"I love you Trump" perde o seu objeto: Bolsonaro ainda insiste na resistência a Biden - Frederic Puglie (Washington Times)

 Newfound flexibility? Defiant Bolsonaro not rushing to embrace Biden

By Frederic Puglie - Special to The Washington Times 

Thursday, November 26, 2020

In the wee hours of election night Nov. 3, the president’s son tweeted a screenshot of Michigan vote totals purporting to show a sudden jump in favor of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden.

“Strange,” he noted ironically.

But what may sound like Donald Trump Jr. in truth came from Eduardo Bolsonaro, the congressman and third son of a man who has long and enthusiastically embraced his “Trump of the Tropics” moniker: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Several foreign leaders who forged strong personal bonds with President Trump — including Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — over the past four years face challenges adjusting to the prospect of a Biden administration. But nowhere may the whiplash be as severe as in Brasilia.

Having openly endorsed President Trump’s bid for reelection, the leader of South America’s largest and most populous nation now finds himself having to deal with a man he all but called a danger to his country as recently as two weeks ago — and one who has had some pointed criticisms of the populist Brazilian leader to boot.

“We heard a great candidate for head of state say that if I don’t put out the fire in the Amazon, he’ll put up trade barriers against Brazil. How can we react to all that?” Mr. Bolsonaro said on Nov. 10.

“Diplomacy alone won’t do,” he cautioned. “When you’re out of spit, you need gunpowder.”

The remark was but the latest sign the confrontational Mr. Bolsonaro sees no immediate intent to ingratiate himself with Mr. Biden, who had threatened the former army captain with “significant economic consequences” should he refuse to “stop tearing down the forest” in exchange for a $20 billion payment.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Bolsonaro is one of the last major holdouts who has yet to formally acknowledge Mr. Biden’s apparent electoral victory, so long as his friend Mr. Trump refuses to formally concede the race.

But also characteristically, Mr. Bolsonaro’s defiance is not so much about alienating Mr. Biden or placating Mr. Trump as it is about promoting none other than Mr. Bolsonaro, said Ambassador Paulo Roberto de Almeida, a former director of the IPRI think tank at Brazil’s foreign ministry.

“He must know that Trump lost and that Joe Biden will be the next president,” Mr. de Almeida said. “But since he embodied this ‘anti-multilateralist, anti-globalist, pro-American, anti-Chinese, anti-communist and so on’ position, he sticks to it.”

And while Mr. Bolsonaro’s refusal so far to congratulate — much less offer to work with — Mr. Bidenmay unnerve Brazil’s foreign policy establishment, his inner circle continues to egg him on, Mr. de Almeida added.

“Bolsonaro depends on his immediate advisers: [foreign policy adviser] Filipe Martins; son No. 3, Eduardo Bolsonaro; and Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo,” he detailed. “Those three kept Bolsonaro from ending [his] silence about the [Biden] victory.”

And little suggests Mr. Bolsonaro is about to turn into a second Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Mexico’s leftist president who — despite his political leanings — was able to forge an unexpectedly respectful and productive relationship with Mr. Trump, his ideological opposite.

Mr. Bolsonaro “doesn’t seem like he’s really ready to backtrack and find ways of working with Biden,” said Peter Hakim, president emeritus of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank. “In part, it’s [because] Brazil is certainly less dependent on the United States than Mexico.”

Running in 2022

In the medium term, then, the fate of Washington-Brasilia relations may well depend on what Mr. Bolsonaro concludes is his best campaign strategy to win a second term two years from now.

“Whatever he does with regard to relations with the United States — what he looks for in the United States — will be in reference to his [reelection],” Mr. Hakim cautioned.

The Brazilian president, who has remained buoyant in the polls despite the country’s devastating fight with the coronavirus, has shown a tactical ability to be flexible on the policy front.

Having initially championed his Economy Minister Paulo Guedes’s pro-market fiscal conservatism, Mr. Bolsonaro this year switched course to allow for generous government handouts amid the coronavirus pandemic — one big reason, analysts say, for an unprecedented bump in his approval numbers.

“After a blustery, Trump-like start that he is going to make these huge changes in the way Brazilfunctions and he’s not going to follow the rules,” Mr. Hakim quipped, “he has [now] recognized the value of getting something done.”

And though the Nov. 15 first round of municipal elections saw Bolsonaro-backed candidates lose key mayoral races, the overall success of center-right forces, ironically, turned out to be good news.

“In truth, he gained strength,” Brasilia-based political consultant Vera Galante noted. “He ends up strengthened in Congress, and also in the states, even though his candidates were defeated.”

Which version of Mr. Bolsonaro — the 2019 ideologue or the 2020 pragmatist — will show up for the 2022 campaign, then, is, more than ever, anybody’s guess.

“He has a real dilemma facing him,” Mr. Hakim said. “Does he use his populist strongman approach? … Or is the best to try to get the economy going again? He would like to do both, but there are trade-offs there for him.”

The dilemma is real, political scientist Lucas de Abreu Maia agreed. But economic realities will ultimately force Mr. Bolsonaro’s hand, the former O Estado de S. Paulo reporter added.

“He is in a very tough position, actually, because he has to please his domestic audience — but the Brazilian economy cannot afford to have anything but [a] good relationship with the U.S.,” Mr. de Abreu Maia said. “Brazil needs the U.S. a lot more than the U.S. needs Brazil.”

