Ep 08 – World Politics with Chapman and Wolford, Part 3

[0:00:00 Speaker 1] eyes. The West faltering? Are the institutions that have supported the international order since the end of World War Two Collapsing? Has America’s preeminence in international affairs seen its best days? Is the West protecting itself from terrorism in any significant way? Does America have a strategy in Syria and if so, what is it? Welcome back to the connector, where we bring together innovative, groundbreaking and collaborative research inside the U. T. Austin political science universe. I’m your host, Stewart Tendler, Continuing our discussion with Terry Chapman and Scott Woolford, our guest suggests that claims of Western demise are premature and overstated. While countries challenged the current international order, these air limited challenges made strategically to annoy just a little bit, but not enough to justify harsh retribution. In this sense, current international institutions air strong and persisting as the discussion persists. What becomes clear is the utter complexity of international politics and the frustration of having to choose between bad choices. The Syrian Civil War provides a case in point to both serious and casual observers. It might appear the United States has no strategy to address the civil war in Syria, but the truth might be that merely trying to contain the war is the best option available, no matter how ugly or dissatisfying that might be. Before concluding, our guests discuss how wars end, why countries might fight wars in the first place and how what we know does not give us clear guidelines on how to approach complex questions of foreign policy and international intervention. In the end, it would seem that no matter how complicated and dangerous the world is, the United States remains firmly secure in a position of global

[0:01:49 Speaker 2] leadership. Scott, you mentioned kind of these challenges to the post war order, and I guess my question for you guys, right? So in your work with coalitions, Terry, in your understanding how how international institutions, workers should work and and then just the domestic politics aspect of everything. I mean, it seems to me that these challenges are kind of going unchecked, and I don’t know if that’s a misreading, but so what’s happening right? So Russia violates a basic principle of the post war order. Nothing happens. Britain votes to leave, and it’s kind of there’s no mechanism toe prevent it from happening, right? I mean, what did one of the you guys was like, Yeah, I want your resignation letter to hate her. So yeah,

[0:02:43 Speaker 1] And then, of course, the

[0:02:46 Speaker 2] the big terrorism attacks on European soil that seemingly Europe has no response to. I mean, and we kind of in my reading of the press, we act like the attacks that are happening in this country or kind of separate it, and I get there. They are different in nature, but still, we had, what, The largest mass shooting in the country’s history. Is that right? I mean, in the Orlando Club,

[0:03:14 Speaker 0] at least was recently, yeah, depending on how we define mass shootings. Yeah,

[0:03:18 Speaker 2] it just seems that we have NATO, the U We have these coalitions that were put together after we have these institutions and I don’t know, it seemed when they weren’t being challenged, everything seemed great. And now these challenges air happening, and it’s unclear to me how they’re responding in any kind of way that would identify them as an institution or as a coalition,

[0:03:44 Speaker 0] right? That’s a good question. Because people were exercised over how the U. S. Should have responded both to, you know, the Russian annexation of Crimea and support for a civil war in Ukraine, but also the invasion of Georgia, right in 2008. And, you know, I think that the reason we haven’t seen a stronger response is we have is because thes decisions were carefully calibrated to not generate a big retaliatory response. I think they’re kind of carefully calibrated attempts at a fate accompli that worked, right? It kind of paid off for the right. Well, OK, the Russians have Crimea. They’ve got financial problems now, which have been, you know, substantial. Right? So I think what we’ve seen is pushes around the edges of the terms of the settlement, right? People are seeing exactly how far the rule of the road extends. You know, like in tow. How many on the main highways? Sure. Right on the city streets. Sure, but what about these? You know, smaller, less to find parts. I think we’re seeing challenges to that kind of global equilibrium. And you know what’s gonna matter. I think in the long term is how many countries decide they can push up against the edges of it. But I do think you know, it is instructive that Ukraine kind of falls into a political chaos. Russia takes a bid. But you know, if we look historically, his designs are on far more than just the Crimean Peninsula, Right? You know, it kind of learned what the West as a group that, you know, we view the West is kind of against Russia in this case on this issue, right? But it’s not provoking NATO countries in the same way or you countries because Ukraine hadn’t gone there yet. So I think a there you’re seeing Russia in particular, push against the terms of it to see how will these status quo powers like the US and Germany and the British respond, but at the same time their choice of not their choice of target. But you know, the reasons that one way to view Russian actions here is not that it’s a challenge to the status quo, but it’s kind of Ah, stop loss measure, right? So if Ukraine really aligns itself toward the West, Russia loses big leverage over a former part of the empire right that even denies is really Ukraine. Parts of it should be Russia, right? And so it’s almost a testament to the strength and the allure of those institutions that that you could see a country feeling the need to get involved militarily and really dicey operation. Not so much seizing Crimea but getting involved in the the the Don Basin, right in Eastern. He’s from Ukraine. It’s almost about what’s at issue is the strength of the European Union and NATO. But I think it’s, you know, it’s easy for us to interpret it as Ah, the U. S is weak. They wouldn’t bomb the Syrian capital and therefore Russian troops were in Crimea, Right? I don’t really bad that read on it so much. But you’re also right that these there are challenges to the system out there. But I think there their chosen in such a way that they’re not exactly gonna provoke the’s big responses. Don’t know. Yeah, no, I

