A reader says nice things about my long posting on the Copenhagen Negotiating Disaster (for the EU at least) but also asks a terrific question:

A remarkable piece of analysis, Charles, with fascinating insights for the outsider.

I detect a theme emerging in your posts – a sort of neo-realpolitik that suggests that your view is that only large, powerful countries (or those soon to be large and powerful) have a realistic chance of shaping world affairs, despite modern rhetoric about equality of nations, consultation, and international legal systems. Neo-Kissinger?

Where to start?

First, I have little time for all that American academic burbling about multi-polar uni-polar worlds, let alone the California School of IR studies which seems to think it can all be reduced to equations. 

When you see just how much of top-level diplomacy comes down to instincts and personalities and sheer luck on the day, all that abstracting seems quite irrelevant. Things do not fall into neat categories just because academics and indeed diplomats have to write in a few pages about the whirling endless complexity of world goings-on and so indulge in amazing simplifications. 

I tend to start with Reality. When I look out of the window to scrutinise global diplomacy I observe thusly:

  • there is no lack of consultation and debate which has an ‘equalizing’ function and does bring in many smaller countries and ‘non-state actors’ these days – see Copenhagen plus many more examples
  • international law may lack some sort of normative über-sanction but it counts for a lot – governments make great efforts to negotiate all sorts of international law norms, and then even greater efforts to demonstrate that they are living up to their obligations (albeit some obligations more than others)
  • there are also Power/Resources, Will, Clarity of Purpose and Technique. And those states exhibiting and deploying these in generous measure will tend to do better than those which either lack them or are loath to use them
  • which is another way of saying look at some of the key physics principles involved in delivering impact and foreign policy volume

A large fast powerful determined country will tend to get favourable outcomes in any negotiation (and many situations are in effect a Negotiation even when people are not sitting around a table). They get results either by being active and pressing for specific outcomes including by bribes of different sorts (eg USA) or (more often in the case of Russia and China) simply by blocking others who want specific outcomes.

It also is worth bearing in mind Timescale. Things do come and go. Here on Earth gravity plays a huge part – bigger things necesarily tend to be heavier and less manoeuvrable, which means that in many situations smaller, nimbler creatures have their own advantages – or not.

Russia gets what current management sees as a good outcome by building hi-tech weapons systems. Yet its health-care record and death-rate statistics are calamitous, piling up demographic and so political problems down the road.

Venezuela is getting a lumpen-populist global PR boost from Chavez, but only by ruinous domestic policies which will drag the country down for a long time to come.

Norway in its Middle Eastern policy shows what can be done by a smart smaller country pulling together a well-tuned package of Will, Determination and Resources. Australia does well by using commin sense Anglo-Saxon technique in an Asian context.

By the standards of Africa the leaders of South Africa do well at the high international level, combining busy moral primness with energy and (again) good technique. Cuba gets rave reviews in the Guardian, but at the cost of impoverishing its people for decades.

The whole EU internally is based upon an uneasy eqilibrium between the Bigs and everyone else, with the Bigs on the whole wanting to lead collective strategic policy and the Rest satisfied by grabbing ad hoc national advantages through cunning use of whatever blocking power they have. The Greece/Macedonia row over Macedonia’s name is a classic example of Blocking for self-centred national reasons, Greece uniting blocking power with unbreakable wilfulness to fine effect (as Greece defines it). 

Externally, the EU has Resources but mainly lacks Clarity of Purpose and so Will, hence such EU Technique as exists does not get far. There is a case for a strong and unified expression of democratic European values in today’s world, but done rather through key hard-headed member states pooling their Resources and Technique and mustering as much Will and Clarity of Purpose as can be mustered.

Other regional groupings such as ASEAN scarcely try to have collective impact, except in mainly defensive ways, eg to fend off ‘Western’ scrutiny of Asian human rights abuses.

Going down to buzzing micro-insect level, small formations of Islamist fanatics can ‘shape world affairs’ by causing almost limitless damage and alienation in free societies – see any airport.

So I suppose that I look at International Relations less as a Newtonian billiard table with elegant shots by clever players ricocheting balls into selected spaces, and more a Darwinian jungle. Many different natural phenomena interacting and changing in ways which create new patterns and indeed over time new life-forms, but not in easily predictable ways.  

None of these creatures ‘defines’ the way the jungle works, any more than a herd of elephants defines a jungle in Africa. But the metaphor breaks down because people and states (unlike animals/plants/insects) can identify specific purposes, good or bad, and work consciously to achieve them.

Which seems to be why the Obama Administration is trying to move away from the rhetoric of American power and championing ‘democracy’ towards an anti-Bush, more inclusive ‘organic’ style of leadership.

The problem with that is that if the USA with all its resources and energy does not champion Freedom, other things get championed instead. The opportunity cost of repressive behaviour will decline, and we’ll get more of it.

Enough IR theory – Ed.