Stephen Walt on practical realities and moral considerations for the US in the Russia-Ukraine War

Stephen Walt is perhaps more willing to address international law and questions of morality than some other prominent realists. And this column is an example. His basic perspective here is that war means killing people and that has to figure heavily into evaluation of when to enter into wars and how long to sustain them.

What kind of "rules-based" world order should the US be defining (or prooting)?

The foreign policy phrase "rules-based order" is coming under some criticism.

The press and ordinary citizens should always take a critical view of their country's foreign policy, as difficult as that may be, especially in times of open military conflict. It is important to have a competent team running foreign policy. The Trump Administration wanted to get rid of as many competent foreign policy officials as they could. But it's also important to hold all administrations to account for how they do their jobs.

Über-Realist Stephen Walt remarks (China Wants a ‘Rules-Based International Order,’ Too Foreign Policy 03/31/2021), "A ready ability to use the phrase 'rules-based international order' seems to have become a job requirement for a top position in the U.S. foreign-policy apparatus."

As he explains, in the new-cold-war-ish rhetoric of the Biden-Harris Administration, the defense of the "rules-based international order" - apparently the abbreviation "RBIO" hasn't become common yet - is invoked against China. The implication is that China is out to tear down such an order.

But Walt places the (partly) contrasting visions of the two big powers in the context of the evolving world, in which China is now the second most powerful country and what is or soon will be the largest national economy, while Walt's foreign-policy-realist descriptions of the state of the world can sometimes be discouraging, he's also able to look on the bright side and discourages needlessly alarmist narratives:

If Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s loftiest ambitions are realized and China eventually occupies the commanding economic heights of the 21st century, it still won’t be able to take over the world. But such a position will give it a great deal of influence over the rules of the international system, because other states will be less willing to defy it openly and forced to adapt some of their practices to conform to Chinese preferences. Even states that are actively balancing against China militarily may choose to accommodate it in other ways. By contrast, if the United States keeps pace economically and retains key advantages in most of the core technologies on which future productivity depends, then the 21st-century order is likely to favor Washington’s preferences more than Beijing’s.

Here’s the good news for Americans: Undertaking the reforms that will be needed to retain the necessary economic strength would be good for the United States in any case, and it would make sense even if China were weaker than it is today and posed no challenge to the current order. In short, the United States is in one of those happy moments where what is good for the country at home will also be good for its standing and influence abroad. [my emphasis]

On the other hand, there really are economic and ideological interests who prefer wars and rumors of wars over what is best for the country and its people as a whole. Something of which Walt is also very much aware.

Rachel Esplin Odell warns of the risk in the current rhetorical framing of the Biden-Harris Administration in relation to China (Why it’s wrong for the US to label China a threat to the ‘world order’ Responsible Statecraft 03/20/2021):

This rhetoric reflects Washington’s tendency to imagine the current world order as a monolithic, liberal system of mutually-reinforcing laws, norms, institutions, and alliances, upheld by the United States and its allies. In this view, states like China and Russia seek to overthrow this order and replace it with one that is more lawless and repressive.

But this is deeply misleading. No such version of a world order has ever existed, nor has the relationship of the United States — or its adversaries — to the present order ever been so simple. And this misconception is perilous. Vastly overstating the nature of China’s challenge to the current “world order” stands to hinder vital U.S.-China cooperation on issues like climate change, fuel a massive and harmful overreaction in American foreign policy, and in the worst case could force China to assume a more aggressive and revisionist posture than it otherwise would. [my emphasis]

Foreign policy is complicated, in other words.

Recovering Iraq War hawk Peter Beinart also expresses reservations about The Vacuous Phrase at the Core of Biden's Foreign Policy New York Times 06/22/2021:

"Rules-based order" (or sometimes, "rules-based system") is among the Biden administration's favorite terms. It has become what "free world" was during the Cold War. Especially among Democrats, it's the slogan that explains what America is fighting to defend.

Too bad. Because the "rules-based order" is a decoy. It's a way of sidestepping the question Democrats should be asking: Why isn't America defending international law? [my emphasis]

Beinart clarifies that the currrent administration is serious about practical and constructive internationalism:

Mr. Biden and his top advisers recognize that international legitimacy constitutes a form of power. They badly want America's allies - and American voters - to see America's overseas behavior as less capricious and less predatory than the behavior of America's chief rivals. They just are not willing to submit that proposition to any test other than one America writes itself. [my emphasis]

Peter Beinart really does seem to have learned from his misguided support of the Iraq War. (Heather Digy Parton, He blew it on Iraq, but makes sense now: Peter Beinart's thoughtful lessons Salon 06/19/2014)

Biden on Foreign Policy (2 of 3): China

I should preface this whole post by saying, yes, we can certainly expect that a conservative Democratic Joe Biden Administration will pursue a more responsible foreign policy in general than the Trump Administration. And that's very important. It's also a perfectly reasonable claim for Biden's current Make American Boring Again campaign to make.

