Foreign Policy Adviser Research Articles

Johann Hari Replies

Nick Cohen's response is perplexing, characterized as it is by daft hyperbole (I'm Maoist now?), denial of his own statements, and arguments that he knows I agree with and have done more to advance than he. It's disappointing he doesn't try to defend his positions or engage with any of my arguments, despite the fact I tried hard to fairly summarize his case. For example, he simply repeats his claim that the Iraq War marked a radical break with Henry Kissinger's influence on U.S. foreign policy—and, to sustain this, he ignores the lengthy part of my review pointing out that Kissinger is now, according to Bob Woodward, "the most senior foreign policy adviser to [Bush] outside the administration." This information doesn't fit into his Manichean polemics so, rather than defend his case, he simply pretends it isn't so.

A Critique of the China Threat Theory: A Systematic Analysis

Proponents of the theory argue that it is inconceivable for China to have a rise; a superpower China will inevitably be a threat to the United States. This article analyzes the military and economic aspects of the theory from theoretical, methodological, and points of view. theory's flaws are in its assumptions, which this article tackles by providing counter examples as well as by highlighting external and internal problems facing China that can complicate its rise to great-power status. In addition, the theory is based on linear projection and imperfect historical analogies that are as misleading conceptually as they are strategically counterproductive to Sino-American relations. This, of course, is not to argue that China poses no threat; it is, however, to suggest that the nature of any threat is far more nuanced than the theorists claim it to be. Key words: East Asian Security, U.S.-China relations Introduction China's rise has been viewed with uncertainty and anxiousness in the West. Its rapid economic growth, military modernization, and in recent years a surge in energy demand have made many in the United States talk about a threat. Policy makers, thinkers, academics, and pundits have started exploring strategies of containing China, and rejecting the concept of peaceful rise.1 There are many reasons for such fears. Robert Kagan, for example, has used history to argue that China's rise will not be peaceful. He has asserted: The history of rising powers . . . and their attempted 'management' by established powers provides little reason for confidence or comfort. Rarely have rising powers risen without sparking a major war that reshaped the international system to reflect new realities of power.2 Others have expressed the threat from a rising China in starker terms. Bill Gertz, for example, has argued that The People's Republic of China is the most serious national security threat the United States faces at present and will remain so into the foreseeable future . . . reason Americans should take the threat from China so seriously is that it puts at risk the very national existence of the United States.3 U.S. government has been more nuanced and reserved about the perceived threat from China, but it has also sounded the alarms. 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, for example, asserted that has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional U.S. military advantages.4 Of course, different administrations have had different attitudes toward the threat. President George W. Bush's administration, however, made it clear that-unlike the Clinton administration- it saw China as a competitor. following quote from Condoleezza Rice-then a foreign policy adviser to then-Governor George W. Bush-is telling. Arguing against the Clinton administration's policy of engagement of China, Rice wrote: Even if there is an argument for economic interaction with Beijing, China is still a potential threat to stability in the Asia-Pacific region. Its military power is currently no match for that of the United States. But that condition is not necessarily permanent. What we do know is that China is a great power with unresolved vital interests, particularly concerning Taiwan and the South China Sea. China resents the role of the United States in the Asia- Pacific region. This means that China is not a status quo power but one that would like to alter Asia's balance of power in its own favor. That alone makes it a competitor, not the strategic partner the Clinton administration once called it. Add to this China's record of cooperation with Iran and Pakistan in the proliferation of ballistic-missile technology, and the security problem is obvious. …

