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Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy: How Generals, Weapons Manufacturers, and Foreign Governments Shape American Foreign Policy
This book argues that while the US president makes foreign policy decisions based largely on political pressures, it is concentrated interests that shape the incentive structures in which he and other top officials operate.
The author identifies three groups most likely to be influential: government contractors, the national security bureaucracy, and foreign governments. This book shows that the public choice perspective is superior to a theory of grand strategy in explaining the most important aspects of American foreign policy, including the war on terror, policy toward China, and the distribution of US forces abroad. Arguing that American leaders are selected to respond to public opinion, not necessarily according to their ability to formulate and execute long-terms plans, the author shows how mass attitudes are easily malleable in the domain of foreign affairs due to ignorance with regard to the topic, the secrecy that surrounds national security issues, the inherent complexity of the issues involved, and most importantly, clear cases of concentrated interests.
The book will be of interest to students and scholars of American Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis and Global Governance.
The author identifies three groups most likely to be influential: government contractors, the national security bureaucracy, and foreign governments. This book shows that the public choice perspective is superior to a theory of grand strategy in explaining the most important aspects of American foreign policy, including the war on terror, policy toward China, and the distribution of US forces abroad. Arguing that American leaders are selected to respond to public opinion, not necessarily according to their ability to formulate and execute long-terms plans, the author shows how mass attitudes are easily malleable in the domain of foreign affairs due to ignorance with regard to the topic, the secrecy that surrounds national security issues, the inherent complexity of the issues involved, and most importantly, clear cases of concentrated interests.
The book will be of interest to students and scholars of American Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis and Global Governance.
224 pages, ebook
Published December 28, 2021
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December 29, 2021
Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy: How Generals, Weapons Manufacturers, and Foreign Governments Shape American Foreign Policy (2021) by Richard Hanania outlines why US foreign policy is best understood using a public choice theory framework. This is in contrast to the way that US foreign policy is often analysed where a unitary actor model with the US having a coherent grand strategy is posited. The book is an academic book but it is very readable.
After an Introduction the ideas of grand strategy are described, then a public choice model of US foreign affairs. The US’s actions as a rogue superpower are later described. The US’s peculiar actions of building up and then balancing geopolitical is outlined. The role and failures of US sanctions as a tool of foreign policy is then examined. Hanania then goes over the “War on Terror” from a public choice perspective. Finally the book’s conclusion brings all the discussed themes together.
Hanania makes the argument very well that the US’s actions are very hard to comprehend if viewed from the perspective of some kind of coherent strategy. The shifting justifications of the Iraq and Afghan wars make no sense. The initial push into Afghanistan to capture Osama Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda operatives is shown to be something that could have been achieved diplomatically. The Taliban repeatedly tried to negotiate with the US and appeared extremely likely to hand over various people had the US put much effort into negotiations. Once in Afghanistan the remarkable lack of foresight reflected that the US had started the war more for US internal political reasons than as part of a coherent strategy. Similarly in Iraq after the push for a war based on WMD and links to Al Qaeda after winning the initial conflict and having found none of the alleged weapons or links to terrorism instead a push was made for national building and the establishment of democracy. But so little planning had been put into post war scenarios that the idea that the invasion was part of an overarching plan is not credible.
The idea of looking at US foreign policy as being driven by various interests and players in Washington makes a lot of sense, particularly in the post Cold War era. A unified ‘blob’ that is sometimes described doesn’t work as well as the idea of having various institutions push for various outcomes. Also considering the political needs of presidents appears to be well worth considering. Obama’s curious actions in increasing troop numbers while announcing an exit date in Afghanistan are completely comprehensible as being politically reactive while the idea that they were part of some long term strategy is far fetched. Hanania’s description of institutions pushing for certain outcomes is less strong. Certainly the military doesn’t wish to have reduced funding or be seen to have failed, but this doesn’t push the idea that the military is keen on starting war. Madeleine Albright’s alleged quote “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” would seem to indicate that the US military was less keen on starting military action. However once the US military is engaged in a war with fairly low losses the loss of faith and prestige from pulling out does seem to be an important concern.
