Nader Mousavizadeh: End of Rogue States
[Nader Mousavizadeh, a special assistant to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan from 1997 to 2003, is a consulting senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.]
A year after Barack Obama relaunched America's relations with the world's rogue states, the verdict is in: from Burma to North Korea, Venezuela to Iran, the outstretched hand has been met with the clenched fist. Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest in Rangoon, Pyongyang is testing missiles, Caracas rails against gringo imperialism, and Tehran has dismissed a year-end deadline to do a deal on its nuclear program. Engagement has failed and Obama is now poised to deliver on threats of tougher sanctions, as surely he must. Right? Well, not necessarily.
What Washington has failed to fully recognize is that the world that created "rogue states" is gone. The term became popular in the 1980s, mainly in the United States, to describe minor dictatorships threatening to the Cold War order. Then, after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the main challenge to American dominance came from those states unwilling to accommodate themselves to the "end of history" and conform to U.S. values. The idea of "the rogue state" assumed the existence of an international community, united behind supposedly universal Western values and interests, that could agree on who the renegades are and how to deal with them. By the late 1990s this community was already dissolving, with the rise of China, the revival of Russia, and the emergence of India, Brazil, and Turkey as real powers, all with their own interests and values. Today it's clear that the "international community" defined by Western values is a fiction, and that for many states the term "rogue" might just as well apply to the United States as to the renegades it seeks to isolate.
The answer to those states challenging the established global order will not come in the form of carrots or sticks from Washington alone. Confronting the threats of nuclear proliferation, terror, and regional instability posed by state and nonstate actors alike will require coalitions that are genuinely willing—not forged under U.S. pressure. It is no longer possible for the U.S.—even with Obama as president—to rally international support for an American, or even a Western, agenda. What the world seeks from America is more engagement, not less, but based on partnership, not U.S. primacy. Conventional American leadership, it is now evident, is as unwelcome in the person of Barack Obama as in George W. Bush.
In the absence of a newly forged international community, a U.S.-led crackdown on the old rogues is bound to backfire. Already Western efforts have driven rogue states into each other's arms—Burma is trading military hardware and perhaps nuclear secrets with North Korea; Iran is forging closer ties to Syria; Venezuela is supporting Cuba more lavishly. Worse than these warming relations among relatively weak troublemakers is their growing support from legitimate rising powers. Brazil, Turkey, Russia, China—all are making no secret of their resistance to America's anti-rogue diplomacy.
Obama came into office thinking that a more responsive diplomacy could rally global support for the old Western agenda, but that's not enough. What's needed, more than a change in tone or a U.S. policy review, is a new set of baseline global interests—neither purely Western nor Eastern—defined in concert with rising powers who have real influence in capitals like Rangoon, Pyongyang, and Tehran. This requires a painful reconsideration of America's place in the world. But it promises real help from rising powers in shouldering the financial and military burden of addressing global threats.
Today countries large and small, well behaved and not, are looking for partners, not patrons. Where Washington looks to punish rogues, seeking immediate changes in behavior, rival powers are stepping in with investment and defense contracts, and offering a relationship based on dignity and respect. This is the story of China in Burma, Russia in Iran, Brazil in Cuba, and so on down the line. And given that the core institutions of global governance—the U.N. Security Council, the World Bank, and the IMF—are unwilling to grant the new powers a seat at the decision-making table, it's not surprising that they feel no obligation to back sanctions they've had no say in formulating.
Far from being coy about their newfound independence, the rising powers are asserting their status with increasing strength. During a recent state visit, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stood beside President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and declared bluntly: "We don't have the right to think other people should think like us." These words resonate more deeply outside the Western world than new calls for unity against the rogues. Days earlier, Ahmadinejad had been hosted by Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had embraced his neighbor at a summit of Islamic nations and insisted that Iran's nuclear program was "peaceful." Predictably, the Western press attacked both Lula and Erdogan for betraying democratic values and solidarity, missing the point entirely. Established democrats like Lula and Erdogan are not siding with Ahmadinejad, supporting his government's violent crackdown on protesters or its covert nuclear programs. Rather, they are demonstrating their intention—and, more important, their ability—to have a say in who the rogues are and how they should be dealt with.
The perils of the West's old thinking about rogue states are laid bare in a corner of Asia that is fast becoming a geopolitical battleground with no Western presence to speak of. Iran, with its nuclear program, may be the most acute rogue-state security challenge today; Sudan, with its record of a genocide overlooked, the most morally troubling; Zimbabwe, with its spectacle of a society's systematic self-destruction, the most maddening. But Burma presents perhaps the starkest and most advanced case of the failure of Western strategies aimed solely at cutting off repressive regimes. The two-decade-old policy of isolating Burma now looks like a carefully constructed attempt to weaken Western influence and open the door to China, while devastating Burma's legitimate economy and doing nothing to improve its people's human rights...
