Impossible Choices

The trouble with understanding power is that everything you know about it you probably learned in kindergarten or before, and it’s wrong.  That playground bully (or your big brother) shoved you, and you concluded, one – that power is the ability to coerce, and two – that it is a property of the person (or later on, the organization) resulting from some intrinsic property like bigger muscles (or, again later on, from smarts or having lots of money.)  Both conclusions are wrong, or at least highly limited to playground-like situations.  Napoleon could have told you that as he complained bitterly about his inability to get his ministers or his generals to do what he ordered them to do.  But they are the basis of a lot of silly discussion going on these days on the editorial pages about “the decline of American power” in places like the Middle East.

The problem is that there are at least three different definitions of power, none covering all situations but all useful.  The first is the playground bully’s definition, the ability to coerce.  The second is the ability to get done what you want done; call it the diplomat’s definition.  I used to tell my staff that personal diplomacy is the art of letting the other person have your way.  If you’re willing to let others get credit for ideas you know you initiated, you can get a lot done that way.  Broader than the first, it presumes that skilled diplomats can get done what needs being done, and that failure to get things done is either a failure of diplomacy or a weakening of American power.  Either way, in international relations that implies the loss of some intrinsic ability, and it’s bad news for America.

Call the third the sociologist’s definition.  It describes power as a relationship between people or organizations based on dependency.  A (either person or organization) exercises power over B to the extent that B depends in some way on A.  If the dependency changes, the power changes.  Intrinsic capability does not count.  Dependency relationships change many ways.  A child needing help from daddy to climb upstairs may one day be helping daddy.  Many a person or organization suddenly set on a shelf wonders what happened, when in fact the change may have been in a relationship between third parties.  A local store where everyone bought may fold when a Wal-Mart moves in.  If that schoolyard bully grew up and went to jail (that sometimes happens to bullies) and you turned out to be his warden, the childhood power situation would be completely reversed.

The third definition is what is useful in looking at international relations.  The U.S. is powerful to the extent other nations depend on the U.S., either for money, for protection, for its buying ability, for resources or for its ability to influence.  Political and other changes around the world can change those dependencies, with nothing changing in the U.S.  The money of Saudi Arabia may eliminate Egypt’s dependency on U.S. aid; nothing has changed in the U.S., but the power relationship with Egypt has been altered.  Russia and China may oppose the RTP (Responsibility to Protect) doctrine because of their own internal problems with dissidents, and that opposition may take the form of sheltering Syria from U.N. intervention.  That shelter may embolden Assad to thumb his nose at the U.S.  Nothing here has changed.  The emergence of democracy and resource changes around the world has changed it from a bi-polar “cold war” place to a multi-polar globe – without changing American capabilities.  But America’s power relationships have changed.

We are no schoolyard bully, nor should we seek to be, yet two Yale Law professors claim today in the Washington Post that is exactly what we would be if we take military action against Syria without a U.N. mandate.  A U.N. mandate is impossible with the veto power of Russia and China in play.  So the professors’ reliance on principle leads to inaction in the face of a moral outrage. In the new multi-polar world, the best road for America is to lead in establishment of internationally accepted limits on morally abhorrent coercive behaviors.  But are we the enforcer of those limits also?  An argument can be made that the use of chemical or biological weapons anywhere is a threat everywhere. Is that justification for action when we ourselves have not been attacked?  The rules elaborated by St. Augustine for Just War are broader than the international law that has evolved from them.  Just War principles provide both justification for war in self defense, and war to prevent persecution of the helpless.  They would support our military action, but are not international law.  And the 17^th century taught us the dangers of allowing them to be.  Military action is a last resort when other choices are exhausted. There is no right choice.  It does not represent a decline of American power, but a changing world.

When there is no course but error, wisdom teaches to err on the side of justice and compassion.  That means some kind of action to prevent further harm.  Some “surgical” minimum intervention is called for, and that is what our strategists are seeking.  A warrant from the International Criminal Court indicting Assad for War Crimes might help, but is probably not possible.  Action must be taken within the present boundaries of the situation.  If that action can only be military, then military it must be.  Let us hope our strategists can find a way.