Abstract
For a considerable time, foreign policy analysis has mostly abstained from ethical considerations, though nations have often deployed a wide range of ideas and norms in justifying their actions or criticizing the policies undertaken by their rivals and foes. This is mostly because of the stranglehold of political realism in international relations thinking, be it the human nature variant or the structural one, which is dismissive of values and ethical considerations as valid comportments of foreign policymaking. States are supposed to be driven by the cardinal national interest of surviving in an anarchical international system, this tradition argues, where every state must recognize, plan, coordinate and implement its own strategy knowing that there is no abiding security guarantee within an order without authority. In fact, most realists have routinely cautioned diplomats of not getting dissuaded by cheap moral talk as morality, like law, has little purchase in a world determined by the machinations of national power.
Liberals, while disputing this rather ghastly negative and forbidding reading of the international system, have sought to prioritize the vectors of the market, democracy, rule of law, and human rights, as defining elements in the making of an open and largely pacifist world order. At least until the globalization and the European Union (EU) looked exciting and viable projects around which a cast of liberal consensus took shape, the transactional, wealth-triggered, and communication-oriented image of the world seemed a normatively attractive alternative, though not necessarily an outright repudiation, to the realist odyssey. While values were not central to the liberal understanding of how states made foreign policy choices, their emphasis on domestic preference structures, international coalitions of stakeholders, trading arrangements, and institutions, could accommodate value considerations better than their realist counterparts. The case for values and ethical standards was recognized centrally by the English School whose juxtaposed analyses of sovereignty and society as different norms underpinning the modern world order ultimately turned on different sets of norms following from these opposed foundations.
Considerations of values and ethics in foreign policy achieved a new lease of life with the advent of constructivists and norm-analysis in international relations that emphasized on the social construction of meaning, the agential distinctiveness despite structural causation, the significance of ideational structures, and the centrality of values and identity in international life. While it is true that the spotlight fell disproportionately on identity markers and strategic culture as an element of national security, ethical considerations also became fashionable as the Western powers routinely invoked normative idioms in their case to construct a liberal world order and states such as China, Japan, Indonesia and India often responded by affirming their cultural difference. Russia under Putin also rejected the US and EU-led international order on both power and cultural terms. With the unfortunate intertwining of terrorism and Islam in the mainstream thinking of many Western states after the 9/11 calamity, Iran, Turkey, and many other West Asian states also took to the same line.
Hence, at least in terms of public evidence, norms, and values became common refrains in foreign policies of states. However, more crucially, many scholars found linkages between how states thought and acted in foreign affairs and their domestic normative presuppositions, although, in no case was this performative normativity either coherent or continuous. States are not made up of one set of values. The ruling elites juggle normative projects and their domestic choices often reflect on their global roles and vice versa. The present volume under review is important in recognizing three things. First, values matter though they do not matter uniformly; second, contingencies mostly trump ethical considerations, though the available range of choices is often linked to the value socialization of states; and, third, no meaningful foreign policy analysis can bifurcate the domestic and the international as hermetically sealed spaces. While not all chapters of the book would validate all the three points, among them, on balance, they largely deliver these arguments. These in my view are the central takeaways from the volume contrary to what the editors have claimed, namely, that the book is about finding if there are nationally specific values and, if there are, how do they differ from the values originating in the West.
The difficulty here is three-fold. First, finding the distinctiveness of national values is a humongous task and requires delineation and testing that does not happen in this volume. Second, the very idea of value specificity, as a variation on the broader theme of culture/norms, is problematic as the modern international order is both specific and cosmopolitan, and, as the post-colonial theorists have so persuasively shown, the West is neither the unitary source of the modern order nor is its sole cognitive fountainhead. In the present context, the claim of cultural specificity is not only an expression of national chauvinism but also a conceptually unacceptable one. No culture is purely unique or completely shared. Hence, values are bound to overlap, their modes of appropriation and usage notwithstanding. Finally, the idea that security, economic welfare, cultural preservation, etc., are national values seems contentious as it is virtually impossible to distill anything peculiarly “national” about them. All states aim to realize these goals and may find it convenient to articulate their efforts in the language of national values. However, this hardly qualifies these goals as “national values” as these are common aspirations of modern states all over the world. The arrogation of these universal aspirations as national values or cultures is a common practice. The point needs to be finessed a bit more though. All states pursue goals such as security and wellbeing but that does not mean they either take these values alike or even when there is a degree of convergence in understanding, would pursue these goals through similar means. Most chapters of this volume show this commendably.
For a volume of this nature, it is extremely difficult to make chapter-wise analysis since there is hardly a common baseline to rely upon. Instead, I focus on four clusters of values that the authors have identified and dissected. These are Western, Chinese, Asian, and the Islamist. Virtually all the cases can be placed under these broad categories though some countries show a considerable overlap of values.
