My Review of A. Wess Mitchell's "Great Power Diplomacy"

 The Art of the Deal

 

Diplomat/historian A. Wess Mitchell has offered us a long history of diplomacy starting with Sparta’s conflict with Athens in 400 BCE up to the Nixon/Kissinger opening of China in the 1970’s. Instead of the direct application of force Mitchell views active diplomacy as a way of getting the best out of a weak hand and as a way to strengthen a strong hand in the game of nations.

 

His case studies also include Byzantium’s struggle against the Huns and Persia, Venice making peace with Milan to engage the Ottoman’s, Austria’s many struggles in Central Europe, France’s grand strategy in the 1600’s, Bismarck’s in the 1800’s and Britain’s at the turn of the 20^th Century. Above all to Mitchell, interests triumph over ideology requiring a nation to play the hand with the cards it is dealt.

 

Especially interesting to me was Austria’s Prince Kaunitz, Metternich’s predecessor, using Louis XIV’s mistress Madame Pompadour as a go between to establish an alliance with France against Frederick the Great’s Prussia. A few years later we see Austria, guided by Metternich making an alliance with Prussia to stave off France. Indeed, interests are far more permanent than alliances. Also fascinating are the machinations of France’s Cardinal Richelieu making an alliance with Protestant Sweden against Catholic Austria. Mind you this is against the backdrop of huge religious strife in Europe.

 

Mitchell discusses at length Britain’s realization that by 1900 it was overstretched and had to reduce its global commitments. Mitchell follows Lord Landsdowne as he makes deals with Japan limiting its involvement in the Western Pacific, with Russia in Central Asia and with the Untied States in the America’s. All of this was necessary to gird the nation for the war that would come with Germany. If there is one message in the book is that core interests take precedence over peripheral interests. This blog previously reviewed Kori Schaki’s work on the same topic. (See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Kori Schake's "Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony" )

 

Another lesson of the book is the importance of mobilizing effective coalitions and isolating the enemy. The worst thing that can happen is to be isolated against a strong enemy. Opponents have to be constrained and if they can’t be constrained by the threat of force, bribery sometimes works as in the case of Byzantium buying off the Huns. But bribery should not be confused with appeasement of a direct rival. In the case mentioned Persia was the direct rival and the bribes enabled Byzantium to hold its own.

 

In reading Mitchell’s book, one has to shudder just to think about Trump’s foreign policy. Instead of making alliances, he is destroying them and making America more isolated while Russia and China are moving in the fill in the vacuum, not a pleasant sight. ( See: Shulmaven: Some Thoughts on Trump's National Security Strategy ) One would hope that at least a few Trump staffers would sneak away to read this valuable volume on foreign policy.

 

My Review of Andrew Lambert's "No More Napoleons"

The Balance of Power

King’s College naval historian Andrew Lambert has written an over-detailed evaluation of British geopolitical strategy from 1793-1914. After fighting France for 22 years Britain settled on a strategy of offshore balancing and maintaining order in Europe enforced by the Royal Navy and a small expeditionary force. The initial goal was to prevent a revanchist France from regaining control of Europe. The architects were Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, Foreign Secretary Castlereagh, and the Duke of Wellington. The latter initially as the hero of Waterloo and later as prime minister. Their policies were enhanced by Lord Palmerston as both foreign secretary and prime minister.

Britain’s greatest fear was that a continental power could launch an invasion from the low countries. Hence it was crucial to keep France out of the Scheldt Estuary and the Port of Antwerp. When Belgium split off from Holland the 1839 Neutrality Treaty orchestrated by Palmerston kept France out. The result of that treaty and Britain’s troop presence in Belgium in 1870, kept both France and Germany out of Belgium during their war. This would not be so in 1914.

The linchpin of the strategy was the power of the Royal Navy whose goal was to be at least twice as strong as any two powers. Aside from a quantitative advantage the Royal Navy had the most technologically advanced fleet by taking advantage of steam power, screw propellers, gunnery, and hydrology. The Royal Navy truly ruled the waves and it enabled Britain to become a global power through its colonies, but for that power to be maintained there had to be an offshore balance in Europe.

