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Strategies for Managing Rogue States
Strategies for Managing Rogue States by Colin Dueck Colin Dueck ([email protected]) is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the author of Reluctant Crusaders: Power, Culture and Change in American Grand Strategy (Princeton University Press, 2006).
Abstract: In the ongoing debates on how to manage relations with rogue states such as North Korea and Iran, the opposing policies of both hawks and doves are unrealistic in their pure forms. Throughout American history, presidents have faced the same choices the Bush administration now has when dealing with adversaries abroad: appeasement, engagement, containment, rollback, and non-entanglement. Each of these five basic strategic alternatives has potential advantages and risks. In analyzing how these have applied to U.S. relations with Iraq, North Korea, and Iran—the so-called axis of evil—it becomes clear that rollback and appeasement are the riskiest options and containment the most promising. Elements of diplomacy, however, can be used in conjunction with a primary policy of containment to head off threats from rogue states.
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hen serious foreign policy challenges are refracted through the prism of American party politics, the resulting debates are often characterized by false and misleading dichotomies. This has certainly been the case with the ongoing challenge of how to manage ‘‘rogue states’’ such as North Korea and Iran. Foreign policy hawks advocate punishment, sanctions, and regime change; doves advocate rewards, inducements, and diplomatic engagement. Neither side, in its pure form, offers strategies that are likely to be realistic or effective in the face of capable adversaries. The United States and its allies have long histories of dealing with hostile, threatening, and revisionist powers on a much worse scale than at present—and of outlasting or defeating them. We also have ample experience with failed and mistaken strategies in dealing with such states. A brief survey of the basic strategic alternatives and their effectiveness in the past will illuminate the current debate over U.S. policy toward rogue states. It will also help to clarify the proper long-term tone and direction of U.S. policy. The term ‘‘rogue state,’’ which has come into wide usage only over the past decade, has more to do with American political culture than with
# 2006 Published by Elsevier Limited on behalf of Foreign Policy Research Institute.
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DUECK international law.1 Nevertheless, it does capture certain undeniable international realities, namely, the continuing existence of numerous authoritarian states that support terrorism, seek weapons of mass destruction, and harbor revisionist foreign policy ambitions. Loosening this definition a bit, we can see that rogue states are really nothing new. Over the past century, Western democracies have been faced with a series of challenges from autocratic, revisionist, and adversarial states of varying scope and size. The democracies have always had five basic strategic alternatives in relation to such adversaries: appeasement, engagement, containment, rollback, and non-entanglement. Appeasement The strategy of appeasement, while seemingly discredited after 1938, has recently attracted surprising and favorable attention from scholars of international relations.2 Part of the problem surrounding the term has been a failure to agree on its meaning. Properly speaking, appeasement is not synonymous with diplomatic negotiations or diplomatic concessions, but refers only to those cases where one country attempts to alter or satiate the aggressive intentions of another through unilateral political, economic, and/or military concessions.3 It is sometimes argued that appeasement can work under certain circumstances, and that Neville Chamberlain’s performance at Munich in 1938 was simply a case of appeasement badly handled.4 The drawbacks of appeasement, however, are inherent. They lie in the fact that concrete concessions are made by one side only, while the other side is trusted to shift its intentions from hostile to benign. With this strategy, there is nothing to stop the appeased state from pocketing its gains and moving on to the next aggression.5 Britain’s rapprochement with the United States in the 1890s is often described as a successful case of appeasement.6 Skillful British diplomacy indeed played a part in significantly improving relations between the two over the course of that decade, but that case does not deserve the term. The United States was not particularly hostile to Great Britain in the first place, 1
Robert Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Containment after the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2000), pp. 47–56. 2 See, e.g., Stephen Rock, Appeasement in International Politics (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000). 3 John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), p. 163. For competing definitions, see Gordon Craig and Alexander George, Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Problems of Our Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 247; and Rock, Appeasement in International Politics, p. 12. 4 Craig and George, Force and Statecraft, p. 251; Rock, Appeasement in International Politics, pp. 49–76. 5 Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 163–4. 6 Rock, Appeasement in International Politics, pp. 25–47.
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Rogue States and no vital conflicts of interest existed between the two powers. The AngloAmerican rapprochement was more the result than the cause of that commonality of interests.7 In sum, appeasement—strictly defined—is a strategy best avoided. Realistic bargaining or negotiations involving mutual compromise and presumably fixed intentions is another matter entirely, however, and should not be confused with appeasement. Engagement Engagement, a popular concept in recent years, actually has several possible meanings and is used in a number of different ways. It can refer to (1) a stance of diplomatic or commercial activism internationally;8 (2) the simple fact of ongoing political or economic contact with an existing counterpart or adversary; (3) using such political or economic contact as a strategy in itself, in the hopes that this contact will create patterns of cooperation, integration, and interdependence with a rogue state;9 (4) a strategy under which international adversaries enter into a limited range of cooperative agreements, alongside continued rivalry or competition;10 or (5) the very act of diplomacy, negotiating, or bargaining, regardless of its content. Only the third definition, focusing on integration through contact, is analytically useful. The first is too vague to be of much use; the second is a condition rather than a strategy; the fourth is more accurately captured by de´tente; and as to the last definition, there is no compelling reason to abandon the words ‘‘diplomacy,’’ ‘‘negotiating,’’ or ‘‘bargaining’’ when they have served very well up to now.11 Engagement as a strategy of integration through contact rests upon liberal assumptions regarding international affairs. Specifically, it typically assumes that increased economic interdependence, membership in international organizations, and transnational contact between civil societies will combine to shape adversarial regimes in a more democratic and peaceful direction.12 In the 1970s, Western analysts viewed America’s de´tente with the Soviet Union as this sort of strategy, and the collapse of the USSR is in fact frequently attributed in large part to the subversive influence of increased 7
Howard Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power (New York: Collier Books, 1970), pp. 85–158. 8 This appears to be one of the senses in which the Clinton administration used the term. See William J. Clinton, A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement (White House, 1996). 9 Richard Haass and Meghan O’Sullivan, ‘‘Terms of Engagement: Alternatives to Punitive Policies,’’ Survival, Summer 2000, p. 114. 10 Chas W. Freeman, Arts of Power: Statecraft and Diplomacy (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997), pp. 80–81. 11 Craig and George, Force and Statecraft, pp. 163–79, 245–57; Freeman, Arts of Power, p. 80. 12 Haass and O’Sullivan, ‘‘Terms of Engagement,’’ pp. 114, 121–2; George Shambaugh, ‘‘Containment or Engagement of China?’’ International Security, Fall 1996, p. 181.
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DUECK contact with the West. But Western trade, technology, and recognition in the second half of the Cold War did as much to prop up as to undermine the Soviet bloc.13 Western policies toward various rogue states (and toward China) over the last twenty years have often been predicated on the assumption that increased political and economic contact with the outside world will undermine these regimes. Yet there is remarkably little evidence that integration through contact has ever actually worked in managing existing international adversaries. The Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy team, with which de´tente is most closely linked, did not see it primarily as a strategy of integration, but rather as a strategy of disciplined rivalry alongside expanded areas of cooperation.14 In other words, they held to the more traditional definition, in which tensions were reduced while continued competition with one’s adversary was considered inevitable. In this very limited sense, the Soviet-American de´tente of the early 1970s was indeed a positive achievement, in that the risks of war were reduced for both sides. Only when liberals came to view de´tente as having more ambitious, overarching goals—as restraining Soviet expansion through a web of interdependence—did it have to be considered a failure. Engagement as integration, engagement as de´tente—what about engagement as diplomacy? Observers often call for the United States to ‘‘engage’’ rogue states such as North Korea or Iran when what they seem to mean is ‘‘negotiate.’’ Obviously one cannot speak of ‘‘negotiations’’ in the abstract: it all depends on the precise bargain that is on offer. Yet this is exactly what observers so often do when they urge the United States to ‘‘try diplomacy’’ without regard to the particular terms that are actually available from the other side. If a rogue state is willing to come to an agreement, however limited, that advances American interests, then diplomatic efforts should be embraced. If not, then we ought to recognize that diplomacy is not an end in itself. Containment Containment is the strategy most closely associated with America’s Cold War policies. It is also a strategy with considerable prior use. Britain, France, and Russia in effect ‘‘contained’’ Germany after 1900 by coming to a set of diplomatic understandings. Before that, Bismarck contained France in the 1870s and 1880s with his web of European alliances. The Vienna peace settlement of 1815 contained Restoration France by creating a number of 13
See, e.g., in the case of East Germany, Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (New York: Random House, 1993), pp. 367–8; and M. E. Sarotte, Dealing with the Devil: East Germany, De´tente, and Ostpolitik, 1969–1973 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), pp. 169–78. 14 John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 274–308.
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Rogue States medium-sized buffer states.15 In a sense, containment is nothing more than traditional balance-of-power policy, creating military and diplomatic counterweights against a potential aggressor. The early Cold War version of containment, however, had certain distinct qualities that went well beyond the balance-of-power approach, in that U.S. officials abjured meaningful negotiations with the Soviet Union. Instead, they attempted to quarantine that country, in the hopes that it would eventually mellow or collapse.16 The distinction is significant. With traditional balance-of-power diplomacy, adversaries often engage in straightforward negotiations and ignore ideological strictures, even as they attempt to outmaneuver one another. However, under early Cold War forms of containment, such negotiations were viewed as essentially futile and counterproductive, due to ideological differences between the two superpowers.17 In the end, of course, containment led to astounding and unexpected success, allowing the United States to avoid either catastrophic retreat or greatpower war. Yet containment, in the abstract, can be combined with other approaches. The Nixon-Kissinger team pursued a strategy of containment plus diplomacy with a certain degree of success. So while it does not rule out the use of negotiations, containment does require patience, strength, and vigilance. Rollback Rollback has gained new appeal since 9/11. It is the most assertive of the five alternatives. In its direct form, it involves full-scale war against a rogue state to achieve regime change. But there are also less extreme versions of this strategy. Rollback can involve, for example, intense military, economic, and diplomatic pressure, short of outright invasion, in the hopes of precipitating the collapse of a given regime. These can also be combined with containment. There are historical cases where nothing short of direct rollback would have sufficed to remove a deadly international threat. These are cases where the threatening states combined risk-acceptant aggressiveness with an intolerable conglomeration of military power. Nazi Germany is the obvious case. Napoleon also seems to have been bent on aggression and unlikely to have 15
F. R. Bridge and Roger Bullen, The Great Powers and the European States System, 1815–1914 (New York: Longman, 1980), pp. 24–27, 115–36, 155–9. 16 The most articulate statements of these goals and assumptions were contained in the writings and memoranda of State Department official George Kennan. See especially Kennan to Secretary of State James Byrnes, Feb. 22, 1946, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946, vol. 6 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), pp. 696–709 (‘‘Kennan to Byrnes’’); and ‘‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct,’’ Foreign Affairs, July 1947. 17 Walter Lippmann, a leading foreign policy realist of the 1940s, criticized the strategy of containment for this very reason. See Lippmann, The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Harper, 1947), p. 60.