Hanania makes a very interesting point that the US in the past supported the economic development of the USSR in the 1920s while refusing to recognise it diplomatically. The US under Clinton also helped China’s development in the 1990s while downplaying it’s human rights record and touting optimistic self-serving beliefs that greater wealth in China would lead to democratisation. Then while China was becoming richer and hence more powerful economically the US tried and is trying to counter Chinese power. These strategies are clearly incoherent from a grand strategy point of view but make sense if from the point of view of the US firms lobbying for access to markets while foreign policy professionals worry about the impact of powerful states.
Along the way in the book Hanania makes the point that the US’s actions are unpredictable and problematic and that this is a serious concern for the alleged liberal international rules based order. He writes
“There is a contradiction at the heart of liberal internationalism that has never been resolved: while the international politics it aims for is grounded in the idea of the sovereign equality of states, in reality it is only the powerful Western democracies, particularly the United States, that are allowed to decide when it is appropriate to violate the default prohibition on the use of force.”
He also points out that the US’s actions of removing Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi mean that foreign powers cannot trust the US. The same point is also made with the US’s creation of a an agreement with Iran on nuclear weapons and subsequent abandonment of that agreement. It’s also a point that shows the lack of real long term strategy.
Amusingly wikipedia has ‘doctrines’ for most post war US presidents. Hanania’s book shows just how contrived and constructed after the fact the doctrines are.
The book has less on general Cold War strategy, which is perhaps because this is the time when the US had the most long term and coherent strategy. The US’s opposition to Communist and Soviet expansion was fairly consistent across a considerable period of time. However since the fall of the Soviet Union US strategy is surely better described as ad hoc and driven by interest groups and presidential politics.
Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy makes it’s points clearly and well. It provides a much better framework for pondering US foreign policy than pontifications of worthies trying to justify the actions of US presidents as being part of some grand strategy. The book is also readable and fairly short. It’s well worth a read for anyone looking for a different interpretation of US foreign policy.
After an Introduction the ideas of grand strategy are described, then a public choice model of US foreign affairs. The US’s actions as a rogue superpower are later described. The US’s peculiar actions of building up and then balancing geopolitical is outlined. The role and failures of US sanctions as a tool of foreign policy is then examined. Hanania then goes over the “War on Terror” from a public choice perspective. Finally the book’s conclusion brings all the discussed themes together.
Hanania makes the argument very well that the US’s actions are very hard to comprehend if viewed from the perspective of some kind of coherent strategy. The shifting justifications of the Iraq and Afghan wars make no sense. The initial push into Afghanistan to capture Osama Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda operatives is shown to be something that could have been achieved diplomatically. The Taliban repeatedly tried to negotiate with the US and appeared extremely likely to hand over various people had the US put much effort into negotiations. Once in Afghanistan the remarkable lack of foresight reflected that the US had started the war more for US internal political reasons than as part of a coherent strategy. Similarly in Iraq after the push for a war based on WMD and links to Al Qaeda after winning the initial conflict and having found none of the alleged weapons or links to terrorism instead a push was made for national building and the establishment of democracy. But so little planning had been put into post war scenarios that the idea that the invasion was part of an overarching plan is not credible.
The idea of looking at US foreign policy as being driven by various interests and players in Washington makes a lot of sense, particularly in the post Cold War era. A unified ‘blob’ that is sometimes described doesn’t work as well as the idea of having various institutions push for various outcomes. Also considering the political needs of presidents appears to be well worth considering. Obama’s curious actions in increasing troop numbers while announcing an exit date in Afghanistan are completely comprehensible as being politically reactive while the idea that they were part of some long term strategy is far fetched. Hanania’s description of institutions pushing for certain outcomes is less strong. Certainly the military doesn’t wish to have reduced funding or be seen to have failed, but this doesn’t push the idea that the military is keen on starting war. Madeleine Albright’s alleged quote “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” would seem to indicate that the US military was less keen on starting military action. However once the US military is engaged in a war with fairly low losses the loss of faith and prestige from pulling out does seem to be an important concern.
