Former Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State argues why NATO is more important than ever, explains how women are positively impacting U.S. foreign policy, and asseses President Obama's Middle East policy.
05.11.12
In a career that has spanned both academia and government, Anne-Marie Slaughter has become one of America’s most prominent experts on international relations. Unlike members of the “realist” school of international relations, Slaughter has championed the role of values in the framing of policy, and has led the rethinking of American foreign policy as it moves from its traditional focus on relations between governments to embrace the new challenges of globalization (including development issues and the digital age). Her books reflect this broader vision. They include A New World Order: Government Networks and the Disaggregated State, and The Idea That Is America: Keeping Faith with Our Values in a Dangerous World.
Slaughter is part of a new generation of women, along with Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton, who are shaping American foreign policy. She was Director of Policy Planning for the State Department in 2009-2011. Her academic career includes positions at the University of Chicago Law School and the Harvard Law School before returning to Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, where she served as Dean from 2002-2007, as the Bert G. Kerstetter ’66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs. She has thought deeply about NATO and other global issues, and shared these thoughts in a telephone interview with me.
Q:
Richard Longworth
As you’ve written, public approval for President Obama’s foreign policy is higher than that for his domestic policy, so one can expect him to stress foreign policy in the election campaign. In that context, is the NATO summit here in Chicago more than an international meeting, politically speaking, but a conscious attempt by the President to call voters’ attention to his foreign policy successes?
A:
Anne-Marie Slaughter
I think the President does want to emphasize that he has strengthened the alliance—that NATO has really expanded its network of global partnerships. All NATO partners have fought side by side in Afghanistan, and the summit will be focusing on how to transition out of Afghanistan. But it will also be looking forward to how it can meet the next generation of foreign policy challenges.
The President wants to highlight a number of his foreign policy successes through NATO, but I also think he doesn’t want to be abroad during an election year. So it’s important to have all of our allies come here rather than having him take the better part of a week to go wherever else the summit might be.
Q:
Richard Longworth
NATO is, after all, an alliance between the United States and Europe, but President Obama has pivoted America’s strategic focus from Europe to Asia. I know the Europeans are worried that they might be becoming something of an American afterthought. Are they right to be worried, and what can the President do to assure them that they’re still important to us?
A:
Anne-Marie Slaughter
NATO Ambassador Ivo Daalder had the best description of what I think the pivot really is about, which is that it’s really a pivot away from a decade of war and toward a global approach to security—one that means we will certainly be very present in Asia as an ever more important political and security arena, but that, in that process, we can’t go global without the Europeans. In fact, it’s the transatlantic alliance that is the hub of a global security network. And that’s something you’re going to hear a lot about at the NATO summit: the idea of NATO as the hub of a global security network.
So if we’re focusing more on Asia, the Europeans will be with us every step of the way. They’ll also be working in Africa and the Middle East in ways that we very much need them to do because, without that, NATO can’t play a global role.
Q:
Richard Longworth
As many commentators have said, America seems to be in relative decline, strategically as well as economically. Basically, this could mean we just can’t project our power the way we used to perform our traditional role as an international balancer. This was the subject of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s latest book, "Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power." Has President Obama come to terms with this shift? How is this influencing his foreign policy?
A:
Anne-Marie Slaughter
I don’t think President Obama believes for a minute that America is in decline. And I have to say I agree with him. Obviously, when powers are getting stronger then the relative difference between them and us is less. That’s inevitable. But that’s a relative process. That doesn’t mean that the United States is any less able to lead or that it is any less necessary to have us lead.
I have to say—although I think the United States leads in a different way in a complex world of 194 nations, that its leadership is much more about creating the conditions and the coalitions for other countries to step up and play an active role in global security—I don’t think the United States is declining in the sense that it will not continue to be the central player in global politics.
Q:
Richard Longworth
Let me carry that a bit further to the subject that you raised in your book, "The Idea That Is America," a book that celebrates American values such as liberty, democracy, equity, power, and others. These values took root in America long ago, and we’ve been able to spread them abroad largely because we have had the power to do so. If some of that power is shifting east—to other countries that don’t necessarily share the same values—how do we defend our values in a world where they are going to be challenged as they possibly have not been in the past couple of centuries?
A:
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Well, one of the things that’s so interesting to note is that, even while everybody’s talking about power shifts and America in decline, what we’re actually seeing is an embrace of the values of liberty and democracy and justice and human dignity around the world to an extent we have not really seen since the end of the Cold War. We are watching, for the very first time, people rising up across the Arab world—North Africa and the Middle East—in ways that many people thought would not happen for a very long time, if ever. Yet the United States is not directly promoting what is happening, but simply supporting it as best we can.
