THE FOREIGN POLICY OF CONTENTMENT
The Recreational and the Real
Before examining the way contentment has affected the foreign policy of the United States, it is important to have in mind certain basic and, indeed, unique features of this area of public policy and action. These now go seriously unrecognized. This chapter, accordingly, must first depart briefly from the broad influence of the culture of contentment to place foreign policy in its public context.
In general, performance in the field of foreign policy, great emergencies apart, is relatively free from the economic, political and even intellectual requirements and constraints that control much domestic government action. The latter, because of its effect on taxes, public services and regulation, produces a marked public and political response, while most foreign policy initiatives, in contrast, evoke no such reaction. A change in official attitude toward some foreign country, although it may make headlines and the television evening news, does not impinge upon the life of the average citizen. If some peculiarly repressive or abhorrent government is being treated with inappropriate courtesy and grace, there may be objection, even indignation; nonetheless, few Americans are immediately affected in any concrete fashion. Such public response as is heard has the comforting virtue of being rhetorical rather than real, and the adverse opinion can be easily tolerated.
When thoughtful commentators and the press report a deterioration in relations between the United States and some other country, the change has occurred, in practice, only in the attitudes of a limited number of officials on each side. There is no larger involvement or consequence. A newspaper headline saying that the United States government views with grave concern some development in Guatemala, the Philippines or the Ivory Coast means only that a handful of government functionaries have so reacted. Reporting their concern, they are the United States. The further consequences of the development are normally slight, as also when, at some later moment, it is said that relations have improved.
The politically and intellectually undemanding character of the routine conduct of foreign affairs is made strongly evident by the way the presumptively responsible personnel come into office. With each new administration high officials of the Department of State are installed, often with no apparent earlier preparation and frequently with no visible qualification.
The even more compelling case is that of so-called political ambassadors assigned to foreign posts. They take command with no prior diplomatic experience of any kind and normally with no prior knowledge of the country to which they are assigned, the name of the capital, in favoring circumstances, possibly apart. Although the practice is subject to occasional criticism, no great damage has been known to result.
The second and closely related feature of foreign policy is the peculiar reward that it accords its practitioners. Those in the government whose responsibility is for domestic policy and administration do, of course, enjoy a certain measure of distinction that comes from identification with the prestige and power of the great Republic; it is for this that so many so reliably seek office. But there is the ever present dark side in the negative reaction from that part of the citizenry that considers their official actions in some way adverse. Contracts and other emoluments have been denied, regulations have been enforced and, on occasion, taxes have been urged, or, at a minimum, there has been association with the expenditure of money that has been reluctantly provided. All of this involves controversy and criticism.
Involvement with foreign policy, on the other hand, is without this unhappy aspect. Instead those thus employed are the actual, visible image of the United States; they bask appreciatively, enjoyably, in its glow.
Men and the few women who have headed missions abroad often seek to retain the ambassadorial title and something of the aforementioned glow for a lifetime. To this end, they attend meetings to hear undemanding accounts of recent developments in foreign policy and often improbable forecasts as to the prospect and to express or reflect on the currently conventional and acceptable views. This latter is in keeping with a larger tendency in foreign policy advice and discussion. Called upon by the President during the Vietnam war, the acknowledged deans of the foreign policy establishment—the Wise Men, as popularly denoted—urged the full, energetic commitment of the armed forces up until the moment when this became palpably disastrous both politically and militarily. Then they advised detachment.
Most revealing, perhaps, as to the recreational character of much modern foreign policy is what happens on the visit to some friendly foreign capital of a President, Vice President or Secretary of State, and the return visit by the foreign leader to the United States. In each case, there is a welcoming ceremony and applause that could not reasonably be expected at home. There follow conversations of quiet, decorous tone, which, however vacuous, are in agreeable contrast with the contentiousness so often experienced in domestic political negotiations. Communiques are issued, often written in advance, telling imaginatively of the topics under discussion and the areas of agreement.1 It is believed (and faithfully reported) that in pursuit of foreign policy concerns, high officials travel for important national purpose; not exceptionally, it is, instead, for personal pleasure.
American wealth, economic well-being and the resulting largesse that the United States has distributed overseas have also added in past times to the enjoyments of more substantive foreign policy. American officials and initiatives have received the deference and approving response abroad that in private, public or international relationships accrue to a creditor or to the source of much needed and much welcomed financial endowment. As a result of the Marshall Plan following the Second World War, the ensuing widely dispersed AID programs and the large bank loans to Latin America and other poorer lands, the United States gained the aspect of a rich and generous relative, one to be much respected and warmly thanked. Those who were associated, however marginally, even rhetorically, with those specific programs or with the policy in general delighted in the resulting approval.
