Gideon Rose on US Foreign Policy

Should America have intervened in Libya? Done more? Done less? Done it differently? The editor of Foreign Affairs explains the tension that lies at the heart of every foreign policy decision

American foreign policy is something almost everyone around the world has an opinion on, and that opinion is normally fairly critical. But at the end of the day, many of those criticisms don’t correspond with one another, and there’s a fair amount of ignorance about what’s really driving it. For example, if you asked 10 people why the US went into Iraq, you’d probably get 10 different answers. Can you explain what, in your view, it’s all about?

The first place to start in analysing foreign policy – as with all public policy – is with what I call “Rose’s first law of foreign policy”, which is that all policies are lousy but some are lousier than others. The real question professionals grapple with is not whether a particular policy is good – because it rarely is – but whether it is less bad than all the other possible options out there, in terms of whatever metrics you’re using – protecting/advancing your interests, helping the world, heading off disasters et cetera. This gets to your question – lots of people are critical of American foreign policy but the criticisms vary – and the answer is not whether something is wrong with a particular policy, but whether the alternative policies that are plausibly available net out any better. And the answer is usually not.

That’s why, in certain respects, there has been so much continuity in American foreign policy over such a long period of time. It actually has a far more sensible logic than people really appreciate, and is managed by relatively sensible, intelligent professionals, far more, again, than most people appreciate. That doesn’t mean there aren’t major screw-ups. But there are fewer than people think and the decisions behind them are usually somewhat more understandable than they might seem to a casual observer.

And Iraq?

Iraq is the big exception that proves the rule. We actually do know why the US went into Iraq: I wrote a chapter in my book about it. The problems with the Iraq policy were ones that show what happens when normal, sensible, professional decision-making procedures are not followed, and you have executives going and doing things the way they feel they should. Also, you have to distinguish the decision to go to war from the way the Iraq operation was handled. You could have gone to war in Iraq and done it quite differently. The answer to both of those is that the administration felt it wanted to do it this way, and was not constrained by any outside force – internationally, domestically or bureaucratically. They just did it in whatever way happened to appeal to the relatively few people in power. The Iraq case is a highly unusual one which demonstrates what excessive freedom of action can do in the wrong hands. Checks and balances usually ensure a more considered policy. It is a little more stodgy and plodding, but it avoids some of the most extreme excesses.

History of the Peloponnesian War

By Thucydides

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Your first book is Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War – I’m intrigued why a book from 400 BC is on your list.

To understand American foreign policy you have to understand what foreign policy and international relations more generally are. Thucydides is the single best treatment of international relations, foreign policy and military affairs that exists. It is the best description of what life in a multipolar world is like, what politics and war are like for the units involved, of the basic realities of international relations. It has no single line.

Thucydides is often considered the father of the “realist” tradition in international relations, because he argued that the root cause of the Peloponnesian War was Athens’s growing power and the fear this caused in Sparta. But there is everything and its opposite in Thucydides. It’s a brilliant, kaleidoscopic, panoramic view of states in action in the international sphere. You see what war does to domestic politics; you see what domestic politics does to war. You see what morality in wartime is like and what the consequences are. You see what alliance behaviour is like, and what the pressures of the system do to various different players inside. What he is describing is the world of a state system – in this case Ancient Greek city-states – but the same dynamic that prevailed then is the world we see today in many, many respects. And nobody has captured the essence of that world better than Thucydides. So the reason Thucydides is on my list is to teach people what the world of international relations and foreign policy and war is all about. Only then, once you know that, can you turn to America and understand what the United States is doing, as one particular actor operating in that world.

In Thucydides, can you give me an example of something where, as you were reading it, you went, “Wow, that really reminds me of some recent event”?

One of the great things about Thucydides is that every age that reads it finds great insight into their own era. It’s like reading Shakespeare or any true classic. It’s describing human nature and human relations in some particular concrete setting, but it gets at the essence, at the heart of that. So during the Victorian era, the British saw themselves as Athens; during the Cold War, the United States saw itself as Athens. If you want to understand alliance dynamics, you look at [the Athenian alliance] the Delian League. Every time there is a mistaken expedition to a godforsaken place which should never have been undertaken in the first place, people bring up the Sicilian expedition. Every time alliance partners choose to pay money rather than contributions in kind – and end up being somewhat subservient to the dominant alliance partner – you can refer back to the Delian League.