Who's Advising This Prince?

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The recent emphasis on the “smart power” concepts developed by Harvard’s Joseph Nye has reminded us that from the times of Kautilya, Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, intellectuals have avidly sought the role of adviser to the prince.

In the last century, George Kennan created the doctrine of “containment” of the Soviet Bloc. Henry Kissinger breathed new life into “concert politics” in a balance-of-power international system. Samuel Huntington defined a “clash of civilizations.” And Joseph Nye elaborated “soft” versus “hard” power and their resultant synthesis – lately and repeatedly referenced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- “smart power.”

One could argue that the Cold War was fought and won by the West using a mixture of nuclear deterrence, interlocking and encircling alliances, costly arms races and persistent economic competition which collectively precipitated the Soviet bloc’s bankruptcy and collapse. George Kennan, a diplomat and a Princeton scholar, with his 1946 “long telegram” from Moscow and 1947 “X” article in Foreign Affairs, was the father of this Western strategy. Based on the assumption that Soviet communism needed to grow -- through a chain reaction of revolutions -- in order to survive, containment would deny the expansionist oxygen the Soviets needed to “bury” (Nikita Khrushchev’s boast) their capitalist adversaries.

Ultimately, Kennan predicted, this would lead the Soviet Union to implode or “mellow from within.” As the first head of the State Department’s policy planning staff, he was able to broadly influence the ideas that created American post-war foreign, economic and defense policies and guided American leaders for more than four decades.

Harvard professor Henry Kissinger, National Security Adviser and Secretary of State during the Nixon years, was probably the first and clearly the most visible scholar-official to challenge the assumptions and behavior of Cold War bipolarity. While the Vietnam War was raging, German-born Kissinger was acutely aware that the increasing friction between the Soviet Union and China had deep geopolitical roots and that their shared communist ideology would not reliably overshadow their fierce competition for power and influence in Eurasia.

Kissinger, with Nixon’s approval, departed from a two-decades-long practice of American non-recognition and orchestrated the “opening” to China – symbolized by the dramatic 1972 Nixon trip to Beijing. Balance-of-power politics (in the style of Prince Metternich and Lord Castlereagh) would enable the US, and the West, to further weaken the Soviet Union, forcing it to focus on a second strategic front to the east and south of its Asian borders. By accepting China as a global player in 1971, Kissinger arguably ended bipolar politics well before the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Samuel Huntington, who died late last year, was a brilliant Harvard scholar with a long, distinguished and productive career. In the summer of 1993 he published a seminal article in Foreign Affairs introducing his vision of “the clash of civilizations.”

Huntington’s model of the post-Cold War world filled the systemic vacuum left by the Soviet bloc’s implosion. He asserted that “…the fault lines between civilizations are replacing the political and ideological boundaries of the Cold War as the flash points for crisis and bloodshed.” Later in the same article, he prophesied that the “… next World War, if there is one, will be a war between civilizations.” He assumed Western uniqueness in terms of respect for democratic principles and values, and believed that the ultimate confrontation would involve “the West versus the Rest.” Again, arguably, Huntington’s logic fit well with neoconservative views and George W. Bush's doctrine regarding “axes of evil” and “preemptive wars” to bring about regime change.

Joseph Nye, another prominent Harvard scholar-practitioner, has spent many years exploring the nature of the international system and refining concepts such as “transnationalism” and “interdependence.” In his critical reviews of American foreign policy, he coined the terms “soft power” -- the ability to convince or inspire others -- and “hard power” -- the ability to compel through the threat or the use of military force.

He is convinced that a right mix of diplomacy, economic incentives and interdependence based on trade and investments, and, where necessary, force -- whether defensive or preventive -- would be the best strategy for a great power “bound to lead.” He also developed the hybrid idea of “smart power,” which represents the grand synthesis of the hard and the soft ingredients of power. The Obama administration, in its initial foreign policy steps, appears to have seized on Nye’s advice.

Another scholar, again from Princeton, now has George Kennan’s old position as head of the State Department’s policy planning staff. Anne-Marie Slaughter is among those forging a new definition of the international system based on concepts of interconnectedness, where issues, problems, nations, people, business -- and ultimately power itself -- reflect the complex networks that tie them all together. In an article in the current Foreign Affairs, she argues that “The emerging networked world of the twenty-first century … exists above the state, below the state, and through the state. In this world, the state with the most connections will be the central player, able to set the global agenda and unlock innovation and sustainable growth. Here, the United States has a clear and sustainable edge. ”

Perhaps most strikingly, can we forget at this time of global economic and financial crisis the archetypal scholar-adviser, John Maynard Keynes? After all, it is his name now being commonly invoked, as leaders all over the world are once again saying and behaving as if “we are all Keynesians now.”

Theodore Couloumbis is vice president of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy and professor emeritus at the University of Athens, Greece; Bill Ahlstrom is an executive at a US multinational; Gary Weaver is professor at American University’s School of International Service; these views are their own.
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