2. The international and internal

DETERMINANTS OF STATES’ FOREIGN

POLICY BEHAVIOR

Geostrategic location, military might, economic prowess, and system of government are all variables that affect foreign policy choices. Still, due to the diversity of states, as well as their different locations and positions within the contemporary global system, it is difficult to generalize about the influence of any one factor or combination of factors.

To determine the relative impact of specific factors under different circumstances, we must first distinguish between the international and internal influences on policy choices. In classifying the determinants not only of states’ foreign policies but also of trends in world politics generally, the levels-of-analysis concept helps to describe the multiple influences on states’ decision-making processes. States and the global system make up two distinct levels: the state level encompasses domestic characteristics, and the global or international system level encompasses interstate relations and changes in these relations over time. Although these two traditionally discrete realms have become increasingly fused in what is called intermestic politics, as the need for leaders to coordinate their domestic and foreign policies has increased with the globalisation of twenty-first-century international relations, this categorical distinction is still useful for purposes of analysis.

Global or "external" influences on foreign policy include all activities occurring beyond a state’s borders that structure the choices its officials make. Such factors as the content of international law, the number of military alliances, destruction of forests and animal species, and the changing levels of international trade sometimes profoundly affect the choices of decision makers. Internal or "domestic" influences, on the other hand, are those that exist at the level of the state, not the system. Here attention focuses on variations in states’ attributes, such as military capabilities, level of economic development, and types of government, which may influence different states’ foreign policy behavior.

Geopolitics

One of the most important influences on a state’s foreign policy behavior is its location and physical terrain. The presence of natural frontiers, for example, may profoundly guide policymakers’ choices. Consider the United States, which has prospered because vast oceans separate it from Europe and Asia. The advantage of having oceans as barriers to foreign intervention, combined with the absence of militarily powerful neighbors, permitted the United States to develop into an industrial giant and to practice safely an isolationist foreign policy for over 150 years. Consider also mountainous Switzerland, whose topography has made neutrality an attractive foreign policy option.

Similarly, maintaining autonomy from continental politics has been an enduring theme in the foreign policy of Great Britain, an island country whose physical separation from Europe served historically as a buffer separating it from entanglement in major-power disputes on the Continent. Preserving this protective shield has been a priority for Britain and helps to explain why Great Britain has been so hesitant in the past twenty years to accepting full integration in the European Union (EU).

Most countries are not insular, however; they have many states on their borders, denying them the option of noninvolvement in world affairs. Germany, which sits in the geographic center of Europe, historically has found its domestic political system and foreign policy preferences profoundly affected by its geostrategic position. Located in the center of Europe, Germany in the twentieth century has struggled through no less than six major radical changes in governing institutions, each of which pursued very different foreign policies:

• Kaiser Wilhelm Us empire,

• The Weimar Republic,

• Adolf Hitler’s authoritarian dictatorship and imperialistic wars to establish a 1,000-year Reich to rule the world, its two post-World War II successors,

• The capitalist Federal Republic in West Germany,

• The communist German Democratic Republic in East Germany,

• A reunited Germany after the end of the Cold War, now committed to liberal democracy and full integration in the European Union.

Each of these governments was preoccupied with its relations with neighbors, but responded to the opportunities and challenges presented by Germany’s position in the middle of the European continent with very different foreign policy goals. For each government, however, isolationistic withdrawal from involvement in continental affairs was not a viable geostrategic option.

In much the same way, extended frontiers with the former Soviet Union shaped the foreign policies of China and Finland. Finland’s neutrality in the Cold War helped ensure its survival in the face of a powerful and threatening neighbor. China, on the other hand, has long regarded its relationship with the now defunct Soviet Union as unequal, and in the late 1960s the two communist giants clashed militarily as the Chinese sought to rectify past injustices. The "unequal treaties" between China and outside powers, which encapsulate other perceived injustices, resulted in part from China’s vast size and indefensible borders, which made it an easy target for the great powers that had carved it into spheres of influence in previous centuries.

