The Politics of Doing Nothing versus Doing Something: Domestic Political Competition and Risk Taking over the Syrian Civil War

Why is U.S. policy towards the Syrian Civil War suddenly shifting from nonintervention to intervention? Was it really just the chemical attack outside of Damascus last week that was ostensibly conducted by Assad’s security forces? After all, what’s the difference between the Assad regime killing 100,000 people with conventional weapons—small arms, tanks, artillery, bombs, mortars, and even tactical ballistic missiles—and killing about 1,500 people using chemical weapons? From a strategic perspective, Steve Walt is right that a change in weaponry should have little to no impact on U.S. policy towards Syria. However, the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime has shifted U.S. policy on its head over the last week. Suddenly the Obama administration is poised to launch a military attack on Syria in the coming days (I’ll bet this coming Sunday or Monday). I think the real impetus for the change in Obama’s policy towards Syria rests in how the recent chemical attacks reverberated within U.S. domestic politics.

While Obama is now well into his second term in office that does not mean he has nothing left to run for. So long as the House is under Republican control, he has no avenue to advance his domestic priorities or even a specific major policy he can pass that would serve as the capstone of his second administration. Until the 2014 midterms, the next fifteen months in Washington will likely consist of budget and debt ceiling battles between Congressional Republicans and the White House. While Obama in the past has repeatedly outmaneuvered the Republicans in these fights, such wins have been short-term tactical victories. Obama’s last chance for a significant legislative achievement during his remaining time in office rests on the prospect that the Democrats can take the back the House and at least hold their ground in the Senate in the midterm elections in November 2014. Once he has a Democratic-controlled Congress, Obama then would have a short window to pass the kind of major legislation that presidencies are actually remembered for (Remember Obama said he wanted to be a transformational president and not just some guy in a round office). I think that Obama has likely weighed his approach and options regarding Syria (and other foreign and domestic policy areas) on each move’s potential impact and risks to his party’s prospects for success in the midterms.

I think Obama has previously decided not to take action in Syria because he saw lots of potential political risk and little to no upside. Furthermore, his opponents were unable to effectively inflict costs on him to significantly change his policy. Just a few weeks ago, Obama’s policy of non-direct intervention but providing low levels of support to the rebels was under increasing criticism from Republican and Democratic hawks in light of several battlefield victories by the Assad regime. Most accounts of Obama’s approach on Syria usually fell somewhere along the range of criticism between being adrift or directionless to inadequate or ineffective or all the way to being a catastrophic blunder or an outright failure. To correct his footing, Obama made a minor low risk concession to the hawks and begrudgingly announced the United States would start sending light weapons to the rebels (which apparently still have not arrived). All in all, Obama protected his political position fairly well and remained in the center between doves and hawks from both parties.

Then last week Obama’s centrist position on Syria was undermined after Assad’s security forces launched a chemical attack around Damascus in the early hours of August 21^st that killed about 1,500 people. The attack occurred almost a year to the day when Obama made a somewhat off-the-cuff remark during the presidential campaign that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a “red line.” At the time, he seemed to be setting the bar for U.S. intervention in Syria quite high. After last week’s chemical attack, however, continuing to do nothing on Syria —i.e. maintaining the status quo—began to carry with it some political costs. The hawks could easily paint Obama as weak and cowardly. If the regime escalated with even further attacks over the next year, the hawks would have a decent argument that Obama was weak on Syria and so on.  This in turn would probably hurt Obama again and again heading into the midterms. It is important not to exaggerate the extent of the political damage, which would hardly be terminal, but Obama would have a bleeding wound that the hawks would reopen every time Assad used chemical weapons and could tie in with other issues like Iran where Obama set a red line on nuclear weapons.  For Obama, the risks of doing nothing (i.e. not using force) in Syria suddenly became higher than the risk of doing something (i.e. using force). To avoid the costs of inaction, Obama has spent the last week looking for something low-risk to do which would put him on a sound political footing but also divide and weaken his hawkish opponents in the future.