The Western value system has been well documented across chapters on the US, EU, and several others. Sourcing in the perennially fractious liberal and communitarian/conservative traditions that continue to define the Western value system, the pluralist-solidarity and the universalist-particularistic distinctions showcase the debates in more contemporary times. William Antholis’s chapter on the United States shows how Trump has complicated the value question by emphasizing unconditional unilateralism over shared normative projects with European powers, particularly the EU, in sharp contrast to his predecessors. While all US presidents have married claims of power and values, they have in the past sought to universalize them, championing rhetorically the cause of liberty and democracy as uncompromising features of the post-World War II order. While the narratives of the clash of civilizations and a US-led liberal order were rival imageries, they sought to uphold the Western norms and values over others. Trump’s foreign policy finds such a commitment to be onerous and economically counter-productive. Hence, his detractors find it easier to target Trump. Trump’s exceptionalism, however, is exaggerated. There has always been a deeply conservative element in the US. Trump’s success is having mainstreamed it considerably, in terms of both domestic and foreign policy choices.
The chapters by James Mayall on European foreign policies and Bruno Maçães on values in Western foreign policy reveal normative tensions within what is often simplistically taken as a single paradigm. Fundamentally, the conflict is over rival conceptions of the world order that pivots on the contrasting notions of sovereignty and humanity along one axis and state-centrism and universalism on the other. Both chapters demonstrate the fraught nature of the EU as a political project, particularly after setbacks such as the Brexit and Trump’s America first policies. Mayall has brilliantly portrayed how the refugee crisis and an unwieldy economic structure that clearly separates the richer northern states (Germany and the Nordic states) from the relatively poorer southern ones has led to nationalist backlashes in many European states and explained why the prospect of a unified European project seems increasingly remote. Bruno Maçães draws attention to Hedley Bull’s influential argument that international norms and values constituted a code of conduct that did not extend beyond continental affairs. While this idea is indeed problematic as the devastations wrought by the two World Wars remind us, his analysis of the comportments of the European value system and the challenges they face from an assertive China, a revanchist Russia, and the withdrawing US seems convincing enough. Fredric Erixon’s chapter on the EU also reiterates similar dilemmas and problems. It recognizes the weakness of the process after the Eurozone crisis and concedes that even if the weaker states came back to the integration process strongly, in the absence of a European political character, the EU would possibly remain a half-way house. Sadly, the chapter does not investigate the underlying values and norms and, therefore, tells us little about the ontological basis of a European political character. Amit Dasgupta’s piece on Germany would have us believe that there is a fundamental value consensus in German foreign policy and the skirmishes are all over instrumentalities or means. This is a remarkable conclusion both in the light of the four major value debates he mentions in the course of German history, where he omits the Nazi interlude altogether and given the present evidence of the resurgent right-wing forces targeting Turks and other immigrants. The chapter could have looked more closely at the contestation of values rather than extolling the consensus.
Is Russia a European power? A revisionist state? Or, a Eurasian power? Russia’s national identity question has spawned an enormous literature, particularly since the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Hari Vasudevan and Tatiana Shaumyan add to this richness though one struggles to find a definite answer on the identity question. They find in the shunning of a unitary ideological foundation the ammunitions for value flexibility and a predilection under Putin to both underline its differences and work on the convergences of interests with the US and the EU. Russians seem to be equivocating as the exigencies of domestic and global circumstances demand quick adjustments. Blessed with enormous energy resources and heir to the Soviet nuclear arsenal, Russian foreign policy has depth and cunning in equal measures to leave its independent imprint in its dealings with both friends and rivals. Russia’s concerns with humanitarian interventions, human rights, liberal democracy, and civil society are well known. But, many states share these critical sentiments and there is hardly anything culturally distinctive in Russia’s espousal of a revisionist agenda.
The chapters on China and Asian values are contrasting ones. Zhang’s chief argument in the chapter on China is to draw attention to the traditional Confucian roots of Chinese foreign policy, which, interestingly, he claims as universal. It claims its chief civilizational cognates to be harmony, cooperation, fraternity, and trust in contrast to the alleged European values like individualism, private property, rights, and liberty. Zhang sees these values, however, as not specifically Chinese but universal that is remarkably similar to the Orientalist understanding of the international as European. The problem here is a common one. A more convincing account of the recent changes in China’s foreign policy can be made without recourse to Chinese values, their locality or universality notwithstanding, as normal and acceptable conduct of a major power that seeks to challenge the US-based order as it does not measure up to its ambitions. On the one hand, there are problems of relating traditional values with state conduct in vastly dissimilar times; on the other, there is little demonstration that these claims are independent of a power transition process that cannot be explained without recourse to the traditions and values in question. In contrast, the chapter on the Asian values shows how the Chinese predominance and economic muscle have contributed to ties with ASEAN states independent of values, the little purchase these values have in explaining pragmatic policy choices, the fact of changing European and Asian values, and how, by deploying fixed and frozen categories across time and space, one risks missing out on transitions and manifest alignment of interests between Asia and the rest.
