Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively PDF

8 International Relations Theories and Foreign Policy In This Chapter The International System Level of Liberal Institutionalism Analysis Alternativ...

8 International Relations Theories and Foreign Policy In This Chapter The International System Level of Liberal Institutionalism Analysis Alternative Theories Neorealism Major Cases Explored China’s One Belt, One Road Ini- strategic balancing against US tiative preponderant power Contrasts in the depictions of How post–Cold War US grand China in the National Security strategy fits the neorealist model Strategies of Barack Obama and How the United States built the Donald Trump liberal international order and why The Cold War as a working inter- Discontent among China’s part- national system ners over the Belt and Road Ini- The Economic Community of tiative West African States (ECOWAS) as German foreign policy experts on a working regional system the future of the liberal interna- The post–World War II liberal tional order international order as a negotiated The Gulf War of 1991 as a war to order maintain the core against threats Russian efforts to disrupt the lib- from the periphery eral international order The G20 as a manifestation of the The lack of hard balancing against core US preponderant power The Bandung Conference and the The Shanghai Cooperation Orga- Non-Aligned Movement as anti- nization and the BRICS as core resistance I n 2013, China launched the One Belt, One Road Initiative. The plan was to invest $1 trillion in transportation infrastructure to re-create the ancient Silk Road from Asia to Europe. The Belt and Road Initiative envisioned 137 Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 137 5/30/18 2:08 PM  138 Chapter 8: International Relations Theories and Foreign Policy a massive land route using high-speed rail and highways and a maritime route using a series of ports connecting China to Central, South, and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. Sixty-eight countries signed on to the initiative, representing 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. China was attempting to “create a new kind of globalization that will dis- pense with the rules of the aging Western-dominated institutions. The goal [was] to refashion the global economic order, drawing countries and compa- nies more tightly into China’s orbit.”1 The China Development Bank designated some nine hundred projects as part of this initiative.2 One major project was a seven-thousand-mile rail line connecting Chinese manufacturing centers to European cities.3 The Chinese constructed a “port” and trade hub on this rail line in the western city of Khorgos. This city sits “just 100 miles from the Eurasian pole of inaccessibil- ity—the farthest point of earth from any ocean.”4 Projects also included power plants and an upgraded highway system in Pakistan and a $6 billion rail line in Laos, a country with a $12 billion annual national output.5 Other projects included a Chinese-owned port in Greece and a port in Sri Lanka. Setting a frame to accompany these ventures, Xi Jinping addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2017, calling for countries to resist protectionism and deepen the benefits of globalization. Meanwhile, Chinese construction of military infrastructure in the Spratly and Paracel Islands in the disputed South China Sea continued apace. Foreign policy analysts should ask, what are China’s global ambitions and what does it intend as its endgame? Should any other country or countries be worried about China’s activities? If so, what should that country or those countries do? Alternatively, should other countries see China’s actions as good for the global system and work with it to deepen economic interdependence? Infrastructure, after all, is a pressing need in cash-strapped developing coun- tries, so China seems to be providing much-needed assistance. The answers to these questions depend on one’s worldview. For international relations (IR) scholars, the answers depend on one’s ontological preference; that is, the answers depend on the international relations grand theory one utilizes. In this chapter, we study how some international relations theories offer models for understanding states’ foreign policy motivations and behavior. IR theories do not give a lot of guidance for understanding foreign policy. The theories, at best, set parameters for how states may act. They are, in many respects, prescriptive about what states should be doing under certain condi- tions, and often descriptive. Most IR theories are not useful in foreign policy study because they focus on global, cultural, sociological, and historical trends and patterns that are not reducible to state-centric foreign policy considerations. Under the presidency of Barack Obama, the official US policy regarding a rising China was to partner with it, with some caution. In the introduc- tion to the 2015 National Security Strategy (NSS), Obama writes about the Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 138 5/30/18 2:08 PM  International Relations Theories and Foreign Policy 139 US “rebalance” to Asia and the Pacific and the potential of the Trans-Pa- cific Partnership (TPP) between countries responsible for 40 percent of global trade. The TPP was, in some respects, a counterbalance to China’s expanding interests. Despite this, Obama notes as well the unprecedented level of coop- eration with China, hailing a “groundbreaking” and “landmark” agreement with China on global warming. The Obama administration said, “The United States welcomes the rise of a stable, peaceful, and prosperous China.” The 2015 NSS continues, We seek to develop a constructive relationship with China that delivers benefits for our two peoples and promotes security and prosperity in Asia and around the world. We seek cooperation on shared regional and global challenges such as climate change, public health, economic growth, and the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. While there will be competition, we reject the inevitability of confrontation. At the same time, we will manage competition from a position of strength while insisting that China uphold international rules and norms on issues ranging from mar- itime security to trade and human rights. We will closely monitor China’s military modernization and expanding presence in Asia, while seeking ways to reduce the risk of misunderstanding or mis- calculation. On cybersecurity, we will take necessary actions to protect our businesses and defend our networks against cyber-theft of trade secrets for commercial gain whether by private actors or the Chinese government.6 This long statement from the 2015 NSS is included here because it summa- rizes many of the kinds of issues that one would study using liberal institu- tional IR theory, issues best addressed through cooperation. This statement serves here as an introduction—we will examine how liberal institutionalism speaks to foreign policy study in more detail later in this chapter. In contrast to Obama’s perspective, the 2017 National Security Strategy of the United States produced by the Trump administration demonstrates a neorealist take on foreign policy, specifically a view called offensive neore- alism. This is another IR theory we will examine in more detail. In Trump’s introduction, he evokes the ideas of making America great again and sets the tone for his “America First” foreign policy that focuses on defending the United States against a world that exploits it, but will not exploit it any longer. In this view, the world is at its core competitive, and the primary competition involves the United States, China, and Russia. Throughout the 2017 NSS, “China and Russia” are presented together as threats. “China and Russia chal- lenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity,” the 2017 NSS intones.7 Despite the threats posed by North Korea and Iran, “great power competition” has returned,8 and Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 139 5/30/18 2:08 PM  140 Chapter 8: International Relations Theories and Foreign Policy the United States must prepare for this type of competition. China, Russia, and other state and nonstate actors recognize that the United States often views the world in binary terms, with states being either “at peace” or “at war,” when it is actually an arena of continuous competition. Our adversaries will not fight us on our terms. We will raise our competitive game to meet that challenge, to protect American interests, and to advance our values.9 The view of China is stark in the 2017 NSS: China steals US intellectual property, tries to steal US partners in the “Indo-Pacific” region, threatens sea- lanes and sovereignty, pushes into Europe using its unfair trade practices, and in