On your point about the liberalizing effect of development I am generally inclined to agree. However, allowing or assisting the economic development of autocratic regimes does clearly pose a medium term challenge even if development liberalizes them over the long term. Russia and China have benefited from global trade with the liberal world and with these economic resources they are better able to wage war while they are still illiberal regimes. If you do believe there is some value to the independence of Ukraine and Taiwan, even if the west shouldn't be protecting them, the West's economic cooperation with Russia and China has increased the capacity of these regimes to threaten the independence of their neighbours. Further, there is the possibility that there is some sort of partial reform equilibrium where regimes liberalize somewhat to gain economic resources, but not so much that they produce instability. Admittedly I can not foresee whether these regimes will truly be stable in the long term, but it still ought to be considered.
Yes, I'm inclined to think this point is not sufficient to change the practical recommendations I would make, but I admit they're good points and that it's worth taking them into account.
For those of us that just don't want to world to end, nuclear war with Russia or a shooting war with China are basically the only two things that could fuck that up.
So to risk either, even if the probability is exceedingly low, requires a really massive offsetting risk.
I don't have much confidence that people using "appropriateness" to evaluate that tradeoff can make anywhere close to a reasonable decision, based on their track record.
First of all, you should use GDP PPP per capita to determine national wealth, not nominal GDP per capita, since the former accounts for differences in the cost of living while the latter doesn't. Based on GDP PPP per capita, China is already at $25,000:
That's not that far off from Argentina or even Chile and 1/2 the level of the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Spain.
Secondly, it's quite interesting that Singapore is extraordinarily wealthy (much wealthier than most of the West, in fact) and yet is nowhere near as liberal as the West itself is. The Gulf states are also extremely wealthy by Western standards and yet are nowhere as liberal as the West itself is either. So, while liberalism does, on average, increase with increased economic prosperity, it's not a fixed rule even at the highest income levels. Exceptions to this rule exist. For instance, I don't expect gay pride parades to be held in Riyadh or Doha or Abu Dhabi anytime soon.
China might or might not become a democracy in the future, and it might depend on just how long one will look into the future, but I also don't think that it's a preordained conclusion that China will eventually become a democracy. After all, in a semi-totalitarian one-party state, there can be selection for people who are loyal to the state's existing governance model, even among the younger generations. If you're a liberal-minded young Chinese person, you're going to need to keep your views very secret if you want to advance politically, because otherwise it's going to be extraordinarily difficult for you to politically advance. Maybe someone will eventually be able to make it through the cracks, but it's not obvious and we don't know when it will occur. I doubt that Mikhail Gorbachev would have become the USSR's leader had the other prominent politicians in the USSR knew that he was going to implement a multiparty political system in the USSR, for instance.
As a side note, I have no problem in having the West avoid sponsoring regime changes abroad. The problem is, however, is that even if the West does not play much, if any, role in internal domestic unrest, autocrats might still see the West's "evil hand" in this, similar to how Hitler saw the "evil hand" of the Jews wherever and whenever he saw evil in the world (predatory capitalism, Communism, et cetera). The West's role in the Orange and Maidan Revolutions were fairly limited, for instance, and yet Putin still saw an evil Western plot to steal Ukraine away from Russia. The fact that huge numbers of Ukrainians preferred the West to Russia was irrelevant to Putin because he believed that they were simply being subjected to Western propaganda and indoctrination. Similarly, if there will be huge protests in Iran comparable to the 2009 Green Movement, do you really think that Iran's regime will avoid seeing a Western and/or Israeli "evil hand" in these protests, even if the West and/or Israel are genuinely completely uninvolved in them?
As a side note, though, regime change primarily works if one has sufficient military strength, a good post-war strategy, and support from the local population. For instance, arguably a Western-led regime change effort against the Bolsheviks back in 1919, and on an astronomically large scale relative to real life, might have very well succeeded had the West actually had the political willpower for this. Most Russians back then did not want the Bolsheviks and once it would have become clear that the US's role would be to restore democracy to Russia, I think that many Russians would have been willing to cooperate with the US. And it would have been much better for both Americans and Russians that way as well. But Yeah, without sufficient military strength, a good post-war strategy (looking at post-2001 Afghanistan), and support from the local population, a regime change effort is doomed to fail. And even with all of these factors, one should still weigh whether this attempt would actually be worth it. Even defeating and destroying Nazi Germany was extraordinarily costly for its enemies, after all.
I have to disagree with you; it's obvious that the "Orange Revolution" was entirely about placing a American puppet regime in Kiev and weaponizing the Ukraine against Russia. Also, when you discuss the double standard of Western foreign policy; I am amazed you ignore the Turkish invasion and occupation of northern Cyprus in 1974 with a complete non-response by so-called "liberal democracies", they did not even expel Turkey from NATO! Lastly, I think the very term "liberal democracy" has become as misleading as the name "Holy Roman Empire" was in its last two centuries. The "liberal democracies" are increasingly illiberal and oligarchic.
>It would probably help if they didn’t have such a romantic view of democracy and saw it less as a way for the will of the people to prevail on policy and more as a mechanism that allows political elites to compete for power in a peaceful manner.
