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[post_content] => Policymaking is a discipline, a craft, and a profession. Policymakers apply specialized knowledge — about other countries, politics, diplomacy, conflict, economics, public health, and more — to the practical solution of public problems. Effective policymaking is difficult. The “hardware” of policymaking — the tools and structures of government that frame the possibilities for useful work — are obviously important. Less obvious is that policy performance in practice often rests more on the “software” of public problem-solving: the way people size up problems, design actions, and implement policy. In other words, the quality of the policymaking.
Like policymaking, engineering is a discipline, a craft, and a profession. Engineers learn how to apply specialized knowledge — about chemistry, physics, biology, hydraulics, electricity, and more — to the solution of practical problems. Effective engineering is similarly difficult. People work hard to learn how to practice it with professional skill. But, unlike the methods taught for engineering, the software of policy work is rarely recognized or studied. It is not adequately taught. There is no canon or norms of professional practice. American policymaking is less about deliberate engineering, and is more about improvised guesswork and bureaucratized habits.
My experience is as a historian who studies the details of policy episodes and the related staff work, but also as a former official who has analyzed a variety of domestic and foreign policy issues at all three levels of American government, including federal work from different bureaucratic perspectives in five presidential administrations from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama. From this historical and contemporary vantage point, I am struck (and a bit depressed) that the quality of U.S. policy engineering is actually much, much worse in recent decades than it was throughout much of the 20th century. This is not a partisan observation — the decline spans both Republican and Democratic administrations.
I am not alone in my observations. Francis Fukuyama recently concluded that, “[T]he overall quality of the American government has been deteriorating steadily for more than a generation,” notably since the 1970s. In the United States, “the apparently irreversible increase in the scope of government has masked a large decay in its quality.”[1] This worried assessment is echoed by other nonpartisan and longtime scholars who have studied the workings of American government.[2] The 2003 National Commission on Public Service observed,
The notion of public service, once a noble calling proudly pursued by the most talented Americans of every generation, draws an indifferent response from today’s young people and repels many of the country’s leading private citizens. … The system has evolved not by plan or considered analysis but by accretion over time, politically inspired tinkering, and neglect. … The need to improve performance is urgent and compelling.[3]
And they wrote that as the American occupation of Iraq was just beginning.
In this article, I offer hypotheses to help explain why American policymaking has declined, and why it was so much more effective in the mid-20th century than it is today. I offer a brief sketch of how American education about policy work evolved over the past hundred years, and I argue that the key software qualities that made for effective policy engineering neither came out of the academy nor migrated back into it.
I then outline a template for doing and teaching policy engineering. I break the engineering methods down into three interacting sets of analytical judgments: about assessment, design, and implementation. In teaching, I lean away from new, cumbersome standalone degree programs and toward more flexible forms of education that can pair more easily with many subject-matter specializations. I emphasize the value of practicing methods in detailed and more lifelike case studies. I stress the significance of an organizational culture that prizes written staff work of the quality that used to be routine but has now degraded into bureaucratic or opinionated dross.
Many former officials share such concerns, as will become apparent.[4] My suggestions use a relatively simple template, making it easy for people to learn and use it. But, as in engineering, knowing the steps for good policy design is much simpler than implementing them in professional practice. That is why in-depth case work in training and a strong organizational culture in practice are so important, and so difficult.
Of course, some will point to dysfunction in the hardware of American politics and policy as a cause of the decline in policymaking prowess. But whatever the other issues, surely part of the solution to improving American policymaking must include better performance in analyzing, crafting, and implementing solutions to public problems.
Policymaking: Hardware vs. Software
The software of substantive public problem-solving overlaps with the formal procedures of government, but it is really a different subject. The software of policy is about how policies are crafted within a given set of processes and constraints. Software includes methods or routines for the way the substantive work is done, at the level of the individual professional and the institution. At every stage, the software includes organizational cultures for getting and evaluating information, for doing analysis, and for recording what is being done.
By contrast, the tools and structures that frame the possibilities for useful work may be described as the hardware of policymaking. Explanations for failures of policy tend to focus on the structure of government. While hardware constraints are real, in my experience, problems often have at least as much to do with bad software.
Good software is also one of the few defenses against bad hardware. For instance, amid all the public controversies about law in America, the United States still does reasonably well upholding the rule of law and the administration of justice. Why? One reason is because the American legal profession has established very strong norms about what constitutes appropriate legal reasoning and quality legal research and writing. This is software.
[quote id="1"]
Such norms are no sure cure for partisanship, caprice, incompetence, and corruption. But, in the American legal world, generally accepted norms for legal research and writing do help constrain excesses, clarify arguments and evidence, and expose sloppy work. They provide a common vocabulary for evaluation and analysis. In American public policy design, however, there are no comparable norms that distinguish professional craft. There is no commonly understood set of habits that routinely force out necessary questions and naturally highlight gaps in information or analysis.
Good software, rigorous training, and strong organizational culture can decisively improve performance. One of the more interesting social-science experiments ever conducted for policy work, the University of Pennsylvania and U.C.-Berkeley’s “Good Judgment Project” led by Philip Tetlock, Barbara Mellers, and Don Moore, funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, ran from 2011 to 2015. It included work from more than 25,000 forecasters making more than a million predictions about world developments. The study’s basic conclusions: “First, talented generalists often outperform specialists in making forecasts. Second, carefully crafted training can enhance predictive acumen. And third, well-run teams can outperform individuals.”[5] Consider that an illustration of what is possible in just one facet of work.
Preparing to Make Policy
Bad policymaking is almost unavoidable when policymakers undertake complex and difficult work without adequate training or preparation. Unfortunately, a lack of adequate training or preparation seems to be the norm among American policymakers today. Why? I offer three premises:
First, general training among senior and mid-level policy professionals is radically insufficient to prepare them to do action-focused analysis and assessment, high-quality written policy design work, and adaptive, people-centered implementation. Usually this training simply does not exist.
Second, whatever the talents of individual politicians or officials or commentators, they will remain idiosyncratic unless the craft is institutionalized in a canon of professional education and the related ideas are better understood.
Third, even if certain professional or graduate schools (e.g., in public policy, law, political science, or economics) had an effective canon of this kind, which I believe they do not, such programs — as currently configured — simply will not reach, or are effectively unavailable, to the large majority of people who will find themselves actually filling most senior and mid-level policy jobs.
Modern American political history offers support for these premises, as I outline below. As this sketch reveals, the best practices that made the software of American policymaking successful in the mid-20th century neither came out of the academy nor migrated back into it. They were never adequately turned into canonical methods, “carefully crafted training,” or an organizational culture of well-run analytical teams.
A Brief History of Preparing Policymakers
American education for public service “has differed from such education in most if not all other parts of the world.”[6] Outside of the Army and Navy, the notion of professional “careers” in public service did not emerge in America until the late 19th century. The passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883 created the first national civil service in America and many states adopted similar reforms. These laws required competitive examinations for entry into public service — although the educational levels required were not high. Basic literacy and numeracy were desired, as was some knowledge of accounting and some constitutional history.
A loosely defined field of “public administration” arose during the early 20th century. The impetus for it was a delayed reaction to the rapid urbanization of America, one of the great social upheavals in the history of the country. The field of public administration combined general administrative skills and knowledge (e.g., finance, accounting, personnel management), relevant technical knowledge (e.g., hydrology, criminology), and some knowledge about emerging social sciences.
The Training School for Public Service, founded in 1911, was typical among pioneering public administration institutions. At first not associated with any university, it was instead part of the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, founded in 1906. In 1931, the Training School in New York City broke up. Part of it went to Columbia University and part to the important Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, which was founded in 1924 with six public administration students. The Woodrow Wilson School was established at Princeton University in 1930. In Washington, DC, Robert Brookings founded a research institute and graduate school in the early 1920s, later reduced just to research. Between 1914 and 1930, several dozen institutions created small programs in public or municipal administration.[7]
Diplomacy escaped all formal professionalization until early in the 20th century. Diplomats, as distinct from consuls, did not begin to have to pass examinations until the mid-1920s. “Then, as now, many of the higher diplomatic posts remained ‘spoils.’”[8]
In the United States, expertise in statecraft was often equated with experience in the principles and practice of international law. To foster its study, the American Society of International Law was founded in 1906. Some indication of the society’s stature can be gathered from noting that its first president was Elihu Root (1906–24), who had been Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary of war and then secretary of state. When Root stepped down, his place was taken by the then-secretary of state (and future chief justice of the Supreme Court), Charles Evans Hughes (1924–29). In those years, the society regularly held meetings at the White House and was addressed by the president.
In addition to skill in the practice of international law, skill in foreign policy work was also often associated with the knowledge of international business. Familiarity with diplomatic history was a plus, as was knowledge of foreign languages, geography, and culture.
The new law schools could well have become a broader base for training policymakers. But the formative ones, such as Harvard Law under Dean Christopher Langdell, sought to foster as their distinct intellectual identity a new science of legal thinking, its principles to be discovered through the study of cases. In this context, “administrative law” became a field within law schools, conceived of as an effort to decode the legal principles that guided court review of administrative decisions.[9]
Very early, the public administration schools moved away from older styles of training in governing philosophies, political thought, and civic virtue, the kinds of educations urged by men like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, or John Stuart Mill. Like the founders of American political science, these academic leaders thought such educational agendas were old-fashioned and too concerned with formal structures.
Instead, the new leaders of these schools wanted to move beyond discussions of political philosophy and civic virtue. They wanted to build policies on the scientific study of social conditions and political behavior. They hoped that “scientific — ‘what is’ — studies would replace public-spirited — ‘what should be’ — studies.” Their argument was that by understanding the sociology of criminal behavior, the economics of labor unrest, the public health of cities, or the patterns of behavior among elected officials, there would be a scientific basis for action, and that this was better than just a lot of nostalgic, virtuous philosophizing.[10]
This model for a school of public administration added some value. Various disciplines gathered valuable information about social conditions and theories about social behavior. Public administration was then informed by such knowledge. But neither the early schools, like Maxwell, nor the emerging discipline of “political science,” developed a canon for how best to apply scientific knowledge to higher-level policy design.[11]
[quote id="2"]
Political science was built up as a discipline to consider policymakers objectively, as objects of study. Such scientists view the behavior of policymakers much as entomologists view the behavior of insects. Neither set of scientists are necessarily concerned with giving “how to” advice to their subjects.
In saying this, I am not trying to join a culture war decrying the relevance of social science. I simply observe the way such scientists tend to formulate their problems and questions, which then affects everything else. Much of the debate about relevance in those disciplines is a supply-side argument: that if they produced different scholarship, such work would be more influential. My argument in this article is different. It is a demand-side argument. It is that, as the software of policy work has deteriorated, the people doing policy work no longer do the analysis — or articulate the questions — to seek out and use relevant knowledge, whatever its source. I think it will be most impactful to fix the demand side of the problem.
The Golden Age of American Policymaking
Policy staff work of all kinds achieved a relative high point with the crises of the 1940s. The craft and discipline of policymaking was already surging because of the public responses to the Great Depression. But World War II produced a vast mobilization of talent to tackle a staggering array of military, economic, and governance problems.
The Allied successes included extremely high-quality policy work on grand strategy, logistics, and problem-solving of every kind. The German and Japanese high commands were comparably deficient in all these respects.[12] Paul Kennedy calls this software advantage the “most important variable of all.” Analytically, he noticed “a support system, a culture of encouragement, efficient feedback loops, a capacity to learn from setbacks, an ability to get things done.” All of this could permit “the middlemen in this grinding conflict the freedom to experiment, to offer ideas and opinions, and to cross traditional institutional boundaries.”[13]
From these tremendous accomplishments, I note five observations:
First, no one should overly romanticize the often quarrelsome, wasteful, and chaotic world of Washington during these years. There were many mistakes, some of them deadly and disastrous. Nor did the skills come from a well-thought-through template of the kind proposed in this paper. They emerged piecemeal from vast and stressful experience, amid plenty of bureaucratic rivalry and confusion.
Second, the experience arose from years of trial and error in managing the most challenging rival sets of claims and arguments on a global scale. With their long experience in doing this, including the challenges of managing resources, shipping, and manpower, the British staffing systems were the most evolved. British staffing practices were envied and then emulated by the Americans.
Third, the relevant qualities did not, by and large, migrate from the American universities. Nor did the qualities migrate back to them.
Fourth, the relevant qualities did emerge from some distinctive cultures and leaders. One big tributary was the very strong, decentralized problem-solving culture of American business in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.[14] In that era, the paradigmatic discipline of American business and industry was engineering, and the paradigmatic figure was that of the ingenious tinkerer who deeply understood both design and production and knew his way around the shop floor. Bill Knudsen at General Motors, who started his career in bicycle and auto parts, and as a builder of steam engines, was a typical and well-known exemplar.
Another great tributary was the managerial culture inside the armed forces, fostered by specific individuals. The military leaders during the war who set the tone for the high-level staff work were strategic managers — men like George C. Marshall or the civilian resource manager, Ferdinand Eberstadt, rather than “warriors” like Douglas MacArthur. It was no accident that Marshall elevated his most trusted staffer and planner in 1942, Dwight Eisenhower, to top command. Marshall and Eisenhower had strong views about the organizational culture of effective policymaking. Underperforming staff officers or program managers were frequently relieved and reassigned.
Fifth, the wartime and immediate postwar experience profoundly influenced organizational culture for another generation or so. A great many Americans had been drawn into the work of higher-level policy design on numerous topics. “One analyst referred to [the war] as the largest program in postdoctoral education for faculty in the nation’s history.” There was a similar impact on the nation’s lawyers.[15]
The breadth of experience summed up by these five observations about policy culture and staff work carried over into postwar efforts. In 1947, as secretary of state, Marshall used his first national radio address to the American people to remind them that, “Problems which bear directly on the future of our civilization cannot be disposed of by general talk or vague formulae – by what Lincoln called ‘pernicious abstractions.’ They require concrete solutions for definite and extremely complicated questions.”[16]
The military and business cultures of the United States in this period were intensely oriented toward practical problem-solving. They emphasized meticulous written staff work: unending flows of information and estimates, habitual preparation of meeting records or minutes, constant and focused debates about priorities and tradeoffs, and guidance directives drafted with concise precision that a lawyer would envy.
The result, especially by 1943 and afterward, was marked in dozens of projects from the atom bomb to the Marshall Plan to the Berlin Airlift. Any close study of such efforts reveals superior construction of large-scale, complex multi-instrument policy packages, including frequent adjustments.
The point about constant adjustment and iteration is notable. Even in military technology, most of the key Allied innovations turned out to be second-generation innovations. In other words, they were not the airplanes or ships that were available or in production at the start of the war. Instead, they were new or improved models of every kind, several of which had not even been imagined before the war. They were developed with agility and on a massive scale by a number of agencies and scores of companies in response to ongoing lessons learned, lessons that were constantly, consciously being extracted and studied.
It is difficult for those who have not pored through the archives to appreciate the scale and scope of this work, ranging from economic statecraft to amphibious operations to science policy. The extraordinary sets of official history volumes from World War II, familiar to historians of the period, give a sense for the work. They are also a striking illustration of the organizational culture that would produce such meticulous and admirable historical analyses.
The organizational culture that accomplished so much during the war was passed along mainly through imitation and apprenticeship. But the best practices did not migrate into standardized training or academic degree programs.
The Microeconomic Turn
The mid-20th-century academic paradigm of policymaking assumed a relatively neat separation between “policy” on the one hand (often equated with lawmaking) and “administration” on the other, presumably informed by good social science. By the 1960s, this older paradigm seemed more and more out of date. Although intellectuals recognized the huge intermediate space that was being filled by policymaking, academia had trouble figuring out how to teach it. Older public administration programs suffered an institutional identity crisis. The private foundations that had helped build up that field in the 1930s lost interest. The field of public administration fell into lower repute as compared with the rising social sciences.
Partly in response, a new trend in public policy education took shape. The social sciences were developing new techniques for the systematic analysis of public policies using analytic models, many derived from economic theory, along with quantitative methods. The federal government was pouring money not only into the expansion of government services, but also into training programs. In 1958, the Government Employees Training Act became law, while grants from the Civil Service Commission helped to subsidize large numbers of mid-career students. Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School was transformed by a 1965 gift from Charles and Marie Robertson. In 1968, the University of Michigan converted its public administration institute into an institution for “public policy studies.” Also in 1968, Harvard scrapped its former school of public administration, established a new John F. Kennedy School of Government, and developed an entirely new academic program for it. During that same academic year, the University of California created a new Graduate School of Public Policy at its flagship Berkeley campus, awarding a new “public policy” degree to replace its earlier offering in public administration.
[quote id="3"]
Dedicating one of the new buildings at the Woodrow Wilson School in May 1966, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed that “the public servant today moves along paths of adventure where he is helpless without the tools of advanced learning.” He said the country would need “enormous new drafts of trained manpower into the public service.” A presidential task force recommended new programs to train these “enormous new drafts.” Foundations like Carnegie and Ford took on the role that the Social Science Research Council had played in an earlier generation.
All this momentum produced one of the most significant changes in professional higher education of that generation. “At the heart of this shift [during the 1960s and early 1970s] was a growing faith in the power and prestige of economics as a field, a method, and even a science.” For instance, “in and around Robert McNamara’s Department of Defense, economists put into practice techniques of program analysis and benefit-cost measurement, which President Lyndon Johnson then forced on all domestic departments involved in building his Great Society.” One scholar involved in this shift recalled
visiting the office of a cabinet secretary in order to explain to him a several-hundred-page booklet on policy planning budget systems, one of the hallmark techniques of the era. He came upon the secretary fingering the booklet and asking, ‘What is this piece of shit?’ He had the pleasure of responding, ‘That piece of shit, sir, is what the president of the United States has directed that you introduce into your department.’[17]
The triumph of the RAND analysts, as some called it, put a lasting mark on education for public service. The core curriculum for that degree and similar foundational programs, like the one at Berkeley, then set a widely imitated paradigm which claimed that it taught “policy analysis.”
Economic tools for analyzing policy were regarded as novel. They fostered evidentiary discussion of outcomes. And, because the tools came from “demanding social science disciplines,” they “helped give the curriculum of the fledgling public policy schools a certain kind of legitimacy in the academic world in which they were struggling for academic respect.”[18]
“But left open, however,” one of the founding deans of such schools recalled,
were the answers to two further important questions: first, the extent to which schools of public policy intended to train individuals to participate effectively in the governmental process as policy makers as well as policy analysts; and if so, how individuals trained to be policy analysts, or policy makers … would relate to the political processes that were an inevitable part of policy making in a democratic society.[19]
Further, in the new curricula the definition of “policy analysis” was narrowed. In this paradigm, policy analysis teaching would focus on “economics, statistics, and quantitative analysis.”
In such core curricula, at least half of the courses are in economics and statistics.[20] They focus especially on cost-benefit analysis and the microeconomic fields of behavioral economics, game theory, and operations research. Any student who masters this curriculum and the relevant statistics applications would be equipped to contribute to certain kinds of policy-related research. The student could model theories of action for certain kinds of public problems.
But most policymaking challenges, and the related staff work, call upon different sets of skills. As a result, even as it triumphed in this part of academia, the microeconomic paradigm of policy analysis was passing out of fashion in much of government. In the world of foreign policy, the microeconomic paradigm never gained much traction to begin with, except in segments of development work.[21]
Some studies have been done on the alumni of this kind of policy analysis education to see how well it worked for them in practice. The results seriously question the value of such core curricula. The alumni told the investigators that they wished they had learned more about topics like “policy design.”[22]
While the study of policy analysis was taking its microeconomic turn, the study of “public administration” went through its crisis and advanced forward. It was revived as a field of “public management.” That field, fortunately, has continued to mature and advance.[23]
Social Science and the Return of the Lawyers
After World War II, law and lawyers became more and more powerful in establishing paradigms for domestic policymaking in the United States. In foreign policy, the story was very different. The older paradigm for expertise, that of international law, lost its dominant standing. No critic was more influential than the famous former diplomat George Kennan, who published a set of polemical lectures on “American Diplomacy” in 1951 attacking what he regarded as a legalist-moralist strain in American statecraft.[24] Kennan himself had no particular use for social science. He spent the rest of his life writing history and historical reflections.
History and social science continue to be invaluable resources for evidence about trends and causes in social behavior. The gap remains in the application of this knowledge to the solution of practical problems. This is not because academics do bad work. Their work varies, as always. But, as I mentioned earlier, their work is fundamentally oriented to answering questions that are meaningful within their scholarly fields. These questions are very different from the kinds of questions actually encountered in the application of their knowledge to the solution of practical problems. There is a similar divide between the world of laboratory science disciplines and the world of engineering. Chemical engineering is not just applied chemistry. It is a distinctive discipline with canonical methods of its own. In the engineering disciplines, this point was grasped more than a hundred years ago.
Law schools have become principal producers of the people who are actually going into the policy jobs. Lawyer-officials have ready gifts. They know how to make an argument. They are usually experienced writers. On a good day, they are relatively rigorous in attending to factual and legal detail. The tradeoff for these “generalist” skills, however, is a lack of much subject-matter or foreign expertise. Experienced as advocates who can pick evidence to defend a position, lawyers are not necessarily trained to weigh and sift positions on both sides. Experienced in being asked to decide what “can” be done, lawyers are not trained to analyze what “should” be done, even in policies having to do with policing or the administration of justice. They have no necessary experience in policy design, analysis, or implementation.
Perhaps above all, a lawyerly cast to government tends to emphasize process over substance. Meetings proliferate. Sides are heard. The quality of written staff work takes second place.
The Teaching Problem and “Thick” Cases
The World War II generation learned much about effective policy work, but never quite figured out how to teach it. Data for the microeconomic sort of policy analysis is also rarely connected to the data about implementation. Experts in program evaluation and experts in performance management became estranged, “a tale of two children who were brought up in the same house but were raised by different tribes and aren’t so friendly with one another.”[25]
One part of the problem is that policy engineering is complicated. Assessing a policy situation is a classic problem of “thick description.” In academia, if readers will forgive me for lapsing momentarily into academic-speak, thick description
accurately describes observed social actions and assigns purpose and intentionality to these actions, by way of the researcher’s understanding and clear description of the context under which the social actions took place. Thick description captures the thoughts and feelings of participants as well as the often complex web of relationships among them. Thick description leads to thick interpretation, which in turn leads to thick meaning of the research findings. … Thick meaning of findings leads readers to a sense of verisimilitude, wherein they can cognitively and emotively ‘place’ themselves within the research context.[26]
For readers who got bogged down in that definition, the punch line is in the last sentence.
Consider the Marshall Plan, for example. The simple memory of this might be that Americans wisely displayed exceptional generosity and foresight in committing a lot of money to help rebuild Europe. But that level of understanding barely begins to comprehend the qualities of the work involved in developing and implementing the European Recovery Program.
The genius of the program is found in the details of the design, which are difficult to summarize quickly but include the way the plan involved the Europeans in working out the program designs and new ways to cooperate within Europe, the way the program set up and used local “counterpart” funds for acquisitions in each of the participating European countries, and the way it rallied wary U.S. congressmen with elements that appealed to the businessmen in their districts. Even at the level of higher strategy, the Marshall Plan reflected a choice of where to commit resources and energy — in this case, a massive commitment to Western Europe amid the simultaneous clamor for a commitment instead to America’s favored side in China’s civil war.
Many public policy problems are like this, “thick” with successive stages of problem-solving, each with layers of analysis and context. Such thick problems are relatively resistant to social science generalizations. They also confound quests for generic forecasting. The problem has spawned an extensive literature about the craft of analyzing and sifting specific information, although in America much of this work is mainly known and taught among professional intelligence analysts.[27]
All this is hard to translate to the classroom for a variety of reasons. First, many teachers do not have the requisite knowledge of policy-relevant details, because they have never been involved in the subject-matter specialization and because their scholarly disciplines do not usually expect (or even want) them to master such problem-solving skills.
[quote id="4"]
Second, hiring practitioners does not necessarily help. When ex-practitioners go into the classroom, they can often tell stories. They remember some of the details. Yet, they have no canon for how to teach about their experiences. One expert who surveyed courses in diplomacy all over America found that the differences were enormous. Across academics and practitioners alike, she concluded, “I could not find a common core.” Instead, what she found were courses that just elide the messy challenge of how to solve problems, especially if they involved other governments.
Some courses focus on acquiring transnational expertise, “without distrusted national governments getting in the way.” Other courses dodge engagement by being aimed more at Americans who view the world as “a pathological mess” and just want protection from it. Then they focus on security studies, including intelligence, like the study of how to diagnose a disease, without attempting to teach about how to solve a foreign problem.[28]
Third, college courses prefer “thin” cases that are easy to digest and understand in a single class before moving on to the next topic. The structure of a course usually leaves little time for students to delve very deeply into the details, personalities, and issues in any specific episode. To do so requires too much reading or assumes too much background knowledge. Students like stories. But, in the classroom, memorably thin descriptions and colorful anecdotes are preferred. Even classes that use a case method rarely devote multiple classes, much less weeks, to microexamination of a single case, however rich it may be.
One popular solution to teaching about problem-solving is to stage a simulation. Yet, simulations in such simplified thin cases “devolve rather rapidly into theater.” International crisis simulations reinforce the notion of diplomacy as “an event or series of events, of crisis management or negotiations done in a matter of days.” To a veteran practitioner, “Diplomacy is to simulations as the practice of medicine is to the TV show ‘ER.’”[29]
Another practice in contemporary teaching about policy work enjoins students to try writing “options” papers, modeled on policy memos. A typical policy memo in contemporary American government consists of some discussion of what is going on, something about process, and recommended talking points. If there is any policy analysis at all, it rarely advances much beyond op-ed style argument.
As if to learn to imitate this mediocrity, students writing options papers are often urged to keep their papers short — op-ed length — supposedly so they can learn how to engage the attention of busy policymakers. The would-be experts thus learn to be experts by dumbing themselves down. Such training does not prepare students to engage professionally with the messy details of the policy instruments being used or the messy details of the local circumstances in which these concepts may actually be tested.
The Organizational Culture Problem
The usual focus in the study of organizational culture is on the culture of operators, of the “street-level bureaucracy,” as the title of one classic work put it.[30] These studies tend to neglect the organizational culture of higher-level policy work.
Yet, it was just that part of organizational culture that was so essential in the software of the American organization for victory in World War II and its most effective public problem-solving in the postwar years. This part of the software is made up of formal and informal routines for activities that seem mundane, but are not.
These cultural routines and habits define the way the key organizations distribute information about what is going on, including the ways top officials get their information every morning; comment upon or “clear” incoming reports or policy papers; delegate policy work; interact with “the field”; analyze issues for higher-level discussion and decision; resolve differences, either through written work or in meetings; record and brief about policy discussions and decisions; and critique their work.
There are great variations in these practices. American practices are different than in other governments. They even vary greatly over time within the same agency.
Two specific examples, both in the foreign policy world, illustrate this point. Through World War II and the postwar years, daily information about what was going on in the world was provided to top leaders by diplomatic and military reports, from the State Department and the armed services. Beginning in the 1960s, and evolving very slowly during the next 30 years, the CIA took over the job. The CIA became a systematic primary source of daily publications and briefings to tell top leaders what was going on in the world. The armed forces’ products quickly receded in importance and the quality deteriorated. By the 2000s, the State Department’s daily morning product had disappeared altogether and was abolished.
Intelligence agencies have very particular strengths and weaknesses in what they follow and what they do. So, reliance on the intelligence agencies for the morning “papers” has very large effects on what policymakers see about the world. It also has very damaging effects on the incentives and quality surrounding diplomatic and military reporting. But this growing reliance on the daily worldview of the intelligence community (not necessarily drawing from foreign field presence or experience) was not the product of a conscious policy choice. It evolved incrementally, with little notice or reflection.
Records of policy discussions provide another example of the variation of organizational cultures over time. Through the war and postwar years, careful records were usually kept for all high-level meetings among American officials. This is hard to do. It was not done mainly out of regard for historians, although that was a factor. It was done because such records were considered essential for good government. It forced reflection on what had been said or not said. It helped others stay current if they had a need to know what was going on.
These habits were so thoroughly ingrained that even when President Eisenhower met one-on-one with his secretary of state, almost invariably one or both men would routinely prepare a written record of what they had just said to each other. The secret recording systems used by Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Richard Nixon were an extension of such habits, as dictabelts and tape machines made their way into offices. Henry Kissinger’s staff prepared excellent records of about 15,000 of his meetings and telephone calls. These routines remained relatively strong through the 1970s and even well into the 1980s, though they were starting to fade.
It is now rare to find any good records kept of what is said at meetings among American officials. The quality of the records of meetings with foreigners has also deteriorated. The usual excuse given is the horror of leaks. But that horror was perfectly familiar to officials of the wartime and postwar generation as well. Though constantly irritated by leaks, those past officials thought that the net value of routines of good governance took precedence. The real reasons for the change are likely more banal. There was no conscious policy choice across the administrations to quit preparing good records. It is just hard to do it. Without a routinized discipline, it vanishes from the day-to-day culture.
In the postwar period, detailed written estimates and policy staff work were the norm. Papers were subjected to constant peer review from colleagues who were similarly trained and experienced. Very busy officers were accustomed to writing and reading lengthy papers of this kind every day. Thousands of Americans acquired such experience. They could be found operating at the highest levels in Marshall Plan development (such as the famed economists Charles Kindleberger and Edward Mason), occupation governance (such as the young Kissinger), strategic planning, research and development (for example, Vannevar Bush’s team at the wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development and later in the creation of the National Science Foundation), and much more.
One pattern in the War Department culture was that responsibility for planning and responsibility for operations were inseparable. A planner had to be willing and able to convert his work into action.[31]
Developing these habits, the Americans during the 1940s were strongly influenced, through common work in various Allied organizations, by long-established and relatively high-quality British processes for collective policy analysis and staff work. Eisenhower was both a product and exemplar of such Allied experience.
Although the origins are almost forgotten, the 1947 creation of America’s National Security Council system was greatly influenced by the model of British systems, including the British War Cabinet system. Many of the Americans had come to know, imitate, and grudgingly admire those staffing methods. They consciously adapted analogous habits of systematic paper preparation, record-keeping, historical evaluation, peer commentary, lucid guidance, and collective decision-making. Eisenhower well understood this background about why the National Security Council was created and how it was originally expected to function. He was the last American president who did.[32]
[quote id="5"]
The Pentagon Papers on the decisions made during the Vietnam War, the subject of the 2017 film, “The Post,” were an anachronism in more than one way. As bad as the Vietnam decisions were, the policy papers were long, detailed, and rigorous. The Pentagon Papers were such a revelation because this underlying policy work, and the dilemmas being presented, were relatively lucid and self-revealing.
Suppose contemporary officials actually opened up and read some of these documents about Vietnam today. Suppose they contrasted the quality of the memos written in the 1960s with the papers they have seen cross their desk more recently, say, on policy toward Afghanistan or Iraq. These officials might be a bit bewildered. In their own working lives, they may never have seen written staff analyses of this kind, work that was so commonplace 50 years ago.[33]
The sheer existence of the Pentagon Papers project is another revealing symptom of a vanished organizational culture. This work of thoroughgoing historical reflection was done at the direct behest of Secretary of Defense McNamara, during the Johnson administration. Back then, this sort of high-quality review was not so strange. There were other searching, internal self-examinations, like the ones done after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, or after the swine flu vaccine mess during the Ford administration. It is hard now to imagine the kind of American government that would even commission an internal study as meticulous as the Pentagon Papers, or the kind of studies the Kennedy and Ford administrations ordered to examine their own failures.[34]
Outsiders — and even many insiders, especially the less-experienced ones — are unconscious of most of this software, and how much it varies. Historians rarely notice such things or compare contrasting routines over time. Although the details of such staffing practices have been extensively studied in Britain, I do not know of any comparable published work on these practices in the United States.
One way to spot the decline in the quality of written policy work is to notice if the paper simply describes what is going on and then moves on to statements of what “we” want, with “talking points.” In this environment, PowerPoint slides replace prose analysis.
As the quality of written staff work declines, fewer decisions can be made based off the paperwork. High-level meetings proliferate. They become a surrogate for good written analysis and advocacy.
In such oral processes, delegation of analysis and action is more difficult. More and more policy work gets pulled up to the level of overworked principals, and their own ill-documented oral meetings. Meanwhile, senior agency officials turn more and more into functionaries. As they know their work or views are less meaningful, the trend reinforces the downward cycle.
The older organizational culture naturally placed a high value on in-depth knowledge and analysis. In the CIA’s analytic world, for instance, Cold War-era estimates “could draw on a deep base of knowledge,” the 9/11 Commission observed in 2004. But,
[w]hen the Cold War ended, those investments could not easily be reallocated to new enemies. The cultural effects ran even deeper. In a more fluid international environment with uncertain, changing goals and interests, intelligence managers no longer felt they could afford such a patient, strategic approach to long-term accumulation of intellectual capital. A university culture with its versions of books and articles was giving way to the culture of the newsroom.[35]
With the disappearance of these organizational cultures, largely unnoticed, the software of policymaking that went with them also faded away about a generation ago.
The deterioration in policymaking software has had a huge impact, as several recent policy episodes, including the Iraq War, have made clear. Yet, the present generation of policymakers and politicians are, understandably, not even aware of what has happened or how the government has changed.
A Template for Policy Engineering: Assessment … Design … Implementation
“Design process” is a phrase that is foundational in engineering education, in which students are trained in how to apply knowledge to the solution of practical problems. One of the main purposes of an engineering design process is to generate better questions and focus them constructively. Such focused questions then drive more specific, in-depth assessment.
Engineers are often taught a set of steps they must memorize, steps that are put on a card they carry in their wallet. The specific steps memorized by engineering trainees vary from textbook to textbook or teacher to teacher. Common formulas have five or seven steps. MIT’s fine course on “Engineering Innovation and Design” in its renowned Gordon Engineering Leadership Program has a 10-step design process.[36]
“Design” has become a fashionable concept during the last ten years. Although the usages overlap, they vary in important ways. In the business world, “design thinking” has become a term synonymous with a search for greater creativity in thinking about what the firm is trying to do. A leader in this field is the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford’s d.school. Its guide to design thinking breaks down a process with five stages (with sub-methods for each): empathize (with the user), define (the challenge), ideate, prototype, and test.[37]
At the end of the 2000s, reacting to a very difficult and complex set of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. Army decided it needed to add the concept of “design” to its basic field manual for “the operations process.” Officers now argue about what “Army design methodology” means in practice. At a minimum, it is the Army’s way of urging commanders who are confronting complex or unfamiliar problems to stop and think harder about what they are trying to do. Officers are urged to at least “give a bit of structure to those periodic conversations any commander has with his staff officers to improve his appreciation of the mission.” This should at least take the form of four questions, about what is going on, what exactly is the desired end state, what is the theory of strategic action to get that result, and how to act and speak to make good on that theory.[38]
[quote id="6"]
Meanwhile, within academia, some scholars of public management have pressed for a turn toward a “new” study of policy design, what they call “design 2.0.” These experts reject the stock analyses that just relate tools to outputs, a superficial “means-ends understanding of policy formulation.” Instead, they call attention to the multilayered and deeply context-dependent nature of modern policy design.[39]
In the world of business schools, the field of “decision analysis” — a required part of the usual first-year MBA curriculum — consists substantially of teaching students how to assign number weights to values and probabilities and then work up equations that integrate the calculation of these variables.[40] It does not, however, actually teach a policy design framework.