But I want to start here by referring to this article by Über-Realist Stephen Walt, Yesterday’s Cold War Shows How to Beat China Today Foreign Policy 07/29/2019.

In my love-hate relationship with "realist" foreign policy theory, I don't accept the implicit narrow-nationalist focus of the Realist outlook that views the world order as an unending set of evolving conflicts between self-interested nations. On the other hand, that's still largely how the world system works, because the slow process of establishing common international norms is still not at the point it needs to be to deal adequately with nuclear proliferation and climate change.

Walt, looking at the world system as it is, gets an awful lot of things right in his empirical understanding of international developments. And he sees war as inherently a bad thing to be avoided whenever possible. He also turns a jaded realist look not only on other countries but on the United States, as well. So he has no love for America Firster jingoism or even the bipartisan idolization of "American exceptionalism".

Joe Biden, on the other hand, in his Foreign Affairs essay, Why America Must Lead Again: Rescuing U.S. Foreign Policy After Trump, strikes the conventional bipartisan pose of standing up to threatening adversaries, of which he pictures China as the most significant. In seeing China's rise in economic and political power as displacing the Post-1989 "unipolar" dominance of the US, he's in agreement with the realists. But Biden takes a different tone:

• Tech "companies must act to ensure that their tools and platforms are not empowering the surveillance state, gutting privacy, facilitating repression in China and elsewhere."
• "To win the competition for the future against China or anyone else, the United States must sharpen its innovative edge and unite the economic might of democracies around the world to counter abusive economic practices and reduce inequality."
• "There is no reason we should be falling behind China or anyone else when it comes to clean energy, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, 5G, high-speed rail, or the race to end cancer as we know it."
• "The question is, Who writes the rules that govern trade? Who will makesure they protect workers, the environment, transparency, and middle-class wages? The United States, not China, should be leading that effort."
• The US must insist "that China - the world's largest emitter of carbon - stop subsidizing coal exports and outsourcing pollution to other countries by financing billions of dollars' worth of dirty fossil fuel energy projects through its Belt and Road Initiative."
• "As new technologies reshape our economy and society, we must ... avoid a race to the bottom, where the rules of the digital age are written by China and Russia."
• The US is getting "heroin from Mexico and, more recently, fentanyl from China, which is much more lethal."

Here is how Biden frames his general approach to China:

China represents a special challenge. I have spent many hours with its leaders, and I understand what we are up against. China is playing the long game by extending its global reach, promoting its own political model, and investing in the technologies of the future. Meanwhile, Trump has designated imports from the United States' closest allies-from Canada to the European Union- as national security threats in order to impose damaging and reckless tariffs. By cutting us off from the economic clout of our partners, Trump has kneecapped our country's capacity to take on the real economic threat.

The United States does need to get tough with China. If China has its way, it will keep robbing the United States and American companies of their technology and intellectual property. It will also keep using subsidies to give its state-owned enterprises an unfair advantage- and a leg up on dominating the technologies and industries of the future. The most effective way to meet that challenge is to build a united front of U.S. allies and partners to confront China's abusive behaviors and human rights violations, even as we seek to cooperate with Beijing on issues where our interests converge, such as climate change, nonproliferation, and global health security. On its own, the United States represents about a quarter of global GDP. When we join together with fellow democracies, our strength more than doubles.

China can't afford to ignore more than half the global economy. That gives us substantial leverage to shape the rules of the road on everything from the environment to labor, trade, technology, and transparency, so they continue to reflect democratic interests and values. [my emphasis]

That distant, discordant sound you hear whenever American leaders brag about how they want policies that "continue to reflect democratic interests and values"? That is the sound of cynical laughter echoing from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego.

