Ronald Steel Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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At first we did reduce the importance of them. NATO was floundering around for a long time without a mission; it's still looking for a mission. The mission had been to protect Western Europe against the Soviet Union, but there was no Soviet Union, there was nothing to protect anymore. The effort to find a mission for NATO went on through most of the nineties. We were unwilling to give it up, although it would have been logical in many ways to give it up because it had served its purpose. But it was useful to the United States. It provided a kind of influence or even control over European behavior, the behavior of our allies. It restricted their freedom of action. As long as the United Sates promised to provide their defense, they wouldn't be tempted to build up an independent defense force.
There were Europeans, particularly in France, and to a lesser degree in Germany, who wanted to have, and still do, an independent European defense force, separate from the United States. No American president wanted that. They wanted the Europeans to rely on us for their last line of their defense, but also to rely on us to make the important decisions. Every time the Europeans tried to do that, we got in the way. So NATO started out as an instrument to deter the Russians, then evolved after the collapse of the Soviet Union into an instrument to deter the Europeans, our allies.
Now it seems to be morphing into an institution to assist us, as we move globally around the world.
That was the hope of the administration, but what happened, of course, was two leading Continental members of the alliance, France and Germany, opposed our policies. So then, in the lead-up to the Iraq War, the administration decided it would put together what it called a "coalition of the willing." It would pick those NATO nations which would support its policies, and then ignore, or even, if possible, punish those that wouldn't. So the president stopped talking to the President of France -- a lot of pettiness was involved in this -- and of Germany, as though they were unimportant, and then formed this coalition with Britain, picking up countries where they could, and then the East European countries whose soldiers they rented, in effect, giving them a considerable amount of money. So here was attempt to use NATO where it could be useful.
I think there still is a desire to keep some form of NATO intact as a way of projecting American influence on many Europeans, and also, as I said, preventing an independent European force, which if it ever got together and Europe became truly united, could be a rival to the United States.
What motivates our foreign policy elites? Is there an urge, a need, a desire to dominate globally that is at the heart of our policy? If that is the case, then is the Wilsonian language just being used to mobilize support at home?
I don't think they would look on it as a need to dominate. When you're sitting on top, it seems like a just and proper order, and a reward for your abilities and intentions. And when you're on top, you want to stay on top.
Top of the world or top of the United States?
Well, both. If you're in foreign policy, top of the world, because that's how the United States projects its power and influence. If you're the manager of the New York Yankees, you want to stay on top. That's the game. The game is to stay on top. And then would you say, "Well, it isn't so important if we win this year"? Well, no.
It's all about prestige and influence: if you're on top, you have both. Anybody of either party who is put into a position of power over American foreign policy is not going to want to weaken the influence of the United States.
Now, this is not only about prestige, it can also be about things like economic advantage, because if a country is dependent on you politically or militarily, it's going to make concessions economically that would be in your interest, which the Japanese do all the time to the United States, for example. So you get this relationship of mutual dependency, that we make allowances for their behavior -- we let Japan, for example, have huge trade imbalances with the United States, in return for which we have a considerable influence over their foreign policy.
I don't think it varies from one administration to the other, unless we were in an isolationist mood. But countries that are at the top of the heap are rarely isolationist. Those who are somewhat below and yet also don't feel threatened, as the United States was in the nineteenth century, can afford to be.
Are there any differences between, let's say, the liberal interventionists of the Clinton period and the neoconservatives who dominate in the Bush administration?
Yes, there is one crucial one. In the first Bush administration and previous administrations, the motivation was protecting American political and economic interests through military alliances and cooperation with allies. There was a great effort by George Bush [Senior] in the first Gulf War to create an alliance to go into Iraq. This administration is different, because the historical circumstances are different, that along the way the Cold War ended.
The Clinton administration was a transitional period, when we thought, "Now we can relax about foreign policy because there's no challenges to the United States in the world." And so Clinton focused, as he said, "like a laser beam," on the economy. Things were happening in the world that didn't threaten the United States, but were messy and embarrassing, if you take the position that you're a leader of the free world, which we continued to do.
So, for example, the Bosnian war. Here was a war that was on TV every night, and it was terrible, and nobody was doing anything about it. The Europeans were paralyzed and the United States just stood there; every night you watched this carnage. Well, what kind of a leader is that? You either have to say, "I'm not going to be a leader anymore," or "We've got to go in and take care of this sort of thing." So there was that.