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DUECK stopped his expansionism unless overthrown.18 But not every rogue state fits into this category. Some rogues are simply not that powerful; others, while implacably hostile, are not actually prone to taking chances against determined opposition. Here was one of George Kennan’s crucial insights into the leadership of the Soviet Union: that while they were truly hostile toward the West, they were not inclined to risk war in the way that Hitler had been.19 This critical factor made possible the containment of the USSR. At the time, of course, during the early years of the Cold War, many Americans were not so sure: containment seemed to promise only indefinite cost and commitment, leaving the option of rollback rather appealing by comparison.20 During the Korean War, prominent U.S. officials attempted to ‘‘roll back’’ North Korea, while seriously considering air strikes against both China and the USSR. In the end, direct rollback or military attack against the Soviet bloc was rejected, for the obvious reason that it was appallingly risky and expensive.21 The United States continued to employ covert operations and psychological warfare against the Soviet Union and its allies, but rollback became more of a rhetorical commitment than a real alternative. Only in the 1980s was the United States able to hit on a version of indirect rollback—the Reagan doctrine—that delivered considerable gain at minimal expense. By providing aid to anticommunist guerrillas in the periphery of the Soviet bloc, the United States helped to put Moscow into an intolerably over-extended position. In sharp contrast—and just as indicative of the typical outcome—was America’s earlier experience at the Bay of Pigs, where the attempted rollback of Castro’s regime resulted in humiliation for the United States. It is hard to conclude from the historical record that rollback is always the best alternative against hostile rogue states. When successful, it has the incomparable advantage of removing a given threat altogether. To employ Hans Delbruck’s classic formulation, rollback is a ‘‘strategy of annihilation,’’ whereas containment is a ‘‘strategy of exhaustion.’’22 Historically, Americans have preferred strategies of annihilation, which promise immediate and decisive results.23 But this very feature comes with a downside. Just as rollback is the most assertive of the five alternatives, so it is also potentially the most 18
Paul Schroeder, ‘‘Napoleon’s Foreign Policy: A Criminal Enterprise,’’ Journal of Military History, April 1990. 19 Kennan to Byrnes, pp. 706–8. 20 The most searching arguments in favor of a Cold War strategy of rollback or ‘‘liberation’’ were written by James Burnham. See Burnham, Containment or Liberation? (New York: J. Day, 1953), pp. 34–36, 43, 128–40, 251–2. 21 Rosemary Foot, The Wrong War: American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 117–21, 128–39. 22 Gordon Craig, ‘‘Delbruck: The Military Historian,’’ in Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 341–4. 23 Russell Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), p. xxii.
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Rogue States costly and risk-prone. When it fails, it tends to fail spectacularly. Furthermore, arguments for rollback always run into the dilemma of whether to impose one’s stated commitment to regime change through force. Direct implementation entails all of the costs and risks of war. A rhetorical commitment alone, on the other hand, complicates diplomacy and even invites preemptive attack, but without actually removing the threat. A strategy of rollback is preferable to appeasement, but it carries considerable dangers. Non-entanglement Non-entanglement is the fifth and final alternative. Properly understood, a stance of non-entanglement is neither hawkish nor conciliatory.24 It eschews both sticks and carrots. Its defining characteristic is the unwillingness to make any sort of military, diplomatic, or economic commitment—whether as threat or inducement—in relation to a given rogue state. Historically, the option of non-entanglement has been especially appealing to maritime and democratic powers such as Britain and the United States, but it has often had disastrous consequences. The British were happy to abstain from any European security commitment for much of the nineteenth century, which posture allowed them to pursue economic and imperial opportunities abroad without the need for an expensive military establishment. Yet this same posture also cost them decisive influence over critical events on the continent, such as Bismarck’s unification of Germany. Without the willingness to intervene in a potentially costly manner, the British could not expect to carry any weight in Europe’s balance of power. Even as late as July 1914—and despite preexisting diplomatic and military agreements with Paris—the British cabinet refused to make any firm commitment to the defense of France and Belgium until it was too late. There is at least the possibility that a strong, clear warning beforehand would have deterred the Germans from attacking, but none was given.25 In this sense, the ultimate fruit of ‘‘splendid isolation’’ was a catastrophic war into which Britain was dragged in any case. America’s experience with non-entanglement over the past century has been no better. In both world wars, the United States tried to avoid involvement, only to eventually discover that vital interests were at stake. The failure to act earlier against the Axis helped shape the postwar consensus against isolationism. But efforts at and perceptions of U.S. disengagement continued to plague American foreign policy. In 1950, North Korea attacked the South under the mistaken impression that the United States would not intervene. In the 1960s and 24
Eric Nordlinger, Isolationism Reconfigured: American Foreign Policy for a New Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 34. 25 Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War: Explaining World War I (New York: Basic Books, 1999), pp. 56–104, 143–73; Sean Lynn-Jones, ‘‘De´tente and Deterrence: Anglo-German Relations, 1911–1914,’’ International Security, Fall 1986.
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DUECK early 1970s, North Vietnam conducted its war against Saigon by relying upon the half-heartedness of American involvement. In 1990, Iraq attacked Kuwait under the misapprehension that the United States would remain disengaged. Even 9/11 can be partially attributed to Al Qaeda’s perception that the United States would not fight a costly war against it, but would rather withdraw from the Middle East after suffering heavy casualties.26 If true non-entanglement were actually an option for the United States, these perceptions would not matter. But since the United States is inevitably drawn by its own interests into various conflicts overseas, the very impression of American non-entanglement tends to operate as a dangerous source of instability and war. Obviously, the United States does not have an obligation to intervene in every single circumstance of international or civil conflict. In those cases where American interests are limited, threats are modest, and the costs outweigh the benefits, non-entanglement may be a perfectly good option. But as a general strategic posture or default response, the disadvantages of non-entanglement outweigh the advantages. Americans typically believe that a relatively open, democratic, and free international order is in their interest. This order is not self-sustaining; it requires protection, which non-entanglement does not provide. When the United States adopts a strategy of nonentanglement, it allows free rein to rogue states to pursue their own revisionist ambitions and robs itself of the ability to influence events overseas. Whenever the United States pursues a strategy of non-entanglement, it eventually ends up having to intervene anyway, at greater cost. In the long term, non-entanglement is often the riskiest and costliest strategy of all.27 Case Studies In order to better weigh the costs and benefits of these various alternative strategies, it is instructive to examine both their actual and their potential use in relation to each of the three ‘‘rogue states’’—Iraq, North Korea, and Iran— singled out by President Bush in his January 2002 state-of-the-union address. Iraq From the spring of 1991 until the fall of 2001, containment—with elements of indirect rollback—was Washington’s de facto strategy toward Iraq. Saddam had been left in power after the 1991 Gulf War, but concerns continued about his ability to build WMD and threaten his neighbors. The 26
For evidence of this perception, see Osama bin Laden, ‘‘Declaration of War (August 1996),’’ in Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin, eds., Anti-American Terrorism and the Middle East: A Documentary Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 140. 27 Robert Art, A Grand Strategy for America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 172–222.
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Rogue States American response over those years was fourfold. First, the George H. W. Bush and then the Clinton administration developed and maintained a significant, permanent military presence within the Persian Gulf region, in order to deter Saddam from future aggression. Second, with its allies, it created and enforced no-fly zones in both north and south Iraq. Third, it encouraged UN inspectors to locate and dismantle any WMD within Iraq. Finally, it attempted to corral international support for continued economic sanctions against Iraq, in order to enforce weapons inspections, degrade Iraqi military capabilities, and weaken Saddam Hussein’s regime. These last two tactics, in particular, broke down over the course of the 1990s. In 1998, Saddam forced UN inspectors out of Iraq, and by 2001, it was clear that the sanctions regime was both porous and unpopular. The successive administrations of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush tinkered with covert options, clearly hoping that Saddam might be overthrown or killed in some sort of palace coup. ‘‘Regime change’’ became official U.S. policy in 1998, with the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act, according to which Washington would materially support Saddam’s domestic opponents. A continuous series of U.S. air strikes against Iraq began that same year. But there was never any sense, prior to the fall of 2001, that the United States was seriously preparing to launch a major ground invasion, and Saddam apparently continued to have as firm a grip on power as ever. This was the record of U.S. strategy toward Iraq prior to 9/11, and out of discontent with its obvious imperfections, many critics decided that containment had failed. But compared to what alternatives? Obviously, if the primary American goal up until 2001 was to overthrow Saddam, then a full-scale invasion was the most certain instrument toward that end. But it is important to be precise here: if the American goal was to ‘‘keep Saddam in his box,’’ to deter him from aggression, and to prevent him from attacking his neighbors—as U.S. officials said it was—then containment did not fail, but in fact succeeded. Saddam was not only contained prior to 2003, but militarily much weakened. The sanctions regime, in particular, had a devastating effect on Iraq’s military capabilities across the board. Indeed, it was his eagerness to remove these sanctions that led Saddam to largely dismantle his existing WMD capabilities.28 Precisely because of American vigilance between 1991 and 2003, Iraq was in no condition to threaten or attack its neighbors. Now that the United States is engaged in a lengthy armed struggle in Iraq, it would be irresponsible not to ask whether the benefits of rollback in this case have outweighed the costs. The administration and its supporters argue that there have been several benefits: the removal of a monstrous dictator whose human rights record turns out to have been even worse than 28 ‘‘Excerpts from the Comprehensive Report of Charles A. Duelfer, Special Advisor to the DCI and Leader of the Iraq Survey Group, on Iraq’s WMD, October 2004,’’ in Craig Whitney, ed., The WMD Mirage: Iraq’s Decade of Deception and America’s False Premise for War (New York: PublicAffairs, 2005), p. 248.