Like China, the Latin American countries reside geographically near a much stronger power, the United States, whose capabilities are in part a function of geophysical resources. Latin America has long been the object of studied interest and frequent intervention by the giant to the north. The U.S. presence provoked a bitter response among Latin American countries for many decades, because they felt they could not compete on an equal footing with the U.S. economic and military powerhouse. Their foreign policy of resistance to so-called Yankee imperialism was driven by their vulnerable circumstances. Understandably, many other poor Global South countries without many resources also see that, given their weak geo-economic condition, their foreign policy goals should be geared to opposing imperialism—what former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser defined as "the subjugation of small nations to the interests of the big ones."

History is replete with other examples of geography’s influence on states’ foreign policy goals, which is why geopolitical theories are useful. The geopolitics school of realist thought and political geography generally stresses the influence of geographic factors on state power and international conduct. Illustrative of early geopolitical thinking is Alfred Thayer Mahan’s (1890) The Influence of Sea Power in History, which maintained that control of the seas shaped national power. Thus states with extensive coastlines and ports enjoyed a competitive advantage. Later geopoliticians, such as Sir Halford Mackinder (1919) and Nicholas Spykman (1944), stressed that not only location but also topography, size (territory and population), climate, and distance between states are powerful determinants of the foreign policies of individual countries. The underlying principle behind the geopolitical perspective is self-evident: Leaders’ perceptions of available foreign policy options are influenced by the geopolitical circumstances that define their states’ place on the world stage.

Geopolitics is only one aspect of the global environment that may influence foreign policy. In other chapters we will discuss additional global factors. Here, we comment briefly on three internal attributes of states that influence their foreign policies: military capabilities, level of economic development, and type of government.

Military capabilities

The proposition that states’ internal capabilities shape their foreign policy priorities is supported by the fact that states’ preparations for war strongly influence their later use of force. Thus while all states may seek similar goals, their ability to realize them will vary according to their military capabilities.

Because military capabilities limit a state’s range of prudent policy choices, they act as a mediating factor on leaders’ national security decisions. For instance, in the 1980s Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi repeatedly provoked the United States through anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric and by supporting various terrorist activities. Qaddafi was able to act as he did largely because neither bureaucratic organizations nor a mobilized public existed in Libya to constrain his personal whims and militaristic foreign policy preferences. However, Qaddafi was doubtlessly more highly constrained by the outside world than were the leaders in the more militarily capable countries toward whom his anger was directed. Limited military muscle compared with the United States precluded the kinds of belligerent behaviors he threatened to practice.

Conversely, Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator, made strenuous efforts to build Iraq’s military might (partly with the help of U.S. arms sales) and by 1990 had built the fourth-largest army in the world. Thus the invasion of Kuwait became a feasible foreign policy option. In the end, however, even Iraq’s impressive military power proved ineffective against a vastly superior coalition of military forces, headed by the United States. The 1991 Persian Gulf War forced Saddam Hussein to capitulate and withdraw from the conquered territory. Eleven years thereafter, in 2002 when the anti-Iraqi coalition crumbled after its attempted enforcement of UN sanctions to prevent Iraqi armament failed, Iraq was now defiant.

The new U.S. president, George W. Bush, claimed that Iraq was poised to militarily confront its primary enemy, the United States. Iraq’s potential military muscle was said to give Saddam Hussein the capabilities to threaten its more powerful foe. Thus, military might as a determinant of national security policy was underscored once again when President Bush chose to face the challenge that still existed after his father left the White House in 1992—how to deter Iraq’s Saddam Hussein from arming himself with nuclear warheads and other weapons of mass destruction and possibly sharing them with terrorists to attack the United States and its allies. The potency of military capabilities as a driving influence on foreign policy decisions was made apparent in September 2002 when Bush announced a "new Bush doctrine" pledging to use military force to remove Mr. Hussein from office, that is, to undertake an unprovoked attack on an enemy state to coerce disarmament and regime change.