Latin America “seeks to pull the region into its orbit through state-led investments and loans.”10 In all, the 2017 NSS mentions China as a threat and competitor almost a dozen times. The only time the 2017 NSS speaks about China in nonthreatening terms is the single time when it reassures China and Russia that plans to enhance the US missile defense system are “not intended to undermine strategic stability or disrupt longstanding strategic relationships with Russia or China.”11 The Obama and Trump strategy statements are two dramatically differ- ent views of what the United States should do about a rising China. Readers might want to go back to chapter 3 to think about these differences in terms of these two particular leaders. In this chapter, however, we can use these dis- similar policy stands to illustrate how different international relations theories help us understand foreign policy at the system level of analysis. Our primary focus in this chapter is on neorealism and liberal institutionalism, but we will consider alternative theories at the end. Neorealism and liberal institutional- ism are the dominant IR theories, and they also have the most to say about foreign policy. The International System Level of Analysis When we use the notion of system-level analysis, we propose to speak about global politics as a working system. A system has these elements: boundar- ies between the system and things external to the system, a beginning point when the system starts, an ending point at which it ceases to exist, component parts, and operating rules. The international system has as its boundaries the physical earth and those places on earth that are under political control. When scholars use the term international system, they usually do not mean the generic notion of world politics but a more specific term connoting particular international political systems. For example, from roughly the end of World War II to 1989–1991, the international system was bipolar. States in this sys- tem primarily gravitated around two power centers, or poles, the United States and the Soviet Union. International military organizations represented the two sides—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 140 5/30/18 2:08 PM  The International System Level of Analysis 141 Treaty Organization (WTO) and various other military arrangements. There were other states in this system that disavowed the bipolar international sys- tem and sought a third way—the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) arose as a large and often contentious group that sought international politics outside the bipolar system. So, too, were there international organizations—partic- ularly the United Nations—that purported to be about global interests but often were subject to the politics of bipolarity. The rules of the bipolar system were intense. Both poles were commit- ted to the destruction of the other, both armed themselves with large mili- taries and nuclear weapons, and both competed for influence in nonaligned countries by supplying weapons to local conflicts that grew into international struggles between the poles. The list of these wars was long because one rule of the nuclearized bipolar system was that neither lead country would fight each other directly because of the threat of global nuclear devastation. This did not stop them from taking sides in and promoting “smaller” conflicts (no conflict is really “small” if you and your people are in it). This discussion of global politics as an international system should make sense to the reader. Systems can also exist on a regional level. The presence of an international system does not stop regional systems from forming and operating. For example, there is a regional system in Western Africa composed of fifteen states: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. The system manifests in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The basic purpose and boundaries of ECOWAS are explained on its website. The countries of ECOWAS have both cultural and geopolitical ties and shared common eco- nomic interest. The region of West Africa is located west of north- south axis lying close to 10° east longitude. The Atlantic Ocean forms the western as well as the southern borders of the West Afri- can region. The northern border is the Sahara Desert, with the Ranishanu Bend generally considered the northernmost part of the region. The eastern border lies between the Benue Trough, and a line running from Mount Cameroon to Lake Chad. Colonial boundaries are still reflected in the modern boundar- ies between contemporary West African states, cutting across eth- nic and cultural lines, often dividing single ethnic groups between two or more states.12 West Africa is composed of many different people and languages, yet the region acts as a system in terms of economic patterns and political currents. In recognition of this, and to strengthen the region, the Treaty of Lagos was signed in Nigeria in 1975 launching ECOWAS. Economic cooperation among these states turned to political and military cooperation, as demon- Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 141 5/30/18 2:08 PM  142 Chapter 8: International Relations Theories and Foreign Policy strated in the deployment of the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) to conduct peace enforcement operations in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea-Bissau. Nigeria has served as the lead coun- try in ECOWAS, hosting its headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital; serving as the primary financier of its operations; and sending the most troops on its military operations. International and regional systems have institutional frameworks and pur- poses. Historically, colonial and imperial systems were organized under the institutional framework of the colonial administration, which was a part of the government of the colonial state. The purpose of the system was to provide for the material wealth of the colonizer, not the colonized. Since 1945 and the founding of the United Nations, most colonies have become self-gov- erning states, although some post-UN relationships between sovereign states remain dominated by institutional frameworks that provided for the interests of a single state rather than the collective. The institutional arrangements that frame interactions in the global sys- tem and in regional systems may have some elements of governance in them, but they do not constitute a government. The most important components of the international system—all international and regional systems as well—are sovereign states. State sovereignty, the idea that states are the ultimate deci- sion makers and decision enforcers within their own territories, sets the terms for the international system and politics. States do not willingly give up their sovereignty to any supranational unit. Even in the European Union, an inter- national organization that exceeds all others in its jurisdiction, member states remain sovereign on essential matters. Because state sovereignty is paramount in the international system, authority in the system is fragmented. Each state retains authority, and none (technically) has authority over any other state. This brings us to the situation IR theorists called anarchy. Anarchy connotes the absence of any overarching authority over states. Anarchy is a condition of the international system to which states must adapt with their foreign policies. Neorealists and liberal institutionalists agree that anarchy is a foundation of international politics, but they take us in different directions regarding the question of what states can do about anarchy. Their answers involve different views of international order. What is international order? Here we can draw on the work of neorealist Randall Schweller, who says “a system exhibits ‘order’ when the set of dis- crete objects that comprise the system are related to one another according to some pattern; that is, their relationship is not miscellaneous or haphaz- ard but accords with some discernible principle.”13 The discrete objects in this statement refer mostly to states, but it could mean other international actors. “Order prevails when things display a high degree of predictability, when there are regularities, when there are patterns that follow some under- standable and consistent logic.”14 To refine this to our purposes, international Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 142 5/30/18 2:08 PM  Neorealism 143 orders arise as the result of some states’ foreign policies and behaviors, and, once established, the particular international order guides the foreign policy choices and behaviors of states within it. States conform to the established pattern; they act in predictable ways. International orders can exist at the