Bismarck once remarked that asking him to pay attention to political principles while conducting foreign policy was like asking him to walk through a dense forest with a twelve-foot pole between his teeth. And this view is supported by some conservative theorists who ask us to consult only the national interest when formulating foreign policy. In fact, the apparent logic of their approach dissolves upon examination. How do we recognize our vital interests? How best can we pursue them once identified? Do they include freedom and democracy in other countries? How do you persuade your own citizens, or other governments, to join in the pursuit of your chosen course? To what extent is some structure of international order also a specific national interest? And if it is, what degree of sacrifice should we make for it? These and similar questions cannot be answered without reference to principles.
For me, the conservative approach to international affairs rests on five tenets, which in different degrees and combinations can be applied to the challenges we face.
The first of these is that collective security can be upheld only if it is guaranteed by a single power or an enduring alliance which is strong enough to dwarf challenges from other powers. In our present world, this means that America must remain the single superpower. This will not be achieved without cost, which American taxpayers alone should not be expected to bear. Nor will it be without friction: Russia and in due course emerging great powers like China, India, Japan, Brazil — not to mention the hypersensitive Europeans — will all resent this. But for the sake of peace and stability it is overwhelmingly the least bad option.
The fact that the United States cannot maintain this dominant status alone over time, as other countries emerge more fully as world powers, does not negate this point — although it does amend it. In the first place, there is a time lag. Military superiority does not automatically go to the most advanced economic power, particularly when, as now, it is military technology — where the United States excels — rather than simply the volume of resources committed to defence, which is critical. In any case, it is important not to underrate the economic potential of the United States, as the prospect of a vast free trading zone embracing not just North but South America as well opens up.[84]
Still, America will need dependable allies, willing to share — and share fully — the burden of world leadership, if it is to be prolonged into the twenty-second century. Exactly how this might be achieved — by investing NATO with proper burden-sharing arrangements, especially for out-of-area operations, and underpinning it economically with an Atlantic Free Trade Area — is perhaps the most important topic for us to discuss over the next decade. But, whatever institutional form this burden-sharing takes, and however the burden is distributed between America and Europe, world leadership will still entail heavy obligations. They will nonetheless have compensating advantages: in particular, international arrangements and the decisions of global institutions will tend to reflect American, and by extension Western, interests. Indeed, unless this is so, democratic electorates, especially in the United States, will simply not be prepared to pay the price.
My second tenet is that in foreign policy we should recognize the value of the balance of power in regional contexts. This is an important qualification to the first assertion, regarding America’s global role. The operation of regional balances of power will help to reduce the number of occasions when American-led interventions are necessary. When, in pursuit of its own interests, a state allies with other states to counter and contain a regional power which threatens to become dominant, a generally beneficial equilibrium is achieved: and the temptations and opportunities for misbehaviour open to the most powerful state are reduced. It was, of course, British policy for many years to promote such a balance of power within Europe; and, as I have explained, this still makes sense when a major, if unstated, objective of policy should be the containment of German power.[85]
American policy-makers have generally rejected the balance of power principle — partly because of America’s own overwhelming strength, and partly because idealism and ideology have seemed so important and the balance of power was seen by Wilsonians as amoral. More generally, the competitive jockeying for dominance has been held responsible for a succession of wars — above all the First World War. And a powerful contemporary argument has been that in a world where possession of nuclear weapons makes the risk of all war unacceptable, the tensions resulting from operation of the balance of power cannot be afforded.
These arguments are not without merit. But the US State Department has had almost fifty years of operating in world politics in ways that have tempered the principles of Woodrow Wilson with the realities of local power balances, from the Middle East to the Indian sub-continent. Secondly, as long as there is one ultimate superpower which, if necessary, can determine the outcome of regional disputes, then there are limits set on the competition between states. And the fact that the US is, in nuclear terms, more powerful than any other state, enhances its ability to set these limits. It is under these conditions that the balance of power is a force for good.
Arguably, the most important area in which the balance of power — supplemented by a sufficiently strong American presence — can help resolve future problems is in Asia and the Far East. The sometimes hysterical discussion of the ‘threat’ posed by Japan to the American and European economies leaves out two considerations. We are extraordinarily lucky that, both for historical reasons and because it is protected by the American nuclear umbrella, Japan does not wish to be a military as well as an economic superpower. And there are three Asia- Pacific powers which either have, or will shortly have, nuclear weapons: China, Russia and India.
The precise size and growth-rate of the Chinese economy is disputed; since China’s prosperity is occurring largely in spite, rather than because, of decisions made in Beijing, probably not even the Chinese know the truth. But that the potential is huge, that it is being ever more effectively exploited by the industrious Chinese people (and the wider Chinese diaspora) and that China is building up its defences while the rest of us are running ours down — these things
Russia, preoccupied with its internal economic and political problems, will nevertheless strive to remain a Pacific power. Given its nuclear armoury and mineral wealth, the Bear cannot be counted out. And it has quarrels with China over borders and resources that might yet be destabilizing.
India is large enough and, as long as present policies and trends continue, will in due course become wealthy enough to emerge as a major regional power. This is something the West should welcome and encourage: for example, if it is felt that the UN Security Council should be enlarged — and there is much to be said for leaving well alone — India is a strong candidate for inclusion. For all its religious and ethnic problems, India is a democracy with an established rule of law. In the old pattern determined by the Cold War, India was under the influence of the Soviet Union. This must not now blind us to the fact that she is the Asian power with which it will prove easiest to do business.
So, in the Asia-Pacific region, there will be a balance of power between three large nuclear states and one state enjoying the nuclear protection of the US. Any one of these powers is likely to meet opposition from the others if it attempts to expand its territory or sphere of influence. And in addition to providing nuclear security for Japan, the US is also available to throw its nuclear and conventional weight into the scales if any local power seems likely to upset this balance. The US already performs a similar balancing act conventionally on behalf of smaller Asian states like South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines. This serves as a demonstration to the larger powers that they should not risk drawing America into a conflict between them. That is all the more reason why the US must now secure a favourable outcome in its dispute with North Korea over the North’s nuclear programme.
NATIONS, NATION STATES AND NATIONALISMS
The third tenet is that nationhood, nation states and national sovereignty are the best foundations for a stable international system. Superficially, that is a paradox. Is it not true that nationalism has disrupted European peace in two world wars? In fact, in most important senses the answer is ‘no’. The instability of multinational empires was the background to the First World War, and transnational secular religions like communism and Nazism gave rise to the Second. And in both wars only strong nation states were able to resist and to defeat aggression.
But in any case there is no point in arguing that a world without nations — and the loyalties, frictions and institutions they generate — would be desirable, since for the foreseeable future such a world is a plain impossibility. Politics, as conservatives recognize, is about making the best of the world which exists, not in vainly