From the foregoing it will be evident that foreign policy has a favored role in the polity. It is, to repeat, exempt from the harsh attitudes that surround much domestic policy; its conduct and those involved therewith are well regarded. Nor is this a recent development. It far anticipates the mood of the 1980s and President Bush’s enthusiastic but wholly natural preference for foreign policy as opposed to socially urgent domestic questions.
The broadly recreational character of foreign policy and its appeal to the community of contentment goes back, in fact, many generations. In the years prior to World War II, a gentleman of financial means derived from inheritance or a monetarily well endowed wife and with a degree from Princeton University, Harvard or Yale could not work for the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce or, certainly, the Department of Labor. But he could serve, with mannered excellence, in the Department of State or in an overseas embassy. The Department had, as has indeed been said, many of the characteristics of an exclusive men’s club. Assignment even to countries with the most retrograde governments or dictators could be accepted, even enjoyed, which often resulted in an unfortunate tolerance toward their policies and political activities. In a memorable comment in the early days of the Second World War, President Roosevelt was quoted as saying that the best that could be hoped for from the State Department in the emerging conflict was neutrality.
After the First World War and the Versailles Conference, those diplomats who returned to private life sought diligently to retain the distinction of their recent, greatly prestigious preoccupations and decisions; they formed the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, which, not surprisingly, soon also came to resemble a carefully maintained club. Membership was, as it remains, confined to individuals claiming past experience in foreign policy or, at a minimum, having some academic or journalistic connection therewith. Meetings, although made impressive by an overtone of public concern and responsibility, were held for the undoubted enjoyment of the participants. As might be imagined from the already described nature of foreign policy, the subjects discussed did not normally touch on intellectually challenging, oratorically contentious or politically divisive issues, as would discussions of domestic policy. None had a visible impact on the pay, pocketbooks, profits or the liberties and well-being of the ordinary citizen. Speeches and discussion that were, by well-established custom, kept agreeably within the limits of the accepted wisdom went far to ensure the amiability and calm of the proceedings.2 The tradition thus so comfortably observed and enjoyed continues and is perpetuated in similarly ceremonial gatherings in other cities and, if in slightly less disciplined fashion, by numerous foreign policy communicants in colleges and universities.
Nor is this enjoyment confined within the geographical limits of the United States. In regularly scheduled conferences—those of the Bilderberg convocation and the Trilateral Commission—foreign policy authorities, including past government officials, come pleasurably together for extended discussions not unmixed with mutual admiration. Nothing, or not much, is believed to have emerged from these meetings; they too reflect the recreational aspect of foreign policy in perhaps its highest and most distinguished manifestation.
As compared with the discussion of budgets, taxes, law enforcement, drug abuse, health care or abortion rights, foreign policy is, to repeat, an area of pleasant and relaxing discourse. Anything suggesting political partisanship is regretted and may even be openly deplored. Foreign policy should be “above politics.” A good foreign policy for the foreign policy constituency is sternly nonpartisan.
In the United States, as in other countries, and especially in otherwise quiet times, there are certain issues, sometimes ones stirring considerable controversy, such as the American debates over flag burning and the pledge of allegiance and other purely oral patriotic observances in the public schools, that are pursued not because of their intrinsic importance but because the discussion, disagreement and, on occasion, violent collision are greatly enjoyed. At a mild and pleasant level this enjoyment has been extensively true of much foreign policy debate over the years.
While no one need regret the polite ceremony and civilized communication that have characterized the past practice of foreign policy, the reality has been at a deeper level. It is possible that amiable and sometimes inspired persuasion has occasionally had useful results, but nearly all foreign policy achievement in the United States has rested on two (and only two) stalwart pillars. These are economic power, with the associated deployment of economic resources, and military power and the threat or actuality of its use. The more purely recreational or rhetorical activities of the foreign policy community count for little in terms of actual change or effect.
American economic strength was the highly visible support to American international influence in the years following the Second World War. The Marshall Plan and the AID programs earlier mentioned, the later American influence in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the compelling need for other countries to gain access to the American market, the perception of the United States as the obvious model of economic success for the world and the extensive resources its private lenders so confidently dispersed with however disastrous consequences were all central to the success of American foreign policy initiatives.
American military power was the second pillar of the American position. These, economic and military strength, were for many years the real as distinct from the rhetorical or recreational basis of American foreign policy. In the age of contentment, however, there has been a marked change in the relative power and importance of the two.
