A New Vision for American Foreign Policy

Dr Lindsay Newman

Good afternoon. I would like to welcome all of you to Chatham House. My name is Dr Lindsay Newman. I am a Senior Research Fellow in the US and Americas Programme here at Chatham House. We are very fortunate today to be hearing from Professor Stephen Walt. He is going to be speaking on American – a New Vision for American Foreign Policy. Professor Walt is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. He’s also the Author of numerous books, on foreign policy, including his latest, The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of US Primacy. The text surveys, liberal hegemony under three recent US administrations, that of President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, and it also takes a stab at assessing US foreign policy under current President Donald Trump, which is as timely as ever.

Before I turn it over to Professor Walt, a couple of small procedural points. Professor Walt will be speaking, after which he and I will have a brief share of – brief questions, and then I will turn it over to all of you for Q&A. This event is on the record, so please feel free to tweet about it, using the hashtag #CHEvents, and finally, if you could please silence your phones for the duration. Thank you very much, and with that, over to you [applause].

Professor Stephen M. Walt

Thank you. Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here today to talk about American foreign policy. I want to thank Lindsay for the introduction. Please, thank all of you for coming. So, I’m going to outline a different vision for American foreign policy, but the obvious question to start with is, well, why do we need one? The reason is simple: American foreign policy has been mostly a failure, since the end of the Cold War, and I will try to explain why. Along the way, I will also explain why Donald Trump is not going to be the one who provides that new vision or is able to implement it. So, think back, remember the early 1990s? The United States was on good terms with all the major powers, including Russia and China. Iraq was being disarmed, Iran had no enrichment capacity. We thought in 94 we had capped North Korea’s nuclear programme. Globalisation is spreading rapidly, with the formation of the World Trade Organisation and the opening up of financial markets. NATO and the European Union were expanding, democracy was spreading, the Oslo Accords gave us all hope for a lasting peace in the Middle East. The American Military seemed unstoppable, the US economy was doing remarkably well. The wind was at our back and life was good.

Look at the world we live in today. China’s power and ambitions have grown steadily for 25 years. Russia has seized Crimea, interfered in some other states, relations with Moscow are now worse than at any time since the Cold War. Moscow and Beijing are increasingly aligned. Democracy is now in retreat. According to Freedom House, 2018 was the 13th consecutive year in which the level of global freedom declined, and in 2017, the Economist magazine, that notorious left-wing publication downgraded the United States from a full democracy to the category of flawed democracy. North Korea, India and Pakistan have all tested nuclear weapons, Iran has acquired the capacity to build one, if it ever decides it wants to. Repeated American efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace were all humiliating failures, and the two-state solution is now farther away than ever. The United States was attacked on September 11th, we responded by invading Afghanistan and then Iraq. Both of these wars ended up being costly disasters that weakened our overall position, and the American Military, though still very capable, no longer looks unstoppable. Indeed, much of the Middle East is now divided, and American interference helped create failed states in Libya and Yemen and Syria.

So, back in 2016, when Donald Trump called US foreign policy, “A complete and total disaster,” and said, “the foreign policy establishment was out of touch and unaccountable,” a lot of Americans nodded their heads and agreed with that assessment. The tap root of these failures, I argue in The Hell of Good Intentions, was our attempt to promote or create a truly global liberal order, a grand strategy that I and others have called liberal hegemony. It’s liberal not in being left-wing but because it seeks to promote those classic liberal values: democracy, markets, the rule of law, human rights. It’s hegemony because it sees the United States as the indispensable power that is uniquely qualified to lead that process. When you think about it, this is a highly revisionist grand strategy. Instead of defending American territory, perhaps helping uphold the balance of power in some key regions, this strategy tries to change the political status quo around the world, peacefully if possible, but if necessary, using force, and essentially, remake the world in America’s image.

The problem is, of course, that this strategy is fundamentally flawed. For starters, it allows our allies to freeride and increases American defence requirements. Second, trying to spread these values threatens non-democratic regimes, who begin to resist, in various ways, as we’ve all seen. It assumed we knew how to create democracies in the wake of regime change, but toppling foreign governments led to failed states, more terrorists and costly military occupations. Meanwhile, globalisation did not deliver as promised and eventually created a more fragile international financial system, as we all learned, in 2008. The bottom line here is that liberal hegemony was a failure, under both Democratic and Republican Presidents. So, then the question is, well, why did we do this foolish thing, and why did we keep doing it in the face of repeated failures? Well, it’s partly ‘cause the United States is, in fact, very powerful and very secure and it can do a lot of dumb things, for a long time, without paying a big price. It’s also because liberal values are hardwired into our political culture, but it’s also because there was a powerful bipartisan consensus in favour of this strategy within America’s foreign policy elite, what Ben Rhodes, Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor, called ‘the blob.’ By this elite, I mean those who work in government, but also in the surrounding community of think tanks, lobbies, the media and academia, all of them trying to influence what people in government are doing.