Tadashi Anno has penned one of the strongest chapters in the volume on Japan. His essay shows the evolution of values in Japanese society, the tumultuous events through which Japan has moved, and the roles that the West and the United States, in particular, have played in fashioning Japanese society, polity and foreign affairs in a certain direction. He argues that while a large number of traditional cultural elements can be discerned in Japan, like the imperial myths, Shintoism, Zen Buddhism, and Bushido (Samurai tradition), there has not been any marked efforts to use them as many such traditional values are deeply controversial due to their association with Japan’s imperial past. In contrast, Japan has embraced Western values such as liberty, democracy, and human rights more forthrightly than merely instrumentally to keep its benefactors happy. Values in sync with Japanese commitment to pacifism, like those underlying human security, have tended to be more successful than ones that emphasize national specificity. In fact, he concludes that while the post-Cold War phase of cultural universalism was a short-lived one, Japan’s commitment to cosmopolitanism has strengthened. This chapter is a much-needed reminder that while values may indeed matter in foreign policy, these values need not be exclusively nationalist ones.
The chapters on Indonesia, South Korea, and Myanmar reveal the diversity of views. From peace activism in Indonesian foreign policy that has emphasized the values of cooperation and institution building with like-minded states, through the influence of the major powers on South Korea’s strategic postures, and the how ethnic sub-nationalism and group conflicts have largely determined Myanmar’s foreign policy and the importance of the civilian and military structures therein, these chapters show how the domestic constituencies contribute to and in turn are served by foreign policy choices. Perhaps not everything can be claimed as values in these exercises. However, the distinctive histories, politics, and anthropologies of these states provide the canvases for their foreign policy choices, explaining a certain generic continuity amid changes at many levels.
Does religion affect a state’s foreign policy? Mehemet Ozan and Kingshuk Chatterjee, in their chapter “Islamic Values in Foreign Policy” with particular reference to Turkey and Iran, answers in the affirmative. The chapter contrasts an apparently secular Turkey and an avowedly religious Iran using religious diplomacy and cultural institutions as parts of their diplomatic tools to good effect. However, the authors find evidence of pragmatic considerations prevailing on the state’s foreign policy choices, particularly when it comes to Iran. Hence, rather than advancing a strong value determined explanation of Iran’s foreign policy, the conclusion seems to point to their instrumental role, given the political narrative over-determined by political Islam. While the authors believe that the role of Islamic culture and values would not only be important to these states’ domestic politics but internationally as well, they refrain from strong determinism and recognize the existence of forces that may ameliorate the predisposition in the future.
Finally, Krishnan Srinivasan in his chapter on India hails Nehru as an idealist and a pragmatist, who espoused India’s civilizational heritage as much as economic necessities as constituting the basic determinants of India’s foreign policy moves. The chapter appears too Nehru-centric, which is hardly surprising given his extensive writings on India’s moral capital, civilizational heritage, destiny, and culture. Did we retain the moral stance in the aftermath of Nehru? Is India’s post-Cold War foreign policy weaved on the same value matrix that Nehru had bequeathed? Or, has there been a manifest change in our values and justifications? The author could have enriched us better here as his own experience as a practitioner at the highest level afforded him unparalleled advantages over others. His discussion of “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” as a defining cultural element of India’s foreign policy is apt though it could have been given some more space. While other reviewers have found his neglect of realpolitik a definite source of weakness, in all fairness, he neither denies pragmatism nor claims for values an explanatory reach across the whole continuum of India’s foreign policy. Rather, the claim that India’s soft power—“power of ideas, spirituality, music, cinema, arts, pluralist democracy, the power of culture, and civilization”—is simply too exhaustive to boot. Further, the tendency to see more continuity than differences in India’s commitment to her values as cultural resources of foreign policy is also historically problematic. None of these ideas that he refers to mean the same across Nehru and Modi, and the distance of meaning is no less telling than the material differences in epochs.
This is an important book by demanding academic standards and the editors have done commendable work in putting together strong essays that are more or less united on the central problem. Since the book had asked a couple of questions perhaps a conclusion was warranted. However, this does not prevent the reader to find the answers themselves. Not many edited volumes enable us to derive conclusions. The only substantial disagreement that I have is the lack of engagement with a large body of existing theoretical literature on foreign policy and values, norms, strategic culture, and identity. However, judging by the richness of the coverage, the profundity of the analysis that comes with remarkable lucidity that allows a quick reading, and the centrality of the subject matter, this is a book that deserves a long shelf life.