Obama will probably be take a miniscule risk of using limited force in Syria to shore up his domestic political flank against Republican and Democratic hawks clamoring for action after Assad’s forces violated the chemical weapons “red line.” A limited strike could change Obama’s domestic alignment stuck between the losing doves who have argued Obama should do nothing in Syria and the winning hawks who have argued Obama must do something in Syria but are often vague or divided over what that should entail. If Obama uses limited force he can forge a new alignment with the hawks who want to use just a little bit of force (like a low-risk onetime cruise missile strike that would not change the situation on the ground) and the hawks who want a more substantial use of force (like a riskier large-scale sustained bombing campaign against the regime’s military which would likely eventually topple the regime but create a power vacuum in Syria and leave the civil war raging). With a limited strike, Obama can drive a wedge through the hawks and shore up his political flank on Syria. He can also strengthen his position by trying to bring some of the doves from both parties on board by painting the strike as a humanitarian operation and playing up rhetoric about America’s moral responsibility to protect innocent civilians from crazy dictators with chemical weapons and so on. He could frame his actions as measured and pragmatic since he did not engulf the country in yet another large war in the Middle East (the key here would be to use the terms “Bush” and “Iraq” as often as possible when speaking to the doves).

So Obama will probably use force in Syria to regain the political center and splinter the Republican and Democratic hawks. But what is the strategic impact of a limited U.S. strike against Syria? As any military analyst would point out, lobbing a few cruise missiles at fixed regime targets will have no effect on the military balance of power between the Assad regime and the rebels. Further, I strongly doubt a limited strike would have much of a deterrent effect on the future use of chemical weapons either, since effective deterrence relies on the adversary perceiving the threat as credible and the action being deterred as becoming more costly than the alternatives. Assad is in the midst of waging a bloody civil war entering its third year. He is not only fighting for the political survival of his regime but probably his personal safety from a Qaddafi-style execution at the hands of the rebels. Furthermore, his Alawite commanders and soldiers know they and their families face the very possibility of being slaughtered by the rebel Sunnis if they lose—after all, they’ve slaughtered lots of Sunni fighters and their families too. How do you seriously expect to deter someone who has that much at stake when a few cruise missiles amount to the punishment?  Finally, over the past few days, the White House has told Congressional doves and others worried about direct U.S. military involvement in Syria not to fret because Obama has no intention of getting involved in a huge military operation there. To appease domestic doves, the White House essentially told Assad that the threat of future attacks or escalating punishments if he does not comply is fairly negligible. 

Interestingly, the hawks who want a U.S. intervention to be strategically effective are correct that a cruise missile strike against Syria would be pretty much useless and to achieve any change the United States would need to impose a no-fly zone and commit to a sustained bombing campaign against the regime’s ground forces. Meanwhile, the United States and its allies would also provide a considerably higher level of support and resources to the rebels to affect the military balance on the ground. All of this would take a very long time, but could be accomplished from a military perspective. But for what gain to Obama? 

Suppose after a six or ten month U.S. bombing campaign that Assad flees to Iran or is killed, Damascus falls to the rebels and the regime’s security forces disintegrate. A post-Assad Syria would very likely remain extremely violent and chaotic as the Sunni rebels and remnants of the Alawite forces continue to vie for power since the opposition is not unified at all and there is really no hope for a transitional government to step in overnight. The Sunnis will continue fighting the Alawites and other minority groups in addition to themselves (particularly the jihadist groups associated with al-Qaeda will fight the moderate Sunnis). Lebanon would certainly become less stable as violence from Syria spills over its borders and agitates the delicate peace among its rival political groups that are similarly divided along ethnic and sectarian lines as Syria's. Israel will be facing well-armed Shia and Sunni militant groups—which mutually despise Israels existence—fighting it out along its northern borders with heavy weaponry, and of course there is the issue of the chemical weapons possessed by the former Assad regime. Iraq, which is already reaching levels of violence not seen since the full-scale civil war was underway there from 2006-2008, will likely get worse as Iran’s Shia proxy groups and the Sunni insurgents (who are likely backed covertly by the Saudis and the Gulf States) go at each others jugular as the Iraqi government teeters. Jordan and Turkey will be further flooded with refugees and threatened by insecurity. Who knows what the Kurds in Syria (and Iraq) will do. Oh, and don’t forget Iran will still be getting closer to developing a nuclear weapon, which Obama has also said is a red line. The outcome in Syria is surrounded by uncertainty. There is a very high potential for wider regional conflicts to emerge and escalate. So far as I can tell, winning in Syria carries enormous political risks for Obama and nearly no upside.

