How not to do foreign policy

Hameed Hakimi

Good afternoon, welcome to Chatham House. We have a wonderful event. This is a members’ event in conjunction with the International Affairs. Some housekeeping before I kick off. This is a hybrid event, so, we have people online and we have the wonderful audience in the room. This is on the record and it will be recorded. We have a reception after this, which you’re most welcome to join us and, also, collect your free copy of the special issue, plus a very good bag, and this is mine, so, don’t forget that.

But I’m very delighted to be asked to chair this discussion. We have an excellent panel. The conversation today is about “How Not to do Foreign Policy.” So, often at Chatham House we discuss about things to do, but today it’s a reflection session. The history of international affairs is littered with catastrophic decisions at key moments. Different policy decisions and actions taken at the time might have led to a more peaceful and prosperous world.

Whilst foreign policy analysis, discussions and debates seek to replicate successes, this event asks how to avoid catastrophic failure. Can we learn from our past failures? From the use of economic sanctions, which has often become a go-to tool of diplomacy, to failures of negotiation, the panel will today reflect on key questions, exploring prominent historical figures – prominent historical cases and wider reflections.

We have three distinguished panellists, Professor Daniel Drezner, Professor of International Politics at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, and also a non-residency and a Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. All of the panellists have really long and wonderful CVs and biographies, so, I’m really going to the shorter version. Virtually joining us is Professor Amrita Narlikar. She’s the President of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies. She’s also an Honorary Fellow at the Darwin College, University of Cambridge, and a non-residency and a Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, and a non-resident Distinguished Fellow of the Australia India Institute. Then we have Professor Valèrie Rosoux, Research Director of the Fund for Scientific Research in Belgium, and a Professor in the School of Political and Social Sciences, University of Louvain. My name is Hameed Hakimi, and I’m an Associate Fellow here at Chatham House.

So, I thought we could kick off this conversation, Daniel, starting with you. You know, if we can have each of the panellists, starting with you, Daniel, then I’ll go to Amrita, and then to you, Valèrie, to give us your initial remarks, five minutes to set the scene, and then I’ll follow-up with a couple of questions, and then we’ll open up to the audience.

Daniel W. Drezner

Thank you very much, Hameed. So, in five minutes, quickly, first of all, it’s lovely to see people in person, I really like that, I’m very grateful of that. And before I proceed, I also want to thank my colleague, Amrita Narlikar for whom –we are genuinely co-creators of this special issue, and this special issue, in some ways, was born out of the pandemic. International Affairs was soliciting, you know, centenary ideas, and Amrita and I were talking about this, and we realised that, in part, the reason we were doing this virtually rather than in person was because a pandemic that, in theory, could’ve at least been far better contained was not. And it pointed to one of – you know, a genuine catastrophe in terms of the way we’ve lived for the last two-and-a-half years.

And while it be – might be one catastrophe, it was hardly going to be the only one in this century. We’re going to have to cope – you know, even since the pandemic started, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the inevitable problems with respect to climate change. And really, over the past century there have been so many myriad catastrophes, catastrophes that are so widely acknowledged to be so, that all you have to do is say one word, like Munich or Vietnam, and it’s generally acknowledged that that is something that is to be avoided.

And, as Hameed said, we thought that one way – you know, there’s a tendency in social sciences, particularly those affected too much by economics, to focus on things like maximisation and optimisation, the ways to think – make things supremely efficient, and that’s a desirable goal. But in a world in which there’s so many multiple shocks, Amrita and I, sort of, thought, “Well, maybe we should focus on avoiding the worst-case scenario, in addition to trying to aim for better.” And to, sort of, paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, “If we rule out all the catastrophic options, maybe a tolerable option will emerge,” and that way we can proceed based on that.

And so, we proceeded with the idea to focus on what we consider truly catastrophes or failures, and the way we defined failure was, sort of, multiple parts. But the key one being that first, whatever policy option was pursued winds up working out in a drastically different way than the – was originally intended, and second, that the policy outcome was a lose-lose outcome. In other words, there are policy outcomes in which, you know, there might be a redistribution of what happens, but presumably, someone benefits from that. We’re talking about catastrophes that are so bad that no-one is made better off; they are a net destructive option. And third, that the failure had to be almost immediately apparent, in other words, that within just a month or two it was obvious that something very bad had happened. And so, if we combine all these three things, the idea is that it’s a lose-lose outcome that, once implemented, winds up becoming so infamous that it, again, is referred to almost as something to be avoided.

And with that in mind, we then asked an array of contributors from across the world – again, one of the things Amrita and I, I think, are particularly pleased about is how many different people from different countries we had. We had contributors beyond the United States and the United Kingdom, from Canada, from Belgium, from Italy, Russia, India, Singapore and so forth, to focus on their area of expertise. And in particularly to look at, sort of, what we would describe as off-the-shelf foreign policies, sort of, part and parcel of what is considered ordinary statecraft. Whether we’re talking about multilateral negotiations, or conflict mediation, or sanctions, or the use of force, or what have you. Asking each of these people to look at the, sort of, worst case outcomes they could think of and try to analyse what was it that happened there that could be avoided in the future?

So, to just give one example very quickly, my paper, beyond the introduction, was “How Not to Sanction.” So, I’ve been studying economic sanctions for, oh, dear God, 25 years now, and my paper looked at, sort of, two generally spectacular failures. One was the United Nations sanctions imposed against Iraq after that country invaded Kuwait, the second was the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA and reimpose sanctions on Iran in 2018. And in both instances, what you see are, you know, sanctioning countries, believing that they’re actually following the best advice, very often, of what, you know, scholars and practitioners would do, but winding up radically overestimating what sanctions can accomplish in general. And generally, also making demands that were either so inchoate or so grandiose that there was no way that the target could comply and still exist, in some ways, as a regime, or as a country.