Read entire article at Newsweek
A year after Barack Obama relaunched America's relations with the world's rogue states, the verdict is in: from Burma to North Korea, Venezuela to Iran, the outstretched hand has been met with the clenched fist. Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest in Rangoon, Pyongyang is testing missiles, Caracas rails against gringo imperialism, and Tehran has dismissed a year-end deadline to do a deal on its nuclear program. Engagement has failed and Obama is now poised to deliver on threats of tougher sanctions, as surely he must. Right? Well, not necessarily.
What Washington has failed to fully recognize is that the world that created "rogue states" is gone. The term became popular in the 1980s, mainly in the United States, to describe minor dictatorships threatening to the Cold War order. Then, after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the main challenge to American dominance came from those states unwilling to accommodate themselves to the "end of history" and conform to U.S. values. The idea of "the rogue state" assumed the existence of an international community, united behind supposedly universal Western values and interests, that could agree on who the renegades are and how to deal with them. By the late 1990s this community was already dissolving, with the rise of China, the revival of Russia, and the emergence of India, Brazil, and Turkey as real powers, all with their own interests and values. Today it's clear that the "international community" defined by Western values is a fiction, and that for many states the term "rogue" might just as well apply to the United States as to the renegades it seeks to isolate.
The answer to those states challenging the established global order will not come in the form of carrots or sticks from Washington alone. Confronting the threats of nuclear proliferation, terror, and regional instability posed by state and nonstate actors alike will require coalitions that are genuinely willing—not forged under U.S. pressure. It is no longer possible for the U.S.—even with Obama as president—to rally international support for an American, or even a Western, agenda. What the world seeks from America is more engagement, not less, but based on partnership, not U.S. primacy. Conventional American leadership, it is now evident, is as unwelcome in the person of Barack Obama as in George W. Bush.
In the absence of a newly forged international community, a U.S.-led crackdown on the old rogues is bound to backfire. Already Western efforts have driven rogue states into each other's arms—Burma is trading military hardware and perhaps nuclear secrets with North Korea; Iran is forging closer ties to Syria; Venezuela is supporting Cuba more lavishly. Worse than these warming relations among relatively weak troublemakers is their growing support from legitimate rising powers. Brazil, Turkey, Russia, China—all are making no secret of their resistance to America's anti-rogue diplomacy.
Obama came into office thinking that a more responsive diplomacy could rally global support for the old Western agenda, but that's not enough. What's needed, more than a change in tone or a U.S. policy review, is a new set of baseline global interests—neither purely Western nor Eastern—defined in concert with rising powers who have real influence in capitals like Rangoon, Pyongyang, and Tehran. This requires a painful reconsideration of America's place in the world. But it promises real help from rising powers in shouldering the financial and military burden of addressing global threats.
Today countries large and small, well behaved and not, are looking for partners, not patrons. Where Washington looks to punish rogues, seeking immediate changes in behavior, rival powers are stepping in with investment and defense contracts, and offering a relationship based on dignity and respect. This is the story of China in Burma, Russia in Iran, Brazil in Cuba, and so on down the line. And given that the core institutions of global governance—the U.N. Security Council, the World Bank, and the IMF—are unwilling to grant the new powers a seat at the decision-making table, it's not surprising that they feel no obligation to back sanctions they've had no say in formulating.
Far from being coy about their newfound independence, the rising powers are asserting their status with increasing strength. During a recent state visit, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stood beside President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and declared bluntly: "We don't have the right to think other people should think like us." These words resonate more deeply outside the Western world than new calls for unity against the rogues. Days earlier, Ahmadinejad had been hosted by Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had embraced his neighbor at a summit of Islamic nations and insisted that Iran's nuclear program was "peaceful." Predictably, the Western press attacked both Lula and Erdogan for betraying democratic values and solidarity, missing the point entirely. Established democrats like Lula and Erdogan are not siding with Ahmadinejad, supporting his government's violent crackdown on protesters or its covert nuclear programs. Rather, they are demonstrating their intention—and, more important, their ability—to have a say in who the rogues are and how they should be dealt with.
The perils of the West's old thinking about rogue states are laid bare in a corner of Asia that is fast becoming a geopolitical battleground with no Western presence to speak of. Iran, with its nuclear program, may be the most acute rogue-state security challenge today; Sudan, with its record of a genocide overlooked, the most morally troubling; Zimbabwe, with its spectacle of a society's systematic self-destruction, the most maddening. But Burma presents perhaps the starkest and most advanced case of the failure of Western strategies aimed solely at cutting off repressive regimes. The two-decade-old policy of isolating Burma now looks like a carefully constructed attempt to weaken Western influence and open the door to China, while devastating Burma's legitimate economy and doing nothing to improve its people's human rights...