Two traps in thinking about international relations in the 21st century

 Commentators often, I think, fall into two serious (and diametrically opposed) traps when discussing international politics.

The first is to assume that everything is different now that we’re in the 21st century. Globalization, democratiza-tion, international institutions, new norms, and the internets have all combined to create a brave new world where none of the old verities apply. I talked a lot about this back when people were all agog over the putative “Twitter revolutions,” but it applies to more conventional analysis. Take this from a month ago: 

“The U.S. should call for an urgent, immediate Security Council meeting and push for a strong resolution condeming Libya’s use of violence and authorizing targeted sanctions against the regime. Such steps could stand a chance of rever-sing the course of a rapidly deteriorating situation. An effective international response could not only save many Libyan lives, it might also send a powerful warning to other Arab leaders who might contemplate following suit against their own protest movements.”

A Security Council resolution is indeed a powerful thing. And that is what happened. But when it did not work, the same author produced an very odd follow-up a few days ago, when Libyan government forces were at the outskirts of  Benghazi:

“The administration should move quickly and aggressively to recognize the provisional Libyan government, release the frozen Libyan assets to that provisional government, and allow the flow of weapons to them. It should push for ever tighter targeted sanctions against Qaddafi, and continue to mobilize international consensus against his regime to make sure that he remains an absolute pariah without access to international institutions, revenues, or support. It could jam Qaddafi’s communications and provide intelligence, and more. The debate should move away from an exclusive focus on military action.”

Huh? Come again? What besides military action is supposed to dissuade the Colonel from slaughtering his opponents, conducting house-to-house raids, mass arrests, show trials, and the rest of the panoply of modern totalitarianism? Perhaps “crazy” is the wrong word, given that we are talking about the Colonel, but Gaddafi would be crazy not to bring out the full Stalin should he win, and I am at a loss as to why people think that our brave new globalized world of international institutions would change the logic of authoritarianism.

Of course, the second mistake is to assume things are just like the 19th century. In this view, the spread of democratic ideals is irrelevant, international institutions are mere epiphenomena, and norms only have meaning when backed up by force. Technology changes power balances, of course, but ideology does not, with the possible exception of nationalism. This is the mistake that Stratfor seems to make in its more head-scratching analyses. States are the only actors that matter, states are in a zero-sum game, international opinion does not exist, communication technology only matters in military terms, and political norms are meaningless once you move outside states. The problem with that view is that it contradicts our everyday experience of watching international politics happen. (It is also not entirely consistent with more concrete data.)

I tend more towards the second error, myself. That might be more common among Americans, since our approach to foreign relations has changed less than elsewhere, and international institutions and norms have less of a daily effect on our lives, but both extremes (everything is different now versus nothing has changed) are, I think, good things to avoid.

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[Jonathan]

Did you read the NY Review of Books article on China this week? Some interesting perspectives on China's future, leavened well by your comments here.