 08/14/2020) makes his case on how the US should regard the changing military power configuration in which China is now operating:

Beijing defines its sovereign territory expansively to include Taiwan, disputed islands and rocks in the East and South China seas along with the waters themselves, and land on the border with India. Therefore, even “defensive” goals seek to redraw the map, using force if necessary, with major implications for the United States and its alliance commitments, especially with Japan and the Philippines.

US Latin American policy has been chronically bad for most of the existence of the United States. In more recent times, both the Cheney-Bush and Obama Administrations followed policies that favored "business-friendly conservatives" like Maricio Macri of Argentina or (now) Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil over elected center-left governments from the Texas border to Tierra del Fuego. And it's been even worse under Trump, as the malicious but clownishly inept regime-change operation against Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela dramatically illustrates. To put in in terms not usually encountered in Foreign Affairs, US Latin American policy should not give top priority to the narrow interests of financial buccaneers and extractive industries. A policy build on genuinely supporting democratic processes along with constructive trade relations and, where necessary, military cooperation would make a lot more sense for the country, however inconvenient it might be for some business lobbies.

American democracy, so long as we can keep it, is an important element of "soft power" that is not only of theoretical interest but also enhances American influence in very practical ways. But not every policy that the US justifies as democracy promotion is benign, much less those known as humanitarian intervention. See: the great concern professional neocon warmongers expressed for women's rights in places like Afghanistan and Iraq during the Cheney-Bush Administration.

But Ben Rhodes, a Deputy National Security Adviser for eight years during the Obama Administration, argues (The Democratic Renewal: What It Will Take to Fix U.S. Foreign Policy Foreign Affairs 95:5 Sept-Oct 2020):

A Biden victory in November would offer the temptation of seeking to restore the United States’ post–Cold War image of itself as a virtuous hegemon. But that would badly underestimate the country’s current predicament. The United States hasn’t just lost ground; the ship of state is pointed in the wrong direction, and the rest of the world has moved on. Global concerns about U.S. credibility aren’t simply tied to the calamitous presidency of Donald Trump—they’re rooted in the fact that the American people elected someone like Trump in the first place. Having seen Americans do that once, foreign leaders and publics will wonder whether the United States might do it again, particularly given the fealty of the Republican Party to Trump’s nationalist, authoritarian brand of politics.

He hopefully suggests that a Biden Administration might find ways to renew the soft-power assets of the US:

The extraordinary mobilization against structural racism and injustice offers an opportunity to renew the United States’ sense of purpose. A large part of the country’s claim to global leadership has been the evolutionary and redemptive elements of its story—the fact that the United States is a multiethnic, multicultural society that has, through constitutional democracy, chipped away at institutional racism and the lingering power of white supremacy.

War really should be the last resort in foreign policy. That's a classic part of historical Just War Theory. Every war presents complications of its own. Preventive war is already illegal in international law and for good reasons. It should not be the case for the United States to use "humanitarian intervention" as a fig leaf for reckless military interventions, like with Libya in 2011.

We need a fully functioning and professional State Department. See: Doyle McManus, Almost Half the Top Jobs in Trump’s State Department Are Still Empty The Atlantic 11/04/2018; Courtney Bublé, Watchdog Finds Serious Staffing and Leadership Problems at State Department Government Executive 01/23/2020; Diplomacy in Crisis: The Trump Administration's Decimation of the State Department (Democratic Staff Report for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) 07/28/2020.

Zombie ideas and attitudes can lurch around for a long time. Cold War triumphalism is one that the US should relegate to the past. And in many ways, that attitude has been swallowed by the events of the last 30 years. But the Republicans' current celebration of "American Exceptionalism" incorporates a version of Cold War triumphalism. But it was always a perilously superficial view of the period in which the Warsaw Pact ended, the Soviet Union dissolved, and the "state socialist" systems in them were replaced. David Singer wrote in 2000 (Triumphalism and Reality in U.S. Cold War Policies Peace Review 12:4):

[W]ith the end of the Cold War, the U.S. was awash in triumphal shouts of victory and success. But in the 10 or so years since, we have not only seen all of those dreadful chickens come home to roost, but we have also demonstrated that we still see them as indicators of national greatness. Actually, they are really signs of declining influence, global chaos, and the continuing erosion and destruction of those norms and institutions so essential to building a civilized human community. [my emphasis]

Bunker Boy has a new tantrum over Angela Merkel

Bunker Boy's administration is playing more games with Germany and NATO, as Alexander Smith and Courtney Kube report for NBC News in U.S. to withdraw almost 12,000 troops from Germany in sweeping reorganization 07/29/2020:

The Trump administration announced plans Wednesday to withdraw almost 12,000 troops from Germany, a sweeping continentwide reorganization that has provoked bipartisan congressional opposition and widespread dismay in Europe.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told a Pentagon briefing that the move would benefit Washington's strategic interests abroad, strengthening NATO and deterring Russia, and equipping the military for "a new era of great power competition."

But President Donald Trump has previously offered a different explanation, suggesting the planned drawdown is punishment for his long-standing complaint that Germany does not spend enough on its military.

I know what rightwing, America First isolationism is, i.e., extreme nationalism and militarism, so I've never expected Bunker Boy to actually have dovish policies, except by total accident. This is another idiotic move, that Trump justifies on the basis that NATO is a protection racket and Germany is behind on their payments.

"The announcement of a massive reduction of the number of American troops in Germany is Trump's revenge on Angela Merkel. There are few heads of government who are as opposed to him as the Chancellor," writes Konstantin von Hammerstein (Trumps Rache an Merkel Spiegel Online 07/29/2020; my translation from the German).

Expecting European countries to move quickly to deal with obvious problems is usually a bad bet. But it might be possible in the (relatively) near term to come up with a more coherent definition of what NATO should be . It's always been basically an anti-Russia alliance, so making it a jumping-off point for bonehead US interventions in the Middle East or Africa is probably not the best idea.

But after the Bunker Boy experience, can any European government really believe the US would go to war with Russia if Putin decided to take a piece of Estonia? Estonia is a NATO member, though Trump probably couldn't identify it as a country, much less find it on an unlabeled map. In any case, Russia is an overstretched regional power that also has the blessing/curse of being a petrostate.

Refounding NATO is probably too much to expect in any immediate future.