A process for policy work, which itself is often called a “design process,” is all about assessment, design, and implementation. [41]
Assessments
Assessments are judgments about circumstances. These appreciations are always a compound of assessments of reality, what we or “they” think is going on; assessments about values, what we or “they” care about; and preliminary assessments about action — what, if anything, might be done. In this context, the action judgment is simply the threshold cognitive judgment — can we do something about this? — that then influences how much attention we give to the problem.
There are various heuristic aids to assessment: weighing alternative interpretations of available evidence, weighing alternative futures and scenarios, assigning probabilities, and more.[42] Good assessment has at least four elements:
- detailed knowledge with regard to the issue, though not necessarily from a professional specialist;
- unpacking the assessment into its component variables or presumptions;
- using heuristic tools, such as distinguishing what is known, unknown, and presumed; constructing scenario analyses; assigning specific probability weights; and weighing generic probabilities from other cases against the distinguishing features of the case at hand; and
- the right team to bring the expertise and analytic rigor to bear in a specific case.[43]
Design
Design is the choreography of action. A more academic definition of policy design, developed by scholars working in Canada and Singapore, calls it: “an activity conducted by a range of policy actors at different levels of action in the hope of improving policymaking and policy outcomes through the accurate anticipation of the consequences of government actions and the articulation of specific courses of action to be followed to achieve different levels of policy goals and ambitions.” Such design work occurs “within the context of designing complete policy packages. … [So] each policy and program is a complex arrangement of ends and means-related goals, objectives, instruments, and calibrations that exists in a specific governance and temporal setting, and these contexts must be taken into account if effective program design is to result from design efforts.”
[44]
To put this a little more simply, the “design” part of a policy design process includes choices about:
- Operational objectives — converting values into a concrete, working definition of success;
- Strategic theories of action — that spell out the presumed relations of means to these ends;
- Choreographies/blueprints of required action — who does what and when, using what instruments and institutions
To offer a simple illustration of how such a framework could be applied, just consider one part, the “operational objectives,” in the Trump administration’s trade and tariff policy toward China.
Are they to gain a trade deal that would more fairly
recouple the American and Chinese economies? If so, what would be a concrete definition of success?
Or the operational objectives could be the opposite — to
decouple the two economies. Again, what would be a concrete, working definition of whether that objective had been attained?
Or the operational objectives could be defined as a targeted increase in U.S. manufacturing employment, or as a reduction of U.S. bilateral current account deficits. And so on.
Obviously, the analysis of these different operational objectives then open up quite different questions about the best theories of action and choreographies of what should be done. Yet, since at the moment (September 2019) no one can tell what the operational objectives are for the U.S. policy, the policy becomes inherently incoherent.
Implementation
Implementation is the final part of the policy work
. It is attentive to local circumstances, the realities of the field, and the many stakeholders involved. At every stage, the software includes the organizational cultures for getting and evaluating information, for doing analysis, and for recording what is being done. As with the other elements, implementation is not separate from assessment and design. It interacts with them, as implementation informs ongoing reevaluation of everything else.
[45]
This whole template — conscious methods for assessment, design, and implementation — is itself just a kind of heuristic tool. As with the engineering trainees memorizing the steps on their wallet cards, such tools are both a discipline and a defense. They are a kind of analytical checklist that provide a bit more protection against so many insistent claims that divert and distract attention.
Policy Education Should Not Stand Alone
The wartime and postwar science adviser, public official, and longtime president of Harvard, James Conant, regarded Harvard’s public administration school, established in the late 1930s, as his greatest failure. He observed that two approaches had to be balanced. Such public affairs education should not, he thought, duplicate business schools by trying to build an entirely separate faculty. He thought such education should draw on the resources of the university as a whole. At the same time, Conant thought it was important to have a curriculum that did not emphasize a science of public administration separated from its policy content.
[46]
Colleges of arts and sciences, and the major professional schools (law, business, engineering, medicine) all turn out women and men who work on public policy. In fact, despite the growth of the policy schools, these older institutions empirically still contribute the great majority of the citizens who work on such problems, including at the higher levels of policymaking. Yet, none of those “regular” schools are, or can be,
primarily interested in public policy or education for public service. Even at the leading policy schools, only a fraction of their graduates actually go into public service.
[47]
The challenge, then, is in how to offer a distinctive preparation for citizen involvement in public policy. Aside from the general education of citizens, the professionals who are most likely to identify a need for more professional training tend to be in government, including the military, foreign service, intelligence, and legislative staff; law, including as a possible addition to law school work; business, including as a possible addition to business school work; academia, including as a possible addition to PhD or MA programs; applied science, including engineering, public health, and medical practice; and nonprofit organizations.
Many of the key jobholders already in government are primarily trained in specialized field and technical duties. Their often-admirable training does not include adequate preparation for policymaking challenges outside their traditional functional and managerial skillsets.
Traditional graduate studies related to policy work tend to bifurcate into two very distinct tracks — a professional master’s degree program and an academic PhD program. Both of these programs serve important purposes, but they leave a major gap. The PhD students develop rigorous research skills to investigate theories in their fields, but are largely insulated from consideration of real-world policymaking.
[48] Professional master’s students are exposed to some complexities and challenges of practice. The strength of these programs can be training in quantitative analytic methods, public administration, and advocacy. For various reasons, they do not provide rigorous training in the kind of strategic and design thinking needed for problem-solving, nor do they impart enough relevant substantive knowledge.
[49]
In addition, students are forced to make a fateful choice early in their studies. They can either pursue the law or master’s degree, which opens the path to the world of practice yet can mean foregoing a career in teaching and research. Or they can pursue the academic PhD and sharply steer away from training in practical problem-solving.
An alternative approach would be to develop a relatively flexible curriculum. It would be conceived not as an alternative educational pathway, but as a broadening or extension of a core path that a student or professional has already chosen. Rather than forcing students to choose between a traditional “major” or career track and public service, the purpose of the curriculum would be to help students learn how to apply their core interest (and others they may discover) to public service. This complementary curriculum thus need not emphasize in-depth subject-matter education in particular regions of the world or in functional specialties like development, public health, cyberspace, or public order. The curriculum should instead be designed and delivered so that it can complement many such specializations.
Such a curriculum could have at least three especially distinctive features:
first, instruction and practice in analysis of detailed information and the assessment of situations. These assessments must grow out of a relatively deep ability to understand and imagine governance in unfamiliar institutions.
Second, instruction and practice in a conscious policy design process: This process can teach students how to break down complex policy problems. Then they can learn how to unpack and identify critical questions or choices, using a common conceptual vocabulary.
Finally, the curriculum could make extensive use of detailed case studies, both historical and contemporary, as projects in which students can develop a series of specific skills in working with situations of potential cooperation and conflict. These projects can be sustained over weeks, to give a sense of iterative change and adjustment. Some programs have tried such “policy task forces/workshops.”
[50]
[quote id="7"]
The skills to develop in such extended exercises can include attention to the routine habits of effective staff work. They include familiarity with the role of budgeting in policymaking, crafting public statements, participation in policy debates, role-playing to understand the perspectives of others and gain experience with negotiation, and learning to orchestrate and evaluate the implementation of a policy.
Such an educational initiative carries with it a major agenda for research. More and better “thick” case studies are needed, of the kind that are indispensable in other realms of professional education. The traditional scholarly disciplines have a specific understanding of what “case studies” mean for their investigations, but those case studies are rarely very useful for this kind of practical education. At some policy schools, such cases as exist have been prepared by professional “casewriters” who often do not have substantive training in the topic and whose work may not reflect the best scholarship or expert analysis. The range of possible studies of this kind is enormous. Such studies can bring “thick” problems and fateful choices to life.
Conclusion
There are obviously several major ways to explain the decline in government performance and the collapse in public trust in the U.S. government since the high-water marks of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Since the early 1960s, the government has tried to do much more — around the world and at home — and it is perceived to have usually fallen short, sometimes catastrophically so.
It is not very useful to blame the anti-Washington discourse. Such scapegoating of Washington is not new. It is an old, old theme in American history. Nor do I blame incompetent delivery of basic services, which are still reasonably good in America.
Part of the story is a record of policy failures: the tendency to react to events rather than drive them, poorly specified objectives, confusing guidance, reliance on weakly evidenced suppositions, little grasp of organizational capacities, inability to adapt organizations to new problems, overreliance on ill-managed contractors. These are all symptoms. They are symptoms of policies that are badly designed.
Weak knowledge of the history of certain issues or even of the government’s own policy record, a superficial grasp of other communities or institutions, and a preoccupation with reactions to daily news: These, too, are symptoms. They are symptoms of a weakening capacity for in-depth professional assessment.
Of course, the marked tendency to militarize policy, to rely on military instruments and military policymakers, is no cure. It is another symptom of the breakdown, as American policymaking is dumbed down and becomes praetorian.
Some of these problems can be blamed on bad structures and on polarized, dysfunctional politics. But that’s not all of the story.
As the immensely powerful Qing empire in China began to decay in the early 1800s, a leading scholar began calling for reform of the Confucian system that selected and trained the country’s administrative elite. He looked around and saw “everything was falling apart … the administration was contaminated and vile.” The scholar, Bao Shichen, “found himself drawn toward more practical kinds of scholarship that were not tested on the civil service exams.”
Bao “would in time become one of the leading figures in a field known broadly as ‘statecraft’ scholarship, an informal movement of Confucians who were deeply concerned with real-world issues of administration and policy.”
[51] Tragically, for Bao and many of his reformist allies, though their efforts made some headway, it was not enough. They could not reverse the decline of their empire.
The United States government has plenty of problems too. Fortunately, it is not yet at the point the Qing dynasty reached. Americans can reflect on a proud heritage, not far in the past, when Americans were notorious across the world for their practical, can-do skills in everything from fixing cars to tackling apparently insurmountable problems, public as well as private. These seemingly bygone skills were not in their genes or in the air. They need not be consigned to wistful nostalgia. The skills were specific. They were cultural. And they are teachable.
Philip Zelikow is the White Burkett Miller Professor of History and J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, both at the University of Virginia. His books and essays focus on critical episodes in American and world history. A former civil rights attorney and career diplomat, he has served at all levels of American government. He was the executive director of the 9/11 Commission and, before that, directed the Carter-Ford commission on federal election reform. He has also worked on international policy in each of the five administrations from Reagan through Obama.
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[post_title] => To Regain Policy Competence: The Software of American Public Problem-Solving
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[lead] => American policymaking has declined over the past several decades, but it is something that can be regained. It is not ephemeral or lost to the mists of time. The skills needed to tackle public problem-solving are specific and cultural — and they are teachable.
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[text] => The software of policy is about how policies are crafted within a given set of processes and constraints.
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[text] => Very early, the public administration schools moved away from older styles of training in governing philosophies, political thought, and civic virtue, the kinds of educations urged by men like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, or John Stuart Mill.
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[text] => Many public policy problems are like this, “thick” with successive stages of problem-solving, each with layers of analysis and context.
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[text] => A process for policy work, which itself is often called a “design process,” is all about assessment, design, and implementation.
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[text] => Rather than forcing students to choose between a traditional “major” or career track and public service, the purpose of the curriculum would be to help students learn how to apply their core interest (and others they may discover) to public service.
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[1] Francis Fukuyama,
Political Order and Political Decay (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014), 469.
[2] On other quality critiques, see, e.g., Donald Kettl,
Escaping Jurassic Government: How to Recover America’s Lost Commitment to Competence (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2016); and Paul Light, “A Cascade of Failures: Why Government Fails, and How to Stop it,” Brookings Institution, July 2014,
https://wagner.nyu.edu/files/faculty/publications/Light_Cascade_of_Failures_Why_Govt_Fails.pdf.
[3] Urgent Business for America: Revitalizing the Federal Government for the 21st Century, National Commission on Public Service, chaired by Paul Volcker (Washington: Brookings Institution, 2003), 1–2.
[4] A group of former officials who are also educators, and have thus worked on both sides of the fence, recently joined me in publishing a “Statement on Education for Public Problem Solving,” posted at a website that also includes some suggestive scholarship. https://fsi.stanford.edu/publicproblemsolving/docs/statement-working-group-public-problem-solving.
[5] Paul J. H. Schoemaker and Philip E. Tetlock, “Superforecasting: How to Upgrade Your Company’s Judgment,”
Harvard Business Review, May 2016, 4,
https://hbr.org/2016/05/superforecasting-how-to-upgrade-your-companys-judgment; see generally Tetlock and Dan Gardner,
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (New York: Broadway Books, 2015).
[6] Alexander Keyssar and Ernest May, “Education for Public Service in the History of the United States,” in,
For the People: Can We Fix Public Service? ed. John D. Donahue and Joseph S. Nye Jr. (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2003), 225.
[7] Keyssar and May, “Education for Public Service in the History of the United States,” 232.
[8] Keyssar and May, “Education for Public Service in the History of the United States,” 230.
[9] See William Chase,
The American Law School and the Rise of Administrative Government (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), 29–49.
[10] “Scientific,” Ralph Ketcham,
Public-Spirited Citizenship: Leadership and Good Government in the United States (New York: Routledge, 2015), 102 (discussing the address of Harvard president A. Laurence Lovell to the new American Political Science Association in 1910).
A perceptive Chinese political thinker of the early 20th century, Liang Qichao, much influenced by the work of John Dewey, was worried in 1919 about the trend in American political science toward “the omnipotence of science” amid a presumed social Darwinism of struggle among conflicting interests. Liang, trying to adapt Western ideas to his more Confucian sensibility, believed these trends were neglecting the older concentration on civic virtue and defining the public good. Ketcham, Public-Spirited Citizenship, 104–05.
[11] Ketcham,
Public-Spirited Citizenship, 101–30. Ketcham illustrates his argument with an appendix that offers a sharply observed history of the evolution of the Maxwell School at Syracuse (see pages 205–52). Both William Mosher, at Syracuse, and Charles Merriam, at the University of Chicago, produced early exemplary textbooks that tried to balance their social scientific observations of American public life with hortatory statements of their idealistic hopes for American government planning. Reviewers noted the “unresolved” tension between the specific science and the sermonizing idealism about how it should be applied in practice. Ketcham,
Public-Spirited Citizenship, 226–27.
[12] On the deficiencies of high-level German military staff work, especially on higher-level strategy, intelligence assessment, resource management, and logistics, see, e.g., Geoffrey Megargee,
Inside Hitler’s High Command (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000).
[13] Paul Kennedy,
Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War (New York: Random House, 2013), 362, 372. A similar argument is made by Richard Overy, in
Why the Allies Won (New York: Norton, 1997), who does not delve as deeply into the software that made the structures he praises so functional.
[14] See, for example, Thomas McCraw and William Childs,
American Business since 1920: How It Worked, 3rd ed. (New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2018), 26–28, 72–75 (emphasizing the decentralized management approaches of both Alfred Sloan at GM and Ferdinand Eberstadt in organizing war production). Explaining the “deindustrialization” of the 1970s and 1980s, they stress that, by then, “American management became more enamored with ‘financialization’ than with creating new products and services.” See page 232.
[15] Keyssar and May, “Education for Public Service,” 233.
[16] Marshall radio address, April 1947, quoted in Philip Zelikow, “George C. Marshall and the Moscow CFM Meeting of 1947,”
Diplomacy and Statecraft 8 no. 2 (1997): 97, 116,
https://doi.org/10.1080/09592299708406045.
[17] Keyssar and May, “Education for Public Service,” 234; and Graham Allison, “Emergence of Schools of Public Policy: Reflections by a Founding Dean,” in,
Oxford Handbook of Public Policy, ed. Michael Moran, Martin Rein, and Robert Goodin, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 64.
See generally, telling this triumph of the microeconomic turn as a success story, Beryl Radin,
Beyond Machiavelli: Policy Analysis Comes of Age (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000). Radin’s conception of policy analysis is triumphantly exclusive. It seems to simply ignore the existence of lawyers, diplomats, and health care policy wonks, among the many categories of people who believe they do such work.
[18] Allison, “Emergence,” 68. Allison recounts that he focused much of his agenda as dean on offsetting this curricular bias by building up the public management curriculum, fostering executive programs, and raising funds for problem-focused research centers. This work did help the school take off and become relatively successful. But, even from his account, it is not clear that he ever fully addressed the two questions that bothered him from the start.
[19] Allison, “Emergence of Schools of Public Policy,” 65.
[20] Such courses are currently 16 of the 30 credits in the Harvard Kennedy School’s first-year master in public policy core curriculum: “Degree Requirements,” Harvard Kennedy School, accessed Aug. 26, 2019,
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/educational-programs/masters-programs/master-public-policy/degree-requirements.
[21] As I saw firsthand when chairing part of the Harvard Kennedy School’s core curriculum during the 1990s, several of the founders of the Harvard Kennedy School were deeply dissatisfied with the way the school’s core curriculum had developed. They believed the school had succumbed to the desire of much of the faculty to join the “third best economics department in Cambridge.” Richard Neustadt quoted in Graham Allison, “Institution Builder,” in,
Guardian of the Presidency: The Legacy of Richard E. Neustadt, ed. Matthew Dickinson and Elizabeth Neustadt (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2009), 146–47.
[22] For articles that focus on alumni of the Harvard Kennedy School, see, Carol Chetkovich, “What’s in a Sector? The Shifting Career Plans of Public Policy Students,”
Public Administration Review 63 no. 6 (November 2003): 660–74,
https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-6210.00330; and Mark Henderson and Carol Chetkovich, “Sectors and Skills: Career Trajectories and Training Needs of MPP Students,”
Journal of Public Affairs Education 20 no. 2 (2014): 193–216,
https://doi.org/10.1080/15236803.2014.12001782.
[23] The modern field of public management has innovated and matured into a global movement, borrowing much from management innovations in the private sector. At the level of day-to-day job performance and integrity, federal bureaucrats seem to do at least as well as employees in private firms. See Donald Kettl,
The Global Public Management Revolution, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2005); and Hal Rainey,
Understanding and Managing Public Organizations, 5th ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2014), chap. 14.
[24] George F. Kennan,
American Diplomacy 1900-1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951).
[25] Donald F. Kettl, “Making Data Speak: Lessons for Using Numbers for Solving Public Policy Puzzles,”
Governance 29 no. 4 (October 2016): 573–79,
https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12211; “a tale of two children,” Donald Moynihan quoted in Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene, “Government’s Data-Driven Frenemies,”
Governing, March 17, 2016,
http://www.governing.com/columns/smart-mgmt/gov-performance-measurement-program-evaluator.html.
[26] Joseph Ponterotto, “Brief Note on the Origins, Evolution, and Meaning of the Qualitative Research Concept Thick Description,”
Qualitative Report 11 no. 3 (2006): 538, 543,
https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol11/iss3/6/.
[27] An introduction to this literature is available through the essays collected in Roger George and James Bruce, eds.,
Analyzing Intelligence: National Security Practitioners’ Perspectives, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014).
[28] Donna Marie Oglesby, “Diplomacy Education Unzipped,”
Foreign Service Journal (January/February 2015): 27, 28,
https://www.afsa.org/diplomacy-education-unzipped.
[29] Barbara Bodine (a retired diplomat and current director of Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy), “Teaching Diplomacy as Process (Not Event): A Practitioner’s Song,”
Foreign Service Journal (January/February 2015): 21, 24.
[30] E.g., Michael Lipsky,
Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services, 30th anniv. rev. ed. (New York: Russell Sage, 2010). For an example in the case of U.S. diplomats, see Kenneth Weisbrode,
The Atlanticists: A Story of American Diplomacy, rev. ed. (Santa Ana, CA: Nortia Press, 2015).
[31] See, for example, the detailed portrait in Ray Cline,
Washington Command Post: The Operations Division, in the Historical Series on the U.S. Army in World War II, subseries for the War Department (Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1951).
[32] The initial proposal for a national security council, in the Eberstadt Report, was modeled on the British War Cabinet system and the wartime State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee, which had also been modeled on British practice. Douglas Stuart,
Creating the National Security State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 89. For background on the Roosevelt practice, see also, Matthew Dickinson,
Bitter Harvest: FDR, Presidential Power and the Growth of the Presidential Branch (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Though this is mostly forgotten now, President Harry Truman was suspicious of the national security council proposal. He was suspicious precisely because he understood that it was modeled on the British War Cabinet and, like that system, was meant to dilute the power of the head of government and constrain him in a more deliberate, analytical, and collective decision-making system.
[33] When national security officials of the Obama administration reflect on the best written policy work they encountered, the two standouts seem to have been the preparatory work done before the May 2011 Bin Laden raid into Pakistan and the policy support work on Iran that culminated in the Iran nuclear deal of 2015. But I think those episodes stand out so much to them because the fine quality of that written policy work was
not the norm.
[34] As illustrations see, for example, the studies published in Richard Neustadt,
Report to JFK: Skybolt in Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999); Richard Neustadt and Harvey Fineberg,
The Swine Flu Affair: Decision Making on a Slippery Disease (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1978).
[35] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (New York: Norton, 2004), 91. I was the commission’s executive director. This particular passage of the report was drafted with the input of a former deputy director of the CIA and the former head of the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence, both of whom were on our staff.
During the 2000s and 2010s, reacting to problems in analytic tradecraft, exemplified by the Iraq weapons of mass destruction catastrophe, the intelligence community built up a National Intelligence University, operated by the Defense Intelligence Agency. The CIA has developed its Sherman Kent School of Intelligence Analysis. The substance of the CIA’s analytic training has improved, although some of those involved in these innovations believe the intelligence community needs to make further significant progress.
[36] The ten steps are: 1) identify needs (what’s the problem?); 2) information phase (what exists?); 3) stakeholder phase (what’s wanted and who wants it?); 4) planning/operational research (what’s realistic and what limits us?); 5) hazard analysis (what’s safe and what can go wrong?); 6) specifications (what’s required?); 7) creative design (ideation); 8) conceptual design (potential solutions); 9) prototype design (create a version of the proposed design); and 10) verification (does it work and, if not, redesign). From the version of MIT’s course 6.902 taught in Fall 2012 by Blade Kotelly and Joel Schindall and available through MIT OpenCourseWare.
[37] See, e.g., “An Introduction to Design Thinking: Process Guide,” Hasso Plattner Institute, accessed Aug. 26, 2019,
https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/sandbox/groups/designresources/wiki/36873/attachments/74b3d/ModeGuideBOOTCAMP2010L.pdf.
[38] “Field Manual 5-0: The Operations Process,” Department of the Army, March 2010; “ADP 5-0: The Operations Process,” Department of the Army, May 2012. The impetus for the “design” movement appears to have come from the Army’s Command and General Staff College and School for Advanced Military Studies, both at Fort Leavenworth. The quote and questions, paraphrased, are from Lt. Col. Celestino Perez, “A Practical Guide to Design,”
Military Review, March-April 2011, 43–45,
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-review/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20110430_art008.pdf; see also Heather Wolters, “Army Design Methodology: Commander’s Resource,” Department of the Army, Feb. 2012,
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a558054.pdf.
[39] One template for policy design, derived from domestic policy experience, offers a five-level framework: high-level abstraction, program-policy linkages, program-level operationalization, program implementation linkages, and specific measures. Michael Howlett, Ishani Mukherjee, and Jeremy Rayner, “Designing Effective Programs,” in,
Handbook of Public Administration, 3rd ed., ed. James Perry and Robert Christensen (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2015), Table 10.5, 196. See generally Michael Howlett, Ishani Mukherjee, and Jun Jie Woo, “From Tools to Toolkits in Policy Design Studies: The New Design Orientation Towards Policy Formulation Research,”
Policy & Politics 43 no. 2 (April 2015): 291, 297-99,
https://doi.org/10.1332/147084414X13992869118596. For more on this notion of “design 2.0” as a research agenda, see also Howlett and Mukherjee, “Policy Design: From Tools to Patches,”
Canadian Public Administration 60 no. 1 (March 2017): 140–44,
https://doi.org/10.1111/capa.12209.
[40] See, e.g., Paul Goodwin and George Wright,
Decision Analysis for Management Judgment, 5th ed. (New York: Wiley, 2014).
[41] Earlier and different versions of this design framework were first tried out in Philip Zelikow, “Foreign Policy Engineering: From Theory to Practice and Back Again,”
International Security 18 no. 4 (Spring 1994): 143–71, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2539180. This framework has been tried out in the classroom at Harvard and elsewhere. At Stanford, Jeremy Weinstein and Francis Fukuyama are developing an analogous framework in their teaching.
[42] See, e.g., the illustrations catalogued in Atul Gawande,
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right (New York: Henry Holt, 2009); and Steven Johnson,
Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions that Matter the Most (New York: Riverhead, 2018).
[43] These four elements are a synthesis of methods suggested in Richard Neustadt and Ernest May,
Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers (New York: Macmillan, 1986), along with the way Neustadt, May, and I then developed and taught these ideas. See also Tetlock and Gardner,
Superforecasting. I’m indebted to Michael Morell for discussions about the most basic elements of good assessment. See also the good discussion in Bodine, “Teaching Diplomacy as Process (Not Event),” 21–26.
[44] Howlett, Mukherjee, and Rayner, “Designing Effective Programs,” 195.
[45] For more on this emphasis on local, ground-level knowledge, see generally, written more in the context of domestic policymaking, Tara Dawson McGuinness and Anne-Marie Slaughter, “The New Practice of Public Problem Solving,”
Stanford Social Innovation Review, Spring 2019, 27–33,
https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_new_practice_of_public_problem_solving.
For some promising work on how to implement effective programs in the realm of state institution building, what they call “Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation,” see Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett, and Michael Woolcock,
Building State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). In more of a conflict/security context, see the pair of outstanding recent case study illustrations of analysis from the ground up, offered in Carter Malkasian,
War Comes to Garmser: Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016) (the paperback edition has a valuable afterword reflecting on more recent U.S. efforts); and
Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
[46] Allison, “Emergence of Schools of Public Policy,” 67; James Conant,
My Several Lives (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).
[47] Such placement trends led to a major lawsuit against Princeton, in which the members of the Robertson family that had originally donated the funds to enlarge the Woodrow Wilson School sued because the school no longer seemed to be using the gift to educate students for public service. Part of the 2008 settlement required Princeton to sponsor a $50 million foundation dedicated to that mission. Tamar Lewin, “Princeton Settles Money Battle Over Gift,”
New York Times, Dec. 10, 2008,
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/education/11princeton.html.
[48] This depiction of the academic market failure draws in part from arguments developed by Jim Steinberg and Frank Gavin for the Carnegie International Policy Scholars program. The academic PhD programs suffer from another problem. Unlike the policy schools, which are often home to faculty from a variety of social science disciplines, and in some cases the natural sciences and engineering, PhD programs in international affairs are designed, taught, and administered in discipline-based departments, primarily political science. This arrangement may make sense for scholarly training in that discipline. But it is counterproductive for interdisciplinary policy training. That problem has been compounded by the long-term decline of area studies programs within political science departments.
[49] The professional master’s degree programs, typically one to two years, focus on professional skills training for future practitioners. These degree programs are the core of most APPAM (Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management) and APSIA (Association of Professional Schools in International Affairs) schools. To the extent they have a canon, they too reflect the “microeconomic turn.” There are usually also courses that provide background information on international relations, current issues, and particular regions.
As a nod to practical training, such schools frequently hire faculty as professors of practice and adjuncts who are current and former practitioners. They frequently draw from their experience to tell good policy stories and offer suggestive illustrations. This helps. But they then lack an established teachable canon for rigorous professional education.
[50] There are some useful precedents in the “policy analysis exercises” used at some of the public policy schools. At Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, Bodine describes policy task force/workshops as “more practical than the conventional academic approach and more conceptual, structural and historical than simulations or even case studies.” Each focuses on a single major ongoing policy issue. Students produce a set of detailed papers on each facet of it. Bodine, “Teaching Diplomacy as Process (Not Event),” 25. The CIA’s Kent School of Intelligence Analysis has had some success using an analogous approach in training intelligence analysts.
[51] Stephen Platt,
Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age (New York: Knopf, 2018), 233 (following the work of William Rowe).
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[post_content] => At 00:50 on June 9, 2016, in the East China Sea, a frigate belonging to the Chinese navy
[1] entered the contiguous zone surrounding the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands on a course toward the islands’ territorial waters.
[2] While ships belonging to various Chinese agencies had entered both the contiguous zone and the territorial waters around the islands in the past, this was a first for a Chinese naval vessel. A Japanese Self Defense Forces destroyer following the vessel’s movements hailed it, advising it to change course — to no avail. Meanwhile, in Tokyo, a team assembled inside the crisis management center of the prime minister’s office to monitor the situation. In the early hours of the morning, the Chinese ambassador was summoned to the Japanese Foreign Ministry, where Vice Minister Saiki Akitaka met him with a demand for the vessel’s immediate withdrawal. While declining to formally accept this demand, the ambassador conveyed that escalation was undesirable and that he would report back to Beijing. The Chinese naval vessel subsequently exited the contiguous zone at 03:10.
[3]
Unlike previous “white-on-white” engagements — a label denoting the color of the ships’ hulls — between the Japanese Coast Guard and non-military Chinese vessels, this incident held the potential of becoming a dangerous “gray-on-gray” military showdown. Had the Chinese naval ship entered the islands’ territorial waters, it is highly conceivable that the Japanese government would have authorized the Japanese Self Defense Forces to employ force. Saiki would later reflect that there was real concern at the time that the situation would escalate into a serious confrontation between the Chinese and the Japanese forces.
[4] The tensions of that night reflect the stakes involved: Intentionally or unintentionally, actions by either side could have sparked a military escalation involving the world’s three largest economies.
Consisting of five core islands and a number of other minor features, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are claimed by Japan, the People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan.
[5] Although Japan has administered the islands since 1972 — when the United States transferred control — and continues to maintain that no dispute exists, its position has increasingly been challenged by the presence of official Chinese vessels in the islands’ adjacent waters.
[6] The United States, while not taking a stance on the sovereignty of the islands, nevertheless has committed itself to come to Japan’s defense should it be attacked in the exercise of its administrative control.
[7] The islands thus constitute a potentially dangerous flashpoint in East Asia, highlighted by a number of analyses as a possible trigger for armed conflict — if not war — in the region.
[8]
My goal in this paper is to supply an evidence-based, theoretically informed account of recent developments in the contest over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. To do so, I draw upon primary and secondary source material in Japanese and Chinese, as well as extensive interviews in both countries. I argue that, objectively speaking — apart from the mere fact that the Senkaku/Diaoyu are tangible features in the East China Sea to which Tokyo and Beijing both lay claim — the particular details of the disputed islands in themselves are by and large irrelevant.
Rather, to explain why the islands have become the flashpoint they are today, we must look at how their significance within Sino-Japanese relations has grown in ways that have little to do with their actual, inherent value. Specifically, there are three important dimensions to the increased significance of the islands. The first dimension is symbolic. Since late 2010, the islands have increasingly become a proxy for an array of latent and newly emerging intangible concerns, frustrations, resentments, and anxieties on both sides. These have given the islands import and salience by raising the perceived stakes involved. The second dimension is domestic. The emergence of an active contest over the islands generated both opportunities and vulnerabilities within the domestic political sphere of each state. At crucial moments, these domestic dynamics have raised the profile of the dispute and increased pressure on policymakers to take firmer action. The third dimension is competitive. The islands have become the concrete focus of an ongoing set of escalatory, interactive dynamics, in which actions taken by one side to improve its standing in the dispute elicit counter-measures from the other. These spiralling dynamics continue to play out across a variety of domains and remain a source of further potential conflict.
In brief, since late 2010 the islands have increased in significance as a symbol, as a domestic political football, and as an object of ongoing, competitive jockeying. Existing work has highlighted certain aspects of these roles in isolation, but I argue that we must view them as the interwoven pieces of a whole. The islands became increasingly salient as a domestic political issue in no small part because of their growing symbolic significance. But at the same time, the symbolic import of the islands benefitted immensely from being championed by domestic politicians, activists, and others who latched onto the issue, whether opportunistically or out of sincere conviction. As the island’s symbolic and domestic political importance rose, so too did the respective pressures on the leaders managing the contest to take stronger action. This set in motion competitive spirals of move and counter-move between Tokyo and Beijing. The friction this generated has, in turn, helped to further feed into the islands’ symbolic and domestic political significance. The different facets of the islands’ increasing significance are therefore closely interconnected.
This paper proceeds in six parts. First, it lays out why the escalation over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands since 2010 is so puzzling. Second, it investigates arguments concerning the material value of the islands. Third, it examines the potential
non-material value attached to the islands before 2010. Fourth, it evaluates the possibility that leaders on either side actively sought to initiate the dispute for self-interested reasons. Fifth, it offers an alternative explanation, arguing that we need to examine the increasing significance of the islands within Sino-Japanese relations with a focus on three dimensions. Finally, it concludes by considering potential paths forward.
The Puzzle of Escalation
Prior to 2010, the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands were a relatively peripheral issue in Sino-Japanese relations. On Sept. 7, 2010, however, a Chinese fishing trawler collided with Japanese Coast Guard ships in the waters surrounding the islands, resulting in the Japanese detention of the ship and crew and the arrest of the captain. This spiraled into a major diplomatic incident, as Beijing applied increasing pressure on Japan for their return. Japan first released the ship and crew, and then eventually also the captain, after which tensions subsided. But in 2012, tensions reignited when — despite Beijing’s objections — the Japanese government chose to preempt an initiative by the nationalist mayor of Tokyo to buy several of the islands from a private owner by purchasing the islands itself. This unleashed a new round of conflict involving popular protests and official tensions. As Sheila Smith has written, “Until 2010, what had largely been perceived as a manageable difference between Tokyo and Beijing, of interest only to small groups of nationalist activists in both countries, had blown up into a major confrontation between the two states.”
