Foreign policy “realism,“ liberal internationalism, and the Ukraine crisis

Joseph Nye, Jr. and Richard Haass are both respectable members of the foreign policy establishment. In fact, Haass is going on 18 years as president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most iconic symbol of the foreign policy establishment.

They both thought it necessary to defend their liberal internationalist approach in Foreign Policy in two articles of 02/02/2022, Nye in Realism About Foreign-Policy Realism and Haass in Putin's Ukraine Quagmire.

Advocates of different kinds of foreign policy outlooks aren't required to sign statements endorsing a particular set of principles. The labels aren't copyrighted property! Academics and foreign policy advisors are often reluctant to identify with a defined set of principles. And "foreign policy" encompasses a huge scope of information. So it's impossible for even those consciously adhering to the same school of thought not to have differences on issues.

Nye and Haass are addressing the "realist" foreign policy outlook identified in the immediate postwar years with figures like Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan, Reinhold Niehbuhr, and Henry Kissinger. Its best-known current advocates are Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer.

Neoconservatism as represented by the Cheney-Bush Administration and their war in Iraq is a major influence in American foreign policy thinking, which is basically an American supremacist view. The MAGA/America First outlook is essentially crude rightwing nationalism and militarism, whose advocates are sometimes critical of US military intervention. But the neocon outlook and the MAGA one are very similar in practice, because jinoigstic MAGA slogans don't easily translate into policy.

At this point, the main dissenting trend of foreign policy thought in the US could be broadly inlcuded in the "restrainer" outlook, currently effectively advocated by the scholars and analysts who associate with Andrew Bacevich's Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Their position applies a skeptical view to militarized approaches to foreign policy.

None of these categories of foreign policy outlook lines up clearly with current left-right differences in US politics. Although the liberal internationalist approach is more prevalent among Democrats and some toxic mixture of neoconservatism and MAGA militarism more in the Republican Party, there are a wide range of shared assumptions between various "schools" of foreign policy thinking.

Which is where the "realists" come in. They argue that the incentives on nations in the international system tend to push them to act in certain ways in their dealings with other nations. And so different theoretical frameworks by foreign policy makers often wind up with similar sets of choices.

Ukraine: A crisis that the realists worried would come

The current Ukraine crisis is playing out a way that realists said was likely when the liberal internationalists and neocons tripping on Cold War triumphalism decided to push for NATO enlargement. Lately, we've seen quite a few references the warning George Kennan, "realist" architect of the postwar containment policy, gave in 1997 (A Fateful Error New York Times 02/05/1997):

[E]xpanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.

Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.

The liberal internationalists/interventionists of the Clinton 'Administration and the neocons under Bush cheerfully ignored swuch warnings.

Joseph Nye aregues in his new piece:

Was the current crisis in Ukraine caused by a lack of realism in US foreign policy? According to some analysts, the liberal desire to spread democracy is what drove NATO’s expansion up to Russia’s borders, causing Russian President Vladimir Putin to feel increasingly threatened. Viewed from this perspective, it is not surprising that he would respond by demanding a sphere of influence analogous to what the United States once claimed in Latin America with its Monroe Doctrine.

But there is a problem with this realist argument: NATO’s 2008 decision (heavily promoted by the George W. Bush administration) to invite Georgia and Ukraine eventually to join the Alliance can hardly be called liberal, nor was it driven by liberals. In making such arguments, realists point to the aftermath of World War I, when US President Woodrow Wilson’s liberalism contributed to a legalistic and idealist foreign policy that ultimately failed to prevent World War II. [my emphasis]

This is a surprisingly defensive polemic that rests on a simple word play. Outside of the US and Canada, "liberal" in party politics, doesn't mean center-left. Elsewhere, it refers to to a commitment to representative government (i.e., political democracy), the rule of law, and respect for international law. It does not refer to "liberal" as in the Democratic Party in the US. These are the dates of NATO expansion since 1999, all of which enjoyed wide bipartisan support in the US:

1999: Czechia, Hungary, Poland
2004: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia
2009: Albania, Croatia
2017: Montenegro
2020: North Macedonia

One of the implications of the "realist" viewpoint is that it can sound amoral at a theretical level, more so coming from some of its advocates than others. But Nye uses the following example to imply that Realism is inherently amoral:

In a famous historical example of this approach, Winston Churchill, in 1940, ordered an attack on French naval vessels, killing some 1,300 of Britain’s allies rather than letting the fleet fall into Hitler’s hands. Churchill also authorized the bombing of German civilian targets.

Leaving aside how well-known that incident is today - I doubt that even most World War II buffs have ever heard of it - and that brief description Nye gives could be misleading. The vessels in question at that time were under the control of the German-dominatied Vichy regime under Philippe Pétain. (Thomas Parker, When Winston Churchill Bombed France: The Battle of Mers el-Kabir, The National Interest 08/13/2016)

Haass doesn't dunk on the realists as such in his article. But he basically argues that everything seems to be going fine in the current confrontation over Ukraine. Which is a more practical attitude than obsessive fear-mongering about Russia's intentions in the current situation. He puts the argument this way:

But while Putin manufactured the Ukraine crisis believing he held a clear advantage vis-à-vis the West, he committed an error that can prove dangerous even for a skilled martial-arts practitioner: he underestimated his opponent.

While Biden and NATO have said they will not intervene directly on behalf of Ukraine, this is not the same as accepting Russian dominance. In fact, the US has organized a comprehensive response. It has sent arms to Ukraine to increase the costs to Russia of any invasion and occupation. There are plans to fortify NATO member countries closest to Russia. Substantial economic sanctions are being prepared. And rerouting gas to Europe would partly offset the possible loss of Russian supplies.

It's worth noting that in 1997, Haass himself was more cautious than the most enthusiastic American advocates of NATO enlargement, though he declared himself resigned to recognize the establishment consensus on the matter that realist like Kennan warned against (Enlarging NATO: A Questionable Idea Whose Time Has Come Brookings Institute 03/01/1997):

The sixteen members of NATO will soon invite Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and possibly others to join. There are strong arguments for enlarging the alliance, above all securing the democratic and Western orientation of selected former Warsaw Pact states and hedging against political uncertainty in Russia.

But there are arguments at least as strong against enlargement. Expanding NATO could complicate its ability to achieve consensus, weaken the security of those countries not brought in, increase demands on defense budgets when they are already overstretched, and alienate Russia. In the process, Europe’s security could well diminish, not grow.

This debate is increasingly moot. Events have all but reached a point of no return. The costs of going ahead are less than those of changing course. [my emphasis]

(Minor corrections for clarity made on 02/22/2023)