Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy [Hardcover]

 

 

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No doubt about it, during the Bush administration the nation's stature around the world suffered as it engaged in adventurism in the Middle East, "cowboyism" toward rivals and potential rivals, and generally took the approach that as the last remaining superpower the United States could dictate a Pax Americana to the other nations of the world. Resentment, sleight-of-hand, and sometimes outright opposition resulted too often and the U.S. was incapable of achieving many of its objectives, even if those objectives might have been noble. So what do we do about it?

Leslie Gelb, a longstanding foreign policy theorist and analyst, offers a set of recommendations to the new administration just taking office as this book was published. Certainly neither a dove nor a dreamer, Gelb offers a Realpolitick assessment of the world situation and offers advice for the future. He claims that his efforts here are based on the maxims to "The Prince" offered by Machiavelli in his classic work; what this new "prince" does with them is up to him.

Gelb argues that the wise "prince" will recognize that none of the dominant schools of foreign policy alone have the answers to the problems of the U.S. in the international community. He spends an appropriate amount of energy debunking the foreign policy claims of the neoconservatives, of the über-doves, of the soft power advocates, and of the internationalists. Gelb argues that the U.S. remains THE great power in the world and that it has the responsibility to act the part. Of course, to paraphrase a statement from "Spiderman," with great power comes great responsibility.

Even so, U.S. power is neither absolute nor incontrovertible. Accordingly, the U.S. must collaborate with other nations for mutual benefit rather than try to dictate to others. He uses the term "mutual indispensability" to describe this approach. He comments that the U.S. will assure its inability to achieve its objectives if it fails to appreciate that statecraft is a combination of military might and diplomatic negotiations, coercion and persuasion. Carrots are powerful tools to persuade others to follow the path the U.S. envisions, but the stick is also a part of the process.

Leslie Gelb offers a sparkling set of case studies of U.S. success and failure in international relations over the last half of the twentieth century and the first years of the twenty-first. His message is clear; threats and military action do not alone solve problems. Neither does moral suasion and diplomatic discussions. A common sense approach, Gelb insists, offers a creative mix to the hard and soft power strategies discussed repeatedly in the foreign policy arena. He urges five components to this analysis:
1. Make America strong by restoring its economic "dynamism."
2. Emphasize "mutual indispensability" as the fundamental principle of U.S. power in the twenty-first century.
3. Clearly delineate the challenges to the U.S.--terrorism, threats to the global economy, nuclear proliferation, the environment, and global pandemics--and lead coalitions of other nations to respond to them.
4. Deal with potential problems before they fester and mature into full-scale crises.
5. Embrace the idea that while power involves the use of force in certain circumstances, U.S. capability to dictate through bald-faced coercion is less compelling than it was even a handful of years ago.

In Gelb's estimation this approach to foreign policy is not inherently partisan. He sees individuals in both the Democratic and the Republican camps who embrace many of these maxims. For example, he invokes both the Democrat Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Republican Brent Scowcraft as representative of those who emphasize a pragmatic, effective, "mutual indispensability" in dealing with the rest of the world.

OK, so tell me something I didn't know. So far this is foreign relations 101 and while it is useful to remind political leaders of this approach, especially in the aftermath of a stunning set of misfortunes in foreign policy during the Bush administration, there is little here that will be truly helpful after the invocation of moderation in dealing with other nations and thinking strategically about U.S. priorities.

While "Power Rules" is a fine reading experience and serves well as a basic primer for the issues of foreign policy for the Obama administration, I expected more insight. While it also contains a good overview of what has worked and not worked in the past, I wanted more of a prescription for the future than I saw here. As it is, it serves as a basic primer, a refresher on foreign policy, but not one that is singularly innovative.

Leslie Gelb's new book "Power Rules" is a modern update to Niccolo Machiavelli's 15th century classic book written to the new ruler of the City-State of Florence, Italy. Only Gelb's book is specifically written for new U.S. President Barack Obama about the present U.S. situation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and elsewhere. Machiavelli once wrote:

"There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless."

Whether *Power Rules* falls into the first or the second of Machiavelli's three types of intelligence is the question to be answered in this book review.

Gelb relates what he understands for himself as a political moderate about U.S. foreign policy based on decades of working for Presidents on both sides of the political spectrum.