[9]
The 2010 collision and subsequent 2012 purchase were thus decisive turning points in the nature of the Sino-Japanese dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. This is evidenced by substantial shifts in the official and popular prominence of the dispute. Consider the attention the islands have received from the
People’s Daily, the Chinese government’s official mouthpiece: Only 16 articles referenced the islands in the five years before the 2010 collision compared to 312 in the five years after.
[10] In Japanese officialdom, that these events marked turning points in the dispute is evidenced by parliamentary references: As one study demonstrates, 2010 marked a watershed for the islands’ salience within parliamentary debates, with mentions increasing exponentially over previous years.
[11] As for the popular prominence of the dispute, the Chinese search engine, Baidu, shows few online searches for the islands in the five years prior to 2010. In September 2010, there was a sudden burst in Chinese interest, which was subsequently dwarfed in 2012 with searches increasing nearly six-fold.
[12] In Japan, Google Trends shows little interest in the islands in the years before the 2010 incident as well. Interest first shot up massively in 2010 and then again in 2012.
[13]
[quote id="1"]
Seven years on, the prominence of the dispute has subsided somewhat; however, the situation in the waters around the islands remains a far cry from the status quo ante. Since 2012, official Chinese maritime vessels have conducted regular incursions into the islands’ territorial waters, and official Chinese aircraft have repeatedly appeared in the airspace above them.
[14] In 2013, Beijing announced an Air Defense Identification Zone including the airspace over the islands, raising the risk of aerial confrontation. Though there has been progress since then — most notably a maritime communication mechanism between the Japanese Self Defense Forces and the People’s Liberation Army
[15] — as well as a more general improvement in the tone of relations, the area around the islands has become more crowded and the possibility for serious conflict remains.
The above broadly describes
what happened, but not
why. Looking to the existing literature on territorial disputes, one approach to seeking an explanation would be to ask what it is about the contested islands’ material value — be it strategic or economic — that has motivated such tensions. Another approach would be to examine the islands’ preexisting non-material value — religious, ethnic, or historical. A third approach would be to adopt a cynical perspective, investigating the potential of a “wag-the-dog” scenario in which the governments involved intentionally initiated the dispute to distract from domestic concerns or, alternately, to gain bargaining leverage in other areas.
This paper examines each of these explanations in turn and finds them wanting. The material value of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands is, at best, questionable. Nor does it explain why tensions did not begin until 2010. If anything, estimates of the islands’ economic value have been repeatedly adjusted downward. Regarding non-material value, the islands are uninhabited and host no sites of major religious or ethnic meaning. If there have been revisions to their perceived historical significance, these have arguably occurred as a function of post-2010 developments. And lastly, all available evidence suggests neither side was initially seeking escalation. The following three sections lay out these findings in detail, leaving the developments in the years since 2010 a mystery.
The Question of Material Value
A number of existing approaches explain territorial disputes according to the tangible benefits possession of a disputed territory can supply. These include strategic advantage, natural resources, control of trade routes, an increased population or tax base, or extra land to settle.
[16] Given that the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are small and uninhabited, most material arguments have focused on their strategic or economic value.
Strategic Value
One argument for the strategic value of the islands is that possessing them would aid the Chinese military in breaking through the first island chain separating continental China from the Pacific Ocean. Alternately, were Japanese forces to possess them, it would help prevent a Chinese military breakthrough.
[17] The first island chain stretches from the Korean peninsula southward across the Japanese Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, and beyond to the Philippines.
[18] The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are located inside this island chain, northeast of Taiwan on the western edge of the Okinawa Trough.
But while nearer to the first island chain than the Chinese continental coastline, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are, at their closest, still at least 60 miles (100 km) away from any feature in the chain.
[19] Consequently, even if the People’s Republic of China possessed the islands, penetrating Japanese-held sections of the chain would still require Chinese military vessels to transit a considerable distance and pass through one of several bottlenecks, most prominently the Miyako Strait, between the Japanese islands of Okinawa and Miyako. These islands already house formidable Japanese military capabilities, including mobile, surface-to-ship missiles covering the strait’s entrance, and a submarine sound-surveillance system extending along the Ryuku archipelago.
[20] Apart from mobile, land-based missiles stationed across the chain, Japan can also deploy guided-missile patrol boats, submarines, and even mines to block critical passageways.
[21] Correspondingly, Japan does not need control of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands to obstruct the Chinese navy’s movement through its portion of the first island chain. Therefore, as one analyst has noted, to break through the chain the Chinese military would likely attempt capturing islands such as Miyako and Ishigaki for control of the strait that lies between them.
[22] Certainly, Japan could do more to increase its defenses on these islands.
[23] But taking them remains a daunting task involving the long-distance transport of an invasion force. Chinese possession of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands would not markedly change that fact.
A second argument for the strategic value of the islands is that they would provide a platform for placing strategically useful assets — such as radar installations or missiles — closer to either the island chain or the Chinese continental coastline, respectively, as well as nearby sea lines of communication.
[24] And yet, such an advantage would be marginal at best. For one, anything placed on the islands would be highly vulnerable. Only one of the islands — Uotsuri/Diaoyu Island — has a surface area greater than half a square mile (or 1 sq km). But at less than 1.4 square miles (3.6 sq km.) it is just “a bit larger than New York City’s Central Park.”
[25] Accordingly, the islands have scant space to hide assets or develop redundancies. In a conflict scenario, assets on the islands would offer easily identifiable targets unlikely to survive an opening salvo.
[26] Moreover, the islands are relatively isolated: They are over 60 miles (100 km) from either the nearest Japanese islands or Taiwan and more than 180 miles (300 km) from the Chinese mainland. Resupply under combat conditions would pose major logistical difficulties.
[27] What is more, such capabilities can be placed elsewhere. To cite a former Japanese defense official, “you could get the same result from putting radar on the Senkaku as from putting it nearby on a ship, or, alternately, by flying AWACS [Airborne Warning And Control Systems] you could get information from farther away.”
[28] Not only do ship-mounted and airborne capabilities have the advantages of mobility, the latter also have the advantage of altitude, providing a much farther radar horizon.
[29] So, while the strategic value of the islands is not zero, it is quite low. According to one former Japanese vice admiral, they are “just junk rocks, no strategic value.”
[30]
Still, one could argue that Beijing’s behavior in the South China Sea — including fortifying tiny features with military hardware despite international condemnation — demonstrates the value it places on such outposts. There are, however, several crucial differences. First, compared to the relatively isolated Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, the outposts built by the People’s Republic of China in the South China Sea sit within a crowded cluster of contested features, where other claimants have already competitively established military footholds to cement their position.
[31] Second, while Chinese military assets on these small outposts are similarly vulnerable to U.S. attack, they nevertheless offer intimidating advantages against less well-equipped competitors in the South China Sea “whose navies barely rate as coast guards.”
[32] Placing assets on the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands would not grant such advantages with regards to Japan, a more formidable adversary. Lastly, to date, the People’s Republic of China has only militarized features in the South China Sea that it has already controlled for decades. Militarizing the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, however, would require first expelling Japan and risking a wider conflagration with the United States. In this regard alone, the potential strategic value of the islands pales in contrast to the costs and dangers of such a confrontation, even assuming the Chinese military were to prevail. Nor would preventing Japan from militarizing the islands stop the latter from shifting capabilities westward. In fact, Japan has already moved assets westward by stationing a defense facility, complete with radar, to the south of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands on another island, Yonaguni.
[33] All said, it is difficult to argue that the marginal strategic benefit the islands would offer either side justifies risking war to obtain them.
Economic Value?
But what of their economic value? A central factor is the potential 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone entitlements assumed to be conferred on the state with sovereign rights to these islands under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Given overlapping claims, one study has calculated that potentially 19,800 square nautical miles of exclusive economic zone entitlements are at stake.
[34]
These entitlements are seen as valuable primarily due to a 1969 U.N. Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East report, which suggested the area “may be one of the most prolific oil reserves in the world.”
[35] Importantly, the report failed to confirm actual reserves, only hypothesizing their existence given the area’s geological structure. At the time of the report’s release, Taiwan and Japan (both claimants) entered into joint development negotiations; however, these ended in 1970 when the People’s Republic of China voiced objections.
[36] Since then, there has been no exploratory drilling, due to the contested nature of the area, and thus the actual presence of oil and gas reserves remains unsubstantiated.
Nevertheless, this has not stopped speculation. One figure for the fossil fuel prospects of the entire East China Sea that has frequently appeared in Chinese academic writings is 109.5 billion barrels.
[37] This number, however, is of apparently dubious provenance, allegedly stemming from a 1969
New York Times article in which a Japanese official quotes findings from the U.N. report. The report, however, contains no such number.
[38] Another common figure is 3 to 7 billion tons — purportedly put forward by official Chinese experts in 1982 without any hard evidence.
[39] Other similarly high Chinese estimates exist, but as a U.S. Energy Information Administration report notes, they remain without corroboration and “do not take into account economic factors relevant to bring them to production.”
[40] In fact, one source from a major Chinese oil company confided that “inside the [Chinese] oil industry, you do not hear anyone making big claims about oil and gas around the islands these days, especially given the limited findings in other parts of the East China Sea.”
[41]
[quote id="2"]
Indeed, other recent estimates are more conservative. In 2006, one Japanese official estimated oil and gas reserves on Japan’s side of its self-proclaimed East China Sea median line — including potential Senkaku/Diaoyu entitlements — at approximately 500 million kilo-liters, equivalent to less than a year’s worth of Chinese consumption at 2015 levels.
[42] The Energy Information Administration has estimated “proved and probable reserves” in the
entire East China Sea at approximately “200 million barrels of oil” and “between 1 and 2 trillion cubic feet” of natural gas.
[43] At China’s 2015 consumption levels, that equals just 16 days’ worth of oil and between 55 to 100 days of natural gas.
[44] In short, although potential oil and gas resources may have initially generated an interest in the islands decades ago, it currently remains unclear what resources actually lie in the surrounding seabed, and recent estimates have tended to decrease expectations significantly.
[45]
A second potential source of economic value is the fishing resources around the islands. At present, under a 1997 agreement, each side has agreed not to enforce its laws on the “nationals and fishing vessels” of the other in the waters 12 nautical miles beyond the islands. The friction, however, is within the narrow 12-nautical-mile bands of water surrounding the islands. The Japanese government claims these as territorial waters to which the 1997 agreement does not apply,
[46] and Chinese fishing boats thus face being chased off by the Japanese Coast Guard when approaching.
[47] These waters, however, constitute only a small fraction of the disputed East China Sea exclusive economic zone area. Moreover, due to over-fishing in the general area, the fishing stocks in these waters have declined precipitously in line with broader trends in the East China Sea.
[48] This decline, together with factors including increasing fuel costs for travel to the islands, has put off many local Japanese fishers from traveling to the islands.
[49]
A third potential source of economic value is seabed mining, primarily of polymetallic manganese nodules or polymetallic sulfides.
[50] But polymetallic sulfides and economically viable concentrations of manganese nodules are generally limited to deeper waters, the former around underwater vents.
[51] In the East China Sea, the chief concentrations are in the depths of the Okinawa Trough, in the vicinity of undisputed Japanese islands in the Ryukyus.
[52] The shallower waters of the continental shelf floor surrounding the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands would thus appear to offer considerably less of potential value, while sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands would make only a relatively minor difference for claims in deeper waters.
[53]
There is a further issue concerning the economic value of the islands: Settling the question of sovereignty over them would still leave unresolved the problem of who is entitled to the resources in and below their surrounding waters. Granted, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the state with undisputed sovereignty over the islands would have claim to 12 nautical miles of territorial waters around each of the features above water at high tide. But as noted above, many of the resources under dispute lie outside these narrow confines and thus ownership would depend on further exclusive economic zone entitlements.
[54] And yet, it is far from certain an international court or arbitral tribunal would grant the Senkaku/Diaoyu exclusive economic zone entitlements. Specifically, to qualify for an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf entitlement, the features in question need to be capable of sustaining human habitation or economic life of their own.
[55] Given the stringency with which the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling applied this requirement to the South China Sea, it is questionable whether the small, uninhabited Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands would qualify.
[56]
Let us assume, nevertheless, that one or more of the Senkaku/Diaoyu features were found to meet the legal requirements for generating an exclusive economic zone entitlement. In negotiations or judicial proceedings to allocate exclusive economic zones between claimants in the East China Sea, such an entitlement might still only receive reduced consideration or be wholly discounted due to a variety of factors. These include the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands’ relatively small size, lack of population and economic activity, and distance from other features.
[57] Even if the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands’ entitlements to an exclusive economic zone were granted full effect in the process of drawing borders, they would still need to be weighed against all the other potential exclusive economic zone and continental shelf entitlements that extend from Taiwan, continental China, and the Japanese archipelago and also require consideration. With all these overlapping entitlements, the final determination of the exclusive economic zone boundaries in the East China Sea is far from straightforward. Given that the processes of negotiation or third-party arbitration pertaining to maritime borders is highly complicated and unpredictable, the actual benefits to be reaped from having sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands when entering into such proceedings are very uncertain and possibly quite trivial This also assumes such proceedings would even occur. As one legal scholar notes, “the unpredictability of litigation, the probable domestic illegitimacy of any adverse result, and the lack of any means short of force to enforce a judgment all work to discourage litigation or arbitration.”
[58]
Evaluating Material Motives
Asked in 2016 if the islands have strategic or economic value, former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda replied, “No, no, using all that petrol for patrols … I think it is a waste.”
[59] Strategically, the islands are isolated and easily targeted, and attempting to militarize them would entail substantial risk for marginal advantage. The fishing stocks are in decline while potential oil and gas reserves remain unconfirmed and have repeatedly been re-estimated as lower than previously thought. Moreover, it remains uncertain what — if any — advantage sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands would provide in negotiations or judicial proceedings over the delimitation of maritime resource entitlements, should these ever even occur.
Nevertheless, one could argue it is perceptions, not the actual value, that matter. Policymakers may, after all, still be driven by perceived material aims. For instance, retired Maj. Gen. Luo Yuan claims the islands are “treasure islands” and have “great geostrategic significance.”
[60] But we should be careful in taking such publicly presented rationales at face value, particularly when they come from Chinese military hawks who are active in public affairs.
[61] In truth, if Beijing’s aim is installing stationary military outposts in the East China Sea, it has easier options. In fact, having already built several oil and gas rigs in the East China Sea further to the north, abutting the Japanese-demarcated median line, the Chinese government could erect more such structures to the south, along its side of the median line near the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and adjacent important sea lanes. Such rigs can host radar and missile emplacements. Indeed, the Japanese side has already accused Beijing of installing military-use radar on its northerly rigs.
[62] If Beijing desires a tripwire between Japan and Taiwan, these could serve the purpose.
Alternately, if the driving motive is economic, joint development would offer considerable gains over the status quo without the risk of costly conflict. In actuality, this may be the only feasible option for Tokyo, as underwater topography is unfavorable to unilateral Japanese development of what is likely to be natural gas.
[63] The Japanese government has itself admitted as much.
[64] Ironically, running a pipeline to the Chinese coast is far more feasible.
[65] One might argue it still makes sense for Japan to defend its claim in order to prevent China from taking all the spoils. But Beijing has already, on multiple occasions, proposed joint development while shelving the sovereignty issue.
[66] Admittedly, such cooperation would require ironing out many details. And yet, there are successful precedents: In 1974, Japan and the Republic of Korea agreed to jointly develop highly anticipated petroleum deposits in waters where both shared overlapping claims, although they subsequently found little of value.
[67]
It is extraordinarily difficult to prove a negative. Yet, if the core motives for escalating the contest over the islands were material, we should have expected the protagonists to act in ways that maximize advantages or gains in these categories. That we have not, and the prominence of the dispute has increased even while the islands’ economic value now appears less than originally thought, suggests other things at work.
Non-material Value?
Another potential approach, also drawn from the literature on territorial disputes, would be to examine preexisting
non-material factors, such as the historic or religious value of the contested space, or the ethnic heritage of its population.
[68]
The actual disagreement between Japan and the People’s Republic of China over the islands, however, is of relatively recent provenance, beginning when Beijing first publicly challenged Japanese sovereignty with its own claim in 1971.
[69] Before that, the islands had a relatively trivial existence: They had no religious or historic meaning of note, no Chinese citizens had ever lived there, and a Japanese fish-processing factory that had been there before the war had long been abandoned. At the time Beijing raised its claim, the islands were uninhabited, with several of them leased to the United States for target practice. Strikingly, in 1972, when Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei brought up the islands with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai during normalization negotiations, Zhou’s response was, “Because oil has emerged, that is why this is a problem.”
[70] It is, therefore, difficult to argue the islands possess any distant historical lineage of value.
Even today, the islands remain nothing more than small, isolated, uninhabited features without any population, meaningful infrastructure, or sites of major religious or historical consequence. Critics might simply retreat to saying that territory is an issue of national sovereignty, and that regardless of their history, once both sides laid claim to the islands they became a core national interest.
[71] Additionally, critics could also point to the overlapping claims to the islands advanced by Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China, thus linking the issue to the larger question of Chinese national unification. But even if one were to concede these points, they still do not explain the historic variation in how the dispute has unfolded within Sino-Japanese relations. General concerns over sovereignty fail to explain why certain territories might be valued more than others. Concerns over national sovereignty or unification are also longstanding and static and thus do little to explain how the willingness of both sides to risk conflict over the islands has changed over time.
[quote id="3"]
There remains important historic variation that needs explaining, particularly between the nature of the dispute in the pre- and post-2010 periods. Prior to 2010, both sides had adopted a delaying strategy regarding the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands.
[72] Indeed, in 1972 Zhou stated he did not want to discuss the dispute,
[73] and in 1978 Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping suggested shelving the issue for the next generation to solve.
[74] Neither actively sought to raise the dispute and were responding to its having been brought up by the Japanese side. And while Tokyo never publicly acknowledged — and in fact repeatedly denied — shelving the dispute, in practice, both countries subsequently worked to minimize the issue while Japan continued to exercise administrative control.
[75]
Admittedly, there were points of friction. In 1978, when members of the ruling Japanese Liberal Democratic Party criticized their leadership for not leveraging Treaty of Peace and Friendship negotiations to get Beijing to cede its claim, hundreds of Chinese fishing ships appeared near the islands.
[76] The Chinese central government, however, later described the incident as “accidental,” generating speculation that this was the result of internal divisions over the treaty.
[77] In 1992, the People’s Republic of China passed the Law on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone, which explicitly names the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands as its territory. This move was reportedly fiercely debated internally and done under pressure from the military.
[78] But as both Beijing and Tokyo were more focused on the Japanese emperor’s upcoming visit to China, there was limited fallout.
[79] In 2008, official Chinese ships entered the territorial waters around the islands for the first time.
[80] In light of other high-level efforts to improve relations at the time, including a Sino-Japanese East China Sea joint development agreement — concluded despite internal Chinese opposition — some have attributed this to dissenting Chinese hardliners.
[81]
More prominently, however, it was small activist groups on both sides that generated problems. In the 1970s, the dispute had already galvanized “Protect the Diaoyu” groups in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States. In Japan, various nationalist groups also rallied to the cause, the most prominent being the Nihon Seinensha.
[82] Attempts by these actors to land on the islands, or alternately, in the case of Nihon Seinensha, advance the cause by building and registering lighthouses, constituted an ongoing irritant, particularly in the 1990s.
[83] Additionally, in 2004, after multiple failed attempts, members of the mainland China-based “Chinese Federation for Defending the Diaoyu Islands” landed on one of the islands for the first time. In response, the Japanese government simply repatriated the Chinese activists back to the Chinese mainland. The government in Beijing, for its part, prevented further attempts by the group to travel to the islands.
[84] On the whole, both Tokyo and Beijing repeatedly worked to contain the impact of their activists: Beijing suppressed press coverage and prevented organized protests, while Tokyo refused to officially recognize the efforts of its nationalist groups and sought to limit their activities.
[85]
All in all, Japanese policy prior to 2010 could be summarized with the words of Japan’s foreign minister, Sonoda Sunao: “eschew provocative, propagandizing behavior … only carefully, calmly do what is necessary for domestic political needs.”
[86] The policy of the People’s Republic of China, in turn, could, with few exceptions, be summed up in Chinese Vice Premier Gu Mu’s words: “[The Diaoyu Islands] have always been Chinese territory. … [W]e can temporarily shelve the sovereignty issue. Let the later generations resolve it.”
[87] Erica Downs and Phillip Saunders argue that in the past this policy to contain the dispute was due to concerns about its possible impact on bilateral economic relations.
[88] Given mainland China’s economic growth, one could suggest that economic relations with Japan are not currently as crucial to Beijing as they were when Downs and Saunders were writing. But the fact is that even now Japan still remains a major economic partner. As recently as 2017 Japan ranked as China’s third largest export destination and second largest import partner, as well as a key source of investment.
[89] Moreover, Taylor Fravel, writing in 2010, also noted a number of other reasons we should have expected both sides to avoid conflict, including the deterrent effect of U.S. commitments, the desire by both to maintain a regional reputation as “constructive and benign powers,” and the prior ability of all sides to manage the dispute.
[90] Given all these countervailing factors, an explanation is still needed for the substantial change that took place after the 2010 collision incident.
Intentional Conflict?
A third potential explanation would be that the 2010 confrontation was intentional. One conceivable reason for deliberately provoking an escalation of the dispute would be to distract from internal issues and improve the domestic popularity of each country’s respective leadership, a position commonly advanced under the rubric of “diversionary war theory.”
[91] Another possibility is that the escalation demonstrates, as Krista Wiegand has argued, an intentional effort at “issue linkage” in which Beijing sought to use “the islands dispute as bargaining leverage to gain concessions from Japan on other disputed issues.”
[92]
All available evidence, however, suggests the initial incident in 2010 was neither planned nor welcomed by either side. The trawler’s captain was reportedly intoxicated when arrested, and thus was not likely a covert Chinese agent.
[93] Though initially feted upon returning home to mainland China, he was subsequently forbidden to fish and subjected to a “soft” house arrest.
[94] Additionally, the Chinese government’s response — far from seeking to immediately leverage the incident — was restrained at first. Although protesting to the Japanese ambassador and canceling visits and East China Sea joint-development negotiations, in the first week after the captain’s arrest, Beijing suppressed protests and conveyed to Tokyo through back channels, “Somehow, please just get this settled without a fuss.”
[95] Only after the Japanese side decided to extend the detention of the fishing captain despite releasing the ship and crew did Beijing escalate its response. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao publicly pressed for the captain’s release, reports emerged of an alleged Chinese embargo on rare-earth exports to Japan, and Beijing detained four Japanese citizens.
[96] Nothing here suggests an official Chinese conspiracy or reactive opportunism. In reality, Beijing was likely responding to an initially perceived loss: Tokyo had asserted its domestic law in the waters around the islands.
[97]
Neither would this seem to be a clever plot planned by the Japanese government. Maehara Seiji, the Japanese minister in charge of the Japanese Coast Guard at the time, subsequently claimed to be following an “arrest manual” inherited from a previous administration.
[98] Even if Maehara did see a chance to assert Japanese jurisdiction, little preparation was made for what to do afterwards. The Kan Naoto administration was left scrambling for ways to contain the damage, fearful of being forced to pay the political price for intervening in the legal process in order to end the incident.
[99] Facing increasing pressure from Beijing, a Japanese foreign ministry delegation gave a presentation to the local prosecutor’s office, ostensibly at the latter’s request.
[100] The following day, the prosecutor announced the captain’s release. As Maehara himself admits, the handling of the situation was a “mishmash” (
chūtohanpa).
[101]
Notably, both countries subsequently sought to mend the relationship. Kan met with Wen on the sidelines of a summit in October 2010, where both agreed to promote a mutually beneficial strategic relationship. When the triple disaster of March 11 struck Japan in 2011 — the earthquake, tsunami, and meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant — Beijing expressed condolences and provided aid in an effort to improve relations.
[102] Preparations thus began to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Sino-Japanese normalization. As Kan’s successor, Noda Yoshihiko, recalls, in 2011 he “had no premonition” that the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands would again become a problem.
[103]
[quote id="4"]
Consequently, when in April 2012 the mayor of Tokyo, Ishihara Shintaro, proposed purchasing the islands, it was a development unwelcome to both governments. Ishihara was well known as a right-wing nationalist and there were concerns he would provoke Beijing such that “Sino-Japanese relations would enter an extremely dangerous state.”
[104] To contain the situation, the new Noda administration began quietly exploring the possibility of preemptively buying the islands. Behind the scenes, it also reached out to Chinese officials, arguing it was better for the Japanese government to hold title to the islands. Initially, the Japanese government thought it might be making headway in gaining tacit acceptance from Beijing of this point.
[105] The hope was to surreptitiously transfer the islands’ ownership without any publicity. This plan failed, however, when in July 2012 a Japanese newspaper made the story front-page news and Noda was forced to publicly announce his plans to pursue a potential purchase.
[106] Compounding the damage, this announcement also coincided with an important wartime anniversary, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937 which had precipitated Imperial Japan’s full-scale military invasion of China. Even still, the Chinese government only began meaningfully escalating its response in mid-August, suggesting it, too, had initially wished to handle the issue quietly. But despite the apparent initial intentions of both sides, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands subsequently became a highly salient flashpoint. Yet it remains unclear why.
The Three Dimensions of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands’ Increased Significance
In examining the evidence, three dimensions of the islands’ increased significance emerge as important in explaining how the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands have developed into the flashpoint they are today. Those dimensions are symbolic, domestic, and competitive. The initial catalyst for the islands to begin growing in significance was the 2010 collision incident. The 2012 Japanese purchase of the islands exacerbated this even further.
The Symbolic Dimension
Surveying official statements, news reports, and comments from government officials regarding the islands, it becomes clear that the dispute over the islands rapidly came to implicate much more than their immediate, tangible value. Political scientists have long suggested that international relations are populated with a variety of intangible concerns. State actors care about reputation, status, prestige, and honor within the international community.
[107] In some cases, these are ends in themselves, such as, for instance, when international prestige satisfies a need for national self-esteem or a certain international status constitutes an important element of a state’s national identity. In other cases, they can be a means to an end — for example, in order to increase the international deference a state enjoys and ease its ability to achieve its desired outcomes.
[108] The pursuit of intangibles — such as reputation — may even stem from mistaken fears over how other states will evaluate a given state’s resolve.
[109] Such concerns may be particularly salient for state actors who believe their international standing does not reflect what they are due, or alternately, perceive their status and prestige to be slipping away. Apart from global concerns, there may also exist intangible concerns that are particular to certain relationships between specific states. These include not only particular fixations with relative status and hierarchy vis-à-vis key counterparts, but also historical resentments and grievances, stories of unrectified humiliation and betrayal, and even mutual suspicion and prejudices.
[110]
Even before 2010, Sino-Japanese relations had experienced various episodes of contention over intangible issues. In the early 2000s, issues concerning the legacies of Japanese aggression against China — the “history problem” as it is called — loomed large. In particular, Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro’s annual visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 Japanese Class A war criminals are enshrined, were an especial irritant — by the end of his administration the top Chinese leadership refused to even meet with him.
[111] This was exacerbated, among other things, by disputes over textbook content and ongoing wartime compensation issues.
[112] Beijing’s official position was that Japan was not taking the proper attitude toward its history, while for many on the Japanese side, the Chinese government was also responsible for cynically playing up history and exaggerating the threat of Japanese militarism.
[113] Indeed, in a 2010 poll, the majority of Chinese respondents blamed a lack of Japanese historical consciousness for the history problem between the two countries, while Japanese respondents primarily blamed China’s anti-Japanese education.
[114] Nevertheless, these controversies over history played out primarily in the realm of rhetoric and, occasionally, protests — not military planning. The flare-up of the dispute over the islands, however, supplied these struggles over history a concrete focal point.
[115]
The official Japanese position is that the islands were
terra nullis when declared Japanese territory in 1895. In the decades that followed, China did not challenge Japanese use of the islands, and neither did it object to U.S. administration of the islands after World War II. From the Japanese perspective, the Chinese government’s 1971 claim thus appeared suspicious so close on the heels of the publication of the U.N. Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East report suggesting the existence of significant petroleum deposits.
[116] In this view, by making a historical claim Beijing was duplicitously inserting itself into the game retroactively when it appeared there was material gain to be had, again twisting history to its own political ends.
[117]
The official Chinese position, however, is that China first discovered and administered the islands and that Japan only secretly incorporated them after gaining the upper hand in the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War. The islands were thus Japanese spoils of war, ceded with Taiwan, and therefore subject to return under the 1945 terms of the Japanese surrender. But they were not returned, and the People’s Republic of China was excluded from the 1951 peace treaty process. Therefore, in 1971, as the United States prepared to transfer the islands to Japan, Beijing made its position clear.
[118] In this reading, Japan is again white-washing past aggression and distorting history, and has “rejected and challenged the outcomes of the victory of the World Anti-Fascist War.”
[119]
Granted, these diverging historical arguments existed prior to the 2010 incident, and were known to activists and specialists. With the dispute thrust into the limelight by the events of 2010 and 2012, however, the islands became implicated in the larger “history problem” for the domestic publics in both states, with all the perceptions of bad faith that entailed.
The islands became more than just another vessel for historical disagreements, frustrations, and grievances, however. They also came to implicate higher matters of justice. In China, this is exemplified by a sudden uptick after the
People’s Daily referred to Japan as “stealing” (
qiequ) the islands in 2010.
[120] The language of theft was also used in Japan, where, as one Japanese commentator noted, the logic took the following pattern: The events triggered a “[the islands] ‘may be stolen’ victimhood-consciousness,” resulting in “an instantaneous ‘we cannot let [them] be stolen’ reflexive response.”
[121] Certainly, if, as each country insists, the islands are its “inherent” territory,
[122] the other country cannot but have criminal intent and is acting unjustly.
All the above erupted against the larger backdrop of Sino-Japanese relations, in which China was seen in both countries as increasingly overshadowing Japan politically, economically, and militarily.
[123] Notably, 2010 was the year China’s gross domestic product surpassed Japan’s, becoming second only to the United States’.
[124] Consequently, within Japan, Beijing’s conduct crystallized fears of how a stronger China might behave in the future: bullying and ignoring the rules and using its military and economic might to assert its prerogatives in the region and beyond.
[125] Indeed, as Smith notes, in Japan the 2010 incident earned the title “Senkaku shokku [shock],” as it demonstrated how a “hostile” China might behave.
[126] Some in Japan even began suggesting a domino logic — “If we give them Senkaku, next it will be giving over Yonaguni Island or even the main island of Okinawa.”
[127] These concerns resonated with poll results revealing unfavorable popular perceptions of Chinese people more generally, likely influenced by recent negative press concerning poor behavior by mainland Chinese tourists in Japan as well as a high-profile scandal involving poisoned Chinese food imports, but also suggesting possible racist undertones of longer lineage within certain parts of the population.
[128] On the eve of the 2010 collision, only a small percentage of Japanese people reported viewing mainland Chinese as peaceful, altruistic, or trustworthy, and a majority in earlier polls described mainland Chinese people as greedy, nationalistic, and rude.
[129] All this further echoed and bled into larger anxieties over Japan’s place in the world given its declining population and internal malaise.
[130]
[quote id="5"]
For Beijing, however, Japanese behavior belied the notion that other states would accord China greater respect in line with its growing strength. The inverse logic of the Chinese axiom “those who are backwards will be bullied”
[131] is that great powers should receive greater deference. Yet, from the official Chinese perspective, Japan was showing no such deference: It obstinately refused to acknowledge the dispute, unilaterally abrogated the implicit agreement between the two countries to shelve the issue, and repeatedly and flagrantly disregarded Beijing’s warnings.
[132] In the words of a general in the People’s Liberation Army, “Japan should view these warnings very clearly, today’s China is different from the China of the past.”
[133] The China of the past may have been preyed upon due to its weakness, but the strong China of today deserved to have its wishes respected. That Japan did not do so spoke to larger suspicions in China that Japan “cannot acknowledge any other Asian country, cannot accept any other Asian country’s development, believes Japan should stand eternally at the head of the Asian powers.”
[134] This corresponded to more general views recorded in polls: Large majorities of Chinese respondents perceived the Japanese people as arrogant, nationalistic, and violent.
[135]
The islands thus became a symbol of something larger for both countries. In the words of a former high-ranking Japanese defense official, “it is not a struggle over economic interests … it is not something that would affect the military balance, and so what is left is honor—it is a nationalistic symbol.”
[136] Similarly, a former Japanese vice admiral stated that the islands “are a kind of psychological symbol … politically and psychologically we cannot allow China to take them.”
[137] Former Japanese ambassador Miyamoto Yūji framed the stakes even more poignantly: “We consider giving them up, what will they do next, does Japan really want to be a part of China, dominated by Chinese influence? … If Japanese lose the guts to defend the Senkaku, we become, ‘Yes, I follow your orders, China, king.’”
[138]
Alternately, multiple Chinese interviewees in academia and at think tanks also privately conveyed the islands’ value to be neither strategic nor economic, but primarily symbolic and political.
[139] As one scholar noted, the islands are worthless, but one cannot say so because the issue is too emotional. He continued, “The islands are emotionally important. They are just a few rocks, but we cannot back down. Japan took the islands when China was weak.”
[140]
In sum, following the 2010 incident, the dispute over the islands quickly became about much more than the islands themselves — they became concrete proxies in larger morally and emotionally charged struggles over history, reputation, recognition, victimization, and status. There is, therefore, an important symbolic dimension to the significance of the islands within Sino-Japanese relations. Their increased symbolic meaning elevated the dispute’s salience and raised the perceived stakes involved.
The Domestic Dimension
In examining how the dispute developed after the 2010 incident, it is equally impossible to ignore the domestic dynamics that were set into motion in both countries. Domestically, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands became a major political football. Much has been made within the international relations literature of “outbidding,” whereby domestic political actors seek to raise their profile and political chances by taking hardline foreign policy positions.
[141] The conflict over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands supplied an opportunity
par excellence for such outbidding. Advocating harsher measures, domestic politicians and political activists were able to differentiate themselves from their competitors by playing to popular hawkish biases.
[142]
That said, for the leaders managing the territorial contest, the dispute over the islands constituted a point of exposure that domestic opponents could leverage on a domestic playing field that was not fully level. Not holding power, political opponents were at liberty to criticize without offering solutions or, alternately, to propose tactics that play well domestically regardless of their international ramifications. Importantly, the conflict also erupted at a difficult time for the leadership in both countries. The Democratic Party of Japan, a relatively new party without previous ruling experience, had assumed power. In China, a leadership struggle was underway. The conflict thus was a potential source of vulnerability for those in power and a potential source of ammunition for their critics.