And this led, as a result, to two cases that were simultaneously instances in which the United States did not get what it wanted, or the United Nations did not get what they wanted, and yet, the targeted country suffered humanitarian, you know, catastrophes in which there was an increase in loss of life or child malnutrition, or what have you. And these are the outcomes that, ideally, would like – I would like to see avoided, going forward, because sanctions, clearly, have become a policy of first resort rather than a policy of last resort. And this is a tool that I think has significant utility, but it’s a tool that I would like to see used far more wisely than it’s being used now. And I think I’ll close there.

Hameed Hakimi

Thank you very much, that’s five minutes on the dot, so, a very, very good start. Professor Amrita Narlikar, if I can come to you next, please, your five-minute, or your initial remarks.

Professor Amrita Narlikar

Okay, so, thank you very much, Hameed, and thanks to my wonderful partner in crime, Dan, and a big thank you to Andrew Dorman, the team at International Affairs and Chatham House for supporting our somewhat subversive project.

So, as we looked at some of these failures that Dan just told us about, we wanted to – we wanted a project that has relevance for policy, and one of the ideas that we came up with was the Hippocratic Oath for international relations. The do-no-harm principle that Doctors are asked to apply, the oath that they take, we need something like this for international relations to avoid catastrophic, abject failures that abound around us.

Hameed Hakimi

Sorry. Sorry, Amrita, I think we’ve lost you for a second. You went mute.

Professor Amrita Narlikar

I’m not – yeah.

Hameed Hakimi

No, we couldn’t hear you, sorry.

Professor Valèrie Rosoux

No, go back.

Hameed Hakimi

Go ahead.

Professor Amrita Narlikar

Okay. Yeah, so, the do-no-harm principle, right, that we should do everything that we can to avoid these abject foreign policy failures, and this involves weighing up the pros and the cons of policy options, so that interventions do not worsen an existing situation. But this should be, and often is, standard fare for foreign policymakers. The fact that failures abound, nonetheless, suggests that we may need guidelines to actually implement the “don’t do stupid shit” injunction that is attributed to President Obama.

So, we offered some guidelines towards this, and Dan and I also asked our contributors to pay attention to these guidelines, and I just want to flag up three right now. First, our definition of failure involves, as Dan just outlined, three considerations: actor intentions, timing and distributive implications. Additionally, though, we also recognise the importance of positionality in how particular actors would apply this definition. Failure, like beauty, can lie in the hand – in the eye of the beholder. A deadlock may be seen as a failure by some players, but not by others, so for example, in my article, I talk about how developing countries had greeted some of the Doha deadlocks in past years with elation and the cry of “No deal is better than this deal.” Recognition of this positionality can help guard against some obvious policy failures.

Second, a point relating to positionality. Several of the articles in our special issue factor in the perspectives of seemingly weaker players, for instance the Global South, and we have encouraged our contributors to do this, because we suspect that many classic instances of how not to are a product of ignoring the views and agency of these players. And while including the Global South is not a silver bullet for all real-world problems, factoring in the roles that developing countries have played, and sometimes not played or not been allowed to play, can be key to understanding the policy failures with which we are living with today.

And third, channelling our inner TS Eliots, Dan and I think that between the idea and the reality, between the theory and the outcome, there fall not one, but two shadows. The first shadow is the one that Researchers often refer to. When asked about the limits of their policy impact, scholars tend to say that practitioners either “do not heed their advice,” or “they use this advice for self-serving, overs – self-serving purposes, or they use oversimplified versions of their analyses.” In our special issue we recognised that some policy failures derive from the ways in which Researchers conveyed and practitioners received scientific advice. But we’re also convinced that it is high time that we, as Researchers, also pay attention to a second shadow, which has received very little attention thus far: the inadequacies, biases, hubris of academic analyses in the first place, which would’ve contributed to poor policy decisions, irrespective of the filtration process between research and practice.

And so, while recognising the importance of openminded engagement with scientific advice by practitioners, in this special issue we’ve really pushed ourselves and our scholarly peers to reflect on our own limitations and misjudgements, and we hope this will encourage other scholars to do the same. I’ll stop there.

Hameed Hakimi

Thank you very much, another five minutes, very, very timely remark. So, no pressure, then.

Professor Valèrie Rosoux

Yes, no pressure. Thank you, Hameed. Can you hear me well, right?

Hameed Hakimi

Yes.

Professor Valèrie Rosoux

Yes, so, first of all, I would like to thank you for having me here. Thank you for having me in the special issue. It’s both a pleasure and a privilege for me to be here with you all. Five minutes, I would say my initial remarks. By training, I’m a Philosopher and a Political Scientist, and if I try to summarise my obsession in terms of research, I will give you one simple question, which is, how can we deal with the past in the aftermath of mass atrocities? Basically, that’s what I’m focusing on all the time, almost all the time.

To address this question, I met with policymakers, practitioners, individuals, mostly victim/survivors, and have been puzzled by two diverging and even contradictory, attitudes towards reconciliation, right. On the one hand, most policymakers, practitioners, scholars, call for reconciliation and consider it as an obvious goal, probability, OK, is here, and that’s what you think. On the other hand, most victims I met with in Rwanda, in the Balkans, in Colombia expressed a real bitterness towards the same notion. So, my question as a scholar, but also sometimes as a practitioner, is what can we do with these two attitudes? And I decided to take them both – to take both attitudes seriously, and a decent goal or an obvious goal, because they tell us something about the scope and the limits of reconciliation as a peace-building process, if you want.

Oh, I still have two minutes.