By the time of the Bush administration, this had slowly begun to change. However, during the campaign of 2000, when Bush was running against Gore, Bush said on television several times, "We should follow a humble foreign policy. We should not be too aggressive. We should not alienate our allies ... " etc., etc. And then came September 11. So here, suddenly, was a perception, "Well, the Cold War is over, but the United States still has enemies," so it has to organize a whole response to this. One way to do it is the traditional way: you assemble allies, just like the Cold War response. But there was a belief, particularly among people in the [Bush] administration, which there wouldn't have been in a previous administration, that the United States has to be very aggressive in not only holding back a tide of opponents, but going out and destroying them.
The whole containment restriction seemed to be unnecessary, because there was no Soviet Union to worry about to protect these other countries. Hence the belief that other countries have to be transformed, made more like the United States, and democracy may be one of the ways to do it.
So then, after the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, things like democracy promotion as a means of transforming other societies from within became part of the agenda. And here we go back to Woodrow Wilson, because that's one of the things that Woodrow Wilson kept espousing. So here is a curious link between Wilson, who was truly an internationalist and wanted to build an international community, but he also believed it had to be done on the basis of American values, of which democracy is one. Today, people [want to export democracy] who have no interest in building an international community -- they look on that as an infringement of American power. If an international organization gets in the way, just push it out of the way, like the UN.
Wilson preached collective security; the people in power today preach unilateralism. The United States does what it feels like, and others will go along "because it's right." But in a curious way, they can both consider themselves Wilsonians, because they're preaching a certain set of values.
Another distinction that needs to be made here is that the present incumbents believe that you need to preempt. So in a way, democratization is the second stage after preemption.
Yes. Well, preemption is something you can do when you don't have threat of retaliation. During the Cold War, it would have been too dangerous to preempt, particularly a small state, because the Soviet Union was there and it could cause us great harm. But when you have a massive military lead over everybody else, then there's a temptation to do that -- the idea of the "quick fix." The only problem with this is that it's subject to enormous abuse. You say, "I think so-and-so's going to attack me." Well, you can think anything. How do you justify it, though? If carried to its logical extreme, it can be a recipe for tyranny. The powerful country can invade anybody it wants to. That will inevitably breed a reaction: other countries in the world will feel threatened and they'll try to find ways of dealing with it.
We've touched on the different factors in the culture, in the example of previous presidents that help shape our ideas about foreign policy. What your take on elections themselves? It seems that elections have been very important in revitalizing, rejuvenating the foreign policy debate at particular times in our history. I'm thinking of the missile gap, I'm thinking of the antiwar movement, and so on.
Do you see the electoral process -- and we've got an election coming up, we're about to have the California primary -- do you think that will be a process whereby we will gain different perspectives on what we should be doing in foreign policy? Or are the cultural and other constraints so great that we're not going to see many differences in how we should we dealing with the would?
I'd like to think that there will be a real debate and discussion and arguments about this, but I don't think it's going to happen, because I think that both parties are going to want to avoid it. The Republicans are going to want to avoid appearing aggressive, the Democrats don't want to appear weak; and so the differences over foreign policy are absolutely marginal, I think.
No Democrat is going to say, "It doesn't matter if the Middle East is democratic or not." Well, it probably doesn't for a balance-of-power world. I mean, we lived perfectly happily with an authoritarian Iraq most of the time since Saddam Hussein came to power, until the first Gulf War. We live happily with a Saudi autocracy -- [the goal of] democracy in the Middle East does not include our own allies. But it is something that Americans have to tip their hat to, so I don't think that Democrats could come out and say that. And after September 11, they can't come out and say, "Terrorism isn't all that important, either."
As far as this election is concerned, foreign policy is going to be along the margins. It's hard to think of an election that was fought on foreign policy in a long, long time, even the '68 election when the Vietnam War was at its height. The Republicans under Nixon didn't repudiate the war. Nixon simply said, "I have a secret plan to end it." You would have to go very far back to find an election where foreign policy was the key issue.
How resilient are our institutions of democracy and civil liberties at home with regard to foreign policy? The war on terrorism poses questions about how much we will change the rules that we live by at home with regard to privacy, to communications, and so on. Do you think there are limits to how far we will change ourselves in order to fight this war?
