December 15, 2003
Actions and Words in Foreign Policy
One of the most frustrating things about political discourse is the disparity between words and actions. Just as irritating is mistaking words for actions. There are times when speaking the truth can be an action in itself, typically when speaking is dangerous. But in reality this is a fairly rare occurrence. In politics and diplomacy, much is made of the words which are said, but the actions are what is important.
A key area of current concern is about Bush’s publicly stated short-term goal of bringing democracy to Iraq. This, coupled with his long-term goal of bringing democracy to the Middle East, offers a powerful vision for the hope of an end to the War on Terrorism. This is a worthy vision, but it remains to be seen if he and the American public have the will and stamina to bring it to fruition with positive action. In a democracy, one way of keeping the actions from straying too far from the words is by holding politicians accountable for doing what they say they will do. By the time of the 2004 election, we will hopefully be able to see if Bush’s actions are leading in the direction of his stated goals.
In diplomacy, the gulf between words and actions can be even greater than in democratic politics. It is common for a country to say one thing publically while doing the opposite. It is often frustrating for me to discuss foreign policy with people who insist on believing the public pronouncements of foreign actors, while ignoring their actions. I know these people are capable of noticing a gap in actions and words--they do so all the time when our own government is involved. But when other governments say something, they refuse to question the gap between actions and words.
A classic example of this is when people suggest that after 9/11 the world was with us. They suggest that Nato invoked Article V after 9/11 and that we squandered that good will by failing to coordinate through NATO in Afghanistan. The Article V invocation was speech. The actions after it were not in line with support. The NATO countries initially tried to discourage us from acting militarily against Afghanistan. When they saw Bush was determined, they next attempted to gain veto over all targeting choices (ask Gen. Clark how great he thought that idea was in the much easier war in the Balkans). The way this would have worked out can be easily discerned by how the French 'supported' us in the Afghanistan action later. They refused to provide air support to our units when the US soldiers were under fire. The US military acts on the moment to moment assessment of soldiers on the ground. Waiting days for NATO approval of individual targets would have been disasterous. It would have increased the length of the war, and really could have caused us to be engaged in a quagmire. These were not the acts of those who were supporting us. The words were irrelevant. The willingness to let our soldiers die without air support was eloquent enough.
In the run up to the war against Saddam Hussein, I saw a number of Amnesty International supporters complain that their reports of Saddam's rape and torture rooms and their documentation of Saddam's genocide were being misused to drum up support for the war. I can't find any of the original articles now, but I remember a number of debates about the fairness of using Amnesty International reports against their wishes. This reflects a serious confusion about Amnesty International's usefulness. Amnesty International documents human rights violations. It sheds light on them by publishing this documentation. In authoritarian countries, this puts the documentors in danger so revealing the truth counts as action in those cases by my definition above. But this revelation is not an end to itself. Amnesty International does not reveal this conduct just for the fun of it. They hope that their revelations will cause other parties to take action so that the atrocities will not continue.
In a free society, revelation will hopefully cause the populace to vote in leaders who will make changes. But in a highly restricted society this is not possible. In order for the atrocities to cease, someone must use force to get rid of those who are committing the atrocities. The words of revelation are at best a first step in causing the change. To pretend that the words are being 'misused' as support for forcing the change desired is to mistake the speech condemning the atrocities with the force required to cease the atrocities. This confusion causes groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to act in all sorts of crazy ways like these documented by Steven DenBeste at The USS Clueless . Because in free countries the revelation itself is often enough to cause change, such groups act as if the revelation is real action for change in authoritarian situations as well. So they end up in the odd position of opposing the kind of action which is really needed to improve human rights in less democratic countries because they forget that words are not the main actions which are needed in such cases.
This mistake is seen constantly in diplomatic discussions of soft power . The problem is not that soft power doesn't ever work. The problem is that it doesn't work in all the areas where its supporters think it works. Soft power can almost always obtain agreements and treaties. But when one party doesn't want to follow these agreements or treaties, soft power is usually helpless to enforce compliance. This can be seen in such disparate cases as North Korea's relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons, Hitler's relentless pursuit of Poland, and France's decision to ignore the Euro-stability pact rules that it set up. In each case, advocates of soft power declared victory because of pieces of paper--words--while setting themselves up for nasty times later on by ignoring the actions which contradicted the words.
In both domestic politics and foreign policy, discussions of words are completely insufficient; you must examine actions. Much recent discussion of other countries' willingness to help on the War Against Terrorism has focused on their words. That is not helpful since their actions are not in line with their words.
Posted by Sebastian Holsclaw at December 15, 2003 02:33 AMSebastian, great discussion. While everything you say is historically accurate and applicable to some situations, I don’t think it is universally applicable either historically or currently.
What is missing is an understanding and appreciation of other nation’s priorities. We celebrate the Civil War by reenactments and televise various aspects of these reenactments every year. We do this because the cost of the Civil War, both potentially in terms of destroying the united in “United States”, as well as actual cost in lives, families, and the quality of life, must never be forgotten. In doing so, we maintain our priorities.