But hoping for better algebra isn't too big a stretch. This 2% of GDP goal for military spending is a typical lazy diplomatic marketing move. As NBC reports, "Belgium and Italy, where some American headquarters and troops would be redeployed under the plan, spend even less on defense than Germany in relation to the size of their respective economies."

Russia was spending around 4% or so of its GDP on the military in 2019. (Siemon Wezeman, Russia’s military spending: Frequently asked questions SIPRI (04/27/2020).

But its GDP is basically the size of Italy's, depending on the exchange rates on any given day. Germany and France together have more-or-less the same size military as Russia, and France even has nukes. What percent of GDP countries are spending is all-but-meaningless for the comparison. Europe's problem isn't the GDP % they spend, it's the fact that they don't have a coordinated European force except for NATO, which Bunker Boy is wrecking.

What does Trump's withdrawal of US troops mean for Germany and NATO? Deutsche Welle 07/30/2020:

Current international players in the Libyan civil war

Juan Cole updates us on the conflict in Libya, which has wide implications that could easily become more acute: The World War in Libya: Russo-Turkish, Turko-Egyptian Conflicts Recall Multi-Polar 19th Century Informed Comment 07/26/2020:

Libya has become a multipolar battleground unusual in the era since 1946. The UN-recognized General National Assembly (GNA) government in Tripoli is ranged against the forces of Benghazi-based Gen. Khalifa Haftar.

Haftar is supported by the Russian Federation, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and diplomatically, France.

The GNA is supported by Turkey, which has sent in a few thousand Syrian mercenaries (battle-hardened rebels who lost in their home country and who skew to the religious Right). Although ordinarily the Turkish backing would also implicate NATO, Turkey’s Libya position is opposed by Greece, Italy and France and so Ankara is isolated on this issue. Turkey in Libya helps create an Eastern Mediterranean strategic position for that country, stretching east from Tripoli to eastern (Turkish) Cyprus and thence Turkey itself. Turkey is interested in gas deposits off Cyprus that Greek Cyprus, Greece, Italy and France also have their eye on. It is also interested in Libyan oil, which is at the moment not being much pumped and is under Haftar’s control.

The two sides, the GNA and Haftar, are gearing up for a big battle over Sirte, which would be the GNA’s gateway to recovering some of the oil fields.

Of course, oil is involved! Cole notes that the policy of Bunker Boy's Administration is incoherent.

The Trump administration is largely uninterested in the substance of geopolitics, but rather is satisfied with the appearance of willingness to negotiate US demands, as with North Korea. Curbing China and strangling Iran are virtually the only actual major Trump policies toward the rest of the world.

The US turn inward and the paralysis of the country in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, has opened up new spaces for other great powers, and for regional powers, to assert themselves.

The US is irrelevant to this one at the moment.

We're at a place in the Presidential campaign were some Democrats are panicky at the thought of anything that sounds like a criticism of the Obama-Biden Administration. But they did intervene militarily in Libya in 2011. (I'll mote here that Juan Cole, who is generally critical of US interventions, supported that one at the time.)

Dominic Tierney reports in The Legacy of Obama’s ‘Worst Mistake’ The Atlantic 04/15/2020

In a Fox News interview last Sunday, Obama was asked about his “worst mistake.” It’s a classic gotcha question, but he had an answer ready. “Probably failing to plan for the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya.” This was yet another act of presidential contrition for the NATO operation in 2011 that helped to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi but left the country deeply unstable. In 2014, Obama said: “[W]e [and] our European partners underestimated the need to come in full force if you’re going to do this. Then it’s the day after Qaddafi is gone, when everybody is feeling good and everybody is holding up posters saying, ‘Thank you, America.’ At that moment, there has to be a much more aggressive effort to rebuild societies that didn’t have any civic traditions.” In recent interviews with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on the “Obama Doctrine,” the president bluntly said the mission in Libya “didn’t work.” Behind closed doors, according to Goldberg, he calls the situation there a “shit show.” [my emphasis]

In the first bolded passage, Obama is repeating the stock excuse of the generals and the foreign policy establishment for failed military interventions: everything would have been better if we had just killed more of those foreigners and killed them faster, everything would have worked out. Even spectaular disasters like the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War haven't seemed to deterred them from using it.

The second bolded passage is a better description.

The US-NATO intervention nine years ago can't be said to have led directly to the current situations. Other international players made they own decisions in the process. But it contributed mightily to the developmentof the current situation. As the Quincy Institute's July 2020 report New U.S. Paradigm for the Middle East: Ending America’s Misguided Policy of Domination observes:

The military intervention, with U.S. support and involvement, that led to the overthrow of Muammar al–Gaddafi in 2011 has left Libya in chaos. The continuing civil war has had a destabilizing effect beyond Libya’s borders, including a notable increase in terrorist groups operating in the Sahel and West and Central Africa. Furthermore, the involvement of Turkey and European governments in support of opposed Libyan factions has deepened rifts within the E.U. and NATO. [my emphasis]

None of this means that Bunker Boy is displaying some kind of dovish inclinations in his Libya policy. Cole's analysis that he doesn't much know are care what is happening in Libya is very plausible. Not much market for new Trump Towers there at the moment. The Orange Clown in fact weighed in on Libya in 2011 in a statement that hardly sounds dovish, Donald Trump Vlog - Deleted: From the Desk of Donald Trump - Gaddafi, Libya - February 28, 2011 Factbase Videos 03/11/2018:

He is also in that video applying the same kind of deep and incisive analysis with which the world has now become so familiar.

Competence matters in foreign policy. And the US could have some actual constructive influence - without additional military interventions - in discouraging an Egyptian invasion and pressuring both Turkey and Russia to back off. Turkey is an ally of the US in the NATO mutual-defense pact, so what countries Turkey is invading is an important matter for US policy.