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DUECK expected; the encouraging movement in Iraq, and potentially the region, toward democratic forms of government; and the creation of a new credibility in relation to compellent threats by the United States—an indication that the United States cannot easily be coerced, but will punish those who threaten its interests and its citizens.29 These are no small benefits, were they all to be secured, and as of yet, the final ledger is unclear. Yet many of the advertised benefits of this war remain uncertain. In terms of the development of Iraq into a strong, friendly, and democratic power, progress has been uneven, to say the least. Iraq is more a loose collection of squabbling and mutually hostile sects and ethnicities than a stable nation-state. Many Sunni Iraqis are profoundly alienated from the new regime. To this day Iraq’s own security forces are extremely weak. And by Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s own criterion, the insurgents seem able to replace their losses as quickly as we are able to capture, turn, or kill them. Even if Iraq becomes a functioning democracy, there is no guarantee that a popular, Shiite majority government will remain an ally of the United States. Nor is it obvious that steps toward democracy in Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian Authority will ultimately redound to American interests. Consequently, it is still too early, from the perspective of American national interests, to talk of a democratic ‘‘springtime’’ in the Middle East. The value of the war in terms of its spin-off, compellent effects in other regions is also uncertain. New diplomatic opportunities with regard to Libya, North Korea, and Iran seem to have had as much to do with local circumstances—and in some cases, American concessions—as with anything else. In fact, it could be argued that America’s military, and therefore political, leverage in regard to these other cases has actually been reduced, since U.S. armed forces are preoccupied with Iraq. Indeed, the war in Iraq has opened up an arena for a potential American military defeat that did not previously exist. If U.S. forces eventually disengage or withdraw from Iraq without having defeated the insurgents, that will naturally be interpreted as a success for the international jihadist movement and a defeat for the United States. In that case, America’s compellent credibility will be less, not greater, than it was before 2003. Against the mixed evidence on the issues of democratization and compellent credibility is the hard fact of numerous other costs. More than 2,200 Americans have been killed, and 16,000 wounded, in Iraq. Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have also been killed or wounded, not all of whom worked with the insurgency. The war has cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars for operational expenses alone. It has dealt a serious blow to America’s reputation among friends, allies, and ‘‘neutrals’’ as a self-restrained and nonaggressive great power. Most frustrating and tragic of all, perhaps, is the extent to which the issue of Iraq has weakened and divided both domestic and international support for the war on Islamist terrorism—a war that is almost 29
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Victor Hanson, ‘‘Has Iraq Weakened Us?’’ Commentary, February 2005.
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Rogue States universally agreed to be right and necessary. By associating Saddam so closely with the terrorist threat, the Bush administration succeeded in building support for a strategy of direct rollback. But as the American public grows increasingly disenchanted with the slow progress in Iraq, the war only provides ammunition for those who would question the administration’s whole approach, including the wider war on terror. In this sense, the Iraq issue may come back to undermine domestic political support for other hardline and worthwhile counterterrorism or foreign policy initiatives. Internationally, it shifted the focus of global attention from Al Qaeda to the United States itself. And even in terms of the jihadist movement itself, the war has acted as a recruiting tool and a new arena for operations, arguably strengthening rather than weakening the terrorists internationally.30 It is a bitter reflection that a war undertaken in response to 9/11 may have done more to strengthen than to hurt jihadist terrorists. It is not obvious that the United States would have been in a worse strategic position overall if it had merely continued to contain Saddam. At this point, of course, the undertaking in Iraq has truly become a part of the international war on terror, if only because jihadists have flocked into Iraq and taken it up as the newest proving ground for their cause. For that very reason, the United States cannot afford to fail in that country. An American retreat would constitute a humiliation for the United States and a victory for the terrorists, and would leave Iraqis to fend for themselves against violence and disorder, without a stable central government to protect them. President Bush has been under significant domestic pressure to disengage American troops from this war. It is to his credit that he has consistently rebuffed these demands, at considerable political risk to himself. Ultimately, history will judge whether the Bush administration was right to invade Iraq. If that country becomes a democratic power over the next few years, then Bush will look visionary. Yet it would be imprudent to conclude, based upon the current evidence, that direct rollback rather than containment ought to be our guiding template against other rogue states. The costs of this strategy against Saddam have been very high, and most of the benefits uncertain. North Korea With Iraq, the only real choice was between containment and rollback. In the case of North Korea, the plausible alternatives also include engagement. This is not because Kim Jong Il is any less malicious or aggressive than was Saddam: on the contrary, Kim’s government is both threatening and brutally repressive. Unfortunately, however, North Korea is thought already to have 30
International Institute for Strategic Studies [IISS], Strategic Survey 2004/5 (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 8–9.
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DUECK several nuclear weapons or the ability to assemble them.31 This alone makes the Korean situation far more dangerous—and delicate—than Iraq ever was. During the 1990s, the Clinton administration followed a North Korea strategy that could be described as engagement plus containment. The administration apparently hoped that diplomatic and economic contact and inducements would lessen North Korea’s insecurities, encourage political and economic reforms within the North, and secure peaceful coexistence on the Korean peninsula. At the same time, the Clinton approach contained strong elements of containment as well as straightforward bargaining. Under the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea agreed to freeze and eventually to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, with international inspectors to monitor and verify the process. In exchange, Washington and its allies agreed to provide the North with heavy fuel oil and eventual help in building civilian-use nuclear energy plants. In the following years, both sides to some extent dragged their feet on the implementation of this accord. But the most crucial and blatant violation was by North Korea, when that country revealed in October 2002 that it had a clandestine nuclear-weapons program based upon highly enriched uranium. Leading officials within the Bush administration had always been skeptical of the benefits of engaging Pyongyang. In January 2002 and later, President Bush described North Korea as part of an international ‘‘axis of evil,’’ condemned Kim’s regime altogether, and characterized the primary U.S. goal in relation to the North as regime change. Pyongyang, meanwhile, kicked out international inspectors, withdrew from the Nonproliferation Treaty, and restarted its nuclear reactors. Washington responded by saying that it was open to a peaceful solution, so long as the North took the first step in dismantling its uranium program. Intermittent and sometimes acrimonious six-party talks involving the United States, North and South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia began in the summer of 2003. In fall 2005, those talks moved in a more serious, businesslike direction, and the gap between Pyongyang and Washington’s positions narrowed somewhat. But the resolution of the longstanding Korean nuclear crisis remains uncertain.32 On the question of the appropriate American response to this situation, two schools of thought within the United States have been especially vocal in recent years, one advocating engagement and the other rollback. Advocates of engagement suggest that North Korea has legitimate security concerns, especially in relation to the Bush administration, and that these concerns should be addressed through corresponding assurances from the United States.33 Freed 31
Ibid., p. 39. ‘‘The Deal That Wasn’t,’’ The Economist, Sept. 24, 2005. 33 Selig Harrison, ‘‘Did North Korea Cheat?’’ Foreign Affairs, January/Febuary 2005, pp. 99– 110; Leon Sigal, ‘‘Bush Policy Backfiring in Asia,’’ Boston Globe, July 8, 2005; and Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 251–4. See also Chadwick I. Smith, ‘‘North Korea: The Case for Strategic Entanglement,’’ in this issue of Orbis. 32
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Rogue States from its sense of external threat, the North would be able to concentrate on domestic reforms, opening the road to peaceful reunification. Advocates of rollback, on the other hand, maintain that the Kim regime is bent on aggression; that it is inherently untrustworthy; and that negotiations with it represent futile concessions to extortion. Beyond that, these advocates suggest that Kim’s peculiar, malignant narcissism leaves him dangerously insensitive to deterrent threats. The policy implication is that Washington should ratchet up military, economic, and diplomatic pressure against Pyongyang, isolate and ostracize the North’s abhorrent regime, and aim at its destabilization and collapse rather than its continuation.34 The problem with engagement is that it seriously underestimates the Kim regime’s malevolence. It is rather naı¨ve to expect that any package of economic, diplomatic, and strategic inducements will necessarily alter the fundamentally hostile and authoritarian nature of the Kim regime by, for example, integrating that regime into regional patterns of economic interdependence. Kim will see any attempted integration as a potential threat to his rule. Nor can negotiations be conducted under the assumption that they will automatically result in softening or satiating the North’s foreign policy goals. All prior experience indicates that Pyongyang will wring whatever concessions it can from this process, without abandoning its revisionist ambitions. It is absurd to suggest that Kim ‘‘feels’’ insecure primarily because of the policies of the Bush administration. Both his insecurity and his clandestine nuclearweapons program predate President Bush. The United States certainly caused alarm in Pyongyang with talk of regime change, but the root cause of this crisis is with North Korea, not George W. Bush. For practical reasons, however, direct rollback is not a plausible alternative. To begin with, any preventive U.S. military strike against North Korea and its weapons sites would probably result in a horrific conflict that would make Iraq look tame. The United States would ultimately win this war, but only at immense cost. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians would be killed. So would thousands more American troops. South Korea would be devastated. There would be no coalition support for such a preventive war under current circumstances. Nor are there any guarantees that North Korea’s weapons sites would actually be destroyed and its nuclear weapons unused. This prospect should warn us not only against a preventive strike, but indeed against any actions that might hasten war. A stated American policy of regime change or indirect rollback against Pyongyang risks this very possibility. Insofar as Washington appears to indicate that its primary goal is overthrowing 34
Nicholas Eberstadt, The End of North Korea (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute Press, 1999), and ‘‘North Korea’s Weapons Quest,’’ The National Interest, Summer 2005, pp. 49–52; Terry Stevens, et al., ‘‘Deterring North Korea: U.S. Options,’’ Comparative Strategy, December 2003. See also Ralph C. Hassig and Kongdan Oh, ‘‘The Twin Peaks of Pyongyang,’’ Orbis, Winter 2006.
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DUECK the Kim regime, the fewer incentives Pyongyang will have to abstain from lashing out in a dangerous policy course involving very high risk, coercive diplomacy, and even full-scale preventive war.35 The baseline American strategy in relation to North Korea must therefore be neither rollback nor integration through engagement, but containment, supplemented by some careful, hard bargaining. A successful strategy of containment requires absolute clarity about the deadly consequences for Kim and his government should he choose to act aggressively. It also requires having military capabilities on the spot to make that threat credible. Fortunately, the United States and South Korea have those capabilities. The North can therefore be deterred, so long as U.S. defensive commitments are unambiguous. Kim cares little for the lives of his people, but he does value his own power and survival. For this very reason, even in relation to a leader like Kim, containment can work, as it has in the past.36 The United States is well served in supplementing this baseline strategy of containment with some tough bargaining over the issue of North Korea’s nuclear weapons. The broad potential outlines of a bargain have been thoroughly discussed in recent years and are well within sight: essentially, that the North agrees to fully disclose, freeze, and subsequently dismantle its nuclear-weapons program, under international supervision, in exchange for energy assistance and security assurances from, and normalized relations with, the United States and its allies.37 Of course, it may be the case, as some critics suggest, that the North will never agree to abandon its nuclear weapons. But there is only one way to find out, and that is to try. If negotiations fail, then the United States will be in a stronger position to return to a strategy of pure containment, and potentially to turn up the pressure on Pyongyang, with international support. That support will not be forthcoming unless and until the United States demonstrates a genuine effort at a diplomatic agreement.38 Fortunately, in fall of 2005 the Bush administration was moving in this very direction. The precise details and implementation of any ‘‘grand bargain’’ with North Korea are obviously crucial, as are the assumptions behind it. Several guidelines can help inform this process. First, the assumption that diplomacy will transform Kim’s regime or his intentions is a weak and dangerous one upon which to rely, because it could tempt Washington into making unreciprocated concessions toward a fundamentally hostile regime. The only convincing reason for a diplomatic approach is to secure the dismantling of the North’s nuclear weapons at relatively little cost. Second, in order to maximize 35
Victor Cha, ‘‘Hawk Engagement and Preventive Defense on the Korean Peninsula,’’ International Security, Summer 2002. 36 David Kang, ‘‘The Avoidable Crisis in North Korea,’’ Orbis, Summer 2003, pp. 497–9. 37 See, e.g., Michael O’Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki, ‘‘Toward a Grand Bargain with North Korea,’’ Washington Quarterly, Autumn 2003. 38 Cha, ‘‘Hawk Engagement,’’ pp. 44, 71.