Getting Around Pyongyang's Hard-Liners

In the standard U.S. image, North Korea is a monolithic, Stalin-style dictatorship controlled by one man, Kim Jong Il. However, the key reason for North Korean intransigence in the crisis with the United States is that Kim does not have unchallenged control over foreign and defense policy. The North Korean power structure is deeply divided between pragmatists who favor a deal with the United States and increasingly assertive hard-liners who argue that a tough posture is needed to stop the Bush administration from pursuing in Pyongyang.My most disturbing finding on a recent visit to North Korea was that a showdown over policy occurred in early February 2005 between the dealers, led by First Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju, the principal foreign policy adviser to Kim, and a coalition of hard-line generals and Workers' Party leaders. The hardliners prevailed. On February i0, 2005, Pyongyang made its pronouncement that it has manufactured nukes and is a nuclear weapons state. Then a March 3i declaration served notice that North Korea will no longer discuss dismantling its weapons capabilities until the United States normalizes economic and diplomatic relations with the Kim regime.The ascendancy of the hard-liners is the direct result of the Bush administration's ideologically driven North Korean policy and can be reversed only if the United States makes a fresh start attuned to the conciliatory engagement approach now being pursued by South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun.In contrast to his father, the late Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il is not a revered, charismatic demigod and must accommodate pressures from his generals. As the son of the Great Leader, he is needed out in front to legitimize the regime, but the armed forces wield growing power, even in the economic sphere.In the February showdown, I was told by several of those involved, the argued in favor of preserving ambiguity concerning the extent of North Korean capabilities as part of a continued effort to get economic quid pro quos in return for step-by-step denuclearization.The hard-liners countered that it would be naive to continue hoping for a beneficial deal with the Bush administration, which in their view is seeking regime change and wants to use the six-party talks in Beijing to drive Pyongyang into a corner. It is demeaning for North Korea to let the United States keep it on the defensive in the six-party talks, they contended, even though Washington has 7,400 operational weapons of its own. The only self-respecting course for North Korea, they said, would be to rule out any discussion of dismantlement for now and to declare unambiguously that North Korea is already a nuclear weapons state in order to make Washington think twice about any military adventure.There is a strong mood of wounded pride and angry nationalism in Pyongyang that cuts across both dealers and hard-liners. It is particularly galling to North Korean leaders that the United States, oblivious to the sensitivity of Chinese-Korean relations throughout history, is attempting to apply pressure through China and to use it as a diplomatic intermediary.This is not the i9th century, one North Korean official commented, an allusion to the servile posture of Korean monarchs toward China during the closing decades of the Yi dynasty, which provoked a strong nationalist reaction. The Kim regime consistently appeals to Korean national pride and has sought friendship with the United States in part as an offset to excessive dependence on its giant neighbor. Thus, attempting to use China to pressure Pyongyang only strengthens the hardliners.It was a red flag to the hard-liners when Bush sent a White House emissary to Chinese President Hu Jintao on Feb. i with a letter calling for a much tougher posture against Pyongyang. To army generals who think of themselves as the guardians of Korean nationalism, it was necessary to show the world that North Korea would not submit to U. …

O.D. Skelton and the North American mind

NINETEEN THIRTY-FIVE WAS A GOOD YEAR for Canadian-American connection. Prime Minister R. B. Bennett began negotiation of a trade agreement with United States spring. Another leader, Mackenzie King, finished job time to celebrate his success on Armistice Day, 11th of November, from his perspective appropriate occasion to contrast cooperative peoples of America with those of a barbaric Europe.1 O. D. Skelton, King's chief foreign policy adviser as he had been Bennett's, was delighted by substance of freer trade, but even more by its potential for shaping of a North American mind.2 That would distance country from trap of British imperialism and European militarism.THE RISE OF NORTH AMERICANISMThe first four decades of 20th century, period of Skelton's academic and public service career, witnessed rise of a Americanism that went to core of his thought. Americanism was not an organized impulse, nor was it dominant force driving attitudes and policy Canada or United States. But it was on an upwards trajectory during Skelton's adult life.North Americanism came from many directions-from growth of United States' power and ambition, and dimming of British empire's light and authority; from resolution of Canadian-American disputes that had dogged late 19th and early 20th centuries; from sense that a superior American diplomatic structure was taking shape, with International Joint Commission (IJC) as both symbol and evidence of an ability to resolve knotty problems cooperatively; and from continental publicists such as J. T. Shotwell and J. W. Dafoe. It came, too, from intensifying links of economics and culture, and from merchants, doctors, engineers, lawyers, bankers, unionists, bureaucrats, academics, entertainers, and athletes who moved effortlessly and increasingly across border.When Americans and Canadians turned away from world years between two world wars, Americanism took a tighter hold. Sir Robert Falconer, president of University of Toronto, wrote 1925 that America was hope of world: Fear of force is unknown, vessels of war are not seen on lakes nor fortifications on frontier, and such rivalries which exist spring not from incompatible racial ambitions but from legitimate trade between two peoples of mutual affinity and respect. How sad, by comparison, was the plight of Europe: country set against country, race against race, frontiers watched by suspicious guardians, enclaves and fragments of peoples only tolerated by necessity.' Canadians regularly traveled to League of Nations to read what became known, and not a complimentary way, as speech, prescribing IJC's methodologies of investigation, reason, and discussion as a remedy for world's ills. Canadians, Mackenzie King told League 1928, lived in perfect harmony ... with their neighbour to south.4From 1935 into second World War, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, St. Lawrence University, and Queen's University convened large and buoyant Canadian-American relations conferences, alternating between Canadian and American sites and drawing on a wide range of expertise from both countries. In 1936, J. T. Shotwell launched Carnegie's series of scholarly examinations of relationship, which eventually reached 25 sober blue volumes. At first of Canada-US meetings, held upstate New York, J. W. Dafoe, celebrated editor of Winnipeg Free Press, argued that Canada and United States constituted a cultural, intellectual, and moral unity, North American character and range.5 That summarized a broad intellectual trend.6By later 1930s, according to US Chamber of Commerce, there were 11 non-governmental organizations United States pushing for close Canadian-American relations. …

Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet

RISE OF THE VULCANS: The History of Bush's War Cabinet James Mann New York: Viking, 2004. xxii, 420pp, $39.00 cloth (ISBN 0-670-03299-9)Why did the United States invade Iraq in the spring of 2003? One way to find an answer to this question would be to sift through the Bush administration's public remarks leading up to the war. All the key members of President Bush's foreign policy team appeared on television, delivered major speeches, and testified before a variety of international and domestic agencies laying out their case for war. This sort of an approach would allow us to understand all the stated reasons for invading Iraq: the belief that Iraq was a growing threat, the belief that the United States must act quickly and decisively to check this growing menace, and the belief that overthrowing Saddam Hussein was a central component of the war on terror.But such an approach would not shed much light into why key foreign policy advisers believed these things. Why did the administration believe that the United States had to act? Why do key foreign policy advisers believe the war against Iraq was justified despite the fact the no weapons of mass destruction were discovered? Why do these advisers believe there is a connection between Saddam Hussein and the events of September nth? To answer these fundamental questions, one must have a sense of the beliefs and world views of those who are responsible for making US foreign policy. James Mann's book, Rise of the Vulcans, is excellent in this regard.As Mann points out, one can imagine a very different set of responses to the events of September nth. In order to understand the Bush administration's response to this tragedy, one must have a sense of the policy makers involved, their histories, and their perspectives on international relations and the United States' place in the world. Thus, Mann has written a collective biography, a book that traces the professional and ideological development of President Bush's key foreign policy advisers: Vice President Dick Cheney, National security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and Deputy secretary of State Richard Armitage. The term Vulcans refers to Bush administration officials who previously served in other Republican administrations. The nickname originated with the advisers themselves, during the 2000 presidential campaign.Mann has wisely chosen to write the book in a thematic manner. Rather than devoting a single chapter to each individual, Mann has chosen to organize the book chronologically. …

Explaining Change in the Carter Administration's China Policy: Foreign Policy Adviser Manipulation of the Policy Agenda

The formal recognition of the People's Republic of China (PRC) on 1 January 1979 shifted the balance in the American, Soviet, and Chinese triangular relationship and stirred up domestic opposition from the Taiwan lobby. From a foreign policy agenda that emphasized ddtente with the Soviet Union, the Carter administration developed a strategic military relationship with the Chinese to counter a shared perception of the Soviet threat. This shift in President Carter's thinking was a dramatic change from a president who initially sought deep cuts in nuclear weapons with the Soviets. This change raises important questions about the making of America's China policy, namely, how and why did this tilt toward China occur? As the United States conducted its sensitive negotiations with China, both strategic and domestic considerations influenced how negotiations proceeded. There were tradeoffs at the international level because as the United States pursued normalization the Soviet Union could be alienated. At the domestic level, given the shared nature of American power between the president and Congress, any change in policy toward China faced challenges from members of Congress and other domestic critics that could jeopardize the president's policy initiatives. This meant that the Carter administration engaged in a two-level game to balance Chinese expectations/demands with the constraints posed by the domestic polit