The EU and the members who are also NATO allies have their own responsibility in this situation. They should all be trying to de-escalate the civil war instead of fueling it. Especially since Turkey has also been escalating tensions with fellow NATO member Greece. The EU is also particularly vulnerable to blackmail by Turkey because the EU steadfastly refuses to develop a more reasonable and humane policy for housing and processing refugees. Under the 2016 Angela Merkel negotiated, the EU is paying Turkey to hold up to four million refugees. Turkey used the threat of sending refugees into the EU to pressure the Union earlier this year. (Chris Baynes, Turkey’s Erdogan threatens to send millions of refugees to Europe unless it backs Syria ‘safe zone' Independent 10/26/2019

Turkey's current touchy tangle with Syria, Russia, Kurds, NATO, and the EU

The architects of the Iraq War wanted to wreck existing governments in the Middle East - not including Saudi Arabia, of course - through "wars of liberation" and thereby strengthen the relative positions of the US and Israel. The chain of events runs from the US invasion of Iraq, to the resulting installation of an Iraqi government with a pro-Iranian foreign policy orientation, to the rise of the Islamic State and a long civil war in Syria now currently has NATO ally Turkey on the verge of a war with Syria and Russia.

There were many other factors involved, of course. But to a very great extent, the current precarious political-military situation on the Syrian border is a direct result of the Iraq War. And, to a large extent, this instability, death, and massive social disruption was a desired outcome of the advocates of the Iraq War.

According to this report from Al-Monitor (Maxim Suchkov, Will Russia, Turkey go to war over Syria's Idlib? 02/28/2020):

Earlier today [Friday], two Russian warships armed with cruise missiles transited from Sevastopol, Crimea, through the Bosporus Strait in Istanbul to Mediterranean waters.

Turkey reacted to the attacks by launching military strikes on the Syrian positions, allegedly “neutralizing 309 regime troops.” It also opened its borders for Syrian refugees to enter Europe, likely to pressure the Europeans to take a harsher stance on Russia and Syria. Erdogan's decision triggered angry reactions from Greece, which depolyed [sic] police reinforcements to the country’s border checkpoints with Turkey to prevent the influx of new migrants. Ankara also called for an emergency NATO meeting over the situation in Syria. [my emphasis]

Austria's rightwing (ÖVP) Chancellor Sebastian "Basti" Kurz wasted little time in banging his favorite xenophobic drum against refugees and immigrants:

#Österreich ist auch bereit, die Länder an der Außengrenze mit zusätzlichen Polizisten zu unterstützen, wie Innenminister @karlnehammer bereits gestern betont hat. Wenn der Schutz der EU-Außengrenze nicht gelingen sollte, dann wird Österreich seine Grenzen schützen.

— Sebastian Kurz (@sebastiankurz) February 29, 2020

My Translation:

A situation like [the large refugee influx to Northern Europe in] 2015 must not be repeated. Our aim must be to properly protect the EU's external borders, to stop illegal migrants there and not to wave them through.

Austria is also prepared to support the countries on the external border with additional police officers, as Interior Minister Karl Nehammer stressed yesterday. If the protection of the EU's external border is not successful, Austria will protect its borders.

I've written before about the EU's sad neglect of the real immigration needs and refugee problems, e.g., Langfristige Herausforderungen der EU bei Einwanderung und Flüchtlingen (3 Teilen); EU long-term challenges on immigration and refugees (3 Parts).

The EU "solved" the acute phrase of the refugee crisis in 2015-16 which far-right parties exploited for demagogic appeals with non-trivial ´benefit to their electoral position, by an agreement that Angela Merkel negotiated with Turkey to hold refugees. Turkey's latest action appears to breach that agreement. And that agreement gave Turkey the ability to threaten the EU in other policy areas, which he is now doing.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan's foreign policy is currently a mess. He thumbed his nose at his NATO partners by accepting weapons sales from Russia that were opposed by other NATO members. Then he launched a military operation inside Syria, which is backed by Russia. He also intervened in the Libyan civil war underway, on the opposing side to the one backed by Russia.

Turkey's expressed goal in its recent invasion of northern Syria was to repatriate some of the millions Syrian refugees they were hosting. But Erdoğan used that as an excuse for “ethnic cleansing” of Kurds out of that region, generated additional refugees in the process. Because Erdoğan also wants to establish a Turkish-controlled buffer zone against a possible Kurdish independence movement. The US had previously supporter the leftist Kurdish YPG organization. But Trump abandoned them under pressure from Turkey. See: Juan Cole, Abandoned by Trump, Syrian Kurds frantically turn to Moscow for Protection from Turkey Informed Comment 12/28/2018.

Linah Alsaafin reports (Erdogan, Putin discuss Syria as Turkey demands truce in Idlib Aljazeera 02/28/2020:

Nearly a million people have been forced from their homes in Idlib since the Syrian government launched its offensive to capture the province from Turkey-backed opposition forces in December - a crisis the United Nations has called a "man-made humanitarian nightmare". ...

Earlier this month, forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad captured the arterial M5 highway, which links all of the country's major cities and six provinces, and consolidated control over Aleppo province. This has come at a heavy cost to the Turkish military, which has 12 observation posts in the region under a 2017 and 2018 "de-escalation zone" agreement with Russia.

Some of these positions now lie in areas seized by the Syrian government.

Speaking in Ankara on Friday, Turkey's Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said his country's military had responded to the Syrian government attack by striking 200 of their targets from the air and ground. Some 309 Syrian troops were "neutralised", he said. Among the targets were Syrian government helicopters, military tanks, armoured vehicles, howitzers and ammunition depots.

"This attack [on Turkish soldiers] occurred even though the locations of our troops had been coordinated with Russian officials in the field," he said. The Russian foreign ministry, denied the claim, saying: "Turkish soldiers who were in the battle formations of terrorists came under the fire of Syrian troops."

Maxim Suchkov assess the current state of Turkish-Russian relations this way:

Putin and Erdogan are increasingly unhappy with one another but both still need each other in Syria and beyond. To extend the “marriage of convenience” metaphor that is frequently applied to describe the Russia-Turkey partnership, the two have to stay together “for the kids” — joint trade, growing interdependency in energy supplies, the Akkuyu nuclear power plant and the S-400 missile deal as well as other possible contracts and political investments the two leaders have made into developing the relationship.

For Russia, the value of Turkey in these and other domains has not depreciated. It's even grown since the last stress test Moscow and Ankara experienced when Turkey downed the Russian jet in November 2015. Against this particular measurement, the partnership with Syria seems a lot less significant. Yet the price of not standing up for its ally in Damascus is measured in different currency in Moscow — one that buys global status.

