The Limits of (Super)Power

Gaddis describes an interesting situation in The Cold War: A New History. Sometimes the superpowers (back when there were two) would find themselves losing control of situations, unable to dictate the actions of their "client states" or subordinate powers, but trapped into less-than-optimal outcomes or policies because their client states would have them over a barrel. This took two forms, for the most part. The first form is the "weak" client, always and allegedly on the verge of falling to the other side. Any efforts by the United States to get such regimes (e.g., South Korea for a very long time) to become less authoritarian, for example, would be met with complaints that any additional liberties would cause the regime to collapse and the country to go over to the other (Red) side of the Cold War. Thus the United States would be in a relatively weak bargaining position, even with a country like South Korea that only existed because U.S. troops were on its border, protecting it. Even an administration interested in improing human rights would be confronted with a Cold-War-power-stakes argument when it tried to push pressure on its "clients." The superpower, in short, couldn't just call the shots.

The second form was when a subordinate power had the option of playing one side against the other--Tito in Yugoslavia and Mao in China played this one against the Kremlin, despite their Marxist governments. This really gave the subordinate or client power to bargain and play the sides against one another.

The former version of this superpower dilemma is much more relevant to the present situation in Iraq--i.e., the clusterfuck--than the latter, but both have some relevance. (Thus, the current "Unity" government in Iraq has much closer relations with Iran than the United States--at least, some of the factions included in the "Unity" government do. So they can make visits to Iran that must worry certain members of the Bush cabinet, no?)

The Bush administration constantly talks about putting pressure on the Maiiki government is Baghdad, but really, the bargaining stakes aren't that even. Maliki knows that the Bushies can't let things deteriorate beyond a certain point in Iraq, if they have the power to prevent it (or have the option of escalating the clusterfuck to prevent it). So the Bushies' hands are tied--there's a limit to what they can do to pressure Maliki. Withdrawal isn't an option, for them, and thus he gets their continued support. No matter what he does, or doesn't do. Because if he's pressured, he can claim, with some plausibility, that after him, the deluge. So if he says that he's moving against the militias, for example, as much as he dares, what is Hadley to say? "Do more." And then Maliki says, "If I do more, the government will collapse and you will dealing with a full-fledged civil war." What does Hadley say then? "How can I help you prevent that?" See how this works?

There is a kind of naive idea that superpowers, like the United States, get to call the shots. That if Bush says jump, the Iraqi "Unity" government has to ask, "How high?" But in reality, once you are in a situation where your superpower goals depend on others' actions, no matter how many cruise missiles you have, there's a limit to what you can do without the active cooperation of your "allies," "clients," or whatnot. And allies have their own agendas and goals, sometimes ones that are at odds with the superpower's.

This should have been obvious in trying to set up a functioning Iraqi democracy. That any such "young democracy" would be fragile, and thus that any efforts to move it in certain directions would be met by claims, by the powers-that-be-now, that such efforts would cause the whole thing to collapse. Some of these claims may be bogus, but that's not the point. If you can't just tell the Iraqi leadership what to do--and you really can't, because unless you're willing to send in the tanks (think Budapest 1956) or to support a coup (South Vietnam, Diem, 1963), you're stuck with the client state that you have been supporting. Because it's hard to remove support from people you've been presenting as crucial allies in the GWOT for so-o-o-o long. (Btw, neither Budapest nor the Diem assassination worked out that well for the superpower in question, in the long run. But that's another post.)

Of course, I'm not an expert in foreign policy, or anything. I just learned this from reading a book. On foreign policy. Now, of course, that book was just published in 2005, but this strikes me as an idea that's probably been around for some time.