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Rogue States its bargaining leverage, Washington should use sticks as well as carrots to persuade Pyongyang to come to a peaceful arrangement. This could include, for example, threats of new economic sanctions if negotiations fail. Third, Washington should maintain a bargaining position in close consultation with its regional allies, as well as China. It should typically be Pyongyang, rather than Washington, that is diplomatically isolated. Fourth, there is no reason to expect that any grand bargain with North Korea will necessarily end the underlying rivalry or hostility between Pyongyang and Washington. North Korea will probably continue to be, of its own choosing, a dangerous adversary of the United States, with or without a nuclear accord. Iran Iran’s circumstances are in some ways quite similar to North Korea’s. The Iranian government has been repeatedly found in violation of its commitments under the Nonproliferation Treaty. Its nuclear weapons program, while not as fully developed as North Korea’s, is by most indications well advanced.39 Iran is a major state sponsor of terrorism, and its foreign policy is in many respects predicated upon hostility toward the United States. The Clinton administration followed a strategy of containment in relation to Iran, supplemented by vague overtures at engagement. The Iranian government rebuffed these overtures. President Bush, by placing Tehran within the ‘‘axis of evil,’’ signaled that America’s goal for Iran was neither engagement nor containment but regime change. More recently, the Bush administration has allowed its European allies to take the lead in searching for some kind of diplomatic solution to the issue of Iran’s nuclear program. Iranian negotiating behavior has been consistently obstreperous, and these talks now appear to have reached an impasse. Directly rolling back Iran—that is, an American invasion and occupation—is impractical in the extreme. Even the more limited option of preventive U.S. air strikes designed to destroy Iranian weapon sites has grave disadvantages. They would very likely fail to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, and the political fallout could be immense: a nationalist backlash among the Iranian public; international condemnation of the United States; and Iraniansponsored terrorist attacks against American troops in Iraq.40 At the same time, there is no reason to believe that diplomatic engagement will necessarily succeed in turning Iran’s theocratic government from a bitter and duplicitous adversary into a friendly acquaintance of the United States. It is currently unclear whether the United States will be able to gather support from all five permanent members of the Security Council for UN 39
IISS, Strategic Survey 2004/5, pp. 48, 205–6. Geoffrey Kemp, ‘‘Facing up to the Iranian Bomb,’’ The National Interest, Summer 2005, pp. 55–6. 40
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DUECK sanctions against Iran. Stopgap European-led negotiations have not worked. Iran is clearly on the path toward building nuclear weapons, but rollback is not a viable option. There is an alternative. Iran’s outrageous president is obviously not a serious counterpart for negotiations, but fortunately he does not direct Iranian diplomacy. Iran can be contained and deterred from acts of external aggression so long as U.S. deterrent signals are clear, strong, and credible. This approach would have to be supplemented with a new bargaining strategy in order to deprive Iran of nuclear weapons. The outlines of this bargain would look much like the proposed one with North Korea: the complete dismantling of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, undertaken in verifiable stages, in exchange for technical assistance, economic benefits, an end to sanctions, and security assurances. Any agreement would have to be specific, incremental, and reciprocal, not unilateral; concessions would have to be made in return for concessions, and not out of vague hopes of an adversary transformed. Critics say that Iran has rejected similar offers and will continue to do so.41 Perhaps it will. But Washington has never made a precise, comprehensive offer. It has not taken the lead on this issue, or appeared willing to consider the use of inducements as well as punishment. It has not worked closely with its European allies to put a serious offer on the table, and for those allies’ part, they have frequently been unready to consider punishment as well as inducements. The good news is that Britain, France, and Germany are now more willing than ever to consider economic sanctions against Iran if it continues to be uncooperative on this issue. That gives the American position new purchase. The United States should take this opportunity to gain maximum leverage, using—together with its European allies—a bold strategy to induce Iran to surrender its nuclear weapons program. Should the strategy fail, the United States would be no worse off than it is now, but it would have built fresh international support for punitive action against Iran, with or without the UN.42 Conclusion With regard to both North Korea and Iran, engagement and rollback advocates each commonly argue that their own approach is the surest road to regime change. But regime change is an aspiration, not a strategy. Kim Jong Il and the mullahs of Iran have already lasted longer than many predicted; there are no signs that either regime is facing imminent collapse.43 A vague policy of 41
See Nazila Fathi and John O’Neil, ‘‘Ignoring Protests, Iran Resumes Atom Program,’’ New York Times, Jan. 10, 2006. 42 Kenneth Pollack and Ray Takeyh, ‘‘Taking on Tehran,’’ Foreign Affairs, March/April 2005, pp. 20–34. 43 Victor Cha and David Kang, ‘‘The Korea Crisis,’’ Foreign Policy, May/June 2003, pp. 22–23; Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasri, ‘‘The Conservative Consolidation in Iran,’’ Survival, Summer 2005.
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Rogue States integration through engagement risks strengthening these regimes, without necessarily receiving much in return. A policy of rollback risks American isolation at best and war at worst. Since the United States is not about to invade and occupy either North Korea or Iran, a refusal to negotiate directly with these governments is to effectively acquiesce in their development of nuclear weapons. American officials must therefore walk a fine line between opposing dangers, in relation to both countries, by following a firm yet prudent strategy of containment alongside limited bargaining. This is not a strategy that has ringing emotional appeal on the campaign trail. Its only virtue is that it is demonstrably better than any of the alternatives. Appeasement, engagement, containment, rollback, nonentanglement—while no single one of these is always the best option, one can draw some general lessons regarding their use, along with their relative costs and benefits. The first is that strategies that rely solely upon inducements and rewards are unlikely to be effective against revisionist, adversarial rogue states. The notion that such states can and must be accommodated or appeased through positive incentives alone has a long and sorry history. In fact, the dangers of firmness in the face of rogue state aggression are much less than the dangers of weakness. Democracies’ policies of non-entanglement, appeasement, or engagement frequently strengthen rogue states without doing anything to alter their hostile intentions. If anything, these strategies may actually increase the danger of war, by giving a possibly misleading impression of unending indifference or passivity on the part of democratic powers. At a minimum, therefore, the United States and its allies should rely upon strategies of containment in relation to rogue state challengers—that is, upon strategies of deterrence, of military preparedness, of strong alliances, and of clear commitments. Some versions of containment, however, are too simplistic to serve the national interest, and here we come to the second lesson: that containment often works best when supplemented with limited incentives and careful negotiations. Adversaries are most likely to respond to demands when faced with a broad combination of rewards and punishments.44 Economic incentives and diplomatic or political recognition are forms of power that the United States possesses alongside its military and economic tools. Why would we renounce any one of these forms of power? To do so would be to voluntarily reduce our influence over a given rogue state. The key is to treat economic and diplomatic incentives as part of an overall strategy in which incentives are linked to disincentives, as well as to reciprocal, verifiable actions or 44 Alexander George, Forceful Persuasion: Coercive Diplomacy as an Alternative to War (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1991), pp. 10–11, 73–74; Paul Huth, Extended Deterrence and the Prevention of War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 75–79.
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DUECK concessions on the part of other states. A closely related prerequisite is to avoid deluding ourselves about the purpose of diplomacy with such states. Every foreign regime, no matter how hostile, understands the concept of hard bargaining, and under certain circumstances the benefits of negotiating may outweigh the costs for the United States. But negotiations must never be initiated or concluded out of a vague hope in the transformational power of diplomatic or economic contact. Rather, negotiations with rogue states should only be undertaken under the limited assumption that we are bargaining over reciprocal, concrete concessions, and not in the hope of altering our adversaries’ basic intentions. Any other approach is irresponsible. Elements of rollback, like elements of engagement, can be used to supplement baseline strategies of containment, but again, hybrid approaches must be conceived and implemented with great skill and care for each case. To directly roll back a given regime through force is, by its very nature, typically more difficult, costly, and risk-prone than containment. Even indirect forms of rollback carry considerable costs. A declared intention to overthrow a foreign government is obviously provocative and may even encourage the target state to launch a preventive strike. Such strategies are also less likely to attract allied support. In some circumstances, elements of indirect rollback can usefully supplement strategies of containment, for example, by weakening, destabilizing, and/or delegitimizing target states, and/or by holding out hope of change to political dissidents overseas. But making regime change the official U.S. policy against a given state must be based upon demonstrable, concrete advantages—including those for the citizens of the target state—and not simply upon rhetorical, ideological, or emotional appeal. Commentators often fixate on the supposed beliefs or preferences of a given rogue state’s leaders, so that the debate then circles around questions of intentions that cannot really be conclusively or definitively answered in the present. The safest assumption under such circumstances is to presume that rogue leaders are hostile but strategic actors—that is, that they weigh the costs and benefits of their own behavior within a given international framework. The United States has considerable ability to shape that framework by offering, threatening, or withholding various incentives and disincentives. It would be self-defeating for the world’s only superpower to renounce a priori the use of any instrument to promote its own interests. The only sensible conclusion is for the United States to preserve its ability to offer a wide range of rewards and punishments in meeting any particular rogue-state challenge. The default or preferred strategy in most cases, therefore, is containment, supplemented from time to time by a little hard bargaining. Inconsistency, weakness, or confusion in implementing this strategy is usually a greater danger than that of provoking one’s adversary. Long-term hopes for rogue state rollback are reasonable and even admirable under a variety of circumstances. At the same time, however, it is 240
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Rogue States possible to pursue forms of rollback that are simply too ambitious or aggressive to secure the national interest. Peace through strength is a reliable mantra in virtually every case; peace through preventive war is not. The burden of proof lies upon those who argue, whether as hawks or doves, against tried-and-true strategies of containing rogue states.