Within Japan, the ruling Democratic Party of Japan quickly came under fire for giving the appearance that the captain had been released due to pressure from Beijing. Linus Hagström has chronicled how policymakers, elites, and the press in Japan viewed the episode: “a diplomatic defeat,” “caved in to pressure,” “a humiliating retreat,” “a fiasco.”
[143] Above all, the Democratic Party of Japan was attacked as “spineless.”
[144] Even the Japanese ambassador in Beijing was criticized for responding to late-night summonses from the Chinese government.
[145] The opposition also called for the Democratic Party of Japan to release the coast guard footage of the incident to clarify who was at fault. Chief Cabinet Secretary Sengoku Yoshito argued the video was evidence and could not be made public, but this was ridiculed as deferring to Chinese sensibilities while Beijing spread untruths, such as the claim that the captain was innocent.
[146] Consequently, a coast guard official who had access to the video and was angry with the Japanese government’s behavior leaked the footage.
[147] The leak, in turn, ignited a further controversy over the ruling party’s control of its own officials.
[148] The overall effect was a blow to the Democratic Party of Japan. As one parliamentarian who belonged to that party relates, after 2010, “we were in a different political climate … much of the criticism, or even I would say hatred towards the DPJ [Democratic Party of Japan] stems from that, that we were seen as being weak … almost having a collusive relationship with the Chinese.”
[149]
This, in turn, set the stage for 2012. By announcing his plan to purchase the islands, Tokyo’s mayor, Ishihara, cast himself as defending the national interest where the Democratic Party of Japan had failed: “The government should buy them, but it doesn’t. Tokyo will defend the Senkaku.”
[150] Ishihara was known for his antipathy toward the People’s Republic of China — frequently referring to it with the derogatory term
shina.
[151] But this was also a political opportunity. As Noda observed, “He was the mayor of Tokyo, but after that he founds a new party, and becoming ambitious towards national politics, he may have been looking for something with which to appeal to the public.”
[152] In the wake of 2010, that is exactly what happened: One early poll showed 69 percent support for Ishihara’s plan.
[153] The Liberal Democratic Party followed suit, adding the purchase of the islands to its manifesto.
[154] Ishihara quickly amassed a large number of public donations worth 1.4 billion yen, both increasing his leverage and making it difficult to back down.
[155] Ishihara was also quite cavalier about the risks. Speaking privately with Noda, he suggested that even if China were provoked to military action, things would be fine, because “if it involves conventional forces, the Japanese Self Defense Forces would win.”
[156]
Afraid of what would happen should Ishihara purchase the islands, the Noda government thus entered into a covert contest with him to buy them first. Although the Japanese government may eventually have sought ownership of the islands regardless so as to control their use, Ishihara accelerated its timeline, limited its options, and brought unwanted publicity.
[157] Complicating matters, the islands’ owner was slow and fickle, causing some drama as both sides sought to curry favor with him.
[158] Even after securing the owner’s agreement to sell, the Japanese government worried he might change his mind. Initially, the Japanese government was hopeful that its counterparts in Beijing might be amenable to its efforts. As events progressed, however, Japan’s top officials came to believe that Beijing would object irrespective of the timing and thus it would be better to finish with buying the islands quickly before the upcoming transition in China’s leadership.
[159] All the same, the forcefulness of the Chinese side’s response exceeded their expectations.
[160]
[quote id="6"]
Even with the purchase completed, the islands remained a prominent domestic political issue in Japan. In the September 2012 leadership race within the Liberal Democratic Party — which was playing out against the backdrop of violent Chinese protests — all candidates but one advocated increasing Japan’s “effective control of the islands.
[161] Chief among these was Abe Shinzō, the victor, who proposed solidifying Japanese control by building a small harbor or structure to house officials on the islands.
[162] He continued a hawkish line going into the December lower-house elections, attacking the Democratic Party of Japan for “three years of diplomatic failure.”
[163] The Liberal Democratic Party won, making Abe prime minister. In office, he has maintained a firm position, which arguably has played to his advantage as he has sought to increase Japanese defense spending and loosen legal restrictions on the Japanese Self Defense Forces.
[164]
Domestic dynamics within the People’s Republic of China are less clear, but internal political pressures also appear to have been at work. Scholars have long noted the importance of Sino-Japanese relations to the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party, this being a domain of particularly strong perceived nationalist emotions.
[165] Nevertheless, prior to the 2010 incident, the administration of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao had been actively working to improve relations with Japan, reaching a controversial agreement to jointly develop oil and gas resources in the East China Sea. The agreement attracted internal domestic criticism and at the time was pushed through despite objections from members of various maritime security agencies.
[166] The Japanese arrest of the fishing captain put Hu and Wen in a difficult position, as it suggested their concessions were for naught. Not surprisingly, the joint agreement was an early casualty of the 2010 confrontation.
[167] Wen, in turn, became the face of China’s criticism of Japan, sharply attacking the arrest as “eliciting the anger of all Chinese at home and abroad.”
[168]
The incident also elicited domestic protests, although these were subject to official restraint.
[169] Interestingly, in 2010, Chongqing was both one of the earliest sites of anti-Japanese protests and one of the last — the final demonstration occurred after the central government had begun officially discouraging protests.
[170] This protest was apparently tolerated by local authorities, given that calls for the rally had “circulated days in advance and drawn international media coverage.”
[171] Although it was unclear at the time, we now know the Chinese Communist Party secretary of Chongqing at the time, Bo Xilai, was engaged in a fierce political struggle for a top leadership position. One of his methods of gaining support was an unorthodox campaign to foster mass popularity. That Bo might have sought to leverage the conflict for political gain is not inconceivable — it would have helped bolster even further his populist credentials while putting pressure on the center.
Bo eventually fell in 2012 — embroiled in a drama involving the murder of an expat. This scandal, along with the larger leadership succession struggle within the Chinese Communist Party prior to the 18th Party Congress, unfolded at the same time as Tokyo was moving closer to buying the islands. The Japanese purchase thus came at a very difficult time for Hu and Wen.
[172] As the then-Japanese ambassador recounts, from July 2012 onward, Beijing repeatedly communicated to Tokyo that it should desist with efforts to purchase the islands, conveying the message: “The Party Congress is in November, this will be an extremely large problem.”
[173]
The exact details of the leadership struggle remain a mystery — including Xi Jinping’s sudden disappearance in September, officially due to a “back injury.”
[174] What is clear, however, is that a considerable hardening of Beijing’s position vis-à-vis Tokyo occurred in mid-August 2012, following a Chinese Communist Party leadership conference in Beidaihe. Online censorship of nationalistic posts concerning the islands dropped precipitously starting August 18, and in mid-August Chinese authorities became more permissive toward nationalist activities, allowing demonstrations and attempts by Hong Kong activists to land on the islands, even providing media coverage.
[175] Several Japanese scholars have argued that political adversaries used the dispute to attack Hu and gain leverage in the leadership struggle, with some even suggesting the demonstrations were part of a plot by the subsequently deposed security chief, Zhou Yongkang.
[176] Even if this was not the case, Hu likely was politically on his heels, with a close aide under fire for corruption.
[177] Consequently, it is doubtful he could have tolerated letting the contest with Japan become an additional source of vulnerability.
Unsurprisingly, when Hu encountered Noda at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference on Sept. 9, 2012, he strongly conveyed Beijing’s objections. As Noda recalls, he approached Hu to give his condolences and offer support for a recent earthquake, but “not at all responding to that, what came back was ‘[we] absolutely cannot accept nationalization of the islands ….’”
[178] Hu’s warning did not dissuade Noda. The following day he announced the purchase of the islands. As the then-Japanese ambassador has observed, the timing “was a bit diplomatically rude.”
[179] For Hu, it was a clear attack on his authority.
For Hu’s successor Xi, however, it presented an opportunity and a crucial trial. Xi was reportedly charged with heading a leading small group — a key policy body reporting to the Politburo — to respond to the Japanese purchase.
[180] If true, this constituted an important test of his leadership abilities and offered Xi the chance to project strength in contrast to Hu. The safest course for him was arguably a harsh response, provided it did not escalate out of control. As there were already calls to increase patrols around the islands, Xi could prove his mettle by supporting them, which apparently he did.
[181] Xi continued to take a hard line toward Japan in the years that followed, siding with the People’s Liberation Army in 2013 — over objections from the foreign ministry — on the plan to establish an Air Defense Identification Zone over the disputed islands.
[182] The political logic makes sense: When he was first in office, Xi was embroiled in fierce domestic battles, most prominently the massive anti-corruption campaign that has become one of the defining elements of his rule. Taking a hardline stance prevented criticism, appealed to key constituencies in the military and security apparatuses, and bolstered his popularity as a strong leader. It would be two years before Xi would first meet Abe, and only after both sides had hammered out statements seemingly agreeing to disagree about the existence of a disagreement over the islands.
[183]
The combination of vulnerability and opportunity therefore pressured leaders in both countries to adopt a harder line. But numerous minor actors on both sides — too many to list here — also saw opportunity in the conflict. This extended beyond the many nationalist activists on both sides who mobilized for the cause — online and in the streets — and the tabloids supplying sensationalist reporting. The conflict also became the subject of pulpy books for the general public, ranging from the People’s Liberation Army Rear Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong’s
History of Disputed Islands to former Japanese Coast Guard official Isshiki Masaharu’s account of leaking the collision footage.
[184] Conspiracy theorists also found an outlet, suggesting, for instance, that the 2010 collision was a Chinese plot or that the death of a Chinese panda on loan to Japan was deliberate.
[185] Jiun Bang, in her excellent work on nationalist kitsch, has mapped the myriad ways private entrepreneurs in both Japan and China capitalized on the dispute.
[186] Merchandise included stickers, keychains, shirts, food, and even alcohol — one example being the 106-proof “Diaoyudoa patriotic liquor” available in an artillery-shell-shaped flask. Private investors even sought to purchase the trawler from the 2010 collision to house a sarcastically named “Sino-Japanese Friendship Restaurant.”
[187] In China, the conflict spawned videogames, from the cartoonishly racist “Protect Diaoyudao,”
[188] to the more realistic “Glorious Mission,” which was designed by the People’s Liberation Army.
[189] All served to further cement the dispute within the public sphere and raise its salience.
In sum, there has been a clear domestic dimension to the significance of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Developments concerning the islands generated both opportunities for domestic political actors and private entrepreneurs and potential vulnerabilities for each country’s leadership. Those not in power had incentives to play up the drama and the intangible stakes of the contest for selfish ends — whether personal, ideological, or commercial. For those in power, the stakes of the contest — for better or worse — potentially included their own political fate. The overall impact domestically was to direct attention to the contest and exert pressure on policymakers to take ever stronger actions in response.
The Competitive Dimension
The 2010 incident — and the subsequent 2012 purchase even more so — sparked not just immediate retaliatory gestures but also a variety of concurrent forms of positional competition between the two countries. Akin to the security dilemma, in which actions by one side to improve its security render the other side less secure, here actions taken to improve one side’s position in the dispute were detrimental to the other’s, thus eliciting counter-measures. Such positional competition did not just take military form, it also unfolded within the domains of public diplomacy, legal contestation, and even historical research. Through move and counter-move, a set of interactive dynamics emerged that even now continue to propel escalation of the dispute forward. The islands are thus also significant in that they became a concrete, enduring target for all these positional struggles.
Things began with the disagreements over the Japanese arrest of the trawler captain and the subsequent purchase of the islands, both of which generated strong reactions from both countries. In response to the latter, in particular, Beijing launched a “diplomacy of anger,”
[190] expressing outrage, suspending meetings and exchanges, and taking various punitive measures. As one Chinese scholar writes, “to defend the sovereignty of the Chinese Diaoyu Islands, the Chinese government adopted a series of forceful countermeasures” ranging from sending maritime surveillance ships and aircraft into the area, to the official publication of basepoints and baselines around the islands, to even introducing daily televised weather forecasts for the islands.
[191] Beijing also permitted protests in over 200 cities, some involving violence and the destruction of stores, restaurants, and property associated with Japan.
[192] Japan, in turn, was host to various forms of activism, as well as protests and denunciations of China’s behavior.
[193] Although the vehemence of these immediate reactions appears to have subsided, both states also took further measures to solidify their respective standing in the dispute, setting in motion various forms of positional competition that remain ongoing.
Military Competition
Perhaps the most prominent form of positional competition has been in the military — or paramilitary — domain, whereby each side seeks advantage through acquiring and deploying relevant capabilities. Most strikingly, official Chinese vessels and aircraft have become a regular presence around the disputed islands, challenging Japanese control. Following the 2010 arrest of the Chinese trawler captain, Beijing successively sent a number of official vessels into the contiguous zone surrounding the islands. After the 2012 purchase, these increased markedly: Sixty-six patrols entered the islands’ territorial waters over the subsequent year.
[194] In the latter half of 2013, these stabilized into regular patrols two or three times per month,
[195] and were accompanied by increasing Chinese air patrols as well.
[196] The initial Japanese response was to shift half of its entire coast guard to the area surrounding the islands and keep up a constant pace of scrambling fighters to intercept approaching Chinese aircraft.
[197]
The longer-term response on both sides, however, has been a qualitative and quantitative increase in both the capabilities deployed in the immediate vicinity of the islands as well as the overall portfolio of capabilities that both sides possess. Beijing has steadily increased military spending and has also invested heavily in its paramilitary maritime forces.
[198] Certainly, this is a trend that predates 2010 and involves a multitude of factors. But this spending includes capabilities that would be useful for a scenario involving the islands. Indeed, official Chinese ships appearing in adjacent waters have, of late, become larger and more militarily capable, with a number of Chinese navy vessels being repurposed as coast guard ships.
[199] Correspondingly, Japan has increased its military spending and responded with a variety of measures, including the construction of new Japanese Self Defense Forces and Japanese Coast Guard facilities on nearby islands, the creation of a “dedicated Senkaku Territorial Waters Guard Unit” to maintain a “24/7 presence” around the islands, a 50 percent increase in coast guard tonnage, and the creation of an amphibious force capable of retaking remote islands.
[200] Japan has also repeatedly sought U.S. support, receiving assurances that their defense agreement covers the islands and successfully seeking revisions to the bilateral defense guidelines so as to better respond to potential contingencies involving the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands.
[201]
[quote id="7"]
The overall consequence of the above developments is a much more crowded maritime environment coupled with a greater increase in the potential force both sides can bring to bear. As Adam Liff and Andrew Erikson note, “Despite … the fact neither Beijing nor Tokyo
wants conflict, the post-2012 operational status quo has significantly increased the possibility of even an unintended miscalculation or incident.”
[202] There have been close encounters, including incidents in which Chinese military vessels have locked onto Japanese counterparts with fire-control radar and episodes of “mock dogfighting” between both sides in the air.
[203] As each state seeks to materially defend or improve its position, the potential danger of the situation increases.
Public Diplomacy
However, the ongoing, interactive material competition is not the only one in play. Positional jockeying has also unfolded in the realm of public diplomacy, with each country appealing for support internationally. As the conflict proceeded, Beijing became particularly active in broadcasting its position — mobilizing diplomats to author op-eds in foreign newspapers, encouraging demonstrations abroad, releasing a new white paper, and creating a multi-language pamphlet for international distribution.
[204] Kitagami Keiro, an aide in Noda’s administration, recalled Noda presenting him the Japanese-language version of the pamphlet, saying, “one of my friends visited China for business purposes and they gave him this. … We have to give our side of the argument.”
[205] Consequently, Japan began producing its own pamphlets and videos, and diplomats were given orders to respond where possible — at the United Nations, at international conferences, and in the opinion pages of major foreign newspapers.
[206] At times, this bordered on the absurd, as when Chinese and Japanese diplomats in Britain traded public accusations as to which was more akin to Voldemort, the villain from the Harry Potter books.
[207] The core message each country endeavored to convey, however, was more serious. Beijing sought to portray Japan as an unrepentant, militaristic challenger to the post-World War II order, while Tokyo sought to portray itself as upholding a rules-based order in the face of broad Chinese revisionism in both the East and South China Seas.
[208]
Legal and Historical Contestation
The public diplomacy campaigns intersected with two other domains in which Sino-Japanese positional struggles were unfolding: those of legal contestation and historical scholarship. Legal imperatives, in particular, can have quite pernicious effects, motivating competitive “displays of sovereignty” to avoid any sign of acquiescence and to counter every move made by the other side.
[209] In particular, this has driven contests between Chinese and Japanese vessels over jurisdictional control in the waters off the islands. Legal argumentation also incentivizes each side to promote self-serving interpretations while denying any legitimacy to the position of the other, reinforcing a sense of self-righteous victimization. As noted above, the Japanese legal claim contends the islands were
terra nullis and that, for decades, it exercised effective control with Chinese consent, while Beijing argues its legal claim on the basis of prior discovery and the Japanese conditions of surrender in 1945.
[210] Discrepancies between these justificatory histories feed the impression that each side’s national cause is just and the other’s is duplicitous. Thus, as both countries seek to legitimate their claims, they become cemented in positions ever less amenable to compromise.
To supplement their legal claims, both countries have also resorted to competitive historical documentation and research. Each side has sought to support its position with historical maps, documents, and sympathetic scholarship.
[211] History has also been marshalled to fortify domestic support through historical exhibitions and updated textbooks.
[212] Historical argumentation can work in destabilizing ways, however. For example, in 2013, two Chinese scholars published a piece in the
People’s Daily arguing not only that the Diaoyu Islands belonged to Taiwan, but that even Japanese claims to the Ryukyu Islands had a troubled history.
[213] According to one of the authors, the goal was to point out, “If one says that the Ryukyus in early history were not part of Japan, what evidence does Japan have to prove that the Diaoyu Islands are Japanese territory[?]”
[214] Ostensibly intended to discredit Japanese claims to the islands as “inherent territory,” in Japan, the essay was interpreted much more ominously, with conservative papers proclaiming, “not just the Senkaku, China’s blatant intention to seize all of Okinawa has become visible.”
[215] The article only provided further confirmation of Chinese malevolence to hawks in Japan arguing that the islands were just the first domino.
In short, the islands have also grown in significance as the focus of ongoing positional competition across a variety of domains. They act as a concrete object for both sides to continue to struggle over. As each side has mobilized its diplomats, soldiers, scholars, and lawyers for their respective efforts, the result has been ever hardening positions and more points of friction within Sino-Japanese relations. Even after the immediate tensions subsided, these various forms of competition have continued to unfold, shaping mutual perceptions and setting the stage for further tensions. Perhaps most crucially, these different forms of competition appear to be taking on lives of their own irrespective of the original value of the stakes involved. Indeed, it is, in general, not the place of those tasked with achieving positional advantage to question the aims — only to find the best way to execute their mandate.
Thinking in Three Dimensions
The recent increase in significance of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands has three key dimensions. The first is the symbolic dimension, which consists of the expanding, intangible stakes that were projected onto the islands and elevated their prominence. The second, the domestic dimension, encompasses the ways in which the islands became a political football, generating increased internal pressure on leaders on both sides to take firmer measures. And the third is the competitive dimension, which refers to the role the islands have played as an object of various positional struggles that continue to unfold. Even as the relationship has now taken an apparent turn for the better, various forms of positional competition are still operative and a collision at sea or in the air could easily set off a new round of tensions.
Unquestionably, the three-dimensional account outlined here draws significant inspiration from existing, process-focused strands within the literature on territorial disputes. First, it echoes approaches that highlight the symbolic dimension of territorial disputes, including concerns about rivalry, reputation, and symbolic entrenchment.
[216] But it does not promote any one concern — such as reputation — over the others, arguing that a multiplicity of intangible concerns have simultaneously been in play, including prejudices, moralized judgments, status issues, and resentment. Second, it builds on work that stresses the importance of the domestic dimension.
[217] But it does not treat these dynamics as necessarily more pronounced in democracies,
[218] nor does it focus only on the domestic coalitions that involvement in these disputes engenders.
[219] It additionally highlights how a wide variety of actors — journalists, academics, activists, and even economic opportunists — participated in elevating the domestic salience of the dispute. Lastly, it resonates with work that explores the interactive nature of disputes in terms of positional competition — whether this involves argumentation or militarization — but broadens the focus to include the arenas of international public diplomacy, legal rationalization, and historical research.
[220]
Beyond this, however, it is crucial to note that none of the developments outlined above played out in isolation. Quite the contrary. At various times, when one facet of the islands’ significance increased, the other dimensions were affected as well. The island’s growing symbolic significance, for instance, rendered them more attractive for use as a domestic political football. Indeed, a variety of substate actors in the domestic realm — politicians, journalists, online commentators, demonstrators, even businesses producing nationalist kitsch such as “Diaoyu Beer,” sporting the exhortation to “drink the Diaoyu, strengthen your patriotism!”
[221] — leveraged the symbolic import of the islands to their own ends. But at the same time, the symbolic meaning of the islands also grew in return as a result of their activism. Ishihara, in particular, was a key protagonist in this regard, stoking concerns that “before we know it, Japan could become the sixth star on China’s national flag.”
[222]
[quote id="8"]
The rising symbolic and domestic stakes attached to the islands, in turn, increased the weight of demands on policymakers to take firmer measures, both in the waters around the islands and in the arena of international public opinion. These actions, however, set in motion their own escalatory, interactive dynamics, generating additional points of friction. The
People’s Daily article on the “unresolved” status of Okinawa mentioned above is a prime example of this — an escalation in the realm of historical argumentation that provided ammunition to Japanese hawks while exacerbating more general Japanese concerns over China’s intentions. Moves such as this only served to further heighten the symbolic and domestic import of the islands.
Conversely, while counterfactuals are always problematic, there exists a strong logical argument that were one to have stripped away any one of these dimensions of the islands’ significance, events might have played out quite differently. Without the ineffable anxieties, frustrations, and resentments that became symbolically attached to the islands, the islands would arguably have been less salient a political issue for domestic opportunists to exploit. Here, too, Ishihara looms especially large. Had he not been able to leverage the issue for sizable donations and public support, his threat to purchase the islands would have lacked credibility. Without the domestic significance of the islands as a source of political vulnerability — whether for the beleaguered Democratic Party of Japan government or during the troubled leadership transition in Beijing — both governments would have perhaps had more room to delay, downplay the issue, or seek alternative courses of action. Lastly, without the significance of the islands as a concrete and enduring focal point of positional jockeying that continues even now on multiple fronts, the potential risk of new cycles of conflict involving the islands would be significantly reduced.
Conclusion
In many ways, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands have played the role of what the famous British film director Alfred Hitchcock labeled a “MacGuffin” — an object that the protagonists of a narrative find themselves struggling to obtain. For instance, “in crook stories it is always the necklace and spy stories it is always the papers.”
[223] For Hitchcock, the attributes of the MacGuffin were more or less irrelevant. The MacGuffin was only important because it gave the main characters something to fight over, thus driving the plot forward and rendering the film compelling. In Hitchcock’s words, “the logicians are all wrong in trying to figure out the truth of a MacGuffin, since it’s beside the point. … To me, the narrator, [it is] of no importance whatever.”
[224] Similarly, the argument here is that asking after the “truth” of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, in terms of their prior strategic, economic, or historic value, is not of much analytical use. Rather, we should look to the roles they play in the larger story. They are significant within Sino-Japanese relations as a symbol, a domestic political football, and an object of various forms of ongoing positional competition.
The purpose of this article has been to provide an evidence-based, theoretically informed account of how and why the contest over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands has turned into what it is. The three-dimensional approach taken here may apply to other disputes to greater or lesser degrees as well, and this could offer an interesting avenue for future research. But it should also be noted that the contest over the islands is distinctly characterized by being initially unwelcome by both sides and seemingly detached from the actual, tangible stakes involved. Given the potential dangers implicated in this dispute, making sense of it is an important task in and of itself. Moreover, understanding the dynamics at work can help inform how we consider potential paths forward.
That said, there is no erasing the past. The politicized nature of the dispute means the options available for reversing the developments of the past several years are quite limited. However, one could endeavor to call public attention to the limited tangible worth of the islands. Taking into account both the tremendous value of stable economic and political relations between Japan and the People’s Republic of China, not to mention the massive potential damage even a minor armed clash over the islands might produce, the concrete value of the islands pales in comparison, especially in light of their relative unimportance for individual citizens’ lives and livelihoods. Framing the dispute in this manner would create political incentives to contain or shelve the conflict and work to detach the islands from the intangible significance they have come to accrue. But at the same time, there are parties on either side who might strongly push back against such attempts — and indeed, a number of China hawks already have
[225] — thus rendering this option decidedly difficult.
And while recent efforts to set up crisis communication mechanisms are to be welcomed, more needs to be done to decrease the possibility of dangerous incidents in the vicinity of the islands. One avenue would be an agreement to mutually reduce or limit deployments to the area coupled with the explicit understanding that this would alter neither side’s legal position. Even better, declaring the islands and their territorial waters a mutually recognized nature sanctuary would offer good reason to keep ships out of the vicinity.
[226] Currently, however, this option is unlikely to find much domestic support in either country.
Whatever measures are taken, the eventual goal should be to return the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands to the periphery of Sino-Japanese relations. After all, despite the swirl of anxiety and resentment, political struggles and intrigue, and contests for military and diplomatic advantage, at the center of this dispute lies just a set of uninhabited rocks — rocks of questionable substantive value at that.
Acknowledgements: This paper is the result of much time, attention, and assistance from many individuals. I want to thank Andrea Bjorklund, Ja Ian Chong, Janina Dill, Reinhard Drifte, Sarah Eaton, Erik Gartzke, Chenchao Lian, David Leheny, Kate Sullivan de Estrada, and anonymous reviewers for this journal for their extraordinarily helpful feedback, as well participants in sessions at the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, the University of Goettingen, the University of Tokyo, and the 2019 International Studies Association Annual Meeting in Toronto for their comments. Rosemary Foot deserves special thanks for suffering through multiple drafts and offering so many brilliant insights. I am very grateful to the Social Science Research Council’s Abe Fellowship for funding and supporting research for this project, and especially to Nicole Restrick Levit and Tak Ozaki — who went way beyond the call of duty — for all their support. I am also very indebted to the Institute for Social Studies at the University of Tokyo for hosting me, and Maeda Hiroko, Kawashima Shin, Matsuda Yasuhiro, Gregory Noble, Takahara Akio, and so many more (for whom I will err on the side of caution in leaving anonymous) for being so welcoming to me while I was in Tokyo. A similar debt of gratitude goes to all those in China who took the time to speak with me and who also, for obvious reasons, will remain anonymous. Megan Oprea provided excellent editing help in getting this article polished for publication. It goes without saying, the views and errors of this paper are mine.
Todd Hall is an associate professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations and tutor in politics at St Anne’s College. His research interests extend to the areas of international relations theory; the intersection of emotion, affect, and foreign policy; and Chinese foreign policy. Recent publications include articles on the dynamics of crises in East Asia, provocation in international relations, and the lessons of World War I for contemporary East Asian international politics. Professor Hall is also the author of Emotional Diplomacy: Official Emotion on the International Stage
(Cornell University Press), which was named co-recipient of the International Studies Association's 2016 Diplomatic Studies Section Book Award.
Image:
Al Jazeera English
[post_title] => More Significance than Value: Explaining Developments in the Sino-Japanese Contest Over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands
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[lead] => The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are presently the focus of a dangerous contest between the People’s Republic of China and Japan, one that even now has the potential to spark a military conflict that could draw in the United States. How has this come about? Whether seen from a strategic, economic, or historical perspective, the value of the islands does not appear to merit the risks of such a contest. Consequently, what has driven the escalation is not anything particular to the islands themselves, but rather the increasing symbolic stakes attached to them, their role within the domestic politics of both sides, and the measures each side has taken to shore up its respective claims.
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[text] => Prior to 2010, the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands were a relatively peripheral issue in Sino-Japanese relations.
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[text] => In short, although potential oil and gas resources may have initially generated an interest in the islands decades ago, it currently remains unclear what resources actually lie in the surrounding seabed...
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[text] => Even today, the islands remain nothing more than small, isolated, uninhabited features without any population, meaningful infrastructure, or sites of major religious or historical consequence.
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[text] => But despite the apparent initial intentions of both sides, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands subsequently became a highly salient flashpoint.
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[text] => All the above erupted against the larger backdrop of Sino-Japanese relations, in which China was seen in both countries as increasingly overshadowing Japan politically, economically, and militarily.
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[text] => Afraid of what would happen should Ishihara purchase the islands, the Noda government thus entered into a covert contest with him to buy them first.
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[text] => As each state seeks to materially defend or improve its position, the potential danger of the situation increases.
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[text] => At various times, when one facet of the islands’ significance increased, the other dimensions were affected as well.
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[1] For the purposes of this piece, uses of the term “China” post-1949 shall refer to the People’s Republic of China.
[2] The Japanese name for the islands is “
Senkakushotō,” while the People’s Republic of China uses “
Diaoyudao”; for the purposes of neutrality, this piece uses “Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands.” A “contiguous zone,” as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, consists of the waters not extending more than 24 nautical miles “from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured” in which states may “exercise the control necessary to (a) prevent infringement of its customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws and regulations within its territory or territorial sea; [and] (b) punish infringement of the above laws and regulations committed within its territory or territorial sea.” See:
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, accessed on July 9, 2019,
https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf.
[3] This account is reconstructed from contemporary reporting and interviews with anonymous Japanese officials. For Japanese news reports, see: “Senkaku ni gunkan, mimei no kinpaku,” [Chinese warship near Senkaku, early morning tension],
Asahi Shimbun, June 9, 2016, Morning Edition, 2; “Senkaku setsuzoku suiiki ni Chūgoku gunkan,” [Chinese warship in Senkaku contiguous zone],
Yomiuri Shimbun, June 9, 2016, 1; “Senkaku setsuzoku suiiki ni Chūgoku gunkan,” [Chinese warship in Senkaku contiguous zone],
Mainichi Shimbun, June 10, 2016.
[4] Vice Minister Saiki Akitaka, author’s interview, Tokyo, July 14, 2017. Subsequent analysis suggested the People’s Liberation Army Navy was not engaged in a planned provocation, but rather reacting to Russian warships transiting the contiguous zone from the south, returning to Vladivostok. See, “Chūgoku gunkan ga Senkaku shūhen no setsuzoku suiiki-hairi…” [Chinese warship enters contiguous zone around Senkaku…],
Reuters, June 9, 2016,
https://jp.reuters.com/article/china-frigate-senkaku-idJPKCN0YU2NF; Some, however, suggested Sino-Russian collusion. See, “Senkaku setsuzoku suiiki ni Chūgoku gunkan,” [Chinese warship in Senkaku contiguous zone],
Mainichi Shimbun, June 10, 2016.
[5] This paper focuses primarily on relations between Japan and the People’s Republic of China concerning the islands. Relations between Japan and Taiwan and between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China concerning the islands are outside the purview of this article.
[6] See, “Senkaku Islands Q&A,” Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, April 13, 2016,
http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/senkaku/qa_1010.html.
[7] Mark Manyin,
Senkaku (Diaoyu/Diaoyutai) Islands Dispute: US Treaty Obligations (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 2016).
[8] Graham Allison,
Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), 176–78; Michael McDevitt,
Senkaku Islands Tabletop Exercise Report (Suffolk, Virginia: Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA, 2017); Eric Heginbotham and Richard J. Samuels, "Active Denial: Redesigning Japan's Response to China's Military Challenge,"
International Security 42, no. 4 (Spring 2018): 148,
https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00313.
[9] Sheila A. Smith,
Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 190.
[10] Full-text search of
People’s Daily articles for “钓鱼岛” comparing the period between Sept. 6, 2005, and Sept. 6, 2010, to the period between Sept. 7, 2010, and Sept. 7, 2015. For longer-term analysis showing a similar trend, see, Yasuhiro Matsuda, "How to Understand China's Assertiveness since 2009: Hypotheses and Policy Implications," Center for Strategic and International Studies, Strategic Japan, April 2014, 4.
[11] Yasuo Nakauchi, "Ryōdo O Meguru Mondai to Nihon Gaikō ― 2010-Nen Ikō No Ugoki to Kokkai Rongi" [Territorial issues and Japanese diplomacy — Developments after 2010 and Parliamentary Debate],
Rippō to chōsa, 342 (2017): 3.
[12] Baidu Zhishu query for the personal computer search history data for “钓鱼岛,” using
http://index.baidu.com/ (Baidu account necessary for use) accessed July 12, 2018. Interestingly, closely tracking this was searches for “钓鱼岛地图” (Diaoyu Islands map) suggesting many people were trying to locate the islands.
[13] Google Trends query for “尖閣” search history in Japan,
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=JP&q=尖閣, accessed Aug. 7, 2018. Notably, the most interest appears in November 2010, ostensibly due to the video scandal discussed below.
[14] See, “Trends in Chinese Government and Other Vessels in the Waters Surrounding the Senkaku Islands, and Japan's Response,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, June 8, 2018,
https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/page23e_000021.html; “China’s Activities Surrounding Japan’s Airspace,” Ministry of Defense of Japan, accessed June 26, 2018,
http://www.mod.go.jp/e/d_act/ryouku/.
[15] “Japan, China Launch Maritime-Aerial Communication Mechanism,”
Mainichi Shinbun, June 8, 2018,
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180608/p2a/00m/0na/002000c.
[16] Paul Diehl and Gary Goertz,
Territorial Changes and International Conflict (New York: Routledge, 2002), 14–18; Paul Diehl,
A Road Map to War: Territorial Dimensions of International Conflict (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999), x–xi; Monica Duffy Toft, "Territory and War,"
Journal of Peace Research 51, no. 2 (2014): 187–89,
https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0022343313515695; Paul Hensel, "Contentious Issues and World Politics: The Management of Territorial Claims in the Americas, 1816–1992,"
International Studies Quarterly 45, no. 1 (March 2001): 81–109,
https://doi.org/10.1111/0020-8833.00183.
[17] Li Ran, “Zhuanjia cheng riben kanzhong wo guo diaoyudao zhanlue jiazhi,” [Experts claim Japan is focused on the strategic value of our country’s Diaoyu Islands],
Renmin Wang, July 7, 2012,
http://world.people.com.cn/n/2012/0717/c115361-18534590.html; Akimoto Kazumine, "The Strategic Value of Territorial Islands from the Perspective of National Security,"
Review of Island Studies, Oct. 9, 2013,
https://www.spf.org/islandstudies/research/a00008/.
