Alliance Politics: Emotion over Reason

There are policy decisions which most people agree on. There are policies that reasonable people disagree about. There are policies that are so extreme that few people embrace them.

Then there's Donald Trump's foreign policy.

Over the last few days, Trump sowed chaos at the NATO summit in an unprecedented fashion. At the height of his extremity, he called on NATO members to boost their spending on their militaries to 4% of their GDP.

Nobody in their right mind would call for such a thing. Even the US doesn't spend that much, and the US outspends the next dozen or so countries on the planet combined.

Trump later appeared to drop that particular target, calling instead for the 2% target to be met immediately - after earlier signing a joint statement that called for meeting that target by 2024. Later, he mentioned 4% yet again, then dropped it again.

None of this makes any sense, if you assume that the President is a minimally rational human being for whom words and numbers have meaning.

But Trump is none of these things. He is not rational, in the sense that he does not select strategies that are aimed at achieving goals. He has said himself that he doesn't prepare, he "goes with his gut" - the very antithesis of rationality. He is driven by feeling, by instinct. This is many things, but it is not rational in the standard definition of that term.

News networks have been tying themselves in knots trying to make sense of these varying and contradictory statements. Some have taken the time to look up facts that clearly demonstrate that a 4% target is an absurdist fantasy.

All of this is a waste of time. When Trump says 4%, he doesn't mean what you or I would mean. He doesn't mean anything. He doesn't understand the numbers, doesn't know what the right number would be, and doesn't care.

When Trump says that everyone else should spend 4%, what he means is, everyone else should do what he says. He means simply to project power, to demonstrate that he is right and everyone else is wrong. That, in his own words, only he can save us.

So let us not waste our time arguing with facts that are obviously and absurdly wrong, or policies that are obviously beyond the bounds of reason. None of this is about policy. It's about a man on the world's biggest stage trying desperately to convince everyone (or maybe just himself) that he has all the answers, and that everyone else is wrong.

God help the rest of us.

A Syrian Escalation Ladder?

Amidst the long run-up to last week's somewhat anti-climactic missile strikes against Syria, a few folks raised a concerning specter: could a US bombing campaign lead American into a wider war?

For all the talk of a "new Cold War" between the US and Russia, we're nowhere near that point. The Syria case illustrates this nicely, and helps understand why Syria is unlikely to be the flashpoint for World War III.

First, even with the end of the Cold War in 1991 the United States and Russia remain strategic nuclear-capable states, meaning that each possesses the capability to threaten the existence of the other as a functioning society, and indeed to threaten life on the planet. Strategic nuclear arsenals have declined from their peak in the early 1980s, but both sides retain plenty of capacity to effectively annihilate the other.

What has changed since the Cold War is that the US and Russia no longer seek to actively destroy or overthrow the other. Putin enjoys messing with the West, but largely because he wants to create some breathing space within what he regards as Russia's sphere of influence so he can do what he wants. Today's Russia, unlike Stalin's USSR, has no grand ideology for taking over the world. Putin may be a local megalomaniac, but a global megalomaniac he is not.

Because of this shift, the US is no longer nearly as concerned as we once were that Moscow could try to destroy us at any moment. This used to be a real, if debated, concern, but there is no equivalent to the Committee on the Present Danger today - no more talk of Nuclear Vulnerability Windows and Strategic First Strike capabilities and the other sorts of things we used to worry about.

All of this is to say that, compared to the 1970s and early 1980s, the global superpower stakes are a LOT lower. If anybody wants to replace the US as global hegemon, it's China, and they seem content to focus on economics as a tool for doing so. They also have the good sense to stay the heck out of Syria, and indeed the Middle East as a whole.

So what does all of this mean for the US involvement in Syria? In the short term, we got through the strikes over the weekend without any obvious escalation. Trump, despite his proclaimed aversion to telling people what he's going to do, had telegraphed the attack for a week, so everyone had time to prepare. The US military also had plenty of opportunity to warn the Russians, who do have personnel and equipment on the ground in Syria. That warning was undoubtedly passed on to the Syrian regime, possibly lessening the impact of the strikes, but the whole thing was mostly symbolic anyway.

The fact that the US military can warn the Russian military directly in a theater of operations shows how far the two sides have gone to avoid direct confrontation, which neither of them wants. Syria isn't important enough to either side to consider risking a broader crisis, and unlike the Cold War era there's no "domino theory" today that would link a conflict in a minor regional state to an existential threat to the US.

There are only two things the US can do in Syria that could provoke a significant Russian military response. The first is to kill actual Russian soldiers (not mercenaries, whom all sides agree are on their own - the whole point of those forces, on both sides, is plausible deniability). If the US were to target a Russian facility and kill uniformed Russian forces, particularly in significant numbers, Russia would almost certainly feel compelled to respond in some way. Ongoing communication between US and Russian commanders in the area is a way to keep this from happening by accident, which so far has worked well.