In periods of anxiety for nations, just as for communities or individuals, people relax the rules of constraint and there's a high premium put on conformity. When the crisis is over, the balance moves back again, at least in a country like the United States. For example, in 1917 when the United States entered the First World War, the Wilson administration imposed the most severe restrictions on American civil liberties since the Alien and Sedition Acts in the late eighteenth century. It was made a crime to criticize the American president, to criticize the war effort in any way, a crime punishable by imprisonment if you were an American citizen and deportation if you were an alien. Emma Goldman was a radical, politically; she was deported. Eugene Debs, who as the socialist candidate for president in 1912 won a million-and-a-half votes, was thrown into jail for criticizing Woodrow Wilson, and remained there until three years after the war was over. So there is a kind of thought control, either voluntary or involuntary, that takes place in times of crisis.
There was a panic in this country after September 11. Congress pushed through the Patriot Act without most congressmen even having an idea of what was in it. Now we're being surprised by some of the provisions, the restrictions on civil liberties -- even an American citizen can be thrown into jail without habeas corpus if the government says they suspect him. This is an extraordinary thing! I don't think it will last, but I do think, as they say, in war the first victim is truth. I think the equal victim is any kind of balance.
Our discussion has suggested that this war on terrorism seems to be turning to the notion of democratization: democracies don't go to war; if you have a democracy, people will be happy and there won't be these rogue states, failing states; failed states will not be the home of terrorists who might attack us with weapons of mass destruction. That seems to be the scenario. But now with the Iraq War we're coming to realize that when the tire hits the road, making democracy in a country with Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds is not easy. Do you think we will back away from these Wilsonian ideals, or will we live with the hypocrisy and continue to respond to the realities on the ground in places like Pakistan?
As the cost grows higher, the enthusiasm for imposing our values on others will diminish. It's all very nice if it's relatively cost-free. But if it starts to be enormously expensive -- all the Americans being killed today in Iraq, for example -- you'll begin to see a retreat. Now, despite all our propaganda to democratize Iraq, we're desperately looking for an exit strategy so we can get out before the November elections, so that the administration can't say it's stuck with a tar baby on its hands.
If I had my wish list, if I had my druthers, we'd have democracy in Iraq and everything would be okay. But lots of countries have democracy and everything is not okay. It's the social conditions. Things were not okay in the United States in the 1960s, and we had democracy. Or in the 1930s when we had the Depression. It's not a fix, it's just a method for getting popular opinion across.
Democracy isn't a high priority for a lot of people in the world -- certainly not a priority for people who enter the priesthood, for example. Freedom can also have implications of anarchy and instability.
There's no democracy in the military. I've been in the military; it's not about democracy. It's about hierarchy and following orders, and knowing your proper place in the hierarchy. Many people find that deeply gratifying, because the extreme of democracy is anarchy, and that's the worst of all, because you have no rules and nobody else has any rules.
You don't have democracy on the road. If there's a red light you got to stop, whether you like it or not. If you vote for going on a red light, it still doesn't make a difference, you've still got to stop.
What do you think a sensible, suitable policy looks like in a world being defined as a "new age of terrorism," with adversaries lurking anywhere in the globe -- who in fact may not be adversaries, but just part of local national liberation struggles and so on? How does a policy sort all this out?
We, and probably other countries too, have a proclivity to believe that nothing is real until it happens here. So suddenly we discover terrorism because it happened here. Until then, it was just an abstract thing that happened in other parts of the world. So then we become obsessed by it.
But what's striking about it is, for all of the concentration on terrorism and how to combat it, there's been virtually no discussion about its causes. It's as if a doctor said you have this infectious disease, and here are some pills you can take which we hope will help deal with it, whereas nobody is looking for the cause of it, which might alleviate more than the symptoms and might actually prevent it from happening. So where is the discussion about why this happened to the United States?
The president gives a speech all the time in which he gives his explanation: "They attack us because they hate freedom." Well, that's not a very persuasive explanation. They don't attack Denmark, and Denmark represents freedom, too. They attack the United States because it runs the world, and they don't like the way the world's being run. And who else would you attack? They're not going to attack the Danes. They have no influence over anything. So if you're all-powerful, if you're number one, "master of the universe," then we'll make you pay for that so you'll change your policies. That's the whole thing about terrorism.
So you can attack the symptoms, but unless you're dealing with the causes, you're not going to get very far, which is why, in the end, we're not going to transform these societies. And we're going to get tired of the enormous expense of doing so. We're going to restrict our definition of where we have to become directly involved in the world, and let others sort out their problems.
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