same time. The order imposed by the Soviet Union on the countries of Eastern and Central Europe existed at the same time as the global order led by the United States. This statement is explained in more detail later in this chapter. Schweller proposes that “there are essentially three types of international order.” We will take these out of the order he offers. First, there is a “spontaneously generated order,” which is the “unintended consequence of actors seeking only to maximize their interests and power.”15 As an example, he gives the eighteenth-century European bal- ance of power system. Because this order is the unintended consequence of power-seeking behaviors by great powers, we can categorize this as a realist construct. Second, Schweller offers the “imposed order,” which is a “non-vol- untary order among unequal actors purposefully designed and ruled by a malign (despotic) hegemon, whose power is unchecked. The Soviet satellite system is an exemplar of this type of order.”16 Clearly, this is a realist order as well, with one state dominating the others for its own interests, chief of which is to maintain its primacy over the others while pursuing global domination. The third order is the “negotiated order.” This is the kind of order encompassed in the notion of Pax Americana, the order from 1945 to the present.17 Schweller is a neorealist, so he frames this order in terms of great powers and dominance; he says this is “a rule-based order that is the result of a grand bargain voluntarily struck among the major actors who, therefore, view the order as legitimate and beneficial.”18 Although Schweller explains this order’s origins in terms of great power foreign policies, this order can serve the interests of other countries as well, as liberal institutional theorists explain. With this introduction to the international system in mind, we turn now to the dominant IR theories to understand what they have to say about foreign policy. Neorealism There are classical realists and there are neorealists. There are offensive neo- realists and defensive neorealists. There are also neoclassical realists. Some of these were discussed in chapter 2. Suffice it to say that this section will not develop the nuances and disagreements between these realists but will stick to the basics so we can keep our focus on foreign policy. For neorealists, interna- tional anarchy dictates the behaviors of states. Since there is no central author- ity protecting the interests of individual states, states must be always watchful for encroachments on their security and power, and for opportunities to advance their security and power. The offensive/defensive debate is important Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 143 5/30/18 2:08 PM  144 Chapter 8: International Relations Theories and Foreign Policy to note here for later use in this section. Offensive neorealists worry about potential threats to state power and propose that states must stay constantly on guard and look for ways to increase their own power over others. Defen- sive neorealists worry about actual threats and can be content with the status quo in the absence of realized threats. Realists and neorealists place their primary emphasis on the study of power- ful states or great powers. Great powers can shape the international system, cre- ating international orders that suit their interests. Great powers can disrupt the prevailing international order in order to revise it to better suit their interests. Great powers may also be revisionist states, seeking to create their own inter- national order. Smaller powers are of interest in terms of what they can do for the great powers and what leverage they may have over great powers. Smaller powers can also act as rogues or spoilers, causing bothersome disruptions in the system. Otherwise, smaller countries are not of interest because they have no potential systemic impact. In this way, realist and neorealist IR theories do not help us understand the foreign policies of most states in the world. Putin’s Russia is a country that appears to be intent on disrupting the international order. Its influence operations and military intervention in post-Soviet states seek to re-create the Soviet-imposed international order of the past, while its influence operations in Western democracies seek to under- mine the Western-led order. Russia has not hesitated to provoke wars with other countries, such as the wars in Georgia and Ukraine (which resulted in the annexation of Crimea and the simmering war in Eastern Ukraine). Rus- sia has intervened in other countries’ domestic affairs in a variety of ways, including shutting down Estonia’s internet in 2007 and Ukraine’s in 201519 and providing weapons to minority nationalist groups in Georgia. In these and other ways, Russia flouts international norms on respecting the territo- rial integrity of sovereign states. Further, Russia militarily defended the Assad regime in Syria against jihadists and rebels, even as Assad used chemical weap- ons in that war (more flouting of international norms), and assisted North Korea’s evasion of international sanctions. Although Russia has not managed to build its alternative international order, it has managed to be a spoiler in the US-built international order. Because great powers are global actors with global interests, realists explain that they develop and employ grand strategies. Only great powers have grand strategies that guide their foreign policies. Robert Art expounds that “a grand strategy tells a nation’s leaders what goals they should aim for and how best they can use their country’s military power to attain these goals.”20 The primary goal for any great power is to become hegemonic. A hegemon is a preponderant power defined in terms of military and economic power. The hegemon, John G. Ruggie explains, “will seek to construct an international order in some form, presumably along lines that are compatible with its own international objectives and domestic structures.”21 This order Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 144 5/30/18 2:08 PM  Neorealism 145 may be to the liking of other great powers in the short term, but realists and neorealists say that these great powers can never be satisfied with it, as it does not reflect their own choices, first of which is to be the hegemon. Because all great powers seek to become hegemonic, all great powers must act to prevent any one great power from becoming hegemonic. The primary way that states attempt to prevent another state from becoming hegemonic is through the balance of power system. States balance against the state (or group of states) attempting to become the hegemon. Schweller explains that “balancing means the creation or aggregation of military power through either internal mobilization or the forging of alliances to prevent or deter the occupation and domination of the state by a foreign power or coa- lition.”22 States in this system join the weaker side of a conflict to stop the accumulation of power by the stronger side, and any alliances they form are only for the immediate circumstances, since formal alliances limit the ability of states to form future balances. For the successful balance of power to work, states must be constantly vigilant and must constantly prepare for war. A bal- ance of power system is a war system; the method for maintaining the balance of power is war. The balance of power is what realists and neorealists predict, but it is not a guarantee. As Schweller concedes, balancing behavior is not necessarily to be expected: In an era of mass politics, the decision to check unbalanced power by means of arms and allies—and to go to war if these deterrent measures fail—is very much a political act made by political actors.... [P]olitical elites must weigh the likely domestic costs of bal- ancing behavior against the alternative means available to them and the expected benefits of a restored balance of power. Leaders are rarely, if ever, compelled by structural imperatives to adopt cer- tain policies rather than others.23 After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, US power was not checked or balanced by any other state or group of states. This era of preponderant US power is a unipolar international system. In the unipolar system, there has been no hard military balancing activity by states attempting to form a counterweight against US military power, but there have been other kinds of balancing attempted. Defensive neorealists claim that this lack of hard military balancing against the United States is explained by the fact that states do not balance against power but against threat. Stephen Walt explains that in the unipolar era, the United States has not posed a significant enough threat to potential balancers to make the effort worthwhile: The