In this sort of environment, Obama’s domestic allies and opponents who supported the intervention in Syria would then jump ship—just like many Democrats who supported Bush before the invasion of Iraq did after that endeavor went sideways. They can claim they backed the concept of intervening to prevent Assad from gassing his own people but the administration had bungled this or that and must shoulder the responsibility for the calamity. Basically everyone but Obama would get to say, “I didn’t sign up for this.” At that point, Obama could be looking at overlapping conflicts stretching from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf which encompasses all of the region’s major states. For once there would actually be loose weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East that could fall into terrorists’ hands in addition to a tattered U.S.-Israel-Arab security umbrella and probably spiraling global oil prices that could hurt the economic recovery and piss off voters. That would certainly not bode well for Obama’s political standing at home and the prospects for a Democratic victory on November 4, 2014.

When examining Obama’s Syria policy, the questions we need to ask are how does each alternative policy course effect Obama’s chances in the 2014 midterms and is Obama helped or hurt by removing Assad and his regime from power before then? The answer I reach is that Obama needs to do something to regain his domestic political footing on the issue, but he cannot risk doing so much that the United States actually succeeds and topples Assad and he gets blamed for the chaos that ensues—at least before the midterms.

Obama’s Trail Balloon: The Politics of the “Zero Option” in Afghanistan

A few days ago, the Times ran an interesting story quoting senior U.S. and European officials in Washington and Kabul that the Obama administration is giving very serious consideration to pulling all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan at the end of 2014. The impetus for the change in the administration’s thinking is attributed (in the article) to the deteriorating relationship between President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. According to officials, Karzai threw a fit to Obama during a video conference related to the announcement last month that the United States and the Taliban were planning to hold peace talks without the Afghan Government. The “zero option” is, of course, contrary to several years of pledges by the United States that it plans to leave a small residual force of troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014, mostly to train the Afghan security forces and conduct counter-terrorism operations. Many military analysts would agree some residual U.S. force as critically necessary to prevent the Afghan government falling to the insurgency, particularly in lieu of a peace deal with the Taliban (something that won’t happen, but that’s a whole other post).

Of course, attributing the administration’s change of thinking on the zero option in the White House due to one bad video conference between Obama and Karzai is ridiculous. Obama’s personal relationship with Karzai has always been rocky, if not downright terrible. Remember, Karzai’s attitude did not deter Obama from sending tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan in 2009. Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) suggested the discussions of the zero option were a part of the Obama administration’s negotiating strategy with Karzai related to the Status of Forces Agreement that would dictate terms of the U.S. presence after 2014. Levin said, “I think it’s a signal that he thinks he has leverage that he doesn’t have.” I very much doubt that the Obama administration would float the zero option as part of a negotiating strategy with Karzai. Karzai has plenty of unflattering qualities, but he has never struck me as a complete and utter fool. He knows he has little to no leverage with the United States (except perhaps, embarrassing Obama in public).  After all, the United States pays for the entire budget of the Afghan government, including its military, and has tens of thousands of troops on Afghan soil. This does not leave Karzai a whole lot of negotiating room.

Rather than aimed at Karzai, I would venture to guess the story given to the Times by anonymous officials within the Obama administration that discussions of the zero option were taking place was in essence a trial balloon. Obama and his advisers wanted to gauge what the domestic political reaction of hawkish Republicans and Democrats would be to the zero option. I think absent domestic politics, Obama’s preferred policy in Afghanistan would be the zero option. After all, it is not exactly a secret that Obama has basically no interest in furthering U.S. involvement in the war. Further, I suspect (apparently along with others) that he privately regrets his decision on the surge way back in 2009. Interestingly, the reaction to the administration’s discussions by hawkish Republicans and Democrats was muted. As far as I can tell, there was little outrage, no attacks, and no repercussions for Obama.  