Hanania makes a very interesting point that the US in the past supported the economic development of the USSR in the 1920s while refusing to recognise it diplomatically. The US under Clinton also helped China’s development in the 1990s while downplaying it’s human rights record and touting optimistic self-serving beliefs that greater wealth in China would lead to democratisation. Then while China was becoming richer and hence more powerful economically the US tried and is trying to counter Chinese power. These strategies are clearly incoherent from a grand strategy point of view but make sense if from the point of view of the US firms lobbying for access to markets while foreign policy professionals worry about the impact of powerful states.
Along the way in the book Hanania makes the point that the US’s actions are unpredictable and problematic and that this is a serious concern for the alleged liberal international rules based order. He writes
“There is a contradiction at the heart of liberal internationalism that has never been resolved: while the international politics it aims for is grounded in the idea of the sovereign equality of states, in reality it is only the powerful Western democracies, particularly the United States, that are allowed to decide when it is appropriate to violate the default prohibition on the use of force.”
He also points out that the US’s actions of removing Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi mean that foreign powers cannot trust the US. The same point is also made with the US’s creation of a an agreement with Iran on nuclear weapons and subsequent abandonment of that agreement. It’s also a point that shows the lack of real long term strategy.
Amusingly wikipedia has ‘doctrines’ for most post war US presidents. Hanania’s book shows just how contrived and constructed after the fact the doctrines are.
The book has less on general Cold War strategy, which is perhaps because this is the time when the US had the most long term and coherent strategy. The US’s opposition to Communist and Soviet expansion was fairly consistent across a considerable period of time. However since the fall of the Soviet Union US strategy is surely better described as ad hoc and driven by interest groups and presidential politics.
Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy makes it’s points clearly and well. It provides a much better framework for pondering US foreign policy than pontifications of worthies trying to justify the actions of US presidents as being part of some grand strategy. The book is also readable and fairly short. It’s well worth a read for anyone looking for a different interpretation of US foreign policy.
October 7, 2023
- # Essence
- Well-researched book, but *at times **very* meandering and initially quite challenging to read (because it's dry)
- This continues later, where it gets a real drag. Once the true message is out, everything seems to slow down *so badly*...
- However, in the text there are some gems, partially hidden as motivations, partially as side-notes
- I mainly document these below
- [Cory Doctorow **harshly** criticises](https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/13/pu...) Public Choice Theorists' attitude towards industry and regulation
- This was not part of the book, but the implications are obvious.
- Should this framework be applied to the commons, concentrated interests will dominate exploitation of the commons
- This is something worth fighting against
- In the book, this was not mentioned at all. Why?
===============
- # Chapter 2
collapsed:: true
- Immigration into the US was changed in 1965 by Johnson, from a quotas-based system to a employability-dominated one.
- Republicans added a "family reunion" clause to keep whites dominant (historically, most US Americans came from Europe)
- But few US Americans had relatives who wanted to emigrate *left there*
- So this mechanism allowed for a strong effect of
> accelerating the demographic decline of the white majority
- This was unintended. Why it wasn't changed back is simple.. construction of the bicameral system, lobbying *by the new arrivals*, businesses liking cheap labor
- Public choice is influenced by (all sorts of)(spontaneously formed) groups, and
> Articulated most famously by Olson (1971), perhaps the most fundamental insight of public choice theory is that small groups with a concentrated interest in a policy outcome are more likely to get their way than larger groups with more diffuse interests, and this is true even if a larger group has more of an interest in the policy outcome in the aggregate
- Even the president is not except from those influences:
> Notably, there is nothing in our system that selects for individuals that come up with and implement successful long-term plans while in government.
- This spells trouble, especially for Marxists: anytime any group is fragmented, the minority with the high stake dominates the direction!
- Tax system, defence, real-estate-*enabling* policy (S21), regime change, smoking industry...
- AND OF COURSE THE DOOM OF US ALL
> One recent study showed that Canadians were much more likely to feel a duty to vote than a duty to be informed (...)
and, likewise, quoted from Jones2020:ch2,
> since voters have short memories, the political system focuses on pleasing them in the near term
- # Chapter 3: The Rogue Superpower
collapsed:: true
- This details the various violations of international treaties, especially by the USA. This is not because Hanania isn't a patriot (he *definitely* is!), but rather because the USA are the prime violator of international law.