For most of the 19^th century the policy succeeded largely because France was in a long-term relative decline while Britain was moving to its heights. However, after 1870 Britain entered into a relative decline in relationship to a newly reunified Germany. As a result, it required an alliance with France which severely limited Britain’s freedom of action. Britain learned the hard way in the trenches of France. Given all of Britain’s interest in Belgium, it is a wonder why Germany was unsure about Britain’s entry in World War I after it invaded Belgium.

Although Lambert discusses the 1815 Vienna settlement, he makes little note of Count Metternich of Austria whose interest in a stable Europe was greater than Britain’s. He also does not cite Henry Kissinger’s “A World Restored” on the Congress of Vienna. He also left out a discussion on the 1878 Congress of Berlin where British Prime Minister Disraeli played a leading role in settling, at least for a time, the Balkan question. There is way too much information in this book, and I would only recommend it to history nerds.

 

  

My Amazon Review of Martin Indyk's "Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy"

Metternich in the Middle East

Martin Indyk, two-time ambassador to Israel under President Clinton and special envoy to the middle east under President Obama, has written an homage to Henry Kissinger’s middle eastern diplomacy before and after the October 1973 war. Indyk quotes extensively from Kissinger’s “A World Restored,” a book I read fifty years ago, on the role of Count Metternich at the 1815 Congress of Vienna that established order in Europe for the next 100 years. To Kissinger the role of diplomacy is not so much as to establish peace, but rather to establish a stable order based upon the balance of power and legitimacy.

 

On becoming President Nixon’s national security advisor in 1969 and later Secretary of State, Kissinger’s goal for American foreign policy in the middle east was to get the Russians out of the region and to avoid a return to Israel’s pre-1967 borders. He succeeded in both of those tasks, but it took the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the statesmanship of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to make those goals a reality. Along the way U.S. forces had to go on a worldwide nuclear alert (Defcon 3) fearing a direct Russian military intervention in the region.

 

Indyk gives us a daily play-by-play of Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy in the region. First, by disengaging Israeli and Egyptian forces in the Suez Canal area and later the much more difficult negotiation involving the critical passes in the central Sinai. Similarly, Kissinger shuttled back and forth between Israel and Syria dealing with Syrian President Hafez Assad in negotiating a partial disengagement in the Golan area. Further Kissinger was not above being duplicitous by suggesting his ideas as coming directly from the parties involved and vice versa in search of a deal. Further, because Kissinger believed in hierarchy of power both the Jordanians and the Palestinians were largely frozen out of the process.

 

Not only did Kissinger understand the players, but he also understood the geography and the topography of the region to better understand the military situation on the ground. As a result, he created a step-by-step process whose results hold to this day.

 

On the way we meet such key Israeli players as Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin, defense minister Moshe Dayan and he brings out the much unheralded role of Israeli ambassador to the United States, Simcha Dinitz. Indyk relied on recently declassified sources in the United States and Israel and the held numerous interviews with Henry Kissinger.

 

While reading this book one marvels at Kissinger’s stamina shuttling back and forth between Israel, Egypt, and Syria. While all of this was going on Kissinger had to deal with the Russians on nuclear issues, the fall of the Nixon presidency under the strain of Watergate and the collapse of South Vietnam. His plate was more than full.

 

Indyk learned the hard way that potential big deals in the middle east have a way of blowing up. He was directly involved with President Clinton’s proposals with Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat in 2000 which blew up into the second intifada and further he was involved with President Obama’s efforts in 2013 which went nowhere. His lesson is that a peaceful order in the middle east will come gradually in small steps and the lure of the big deal is pure chimera.