These domestic political maneuvers we are seeing over U.S. Afghan policy reminded me of something I wrote back in the fall of 2011 on the domestic politics of Obama’s Afghan strategy that seems pretty accurate:

…Obama will need to forge a stronger coalition with moderates and doves on a withdrawal timetable in Afghanistan beyond 2014 if he wants significant congressional backing for his war strategy. This may become increasingly difficult after of the 2012 election. If Obama wins reelection in 2012, he may face a Republican-controlled Senate and House which might dissuade Obama from a faster draw down if he is under pressure from a Republican Congress to extend it. There is an expectation from Republican hawks and many security analysts that the administration will live up to its word and leave a fairly large residual force in Afghanistan far beyond 2014 to support counter-terrorism operations and training the Afghan security forces. If Obama is successful at forging a coalition with dove and moderate Democrats and Republicans towards ending U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, there will likely be intense political pressure to bring the number of troops to zero. While this may not preclude a large intelligence and/or special operations forces footprint remaining in Afghanistan beyond 2014, the domestic political momentum that would build up behind the troop withdrawals—as seen in Vietnam and Iraq—would be difficult for Obama to resist once they start; even if the conditions on the ground change unfavorably.

The Obama administration has said there is “no decision imminent” over the U.S. presence in Afghanistan after 2014. Nevertheless, I think it is very likely Obama will choose some form of the zero option given the tepid hawk reaction to the trail balloon. Obama’s decision will probably be a shock to a lot people in the Pentagon and Congress. It will probably be seen as a betrayal in Kabul. But if hawkish Republicans and Democrats are not going to push back at all, why shouldn’t Obama move more quickly to end America’s role in war he doesn’t want to fight?  

Why did the Egyptian Military Leave the Barracks?

I was not exactly surprised that a few days ago the Egyptian military overthrew President Mohamed Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected leader, and suspended the constitution amid widespread anti-government demonstrations. After all, Egypt has a completely dysfunctional civil-military relationship. Its armed forces have never been subordinate to civilian control and it is by far the most powerful political actor in the country. The coup d'état is the apex of military intervention in politics and its study traditionally been a central tenant in the civil-military relations, a sub-field of security studies. The crux of civil-military relations has generally revolved around how civilian governments can exercise control over militaries that have the strength to usurp their authority. In every country, it is the military that possess a monopoly on the use of violence (it is therefore key to first distinguish the military as a special part of the state). The organization, manpower, and weaponry possessed by militaries endow them with the ability to disobey and overthrow their governments at whim. Yet if militaries can stage coups whenever they want, and a military like Egypt’s is predisposed to such behavior because it is entirely unrestrained by civilian leaders, why then did the Egyptian military decide to leave the barracks a few days ago and seize power?

Most commentators have so far attributed the driving factors behind the recent military coup in Egypt to the failure of President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to unite Egypt’s various political factions and to address the major socioeconomic problems that have ailed the country since 2011. In turn, these shortcomings contributed to massive anti-government protests in Cairo which preceded the military stepping in to replace Morsi and install a new government. Yet this story is far too simple and seriously flawed. Many scholars including Samuel Huntington (1957, 1968), S.E. Finer (1962),  Rob Nordlinger (1977), William Thompson (1975),  Claude Welch (1976), and Edward Luttwak (1979)—to name only a few—have addressed the causes, typologies, and frequency of military coups.  They have identified numerous and complex web of casual factors behind military coups, which can be separated into coup opportunities (not to be confused with the ability to coup, which is constant) and coup motivations. Coup opportunities arise from a general political weakening of the civilian regime’s legitimacy, often through flagrant corruption, electoral fraud, or other forms of political mischief, or perhaps a general ineptitude at governing. Coup opportunities can also be fashioned from broader conditions in a country such as a floundering political process, internal unrest, external security threats, or economic crises.

While the June demonstrations in Egypt were probably the largest since the downfall of Mubarak in February 2011, they did not represent a major change in the chaotic political climate that has taken hold in Egypt for the last two years. Large-scale street protests against the government (whether it was being run by Mubarak, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces [SCAF], or Morsi and Muslim Brotherhood) have taken place on a near-weekly to monthly basis in Cairo and other major cities since January 2011. Nevertheless, the recent demonstrations did provide the opportunity for the military to intervene and stage a coup. But opportunity and motivation need to be separated in order to better understand why the coup happened. The Egyptian military was not acting benevolently to defend democracy or in direct support of the protesters’ grievances against the Morsi government. That’s simply not why a praetorian military like Egypt’s stages a coup (but it is exactly how praetorian militaries justify coups). 