The other thing that could produce a significant Russian reaction would be to directly threaten the survival of the Assad regime. Were to US to launch a truly massive bombing campaign, possibly combined with ground forces, that threatened to overthrow Assad and replace him with a more pro-Western alternative, we would be forcing Russia to make a choice: risk war with the US in order to protect their ally, or abandon their alliance and retreat. That's a difficult choice, given all that Russia has invested in the Syrian regime.

Luckily, it's a choice that Russia will almost certainly never have to make. Current US foreign policy, taken collectively, doesn't care nearly enough about Syria to try to alter the outcome of the Syrian civil war. Trump himself dislikes the whole thing and, now that ISIS is mostly defeated, wants to get the heck out. Others in the administration may have other views, but together they haven't been able to come up with a coherent Syria policy. In the absence of consensus on Syria, and given Trump's indifference to its future, it is extremely unlikely that the US will do anything that might push the situation towards a Russian response.

So much, then, for starting World War III. The other escalation axis people have been watching is Israel-Iran, but this too probably isn't going anywhere. Iran's support for Syria, while significant, is mostly through weapons and money, not Iranian forces on the ground. Iran doesn't like it when Israel bombs things in Syria, but there's not much the Iranians can do about it. Iran lacks a counter-deterrent to Israel's nuclear arsenal, and it lacks any other significant capacity to strike Israel except through terrorist proxies. As many scholars in my field have pointed out, proximity is a major factor in the likelihood of war, and Israel and Iran are not near each other.

Syria is a good example of how the most powerful state in the system doesn't always get its way. In this case that's because the US, despite its significant military advantages over all competitors, doesn't care as much as others do about the outcome. The American body politic is extremely unwilling to suffer any serious costs over Syria - Trump may be able to shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose voters but if he gets a couple thousand Americans killed fighting in Syria he may see his support cut in half. There's no agreement in Washington among foreign policy elites (of any party) as to what to do either. And so we dither and muddle along, while those with clearer goals and greater commitment forge ahead.

This is unlikely to change any time soon, and the end result is likely Assad remaining in charge of a significantly damaged Syria. On the way to that outcome, we can at least rest assured that this war is unlikely to spiral outward into a wider one.

A "New Cold War"? Let's Review the Basics...

There's been a lot of talk in the media in the last few days, as the Crimea crisis works its way towards a de facto annexation by Russia, about a "new Cold War" between Russia and the US. John McCain, eager to criticize Obama on almost anything, seems positively slavering over the prospect. But what McCain wants to call a "return to Realism" is anything but, and those journalists who want to make parallels between today's geopolitics and the Cold War need to go back to school.

While there were differing theories about the Cold War and what caused it, they boiled down in the end to an argument between three camps - the Classical Realists, the Neorealists, and the Hegemonic Stability Realists. Each saw the Cold War in a slightly different light:

- For Classical Realists (e.g. Hans Morgenthau), the Cold War was a struggle between two fairly evenly matched great powers, one of which liked things they way they were (a Status Quo power) and one of which wanted to change the world in its image (an Imperialist power). For Morgenthau, the conflict was a struggle for power driven not so much by the particular ideologies (communism vs. democracy) as by the underlying motivations. The US, in Morgenthau's view, was trying to defend the world largely as it was, while the Soviet Union wanted to topple that world and replace it with something else in its own image. This was a classic "aggressor-defender" model on the world stage, and a fairly persuasive argument to folks like George Kennan who were architects of US foreign policy in the 1950s.

- Neorealists (Ken Waltz and his successors) agreed with the Classical Realists that the world was bipolar - that is, that the US and the USSR were fairly evenly matched, and that no other powers were anywhere close. But Waltz argued that, to a great extent, motive doesn't matter. You don't need one of the two bipolar superpowers to be Imperialist (or Revisionist, or whatever you want to call someone who wants to change the system); you just need for there to be two superpowers. That, in and of itself, will generate conflict largely through the Security Dilemma. Waltz' other insight was that, while this conflict flowed from the structure of the international system itself (never mind what the superpowers actually wanted, they were more or less destined to compete), a bipolar system also constrained that conflict to reasonably stable levels (i.e. no major wars). Indeed, as historian John Lewis Gaddis (a big fan of Waltz' work) latter put it, the problem was not explaining the Cold War but the "Long Peace" - how did we manage to go so long with no wars between the major powers? In Waltz' view, the Cold War was determined by the bipolar structure of the international system, which also kept it from getting too far out of hand.