relative dearth of hard balancing is consistent with the view that alliances form not in response to power alone but in response to the level of threat. States will not want to incur the various costs Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 145 5/30/18 2:08 PM  146 Chapter 8: International Relations Theories and Foreign Policy of balancing (increased military spending, loss of autonomy, pun- ishment by the unipole, and so on) unless they believe doing so is truly necessary. In particular, states will not engage in hard balanc- ing against the unipole if its power is not perceived as posing an imminent threat to their security.24 In the absence of a clear military threat, other great powers in a unipo- lar system act as status quo powers. This does not mean that the other great powers simply follow the leader. Neorealists speak about many types of bal- ancing beyond hard military balancing: internal balancing, strategic balancing, and soft balancing. Internal balancing happens within countries and is best explained as an arms buildup. Chinese efforts to modernize and expand their military are a form of internal balancing. Internal balancing improves China’s military capabilities when compared to those of the United States. Strategic balancing is not well defined by neorealists, but we can roughly use it to describe formal and informal groupings of states not for military hard balancing, but for political posturing against another group of states, or in the case of unipolarity, against the United States. For example, the Shang- hai Cooperation Organization (SCO) might be strategic balancing. In 2001, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan formed the SCO; since that time, other countries, such as India and Pakistan, have gained observer status with pending membership. The US Bush administra- tion applied for observer status but was turned down, indicating that the SCO was drawing a line between itself and the United States. However, despite what appears to be strategic balancing against the United States, the SCO’s mission statement is not a challenge to the United States. Instead, the SCO’s mission is to address three immediate security threats to each member state: terrorism, extremism, and separatism. SCO joint military exercises give the impression of strategic balancing, and it is possible that the SCO could trans- form into a hard balance against the United States under the right circum- stances. The right conditions would be some threatening action aimed at it by the United States. However, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbeki- stan are all members of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, complicat- ing the potential for the SCO to serve as a vehicle for future hard balancing against the United States. Another example of what might be an effort to form a strategic bal- ance against the United States is the group called the BRICS. The BRICS is a loose summit group made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. This group started meeting formally—but not frequently—in 2009. The BRICS, though, is not an intentional group but one first conceived by an executive at Goldman Sachs in 2001. The initial acronym used by that financial advisor was BRIC—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—and he used it to call attention to four countries with dynamic economies worth investing in. In 2008, the BRIC group began to think of itself as a loose group; then Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 146 5/30/18 2:08 PM  Neorealism 147 in 2010, China suggested adding South Africa to the group. Some of the rhetoric of the BRICS is anti-Western, but not in the form of being a strate- gic balance against the United States and its Western allies.25 As in the case of the SCO, the “diplomatic practice” of meeting together as a group could facilitate hard balancing by the group should it be necessary in the future. As Andrew Cooper argues, “the loose club style allows the BRICS to project a confidence about its rise, with a considerable degree of sustainability. Biding their time and focusing on converging interests and values, BRICS members have channeled their long-standing sense of frustrated ambitions into a collec- tive mechanism.”26 Soft balancing is an effort to block or change the international policies advocated by the unipole. Walt explains, “Soft balancing accepts the current balance of power but seeks to obtain better outcomes within it, by assembling countervailing coalitions designed to thwart or impede specific policies.”27 In 2002 and 2003, the soft balancing of France, Germany, and Russia in the UN Security Council stopped the Bush 2 administration from getting UN approval for the Iraq War.28 This soft balance did not stop the United States from invading Iraq, but it did cause the United States diplomatic problems. In 2011, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom were able to procure a UN Security Council “civilian protection” mandate for Libya that resulted in the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime. Germany opposed the use of force in Libya, and its public disagreement with its NATO allies was a soft-bal- ance demonstration. The same event caused Brazil, India, and South Africa to declare their intention to work as a bloc within the United Nations to stop future “civilian protection” mandates that were in reality political excuses for Western military regime change in Global South countries. Neorealists describe another potential foreign policy behavior that is nearly the opposite of balancing: bandwagoning. Rather than balancing to prepare for a coming conflict, states may join with the side of the conflict that they perceive to be stronger. Many former Soviet allies and many for- mer Soviet republics have joined NATO or the NATO Partnership for Peace. Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s public unhappiness about the loss of the Soviet empire and his willingness to intervene in other countries overtly and covertly have given these countries ample reason to consider a resurgent Rus- sia a clear and present security threat. Bandwagoning with NATO in the face of a disruptive Russia—particularly after the Russian taking of Crimea from Ukraine—seems a wise foreign policy choice. What about the foreign policy of the unipole? When the United States found itself the last superpower standing, some American realists advocated a proactive foreign policy aimed at maintaining US predominant power and unipolarity. Maintaining unipolarity is compatible with offensive neorealism. Other Americans advocated that the United States would be better able to hold its top position if it allowed other great powers to rise and a multipolar Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 147 5/30/18 2:08 PM  148 Chapter 8: International Relations Theories and Foreign Policy international system to form. Multipolarity would not be a threat to the United States because the United States could still be more powerful than the other great powers; but multipolarity would mean that the United States could shift the burden of system maintenance onto others. This position is compatible with defensive neorealism or with liberal institutionalism, the sub- ject of the next section. The grand strategies of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama can be read as defensive neorealist strategies. All of these presidents perceived rising competitors as potential partners and not necessarily as imme- diate threats. Multipolarity provided opportunities for other countries to pay or share the costs of systemic threats. By insisting on and supporting multilat- eral responses to international security problems, US resources could be pre- served until such a time as actual threats to the United States and its position in the international order materialized. Until such time, the United States could welcome rising powers and watch and wait. The United States was not passive in these administrations. The George H. W. Bush administration gathered a multinational coalition to fight the 1991 Gulf War and initiated an era of multilateral humanitarian intervention. The Clinton administration was a period of vast US military expansion with frequent use of US military force. Josef Joffe depicts Clinton’s grand strat- egy as one based not on “intermittent intervention, but permanent entan- glement,”29 designed to make the United States the good friend and partner of many major and rising powers. The Obama administration inherited two major military operations from Bush 2 (discussed below and out of chrono- logical order) and worked to wind these conflicts down while expanding sup- port activities for other major powers and coalitions. This strategy involved “forward partnering,” a strategy to make others share