The Further Shore

IN CANADA THE VIETNAM WAR is primarily remembered as an episode in domestic politics - riots, protests, dissent - or as a peculiarly unfortunate period in Canadian-American relations. In some ways, this is appropriate. The war was, above all, a public phenomenon, in which diplomacy came up against the force of public opinion and lost. 'Quiet diplomacy,' as far as Canadian-American relations were concerned, was a lost cause, as politicians desperately tried to shore up their standing with an aroused and irritable public opinion. There was no policy choice except expedience and no alternative but surrender to the loud demands of many Canadians. It was, in some respects, the well-intentioned diplomat's worst nightmare.That story is true enough, as far as it goes, but it applies mostly to the second half of Canada's involvement with Vietnam, from 1965 until the fall of Saigon to the communists in 1975. It does not describe the first half of the Canadian experience in Southeast Asia, from 1954 to 1965. That episode was just as interesting because it, too, brought together contradictory elements in Canada's external policy. On the one hand was Western solidarity, surely the touchstone of Canadian foreign relations from the 1940s through the 1990s, and perhaps still. On the other was the sense of a world beyond the cold war - the emerging nations of Asia and later Africa - and that the Western position in the cold war might be damaged or imperilled unless the interests of the poor and populous countries of Asia were taken into account.Professor of History, University of Toronto. The author is at present working on histories of Canadian foreign relations and of the impact of the Vietnam experience on Canada.The 1950s thus witnessed the first serious engagement of the Canadian government in Asia. The Liberal government of Louis St Laurent and his foreign policy advisers was not indifferent to the logic of population statistics. China and India and the countries in between accounted for half of humanity, and they were steadily growing. With China overcome by chaos and then communism, it made sense to pay attention to India. Canada was linked to India through the shared history of the politics and culture of the British Empire and through the British Commonwealth.The story of that early experience is depressing as well. In 1954 Canada undertook to help clean up the aftermath of a colonial war that seemed to pit East against West, North against South, communism against democracy, and the emergent nationalism of the Third World against the colonial hangovers of European imperialism. The Canadian government of the day, Liberal in politics and liberal in temperament, was a firm member of the Western alliance. Yet it also defined itself as untainted by European - even British - colonialism and as unmoved by the sometimes hysterical and always strident anti-communism that in the 1950s disfigured American public life. At the time, these qualities were considered moral assets, and they were deployed in 1954 in formerly French Indochina. But vision and good intentions took policy only so far, for experience in Vietnam showed that Canadian-Indian differences were far greater than convergences.ORIGINSCanada's involvement in Indochina and its tangled diplomacy dated back to the collapse of French power in World War Two. Canadian policy during that war and after was to sustain French resistance and then restore France as a major component in the international system. As Canadian diplomats discovered, that meant accepting what the French government believed to be necessary for the restoration of French power. That in turn meant coming to terms with French policy in Indochina.(f.1)Indochina was the jewel of the French colonial system. Before the Second World War, it was exotic, isolated, and remote, and the French governed it with an iron hand. Its three components, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, were ruled either directly by French proconsuls or indirectly through local, powerless, monarchs. …

The Black Woman Who Is the Chief Foreign Policy Adviser to the Man Who May Be the Next President of the United States

The Black Woman Who Is the Chief Foreign Policy Adviser to the Man Who May Be the Next President of the United States

Trudeau and Europe: Reflections of a foreign policy adviser∗

Trudeau and Europe: Reflections of a foreign policy adviser∗

From House to Haig: Private Life and Public Style in American Foreign Policy Advisers

Personal history may determine the individual's style of expressing political beliefs as much as or more than it influences the beliefs themselves. Connections between private life history and public political style have most often been studied in U.S. presidents. However, studies of prominent foreign‐policy advisers can be just as useful for an understanding of how individual life history shapes the expression of political beliefs. This paper examines areas of apparent linkage between private life and public style in four of the most prominent American foreign policy advisers of the 20th century: House, Dulles, Kissinger, and Haig. Three styles of dealing with foreign policy issues—Machiavellianism, ego‐idealism, and authoritarianism—are considered in relation to the public and private behavior of each man.

The preservation of Turkey's neutrality during the second world war: 1940

On 19 October 1939, the Turkish Republic signed a treaty of Mutual Assistance with Britain and France. But leaders like President In6nu and the close circle of foreign policy advisers around him knew that Turkey was in no condition to take part in any modem war. ' She was only just beginning to heal the wounds left by the continuous wars from 1909 to 1923, when the Republic had been founded. Therefore, Turkey had to be kept out of the war, and yet her sovereignty and territorial integrity safeguarded. This brought forth from the Turkish leaders at the time, a most remarkable feat of diplomacy. Despite her vital strategic location Turkey managed to avoid involvement in the worldwide upheaval. The most critical stage of the war for Turkey was 1940, as this year presented the Turkish foreign policy planners with great difficulty in the application of their policies. It was a year of severe crises and unforeseen events. 'When the Turks, the French and the British signed an alliance it was impossible to foresee either the German successes in Western Europe and the developments which brought the Axis to the very doors of Turkey, or the threat of complete hostile encirclement ...'I In the previous year during the treaty negotiations the British had spoken in terms of the 'Maginot line' and the French having 'the best existing land defences in the world', this making 'a direct attack on France most unlikely'. They had also spoken of a 'Polish Offensive in the East'.3 In view of what actually happened it was hardly surprising that the Turks kept their reserve. It is no more surprising that Turkey, 'was not even ready to allow the indispensable naval and air bases to be prepared in her territory'.4 The British and Turks approached the Alliance with completely contradictory viewpoints. To the Turks it was an insurance policy to be put into practice only in case of dire need, while for the British it was a means of effective action in the Balkans and Middle East. Barutqu quotes Inonu as saying at the time:

