Princeton Lyman Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

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State Power and Globalization

Let's talk a little about state power in an era of globalization. Let's put aside 9/11, and not talk about terrorism yet, we'll get to that in a minute. But how would you characterize today's international environment?

There's no question that there are things that the states have to do differently to have the influence they want to have. If you're a small state and you want to break into the world economic system and the trading system, you have to give up certain kinds of autarchy, and you put yourself subject to movements of international capital that you really can't control. I follow South African events very closely. The South Africans have made a commitment to move into the international trading system, but every time there's a crisis in an emerging country, they see capital flowing out of their stock market, even though it isn't South Africa that's in trouble. So you lose that kind of thing.

What you have to do is find new ways of operating to advance your own interests, even for the United States. Because of the movement of people today and the tremendous problems with the smuggling of people and illegal migration, we can't control those issues, and all the international crime and drugs that go with them, ourselves. So we have to find methods of cooperation and diplomacy and multilateral agreements that will strengthen our ability to take care of our own people. And you can't do it the same way, because of these global problems.

How did these changes affect the role of an ambassador, like you were in Nigeria and in South Africa?

They affected us, and they continue to affect the [State] Department, in several ways. One is that the issues are not the traditional issues. You're focused on your diplomatic relations with the country and fairly immediate problems, and yet you're supposed to be doing something about global warming. How do you fit that into your priorities, and what do you know about global warming? And then you add drugs and you add crime and you add regional stability, and the question is how do you pull all those together and prioritize them and obtain the skills? The Department doesn't have all the skills. So it puts much more of a premium on an ambassador, or any part of the Department, to amalgamate different skills and different professional ones, and create the hierarchy of relationships one needs.

You will find in the Department of State today, for example, a fair amount of tension between the regional bureaus and the functional bureaus. The regional bureaus are the traditional powerhouses, that's the relations with China, with Russia, etc. And then you have oceans, environment, science; you have drugs, you have refugees. These are looking at world problems, and knocking on the regional director's door and saying, "Look, you've got to go to the government and talk about these things." That can be a healthy tension, but it's not one that's always fully resolved.

What is it about these functional problems that's different? You suggested earlier that they require multilateral solutions, that's one thing. What else about them makes it especially difficult for an ambassador or a government to work for solutions?

They're often very highly technical and complex, and your counterpart in the country may not have the science either. So you not only have to make sure you know what you're talking about, but make available expertise, if that's necessary, and bring it out to the country. The second thing is that the solution isn't going to be even bilateral. You're going to be negotiating with that government on things you want them to do in a multilateral context, and that isn't always the way traditional diplomacy is focused. So it's both the technical aspects of it, and the fact that you're negotiating bilaterally for multilateral solutions.

AIDS would be a good example of this.

AIDS would be a very good example, because here is something that some governments don't want to deal with. It's changed now, but I'd say ten years ago, a lot of embassies didn't want to deal with it. It's not a pleasant subject, it's gets you into a very difficult set of areas. It requires not only dealing with the government, but these are problems that affect peacekeeping operations, regional security, etc. It's a good example of exactly this. But I would say environmental issues are even more so.

Give us an example of an environmental issue that you grappled with in Nigeria. I guess, as ambassador, all of the environmental issues raised by the extracting of the oil come to mind.

With all due respect, I frankly didn't focus enough on it when I was there, and it's a good example of how environment didn't loom large enough in our diplomacy. When I was in Nigeria in the middle eighties, we didn't pay as much attention to it as we should have. Specific oil spills or something, yes, and we brought in a lot of expertise around one particular problem. But as I look back on it, we should have been thinking about the whole environmental degradation question, and the political implications of it in the [Niger] Delta. We do today, but we didn't then. It's a good example of how these more nontraditional issues are now recognized to be some of the most salient political issues.

If you're a diplomat, and a diplomat who was trained as a political scientist, are you handicapped to a certain degree by the overemphasis on the state and state power?

When you're in the government, of course, you're part of state power, you're always trying to maximize its effectiveness and usefulness. But one thing that I came to appreciate, and partly because of the assignments I had, was the collaboration with the nongovernmental sector. I was the director of refugee programs for three years. We could not carry out our functions without an alliance with the nongovernmental sector, both abroad and in settling refugees in the United States. The voluntary work of refugee resettlement in the United States is enormous, and it takes tremendous burdens off the government, and to some extent, in the foreign aid program.

It's helpful, although sometimes frustrating and difficult when you're negotiating something like the International Criminal Court. The strong role of the NGOs is both helpful in some ways, and sometimes gets in your way.

So what you're suggesting is that in some ways, civil society, international society, is ahead on certain issues.

Yes.

But, on the other hand, we never can do away with governments, I would go on to assert. And so this raises questions about global governments, then. How do we govern in a situation where what states can do alone, no matter how powerful, is not what could be done before?

Civil society is extremely important in putting issues on the agenda, making them salient, building public support around them, whether it's human rights or environment or other issues. But if you want governance, you've got to have states agree, in most cases -- not always, but in most cases -- to set up rules, regulations, and enforcement. So you end up, and most of the NGOs do end up, back knocking on the door of state government or multilateral institutions -- the World Bank, etc. -- saying, "These are rules you need to set up." There are some areas, however, in which governments are probably not going to be the only actors, and we have corporate - NGO partnerships taking place to try to govern commerce -- and environmentally sound commerce, etc. But in the end, whether it's a multilateral institution or other, it's the states that set the rules and create the enforcement mechanisms.

