Questions and Big Problems

1. Questions and Big Problems The Future of American Foreign Policy

2. A new World • The end of the Cold War was not the “end of history” but the start of a painful process of global transformation – • from stable, long-term confrontation governed by well-defined rules to something entirely new.: • no status quo, • a world of dynamic power shifts, the most unstable of all • A dangerous world but a world in which the American “unipolar moment” has passed

3. Questions • with regard to weapons of mass destruction, deterrence  no longer seems feasible.  The weapons' technology spreads through  illegal markets to non-state actors, and if and when such weapons  are created, their delivery will be non-conventional.  How should  this issue be handled? • What should we do with terrorists who do not consider themselves  part of any country and who commit acts of violence across  international borders? Where should they be taken? Do these lawless  fighters deserve the full protections of the Geneva Convention?

4. Big Problems • Financial Crisis: Impact on Foreign Policy • Ethnonationalism and Human Rights crises • Militarization • Weakening of International Institutions and Laws

5. First Problem: Financial Crisis impact on foreign policy • Reduction in foreign aid • Reduction in willingness to address climate change issues • Trade Protectionism

6. Less U.S. foreign aid? • How will the US meet its entitlement obligations, pay interest on the $10 trillion debt, and bail out states and cities unable to balance their budgets? • Down the road, ballooning deficits will bring inflation and cause problems for the dollar. • What will be cut? There are few targets available to reduce federal spending. • Will Congress want to cut the defense and foreign-aid budgets? • If so, this will limit the availability of tools central to asserting U.S. power and influence abroad.

7. Climate Change on the Back Burner? • Will it be more difficult to negotiate an international accord on climate change? • Countries such as China and India are likely to resist anything that could be an impediment to growth. • And the U.S. as well…..

8. Trade Protectionism? • Trade is a boon to developing countries, and one way to link countries in a web of dependencies that restrains nationalist impulses. • We still take in the world’s goods. Will U.S. trade protectionism slow growth around the world, increasing poverty and straining political stability in many countries? • We should not be surprised when governments fail and societies suffer from violence.

9. Commodity price decline • the decline in commodity prices will be as influential in boosting incomes and spending in advanced economies as their rise was in sparking a vicious circle of weakness that put further pressure on an already stressed financial system.

10. Decline of Potential Rivals? • Recession has caused a major decline in the world price of oil, to roughly $70 a barrel from over $140. • What does this mean for Russia and Iran?

11. Iran • Decline in oil price will make financial sanctions more meaningful • could well make the Iranians more open to diplomacy that would limit or better yet end their independent uranium enrichment effort in exchange for economic relief. • It might even lead the Iranians to examine some of their expensive support for Hamas, Hezbollah and Shiite militias in Iraq.

13. Russia • is feeling the pain -- of falling energy prices and a plummeting stock market that has come down two-thirds from its high and was closed by authorities more than a dozen times. • Will Russia be more or less aggressive as a result?

14. Lingering issues and growing problems • Ethnonationalism • Militarization • Decline in international institutions

15. Second Problem: A World of Ethnonationalism • A world divided by ethnic and sectarian nationalist states and the rise of extremist ethno-national and sectarian nationalist ideologies. • more “ethnonationalist” nation-states now than at the beginning of the 20th century • states dominated by a single ethnic or religious group.

16. National Identity in this World…… • Exclusive “Nations” with unique citizenship rights have aligned with both • “states” • and territory in the 21st Century. • This trio forms the core of national identity for most of the world—

17. National Self-Determination • Many would argue that providing exclusive “states” for these ethnically and religiously defined “nations” is a good thing. • A state and piece of land for each “nation.” • It is closely linked in many people’s minds to “national self-determination.”

22. But there is not enough land to go around… • But there are not enough “states” to go around, given the multiplicity of “nations” in the world. • ……There aren’t enough states to house all the world’s nations

23. Gross Human Rights Violations • the UN Security Council still finds itself unable to agree to do much to protect the people of Darfur, Congo, and others from the murderous contempt of their rulers—and opposing ethnic or sectarian groups….just as in the 1990s the UN failed the genocide victims in Rwanda.

25. Refugees as a Humanitarian Crisis • At the end of 2007, 11.4 million refugees in the world and 26 million displaced within their own country -- known as internally displaced people, or IDPs.  • underlying causes: • Ethnic and sectarian conflict • climate-induced environmental degradation that increases competition for scarce resources, • extreme price hikes that have hit the poor the hardest and are generating instability in many places," said Guterres.

26. Conflict • Groups that hate and fear one another look for a “state of their own” on territory that privileges their own national group. This has led to unspeakable horrors, such as genocide and ethnic cleansing. • Conflict over the right to Land • IMMIGRATION HAS often GIVEN RISE TO COMMUNAL CONFLICT IN THESE STATES, IN WHICH IMMIGRANTS ARE NOT CONSIDERED PART OF THE “NATION”

27. National self-determination? • The fact of ethnonationalism combined with many gross human rights violations leads to the “easy” conflation of human rights with “national self determination.” • is seen as the answer to the human rights abuses that these ‘nations’ have suffered.