Now, as you all know, there are sometimes tactical disagreements within the blob, over specific foreign policy issues, such as the Iran deal, where there was a deep division, or what to do about Syria, where there’s been no real consensus either. But in Washington, voices supporting liberal hegemony, voices supporting the indispensable nature of American leadership far outweigh the voices saying the United States might want to act with a bit more restraint. Why does our foreign policy elite like liberal hegemony so much? Well, partly because many of them sincerely believe in these principles, think it’s good for the United States and good for the rest of the world. But trying to remake the world in America’s image also increases their power and status, flatters their sense of self-worth, justifies a bigger budget and gives them plenty to do, and in probably the snarkiest line in my book I call liberal hegemony, “A full employment policy for the foreign policy elite.”

The American people, however, have a rather different view of this. On the one hand, they reject genuine isolationism. Very few Americans really want to return to Fortress America, but polls show growing support for a more restrained foreign policy, and this actually now goes back a number of years. And consider also that the last four Presidents all ran for office, promising to do less in world affairs. Bill Clinton’s mantra was, “It’s the economy, stupid.” George W. Bush promised us a humble foreign policy and an end to nation-building. Barack Obama ran on his opposition to the Iraq War and said we should do nation-building at home. As I’ve already mentioned, Donald Trump issued a full-blown assault on what we’ve been doing.

Now, again, because the United States is very powerful, can do a lot of dumb things for a long time, the American foreign policy elite is rarely held accountable for these mistakes. Consider that the people responsible for the Iraq War remained respected figures and eligible for top jobs. Until recently, John Bolton was our National Security Advisor, Elliott Abrams, who’s now our Special Envoy for Venezuela. By contrast, those who challenge the consensus view usually get marginalised, even when they turn out to be right, and there’s little evidence that our foreign policy elite has learned very much, from the past 25 years. Of course, hawks like John Bolton or Secretary of State Pompeo are just repeating the same mistakes we’ve been making for the past 25 years. But if you read recent books or articles by people like Susan Rice, Jake Sullivan or my friend and colleague Samantha Power, they’re remarkably unrepentant about the policies they were following. In a sense, they still think American strategy and liberal hegemony is the right strategy, we just have to figure out a way to sell it better. But at this point we say, “Wait a second, wasn’t Donald Trump going to drain the swamp, challenge the blob and make America great again?” The answer is no, which is why the chapter on him in my book is called How Not to Fix Foreign Policy.

Now, it’s – there’s no question Trump has done a number of things differently, especially in terms of his personal style. His personal conduct, his interactions with other world leaders is unprecedented, we’ve never seen a President like this. He has clearly shifted US policy, especially on trade, in some fundamental ways. But just as with the transition from Bush to Obama, a lot is still the same. The trade wars have produced only modest changes so far. The new trade agreements he negotiates turn out to be very similar to the old trade arrangements. The American commitment to NATO remains intact, and the burden sharing issue, which is his principle complaint, of course, goes all the way back to Dwight D. Eisenhower, there’s nothing new about that.

The United States has the same commitments in the Middle East. If anything, he has just doubled down on them, and hostility to Iran is not a novel policy initiative, on the part of the Trump administration. Moreover, he has redeployed our forces in Syria, but he’s not actually reduced the force levels throughout the Middle East. In fact, he has sent troops now to Saudi Arabia. Indeed, just like Barack Obama, he also sent more troops to Afghanistan, in his first year as President. He criticises China and Iran for their human rights abuses, but not our allies, especially in the Middle East. That’s just like his predecessors.

Russia is still facing sanctions over Ukraine, China is still seen as our primary peer competitor, and the United States continues to spend more on defence, than the next seven or eight countries combined. Bottom line here is that changes in Presidential style are greater in changes than foreign policy substance, and in my view, we now have the worst of both worlds, an overly ambitious foreign policy, but with an incompetent skipper at the helm of the ship of state. For example, if you wanted to confront China on trade, why leave the Transpacific Partnership, and why would you simultaneously pick fights with all of your other major trading partners? Not the best way to put multilateral pressure on China. If you wanted to address Iran’s regional behaviour, why not stay in the joint and comprehensive plan of action and bring multilateral pressure to bear? Instead, of course, Trump tried to get Iran to cave through the policy of maximum pressure. Iran called his bluff by restarting parts of its nuclear programme and attacking American allies, and Trump ends up backing down. Finally, it makes sense to reduce the American presence in the Middle East, but Trump did so in a way that managed to betray the Kurds, alarm our allies and worsened relations with Turkey, all simultaneously. That’s not easy to do, but he managed.

So, let me briefly outline what I think would be a better way. Instead of liberal hegemony, the United States should return to a strategy again that some of us have called offshore balancing. Now, this strategy should be very easy for Britains to grasp, because it was essentially the same strategy Britain followed as a great power, and the core logic is pretty simple. It recognises that the United States is a remarkably secure country, the world’s largest economy, technically sophisticated, very powerful conventional military, thousands of nuclear weapons and still isolated from other parts of the world by these two enormous oceans, which don’t matter for every danger, but they do matter for lots of them. No great power rivals anywhere near the United States, a unique position. By the way, the United States was last invaded, and you folks were responsible, in 1812. We started the war, but you – I mean, 1812. No other great power has been so free, from external interference, for such a long period.