And plenty of influential forces will be pushing Mr. Bolsonaro to at least try to mend fences with his new American counterpart, Mr. Hakim said.

“The agricultural lobby, the business community and the military — and even many of the evangelicals,” he said, “are going to press him to find a way to patch up relations with Biden.”

To do that, though, all roads lead back to the Amazon, whose deforestation pits Mr. Bolsonaro’s trademark talking points — sovereignty, national pride, development — against Mr. Biden’s assertion of an “existential threat” from climate change and his determination to make climate change a centerpiece of U.S. economic and foreign policy.

“Trade relations, trade negotiations, trade agreements,” Mr. Hakim enumerated, “are going to be very hard for Brazil to secure without a real reversal on Bolsonaro’s Amazon policy.”

In fact, Mr. Biden’s mention of the Amazon in the first presidential debate was the first time he had seen a purportedly domestic issue come up so prominently in a foreign campaign, economist Marcio Pochmann said.

“The Amazon issue, in truth, is an international debate,” said Mr. Pochmann, the former president of the Perseu Abramo Foundation linked to the opposition Workers’ Party.

About-face?

And given Mr. Bolsonaro’s newfound flexibility on a variety of issues, another about-face is certainly within the realm of the possible, he suggested.

“I wouldn’t rule out Bolsonaro changing positions” on the international scene, Mr. Pochmann said.

Getting along with Mr. Biden could certainly help Brasilia stay at the top of the South American pecking order, Ms. Galante suggested.

“President Bolsonaro will want to re-establish [Brazilian] hegemony in the region, and for that he needs the United States,” she said.

But any “flexibility” could easily cut both ways, Mr. Pochmann cautioned, pointing to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s conspicuous display of camaraderie toward Mr. Bolsonaro at last week’s virtual BRICS summit of major emerging economies.

And if anything, the former congressman — who during his 20-year career in politics has switched party allegiances no fewer than eight times — has a history of digging in, not dropping out.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s animosity toward Argentine President Alberto Fernandez — by all accounts mutual — seems to have survived countless attempts at reconciliation. And his jabs against China have already cost Brazil dearly, Mr. de Almeida said. At the BRICS summit — a loose grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — Beijing quietly withdrew its longstanding endorsement of an expanded role for Brasilia at the United Nations.

A telltale sign of what course Mr. Bolsonaro wants to take toward the Biden administration, analysts agreed, will likely be the fate of Mr. Araujo, his foreign minister.

A changing of the guard at the ministry’s famed Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia could come around Mr. Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration and would signal Mr. Bolsonaro’s desire for a new beginning, Mr. de Almeida said.

“I would pay close attention to the Itamaraty,” Ms. Galante agreed, “because he could use this opportunity.”

But foreign policy and self-interest aside, embracing Mr. Biden will not come easy to Mr. Bolsonaro, who modeled much of his political success — his stunning 2018 electoral victory, his jabs at “fake-news” media, his Twitter tirades — on the Donald Trump model.

“He embodied this ‘Trumpist’ position not because he was Trump’s friend — he isn’t — [but because] he is Trump’s admirer,” Mr. de Almeida said.

“To the extent that either follows a playbook, Bolsonaro has been following Trump‘s,” Mr. de Abreu Maia said. “It’s going to be harder for [Mr. Bolsonaro] to win reelection without having really an inspiration — really a playbook to follow.”

Modern Diplomacy in Practice - Robert Hutchings, Jeremi Suri (Editors)

Modern Diplomacy in Practice

by Robert Hutchings (Editor), Jeremi Suri (Editor)

• Paperback: 268 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; 1st ed. 2020 edition (December 25, 2019)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3030269353
• ISBN-13: 978-3030269357

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26933-3_1

This textbook, the first comprehensive comparative study ever undertaken, surveys and compares the world’s ten largest diplomatic services: those of Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Chapters cover the distinctive histories and cultures of the services, their changing role in foreign policy making, and their preparations for the new challenges of the twenty-first century.


Brazil excerpt: “The election of President Jair Bolsonaro and his appointment of Ernesto Araújo as foreign minister marked a sharp departure in Brazilian diplomacy—and a dramatic reversal of the globally focused foreign policy of Lula. Fifty-one years old and having only recently risen to ambassadorial rank, Araújo promised “to liberate Brazilian foreign policy” through a religious-based nationalism. Where this orientation will lead and how long it will last are open questions. Certainly, the Brazilian Foreign Service faces a challenging period ahead. Yet one suspects that Celso Amorim is right that “Brazil is too important to stay out of global issues,” and that the enduring historical and geopolitical factors that contributed to Itamaraty’s historic role will, sooner or later, reassert themselves. Current Brazilian diplomats may take comfort in the words of former minister Rubens Ricupero: “The values that Rio Branco espoused—peace, moderation, trust in international law, non-intervention and what would now be called the pursuit of soft power—became integral to Brazil’s idea of itself.”
Authors: Maria Pereyra-Vera, Daniel Jimenez, Robert Hutchings (The University of Texas in Austin)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“An invaluable resource that illuminates not only the state of modern diplomacy, but also the prospects for its renewal in this moment of global testing.” (Ambassador William J. Burns, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)