- USA often try to frame their "interventions" as necessary for national security or (alternatively) as humanitarian - this falls short in ~~several~~most cases, and recently (surely since Libya) do not even bother to deploy these kinds of rationales anymore
- The Libya conflict (January 2011 to ~August 2011) soured international relations, because the US used the UNSC to get permission to establish a no-fly-zone (together with France and the UK), where China and Russia abstained. Both veto-powers did not expect the US and her allies to also deploy ground troops (special forces) and stir unrest, basically pushing (and enabling) regime change.
Libya is in a state of unrest ever since
- Subsequently, there was less cooperation in the UNSC, especially in Syria, where Russia was not to be convinced to let Assad fall.
- US sanctions crippled Syria's economy, forcing a decline of 75 % (more than Japan and Germany in WW2..)
-
> North Korean officials specifically cited Libya as a reason not to give up their nuclear deterrent
- ## There is a section on other nations' violations:
- Russia in Georgia/South Ossetia and Ukraine/Krim
- But in both cases not the goal to eliminate the government:
> Yet its goals in these conflicts have been minor relative to what the United States has sought to accomplish through its wars. Russia has occupied small parts of its neighbors, rather than removing and killing their governments and seeking to fundamentally remake their societies
- The 2021 Invasion of Ukraine by russia surely escalates this
-
> China likewise has no long history of regime change abroad (...) We are now approaching two generations without Beijing going to war against a foreign country.
- ### US Troop Deployments abroad
| Year | Germany | Italy | Japan | South Korea | United Kingdom |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1951 | 176k | - | 172k | 326k | 26k |
| 2019 | 47k | 15k | 62k | 30k | 11k |
- Turns out that the (relative) distribution of deployments have not changed since 1950
- In fairness, highlighting ~1000 troops in Turkey, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE and Quatar is a bit weird - a single carrier strike group employs more than 7500 troops!
- Indeed, all these points lead to one conclusion:
**In the public choice model**
- ### The Military is just another bureaucracy!
- Therefore, it aims to retain the status quo, and make no/only minor changes
- ... while retaining or enlarging its budget
- ## Conclusion
-
> In fact, the record makes it clear that not only does the United States not set a good example for other nations to follow, *but it is an outlier in how it treats other countries*.
Ouch!
> During the Cold War, the United States attempted *on average* approximately **two covert regime changes a year**
> It is the only nation in the world that uses military force to remove governments it does not like as a regular part of its foreign policy
Devastating
- # Chapter 4: Build, then Balance
collapsed:: true
- The idea of Chapter 2 is applied here:
- Why did the US built up the Soviet Union and later, China, by the private sector?
- Why did it not manage to keep both powers from rising, by governmental action?
- -> Because the government has very little incentive to stop *already established* trade
- Fun fact, during Stalin's first two 5-year-plans, Soviet Russia's economic output doubled *twice*
- Also, Heny Ford helped a lot, from 600 tractors in 1913 to ~60000 in 1930
-
-
- # Chapter 5: American Sanctions: Ineffective, immoral, and politically convenient
collapsed:: true
- No pushback explains via the public choice theory how sanctions come to be, even though they are mostly ineffective at their *stated goals*
> If sanctions are meant to accomplish domestic political goals that are symbolic in nature, then there may be ways to achieve the same benefits without harming so many people
- ## The humanitarian costs of sanctions
- Original US law prohibits sanctions to include food and medicine sectors!
Financial sector actions extend to these regimes..
- Sanctions' I'll effects are harder to attribute than WMDs
> If bombings caused as much economic and humanitarian destruction as sanctions did, the harm would be indisputable and such policies would be widely acknowledged as war crimes
This makes little sense IMO, Hanania's got it backwards?!?