In terms of motivating factors of coups, the perpetrators nearly always justified their actions as being in defense of the “national interest,” however such a vague concept is defined. Such benevolent claims, however, are basically rhetorical camouflage to hide the military’s pursuit of narrower sets of motivations. Some scholars contend that a military may be motivated to coup to defend or advance the interests of a particular socioeconomic class, ethnic, or sectional group in the society. Such an explanation for Egypt does not work well, since Egypt and the military are basically ethnically and religiously homogeneous (Coptic Christians aside).

Another possible coup motivation is to advance the personal interests of the military leadership. Generals may seek greater political power, glory, or riches for themselves by seizing power. This explanation has a strong historical precedent in Egypt. General Gamal Abdel Nasser led Egypt’s first modern military coup in 1952 which overthrew the monarchy and established the country as a republic, an action which initiated a wave of anti-monarchy military coups across the Arab world. Nasser was a charismatic leader and ardent Arab nationalist whose confrontational policies towards the United States, Great Britain, and Israel endeared him to the Arab world.  Nasser ruled Egypt as president until his death in 1970. Not much is known about General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the current head of the Egyptian military. Sisi took over the position in August 2012 after the newly-inaugurated Morsi ordered Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi (who led the coup against Mubarak) to step down and promoted Sisi to the job. In addition to Tantawi, Morsi dramatically retired several other top commanders. Until the coup, Sisi had kept a low political profile and was even seen by some observers as being too close to Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood for the military’s comfort. Nevertheless, Sisi has so far not struck many as possessing the personal political ambitions to engineer a coup in order to become Egypt’s head of state. At this point, my opinion is that personal glory is unlikely but still at least a plausible factor behind the coup.

Most civil-military relations scholars recognize one of the strongest coup motivations is the military’s desire to defend its corporate self-interests, which includes preserving the military’s autonomy, hierarchical discipline, internal unity, organizational prestige, access to resources, privileges, and similar aspects. As far as I can tell, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood had not threatened the military’s access to resources, its budget, or economic interests (the military runs an economic empire in Egypt that encompasses around ten to forty percent of the country’s GDP). This leaves us with several other factors: the preservation of the military’s autonomy, hierarchical discipline, and internal unity.  These causes, in my opinion, were likely the strongest motivating factors in the coup. I suspect Sisi was not personally enthusiastic about staging a coup, but increasingly felt political pressure from within the officer corps to remove Morsi for the good the military (not the country). A Times piece on the prelude to the coup reveals some interesting moves between Sisi and Morsi prior to the takeover:

The first alarms went off in Mr. Morsi’s inner circle on June 21, when General Sisi issued a public statement warning that the growing “split in society” between Mr. Morsi’s supporters and opponents compelled the military “to intervene.”

Mr. Morsi was given no warning, his advisers said. But when Mr. Morsi called the general, General Sisi told the president that “it was to satisfy some of his men” and that “it was nothing more than an attempt to absorb their anger,” one of Mr. Morsi’s advisers said. “So even after that first statement, the president didn’t think a coup was imminent.”

From this account, it appears Morsi and his advisers mistakenly placed too much stock in cultivating a personal relationship with Sisi, believing a good relationship with him would be synonymous with a good relationship with the military as a whole. Nevertheless, it seems there was a good deal of discontent within the junior officer corps over Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. While the Egyptian military is extremely politicized, it has remained a highly professional organization with a significant degree of internal discipline and cohesion. Yet the growing discontent within the officer corps over Morsi’s tenure may have been critical to Sisi’s decision to stage the coup. Obviously, militaries are by nature top-down hierarchical organizations and by no means democratic. Yet when it comes to intervening or not intervening in politics, senior military commanders must constantly gauge the attitudes and willingness of the junior officers. After all, giving orders for a coup is quite different than giving orders on a battlefield. Political passions and personal beliefs can quickly overwhelm professionalism.