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Abstract: In the ongoing debates on how to manage relations with rogue states such as North Korea and Iran, the opposing policies of both hawks and doves are unrealistic in their pure forms. Throughout American history, presidents have faced the same choices the Bush administration now has when dealing with adversaries abroad: appeasement, engagement, containment, rollback, and non-entanglement. Each of these five basic strategic alternatives has potential advantages and risks. In analyzing how these have applied to U.S. relations with Iraq, North Korea, and Iran—the so-called axis of evil—it becomes clear that rollback and appeasement are the riskiest options and containment the most promising. Elements of diplomacy, however, can be used in conjunction with a primary policy of containment to head off threats from rogue states.
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hen serious foreign policy challenges are refracted through the prism of American party politics, the resulting debates are often characterized by false and misleading dichotomies. This has certainly been the case with the ongoing challenge of how to manage ‘‘rogue states’’ such as North Korea and Iran. Foreign policy hawks advocate punishment, sanctions, and regime change; doves advocate rewards, inducements, and diplomatic engagement. Neither side, in its pure form, offers strategies that are likely to be realistic or effective in the face of capable adversaries. The United States and its allies have long histories of dealing with hostile, threatening, and revisionist powers on a much worse scale than at present—and of outlasting or defeating them. We also have ample experience with failed and mistaken strategies in dealing with such states. A brief survey of the basic strategic alternatives and their effectiveness in the past will illuminate the current debate over U.S. policy toward rogue states. It will also help to clarify the proper long-term tone and direction of U.S. policy. The term ‘‘rogue state,’’ which has come into wide usage only over the past decade, has more to do with American political culture than with
# 2006 Published by Elsevier Limited on behalf of Foreign Policy Research Institute.
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DUECK international law.1 Nevertheless, it does capture certain undeniable international realities, namely, the continuing existence of numerous authoritarian states that support terrorism, seek weapons of mass destruction, and harbor revisionist foreign policy ambitions. Loosening this definition a bit, we can see that rogue states are really nothing new. Over the past century, Western democracies have been faced with a series of challenges from autocratic, revisionist, and adversarial states of varying scope and size. The democracies have always had five basic strategic alternatives in relation to such adversaries: appeasement, engagement, containment, rollback, and non-entanglement. Appeasement The strategy of appeasement, while seemingly discredited after 1938, has recently attracted surprising and favorable attention from scholars of international relations.2 Part of the problem surrounding the term has been a failure to agree on its meaning. Properly speaking, appeasement is not synonymous with diplomatic negotiations or diplomatic concessions, but refers only to those cases where one country attempts to alter or satiate the aggressive intentions of another through unilateral political, economic, and/or military concessions.3 It is sometimes argued that appeasement can work under certain circumstances, and that Neville Chamberlain’s performance at Munich in 1938 was simply a case of appeasement badly handled.4 The drawbacks of appeasement, however, are inherent. They lie in the fact that concrete concessions are made by one side only, while the other side is trusted to shift its intentions from hostile to benign. With this strategy, there is nothing to stop the appeased state from pocketing its gains and moving on to the next aggression.5 Britain’s rapprochement with the United States in the 1890s is often described as a successful case of appeasement.6 Skillful British diplomacy indeed played a part in significantly improving relations between the two over the course of that decade, but that case does not deserve the term. The United States was not particularly hostile to Great Britain in the first place, 1
Robert Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Containment after the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2000), pp. 47–56. 2 See, e.g., Stephen Rock, Appeasement in International Politics (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000). 3 John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), p. 163. For competing definitions, see Gordon Craig and Alexander George, Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Problems of Our Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 247; and Rock, Appeasement in International Politics, p. 12. 4 Craig and George, Force and Statecraft, p. 251; Rock, Appeasement in International Politics, pp. 49–76. 5 Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 163–4. 6 Rock, Appeasement in International Politics, pp. 25–47.
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Rogue States and no vital conflicts of interest existed between the two powers. The AngloAmerican rapprochement was more the result than the cause of that commonality of interests.7 In sum, appeasement—strictly defined—is a strategy best avoided. Realistic bargaining or negotiations involving mutual compromise and presumably fixed intentions is another matter entirely, however, and should not be confused with appeasement. Engagement Engagement, a popular concept in recent years, actually has several possible meanings and is used in a number of different ways. It can refer to (1) a stance of diplomatic or commercial activism internationally;8 (2) the simple fact of ongoing political or economic contact with an existing counterpart or adversary; (3) using such political or economic contact as a strategy in itself, in the hopes that this contact will create patterns of cooperation, integration, and interdependence with a rogue state;9 (4) a strategy under which international adversaries enter into a limited range of cooperative agreements, alongside continued rivalry or competition;10 or (5) the very act of diplomacy, negotiating, or bargaining, regardless of its content. Only the third definition, focusing on integration through contact, is analytically useful. The first is too vague to be of much use; the second is a condition rather than a strategy; the fourth is more accurately captured by de´tente; and as to the last definition, there is no compelling reason to abandon the words ‘‘diplomacy,’’ ‘‘negotiating,’’ or ‘‘bargaining’’ when they have served very well up to now.11 Engagement as a strategy of integration through contact rests upon liberal assumptions regarding international affairs. Specifically, it typically assumes that increased economic interdependence, membership in international organizations, and transnational contact between civil societies will combine to shape adversarial regimes in a more democratic and peaceful direction.12 In the 1970s, Western analysts viewed America’s de´tente with the Soviet Union as this sort of strategy, and the collapse of the USSR is in fact frequently attributed in large part to the subversive influence of increased 7
Howard Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power (New York: Collier Books, 1970), pp. 85–158. 8 This appears to be one of the senses in which the Clinton administration used the term. See William J. Clinton, A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement (White House, 1996). 9 Richard Haass and Meghan O’Sullivan, ‘‘Terms of Engagement: Alternatives to Punitive Policies,’’ Survival, Summer 2000, p. 114. 10 Chas W. Freeman, Arts of Power: Statecraft and Diplomacy (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997), pp. 80–81. 11 Craig and George, Force and Statecraft, pp. 163–79, 245–57; Freeman, Arts of Power, p. 80. 12 Haass and O’Sullivan, ‘‘Terms of Engagement,’’ pp. 114, 121–2; George Shambaugh, ‘‘Containment or Engagement of China?’’ International Security, Fall 1996, p. 181.
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DUECK contact with the West. But Western trade, technology, and recognition in the second half of the Cold War did as much to prop up as to undermine the Soviet bloc.13 Western policies toward various rogue states (and toward China) over the last twenty years have often been predicated on the assumption that increased political and economic contact with the outside world will undermine these regimes. Yet there is remarkably little evidence that integration through contact has ever actually worked in managing existing international adversaries. The Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy team, with which de´tente is most closely linked, did not see it primarily as a strategy of integration, but rather as a strategy of disciplined rivalry alongside expanded areas of cooperation.14 In other words, they held to the more traditional definition, in which tensions were reduced while continued competition with one’s adversary was considered inevitable. In this very limited sense, the Soviet-American de´tente of the early 1970s was indeed a positive achievement, in that the risks of war were reduced for both sides. Only when liberals came to view de´tente as having more ambitious, overarching goals—as restraining Soviet expansion through a web of interdependence—did it have to be considered a failure. Engagement as integration, engagement as de´tente—what about engagement as diplomacy? Observers often call for the United States to ‘‘engage’’ rogue states such as North Korea or Iran when what they seem to mean is ‘‘negotiate.’’ Obviously one cannot speak of ‘‘negotiations’’ in the abstract: it all depends on the precise bargain that is on offer. Yet this is exactly what observers so often do when they urge the United States to ‘‘try diplomacy’’ without regard to the particular terms that are actually available from the other side. If a rogue state is willing to come to an agreement, however limited, that advances American interests, then diplomatic efforts should be embraced. If not, then we ought to recognize that diplomacy is not an end in itself. Containment Containment is the strategy most closely associated with America’s Cold War policies. It is also a strategy with considerable prior use. Britain, France, and Russia in effect ‘‘contained’’ Germany after 1900 by coming to a set of diplomatic understandings. Before that, Bismarck contained France in the 1870s and 1880s with his web of European alliances. The Vienna peace settlement of 1815 contained Restoration France by creating a number of 13
See, e.g., in the case of East Germany, Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (New York: Random House, 1993), pp. 367–8; and M. E. Sarotte, Dealing with the Devil: East Germany, De´tente, and Ostpolitik, 1969–1973 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), pp. 169–78. 14 John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 274–308.
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Rogue States medium-sized buffer states.15 In a sense, containment is nothing more than traditional balance-of-power policy, creating military and diplomatic counterweights against a potential aggressor. The early Cold War version of containment, however, had certain distinct qualities that went well beyond the balance-of-power approach, in that U.S. officials abjured meaningful negotiations with the Soviet Union. Instead, they attempted to quarantine that country, in the hopes that it would eventually mellow or collapse.16 The distinction is significant. With traditional balance-of-power diplomacy, adversaries often engage in straightforward negotiations and ignore ideological strictures, even as they attempt to outmaneuver one another. However, under early Cold War forms of containment, such negotiations were viewed as essentially futile and counterproductive, due to ideological differences between the two superpowers.17 In the end, of course, containment led to astounding and unexpected success, allowing the United States to avoid either catastrophic retreat or greatpower war. Yet containment, in the abstract, can be combined with other approaches. The Nixon-Kissinger team pursued a strategy of containment plus diplomacy with a certain degree of success. So while it does not rule out the use of negotiations, containment does require patience, strength, and vigilance. Rollback Rollback has gained new appeal since 9/11. It is the most assertive of the five alternatives. In its direct form, it involves full-scale war against a rogue state to achieve regime change. But there are also less extreme versions of this strategy. Rollback can involve, for example, intense military, economic, and diplomatic pressure, short of outright invasion, in the hopes of precipitating the collapse of a given regime. These can also be combined with containment. There are historical cases where nothing short of direct rollback would have sufficed to remove a deadly international threat. These are cases where the threatening states combined risk-acceptant aggressiveness with an intolerable conglomeration of military power. Nazi Germany is the obvious case. Napoleon also seems to have been bent on aggression and unlikely to have 15
F. R. Bridge and Roger Bullen, The Great Powers and the European States System, 1815–1914 (New York: Longman, 1980), pp. 24–27, 115–36, 155–9. 16 The most articulate statements of these goals and assumptions were contained in the writings and memoranda of State Department official George Kennan. See especially Kennan to Secretary of State James Byrnes, Feb. 22, 1946, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946, vol. 6 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), pp. 696–709 (‘‘Kennan to Byrnes’’); and ‘‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct,’’ Foreign Affairs, July 1947. 17 Walter Lippmann, a leading foreign policy realist of the 1940s, criticized the strategy of containment for this very reason. See Lippmann, The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Harper, 1947), p. 60.