[0:06:48 Speaker 3] agree with all that. I mean, once small point disagreement. I mean, I’m not sure even interpret the European response so far is being conciliatory or appeasing or sort of letting it really remember This referendum doesn’t is no automatic, right? So the parliament still has to invoke Article 50. Lots of things have to happen for Britain actually exit So actually interpreted the response from European capitals has be, at least you know, the big ones and from Brussels is being actually pretty firm response to us in the sense that they’re not giving much leeway. So saying, Yeah, you have to exit right away is sort of signaling, Yeah, it’s a signaling tactic to signal both to British politicians and citizens that these are gonna be the consequences if you follow through with this right. So I don’t think it’s actually a foregone conclusion that we’ll see Britain fully exit the EU. It’ll be politically thorny and volatile over the next few years. Whatever happens, right, because obviously after this referendum, if they don’t leave, then you know some people’s careers are gonna be on the line. But I actually see that as being a firm response on the other points. I mean, I think I think Scott’s right. That and let me see if I can kind of put it like a slightly different analogy of the way I was thinking about it is that you know, there’s a fine line between appeasement versus prudence, see when a more aggressive response could cause a wider conflagration, right? And so it’s difficult to tease that out in some of these cases. One reason is just a, Scott pointed out. There are again. Here’s where social science can help so that their selection effects right. We don’t observe all the possible challenges, and therefore we don’t observe necessarily the challenges that would provoke a strong deterrent response. Now that might again seem like to the lay person, like we’re just making excuses or something. But on the other hand, I think it’s, ah, it’s a valid point because it means that first of all, Russia and other countries like that are and the Assad regime they’re choosing strategically their behavior in ways that they’re just pushing up against the boundaries of provoking a stronger response. Yeah, that’s right, right, and sort of their testing those limits. All right, just like our toddlers do there, provoking us and provoking us, right? And so, if you see you know a moderate response to that, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the other powers week it might mean that for various complex, geo strategic reasons, they feel a larger response is not, you know, prudent, not prudent at this juncture. That and the other thing is that then also, you know, argue against myself for a minute and say that I do think there’s a valid point here and the the broader strategy of a response to Syria and the Assad regime, it appears from the outside is one where there’s been a lot of indecision and muddling through. That may not be the case. It may be that the Obama administration internally has a very clear idea about what they’re doing. But the appearance is important because again it has signaling implications to all of our allies. Right? So this, um, communicate came out last week, signed by, like be 50 or 60 different mid level foreign policy bureaucrats saying that you know the United States needs to commit firmer military presence to directly bomb the Assad regime. The only people that were glad about Brexit, probably where the Obama foreign policy team that saw this story go go away because I think this is sort of unprecedented, that a bunch of bureaucrats would actually come out publicly and say this and Biden came back and said, Well, there’s not a single, coherent alternative suggestion in that communication, which is true, but they have a fair point right that there’s been a lot of indecision going all the way back to Obama, saying that the use of chemical weapons would be a red line. I think lots of people in his administration regret that that was a public statement because then you know he had to go back on that later. And so I think you know, the entire strategy and Syria’s is at least produced the perception that there’s sort of an indecisiveness and muddling through. I think there’s some justifications for why that’s the case, but I think it has some negative implications for not necessarily embolden Russia, Russia and Crimea. I think there’s a really good case to me today that it’s unlikely that Russia is making drawing inferences off of Syria and linking that to Crimea, right, But I do think it. Russia has drawn inferences about how the U. S. Will respond to its various behavior in Syria. Yeah, based on the strategy in Syria and I think they’ve done so in ways that don’t benefit the United States, right, like you know, supporting Assad’s forces and bombing US supported rebel groups, right? So I think that’s a fair point in that case may the response to terrorism and is an interesting one as well. There’s been some, actually, some recent academic work, actually, by a formal theorists N Y u Siberia drug. He has a series of articles and a book coming out about how strong responses to terrorist events can actually be counterproductive, and it’s kind of a counterintuitive argument. He makes the argument he makes. It’s a little more complicated in this, but in a nutshell, it’s that you can think of the game if you want to call it that between terrorists and a government trying to deter and suppress terrorist actions as a competition of effort right and and so a competition of effort. It means that sometimes when you raise your effort to, you know, fight. So he focuses specifically on the instance of restricting civil liberties as a method of fighting terrorism by trying to, you know, monitor terrorist communications and so on that these things can actually backfire in surprising ways, because terrorists confined creative ways to increase their effort in response that actually make terrorist acts more likely. So this is a very complicated problem, and I don’t have a good answer to it. I think there there are lots of problems with the way. From what I’ve read, I’m not an expert on this, but with the way security agencies have shared information and shared intelligence in advance of these attacks. And it’s certainly the news does not look rosy when we see these attacks. But on the other hand, how you respond is incredibly complex. In addition to worrying about the response of terrorists, you have to worry about how your policy changes might influence the radicalization of as people who aren’t terrorists and wouldn’t otherwise would be. But I feel that they’re being marginalized and treat about a za result. And then we can also get back to what we just talked about. Selection effects, right? It’s hard for us to observe all the failed terrorist attempts. It could be that you in the United States, policing efforts and enforcement efforts with respect to terrorism are great, and they’re doing a great job. But the level of activity is just so high that it’s impossible to prevent you know, these lone wolf shootings from time to time. That’s a scary prospect, but that could be the reality right. So I think a riel informed assessment of whether we’re doing a good job with that requires a lot more information and analysis than just kind of like seeing these things that are shocking, an alarming which naturally produced the reaction of what we’re not doing enough. Because I think research tells us that, you know, it could be actually opposite. We could be either doing too much or we could be doing the best we can and stopping a lot of attacks. Even if it’s impossible. Stop them all.