[18] Toshi Yoshihara, "China's Vision of Its Seascape: The First Island Chain and Chinese Seapower,"
Asian Politics and Policy 4, no. 3 (July 2012): 293–314,
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1943-0787.2012.01349.x.
[19] Measured from Taisho-jima/Chiweiyu.
[20] Desmond Ball and Richard Tanter,
Tools of Owatatsumi: Japan's Ocean Surveillance and Costal Defence Capabilities (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2015), 11, 103.
[21] Toshi Yoshihara, "Sino-Japanese Rivalry at Sea: How Tokyo Can Go Anti-Access on China,"
Orbis 59, no. 1 (Winter 2015): 69–71,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orbis.2014.11.006.
[22] Yoshihara, "China's Vision of Its Seascape," 306–07.
[23] Heginbotham and Samuels, "Active Denial."
[24] Taylor Fravel and Alexander Liebman, "Beyond the Moat: The Plan’s Evolving Interests and Potential Influence," in
The Chinese Navy: Expanding Capabilities, Evolving Roles, ed. Saunders, et al. (Washington, DC: CreateSpace, 2011), 53–54; Zhu Fenglan, "21 Shijichu De Riben Haiyang Zhanlue," in
Yatai Diqu Fazhan Baogao, ed. Zhang Yunling and Sun Shihai (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2006), 249.
[25] For the dimensions, see, “The Senkaku Islands: Location, Area, and Other Geographical Data,”
Review of Island Studies, Feb. 17, 2015,
https://www.spf.org/islandstudies/info_library/senkaku-islands/02-geography/02_geo001.html; for the quote, see Manyin, "Senkaku (Diaoyu/Diaoyutai) Islands Dispute," 1.
[26] Stephen Biddle and Ivan Oelrich, "Future Warfare in the Western Pacific: Chinese Antiaccess/Area Denial, US Airsea Battle, and Command of the Commons in East Asia,"
International Security 41, no. 1 (Summer 2016): 7–48,
https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00249.
[27] Anonymous interviews, Japanese Self Defense Force officials, Tokyo, April–May 2017.
[28] Anonymous interview, former Japanese Defense Ministry official, May 2017.
[29] Biddle and Oelrich, "Future Warfare in the Western Pacific," 23–24.
[30] Retired Vice Admiral Yoji Koda, author’s interview, Tokyo, April 19, 2017.
[31] "Occupation and Island Building," Center for Strategic and International Studies, Asian Maritime Transparency Initiative,
https://amti.csis.org/island-tracker/.
[32] James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, "Five Shades of Chinese Gray-Zone Strategy,"
National Interest, May 2, 2017,
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/five-shades-chinese-gray-zone-strategy-20450.
[33] Ball and Tanter,
Tools of Owatatsumi, 22–27.
[34] Victor Prescott and Clive Schofield,
The Maritime Political Boundaries of the World (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2005), 436–39.
[35] Cited in James Manicom,
Bridging Troubled Waters: China, Japan, and Maritime Order in the East China Sea (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014), 43.
[36] Manicom,
Bridging Troubled Waters, 44.
[37] See, for instance, Caihua Ma et al., "Diaoyudao Ziyuan Jiazhi Tanjiu " [Study of the resource value of the Diaoyu Islands],
Zhongguo Yuye JIngji, no. 6 (2012): 126.
[38] See Lengcui Fei, "Diaoyudao Daodi Cangle Duoshao Shiyou?" [How much oil do the Diaoyu Islands really contain?],
Qingnian yu Shehui, no. 11 (2012): 34; for the original, see, "Japan Will Press Efforts to Exploit Major Oil Find,"
New York Times, Sept. 1, 1969, 2.
[39] Qian Song, "Haiyang Shiyou--Shiyou Shengchan Zengzhang De Qianli Suozai " [Offshore oil- the potential for growth in oil production],
Zhongguo shiyou he huagong jingji fenxi, no. 2 (2006): 46.
[40] "East China Sea," U.S. Energy Information Administration, Sept. 17, 2014,
https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/regions-topics.php?RegionTopicID=ECS.
[41] Anonymous interview, Beijing, July 2018.
[42] Diet Session 164, Sangiin gyōsei kanshi iinkai, April 24, 2006. Calculated based on consumption figures provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration: “International Energy Statistics,” U.S. Energy Information Administration, accessed Feb. 12, 2018,
https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/data/browser/.
[43] "East China Sea."
[44] Calculated based on consumption figures provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration: “International Energy Statistics,” U.S. Energy Information Administration, accessed Feb. 12, 2018, https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/data/browser/.
[45] Paul O’Shea, "How Economic, Strategic, and Domestic Factors Shape Patterns of Conflict and Cooperation in the East China Sea Dispute,"
Asian Survey 55, no. 3 (May/June 2015): 555–56,
https://doi.org/10.1525/as.2015.55.3.548.
[46] Nobukatsu Kanehara and Yutaka Arima, "New Fishing Order-Japan's New Agreement on Fisheries with the Republic of Korea and with the People's Republic of China,"
Japanese Annual of International Law, no. 42 (1999): 27–28,
https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/jpyintl42&div=4&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collection=journals.
[47] Hirose Hajime, "Kaijōhoanchō Ni Yoru Senkaku Keibi No Rekishi" [A history of Japanese Coast Guard policing of the Senkaku],
Sōsa kenkyū 65, no. 9 (2016).
[48] Makomo Kuniyoshi, "Senkakushotō Ni Okeru Gyogyō No Rekishi to Genjō" [History and current state of Senkaku fisheries],
Nippon Suisan Gakkasishi 77, no. 4 (2011): 707; Tseng Katherine Hui-yi,
Lessons from the Disturbed Waters: The Diaoyu/Diaoyutai/Senkaku Islands Disputes (Singapore: World Scientific, 2015), 75–78. Given that fish generally do not pay attention to borders, this is not surprising.
[49] “Fuon'na ryōba/Senkaku” [Turbulent fishing grounds/Senkaku],
Ryuku Shimpo, March 1, 2013, 3.
[50] Thomas Peacock and Matthew H. Alford, "Is Deep-Sea Mining Worth It?"
Scientific American 318, no. 5 (May 2018): 72–77,
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-race-is-on-to-mine-and-protect-the-deep-seafloor/; G.P. Glasby, "Deep Seabed Mining: Past Failures and Future Prospects,"
Marine Georesources and Geotechnology 20, no. 2 (2002): 165,
https://doi.org/10.1080/03608860290051859.
[51] Nobuyuki Okamoto et al., "Current Status of Japan's Activities for Deep-Sea Commercial Mining Campaign," paper presented at the 2018 OCEANS-MTS/IEEE Kobe Techno-Oceans (OTO), 2018.
[52] Satoshi Ueda and Nobuyuki Okamoto, "Nihon Shūhen Kaiiki Ni Bunpu Suru Kaiteinessuikōshō No Kaihatsu Purojekuto No Gaiyō," [The Overview of Project for Developing Seafloor Massive Sulfides in the EEZ of Japan (sic)],
Journal of MMIJ no. 131 (2015).
[53] And this would depend on the People’s Republic of China asserting an exclusive economic zone on the basis of sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, which it has not yet done. Such a claim on these resources, particularly those more northerly, would more likely be based on continental shelf entitlements. See, Mark J. Valencia, "The East China Sea Dispute: Context, Claims, Issues, and Possible Solutions,"
Asian Perspective 31, no. 1 (2007): 139,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/42704579. For the Chinese claim, see, “Submission by the People’s Republic of China Concerning the Outer Limits of the Continental Shelf Beyond 200 Nautical Miles in Part of the East China Sea,” United Nations Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, Dec. 14, 2012,
https://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs_new/submissions_files/chn63_12/executive summary_EN.pdf.
[54] Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky, "International Law's Unhelpful Role in the Senkaku Islands,"
University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, no. 29 (2007): 931,
https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/upjiel29&div=27&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collection=journals.
[55] See, Article 121,
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, accessed on July 9, 2019,
https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf.
[56] The requirement was clarified as, “the objective capacity of a feature, in its natural condition, to sustain either a stable community of people or economic activity that is not dependent on outside resources or purely extractive in nature.” See, “The South China Sea Arbitration (the Republic of the Philippines V. The People’s Republic of China),” Permanent Court of Arbitration Press Release, The Hague, July 12, 2016,
https://pca-cpa.org/en/news/pca-press-release-the-south-china-sea-arbitration-the-republic-of-the-philippines-v-the-peoples-republic-of-china/; Manyin, "Senkaku (Diaoyu/Diaoyutai) Islands Dispute," 1.
[57] Clive Schofield, "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back? Progress and Challenges in the Delimitation of Maritime Boundaries since the Drafting of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea," in
30 Years of UNCLOS (1982-2012): Progress and Prospects, Guifang Xue and Ashley White (Beijing: China Universtiy of Political Science and Law Press, 2013).
[58] Ramos-Mrosovsky, "International Law's Unhelpful Role in the Senkaku Islands," 907.
[59] Former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, author’s interview, Tokyo, July 10, 2017.
[60] Yuan Luo, "Diaoyudao Bu Shi Wuzuqingzhong De 'Huangdao,'"
Huanqui Shibao, Sept. 4, 2012.
[61] Andrew Chubb, "Propaganda, Not Policy: Explaining the PLA's Hawkish Faction (Part One),"
China Brief 13, no. 15 (2013),
https://jamestown.org/program/propaganda-not-policy-explaining-the-plas-hawkish-faction-part-one/.
[62] Ankit Panda, "A New Chinese Threat in the East China Sea? Not So Fast,"
The Diplomat, July 23, 2015,
https://thediplomat.com/2015/07/a-new-chinese-threat-in-the-east-china-sea-not-so-fast/.
[63] Rongxing Guo,
Territorial Disputes and Seabed Petroleum Exploitation: Some Options for the East China Sea (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, September 2010), 9, 19,
https://www.brookings.edu/research/territorial-disputes-and-seabed-petroleum-exploitation-some-options-for-the-east-china-sea/; Manicom,
Bridging Troubled Waters, 154.
[64] “Sekō keizai sangyō daijin no kakugigo kishakaiken no gaiyō” [Press conference with METI Minister Sekō after Cabinet Meeting], Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, Sept. 13, 2016,
http://www.meti.go.jp/speeches/kaiken/2016/20160913001.html.
[65] Guo,
Territorial Disputes and Seabed Petroleum Exploitation, 19; Manicom,
Bridging Troubled Waters, 154.
[66] Reinhard Drifte, "The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands Territorial Dispute Between Japan and China: Between the Materialization of the "China Threat,”
UNISCI Discussion Papers 32, no. 32 (May 2013): 26,
http://dx.doi.org/10.5209/rev_UNIS.2013.n32.44789; “Sangiin gyōsei kanshi iinkai,” Diet Session 164, April 24, 2006.
[67] Clive Schofield and Ian Townsend-Gault, "Choppy Waters Ahead in 'a Sea of Peace Cooperation and Friendship'?: Slow Progress Towards the Application of Maritime Joint Development to the East China Sea,"
Marine Policy 35, no. 1 (2011): 28–29,
https://econpapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:marpol:v:35:y:2011:i:1:p:25-33.
[68] Diehl and Goertz,
Territorial Changes and International Conflict, 19–20; Toft, "Territory and War," 189.
[69] “Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiaobu shengming (1971 nian 12 yue 30 ri)” [Chinese People’s Republic Foreign Ministry Statement (1971 December 30)],” Foreign Ministry of the People’s Republic of China, accessed April 5, 2018,
http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/diaoyudao/chn/flfg/zcfg/t1304543.htm.
[70] Akira Ishi et al.,
Nitchu Kokkou Seijouka, Nitchu Heiwa Yuukou Jouyaku Teiketsu Koushou [Concluding Negotiations for Sino-Japanese Normalization, the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship] (Tokyo: Iwanami, 2010), 68.
[71] Alessio Patalano, "Seapower and Sino-Japanese Relations in the East China Sea,"
Asian Affairs 45, no. 1 (2014): 37,
https://doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2013.876809.
[72] Taylor Fravel,
Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China's Territorial Disputes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).
[73] Ishi et al.,
Nitchu Kokkou Seijouka, Nitchu Heiwa Yuukou Jouyaku Teiketsu Koushou, 68.
[74] Masato Tomebachi,
Senkaku Wo Meguru “Gokai” Wo Toku [Resolving misunderstandings surrounding the Senkakus] (Tokyo: Nihon Kyōhōsha, 2016), 92; Lili Zhang,
Xin Zhongguo He Riben Guanxi Shi [History of Relations between Japan and the new China] (Shanghai: Renmin Chubanshe, 2016), 146.
[75] Tomebachi,
Senkaku Wo Meguru “Gokai” Wo Toku, 16–17, 79–97; Taylor Fravel, "Explaining Stability in the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Dispute," in
Getting the Triangle Straight: Managing China-Japan-US Relations, ed. Gerald L. Curtis, Ryosei Kokuburn, and Jisi Wang (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2010).
[76] Daniel Tretiak, "The Sino-Japanese Treaty of 1978: The Senkaku Incident Prelude,"
Asian Survey 18, no. 12 (December 1978): 1235–49,
https://doi.org/10.2307/2643610.
[77] Tretiak, "The Sino-Japanese Treaty of 1978, 1243; Hajime, "Kaijōhoanchō Ni Yoru Senkaku Keibi No Rekishi," 114–16; Ryosei Kokubun et al.,
Nitchūkankeishi [History of Sino-Japanese Relations] (Tokyo: Yuhikaku Aruma, 2014), 133.
[78] Mori Kazuko,
Nitchū Hyōryū [Sino-Japanese Drift] (Tokyo: Iwatami Shinsho, 2017), 89, 215.
[79] Kazuko,
Nitchū Hyōryū, 90; Kokubun et al.,
Nitchūkankeishi, 179–80.
[80] Richard C. Bush,
The Perils of Proximity: China-Japan Security Relations (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2010), 74–75.
[81] Mori Kazuko,
Nitchū Hyōryū, 208–11. Miyamoto Yūji, former Japanese ambassador to the People’s Republic of China (2006–2010), author’s interview, Tokyo, May 12, 2017. Importantly, this also resulted in a strengthening of the Japanese security operations around the islands. See, Bush,
The Perils of Proximity, 74–75.
[82] Jinxing Chen, "Radicalization of the Protect Diaoyutai Movement in 1970s-America,"
Journal of Chinese Overseas 5, no. 2 (2009); Smith,
Intimate Rivals, 127–34, 212–17,
https://doi.org/10.1163/179303909X12489373183055.
[83] Erica Strecker Downs and Phillip C. Saunders, "Legitimacy and the Limits of Nationalism: China and the Diaoyu Islands,"
International Security 23, no. 3 (Winter 1998/1999),
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2539340; Smith,
Intimate Rivals, 127–34; Jessica Chen Weiss,
Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China's Foreign Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 116–18.
[84] Shi Jiangtao, “Protesters Barred from Diaoyu Mission,”
South China Morning Post, July 20, 2004, 5.
[85] Weiss,
Powerful Patriots, 120–25; Downs and Saunders, "Legitimacy and the Limits of Nationalism."
[86] Tomebachi,
Senkaku Wo Meguru “Gokai” Wo Toku, 81.
[87] Zhang,
Xin Zhongguo He Riben Guanxi Shi, 153.
[88] Downs and Saunders, "Legitimacy and the Limits of Nationalism."
[89] “The World Factbook, East and Southeast Asia: China, 2017,” Central Intelligence Agency, accessed on March 13, 2018,
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html.
[90] Fravel, "Explaining Stability in the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands Dispute,"159.
[91] Tir, "Territorial Diversion."
[92] Krista Wiegand,
Enduring Territorial Disputes: Strategies of Bargaining, Coercive Diplomacy, and Settlement (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 98.
[93] Smith,
Intimate Rivals, 190.
[94] “Senkaku oki shōtotsu jiken no chūgokujin senchō ga “jitaku nankin” jōtai, shutsugyo mo kinshi” [The Chinese captain from the Senkaku sea collision under ‘house arrest,’ also forbidden to fish],
Searchina, May 24, 2011.
[95] Citing a Japanese official, Tsuyoshi Sunohara,
Antō: Senkaku Kokuyū-Ka [Secret Battle: The Senkaku Nationalization] (Tokyo: Shinchō bunko, 2013), 23.
[96] Alastair Iain Johnston, "How New and Assertive Is China's New Assertiveness?"
International Security 37, no. 4 (Spring 2013): 23–26,
https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00115; Linus Hagström, "‘Power Shift’ in East Asia? A Critical Reappraisal of Narratives on the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands Incident in 2010,"
Chinese Journal of International Politics 5, no. 3 (Autumn 2012): 282–83,
https://doi.org/10.1093/cjip/pos011. Johnston disputes the embargo using Japanese import data. This, however, overlooks the pervasive “quasi-smuggling” on the People’s Republic of China side — many 2010 rare earth exports were not classified as such when leaving the People’s Republic of China but registered in Japanese import data upon arrival. See, Nabeel A. Mancheri and Marukawa Tomoo,
Rare Earth Elements: China and Japan in Industry, Trade and Value Chain (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Institute of Social Science, 2016), 159–60. At the time, multiple Japanese firms did report sudden stoppages, and officials from the People’s Republic of China reportedly confirmed the embargo to U.S. counterparts privately. See, Richard McGregor,
Asia's Reckoning: The Struggle for Global Dominance (London: Penguin UK, 2017), 265. The evidence, however, remains inconclusive at best. Michael Green et al.,
Countering Coercion in Maritime Asia: The Theory and Practice of Gray Zone Deterrence, Center for Strategic and International Studies, May 9, 2017, 85–90,
https://www.csis.org/analysis/countering-coercion-maritime-asia. On the detention of Japanese nationals, see: Smith,
Intimate Rivals, 191; Hagström, "‘Power Shift’ in East Asia?" 281. Hagström suggests the timing could be coincidental.
[97] M. Taylor Fravel, "Explaining China’s Escalation over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands,"
Global Summitry 2, no. 1 (2016): 24–37,
https://doi.org/10.1093/global/guw010.
[98] Maehara, author’s interview.
[99] Sunohara,
Antō, 16–17, 36.
[100] Sunohara,
Antō, 39–43.
[101] Maehara, author’s interview.
[102] Sunohara,
Antō, 49; Zhang,
Xin Zhongguo He Riben Guanxi Shi, 299.
[103] Noda Yoshihiko, former prime minister, author’s interview, Tokyo, Sept. 5, 2017.
[104] Yoshihiko, author’s interview.
[105] Sunohara,
Antō, 173–83, 253–55.
[106] Sunohara,
Antō, 189–91.
[107] Allan Dafoe, Jonathan Renshon, and Paul Huth, "Reputation and Status as Motives for War,"
Annual Review of Political Science no. 17 (May 2014): 371–93,
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-071112-213421; T. V. Paul, Deborah Welch Larson, and William C. Wolhlforth, eds.,
Status in World Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Deborah Welch Larson and Alexei Shevchenko, "Status Seekers: Chinese and Russian Responses to US Primacy,"
International Security 34, no. 4 (Spring 2010): 63–95,
https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.2010.34.4.63; Barry O'Neill,
Honor, Symbols, and War (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2001); Richard Ned Lebow,
A Cultural Theory of International Relations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Reinhard Wolf, "Respect and Disrespect in International Politics: The Significance of Status Recognition,"
International Theory 3, no. 1 (2011): 105–42,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752971910000308.
[108] Dafoe et al., "Reputation and Status as Motives for War," 382–83.
[109] Shiping Tang, "Reputation, Cult of Reputation, and International Conflict,"
Security Studies 14, no. 1 (2005): 34–62,
https://doi.org/10.1080/09636410591001474; Jonathan Mercer,
Reputation and International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010); Daryl Press, "The Credibility of Power: Assessing Threats During the 'Appeasement' Crises of the 1930s,"
International Security 29, no. 3 (Winter 2004/2005): 136–69,
https://doi.org/10.1162/0162288043467478.
[110] Reinhard Wolf, "Resentment in International Relations," paper presented at the European Consortium for Political Research Workshop on Status Claims, Recognition, and Emotions in International Relations, Mainz, March, 2013; Khaled Fattah and K.M. Fierke, "A Clash of Emotions: The Politics of Humiliation and Political Violence in the Middle East,"
European Journal of International Relations 15, no. 1 (2009),
https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1354066108100053; Paul Saurette, "You Dissin Me? Humiliation and Post 9/11 Global Politics,"
Review of International Studies 32, no. 3 (2006): 495–522,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40072200; Richard Herrmann et al., "Images in International Relations: An Experimental Test of Cognitive Schemata,"
International Studies Quarterly 41, no. 3 (September 1997): 403–33,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2600790.
[111] Smith,
Intimate Rivals, 59; Ming Wan,
Sino-Japanese Relations: Interaction, Logic, and Transformation (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 260.
[112] Caroline Rose,
Sino-Japanese Relations: Facing the Past, Looking to the Future? (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004).
[113] Smith,
Intimate Rivals, 95–96; Karl Gustafsson, "Recognising Recognition through Thick and Thin: Insights from Sino-Japanese Relations,"
Cooperation and Conflict 51, no. 3 (2016): 255–71,
https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0010836715610594.
[114] “Dai 6-kai nitchū kyōdō seronchōsa” [The Sixth Japan-China Joint Attitude Survey], Tokyo-Beijing Fōramu, Aug. 12, 2010,
http://tokyo-beijingforum.net/index.php/survey/6th-survey.
[115] For detailed analysis, see, Reinhard Drifte, "The Japan-China Confrontation Over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands–Between 'Shelving' and 'Dispute Escalation,'"
Asia-Pacific Journal 12, no. 30 (2014),
https://apjjf.org/2014/12/30/Reinhard-Drifte/4154/article.html.
[116] “Senkaku Islands Q&A.”
[117] The common Japanese term is
ato dashi janken — entering a game of paper-rock-scissors after the other side has shown its hand. See, Tomebachi,
Senkaku Wo Meguru “Gokai” Wo Toku, 6.
[118] “Diaoyu Dao, an Inherent Territory of China,” The State Council of the People’s Republic of China, September 2012,
http://english.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2014/08/23/content_281474983043212.htm.
[119] “Diaoyu Dao, an Inherent Territory of China.”
[120] Chisako Masuo, "Lun Zhongguo Zhengfu Guanyu 'Diaoyudao' Zhuzhang De Fazhan Guocheng " [The Development Process of Chinese Official Discourse on Senkaku/ Diaoyu Islands],
Contemporary Japan and East-Asia Studies 2, no. 2 (2018): 17.
[121] Takashi Okada,
Senkaku Shotō Mondai: Ryōdo Nashyonarizumu No Miryoku [Senkaku Islands Problem: The Attraction of Territorial Nationalism] (Tokyo: Sososha, 2010), 3.
[122] Both even use the same word, 固有 (Japanese:
koyū, Chinese:
guyou).
[123] Giulio Pugliese and Aurelio Insisa,
Sino-Japanese Power Politics: Might, Money and Minds (Springer, 2016); Michael Yahuda,
Sino-Japanese Relations after the Cold War: Two Tigers Sharing a Mountain (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), 39–63.
[124] Smith,
Intimate Rivals, 21. This was mentioned repeatedly in interviews on both sides.
[125] Smith,
Intimate Rivals, 189–236; Shogo Suzuki, "The Rise of the Chinese ‘Other’ in Japan's Construction of Identity: Is China a Focal Point of Japanese Nationalism?"
Pacific Review 28, no. 1 (2014),
https://doi.org/10.1080/09512748.2014.970049; Hagström, "‘Power Shift’ in East Asia?" 275–80.
[126] Smith,
Intimate Rivals, 189.
[127] Okada,
Senkaku Shotō Mondai, 3.
[128] Yuko Kawai, "Deracialised Race, Obscured Racism: Japaneseness, Western and Japanese Concepts of Race, and Modalities of Racism,"
Japanese Studies 35, no. 1 (2015): 23–47,
https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2015.1006598.
[129] “Dai 6-kai nitchū kyōdō seronchōsa” [The Sixth Japan-China Joint Attitude Survey], Tokyo-Beijing Fōramu, 2006,
http://tokyo-beijingforum.net/index.php/survey/6th-survey; "China’s Neighbors Worry About Its Growing Military Strength," Pew Research Center, Sept. 21, 2006, 4,
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2006/09/GAP-Asia-report-final-9-21-06.pdf.
[130] Hagström, "'Power Shift' in East Asia?" 292.
[131] “Luohou jiu yao ai da.” See, Peter Hays Gries,
China's New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy (Oakland: University of California Press, 2004), 50–51.
[132] Guo Jiping, “Diaoyudao shi zhongguo lingtu, tiezheng rushan” [The Diaoyu Islands are Chinese territory, the mountain-high evidence is ironclad],
Renmin Ribao, Oct. 12, 2012, 3. (Guo Jiping being the pseudonym for authoritative foreign affairs commentaries.)
[133] Jin Yinan,
Shijie Dageju Zhongguo You Taidu [The grand international setup, China has an attitude] (Beijing: Beijing Lianhe Chuban Gongsi, 2017), 66.
[134] See, Wang Fan,
Daguo Waijiao [Great Power Diplomacy] (Beijing: Beijing Lianhe Chuban Gongsi, 2016), 279.
[135] "China’s Neighbors Worry About Its Growing Military Strength," 4.
[136] Yanigisawa Kyōji, former assistant chief cabinet secretary for national security (2004–2009), author’s interview, May 24, 2017.
[137] Koda, author’s interview.
[138] Miyamoto, author’s interview.
[139] Anonymous interviews, Beijing, June 18–July 5, 2017.
[140] Anonymous interview, Beijing, June 2017.
[141] Michael Colaresi,
Scare Tactics: The Politics of International Rivalry (Syracuse University Press, 2005), 20, 29–35
[142] Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon, "Hawkish Biases," in
American Foreign Policy and the Politics of Fear: Threat Inflation since 9/11, ed. A. Trevor Thrall and Jane K. Cramer (New York: Routledge, 2009).
[143] Hagström and Jerdén, "Understanding Fluctuations in Sino-Japanese Relations," 276–79.
[144] Smith,
Intimate Rivals, 208.
[145] Niwa Uichiro,
Pekin Retsujistu [Scorching Beijing Days] (Tokyo: Bungei Shunju, 2013), 15.
[146] Smith,
Intimate Rivals, 206.
[147] Masaharu Isshiki,
Nani Ka No Tame Ni [For something] (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun Chuban, 2011), 87.
[148] Smith,
Intimate Rivals, 207–09.
[149] Kitagami Keiro, Japanese Parliamentarian, author’s interview, Tokyo, June 6, 2017.
[150] Sunohara,
Antō, 78.
[151] “Shina” was a term used by Imperial Japan.
[152] Noda, author’s interview. On Ishihara’s political ambitions, see also, Okada,
Senkaku Shotō Mondai 16–20, 104.
[153] “Gaikō, kiki kanri' seronchōsa kekka” [Diplomacy, crisis management poll results],
Shizuoka Shinbun, June 18, 2012, 2.
[154] Smith,
Intimate Rivals, 224.
[155] Approximately $15,000,000. “Senkaku kifu-kin jōto” [Transfer of Senkaku donation money],
Sankei Shinbun, 7 September 2012, 1.
[156] Noda, author’s interview.
[157] Nagashima Akihisa, special advisor to Noda for foreign affairs and national security (2011–2012), author’s interview, Tokyo, July 19, 2017.
[158] Sunohara,
Antō.
[159] Noda, author’s interview.
[160] Noda, Nagashima, author’s interviews.
[161] Smith,
Intimate Rivals, 234.
[162] “Jimintōsōsaisen - shin sōsai ni Abe moto shushō” [LDP presidential election – new president, former PM Abe],
Mainichi Shinbun, Sept. 27, 2012.
[163] “Shūin-sen kōyaku bunseki - gaikō TPP” [Lower house election analysis – diplomacy, TPP],
Yomiuri Shinbun, Dec. 14, 2012, 11.
[164] Adam P. Liff, "Japan’s Security Policy in the “Abe Era”: Radical Transformation or Evolutionary Shift?"
Texas National Security Review 1, no. 3 (May 2018),
https://doi.org/10.15781/T29S1M35C.
[165] Susan Shirk,
China: Fragile Superpower (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); William Callahan,
China: The Pessoptimist Nation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Gries,
China's New Nationalism.
[166] Anonymous interviews, Beijing, June 18–July 5, 2017; Manicom,
Bridging Troubled Waters, 151; Bush,
The Perils of Proximity, 79–80; Weiss,
Powerful Patriots, 162–64.
[167] Smith,
Intimate Rivals, 191.
[168] “Wenjiabao zongli zai niuyue qianglie duncu rifang liji wutiaojian fang ren” [Premier Wen Jiabao in New York strongly presses the Japanese side for an immediate and unconditional release],
Zhongyang Zhengfu Menhu Wangzhan, Sept. 22, 2010,
http://www.gov.cn/ldhd/2010-09/22/content_1707863.htm.
[169] Weiss,
Powerful Patriots, 160–88.
[170] Weiss,
Powerful Patriots, 182.
[171] Weiss,
Powerful Patriots.
[172] McGregor,
Asia's Reckoning, 272–74; "Report 245/Asia: Dangerous Waters: China-Japan Relations on the Rocks," International Crisis Group, April 8, 2013, 7–8,
https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/north-east-asia/china/dangerous-waters-china-japan-relations-rocks.
[173] Uichiro Niwa,
Chūgoku No Dai Mondai [China’s Major Issues] (Tokyo: PHP Shinsho, 2014), 143.
[174] McGregor,
Asia's Reckoning, 279.
[175] Christopher Cairns and Allen Carlson, "Real-World Islands in a Social Media Sea: Nationalism and Censorship on Weibo During the 2012 Diaoyu/Senkaku Crisis,"
China Quarterly no. 225 (March 2016): 23–49,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741015001708; Weiss,
Powerful Patriots, 198–205.
[176] Kokubun et al.,
Nitchūkankeishi, 245–46; Kokubun Ryosei,
Chū Kuni Seiji Kara Mita Nitchūkankei [Sino-Japanese relations from the perspective of Chinese politics] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2017), 223–24.
[177] Li,
Chinese Politics in the Xi Jinping Era, 23–24.
[178] Noda, author’s interview; see also, McGregor,
Asia's Reckoning, 267–69.
[179] Niwa, author’s interview.
[180] McGregor,
Asia's Reckoning, 270–71; International Crisis Group, "Dangerous Waters," 7. Linda Jakobson, “How Involved Is Xi Jinping in the Diaoyu Crisis?”
The Diplomat, Feb. 8, 2013,
https://thediplomat.com/2013/02/how-involved-is-xi-jinping-in-the-diaoyu-crisis-3/. Michael Swaine, “Chinese Views Regarding the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands Dispute,”
Chinese Leadership Monitor, 41 (Spring 2013), 9-11, https://www.hoover.org/research/chinese-views-regarding-senkakudiaoyu-islands-dispute The group is potentially the “Leading Small Group for the Protection of Maritime Rights and Interests,” whose full membership is unclear, but it first appears in September of 2012 on the CV of at least one People’s Republic of China cadre; see, “Liu Cigui, Jianli,”
Difanglingdao ziliaoku, accessed on Sept. 5, 2018,
http://ldzl.people.com.cn/dfzlk/front/personPage11962.htm.
[181] Andrew Chubb, "Assessing Public Opinion’s Influence on Foreign Policy: The Case of China’s Assertive Maritime Behavior,"
Asian Security 15, no. 2 (2019): 14,
https://doi.org/10.1080/14799855.2018.1437723.
[182] Anonymous interviews, Beijing, June 18– July 5, 2017. See also, Feng Zhang, “Should Beijing Establish an Air Defense Identification Zone Over the South China Sea?”
Foreign Policy, June 4, 2015,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/04/should-beijing-establish-an-air-defense-identification-zone-over-the-south-china-sea/.
[183] Adam P. Liff, "Principles Without Consensus: Setting the Record Straight on the 2014 Sino-Japanese ‘Agreement to Improve Bilateral Relations,'" Working Paper, Nov. 8, 2014,
http://www.adamphailliff.com/documents/Liff2014_PrinciplesWithoutConsensus.pdf.
[184] Zhang Zhaogong,
Shishuo Daozheng [History of Disputed Islands] (Beijing: Beijing Chubanshe, 2014); Isshiki,
Nani Ka No Tame Ni.
[185] Nani Ka No Tame Ni, 49–50. McGregor,
Asia's Reckoning, 264.
[186] Jiun Bang, "“Commodification of Nationalism,” Unpublished Manuscript, (2017).
[187] This was thwarted by the government. “Senkaku shōtotsu no Chūgoku gyosen wo nitchūyūkō no resutoran-sen ni?” [The Chinese ship from the Senkaku collision to be a Japan-China friendship restaurant?],
Searchina, May 24, 2011.
[188] “‘Baowei diaoyudao’ youxi xiajiahou, yansheng duoge shanzaiban” [After the ‘Protect Diaoyudao’ videogame took off, it spawned many imitations],
Renminwang, July 12, 2012,
http://world.people.com.cn/n/2012/0712/c1002-18499038.html.
[189] J. T. Quigley, “Diaoyu Island Assault,”
The Diplomat, Aug. 2, 2013,
https://thediplomat.com/2013/08/diaoyu-island-assault-pla-designed-video-game-simulates-sino-japanese-conflict/.
[190] Todd Hall,
Emotional Diplomacy: Official Emotion on the International Stage (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 39–79.
[191] Zhang,
Xin Zhongguo He Riben Guanxi Shi, 300–01.
[192] International Crisis Group, "Dangerous Waters," 10–11; Weiss,
Powerful Patriots, 160–218.
[193] Smith,
Intimate Rivals, 224–28.
[194] Green et al.,
Countering Coercion in Maritime Asia, 75,142–44; Fravel, "Explaining China’s Escalation Over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands," 32–33; Adam Liff, "China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations in the East China Sea and Japan’s Response," in
China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations, ed. Andrew S. Erickson and Ryan D. Martinson (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2019); “Trends in Chinese Government and Other Vessels.”
[195] Liff, "China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations," 9.
[196] “China’s Activities Surrounding Japan’s Airspace.”
[197] Green et al.,
Countering Coercion in Maritime Asia, 143.
[198] Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2018, (Washington, DC: United States Department of Defense, 2018).
[199] Liff, "China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations," 13.