It was not surprising that Bush’s Iraqi policy at once met with staunch criticism at home and abroad, even from members of his own administration and political party, because a preemptive attack without prior aggressive provocation would violate the established norm in international law prohibiting a premeditated attack to prevent an anticipated action. As former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned at the time, the danger is that every country could conclude that preemption is an acceptable practice; he counseled, "we cannot have a doctrine of pre-emption for all eternity" which would encourage any state to attack any adversary that it felt was threatening it. Nevertheless, this episode of a showdown with Iraq illustrates well the power of perceived shifts in the balance of military capabilities between enemies as a determinant of foreign policy decisions.

Economic conditions

The level of economic and industrial development a state enjoys affects the foreign policy goals it can pursue. Generally, the more economically developed a state is, the more likely it is to play an activist role in the global political economy. Rich states have interests that extend far beyond their borders and typically possess the means to pursue and protect them. Not coincidentally, states that enjoy industrial capabilities and extensive involvement in international trade also tend to be militarily powerful—in part because military might is a function of economic capabilities.

The United States today stands out as a superpower precisely because it benefits from a combination of vast economic and military capabilities, including extensive nuclear weapons capabilities. This enables the United States to practice unrestrained globalism; its "imperial reach" and interventionist behavior are seemingly unconstrained by limited wealth or resources. For this reason, gross national product (GNP) is often used in combination with other factors to identify great powers and by itself is an important element in predicting the extensiveness of states’ global interests and involvements.

Although economically advanced states are more active globally, this does not mean that their privileged circumstances dictate adventuresome policies. Rich states are often "satisfied" ones that have much to lose from the onset of revolutionary change or global instability and that usually perceive the status quo as best serving their interests. As a result, they often forge international economic policies to protect and expand their envied position at the pinnacle of the global hierarchy.

Levels of productivity and prosperity also affect the foreign policies of the poor states at the bottom of the hierarchy. Some dependent states respond to their economic weakness by complying subserviently with the wishes of the rich on whom they depend. Others rebel defiantly, sometimes succeeding (despite their disadvantaged bargaining position) in resisting the efforts by great powers and powerful international organizations to control their international behavior.

Thus generalizations about the economic foundations of states’ international political behavior often prove inaccurate. Although levels of economic development vary widely among states in the global system, they alone do not determine foreign policies. Instead, leaders’ perceptions of the opportunities and constraints that their states’ economic resources provide may more powerfully influence their foreign policy choices.

Type of government

A third important attribute affecting states’ international behavior is their political system. Although neorealism predicts that all states will act similarly to protect their interests, a state’s type of government demonstrably constrains important choices, including whether threats to use military force are carried out. Here the important distinction is between constitutional democracy (representative government) on one end of the spectrum and autocratic rule (authoritarian or totalitarian) on the other.

In neither democratic (sometimes called "open") nor autocratic ("closed") political systems can political leaders survive long without the support of organized domestic political interests, and sometimes the mass citizenry. But in democratic systems those interests are likely to be politically potent, spread beyond the government itself, and active in their pressure on the government to make policy choices that benefit them. Public opinion, interest groups, and the mass media are a more visible part of the policy-making process in democratic systems. Similarly, the electoral process in democratic societies more meaningfully frames choices and produces results about who will lead than typically occurs in authoritarian regimes, where the real choices are made by a few elites behind closed doors. In short, in a democracy, public opinions and preferences may matter and, therefore, differences in who is allowed to participate and how much they exercise their right to participate are critical determinants of foreign policy choices.

Compare, for example, the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia, controlled by a king and royal family, with that of Switzerland, governed by a multiparty democratic process. In the former, foreign policy decisions have sometimes been bold and unexpected, as exemplified by the Saudi royal family’s revolutionary policies in summoning U.S. military forces to its territory during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, in contravention of long¬standing Arab policies designed to prevent Western encroachments against Muslim lands. In Switzerland, where voting and mass political participation heavily influence decisions about Switzerland’s international activities, the government has pursued the policy of neutrality without deviation since 1815, and, as an indicator of its traditional foreign-policy independence, did not join the UN until September 2002.