[0:14:37 Speaker 0] So I have something two topics ago. Just a building. Oh, so you’re talking about how we should view the administration’s serious strategy right? Which in large part, has been do nothing. But it looks like do nothing if by nothing, we simply mean basically fight a land war in Syria, right? Like when people say we’re doing nothing, they’re saying we’re not doing that. We’re not launching an invasion into a country undergoing ah, tremendously bloody and disastrous civil war, right when you put it that way, usually not obvious what the right response should be. We know a lot about how wars end and how long the ends of these wars can last and frequently the things we know we’re disturbing, right that outside outside intervention to stop a war can sometimes be counterproductive. So suppose that a great power comes in, stops a civil war. But somebody still thinks they could profit by fighting when that great powers attention leaves that when that deal is no longer guaranteed, it’s easy to see it start up again, right? This is not a direct analogy, but you can. One way to think about this is what happened to China, um, after Japan’s invasion and 37 right? So China is fighting a civil war and has been for quite some time. Japan invades China proper in 1937 gets kicked out in 1945. And guess what? Civil war re starts right almost immediately, So its not obvious and what we should expect to happen. You might think that China would have been exhausted right after just, uh, taking a tremendous beating at the hands of Japan. Didn’t happen, right, But the other way to look at it and I don’t know, I don’t know what’s going on in the heads of the administration, but yesterday Fallujah, which is the biggest city in Iraq, that these so called Islamic state still controlled has now been retaken by government forces. One thing I think that you can back out is having been consistent on the part of the U. S. Is actually trying to localize the Syrian civil war at a minimum to push it back within Syria’s borders. One thing we do know is that internationalized civil wars air really dangerous, right to the extent we don’t want to fight a land war in Syria, helping local as it by containing it within those borders might get a few things we want by at least limiting the potential for expansion into other countries. Right now, that’s does not to say that Iraq is everything’s hunky dorey, right? That is not to say that this is the right move, but I think we are seeing the result of whatever the U. S is doing is going to be something like a localization of that civil war. I know I’m spitballing here, but I think I think

[0:17:14 Speaker 3] that’s right. I My point was more that there hasn’t been effective communication that that is the overall strategy here and It’s a difficult thing to communicate, because me, because a smart leader would leave the potential threat of ground troops in an all out invasion on the table, right? The threat of that may have become less credible over time, but my point was more that by in making that you know, the tacit policy. One of the results is that we’ve potentially created sort of a moral hazard, part of the part of rebels, in the sense that they expect Mawr US involvement and so continue to fight instead of realizing that they may be outmanned and also creating a credibility problem that may have. You know, in that instance, I think there is potentially a case to the credibility problem has allowed the Russians to kind of come in sort of under false pretenses, even though everybody expected they would be supporting Assad and I end up doing that. But maybe, you know, again, if this is a strategy of muddling through, you could make a very reasonable argument that that’s the best option, given the many bad options that were on the table over these last few years to the Obama administration, given this state of the economy given over extension in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 15 years, Right? Given all these things, there’s a very reasonable case to be made that a strategy of limiting or invention is is the most appropriate.