And if his Yellow Peril video spots are a measure, "get tough with China" is the main message he wants to convey here. But the whole piece is an example of Establishment foreign-policy boilerplate. Which means it doesn't base itself around the points that Stephen Walt stresses about US China policy:

• Lesson #1: Make sure you have the right allies.
• Lesson #2: Investing in science, technology, and education pays off.
• Lesson #3: Greater openness, transparency, and accountability gave the United States an important advantage [in competition with the USSR].
• Lesson #4: Playing rope-a-dope (i.e., letting the Soviet Union squander resources in strategically marginal areas) was a smart strategy.
• Lesson #5: Nice countries finish first.

On the last point, Walt writes:

The United States is not as virtuous as Americans like to pretend, but during the Cold War, it benefited from standing for freedom, human rights, and other popular political values. U.S. leaders also recognized that making progress on civil rights would be important in the context of the Cold War, as greater racial equality would make the country look better in the eyes of nonwhite societies around the world.

To be sure, the United States backed authoritarians when it thought it had to and sometimes acted with callous disregard for foreign populations. But on balance - and especially when compared to its Soviet rival - the United States was seen as standing for something more than just the naked exercise of power.

Equally important, U.S. leaders consistently treated their foreign counterparts with respect, even when they were privately angered by others’ actions or when they had to play hardball with them within the broader alliance context. French President Charles de Gaulle irritated several U.S. presidents on more than one occasion, but you rarely heard U.S. officials denouncing him in public. U.S. officials understood that denigrating or humiliating one’s partners would generate resentment and undermine Western unity, so they kept the mailed fist inside a velvet glove. Because the United States was so much stronger than others, it usually got its way. But its leaders were wise enough not to boast about it, lest this trigger resentment and impair cooperation. [my emphasis]

"Restrainer" foreign policy and understanding Russia's current role

The Quincy Institute (The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, QI) just launched its website. The invaluable Andrew Bacevich is the President. QI focuses on US foreign policy and describes its vision as a "world where peace is the norm and war the exception."

QI lists its principles as follows:

• Responsible statecraft serves the public interest.
• Responsible statecraft engages the world.
• Responsible statecraft builds a peaceful world.
• Responsible statecraft abhors war.
• Responsible statecraft is democratic.

At the end of 1992, these would have sounded like boilerplate foreign policy talking points, i.e., they would have sounded obvious. The fact that they take on a radical-sounding edge in 2019 - "responsible statecraft abhors war" - is a sign of how badly US foreign policy in the "unipolar moment" after 1989 has gone of the tracks for responsibility and pragmatic realism.

The website features an article by über-Realist Stephen Walt, A Manifesto For Restrainers 12/04/2019. In line with the QI principles listed above, Walt gives his own set of guidelines for a US foreign policy that is actively, constructively engaged with the world but also shows sensible restraint, in particular far more restraint in the use of military force.

I don't know if the label "Restrainers" will catch on. But I hope the policy orientation does.

Walt reminds us the extent to which the American End-of-History foreign policy post-1989 has involved military engagement:

The United States keeps taking on new security obligations in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, but it rarely debates their wisdom or value. Americans are now formally committed to defending more countries around the world than at any time in U.S. history, even though some of these states are hard to defend, have little strategic importance for the United States, and sometimes act in ways that damage U.S. interests. Washington is also engaged in less visible military activities in dozens of other countries, some of them shrouded in secrecy. Yet anytime U.S. leaders contemplate trimming these obligations, alarmists warn that the slightest reduction in America’s global presence will undermine U.S. credibility, embolden rivals, and lead to catastrophe. Having allowed itself to become overextended, the United States ends up fighting endless wars in places with no strategic value in order to convince allies and adversaries that it will still fight in places of greater importance. [my emphasis]

For those familiar with Walt's analyses, one can see echoes there of his critical evaluation of US relations with Israel (he co-authored the 2007 book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy with John Mearsheimer; their 2006 working of the same title is online here) and his advocacy after the fall of the USSR for rethinking and replacing NATO. He warned, as did other realists including the late George Kennan, about the risks in expanding the membership of NATO further east.

Walt's broad view of foreign policy emphasizes that China is the most important rising power in the world and that US policy should focus on doing what it can to manage that process peacefully. "It should focus on commitments and missions that can command strong support from the American people - such as helping to ensure that a rising China does not dominate Asia - and eschew obligations that do not make America more secure."

This orientation is not consistent with the current fixation by much of the US foreign policy establishment on Russia, which is often discussed as though it's still a power with the strength of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Donald Trump's corrupt connections with Vladimir Putin's authoritarian oligarchic regime has made the Democratic Party talk about Russia as though it is a far more powerful adversary that it actually is. But Trump's sloppy management of foreign policy combined with his deferral to Putin's priorities in some areas does not mean that he's pursuing a constructive peace policy, as some antiwar leftists seem to have convinced themselves.