Now, in terms of the geopolitics, the main threat to America would be a peer competitor that dominated its region in the same way the United States dominates the Western hemisphere and could therefore, project power globally the same way that we do. Our goal, therefore, should be to prevent any country from achieving that position, being a regional hegemon, particularly in Europe or Asia or the Persian Gulf. If possible, we should pass the buck to other states and get them to do the work, but that’s not always possible. This was America’s grand strategy, from the time it became a great power until the end of the Cold War. The United States was the last major power to enter World War One and World War Two, and we did it only when Germany threatened to win in Europe and Japan threatened to dominate Asia.

The United States had no-one to pass the buck to during the Cold War, so the United States had to go onshore in Europe and Asia, something very new in our history, to contain the Soviet Union. But notice, in the Cold War the United States acted like an offshore balancer in the Middle East. We had strategic interests there, but we did not deploy significant ground or air forces until Iraq seized Kuwait and threatened the local balance of power in 1990. At that point, we sent the rapid deployment force into the Middle East to right the balance. On those occasions, when the United States departed from those principles, as we did in Vietnam, as we did in the policy of dual containment that followed the first Gulf War, and of course, in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the result was a costly disaster.

So, what would this mean today? Well, China is the only potential regional hegemon out there that you could see a possibility, so we should be focusing on balancing China in Asia, and that means strengthening those alliance partnerships, because the United States cannot be a significant player in Asia without allies. We should be gradually reducing our military role in Europe and letting Europeans handle their own defence. Europe, together, has about 500 million people, a combined gross domestic product equal to that of the United States or roughly equal to that. NATO’s European members, not counting the United States, spent three to four times each year what Russia spends on defence, right, three to four times every single year. They don’t spend it very well, but the idea that Europe lacks the wherewithal to deal with any potential challenge from Russia, I think does not stand up to much scrutiny.

This shift, by the way, should be gradual and amicable, and the United States, in this context, should remain pro-EU, rather than being hostile, because the European Union is one of the things that tries to keep European politics relatively quiet and civil, and that’s a good thing for the United States. The United States should also reduce its military presence in the Middle East, go back to essentially an offshore balancing approach, and have normal relations with all countries there, including Iran, instead of special relations with some countries and no relationship with others. Our current policy of giving some states unconditional support while pretending the others don’t really exist, just undercuts American leverage. And my fantasy is that the next time Mike Pompeo flies into Riyadh, the Saudis know that his next stop after Riyadh is going to be Tehran, and the Iranians know that his next stop after Iran is going to be Tel Aviv, and then maybe Ankara. That’s a nice situation, from an American perspective, because it gives each of those stops some big incentive to tell Secretary Pompeo something he would like to hear, lest he hear something more favourable at his next stop, and for an offshore balancer, that’s how you maximise leverage.

Three more points. We should get out of the regime change and nation-building business and stay out. We’ve been trying it for a while, we’re not getting better at it with practice. We should put much more emphasis on diplomacy and think of military power, sanctions and coercion as our last resort rather than our first impulse. And finally, we should not abandon our liberal values, but we should try to promote them abroad, primarily by setting a good example, back in the United States, so that other societies see how we’re living and aspire to something similar for themselves, suitably adapted to their own history, culture and circumstances.

This is not isolationism, because the United States would still be engaged economically, diplomatically, and in some parts of the world, militarily. But we would not be squandering resources the way we have been, and we could devote more time, attention and money to fixing some problems we have in the United States. To do that, needless to say, requires changing the attitudes of our foreign policy elite. We need a broader debate about alternatives, where we probably need some institutions and think tanks, will bring those ideas to fruition. There’s some movement in that direction, as some of you may know, and it’s worth nothing that younger Americans seem especially receptive to this. Ideas about America’s role in the world are quite different, once you start looking at Americans under 40. Last point, I think the growing rivalry with China is going to push most of these trends anyway. Instead of trying to run the world and indulging in lots of idealistic crusades, we’re going to have to set some priorities and decide what’s important.

So, to sum up, Adam Smith once wrote that, “There is a lot of ruin in a nation,” and I think that’s especially true, when you’re as fortunate as the United States has been. Good fortune has allowed the United States to run a rather cavalier and unrealistic foreign policy, which I always think of as the confirmation of Bismarck’s alleged quip that there seems to be a special providence that looks after drunkards, fools and the United States of America. The real danger that Americans face is not some powerful array of clever foreign adversaries, who are going to snatch our security and way of life away from us. The problems we face at home and abroad are mostly of our own making. So, I see the United States, not unlike Britain, as something of a crossroads. Down one road lies more of the same for repeating the past quarter century, with the same disheartening results. Down another road is a strategy that has served us well in the past, would do so again, if tried. It is not the foreign policy the current occupant of the Oval Office who is going to be able to deliver. I think it is, however, the foreign policy most Americans want, and the real question is, how long will it take before they get it? When they do, I think it will have significant implications for the rest of the world. On balance, I think those will be positive, but perhaps that’s something we can talk about in discussion.

Thanks very much for your attention. I look forward to hearing Lindsay’s comments and yours, as well. Thanks very much [applause].