“Foreign policy experts and readers broadly interested in the geopolitics of the early XXI Century will find Modern Diplomacy in Practice an informative and insightful guide to today´s multipolar international scenario. As a career diplomat, I fully subscribe to the conclusion that the need for diplomacy has never been greater in order to sustain a functioning international system.” (Ambassador Antonio Patriota, former Foreign Minister of Brazil)

“This comparative analysis of foreign services comes at the right time. For practitioners and students of diplomacy alike it is essential to know how select services have developed over time and how they react to current challenges like globalization and digitalization.” (Ambassador Emily Haber, German Ambassador to the United States)

“At a time when diplomacy is more important than ever, this helpful and important volume explores its strengths and weaknesses as deployed by major states. Sadly, many countries including the US, underfund this vital power resource.” (Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Harvard University, and author of Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump)

From the Back Cover

This book, the first comprehensive comparative study ever undertaken, surveys and compares the world’s ten largest diplomatic services: those of Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Chapters cover the distinctive histories and cultures of the services, their changing role in foreign policy making, and their preparations for the new challenges of the twenty-first century. 

Robert Hutchings is Professor and former Dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. His combined academic and diplomatic career has included service as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Director for Europe with the National Security Council, and Special Adviser to the Secretary of State, with the rank of ambassador. He is the author and editor of six books.

Jeremi Suri holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, where he is Professor in the Department of History and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Professor Suri is the author and editor of nine books on history, international relations, and political leadership, and hosts a weekly podcast, “This is Democracy.”

About the Author

Robert Hutchings is Professor and former Dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. His combined academic and diplomatic career has included service as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Director for Europe with the National Security Council, and Special Adviser to the Secretary of State, with the rank of ambassador. He is the author and editor of six books.

Jeremi Suri holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, where he is Professor in the Department of History and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Professor Suri is the author and editor of nine books on history, international relations, and political leadership, and hosts a weekly podcast, “This is Democracy."

Trump years: hard times for diplomacy - Amb. Gerard Araud

Não só nesse circuito, caro embaixador, em outras latitudes também; é difícil ser embaixador nesta assemblagem de tempos similares Trump-Bolso.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

How Trump Practices ‘Escalation Dominance’

“You have restraint on your side. He has no restraint. So you lose,” says outgoing French Ambassador Gérard Araud.

Michael Hirsh

Foreign Policy, April 19, 2019, 12:00 AM

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/19/how-trump-practices-escalation-dominance/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=12151&utm_term=Editor

Gérard Araud, the French ambassador to the United Nations, attends a U.N. Security Council meeting at U.N. headquarters in New York on June 9, 2010. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images) 

Following in the footsteps of Alexis de Tocqueville, Gérard Araud has made a study of the United States while serving as France’s ambassador to Washington for nearly five years. Araud has also frequently expressed frank opinions on the fate of the West, sometimes on Twitter. After a stellar career in the French foreign service that earned him a reputation as an able negotiator on Middle East issues and took him to an ambassadorship in Israel, as well as to senior positions at NATO and the United Nations, Araud officially retired on April 19. He plans to publish a memoir of his experiences this year. Araud, 66, sat down with Foreign Policy to give his parting reflections on how to handle U.S. presidents—based on his own experience with Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

Foreign Policy: What advice would you give your successor on how to handle the Trump administration?

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Gérard Araud: First, I think I prefer somebody who doesn’t have heart problems. I will give you an example. We were in mid-May last year, and everybody in the administration was telling us the president was not going to take a decision [on the Iran nuclear deal] because no meeting had been scheduled on Iran in the White House. So, of course, I sent that to Paris, and, of course, Donald Trump took the decision [to withdraw from the deal] that following Tuesday because Donald Trump didn’t need a meeting.

FP: Is there any way you can predict what Trump will do, say, or tweet?

GA: I will tell you the advice I gave [to Paris] about the tweets. He once criticized the French president [Emmanuel Macron], and people called me from Paris to say, “What should we do?” My answer was clear: “Nothing.” Do nothing because he will always outbid you. Because he can’t accept appearing to lose. You have restraint on your side, and he has no restraint on his side, so you lose. It is escalation dominance.

FP: As ambassador, you bridged two very different presidents, Obama and Trump. Talk about what that was like.

GA: On one side, you had this ultimate bureaucrat, an introvert, basically a bit aloof, a restrained president. A bit arrogant also but basically somebody who every night was going to bed with 60-page briefings and the next day they were sent back annotated by the president. And suddenly you have this president who is an extrovert, really a big mouth, who reads basically nothing or nearly nothing, with the interagency process totally broken and decisions taken from the hip basically. And also, for an ambassador, you had a normal working administration with Obama. People in the executive branch offices were able to explain to you what the president was thinking or what the president was going to do. And suddenly it’s the opposite. A lot of offices are still empty. It’s amazing—after 55 months, a lot of people are changing overnight. It’s the fourth G-7 [emissary] we’ve had in the White house in two years! So the first problem is we have nobody in the offices or if they are there, they’re going to leave. But on top of that, even if you have somebody in the offices, they don’t know what the president is going to say. And if the president has said something, they don’t know what he means.

Very often even the secretary of state is surprised by a presidential announcement. When there was the announcement on Dec. 19 about the U.S. withdrawal from Syria, nobody was aware of it, including the director of the CIA. And for the [decision to concede Israeli sovereignty over the] Golan Heights, what I understand was that the secretary of state was not informed. So it means the job of the ambassador has become much more complicated.