For one thing, to have a peaceful policy, an Administration needs to have a foreign policy. Trump's version consists largely of bluster, efforts to benefit the family business, and stumbling mistakes. He's expanded the military budget for no good reason and abandoned not only the US commitment to international cooperation on climate change, he's also tossed out nuclear arms control as any kind of serious priority. And his pursuit of a coup in Venezuela and his Administration's embrace of the coup regime in Bolivia are not signs of a peace-oriented foreign policy.

Walt's "restrainer" outlook does coincide with Trump's stumbling rhetoric around NATO, though Walt certainly doesn't endorse Trump's ridiculous claim that NATO partners aren't paying their "dues".

But he does allude to the ways NATO needs to change:

Restrainers believe allies will pull their weight only when they no longer see Uncle Sam as their first line of defense. Because NATO’s European members are significantly more populous and prosperous than Russia, they should assume primary responsibility for their own defense. Furthermore, the United States should withdraw from Afghanistan, curtail spending on counter-terrorism operations abroad, and let the contending countries in the Middle East balance each other. It should focus most of its military efforts on making sure that China does not achieve a dominant position in Asia, while insisting that its Asian partners pull their weight as well. Above all, the United States should not do more to protect allies than they are willing to do themselves. [my emphasis]

This implies some pretty serious changes in US policy: a more realistic view of Russia's power and world status, a lower US priority on dominating the Middle East, a seriously revised relationship with Israel, and almost certainly a significant adjustment if not complete reorganization of NATO, and the necessity for a common European foreign and military policy.

And always present is the "Spy vs. spy" element. Even in the best of times, intelligence is a shadow side of relations between countries that always has some potential to sidetrack relations, while intelligence cooperation can also strengthen relations. But because so much of that work has to be kept secret, it is especially difficult for the general public to follow or understand issues and events involving intelligence operations. And given Trump's entanglement with Russia along with Russia's use of propaganda operations to partially compensate for its economic and military limitations, developing a more constructive relationship with Russia will be a complicated political challenge domestically.

Tom McTague writes about Britain’s Secret War With Russia (Also in Defense One 12/04/2019), with a kind of narrative that is engaging but also easier to incorporate into a Cold War spy movie framework than into a nuanced foreign policy understanding of a complex set of relationships with Russia. He writes about an Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)
lab in Switzerland:

Over the course of a few months in 2018, however, this gentle existence was upended, as the lab became caught in a cold war between Russia on one side and the United Kingdom and the West on the other, fought in public and in the shadows, online and in person, occasionally flashing hot in deadly fashion. From the attempted assassination of a double agent in a sleepy English city to the expulsion of scores of Russian diplomats from Western capitals, this fight would grow and morph, drawing in a chemical-weapons attack in Syria and rolling scandals about Russian sports doping.

Through it all, Russia and Britain went toe-to-toe in an international intelligence and PR battle, one in which each landed blows, exposing fissures in their respective systems and societies. Yet, as NATO leaders meet in London this week to discuss the future of the military alliance 70 years after its founding, other lessons emerge, with implications for the wider contest between Russia and the West, which are vying for influence, respect, security, and raw geopolitical power. [my emphasis]

Let's note that the "blows" exchanged after the 2018 attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal were (so far as we know) metaphorical blows on the level of diplomatic expulsions and information operations. McTague elaborates in good Cold War fashion:

Whereas NATO was founded to unite the Western world against the threat of conventional military aggression by the Soviet Union, eventually contributing to the Communist bloc’s demise, the alliance is today confronted with a recalcitrant Russia that seeks to leverage propaganda and disinformation to sow confusion and discontent, and that exhibits a willingness to use its traditional military force and intelligence agencies to expand its influence. It is a Moscow that is able to project disproportionate power — despite being dwarfed in economic size and resources by even mid-tier Western countries — thanks to a web of international influence, aggression, tactical cunning, and criminality. [my emphasis]

That "despite being dwarfed in economic size and resources by even mid-tier Western countries" is an extremely important qualifier that too often gets swallowed up, as McTague continues immediately:

At the same time, NATO and its members are divided, distracted, and shorn of a coherent strategy to deal with Russia’s efforts. The grouping’s superpower, the United States, is led by a president whose commitment to the alliance’s underlying principle of collective defense is in doubt; its other significant members are consumed by domestic strife (Britain), questioning NATO’s strategic future (France), or lack the military might and political will to fill the gap (Germany). And faced with a new array of threats from Russia, the alliance has more than once been caught unawares, at times thanks to its own unforced errors but also in no small part due to a lack of long-term vision to do anything other than de-escalate tensions. Despite Russia deploying a chemical weapon on the streets of a NATO member (also Britain), the country’s international freeze is already beginning to thaw, its economy is growing, and its leadership, on the face of it at least, remains secure. It has successfully expanded its influence in the Middle East and has secured its illegal land grab in Crimea. [my emphasis]

Calls to action are appealing in politics. And the US national security establishment generally shows a bias toward activism, which far too often translates into calls for military action. And we see that reflected in the passages quoted. Instead of the "new array of threats" invoked, the remainder of the article is devoted to discussing the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal in Britain, an action credibly attributed to Putin's government. Of course, countries have to react to incidents like this, and they do. McTague gives us an interesting description of strategies Russia used in response to being publicly accused of the action.

But whether or not the Spkripal assassination attempt can be meaningfully described as "deploying a chemical weapon on the streets of a NATO member," the Cold War framing he gives the article presents Russia as a super-efficient, hostile, and expansionist power presenting the NATO countries with a pressing military threat while the latter are floundering in helpless disarray, with a flourishing economy, a secure regime, and a vast web of international influence.

We could also state the situation he describes in a different way: Russia engages in information operations in various countries with some degree of success, though the effects are difficult to measure, but the countries of the NATO alliance have been coping with similar disinformation campaigns while conducting their own. Western governments have plenty of experience in dealig with them, even though Twitter and Facebook haven't always been around as media platforms.

Russia's seemingly intensive use of information operations results in no small part from their need for asymmetric methods in dealing with more powerful countries and the NATO alliance. Russia is to a significant extent a petrostate, and the five-year slump in oil prices have significantly burdened its economy. After decades of deepening involvement by the US in the Middle East, an involvement that has produced massive disasters and shown the limits of US influence there, Russia is engaging in a similar effort, but there is no real sign that Russia can count on it benefitting them any more than it has the US in the last two decades.

Meanwhile, it has occupied and annexed Crimea and is supporting separatist movements elsewhere in Ukraine, including by limited direct military intervention, giving it significant burdens in the need to defend Crimea, while Ukraine has been successfully countering the Russian military pressure with Western assistance. Since Cold Warriors have been bragging for decades how Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan were a major blow to the USSR's continuing existence, there seems to be reason to think that those involvements are more a problem for Russia than some kind of magnification of its power. But at least if Putin's government is reasonably secure for the time being, that offers real opportunities to reach mutually beneficially arrangements with Russia on a broad spectrum of issues.

Hopefully, the "rstrainer" view will increase greatly in the post-Trump era with the result that sensible caution and prudent restraint will play a larger role than it has since the End of History.

Stephen Walt über Nationalismus

Stephen Walt gibt einen schnellen Überblick über den Zustand des Nationalismus in der Welt in You Can’t Defeat Nationalism, So Stop Trying Foreign Policy 06/04/2019:

Bisher war die "Nation" die größte Kulturgruppe mit dieser Art von anhaltender Anziehungskraft für ihre Mitglieder. Die bestimmenden Merkmale, aus denen eine Nation bestehen, können variieren, aber sie umfassen in der Regel eine gemeinsame Sprache, eine gemeinsame Kultur, einen territorialen Ursprung und eine gemeinsame Erzählung über die kollektive Vergangenheit. Am wichtigsten ist, dass eine Nation eine Gruppe von Menschen ist, die sich selbst als eine einzigartige Gemeinschaft mit einer bestimmten Identität konstituieren. In Benedict Andersons berühmtem Satz sind Nationen "imaginierte Gemeinschaften", in denen sich völlig Fremde dennoch als Angehörige derselben Gruppe erkennen und anerkennen.

(Meine Übertragung aus dem Englischen.)

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.

Über-Realist John Mearsheimer on world "systems," world "orders," and NATO

A distinguishing feature of the Realist foreign policy outlook generally is that countries act according to national interests understood as participating in a process of balancing and rebalancing power blocs. This concept is primarily derived from the order of modern European nation-states formally established in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia. (Westfällische Frieden) A classic case for the system of balancing and rebalancing of power among nations was the post-1815 Peace of Paris, an order particularly identified with Prince Klemens von Metternich, Austrian Foreign Minister 1809–1848 and Chancellor 1821-1848.