Metin Gurcan describes the recent diplomatic maneuvers between Turkey and its NATO allies in Can Ankara’s sudden change of heart on NATO save the day in Idlib? 02/25/2020.

With Turkish losses mounting in #Syria , President Erdogan is brushing up against the limits of his pivot to Russia. Putin has chosen Assad over Erdogan. https://t.co/98TeSXfShS

— Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) February 29, 2020

Iran policy: Trying to give advice to a leader who has no idea what he's doing

Robert Hunter writes about Trump and Iran in a piece titled Will Trump Learn Enough from the Iran Crisis? (Responsible Statecraft 01/11/2020).

The safest answer to the headline question is, of course, no. But Hunter's article observes the convention of serious foreign policy analysis that it's written as though it provides expert advice to rational and responsible actors. Even though the most important actor, the Orange Clown in the Oval Office, has repeatedly shown himself to be neither. But there's always the hope that he or someone with some momentary influence over him might be nudged in a positive direction.

So he argues hopefully:

... Trump must understand is that he can’t afford to rely solely on his own counsel or to surround himself just with like-minded people, especially if they are war hawks that could tip the United States into a conflict that serves no useful purpose and could severely damage U.S. interests and cost American lives. Worst of all now is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has been itching for war and has been telling the Iranians that, in effect, they must surrender unconditionally before the United States will negotiate. There are many smart, able, serious, and thoughtful American Middle East experts - they just aren’t present at senior levels in this administration. The only exceptions are senior U.S. military leaders, who understand the price paid in human life by a commander-in-chief’s arrogance, recklessness, or stupidity. [my emphasis]

And he calls attention to what he calls one of Trump's "other fantasies":

... he has called on NATO to assume a greater role in the Middle East, what he calls NATO-ME. While there is clear merit in the Europeans’ assuming more responsibility for security in the Middle East, Trump hasn’t connected the dots. He has spent three years undercutting NATO and even calling into question whether the United States would in all cases honor the Alliance’s core commitment, that an armed attack on any one ally is considered an attack on all. Now he is coming to NATO like the Prodigal Son, expecting to be welcomed home and provided succor. Sorry, Mr. President, given the way you have undercut NATO, it is unlikely that the allies will do what you want in the Middle East, at least until you fully and unambiguously reaffirm U.S. fealty to the Alliance. Even then, most of the allies will be reluctant to go along. [my emphasis]

There are a lot of elements to the mess that Trump has made with US policy toward Iran.

NATO expansion and the Iraq War: two turning points for US foreign policy

Jeremi Suri has some observations about a couple of important turning points in Amrican foreign policy in recent decades in The Long Rise and Sudden Fall of American Diplomacy Foreign Policy 04/17/2019. Suri is commenting on a book by a former ambassdor to Jordan and foreign policy official, William Burns, currently president of the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Burns thought the Clinton Administration's decision to expand NATO was poorly conceived and inadequately thought out:

The militarization of U.S. diplomacy began, according to Burns’s account, when President Bill Clinton pushed for rapid NATO expansion into the former Soviet bloc, despite prior U.S. commitments to the contrary (as confirmed by Burns in his memoir) and strong Russian objections. Although Clinton offered strong personal support to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, he failed to address the growing sense of insecurity and grievance within Russia. It appeared that the United States was muscling into Russian geopolitical space, brandishing guns and dollars. Washington offered little to assure concerned Russians, other than continued aid to a drunk, pro-American figure in the Kremlin.

The former Soviet bloc states had good reason to seek NATO membership, but the United States needed to do more to accommodate Russian fears. Diplomacy of this kind received little attention among Clinton’s impatient advisors. Burns, then the U.S. minister-counselor for political affairs in Russia, recounts: “Sitting at the embassy in Moscow in the mid-1990s, it seemed to me that NATO expansion was premature at best, and needlessly provocative at worst ... It was wishful thinking, however, to believe that we could open the door to NATO membership without incurring some lasting cost with a Russia coping with its own historic insecurities.”

It's too late to put that genie back in the bottle. But the post-1989 US foreign policy was strong on arrogance and short on realistic views of Russia.

And he cites Burns' view of the foreign policy disaster known as the Iraq War.

The United States isolated itself, antagonized allies and adversaries, and diverted its resources to a lengthy military occupation that further destabilized the region. The winner of the war was Iran, which saw a regional rival defeated and found new influence in Iraq. The United States was a clear loser, as the “war in Iraq sucked the oxygen out of the administration’s foreign policy agenda.” Mired in Iraq, facing opposition around the globe, Washington found its diplomatic leverage diminished in almost every region. Burns recounts how Russian President Vladimir Putin took advantage of this situation by throwing his weight around in Central Asia, the Middle East, and Southeastern Europe. The United States had cornered itself.   [my emphasis]

Sometimes commentators refer to the Iraq War as an unforced error. Unforeced disaster would be more appropriate.

Most damaging, the United States never recovered the diplomatic capital lost in Iraq. Burns recounts many skilled U.S. efforts to contain Russia and denuclearize Libya and Iran, but from military intervention to drone warfare Washington consistently “overrelied on American hard power to achieve policy aims and ambitions.” Even critics of the Iraq War presumed the United States had underused or misused military power; they did not address the diplomatic deficit. U.S. leaders failed to educate the public about the importance of forging compromise abroad, and they frequently encouraged more skepticism toward diplomacy. This was most evident during the Barack Obama administration’s negotiations with Iran, when members of Congress worked to undermine sensitive negotiations while they were still in process, calling recklessly for military intervention instead.  [my emphasis]

One of the poor assumptions behind the war on terror in the context of which the Cheney-Bush Administration justified the Iraq War was to conceive of terrorism as a problem of state-sponsored terrorism. Paul Pilar notes that this bad assumption has been unfortunately persistent (The Pensacola Shooting and the Misconceiving of Terrorism Responsible Statecraft 12/09/2019):

State sponsorship of terrorism has dropped significantly over the past three decades. At least that is true of governments either directly perpetrating or instigating terrorist operations. A persistent problem of states and terrorism involves the less direct malevolent effects of what certain states do, and Saudi Arabia is Exhibit A in that problem. It is no accident that fifteen of the nineteen men who carried out the mother of all of international terrorist attacks — 9/11 — were Saudis. ...

