Empathy and Realism
I liked Steve Clemons’ remarks on the connection between a realist foreign policy and an empathetic one.
I think this is where the prospects for liberal/realist synthesis really come into view. At its best, realism isn’t just cynicism, it’s a recognition of the important reality that other countries have their own real and perceived interests and that effective US foreign policy needs to take that into account. And at its worst, the liberal humanitarian impulse becomes less about actually helping other than about appropriating vaguely high-minded rhetoric to mass an agenda of arrogance (see e.g., Max Boot’s paen to the virtues of imperialism). Productive synthesis between this impulses can be a guide to good policy, and the useful corrective in both cases is empathy — the idea that others’ point of view should be taken seriously.
22 Responses to “Empathy and Realism”
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December 11th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Also, it’s a good suggestion to retain basic logic and reasoned arguments as bases for foreign policy, rather than enshrining trivialities or dogmas into a supposed ’school’ of policy.
December 11th, 2008 at 9:12 am
O/T, but fascinating: Paul Weyrich being a complete douchebag again, still trying to claim that a certain portion of the thousands and thousands and thousands of tons of low grade “yellowcake” uranium that Iraq possessed for decades was really a heroic discovery by the Bush Jr. administration and thus tha libruls simply refuse to admit that George W. Reagan Hoover Jr. saved us all.
Those who think it’s news that Iraq possessed low grade uranium may want to revisit the IAEA report of Iraq’s thousands and thousands of tons of it, none of which substituted for actual nuclear technology.
December 11th, 2008 at 9:16 am
Not to get all political science on you, but realism as a theory of behavior suggests very little room for the productive value of “empathy”. States are interested in one motivating factor–survival. If Turkey believes that an independent Kurdistan will threaten its survival as a regime, it will oppose all attempts to “liberate” Iraq or negotiate a federal state. Clemons isn’t really talking about empathy, he’s talking about diplomacy (or constructing stable alliances). We convince Turkey of our shared interests not through some group therapy session, but by spending some U.S. resources to rein in Kurdish separatists. The biggest problem with the Bush administration is that they assumed that the U.S. was so powerful it didn’t really need allies and, as a result, hired a bunch of people who were, quite frankly, bad at their jobs. We don’t need empathy, we need intelligence.
December 11th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Braden clarifies my comment. This is where generalizations of foreign policy approaches can easily begin to be pushed as pseudo-scientific schools, in which loads of assumptions are treated poli-sci fashion as empirical theories, in reality highly ideological.
Be very, very careful about anyone moving from reasonable statements that states are interested in increasing their ’security’ and ’survival’ (each of which are also definitional terms) to dogmatic attempts to make this into some sort of scientific sounding approach.
Maybe we should posit “realistickism” as an alternative development.
December 11th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Even if your objectives are blatantly imperialist, it behooves you to know the lay of the land, including the local mindset, before you can take over.
For example, the early British East India Company got nowhere until it learned the ins-and-outs of Subcontinent politics and how to pull the appropriate strings.
December 11th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Actually to me it looks like Ben Katcher wrote that not Steve Clemons.
The Bush administration’s greatest failure to empathize in the Turkish context was its inability to appreciate that even a successful overthrow of the Baathist regime in Iraq was likely to result in greater autonomy for Iraqi Kurds and instability along Turkey’s southeastern border. It was this fact, rather than anti-Americanism or weak knees, that was the decisive factor in the Turkish parliament’s decision on March 1, 2003 to prohibit U.S. forces from using its territory to open a northern front against Saddam.
As a citizen of the world, I empathize with the minority Kurds who have long been persecuted and oppressed by the Turkish state, just as I empathize with Palestinians under Israeli occupation.
As an anti-dictator liberal hawk, I do believe a war with Iran would be “unrealistic.” I am interested to see what Obama does about Pakistan.
Having a democratic neighbor in Iraq and a decently treated Kurdish minority will benefit Turkey in the long run. To Turkey’s credit it has made some helpful diplomatic efforts regarding Syria and Iran. The sooner Europe stops making excuses and lets Turkey in, the better.
December 11th, 2008 at 10:48 am
duBois: Perhaps the most evil aspect of the Niger-yellowcake scam, that at the very time the hawks were, well, hawking this fake story (that Saddam was going to buy hundreds of tons of low grade uranium from a French-controlled facility in Niger from which it would have to truck out the uranium so as to avoid the U.S. no-fly zone) was that the pushers AND the major media very well knew that Iraq already possessed thousands and thousands of tons of low-grade uranium and were limited not by lack of low-grade uranium but refinement technology & technique.
December 11th, 2008 at 11:01 am
For me “realism” is synonymous with callousness. You identify with and partner up with the local dictatorial power, so theweaker local parties are screwed. Syria’s intelligence service assassinate a prominent Lebanese politician? tough shit, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. (that led to the Rose revolution). Genearl Musharraf makes a mockery of Pakistan’s democratic forces, tough shit, we have a war on terror to fight. We must never criticize Israel, b/c they’re an important ally. In the long run this sort of thing is being unrealistic.
December 11th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Most realists would argue that the added value of their theory is that decisions can be made without the necessity to empathize or understand the beliefs of leaders in other countries. In other words, motives can be assumed to be the same for all states because every leader must, first and foremost, secure his or her country’s security. Now, every state’s situation will vary, so good realists will use a state’s strategic situation (its military resources, diplomatic alliances, internal cohesion and economic prosperity) to develop an effective strategy to mitigate conflict. The ultimate failure of Bush-era diplomacy was its assumption that the U.S. was powerful enough that it could coerce compliance from allies without seriously considering each state’s unique circumstances. But, this isn’t empathy, it’s just being an intelligent, well-informed diplomat.
In fact, the theory loses all relevance if you are forced to consider the individual circumstances of each country to determine their long-term strategic interests. It becomes little more than a self-evident statement that “not all states will share the same interests.” I guess if this statement comes as a surprise to some, perhaps the theory still has some value.
December 11th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
So should we come up with a new name for empathetic realism? How about Bayesianism?
December 11th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Is the word “diplomacy” so foreign? However much is felt, it only makes sense to consider the interests of foreign powers when dealing with them—how else can you understand their behavior and make reasonable predictions about how they will respond to our actions?
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