Similarly, we’re seeing a big shift in a country like Burma that has been completely closed off. We’re seeing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) supporting democracy and human rights for its members. We’re seeing the African Union act immediately when there is a coup among one of its members—to condemn it and counter it.
So it’s a good time in the world for American values. But I think that one of the things that the Obama administration has done that’s particularly important is to talk about respect for universal values being in the U.S. national interest, and that’s the way I think we have to go about it. These are not just American values. They’re universal values. The United States should do what it can to stand up for them and support them, but we must recognize that different countries are going to achieve those values in their own way.
Q:
Richard Longworth
One unique and positive feature of American foreign policy these days is the degree to which it’s being shaped and led by women, from Madeleine Albright to Hillary Clinton, with the involvement of women like yourself and Susan Rice. Women have assumed the leadership in foreign policy. I’m curious to know what difference this makes. Is our foreign policy over the past two decades any different than it would have been if it had been run traditionally and therefore nearly exclusively by men?
A:
Anne-Marie Slaughter
In some ways, not at all. In other ways, quite a bit. You know, the one myth that I think has been shown to be a myth is that if women are in leadership positions they will be less willing to stand up for U.S. interests forcibly if necessary. You’ve seen Madeleine Albright pushing very hard for U.S. or NATO intervention in Bosnia. You saw Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice taking a strong stance on U.S.-NATO use of force in Libya. In that sense, I think women have proved that they can be every bit as tough as men if they need to be, and they are not afraid to defend American interests and to promote American and universal values by force, if necessary.
The ways in which it has changed is that I do think women have had an impact on the growing emphasis on development as an important pillar of U.S. foreign policy. Madeleine Albright felt strongly in this regard as did Condoleezza Rice, and certainly Hillary Clinton came into office saying she was going to elevate development to be an equal pillar of U.S. foreign policy.
There are certainly many men who support development as well, but I think what you’re seeing are women who think about the world not just as a world of states but also as a world of human beings—of individuals who have an equal right to live up to their potential, as Secretary Clinton would put it. Whether they have enough to eat, whether they have shelter, whether they have access to education for their children, whether they have the opportunity to do meaningful work—these issues are not charity issues or even humanitarian issues. These are foreign policy issues, and we have to pay much more attention to them.
Q:
Richard Longworth
You have written eloquently that foreign policy in the 21st century is less nation-based and moving away from the old realist world of traditional relations. It is becoming more developmental, digital, and above all, global. Instances such as the Arab Spring seem to support this. But are we seeing a backlash? The elections last weekend in France and Germany indicate that nationalism isn’t dead, and that people of individual nations demand to be heard. In embracing a more global approach, have we perhaps underestimated the still potent ability of nationalism to shape events?
A:
Anne-Marie Slaughter
I think it’s very important for foreign policy practitioners or commentators or simply anyone interested in foreign policy to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. We have to remember that the world of nationalism, of state power, of clashing state interests is still very much with us. You can look at the French elections or at U.S. relations with Iran or North Korea and certainly see plenty of old fashioned geopolitical conflict out there.
What is equally important, though, is that the world of people is rising and is ever more important alongside the traditional world of states. And many want to hold to one or the other. It’s just easier to say, “Well, it’s a realist world of power and interest or it’s a global world of social networks and political and economic networks.” It’s actually both, which is one reason it’s so hard to advance U.S. and global interests in this world.
Q:
Richard Longworth
It sounds like we’re in a world of transition, but we’re not entirely sure of what to transition it to. Or is the future more clear than that?
A:
Anne-Marie Slaughter
I think we are in transition to a networked world in which states will still be the principal foreign policy actors, but we need to understand them, not just as a system of billiard balls that bang into each other periodically, but also as hubs of global social, political, economic, and even criminal networks.
We can see where we’re going. Imagine the Internet, with its millions and millions of different tiny little websites and networks connecting them and then a far smaller number of really big hubs. That’s the way we’re going to need to think about international relations. States are still those big hubs. They are very important, and I don’t see them going away. At the same time, networks of nongovernmental organizations, of corporations, of political movements—just think about the Arab revolutions—those networks are equally going to be able to shape world events, and we’re going to have to craft policy that, as I said, addresses states and people at the same time.