The Trump administration has put the latest attack, and terrorism in general, in the framework of its policy toward the Middle East, which rigidly takes sides in regional rivalries and is built around unrelenting hostility toward Iran. ...

The oft-repeated mantra about Iran being the “number one state sponsor of terrorism” is an anachronism. It was applicable in years past, when fifty U.S. diplomats were taken hostage in Tehran and in subsequent years when the Iranian regime conducted serial assassinations of exiled dissidents. That behavior stopped years ago. ... Iran has been heavily involved, especially in Iraq, in combating the most ominous terrorist movement of recent years - Islamic State - and has been the victim of major Islamic State attacks within Iran. [my emphasis]

Stanley Sloan and the state of NATO

The "crisis in transatlantic relations" is something that has been part of NATO politics pretty much since the day it was created.

This book was published in 2004 - complete with a blurb at the top from Status Quo Joe Biden himself!

In September 2004, the Wilson Center held a conference on the topic The Crisis in Transatlantic Relations.

The differences over the Iraq War didn't stop the expansion of NATO to include Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia in 2004, followed by Albania and Croatia in 2009 and Montenegro in 2017.

Trump's election to the Presidency has brought a new chapter in the Crisis in Transatlantic Relations. The latest episode made the news again this weekend when Stanley Sloan, a US expert on NATO, was vetoed by the State Department as a speaker at a scheduled NATO conference in Denmark, which as a result was cancelled by the Danish Atlantic Council, which was sponsoring the event. This kind of State Department intervention to veto a speaker with thoroughly Establishment credentials is unusual, as Mariel Padilla reports (NATO Conference Is Canceled After U.S. Ambassador Barred a Trump Critic New York Times 12/08/2019):

Mr. Sloan, a visiting scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont, a fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, planned to speak about the future of trans-Atlantic relations.

One day before he was set to leave for Copenhagen, Mr. Sloan was informed that the United States Embassy in Copenhagen had vetoed his participation because of his previous criticisms of President Trump, Mr. Sloan said on Facebook on Saturday.

Carla Sands, the United States ambassador to Denmark, did not want Mr. Sloan to participate, and the Danish Atlantic Council “had no other option” than to revoke his invitation to speak, Lars Bangert Struwe, the secretary general of the council, said in a statement.

Mr. Sloan said the decision had left him “stunned and concerned about our country.”

Sloan has been tweeting about the incident.

It is here for your viewing: https://t.co/S2eiZ9ruH0 https://t.co/ZwTAkcmlut

— Stanley R. Sloan - Defense of the West (@srs2_) December 8, 2019

The page he links contains further links to his work, including his notes for the speech that he couldn't deliver because Dear Leader Baby Trump doesn't want to hear people criticizing his bumbling, fumbling, laughingstock of a foreign policy, Crisis in transatlantic relations: what future will we choose? The speech itself is largely boilerplate Atlanticist assumptions and is thoroughly conventional. He states his perspective as follows:

• I support liberal democracy as the best, albeit not perfect, political system for our countries.
• My outlook on how to defend the West is influenced as much by this ideological bias as it is by the need for governments to defend against physical threats.
• Finally, in my years of working on transatlantic relations I’ve analyzed and written about many “crises.”
• It’s my judgment that the crisis currently facing the West is the most dangerous of any seen in the past seven decades.

NATO has never been overly disturbed by incidents of member states departing from liberal democracy, e.g., the military government in Greece 1967-1974, various military governments in Turkey and Tayyip Erdoğan's authoritarian Islamist government today, Viktor Orbán's authoritarian regime in Hungary.

Since NATO is an alliance focused on Europe, he takes a Eurocentric view:

Of course, “the West” is more than the transatlantic alliance

When the term is defined broadly, it certainly includes Eastern democracies such as Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

Ultimately, however, the members of NATO and the European Union represent the heart of what we call “the West.’

We could quibble with how he uses "the West" as a normative standard, i.e., Japan is part of "the West" but Russia isn't? But it's not the kind of thing that would raise anyone's eyebrows on Morning Joe.

Sloan makes the sensible point that miltiary budgets are always a matter of political decisions, "so the transatlantic alliance will be perpetually plagued by a 'burdensharing' problem."

He does make an explicit if general criticism of the Trump Administration:

Meanwhile, the American guarantee of European security has, under President Trump, become very uncertain. Mutual trust among leaders of alliance nations is at an all-time low.

The [recent NATO] London meeting did little to reassure us.

And, the threat from Russia has become even more intrusive.

Russia’s Putin is getting a helping hand from our president as well as from radical right populist politicians here in Europe.

He sketches out his (also thoroughly conventional) view of challenges from Russia, China, and international terrorism.

Sloan's description of what he sees as the possibility of a "radical negative change" in NATO sounds like a lazy recitation of decades-old Cold War talk, with Moscow as the mastermind of a European Communist movement replaced by Moscow as the mastermind of a European fascist movement. Actually, Putin's government seems far more interested in encouraging political chaos where it can rather than promoting some ideology encouraging Putin-style governments in other countries.

And what would such a presentation be without an invocation of "Munich"? He describes in his "radical negative change" scenario:

In this hypothetical scenario, Trump continues the process of abandoning US international leadership and decides to remove all US forces from Europe.

Trump tweets that he and Vladimir Putin have agreed that such a move would promote peace and security in Europe.

In response, European allies discuss creating strong, integrated European defense structures to replace the transatlantic NATO one.

But they find it too challenging politically and financially.

Even the overwhelming cost estimate projected in 2019 by the IISS for the EU members to create a defense system as capable as that of NATO turns out to be overly optimistic.

Several member countries suggest that the EU should follow the US lead and sign a peaceful relations accord with Russia, in which both sides pledge to take no aggressive actions against the other.

Even though some commentators immediately label this “the 21st century Munich,” most European governments decide they have little choice.

In addition, this move toward accommodation with Russia strengthens illiberal pro-Moscow parties throughout Europe.

That leads to the election of several national administrations that lean toward fascist forms of governance and away from liberal democracy. [my emphasis]

Not a particularly creative formulation. But, as John Kenneth Galbraith observed, the "comfort of convenient belief" can be very attractive in itself. (The Culture of Contentment, 1992) But it often renders its adherents incapable of recognizing important changes and developments not included int he conventional wisdom.