FP: Do you report back on a regular basis: We have no idea what the Americans are going to do?

GA: Exactly. Which means that very often that’s the use of having Macron call Trump. Very often I’m obliged to tell Paris, “I’m sorry, I don’t know. If you really want to know, the president has to call Trump.”

FP: Recently, for example, your defense minister was here, and she had to go talk to acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan about getting clarity on U.S. policy in Syria.

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GA: The problem of Syria is the problem of the way the president has been working. First the president says—to the total surprise of everybody including the secretary of defense, who resigned after that, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman—that the Americans are withdrawing. Then these administration officials don’t try to push the president to change his mind, but they go through modalities to change his policy, beginning with what number of U.S. troops will remain. But to be able to bargain for that, they need to be able to say to the president, “Oh, the French are going to double their contribution.” Which doesn’t make sense because on the French side we say, “We’re really sorry. We can’t tell you how many soldiers we’ll have if we don’t know how many soldiers you’re going to put in.” It’s chicken and egg. So basically we are used for the only negotiation that matters—which is the negotiation between the Defense Department and Trump.

FP: So has there been any resolution on the number of U.S. troops in Syria?

GA: No, of course not. The Americans, because of the Trump constraint, are not acting very logically. They are totally unable to tell us whether it will be 200 or 800.

FP: Is there any policy on which you do have clarity from the Trump administration?

GA: I think trade. It’s really very clear. Trade conceived as a zero-sum game on a bilateral basis and on the basis of the crude balance of power between both sides.

FP: So it’s mercantilism from the 18th century.

GA: Yeah, exactly. You have a big stick, and you don’t care who your interlocutor is. You treat China the same way you treat the U.K. or the European Union.

FP: Can the concept of the West survive this reversion to mercantilism?

GA: Basically the current president doesn’t care about the West. He is a nationalist. He is America alone.

FP: I understand your memoir is finished. Can you give us some highlights?

GA: What for me was striking was realizing that I had started my career more or less when Ronald Reagan was elected and I was completing my career when Trump was elected. And suddenly I realized by chance my career nearly exactly fit a particular period in history—a period that I’m convinced is over. I’m really convinced the direction of Trump is a signal that 40 years of what people call neoliberalism is over. This period where everybody was convinced that free trade was good, the market good, taxes were bad, and state intervention was bad, and suddenly with the election of Trump but also with Brexit and the populist wave in the Western countries, including France, the signal is that some of our citizens are saying, “No way, it’s over.” Nearly overnight all the certainties of my diplomatic life were shattered. You had an American president saying suddenly that the EU is a threat, that NATO is dangerous. That for me was the stepping stone of my memoirs.

FP: So if this era is over, what follows?

GA: I think that what’s interesting on the right wing of the political spectrum is you have a new conservatism that is suddenly defined. The Republican Party was the party of free trade, the party of active foreign policy, of budgetary restraint, and suddenly it’s over. In a sense Trump hijacked the Republican Party. So you can argue that after the mandate of the current president, things will come back to business as usual, but I don’t think so. That’s the advantage of being a foreigner: You see that conservatism is moving in the same direction everywhere. The French conservative party—and I’m not talking about the far-right—is also moving in the direction of identity, [closed] borders, anti-immigration, anti-globalism, so you have sort of a new right. And I’m regretting a bit leaving my post now because I’m convinced the 2020 elections will be a critical moment for the American left to redefine itself, and of course it has influence on the rest of the world.

FP: What went wrong? Why is this era ending in a backlash where people feel that the verities of the period you describe didn’t hold true anymore?

GA: The statistics show that half of Americans, roughly speaking, have seen stagnation of their income in the last 30 years. Overall the opening of the borders has been good for the poor countries, and very good for the rich of the rich countries, but the lower middle class and lower end have been really hit. And it’s not only the opening of borders but also automation. And on top of that, you had the storm of the financial crisis of 2008. I think it was very well managed, especially by Obama, but millions of Americans lost their homes and millions of Americans lost their jobs. So there was a moment when 30 or maybe 35 to 40 percent of Americans said, “It’s over.” And the genius of Trump has been to feel this crisis.

FP: Would Trump’s re-election in 2020 be a disaster for the West?

GA: I don’t know if it will be a disaster. I’m sure it won’t be a good thing. But at the same time it’s too easy to say Trump is responsible. Because on the European side, the crisis is on both sides of the Atlantic. You see the incredible soap opera [over Brexit] offered up by the British. Whatever the result, it’s a lose-lose situation for Europe. It’s a disaster that we are losing the British, all the capabilities they are bringing to us.

FP: You may not lose them now.

GA: Yeah. But even if we don’t lose them, it will be bad. Because for the British citizens, it will mean that once more the elites have stolen their future, and that is bad for British democracy. You see Italians, where they are. The Germans are also conservative, shifting to the right. Macron was the only voice for European integration, and you see the challenges he’s facing. So again, we can always hope for a rebound, but on both sides of the Atlantic, we have real reason for concern.

FP: What other advice, finally, would you give to your successor?

GA: Travel. Travel. Travel. We are talking too much about Washington, D.C. The job for an ambassador is traveling throughout the country. And as soon as you cross the Beltway, people don’t care so much about what is happening in Washington.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for publication. 