The United States is not setting a good example these days, in terms of our attitude toward multilateral negotiations, multilateral agreements, and multilateral institutions. Comment on that. What are the kinds of things we can do to change that course? Because it seems from what you're suggesting, it's not going to work.

There's a new book out by John Ikenberry that points out that by emphasizing a tremendous development of multilateral institutions at the end of World War II, United States foreign policy interests were extremely well served, and that we don't now appreciate how valuable multilateral diplomacy was for our own national interests. What's not appreciated very much today is that as you multiply your influence and ability to deal with these issues, it doesn't mean you accept every agreement, you don't bargain hard, etc. But if you look at some of the people who have been writing on behalf of this administration -- and Charles Krauthammer is perhaps the most articulate if not the most extreme -- [they write] that multilateralism as a principle is wrong, that unilateralism is the way to go in the twenty-first century because we have the power and we can do it. I had a congressman say that to me. He said, "I'll tell you what others of us won't tell you, that we're the biggest superpower, and the rest of the world should do what we say." It won't work. We can't even do it on terrorism, we certainly can't do it on crime, environment, or drugs.

So missing now is an appreciation of multilateralism as an important tool of diplomacy. And if you don't have that, then, sure, you will make an agreement when you have to, but your general attitude is, "I'm walking away." And that has a very negative effect on other countries.

How will 9/11 affect where we are and what we have to do in the world?

There are several things. One is, of course, it has forced this administration to rethink how it relates to other countries and the coalitions, but still only in a relatively limited way. On the other hand, it has, I think, awakened the American public to the interdependence we have with the rest of the world in a very stark and unfortunately tragic way. We are linked to things we don't fully understand, and that's why people say, "Why do they hate us?" Americans have a very positive image of the United States, so it comes as a shock that people could hate us that much. That opens the door to a tremendous dialogue about how we play our role in the world, and how we're linked to the world in a variety of ways. That's the opportunity, that's the terrific opportunity. The media, right after 9/11, actually did a lot of this because they had to go twenty-four hours a day, and they didn't have any commercials, and they were just going into every aspect of it. But it retreated from that; it's very much on the war.

I find, and it would be interesting [to hear] your own experience here on the campus, but I find when I go out speaking, the people are very interested in these questions, they want to know. A poll that's out shows that by a very large majority, Americans know that the war on terrorism is not going to be met by military means alone, that we've got to be dealing with these other global issues. So that's an opportunity; the question is whether it's is seized.

There's a curious thing here, which is that this American withdrawal, this emphasis on unilateralism, comes at a time when our educational system is producing so many young people who have been exposed to diversity, to different cultures, who are very informed, through the culture, about the complexity of the world. But on the other hand, one has this unilateralism emanating from both the state and its diplomacy, but also in the dynamic of domestic politics, where unilateralism, "America first" prevails.

I think you're right, and, again, it's a question of leadership and articulation. And that's not only from the government, but from the media and elsewhere. What does it mean to be the only superpower in a world that is so complex and interdependent? How do you define that role? You're the biggest guy on the block, but you also need everybody else on it. That takes a lot of articulation. People who say that because you're the biggest guy on the block you can get whatever you want, that's kind of self-satisfying, you know, you don't have to worry about it so much. Whereas, I think if people talk more about what it takes -- and it's complex -- one would get a good response.

But there is also something about globalization, just to go back to that for a moment. There's an interesting approach that James Rosenau takes on this, that globalization produces a great deal of integration, but because it also produces a great deal of anxiety; there's fragmentation at the same time, people pull back. So you see more emphasis on ethnic identity, on local government, or on communities. It's a [sense] of, "Gee, I'm losing myself in this." We see that tension. "Yes, we know now we're more connected to the world, but let's do something in our own community, I feel comfortable there." One has to deal with the tendencies in both directions.

Of course, in this globalized age, there's still work for diplomacy. I'm curious, your background as ambassador to Nigeria and South Africa, both places where the work of democratization was very important, and presumably our foreign policy could help in that regard; how should we be continuing those kind of efforts?

I found the South African experience extremely rewarding, because when we got there in 1992, a lot of the issues that had divided the United States over South Africa were behind us. So we were very much in favor of the transition, and we were able to bring a lot of diplomatic and expertise and other resources to bear, helping putting money into civil society, conflict resolution. The negotiations were in the hands of the South Africans, which was right and proper, but we could bring an awful lot of support to bear for the process, and play a role that I feel was significant.

I think that's still the case in countries like Nigeria or countries like Argentina, where if we bring the resources to bear -- and they're diplomatic, they're skills, as well as financial -- the United States can play a very positive world. But we allowed the diplomatic resources to decline tremendously in the 1990s; Colin Powell, to his credit, is working very hard to restore them. We've allowed our foreign aid program to decline, so the amount of resources we've got to work with are more limited. And we lose opportunities. I mean, the capability of the United States -- because we have a lot of very good people in the country you could bring to bear on issues -- we lose opportunities as a result.

Next page: Conclusion

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