Using Gelb's favorite concept about U.S. foreign policy, - *mutual indispensability,* (i.e., "we swim together, or we hang apart") this book is "indispendable" and should get a wide reading across the political spectrum. Gelb disabuses just about every camp of foreign policy -- hard-dumb, soft-smart, and globalist-economic -- of their preconceived notions about foreign affairs. Instead he opts for what he calls a common sense approach. But unlike Machiavelli who wrote that "men never do anything well except through necessity," Gelb's approach is based on non-necessity or non-imperatives (i.e., choice). Contrary to Machiavelli, Gelb says war is rarely necessary, as necessity is prone to being invented. Gelb is thus a postmodernist Machiavellian, however otherwise realistic and commensensical he is. It is interesting to note that the Afghan War was initially seen as the common sense *war of necessity* and the Iraq War a *war of choice.* Now the Afghan War is seen by many as a war of choice that we should retreat from. What is seen as common sense is changeable.

Despite that I couldn't put this well-written book down I am sorry to say that it is a disappointment not by what he wrote but what he didn't. For in singling out the invasion of Iraq by President George W. Bush II as a war of choice Gelb never answers the elusive question of our time: if Bush's invasion of Iraq and his policy of pre-emptive warfare was such an obvious failure why did Machiavelli write "There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others"? Gelb loves to invoke Machiavelli to legitimate his book but unfortunately for us only selectively so. He sidestepped this issue.

Of course the Iraq War was a war of choice by President Bush, as pointed out in Lawrence Freedman's book *A Choice of Enemies.* Although al Qaeda has always been highly suspected of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, as Freedman points out in his book the Saudis and Pakistan are the most suspicious sponsors. Faced with the ambiguous situation of who attacked the U.S. after 9/11, Bush had to "choose" an enemy. Bush apparently picked the *low hanging fruit* of Iraq and Afghanistan instead of provoking war with the Saudis (oil), Pakis (nukes), or Iran (Islam). Thus, Bush "chose" indirect warfare as that was the only option which preserved "mutual indispensability" (Gelb's term) with the Saudis (oil), Pakis (nukes) and Iran (Islam). But the American public never has understood that these wars are indirect wars, and thus has perceived them as *manufactured.*

Gelb offers six excellent chapters of rules for exercising power. However, while Gelb is certainly aware in his book of how foreign states (Saudi, Pakistan, Iran) harbor, fund, and arm shadow terrorist networks both within and outside their countries, he frustratingly doesn't offer any guidelines of how to deal with them. Gelb puts so much emphasis on abandoning "unilateralism" for cooperation with other allies or even rival nations that he fails to answer what we do when such nations are also our ally-enemies or are *mutually indispenable* to our national interests? Using Gelb's terminology, what kind of "leverage doors" can you open with nations that hold their own greater leverage over us: Saudis (oil), Pakis (nukes & Islam) and Iran (Islam and soon nukes). What kind of leverage can you exert over friendly Arab states that continue to want to back stab us and keep us bogged down fighting their wars?

Gelb isn't a naive liberal. He just fails to address such paradoxes although he criticizes conservative foreign policy thinkers as simplistic and unable to handle complexity. Oddly, Machiavelli is mostly embraced by conservatives, not liberals.

Machiavelli wrote in Book II, Chapter 9 of his Discourses the following: "this method of starting war has always been common among the powerful and among those who still have respect for both their own word and that of others. For if I wish to wage war upon a prince with whom I have long-respected treaties, I can attack one of his friends with more justification and excuse than I can attack the prince, knowing for a certainty that if I attack his friend he will either resent it (and I shall fulfill my intention of waging war upon him) or not resent it, in which case he will reveal his weakness or lack of faith by not defending one of his dependents. Either one of these two alternatives suffices to lessen his reputation and to facilitate my plans."

In other words, is the Iraq and Afghan Wars indirect wars waged to gain leverage against both neighboring Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran? Gelb doesn't say. But if it is an indirect war then the reasons why Bush failed at devising a convincing public justification for the war become more apparent (e.g., WMD's, removing a tyrant, democracy building, etc). Gelb's approach may be commensensical, non-ideological, and aversive of what he calls "demons," but perhaps it misses the mark.