Metternich

One of the limitations of this theoretical outlook is also associated with the year 1848, when democratic revolutions swept Europe and decisively affected power relations within and between countries. National considerations were extremely important in those upheavals. But they weren't primarily the result of power-balancing considerations in European foreign ministries. They were driven by "ideology", one which was largely based on the desire for more representative representations as well as national identify considerations. Political ideology is a challenge for the Realist viewpoint, because it is based on a general assumption that objective national interests override ideological considerations in foreign policy.

(I refer in this post to foreign policy realism as capital-r Realism to distinguish it from simply meaning empirical or "realistic".)

The more sensible versions of this outlook, e.g., Stephen Walt's, recognize that because actual human being make foreign policy, personal and collective political/ideological outlooks frame the goals and options around which those decisions are made. Somewhat more dogmatic versions grudgingly accept that some people may be motivated by ideology and foreign policy makers must take that into account in their own deliberations in which they exclude all ideology in favor of cold calculations of objective national interest.

Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer are the best-known American academic advocates of the Realist position. Both of them are outstanding and influential scholars. Their jointly-written book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007) reframed the political and scholarly discussions about the practical influence the nation of Israel has had on American foreign policy. It also provides a great example of the ways in which general ideological and political assumptions extensively interact with countries' more coldly pragmatic calculations of their short- and long-terms power advanatages.

Mearsheimer recently published a major article, Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order (International Security 43:4; Spring 2019) in which he makes a dramatic case that the post-1989 US-led liberal international order is in fact deeply flawed. And it provides an interesting look at some of the ideological/political assumptions he applies to a pragmatic Realist view of the present international order.

Much of Mearsheimer's article is an explanation of his framework for understanding "orders" in the world state system. He distinguishes between "bounded orders" and "international orders," the former being limited to particular groups of states, the latter universal. He also explains distinctions between realist, agnostic, and ideological orders, and between bipolar, multipolar, and unipolar systems. The distinction between (worldwide) international systems and international orders (worldwide or smaller) is central to the theoretical and historical account he presents in this article.

His discussion of "realist" orders among nations is especially intriguing. Because he argues that the Realist foreign policy viewpoint tells us based on experience that a certain variety of world system is incompatible with a "realist" order. "If the world is unipolar, the international order cannot be realist."

Mearsheimer (rightly) dismisses Francis Fukayama's "end of history" viewpoint. But his article does show some Hegelian touches, like that quotation.

Ideological assumptions

The background assumptions of Mearsheimer's analysis are important and informative about the strengths and weaknesses of the Realist viewpoint.

A key one is that Mearsheimer explicitly assumes that nationalism always wins out over liberal principles. He states this position in a drastic formulation, "Because nationalism is the most powerful political ideology on the planet, it invariably trumps [sic] liberalism whenever the two clash, thus undermining the [post-1989] order at its core." (my emphasis)

That statement highlights a problem of this ambiguous Realist framing of ideology. If "nationalism is the most powerful political ideology on the planet," then it's obvious that ideology will drive calculations of a country's approach to pursuing its national interest even in the most narrowly pragmatic sense. To a certain extent, Realism tries to operate with what we might call an anti-ideological ideology.

Also, in the current political moment in which authoritarian trends are growing internationally - a key development that Mearsheimer's article is trying to explain - the statement that "nationalism invariably trumps liberalism whenever the two clash" strikes me as too drastic and, well, unrealistic. And excessively pessimistic.

Problems identified, including how NATO expansion was done

Mearsheimer discusses what he views as the major problems of the post-1989 world order in which the US was the overwhelmingly strongest country, the unipolar moment as it is sometimes called. A key one is the role that interventionist practices have played in US and NATO policies, with both neoconservative militarism and humanitarian interventionism both used to justify them. "Spreading liberal democracy around the globe, which is of paramount importance for building such an order, not only is extremely difªcult, but often poisons relations with other countries and sometimes leads to disastrous wars," he writes. Even when applied with extreme cynicism, as the Cheney-Bush Administration did with the Iraq War, the idea of spreading democracy was a key political justification used to drive support for wars and interventions.