Hameed Hakimi

Yes.

Professor Valèrie Rosoux

Maybe I – good. So, I’d like to go further, and maybe to evoke one anecdote, which is the starting point of the article in the special issue. It’s that like many other Belgian children, I grew up reading the famous Adventures of Tintin. You probably know that, right, and it was written a century ago. When I first discovered “Tintin in the Congo,” I was far too young to realise how colonialist and, also, racist it was, right, it was fine to me. And after that, 30 years later, I reread Tintin with my own child, and I saw the things from a very different perspective.

Why am I speaking about this anecdote? Because there is an episode where Tintin intervenes to help two Congolese men fighting for a hat, and he said, “Don’t worry, I’m going to settle the issue.” He cuts the hat into two pieces, gives one piece to each other, and everybody is free and happy; “Thank you for your great mediation.” It has something to do with international affairs, because it says something about two assumptions that are massively shared in the field, I’m afraid. The first one is that we can fix it attitude will help us resolve issues quickly and effectively. The second assumption is that the ultimate objective of post-war mediation is reconciliation. However, neither of these assumptions corresponds, to me, to the reality of post-conflict settings around the world. First, intractable conflicts cannot be easily fixed, and surely not quickly fixed. We don’t think in years, but in generations. Second, the process often leads to more bitterness, more resentment among parties. So, therefore, I try to unpack, a little bit, the issue.

Hameed Hakimi

That’s well within our five minutes’ time. So, if I can follow-up your wonderful initial remarks by a question to all the panellists, in the same order I will go, starting with you, Dan, and then to Amrita, and then to you, Valèrie, but it’s a single question. So, throughout this work that you’ve undertaken, what would you say defines an effective intervention, both in terms of what it may look like, but also what it is – ought to avoid? So, you know, we’ve talked about failure, we’ve talked about the wider context, but what defines an effective intervention?

Daniel W. Drezner

Ooh. I’m not going to lie, we shied away from that a little bit, in part, because – and I apologise for the language of social science here, but we really were selecting on the dependent variable in terms of going this, which is, we wanted to look only at the, sort of, catastrophes, less so at what were widely considered successes. But I would say that, for me at least, and, you know, I think I can speak for some of the other contributors here, I guess we would say we would define it a success if it somewhat met the intentions of the policymaker who instituted policy. In other words, there was some connection between why the policy was initiated, and then what the outcome wound up being.

Second, that that outcome stayed stable for, hopefully, a generation. You know, one of the things that we talked about in the introduction was the idea that, you know, there are many people who would like to say, let’s say, the Bretton Woods, you know, system was a failure, or neo-liberalism or the Washington consensus is a failure. And while those are certainly not unalloyed successes, these are regimes that lasted for at least a generation, if not longer, because it did seem that they delivered some of the goods some of the time to some of the people. So, that, I think, would also count as a success.

And third, ideally, I think you would – success would presumably be one in which, you know, to follow on from what Amrita said, you would have both the policymaker and, also, those who were the targets of the policy have some sense of equity or equities, some sort of stake in maintaining whatever was instituted. There were valid reasons for why they would want to persist in the status quo, even if the status quo was far from perfect. that it, you know, at least hopefully, didn’t make people worse off, so, I guess that would be, sort of, how I would have defined it.

Hameed Hakimi

Great. Can I come to you, Amrita, with the same question: what defines an effective intervention?

Professor Amrita Narlikar

Sure. So, let me now take the – take a couple of examples from my own article on trade negotiations, and I’ll give you three small examples of the don’ts and then the do’s, right? And this is something that we encouraged all our contributors to think about, what doesn’t work, and can we learn something from what doesn’t, to what could be a good intervention, a successful intervention? And so, from – in my case, one of the insights is don’t assume an inevitability of a positive link between economic integration and peace. Under conditions of weaponised interdependence, under conditions of increasing geo-economic threats, the opposite may sometimes be true. And from that don’t, we get to a do, do rethink the purpose of multilateralism, trade and multilateralism, beyond silos of economics and security.

So, even now when we have increasing geoeconomic threats, proposals on reforming the WTO are mainly driven by assumptions of the old system, and mostly to improve the reliability of trade flows per se, rather than address the issue of their instrumentation and misuse. But this strategy has not been working very well. So, the dos would involve, think through how the system can incorporate security considerations, or just another example, don’t assume that technocratic solutions will suffice. This relates very much, also, to some of what Dan has been working on, what Valèrie has been working on.

In my case, we’ve got something that Rob Howse has called – a Trade Lawyer, has called the “insider network of the WTO,” right, but that’s not going to be enough if we only come up with perfect technocratic solutions. What we need is, we need to have those solutions work for real people on the ground and, also, show that they are working of real people on the ground. And this – an intervention of this kind then involves the building of persuasive narratives. I think I’ll stop there. I have a couple more, but I want to hear, also, what Valèrie has to say.

Hameed Hakimi

Okay, perfect.

Daniel W. Drezner

Can I just follow on that very…

Hameed Hakimi

Of course.

Daniel W. Drezner

…briefly, just to point out the technocratic point that Amrita said? That also applies to the sanctions community, because one of the things that I think a lot of scholars in economic statecraft have done significant work on is, how do you make sure that when sanctions are imposed, that the target feels genuine economic pain, and how do you make sure that that pain is focussed on elites rather than the broad-based population? And I think in that sense, governments have listened to what these technocrats have done very well. The problem is that they haven’t absorbed the larger lesson, which is, even though they’ve gotten better at imposing pain, they don’t realise that that’s not the only condition for success. So, as a result, and we see this in the case of the Trump administration’s imposition of sanctions against Iran, there’s no denying they’ve imposed significant costs on Iran, but by putting so many demands out there, conditions of the sanctions, including many that have nothing to do with nuclear proliferation, they guaranteed that there would never be a negotiated outcome, ensuring pain, you know, for years to come.