- ## Sanctions as a Political Act
- Sanctions would have to show a clear path to their own removal to incentivise their target to comply. The fact that reality is indeed contrarian to this shows they are domestic tools, rather than international
- But weirdly, British diplomat Jeremy Greenstock:
> there is nothing else between words and military action if you want to bring pressure upon a government
- Hanania proposes to change sanction regimes to focus on individuals, not entire branches of economy
- This is especially true in development countries, where leaders
> often own property, take vacations, and send their children to school in the United States and Europe. Preventing them from doing so could lead human rights abusers (...) to change their policies for self-interested reasons
-
- ### War as a political strategy
- (Afghanistan, October 2001)
> Nearly one month into the American campaign, Taliban spokesman Amir Khan Muttaqi expressed amazement, declaring "we do not want to fight" and "we will negotiate. But talk to us like a sovereign country. We are not a province of the United States, to be issued orders to. We have asked for proof of Osama's involvement, but they have refused. Why?"
- For Iraq (and the continued occupation of Afghanistan), the idea of
> spreading democracy, which would put an end to terrorism, a form of ad hoc ideological fabrication that conveniently served the political interests of the Bush administration.
-
- # 7: conclusion
collapsed:: true
- U. S. Have spent nearly 400 x of Afghanistan's GDP
- Well-researched book, but *at times **very* meandering and initially quite challenging to read (because it's dry)
- This continues later, where it gets a real drag. Once the true message is out, everything seems to slow down *so badly*...
- However, in the text there are some gems, partially hidden as motivations, partially as side-notes
- I mainly document these below
- [Cory Doctorow **harshly** criticises](https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/13/pu...) Public Choice Theorists' attitude towards industry and regulation
- This was not part of the book, but the implications are obvious.
- Should this framework be applied to the commons, concentrated interests will dominate exploitation of the commons
- This is something worth fighting against
- In the book, this was not mentioned at all. Why?
===============
- # Chapter 2
collapsed:: true
- Immigration into the US was changed in 1965 by Johnson, from a quotas-based system to a employability-dominated one.
- Republicans added a "family reunion" clause to keep whites dominant (historically, most US Americans came from Europe)
- But few US Americans had relatives who wanted to emigrate *left there*
- So this mechanism allowed for a strong effect of
> accelerating the demographic decline of the white majority
- This was unintended. Why it wasn't changed back is simple.. construction of the bicameral system, lobbying *by the new arrivals*, businesses liking cheap labor
- Public choice is influenced by (all sorts of)(spontaneously formed) groups, and
> Articulated most famously by Olson (1971), perhaps the most fundamental insight of public choice theory is that small groups with a concentrated interest in a policy outcome are more likely to get their way than larger groups with more diffuse interests, and this is true even if a larger group has more of an interest in the policy outcome in the aggregate
- Even the president is not except from those influences:
> Notably, there is nothing in our system that selects for individuals that come up with and implement successful long-term plans while in government.
- This spells trouble, especially for Marxists: anytime any group is fragmented, the minority with the high stake dominates the direction!
- Tax system, defence, real-estate-*enabling* policy (S21), regime change, smoking industry...
- AND OF COURSE THE DOOM OF US ALL
> One recent study showed that Canadians were much more likely to feel a duty to vote than a duty to be informed (...)
and, likewise, quoted from Jones2020:ch2,
> since voters have short memories, the political system focuses on pleasing them in the near term
- # Chapter 3: The Rogue Superpower
collapsed:: true
- This details the various violations of international treaties, especially by the USA. This is not because Hanania isn't a patriot (he *definitely* is!), but rather because the USA are the prime violator of international law.
- USA often try to frame their "interventions" as necessary for national security or (alternatively) as humanitarian - this falls short in ~~several~~most cases, and recently (surely since Libya) do not even bother to deploy these kinds of rationales anymore
- The Libya conflict (January 2011 to ~August 2011) soured international relations, because the US used the UNSC to get permission to establish a no-fly-zone (together with France and the UK), where China and Russia abstained. Both veto-powers did not expect the US and her allies to also deploy ground troops (special forces) and stir unrest, basically pushing (and enabling) regime change.
Libya is in a state of unrest ever since
- Subsequently, there was less cooperation in the UNSC, especially in Syria, where Russia was not to be convinced to let Assad fall.