Q:
Richard Longworth
You’ve worked for President Obama. You’ve been generally supportive of his foreign policy but not entirely uncritical. You wrote that two of his biggest foreign policy failures have been in handling Israel and Pakistan, which are our two supposed friends that seem to pay little to no attention to what we want. There has to be a better way to deal with these two countries. What suggestions would you make?
A:
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Well, I think President Obama would welcome healthy debate, and I hope that, now that I’ve been out of office, I’ve provided constructive criticism. [laughs]
I’m not sure I’d say that the Middle East and Pakistan are failures, but they’re certainly not successes. What I mean by that is just that no other administration has been able to bring about peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and no other administration has been able to get our relationship with Pakistan where we want it to be. And President Obama hasn’t succeeded either.
These are really tough issues, but I do think, particularly with respect to the Middle East, that a second Obama administration would be able to map out a strategy based on a lot of the lessons that we’ve learned over the last four years and with a different situation in the Middle East, given all these revolutions. Israel’s in a different political situation, and the sense that the window for a settlement is closing is much more widespread. A second Obama administration will need a new strategy and a renewed determination to make this issue a priority.
Pakistan is so much about the fragile and ever-changing state of Pakistani politics that we are walking a tightrope. We need to affirm our enduring commitment to a strong security relationship with Pakistan. At the same time, we’re constantly on the other end of Pakistani government actors who have a real interest in undermining that relationship.
It’s not an easy question, and it’s not a matter of just having a new strategy. Any strategy runs into very complex politics, but the certainty that President Obama will be in office for four more years will actually help concentrate everyone’s minds.
Q:
Richard Longworth
Let’s get back to NATO. Since the Cold War ended, NATO has sometimes been called an alliance in search of a mission. Its out-of-area activities since then do seem to have been rather ad hoc in Kosovo or Libya or Afghanistan—lacking the sort of overall strategic purpose it had during the Cold War. This leaves the question of whether NATO is still useful or necessary, or whether it might be time to wrap it up. What do you think?
A:
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Oh, I think NATO is more important than ever. I really do. It inevitably had to go through a real transition because it was created as a collective security alliance against a specific threat. The origins of NATO were, as you know, based on the idea that if the Soviet Union attacked any member of NATO it was to be deemed an attack on all. Or if any other nation did, but it was the Soviet Union through the Cold War.
So first you have NATO expansion through the 1990s. Then after the attack on 9/11, NATO did respond as a collective security alliance and NATO members fought and are still fighting side by side in Afghanistan.
Today NATO is the central hub of a global security network with [28 member countries and] over 40 partners around the world. And the way to think about that is that problems arising in Southeast Asia, in Central Africa, in Central Asia, even in Central or South America can directly affect the United States and other NATO members, whether by creating a haven for terrorists, pirates, and other criminals or facilitating the proliferation of nuclear weapons material. But those are threats that you’re not going to fight by mobilizing the alliance as a whole. What’s going to happen is that some NATO members, working with members of other regional organizations, are going to take on specific crises and specific conflicts and specific challenges as they arise.
But if we didn’t have NATO, we’d have a kind of hodgepodge of regional organizations and small alliances and individual military powers without a center. And NATO is brilliantly placed as a transatlantic alliance of 28 countries with, as I said, over 40 partners around the world to really provide centralized resources, guidance, and expertise to meet a century of global threats and challenges.
Q:
Richard Longworth
Let me ask one last question. Some critics say this approach that you’re talking about—coalitions of the willing, if you will—tends to fragment the alliance and raise hard feelings, as Germany and Poland’s decision to opt out in Libya raised hard feelings among some of the allies. Isn’t this a risk?
A:
Anne-Marie Slaughter
It is a risk, but again, different NATO members themselves have to realize that, although France and Britain may have been upset that Germany and Poland didn’t join, Germany and Poland could decide to take action with regard to a crisis. On the other hand, happening on the eastern perimeter of NATO—with U.N. authorization and working with other countries in the region—and France and Britain might not want to join.
So this is a situation in which the flexibility that is afforded ultimately is going to be in everyone’s benefit as long as it doesn’t result in complete fragmentation. You know, what’s critical here is that a certain core will need to be engaged, and other nations may then supply different kinds of assistance without being centrally engaged.
But what they’re going to realize is that NATO is a collective asset. It’s an asset for all NATO members, and it’s an asset for other organizations around the world. NATO has to stay united with respect to collective defense. What can’t change is that an attack on one is an attack on all. But where it’s not NATO’s core mission, then I think every nation will come to realize that a flexible coalition approach is going to be in the best interests of all NATO members and of the world at large.