[200] Adam P. Liff and G. John Ikenberry, "Racing Toward Tragedy?: China's Rise, Military Competition in the Asia Pacific, and the Security Dilemma,"
International Security 39, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 73–78,
https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00176; Liff, "China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations," 17–21; Christopher Hughes, "Japan’s ‘Resentful Realism’and Balancing China’s Rise,"
Chinese Journal of International Politics 9, no. 2 (Summer 2016): 144–45,
https://doi.org/10.1093/cjip/pow004.
[201] Manyin, "Senkaku (Diaoyu/Diaoyutai) Islands Dispute," 6–8.
[202] Adam P. Liff and Andrew S. Erickson, "From Management Crisis to Crisis Management? Japan’s Post-2012 Institutional Reforms and Sino-Japanese Crisis (In)stability,"
Journal of Strategic Studies 40, no. 5 (2017): 604,
https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2017.1293530.
[203] Liff and Erickson, "From Management Crisis to Crisis Management?" 605. Although the Chinese government denies the radar incidents.
[204] “Diaoyu Dao, an Inherent Territory of China”; “China Publishes Pamphlet on Diaoyu Islands,”
Beijing Review, Sept. 21, 2012,
http://www.bjreview.com.cn/special/2012-09/21/content_485502.htm.
[205] Kitagami, author’s interview.
[206] Kitagami, author’s interview; Linus Hagström, "The Sino-Japanese Battle for Soft Power: Pitfalls and Promises,"
Global Affairs 1, no. 2 (2015): 129–37,
https://doi.org/10.1080/23340460.2015.990798; Pugliese and Insisa,
Sino-Japanese Power Politics, 103–27. “Japanese Territory: Reference Room,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, accessed Sept. 10, 2018 at:
https://www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/c_m1/senkaku/page1we_000012.html.
[207] Tyler Roney, “The Sino-Japanese Voldemort Wars,”
The Diplomat, Jan. 9, 2014,
https://thediplomat.com/2014/01/the-sino-japanese-voldemort-wars-chinas-doomed-pr-battle/.
[208] Hagström, "The Sino-Japanese Battle for Soft Power"; Pugliese and Insisa,
Sino-Japanese Power Politics, 103–27.
[209] Ramos-Mrosovsky, "International Law's Unhelpful Role in the Senkaku Islands," 906; Paul O’Shea, "Sovereignty and the Senkaku/Diaoyu Territorial Dispute, Working Paper 240," (Stockholm: EJIS Stockholm School of Economics, 2012).
[210] “Senkaku Islands Q&A”; “Diaoyu Dao, an Inherent Territory of China.”
[211] “Commissioned Research Report on Archives of Senkaku Islands,” Office of Planning and Coordination on Territory and Sovereignty, Cabinet Office, Japan, accessed Sept. 10, 2018,
https://www.cas.go.jp/jp/ryodo_eg/report/senkaku.html; “Diaoyu Dao: The Inherent Territory of China,” National Marine Data and Information Service, accessed Sept. 10, 2018,
http://www.diaoyudao.org.cn/en/.
[212] “Shenyang ‘9-18’ lishibowuguan: jiang zengjia diaoyudao shishi zhanlan neirong” [Shenyang 9-18 history museum: will increase content of Diaoyu Island historical exhibit],
Renminwang, Sept. 15, 2012,
http://japan.people.com.cn/35467/7949966.html; “Ryōdo shuken tenji-kan hōmupēji” [National Museum of Territory and History Homepage], Japan, accessed Sept. 11, 2018,
https://www.cas.go.jp/jp/ryodo/tenjikan/; “New Chinese Textbook Lays Claim to Senkakus, Dates Start of War with Japan to 1931,”
Japan Times, Sept. 1, 2017, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/09/01/national/new-chinese-textbook-lays-claim-senkakus-dates-start-war-japan-1931/; “Japanese Textbooks Toe Government Line on Disputed Islands,”
Nikkei Asian Review, April 7, 2015,
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Japanese-textbooks-toe-government-line-on-disputed-islands.
[213] Zhang Haipeng and Li Guoqiang, “Lun maguantiaoyue and diaoyudao wenti” [Discussing the Treaty of Shimonoseki and the Diaoyu Islands Question],
Renmin Ribao, May 8, 2013, 9.
[214] “Renminribao kan wen zhiyi liuqiu guishu” [The People’s Daily publishes an essay questioning the ownership of the Ryukyus],
Zhongguo guangbowang, accessed Sept. 11, 2018, http://china.cnr.cn/xwwgf/201305/t20130510_512557847.shtml.
[215] “Chūgoku no Okinawa ronbun” [China’s Okinawa essay],
Sankei Shinbun, May 10, 2013, 2.
[216] Hassner, "The Path to Intractability"; Barbara Walter, "Explaining the Intractability of Territorial Conflict,"
International Studies Review 5, no. 4 (December 2003): 137–53,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3186399; Colaresi et al.,
Strategic Rivalries in World Politics; Monica Toft, "Indivisible Territory, Geographic Concentration, and Ethnic War,"
Security Studies 12, no. 2 (2002): 82–119,
https://doi.org/10.1080/09636410212120010.
[217] Sumit Ganguly and William Thompson,
Asian Rivalries: Conflict, Escalation, and Limitations on Two-Level Games (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).
[218] Paul K. Huth and Todd L. Allee, "Domestic Political Accountability and the Escalation and Settlement of International Disputes,"
Journal of Conflict Resolution 46, no. 6 (2002),
https://doi.org/10.1177%2F002200202237928.
[219] Stacie Goddard, "Uncommon Ground: Indivisible Territory and the Politics of Legitimacy,"
International Organization 60, no. 1 (January 2006): 35–68,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818306060024.
[220] Goddard, "Uncommon Ground"; Hassner, "The Path to Intractability"; Vasquez,
The War Puzzle Revisited, 110, 424–25.
[221] “Diaoyudao pijiu,”[Diaoyu Islands Beer] Lecuntao.com,
https://www.lecuntao.com/shop/item-362723.html.
[222] Yuka Hayashi, “Ishihara Unplugged,”
Wall Street Journal, May 29, 2012,
http://on.wsj.com/19sZwZI.
[223] Fred R. Shapiro,
The Yale Book of Quotations (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 360–61.
[224] François Truffaut,
Hitchcock (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), 192.
[225] Jin,
Shijie Dageju Zhongguo You Taidu, 62–63.
[226] Reinhard Drifte, "Moving Forward on the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands Issue: Policy Context and Policy Options,"
Kokusai-hō gaikō zasshi [International Law Diplomacy Journal] 113, no. 2 (2014): 67–68.
)
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[post_content] => I have often felt like a scholar without a home. Trained as a historian, I teach historical thinking and publish historical work. While I have spent time in schools of public policy and international affairs, interdisciplinary research centers, and even a political science department and a law school, I have never been employed by a history department. To further the confusion — I care passionately about foreign policy, engage regularly with national security professionals in my teaching, scholarship, and public engagement, yet have never served in government. Nor have I had an obvious methodological or ideological affinity.
In the past, I have looked at this “identity crisis” as a problem. Who was I? At conferences, when people introduced themselves, I was unable to match their pithy, recognizable titles. “Ideologically-uncommitted, methodologically-promiscuous, historically-minded scholar who thinks about strategy and statecraft with an eye toward improving policy” was no match for “political scientist,” “comparativist,” “restrainer,” “neo-realist,” “post-modernist,” “constructivist,” “Europeanist,” “think-tanker,” “methodologist,” “liberal internationalist,” “progressive,” “never-Trumper,” or “national security professional.”
An experience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) changed my view. In 2015, I was asked by the chair of the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Science to co-chair a job search in nuclear security. While always up for a challenge, this assignment was terrifying. As someone who is unable to operate, let alone fix, even the simplest appliances, working with the world’s smartest nuclear scientists and engineers to identify and recruit the best faculty was daunting. I remember walking to lunch in Cambridge with a distinguished physicist who was on my committee. When his iPhone rang, he looked at the name, grumbled “not him again,” and hung up. The name on the screen had been Buzz Aldrin, the second man ever to walk on the Moon. “He wants to be on the nuclear-fueled mission to Mars we are building, but I keep telling him — Buzz, you are too old!” I realized this would be a difficult crowd to impress.
Over time, however, I came to appreciate these nuclear scientists and engineers who welcomed me into their midst. They didn’t care about labels or even disciplines and demonstrated a strong curiosity and interest in how a historian analyzed the world. Their ranks included physicists, material scientists, computational experts, chemical engineers, and others whose expertise mixed and matched from a variety of fields. When judging candidates for the faculty position, their first question was not about disciplinary training or method. They focused on who asked the best questions and who could actually innovatively solve difficult, important problems.
To be clear, these professors were not dilettantes. They understood that nuclear engineers need a shared set of knowledge and skills that is difficult to obtain. The MIT Nuclear Engineering and Science Department held rigorous comprehensive exams for their PhD candidates and understood the benefits of specialization and methodological excellence. Nuclear science and engineering has as many, if not more, narrow, obscure, technical journals as any social science field. My nuclear scientists recognized the importance of theory and the powerful, necessary interplay between the deductive and inductive. In the end, however, no one cared about advancing the “discipline” for its own purposes. To them, “disciplines” and academic fields were a means to an end — vehicles to better ask and answer important questions, and to advance understanding and resolving problems in the world. No MIT nuclear scientist was ever impressed by someone demonstrating theoretical or methodological prowess if it didn’t actually identify or solve a problem that mattered. And all of them felt quite comfortable moving between and fostering engagement between the academy, government and regulatory agencies, and the private sector.
As I explored it further, it was clear that these scientists and engineers operated in a different world than I did, with different incentive structures and organizational histories. Writ large, they had no problem adapting, transforming, or even adding new fields and disciplines as the problems they tried to solve changed. The social sciences look much like they did in the late 19th century, when cutting edge universities like Johns Hopkins, Columbia, and the University of Chicago adopted the German model and first created PhD programs in economics, history, political science, and sociology. The story in science and engineering has been much different, as dozens of new fields, disciplines, schools, and programs have emerged, ranging from brain and cognitive sciences to stem cell and regenerative biology to environmental science and engineering to data, systems, and society. While it is probably a vast oversimplification, people from science and engineering are often as likely to self-identify based on the problem they are trying to solve as the discipline in which they were trained.
I have thought about that experience a lot since becoming the chair of the editorial board for
TNSR. Is there a way to adapt best practices from science and engineering to the important questions of war and peace? Can
TNSR become like the extraordinary journals
Science or
Nature, publishing the best work, in an accessible way, from a range of disciplines? Or are they fundamentally different undertakings? I am not sure what the right answer to this question is, though it is one we think about. As we encourage scholars to submit their best research on national security, foreign policy, and international affairs — especially those beginning their careers — we are often asked what and who we are. A political science or diplomatic history journal? A platform for policy essays like
Foreign Affairs?
War on the Rocks with footnotes? We have our own answer to this question, of course.
[1] The challenge has been to align our mission with what incentivizes the broad-based, diverse audience for whom we publish and from whom we draw for articles. Perhaps one of our greatest challenges thus far has been to lure smart young thinkers out of their narrow disciplinary or career bands and get them to speak to different communities and to identify and answer bigger, problem-driven questions; to have the political scientist engage with the policymaker, the think-tanker communicate with the historian, and the technologist with the humanist, all without sacrificing the rigor and excellence that mark the best disciplinary journals.
Many have rallied to this mission, and we could not be more pleased with the work we have published thus far. In many ways, the authors in this volume are especially reflective of this approach. Iskander Rehman is a Sciences Po-trained political scientist whose impressive analysis of Cardinal Richelieu engages and connects early modern diplomatic and intellectual history to contemporary analysis. Thomas P. Cavanna is a Sciences Po-trained historian whose essay engages international relations theory and questions from the world of political science. Both have spent time in academic and non-academic positions in different fields. Which one is the historian and which is the political scientist — and more importantly, does it matter? Bruce M. Sugden is a policy and research analyst who has combined historical work, technology assessment, and strategic analysis while working for the armed forces, the private sector, and federally-funded research centers. Jim Steinberg, a Yale-trained lawyer who has served at the highest levels of U.S. national security, engages methods from both history and theory to assess what factors and forces shaped the peace process in Northern Ireland. Jim has a favorite quote from Karl Marx’s
Eleven Theses on Feuerbach that reflects his approach to teaching and research that is equally applicable to what we are trying to accomplish at
TNSR: “Philosophers have hitherto interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”
My sense is that many of these important epistemological questions are in play, and how we organize knowledge around important questions in national security, international security, and foreign policy may change — perhaps dramatically — in the years and decades to come.
TNSR will be an engaged participant in these discussions and debates, and will continue to serve as a platform for the best accessible, cutting-edge, publicly minded, multidisciplinary research.
Francis J. Gavin is the chair of the editorial board of the Texas National Security Review
. He is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the inaugural director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at SAIS-Johns Hopkins University. His writings include Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958–1971
(University of North Carolina Press, 2004) and Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age
(Cornell University Press, 2012). His latest book, Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy
, will be published by Brookings Institution Press later this year.
Image:
Thermos
[post_title] => Patterns and Purpose
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[lead] => In his introductory essay for Vol. 2, Iss. 3, Frank Gavin, the chair of our editorial board, writes about feeling like a scholar without a home, the challenges of publishing an interdisciplinary journal, and how to adapt best practices from science and engineering to questions of war and peace.
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[style_label] => The Foundation
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[1] Francis J. Gavin, “TNSR: Who We Are, What We Do, and Why You Should Care,”
Texas National Security Review 1, no. 1 (November 2017),
https://doi.org/10.15781/T2513VC68.
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[post_date] => 2019-07-30 15:16:15
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[post_content] => The Belt and Road Initiative, an unprecedented infrastructure program that extends across and beyond the Eurasian continent, has elicited increasingly hostile reactions in the West and come to symbolize U.S. leaders’ disillusionment regarding Beijing’s growing assertiveness and authoritarianism under Xi Jinping.
[1] However, the initiative’s nature and its potential repercussions remain unclear. What is Belt and Road? What implications could it have for America’s grand strategy?
[2] This article investigates these questions with a particular focus on security dynamics, arguing that, despite multiple problems and ambiguities, Belt and Road spearheads a coherent Chinese grand strategy that could weaken the foundations of America’s post-World War II hegemony but also advance some U.S. interests.
[3]
Many observers view Beijing’s initiative as a threat. The Trump administration, whose December 2017
National Security Strategy declared China a “revisionist” power that aims “to erode American security and prosperity,” has vehemently denounced Beijing’s predatory economic practices and, along with some allies and partners, is developing alternative investment projects.
[4] Likewise, most scholars are skeptical about Chinese intentions. Some perceive Belt and Road as an opportunity.
[5] Others stress that its primary goal is to advance China’s domestic economic growth.
[6] Yet, many believe that under the guise of spreading prosperity Beijing intends to centralize global economic activity, weaken America’s alliances, and erode the U.S.-led international order, with baleful consequences.
[7]
At the same time, most experts contend that China’s prospects of success are slim. Belt and Road’s closest equivalent, the Marshall Plan for Western Europe, which the United States launched while at the height of its power, had a much narrower financial reach and timeline (1947 – 1951) and covered far fewer nations — but ones that were economically stronger.
[8] While some scholars anticipate that Belt and Road will generate modest returns,
[9] many criticize it as a mere slogan or an “endless list of unrelated activities” that will drain Beijing’s finances and damage recipient countries.
[10]
In this article, I engage this conversation and argue that, for all its flaws, the Belt and Road Initiative is much more coherent, potent, and resilient than many believe. First, it leverages China’s unique geoeconomic assets, such as state control over national actors, a vast national market, and growth rates superior to those of most countries, to circumvent Washington’s military primacy.
[11] Second, Belt and Road works in tandem with Beijing’s industrial modernization, defense buildup, omni-directional engagement, and sophisticated propaganda, thereby transcending the U.S. military-centric approach. Third, the initiative advances a hybrid cross-regional geostrategy that yields powerful sea-land synergies, in contrast with America’s more circumscribed vision. Finally, China’s initiative exploits Washington’s post-Cold War overreach — militarization, political and neoliberal interference — and the strains in its alliance network. Left unchecked, Belt and Road could erode America’s post-World War II hegemony. However, it also offers opportunities that could be leveraged to advance some U.S. interests.
This article makes two contributions to the literature. First, and most important, its multidisciplinary and comprehensive approach helps capture Belt and Road’s mutually reinforcing foundations. Excellent studies have addressed the genesis and contours of China’s initiative in general terms, or have explored its implementation in specific domains (e.g., finance and technology), geographic areas (e.g., Pakistan and Southeast Asia), or projects, like Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port.
[12] However, investigating its historical and cultural roots, multidimensional nature, synergy with other Chinese policies, and geostrategic manifestations
altogether against the backdrop of America’s hegemony helps uncover why Beijing’s endeavor is more coherent, potent, and sustainable than many believe.
Second, the article stresses the role of geoeconomics in grand strategy. Leading scholars have shown how economic assets can elevate a state’s international position.
[13] Recent studies have demonstrated how “deeper, faster … and more integrated” markets impact foreign policy, or have compared the U.S.-China competition to the contest between Germany and Great Britain in infrastructure, technology, trade, and finance in the late 19th century.
[14] However, endorsing the realist paradigm that “effective power is [essentially] a function of … military forces,”
[15] many experts “shy away” from economic analysis.
[16] To them, grand strategy mostly relies on “military remedies,”
[17] “concentrates … on how the military instrument should be employed,”
[18] and necessitates the ability to “use … force internationally.”
[19] This analysis builds on these vital contributions but, it reintroduces geoeconomics into the picture.
The article proceeds in three sections. First, it outlines Belt and Road’s progress, its position within China’s grand strategy and strategic culture, and its resilience. Second, it explores how Belt and Road helps protect the foundations of Beijing’s power. Third, it investigates how the initiative allows China to project influence abroad. In each section, the article also discusses the impact of Beijing’s ambitions on the interdependent levers of influence — military, economic, diplomatic, and geostrategic — that have underpinned America’s post-World War II hegemony. It concludes with policy recommendations for U.S. leaders.
Belt and Road: More than a Slogan
Despite its many problems, the Belt and Road Initiative relies on powerful drivers that are sources of coherence, strength, and sustainability. After a brief overview of Belt and Road, this section discusses the initiative’s position within China’s grand strategy and strategic culture, and its resilience in the face of uncertainties, setbacks, and rising competition.
Emerging Features
The Belt and Road Initiative was launched in the fall of 2013. At its core, it seeks to use trade and foreign direct investment, most of which emanate from state-owned banks, to build connectivity across Eurasia. Its two main branches, the Maritime Silk Road and the Silk Road Economic Belt, initially radiated in six directions: the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor, the China-Mongolia-Russia Corridor, the China-Central Asia-Western Asia Corridor, the China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor, and the New Eurasian Land Bridge. As formalized in March 2015, Beijing intends to develop transport, energy, and telecommunication infrastructure to bolster commerce, financial integration, policy coordination, and “people-to-people bonds.”
[20]
[quote id="1"]
One oft-cited description of the Belt and Road Initiative portrays a multidecade undertaking of $4 trillion spanning areas that represent 70 percent of the world’s population, 55 percent of the global economic output, and 75 percent of the planet’s energy reserves. Another study predicted that Belt and Road funding would ultimately exceed $8 trillion.
[21] These estimates are speculative. However, the initiative has already become a concrete reality. Beijing spent $138 billion in investments — meant to acquire “ownership stake[s]” — and $208 billion in construction projects conducted for third parties in Belt and Road countries between 2014 and 2017, compared to $76 billion and $140 billion, respectively, between 2010 and 2013. Belt and Road’s share in China’s foreign direct investments rose from less than 20 percent in 2017 to 40 percent in 2018, although that increase partly resulted from expanding membership in the initiative.
[22] Moreover, Belt and Road trade exceeded $1.3 trillion in 2018, a 16.3 percent jump that dwarfed China’s 12.6 percent overall trade increase.
[23]
The scope and content of the initiative are ambiguous and in constant flux. However, these characteristics do not necessarily handicap it. Belt and Road’s membership — currently more than 100 countries — continues to expand. Although many observers have derided the vagueness of its Memoranda of Understanding, these documents have real political value and initiate processes that can gain momentum over time. Moreover, many actors located outside Belt and Road’s boundaries are collaborating with China’s initiative, including the Saudi government, British banks, and American companies.
[24] Finally, Belt and Road works in conjunction with Beijing’s industrial modernization, economic and diplomatic outreach, propaganda, and military expansion.
Observers rightly point out that the initiative lacks transparency and that its projects are impacted — sometimes corrupted — by Chinese substate actors who compete against each other to serve their own agendas.
[25] Indeed, the post-1978 “fragmentation, decentralization and internationalization of … state apparatuses” in China has allowed bureaucracies and state-owned companies to work around governmental directives, and has left provinces free to engage internationally without much oversight.
[26] Furthermore, Chinese government elites themselves use Belt and Road to build “discourses of hopes and fears” that shift the domestic narrative away from growing economic difficulties.
[27] However, Beijing’s authorities are highly committed to rationalizing the process. Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao, involved his own legitimacy in Belt and Road, enshrined the latter into the national constitution, created a high-level committee that regularly intervenes to address the initiative’s dysfunctions, and presented Belt and Road to the rest of the world as a symbol of China’s rise and credibility.
[28] To be sure, problems will persist, but they are likely to remain under control.
Some experts emphasize that Belt and Road is merely a slogan because many of the methods and projects that it encompasses existed before its launch. Indeed, the initiative doubles down on state control of the national economy and exploitation of Beijing’s foreign commercial appeal. It resonates with the Western development strategy, designed in the late 1990s to reduce inequalities between China’s coastal and continental provinces; the “Going Out” investment plan for strategic assets, begun in the 2000s; growth-seeking infrastructure campaigns launched in 1997 and 2008; and rhetorical catchphrases, such as “peaceful rise,” promoted in the mid-2000s.
[29] The same can be said of specific projects. For instance, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor builds upon a long friendship rooted in a common interest in encircling India. Yet, these continuities suggest a real degree of coherence. Additionally, Belt and Road is taking past endeavors to new heights. Moreover, the initiative publicizes China’s emerging global ambitions at a time of widespread perception of America’s relative decline.
Belt and Road’s Position Within China’s Grand Strategy and Strategic Culture
The coherence of the Belt and Road Initiative also stems from its symbiotic integration within the arc of Communist China’s grand strategy. That strategy was largely defined by the “century of humiliation” — the period between the start of the First Opium War in 1839 and the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 — which destroyed the “extraordinarily high … civilizational self-regard in which the Celestial Empire had for so long insisted on holding itself.”
[30] The trauma generated a “post-imperial ideology” of victimization,
[31] and convinced many Chinese that their country’s “destiny” was to recover “global status and power.”
[32]
This perspective reflects important facets of China’s strategic culture itself. Beijing’s leaders have long claimed to have a unique “pacifist, non-expansionist, and purely defensive” orientation.
[33] Endorsing this assessment, many experts who delved into the writings of traditional figures such as Confucius or Sun Tzu stressed a national preference for “strategic defense,” “diplomatic intrigue,” “alliance building,” and “the restrained application of force for clearly enunciated political ends.”
[34] Those virtues are often contrasted with Western civilization’s allegedly aggressive outlook. Indeed, according to some scholars, Chinese leaders developed a “siege mentality” that they now direct toward the United States, which they consider to be in opposition to Beijing’s resurgence.
[35]
Belt and Road aligns with this intellectual framework. China promotes it to pursue “strategic hedging” — optimizing its ability to handle potential threats coming from the international system’s hegemon without taking explicit military action.
[36] More broadly, Belt and Road is being used to “shape [an] environment that is conducive to … [Beijing’s] economic, social, and political development.”
[37] In doing so, the initiative departs from the Western strategic tradition, which stresses “force on force.”
[38] Designed to circumvent U.S. military superiority, its geoeconomic thrust, omni-directional engagement, and hybrid maritime-continental orientation reflect centuries-old tactics, such as “forestalling hostile coalitions … seeking relative advantage rather than high-risk confrontations,”
[39] and “[using] the soft and gentle to overcome the hard and strong.”
[40] Moreover, Belt and Road conveys a narrative of peaceful benevolence.
[41] Honoring the spirit of the ancient Silk Road, the initiative officially welcomes everyone, offers “win-win cooperation,” and promotes “friendship, shared development, peace, harmony and a better future.”
[42] This lofty rhetoric obliquely refers to the tribute system that helped China dominate Asia via “civilizational attraction” from the 3rd century B.C. to the mid-19th century.
[43]
[quote id="2"]
However, this narrative could be curtailed by other facets of Beijing’s strategic culture. To begin with, that culture is characterized by a Sino-centrism stretching back to the third millennium B.C. according to which all those who lived beyond China’s peripheries were “subordinate barbarians.”
[44] Those patterns have been exacerbated by the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology and nationalism. In fact, Belt and Road’s early implementation has shown some propensity to ignore local expectations in recipient countries. Additionally, the initiative perpetuates China’s perennial “pull between closure and openness,” as illustrated by its lack of transparency or by the promotion of authoritarian standards via the Digital Silk Road.
[45]
Most important, Belt and Road constitutes an open “counter-hegemonic” effort.
[46] Breaking with the “hide and bide” approach defined by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, Xi Jinping publicly announced a plan to achieve “global [leadership] in … comprehensive national power” by 2049.
[47] This declaration marks the end of the “strategy of transition,” which was adopted after the 1996 Taiwan crisis to help China emerge “within … a unipolar international system.”
[48] Xi’s growing assertiveness could illustrate what some leading scholars have presented as the dominant face of China’s strategic culture, one that heavily relies on violence and offensive warfare.
[49] After all, over the centuries, many Chinese leaders have conducted “campaigns of conquest” and built their legitimacy on territorial expansion.
[50]
Some aspects of Belt and Road might reflect that logic. For one thing, as illustrated by recent controversies, the initiative could facilitate economic coercion.
[51] Moreover, it is working in tandem with a strong military buildup and an expanding defense doctrine, and it might help Beijing establish a foreign base network. However, even the experts who argue that China’s strategic culture is predominantly aggressive explain that such impulses are tempered by “posturing that stresses … disinterested and violence-averse benevolence,” and by “a conscious sensitivity to changing relative capabilities.”
[52] Additionally, in some ways Beijing still wants to let a declining America assume the costly responsibilities of maintaining the international order.
[53]
Considering all of these aspects, Belt and Road is useful in that it allows the defensive and offensive facets of China’s dual strategic culture to cohabitate while keeping all options open for the future. However, other cultural characteristics deserve attention as well when examining Beijing’s initiative. Chinese leaders have often privileged long-term vision over immediate gains and tended to approach strategic issues with “the whole situation in mind” rather than one single battlefield. They also focus less on specific assets than on the way these assets “work … in concert” in a logic of encirclement or counter-encirclement.
[54] Such elements might help reveal the potency of Belt and Road. Although the initiative’s ambiguous and disaggregated aspects have attracted valid criticism, over time synergies may emerge between its various dimensions, its regional manifestations, and the other instruments of Beijing’s grand strategy. Consider, for instance, how the nascent Polar Silk Road and the combination of infrastructure investments in continental Eurasia, the Suez Canal, and European port terminals might propel China’s commercial penetration of wealthy northwestern European economies.
[55] Likewise, a growing naval presence, new land corridors through Pakistan and Myanmar, and a rising influence in island states like Sri Lanka and the Maldives could turn Beijing into a “resident power” in the Indian Ocean region.
[56] Admittedly, none of these outcomes is predetermined. But they seem reasonably plausible and, should they materialize, could have far-reaching implications for the United States.
Belt and Road’s Resilience
Observers have expressed legitimate doubts about Belt and Road’s sustainability in view of Beijing’s domestic difficulties, its setbacks in recipient states, and rising alternatives. However, although those challenges could potentially cripple the Chinese initiative, it may nevertheless prove resilient if Beijing’s leaders make certain adjustments.
One of Belt and Road’s key challenges stems from China’s domestic troubles. These include an economic slowdown, debt, corruption, inequality, and a rapidly aging population. Additionally, traditional measurement methods like Gross Domestic Product (GDP) have overestimated the strength of the Chinese economy.
[57] Furthermore, Xi Jinping’s centralization of power could compromise the regime’s effectiveness, not to mention its system of succession. Each of these problems could single-handedly derail the country’s trajectory.
[58] Belt and Road itself could exacerbate those tensions by diverting money that might better be used at home. Beijing’s economy could also suffer from the graft, rent-seeking, and domestic agendas of the initiative’s foreign recipients.
[59] In fact, the steep fall of Chinese overseas investments since 2016 might jeopardize Belt and Road’s future.
[60]
Yet, those problems must be put into perspective. China has made phenomenal progress since the 1980s. Moreover, it repeatedly disproved the experts who prophesied its demise, and its economy still has major assets including competent leadership, low government debt, vast foreign exchange reserves, manufacturing dominance, a much-underestimated ability to innovate, and solid growth — whether measured in GDP or alternative methods such as “inclusive wealth.”
[61] As for Belt and Road, it is likely to prove financially sustainable. While considerable, the amount of money involved in the initiative pales in comparison to the $5.9 trillion that the United States has spent on the global war on terrorism since 2001 or will inevitably spend in the form of interest rates, veterans’ care, and other obligations.
[62] Some of Belt and Road’s losses were anticipated from the start and, despite the controversies surrounding China’s failures, many of its projects could yield high returns. Moreover, Beijing’s recent foreign direct investment review may optimize decision-making.
[63] Forecasts put annual Belt and Road investments and construction contracts at $50 billion and $60 billion, respectively. Such predictions seem rather reasonable given China’s low stock-to-GDP ratio — 10.9 percent versus America’s 28.9 percent — and private investments could push them further.
[64] Therefore, drawing any conclusions from Beijing’s current difficulties would be highly premature.
The future of Belt and Road could also be compromised by the growing tensions observed in recipient states. China’s promises have not always materialized and corrupt projects make the headlines, stirring disappointment among local populations. Beijing’s nondiscriminative approach means lower governance standards than those of Western institutions like the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund, especially when it comes to transparency and social responsibility. Additionally, Chinese actors capture most of Belt and Road’s contracts at the expense of local companies.
[65] Furthermore, the massive loans extended to recipient states can create what many observers have called a “debt trap,” as illustrated by China’s takeover of Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port in December 2017, and skyrocketing national debt levels in countries like the Maldives, Djibouti, or Montenegro.
[66] Local discontent has torpedoed major contracts, including Pakistan’s $14 billion Diamer-Bhasha dam in November 2017 and Malaysia’s $20 billion East Coast Rail Line in May 2018. Discord could intensify as Belt and Road loans near expiration and as China gets embroiled in regional rivalries — such as the one between Saudi Arabia and Iran — and local politics. Finally, Chinese citizens have been the target of terrorist or insurgent attacks, for example in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.
[quote id="3"]
Yet, Belt and Road’s appeal remains strong. To begin, the initiative’s relevance is guaranteed by the fact that projected global infrastructure needs from 2013 to 2030 may amount to $57 trillion.
[67] Additionally, Western-led organizations have long neglected building infrastructure and have been highly risk-averse, which led them to ignore many poor countries, a gap that Beijing is now trying to bridge.
[68] Moreover, while the criticism of China deserves attention — after all, it uses its economic power to gain leverage and some of its practices are dangerous — its development financing has had positive effects. This impact, which includes economic growth, job creation, and providing alternatives to austerity in times of crisis, explains Beijing’s undeniable popularity in Africa and Latin America.
[69] As for the “debt trap” accusations, they have their limits. Seeking too many bankruptcies would not make sense for China as it would cripple its finances. Authoritative institutions such as the Center for Global Development concluded that Belt and Road “is unlikely to cause a systemic debt problem.”
[70] In fact, Beijing’s credit from 2000 to 2016 only counted for 2 percent of the developing countries’ $6.9 trillion accumulated debt, which largely results from the West’s colonial legacies, unfair commercial terms, austerity measures, and dollar-denominated payment requirements.
[71] Additionally, China is not the only actor that indulges in assets takeover, as exemplified in August 2015 when a German firm took control — with the European Union’s and the International Monetary Fund’s approval — of 14 Greek airports valued at $1.23 billion for 40 years due to Athens’ unsustainable debt.
[72]
Xi Jinping’s promises during the April 2019 Belt and Road summit to ameliorate some aspects of the initiative may prove to be empty words. However, his public acknowledgement of the criticism that Beijing has received might suggest otherwise, not to mention the adjustments — albeit insufficient ones — that are already under way, such as increasing local hires, improving transparency, and consulting with local leaders.
[73] Importantly, early studies on foreign perceptions of the Chinese initiative are not overly alarming.
[74] Despite notable hiccups, Beijing’s financial reach, non-discriminative approach, cheap technical assets, fast delivery, and anti-imperialist rhetoric often suffice to preserve Belt and Road’s appeal. For example, Middle Eastern state leaders believe that the initiative could help them exploit their energy resources, diversify their economies, create jobs, and integrate global supply chains.
[75] Additionally, China’s momentum persists even in countries where severe controversies have erupted. For instance, Pakistan and Sri Lanka’s new leaders “softened” their electoral campaign criticisms of Belt and Road. Malaysia is still pursuing the $10.5 billion Melaka Gateway, resumed the $34 billion “Bandar Malaysia” project, and revived the East Coast Rail Line after obtaining a 30 percent discount, which signals Beijing’s willingness to compromise. Similarly, after years of interruption, Myanmar gave the green light to the Kyaukpyu port project — potentially worth $6 to $7 billion — in November 2017.
[76]
Belt and Road could also lose momentum due to the alternative infrastructure projects that are emerging. In the last two years, Western countries have expressed growing concerns about China’s low governance standards in the context of their disillusionment over Beijing’s increasing protectionism, authoritarianism, and military assertiveness. The main alternatives to Belt and Road include Japan’s “quality infrastructure” blueprint, which would invest $200 billion over five years; the Indo-Japanese Asia-Africa Growth Corridor; the European Union’s Eurasia connectivity plan; and a revamped U.S. development finance agency with a $60 billion portfolio.
[77] This competition could hurt China’s endeavor given these countries’ strong expertise, economic firepower, and determination to work together. It could also create a healthy competition that would ultimately benefit recipient states and their local populations.
However, these counter-initiatives may face a number of obstacles: First, most of them are still in their infancy and are progressing more slowly than Belt and Road. Second, for all the criticism of China’s practices, the West’s political and economic interferences and austerity standards have also generated their fair share of controversy among developing countries in the past. As such, the appeal of these competing projects should not be overestimated.
[78] Third, while Western countries’ foreign direct investment, which originates mostly from private actors, is much higher in the aggregate, China can more easily use its foreign direct investment for strategic purposes thanks to a much tighter, if imperfect, control over national actors.