The most interesting criticism here is his view of how the US and its western European allies decided to approach NATO after 1989:

NATO expansion into Eastern Europe is a good example of the United States and its allies working to turn the bounded Western order into a liberal international order. One might think that moving NATO eastward was part of a classic deterrence strategy aimed at containing a potentially aggressive Russia. But it was not, as the West’s strategy was geared toward liberal ends. The objective was to integrate the countries of Eastern Europe — and maybe, one day, Russia as well — into the “security community” that had developed in Western Europe during the Cold War. There is no evidence that its chief architects — Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama — thought that Russia might invade its neighbors and thus needed to be contained, or that they thought Russian leaders had legitimate reasons for fearing NATO enlargement. [my emphasis]

This is a big reason why I pay attention to Realist analyses despite my reservations about much of the Realist theoretical framework. This is Mearsheimer's way of saying, maybe we should have thought through much more carefully and seriously what we should do with NATO alliance after the fall of the Warsaw Pact.

His fellow Über-Realist Stephen Walt was more explicitly critical of the NATO expansion last year (NATO Isn’t What You Think It Is Foreign Policy 07/26/2018):

If Trump is mostly confused about NATO, its most ardent defenders remain committed to a set of truisms and dogmas that were questionable when first advanced and have become less and less defensible with time. Chief among these myths is the idea that NATO expansion would create a vast zone of peace in Europe and give the alliance a new and lofty purpose in the wake of the Cold War.

It hasn’t quite worked out that way. For starters, NATO expansion poisoned relations with Russia and played a central role in creating conflicts between Russia and Georgia and Russia and Ukraine. It’s not the only reason, of course, and I’m not saying Moscow’s responses were legal, proper, justified, or based on an accurate perception of NATO’s intent. I’m only suggesting that Russia’s response was not surprising, especially in light of Russia’s own history and the George H.W. Bush administration’s earlier pledges not to move NATO “one inch eastward” following German reunification. The architects of expansion may have genuinely believed that moving NATO eastward posed no threat to Russia; unfortunately, Russia’s leaders never got the memo (and wouldn’t have believed it if they had).

Furthermore, expanding NATO increased the number of places the alliance was formally obligated to defend (most notably the Baltic states) but without significantly increasing the resources available to perform that task. Once again, proponents of expansion assumed these commitments would never have to be honored, only to wake up and discover they had written a blank check that might be difficult to cover. And we now know that expansion brought in some new members whose commitment to liberal democracy has proved to be fairly shallow. This situation may not be a fatal flaw, insofar as NATO has tolerated nondemocratic members (e.g., Turkey) in the past, but it undermines the proponents’ claim that NATO is a security community based on shared democratic values and an essential element of a liberal world order. [my emphasis]

In other words, over-optimistic assumptions on NATO expansion created problems that could probably have been reduced or avoided by a more pragmatic and less short-sighted approach.

Mearsheimer is making a related but distinct point about NATO expansion. He is arguing by choosing the unipolar strategy of creating a "liberal" order as distinct from the "agnostic" approach, US leaders made themselves for prone to create the kinds of complications that Walt describes. An agnostic order in a unipolar world system or a "realist" order in a bipolar or multipolar system would likely not have been so quick to make the kinds of mistakes Walt describes with NATO expansion.

He also states that he expects the NATO alliance to endure into the future:

... the United States will want to keep European countries from selling dual-use technologies to China and to help put economic pressure on Beijing when necessary. In return, U.S. military forces will remain in Europe, keeping NATO alive and continuing to serve as the pacifier in that region. Given that virtually every European leader would like to see that happen, the threat of leaving should give the United States significant leverage in getting the Europeans to cooperate on the economic front against China.

Questions raised about the Realist outlook

The idea that a unipolar world system cannot produce or allow a "realist" order is a reminder of a contradiction at the basis of the Realist foreign policy outlook. In that case, Mearsheimer seems to be arguing that a Realist understanding of the world shows that at last one kind of international arrangement cannot maintain a world order that operates under Realist assumptions.

Another way of describing that view would be that it assumes that Realism as an approach to foreign policy is actually only useful in describing a Metternichian world, not one in which a single power had the dominance the US did between 1989-2015.

Mearshimer himself defines that time frame for the so-called unipolar moment. "This article assumes that the world became multipolar in or close to 2016, and that the shift away from unipolarity is a death sentence for the liberal international order, which is in the process of collapsing and will be replaced by realist orders."  But he does describe the Liberal internationalist order as still persisting in 2019. So he's not proposing that this process operates on a rigid calendar schedule.

This piece also raises the question of to what extent this Realist view assumes not just consistent pursuit of national interest but rationality in that pursuit.