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DUECK stopped his expansionism unless overthrown.18 But not every rogue state fits into this category. Some rogues are simply not that powerful; others, while implacably hostile, are not actually prone to taking chances against determined opposition. Here was one of George Kennan’s crucial insights into the leadership of the Soviet Union: that while they were truly hostile toward the West, they were not inclined to risk war in the way that Hitler had been.19 This critical factor made possible the containment of the USSR. At the time, of course, during the early years of the Cold War, many Americans were not so sure: containment seemed to promise only indefinite cost and commitment, leaving the option of rollback rather appealing by comparison.20 During the Korean War, prominent U.S. officials attempted to ‘‘roll back’’ North Korea, while seriously considering air strikes against both China and the USSR. In the end, direct rollback or military attack against the Soviet bloc was rejected, for the obvious reason that it was appallingly risky and expensive.21 The United States continued to employ covert operations and psychological warfare against the Soviet Union and its allies, but rollback became more of a rhetorical commitment than a real alternative. Only in the 1980s was the United States able to hit on a version of indirect rollback—the Reagan doctrine—that delivered considerable gain at minimal expense. By providing aid to anticommunist guerrillas in the periphery of the Soviet bloc, the United States helped to put Moscow into an intolerably over-extended position. In sharp contrast—and just as indicative of the typical outcome—was America’s earlier experience at the Bay of Pigs, where the attempted rollback of Castro’s regime resulted in humiliation for the United States. It is hard to conclude from the historical record that rollback is always the best alternative against hostile rogue states. When successful, it has the incomparable advantage of removing a given threat altogether. To employ Hans Delbruck’s classic formulation, rollback is a ‘‘strategy of annihilation,’’ whereas containment is a ‘‘strategy of exhaustion.’’22 Historically, Americans have preferred strategies of annihilation, which promise immediate and decisive results.23 But this very feature comes with a downside. Just as rollback is the most assertive of the five alternatives, so it is also potentially the most 18
Paul Schroeder, ‘‘Napoleon’s Foreign Policy: A Criminal Enterprise,’’ Journal of Military History, April 1990. 19 Kennan to Byrnes, pp. 706–8. 20 The most searching arguments in favor of a Cold War strategy of rollback or ‘‘liberation’’ were written by James Burnham. See Burnham, Containment or Liberation? (New York: J. Day, 1953), pp. 34–36, 43, 128–40, 251–2. 21 Rosemary Foot, The Wrong War: American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 117–21, 128–39. 22 Gordon Craig, ‘‘Delbruck: The Military Historian,’’ in Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 341–4. 23 Russell Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), p. xxii.
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Rogue States costly and risk-prone. When it fails, it tends to fail spectacularly. Furthermore, arguments for rollback always run into the dilemma of whether to impose one’s stated commitment to regime change through force. Direct implementation entails all of the costs and risks of war. A rhetorical commitment alone, on the other hand, complicates diplomacy and even invites preemptive attack, but without actually removing the threat. A strategy of rollback is preferable to appeasement, but it carries considerable dangers. Non-entanglement Non-entanglement is the fifth and final alternative. Properly understood, a stance of non-entanglement is neither hawkish nor conciliatory.24 It eschews both sticks and carrots. Its defining characteristic is the unwillingness to make any sort of military, diplomatic, or economic commitment—whether as threat or inducement—in relation to a given rogue state. Historically, the option of non-entanglement has been especially appealing to maritime and democratic powers such as Britain and the United States, but it has often had disastrous consequences. The British were happy to abstain from any European security commitment for much of the nineteenth century, which posture allowed them to pursue economic and imperial opportunities abroad without the need for an expensive military establishment. Yet this same posture also cost them decisive influence over critical events on the continent, such as Bismarck’s unification of Germany. Without the willingness to intervene in a potentially costly manner, the British could not expect to carry any weight in Europe’s balance of power. Even as late as July 1914—and despite preexisting diplomatic and military agreements with Paris—the British cabinet refused to make any firm commitment to the defense of France and Belgium until it was too late. There is at least the possibility that a strong, clear warning beforehand would have deterred the Germans from attacking, but none was given.25 In this sense, the ultimate fruit of ‘‘splendid isolation’’ was a catastrophic war into which Britain was dragged in any case. America’s experience with non-entanglement over the past century has been no better. In both world wars, the United States tried to avoid involvement, only to eventually discover that vital interests were at stake. The failure to act earlier against the Axis helped shape the postwar consensus against isolationism. But efforts at and perceptions of U.S. disengagement continued to plague American foreign policy. In 1950, North Korea attacked the South under the mistaken impression that the United States would not intervene. In the 1960s and 24
Eric Nordlinger, Isolationism Reconfigured: American Foreign Policy for a New Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 34. 25 Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War: Explaining World War I (New York: Basic Books, 1999), pp. 56–104, 143–73; Sean Lynn-Jones, ‘‘De´tente and Deterrence: Anglo-German Relations, 1911–1914,’’ International Security, Fall 1986.
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DUECK early 1970s, North Vietnam conducted its war against Saigon by relying upon the half-heartedness of American involvement. In 1990, Iraq attacked Kuwait under the misapprehension that the United States would remain disengaged. Even 9/11 can be partially attributed to Al Qaeda’s perception that the United States would not fight a costly war against it, but would rather withdraw from the Middle East after suffering heavy casualties.26 If true non-entanglement were actually an option for the United States, these perceptions would not matter. But since the United States is inevitably drawn by its own interests into various conflicts overseas, the very impression of American non-entanglement tends to operate as a dangerous source of instability and war. Obviously, the United States does not have an obligation to intervene in every single circumstance of international or civil conflict. In those cases where American interests are limited, threats are modest, and the costs outweigh the benefits, non-entanglement may be a perfectly good option. But as a general strategic posture or default response, the disadvantages of non-entanglement outweigh the advantages. Americans typically believe that a relatively open, democratic, and free international order is in their interest. This order is not self-sustaining; it requires protection, which non-entanglement does not provide. When the United States adopts a strategy of nonentanglement, it allows free rein to rogue states to pursue their own revisionist ambitions and robs itself of the ability to influence events overseas. Whenever the United States pursues a strategy of non-entanglement, it eventually ends up having to intervene anyway, at greater cost. In the long term, non-entanglement is often the riskiest and costliest strategy of all.27 Case Studies In order to better weigh the costs and benefits of these various alternative strategies, it is instructive to examine both their actual and their potential use in relation to each of the three ‘‘rogue states’’—Iraq, North Korea, and Iran— singled out by President Bush in his January 2002 state-of-the-union address. Iraq From the spring of 1991 until the fall of 2001, containment—with elements of indirect rollback—was Washington’s de facto strategy toward Iraq. Saddam had been left in power after the 1991 Gulf War, but concerns continued about his ability to build WMD and threaten his neighbors. The 26
For evidence of this perception, see Osama bin Laden, ‘‘Declaration of War (August 1996),’’ in Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin, eds., Anti-American Terrorism and the Middle East: A Documentary Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 140. 27 Robert Art, A Grand Strategy for America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 172–222.
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Rogue States American response over those years was fourfold. First, the George H. W. Bush and then the Clinton administration developed and maintained a significant, permanent military presence within the Persian Gulf region, in order to deter Saddam from future aggression. Second, with its allies, it created and enforced no-fly zones in both north and south Iraq. Third, it encouraged UN inspectors to locate and dismantle any WMD within Iraq. Finally, it attempted to corral international support for continued economic sanctions against Iraq, in order to enforce weapons inspections, degrade Iraqi military capabilities, and weaken Saddam Hussein’s regime. These last two tactics, in particular, broke down over the course of the 1990s. In 1998, Saddam forced UN inspectors out of Iraq, and by 2001, it was clear that the sanctions regime was both porous and unpopular. The successive administrations of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush tinkered with covert options, clearly hoping that Saddam might be overthrown or killed in some sort of palace coup. ‘‘Regime change’’ became official U.S. policy in 1998, with the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act, according to which Washington would materially support Saddam’s domestic opponents. A continuous series of U.S. air strikes against Iraq began that same year. But there was never any sense, prior to the fall of 2001, that the United States was seriously preparing to launch a major ground invasion, and Saddam apparently continued to have as firm a grip on power as ever. This was the record of U.S. strategy toward Iraq prior to 9/11, and out of discontent with its obvious imperfections, many critics decided that containment had failed. But compared to what alternatives? Obviously, if the primary American goal up until 2001 was to overthrow Saddam, then a full-scale invasion was the most certain instrument toward that end. But it is important to be precise here: if the American goal was to ‘‘keep Saddam in his box,’’ to deter him from aggression, and to prevent him from attacking his neighbors—as U.S. officials said it was—then containment did not fail, but in fact succeeded. Saddam was not only contained prior to 2003, but militarily much weakened. The sanctions regime, in particular, had a devastating effect on Iraq’s military capabilities across the board. Indeed, it was his eagerness to remove these sanctions that led Saddam to largely dismantle his existing WMD capabilities.28 Precisely because of American vigilance between 1991 and 2003, Iraq was in no condition to threaten or attack its neighbors. Now that the United States is engaged in a lengthy armed struggle in Iraq, it would be irresponsible not to ask whether the benefits of rollback in this case have outweighed the costs. The administration and its supporters argue that there have been several benefits: the removal of a monstrous dictator whose human rights record turns out to have been even worse than 28 ‘‘Excerpts from the Comprehensive Report of Charles A. Duelfer, Special Advisor to the DCI and Leader of the Iraq Survey Group, on Iraq’s WMD, October 2004,’’ in Craig Whitney, ed., The WMD Mirage: Iraq’s Decade of Deception and America’s False Premise for War (New York: PublicAffairs, 2005), p. 248.
