Harvard International Review: The Limits of Neorealism

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The Limits of Neorealism

Marginal States and International Relations Theory
From Interventionism, Vol. 26 (1) - Spring 2004

Doug Lieb is a staff writer at the Harvard International Review. The foreign policy of small states tends to attract little public or scholarly attention. Much of the discussion about the international role of less powerful nations seems to acquire a mocking tone, flippantly dismissing Switzerlands quaint neutrality or famine-stricken Eritreas place in the US coalition for the war in Iraq. Since the powerful naturally contribute more to the shaping of international circumstances, a discourse that eschews weaker countries in favor of more influential ones makes practical sense. Examining small states, however, amounts to more than musing over puzzling curiosities. It can inform the consideration of pressing practical issues by improving the means used to approach them. In other words, small states provide compelling test cases for international relations theory. Examining the presence of relatively impotent states at the margins of broad military coalitions sharpens the debate between competing theoretical models of international alliance. Specifically, current weak-state behavior in military coalitions demonstrates that a purely neorealist theoretical perspective is insufficient. Accounting for domestic and institutional factors provides a more complete explanation of alliance patterns. Weak-state behavior also lends empirical credibility to the idea that states may choose to bandwagon with, rather than balance against, a pressing threat. The argument leading to these conclusions will begin with an explanation of the relevant theory. It will then consider two case studies: Iceland and its membership in NATO, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia, as well as these nations relationships to the US-led war in Iraq. Essential concepts shared by these theoretical models are bandwagoning and balancing. Richard Harknett and Jeffrey A. VanDenBerg, Professors of Political Science at University of Cincinnati, explain: Balancing is alignment driven by the desire to find security in resisting or defeating ones most pressing threat; bandwagoning is alignment driven by the desire to find security in appeasing ones most pressing threat. States may balance or bandwagon regardless of theoretical approach; an approach that accounts for omnialignment recognizes that balancing and bandwagoning may occur with and against threats both internal and external. Specifically, neorealism holds at its basis that external pressures will outweigh domestic ones as state leaders rationally choose a foreign policy that will minimize security risk in an anarchical international system. In other words, the neorealist approach, whose foremost advocate is Kenneth Waltz, presumes that elitesthe empowered individuals shaping their nations foreign policywill be free of any domestic constraints that might sway their strategy for global interactions. National politics, international institutions, and ideological or cultural affinities among nations have little relevance. At odds with neorealism is the domestic-level (or liberal) theoretical approach. Miriam Fendius Elman, Professor of Political Science at Arizona State University, writes that scholars in this camp

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expect that state attributes and societal conflicts will affect foreign policy choices and will often render statesmen incapable of responding to the exigencies of the international environment. Institutionalism also places a limit on the neorealist premise of fully rational and self-interested leaders seeking risk minimization. Its constraint, however, comes from the binding political and ideological ties forged within and cemented by such international institutions as the United Nations. On balance, the truth lies between the extremes. Supposing that leaders who author foreign policy have absolutely no stake in the politics of their nations is as impractical as supposing that they are so preoccupied with those politics as to develop strategy without giving any thought to external conditions. It is similarly difficult to conceive of major global institutions as either having no effect at all upon leaders thought processes or as compelling leaders to take action that runs directly counter to their national interests. How does a nation that laid down arms sometime in the 14th Century, according to its Ambassador to the United States, end up a member of NATO? Iceland isquite literally in the North Atlantic, but that geographic distinction hardly seems to have any significance as a membership criterion, as Greece would no doubt attest. This is indeed an intuitive quandary: Iceland has no military but participates in the worlds most powerful formalized military coalition. The lack of an armed force is not to suggest, however, that Iceland contributes nothing to NATO. The coalition maintains a base at Keflavik, which was once a strategic location for defending the Atlantic against a possible Soviet threat. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the bases particular location no longer provides a particular advantage, but the forces it accommodates must be stationed somewhere. (Incidentally, the capital city of Reykjavik is also a preferred location for NATO summits and meetings. As the site of the groundbreaking 1986 summit between US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, Reykjavik has a political symbolism that promotes the public image of a conciliatory and peace-seeking post-Cold War NATO.) NATOs expected cost of defending Iceland from external attack is negligiblethe small, non-belligerent, and relatively remote nation is hardly a logical target. There is little difficulty in understanding, then, why NATO wants Iceland. Instead, the question of theoretical significance is why Iceland wants NATO, of which it has been a member since the 1940s. That Icelands greatest (and perhaps only) substantive threat is Great Britain might seem surprising. Iceland has long endured heavy economic dependence on its fishing industry and has consistently attempted to assert exclusive fishing rights in surrounding waters. Indeed, no other nation has historically been more reliant upon its fishing industry; even with recent diversification spurred by tourism, marine products account for over 70 percent of the value of Icelands exports. Depopulation of fishing grounds and serious competition in maritime industries, then, are among the most serious threats to its domestic stability and welfare that Iceland faces. In 1975, concerned by declining cod populations and a growing British industry presence, Iceland unilaterally extended its control over fishing rights to 200 miles from its borders, out from the previous demarcation of 50 miles. The British refused to comply, and a territorial battle ensured. Icelandic trawlers and coast guard ships and more powerful British frigates rammed, slashed, andin rare cases shot at each other. This was the closest to military conflict Iceland had been since Viking days. It was the Cod War, and there were casualties (injured crew members on both sides) and substantial property damage. The puzzle, then, is that Iceland remained and remains part of a military alliance of which its greatest threat was and is a powerful member. From a theoretical view, this is clear but unsurprising evidence of bandwagoning alleviating a threat by joining with it. The critical implication is that neorealist theory cannot fully explain this decision to bandwagon. Why did Iceland not alignor even consider