Michael Hirsh is a senior correspondent at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @michaelphirsh

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Kissinger, o velho realista cinico, publica "World Order" - Michiko Kakutani

In ‘World Order,’ Henry Kissinger Sums Up His Philosophy

500 NYTBooks / by By MICHIKO KAKUTANI 

/ 3 days ago

Henry Kissinger’s latest book, “World Order,” views history in the light of philosophy of realpolitik.

WORLD ORDER

By Henry Kissinger

420 pages. The Penguin Press. $36.

Given the multiplying foreign policy emergencies in the headlines, from the advance of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to the face-off between Russia and Ukraine, the subject of Henry Kissinger’s new book, “World Order,” could not be more timely. However the reader may regard the author’s own historical baggage, the book puts the problems of today’s world and America’s role in that increasingly interconnected and increasingly riven world into useful — and often illuminating — context.

Mr. Kissinger, now 91, strides briskly from century to century, continent to continent, examining the alliances and divisions that have defined Europe over the centuries, the fallout from the disintegration of nation-states like Syria and Iraq, and China’s developing relationship with the rest of Asia and the West. At its best, his writing functions like a powerful zoom lens, opening out to give us a panoramic appreciation of larger historical trends and patterns, then zeroing in on small details and anecdotes that vividly illustrate his theories.

This book is less concerned than Mr. Kissinger’s earlier ones — including “Diplomacy” (1994), which this volume draws upon heavily at times — with spinning or with rationalizing his own policy-making record as national security adviser and secretary of state under President Richard M. Nixon. Still, there are troubling passages: the handful of pages dealing with Vietnam, for instance, will remind many readers of Mr. Kissinger’s disingenuousness on that subject. Once again, he sidesteps questions about decisions that he and Mr. Nixon made that prolonged and expanded the war, as well as their devastating consequences.

As for Mr. Kissinger’s descriptions of prominent acquaintances or colleagues, they tend toward the anodyne or ingratiating. He doesn’t provide a plausible explanation for why he supported the invasion of Iraq, a position that weirdly aligned him more with Wilsonian neo-conservatives eager to export democracy than with realists like his former associate Brent Scowcroft, who presciently warned of the dangers of implementing regime change in Iraq. Instead, Mr. Kissinger talks vaguely about his respect and affection for President George W. Bush, praising him for guiding the country “with courage, dignity and conviction in an unsteady time.”

Mr. Kissinger also plays down his role as an informal, outside adviser to the George W. Bush White House. (In his 2006 book, “State of Denial,”Bob Woodward wrote that Mr. Kissinger had “a powerful, largely invisible influence” on that administration’s foreign policy, and met regularly with Vice President Dick Cheney.) In a 2005 essay, Mr. Kissinger wrote that “victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy” for the United States in Iraq; in this book, he writes that seeking to implement American values “by military occupation in a part of the world where they had no historical roots” proved “beyond what the American public would support and what Iraqi society could accommodate.”

In this book’s most compelling sections, Mr. Kissinger uses his realpolitik lens (with its emphasis on balance of power, linkage and triangular diplomacy) as a revealing prism by which to look at, say, the roots of World War I and the sources of conflict in the modern Middle East. He similarly uses his knowledge of various countries’ historical proclivities and their self-image over the centuries as a frame of reference for current developments like the Arab Spring and America’s increasingly ambivalent role on the world stage.

Mr. Kissinger’s sketches of historical figures like Talleyrand and Cardinal Richelieu remind us of his gifts as a portraitist while fleshing out his belief in the ability of great leaders to sway — or at least moderate — the course of history. He also provides a succinct summary of his long-held views on the destabilizing dangers of revolution: The French Revolution, he writes, “demonstrated how internal changes within societies are able to shake the international equilibrium more profoundly than aggression from abroad,” a lesson underscored by the upheavals of the 20th century, from Russia to Iran.

Known in the Nixon White House for his backstage maneuvering, Mr. Kissinger delivers some shrewd analysis here of the role that psychology can play (both in the case of individual leaders and entire countries) in foreign policy. He writes as well about how patterns of history often repeat themselves. For instance, of Russia, he asserts that “it has started more wars than any other contemporary major power, but it has also thwarted dominion of Europe by a single power,” holding fast against both Napoleon and Hitler; at the same time, he notes, it has undergone tidal rhythms of expansionism that have remained extraordinarily consistent “from Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin.”

The model for world order that Mr. Kissinger repeatedly returns to is the so-called Westphalian peace, negotiated in Europe at the end of the Thirty Years’ War of 1618-48 at a time when conditions in Europe, he says, roughly approximated those of the contemporary world: “a multiplicity of political units, none powerful enough to defeat all the others, many adhering to contradictory philosophies and internal practices, in search of neutral rules to regulate their conduct and mitigate conflict.”

Old forms of hierarchical deference, he says, were quietly discarded by the dozens of battle-hardened, battle-weary parties (“the delegations, demanding absolute equality, devised a process of entering the sites of negotiations through individual doors, requiring the construction of many entrances”). And a set of straightforward ideas was embraced, most notably the recognition that the state — not the empire, dynasty or religious belief — was “the building block of European order,” and the establishment of state sovereignty (“the right of each signatory to choose its own domestic structure and religious orientation free from intervention”).