[79] Fourth, these countries may have difficulty coordinating their counter-initiatives because of differing standards, priorities, and underlying strategic objectives. Fifth, domestic economic hardships could stand in the way. While China’s share in East Asia’s GDP rose from 8 percent to 51 percent between 1990 and 2014, Japan’s plunged from 72 percent to 22 percent. Meanwhile, India struggles with poverty, socio-ethnic and religious strife, and security threats.
[80] Interestingly, the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor proposed by Tokyo and New Delhi remains “abstract … and both governments may be de-emphasizing the idea.”
[81] As for European economies, they are declining and Brussels’ Eurasia connectivity plan only offers “an increased fire-power of up to €60 billion” spread out between 2021 and 2027.
[82] Finally, America’s response is blunted by deep fiscal deficits, a liberal outlook that rejects state interventionism, and the participation of powerful U.S. multinationals in Belt and Road.
[83]
Meanwhile, the frustrations prompted by Beijing’s commercial practices do not compromise the appeal of its market and products across the world. Moreover, the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and suspension of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations expand China’s window of opportunity. Admittedly, Washington is pushing for deals akin to the revised North American Free Trade Agreement (announced in October 2018), which forbids commercial deals with Beijing. Yet, President Donald Trump may not be able to impose his views as easily on Japan, the European Union, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), heavyweights that value economic relations with China and oppose Washington’s protectionism.
[84]
Protecting the Foundations of China’s Power
The Belt and Road Initiative helps protect the foundations of Chinese national power in three areas. First, it bolsters the country’s national sovereignty and domestic stability. Second, it buttresses its economic security. Third, it enhances its industrial-military potential. These mutually reinforcing dynamics allow Beijing to hedge against potential U.S. aggressions.
Border and Domestic Security
Belt and Road is designed to bolster China’s border and domestic security. The vastness of the country’s western and southern peripheries, the local demographic superiority of non-Han ethnic groups, and the historical weakness of local state authority have always exposed Chinese leaders to domestic unrest and foreign interference.
[85] In that light, the United States has, in recent history, been a perennial concern. Washington tried to exploit turmoil in Tibet and Xinjiang during the early Cold War.
[86] Beijing has also worried for decades about America launching ideological attacks to “bring [China] into its own system.”
[87] For example, in recent years, Chinese leaders have resented Washington’s decision to grant political asylum to Xinjiang activists as well as its support for the National Endowment for Democracy and Radio Free Asia.
[88] Furthermore, the Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia caused Beijing to pay even greater attention to its neighbors.
[89] The Indo-American rapprochement, starting in the mid-2000s, compounded Sino-American tensions. Indeed, China has long competed with India across territories that stretch from Myanmar to Kashmir and Tibet, and it deeply resents New Delhi’s protection of the Dalai Lama.
[90]
[quote id="4"]
The Belt and Road Initiative addresses those problems in several ways. First, it is likely to stimulate the economies of China’s remote provinces, thereby reducing incentives for unrest. Second, combined with a robust military buildup in Tibet, the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and Beijing’s investments in Central Asia, northern South Asia, and continental Southeast Asia, are aimed at blunting regional separatist and terrorist threats.
[91] Third, the Digital Silk Road, which promotes Chinese telecommunications equipment and internet standards, optimizes surveillance and repression, buttresses domestic security cooperation with like-minded regimes, including Russia, and secures data from interception by foreign governments.
[92] Moreover, Belt and Road increases China’s push against New Delhi’s regional influence and could even tighten the encirclement of India, whose vulnerable northern flank, especially the Siliguri Corridor, provides strategic leverage to Beijing. Most important, the initiative reduces the harm that America could potentially inflict on Chinese peripheries.
[93]
However, the increase in Beijing’s border and domestic security should not pose insurmountable problems for the United States. Although Belt and Road reduces Washington’s ability to interfere in China’s backyard, doing so would have always been highly dangerous given Beijing’s nuclear status and growing power. Furthermore, as it improves China’s security, Belt and Road may allow American leaders to manage bilateral tensions more easily. The initiative has the potential to increase autocratic tendencies in Central Asia, inner Southeast Asia, and northern South Asia. However, promoting local democracy was never a priority for Washington. The United States does have an interest in backing India in its border disputes with China. Yet, beyond that specific imperative, massive regional efforts would risk diluting America’s resources in distant areas where Beijing often has a comparative advantage. Pakistan deserves attention, especially given India’s strident opposition to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. However, given Washington’s inability to influence Islamabad — despite spending more than $33 billion in economic and military assistance since 2001 — striving to match Beijing’s local grip would be pointless.
[94] China’s vested interest in stability could actually restrain the Pakistani army and facilitate a U.S. withdrawal from the deadlocked war in Afghanistan. More broadly, Belt and Road could bolster counter-terrorism efforts, help economic development, and divert (at least temporarily) some of Beijing’s resources away from areas that are of utmost strategic importance to the United States, like the Strait of Malacca.
Economic Security
Belt and Road is also designed to enhance China’s economic security. This effort targets multiple contingencies, but the challenges posed by America rank particularly high among them. Chinese leaders have never forgotten Washington’s trade embargo, which lasted from 1950 to 1971, nor its support of Taiwanese operations against Beijing’s sea lines of communication in the mid-1950s.
[95] The United States became a tacit ally of China in the later decades of the Cold War. However, Beijing’s concerns gradually resurfaced following the fall of the Soviet Union. Washington’s persistent military encirclement of China, its debates about blockade scenarios, and its Air-Sea Battle Doctrine only aggravated those concerns.
[96]
Doubling down on longstanding patterns, Belt and Road targets fast-growing, underdeveloped countries to boost national growth, attenuate industrial overproduction, transition away from a low-cost, low-end production paradigm, and reduce exposure to competitors. This reorientation appears sound — Belt and Road partners’ share in global GDP rose from 21 percent to 37 percent from 1995 to 2015.
[97] The trade war that the Trump administration launched in mid-2018 gave this process more urgency. However, Beijing’s ability to resist pressures is rising. Washington disrupted China’s supply chains and businesses, but its measures also hurt American companies and are unlikely to have transformative effects on Beijing’s behavior.
[98]
Belt and Road also optimizes Chinese trade routes. By 2015, China had already invested in two-thirds of the 50 largest container ports worldwide and represented 39 percent of the top 10 operators’ traffic.
[99] Beijing has concentrated its attention on chokepoints. Indeed, 10 of its main port installations surround the South China Sea and eight command access to the Strait of Malacca, a crucial chokepoint that is exposed to the U.S. Navy. But China is also pressing for the Kra Canal in Thailand, which could more quickly link the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
[100] It is expanding its influence near the straits of Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb, including in Djibouti, which hosts Africa’s largest free-trade zone, and Oman’s $10.7 billion port in Duqm.
[101] Likewise, Beijing acquired a 20 percent share in the Suez Canal container terminal, is erecting a second local terminal, purchased southern European port facilities, and is developing major ports and a Red Sea-Mediterranean railway with Israel. China also ramped up investments in northern Europe, including a 35 percent share in Rotterdam’s Euromax terminal.
[102] Finally, the nascent Polar Silk Road could bypass current chokepoints, cut sailing time to rich northwestern European markets, and save Beijing between $533 billion and $1.274 trillion annually.
[103]
In parallel, Belt and Road is betting on roads, railways, and facilities across Central Asia, the South Caucasus, Turkey, and Eastern and Southern Europe. Although most Eurasian economic centers abut coastlines and maritime shipping remains more capable, affordable, and predictable,
[104] land transportation, which is faster than the sea and cheaper than the air, could help the high-tech, fashion, agriculture, and heavy machinery sectors, among others. The digitization of border procedures and the ongoing logistics revolution could boost traffic further.
[105] Moreover, major hybrid sea-land routes are set to emerge. For example, transportation infrastructure across Greece and the Balkans will link up with the Suez Canal maritime routes to allow products in Beijing to reach northwestern European markets eight to 12 days faster than through the Strait of Gibraltar.
[106]
China is also focusing on energy and food security. Beijing has leveraged America’s post-Cold War regional security architecture and the unpopularity of the war on terrorism to nurture its economic presence in the oil-rich Middle East. China’s trade in the region grew by 350 percent from 2005 to 2016 and its foreign direct investment reached $29.5 billion in 2016, compared to Washington’s $6.9 billion.
[107] Saudi Arabia is gravitating toward Belt and Road: A number of bilateral deals worth $65 billion were signed during King Salman’s visit in March 2017 and Riyadh has signed agreements worth $20 billion as a preliminary investment in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Iran, an old ally of Beijing, has enjoyed renewed favors since the signing of the 2015 nuclear deal: China’s local foreign direct investment rose 20 percent between March 2014 and January 2018, bilateral trade soared 19 percent from 2016 to 2017, and joint ventures like the North Azadegan and Yadavaran oil fields, estimated at $5 billion, are moving forward.
[108] The Trump administration’s recent sanctions have curtailed this momentum; however, Beijing — which may be joined by others, including European countries — is likely to work around them, as it has in the past. Meanwhile, China’s noninterference principles have helped to spread its regional influence, as illustrated by the fact that Qatar, Kuwait, Syria, and Iraq support Sino-Iranian ties while Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel see Beijing’s relationship with, and potential leverage over, Iran as a reason to engage China diplomatically and economically.
[109] Similarly, Beijing is investing in energy assets in Central Asia, Africa, Latin America, Canada, and the Arctic. It has also become the main producer of 23 of the 41 most strategically valuable metals and minerals worldwide.
[110] Finally, China’s investments in Belt and Road partners’ agricultural sectors and in companies such as the Swiss Syngenta — a leader in agrochemicals, seeds, and biotech acquired for $43 billion in 2016 — improve the country’s resilience by diversifying suppliers and increasing domestic production.
[111]
These trends could create challenges for Washington. For example, Chinese port operators could collect intelligence on docked U.S. vessels in allied countries such as Israel. The Belt and Road Initiative will also diminish the likelihood of an American blockade by strengthening Beijing’s sea lines of communication, incentivizing littoral states to prevent trade disruptions, and, through continental pathways in Central Asia, Pakistan, and Myanmar, diversifying its shipping options.
[112] More broadly, China’s gains could erode Washington’s influence since guaranteeing the “provision of [Middle Eastern] oil” has long given the United States strategic leverage over other countries.
[113] Additionally, Beijing has secured “a lock on supplies of nine of the 10 [metals and minerals] judged to be at the highest risk of unavailability,”
[114] and might “lock up … farmland … and food processing assets” worldwide.
[115]
[quote id="5"]
However, the impact of these dynamics on American security should not be overestimated. In the first place, although the possibility of imposing a blockade against China has decreased, such a move would have always been highly complex and dangerously escalatory.
[116] In reality, the decline of Beijing’s insecurity
reduces the risk of war. Moreover, although they have given America some influence, military interventions in the Middle East since the early 1990s have incurred severe costs, destabilized local countries, diverted Washington’s attention away from East Asia, and allowed China to free-ride.
[117] Admittedly, the United States retains an interest in the free flow of oil, but so does Beijing. More broadly, America has enough military assets in the region and beyond to deter misbehavior. Therefore, Belt and Road, rather than exclusively posing a threat, might in fact offer Washington an opportunity to rethink how it engages in the Middle East and to cooperate with China in efforts such as countering terrorism and fighting piracy. As for the Chinese challenge in domains like food security, access to key metals and minerals, and influence on other states, a determined geoeconomic response would go a long way toward preserving key American interests.
One final way in which China is ensuring its economic security is via its investments in green energy. The Belt and Road Initiative financed “clean” projects worth $11.8 billion in 2015 and 2016, and issued a $2.15 billion climate bond in 2017. Pointing to Beijing’s skyrocketing pollution levels, most observers have castigated Belt and Road as a scheme designed to export polluting industries.
[118] These critiques have merit. However, current trends might hide a deeper shift toward renewable energies.
[119] Either way, a green Belt and Road would be in Washington’s interest. Although this outcome could potentially allow Beijing to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, build resilient infrastructure, curtail the appeal of the American shale gas revolution, dominate emerging industries like electric cars, and command international “regulations [and] pricing policies,” Washington could mitigate those risks by rekindling its own environmental ambitions.
[120] More importantly, a green China would more proactively help fight global warming, a threat that should dwarf any other concerns.
Industrial-Military Potential
The Belt and Road Initiative is geared toward enhancing China’s industrial-military potential. Although multiple factors drive this effort, the United States looms large. America’s prowess during the 1990 – 1991 Gulf War, the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq gave Beijing powerful incentives to modernize. Additionally, Chinese leaders have resented Washington’s regular attempts to curtail their country’s progress, including pressuring European allies not to lift their post-Tiananmen embargo on exports of military hardware.
[121]
Belt and Road could facilitate Beijing’s defense modernization in several ways. Indeed, it overlaps with “Internet Plus,” a plan to integrate new technologies like big data and advanced manufacturing sectors to make China more competitive in the global markets.
[122] It also works in conjunction with “Made in China 2025” — a program to dominate high-tech industries, such as semi-conductors, by increasing subsidies and attracting foreign companies that will be squeezed out of the market once their knowledge is extracted.
[123] Belt and Road optimizes those efforts by opening new markets for Chinese companies, exporting technical standards, and facilitating industrial espionage.
[124]
However, significant obstacles remain. Beijing’s state-centric approach is plagued by inertia, talent deficits, intellectual property violations, and rising Western investment-screening mechanisms. Moreover, many foreign firms only use China to assemble components that were manufactured abroad.
[125] Yet, the technological gap with the United States is narrowing. Beijing is training more STEM graduates than in the past — a projected 48 million between 2015 and 2030 compared with America’s 10 million for the same time period — attracting more graduate returnees, whose number jumped from 272,900 in 2012 to 432,500 in 2016; progressing in academic rankings; and claiming more patents than ever before, with a 28 percent increase between 2016 and 2017. Additionally, its research and development spending could overtake Washington’s by 2022.
[126] Furthermore, the huge size of its national market allows China to replicate foreign technology, generate a “learning curve” effect, and collect more data, a crucial asset for artificial intelligence and biotech. Beijing, which accounted for 42 percent of the global digital economy in 2017, could soon dominate underequipped regions like Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
[127] The number of Chinese enterprises ranked in a list of the 20 most valuable internet companies worldwide rose from two to nine between 2013 and 2018, and China could be the first major power to roll out 5G technology on a large scale — although recent U.S. sanctions on Huawei might delay that process.
[128] Finally, despite new protections, most advanced economies and private companies remain exposed to Beijing’s foreign direct investment, espionage, and commercial appeal, while countries like Israel or Singapore have yet to ramp up their defenses.
[129]
The security implications of China’s technological progress are significant. Building on the Strategic Support Force, a new branch of Beijing’s military dedicated to electronics, space, and cyber, and capitalizing on its financial reach, civil-military fusion, lesser ethical concerns, and the larger amounts of data that it can collect from its population, China is investing in disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and hypersonic weapons that could diminish America’s competitive edge 15 years down the road to win “informatized wars” — conflicts whose outcome will be determined by the mastery of telecommunications and computer systems.
[130] The Digital Silk Road supports these efforts by strengthening the country’s best companies and improving industrial-military espionage.
[131] For example, new submarine cable projects — which jumped from representing 7 percent of the world total between 2012 and 2015 to 20 percent between 2016 and 2019 — could boost China’s intelligence and anti-submarine capabilities.
[132] Likewise, Belt and Road partnerships help export and upgrade BeiDou, a satellite navigation system that will allow Beijing to “shift away from reliance on [America’s] GPS for precision strike[s]” by 2020.
[133]
Progress in China’s military sector is plagued by bureaucratic inertia, welfare and personnel costs, as well as the costs incurred by domestic instability. Moreover, turning economic power into military capabilities becomes more difficult as technological sophistication increases.
[134] Yet Beijing, which allocated only 1.9 percent of its GDP to defense in 2018 — compared with America’s 3.2 percent — has consistently outpaced intelligence forecasts so far, and may soon pull ahead in key domains like artificial intelligence.
[135] Washington, on the other hand, retains significant industrial potential and can build upon the investment stock that it has accumulated since World War II.
[136] However, its defense industrial base “continues to shrink,” per-troop expenditures have soared by 50 percent in 15 years,
[137] and, having “over-invested in legacy systems,” the United States must shoulder “huge financial burdens … and … [conservative] constituencies.”
[138] The country’s performance is further hurt by the Trump administration’s poor record on innovation and its strained relations with tech companies.
[139]
Projecting Strategic Influence
The Belt and Road Initiative not only helps China blunt potential aggressions, it also allows it to project strategic influence at the bilateral, regional, and systemic levels. Although the United States remains dominant on each of those levels, Beijing could gradually erode America’s hegemony and weaken its security system in the Indo-Pacific.
Systemic Benefits
Belt and Road is designed to erode America’s grip on the international governance architecture, a dominance that Beijing has long resented. Chinese-led financial bodies like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which has a $50 billion endowment and has attracted dozens of states despite U.S. attempts to stop them from joining, or Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa’s (BRICS’) New Development Bank, which has a similar endowment, accelerate the momentum generated by the Chiang Mai Initiative — an endeavor that works to decrease regional defaults in partnership with ASEAN, Japan, and South Korea — the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s Interbank Consortium, and maybe soon a non-Western credit rating agency.
[140] Additionally, Belt and Road has led to the signature of many bilateral commercial agreements and the creation of China-based international courts for conflict resolution. It boosted negotiations over the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which could lift the barriers that separate leading Asian economies, including China, India, Japan, South Korea, and ASEAN, on more than 90 percent of the products that they exchange. Finally, Beijing’s new Cross-Border Interbank Payment System and clearing centers help internationalize the RMB (or yuan, as it is commonly known).
[141] Although this effort is curtailed by capital controls, the Chinese central bank’s lack of independence, Beijing’s investments in U.S. treasury bonds, and the dollar’s domination, the International Monetary Fund added the RMB to its Special Drawing Reserve, and European financial centers are positioning themselves as “‘hubs’ for its use.”
[142] Meanwhile, the newly created “petro-yuan” could transform the pivotal worldwide commodity market.
[143]
[quote id="6"]
Systemic consequences might follow from the strides Beijing has made. By offering alternatives to loan recipients, promoting infrastructure building, and distinguishing economics from politics, China-led financial institutions, in combination with Chinese bilateral development policies, could slowly weaken the austerity principles that the so-called “Washington Consensus” has dictated for decades.
[144] Belt and Road’s commercial agreements could consolidate Beijing’s “agenda-setter” status.
[145] Finally, while the RMB may never achieve dominance, it could erode the dollar’s supremacy, which is already threatened by America’s fiscal deficits and large-scale “economic warfare” with countries like China, Russia, and Iran, not to mention digital currencies and the BRICS’ de-dollarization campaign.
[146]
Washington’s security interests may be affected by those dynamics. Thanks to its leadership in international institutions — such as the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank — and its monetary dominance, America became a “system-maker” after 1945. Combined with the appeal of its loans, investments, and market, this status allowed the United States to borrow without consequences, navigate financial crises, offload adjustment costs, dictate lending terms, tame economic competitors, and open foreign markets.
[147] In turn, these gains strengthened the foundations of America’s hard power. They also contributed to weakening Britain’s empire, maintaining Europe and Japan’s strategic dependency, and convincing most allies to fund U.S. military enterprises. They even helped punish Washington’s enemies — for example, Russia following its 2014 military aggression against Ukraine.
[148] As it erodes America’s “system-maker” status, Belt and Road could reduce these benefits.
Eurasian Integration
Belt and Road may help China optimize its geostrategic posture in Eurasia. Breaking with its historical continental orientation, Beijing has significantly developed its sea power following the Soviet breakup, Taiwan’s democratization process, and the growing dependence of the Chinese economy on foreign resources.
[149] However, there are a number of challenges to achieving maritime dominance. To begin with, building a fleet is extraordinarily costly. Moreover, many Eurasian land powers over history, including Imperial Germany and the Soviet Union, failed to command the oceans because they faced too many continental contingencies. China faces a similar predicament. It has to cope with a superior U.S. navy that “operate[s] freely on exterior lines.”
[150] But it must also protect its vulnerable heartland, and a “March West” helps project influence with less risk of conflict with Washington.
[151] Beijing’s current hybrid sea-land posture raises complex dilemmas in domains like threat management and resource allocation. However, provided Chinese leaders utilize the country’s huge national resources effectively, this posture could optimize China’s “independence and geostrategic flexibility.”
[152] From that perspective, the nascent strategy of “using the land to control the sea, and using the seas to control the oceans” signals Beijing’s determination to make the most of both its continental depth and its location along the Eurasian rimland.
[153]
Belt and Road may contribute to this strategy by facilitating the integration of neighboring economies in Eurasia. Although China has encountered some issues in Central Asia due to local graft, corruption, and politics, bilateral trade, which is 30 times greater than it was in the early 1990s, covers a massive share of these countries’ GDP. Belt and Road infrastructure is also becoming indispensable for them to access markets in the region and beyond.
[154] Most importantly, the Ukraine crisis has accelerated the rapprochement that China and Russia had initiated in the post-Cold War era. Indeed, the rift that it caused with the West encouraged Moscow to increase the technological sophistication of its military exports to Beijing,
[155] and to endorse Belt and Road, which provides Russia with international legitimacy, lowers its reliance on the West, and fortifies its flailing Eurasian Economic Union.
[156] To be sure, the two countries have a long history of strategic competition and Moscow often allied with maritime powers against Eurasian competitors. However, even prominent skeptics recognize that China and Russia “are committed to making things last.”
[157] Both Moscow and Beijing uphold an authoritarian model, seek regional counter-terrorism and economic development, aspire to blunt U.S. influence, and want to minimize their border frictions to pursue ambitions elsewhere.
[158] Additionally, China holds significant leverage over Russia. While their GDPs were similar in 1993, Beijing’s is now more than 10 times greater than Moscow’s. Russia’s dismal infrastructure and energy sector need Belt and Road capital, as illustrated by the 30-year, $400 billion oil deal signed in 2014 and ambitious joint ventures in the Arctic. Besides, Moscow is well aware that China could use its significant demographic superiority to infiltrate and destabilize its neighbor’s thinly populated Far East.
[159]
More broadly, the Middle Eastern oil industries’ growing independence from the West, Iran’s Islamic revolution, the Soviet Union’s unravelling, and China’s and India’s rise opened new opportunities for integration. The resource-rich and capital-rich countries of Eurasia complement one another, which could help lay the foundations of a “new continentalism.”
[160] For example, Iran could become a major energy provider for Pakistan and E.U. countries and a critical export outlet for Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
[161] This Eurasian integration is accentuated by the European Union’s post-Cold War enlargement eastward; the growing connections between western China’s supply chains and those dominated by Germany in central Europe; and the search for continental connectivity of middle powers such as South Korea, Turkey, and Kazakhstan.
[162] This process, which also benefits from the “national and domestic resonance” of the ancient Silk Road in most of these countries, could thrive further under organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
[163] The latter, whose institutional prerogatives now extend to defense and diplomacy, welcomed India and Pakistan in 2017 and might soon be joined by Iran and Turkey. Likewise, Beijing’s “New Security Concept” for Asia, which stresses economic cooperation and implicitly rejects U.S. involvement, could gain momentum.
[164]
These trends could have important security implications. Since the early days of the post-World War II era, fears that a rising hegemon could capture Eurasia’s unmatched resources and markets have led American leaders to forge local alliances and to systematically oppose regional organizations and cross-regional energy networks. These efforts helped entrench Washington’s hegemony and have legitimized its military, political, and economic interferences across Eurasia for decades.
[165] But today’s emerging “continentalism” alters this paradigm. Combined with China’s expanding security dialogues with entities such as the Arab League and the African Union and its growing responsibilities at the United Nations, including contributions to the budget and peacekeeping efforts, institutions like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization could gradually weaken America’s ability to isolate its enemies.
[166] Belt and Road could ultimately create a “continental zone of pre-eminent Chinese influence” and allow Beijing to concentrate on the seas.
[167]
These trends ought to be worrisome for Washington. However, because some of the continental geographic areas coveted by Beijing have less strategic value to American leaders, China’s efforts in those regions might (at least temporarily, but possibly much longer) divert some of its resources away from areas that are of key interest to the United States. Additionally, some of the most proactive and geographically expansive forms of engagement that Washington has adopted in Eurasia in the past led to disasters such as the Vietnam and Iraq wars, incurring enormous costs in blood, treasure, and reputation. In that sense, Beijing’s rise could help check the temptation to overreach. Moreover, a less systematic opposition to China may ease bilateral tensions and help advance other American objectives, such as economic development and counter-terrorism.
Bilateral Leverage
Belt and Road’s geoeconomic approach also enhances China’s bilateral leverage. Beijing’s ability to coerce other states is constrained by its insufficient, albeit significant, control over Chinese companies and bureaucracies, its competitors’ ability to find alternatives, and financial and reputational costs. Nevertheless, China has had some success steering other countries in its preferred direction. For instance, by cutting oil imports, Beijing was able to drive Iran into the 2015 nuclear deal, which facilitated Belt and Road’s development in Tehran. Similarly, economic pressures convinced Turkey to restrict the activism of its Uyghur community, which had created concerns in China. Likewise, Chinese sanctions targeting South Korea’s installation of America’s THAAD missile-defense system in 2017 persuaded Seoul to reject future deployments of this kind.
[168] These coercion efforts could grow as China refines its instruments to target specific companies, institutions, sectors, and “politically salient constituencies.”
[169]
However, Beijing’s long-term strategy relies primarily on inducements, long-term engagement, the identification of common goals, and joint solutions that rely on China’s ability to address development gaps.
[170] This approach could breed significant influence. For instance, many African and Latin American states tend to align with Beijing at the United Nations, while Taiwan has lost almost a quarter of its diplomatic partners since 2016. More broadly, despite occasional tensions, Asian states already accept most of China’s strategic interests.
[171] Over time, more and more world leaders may be tempted to “pre-empt [its] demands” on various issues.
[172]
[quote id="7"]
Finally, Belt and Road works in tandem with China’s rising military influence. Beijing has already leveraged U.S. fears of escalation to assert its claims, deploy its assets, and display an image of inevitability in the South China Sea.
[173] But Belt and Road complements these dynamics by providing more instruments to pressure or incentivize other states to follow China’s interests without reaching escalatory thresholds.
[174] Moreover, the global spread of its national assets requires Beijing to deploy its military and its private defense companies, and to partner with host nations in the arenas of law enforcement, intelligence, and defense. Despite the opening of a base in Djibouti in mid-2017, the dredging of fortified artificial islands in the South China Sea beginning in 2014, reports of covert military outposts in Tajikistan since 2016, news coverage of a secret agreement for facilities in Cambodia in spring 2019, and rumors about future installations on various sites, such as Pakistan’s Gwadar port, a large base network seems unlikely for now, as it would contradict Beijing’s “anti-imperialist” ideology and risk controversies.
[175] However, China is likely to create more bases over time, and current arrangements, such as refueling and port of calls, already bolster its international presence. America’s global military network remains absolutely unrivaled. But current trends could constrain the mobility of U.S. forces in some areas.
[176]
Dislocating the U.S.-Led Maritime Security System
Over time, Belt and Road could heavily impact security dynamics in the Indo-Pacific, the main flashpoint of the U.S.-China contest. Washington has long maintained a robust security system that uses the “energy resources, well-situated … port facilities, large land masses, sophisticated infrastructures,” and “secure rear-basing facilities” of allies and partners in Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific.
[177] Combined with the “stopping power of water,” this strategy helped contain the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War.
[178] But its importance increased as Asia’s share in the world’s economic output skyrocketed and as Beijing emerged as a potential competitor. China’s key objective today is to break what it sees as America’s strategic island chains to gain room for maneuvering, facilitate the projection of military power, and burnish its credibility.
[179] In response to Beijing’s ambitions, the Trump administration, building on President Barack Obama’s pivot-rebalance to Asia, revived “the Quad,” a naval partnership with India, Australia, and Japan, in November 2017. It also ramped up its “Freedom of Navigation Operations” in the South China Sea. Additionally, its withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in February 2019 will allow the United States to upgrade its ground-based missiles, and to expand its firepower across Asia.
[180] However, Beijing’s proximity to the fields of competition means it is more able to absorb setbacks, while America’s distance means it needs key Asian powers to balance or hedge in its favor.
Leading scholars have argued that most local leaders will continue to align with the United States due to the threat posed by China, the path-dependence created by past agreements, and the fact that far-flung sea hegemons often seem more benign than continental neighbors.
[181] Yet, there are reasons to doubt this outcome. Balancing carries with it significant political and financial costs and can hinder strategic autonomy, while domestic strains can stymie its execution.
[182] Moreover, as illustrated by China’s tribute system, balancing theories do not necessarily apply well to Asia.
[183] Furthermore, despite aggressive moves like the establishment of the Air Defense Identification Zone in East Asia in 2013 and island-building in the South China Sea since 2014, Beijing today is a far cry from the threatening regime that fought the United States, South Korea, India, the Soviets, and Vietnam during the Cold War.
[184] Additionally, because maritime systems advantage military
defense over military
offense, many local states may decide that buck-passing preserves their security more effectively than balancing.
[185] Finally, most regional leaders are perceiving a “precipitous decline” in America’s influence.
[186] According to the Rand Corporation’s U.S.-China Military Scorecard, “trend lines are moving against [Washington] across a broad spectrum.” Beijing’s technological progress and ability to deploy assets in more and more massive numbers threaten to overwhelm the United States’ local advantages and could compromise its resolve to fight.
[187] Such assessments might even underestimate the damage caused by initial Chinese missile strikes, the degree to which America’s submarines are stretched thin across the Pacific Ocean, and China’s mine warfare capabilities.
[188]
However, recent U.S. defense budget increases are unlikely to change this trend. Washington’s military superiority has been receding for years despite the fact that its overall defense expenditures are more than three times the size of China’s (underreported) budget and that the People’s Liberation Army also has to deal with domestic security. Indeed, while the United States must honor commitments across the globe, Beijing only has to concentrate on its own geographic region. Moreover, America’s security paradigm seems unsustainable. The U.S. Navy’s 355-ship buildup is crippled by severe financial and industrial limitations, the Air Force fleet is older than ever, with the average airframe at 27 years of age, and the modernization of Washington’s satellite system and nuclear triad remains unbudgeted.
[189] This is not to mention Trump’s tax cuts, with losses expected to reach $260 billion annually,
[190] sector pensions that remain unfunded and could amount to as much as $5 trillion, and the looming exhaustion of Social Security and Medicare funds. The Congressional Budget Office itself calculates that defense expenditures could fall to 2.6 percent of GDP by the mid-2020s.
[191] In sum, perceptions of the regional balance of power will most likely continue to shift against Washington, something that the Trump administration’s notoriously erratic and raucous foreign policy only aggravates.
Beijing does not have an easy path ahead. Nevertheless, combined with its diplomatic outreach, propaganda, and military rise, China’s geoeconomic offensive seems poised to exploit the underlying strains of the U.S.-led regional security system. From that standpoint, some recent trends are concerning. Although Southeast Asian countries have long hedged with a preference for Washington, Beijing’s ascendance is increasingly magnifying America’s distance, receding economic clout, and unpopular efforts to promote democracy and Western governance standards locally. Most regional states, including the Philippines, have leaned closer to China since 2016.
[192]
In East Asia, Japan’s relative assertiveness under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe constitutes “a rear-guard attempt to slow down” Tokyo’s dramatic decline.
[193] Nearly half of Japanese companies’ overseas operations are located in China, whose share in Tokyo’s exports and imports now reaches 20 percent and 25 percent, respectively, compared to America’s declining shares — 18 percent and 11 percent, respectively. In the last two years, Abe has striven to defuse diplomatic tensions with Beijing, approved a currency-swap deal worth $29 billion, decided to cooperate with Belt and Road, and distanced his government from Taiwan.
[194] Similar patterns emerged in South Korea. Trade with China surged 82 percent in five years to hit $90 billion, overshadowing America’s $46 billion. Seoul also tried to delay the deployment of the THAAD missile-defense system, dismissed Washington’s “free and open Indo-Pacific,” and agreed to collaborate with Belt and Road.
[195]
Further away, Australia has opposed Beijing’s political interference and its influence in neighboring Pacific islands. Yet, bilateral commerce rose 29 percent in 2017 and reached 29 percent of Canberra’s foreign trade in 2018.
[196] Australia estimates that China’s GDP will far surpass America’s by 2030 — $42 trillion versus $24 trillion — and that domestic politics will inhibit Washington’s response.
[197] Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently announced a plan to “turbo-charge [the] national effort in engaging China.”
[198]
India rejected Belt and Road but despite ambitious projects such as the co-development of the Iranian port of Chabahar, it has struggled to offer any alternatives. Moreover, India understands that a close rapprochement with America could curtail its “strategic autonomy,” antagonize China, and disrupt relations with Russia and Iran.
[199] New Delhi is the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’s main beneficiary, its dismal infrastructure needs investments, and booming trade with Beijing reached a record $84.4 billion in 2017, representing 22 percent of India’s foreign commerce. Combined with other facets of China’s power, such ties incentivize New Delhi to alleviate bilateral tensions.
[200] Prime Minister Narendra Modi has charted a more nonaligned course since the mid-2017 Doklam plateau standoff, and according to a recent survey, only 43 percent of India’s strategic elites want “closer collaboration with [Washington] in the event of greater U.S.-China competition.”
[201]
[quote id="8"]
The European Union recently branded Beijing a “systemic rival.” Some of its members, including France and the United Kingdom, have deployed military assets and developed ties with Japan, India, or Australia to address the “return of … power assertiveness” in the Indo-Pacific. Additionally, more and more European actors have criticized China’s commercial and industrial practices, espionage, and attempts to gain political influence.
[202] However, their tone is significantly milder than that of American leaders, and Beijing’s economic appeal remains. Despite severe U.S. pressures, many European countries are reluctant to exclude Chinese companies from their 5G networks. Beijing’s leaders have also successfully approached some of the region’s smaller states on a bilateral basis, exploiting their economic hardships, rivalries, and resentment toward Brussels to divide and paralyze the European Union.
[203] Italy joined Belt and Road in March 2019, while Brexit prospects boosted the appeal of China’s market in Great Britain, where London’s financial elites have already begun their “rebalancing” toward East Asia and are assisting the Chinese initiative. Finally, despite expressing reservations, the European Union, Germany, and France themselves still intend to engage Beijing, including on Belt and Road.
[204] Meanwhile, prospects of transatlantic convergence are corroded by Trump’s hostility to multilateralism, free trade, environmental regulations, the Iran nuclear deal, and the European Union itself.