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DUECK expected; the encouraging movement in Iraq, and potentially the region, toward democratic forms of government; and the creation of a new credibility in relation to compellent threats by the United States—an indication that the United States cannot easily be coerced, but will punish those who threaten its interests and its citizens.29 These are no small benefits, were they all to be secured, and as of yet, the final ledger is unclear. Yet many of the advertised benefits of this war remain uncertain. In terms of the development of Iraq into a strong, friendly, and democratic power, progress has been uneven, to say the least. Iraq is more a loose collection of squabbling and mutually hostile sects and ethnicities than a stable nation-state. Many Sunni Iraqis are profoundly alienated from the new regime. To this day Iraq’s own security forces are extremely weak. And by Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s own criterion, the insurgents seem able to replace their losses as quickly as we are able to capture, turn, or kill them. Even if Iraq becomes a functioning democracy, there is no guarantee that a popular, Shiite majority government will remain an ally of the United States. Nor is it obvious that steps toward democracy in Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian Authority will ultimately redound to American interests. Consequently, it is still too early, from the perspective of American national interests, to talk of a democratic ‘‘springtime’’ in the Middle East. The value of the war in terms of its spin-off, compellent effects in other regions is also uncertain. New diplomatic opportunities with regard to Libya, North Korea, and Iran seem to have had as much to do with local circumstances—and in some cases, American concessions—as with anything else. In fact, it could be argued that America’s military, and therefore political, leverage in regard to these other cases has actually been reduced, since U.S. armed forces are preoccupied with Iraq. Indeed, the war in Iraq has opened up an arena for a potential American military defeat that did not previously exist. If U.S. forces eventually disengage or withdraw from Iraq without having defeated the insurgents, that will naturally be interpreted as a success for the international jihadist movement and a defeat for the United States. In that case, America’s compellent credibility will be less, not greater, than it was before 2003. Against the mixed evidence on the issues of democratization and compellent credibility is the hard fact of numerous other costs. More than 2,200 Americans have been killed, and 16,000 wounded, in Iraq. Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have also been killed or wounded, not all of whom worked with the insurgency. The war has cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars for operational expenses alone. It has dealt a serious blow to America’s reputation among friends, allies, and ‘‘neutrals’’ as a self-restrained and nonaggressive great power. Most frustrating and tragic of all, perhaps, is the extent to which the issue of Iraq has weakened and divided both domestic and international support for the war on Islamist terrorism—a war that is almost 29
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Victor Hanson, ‘‘Has Iraq Weakened Us?’’ Commentary, February 2005.
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Rogue States universally agreed to be right and necessary. By associating Saddam so closely with the terrorist threat, the Bush administration succeeded in building support for a strategy of direct rollback. But as the American public grows increasingly disenchanted with the slow progress in Iraq, the war only provides ammunition for those who would question the administration’s whole approach, including the wider war on terror. In this sense, the Iraq issue may come back to undermine domestic political support for other hardline and worthwhile counterterrorism or foreign policy initiatives. Internationally, it shifted the focus of global attention from Al Qaeda to the United States itself. And even in terms of the jihadist movement itself, the war has acted as a recruiting tool and a new arena for operations, arguably strengthening rather than weakening the terrorists internationally.30 It is a bitter reflection that a war undertaken in response to 9/11 may have done more to strengthen than to hurt jihadist terrorists. It is not obvious that the United States would have been in a worse strategic position overall if it had merely continued to contain Saddam. At this point, of course, the undertaking in Iraq has truly become a part of the international war on terror, if only because jihadists have flocked into Iraq and taken it up as the newest proving ground for their cause. For that very reason, the United States cannot afford to fail in that country. An American retreat would constitute a humiliation for the United States and a victory for the terrorists, and would leave Iraqis to fend for themselves against violence and disorder, without a stable central government to protect them. President Bush has been under significant domestic pressure to disengage American troops from this war. It is to his credit that he has consistently rebuffed these demands, at considerable political risk to himself. Ultimately, history will judge whether the Bush administration was right to invade Iraq. If that country becomes a democratic power over the next few years, then Bush will look visionary. Yet it would be imprudent to conclude, based upon the current evidence, that direct rollback rather than containment ought to be our guiding template against other rogue states. The costs of this strategy against Saddam have been very high, and most of the benefits uncertain. North Korea With Iraq, the only real choice was between containment and rollback. In the case of North Korea, the plausible alternatives also include engagement. This is not because Kim Jong Il is any less malicious or aggressive than was Saddam: on the contrary, Kim’s government is both threatening and brutally repressive. Unfortunately, however, North Korea is thought already to have 30
International Institute for Strategic Studies [IISS], Strategic Survey 2004/5 (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 8–9.
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DUECK several nuclear weapons or the ability to assemble them.31 This alone makes the Korean situation far more dangerous—and delicate—than Iraq ever was. During the 1990s, the Clinton administration followed a North Korea strategy that could be described as engagement plus containment. The administration apparently hoped that diplomatic and economic contact and inducements would lessen North Korea’s insecurities, encourage political and economic reforms within the North, and secure peaceful coexistence on the Korean peninsula. At the same time, the Clinton approach contained strong elements of containment as well as straightforward bargaining. Under the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea agreed to freeze and eventually to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, with international inspectors to monitor and verify the process. In exchange, Washington and its allies agreed to provide the North with heavy fuel oil and eventual help in building civilian-use nuclear energy plants. In the following years, both sides to some extent dragged their feet on the implementation of this accord. But the most crucial and blatant violation was by North Korea, when that country revealed in October 2002 that it had a clandestine nuclear-weapons program based upon highly enriched uranium. Leading officials within the Bush administration had always been skeptical of the benefits of engaging Pyongyang. In January 2002 and later, President Bush described North Korea as part of an international ‘‘axis of evil,’’ condemned Kim’s regime altogether, and characterized the primary U.S. goal in relation to the North as regime change. Pyongyang, meanwhile, kicked out international inspectors, withdrew from the Nonproliferation Treaty, and restarted its nuclear reactors. Washington responded by saying that it was open to a peaceful solution, so long as the North took the first step in dismantling its uranium program. Intermittent and sometimes acrimonious six-party talks involving the United States, North and South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia began in the summer of 2003. In fall 2005, those talks moved in a more serious, businesslike direction, and the gap between Pyongyang and Washington’s positions narrowed somewhat. But the resolution of the longstanding Korean nuclear crisis remains uncertain.32 On the question of the appropriate American response to this situation, two schools of thought within the United States have been especially vocal in recent years, one advocating engagement and the other rollback. Advocates of engagement suggest that North Korea has legitimate security concerns, especially in relation to the Bush administration, and that these concerns should be addressed through corresponding assurances from the United States.33 Freed 31
Ibid., p. 39. ‘‘The Deal That Wasn’t,’’ The Economist, Sept. 24, 2005. 33 Selig Harrison, ‘‘Did North Korea Cheat?’’ Foreign Affairs, January/Febuary 2005, pp. 99– 110; Leon Sigal, ‘‘Bush Policy Backfiring in Asia,’’ Boston Globe, July 8, 2005; and Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 251–4. See also Chadwick I. Smith, ‘‘North Korea: The Case for Strategic Entanglement,’’ in this issue of Orbis. 32
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Rogue States from its sense of external threat, the North would be able to concentrate on domestic reforms, opening the road to peaceful reunification. Advocates of rollback, on the other hand, maintain that the Kim regime is bent on aggression; that it is inherently untrustworthy; and that negotiations with it represent futile concessions to extortion. Beyond that, these advocates suggest that Kim’s peculiar, malignant narcissism leaves him dangerously insensitive to deterrent threats. The policy implication is that Washington should ratchet up military, economic, and diplomatic pressure against Pyongyang, isolate and ostracize the North’s abhorrent regime, and aim at its destabilization and collapse rather than its continuation.34 The problem with engagement is that it seriously underestimates the Kim regime’s malevolence. It is rather naı¨ve to expect that any package of economic, diplomatic, and strategic inducements will necessarily alter the fundamentally hostile and authoritarian nature of the Kim regime by, for example, integrating that regime into regional patterns of economic interdependence. Kim will see any attempted integration as a potential threat to his rule. Nor can negotiations be conducted under the assumption that they will automatically result in softening or satiating the North’s foreign policy goals. All prior experience indicates that Pyongyang will wring whatever concessions it can from this process, without abandoning its revisionist ambitions. It is absurd to suggest that Kim ‘‘feels’’ insecure primarily because of the policies of the Bush administration. Both his insecurity and his clandestine nuclearweapons program predate President Bush. The United States certainly caused alarm in Pyongyang with talk of regime change, but the root cause of this crisis is with North Korea, not George W. Bush. For practical reasons, however, direct rollback is not a plausible alternative. To begin with, any preventive U.S. military strike against North Korea and its weapons sites would probably result in a horrific conflict that would make Iraq look tame. The United States would ultimately win this war, but only at immense cost. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians would be killed. So would thousands more American troops. South Korea would be devastated. There would be no coalition support for such a preventive war under current circumstances. Nor are there any guarantees that North Korea’s weapons sites would actually be destroyed and its nuclear weapons unused. This prospect should warn us not only against a preventive strike, but indeed against any actions that might hasten war. A stated American policy of regime change or indirect rollback against Pyongyang risks this very possibility. Insofar as Washington appears to indicate that its primary goal is overthrowing 34
Nicholas Eberstadt, The End of North Korea (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute Press, 1999), and ‘‘North Korea’s Weapons Quest,’’ The National Interest, Summer 2005, pp. 49–52; Terry Stevens, et al., ‘‘Deterring North Korea: U.S. Options,’’ Comparative Strategy, December 2003. See also Ralph C. Hassig and Kongdan Oh, ‘‘The Twin Peaks of Pyongyang,’’ Orbis, Winter 2006.
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DUECK the Kim regime, the fewer incentives Pyongyang will have to abstain from lashing out in a dangerous policy course involving very high risk, coercive diplomacy, and even full-scale preventive war.35 The baseline American strategy in relation to North Korea must therefore be neither rollback nor integration through engagement, but containment, supplemented by some careful, hard bargaining. A successful strategy of containment requires absolute clarity about the deadly consequences for Kim and his government should he choose to act aggressively. It also requires having military capabilities on the spot to make that threat credible. Fortunately, the United States and South Korea have those capabilities. The North can therefore be deterred, so long as U.S. defensive commitments are unambiguous. Kim cares little for the lives of his people, but he does value his own power and survival. For this very reason, even in relation to a leader like Kim, containment can work, as it has in the past.36 The United States is well served in supplementing this baseline strategy of containment with some tough bargaining over the issue of North Korea’s nuclear weapons. The broad potential outlines of a bargain have been thoroughly discussed in recent years and are well within sight: essentially, that the North agrees to fully disclose, freeze, and subsequently dismantle its nuclear-weapons program, under international supervision, in exchange for energy assistance and security assurances from, and normalized relations with, the United States and its allies.37 Of course, it may be the case, as some critics suggest, that the North will never agree to abandon its nuclear weapons. But there is only one way to find out, and that is to try. If negotiations fail, then the United States will be in a stronger position to return to a strategy of pure containment, and potentially to turn up the pressure on Pyongyang, with international support. That support will not be forthcoming unless and until the United States demonstrates a genuine effort at a diplomatic agreement.38 Fortunately, in fall of 2005 the Bush administration was moving in this very direction. The precise details and implementation of any ‘‘grand bargain’’ with North Korea are obviously crucial, as are the assumptions behind it. Several guidelines can help inform this process. First, the assumption that diplomacy will transform Kim’s regime or his intentions is a weak and dangerous one upon which to rely, because it could tempt Washington into making unreciprocated concessions toward a fundamentally hostile regime. The only convincing reason for a diplomatic approach is to secure the dismantling of the North’s nuclear weapons at relatively little cost. Second, in order to maximize 35
Victor Cha, ‘‘Hawk Engagement and Preventive Defense on the Korean Peninsula,’’ International Security, Summer 2002. 36 David Kang, ‘‘The Avoidable Crisis in North Korea,’’ Orbis, Summer 2003, pp. 497–9. 37 See, e.g., Michael O’Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki, ‘‘Toward a Grand Bargain with North Korea,’’ Washington Quarterly, Autumn 2003. 38 Cha, ‘‘Hawk Engagement,’’ pp. 44, 71.