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aligningwith the Soviet camp? (The notion of a stubborn island state joining with the Soviets to create a thorny balance of power with a proximate, economically dominant world power, after all, resonates well with Cold War history.) A complete answer must account for the domestic and institutional factors that neorealism would have us dismiss. First, Soviet alignment simply made no sense within an Icelandic social context. In a recent public address, Icelandic President lafur Ragnar Grmsson explained that Icelands current reluctance to join the EU was largely due to its cultural wariness of bureaucracy and traditional emphasis on face to face problem-solving. Grmsson cited the USSR as the model of the massive, bureaucratic, competitionreducing entity that would be entirely incompatible with Iceland itself. It would require further analysis and speculation to determine whether withdrawal from NATO (or, given that the maritime economic threat to domestic stability was longstanding, initial non-alignment with NATO) in favor of the Soviet bloc would have a rational choice for Icelands security-seeking government. Iceland, as a liberal polity, writes Elman, was and is constructed to allow for the participation of societal actors in policy formation. The cultural incompatibility of the Soviet ethic with Icelandic social norms, therefore, effectively prevented Soviet alignment from being considered as a viable option. In other words, domestic conditions constrained policymakers set of choices for minimized risk. A purely neorealist perspective neglects this reality. Second, and perhaps more tangible, NATO itself facilitated Icelands easement of the British threat. The base at Keflavik proved to be a bargaining chip that drew other NATO partners, most notably the United States, into the dispute as mediators. Icelands threat to deny NATO access to the Keflavik base extended the costs of the Cod War to the United States, which had no stake in the outcome of the conflict itself. Britain agreed to a solution in which its fishermen would informally respect Icelands 200-mile territorial claim without a permanent governmental concession of British fishing claims there. The structure of the coalition thereby provided an incentive for conflict mediation (and, as a result, for the reduction of the imperilment to Icelands stability and welfare). In other words, membership in a multinational institution provided a mechanism that would not have otherwise existed for ending a security threat. This, too, is a truth of Icelands alignment behavior that strict neorealism disregards. The more contemporary example of Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), members of the US-led coalition for the war in Iraq, similarly reveal the importance of domestic concerns in determining states alignment behavior. Both of these tiny Pacific Island nations (Palaus population is under 20,000) maintain a unique relationship with the United States, governed by separate Compacts of Free Association that essentially exchanges long-term aid and protection for American rights to use the islands for defense facilities. Palau and Micronesia neither contributeaside from political and moral supportto the US cause in Iraq, nor do they burden the US effort. As Palau and FSM allied with a powerful nation closely linked to their interests, US President George W. Bush cited the two states commitments to the war, among others, in his efforts to persuade the public of the coalitions diversity. That both sides have at least a little to gain from the Pacific nations inclusion in the Iraq alliance seems clear. The surprisingly acrimonious and complex nature of the Palau and FSMs relationship to the United States, however, makes their coalition status worth investigating. Palau President Tommy Remengesau, Jr. described his nation as overwhelmed by the United States Homeland Security effort. He criticized both the United States desire to officially tighten immigration controls to limit Palauians ability to freely enter the United Statesa right that has already been limited but is guaranteed by the initial Compactand the US demand that Palau improve security technology and enforcement at its airport, which it cannot afford to do. Palau even showed some unexpected pluckiness in its recent dealings with the United States, rejecting membership in the National Exchange Carriers Association (which would drastically reduce long-distance telephone rates) because it believed the offer was merely a gambit to induce a formal agreement on immigration restrictions. Remengesau summarized his