- US sanctions crippled Syria's economy, forcing a decline of 75 % (more than Japan and Germany in WW2..)
-
> North Korean officials specifically cited Libya as a reason not to give up their nuclear deterrent
- ## There is a section on other nations' violations:
- Russia in Georgia/South Ossetia and Ukraine/Krim
- But in both cases not the goal to eliminate the government:
> Yet its goals in these conflicts have been minor relative to what the United States has sought to accomplish through its wars. Russia has occupied small parts of its neighbors, rather than removing and killing their governments and seeking to fundamentally remake their societies
- The 2021 Invasion of Ukraine by russia surely escalates this
-
> China likewise has no long history of regime change abroad (...) We are now approaching two generations without Beijing going to war against a foreign country.
- ### US Troop Deployments abroad
| Year | Germany | Italy | Japan | South Korea | United Kingdom |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1951 | 176k | - | 172k | 326k | 26k |
| 2019 | 47k | 15k | 62k | 30k | 11k |
- Turns out that the (relative) distribution of deployments have not changed since 1950
- In fairness, highlighting ~1000 troops in Turkey, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE and Quatar is a bit weird - a single carrier strike group employs more than 7500 troops!
- Indeed, all these points lead to one conclusion:
**In the public choice model**
- ### The Military is just another bureaucracy!
- Therefore, it aims to retain the status quo, and make no/only minor changes
- ... while retaining or enlarging its budget
- ## Conclusion
-
> In fact, the record makes it clear that not only does the United States not set a good example for other nations to follow, *but it is an outlier in how it treats other countries*.
Ouch!
> During the Cold War, the United States attempted *on average* approximately **two covert regime changes a year**
> It is the only nation in the world that uses military force to remove governments it does not like as a regular part of its foreign policy
Devastating
- # Chapter 4: Build, then Balance
collapsed:: true
- The idea of Chapter 2 is applied here:
- Why did the US built up the Soviet Union and later, China, by the private sector?
- Why did it not manage to keep both powers from rising, by governmental action?
- -> Because the government has very little incentive to stop *already established* trade
- Fun fact, during Stalin's first two 5-year-plans, Soviet Russia's economic output doubled *twice*
- Also, Heny Ford helped a lot, from 600 tractors in 1913 to ~60000 in 1930
-
-
- # Chapter 5: American Sanctions: Ineffective, immoral, and politically convenient
collapsed:: true
- No pushback explains via the public choice theory how sanctions come to be, even though they are mostly ineffective at their *stated goals*
> If sanctions are meant to accomplish domestic political goals that are symbolic in nature, then there may be ways to achieve the same benefits without harming so many people
- ## The humanitarian costs of sanctions
- Original US law prohibits sanctions to include food and medicine sectors!
Financial sector actions extend to these regimes..
- Sanctions' I'll effects are harder to attribute than WMDs
> If bombings caused as much economic and humanitarian destruction as sanctions did, the harm would be indisputable and such policies would be widely acknowledged as war crimes
This makes little sense IMO, Hanania's got it backwards?!?
- ## Sanctions as a Political Act
- Sanctions would have to show a clear path to their own removal to incentivise their target to comply. The fact that reality is indeed contrarian to this shows they are domestic tools, rather than international
- But weirdly, British diplomat Jeremy Greenstock:
> there is nothing else between words and military action if you want to bring pressure upon a government
- Hanania proposes to change sanction regimes to focus on individuals, not entire branches of economy
- This is especially true in development countries, where leaders
> often own property, take vacations, and send their children to school in the United States and Europe. Preventing them from doing so could lead human rights abusers (...) to change their policies for self-interested reasons
-
- ### War as a political strategy
- (Afghanistan, October 2001)
> Nearly one month into the American campaign, Taliban spokesman Amir Khan Muttaqi expressed amazement, declaring "we do not want to fight" and "we will negotiate. But talk to us like a sovereign country. We are not a province of the United States, to be issued orders to. We have asked for proof of Osama's involvement, but they have refused. Why?"