When it comes to Egypt, it is also important to remember that Nasser was not the head of the military when he led the coup against the monarchy and seized power in the 1950s. Rather, Nasser came to power by leading the Free Officers Movement, a clandestine coalition of junior officers who were dissatisfied with the monarchy and the senior military brass which they considered complicit with the monarchy, responsible for the military’s terrible defeat in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and ignorant of the country’s woes. Given this history, Sisi is probably keenly aware it is important to take the opinions of the junior officer corps into consideration. As such, I think are two highly likely motivations behind the coup (these are just hypotheses):  

1. To maintain the military’s prestige. The military’s prestige in turn confers a degree of legitimacy on its extreme autonomy and questionable economic activities. Perhaps many officers did not want the military’s prestige stained by having to defend Morsi’s government from increasingly large and combative demonstrations. Soldiers tend not relish in beating or shooting at their own countrymen, especially on behalf of a regime they despise. 
2. To maintain the military’s discipline and internal cohesion. Morsi’s maneuvers to consolidate power not only threatened the future of the country’s democratic process, but also the military’s established traditions of extreme autonomy from civilian oversight. Morsi’s removal of Tantawi and other senior officers and the appointment of Sisi last summer constituted significant meddling in the military leadership and promotion system, a highly sensitive area for the officer corps. Obviously it was in Morsi’s best interest to sow divisions in the officer corps and over time elevate loyalists into key positions so he could exert greater influence over the military. Officers on the outs may have felt the military’s discipline and internal cohesion were under threat by Morsi’s meddling and politicization.

Despite the abundance of explanations, deciphering the precise causes behind any coup is extremely difficult. Apart from the sheer array of possible factors, none of the explanations are necessarily mutually exclusive. Moving forward, it’s important to remember that military’s usually intervene in politics to advance or protect their organizational interests and rarely for the benefit of society. The Egyptian military is not a midwife for democracy and it probably never will be.  

What Domestic Politics Can Tell Us About International Relations: A Primer

“Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.”

― Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

“…War cannot be divorced from political life; and whenever this occurs in our thinking about war, the many links that connect the two elements are destroyed and we are left with something pointless and devoid of sense.”

― Carl von Clausewitz, On War

Domestic politics is typically the perspective I apply to form a better understanding of international relations (IR) and foreign policy. More broadly, my opinion on the interaction of domestic and international politics will likely develop into the “theme” of this blog. I’ve always been interested in the intersection of domestic and international politics partly because the IR and foreign policy analysis fields basically ignore domestic politics entirely, despite what I’ve believed for many years is its seemingly obvious power to explain major questions about why a country acts the way it does abroad.

To introduce my perspective, I’ve edited down several parts of my master’s thesis which was on the influence of political competition on China’s security policy towards the United States from 1953 to 1992. I apologize this post is a bit thick and abstract, but I felt it was necessary to establish where my point of view on the importance of domestic politics in international politics and security is coming from.

I believe one of the most important tasks in the study of international relations (IR) today is to account for the impact of domestic politics on a state’s international behavior. Since the 1970s, the security studies field has overwhelmingly privileged explanations at the international system level and generally neglected the influence of domestic politics.[1] Most scholars that do investigate domestic-level causes tend to do so in an apolitical manner and shy from contaminating their elegant analyses of state structures and noble statesmen with the muck of domestic politics. Yet the simple observation that statesmen also happen to be professional politicians who are maneuvering for their political survival day in and day out has fazed remarkably few.[2] Yet as several authors have observed, “Most leaders are chosen over rivals because of skills in domestic politics…Consequently, those who shape international affairs are best understood first as politicians and only later perhaps as statesmen.”[3]

Why is the role of domestic politics important to grasp? Because a leader concerned first and foremost with their political fortunes at home may choose policies detrimental to the state’s national power, national security, and vital national interests but which may support their political position at home—at least in the short-term. The incentives a leader faces to remain in power at home may be stronger than safeguarding the interests of the state. This is generally how risky and often disastrous foreign policies come about—think Vietnam. In many respects, however, this perspective is incompatible with the bulk of IR theory in which states act rationally. Furthermore, given the neglect of actual domestic politics in understanding security issues, it is no wonder that such a large gap continues to exist between the strategies and policies recommended by IR scholars and foreign policy professionals and the actual decisions made by policymakers (i.e. political leaders).