For the full Amazon URL see: Metternich in the Middle East (amazon.com)

 

 

My Amazon Review of Richard J. Evans' "The Pursuit of Power: Europe, 1815-1914"

The European Century

The distinguished Oxford Historian Richard Evans has given us a kaleidoscopic view of European civilization during the century it came to dominate the globe. A reader will learn a lot by going through this very long book (848 pages in the print edition without footnotes or endnotes.) In my opinion too long for the average lay reader. Evans offers us a bottom-up socio-political history where the focus is more on the average citizen and culture than the political elite.

In essence Evans discusses how Europe came to terms with the political earthquakes brought about by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars and the industrial revolution. In 1815 the so called Concert of Europe is brought into being by Metternich as a conservative reaction to the French Revolution. That framework largely keeps the peace until 1848.  Nevertheless the ideas of the French Revolution bubble up and gradually work to democratize European society as the franchise is extended to more and more people. He highlights the conflict between the liberal reformers in the bourgeoisie and their more democratic counterparts whose visions extend to feminism and socialism.

Along the way nationalism becomes the most powerful force in Europe as Italy and Germany unify and the minorities within the decaying Austrian and Ottoman Empires revolt. It is those revolts that light the match that starts World War I.

Nationalism also becomes the motivating force in the establishment of European colonial empires in Asia and Africa. Territory abroad yielded political prestige home. The power of nationalism proves itself in 1914 when the previously anti-war socialist parties all vote for war credits in their respective nations.

All told The Pursuit of Power is well worth the read, but it will take a patient lay reader to get through it all.

The full Amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1QBMCP030IDI0/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Henry Kissinger's "World Order"

You can’t be a Kantian in a Hobbesian World

Herr Doktor Professor Kissinger proves that a 19^th Century man can offer much needed foreign policy advice for the 21^st Century.  Although it would be ideal to bring reason and rationality to bear to solve the world’s problems, we unfortunately live in a world that is an inherently dangerous place. The goal of U.S. foreign policy is to “achieve equilibrium while restraining the dogs of war” while being mindful that “our universal principles don’t necessarily hold in other parts of the world.”

“World Order” is a logical follow-up to Kissinger’s “A World Restored,” his history of The Congress of Vienna and its aftermath and “Diplomacy,” his treatise on the history and craft of international relations of Europe since the middle ages. As always he is a fan of the Westphalian System created in 1648 which gave birth to the modern state. The four principles of the Treaty (ies) of Westphalia are 1) noninterference in the domestic affairs of other states, 2) inviolability of borders, 3) that states are sovereign and 4) encouragement of international law. All these four principles were to be enforced by a balance of power among the various states. When the balance of power was disturbed, war was the result. Further, because Westphalia was value neutral, it did not speak to legitimacy. You have to take the good with the bad.

His heroes are the grandmasters of the Westphalian system. Among them are Cardinal Richelieu, Metternich, Castlereagh, Talleyrand and Palmerston. He also admires Kautilya of ancient India and Theodore Roosevelt. Each and every one of them are foreign policy realists. His greatest disdain is for Woodrow Wilson who placed values, many of them noble, over the need to preserve the peace.

Unfortunately radical Islam, for example, does not play by Westphalian rules. This is especially true because there are so many non-state actors associated with it. Indeed one of the most vexing foreign policy questions we face is whether Iran is a state or an Islamic movement.

“World Order” is up to date in that he discusses the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Kissinger also devotes an entire chapter to the role of the internet. Here this 91 year old man was tutored by Google’s Eric Schmidt. Would we all be actively learning at that age? He discusses the implications of cyber warfare and the hyper speed of communication that can outrun more deliberate pace of diplomacy. This makes life more difficult and dangerous because when the chips are down states people have to act on limited information.  

You don’t have to agree with all of it and his personal history is far from perfect but, Kissinger has written a book that should be required reading for President Obama, Secretary Kerry and all of the candidates for president in 2016.  We can’t afford the foreign policy disasters of the past dozen years.

The Amazon URL is: http://www.amazon.com/review/R7QR481EYT92K