the costs of interna- tional peace and security. The neorealist grand strategies of these administra- tions involved selective engagement (that is, military intervention) around the world, prioritizing US responses to deal with immediate threats to essential US interests over threats to others elsewhere. The George W. Bush grand strategy started in this defensive neorealist posture. The pre–September 11 Bush 2 administration appeared to be fol- lowing a stay-at-home and go-it-alone strategy. After 9/11, Bush adopted a “you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists” or a “my way or the highway” policy of primacy or a global dominance grand strategy based on straight- forward offensive neorealism. The administration adopted the view that uni- polarity, or American primacy, could be maintained indefinitely and that the US military was the proper means by which to ensure this. The real-world results of this offensive neorealist grand strategy involved protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, constant threats of a “World War III” with Iran over its nuclear weapons program, a global war on terrorism with no endpoint, and economic turmoil. The Obama administration that followed was confronted Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 148 5/30/18 2:08 PM  Liberal Institutionalism 149 with a global financial crisis that started under the Bush administration and a severely weakened US economy. A defensive neorealist posture made more sense in this context. The Trump administration embraced an offensive neorealist foreign pol- icy aimed at protecting “America First.” This policy involved walking away from collective efforts to address international problems, such as the Paris Cli- mate Treaty and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement between the United States, Iran, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China. The 2017 NSS even declared China to be a serious threat to US inter- ests, as discussed at the start of this chapter. In response to the 2017 NSS, the Chinese government admonished the Trump administration to “stop deliber- ately distorting China’s strategic intentions and abandon a Cold War mental- ity.... Otherwise it will injure others and damage itself.”30 Liberal Institutionalism Liberalism and its primary international relations variants start with the condi- tion of anarchy, like the realists and neorealists, and they even throw in a hege- mon and self-interested sovereign states, but they arrive at a much different kind of order. The liberal institutional order is one in which self-interested, sovereign states decide to work together through international institutions. These institutions mediate conflict (of all sorts, not just military) between states and help them achieve together what few could achieve alone. The lib- eral vision is explained by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s stag hunt allegory. Two persons out hunting together could together catch a stag, while each indi- vidually could catch a rabbit. The rabbit would be a doable, short-term win for each hunter acting alone, but the stag is the larger prize that would have longer-term benefits for both hunters. The best choice in terms of self-interest is to cooperate and catch the stag. Liberalism that focuses on self-interest and the benefits of cooperation is called liberal institutionalism. Sometimes this school of thought is called neo- liberalism, but neoliberalism is better associated with an ideology that privi- leges open markets and advocates for reduced government intervention in the domestic political economy. States in a condition of anarchy have no recourse if another state is a bad actor. The realist prescription is to trust no one and stay alert and prepared for war. The liberal institutionalist prescription for the problems of anarchy is to form international institutions to regulate and make predictable the behavior of states. Liberals believe that cooperation is possible; institutionalists see that cooperation as guaranteed by formalized frameworks. International institutions based on reciprocity guarantee benefits as well as provide mechanisms for punishing states that cheat and break the rules. In the context of international institutions, the issue of trust is removed from states’ calculations and anarchy is overcome. Acting within institutions that reward Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 149 5/30/18 2:08 PM  150 Chapter 8: International Relations Theories and Foreign Policy good behavior and punish bad, states can achieve long-term interests together that none could achieve alone. Clean air and water, a safe and predictable system of international avi- ation, a common response to disease and viruses, more or less open trade, secure sea-lanes, and the general condition of international peace all derive from collective action through institutional frameworks. This statement is a short list of the many kinds of public goods that collective action produces. Over time, the states in this system develop shared interests and common val- ues—typically about the importance of cooperation and negotiation. These shared values deepen the cooperation and extend it to other issue areas. The international order since World War II is a liberal international order. This order has a two-part emphasis on institutions to regulate political conflict and avoid major power war, and institutions to liberalize trade between countries and construct a liberal or capitalist world economy. The word liberal refers both to liberal political systems based on the rule of law, democracy, and human rights, and to a liberal world economy based on free market, capitalist economics. The liberal international order is the product of the United States acting as hegemon, so it is correct to call it a hegemonic order. After World War II, the United States was the world’s preponderant power, and acting in hegemonic form it constructed an international order that suited its interests. Earlier in this chapter we heard Ruggie explain that a hegemonic power “will seek to construct an international order in some form, presumably along lines that are compatible with its own international objectives and domestic structures.”31 Anne-Marie Burley agrees and proposes that the relative foreign policy inexperience of American planners led them to construct a world order from a liberal domestic analogy. The Europeans, conversely, had “centuries of diplomatic interaction [that] impelled leaders to view the international world as distinct and separate from the domestic one.”32 The Europeans were skeptical of applying liberal ideas beyond their national borders, while American planners were convinced that since the liberal model worked at home to govern a diverse population with complex problems, it would work for the US-built international order. When American planners began to think about fixing the world, they decided to project outward the liberal polity that was the US domestic order. Burley explains, Just as the New Deal government increasingly took active respon- sibility for the welfare of the nation, US foreign policy planners took increased responsibility for the welfare of the world. It was widely believed that they had little choice. The United States was going to be a world power by default. It could not insulate itself from the world’s problems. As at home, moreover, it could not neatly pick and choose among those problems, distinguishing poli- tics from economic, security from prosperity, defense from welfare. Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 150 5/30/18 2:08 PM  Liberal Institutionalism 151 In the lexicon of the New Deal, taking responsibility meant gov- ernment intervention on a grand scale.33 The United States would construct an international order modeled on its own domestic order, and this would require US intervention “on a grand scale,” building, funding, and protecting that order. Protecting that order would sometimes require the use of military force against enemies of the order. The expectation was that over time the order would be sustained by the develop- ment of good and proper democratic politics within other states that would honor and sustain cooperation between states.34 The United States acting as hegemon, then, conceived of a particular kind of international order and put US economic, political, and military weight behind building and defending that order. At about the same time that the United States started building the liberal international order, the Cold War started. It is useful to think about the Cold War as a story within a story. The overarching story of the international system after World War II is about how the United States built a liberal international order that continues today, while the story within a story is about the United States protecting that liberal international order from its most significant threat in the form of the Soviet Union and its allies. The struggle between the two superpowers was based on two different versions of international order. After the Soviet Union fell, the United States continued to defend the liberal international order. The first threat to that order came right before the Soviet collapse when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Piracy and terrorism are recent threats to the liberal international order. Putin’s Russia also now poses a threat to that order, according to West- ern intelligence agencies and analysts. Whether China is also a threat to the liberal international order is very much a topic of debate. The dominant operating mode for the liberal international order is multi- lateralism. Liberal institutionalists define multilateralism as the “international governance of the ‘many.’”35 Multilateralism helps many self-interested actors achieve the benefits of cooperation by institutionalizing diffuse reciprocity for good behavior and punishment for bad behavior. Since rewards and punish- ments are integrated into institutional arrangements, states do not need to worry about whether other states are trustworthy. Trust in the benefits of the system (not necessarily trust in other states) is achieved over time as experi- ence demonstrates that the institutional arrangements benefit all good actors without discrimination and compel all actors to be good partners most of the time. Moreover, over time, actors expect that all kinds of international prob- lems can be solved through multilateralism, and thus multilateralism becomes the “deep organizing principle of international life.”36 Multilateralism was a way to vest the other major powers in the new order. Earlier in this chapter, we quoted Schweller, who calls the liberal inter- national order a negotiated order, or a “rule-based order that is the result of a grand bargain voluntarily struck among the major actors who, therefore, view Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 151 5/30/18 2:08 PM  152 Chapter 8: International Relations Theories and Foreign Policy the order as legitimate and beneficial.”37 American planners wanted the par- ticipation of major countries who would find that the benefits of the US-led, rule-based order were more predictable than the previous orders. A rule- based order premised on the idea that all could benefit, not just the hegemon, would reassure the other major powers and buy them into the project. The United States also sought the end of colonialism, and giving the major powers a stake in (and profits in) the new order would be a compensation for this loss of empire. Scholars of different sorts seem to agree that the American hegemon’s decision to use multilateralism as the overarching framework for the postwar world was a distinctly American decision. Ruggie proposes that “to the extent it is possible to know such things, other leading powers would have pursued very different world order designs.”38 Had Germany come out of World War II as the new hegemon, it would have constructed a world order of “imperial design.” The Soviet Union as hegemon would have extended its political con- trol through a Comintern, using “administered economic relations among its subject economies.” A British hegemon would have continued its established practice of colonialism and discriminatory trade practices.39 The ostensible equality embedded in the US-led order was reflected in the primary military alliance that would protect the order, the North Atlan- tic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO was a mutual defense arrangement, with its initial goal being the protection of free Western Europe from the Soviet threat. The Soviet analogy—and counter—to NATO was the Warsaw Treaty Organization, a “coercive and extractive” and imposed order designed for the power and security of the Soviet Union.40 NATO, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the World Trade Organization are chief components of the American hegemonic order, but this is not an exhaustive list. All these institutions work on the notion of multilateralism. Countries are bound by rules but can also expect to benefit from the rule-based system, and this applies to small powers as much as to major powers and even to the hegemonic power, the United States. It is a fact that the post–World War II multilateral institutions have benefited some states more than they have benefited others, and it is also a fact that the United States has not been completely bound by the rules. However, it is also true that most states have derived some benefit from these institutions, and most of the time the United States has played within the rules, or at least used the rules to justify its own foreign policy behaviors. Moreover, although many of the contemporary rising powers (China, India, Indonesia, and South Africa) did not have a voice in the construction of the liberal international order, these rising powers do not seem interested in creating an alternative order. The lib- eral international order is enduring because it serves more than the interests of Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 152 5/30/18 2:08 PM  Liberal Institutionalism 153 the hegemon, or at least the order has endured on these terms. Its future is in some doubt in 2018. We gave a neorealist interpretation of different US administrations above. Liberal institutionalism works to describe the foreign policy of every US pres- ident since World War II; all US presidents until Trump were committed to the liberal international order. Even the Bush 2 administration justified its wars in terms of protecting the order and more or less stayed within it. The Obama administration continued this commitment at the same time that it needed to do a course correction because of the 2008 global financial crisis and the Great Recession in the United States. To Obama, the costs of the liberal international order had become too great for the United States to man- age alone, and the other great powers would need to do more to sustain and manage the liberal order in partnership with the United States. When the Chinese warned Trump that his National Security Strategy “will injure others and damage itself,” the warning was about the Trump admin- istration abandoning the liberal international order. The Chinese learned to operate with great success in the US-led order, and there was no reason yet for China to seek an alternative order, not even one of its own design. The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in many ways emulates US leadership of the present order and results in a deepening of multilateralism and globalization. June Teufel Dreyer notes that a persistent feature of Chi- na’s relations with the West is Chinese appropriation of and spinning of West- ern ideas to reflect a better Chinese version.41 The BRI is a Chinese variation on the Marshall Plan to reconstruct Europe after the Second World War. The Marshall Plan combined state and private enterprise backed with US funding and military protection to rebuild Europe. This won the United States lasting allies and deep “soft power.” The Chinese BRI is a larger version of the Mar- shall Plan in terms of financing and scope, and in the Chinese view the BRI is a better version because it does not depend on the partners’ acquiescence to Chinese political values. Further, the BRI also bypasses the messiness of work- ing with nongovernmental entities such as corporations and private banks, since it is all about state-led development. The planning and execution are ostensibly cooperative, with benefits accruing to China and its partners. There are, however, signs of discontent with this Chinese order coming from China’s partners; this discontent is similar to that felt by developing countries when dealing with Western-led global institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. In Laos, there was fear that the gov- ernment would not be able to pay for its share of the $6 billion rail line project with China. The total annual economic output of Laos was only $12 billion a year, as noted earlier, and “a feasibility study by a Chinese company said the railway would lose money for the first 11 years.”42 Sri Lanka owed Chinese state firms $8 billion. In late 2017, in order to begin to repay the Chinese, Sri Lanka gave China a ninety-nine-year lease to control a major port.43 These Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 153 5/30/18 2:08 PM  154 Chapter 8: International Relations Theories and Foreign Policy and other BRI projects make China’s partners dependent on China in ways that threaten their sovereignty, but China is also dependent on these countries and the trade that it needs to