Fundamentally, the decisions that drive a state’s international behavior, which collectively shape the nature of international politics, are made by political leaders of political coalitions engaged in domestic political competitions. In every country, policies that affect a country’s position in the international realm such as decisions to go to war or to make peace, or to cooperate, ally, or trade with other states, are more often than not subject to intense political debates (which are not always public depending on the country and circumstances). This is not unusual. Given the right incentives, political actors will contest just about anything with one another. The constant political competition among politicians in a given polity for power exerts enormous influence on that state’s external security policies. A state’s behavior in the international system is a consequence of the competition for power among political coalitions within the state.

What I am concerned with is the high politics of the state, the competition among those that hold power and those who seek it and the impact of this competition on security policy. In classical Realism, perhaps no other concept is considered to have such a powerful influence on behavior than survival. Survival is understood as the principal goal of states in the international system. States are assumed to be basically rational actors because they are concerned first and foremost with their survival in anarchy. The interaction of the two concepts—survival amid anarchy—is what realists argue drives security competition between states. The concept of survival, however, is evident and perhaps more powerful within states as it exerts a strong motivating force on leaders and their coalitions, and can therefore explain why (and when) they make the security policy decisions they do.[4] Political leaders think and act in terms of interests defined as power. Political competition rewards those who practice power politics—the preservation of self-interest and survival—and punishes those who engage in altruism. Leaders who do not play power politics at home and abroad would rarely, if ever, become leaders in the first place and certainly would not last long in office. Politics is cruel to those who do not first place a premium on winning.

Although individuals matter, the basic nature of politics tells us that no one rules alone. Decisions are not made in a vacuum. Every leader in every political system has some form of political coalition supporting them in power, ranging from the two major political parties in the United States to the Saudi royal family and its tribal allies in Saudi Arabia.[5] All incumbent leaders face the crucible of holding onto power and office amid competition from rivals.[6] Leaders and their coalitions in power serve as the decision-makers of the state. By understanding the powerful incentives of domestic political competition, we gain important insights in what factors ultimately shape a leader’s policies.

When international relations scholars investigate domestic politics, it is usually because the state is acting irrationally in the international system (i.e. doing something stupid and unpredictable). For the most part, domestic politics is treated like a light switch that is sometimes on and sometimes off depending if it can explain why a state did something odd at some point in time. Scholars who study domestic politics in search of explanations find different variables driving foreign policy such as regime type, state strength, bureaucracies, ideologies, ideas, public opinion and special interests.^[7] Others focus on individual cognition, beliefs, and the decision-making processes of statesmen and those officials and advisers immediately surrounding the leader.^[8] Even those who investigate the domestic process of security policy—like how states generate military strength and wealth—do so by considering these factors within sterile environments aloof from the impact of politics.^[9]

Therefore, I think it is critical to examine the influence of domestic politics on security policy rather than influence of domestic structure. This does not mean how a state is structured is irrelevant. The structure matters in certain ways because it provides the rules (i.e. transitions of power occur though elections, coups, etc.) and the field of competition for political coalitions generated elsewhere in a given country and/or society. The rules of the competition, however, cannot tell us much about the actions (strategies and tactics) the players on the field will take or even who the players are; they cannot tell us which players will win and lose or by what margin; why and when one wins and others do not; nor predict how the players and rules will change in the future.

I think for many people (especially cynics like myself) this would not seem like a very contentious point of view. Every day we can observe politicians engaged in bitter jockeying and maneuvering over domestic policies such as healthcare, immigration, taxes, etc. Why then is it such a stretch for IR and foreign policy experts to imagine those same politicians engaging in exactly the same behavior when it comes to foreign policy and security issues?  There are certainly many reasons that are each worthy of several other posts if not several dissertations, but they would certainly include the dominance of certain theoretical perspectives in IR and the professional limitations imposed on most foreign policy analysts.