I think one could argue that this romantic view is inescapably intertwined with the "belief in the legitimacy of democratic elections" that you mention elsewhere in the essay.
Early in your essay, you criticize the "logic of appropriateness" relative to the "logic of consequences". But then later, you invoke international law in a way that seems very much like the "logic of appropriateness". ("International law should be followed, forget the consequences!") Doesn't that seem a little contradictory?
I think what's going on is we have at least three competing moral systems which are often in conflict:
* Humanitarian consequentialist reasoning.
* Humanitarian deontological reasoning ("we can't sit by while innocent people are slaughtered", see e.g. the rationale for toppling Gaddafi).
* International law, which is either deontological or rule-consequentialist depending on how you look at it. Unlike the previous two, international law considers states as moral agents, rather than individual humans. Wars of conquest appear to have become vastly less popular as a result of international law, which seems like a really good thing.
All the moral systems have problems.
* Predicting consequences is very difficult, and *any* action can be justified by saying "we had a team of analysts predict consequences, and this is what they recommended".
* You criticize humanitarian deontological reasoning well in your essay.
* International law is flawed because states are a societal construct. International law doesn't have a good story for failed states, or states which severely oppress their citizens. It doesn't distinguish between good guys and bad guys, which can occasionally be useful!
A valuable property of a moral system is it should be widely held and easy to evaluate if others are following it. We're nowhere close to that in terms of reasoning about foreign policy. The public mind basically consists of a mishmash of sometimes-mutually-contradictory moral thinking. If you want the US to do something, accuse them of "complicity" or "appeasement". If you *don't* want them to do something, accuse them of "imperialism", "white saviorism", "sovereignty violation", "breaking international law", etc. If the consequences are good, accuse them of violating norms. If norms were followed, accuse them of having bad consequences. With no shared idea of what it means to have a benevolent foreign policy, it's no surprise that the USA is turning towards (a) isolationism and (b) national self-interest. Trying to be a good person is not especially appealing if people will criticize you ruthlessly no matter what you do. Sad!
Unfortunately, we see that poor foreign policy and failure in several military conflicts by a democracy(ies) (of which Afghanistan is the very recent example) does not serve a good material for reflection, as they teach us in management, for example. Instead of analysing the previous experience and changing behavior to get closer to sucessful and prosperous development, the world's "democratic" minority opted for another, and even much more dangerous, escalation with a major nuclear state. That said, maybe the goal of the democratic elites is different from general public's expectations?
On your point about the liberalizing effect of development I am generally inclined to agree. However, allowing or assisting the economic development of autocratic regimes does clearly pose a medium term challenge even if development liberalizes them over the long term. Russia and China have benefited from global trade with the liberal world and with these economic resources they are better able to wage war while they are still illiberal regimes. If you do believe there is some value to the independence of Ukraine and Taiwan, even if the west shouldn't be protecting them, the West's economic cooperation with Russia and China has increased the capacity of these regimes to threaten the independence of their neighbours. Further, there is the possibility that there is some sort of partial reform equilibrium where regimes liberalize somewhat to gain economic resources, but not so much that they produce instability. Admittedly I can not foresee whether these regimes will truly be stable in the long term, but it still ought to be considered.
Yes, I'm inclined to think this point is not sufficient to change the practical recommendations I would make, but I admit they're good points and that it's worth taking them into account.
For those of us that just don't want to world to end, nuclear war with Russia or a shooting war with China are basically the only two things that could fuck that up.
So to risk either, even if the probability is exceedingly low, requires a really massive offsetting risk.
I don't have much confidence that people using "appropriateness" to evaluate that tradeoff can make anywhere close to a reasonable decision, based on their track record.
First of all, you should use GDP PPP per capita to determine national wealth, not nominal GDP per capita, since the former accounts for differences in the cost of living while the latter doesn't. Based on GDP PPP per capita, China is already at $25,000:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
That's not that far off from Argentina or even Chile and 1/2 the level of the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Spain.
Secondly, it's quite interesting that Singapore is extraordinarily wealthy (much wealthier than most of the West, in fact) and yet is nowhere near as liberal as the West itself is. The Gulf states are also extremely wealthy by Western standards and yet are nowhere as liberal as the West itself is either. So, while liberalism does, on average, increase with increased economic prosperity, it's not a fixed rule even at the highest income levels. Exceptions to this rule exist. For instance, I don't expect gay pride parades to be held in Riyadh or Doha or Abu Dhabi anytime soon.
China might or might not become a democracy in the future, and it might depend on just how long one will look into the future, but I also don't think that it's a preordained conclusion that China will eventually become a democracy. After all, in a semi-totalitarian one-party state, there can be selection for people who are loyal to the state's existing governance model, even among the younger generations. If you're a liberal-minded young Chinese person, you're going to need to keep your views very secret if you want to advance politically, because otherwise it's going to be extraordinarily difficult for you to politically advance. Maybe someone will eventually be able to make it through the cracks, but it's not obvious and we don't know when it will occur. I doubt that Mikhail Gorbachev would have become the USSR's leader had the other prominent politicians in the USSR knew that he was going to implement a multiparty political system in the USSR, for instance.