Dr Lindsay Newman

Thank you so much for that. I think what I’m most struck by from, and you, sort of, touched on it towards the end, is often balancing requires a, sort of, diplomatic vision and dip – a core – core institutions of diplomacy that right now, in the US at least, has been quite eroded. And I wonder if you can – you’ve written about this some but, sort of, tell us how we can – how you see being able to build up the diplomatic institutions again? I mean, certainly we’ve seen tons of flight from the state department. It’d be great if Pompeo could go door-to-door and have real teeth in each one of those conversations, but where do you see things standing on the diplomatic side, and where can we – how can we go forward with that?

Professor Stephen M. Walt

Yeah, the – so, your premise is exactly right, that the kind of strategy I’m laying out does require the United States to have actually, a rather sophisticated diplomatic operation. You have to be on cordial terms with much of the world, you have to be aware of what’s happening in the world. You have to know what power trends are occurring in different places, so you can’t do that without sophisticated intelligence services and without, I think, a very well-funded, well-trained professional diplomatic corps. That has been eroding for quite some time, and it didn’t begin with Donald Trump, right? The United States, in part because it has been so powerful, in my view, has never fully appreciated the value that diplomacy plays. The idea that most problems in the world can be worked out without actually threatening people, without having to actively coerce them, without grabbing another country by the arm and twisting it until they say, “Uncle,” and I do talk about this at some level, and some point in my book, where I say that, you know, basically, the American approach to most of its adversaries has been to tell them what we wanted them to do, and if they didn’t do it we’d start punishing them, in one form or another. We would impose sanctions and then we’d just keep ratcheting up the sanctions, without realising that in order to reach a deal, and especially in order to reach a deal that’s likely to last, you’re going to have to let the other side get at least some of what it wants too. But almost all of diplomacy involves working things out, and even if you get 80% of what you want, the other side has to get 20%.

And a perfect illustration, by the way, is how we got to the joint and comprehensive agreement with Iran, where, for roughly 12 years, the United States said, “Our policy – our demand is that Iran abandons its nuclear enrichment programme full stop, and we will just keep imposing more sanctions on you until you give us everything we want.” And it was only when the Obama Administration said, “No, in fact, we’re willing to compromise slightly on that,” that you were able to make any progress. And of course, they’re immediately accused of having – not gotten enough, of having appeased Iran, of having made a bad deal because Americans do not fully understand that, again, the art of diplomacy is the art of the mutual resolution of differences, in a way that leaves both parties better off.

I don’t think, again, Americans have fully appreciated that this administration seems particularly contemptuous of that idea, and as a result, and for a variety of other reasons, you’re seeing an exodus out of the diplomatic services, which is going to leave us handicapped for quite some time. One final point is, I want to – I like to remind my students and some others occasionally, that if you think back on American foreign policy, some of our biggest success stories were actually diplomatic achievements, right? The Marshall Plan was a diplomatic endeavour, the formation of NATO was a diplomatic endeavour, the creation of the Bretton Woods Economic Institutions, which governed the capitalist world economy for many years, was a diplomatic achievement, the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty. The peaceful end of the Cold War and reunification of Germany was accomplished not on a battlefield, it was accomplished across a negotiating table. So there’s all sorts of things that were extraordinarily beneficial for us and for others that were done through diplomacy, and the next President, whoever that turns out to be, would be well served to be very serious about figuring out ways to try and rebuild some of that capacity, as quickly as possible.

Dr Lindsay Newman

I’m sure we’ll receive a number of questions on China, but I wonder, as you just untangle, how…?

Professor Stephen M. Walt

Nobody around the world heard that brilliant answer.

Dr Lindsay Newman

It’s all for us. It’s just us here.

Professor Stephen M. Walt

Thank you.

Dr Lindsay Newman

As I said, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of questions on China. I’m, sort of, struck around how will this administration or the next rebuild in an offshore balancing, sort of, approach? How will they rebuild relations with Asia after TPP, after, sort of, statements around pulling troops out of South Korea? I think it’s much harder to see, under the current administration, making that effort, but what are your views on that?

Professor Stephen M. Walt

Well, I’ll say what I’ve been saying for a while. I mean, certainly, Trump has mishandled our relations with many of our Asian partners, whether it’s through a, sort of, rude phone call with the Australian Prime Minister in his first week in office or this, sort of, back-and-forth he’s subjected South Korea to, or the fact that Prime Minister Abe has done everything conceivable to curry favour with Trump and still seems to get treated with a certain degree of contempt. So, this has not been particularly skilful, and it’s worrisome. It’s, as I said, the United States cannot be engaged in Asia without partners. We’re not located in Asia, and so we need to have alliances, and managing those Asian alliances is not going to be easy, right? You might think, from a very simple balance of power point of view, that as China rises, different Asian countries will come together to contain or balance China and would want help from the United States to do so. And you certainly see a lot of that happening, over the last 10 or 20 years, but managing that coalition is not going to be easy, much harder than managing, say, NATO was during the Cold War.