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Rogue States its bargaining leverage, Washington should use sticks as well as carrots to persuade Pyongyang to come to a peaceful arrangement. This could include, for example, threats of new economic sanctions if negotiations fail. Third, Washington should maintain a bargaining position in close consultation with its regional allies, as well as China. It should typically be Pyongyang, rather than Washington, that is diplomatically isolated. Fourth, there is no reason to expect that any grand bargain with North Korea will necessarily end the underlying rivalry or hostility between Pyongyang and Washington. North Korea will probably continue to be, of its own choosing, a dangerous adversary of the United States, with or without a nuclear accord. Iran Iran’s circumstances are in some ways quite similar to North Korea’s. The Iranian government has been repeatedly found in violation of its commitments under the Nonproliferation Treaty. Its nuclear weapons program, while not as fully developed as North Korea’s, is by most indications well advanced.39 Iran is a major state sponsor of terrorism, and its foreign policy is in many respects predicated upon hostility toward the United States. The Clinton administration followed a strategy of containment in relation to Iran, supplemented by vague overtures at engagement. The Iranian government rebuffed these overtures. President Bush, by placing Tehran within the ‘‘axis of evil,’’ signaled that America’s goal for Iran was neither engagement nor containment but regime change. More recently, the Bush administration has allowed its European allies to take the lead in searching for some kind of diplomatic solution to the issue of Iran’s nuclear program. Iranian negotiating behavior has been consistently obstreperous, and these talks now appear to have reached an impasse. Directly rolling back Iran—that is, an American invasion and occupation—is impractical in the extreme. Even the more limited option of preventive U.S. air strikes designed to destroy Iranian weapon sites has grave disadvantages. They would very likely fail to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, and the political fallout could be immense: a nationalist backlash among the Iranian public; international condemnation of the United States; and Iraniansponsored terrorist attacks against American troops in Iraq.40 At the same time, there is no reason to believe that diplomatic engagement will necessarily succeed in turning Iran’s theocratic government from a bitter and duplicitous adversary into a friendly acquaintance of the United States. It is currently unclear whether the United States will be able to gather support from all five permanent members of the Security Council for UN 39
IISS, Strategic Survey 2004/5, pp. 48, 205–6. Geoffrey Kemp, ‘‘Facing up to the Iranian Bomb,’’ The National Interest, Summer 2005, pp. 55–6. 40
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DUECK sanctions against Iran. Stopgap European-led negotiations have not worked. Iran is clearly on the path toward building nuclear weapons, but rollback is not a viable option. There is an alternative. Iran’s outrageous president is obviously not a serious counterpart for negotiations, but fortunately he does not direct Iranian diplomacy. Iran can be contained and deterred from acts of external aggression so long as U.S. deterrent signals are clear, strong, and credible. This approach would have to be supplemented with a new bargaining strategy in order to deprive Iran of nuclear weapons. The outlines of this bargain would look much like the proposed one with North Korea: the complete dismantling of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, undertaken in verifiable stages, in exchange for technical assistance, economic benefits, an end to sanctions, and security assurances. Any agreement would have to be specific, incremental, and reciprocal, not unilateral; concessions would have to be made in return for concessions, and not out of vague hopes of an adversary transformed. Critics say that Iran has rejected similar offers and will continue to do so.41 Perhaps it will. But Washington has never made a precise, comprehensive offer. It has not taken the lead on this issue, or appeared willing to consider the use of inducements as well as punishment. It has not worked closely with its European allies to put a serious offer on the table, and for those allies’ part, they have frequently been unready to consider punishment as well as inducements. The good news is that Britain, France, and Germany are now more willing than ever to consider economic sanctions against Iran if it continues to be uncooperative on this issue. That gives the American position new purchase. The United States should take this opportunity to gain maximum leverage, using—together with its European allies—a bold strategy to induce Iran to surrender its nuclear weapons program. Should the strategy fail, the United States would be no worse off than it is now, but it would have built fresh international support for punitive action against Iran, with or without the UN.42 Conclusion With regard to both North Korea and Iran, engagement and rollback advocates each commonly argue that their own approach is the surest road to regime change. But regime change is an aspiration, not a strategy. Kim Jong Il and the mullahs of Iran have already lasted longer than many predicted; there are no signs that either regime is facing imminent collapse.43 A vague policy of 41
See Nazila Fathi and John O’Neil, ‘‘Ignoring Protests, Iran Resumes Atom Program,’’ New York Times, Jan. 10, 2006. 42 Kenneth Pollack and Ray Takeyh, ‘‘Taking on Tehran,’’ Foreign Affairs, March/April 2005, pp. 20–34. 43 Victor Cha and David Kang, ‘‘The Korea Crisis,’’ Foreign Policy, May/June 2003, pp. 22–23; Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasri, ‘‘The Conservative Consolidation in Iran,’’ Survival, Summer 2005.
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Rogue States integration through engagement risks strengthening these regimes, without necessarily receiving much in return. A policy of rollback risks American isolation at best and war at worst. Since the United States is not about to invade and occupy either North Korea or Iran, a refusal to negotiate directly with these governments is to effectively acquiesce in their development of nuclear weapons. American officials must therefore walk a fine line between opposing dangers, in relation to both countries, by following a firm yet prudent strategy of containment alongside limited bargaining. This is not a strategy that has ringing emotional appeal on the campaign trail. Its only virtue is that it is demonstrably better than any of the alternatives. Appeasement, engagement, containment, rollback, nonentanglement—while no single one of these is always the best option, one can draw some general lessons regarding their use, along with their relative costs and benefits. The first is that strategies that rely solely upon inducements and rewards are unlikely to be effective against revisionist, adversarial rogue states. The notion that such states can and must be accommodated or appeased through positive incentives alone has a long and sorry history. In fact, the dangers of firmness in the face of rogue state aggression are much less than the dangers of weakness. Democracies’ policies of non-entanglement, appeasement, or engagement frequently strengthen rogue states without doing anything to alter their hostile intentions. If anything, these strategies may actually increase the danger of war, by giving a possibly misleading impression of unending indifference or passivity on the part of democratic powers. At a minimum, therefore, the United States and its allies should rely upon strategies of containment in relation to rogue state challengers—that is, upon strategies of deterrence, of military preparedness, of strong alliances, and of clear commitments. Some versions of containment, however, are too simplistic to serve the national interest, and here we come to the second lesson: that containment often works best when supplemented with limited incentives and careful negotiations. Adversaries are most likely to respond to demands when faced with a broad combination of rewards and punishments.44 Economic incentives and diplomatic or political recognition are forms of power that the United States possesses alongside its military and economic tools. Why would we renounce any one of these forms of power? To do so would be to voluntarily reduce our influence over a given rogue state. The key is to treat economic and diplomatic incentives as part of an overall strategy in which incentives are linked to disincentives, as well as to reciprocal, verifiable actions or 44 Alexander George, Forceful Persuasion: Coercive Diplomacy as an Alternative to War (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1991), pp. 10–11, 73–74; Paul Huth, Extended Deterrence and the Prevention of War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 75–79.
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DUECK concessions on the part of other states. A closely related prerequisite is to avoid deluding ourselves about the purpose of diplomacy with such states. Every foreign regime, no matter how hostile, understands the concept of hard bargaining, and under certain circumstances the benefits of negotiating may outweigh the costs for the United States. But negotiations must never be initiated or concluded out of a vague hope in the transformational power of diplomatic or economic contact. Rather, negotiations with rogue states should only be undertaken under the limited assumption that we are bargaining over reciprocal, concrete concessions, and not in the hope of altering our adversaries’ basic intentions. Any other approach is irresponsible. Elements of rollback, like elements of engagement, can be used to supplement baseline strategies of containment, but again, hybrid approaches must be conceived and implemented with great skill and care for each case. To directly roll back a given regime through force is, by its very nature, typically more difficult, costly, and risk-prone than containment. Even indirect forms of rollback carry considerable costs. A declared intention to overthrow a foreign government is obviously provocative and may even encourage the target state to launch a preventive strike. Such strategies are also less likely to attract allied support. In some circumstances, elements of indirect rollback can usefully supplement strategies of containment, for example, by weakening, destabilizing, and/or delegitimizing target states, and/or by holding out hope of change to political dissidents overseas. But making regime change the official U.S. policy against a given state must be based upon demonstrable, concrete advantages—including those for the citizens of the target state—and not simply upon rhetorical, ideological, or emotional appeal. Commentators often fixate on the supposed beliefs or preferences of a given rogue state’s leaders, so that the debate then circles around questions of intentions that cannot really be conclusively or definitively answered in the present. The safest assumption under such circumstances is to presume that rogue leaders are hostile but strategic actors—that is, that they weigh the costs and benefits of their own behavior within a given international framework. The United States has considerable ability to shape that framework by offering, threatening, or withholding various incentives and disincentives. It would be self-defeating for the world’s only superpower to renounce a priori the use of any instrument to promote its own interests. The only sensible conclusion is for the United States to preserve its ability to offer a wide range of rewards and punishments in meeting any particular rogue-state challenge. The default or preferred strategy in most cases, therefore, is containment, supplemented from time to time by a little hard bargaining. Inconsistency, weakness, or confusion in implementing this strategy is usually a greater danger than that of provoking one’s adversary. Long-term hopes for rogue state rollback are reasonable and even admirable under a variety of circumstances. At the same time, however, it is 240
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Rogue States possible to pursue forms of rollback that are simply too ambitious or aggressive to secure the national interest. Peace through strength is a reliable mantra in virtually every case; peace through preventive war is not. The burden of proof lies upon those who argue, whether as hawks or doves, against tried-and-true strategies of containing rogue states.
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