Govenance Wars II: Nina Hachigian Writes Back!!

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Thursday, January 8, 2009 - 9:10 PM Share

In response to my post about her TNR article, Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Nina Hachigian has e-mailed me the following reply:

It was actually through researching US policy toward big powers that I have come to my belief in the importance of international institutions. [The Next American Century: How the US Can Thrive As Other Powers Rise, co-authored with incoming White House deputy chief of staff Mona Sutphen--DD]. While I like a free pony as much as the next guy, I also like even more not being the victim of a nuclear terrorist attack, the avian flu (which is back) or catastrophic weather events--or a global financial meltdown-but too late for that. To fight these common enemies, China, India, Russia, Japan and Europe HAVE to work together-it's not optional. Of course, clashes, tensions, disagreements, etc will continue in all of these relationships. But the evidence is mounting from events like 9-11, SARS, the Mumbai attacks, and freakish weather that if we don't work together, we sink together. And in order to work together most effectively, we need institutions. Yes, the current ones are flawed, sometimes deeply flawed. But they already carry our water on a regular basis and nearly zero political credit for doing so. Want to prevent an epidemic of drug resistant TB in the US? Need the WHO. Want to share the costs of bailing out a whole bunch of countries? The IMF is taking that on. Want to run schools in Gaza or elections in Iraq? Call the UN. You see my point. It's not that these institutions are a panacea. It's that they are necessary because we haven't figured out a better way to coordinate actions between governments (and I am going to read your 2007 book on regulatory coordination) and they do deliver. If we invest in them modest amounts of time and money, they will pay further dividends in our security and prosperity.

I have three thoughts on Nina's response:

Hachigian is certainly correct about the potential utility of international institutions. The geopolitical effects of the current financial crisis, for example, would have been much greater had the IMF not provided loans and guarantees to Pakistan, Iceland, etc.
That said, Hachigian's primary thesis boils down to "failure is not an option" -- i.e., global problems are so serious that countries have no choice to cooperate. Wrong. Failure is not an option, it's an outcome. When the divergence of preferences on, say, global warming is as sharp as it is right now, no degree of multilateralism short of world government is going to solve the problem. Even action to combat SARS, which should be a no-brainer when it comes to international cooperation, can generate cross-border-frictions.
There's another problem -- even if preferences are close enough for there to be multilateral coordination, that doesn't mean that there will be coordination on a good idea. One could make the arguement -- hey, come to think of it, I have -- that the issue area with with the greatest depth of multilateral coodination to date has been in high finance. Oops.

I hope Nina is right, and that a bargaining core exists for all of these problems. I am wary, however, of stacking too many resources and too much diplomatic capital on hope.

EXPLORE:INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, GLOBAL GOVERNANCE, MULTILATERALISM

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BLUE13326

10:17 PM ET

January 8, 2009

She fails basic logic. Just

She fails basic logic. Just because she thinks we face problems so great that failure is not an option it does not necessarily follow that we will work together on them. Not working together of course is always an option, no matter how much she might deem it necessary--which is what I took to be the thrust of your initial critique. History is filled with examples where the world faced huge challenges where the 'international system' failed to work together. That strand of utopian idealism (only really possible through historical ignorance) can be very dangerous.

And, as you point out above, global cooperation is not a panacea. In addition to the finance example you cite, it's easy to come up with examples where global cooperation could have far worse negative externalities; for example, a global warming agreement during this worldwide recession/depression could significantly exacerbate the economic situation, leading to more political instability (and thereby more costly in terms of lives and livelihoods lost), especially as there is a wide divergence of views on the issue outside of Western Europe.

BRETT

7:54 AM ET

January 9, 2009

Seconded

I'm with Blue on this one - just because it would appear (and the key word is "appear") that a situation would be so desperate that nations would have no choice to co-operate or die, doesn't mean that they actually will do so.

Think about some historical incidents where you had a massive, continent-wide problem which didn't lead to the rise of greater institutions. Did the Black Plague in the 14th century lead to the rise of a pan-European organization to co-operate on countering the spread of disease? No, and it raises the other issue, which is imperfect information - very important when trying to figure out how to do something major.

I suspect that Nina is over-focusing on the twentieth century, where these things did happen to some degree.

More to point, this is perhaps one of those "fundamental differences" that the Liberal Internationalism School (the theory on international relations, not Liberalism as American political philosophy) and Realism part on. The former seem to believe that if pressed strong enough by a problem, people will co-ordinate to solve it.

KYLE L

11:05 PM ET

January 9, 2009

International Institutions and the Future of USFP

Dan- After reading Hachigian’s essay, I certainly see the merit in some of your points. Yet why are you targeting her specifically? What she writes isn’t much different from what a lot of prominent intellectuals are prescribing for Obama’s foreign policy. Do you also disagree with Princeton’s John Ikenberry, who argues even more forcefully than Hachigian that the US should devote most of its efforts to reforming the big international organizations (IOs) that make up the postwar liberal international order? In fact, after reading the essays of prominent fo-po scholars in ‘To Lead the World: American Strategy After the Bush Doctine (Oxford U press), I was surprised at the degree of consensus among almost all of the contributors on the importance of the US reengaging in and reforming these institutions. This isn’t just the usual suspects like Ikenberry and Samantha Power, but also Stephen Van Evera (a realist) and Francis Fukuyama (a neocon… well, sort of). In fact, the only contributor flatly disagreeing with such a strategy is Robert Kagan, who sees the inevitable return of great power feuds and large-scale ideological conflict and competition. Is this your view as well?

I know your take on the future of IOs from the ‘New New World Order’ piece, and I appreciate the point that it is naïve to think that as China, India, etc. rise they won’t want the big institutions to more accurately reflect the new distribution of global power. But does this mean that you really think that great power cooperation through IOs on big global threats is going to be impossible? (and if so, you must find it REALLY disturbing how much this is being advocated by prominent intellectuals… what are they missing that you’re not?). I’m wondering specifically about 3 things: 1) Why all the skepticism here, aside from adopting a generally pessimistic approach to international cooperation? 2) What do you see as the biggest threats on the horizon, at least for the United States? Is it global, non-traditional threats like the financial crisis, terrorism+nukes, and/or the environment? Or do you see the continuation of traditional great power politics (presumably between the US and China and/or Russia) as the greatest challenge of the future? 3) If not working with the great powers through IOs, then what else? What are YOUR prescriptions for moving forward?

ERICCOX

4:22 PM ET

January 10, 2009

Just a quick empirical note

Just a quick empirical note that is on point with the incentives facing great powers.

I was fascinated with all the disdain heaped on John Bolton, disdain I shared, so I started a little project to look at US votes in a fairly low-cost environment -- the UN General Assembly -- to see how the US voted under Bolton as compared to other Bush appointed US Ambassadors. I suspected, the US presence at the UN being determined by far more than one pugnacious ambassador, that there would be little difference. Statistics bore this out. You can't tell the difference between Bush's ambassadors based on votes in the GA.

So I expanded the project to look at post-Cold War presidents. Low and behold, you can't tell the difference between the two Bushes (that great multilaterlist H.W. Bush is indistinguishable from W. Bush). The differences with Clinton are minor, but the shear number of votes does make them statistically significant. On the Middle East & Security there is less of a difference than on other issues.

My take? Unfortunately, I think Dan is right. I say unfortunate only because I do hope Obama does change certain US policies, but there are tremendous incentives against changing policies. I would argue that if we do see real change under Obama, it will be a result of changed incentives facing the US, not something intrinsic about Obama.