Parochial analysts of current world affairs often fail to recognize the significant difference between the U.S. and European nations. We have never been an occupied nation. Europeans commemorate their losses and conduct ceremony and speeches every year in memory of WWII. That war ravaged Europe. They never want to forget the devastation and horror of that war in the same way we never want to forget the Civil War, and for the same reasons.
What is missing, in my opinion, in your article above, is the understanding that the collective memories of WWII, play an important role in the actions and words of heads of state in Europe. Lke the Civil War here, WWII occured on their streets, in their fields, and they still have a fair number of folks who personally remember the devastation. European leaders know their people regard war as a necessary evil to be engaged in only as a last resort, or if surprise attack leaves no choice but defense and counter-offense.
The European people to this day, by and large, fail to see that there was any imminent threat to themselves (let alone the U.S.) emmanating from Iraq. They did see the threat of state sanctioned terrorism in Afghanistan, and European critic’s numbers of our invasion in Afghanistan were few.
Our policy is called “Cowboy Diplomacy” in Europe, shoot first and try the case afterwards. In my opinion, it is an accurate reflection of Bush’s foreign policy from a pacifist’s point of view. We failed to produce the evidence and justification for invasion into Iraq, but, instead, invaded, and then sought the evidence. This is truly Cowboy Diplomacy. And Europeans are by and large pacifists for good historical reason.
Failure to understand the European perspective, which our President obviously did not, resulted in our current situation of not getting the international help, our President so desperately seeks. The Europeans are not ignorant, they see right through the charade of Bush’s. They know his desperation is not born out of concern for the Iraqi’s plight, but, for his own party’s reelection.
And so they balk, in rhetoric and action, to be duped by this man called W who so successfully sold the American people a bill of goods, for which there is no demand in Europe among the peoples of Europe. Europeans are bordered on all sides by different cultures, histories and languages. They are brought up and educated informally by geography toward tolerance, understanding and with a respect for the concept of common good. Why else would they continue such a seemingly impossible idea as the European Union?
Their actions and words seem inconsistent only to those who support Cowboy Diplomacy. Their is no apparent inconsistency among the Europeans at large. Talk is better than war if it can delay war. Treaty and Inspections are preferred to military action. And miltary acton must be measured against the losses. And war should always be the embarassing confession of mankind’s inability to use its creative mind, culture, and history to solve its problems.
Posted by: David R Remer at December 15, 2003 10:11 AMI think you do an excellent job of identifying historical reasons why Europeans mistake words for actions, but you do very little to establish that doing so is a good idea.
France in particular has had a long history of underestimating danger and waiting too long to deal with it. They did so before in WWI, WWII, Algeria, and this decade dealing with Milosevic. They played a dangerous double game with the USSR for most of the Cold War.
“Failure to understand the European perspective, which our President obviously did not, resulted in our current situation of not getting the international help, our President so desperately seeks.”
I see very little evidence of a failure to understand the European perspective, even discounting the fact that those European countries conquered by the Soviets don’t share that perspective in the context of this discussion. What Bush evidences is a belief that the European perspective is wrong and dangerous. I think you correct in this exposition of the European perspective:
“Talk is better than war if it can delay war. Treaty and Inspections are preferred to military action. And miltary acton must be measured against the losses. And war should always be the embarassing confession of mankind’s inability to use its creative mind, culture, and history to solve its problems.”
Talk is not better than war if it delays a war and causes a worse one.
Treaties and inspections are better than military action only if they actually work. Otherwise they mistake words for actions and put us in greater danger by allowing us to pretend we are dealing with a problem.
Military actions should be measured against losses, and long term strategic gains.
War may also be an admission that some aims by some humans are incapable of being reconciled with other aims by other humans. That is the lesson that pacificts never seem to learn, and unwillingness to learn it is a major reason why tyrants thrive.
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw at December 15, 2003 12:12 PMAn excellent response, Sebastian. Being a pacifist, we won’t agree on which set of values, or if values at all, should matter when people can’t reconcile differences and each views the other’s actions as tyrannical. But, your argument is well made and stands solidly behind a pragmatism that portends security at least in the short run.
There is no doubt that is appealing to vast numbers of people. So too, is the vision of peace and liberty without war as envisioned by some of the greatest warriors of the 20th century in the implementation and birthing of the United Nations which was to mediate and arbitrate differences in the hopes of making war, an inescapeable last resort.
The Tao, Yin and Yang, dance of darkness and light, day and night; universal forces of destruction and creation: can’t have one without the other.
Pacifists would be no better off without pragmatists (e.g. WWII) than pragmatists would be without pacifists (ending of the Viet Nam war).
Yours was an excellent response, IMO.
Posted by: David R. Remer at December 15, 2003 04:36 PMSebastian your contributions are always good, but seldom, if ever, do I agree with them ;)
The world was with America after 9/11. Bush has thrown that support away with both hands. The very real contributions made by NATO to the effort in Afghanistan can be found here
http://www.nato.int/usa/allies/france.html
The emotive example from Le Monde that you use to suggest only words were offered conveniently ignores the massive assistance NATO has supplied.