[0:18:51 Speaker 0] And could you imagine the domestic politics of saying our strategy is to localize this war and let him bleed out right? Right? Well, exactly. They can’t say that I’m the last person on Know of that said something. This war is also because I can watch other people bleed with Stalin. Yeah, now saying people wouldn’t like to be compared to Stalin, but not many politically savvy ones. I wouldn’t think again, if that is the strategy, which

[0:19:15 Speaker 1] but so let me see

[0:19:16 Speaker 2] if I can get my head around. What you’re maybe saying here, maybe what I’m taking from what you’re saying, which

[0:19:23 Speaker 1] is going back to something you

[0:19:25 Speaker 2] said originally right is that these air really complicated problems, just the international world, international politics. It’s very complicated and it is incredibly complicated when we talk about things like war in Syria and war in the Middle East. Because the lessons both say through academic research and through history in recent history. We know that just going in and fighting award doesn’t really solve a problem, whether it’s because rebuilding after the war is impossible or maintaining the peace after the wars or whatever it is like us, right, post World War Two generation you know, the sort of infantile mindset is Oh, well, you fight a war and you win it and in the world. But that’s not how it works. And so when these wars air happening, there’s not which it like, I mean, what are we supposed to do? And so you’re saying maybe the strategy now is to just let the fire burn, but try to contain it as best we can write.

[0:20:32 Speaker 0] You know, I think tying that to the attitude in the country after World War Two is important. You know, I tell my undergrad frequently that there’s a curse that comes from the pervasiveness of World War Two in our understanding of how wars end, right? So World War Two is a largely total victory, right? Both sides are totally, totally submitted. The end and the US, quite proud of itself for its participation, comes out super powerful. And this is great, right? World War Two had a great bag, super big bombs. But it’s also the best in America. Captain America. That’s right, that’s right. And by the great bad guy do mean the red skull. Just so just so we know, right? But that’s the exception. Write something of on the order of 2/3 toe. 70% of all wars end, with both sides still standing, retreating across their border, and they cut a deal to stop. Now, political science does a really good job of talking about when that’s gonna happen, why you would still fight, even though you’re going to sign a peace treaty that you could have had before. But that is really at variance with how we think and talk about war. Right? People promise. Well, ah, win all of a strategy to win, even though that idea of winning is predicated on defeating somebody else’s army in the field of signing a peace treaty with them, forcing their surrender or just destroying them. But it’s not obvious when you’re intervening in a civil war what that means, right? What that looks like. What a war to stop the country’s nuclear ambitions would look like right I do think in our popular discourse we have, ah, strange definition of victory. But what that does is it colors how we talk in public about what we’re doing militarily. It colors what people’s expectations are of military operations, and then it works back onto the decisions of politicians who want to stay in office, right?

[0:22:24 Speaker 3] Yeah. I mean, it’s exactly right. There’s the vast majority of wars, and in these limited war settlements, where there’s at some point, both sides agree that it’s better to reach some settlement. But in order for that to obtain, there has to be some commonality of expectations about things like what each side would get if they were to keep pushing and giving Bush a That’s right. And so that’s why some of the things we’re talking about have to do it sort of perceptions and beliefs on the part of different actors involved. Because if external interveners complicate that process of getting to that point where the two sides have some common expectations about what they both can get out of this and they have in fact perhaps different expectations about interveners coming in on their sides, that can actually be counterproductive to reaching one of these limited solutions. It’s also not like a good sound bite to say we’re

[0:23:20 Speaker 0] going to

[0:23:21 Speaker 3] war, but we’ll stop at some point, just like, pulled out, right. It’s like, Get the street. You don’t get in a street fight and say, You know, I’m gonna fight you And once we punch each other a couple of times, then we’ll shake hands and walk away, right you fight to win that rows is the patriotic sentiment, right? But historically, that’s just not how war’s end, right? They end in these settlements where the two sides could keep fighting, but they realized it would be counterproductive to do so.