Galbraith also reminds us of the consequences of the kind of threat inflation previously associated with Western views the USSR and justified by the Munich Analogy:

The natural focus of concern was the Soviet Union and its once seemingly stalwart satellites in Eastern Europe. Fear of the not inconsiderable competence of the Soviets in military technology and production provided the main pillar of support for American military spending. However, the alarm was geographically comprehensive. It supported expenditure and military action against such improbable threats as those from Angola, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Grenada, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Laos, Cambodia and, massively, tragically and at great cost, from Vietnam. From being considered a source of fear and concern, only Communist China was, from the early 1970s on, exempt. Turning against the Soviet Union and forgiven for its earlier role in Korea and Vietnam, it became an honorary bastion of democracy and free enterprise, which, later repressive actions notwithstanding, it rather substantially remains.

Which is also a reminder of the risk of threat inflation in relation to today's Russia. And that's a big issue for NATO, an alliance that has expanded greatly in the last three decades but has nevertheless been an alliance in search of a mission since the fall of the USSR in 1992.

The comfortable conventional view of China that Galbraith described there has now been replaced by China as a pressing threat.

US and NATO foreign policy would be well served by a couple of changes: (1) a more pragmatic and realistic view of threats, which also means one not deferential to profit goals of the armaments industries; and, (2) burying the Munich Analogy, which main consequence has long been to encourage a dangerous habit threat inflation.

Über-Realist John Mearsheimer und Welt-„Systeme“, Welt-„Ordnungen" und NATO

Ein Unterscheidungsmerkmal der „realistischen" außenpolitischen Perspektive im Allgemeinen ist, dass Länder nach nationalen Interessen handeln, die als Beteiligung an einem Prozess des Ausgleichs und der Neuausrichtung von Machtblöcken verstanden werden. Dieses Konzept leitet in erster Linie von der Ordnung der modernen europäischen Nationalstaaten her, die 1648 mit dem Westfälischen Frieden formell gegründet wurden. Ein klassischer Fall für das System des Gleichgewichts und der Neuausrichtung der Macht zwischen den Nationen war der Pariser Frieden nach 1815, ein Orden, der sich besonders mit Fürst Klemens von Metternich, dem österreichischen Außenminister 1809–1848 und Kanzler 1821-1848, identifiziert ist.

Metternich

Eine der Einschränkungen dieser theoretischen Perspektive ist auch mit dem Jahr 1848 verbunden, als demokratische Revolutionen Europa heimsuchten und die Machtverhältnisse innerhalb und zwischen den Ländern entscheidend beeinflussten. Nationale Erwägungen waren bei diesen Umwälzungen äußerst wichtig. Aber sie waren nicht in erster Linie das Ergebnis von Überlegungen zur Machtausgleichen in den europäischen Außenministerien. Sie wurden von einer „Ideologie" angetrieben, die weitgehend auf dem Wunsch nach repräsentativeren Vertretungen sowie nationalen Identifikationsüberlegungen beruhte. Politische Ideologie ist eine Herausforderung für den Realist Standpunkt, weil der auf der allgemeinen Annahme beruht, dass objektive nationale Interessen ideologische Erwägungen in der Außenpolitik überwiegen.

Die vernünftigeren Versionen dieser Sichtweise, z.B. Stephen Walts, erkennen das an, weil der tatsächliche Mensch Außenpolitik macht, persönliche und kollektive politische/ideologische Ansichten die Ziele und Optionen umrahmen, um die sich diese Entscheidungen herum richten. Etwas dogmatischere Versionen widerwillig akzeptieren, dass einige Leute von Ideologie motiviert sein können und Außenpolitiker müssen dies in ihren eigenen Überlegungen berücksichtigen, in denen sie jede Ideologie zugunsten kalter Berechnungen objektiver nationaler Interessen ausschließen.

Stephen Walt und John Mearsheimer sind die bekanntesten amerikanischen akademischen Verfechter der Realist-Position. Beide sind herausragende und einflussreiche Gelehrte. Ihr gemeinsam geschriebenes Buch The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007) - Deutsch: Die Israel-Lobby: Wie die amerikanische Außenpolitik beeinflusst wird - umrahmte die politischen und wissenschaftlichen Diskussionen über den praktischen Einfluss der Nation Israel auf die amerikanische Außenpolitik. Es ist auch ein großartiges Beispiel dafür, wie allgemeine ideologische und politische Annahmen weitgehend mit den kaltpragmatischeren Berechnungen der Länder über ihre kurz- und langfristigen Machtvorteile interagieren.

Mearsheimer sieht den Niedergang der liberalen internationalen Ordnung im Jahr 2005 begonnen und erklärt die Erkenntnisse der Eule von Minerva, die dieses Datum begründete. (Hegel: „Wenn die Philosophie ihr Grau in Grau mahlt, dann ist eine Gestalt des Lebens alt geworden, und mit Grau in Grau läßt sie sich nicht verjüngen, sondern nur erkennen; die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug.") Nach seinem theoretischen Schema ist der weitere Verfall der internationalen Ordnung seit dem Ende des unipolaren Moments für die USA spätestens 2016 unausweichlich: "Der unipolare Moment ist vorbei, was bedeutet, dass es keine Chance gibt, auf absehbare Zeit irgendeine liberale internationale Ordnung aufrechtzuerhalten." (meine kursive Hervorhebung)

(Alle Übersetzungen aus dem Englischen in diesem Beitrag sind meine.)

Mearsheimer hat kürzlich einen großen Artikel veröffentlicht, Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order (International Security 43:4; Spring 2019) in dem er dramatisch behauptet, dass die von den USA geführte liberale internationale Ordnung nach 1989 in der Tat zutiefst fehlerhaft ist. Und es bietet einen interessanten Blick auf einige der ideologischen-politischen Annahmen, die er auf eine pragmatische „Realist“- Sicht der gegenwärtigen internationalen Ordnung anwendet.