First of all, the distances in Asia are enormous, so it’s very easy for countries like Australia to say, “You know, we really don’t have a vital interest vis-à-vis Taiwan, it’s thousands of kilometres away.” So, distances are a problem. These are all countries that have close economic ties with China, and their security interests and economic interests are somewhat at odds. Some of these countries don’t get along very well with each other, South Korea and Japan most notably, as well. So, if there’s a place in the world where you really do need sophisticated and energetic alliance management and even alliance leadership, it’s Asia, in the context of a rising China. That’s a role the United States actually should be able to play, but it requires, again, skilled Diplomats, who know the history, know the cultures, know the languages. It requires Presidents and Secretaries of State and other Cabinet-level officials, who are willing to go to Asia with some frequency and behave properly when they’re there. It requires the same level of attention that we have sometimes put to other areas, and I don’t see us doing that, right?

Dr Lindsay Newman

What do you say to those that think the US needs its own One Belt One Road policy?

Professor Stephen M. Walt

I’m more sanguine about the potential strategic effects of One Belt One Road. I don’t see it as this great game changer, but to the extent that China is able to use its capacity to build infrastructure quickly, as a way of making friends in various places, then seems to me we should have parallel programmes that play to some of our strengths as well. I don’t think, again, that that’s, you know, sort of, having a rival initiative is the key. I think that there – it’s pretty clear what our partners in Asia want from us, and I’m not sure it’s all, you know, new railways, new ports, new roads and bridges.

Dr Lindsay Newman

And one final one from me, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about the special relationship. What – we’re sitting here. Obviously, there’s a lot of political flux in the United Kingdom, just as there is quite a bit going on at home in the US. What do you see as the way forward for that relationship, either under a Trump administration or under an alternative, typically? What is your view?

Professor Stephen M. Walt

I think the likelihood of any real animosity between the United States and the United Kingdom is virtu – is vanishingly small. We’re dependent on Masterpiece Theatre and other BBC productions, so we would do nothing to cut that off. And I understand your Prime Minister is absolutely convinced that, you know, the relationship is just going to be incredibly close, as soon as Brexit happens. I think there you’ll be disappointed. I think once Brexit happens, that the American attitude, certainly under President Trump, will be not to have special relations with Britain or anybody else in Europe. The reason the Trump administration doesn’t like the European Union is a little different than why people here, why Brexiteers didn’t like the European Union. The Trump administration doesn’t like the European Union because it would like Europe to break up into constituent parts, so that we can deal one-on-one with Belgium, with France, with Germany, with Norway, with Great Britain, right, because we’re a lot bigger, and that way we can get better deals, we can pressure you all.

What somebody like Trump doesn’t like is the idea of Europe coming to the United States and speaking with one voice, say, on trade or other issues like that. So, he would love to see you be the first to leave the European Union and have the whole thing fall apart. I don’t think that’s ultimately going to give Britain any real leverage, and it’s certainly going to give Europe less leverage. I think that’s short-sighted, because as I said, the European Union is one of the things that keeps European politics relatively boring, and boring European politics is good for the United States. When politics in Europe gets really exciting, as it did in 1914, the United States has a way of getting dragged in, getting involved in various ways. And one final point, when you think about it, the European Union has been almost perfect, from an American perspective. It’s just united enough to keep things quiet in Europe, and it’s more efficient when we have to do trade arrangements to be able to talk to Brussels and not have to talk to every separate capital. Trump leaves out transaction costs when he thinks about this, but it’s not so united as to be a third poll, you know, a real rival, right? That’s perfect, from an American perspective, again, one of the many ways in which our President does not understand international politics.

Dr Lindsay Newman

And with that, I will turn it over to you. Please wait for the microphone to reach you, and once you have it, please say your name and your affiliation. Yes, right here in the middle, please.

Euan Grant

Yeah, thank you very much, indeed. The name’s Euan Grant, I’m a Chatham House Member. I’m now a Consultant on transnational strategic crime, particularly with China and Russia, which is different game to ordinary international crime. Two quick questions, with both relating to the blob. In relation to culture and understanding and therefore more effectiveness, how many people in the American blob have seen and learned the lessons of the film The Whistleblower, which is about wholly inappropriate persons sent abroad to Bosnia, it representing the United States indirectly, not officially? Secondly, the European blob, on geopolitics and strategy, how much does the continental European equivalent of the US blob engage with its American counterpart? I’ve found the experience is that when defence and security issues are concerned, generally the Europeans, with the exception of France, are much, much less comfortable about discussing this. Thank you.

Professor Stephen M. Walt

So, the blob is, kind of, a nebulous concept. I think of it, again, as being, sort of, the formal parts of the bureaucracy, but then also, the surrounding penumbra of think tanks, Journalists. It’s got to be people who work on foreign affairs all the time, it’s their full-time job, one-time – I would be considered a member as well, although something of a contrarian member of it as well. And the key to understanding it in the United States is, to just reflect on the fact that you don’t have to have any qualifications to do foreign policy in the United States. There is no required degree, there’s no licence, there’s no exam you have. It’s not like being a member of the bar, where you have to take the bar exam or being a Doctor, where you have to pass your medical boards. You literally don’t have to have any qualifications at all. You need a licence to sell real estate in the United States, you do not need a licence to practice foreign policy.