[0:23:49 Speaker 0] You know your point. This kind of comes back to the idea of, say, challenges to the global status quo, right? So when we look at Russia right again altering a border, but they choose which borders to alter because they really have to think what happens if I fight a war against the West, right? That’s still kind of the ultimate default option, right? That’s the one you’re really thinking about. What happens if I push too far, right? Would Russia as it stands now, actually, win a full blown war against the West. Well, the nuclear weapons thing is complicates. It’s a bit, but suppose that nobody wants nuclear annihilation. Russia couldn’t get much more than it has right and would, at a minimum, have a lot of Western armies sitting inside its frontiers right at the end of a war. Now that just seems unthinkable. But I guarantee of both sides have made that calculation. They’re planning for it. But that tells us something about if Russia decides to take some of its, you know, hinterland, former imperial hinterland back. It’s not gonna be a lot that they do not expect to win a war against a Western coalition that is bigger, wealthier, more populous. You know the fact that the West advantage is only likely to grow over time? It’s not shouldn’t make us complacent, right? Because, you know, fighting to prevent your own backsliding is not uncommon, right? But I do think that there’s not much question about what would happen if if there were a big conventional war in Europe, it would be messy, bloody and horrific. But the Russians would not be better off. I don’t think

[0:25:14 Speaker 3] right, and this ties in a broader narrative that, I think was suggestion, suggesting your question a few questions ago that perhaps America and the Western Order is not doing enough to kind of stay strong. And this narrative is being used by the Trump campaign to say, Make America great again. It’s not great anymore. I mean, the fact of the matter is, if you look at raw capabilities and I tell my very intro classes this if you just look at raw capabilities, the United States is so far ahead of everybody else. You know, we haven’t even talked that much about China. But you know, up until a few events, you know recently, the longer term concerns everyone has is about a rising China catching up with the United States. They’re so far off in the metrics of force projection that it’s really not close right now. And projections about when they would overtake the United States rest on so many assumptions about parallel trend’s continuing right. There are not parallel trends, but the trends that have been going on for a while continuing right, and there’s all sorts of reasons why those assumptions may be false. So in particular When you look at, like the ability to project force over geographic distance, the United States just obliterates everybody else having bases located around the world. Aircraft carriers, right? Usually expensive, difficult to build, you know, China has, like for I or something? No,

[0:26:40 Speaker 0] no. Like maybe one or two.

[0:26:41 Speaker 3] Yeah, they don’t have one that bought Yeah, and the United States just blows everybody away in terms of having thes sorts of conventional capabilities. That Scott said, nuclear weapons complicates things. Because, of course, once you have the capability to launched nuclear weapons to the other side of the world, that’s equalizes things to some extent. But in terms of using conventional military force as a diplomatic lever, the United States is still great, so it doesn’t need to be made great again. It’s student quite doing quite well for itself. And you can even make an argument that incidents like the events since 2008 aside, the prosperity of the West since World War two has gone hand in hand with US military dominance for various reasons, right, So that’s why you know, going back again to Brexit. One of the broader worries is that if a Western led coalition were to disintegrate and countries were to retreat into some sort of economic nationalism, fueled by populist discontent with globalization that could have long term security implications as well, because prosperity would diminish in the West. But again, given how far the United States is in terms of force projection capabilities, it’s just unlikely that even events like Britain exiting the you are. You know, these blips in the road are going to cause anything immediate

[0:28:06 Speaker 0] ram, and the the other good point with that right is that so much of the Western The Status Quo coalition is predicated on the wealth of the U. S. But also Germany, France and Britain. And when we worry about the security implications of Brexit, it’s not that British troops were gonna be dying in Flanders again. It’s not the British fighting the Germans. It is the eastern fringe of Europe becoming vulnerable again, right? So how plausible is this? I don’t know, but I guarantee you part of Merkel’s thinking or in France is thinking, and if you’re gonna go, go, making it painful for the British is you don’t want this dragged out, and these kind of now you know, a long entrance nationalist faction in power in Hungary who loves tweaking the you right? And now in Poland, which loves apparently tearing up parts of its constitution. You’re giving them hope in a way that they really don’t want to, because part of part of security in Europe has been integration, right? And after 1991 it’s got been denying Russia a chance to rebuild its empire in apart. So it used to be that Russia had the buffer against the West and the West has the buffer against Russia, right, which I mean to make it really stark. It’s basically what it looks like. And so, oddly enough, I think the biggest security consequence in the short term of Brexit would be more unrest in Eastern Europe.

[0:29:34 Speaker 1] Now that you have heard from the experts, have you changed the way you think about any of these issues? Where do you think the academics have it wrong for my money? I think this episode gets to the heart of what social science does really well, setting aside agendas, doing its best to eliminate biases of all sorts and rigorously analyzing data to reach conclusions grounded in fact, I hope you are enjoying our conversation about international politics with Terry Chapman and Scott Woolford with an eye toward how we got to where we are in 2016. Next time we conclude this, Siri’s by discussing the 2003 war in Iraq. Until then, you can find me at Gov dot utexas dot edu