- For Iraq (and the continued occupation of Afghanistan), the idea of
> spreading democracy, which would put an end to terrorism, a form of ad hoc ideological fabrication that conveniently served the political interests of the Bush administration.
-
- # 7: conclusion
collapsed:: true
- U. S. Have spent nearly 400 x of Afghanistan's GDP
January 12, 2022
Key idea: U.S. foreign policy isn't informed by a coherent grand strategy. If you think of policy as a collection of small short term decisions that reflect a balance of domestic and international interest groups, the incentives of politicians, path dependence and status quo bias etc.. then you have a much better description of how US policy actually works. The best chapters were on the global war on terror and on economic sanctions.
December 31, 2022
A framework to understand politics that makes sense
"Perhaps the main insight of this worldview is that policy tends to end up being in accord with the preferences of groups of people that have a concentrated interest in the outcome of a policy debate (Olson 1971). Other groups that share more diffuse interests will be less influential, even if such individuals have in the aggregate more to gain or lose as a result of government action. The irony of this approach to foreign affairs is that if we treat individuals as rational actors, then we have a reason to believe that states will not be." <- Burnham and Thomas Sowell also say stuff similar to this
"small groups with concentrated interests are more likely to influence policy than large ones with more diffuse interests"
"Being a “free thinker,” an honest person believing in and advocating for whatever the evidence and moral values suggest, is probably not the best way to go far in politics, as individuals can be disqualified for a single errant statement or belief."
"this book claims two important points: that leaders will tend to behave in a way that is consistent with what concentrated interests desire, and one must look at behavior, rather than directly at what people say or even what they truly “believe,” to achieve a nontrivial conclusion about causation in the case of any particular decision"
"when compared to the interest individuals have in the well-being of themselves and their family, nationalism appears to be quite a weak force."
"The Darwinian selection argument is often applied to businesses, where the analogy holds much better than it does in the international system. Firms exist in a competitive environment in which those that become too pathological are weeded out of existence"
"to the extent to which individuals are rational, states are not."
"Chomsky acknowledges that Serbia had no direct strategic or economic value, but compares the United States to a mob boss who occasionally must stamp out any signs of disrespect (Chomsky and Barsamian 2010:54). In this way, practically any intervention can be labeled as part of a “grand strategy.” When the United States invades a region rich in resources or of seeming strategic importance, it can be taken as a direct attempt to pursue American interests. When the United States hits a country that is irrelevant on these measures, it can still be seen as part of a grand strategy to maximize American power. There is little in the archival or historical research to suggest American leaders have been driven by such concerns in interventions like those in Somalia and Serbia"
"American leaders have simultaneously been able to believe both that sanctions and economically harming a regime would lead to democratization, and the same for economic growth, depending on the nation in question. This shows how ideological justifications can be post hoc rationalizations for what leaders want to do anyway"
"No one can prove that any particular member of Congress had his opinion changed due to the lobbying effort, no more than can one prove that one army defeated another in battle because it had more men and ammunition; it is enough to observe that power matters in war and an outcome in which the stronger side wins is consistent with this being a specific demonstration of that general rule, particularly when we lack compelling alternative explanations for what happened."
"The simplest explanation for why the United States went into Iraq and Afghanistan and removed the governments of those states is that there were psychological and political incentives to engage in regime change."
"From the public choice perspective, however, American foreign policy has been a resounding “success.” Certain powerful interests, namely, foreign governments, government contractors, and the national security bureaucracy, manipulate American foreign policy to serve their own ends. Each of these interests has done extremely well over the last several decades."
"A story in one of our top newspapers that attributed the military’s position on Afghanistan or Syria to bureaucratic interests, for example, is almost unthinkable. Perhaps journalists should not be speculating too much about the motivations of leaders without hard evidence in the first place, but to the extent that they do, the assumption that individuals act mostly for self-interested reasons is a good starting point when writing such stories."