Ein Großteil von Mearsheimers Artikel ist eine Erklärung seines Rahmens für das Verständnis von "Ordnungen" (orders) im Weltstaatssystem. Er unterscheidet zwischen "begrenzten Ordnungen" und "internationalen Ordnungen", wobei erstere auf bestimmte Gruppen von Staaten beschränkt sind, letztere universell. Er erklärt auch Die Unterscheidungen zwischen realistischen, agnostischen und ideologischen Ordnungen, und zwischen bipolaren, multipolaren und unipolaren Systeme. Die Unterscheidung zwischen (weltweite) internationalen Systeme und internationalen Ordnungen (weltweit oder kleiner) ist von zentraler Bedeutung für die theoretische und historische Darstellung, die er in diesem Artikel vorstellt.

Besonders faszinierend ist seine Diskussion über "realistische" Ordnungen unter den Nationen. Weil er argumentiert, dass der außenpolitische Standpunkt der Realismus uns auf der Grundlage der Erfahrung sagt, dass eine bestimmte Vielfalt des Weltsystems mit einer "realistischen" Ordnung unvereinbar ist. "Wenn die Welt unipolar ist, kann die internationale Ordnung nicht realistisch sein."

Mearsheimer weist (zu Recht) Francis Fukayamas "Ende der Geschichte" zurück. Aber sein Artikel zeigt einige hegelianische Ähnlichkeiten, wie dieses Zitat.

Ideologische Annahmen

Die Hintergrundannahmen von Mearsheimers Analyse sind wichtig und informativ über die Stärken und Schwächen des Realismus.

Besonders merkwürdig ist, dass Mearsheimer ausdrücklich davon ausgeht, dass sich Nationalismus immer gegen liberale Prinzipien durchsetzt. Er formuliert diese Position drastisch: "Weil der Nationalismus die mächtigste politische Ideologie auf dem Planeten ist, übertrumpft er ohne Ausnahme den Liberalismus, wenn die beiden aufeinanderprallen, und untergräbt damit die [Post-1989-]Ordnung im Kern." (meine kursive Hervorhebung)

Diese Erklärung unterstreicht ein Problem dieser zweideutigen realistischen Ideologie. Wenn "Nationalismus die mächtigste politische Ideologie auf dem Planeten ist", dann ist es offensichtlich, dass Ideologie das Kalkül eines Landes antreibt, seine nationalen Interessen auch im engsten Sinne zu verfolgen. Bis zu einem gewissen Grad versucht der Realismus, mit einer, wie wir es nennen könnten, anti-ideologischen Ideologie zu operieren.

Auch in dem aktuellen politischen Moment, in dem autoritäre Tendenzen international wachsen - eine Schlüsselentwicklung, die Mearsheimers Artikel zu erklären versucht - fällt mir die Aussage auf, dass Nationalismus ausnahmslos "den Liberalismus übertrumpft, wenn die beiden aufeinandertreffen" als zu drastisch und, nun ja, unrealistisch. Und übermäßig pessimistisch.

Festgestellte Probleme, einschließlich der Art und Weise, wie die NATO-Erweiterung durchgeführt wurde

Mearsheimer spricht über was, seiner Meinung nach, die größten Probleme der Weltordnung nach 1989 sind. Die USA waren das überwiegend stärkste Land der Welt, den unipolaren Moment, wie er manchmal genannt wird. Eine Schlüsselrolle spielte die interventionistische Praxis der USA und der NATO, wobei sowohl neokonservativer Militarismus als auch humanitärer Interventionismus sie rechtfertigen. "Die Verbreitung einer liberalen Demokratie auf der ganzen Welt, die für den Aufbau einer solchen Ordnung von größter Bedeutung ist, ist nicht nur extrem schwierig, sondern vergiftet oft die Beziehungen zu anderen Ländern und führt manchmal zu katastrophalen Kriegen", schreibt er. Selbst wenn sie mit extremem Zynismus angewendet wurde, wie es die Cheney-Bush-Administration mit dem Irakkrieg tat, war die Idee der Verbreitung der Demokratie eine zentrale politische Rechtfertigung, die verwendet wurde, um die Unterstützung für Kriege und Interventionen voranzutreiben.

Die interessanteste Kritik hier ist seine Ansicht, wie die USA und ihre westeuropäischen Verbündeten beschlossen haben, sich nach 1989 an die NATO zuwenden:

Die NATO-Erweiterung nach Osteuropa ist ein gutes Beispiel dafür, wie die Vereinigten Staaten und ihre Verbündeten daran arbeiten, die begrenzte westliche Ordnung in eine liberale internationale Ordnung umzuwandeln. Man könnte meinen, dass die Verlegung der NATO nach Osten Teil einer klassischen Abschreckungsstrategie war, die darauf abzielte, ein potenziell aggressives Russland einzudämmen. Aber das war es nicht, da die Strategie des Westens auf liberale Ziele ausgerichtet war. Ziel war es, die Länder Osteuropas – und vielleicht auch eines Tages auch Russland – in die "Sicherheitsgemeinschaft" zu integrieren, die sich während des Kalten Krieges in Westeuropa entwickelt hatte. Es gibt keine Beweise dafür, dass seine Chefarchitekten – die Präsidenten Clinton, Bush und Obama – dachten, dass Russland in seine Nachbarn eindringen könnte und daher eingedämmt werden müsste, oder dass sie glaubten, dass die russische Führung legitime Gründe für die Angst vor der NATO-Erweiterung habe. [meine Hervorhebung].

Dies ist ein wichtiger Grund, warum ich trotz meiner Vorbehalte gegen einen Großteil des realistischen theoretischen Rahmens auf realistische Analysen Aufmerksamkeit gebe. Das ist Mearsheimers Art zu sagen: vielleicht hätten wir uns viel sorgfältiger und ernsthafter überlegen müssen, was wir mit dem NATO-Bündnis nach dem Fall des Warschauer Pakts machen sollten.

Sein Über-Realist-Kollege Stephen Walt kritisierte die NATO-Erweiterung im vergangenen Jahr ausdrücklich (NATO Isn’t What You Think It Is Foreign Policy 07/26/2018):

Wenn Trump in Bezug auf die NATO meist verwirrt ist, bleiben seine glühendsten Verteidiger einer Reihe von Binsenweisheiten und Dogmen verpflichtet, die fragwürdig waren, als sie zuerst vorankamen und mit der Zeit immer weniger vertretbar geworden sind. Zu diesen Mythen gehört vor allem die Idee, dass die NATO-Erweiterung eine riesige Zone des Friedens in Europa schaffen und dem Bündnis nach dem Kalten Krieg einen neuen und erhabenen Zweck geben würde.