- Hegemonic Stability Theorists (think Robert Gilpin) broke with both of these traditions and argued that the Cold War did not represent a period of bipolarity between two equal superpowers, but rather a competition between one Hegemonic power at the top of the heap (aka the US) and a Challenger (the USSR) which, while somewhat weaker, was trying to catch up and topple the Hegemon. This is not far off from Morgenthau's Status Quo/Imperialist categories, but Gilpin saw the power equation as more dynamic - that Hegemonic powers inevitably decline while Challengers tend to catch up and overtake them. This doesn't always happen, of course - sometimes the Challenger fails, as the USSR apparently did in 1991.

So if we want to be Realists about Russia (and, apparently, both prominent Republicans and journalists are just dying to wear that language), then the Cold War was either a bipolar struggle between two equal powers or a struggle between a hegemon and a challenger trying to unseat it. Depending on your flavor of Realism, motives either do or don't matter - take your pick.

Here's the problem - none of this applies to today's relationship with Russia. Any similarities are entirely superficial - the fundamental variables have all drastically changed. So talk of a new "Cold War" is not just premature - it's foolish. Consider:

- Today's Russia is not a superpower equal to the US. It's not even close. The Russian economy has shrunk drastically since its Soviet days, as has its military might and reach. The Russian army taking over Crimea is roughly like the US military invading Tijuana - it's right there, the locals are vastly overmatched, and there are no nearby counterbalancing powers. Morgenthau understood that power declines with distance; apparently McCain has forgotten that lesson. So recent events notwithstanding, we are not dealing with a bipolar world with power divided between the US and Russia. China and Europe are far larger things than Russia is.

- Whatever you think of Vladimir Putin's intentions, and whatever imperialist motives you want to attribute to the Russia psyche, they are not out to take over the world. At worst, Putin's Russia wants to reestablish the previous empire, which was slightly larger than Russia is now - and even that may not be in the cards. But whereas Stalin, Khrushchev, and even Brezhnev actively sought to overthrow of democracy in the West, Putin could care less about what kind of government runs Washington, London, or Berlin. He doesn't want to take over the world, just his corner of it. Which means that unlike the 1950s, there is no existential threat to the West - not that Russia has the power to pose such a threat in any case.

All of this, of course, is IR Theory 101. Russia would have to get a lot more powerful and (depending on your view) its motives would have to change drastically in order for there to be the potential of a new "Cold War". Absent those factors - which don't seem anywhere on the horizon - let's drop the silly historical comparisons and focus on what is. If you want to be a Realist in making US foreign policy, you need to deal with the real world of today.

Is the NATO Alliance Good or Bad for Turkey?

I don't usually wander into NATO issues or questions about alliance politics - my friend & colleague Steve Saideman has probably forgotten more about NATO and its workings than I will ever know. Nevertheless, recent events regarding Turkey and Syria raise some interesting questions.

Turkey, of course, sits right next to Syria and its now year-long civil war. Along with Israel, Turkey is far and away the most powerful military force in the immediate vicinity; outside of the US, Turkey has the largest army in NATO. Turkey has a strong and significant interest in how the Syrian civil war turns out, for a host of reasons (not least among them the potential for some outcomes to cause further problems for Turkey's Kurdish minority - making this another "glass houses" problem. See Steve's first book, Ties That Divide, for more on that subject).

Now we see that a Turkish air force plane has been shot down off the Syrian coast by Syrian air defenses, and that Syrian military officials are defecting to Turkey. These are obvious mechanisms to pull Turkey into the conflict, providing an immediate set of excuses on top of Turkey's broader interests.

But what complicates all of this is that Turkey is a member of NATO. As such, Turkey has obligations to the organization, but can also make demands on it. At the far end of the latter is Article V, the collective defense clause - if Syria were to launch a serious attack on Turkey the rest of NATO (including the US, which is woven throughout NATO's capabilities) is obliged to come to Turkey's defense.

On the other hand, as a NATO member Turkey can't fashion a unilateral response to the Syrian crisis and its immediate problems - the military defections and the downing of its plane. Anything that Turkey does could end up dragging the rest of NATO into an escalating fight. Turkey is obviously wise to ask for a NATO meeting, but it really has no choice - its hands are tied.

All of this raises a very interesting question: is NATO a good or a bad thing for Turkey? On the one hand, Article V provides an enormous guarantee for core Turkish security - nobody in the region (Iran, Syria, Iraq, even Russia) can credibly threaten to attack Turkey proper for fear of an overwhelming response from the preeminent military force on the planet. On the other hand, Turkey's ability to adapt its policy to regional issues - even really serious ones like a civil war on its own border - is severely hampered by its membership in the organization. Turkey has, in essence, traded flexibility for security. In the current circumstances, I wonder if the Turkish government isn't asking how good a bargain that is.