As a side note, I have no problem in having the West avoid sponsoring regime changes abroad. The problem is, however, is that even if the West does not play much, if any, role in internal domestic unrest, autocrats might still see the West's "evil hand" in this, similar to how Hitler saw the "evil hand" of the Jews wherever and whenever he saw evil in the world (predatory capitalism, Communism, et cetera). The West's role in the Orange and Maidan Revolutions were fairly limited, for instance, and yet Putin still saw an evil Western plot to steal Ukraine away from Russia. The fact that huge numbers of Ukrainians preferred the West to Russia was irrelevant to Putin because he believed that they were simply being subjected to Western propaganda and indoctrination. Similarly, if there will be huge protests in Iran comparable to the 2009 Green Movement, do you really think that Iran's regime will avoid seeing a Western and/or Israeli "evil hand" in these protests, even if the West and/or Israel are genuinely completely uninvolved in them?
As a side note, though, regime change primarily works if one has sufficient military strength, a good post-war strategy, and support from the local population. For instance, arguably a Western-led regime change effort against the Bolsheviks back in 1919, and on an astronomically large scale relative to real life, might have very well succeeded had the West actually had the political willpower for this. Most Russians back then did not want the Bolsheviks and once it would have become clear that the US's role would be to restore democracy to Russia, I think that many Russians would have been willing to cooperate with the US. And it would have been much better for both Americans and Russians that way as well. But Yeah, without sufficient military strength, a good post-war strategy (looking at post-2001 Afghanistan), and support from the local population, a regime change effort is doomed to fail. And even with all of these factors, one should still weigh whether this attempt would actually be worth it. Even defeating and destroying Nazi Germany was extraordinarily costly for its enemies, after all.
I have to disagree with you; it's obvious that the "Orange Revolution" was entirely about placing a American puppet regime in Kiev and weaponizing the Ukraine against Russia. Also, when you discuss the double standard of Western foreign policy; I am amazed you ignore the Turkish invasion and occupation of northern Cyprus in 1974 with a complete non-response by so-called "liberal democracies", they did not even expel Turkey from NATO! Lastly, I think the very term "liberal democracy" has become as misleading as the name "Holy Roman Empire" was in its last two centuries. The "liberal democracies" are increasingly illiberal and oligarchic.
>It would probably help if they didn’t have such a romantic view of democracy and saw it less as a way for the will of the people to prevail on policy and more as a mechanism that allows political elites to compete for power in a peaceful manner.
I think one could argue that this romantic view is inescapably intertwined with the "belief in the legitimacy of democratic elections" that you mention elsewhere in the essay.
Early in your essay, you criticize the "logic of appropriateness" relative to the "logic of consequences". But then later, you invoke international law in a way that seems very much like the "logic of appropriateness". ("International law should be followed, forget the consequences!") Doesn't that seem a little contradictory?
I think what's going on is we have at least three competing moral systems which are often in conflict:
* Humanitarian consequentialist reasoning.
* Humanitarian deontological reasoning ("we can't sit by while innocent people are slaughtered", see e.g. the rationale for toppling Gaddafi).
* International law, which is either deontological or rule-consequentialist depending on how you look at it. Unlike the previous two, international law considers states as moral agents, rather than individual humans. Wars of conquest appear to have become vastly less popular as a result of international law, which seems like a really good thing.
All the moral systems have problems.
* Predicting consequences is very difficult, and *any* action can be justified by saying "we had a team of analysts predict consequences, and this is what they recommended".
* You criticize humanitarian deontological reasoning well in your essay.
* International law is flawed because states are a societal construct. International law doesn't have a good story for failed states, or states which severely oppress their citizens. It doesn't distinguish between good guys and bad guys, which can occasionally be useful!
A valuable property of a moral system is it should be widely held and easy to evaluate if others are following it. We're nowhere close to that in terms of reasoning about foreign policy. The public mind basically consists of a mishmash of sometimes-mutually-contradictory moral thinking. If you want the US to do something, accuse them of "complicity" or "appeasement". If you *don't* want them to do something, accuse them of "imperialism", "white saviorism", "sovereignty violation", "breaking international law", etc. If the consequences are good, accuse them of violating norms. If norms were followed, accuse them of having bad consequences. With no shared idea of what it means to have a benevolent foreign policy, it's no surprise that the USA is turning towards (a) isolationism and (b) national self-interest. Trying to be a good person is not especially appealing if people will criticize you ruthlessly no matter what you do. Sad!
Unfortunately, we see that poor foreign policy and failure in several military conflicts by a democracy(ies) (of which Afghanistan is the very recent example) does not serve a good material for reflection, as they teach us in management, for example. Instead of analysing the previous experience and changing behavior to get closer to sucessful and prosperous development, the world's "democratic" minority opted for another, and even much more dangerous, escalation with a major nuclear state. That said, maybe the goal of the democratic elites is different from general public's expectations?