So hat es nicht ganz geklappt. Zunächst einmal vergiftete die NATO-Erweiterung die Beziehungen zu Russland und spielte eine zentrale Rolle bei der Schaffung von Konflikten zwischen Russland und Georgien und Russland und der Ukraine.. Das ist natürlich nicht der einzige Grund, und ich sage nicht, dass Moskaus Antworten legal, richtig, gerechtfertigt oder auf einer genauen Wahrnehmung der Absicht der NATO beruhten. Ich schlage nur vor, dass Russlands Antwort nicht überraschend war, insbesondere angesichts der Geschichte Russlands und der früheren Zusagen der Regierung George H.W. Bush, die NATO nach der deutschen Wiedervereinigung nicht "einen Zentimeter nach Osten" zu bewegen. Die Architekten der Expansion mögen wirklich geglaubt haben, dass die Verlegung der NATO nach Osten keine Bedrohung für Russland darstellt; leider hat die russische Führung das Memo nie erhalten (und hätte es nicht geglaubt, wenn sie es gehabt hätte).

Darüber hinaus erhöhte die NATO-Erweiterung die Anzahl der Plätze, die das Bündnis formell verteidigen musste (vor allem die baltischen Staaten), ohne jedoch die für die Erfüllung dieser Aufgabe zur Verfügung stehenden Ressourcen erheblich zu erhöhen.. Wieder einmal gingen die Befürworter der Expansion davon aus, dass diese Verpflichtungen niemals eingehalten werden müssten, nur um aufzuwachen und zu entdecken, dass sie einen Blankoscheck geschrieben hatten, der schwer zu decken sein könnte. Und wir wissen jetzt, dass die Erweiterung einige neue Mitglieder hinzugezogen hat, deren Engagement für eine liberale Demokratie sich als ziemlich flach erwiesen hat. Diese Situation kann kein fataler Fehler sein, da die NATO nichtdemokratische Mitglieder (z. B. die Türkei) in der Vergangenheit, aber sie untergräbt die Behauptung der Befürworter, die NATO sei eine Sicherheitsgemeinschaft, die auf gemeinsamen demokratischen Werten und einem wesentlichen Element einer liberalen Weltordnung basiert. [meine Hervorhebung]

Mit anderen Worten, zu optimistische Annahmen über die NATO-Erweiterung schuften Probleme, die wahrscheinlich durch einen pragmatischeren und weniger kurzsichtigen Ansatz hätten verringert oder vermieden werden können.

Mearsheimer macht einen verwandten, aber deutlichen Punkt zur NATO-Erweiterung. Er argumentiert, indem er die unipolare Strategie der Schaffung einer "liberalen" Ordnung im Unterschied zum "agnostischen" Ansatz wählt, die US-Führer haben sich für anfällig gemacht, um die Art von Komplikationen zu schaffen, die Walt beschreibt. Eine agnostische Ordnung in einem unipolaren Weltsystem oder eine "realistische" Ordnung in einem bipolaren oder multipolaren System wäre wahrscheinlich nicht so schnell gewesen, um die Art von Fehlern zu machen, die Walt mit der NATO-Erweiterung beschreibt.

Er sagt auch, dass er erwartet, dass das NATO-Bündnis in die Zukunft anhält:

... die Vereinigten Staaten werden die europäischen Länder davon abhalten wollen, Dual-Use-Technologien an China zu verkaufen, und dazu beitragen, Peking bei Bedarf wirtschaftlich unter Druck zu setzen. Im Gegenzug werden die US-Streitkräfte in Europa bleiben, die NATO am Leben erhalten und weiterhin als Friedensstifter in dieser Region dienen. Angesichts der Tatsache, dass praktisch jeder europäische Staats- und Regierungschefs dies gerne sehen würde, sollte die Drohung mit dem Austritt den Vereinigten Staaten einen erheblichen Einfluss geben, um die Europäer zur Zusammenarbeit an der wirtschaftlichen Front gegen China zu bewegen.

Fragen zu der Realist-Perspecktive

Die Vorstellung, dass eine unipolare Weltsystem keine "realistische" Ordnung hervorbringen oder zulassen kann, erinnert an einen Widerspruch auf der Grundlage der außenpolitischen Realist-Perspektive. In diesem Fall scheint Mearsheimer zu argumentieren, dass ein Realist-Weltverständnis zeigt, dass endlich eine Art internationale Vereinbarung nicht eine Weltordnung aufrechterhalten kann, die unter „realistischen“ Annahmen arbeitet.

Eine andere Möglichkeit, diese Ansicht zu beschreiben, wäre, dass sie davon ausgeht, dass Realismus als Ansatz in der Außenpolitik eigentlich nur nützlich ist, um eine Metternichsche Welt zu beschreiben, nicht eine, in der eine einzige Macht die Dominanz hatte, die die USA zwischen 1989 und 2015 hatten.

Mearshimer selbst definiert diesen Zeitrahmen für den sogenannten unipolaren Moment. "Dieser Artikel geht davon aus, dass die Welt im Jahr 2016 multipolar geworden ist und dass die Abkehr von der Unipolarität ein Todesurteil für die liberale internationale Ordnung ist, die im Prozess des Zusammenbruchs ist und durch realistische Ordnungen ersetzt wird." Aber er beschreibt die liberale internationalistische Ordnung als bis 2019 fortbestehend. Er schlägt also nicht vor, dass dieser Prozess nach einem starren Zeitplan arbeitet.

Mearsheimers Artikel wirft auch die Frage auf, inwieweit diese realistische Sicht nicht nur die konsequente Verfolgung nationaler Interessen voraussetzt, sondern auch Rationalität in dieser Verfolgung.

In der Ansicht, die er hier ausführt, sind "agnostische" und "liberale" Ordnungen Optionen nur für ein unipolares Weltsystem. Eine liberale Ordnung fördert die berale Demokratie als Regierungsform. In einer agnostische Ordnung wäre die unipolare Macht gleichgültig gegenüber den internen Regierungsformen. Aber ich bin geneigt zu denken und hoffe, dass die Aussichten für die Ausweitung demokratischer Regierungsformen nicht so düster sind, wie seine Analyse zu vermuten scheint.