Hameed Hakimi

Thank you. Valèrie, what defines an effective intervention?

Professor Valèrie Rosoux

Yes, an effective conflict mediation in my case, right? I would say that a mediation could be effective, it’s – if it is neither moralistic nor euphoric in terms of aims and in terms of timing. If I may explain a little bit, the process of reconciliation is assumed to be self-evident, and it is not – but not at all. I remember one interview that I made with a close advisor of Hillary Clinton back in years ago, in Washington, and she was explaining that the US were launching a broad process of reconciliation projects. I don’t remember how many millions of dollars, in the Balkans and in the Congo. And after 30 minutes, I asked what she meant by reconciliation, right, and she stopped and told me – she was Ambassador – “Reconciliation has to happen as soon as possible, at all levels of society.” I didn’t know what it was, right, and it was the same pattern all the time with all the Africa, there’s – everybody. So, I realised that it was not important to know what it was about for them, it was enough.

However, if we consider – I’ll give you one example, very, very quick. We use the same word for different scenarios, at least four different potential scenarios. International war, the other is the enemy to fight. Civil war, the other is the traitor to punish. That’s not the same kind of violence. Colonial war, the other is a child to educate, or barbarian to civilise, right, it depends. And for case – for a fourth scenario, genocide, the other is an animal to exterminate. The – we talk about reconciliation in all cases, and the processes afterwards have to be differentiated, right, so, it’s a brief example.

For the rest, why not moralistic one anecdote? I’m in Kigali 15 years ago, and I’m in a street and I see an old lady who says something in Kinyarwanda, I don’t understand anything. I’m with a PhD student from Rwanda, and she looked at me in a very harsh way, “Patriot.” I said, “What’s happening here?” and I said, “Agea, what did she say?” Didn’t want to translate, and it put pressure, because I was, you know, the Supervisor, and he said she said, “Go back home, it’s too late.” I was, you know, I was super, super depressed. She was right, it was too late. I – as a Belgian academic in Rwanda, it was far too late for her. There was nothing to add, right? So, surely not moralistic, coming with a kind of, objective, you should reconcile with the other, it’s admirable.

And the second, while not euphoric. One example, one Colombia woman; all women, and it’s not on purpose, I’m sorry. She told me at a certain moment, “Don’t touch upon my hatred, they took all I have. That’s all I have right now, okay, hatred.” So, she was worrying thanks to her hatred. Why was it super important not to be euphoric about that? That, to me, emotions after a war are neither positive not negative, they are, and we take the people the way they are, right, without saying, “You should forgive, you should” – you know, but I don’t want to be too long now. If I have more time, I will go further.

Hameed Hakimi

Sure. I’m sure we’ll revisit some of these aspects again. So, I’m very happy to open the floor. We also have audience online. What I’ll do is, I’ll take some questions from the room. If – when the microphone comes to you, please identify yourself and your affiliation. I will take the questions online. I mean, there are quite a few. I might put them together and present them as a single question.

But if I can take the first question from the room please. The gentleman there had his hand first.

Peter Cadbury

Peter Cadbury, ordinary member. What advice would you give world leaders that could lead to Putin climbing down with at least a little dignity, or does it have to be a lose-lose?

Hameed Hakimi

Is that to any particular member, or the panel?

Peter Cadbury

No, it’s to all and any of them.

Hameed Hakimi

Okay.

Daniel W. Drezner

You’d think I’d have a good answer to this. I mean, the only thing I would say is that, you know, it would be really nice if US policymakers, and they haven’t done this too much, but they’ve said enough to make it a problem, stopped saying that the goal is to weaken Russia permanently. ‘Cause that is a – you know, I think it was Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, who said that back in May, and it was immediately walked back. But all you have to do is say that once and, you know, that’s what Russians are immediately going to incite.

So, I do think – and in some ways, this ties into the paper I wrote about sanctions, because one of the problems that I think the United States, particularly, has with sanctions is that for sanctions to work, there have to be two forms of credible commitment. The first form of credible commitment, which everyone is aware of, is you have to make the target believe, “If you do this we will sanction you.” In other words, you have to believe that it’s a credible threat that sanctioning will happen. The United States is very good at that. No-one doubts that the United States will sanction.

But the second credible commitment is neglected and is equally important, which is, the target has to believe that if it does make a concession, or if it does acquiesce on some issue, or if there are compromises reached, the sanctions will be lifted. You will return back to the status quo ante, and the United States is exceptionally good at imposing sanctions, and lousy at lifting them. And so, I do think what US policymakers and NATO, you know, European policymakers to some extent as well, could start doing is saying, “What is it that Russia would have to do for there to be a return to the pre-February situation?” And let’s be clear, in some ways, we’re never going back to a pre-February situation. I mean, some of those technology sanctions are not going to be lifted, ever.

But the idea that Russia can re-join the Community of Nations, that Russia will, you know, not be barred from the World Cup, or the Olympics, or what have you. You know, the idea that you can ex – you know, tell Russians, and as well as telling Putin, “Russia’s going to be treated as, you know, the – a Great Power even if it loses this war,” in some ways, which is a tough message to deliver but, I think, one that has to be done. Because based on what Putin has even said in the last 24 hours, he keeps – you know, he’s clearly of the philosophy that if you’re in a hole, you dig harder to get out, and that’s not going to work for him.

So, I do think that what can be done is not to compromise with Putin, not to indicate we will scale back our support of Ukraine, but rather to indicate that if they lose that war, that doesn’t mean the end of Russia.