What you need to do is convince some other people, who are already in the blob, that you’re smart, knowledgeable, helpful, loyal, all of those things. It depends very much on connections and reputation, right? That’s the kind of work it is, and that means there’s a tremendous premium on conformity, staying within the consensus, figuring out what the, sort of, standard views are. That’s the American blob. I have not studied its European equivalent. I know it exists, you could argue it – I don’t think it’s as large, I don’t think it’s as unified. It’s more present here in Britain. There are more places to talk about international affairs in London than there are if you wander into, you know, Paris or Berlin, or elsewhere, there aren’t those counterparts, and I think there’s a certain amount of contact, and the fact that I’m sitting here now suggests that there’s some connection to it. I’ll be in Berlin in January, so yeah, there’s a conversation here. How much impact it now has on policy in either place, I think that the Transatlantic Partnership has been getting more and more fragile over time for, sort of, solid geopolitical reasons, and we see the connections between the intellectual communities, on one side of the Atlantic and on my side of the Atlantic, becoming somewhat more distant. Although it still is something of a transnational elite that does talk to each other, reads each others’ papers, connects up at various times.

Dr Lindsay Newman

Thank you. Yes, right here in the third row, yes.

Anita Lowenstein Dent

I’m Anita Lowenstein Dent, Council Member at Chatham House. This weekend in Foreign Policy you wrote an article entitled Assad is Now Syria’s Best-Case Scenario, which is a challenging start to a well thought out article, but still, are you talking about that from geopolitical and international terms? What about the local populations?

Professor Stephen M. Walt

So, I wrote – just to unpack this slightly, I wrote an article, which I knew was going to be controversial, and which I wasn’t very happy about writing, and I actually say it explicitly, that sometimes when I write my columns, I enjoy them and I think I’m saying something, you know, either intelligent or useful, that people may actually like. I knew this was a) going to be controversial, and I took no pleasure in writing it, but the basic point was to say that for a variety of reasons that didn’t begin two weeks ago when Donald Trump made this bizarre decision to suddenly, without any consultation, without any advance preparation, yank the American forces out of Northern Syria, that we were now in a position where, in fact, the least bad outcome was for the Assad regime to regain full territorial control over Syria. And that’s not that it’s a good outcome, it’s the least bad outcome, that the United States does not support the creation of an independent Kurdish state, and the Kurds will not be secure until they have their own state, but because of the Turkish attitude towards the Kurds, if there’s an independent enclave there, the Turks were always going to be looking to find a way to eliminate that sooner or later. That was not a viable long-term position.

Now, ideally, that would have been resolved through a diplomatic arrangement, some kind of diplomatic settlement, but that would’ve involved the United States being willing to talk to Russia, Turkey, Iran and the Assad regime, as well as its Kurdish partners, on what an acceptable set of arrangements might be. We weren’t willing to talk to Russia because we’re mad at them about Ukraine, we’re not willing to talk to Iran because we can’t decide if we’re trying to bring the government down or not, right? We’re not willing to talk to Assad because he’s a war criminal, and he is, right? And that left the United States completely uninvolved in the diplomacy that’s still circulating around this area, and then, of course, Trump bizarrely just does this unplanned thing. So, unfortunately, because again, I think Bashar al-Assad really ought to be in the Hague on trial, rather than running a country, but that’s not the world we’re living in. Unfortunately, we’re now in a situation where allowing him to regain control over the rest of Syria is – solves the Turkish problem with the Kurds. It eventually, I think, means Russia leaves and it eventually means Iran leaves, ‘cause he’s not going to want Russian and Iranian troops wandering around his territory for a long time. And unfortunately, it’s probably not good for the people that he will regain authority over, whose position was going to be bad, sooner or later regardless. But again, I say that with no pleasure whatsoever, and I think many of these things could have been avoided, if the United States and others had a smarter policy towards Syria, going all the way back to the uprising in 2011.

Dr Lindsay Newman

Yes, over in this side, second row. Second row here, please.

Peter Watkins

So, Peter Watkins, formerly of Ministry of Defence and now with Chatham House, so a paid-up member of the British blob, I’m afraid. So, I wanted to ask about offshore balancing and, if you like, the mechanics of it. I mean, you say that, you know, the Brits should be familiar with it because it was British policy for a long time. You could also argue that it wasn’t always spectacularly successful. If you look at, say, the, you know, the run-up to the First World War and the Second World War, you know, there is a risk that other countries misread your intentions, if you don’t have enough skin in the game and think, you know, in terms of troops on the ground and so on. So, I wanted to ask, you know, how much is enough? I mean, pure offshore balancing it seems to me doesn’t work with nothing, but you have to put something in, you have to put some skin in the game. So, how much is enough, in terms of actual assets and troops and so on, in the areas of concern?

Professor Stephen M. Walt

That’s exactly right, that you have to be, sort of, closely attuned to the balance of power in particular areas, and also sometimes, the intentions of potential challengers. The – and the level of commitment is, you know – it has to be, sort of, calibrated by one’s assessment of how dangerous you think the situation is. Looking around the world right now, I actually don’t see major security challenges in Europe. I think, first of all, Russia has no desire to expand territorially, beyond what it currently has. Crimea was a special case, and I see no appetite in Putin for the rest of Ukraine, for example. The last thing he wants is 40 million people that don’t want to be governed by Russians, etc.