Furthermore, research on domestic politics is notoriously difficult to conduct due to the scarce and scattered nature of the literature that discusses domestic politics alongside foreign policy.^[10] This is not just a problem in political science due to the neglect of domestic politics in international relations and foreign policy analysis. There is also a wider problem in historical treatments of international affairs, from which IR field draws its evidence. Historian Fred Logevall once commented that most historians “treat the professional politicians involved in the making of foreign policy as though they were not politicians at all.”^[11] Unfortunately, political leaders have strong incentives to misrepresent or withhold what factors ultimately drive their policy decisions. Few leaders want to be seen debating the political advantages and disadvantages of sending troops off to fight and die in war or the political particulars of national security issues. It is easy to understand why historical evidence in closed political systems like China would be scant due to intense censorship and secrecy. Yet even in democracies there is a strong taboo among officials against openly discussing foreign policy and domestic politics in the same room—or at least documenting it. Anthony Lake, the National Security Advisor during the Clinton administration, once compared the absence of discussion of domestic political considerations during national security meetings on the Middle East to discussing sex in the Victorian-age, “Nobody talks about it but it’s on everybody’s mind.”^[12] 

Understanding a state’s foreign policy requires lifting the curtain of domestic politics and see the rich incentives and intense political competition that is driving and shaping its international behavior. For instance, leaders and their ruling political coalition attach an extremely high value to their political survival and domestic political standing. An incumbent will generally not choose a policy direction that will knowingly make them less secure vis-à-vis their political opposition.   

With all of that said, I don’t want my point to be misconstrued into a simple belief that all politicians are simply Janus-faced power-hungry schemers with zero principles and no sense of civic or national responsibility. Rather, I appreciate (and sometimes admire) the essential art of politics, the strategies and the tactics politicians must use (or invent) as they push, manipulate, and maneuver to achieve their goals. While this is not exactly an entirely complete theoretical framework from which to explore all international affairs through, it is a perspective that is important to keep in mind moving forward.  

 

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[1] See Kenneth Waltz, Man, State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); David Singer, "The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations," World Politics, The International System: Theoretical Essays, 14, no. 1 (October 1961): 77-92; Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1979).

[2] See Alexander L. George, Bridging the Gap: Theory and Practice in Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1993).

[3] Kiron K. Skinner et al., The Strategy of Campaigning: Lessons from Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 30.

[4] As Hans Morgenthau discerns, “Politics is the struggle for power over men, and whatever its ultimate aim may be, power is the immediate goal and the modes of acquiring, maintaining, and demonstrating it determine the technique of political action (emphasis added).” Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations; the Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Knopf, 1967), 195.

[5] The process of coalition building has received considerable attention by formal rational choice theorists. See William H. Riker, The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962).

[6] See Bruce Bueno De Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).

[7] See Graham Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971); Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane, Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993); Peter J. Katzenstein, Between Power and Plenty: Foreign Economic Policies of Advanced Industrial States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978); Stephen D. Krasner, Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); Thomas Risse-Kappen, "Public Opinion, Domestic Structure, and Foreign Policy in Liberal Democracies," World Politics 43, no. 4 (July 1991): 479-512; Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 30-47. Stephen M. Walt, "Revolution and War," World Politics 44, no. 3 (April 1992) 321-368.

[8] Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976); John D. Steinbruner, The Cybernetic Theory of Decision (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974);  Alexander L. George, The Operational Code: A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decision-making (Santa Monica: RAND, 1967);

[9] Peter Gourevitch adeptly criticized these approaches for being overly concerned with “state structure” and focused on the wrong processes that they become entirely apolitical: Many arguments focus on process and institutional arrangements divorced from politics; on structure in the sense of procedures; separate from the groups and interests which work through politics; on the formal properties of relationships among groups, rather than the content of the relations among them; on the character of decisions (consistency, coherence, etc.) rather than the content of decisions. Somehow politics disappears. Peter Gourevitch, "The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics," International Organization 32, no. 4 (Autumn 1978): 901. See also Matthew Evangelista, "Issue-Area and Foreign Policy Revisited," International Organization 43, no. 1 (Winter 1989): 169.

[10] Jack Levy remarks, “It is difficult to read both the theoretical literature in political science on the causes of war and historians' case studies of the origins of particular wars without being struck by the difference in their respective evaluations of the importance of domestic political factors.” Jack S. Levy, "Domestic Politics and War," The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18, no. 4: The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars (Spring 1988): 653.

[11] Schwartz, "Henry...Winning an Election Is Terribly Important,” 179.

[12] Schwartz, "Henry...Winning an Election Is Terribly Important,” 173.