Hameed Hakimi

Would you like to add something, before I go to Amrita? Amrita, would you like to add anything to that, to pick up that question?

Professor Amrita Narlikar

Sort of, just, well, two points. One, I’ve, sort of – I think Dan answered that question very well in terms of the immediate, right? But there’s – there are also some important long-term lessons to this, and one of them is about weaponised interdependence. We have seen Russia weaponizing Germany’s European energy dependence on it, and what we need is a rethink of globalisation, right, we need to think about how we can realign our supply chains. So, that’s one point.

The second thing that comes out very starkly to me is how the Global South came into this whole business, right, and here, again, there was – India’s just one example, and I, personally, was disappointed about how India did not condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine right away. But, having said that, was I surprised? No, not at all. You just have to look at India’s extreme dependence on Russia for military supplies. You have to look at a very difficult neighbourhood that India’s in, and India’s actually shot itself a little bit in the foot there, because by not speaking up on the side of democracy, it ends up in a China corner, right, and there is a link developing between Russia and China.

So, there – so, the second big takeaway from this is we need to be paying more attention to the Global South, and I use Global South as a shorthand, because all these countries have very different imperatives, and we think that they’re all there and they don’t matter until we need their votes, but they matter.

Professor Valèrie Rosoux

A very short comment, or additional comment, yes. More in terms of attitude, I would say that arrogance never helps, never. It’s a pitfall and it’s really risky. We carry on research now with different generations within the same families in Louvain, at the University of Louvain, with other teams abroad, and we interview three generations each family, okay. That’s very interesting, the emotions that are transmitted systematically from one generation to the next are – the two major emotions are resentment and humiliation. I mean, it’s just like, if I can use a metaphor, just like a cascade in a mountain, you know, or something, there is nothing you can do to stop the cascade.

Hameed Hakimi

An avalanche.

Professor Valèrie Rosoux

Yeah, an avalan – yeah, maybe, yeah. Okay, but even if it’s a small cascade, but it just, it goes on, it’s super durable, so, I would never, never advise any policymaker to be arrogant, and that’s what I saw the last days, regarding the situation.

Hameed Hakimi

Okay. I’m going to – I hope the online participants don’t mind, I’m going to put some of their questions together, so we can tackle them jointly. I’m seeing quite a few questions on this dissonance between Global South and Global North, and the language of multilateralism and globalisation, and phenomena like that. So, maybe if I can come to you, Amrita, why – this is a question from Dr Shivkumar, “Do you agree that globalisation and multilateralism has collapsed, then, from – based on what the special issue has tackled? How can we frame globalisation and multilateralism globally, if it seems things have gone really badly?”

Professor Amrita Narlikar

Yeah, should I just respond, Hameed?

Hameed Hakimi

Yes, please.

Professor Amrita Narlikar

Okay, perfect.

Hameed Hakimi

And we’ll invite the two other panellists, as well.

Professor Amrita Narlikar

Okay. So, has multilateralism collapsed, and has globalisation collapsed? No, but they are not doing well, either. And my concern, and as I argue also in my chapter, is if we don’t take the many failures, for example, of trade multilateralism, seriously, and, yes, taking into account the deals that were reached earlier this year at the WTO, but overall, if we don’t take some of the very serious problems affecting the multilateral trading system, then we will get a much bigger problem. And that much bigger problem will look like countries will – they’re not turning inwards yet, but we are seeing the WTO getting more and more marginalised. We are seeing the emergence of different kinds of regional agreements, and we’re also seeing some isolationist tendencies.

These will get worse if we don’t pay attention to the bigger problems that globalisation has, and one of those big problems is what we’ve touched upon already in the context of weaponised interdependence. Another problem is that even though, in aggregate, globalisation has left many, many countries and many people better off, and we’ve seen poverty alleviation happening, until the pandemic broke out, there is, however, a problem that that’s not how it’s – globalisation is seen in different parts of the Global South, right? And so, globalisation needs a serious realignment of its rules to allow a different type of – a different set of rules that allow a linkage between economics and security to be made, and we’re not seeing that happening in the WTO right now, or in many other international organisations.

And second, globalisation also needs to work for countries of the Global South, and this means, in terms of process and also outcomes, it means giving them voice, and it means giving them – ensuring results that also allow developing countries and people within them to be better off.

Hameed Hakimi

Sure. If I can come to you, Daniel, this is the question – I’m going to add another question on top of – and then, I’ll come to the room in a moment. If multilateralism and globalisation works, arguably, and base – has got some health issues, then one of the question is, we see often that sanctions are imposed on weaker countries, but who holds the more, or the most powerful countries to account, so, who put sanctions on them?

Daniel W. Drezner

Okay, so, first to follow-up on Amrita, which gives me time for my brain to think about the answer to the second question, I completely agree with what she says, and I would also say that part of the issue here, and this is one of the macro themes that shoots through the entire special issue, is the power of narrative, and the ways in which narrative – you know, narratives, sort of, wind up being defined in such a way they don’t necessarily correspond to reality. And I think this is – one of the examples here is one of globalisation as somehow having failed or somehow not working. I think that’s incorrect. I think even globalisation as defined by neo-liberalism has actually generated significant gains for, not just the Global North, but the Global South. You’ve seen a massive reduction of poverty over the last 25 years that should not be ignored.

But I think with – just that brute fact doesn’t necessarily change hearts and minds, and I think another example of this, by the way, is how during the war in Ukraine, Russia’s actually been surprisingly successful at selling the narrative, particularly to sub-Saharan Africa, that it is the sanctions that are causing high food prices down there. We – it’s not the sanctions. It’s the fact that Russia, by invading Ukraine, has prevented Ukraine’s food from being exported to sub-Saharan Africa. And so, this is a case where I think sometimes Western diplomats need to be better at, sort of, developing the counter-narrative.