I got the feeling from reading the book that Gelb is ingratiating himself with the new Obama Presidential administration, not for a job (like Machiavelli did with the Lorenzo de Medici), but to disabuse the Obama team of their notions of soft power and that all you have to do in foreign policy is negotiate. If so, Gelb has his own double Machiavellian motivation to slip some medicine into the dog food while playing doctor and criticizing his last patient (Bush) for not taking his medicine (i.e., Bush negotiated behind the scenes and through clandestine intermediaries rather than publicly in order not to legitimate enemy regimes).

It is plausible that a faction within Saudi Arabia wanted the U.S. to fight their war for them against Iraq? We have known for a long time that the Saudis were implicated in 9/11 and that the Pakis are the Taliban and thus an accomplice in Afghanistan. If this was the case, Gelb offers no understanding of how the U.S. should deal or gain leverage over such a situation. Should it have negotiated, gone to war with Saudi Arabia and cut its economic lifeline of oil risking an economic depression, risked an all out war with Pakistan thus risking nuclear retaliation or an all-out war with Islam, or what? We don't know because Gelb is stuck on answers that are obvious and full of common sense rather than asking those questions that everyone seems to want to avoid like some sort of dark family secret.

The book jacket is filled with endorsements mainly by liberal foreign policy critics who have embraced Gelb's book as some sort of vindication of their criticisms of Bush's actions and policies by the dean of foreign policy. Gelb, however, is above the fray, but almost to a fault. Unfortunately, Gelb leaves some of the most tantalizing and prescient propositions of Machiavelli about the Iraq War unanswered. Instead he has opted to write a book that casts a pox on everyone's houses -- which is greatly needed.

In the end, however, I am afraid that I have to put Gelb's book in the second category of Machiavelli's as that which "appreciates what others can understand" more than it casts light or depth on what we don't understand. Nonetheless, don't miss reading this excellent book. It is a *necessity,* even if it is your choice.

Two prominent political figures profoundly influenced U.S. foreign policy since the late 1700s to early 1800s: Alexander Hamilton, George Washington's treasury secretary, and Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the U.S. For two centuries since these two, U.S. foreign policy has shifted back and forth like a pendulum between the Hamiltonian ideology of conservatives/neoconservatives, and the Jeffersonian liberal followers. Mr. Hamilton viewed a strong national economy and military as a necessity to protect U.S. interests, while Mr. Jefferson advocated promoting the American ideals of freedom and democracy abroad (p. 45 of hardcover).

According to Mr. Gelb, the power to lead derives from the power to solve problems, and for 50 years, no U.S. administration has correctly used this indispensible power that is currently on the decline. If this downward trend continues, the U.S. will be nothing more than just another great power; essentially where China is now. Mr. Gelb views this prospect as a travesty for all countries, because in such a scenario the world would be "without a leader to sustain world order and help solve international problems." (p. 278)

Mr. Gelb has an optimistic view of reversing America's diminishing power stemming from the misunderstanding and misuse of U.S. power in foreign affairs, as well as the weakening of domestic fundamentals such as the economy, infrastructure, public schools and political system. The saving grace, according to Mr. Gelb is the rise of moderates to positions of power to counter the destructive influence of "demons" on the far right and left. These moderates, of whom Mr. Gelb is a member of, have failed to strut their stuff for the past 50 years. What would compel them to fight as hard as the extremists on either ends of the political spectrum to get their voices heard? Mind you, they'd have to stay in power consistently for decades to clean up the mess Mr. Gelb asserts the "demons" have created. In a "Meet the Press" interview with the late Tim Russert, Karl Rove correctly asserted the fight for power has always been between conservatives and liberals. Everyone else just goes along for the ride. Mr. Gelb even admits that extremists drown out the voice of moderates, and fight with uncanny resolve. The reason why Muslim extremists were backed by Pakistan in Afghanistan is precisely because they fought harder than moderate Afghani commanders such as Ahmad Shah Massoud. Pakistan needed these extremists to fight their proxy war in India.

So how is Mr. Gelb's optimistic view of a moderate takeover reconciled with a history that doesn't support it? What chance does the U.S. have for retaining its long run indispensable superiority in the face of these bleak prospects? The massive government debt alone may be enough to knock us out of contention as the world leader.

Mr. Gelb correctly postulates that if the U.S. dominant power is to be restored and retained, extremists have to be marginalized. Just how this can be accomplished and the likelihood of its success remains to be seen.

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