The principle of balance of power (ensuring that no country augmented its strength to a point where it threatened to achieve hegemony) became a key to maintaining equilibrium in the Westphalian system, Mr. Kissinger says, even though it would often be “maligned as a system of cynical power manipulation, indifferent to moral claims” (charges that would frequently be made by critics of Mr. Kissinger’s own policy making).

Sometimes, in this volume, Mr. Kissinger assumes the role of history professor. In that sense, “World Order” brings his career full circle, back to the doctoral dissertation about the 19th-century statesmanship of Metternich and Castlereagh that he wrote six decades ago at Harvard and that contained all the seeds of his doctrine of realpolitik, now well known.

As he’s done in earlier writings, Mr. Kissinger argues here that there are two main schools of American foreign policy: the realist school (based on national interests and geostrategic concerns, and exemplified by Theodore Roosevelt) and the idealist school (based on a sense of moral mission, and exemplified by Woodrow Wilson).

Mr. Kissinger, renowned as a practitioner of realpolitik, often sounds as if he were mouthing platitudes when he tries to articulate the importance of the idealistic strain in American diplomacy. (“There is a special character to a nation that proclaims as war aims not only to punish its enemies but to improve the lives of their people.”) He is way more persuasive when dissecting the dangers of the Wilsonian urge to “base world order on the compatibility of domestic institutions reflecting the American example” and the perils of failing to analyze “the cultural and geopolitical configuration of other regions and the dedication and resourcefulness of adversaries opposing American interests and values.”

When efforts to export democratic American ideas of order have fallen short, Mr. Kissinger argues, the country has frequently responded by abruptly retreating, resulting in a pattern that has risked “extremes of overextension and disillusioned withdrawal.” Three times in two generations — in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan — he adds, “the United States abandoned wars midstream as inadequately transformative or as misconceived.” With the volatility of the world today, he writes, it is crucial for the United States to stay engaged on the world stage as a “balancer” in places like the Middle East and Asia, especially at a time when Europe seems to be turning inward.

There has always been a dark, almost Spenglerian cast to Mr. Kissinger’s thinking, and he sees ominous signs today of a descent back into a Hobbesian state of nature — in the bedlam overtaking Syria and Iraq, where “no common rules other than the law of superior force” seem to hold; in the spread of weapons of mass destruction and “the persistence of genocidal practices”; and in the Wild West of cyberspace, which has “revolutionized vulnerabilities.

In fact, he says, we are “insistently, at times almost desperately, in pursuit of a concept of world order,” at this moment in history when “chaos threatens side by side with unprecedented interdependence.”

A version of this review appears in print on September 9, 2014, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Writing of History He Helped to Make.

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Turner on Baxter and Dockrill and Hamilton, 'Britain in Global Politics Volume I: From Gladstone to Churchill'

Christopher Baxter, Michael L. Dockrill, Keith Hamilton, eds. Britain in Global Politics Volume I: From Gladstone to Churchill. Security, Conflict, and Cooperation in the Contemporary World Series. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 312 pp. $100.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-230-36044-0.

Reviewed by Michael J. Turner (Appalachian State University)
Published on H-Diplo (August, 2014)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach

This fine collection of essays was put together by the colleagues, pupils, and friends of Saki Dockrill, whose premature death in 2009 robbed the fields of international relations, Cold War history, and conflict and security studies of a notably gifted scholar. Most of the essays deal directly with some of the issues that Dockrill addressed in her own work. So many contributions were offered, in fact, that it was decided to publish two volumes, an eloquent testament to her as a person and an academic.

This first volume opens with an introduction by Brian Holden Reid, who was for a time head of the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London, where Dockrill was a student and later a professor. Sympathetic and touching, with a fair-minded assessment of her publications, the introduction makes it clear that she was at the height of her intellectual powers when she died, making her loss all the more poignant. She contributed so much, not only with books and essays but also as editor of book series, opening the way for other scholars to publish their research. Even those who did not know her personally (this reviewer included) would agree that her work—and especially her ideas about West German rearmament in the early 1950s, the national security policy of the U.S. government in the Dwight Eisenhower years, and British withdrawal from East of Suez—will stand the test of time.[1]

The first of the essays in this collection, by T. G. Otte, focuses on Anglo-Russian relations. Otte contends that the phrase “Cold War” can reasonably be used about periods before (as well as after) the Second World War, if taken to mean a sustained enmity that falls short of armed conflict, as with British efforts to contain Russian expansionism. “Concerns about Russia,” Otte writes, “ran like a golden thread through the texture of British policy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries” (p. 19). The British tried to exploit Russia’s problems (especially financial), encouraged proxies to assist in deterring Russia, and made alliances. Policy was “underpinned by occasional flashes of belligerence” (p. 40). It is useful to think of “Cold War” in this way, and to take the longer view of conflict and competition. But does this apply only to bilateral relations? In light of Otte’s remarks we might revise our perspectives on other historical “Cold Wars,” and at least try to determine the extent to which his approach helps us to understand multilateral relations.