The proposition that domestic stimuli, and not simply international events, are a source of foreign policy is not novel. In ancient Greece, for instance, the realist historian Thucydides observed that what happened within the Greek city-states often did more to shape their external behavior than what each did to the others. He added that Greek leaders frequently concentrated their efforts on influencing the political climate within their own polities rather than on managing relations with other Greek city-states. Similarly, leaders today sometimes make foreign pol¬icy decisions for domestic political purposes—as, for example, when bold or aggressive acts abroad are intended to influence election outcomes at home or to divert public attention from economic woes. This is sometimes called the "scapegoat" phenomenon or the diversionary theory of war.

Some see the intrusion of domestic politics into foreign policy making as a disadvantage of democratic political systems that undermines their ability to deal decisively with crises or to bargain effectively with less democratic adversaries and allies. Democracies are subject to inertia. They move slowly on issues, because so many disparate elements are involved in decision making and because officials in democracies are accountable to public opinion and must respond to pressure from a variety of domestic interest groups (groups mobilized to exercise influence over the future direction of their country’s foreign policies, especially on issues highly important to them). A crisis sufficient enough to arouse the attention and activity of a large proportion of the population may need to erupt in order for large changes in policy to come about. As the French political sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville argued in 1835, democracies may be inclined to impulse rather than prudence because they overreact to perceived external dangers once they recognize them. There are two things that a democratic people will always find difficult, de Tocqueville mused, to start a war and to end it. In contrast, authoritarian governments can make decisions more rapidly, ensure domestic compliance with their decisions, and perhaps be more consistent in their foreign policy. But there is a cost: Non-democracies often are less effective in developing an innovative foreign policy because of subordinates’ pervasive fear of raising questions. In short, the concentration of power and the suppression of public opposition can be dangerous as well as advantageous.

The impact of government type on foreign policy choice has taken on great significance following the rapid conversion of many dictatorships to democratic rule. These liberal government conversions have occurred in three successive "waves" since the 1800s.

The first wave occurred between 1878 and 1926 and the second between 1943 and 1962. The third wave began in the 1970s when a large number of non-democratic countries began to convert their governments to democratic rule. In a remarkable global transformation from past world history, the once radical idea that democracy is the ideal form of decision making has triumphed. Today, according to Freedom House three-fourths of the world’s countries were fully or partially democratic.

This sea change has prompted widespread speculation that we may be witnessing the end of history—meaning the end of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of government. If this trend continues, the contagious expansion of democratic states could transform the war-prone pattern of past international relations.

The recent growth of democracy has emboldened neoliberals to predict that a democratic peace will develop—that a twenty-first century increasingly dominated by liberal democracies will be a safer century. Their reasons for this prophecy vary but rely on the logic that Immanuel Kant outlined in his 1795 treatise Perpetual Peace. Kant believed democracies would act very differently than non-democracies in their foreign relations: they would form a separate peace with each other. The basis for this prediction rested on Kant’s recognition that in democracies leaders are accountable to the public, and that because ordinary citizens have to supply the soldiers and bear the human and financial cost of imperialistic policies, they would constrain leaders from initiating foreign wars (especially against other liberal democracies similarly constrained by norms and institutions that respect compromise and civil liberties). From this reasoning derived the neoliberal democratic peace argument that liberal democracies are natural forces for international peace.

Much empirical evidence supports this neoliberal proposition that, as stated in 1994 by President Bill Clinton, "Democracies don’t attack each other." Whereas liberal democracies fight wars often with non-democracies, in the last two centuries there have been no major wars waged by one democracy against another. This fact poses a serious challenge that when it comes to war, liberal democracies are no different from illiberal states (since both, realism avers, act on their perceptions of their national interests, not their ideologies, and will respond to similar external threats with the same kind of military responses). The overall record shows that, contrary to realism’s premise, the type of government and, more specifically, whether leaders are accountable to opposition groups through multiparty elections, strongly influences foreign policy goals.