And now I’ve completely forgotten your second question. You’ll have to just say it one more time.

Hameed Hakimi

No, it’s fine. If I can quickly come to you, and we’ll revisit that question on sanctions.

Daniel W. Drezner

Okay.

Hameed Hakimi

Did you want to add anything on that, the mandate…?

Daniel W. Drezner

Oh, “Who takes the powerful into account?” So, I will say this, one of the interesting things that you’re seeing in terms of sanctions is that the United States is now so ambitious with this instrument that it is sanctioning powerful countries. The idea that you were going to sanction China with the idea that that would somehow improve the terms of trade, or that you’re going to sanction Russia with the idea that that will cause it to withdraw territorially from Ukraine, these are extremely ambitious ideas when it comes to sanctions. I would actually warn the questioner that the idea that sanctions would – will bring the most powerful to account actually wildly exaggerates what sanctions can do, and the truth is that they’re not necessarily going to be a useful tool that way.

In some ways, the most powerful tool, even imposed against the powerful, is not always material, but rather social. The idea that a country that commits – you know, that functions, even if it’s a great power, as a rogue state, is no – you know, becomes persona non grata in respectable circles. I think, in some ways, this is just as damning as the material sanctions. I mean, for example, South Africa; it’s often talked about how the most punishing sanction they faced wasn’t the arms embargo, or wasn’t the other embargoes that were put in place during the Apartheid era, but the fact that it couldn’t participate in either the Olympics or the World Cup.

Hameed Hakimi

Valèrie, anyone who wants to add anything? Okay, I’ll go to the floor. The woman there with the white shirt, please, at the back, she had her hand raised first; and then I’ll come to – if I can put maybe three questions together, if you can be succinct, please. Thank you.

Armida van Rij

Thanks very much. Hi, Armida van Rij, I’m a Research Fellow with the International Security Programme here at Chatham House. Thanks very much to the panel so far. This has been a really fascinating discussion. I just wanted to pick you up on your point about sanctions there, Daniel, if I may, and prod you a bit more about the intent for which sanctions are applied, and the extent to which they’re applied with the objective of changing state behaviour. Just because, as we’ve said so often, they’re becoming a first resort for states to respond in particular international circumstances, but actually, that’s not necessarily the most effective tool to do that. Thanks.

Hameed Hakimi

Okay, I’ll take a couple more and then…

Daniel W. Drezner

Okay, of course, go ahead.

Hameed Hakimi

Yeah, the gentleman here, please. Thanks.

Simli Gosal

Simli Gosal, Chatham House member. A question obviously on sanctions. Now, sanctions are normally imposed on the weaker country, as you mentioned, and demands are made on the weaker country to comply with the stronger country’s demands. However, can ever good sanctions, medical sanction, be morally right, can they be justified?

Hameed Hakimi

Last question, then I’ll come back to you later, with the panel. I’ll ask this gentleman here.

James Thackara

James Thackara, I’ve worked with ten human rights group, half of them 18 years back in the Soviet Union. As a result, I represent both the campaigns of Navalny, and I did quite a lot of broadcasts back in 2014, and we were very aware of Aleksandr Dugin and that his policy statements are required reading in the Russian Military. I’m asking you, gentleman, for sanctions of my colleague and my countryman, was anybody unaware of the fact that his Eurasian policy – this is the gentleman, who anybody doesn’t know, whose daughter was blown up a month ago – is considered by many there’s some dubiousness about the mind of Putin, in fact. And his Eurasia concept is that, basically, China, Russia and India will unite 70% of the world population to destroy America. He’s a Nazi, he’s a Russian Nazi, essentially. You may – there’s a lot of scepticism about that but, I mean, the way this is going and the way it looks to me is that Putin will get Ukraine, and I don’t like losing wars. Our country’s been losing wars since the Korean War, one war after another.

I wonder if anybody considered the fact that by imposing sanctions and putting that kind of pressure on the Russian economy, the Dugin policy might actually lead to a 5,000-word statement of eternal love between the Chinese and the Russians, and the fact that the rouble has risen in value because the Chinese are putting a lot of money into oil. They’ve got all the raw materials in the world in Russia and they never got along before. Was this perhaps a mistake?

Hameed Hakimi

Alright.

Daniel W. Drezner

Okay.

Hameed Hakimi

So, just quickly, if you can tackle those two, we’ll go to the rest.

Daniel W. Drezner

Yes, much – yeah, questions.

Hameed Hakimi

Okay.

Daniel W. Drezner

Let me start with the food sanctions first, which is, I think this is actually – I didn’t talk about this in the article, but we’re at the point now where actually there are no – usually no sanctions when it comes to food and medicine. You know, and this is one of the les – yeah, this is one of the lessons of the Iraq War. Technically I don’t believe there are any sanctions on Russian food exports.

Simli Gosal

Generally.

Daniel W. Drezner

But also, in general, I mean, this is one of the hard lessons learned from the Iraq sanctions of the 1990s. Now, one of the problems sometimes is that because sanctions are shifted somewhat from trade to finance, this is where things get complicated, because it’s not so much that there are sanctions on food or medicine. It’s the question of how do you finance those things, and by doing that, do you wind up running afoul of sanctions rules? And we see this with, let’s say, with respect to, you know, sending humanitarian supplies to Taliban-run Afghanistan. So, I do think it would be good if there was an institutionalised carve-out on that front. But on the whole, I don’t think any sanctioning state, at this point, is terribly enthusiastic about food or medicine.