John Fisher’s essay concerns Curzon’s tenure as Britain’s foreign secretary, 1919-24, and his goal of boosting the security of the empire (unsurprising for a former viceroy of India). Curzon believed assertion, preemption, and expansion to be appropriate if they served this end. He was suspicious of Wilsonian peacemaking, though used Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric when it suited British interests; and he was dubious about the strength and reliability of France. Although he was not without talent and vision, Curzon proved to be a failure. He could not find a way to cooperate effectively with Britain’s allies, and he offended colleagues in the government with his egomania and volatility. He did not adapt quickly enough to changing international circumstances and was also undone by shifts in government thinking, particularly when “retrenchment” trumped “security” (p. 62). Fisher provides telling insights into the choices and complications facing British leaders after the First World War, and fills out our picture of one of the key figures of the time. His opinion of Curzon accords in some respects with that of David Gilmour, who has offered a generally positive view of Curzon’s performance as foreign secretary in Curzon: Imperial Statesman, 1859-1925 (2003). Curzon understood the geopolitical ramifications of the First World War and knew that it was in large part a clash of empires. After the war—no less than before it—Britain had to operate a global system and deal with interconnected problems in a global context, and perhaps other historians (notably G. H. Bennett in British Foreign Policy during the Curzon Period, 1919-1924 [1995]) have underestimated Curzon’s role.

Martin Thomas, examining British colonial governance after the First World War, points to the belief that control could be enhanced through new technology. Aircraft were to provide intelligence and assist with policing. Judging by events in Mesopotamia, however, these expectations were not fulfilled. Subjects did not respond as their colonial rulers desired; British air power was used to inflict wanton death and destruction; and there were huge difficulties beyond the practical need to keep order and promote obedience—not least because of the raising of moral and legal questions about air attacks. Of course, the propriety of certain weapons and tactics is an issue with which the international community is still grappling. This essay offers a valuable historical perspective. It is an interesting study of some problems Britain had to cope with in maintaining prestige and power after the First World War. Many of the colonies were restive in these years, and there were grave concerns about the Middle East in particular, a British sphere of influence that loomed large in wartime and postwar strategy. This was not simply because of the route to India. As Elizabeth Monroe (Britain’s Moment in the Middle East, 1914-1971 [1981]), among others, suggested some years ago, the idea was to benefit and serve selected regional peoples while also protecting British interests. Thomas reminds us of how badly this was carried out, whatever the intentions of imperial decision makers in London and the Middle East.

Keith Hamilton’s essay on the vetting of diplomatic and ministerial memoirs in the interwar period highlights the Foreign Office position that it would be dangerous to permit discordant versions of history to be disseminated, especially if they undermined the post-1918 peace settlement. Ways were found to threaten and penalize the writers, citing the national interest, which dictated that Britain’s relations with foreign powers ought not to be complicated by troublesome scribblers. But there was no consistency. No clear rules were observed; much depended on the rank and influence of the writer; and defending or sustaining reputations counted for more than serving the national interest. Hamilton offers a fascinating and informative contribution to a somewhat understudied topic.

Christopher Baxter discusses the case of Hilaire Noulens, a Soviet agent arrested in China in 1931. Revelations resulted about Soviet espionage and Baxter relates these to a wider theme—paranoia—with British intelligence chiefs making anxious assumptions about Soviet strength and intentions. The Noulens affair heightened British fears about the Soviet Union but also made communist conspiracy in China seem more of a threat than Japan’s capacity for military aggression. Success against the Comintern became “a double-edged sword” (p. 147). Baxter’s account will prompt further thinking about intelligence gathering and evaluation, the management of perceptions, and in particular the durability —or vulnerability—of Britain’s position in the Far East between the wars.

Whatever such concepts as “balance of power” and “appeasement” might have meant later, B. J. C. McKercher’s essay demonstrates that British leaders in the interwar years understood them to be robust, sensible, and realistic. During the 1920s there was a toughness and resilience to British policy. Strategic compromises were avoided and force was used when necessary to maintain a balance of power, and this lasted into the 1930s. Appeasement was well established: “just one of a number of tactical alternatives in the planning and execution of British foreign policy” (p. 153). Neville Chamberlain took control in 1937 and there was a change of emphasis because the fixation with balance of power brought too many risks. The new plan was neither weak nor confused. More risk averse, and not inflexible, it probably brought a clarity that the usual opportunistic, wait-and-see approach could not deliver. McKercher’s essay is another convincing addition to appeasement scholarship. Activity that was long regarded as foolish and irrational has for many years been seen as anything but; and one might profitably supplement McKercher’s analysis with others—the study of Chamberlain as a tragic victim of bad luck as well as his own poor judgment, for instance, or the appreciation of domestic and international constraints on the deterrence as well as the concession side of British diplomacy.[2]

Philip Bell’s essay focuses on Winston Churchill’s belief that Britain could work wholeheartedly with France to contain Germany. To Churchill, the French army in the 1930s was strong enough to deter. As Bell shows, however, there were large flies in this ointment: lack of respect and affection for France, the growing sense that Germany had a strong case against the Treaty of Versailles, and Churchill’s own inconsistencies. Churchill’s policy was less a viable alternative to appeasement than a basis for post-appeasement decision making. This essay offers further information about the options available (or thought to be available) in the 1930s, and makes plain the shortcomings as well as strong points in Churchill’s assessment of the international situation.