continue its rise. The benefits—which accrue to China and its partners differently—still outweigh the costs to all, and eco- nomic interdependence continues to deepen. When calculating the long-term prospects for the present international order, liberal theorists will need to allow for the possibility that the founder of that order may intentionally undermine it, abetting the activities of the spoiler Russia. Or at least this seems a possibility in the Trump administration. Other countries, however, are also invested in the liberal order and probably can be counted on to continue engaging in and supporting it. In 2017, a group of German foreign policy experts wrote a manifesto to the German govern- ment urging it to continue to work with the United States despite the Trump administration. They warned that the liberal order was under threat from the Trump administration and many other illiberal, antimodern voices. However, they declared that the United States “remains indispensable” to the world order and to Germany, and so the German government should work around the Trump administration, finding trusted partners in other parts of the US government and society to survive this time of threat and defend the liberal international order.44 What the German foreign policy experts suggest is that Germany should help the United States maintain its central role in order to maintain the lib- eral international order. From the perspective of some liberal institutionalists, though, the liberal international order should be able to continue even in the absence of the hegemon because the liberal order works so well for so many states that themselves are willing to work together to maintain it. Robert Keo- hane made this argument in 1984: the liberal international order had a life after hegemony.45 Keohane thought this was the case even while the Soviet Union existed and was actively opposed to the capitalist world order. Many states have internalized multilateralism as part of their foreign pol- icy identity. Middle powers are such states. “Middle power” is a national role conception adopted by diplomats and scholars in Canada, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and South Korea. Other countries get the middle power label sometimes, but “middle power” is best understood as a national role conception, as discussed in chapter 5. That is, rather than being a category in which countries are placed, it is better to understand middle powers as those countries that perform the behaviors associated with the middle power role that they constructed. The foreign policy behavior is called middle power diplomacy. Middle powers have portrayed themselves as “middle,” but this means between the great powers and all others. During the Cold War, this in-be- tween status was linked to mediation aimed at preserving the world from superpower nuclear war. At the same time, middle power diplomacy was iden- Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 154 5/30/18 2:08 PM  Alternative Theories 155 tified with facilitating dialogue between the Global North and the Global South. Middle power diplomacy is defined as the “tendency to pursue multi- lateral solutions to international problems, tendency to embrace compromise positions in international disputes, and tendency to embrace notions of ‘good international citizenship.’”46 Middle powers claim to be the coalition builders, the mediators and go-betweens, and the peacekeepers of the world. Middle powers, according to the diplomats and scholars from these states, perform internationalist activities because of a moral imperative associated with being a middle power—middle powers during the Cold War were the only states able and willing to be collectively responsible for protecting the international order, especially when smaller states could not and greater pow- ers would not.47 Despite this claim of moral imperative, middle powers com- mit their relative affluence, managerial skills, and international prestige to the preservation of the liberal international order because it has been within this order that the middle powers have acquired their affluence, skills, and prestige. They are committed to maintaining the system from which they have bene- fited. This has made the middle powers—despite claims of being in between different sides—stand rather close to the United States, helping it with system maintenance by virtue of shared values and interests. This closeness has given middle powers entrance to the halls of power as defined by the G7 and G20, two multilateral arrangements of states that control much of the world’s eco- nomic output and trade. Some scholars call the Global South countries of India, South Africa, and Indonesia middle powers.48 Typically, the label “middle power” applies when countries have a certain level of affluence, regional prominence, and a demonstrated commitment to multilateralism. Multilateralism is the hallmark of middle powers. Global South “middle powers” are even charged with the task of building regional multilateral institutions that can spread the bene- fits of the liberal order.49 Regional leadership based in regional institutions is portrayed as the way for regional powers to launch themselves into global standing. Regional leaders, whether they take on the title of middle power or not, demonstrate their leadership by extending multilateral linkages into their region and back out to the global system. Because liberal institution- alist theorists believe that many countries—great and middle and everyone else—benefit from the liberal international order, their explanations of foreign policy pivot on the use of multilateralism, a “diplomatic practice” that benefits all countries.50 Alternative Theories Beyond the dominant IR theories of neorealism and liberal institutionalism, most of the other international relations theories do not present guides for understanding foreign policy making and behavior. Most of these theories do Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 155 5/30/18 2:08 PM  156 Chapter 8: International Relations Theories and Foreign Policy not have much to say about how particular states will act but instead put states into broad categories, and the categories suggest the outlines of policies and behaviors. Here we will discuss the broad elements of what some alternative theories have to say about foreign policy. Marxism is a critique and response to capitalism. Both of the grand polit- ical theories discussed above, realism and liberalism, are compatible with cap- italism. As with realism and liberalism, there is much more to Marxism than will be described here. The foundation of the Marxist view is that the eco- nomic organization of a society determines its political and social systems. A society premised on capitalism, with its free market and private ownership of wealth and property, is a society divided into economic and social classes. Essentially, there are two classes—owners and workers. The societal norms and political system built on a capitalist-based economy protect the continued profit taking of the owner class and keep the workers working. Elite inter- ests dominate politics, and the institutions of government keep workers in an exploited, dependent position. An international system based on capitalism is also a system divided into the owners, or the “haves,” and the workers, or the “have-nots.” The insti- tutions of the rich states—their national militaries and international insti- tutions—are used to maintain the world capitalist system, which serves elite interests. The international system is understood as a structure that fuels the wealth and power of the core states at the expense of semi-peripheral states that help insulate the core and keep the outer poorer states on the periphery. The core is roughly composed of the West, which is the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, and South Korea. Movement between the levels typically does not happen, but the presence of South Korea in the core suggests that states can move from the semi-periphery to the core under limited circumstances. The institutional structures within core states keep workers subservient, and the institutional structures of the international capitalist system do the same. Consider the 1991 Gulf War between the US-led, UN-approved mul- tinational coalition and Iraq. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 resulted from the inability of the two countries to reach agreement on key points of conten- tion regarding Kuwaiti loans to Iraq. When the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein could not persuade Kuwait to accept more agreeable repayment terms, he decided to settle differences with Kuwait through invasion and occupation. Perhaps the Iraqi leader had in mind how the US invaded Panama in Decem- ber 1989 after the US government could not get the Panamanian leader Man- uel Noriega to comply with American demands. Of course, Iraq is not the United States. The UN Security Council condemned the invasion as a viola- tion of key principles of the UN system. When Iraq refused to comply with UN demands to vacate Kuwait, the UN Security Council gave its blessing to the United States and a multinational coalition to use force against Iraq to compel it to act by the established rules. Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 156 5/30/18 2:08 PM  Alternative Theories 157 The international institutions built by the core states maintain the cap- italist system for the advantage of the core. One of the primary principles on which the United Nations was founded—that states must not use force to pursue their foreign policy goals—is only enforced when states from the periphery break it in a way that might threaten the existing international structure. The power of the core was threatened by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. In blunt terms, had Iraq managed to maintain control of Kuwait, Iraq would have controlled too much of the world’s oil reserves to be kept out of the club of the elite. The old core countries did not want to open the doors of their club to Iraq, and so they used their power in the United Nations to justify war against Iraq and put Iraq back in its place. This use of the United Nations was hailed as the beginning of a new world order by Western states. That Iraq is Muslim was not the primary barrier to its entry in the core. The core does permit some entry for non-European states, as is clear from the presence of Japan and South Korea in the list above. The admission comes when basic capitalist values align with economic weight and economic inter- dependence, and when the core wants to grant entry based on its own inter- ests. The G20 is a group representing the world’s major economies. The G20 claims that it represents 85 percent of global economic output, 66 percent of the world’s population, 75 percent of international trade, and 80 percent of global investment. It is a group of nineteen countries and the EU; it includes nine countries that were previously in the global semi-periphery: Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Indonesia and Saudi Arabia are Muslim countries, so religion is not a barrier to entry. In the 1950s, analysts studying the problems with underdevelopment and poverty in Latin America proposed that countries on the periphery and semi-periphery suffered from declining terms of trade that kept their econo- mies forever falling behind and ever dependent on others. Dependency the- ory is a Marxist school of international relations theory that builds on this. Dependency theory explains that even countries that experience some eco- nomic development, such as those countries in the semi-periphery, remain dependent on the core for financing, technology, intellectual property, and markets.51 Dependent capitalist development deepens—at the expense of workers and their country—because of an alliance of local elites, core institu- tions, and multinational corporations from the core. Globalization is the manifestation of the power of the core and of neolib- erals. States outside the core can only (re)claim their autonomy by resistance to globalization and neoliberal policies imposed on them by core lenders and financiers. Anti-Western and antiglobalization sentiments have undergirded the domestic and foreign policies of many noncore states; many people in core states also embrace antiglobalization and reject neoliberal policies that victim- ize workers and environments. Our mission here, though, is to think about Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 157 5/30/18 2:08 PM  158 Chapter 8: International Relations Theories and Foreign Policy Marxist and Marxist-inspired theories that provide explanations for foreign policy behavior. Marxist theorists are like realists in their emphasis on the power-seeking behavior of international actors, and so we can borrow from realists the idea of balancing against power. There have been collective efforts by noncore states to balance against the core in order to force a change in behavior by the core. In 1955, twenty-nine Asian and African countries met at Bandung, Indonesia, at what became known as the Bandung Conference. This was the predeces- sor of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) officially begun in 1961 in Yugo- slavia. The countries at Bandung called for Global South solidarity against colonialism and neocolonialism. Their goal was to promote a more equita- ble international political and economic system. The principles of the Ban- dung Conference still inform the foreign policies of many countries, including Indonesia, South Africa, and India. The efforts of the Bandung Conference and beyond amount to soft balancing against the core states and institutions rather than efforts to create a hard balance aimed at the establishment of a separate international order. Indeed, seven of the attendees at Bandung are today members of the G20: Indonesia, India, South Africa, Turkey, Japan, China, and Saudi Arabia. Resistance to the institutions of the core has occurred within those insti- tutions as well. For instance, the NAM promoted a call for a New Interna- tional Economic Order (NIEO) within the United Nations starting in 1974. The NIEO was a list of demands by a group calling itself the G77 to highlight its difference from the G7 of the time. The NIEO demands were brought before the UN General Assembly and the UN Conference on Trade and Development, but they were not adopted or accommodated in any substantial way by the core states. Individual states have also adopted foreign policies of resistance in the time since the end of the Cold War. Venezuela, Turkey, and Iran attempted briefly to form a loose coalition against the Western-dominated world sys- tem. Their resistance foreign policy agenda was not fully articulated, and these states did not maintain their affiliation. Brazil’s soft balancing against UN civilian protection mandates was also an act of resistance, but not one that formed the foundation of a national role conception and a subsequent foreign policy agenda. Marxist, anticore, and antiglobalization ideas inform the foreign policies of many states, but these ideas characterize the changes these states seek in the international order rather than a foreign policy identity associated with observable foreign policy behaviors. Models explored in other chapters of this book can help to understand when and how foreign policies of resistance start. There are many other IR theories that propose resistance to the dominant international order, particularly theories that use the lenses of feminism and postcolonialism. Maybe readers of this book will go on to develop foreign Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 158 5/30/18 2:08 PM  Alternative Theories 159 policy models that derive from these and can be included in the study of for- eign policy. The next chapter concludes this book by thinking about possible research topics that await investigation. For Discussion 1. What is international order? is no hard balancing against US Discuss the three types of inter- preponderant power. national order and give examples 5. How is the liberal international of each. order a hegemonic order? What 2. Explain China’s Belt and Road did the hegemon do to con- Initiative as complementary to struct this order? the liberal international order 6. Explain the concept and prac- and as a challenge to it. tice of multilateralism. Why do 3. Discuss how the National Secu- liberals say that multilateralism rity Strategy of Barack Obama removes the problem of trust illustrates liberal institutional- from international relations? ist ideas while that of Donald 7. Describe how Marxist-based Trump illustrates offensive neo- theories describe the present realist ideas. international system and what 4. Using a defensive neorealist the Gulf War of 1991 illustrates perspective, explain why there about this system. Key Words globalization balance of power protectionism balancing liberal institutionalism unipolar international system neorealism hard balancing offensive neorealism internal balancing international system strategic balancing bipolar international system soft balancing Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) unipole governance civilian protection sovereignty Global South supranational bandwagoning anarchy multipolar international system great power forward partnering primacy reciprocity defensive neorealism liberal international order revisionist state hegemonic order grand strategy multilateralism hegemon middle power Studying Foreign Policy Comparatively.indd 159 5/30/18 2:08 PM