The logic of your argument being that all that France et al ever have to offer is words. So when they suggested taking more time to ascertain whether or not Saddam had any WMD, they were just reverting to type and could therefore be dismissed as cheese-eating……. The problem with this is they have supported the US effort in Afghanistan with troops, and in hindsight Iraq does not appear to have been much of a threat to Europe or the US.
P.S. Excuse my ignorance but how do you make a web address a hyperlink?
Posted by: Bob Hope at December 16, 2003 04:56 PMTo make a hyperlink do the following except use triangular brackets instead of the square ones I use in the example:
[a href=”http://thelinkaddress”] Description of link you want to appear [/a]
So if you wanted to link to my website and have the link show up in the text as: Sebastian’s silly website, you would type in:
[a href=”www.sebastianholsclaw.com”] Sebastian’s silly website [/a]
Except you would use triangular brackets in all four instances instead of square brackets.
I look forward to the time when you are embarassed to admit that you agree with me. :)
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw at December 16, 2003 05:12 PMExcellent article Sebastian. This is what I love about WatchBlog. It is an excellent source of intelligent conservative thought that does not reduce itself to questioning patriotism and charging treason. I agree with your premise that we should look at actions when considering the words. Politics is often full of words and very short on actions. When I view the Bush’s policies in Iraq and the actions that have followed I see little more than window dressing with regards to the stated goal of democracy and much to indicate that this whole thing is just about oil. A case in point is the continued focus on insuring that the Iraqi people are not saddled with debt. It is a theme that is continually stressed by Bush’s team. Nations are called on to forgive Iraq’s debt and Bush strongly resisted any attempt to allow even a small part of the 87 billion dollar package for Iraq to be in the form of loans. One has to wonder why we would be concerned that a nation with incredible oil wealth be saddled with debt. Surely Iraq has the ability many times over to pay back their debts. When you think of it in terms of oil it makes perfect sense. For Iraq to pay back any debts requires that Iraq have access and control over their own oil reserves. This is something that Bush and the Saudis will never allow. This is all about oil and the actions speak volumes on this. One other thought. This whole debate on Iraqi debt takes on an almost humorous tone when you consider the incredible debt this whole adventure is causing the American people. Keep up the good work Sebastian!
Posted by: William Flynn at December 17, 2003 10:29 AMI think the lessons from the Treaty of Versailles inform the debate about the debt. Setting up a crushing debt level on a fledgling nation might be a problem. And you should understand that the even with the eventual oil wealth, Saddam’s debts would be crushing. This is especially true for the debts incurred when few people would deal with Saddam, because these debts have much higher interest than you would normally expect. Furthermore the many of the debts were incurred by Saddam for the purpose of maintaining his power by oppressing the people of Iraq. It isn’t at all surprising to me that those same people aren’t much interested in paying it back.
I don’t understand where you get the idea that Iraq won’t have access to its oil wealth. There me be something I missed, but my understanding is that while American companies have contracts to drill and distribute oil, the underlying resource and payment for it belongs to the Iraqi government. Even if I were to conceed that the contracts were unfair, and I don’t conceed that, Iraq is still be getting paid quite a bit for their natural resource.
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw at December 17, 2003 01:05 PM“In both domestic politics and foreign policy, discussions of words are completely insufficient; you must examine actions.”
You have that right. Bush actions - invading another sovereign country based upon
questionable intelligence or worse yet lies, indicates that Bush certainly is a man of action.
Just the wrong kind. He has neither the inclination nor mental agility required to make
nuanced decisions for this country. His black/white philosophy is leading this country into
the toilet.
Bush may have won here, and deserve credit for that, but he should held accountable for the mistakes he made doing so.
By not going in with the proper diplomatic approach he has made the possibility of handing over control to the UN very difficult, much more difficult than he really need to.
We did such a good job of spreading democracy in the world, that suddenly a lot of nations have polls to follow. Do you suggest these people go directly against the wishes of their populace? If somebody were to do something like that here, you would pillory them for selling out American interests, and perhaps for being an elistist bastard. Would their critics not claim the same thing?
Diplomacy is necessary because otherwise we are either sitting around telling people what to think, for all the good that’s ever done, or we’re using force to compell them to agreement with us, for all the good that normal does.
With our allies, short of diplomacy, we only have the first option.
With Iraq, it’s obvious that diplomacy with Hussein’s government was not going to get anywhere. But what about everybody else? I mean, Turkey, at the very least- wouldn’t it have been nice to bring in troops from Turkey? Wouldn’t that sort of diplomatic win have saved American lives?
Problem was, we went in on the basis of weak evidence. also, we made it quite transparent what we wanted, and everybody knew what cards we held. Bad way to play poker, bad way to negotiate with anybody.
Diplomacy is not necessarily soft power. Sometimes it can be the supporting structure on which the ability to strike out with force is laid. It can be the invisible weapon in our hand. It can be the backdoor negotiation that turns a favorable situation for a terrorist into a highly unfavorable one, without them being warned.
The key is, it must be clear that America is willing to allow other people advantages, opportunities, and that we aren’t so ideological that we start screwing things up just because we don’t want to give up on our favorite little theories.
We have to stop being so obvious, and stop being so predictable. We need people off balance, not with their two feet planted as we try to pull them along.