KEY POINTS

• The modern state system was born with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The newly independent states were all given the same legal rights: territory under their sole control, unrestricted control of their domestic affairs, and the freedom to conduct foreign relations and negotiate treaties with other states. The concept of state sovereignty—that no one is above the state—captures these legal rights.

• Geostrategic location, military might, economic prowess, and system of government are all variables that affect foreign policy choices.

• States and the global system make up two distinct levels: the state level encompasses domestic characteristics, and the global or international system level encompasses interstate relations and changes in these relations over time.

• One of the most important influences on a state’s foreign policy behavior is its location and physical terrain.

• The geopolitics school of realist thought and political geography generally stresses the influence of geographic factors on state power and international conduct.

• While all states may seek similar goals, their ability to realize them will vary according to their military capabilities.

• The level of economic and industrial development a state enjoys affects the foreign policy goals it can pursue. Generally, the more economically developed a state is, the more likely it is to play an activist role in the global political economy.

• Levels of productivity and prosperity also affect the foreign policies of the poor states at the bottom of the hierarchy. Some dependent states respond to their economic weakness by complying subserviently with the wishes of the rich on whom they depend.

• Political system is the third important attribute affecting states’ international behavior. Here the important distinction is between constitutional democracy (representative government) on one end of the spectrum and autocratic rule (authoritarian or totalitarian) on the other.

CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS

Sovereignty: the principle of supreme and unquestionable authority, reflected in the claim by the state to be the sole author of laws within its territory. The institution of sovereignty is developing and changing, both as new concepts of sovereignty emerge (‘economic’ sovereignty, ‘food’ sovereignty and so on) and as sovereignty is adapted to new circumstances (‘pooled’ sovereignty, ‘responsible’ sovereignty and so forth).

Internal sovereignty refers to the location of supreme power/authority within the state.

External sovereignty (sometimes called 'state sovereignty' or ‘national sovereignty') refers to the capacity of the state to act independently and autonomously on the world stage. This implies that states are legally equal and that the territorial integrity and political independence of a state are inviolable.

The state: political association that establishes sovereign jurisdiction within defined territorial borders.

In political theory, the state is usually defined in contrast to civil society: it encompasses institutions that are recognizably ‘public’ in that they are responsible for the collective organization of communal life, and are funded through taxation (the institutions of government, the courts, the military, nationalized industries, social security system, and so forth).

In international politics, however, the state is usually defined from an external perspective, and so embraces civil society. In this view, a state is characterized by four features:

- defined territory,

- permanent population,

- effective government

- sovereignty.

This means, in effect, that a state is equivalent to a country.

Supraterritoriality: a condition in which social life transcends territory through the growth of 'transborder' and 'transglobal' communications and interactions.

Economic sovereignty: the absolute authority which the state exercises over economic life conducted within its borders, involving independent control of fiscal and monetary policies, and over trade and capital flows.

Foreign policy. Public policy lays out courses of action for government and its various agencies. Foreign policy refers, broadly, to attempts by governments to influence or manage events outside the state's borders, usually, but not exclusively, through their relations with foreign governments. Foreign policy-making involves the establishment of goals and the selection of means to achieve them. In view of the increased interpenetration of domestic and foreign affairs in modern global politics, the term ‘external relations’ is sometimes preferred to foreign policy, allowing for interactions that take place on multiple levels and which involve multiple actors. At the very least, the realm of foreign policy can no longer be confined simply to relations between foreign

ministers / ministries or between national diplomatic services.

Global civil society refers to a realm of autonomous groups and associations that operate independently of government. Global civil society thus highlights a realm in which transnational non¬governmental groups and associations interact.

These groups are typically voluntary and non-profitmaking, setting them apart from TNCs. However, the term global civil society is complex and contested, in its ‘activist’ version, transnational social movements are the key agents of global civil society, giving it an 'outsider' orientation and a strong focus on humanitarian goals and cosmopolitan ideals. In its ‘policy’ version, NGOs are the key agents of global civil society, giving it an ‘insider’ orientation and meaning that it overlaps significantly with global governance.

