Saying Vs Doing The Right Things
This opinion piece on Washington Post hits the problem right on. Her central point is that “although the new president deserves kudos for his domestic policy, when it comes to foreign policy initiatives, the new era looks hauntingly like the old.” It’s not for lacking good intentions, as the author pointed out that the new foreign policy team “usually says all the right things”, although the key is to come up with feasible strategies to deal with real issues and challenges. “It will take a wrenching change of priorities and commitments, a fundamental rethinking of national security, to extricate the United States from the inertial force of this institutionalized engagement on the world stage.”
I am empathetic to the foreign policy team because forming new strategies is much harder than criticizing the moves of the predecessor with a determination to do things differently. After all, it is merely 50 some days since the Biden Administration came to the office, and having a bit of patience will do all of us good.
Besides, the idea of working — not fighting — with allies makes intuitive sense. Ruining relationship with allies is one of worst or dummies Trump legacies. It is interesting to note that Xi, Jinping of China is not much smarter than Trump. China is actively fighting everyone in the west, when the smarter thing to do — for China’s own good — is to focus on competing with the US but developing a working relationship with the others.
Keep Talking To China
The first meeting between Bliken & Sullivan and their Chinese counterparts, perhaps ongoing right now as we are speaking, has been a good start. The two countries are too big, their relationships too complicated, and the international stakes too high to not keep dynamic communications and exchanges ongoing. I would love to see both sides coming up with some regular agenda for the future, not making it a one time deal.
Having talks is always better than having fights, even sometimes a talk seems to be nothing but a waste of time. Believe me, the time on exchanges will never be entirely wasted. Somewhere down the road one party may remember something the other party said, and that may just become a game changer in the future decision making.
Use The UN As Much As We Can
Speaking of game changers, here is one that is easy, convenient, low cost and more efficient than anything else: the United Nations. That is, in addition to the US working with its allies, it should also work with the UN. The Biden administration should make it an important part of the new national security strategy from now on, marking a permanent return to the old days of the Korean war era, when the US entered the Korean peninsula after the UN passed a resolution.
What is the UN good for? It has little power for stopping a war if one of its permanent members of the Security Council is determined to launch a war against another nation in the world. However, it remains one of the best — if not the best — agencies for conflict resolution. This peace promotion and maintenance function is exactly what the US is needed today, in order to focus its resources on competing with China while do the entire world and itself a huge favor.
Democracy Within A Country Is Not Enough
I would love to believe domestic democracy can provide sufficient counter-power to stop a country from making international mistakes, because that would significantly reduce the cost of avoiding military conflicts and increasing global welfare. Unfortunately, the reality tells us otherwise. We only need to look at two extremely protracted wars: the Vietnam War and the Iraq War.
Let us focus on the more recent Iraq War. My initial guess was that it costed the US billions of dollars but my guess was wrong. It was far more than that at $1,060.9 billion (i.e., more than $1 trillion)! To put this in perspective, the annual GDP of the US in 2020 was roughly $21 trillion, so the accumulated money we wasted in Iraq all these years came to roughly 1 in 21 or slightly less than 5%. This is just the accounting cost and we have not taken in the opportunity cost — the time and resources that would have been used elsewhere had there been no Iraq war.
The Iraq war has been a total waste because as the Wikipedia points out, “(t)he Bush administration based its rationale for the Iraq War principally on the assertion that Iraq possessed an active weapons of mass destruction,” which turned out to be zero. Guess who was the winner from the Iraq War? China. “Despite the opposition to the U.S. invasion and occupation of the country China emerged as one of the biggest winners of Iraq’s oil contracts. Chinese and Russian companies had emerged as the biggest winners in the bid for Iraq’s oil. Chinese companies were willing to operate on 20 year fee based contracts, which offered lower profit margins than Western companies desired” according to the Wikipedia page. This is just the obvious countable benefits. Perhaps even more importantly, the US operation in Iraq, the so called “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign in 2003 served as nothing less than a wake-up call for how modern warfare is like, and encouraged China to develop and update its own old legacy weaponry system, including this third generation JL-3 submarine launched ballistic missile that can reach the US.
If domestic forces are not enough to stop a country from making foreign mistakes, UN can help. I want to look at things first from the international and then a domestic perspectives.
The UN Has More Resources Than the US
Internationally, UN is a fully legitimate agency for international cooperation. It is not entirely apolitical, as its permanent members of the Security Council are divided into different camps. However many of its functions are not politically or ideologically motivated. Perhaps its most important function is to maintain international peace.