30. Demonstrators supporting the Abkhazians and South Ossetians protest against Georgia in front of the Georgian Embassy in Ankara

32. Should the U.S. intervene militarily to end these conflicts, protect human rights, bring national self-determination? • goal is neither annexation nor interference with territorial integrity, but • minimization of the suffering of civilians. • rationale behind such an intervention is the belief, embodied in international customary law in a duty to disregard a state's sovereignty to preserve our common humanity. • From the 1990s the understanding of what what justified humanitarian military intervention broadened to include hunger and famine, state repression, the movement of refugees, to justify intervention

33. Nato bombing of Serb military headquarters

34. Somalia…..

35. Responsibility to Protect • the 2005 Security Council resolution sanctions military intervention • seeks to establish a clearer code of conduct for humanitarian interventions • advocates a greater reliance on non-military measures. • But establishes the right to military intervention in the conduct of other states to protect its citizens where that other state has failed in its obligation to protect its own citizens.

36. Genocide survivor Grace Mukagabiro from Rwanda stands in the mock graveyard erected by Oxfam campaigners outside the United Nations headquarters in New York in order to urge governments to endorse the responsibility to protect civilians against future mass killings. The graves have been marked with 'Never again'' in reference to what the world said after the atrocities in Rwanda. 

37. Humanitarian intervention rarely succeeds • Thresholds for intervention difficult to determine • Can lead to cynicism with choice to intervene in some states rather than others • Concern that the responsibility to Protect will be abused and serve to allow powerful states to further their own interests • making and keeping peace between groups that have come to hate and fear one another is likely to require costly ongoing military missions rather than relatively cheap temporary ones. • When communal violence escalates to ethnic cleansing, moreover, the return of large numbers of refugees to their place of origin after a cease-fire has been reached is often impractical and even undesirable, for it merely sets the stage for a further round of conflict down the road.

38. Something I wrote on this issue…. • http://rpgp.berkeley.edu/?q=node/87

39. Third Problem: A world that is dangerously militarized. • "Horizontal" nuclear proliferation • "vertical" proliferation, i.e. the continued existence of huge arsenals of sophisticated nuclear weapons held by major powers, particularly the United States and Russia. • Huge stockpiles of conventional arms around the world, including the newest types, some so devastating as to be comparable to weapons of mass destruction. • World military expenditure reached $1 Trillion in 2007

41. Arms Trade • in 2006 reaching an all-time high in current dollars of $45.6 billion (from $38.9 billion in 2004). • Arms trade fuels regional conflicts, when they are not solidifying undemocratic and abusive regimes. • increases poverty in countries that are already poor. • But is it realistic to want to reduce arms exports without at the same time attempting to reduce military production? • Indeed, the fundamental cause of the flourishing international trade in armaments is the large military establishments that industrial countries subsidize year after year. • While international attention is focused on the need to control weapons of mass destruction, the trade in conventional weapons continues to operate in a legal and moral vacuum.

42. Military industries • It is not realistic to reduce arms exports without at the same time attempting to reduce military production. • Indeed, the fundamental cause of the flourishing international trade in armaments is the large military establishments that industrial countries subsidize year after year.

44. Who buys arms?Military expenditure • arms transfer agreements with developing nations constituted 67.7% of all such agreements globally from 2004-2007, and 70.5% of these agreements in 2007. • A central barrier to third world development—or to solving the current third world food crisis-- is military expenditure. • Worldwide military expenses average ten percent of the public expenditure. • For developing countries military this amounts to fifteen percent of public expenditure. • This very often equates several times the amount spent on education and healthcare. • According to the UNDP, Development is not possible without reducing military expenses. • This means reforms by exporters of arms as well as recipients.

45. Who sells Arms? • Permanent UN Security Council members—the USA, UK, France, Russia, and China—are not only nuclear powers but they dominate the world trade in arms. • U.S. is first, Russia second

46. US contribution to militarization • Today the United States produces about half of the world's military hardware and has over 700 military bases, from Europe to the most remote corners of the world. • Historically, only empires had such an expansive approach to assuring their security.

47. Where is the threat? • In the 21st century, many threats cannot be met with military might. We cannot, for example, bomb terrorists hiding in Germany — • we can’t even bomb them in Pakistan without creating more. • Gunboat diplomacy cannot force China to keep its poisoned milk off our shelves.

48. Fourth Problem: weakening of international institutions and laws • The nuclear non-proliferation regime is in tatters. • The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the fireman in previous financial crises, has been a bystander during the current crisis. • The World Trade Organisation’s Doha round is stuck. • The UN. Security Council is increasingly irrelevant: • When the P5, constituted the security council, the UN had 51 members; • decades of decolonisation and splintering self-determination later, it has 192.

49. The more global problems, the weaker the institutions • increasing trend of prominence of dictatorships in UN • growing number of bilateral trade agreements replacing multilateral trade • and sovereign wealth funds replacing lending and investment by International Financial Institutions.

50. G-8 • The G7 democracies plus Russia • Can they discuss the oil price without Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest producer? • Can they try to stabilize the dollar without China, which holds so many American Treasury bills? • Can they make decisions about global warming, AIDS or inflation without anybody from the emerging world? • On present trends, somewhere between 2025 and 2030 three of the world’s four largest economies will be from Asia. • new nations have emerged as international leaders, and they are declaring their right to participate in defining the rules of the global game. The current international institutions, however, were designed to meet the needs of the old bipolar world. • G8 should expand……..