On sanctions changing state behaviour, I – one of the issues, I would suggest, that is problematic, particularly with the case of Iraq and Iran, and I think this is a stalking horse, unfortunately in the Russia case as well, is that very often, while sometimes sanctions are imposed with stated concessions, with stated, you know, “This has to be done for sanctions to be lifted,” in far too many instances, and the United States is particular on this one, those aren’t the actual goals. The actual goal is regime change, and I think that is certainly true of Saddam Hussein in the 1990s. I certainly think it’s true of the Trump administration in Iran post-2018, and unfortunately, at times, it seems like it’s true of Russia right now, for quite understandable reasons, but nonetheless, the moment you amp it up to regime change, it’s a problem.

With respect to Aleksandr Dugin, I’m going to respectfully suggest that, while I do know that he’s occasionally read in the Kremlin, I’m not sure how seriously he’s taken, even by the Russian military.

In terms of the sanctions, whether or not they have somehow pushed, you know, Russia further into the arms of China and India, not sure how welcoming Chinese and Indian arms are at the moment. And I think the examples that we can cite is how Putin was treated when he went to the SCO meeting in Samarkand, at which he had to publicly acknowledge that Xi was asking him about the war, and then, Modi had to actually scold him about the war. So, I would say that the, sort of, idea of a Russia-India-China axis is vastly exaggerated, and I’m not worried about that.

Hameed Hakimi

Thank you. Did you want to add anything, Amrita or Valèrie? No, okay. I will go next…

Professor Amrita Narlikar

Actually, Hameed, I would. May I?

Daniel W. Drezner

Oh, I mean, there’s also…

Hameed Hakimi

Oh please, please go ahead.

Professor Amrita Narlikar

There was a question on Indian foreign policy there. I’m a little bit more worried about the Russia-China axis. I’m not so much worried about India joining a Russia and China axis, but I do worry very much about India being practically driven in – being driven into the arms of those two players, and India is very – because it’s not got alternatives, right? And so, India is really hedging right now, and we’ve seen – I mean, so, the Indian Foreign Minister was asked, Jaishankar was asked, “On whose side is India?” And he responded, “Well, India is not on anyone’s side, India’s on India’s side.”

And then, to me, that looks like the philosophy of the Ents, the shepherds of the trees in the Lord of the Rings, because – and that’s what they say, you know, that’s what Treebeard says, he says, “I’m not on anybody’s side, because nobody’s on my side.” And that sounds like – an Ent-like philosophy sounds very attractive, but what India needs is allies, right? Now, it doesn’t have to be a formal alliance, but it does need closer relations with likeminded partners on military supplies, but also economic integration, right?

There is Atmanirbhar Bharat, self-reliant India, that sometimes looks quite worrying. It looks a little bit like India in Nehruvian times, and I don’t think India should be undoing the decades of poverty alleviation and growth that it has achieved, right? To be able to maintain that, it needs to be working more closely with allies, and this is why I would say that we, in the West, should be paying more attention to India, and probably finding ways to deepen our collaboration on dual-use technology, on infrastructure, on, you know, on – in the digital sector, and also conventional military in terms of, you know, just, sort of, trade in goods and services. Old-fashioned trade in goods and services and having closer linkages there.

Hameed Hakimi

Okay, thank you. Can I get – the gentleman there, please, he had his hand first.

Richard Pauley

Hello, my name’s Richard Pauley, I’m a member of Chatham – ordinary member of Chatham House. So far as I can see, all the contributors to this edition, which of course, I’ve only had a chance to skim through very quickly, are talking about intergovernmental negotiations. I wonder if you see any separate value, or have – in analysing twin-track negotiations, which have been quite important features of – I think Professor Narlikar would confirm, between India and Pakistan at various times, even – they’ve more often failed than not, but why have they failed?

Hameed Hakimi

Sure. You, please, and then, I’ll come to you.

Nigel Toft

Could you comment on the success or lack of –…

Hameed Hakimi

Your name?

Nigel Toft

…Nigel Toft, ordinary member of Chatham House – on the success of 70 years of United States sanctions on Cuba, insofar as you see it?

Hameed Hakimi

A question from you, please.

Emma Mawdsley

You.

Hameed Hakimi

No, it’s – sorry, it’s the woman.

Emma Mawdsley

Thank you, Emma Mawdsley, University of Cambridge. Amrita, I think, if I heard you right, you mentioned something about academics and thinktank members, the mistakes that we’ve made in contribution to policy failure. Would you say a bit more about what they are?

Hameed Hakimi

Sure. Can I come to you first, Amrita, on the last question first, please?

Professor Amrita Narlikar

Sure. It’s great to see you, Emma, and so, I’ll give you an example from my own article, but we actually explicitly encouraged all the contributors to have a self-reflection exercise, right, and we asked them to address two questions. We asked them to think about how would, you know, how would things have been better if policymakers had followed their advice? So, that’s the first shadow, but also, two, how would they do things differently, what – knowing what they know now, and did they, themselves, make mistakes in the advice they gave practitioners?

And so, I would ask you to read those contributions, but now, to give you one example from my own article, one of the, sort of – I have some successes in terms of policy advice, but I’m not going to bore you with those. I’ll tell you about the failure, the problem, and the problem was that the WTO – the context of Geneva – now, there’s a Brussels context and there’s a Geneva context, and there is something very attractive about that clean, technocratic world, right? And there was a period in the early 2000s where there was great hope that we would find technocratic solutions, right, and I bought, I mean, I bought into that somewhat. And so, while I was always urging the technocrats to bring in political leadership for breakthroughs in the Doha negotiations, it was not obviously apparent to me at the time how important that political engagement was and how important the narratives had to be, right?