Presidential Policy Processes and "New Administration": A Search for Revised Paradigms

C ATCH PHRASES CAPTURE some of the flavor of administration. Among others, these include open systems, temporary, changing, dialectical, and problem-solving organizations, and existential executives. The approaches place at least as much emphasis upon interactions between organizations and their external environments as upon the internal workings of complex organizations, because the single organization, whatever its comprehensiveness, can accomplish little by itself. Because the interactions include individuals and organizations without formal to order each other around, concepts of hierarchy and executive responsibility provide insufficient operational guidance. There is a need, now in the early stages of articulation, to reorient public policy processes in these directions; to establish, for example, a variety of mechanisms that link national and local governments, academia, and the business community, among other circles of influence.1 Whatever the extent of demands from individual citizens and groups that they be able to participate, the demands seem linked more to policy than to electoral processes.2 The trends may portend, perhaps for the first time, a true synthesis of politics and administration, and the conceptualization and implementation of new processes may be the most important items on the agenda. This is because policy processes can determine who participates and, if properly designed, can decrease the likelihood of poor decisions and make it easier to reverse such decisions when they are made. For the most part, however, these new approaches have not been put to work in the most important policy processes. Recommendations for change in presidential processes, for example, tend to follow traditional models. One sees demands that the Department of State take charge of foreign policy, or that a Super Secretary standing above the Cabiet handle both foreign and military affairswith the assistance of a White House staff.3 Predictions of domestic superdepartments modeled after the Department of Defense have been followed by presidential requests to construct such departments in the hope they will encompass all the needed authority and resources. 5 This persistent drive for overhead consolidation may be marching us to the rear. The notion seems to remain that if an organization can only be made big enough, all we need do is erect walls around it, treat it as a closed system, and apply hallowed concepts of command and control. Traditional models do indeed have a strong grip; even the language of administration is inherently hierarchical, making it difficult to conceptualize alternatives or describe them when they exist. This article concentrates upon the past, present, and future implications of one such alternative. The National Security Council (NSC), statutorily established in 1947 as a formal linkage of the President with his foreign policy advisers in the Executive Branch, has functioned as an interactive system, or process, for most of its lifetime, but some of its more profound impli-

World Events

Washington's foreign policy adviser, Dean Acheson, has issued a statement which commits the administration to follow the same stuck-in-the-mud policies that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles supported fifteen years earlier.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Great Britain and Europe

Since October 2010 Simon McDonald, CMG, is the British Ambassador to Germany. He joined the British Diplomatic Service in 1982 and has served in Jeddah, Riyadh, Bonn, Washington and Tel Aviv, and in a wide range of jobs in London. Before becoming Ambassador in Berlin, he served as the Prime Minister’s Foreign Policy Adviser and Head of Foreign and Defence Policy in the Cabinet Office from 2007 to 2010. From 2003 to 2006 he was British Ambassador to Israel. He served as Deputy Head of Mission, Counsellor and Consul-General in Riyadh from 1998 to 2001 and from 1995 to 1998 as First Secretary in Washington. Before taking up an earlier posting in Jedda from 1985 to 1988, he had Arabic language training from 1983 to 1985. Simon McDonald has had a wide variety of other appointments in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. Most recently he was Director for Iraq in 2006/2007. From 2001 to 2003 he was Principal Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary, and from 1993 to 1995 Private Secretary to the Permanent Under Secretary. He was Speech Writer to the Foreign Secretary from 1991 to 1993, and Benelux desk officer in the Western European Department from 1982 to 1983. His diplomatic career was and is closely linked to Germany, both to the old, divided and to the new, unified Germany. He witnessed the fall of the Berlin wall from the perspective of the Second Secretary of the British Embassy in the former capital Bonn between 1988 and 1990 to return to the new capital Berlin 20 years later as the ambassador to the new, reunified Germany.