China for one has repeatedly stated that it backs up the UN function and against the long arm jurisdiction that the US has been using. China has a point here, and the US should not brush it away just because it is from China.
My key point is this: Shifting more power to UN is good for the US itself. First of all, the US is paying UN membership fees each year, it might as well leverage the existing resources instead of always acting on its own or with a few allies in all international affairs. The truth of the matter is that although the US has been called the “international cops”, that is still an informer notion and must be built on countries accepting it. At the end of the day, the US is still a sovereign country just like anyone else. If a country refuses to accept the US intervention, technically speaking the US has no right to force its wills on others — it has done just that in the past. This is the first difference between US and UN: The latter possesses a unique legitimacy resource that the US may or may not have.
The second place where the UN overpowers the US is in its resource diversity. Allow me to illustrate the point in a country that the US has currently stuck and sees no easy way out: “The United States has been at war in Afghanistan for 20 years at a cost of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.” Furthermore, “last year Trump cut a deal with the Taliban to remove all U.S. forces by May 1, 2021. Now, the new administration is giving every indication that Biden will keep the troops in Afghanistan beyond that deadline” according to this essay I cited earlier.
But Biden has another option that would work even better: Passing the Afghanistan issue over to the UN and let the problem become an international headache, not a US headache. The US has been preoccupied — and overcommitted itself — with global troubles everywhere for too long that it forgets a single country, even with a few allies, can only do so much to change the world overnight. Where the US fails, other country may just have better lucks. China for example has met the Taliban in 2019. As a developing country China should understand how people think in poor countries better than the US. Letting China play a role makes things easier for the US.
UN For International Check & Balance
The UN not only has more resources than the US does, it can also help facilitate “International democracy” — if we narrowly define the term as hearing more inputs from all relevant parties in making decisions. If that is too confusing, I can simply say that UN can play a constructive role in international check and balance of powers.
Why an active UN role is better than the US doing whatever it wants, wherever and whenever it wants? Because it works just like democracy within a country: Every decision is slowed down for collectively better decision. It slows everyone down because nobody can get everything from the table. But in return, everyone can potentially gain.
Just a thought experiment that in 2003, President George W. Bush did not act alone or with the UK, but asked for a UN roundtable discussion. Sure, the Security Council would likely delay or even reject the US proposal, but that would be a beauty decision in the end.
A Blind Man & An Elephant
I want to draw wisdom from a famous Chinese proverb of a blind man being asked to describe an elephant. Of course, being blind did not help. He had to use his hands to feel the animal. Now, he might have first touched the big ear and came to the conclusion that an elephant has a flat and smooth body. If he started from the tail, he would think an elephant is a small hairy animal not much bigger than a mouse. The point is clear: You don’t want to be that “blind man.” But in reality, a country is just like a person: Each of us can be blind to certain things but bright to others. Together we are all smarter.
The lesson here is that without appropriate constraint of power, we can all be devils and do terrible things — even with good intent that can do damages just as bad as with evil intent.
Installing A Humanity Bottom Line
I was upset after reading the same piece I cited earlier that the US has said one thing but is doing something else: “while Biden has repeatedly promised that the United States would not engage in regime change, he has sustained debilitating sanctions against Venezuela that are clearly designed to overthrow the government.” What worries me is the innocent civilians suffering the most from the US sanctions. “A United Nations report last month detailed the horrible human costs, and called on the United States and its allies to allow Venezuela to purchase medicine, vaccines and food.”
I also worry about the same civilian suffering in Iran, especially during the pandemic, when the US barred Iran from getting its funds back from South Korea before nuclear compliance. The problem is that dictators or authoritarian leaders can afford to let their citizens suffer without budging on its bottom-line deemed the best for the regime, democratic countries should consider the humanity costs and human rights in other countries, otherwise we are not set ourselves clearly apart from the bad guys. It also makes the propaganda of authoritarian governments an easier job: They can actually sleep better by simply telling their people to hate the US.
An Active UN Helps the US
If the above is still not convincing, this one should: The US cannot have the cake and eat it. It wants a million things in the world at the same time, but if competing with China is its top priority, treat it like it is and get rid of many of its current burdens to fight with both hands. Right now, the US has at least one hand tied up and uses the other hand to deal with China. It is hard to win if the US keeps fighting like this.