So, the idea that we all know at that time, before this new set of threats that face us: geo-economics, more abuse of the system, more breaking of the rules, or the spirit to the law in the WTO, that was a different world in the 2000s. And so, for me it was, “Isn’t it obvious that trade is a good thing, so, why are we getting resistance to it?” And now I’m a little bit older, and hopefully, at least a little bit wiser, and the – and so, my last book is on narratives, right? The previous book that I did is on narratives and how much narratives matter, and trade needs to work for people, but it also needs to be shown to work for people. And that’s not just a be – that’s not just a clean, technocratic exercise, that’s – you know, it’s about culture, it’s about people, it’s about politics, it’s much – it’s a much more interesting exercise, right? But that was one of my – one of the lessons that I learnt.

Hameed Hakimi

Thank you very much. If I can come to you, Dan, on the two questions.

Daniel W. Drezner

Sure. So, quickly, sanctions on Cuba are an unmitigated disaster and do not work, and I’m not going to defend them, even remotely. So, that’s an easy answer.

I did want to follow up on – to yours, ‘cause if Amrita gets to mention her previous book, I get to mention mine, that’s the law of parity. I wrote a book called “The Ideas Industry” about this, and actually what I – one mistake that sometimes academics make, because we’re always encouraged to have impact, we’re always encouraged to contribute – and I think it was actually, I wouldn’t say it was a British Member of Parliament, but scholar turned Member of Parliament, Rory Stewart, who, when he was advising on Afghanistan, made a great analogy about what it was like to give advice to, you know, the – to IFOR at the time. Which was, “Imagine someone comes up to you and says, ‘Listen, we’re going to drive a jeep off a cliff,’ and the question is, should – if you’re driving off – the jeep off the cliff, should you wear a seatbelt or not?” And of course, Rory would say, “Well, I would not recommend driving the jeep off the cliff,” at which point the General says, “Oh, no, let’s be very clear, the jeep is going of the cliff, that’s happening. The question is, do you have the seatbelt on or not?” And he would say, “Well, in that case, I guess you should probably wear the seatbelt,” at which point the army then issues a release saying, “Rory Stewart recommends driving off a cliff with your seatbelt on.”

And this is – in some ways this is the danger, which is as an expert, if you advise, you know, the government, there’s also a danger that sometimes you’re conferring legitimacy with that advice, even if they’re taking one-tenth of your advice and actually doing what they were going to do anyway. And so, in some ways I think that’s the, sort of, cautionary tale that I would warn on, as well. There are times, not necessarily when the academic is giving wrong advice, but the mere act of giving advice winds up legitimising a policy that is probably not a good idea.

Hameed Hakimi

Okay, and I know there’s a question left, but I’m sorry, I’m going to go to Valèrie. If you want to make any remarks, yes, and I want to ask you a question as well, you know. In your piece, you talk about “the slippery slope” and the “slippery tracks of reconciliation.” You know, I wanted you to give us a little bit more elaboration on that, and what to really avoid when you talk about reconciliation, and then, that might be the last word. I’m really sorry, I’m running out of time, and we have a reception. We can carry this on in the reception.

Professor Valèrie Rosoux

To be on time, I have one minute and 50 seconds for the two question.

Hameed Hakimi

No problem.

Professor Valèrie Rosoux

I’ll be very brief.

Hameed Hakimi

Let’s see how we can tackle it, yeah.

Professor Valèrie Rosoux

Okay, so, regarding people-to-people negotiations, you are rig – after a war, at least, intergovernmental negotiations are not enough, for sure. Reconciliation, even not in a maximalist sense, but from a, even, minimalist perspective, it’s all about individuals. Leadership is key to launch the initiatives, but it’s impossible to impose from outside, third parties, or from the top to impose reconciliation. It doesn’t work, just simply it doesn’t work.

So, a success story, not only failed stories, is the Franco-German negotiation and the treaty of Élysée. It’s really far away, 1963 – because it forced governments to meet every two other month, and so on and so forth. But it also created the Office Franco-Allemand de la Jeunesse, Franco-German Youth Office. And there are more than nine millions of youth who participated in exchanges, and I think that it is really crucial.

And of the pitfalls, right?

Hameed Hakimi

Yes, to avoid, absolutely.

Professor Valèrie Rosoux

Yeah, what to avoid. Two things, arrogance, I already talked about, I already said something about that, and haste. So, it doesn’t make any sense. I remember one people at the State Department who was telling me, “In Rwanda, what are they doing? It’s time to move on, times to move on.” He was constantly, you know, referring to this war, and then, you know, it’s been 14 years, it’s nothing, nothing.

And maybe the last metaphor, the city of Koblenz in Germany is a wonderful place where you have the confluence of the Rhine River and the Moselle River. What is really interesting is that both rivers, they keep their colour for a long time, right? They are not mixing each other directly, and it’s the same after a war. You cannot expect people affected by a war – by violence, like a war, to get reconciled in a hurry, it doesn’t work.

Hameed Hakimi

Thank you very much. I’m really sorry, we had so many great questions, I hope we did justice to raising them, as the Chair. Thank you so much. Please give a round of applause to our panel. It’s been a wonderful [audio cuts out – 62:44]. Thanks to all our participants online. Thank you, Amrika – Amrita. We’ll miss you at the reception, but hopefully, the conversation carries on. Please follow my colleagues to show you where the reception is, and please stick around for the free copies and the tote bag. Thank you so much.

Professor Amrita Narlikar

Thanks, everyone, thanks, Hameed. Have a great evening.

Professor Valèrie Rosoux

Thanks, all.

Daniel W. Drezner

Thank you.

Hameed Hakimi

All the best, thanks.