The other thing to remember is, Russia’s economy is about the size of Italy’s now, and we don’t normally think about Italy as a, sort of, potentially rapacious world power. The point is that Russia doesn’t have the capability to embark on a campaign of expansion similar to one we used to worry about the former Soviet Union. And as I said, the Europeans, if they didn’t spend more, just spent what they have more intelligently could mount any kind of credible difference, it seems to me, against possible Russian incursions. And then the question is, are there any other significant conventional security threats that Europe faces? No, right? So, Europe has security challenges, like we do, from crime, from terrorism. There’s the issue of migration, right, but those are not things for which the United States or American Military backing is the solution. So, good news is, Europe is in pretty good shape.

Middle East, we should be out of a military role in the Middle East ‘cause every time we go in there, we make things worse, whether that’s Libya, whether it’s Syria, whether it’s Yemen, whether it’s Iraq as well, and it’s not essential to American security, ‘cause our interest is to making sure that the Middle East is divided and no single power controls all of those energy resources. And here the simple fact is, the Middle East is as divided now as it has ever been, and there’s no country there that threatens to dominate all of it. Not Saudi Arabia, not Israel, not Iran, not – whatever, none of them have the capacity to take the place over, and if one of them emerged as possibly being able to do it, then the United States would have to respond and do more, in terms of preparations, alliance building. In some, I think, unlikely circumstances, it might have to get militarily involved as well.

Asia is another matter. I think if China continues to increase its power and continues to translate its wealth into greater military capabilities, the United States is going to have to focus more attention there. We have a military presence there already. That’s likely to increase somewhat. I don’t think it needs to increase very much, and as I said before, it’s mostly a matter of maintaining that set of alliance relationships in reasonably good order, and possibly building some deeper connections to countries like India, possibly Vietnam as well, over time, again, primarily, a diplomatic task, rather than a military one, although it does require a military presence there.

Dr Lindsay Newman

I just have a two finger on this on – around cybersecurity, cyberattacks. How does – what is the offshore balancing approach to that, or what are you – what is, sort of, your foreign policy view on that?

Professor Stephen M. Walt

I think that’s a separate set of issues. When I’m talking about offshore balancing, it’s primarily about where the United States is willing to commit military forces, put them in harm’s way, right? It’s not about where we’re going to trade and it’s not about the various other things we would do to deal with transnational problems, whether it’s crime, whether it’s cyber threats, of various sorts, whether it’s global public health, right? The United States should be engaged in trying to work with others. One more, climate change. Those are all issues that are important foreign policy issues, for which my strategy is not – is neither irrelevant or pertinent. I’m mostly talking about where the United States would be committed militarily.

Dr Lindsay Newman

I would just think with an assessment of the Russian – for example, the Russian threat, you know, if we’re saying that Russia is not economically strong, but – so we don’t need to see it as that great a threat, in terms of offshore balancing in Europe, that would be, sort of, a counterbalance to that point, that ominous information campaign, the ability to interfere like this?

Professor Stephen M. Walt

We should be worried and doing our best to counter Russian efforts to interfere via social media. That should be a topic of, you know, diplomacy between us, and we should be taking countermeasures to reduce it. We should also be thinking about what’s going on inside our country that has nothing to do with Russia, that’s leaving us vulnerable to this kind of thing, right? If Russian social media interference can have this much of an effect on polarising the United States further, what is that telling us about how we’re talking to ourselves when it’s not the Russians? Some part of what happen – may have happened in 2016 was the condition we got ourselves into, without their help.

Dr Lindsay Newman

Yes, all the way in the back there, please.

Callum Matthews

Hi, Callum Matthews, FCO. In regards to Trumps withdrawal of troops from northern – north-eastern Syria and the impeachment proceedings, which may be seen to be linked in some ways, in what – to what extent do you think foreign policy institutions will be driven in the future by Trump, to distract from domestic political events?

Professor Stephen M. Walt

I actually…

Callum Matthews

And what would those decisions be along the lines of?

Professor Stephen M. Walt

If I could anticipate President Trump’s decisions, you know, I’d be in really good shape, and I can’t. So, I did write a column, a couple of weeks ago, where I tried to explore this, and my conclusion in that column, with one important caveat, was that, in fact, impeachment would have no effect or not much effect on Trump’s foreign policy, for the simple reason that he hardly has a foreign policy. And that it wasn’t – in other words, the principle concern that most people have about impeachment is that it will distract the President from accomplishing things at home or abroad, right? Some argue, for example, that the impeachment process delayed Bill Clinton being able to really focus in on the Oslo peace process, and it may have made it not happen or not be able to reach a successful conclusion.

Well, if Trump had a series of highly successful foreign policy initiatives underway that looked like they were going to pay off, then I might worry that impeachment would, you know, force him to take his eye off the ball, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. The caveat was the one you pointed to, either he feels like he has to do something big and dramatic, like start a war with Iran, which I don’t think he’ll do, by the way, but something like that that might be misguided, or he just has to keep throwing shiny objects out there to try and distract people, of which impulsive actions like the withdrawal from Syria might be one. But overall, I don’t think impeachment is going to affect the trajectory of either his domestic policy, which also isn’t going really anywhere, or his foreign policy. It’ll be fought out largely on the grounds of what the investigations uncover, what effects that has on public opinion and whether or not it leads anybody in the Republican Party to, you know, remember that their oath is to the Constitution and not to the President.