Britain’s dealings with Spain during the 1930s and 1940s provide the subject of Glyn Stone’s essay. During the Spanish civil war the British adhered to nonintervention, hoping to prevent escalation and reluctant to recognize the legitimacy of either side (essentially, the war was taken as a struggle between two forms of totalitarianism). After the establishment of the oppressive Franco regime, British leaders veered between efforts to restore democracy and a willingness to let matters lie, which is what the United States preferred to do in the aftermath of the Second World War. Following the enunciation of the Truman Doctrine in 1947, and in view of the need to put together an anti-communist front in Europe, the British were content to abide by the policy of noninterference in Spain’s domestic affairs. Stone’s essay demonstrates once again how shifting priorities and conditions can work against or allow statesmen to pursue a line that seems to be indicated by consistency and principle.

Joe Maiolo’s essay concerns Chamberlain’s policy in the Phoney War. Chamberlain wanted to try nonmilitary means to remove Adolf Hitler from power, and decided that economic pressure might lead to the fall of the Nazi government or push Hitler into a drastic maneuver that would fail and prompt regime change. This was an attractive prospect for Chamberlain: he was determined to minimize casualties, limit the financial cost of the war, and end the war as soon as possible. It all came to nothing. Chamberlain was mistaken, force was necessary, the war went on. Again, though, a verdict that cites bad luck rather than weakness or self-delusion might be in order, for it was not inevitable that Germany would get through the Phoney War. Maiolo cites Carl von Clausewitz’s emphasis on chance: “That Hitler’s gamble against the odds in the Battle for France paid off in the short run is evidence that Clausewitz was correct about the ungovernable role played by chance in war and not that Chamberlain’s Phoney War strategy was wrong” (p. 221). Opinions might differ about this, but there is more to Maiolo’s contribution than speculation about the role of chance in history. This essay adds greatly to our understanding of the course of the Second World War and raises questions about the likelihood of regime change in Germany (might the military chiefs have ditched Hitler?) and of course about Chamberlain’s judgment.

American opinion about the British Empire during the Second World War is Andrew Stewart’s topic. Stewart investigates the work of a committee, set up late in 1942, that was designed to assist in mitigating American hostility toward the empire and convincing the U.S. government that it would need the help of Britain and its empire in the creation and running of an amenable postwar world order. Fear had grown after the fall of Singapore, lest that disaster be taken as sign that the British Empire was heading for collapse, not recovery, and could not be the asset it might once have been. Stewart highlights the Canadian input, especially through a journalist, Graham Spry, and the inconveniences arising from American ambivalence toward Britain and lack of knowledge of Britain and its empire. The British sought to guide U.S. policy and “play Greece to their Rome,” but the likelihood of this seemed small as the war came to an end (p. 257). One point of tension between British and American leaders is explored in the essay by Saul Kelly, which deals with disagreement about the fate of Italy’s colonies. The British favored wide consultation involving all interested parties, to be followed by partition of territories and the drawing of new frontiers. The Americans pushed instead for international trusteeships, to lead to the creation of independent states that would enter into economic and security relationships with the United States. The British were alarmed because the Americans seemed unconcerned about Britain’s own security interests and were even willing to offer a role in the trusteeships to the Soviet Union (as a lever to obtain Soviet agreement on other issues). Stewart and Kelly demonstrate yet again that the “special relationship” was really a friendship full of reserves, in line with the skeptical strand in the relevant historiography. The British had to figure out just how trustworthy, reliable, and collaborative the Americans were prepared to be. No clear pattern would emerge, since conduct on both sides depended on time, issue, and circumstance. Debate about the “special relationship” will go on—as with the interesting but problematic thesis recently advanced by Simon Tate in A Special Relationship? British Foreign Policy in the Era of American Hegemony (2012), that the “special relationship” consisted of a division of labor between two partners (unequal, but still partners in a hegemonic framework). The findings of Stewart and Kelly encourage another look at familiar themes in this debate, not least Britain’s awareness of its limited reach and relative weakness, the lack of options other than reliance on America, and the tendency of British governments to exaggerate the success of their efforts to shape U.S. policy.

Essay collections are often patchy in quality and usefulness, but not this one. All the contributions are strong. They represent well-written, detailed, intelligent, and expertly researched contributions to the topic areas they cover. The essays are not subdivided into thematic categories but arranged in roughly chronological order; and though they do touch on interests shared with Saki Dockrill, mostly they reflect the current scholarly concentrations of the individual authors. The essays are pitched at a high level and do not confine themselves to familiar milestones and problems or the conventional markers and discussion points in Britain’s changing international status and influence in the era of the two world wars—meaning that students will probably benefit less from this collection than specialists, unless they have done plenty of supplemental reading. There is no volume bibliography, but each chapter has endnotes. The book includes an adequate if brief index.

Notes

[1]. I for one am indebted to Saki Dockrill for sections of my British Power and International Relations during the 1950s: A Tenable Position? (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2009) and An International History of British Power, 1957-1970(Youngstown: Teneo Press, 2010).

[2]. John Charmley, Chamberlain and the Lost Peace (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989); and James P. Levy, Appeasement and Rearmament: Britain, 1936-1939 (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006).

Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=42121

Citation: Michael J. Turner. Review of Baxter, Christopher; Dockrill, Michael L.; Hamilton, Keith, eds., Britain in Global Politics Volume I: From Gladstone to Churchill. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. August, 2014.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=42121

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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