"In reality, nothing in this book denies that both ideas and interests have causal importance. The argument is simply that current ways of talking about foreign policy and the field of international relations have failed to give adequate recognition to the power of concentrated interests"
"Perhaps the main insight of this worldview is that policy tends to end up being in accord with the preferences of groups of people that have a concentrated interest in the outcome of a policy debate (Olson 1971). Other groups that share more diffuse interests will be less influential, even if such individuals have in the aggregate more to gain or lose as a result of government action. The irony of this approach to foreign affairs is that if we treat individuals as rational actors, then we have a reason to believe that states will not be." <- Burnham and Thomas Sowell also say stuff similar to this
"small groups with concentrated interests are more likely to influence policy than large ones with more diffuse interests"
"Being a “free thinker,” an honest person believing in and advocating for whatever the evidence and moral values suggest, is probably not the best way to go far in politics, as individuals can be disqualified for a single errant statement or belief."
"this book claims two important points: that leaders will tend to behave in a way that is consistent with what concentrated interests desire, and one must look at behavior, rather than directly at what people say or even what they truly “believe,” to achieve a nontrivial conclusion about causation in the case of any particular decision"
"when compared to the interest individuals have in the well-being of themselves and their family, nationalism appears to be quite a weak force."
"The Darwinian selection argument is often applied to businesses, where the analogy holds much better than it does in the international system. Firms exist in a competitive environment in which those that become too pathological are weeded out of existence"
"to the extent to which individuals are rational, states are not."
"Chomsky acknowledges that Serbia had no direct strategic or economic value, but compares the United States to a mob boss who occasionally must stamp out any signs of disrespect (Chomsky and Barsamian 2010:54). In this way, practically any intervention can be labeled as part of a “grand strategy.” When the United States invades a region rich in resources or of seeming strategic importance, it can be taken as a direct attempt to pursue American interests. When the United States hits a country that is irrelevant on these measures, it can still be seen as part of a grand strategy to maximize American power. There is little in the archival or historical research to suggest American leaders have been driven by such concerns in interventions like those in Somalia and Serbia"
"American leaders have simultaneously been able to believe both that sanctions and economically harming a regime would lead to democratization, and the same for economic growth, depending on the nation in question. This shows how ideological justifications can be post hoc rationalizations for what leaders want to do anyway"
"No one can prove that any particular member of Congress had his opinion changed due to the lobbying effort, no more than can one prove that one army defeated another in battle because it had more men and ammunition; it is enough to observe that power matters in war and an outcome in which the stronger side wins is consistent with this being a specific demonstration of that general rule, particularly when we lack compelling alternative explanations for what happened."
"The simplest explanation for why the United States went into Iraq and Afghanistan and removed the governments of those states is that there were psychological and political incentives to engage in regime change."
"From the public choice perspective, however, American foreign policy has been a resounding “success.” Certain powerful interests, namely, foreign governments, government contractors, and the national security bureaucracy, manipulate American foreign policy to serve their own ends. Each of these interests has done extremely well over the last several decades."
"A story in one of our top newspapers that attributed the military’s position on Afghanistan or Syria to bureaucratic interests, for example, is almost unthinkable. Perhaps journalists should not be speculating too much about the motivations of leaders without hard evidence in the first place, but to the extent that they do, the assumption that individuals act mostly for self-interested reasons is a good starting point when writing such stories."
"In reality, nothing in this book denies that both ideas and interests have causal importance. The argument is simply that current ways of talking about foreign policy and the field of international relations have failed to give adequate recognition to the power of concentrated interests"
August 16, 2022
Read the book as a devil's advocate to poli sci
Hanania's book argues that micro economics broadly interpreted trump macro theories like strategy. I like his argument and it serves as a great counterpoint to the foreign policy community drum beat. His book would have been more powerful with more direct evidence. He needs to make assumptions at several points to move his argument along. He also doesn't recognize Kenneth Waltz discussion of internal factors in Man the State and War. This recognition would have supported his bona fides.
Hanania's book argues that micro economics broadly interpreted trump macro theories like strategy. I like his argument and it serves as a great counterpoint to the foreign policy community drum beat. His book would have been more powerful with more direct evidence. He needs to make assumptions at several points to move his argument along. He also doesn't recognize Kenneth Waltz discussion of internal factors in Man the State and War. This recognition would have supported his bona fides.
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