Dr Lindsay Newman

Do you think it undercuts his position in trade talks with China?

Professor Stephen M. Walt

I don’t think very much. I don’t think very much.

Dr Lindsay Newman

We have time for about one or two more questions. Yes, how about here, right in the front row. Just one second, please.

Member

Thanks. So, [inaudible – 49:15], I work in the energy industry, focusing on China. Quick question, what is your reading of China’s foreign policy? And an unrelated quick question is, do you think it’s an issue at all, the kleptocratic tendencies of the Trump administration, in terms of their effect on emboldening other regimes to do similar things?

Professor Stephen M. Walt

I missed the word.

Member

Kleptocratic, thanks.

Professor Stephen M. Walt

So, two quick questions with two quick answers. Chinese foreign policy, over the past 30/40 years, hasn’t been remarkably effective. They have basically followed the same strategy the United States followed in the 19th Century. Stay out of trouble and build power at home, and this was explicitly, you know, sort of, Deng Xiaoping’s advice, the idea of a peaceful rise, don’t make waves, don’t call attention to yourselves, and they must have been, of course, overjoyed watching the United States wander all over the world and get into trouble, in various ways. Not only ‘cause it cost us trillions of dollars, which might’ve been spent in all sorts of other useful ways, but it also meant we weren’t paying a lot of attention to what was happening in Asia and what was happening with China. That has started to change a little bit under Xi Jinping. Xi has been more outspoken about Chinese ambitions, somewhat more hardnosed, in pursuing a number of issues as well, consolidating power at home, but also, flexing China’s muscles and, surprise, surprise, it’s having exactly the effects, you would expect. It’s starting to raise concerns in the United States, in Asia and in other parts of the world, including even here in Europe. So, in a sense, I think Chinese foreign policy has been very successful, up until now, and has been less successful, over the last couple of years, or last five years or so, in terms of enhancing China’s overall position.

On the kleptocracy, yes, the Trump administration’s pretty evident corruption makes it really hard for the United States to take a principled stand against any other countries that we think are doing similar things. Now, the United States has been hypocritical in the past, no country is 100% consistent with its professed values, but I think it would be – we’re going to be hard-pressed to persuade anyone to revise or reform their own internal business dealings, when you have a President who is so obviously willing to self-deal in various ways that, again, no prior President has done.

Dr Lindsay Newman

Time for one last quick question. Yes, right there in the back.

Michael

Thank you. I’m Michael, a joint-degree student between LSE and Harvard. I wanted to ask, but we’ve already, sort of, discussed the Belt and Road Initiative in Asia, and so I wanted to ask for Africa and the Middle East as well, what are the costs – where are the costs for furthering liberal internationalism are increasing? How can the US compete there with China?

Professor Stephen M. Walt

Well, as I said, I’m not as – I’m not, sort of, deeply expert on Belt and Road Initiative, and I’m also not as concerned by it as some are. I’ll go back to what I said, in my formal remarks, that I think the principle way the United States tries to spread its own particular set of values is by remaining true to them at home and making them work at home, making the United States a country that when people come to visit it they look and they admire it and they say, “This thing – this country works remarkably well, I’d like something like that in my society, to have an economy that’s performing well, to produce products that others want to purchase, to have a society that isn’t at war with itself politically the way ours is now,” is a better way of spreading those values than certainly sending the 82nd Airborne. What role the United States should play in also then trying to promote economic reforms of various sorts in places like Africa as well, again, the more successful we are at home the easier it is to sell that. Some people will recall that, you know, back in the 1990s, where I began my talk, there was this notion of the Washington consensus. There was this belief, right, best exhibited, you know, in the books of Tom Friedman that the United States had mastered globalisation. If you wanted to be a player in a globalised world, you had to become more and more like the United States. That turned out not to be true, but that’s what many people believed, and again, the more the United States appears to be the most successful player in that globalised world, the more persuasive our arguments are going to be to others.

I’ll add one final thing and that’ll be a good place to stop, I think one of the traits we often forget, in the conduct of international affairs, is the value of competence, right? That when your government officials, experts, advisors, etc., appear to be highly competent, know what they’re doing, can get from point A to point B. without too much damage, that gives you enormous persuasiveness. when you go into a room with others, right? As soon as you start to lose that aura of competence, when you’re seen as an elite that screws up time and time and time again, it’s going to be much harder to persuade others to follow your lead. And it doesn’t matter where the incompetence is demonstrated, but certainly foreign policy incompetence is going to lead more countries to not want to take American advice, not want to heed the kind of guidance that we are trying to give. So again, having a highly competent foreign policy operation, with people who actually do know what they’re doing, is of tremendous value, and we often lose sight of that.

Dr Lindsay Newman

Professor Stephen M. Walt, thank you very much, and…

Professor Stephen M. Walt

Thank you for coming.

Dr Lindsay Newman

…thank you all for coming [applause].