In the decade of the 1980s, as has already been observed, the United States went from being the world’s greatest creditor nation to being its greatest debtor. This was of monumental importance to the practice of foreign policy. A creditor has much at his command in the way of proffered support and largesse and commands much respect; a debtor is, alas, reduced to requesting tolerance and assistance for himself. The difference is very great.3
Back of the changed economic position of the United States in the world were forces intimately associated with the mood of contentment. The United States and Britain, as also Canada and Australia, emerged in triumph from the Second World War. They, but especially the United States, could look with satisfaction on their wartime military achievements, and they did. From this came the long-lasting mood of self-approval; one does not improve on total success.
The mood in the erstwhile enemy countries, Japan, Germany and Italy, was strikingly different. Their history was of unquestioned military disaster, and from this came a sense of needed self-examination, needed improvement and needed effort. On the one hand, the contentment of the victor; on the other, the aspiration of the vanquished.
There is no quantitative measurement that establishes the economic effect of contentment versus aspiration. It is one of the many things in economics and related social comment that depend on the always fragile judgment of the speaker or writer. There were, however, specific, indeed wholly concrete, policies flowing from the difference between defeat and victory.
The defeated countries were left with a powerful sense of the disaster associated with military ambition and with an equally strong awareness of the value of economic excellence, if not superiority. The United States, in contrast, retained a strong commitment to military strength, made stronger, as will be noted presently, by the independent, self-enhancing power of a large military establishment. As a practical consequence, the United States in the 1980s devoted 5.2–6.5 percent of its gross national product to military uses; Germany devoted less than half that; Japan, less than 1 percent.
The American resources so used were at cost to civilian investment and consumption; those so saved in Japan and Germany were available for civilian use and specifically for improving civilian industry. The matter of the use of trained manpower was particularly important. By some calculations, from a quarter to a third of all American scientific and engineering talent in recent years was employed in relatively sterile weapons research and development. This talent the Japanese and the Germans devoted to the improvement of their civilian production. Japan, defeated in war by American industrial power, has now in peacetime extensively replaced its erstwhile enemy in productive service to the American consumer.
And there is more. The United States, with the large overseas debt that has accrued because of the economic policies of the age of contentment, has sharply restrained any foreign policy action that would increase that debt. This is directly the case as to budget expenditure for economic assistance intended to buy foreign economic support or action. Back of this constraint is the haunting specter of higher taxes, the greatest of threats to the controlling principles of contentment.
In the Persian Gulf war of 1991, both Japan and Germany, consistent with their commitment to the superior role of economic power, denied themselves any active military role; in keeping with their perception of economics as the basis of their world position, they offered economic support, support for which the United States with its contrasting emphasis on military strength was reduced to pleading. It did not go wholly unmentioned that the American soldiers, airmen and sailors who led and dominated in the conflict made up what would anciently have been called a mercenary force that was extensively subsidized by Japan, Germany and Saudi Arabia. Nothing so illustrated and emphasized the changed role of economic and military power in American foreign policy as the financial pleas from Washington, the political speeches requesting or demanding more economic support from the allies for military operations.
Other very practical consequences of the decline in American economic power are for all to see. After 1989, as the Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union were seeking the perilous path from socialist and command economies to the market and therewith to a more democratic governing structure, it was vital that this transition be eased with economic help from abroad. It was important that personal liberty and democracy not be identified with empty shops and economic hardship. Such help was forthcoming from the West only reluctantly, and most reluctantly from the United States. Generous offers were made of economic advice, a singularly uncostly contribution.
In the age of contentment, as noted, much foreign policy was passive and recreational in nature, its two principal and substantial supports being economic and military power. As we have seen, only military power has now escaped unimpaired, and with it the next two chapters are concerned.
1 I am aided in my understanding of this process by the fact that I have drafted some of these documents myself. As I have previously observed, no doubt with some exaggeration, it was from this experience that I became aware of my subsequently not unrewarded talent for fiction.
2 I speak as a onetime member of the Council. I have further developed these views in “Staying Awake at the Council on Foreign Relations,” The Washington Monthly (September 1984), a review of Robert D. Schulzinger, The Wise Men of Foreign Affairs (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).
3 The economic change that has occurred is not readily conceded. Thus, in Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990), my distinguished Harvard colleague Joseph S. Nye observes that “the United States remains the largest and richest power with the greatest capacity to shape the future.” However, he concedes that there is “an unwillingness [on the part of Americans] to invest in order to maintain confidence in their capacity for international leadership,” adding, perhaps resignedly, “in a democracy, the choices are the people’s” (p. 261).