In the view he elaborates here, "agnostic" and "liberal" orders are only options for a unipolar world system. A liberal order promotes internal liberal democracy as a governmental form. In an agnostic order, the unipolar power would be indifferent to the internal forms of government. But I'm inclined to think and hope that the prospects for the expansion of democratic forms of governance are not as gloomy as his analysis seems to imply.

Shifting US Syria policy and the Kurdish YPG

In calling an end to our involvement in Syria, ... Trump did the right thing. (In case any of you are wondering, I found it hard to type that sentence.) But true to form, he has done it in the worst possible way. There seems to have been no advance warning or interagency preparation for the decision, which means that the timing, arrangements, and broader implications have not been gamed out in advance. (It is therefore no surprise that the decision on Syria was soon followed by the announcement that Secretary of Defense James Mattis would be retiring in February). As is typical for him, Trump did not consult with U.S. allies or inform them in advance. Nor did he make any serious effort to use the U.S. presence in Syria to orchestrate a diplomatic process to stabilize the country or use the possibility of a U.S. withdrawal to elicit parallel concessions from others. Like his phony nuclear summit with Kim Jong Un or his decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Trump was once again demonstrating the “art of the giveaway”: making unilateral U.S. concessions and getting nothing in return.

That's Über-Realist Stephen Walt on Trump's much-discussed change in Syrian policy by pulling out troops. (Good Riddance to America’s Syria Policy Foreign Policy 12/21/2018)

So, yes, it is possible to criticize Trump's decision while still thinking it's a good result so far as it goes that American troops are being withdrawn. Assuming Trump is serious about that.

Walt also assesses the implications for the Syrian Kurds bluntly:

A more legitimate concern is the fate of Kurdish militias that have been vital partners in the anti-Islamic State campaign. Trump’s critics rightly point out that his decision in effect abandons the Kurds, and I have some sympathy for this view. But America’s moral obligation to the Kurds is not unlimited, and—rightly or wrongly—the long-term consequences for the United States are unlikely to be significant. The Kurds were not fighting the Islamic State in order to do Uncle Sam a favor; they did it out of their own self-interest. Welcome to the brutal world of international politics: Nations and states cooperate when their interests align, but cooperation often ceases once interests diverge. [my emphasis]

And Georgio Cafiero (After Trump’s Syria Announcement, YPG Looks To Moscow And Damascus LobeLog 12/23/2018) discusses how the Syrian Kurds are acting on their current "brutal world" reality. The YPG is the Syrian Kurdish militia.

Although the U.S.-YPG partnership will not necessarily be over after U.S. forces leave Syria—Washington may continue supporting the Kurdish militia in other ways—the YPG must contend with new realities in Syria, recognizing that President Bashar al-Assad has “won” the war. The Syrian regime’s “victory” combined with the U.S. exit will likely push the YPG closer to Russia and the Damascus regime. ...

Last year the Russians began facilitating the opening of channels of communication between the YPG and Damascus. Moscow’s objective was to push the parties toward a solution whereby the U.S.-backed group integrates into the Syrian state security apparatus in exchange for some concessions from the regime to the YPG. With limited options otherwise, it appears that the YPG must capitalize on such opportunities for an agreement with the regime that possibly began taking shape amid these Russia-brokered talks.

Cafiero also mentions the important NATO consideration in play with the US and Turkey pursuing non-unified policies in Syria:

While beneficial to the YPG’s interests in continuing to operate in and control large parts of northern Syria, the U.S.-Turkish standoff in northern Syria amounted to a dangerous game of chicken. Ankara views Donald Trump’s decision to pull U.S. forces out of northern Syria, announced last week, as cause for much optimism—albeit cautious optimism—about the two NATO allies overcoming what, for years, has been an extremely painful source of tension in bilateral affairs.

And December isn't the first time the Kurdish YPG has had reason to worry about the reliability of the US cooperation with them: Joost Hiltermann, The Kurds Once Again Face American Abandonment The Atlantic 08/30/2018. Hiltermann reminds us of an important fact about the YPG's politics:

Today, the YPG faces a similar predicament. It is a Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has fought an insurgency against the Turkish state since the 1980s; Turkey, the United States, and the European Union have designated the PKK a terrorist organization. Despite the YPG’s shared genealogy with the PKK, Washington supported the group because of its battlefield prowess. As it beat back isis, the YPG took control of additional non-Kurdish territory in Syria, including the mostly Arab cities of Manbij and Raqqa.