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nations view of the dynamic of its relations with the United States: All we get is statements that were their friends, but nothing in deed is being done to treat us as friends. FSM was in a more precarious position when, like Palau, it agreed to join the coalition against Iraq in March 2003. Its compact, shared with the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), was about to be considered for renewal and amendment in September 2003 by Washington. RMI provides the benefit that the United States derives from its ties to these island states, since the Ronald Reagan Missile Defense Test Site on RMIs Kwajalein Atoll is the only location in the world with the capacity for fullscale testing of long-range missiles. Though FSM received aid under the initial Compact, RMI possessed the only substantive bargaining power. FSMs desire for a Compact extension, then, was necessarily on shaky ground. Clearly, then, while the thought of a US attack on Palau or FSM is ludicrous, the United Stateswith security mandates and restrictions and well-leveraged aid that may be withdrawnwas to some degree these countries adversary. One would be hard-pressed to think of any country that could have conceivably bothered to directly threaten Palau or FSMs security. Given these states pre-existing dependence upon the United States, a US government advancing aid cuts and costly anti-terrorism policies was actually their most pressing threat. Palau and FSMs alignment choice, therefore, represents bandwagoningan attempt to curry favor with a controlling threat. This was bandwagoning of a peculiar sort, however. The threat the United States posed (and still poses) to Palau and FSM is unlike a conventional one because it did not (and does not) directly threaten the power of the state, that is, the government and its apparatus. That is, even an abrupt and total termination of US ties to these countries would not have had any direct effect on actual state security, per se. This is the critical distinction that brings us to the boundaries of neorealism, for according to strict neorealist doctrine, Palau and FSM would have only aligned if state leaders thought it would minimize an entirely external security risk. There would be, of course, a security risk to the governments of Palau and FSM if the United States slashed aid or burdened these nations with unreasonable anti-terrorism restrictionsan internal risk that would arise indirectly and would depend upon domestic conditions. Both countries, particularly FSM, lag behind world standards for material well-being. Life expectancy and infant mortality measures have not significantly improved in FSM for thirty years. Palau is in the process of moving its capital city (or, more appropriately, its capital settlement) to a town with no roads. It has also struggled notoriously to provide basic law enforcement; the methamphetamine trade is prevalent, corruption scandals abound, and politically motivated assassinations and firebombings have practically become the norm. A withdrawal of US aid or a reprioritization of domestic spending to meet US anti-terrorism demands would likely sound the financial death knell for these governments, particularly in Palau, where the history of drastic political upheavalespecially shocking given the countrys sizehas essentially destroyed the concept of governmental legitimacy anyway. From a theoretical perspective, then, considering the particulars of the domestic situation is necessary to understand why the indirect US threat was sufficient to motivate joining the US-led coalition. In more general terms, alignment choices may take into account both the less conventional and indirect threats posed by foreign powers and the qualities of the national environment that make these threats pressing enough to compel action. Analyzing foreign policy behavior requires more than the discussion of the purely external, more than the assumption of an unconstrained actor. The test case of small states, in addition to grounding the idea of bandwagoning in empirical reality, reveals the contributions of domestic and institutional characteristics to foreign policy choices. While neorealism is clearly a vital componentmaybe the vital componentof a theoretical model of international relations, it has its limits. Studying Palau and its marginal counterparts cannot answer the imperative foreign policy

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questions of our time. It can, however, move us toward a more comprehensive and inclusive theoretical discoursethe only language in which we can pen our answers when we find them. Fatal error: Call to undefined function display_ad() in /home/harva5/public_html/inc/footer.inc on line 6

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