Saturday, 15 March 2003
Coercive acts. Steven Den Beste repeats his call that America should retaliate against the French for their pro-Iraq, anti-America stance in the United Nations. After listing several options for punishing France, Steven declares:
Some will claim that all of this is motivated by spite. It is not. It is, rather, motivated by the fact that if we do not retaliate against the French after their recent performance, other nations will be encouraged to act in the same way towards us. It is clear to the world that American friendship is valuable; it must be equally clear that American enmity is expensive. That way we encourage other nations to cooperate with us.
The reader who prompted Steven's article also asked the interesting question, "How far should the punishment go and what risk of scoring own-goals in the process?" The question is revealing, in part, because of Steven's answer to it: He gives none. He analyzes the merits of different punishment sticks for twenty paragraphs or so, without even considering the question of whether punishing France could backfire upon America and harm our interests abroad.
Steven prides himself on his analytical mind, and frequently cites examples from his engineering background to boost his arguments. But how effective is an engineer who disregards laws of nature? Steven's analyses fall short of the mark, due to blind spots that he himself proudly declares: He is a Jacksonian, and puts little faith in the tools of diplomacy (that is, anything more subtle than the "carrot and stick" approach), and he is willfully ignorant of foreign opinion—he "doesn't care why they hate us," where "they" means not only Al Qaeda but pretty much anyone not in the Jacksonian definition of "us."
As a fellow engineer, I'll challenge Steve to incorporate new information into his theories. Steven cites Yugoslavia as an example where "punishment" was effective and "diplomacy" was not: By punishing the Serbs, we were able to enforce our will upon them and make it "more expensive" for them to ignore us. (I'd say this example is better suited to explain why inspections only work when there's a 250,000-man army standing by on the Iraqi border, but we'll set that aside for now.) Is this the only data that history provides regarding the effectiveness of "punishment" as a diplomatic tool? Is it the most relevant example? Let's look at another.
In 1770, Britain was the most powerful nation on earth, and the American Colonies slept under a blanket of security provided by British soldiers. Less than twenty years before British redcoats had bailed out the Colonists during the French and Indian War, and the cost of maintaining that defense had been a continuing drain on British coffers. The average Brit thought the Colonials had been getting a free ride from the mother country, and believed the British Parliament should recover Colonial defense costs by imposing taxes on the Colonies. The Colonists resented taxation because they had no say in how it was imposed, and believed the British Parliament was trying to dominate their affairs—but, up to this point, they had largely limited their objections to peaceful protests and boycotts. There was a vocal and growing minority calling for rebellion, but the majority of Colonists were, and wanted to remain, loyal and friendly to Britain.
In 1773, after years of protests that fell on deaf ears, a group of colonists staged an act of civil disobedience called the Boston Tea Party. (Just to set the record straight before we go any further: I am most emphatically not drawing any parallels between the American Revolution and Al Qaeda. Any such analogies are repulsive, and anyone who makes them is stupid. This is a comparison of 1774 Britain to 2003 America, and no other metaphors are expressed or implied. Thank you.) The British judged that if they let such brazen defiance go unanswered, the Colonists would never cease to defy Parliament's will—and so they enacted legislation to punish the colony of Massachusetts. These laws, collectively called the "Coercive Acts" or "Intolerable Acts" by the Colonists, closed the port of Boston and all but revoked the Massachusetts Colony's charter; they also gave British soldiers the right to be tried in Britain for any crimes committed in the colonies, to ensure a fair trial for the soldiers. (Wonder what the 1774 British would have thought of the International Criminal Court.)
The British expected the other twelve Colonies to see what was happening to Massachusetts, and be deterred from any further acts of rebellion. The Parliament believed quite sincerely that their punishments would be effective: They wouldn't be loved by the Colonists, but they would be respected or feared. The Colonials were weak, ungrateful, insolent, and they deserved to be spanked—and the British frankly didn't care what the Americans thought, or about their reasons for defiance in the first place.
The results, suffice to say, were not a glorious outcome for Britain. The American reaction to Massachusetts's "punishment" was not to abandon defiance, but to band together in support of Massachusetts and present a united front to the British—and, less than two years later, escalate their defiance to open military rebellion. They even turned to Britain's old enemy, France, for support and aid. Britain, still the world's most powerful country, faced the impossible task of bringing America to heel by force... and ultimately had no choice but to retreat in disgrace and acknowledge American independence.
Now, which of these historical situations is a better predictor for what will happen if America "punishes" France in 2003: NATO vs. Serbia in 1999, or Britain vs. Massachusetts in 1775? Which are the French more likely to pick as a suitable analogy? The Swedes? The British left? We're not "punishing" France to stop a genocidal attack on a neighboring country, as NATO did to Serbia in 1999; Serbia could hardly mount a diplomatic appeal to preserve its right to commit mass murder. France, on the other hand, will eagerly portray American "punishment" as a sign that America betrays its own principles regarding freedom of speech, and that America is not a trustworthy protector of liberty: America protects those who obey it, they'll say, and punishes those who dare to speak out. Do you really want to hand France that kind of propaganda victory?
And if the propaganda doesn't matter, if nations only act in terms of rational self-interest and never listen to irrational arguments, then how did the British end up losing their American colonies? Why is France opposing us when, from a rational point of view, French interests would be better served by quietly negotiating a deal under the table?
Steven Den Beste, as I said before, makes his arguments without considering these points, because he has deliberately blinded himself. His mantra is "I don't care why they hate us"—and he applies it not merely to Al Qaeda, but to any foreign entity. He declines to analyze the impact of American policy on other countries, even of a policy specifically designed to influence other countries, because that would require a cognitive exercise that he has declared off-limits. It's foolishly short-sighted to recommend a policy toward France without analyzing whether that policy will have the desired effect on France, and not some hypothetical robot country that reacts to stimuli like a rat in a Skinner experiment.
Oddly enough, I don't have a problem with many of the "punishments" that Steven proposes: I fully support individual and corporate decisions to find alternatives to French products, I think Japan or India would be a welcome replacement for France on the Security Council, I think we should be diplomatically civil but not friendly to France (and not snub them), and I think the Iraqi people will undoubtedly want to thank France appropriately for their role in propping up Saddam. But I shudder at formal government policy to "punish" France, and I cringe at Steven's logic when it's not supported by the evidence. Any overt attempt on our part to intimidate the French will have the opposite effect, and encourage them to continue playing David to our Goliath. We are already losing diplomatic battles we should be winning, due to the tone and delivery of our message (e.g., the Turkish parliamentary vote, Schröder's re-election campaign, et al.); let's not continue that trend.
Besides, if we're right about all this (and I think we are), we don't need to "punish" France. France will suffer the consequences of being on the wrong side of history, and the indignities of showing the world just how unreliable a partner and friend they are. If we really want to punish France, if we really want to wound their Gallic pride and frustrate them to no end, all we have to do is pat them on the head and go about our business. Imagine France's chagrin when we dutifully consult with Britain, Spain, Australia and Bulgaria about how best to administer post-Saddam Iraq, and France's unsolicited advice gets a polite nod and no action. For the French, that's a punishment far worse than economic boycotts or political snubs: It signals to them, and the rest of the world, that France is not important.
- Posted by Scott Forbes at 1:44 pm. comments.