Transnational community: a community whose cultural identity, political allegiances and psychological orientations cut across or transcend national borders. In that sense they challenge the nation-state ideal, which clearly links politico- cultural identity to a specific territory or 'homeland'. Transnational communities can therefore be thought of as ‘deterritorialized nations' or ‘global tribes'. However, not every diasporic community is a transnational community, in the sense that its members retain allegiances to their country of origin. Nevertheless, transnational communities typically have multiple attachments, as allegiances to their country of origin do not preclude the formation of attachments to their country of settlement, creating a form of differentiated citizenship.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. When was the modern state system born? What was its essence?

2. Explain the difference between state, nation, and nation-state.

3. What is an ethnic group?

4. What is usually meant by foreign policy?

5. What is the general procedure for assessing foreign policy choices?

6. What variables affect foreign policy choices?

7. Why is it difficult to generalize about the influence of any one factor or their combination?

8. What is levels-of-analysis concept?

9. Discuss global influences on foreign policy choices; internal influences.

10. Explain how the presence of natural frontiers may guide foreign policy choices.

11. What geopolitical factor explains why Great Britain has been so hesitant to accepting full integration in the EU?

12. Comment on Germany’s location in the geographic center of Europe.

13. What impact do extended frontiers have on the foreign policy choices of various countries?

14. In what way did the control of the seas shape national power?

15. What geopolitical factors are considered to be powerful determinants of foreign policy choices?

16. Why do military capabilities act as a mediating factor?

17. How does the level of economic and industrial development affect a state’s foreign policy choices?

18. Characterize the USA from this point of view.

19. How do levels of productivity and prosperity affect rich states’ and poor states’ foreign policy choices?

20. Compare foreign policy choices of a democratic and of an autocratic state.

21. What is diversionary theory of war?

22. Why do some believe that democracies are at a disadvantage in foreign policy decision-making process?

23. Why are non- democracies less effective in developing an innovative foreign policy?

CHAPTER 4.POWER AND TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY WORLD ORDER

1. Power and global politics

2. The changing nature of world power

3. Post-cold war global order. The end of bipolarity

4. A multipolar global order. The rise of multipolarity

1. POWER AND GLOBAL POLITICS

The issue of world order is vitally important because it reflects the distribution of power amongst states and other actors, affecting the level of stability within the global system and the balance within it between conflict and cooperation.

However, this raises questions about the nature of power itself. Is power an attrib¬ute, something that states and other actors possess, or is it implicit in the various structures of global politics? Does power always involve domination and control, or can it also operate through cooperation and attraction? During the Cold War period, it was widely accepted that global power had a bipolar character: two superpowers confronted one another, the USA and the Soviet Union, although there was disagreement about whether this had led to peace and stability or to rising tension and insecurity. Since the end of the Cold War, nevertheless, there has been deep debate about the nature of world order. An early view was that the end of the superpower era had given rise to a ‘new world order’, characterized by peace and international cooperation.

Although definitions abound, power remains an am¬biguous concept. Nonetheless, because most leaders are schooled in realpolitik, they conventionally operate from the traditional assumption that power gives states the ability to promote and protect national interests, to win in bargaining situations, and to shape the rules governing the international system. They are inclined to view power as a political phenomenon revolving around the capacity of one actor to persuade another to do what it otherwise would not. Thus, we will first evaluate this defl¬ation, which sees power as politics - the exercise of influence to control and dominate others.

Politics is, in essence, power: the ability to achieve a desired outcome, through whatever means. Power is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon. The problem with power is that it is an essentially contested concept: there is no settled or agreed concept of power, only a series of rival concepts. Power can be understood in terms of capability; that is, as an attribute, something that states or other actors ‘possess’. Power can be understood as a relationship; that is, as the exercise of influence over other actors. And power can be understood as a property of a structure; that is, as the ability to control the political agenda and shape how things are done. To add to the confusion, there are also debates about the changing nature of power, and in particular about the key factors through which one actor may influence another.