[205]
Conclusion
It may take decades to parse the strategic consequences of the Belt and Road Initiative. China’s enormous endeavor will undoubtedly inspire more controversies and record more failures. It might even unravel. Yet, its coherence, potency, and resilience should not be underestimated. Belt and Road reflects core aspects of Beijing’s grand strategy and strategic culture. It deftly enhances, publicizes, and knits together China’s geoeconomic leverage, industrial-technological capacity, omni-directional diplomacy, propaganda, and military power. If Beijing can make enough adjustments to optimize returns, nurture partnerships, and sustain economic growth, Belt and Road could have far-reaching implications. Some of them may serve American interests. But, if left unchecked, China’s initiative could pull apart the interdependent levers of influence that have underpinned U.S. hegemony in the post-World War II era.
Washington must develop an ambitious response to Beijing. The first step is to restore a sense of domestic bipartisanship, recognizing that a divided America will struggle to maintain credibility and prestige abroad. The second step is to strengthen the economic foundations of the United States’ power. At home, American leaders must boost investments in infrastructure, healthcare, education, and research. They should tighten technology transfer restrictions and ramp up counter-intelligence and cyber defense capabilities.
[206] Cuts in the modernization of America’s overwhelmingly superior nuclear triad may be necessary. Moreover, although occasional operations will always be required, U.S. leaders should wind down what remains of the global war on terrorism, the costs of which have been overwhelming. Likewise, Washington must definitively renounce nation-building, a costly undertaking that has yielded dubious results, diverted America’s resources, and allowed China to increase its clout in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[207] Additionally, the United States ought to rethink its efforts to shrink Russia’s and Iran’s resilient spheres of influence to conserve resources, reduce risks of entanglement, and refocus on Beijing.
Having freed up those resources, Washington should project its geoeconomic power more ambitiously. It must re-endorse multilateralism, join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, resume negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and stop pressing allies on commercial issues. It should also more actively exploit the leverage provided by the shale gas revolution (without neglecting environmental reforms), boost foreign infrastructure financing, and shore up the economies and political systems of key allies, partners, and pivotal states.
[208]
Moreover, Washington ought to pursue “competitive strategies” to “channel [Beijing’s] attention, effort, and resources toward actions … that are least threatening.”
[209] Reducing U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia would force China to assume costly responsibilities in its backyard. Likewise, an ambitious, but fair, communication strategy regarding Belt and Road’s abuses could compel Beijing to respond constructively. Similarly, improving relations with Russia and Iran — even to a limited extent — would help exploit their underlying competition for influence with China. By contrast, aggressive policies will only push Moscow and Tehran further into Beijing’s arms.
However, Washington must also recalibrate some aspects of its China strategy toward greater conciliation. It ought to maintain its overall military superiority, support its allies, and deter misbehavior. But its “attack-in-depth” doctrine and its ambition to retain full command of the Indo-Pacific are costly, dangerous, and self-defeating, as illustrated by the steady erosion of U.S. military superiority along China’s coastline.
[210] Instead of pursuing an unsustainable posture whose sudden breakdown could dramatically hurt its credibility, the United States should incrementally adapt to the structural evolution of the local balance of power. It should refrain from operations that are too aggressive, disperse some of its assets to reduce their vulnerability to potential Chinese strikes, capitalize on cheap but highly effective anti-access/area-denial capabilities for deterrence purposes, encourage allies to contribute more actively to the regional military balance, and recognize Beijing’s legitimate concerns about American encirclement. These moves may appear to be signs of decline, but combined with the aforementioned geoeconomic measures, they would boost U.S. credibility by consolidating more sustainable positions and tracing a less dangerous path. An aggressive zero-sum-game approach, on the other hand, could increase the risk of war and disincentivize other leaders from high-end collaboration with the United States.
[211]
Furthermore, while some aspects of the Belt and Road Initiative must be steadily opposed, U.S. leaders should acknowledge that Beijing has made some positive contributions in the developing world and that their own policies toward those countries have not always been particularly benevolent or flawless. A more open stance may yield Chinese concessions on debt, job creation, and environmental questions, and open up more business deals for American companies. By contrast, systematic attempts to portray Belt and Road as a predatory scheme are likely to isolate the United States.
To be sure, Washington must continue to be vigilant. However, moderation and a keener grasp of the limits of American power would reduce the risk of catastrophic escalation, unlock cooperation opportunities, and maintain the theoretical possibility of a modus vivendi in Asia. These adjustments would help chart a more sensible and sustainable U.S. grand strategy.
Acknowledgements: For invaluable comments and suggestions, the author would like to thank Michael Beckley, Joshua Rovner, two anonymous reviewers, the editorial team at the Texas National Security Review
, and participants in seminars hosted by the Center for Strategic Studies at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School. He would also like to thank Monica Toft for her support.
Thomas P. Cavanna is a visiting assistant professor at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy in the Center for Strategic Studies. He writes on U.S. grand strategy and U.S. foreign policy toward China and South Asia. He holds a French “Agrégation” and a Master’s degree and doctorate in history from Sciences Po. He was also a Fox Fellow at Yale. Dr. Cavanna is currently working on a book on the Belt and Road Initiative and U.S. grand strategy.
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[post_title] => Unlocking the Gates of Eurasia: China's Belt and Road Initiative and Its Implications for U.S. Grand Strategy
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[lead] => What is the Belt and Road Initiative and what implications could it have for America’s grand strategy? As many observers have pointed out, China’s Belt and Road suffers from a number of problems and ambiguities. However, it is a much more coherent, potent, and resilient endeavor than many experts believe. Belt and Road is deeply grounded within Chinese grand strategy and strategic culture, helps protect the foundations of China’s national power, and allows Beijing to project influence across and beyond the Eurasian continent. If left unchecked, it could erode the foundations of America’s post-World War II hegemony. However, provided U.S. leaders respond the right way, it could offer important benefits to Washington.
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[text] => The scope and content of the initiative are ambiguous and in constant flux. However, these characteristics do not necessarily handicap it.
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[text] => The coherence of the Belt and Road Initiative also stems from its symbiotic integration within the arc of Communist China’s grand strategy.
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[text] => The future of Belt and Road could also be compromised by the growing tensions observed in recipient states.
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[text] => Although Belt and Road reduces Washington’s ability to interfere in China’s backyard, doing so would have always been highly dangerous given Beijing’s nuclear status and growing power.
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[text] => Beijing has leveraged America’s post-Cold War regional security architecture and the unpopularity of the war on terrorism to nurture its economic presence in the oil-rich Middle East.
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[text] => Belt and Road is designed to erode America’s grip on the international governance architecture, a dominance that Beijing has long resented.
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[text] => Moreover, a less systematic opposition to China may ease bilateral tensions and help advance other American objectives, such as economic development and counter-terrorism.
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[text] => Meanwhile, prospects of transatlantic convergence are corroded by Trump’s hostility to multilateralism, free trade, environmental regulations, the Iran nuclear deal, and the European Union itself.
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[type] => Scholarly
[style_label] => The Scholar
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[1] On the risk of war, Graham T. Allison,
Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017); Aaron L. Friedberg,
A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2011); for a pessimistic view of America’s prospects, Martin Jacques,
When China Rules the World: the Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World (London: Allen Lane, 2009); for optimistic accounts, Michael Beckley,
Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018); Thomas J. Christensen,
The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015); David L. Shambaugh
, China Goes Global: the Partial Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
[2] At its core, grand strategy is “the intellectual architecture that lends structure to foreign policy”; Hal Brands,
What Good is Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in American Statecraft (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 1. For debates on the nature and relevance of grand strategy, see Brands,
What Good Is Grand Strategy? 1–16; Nina Silove, “Beyond the Buzzword: The Three Meanings of ‘Grand Strategy,’”
Security Studies 27, no. 1 (January 2018): 27–57,
https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2017.1360073; Rebecca Friedman Lissner, “What Is Grand Strategy? Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield,”
Texas National Security Review 2, no. 1 (November 2018), 53–73,
http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/868.
[3] Like primacy or preponderance, hegemony entails superior power, but it also implies acknowledgement of a state’s authority by most of the other members of the international system; G. John Ikenberry, Charles A. Kupchan, “Socialization and Hegemonic Power,”
International Organization 44, no. 3 (Summer 1990): 283–315,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S002081830003530X.
[4] National Security Strategy of the United States of America, The White House, December 2017, 2, 25,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905-2.pdf; Jeff Smith, “China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Strategic Implications and International Opposition,” Heritage Foundation, Aug. 9, 2018, 9–10,
https://www.heritage.org/asia/report/chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-strategic-implications-and-international-opposition.
[5] Gal Luft, “China’s Infrastructure Play: Why Washington Should Accept the New Silk Road,”
Foreign Affairs 95, no. 5 (September/October 2016): 68–75,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/china-s-infrastructure-play; Parag Khanna, "Washington Is Dismissing China's Belt and Road. That’s a Huge Strategic Mistake,"
Politico, April 30, 2019,
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/04/30/washington-is-dismissing-chinas-belt-and-road-thats-a-huge-strategic-mistake-226759.
[6] Peter Cai, “Understanding China’s Belt and Road Initiative,” Lowy Institute, March 2017, 1–22,
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/understanding-belt-and-road-initiative; Tim Summers, “China’s ‘New Silk Roads’: Sub-National Regions and Networks of Global Political Economy,”
Third World Quarterly 37, no. 9 (2016): 1628–43,
https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2016.1153415; Christopher K. Johnson, “President Xi Jinping’s ‘Belt and Road’ Initiative: a Practical Assessment of the Chinese Communist Party’s Roadmap For China’s Global Resurgence,” Center for International and Strategic Studies, March 28, 2016, 19–20, v,
https://www.csis.org/analysis/president-xi-jinping%E2%80%99s-belt-and-road-initiative.
[7] Bruno Maçães,
Belt and Road: a Chinese World Order (London: Hurts & Company, 2018), 5–8; Jennifer Lind, “Life in China’s Asia: What Regional Hegemony Would Look Like,”
Foreign Affairs 97, no. 2 (March/April 2018): 72–75,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-02-13/life-chinas-asia; Alek Chance, “American Perspectives on the Belt And Road Initiative: Sources of Concern, Possibilities for U.S.-China Cooperation,” Institute for China-America Studies, November 2016, 15–17,
https://chinaus-icas.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/American-Perspectives-on-the-Belt-and-Road-Initiative.pdf; Dalton Lin, “The One Belt One Road Project and China's Foreign Relations,” Carter Center, china Program Policy Paper 1, no. 2 (September 2015),
https://cwp.sipa.columbia.edu/news/one-belt-one-road-project-and-chinas-foreign-relations-cwp-alumni-dalton-lin.
[8] It cost $122 billion (current dollars); Ely Ratner, Elizabeth Rosenberg, Daniel Kliman, “The China Challenge,” Center for a New American Security, June 27, 2018,
https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/the-china-challenge.
[9] Johnson, “President Xi Jinping’s ‘Belt and Road,’” vi.
[10] Jonathan E. Hillman, “China’s Belt and Road is Full of Holes,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Sept. 4, 2018,
https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-belt-and-road-full-holes; David G. Landry, “The Belt and Road Bubble Is Starting to Burst,”
Foreign Policy, June 27, 2018,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/27/the-belt-and-road-bubble-is-starting-to-burst/; Landry, “The Belt and Road Bubble”; Tanner Greer, “One Belt, One road, One Big Mistake,”
Foreign Policy, Dec. 6, 2018,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/06/bri-china-belt-road-initiative-blunder/.
[11] Geoeconomics is the “use of economic instruments…to produce beneficial geopolitical results”; Robert D. Blackwill and Jennifer M. Harris,
War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft (Cambridge, MA: Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press, 2016), 20. For additional information on China’s geoeconomic assets, see Blackwill and Harris,
War by Other Means, 129–51.
[12] For works of reference, see, Bruno Maçães,
Belt and Road; and Nad
ège Rolland,
China’s New Eurasian Century? Political and Strategic Implications of the Belt and Road Initiative (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2017).
[13] Albert Hirschman,
National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (Berkeley: UCLA Press, 1945); Richard N. Rosecrance,
The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World (New York: Basic Books, 1986); Paul M. Kennedy,
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987).
[14] Harris and Blackwill,
War by Other Means, 37; Parag Khanna,
Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization (New York: Random House, 2016); Markus Brunnermeier, Rush Doshi, and Harold James, “Beijing’s Bismarckian Ghosts: How Great Powers Compete Economically,”
Washington Quarterly 41, no. 3 (Fall 2018): 161–76,
https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2018.1520571.
[15] John J. Mearsheimer,
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2014), 55.
[16] Silove, “Beyond the Buzzword,” 28–29. On the diminishing returns of military power, see Daniel W. Drezner, “Military Primacy Doesn’t Pay (Nearly As Much As You Think),”
International Security 38, no. 1 (Summer 2013), 52–79,
https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00124; for an article arguing that military capabilities are more influential than economic “dependency,” see Robert S. Ross, “Balance of Power Politics and the Rise of China,”
International Security 15, no. 3 (2006), 355–95,
https://doi.org/10.1080/09636410601028206.
[17] Barry Posen,
Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 1.
[18] Robert J. Art,
A Grand Strategy for America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 2.
[19] Colin Dueck,
Reluctant Crusaders: Power, Culture, and Change in American Grand Strategy (Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press, 2006), 10.
[20] “Xi Says Belt and Road Vision Becoming Reality,”
Xinhua, May 14, 2017,
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-05/14/c_136281676.htm.
[21] Gisela Grieger, “One Belt, One Road: China’s Regional Integration Initiative,”
European Parliament Research Service, July 2016, 4,
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2016/586608/EPRS_BRI(2016)586608_EN.pdf; Thomas S. Eder and Jacob Mardell, “Belt and Road Reality Check: How to Assess China’s Investment in Eastern Europe,” Mercator Institute for China Studies, July 7, 2018,
https://www.merics.org/en/blog/belt-and-road-reality-check-how-assess-chinas-investment-eastern-europe.
[22] Cecilia Joy-Perez and Derek Scissors, “The Chinese State Funds Belt and Road but Does Not Have Trillions to Spare,” American Enterprise Institute, March 28, 2018, 1–2,
http://www.aei.org/publication/the-chinese-state-funds-belt-and-road-but-does-not-have-trillions-to-spare/; Derek Scissors, “Chinese Investment: State-Owned Enterprises Stop Globalizing, For Now,” American Enterprise Institute, Jan. 17 2019, 5,
http://www.aei.org/publication/chinese-investment-state-owned-enterprises-stop-globalizing-for-the-moment/.
[23] “2018 Belt and Road Trade Reached $1.3 Trillion,”
Maritime Executive, Jan. 26, 2019,
https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/2018-belt-and-road-trade-reached-1-3-trillion.
[24] See later sections.
[25] Richard Ghiasy and Jiayi Zhou,
The Silk Road Economic Belt: Considering Security Implications and EU-China Cooperation Prospects (Stockholm: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), 5,
https://www.sipri.org/publications/2017/other-publications/silk-road-economic-belt.
[26] Lee Jones and Yizheng Zou, “Rethinking the Role of State-Owned Enterprises in China’s Rise,”
New Political Economy 22, no. 6 (2017): 744,
https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2017.1321625; Shahar Hameiri and Lee Jones, “China Challenges Global Governance? Chinese International Development finance and the AIIB,”
International Affairs 94, no. 3 (May 2018): 580, 584,
https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiy026.
[27] Ngai-Ling Sum, “The Intertwined Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of Hopes/Fears: China’s Triple Economic Bubbles and the ‘One Belt, One Road’ Imaginary,”
Territory, Politics, Governance, published online Oct. 5, 2018, 1–2,
https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2018.1523746.
[28] “China Moves to Define ‘Belt and Road’ Projects for the First Time”,
Taiwan Straits, April 3, 2019,
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/china-moves-to-define-belt-and-road-projects-for-first-time; Rolland,
China’s New Eurasian Century, 50, 55.
[29] Maçaes and Rolland,
China’s New Eurasian Century, 7, 108; Alice Ekman et al., “Three Years of China’s New Silk Roads: From Words to (Re)action?” Institut français des relations, February 2017, 10, 17–21,
https://www.ifri.org/en/publications/etudes-de-lifri/three-years-chinas-new-silk-roads-words-reaction; Johnson, “President Xi Jinping’s ‘Belt and Road,’” 5.
[30] Christopher A. Ford,
China Looks at the West: Identity, Global Ambitions, and the Future of Sino-American Relations (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), 90.
[31] Manjari Chatterjee Miller,
Wronged by Empire: Post-Imperial Ideology and Foreign Policy in India and China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 2.
[32] Ford,
China Looks at the West, 421.
[33] Quoted from Andrew Scobell,
China and Strategic Culture (Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 2004), 3. Strategic culture is the “central paradigmatic assumptions about the nature of conflict and the enemy and collectively shared by decision makers”; Alastair I. Johnston,
Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), ix.
[34] Johnston,
Cultural Realism, 25.
[35] Scobell,
China and Strategic Culture, 11–12, 17; Andrew Scobell, “China’s Real Strategic Culture: A Great Wall of the Imagination,”
Contemporary Security Policy 35, no. 2 (2014): 220–21,
https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2014.927677.
[36] This definition largely builds upon Brock Tessman and Wojtek Wolfe, “Great Powers and Strategic Hedging: The Case of Chinese Energy Security Strategy,”
International Studies Review 13, no. 2 (June 2011): 220,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23017154.
[37] Zhang Yuling and Tang Shiping, “China’s Regional Strategy,” in,
Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics, ed. David Shambaugh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 48.
[38] David Lai, “Learning from the Stones: A
Go Approach to Mastering China’s Strategic Concept,
Shi,” Strategic Studies Institute, May 2004, 5,
https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=378.
[39] Flynt Leverett and Wu Binging, “The New Silk Road and China’s Evolving Grand Strategy,”
China Journal, no. 77 (January 2017): 113,
https://doi.org/10.1086/689684. On the People’s Liberation Army and ancient Chinese strategic thought, see, Andrea Ghiselli, “Revising China’s Strategic Culture: Contemporary Cherry-Picking of Ancient Strategic Thought,”
China Quarterly, no. 233 (March 2018): 177–80,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741018000413.
[40] Lai, “Learning From the Stones,” 5.
[41] Randall L. Schweller and Xiaoyu Pu, “After Unipolarity: China’s Visions of International Order in an Era of U.S. Decline,”
International Security 36, no. 1 (Summer 2011): 44,
https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00044.
[42] “Full Text of President Xi’s Speech at Opening of Belt and Road Forum,”
Xinhua, May 14, 2017,
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-05/14/c_136282982.htm.
[43] Christopher A. Ford, “Realpolitik with Chinese Characteristics: Chinese Strategic Culture and the Modern Communist Party-State,” in,
Strategic Asia 2016-2017: Understanding Strategic Cultures in the Asia-Pacific, ed. Michael Wills, Ashley J. Tellis, and Alison Szalwinski, (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2016), 34.
[44] Julia Lovell,
The Great Wall: China against the World, 1000 B.C.-A.D. 2000 (New York: Grove Atlantic, 2006), 36.
[45] Lovell,
The Great Wall, 348–49.
[46] Leverett and Binging, “The New Silk Road,” 113.
[47] Bonnie S. Glaser and Matthew Funaiole, “Xi Jinping’s 19th Party Congress Speech Heralds Greater Assertiveness in Chinese Foreign Policy,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Oct. 26, 2017,
https://www.csis.org/analysis/xi-jinpings-19th-party-congress-speech-heralds-greater-assertiveness-chinese-foreign-policy.
[48] Avery Goldstein,
Rising to the Challenge: China’s Grand Strategy and International Security (Redwood, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 12, 38, 103, 176.
[49] Johnson,
Cultural Realism, x.
[50] Andrew R. Wilson, “The Chinese Way of War,” in,
Strategy in Asia: The Past, Present, and Future of Regional Security, ed. Thomas J. Mahnken and Dan Blumenthal (Redwood, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 109–11.
[51] Kari Lindberg and Tripti Lahiri, “From Asia to Africa, China’s ‘Debt-Trap Diplomacy’ Was Under Siege in 2018,”
Quartz, Dec. 28, 2018,
https://qz.com/1497584/how-chinas-debt-trap-diplomacy-came-under-siege-in-2018/.
[52] Ford, “Realpolitik with Chinese Characteristics,” 30; Alastair Iain Johnston, “Cultural Realism and Strategy in Maoist China,” in,
Cultures of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 219.
[53] Schweller and Pu, “After Unipolarity,” 65.
[54] Lai, “Learning from the Stones,” 27–28; Henry A. Kissinger,
On China (New York: Penguin Press, 2011), 22–25.
[55] See below.
[56] David Brewster, “Silk Roads and Strings of Pearls: The Strategic Geography of China’s New Pathways in the Indian Ocean,”
Geopolitics 22, no. 2 (2017): 270–71, 277–80,
https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2016.1223631.
[57] Wei Chen et al., “A Forensic Examination of China’s National Accounts,” Brookings Institution, March 7, 2019,
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/bpea_2019_conference-1.pdf; Michael Beckley, “The Power of Nations: Measuring What Matters,”
International Security 43, no. 2 (Fall 2018), 7–44,
https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00328.
[58] Michael Beckley, “China’s Century? Why America’s Edge Will Endure,”
International Security 26, no. 3 (2012): 33–78,
https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00066; Elizabeth C. Economy,
The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).
[59] Alexander K. Cooley, “The Emerging Political Economy of OBOR: The Challenges of Promoting Connectivity in Central Asia and Beyond,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 2016, 1–15,
https://reconasia-production.s3.amazonaws.com/media/filer_public/fc/c7/fcc79a22-e218-4a1b-8494-0220337ab2f5/cooley_the_emerging_political_economy_of_obor.pdf.
[60] Louise Moon, “Chinese Overseas Deals Fall Amid Heightened Scrutiny in U.S.,”
South China Morning Post, Aug. 21, 2018,
https://www.scmp.com/business/global-economy/article/2160734/chinese-overseas-deals-plunge-amid-heightened-scrutiny-us.
[61] William H. Overholt,
China’s Crisis of Success (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 70, 176, 181; Sebastian Heilmann,
Red Swan: How Unorthodox Policy Making Facilitated China’s Rise (Hong-Kong: Chinese University Press, 2018); Editorial Board, “China’s Slowing Economic Growth Should Not Be a Concern,”
Financial Times, Oct. 21, 2018,
https://www.ft.com/content/b9efc238-d389-11e8-a9f2-7574db66bcd5. China’s “inclusive wealth” ratio vis-à-vis America rose from 0.6 to 0.686 between 2005 and 2018 (author’s calculation). Between 2014 and 2018, their “inclusive wealth” increased by 2.4 percent and 2 percent, respectively; Shunsuke Managi and Pushpam Kumar, eds.,
Inclusive Wealth Report 2018: Measuring Progress Toward Sustainability (New York: Routledge, 2018), 230, 234, 249, 252,
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351002080.
[62] Neta C. Crawford, “United States Budgetary Costs of the Post-9/11 Wars Through FY2019: $5.9 Trillion Spent and Obligated,” Watson Center for International and Public Affairs, 1,
https://watson.brown.edu/files/watson/imce/news/ResearchMatters/Crawford_Costs%20of%20War%20Estimates%20Through%20FY2019%20.pdf.
[63] David Dollar, “Is China’s Development Finance a Challenge to the International Order?”
Asian Economic Policy Review 13, no. 2 (July 2018): 283–98,
https://doi.org/10.1111/aepr.12229; Keith Bradsher, “China Taps the Brakes on its Global Push for Influence,”
New York Times, Oct. 17, 2017,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/business/china-belt-and-road-slows.html.
[64] For now, private actors are reluctant; Joy-Perez, Scissors, “The Chinese State,” 2, 4; “Credit Suisse Says China Belt-Road Plan May Top $500 Billion,”
Bloomberg News, May 4, 2017,
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-04/china-s-belt-road-plan-may-top-500-billion-credit-suisse-says; “China Going Global Investment Index 2017,”
Economist Intelligence Unit, Undated, 23,
https://www.eiu.com/public/topical_report.aspx?campaignid=ChinaODI2017.
[65] According to some sources, 89 percent of contractors are Chinese; Jonathan E. Hillman, “China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Five Years Later,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Jan. 25, 2018,
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[66] For an overview, see John Hurley, Scott Morris, and Gailyn Portelance, “Examining the Debt Implications of the Belt and Road Initiative from a Policy Perspective,” Center for Global Development, March 4, 2018, 1–37,
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https://carnegieindia.org/2017/09/14/india-s-strategic-choices-china-and-balance-of-power-in-asia-pub-73108.
[200] “India Becomes Largest Recipient of AIIB Financing,” RWR Advisory Group, June 27, 2018,
https://www.rwradvisory.com/india-becomes-largest-recipient-aiib-financing/; “Spotlight: China-India Trade Ties Set to Deepen,”
Xinhua, March 31, 2018,
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-03/31/c_137079563.htm.
[201] Dhruva Jaishankar, “Survey of India’s Strategic Community,” Brookings Institution, March 1, 2019,
https://www.brookings.edu/research/introduction-survey-of-indias-strategic-community/; Derek Grossman, “India Is the Weakest Link in the Quad,”
Foreign Policy, July 23, 2018,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/23/india-is-the-weakest-link-in-the-quad/; Arzan Tarapore, “Using Uncertainty as Leverage: India’s Security Competition with China,”
War on the Rocks, June 18, 2018,
https://warontherocks.com/2018/06/using-uncertainty-as-leverage-indias-security-competition-with-china/.
[202] “France and Security in the Indo-Pacific,” French Ministry of the Armed Forces, May 2019, 4,
https://www.defense.gouv.fr/english/dgris/international-action/regional-issues/france-unveils-its-defence-policy-in-the-indo-pacific; “China and the Rules-Based International System”, U.K. House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, 16th Report of Session 2017–19, April 4, 2019, 5–7, 23–25, 46–47,
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmfaff/612/612.pdf; Andrew Small, “Why Europe Is Getting Tough on China,”
Foreign Affairs, April 3, 2019,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2019-04-03/why-europe-getting-tough-china.
[203] Ellen Nakashima, “U.S. Pushes Hard for a Ban on Huawei in Europe, but the Firm’s 5G Prices Are Nearly Irresistible,”
Washington Post, May 29, 2019,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/for-huawei-the-5g-play-is-in-europe--and-the-us-is-pushing-hard-for-a-ban-there/2019/05/28/582a8ff6-78d4-11e9-b7ae-390de4259661_story.html?utm_term=.6a9884226113; Nad
ège Rolland, “The Belt and Road in Europe: Five Years Later,”
The Diplomat, Sept. 1, 2018,
https://thediplomat.com/2018/08/the-belt-and-road-in-europe-5-years-later/.
[204] Jeremy Green, “The City’s Pivot to China in a Post-Brexit World: A Uniquely Vulnerable Policy,”
London School of Economics Blog, June 15, 2018,
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-citys-pivot-to-china-in-a-post-brexit-world-a-uniquely-vulnerable-policy/; Nazvi Careem, “UK Supports the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ Behind the Scenes,”
South China Morning Post, Sept. 20, 2018,
https://www.scmp.com/special-reports/business/topics/special-report-belt-and-road/article/2164842/uk-supports-belt-and; Brenda Goh, “Britain Calls China’s Belt and Road Initiative a ‘Vision,’”
Reuters, April 25, 2019,
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-silkroad-britain/britain-calls-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-a-vision-idUSKCN1S20NZ; Rolland, “The Belt and Road in Europe.”
[205] Small, “Why Europe Is Getting Tough on China”; Li Jie Sheng, “Where Is Britain’s Indo-Pacific Strategy?”
The Diplomat, June 7, 2019,
https://thediplomat.com/2019/06/where-is-britains-indo-pacific-strategy/.
[206] Aaron L. Friedberg, “Competing with China,”
Survival 60, no. 3 (2018): 39–50,
https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2018.1470755.
[207] Joseph Sassoon, “China and Iraq,” in,
The Red Star and the Crescent: China and the Middle East, ed. James Reardon-Anderson (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2018), 159, 165.
[208] Blackwill and Harris,
War by Other Means, 220–50; Friedberg, “Competing with China,” 27, 33.
[209] Evan Braden Montgomery, “Competitive Strategies Against Continental Powers: The Geopolitics of Sino-Indian-American Relations,”
Journal of Strategic Studies 36, no. 1 (2013): 77–78,
https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2012.736383.
[210] Michael Beckley, “The Emerging Military Balance in East Asia: How China’s Neighbors Can Check Chinese Naval Expansion,”
International Security 42, no. 2 (Fall 2017): 79–81,
https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00294; Avery Goldstein, “First Things First: The Pressing Danger of Crisis Instability in U.S.-China Relations,”
International Security 37, no. 4 (Spring 2013), 49–89,
https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00114.
[211] Michael D. Swaine, “Creating an Unstable Asia: The U.S. ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’ Strategy,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March 2, 2018,
https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/03/02/creating-unstable-asia-u.s.-free-and-open-indo-pacific-strategy-pub-75720.
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Introduction
On a cold winter day in 1793, a crowd of French revolutionaries burst into the chapel of the Sorbonne. Streaming toward a large sarcophagus in the center of the apse, the mob laid into the cool marble with their rifle butts, hammering away at the central figure’s aquiline features. Howling vandals dragged a desiccated cadaver from the crypt, and a grisly — and most likely apocryphal — tale describes how street urchins were later spotted playing with its severed head.
[1] Alexandre Lenoir, an archeologist, waded into the whirlwind of mayhem and — at the price of a bayonet-skewered hand — managed to save one of baroque sculpture’s masterpieces from total destruction.
[2]
The object of the
sans-culottes' ire was a man who had been dead for over a century and a half, but who remains to this day a towering symbol of
Ancien Régime absolutism: Armand Jean du Plessis — better known as Cardinal Richelieu. The clergyman, who served as Louis XIII’s chief minister from 1624 to 1642, has long constituted one of the more polarizing and fascinating figures in the history of Western statecraft. Renowned for his fierce intellect, mastery of the dark arts of propaganda, and unshakeable belief in the centralizing virtues of the French monarchy, Richelieu’s actions as chief minister have been debated by generations of historians, political philosophers, novelists, and biographers.
[3]
Richelieu is best known for three things: his unabashed authoritarianism, his efforts to stiffen the sinews of the French state, and his decision to position France as a counterweight to Habsburg hegemony through a network of alliances with Protestant powers. It is these aspects of his domestic and international legacy — all of which are frequently viewed as closely intertwined — that have triggered the most controversy. On the one hand, there are the aforementioned critics — those that viewed the cardinal as a devious and shadowy character, the mustachio-twirling villain of
The Three Musketeers who cloaked his naked ambition and venal appetites under his crimson robes.
[4] On the other hand, there has always been an equally strong cohort of Richelieu enthusiasts. For many modern French writers, Louis XIII’s chief minister was an early patriot who contributed to the secularization (
laïcisation) of French foreign policy, and by extension, of French national identity.
[5] Eminent German historians have viewed the cleric as a symbol of diplomatic prudence and dexterity, and have compared him in glowing terms to another “white revolutionary,” Otto Von Bismarck.
[6] Henry Kissinger, a great admirer of the Frenchman, memorably characterized him as “the charting genius of a new concept of centralized statecraft and foreign policy based on the balance of power.”
[7]
This article focuses on this last aspect of Richelieu’s life and legacy: his conception and practice of great power competition. The goal is not to engage in a moral examination of his actions, but rather to debate their overall effectiveness in advancing France’s foreign policy interests during the Thirty Years’ War. What philosophy of power and statecraft underpinned the cardinal’s approach to counter-hegemonic balancing? How did he view France’s role in the world and what was his vision of collective security? Finally, what insights can be derived from Richelieu’s approach to foreign policy and great power competition? Is Richelieu the embodiment of
prudentia, or sagacious statecraft, as some have argued? Perhaps most importantly, are the policies and writings of a 17th-century clergyman relevant and worthy of scrutiny by contemporary security managers?
[8]
In an effort to answer these questions, the article proceeds in three main parts. The first section will explore the intellectual foundations of Richelieu’s foreign policy. The cardinal was a product of early European nationalism, and he — along with other segments of the country’s ruling elites — was steeped in a heavily mythicized belief in French exceptionalism. These messianic and nationalist tendencies were buttressed by the development of a sophisticated body of thought on
raison d’état — or reason of state.
Raison d’état fused foreign ideological imports, such as Machiavellianism, with neo-stoicism and France’s own tradition of divine absolutism. The net result was a philosophy of power tempered by prudence — one which sought to transcend confessional divisions in favor of domestic unity and international strength. Richelieu’s vision of foreign policy, and of an “Augustan golden age” in which France would play the arbitral role in a carefully balanced order of nation-states, can thus best be understood as a subtle amalgamation of these two intellectual currents,
raison d’état and French exceptionalism.
In the second part, the paper examines Richelieu’s strategy in action. At the beginning of the chief minister’s tenure, it was readily apparent that the kingdom of Louis XIII was in no position to directly challenge Habsburg dominance. Weakened by years of war and religious turmoil, and riven with bitter divisions, France, which only a century earlier was considered the greatest military power in the West, was in a defensive crouch, ill-equipped and reluctant to engage in a transcontinental armed struggle. Its finances were in shambles, its military system in dire need of reform, and its security elites almost irreconcilably disunited in their approach to grand strategy.
For the first decade or so of his tenure as chief minister, Richelieu sought, therefore, to recover France’s strategic solvency by strengthening its state apparatus, dampening internecine hatreds, and crushing perceived political threats to the monarchy. In the decades-long competition with the Habsburgs, Richelieu viewed time as a precious strategic commodity, and opted wherever possible for a strategy of exhaustion and harassment —
la guerre couverte (covert war) — over one of frontal confrontation. He waged war via a complex constellation of proxies, while his most able diplomats were dispatched to foment internal divisions within both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. Meanwhile, Richelieu’s attempts to craft a more flexible and dynamic form of foreign policy ran into fierce opposition from the
dévots — Catholic zealots who rejected French alliances with Protestant powers, and sought to accommodate Habsburg Spain.
Even as the cardinal sought to prevail in these bitter ideological struggles and establish some modicum of strategic consensus, he also embarked on an ambitious — and only partially successful — effort to enact internal reforms and strengthen France’s overall state capacity.
[9]
In 1635, drastic changes in the regional configuration of power forced Richelieu to reluctantly transition from
la guerre couverte to
la guerre ouverte — or open war. Until his death in 1642, the cardinal found himself in the challenging position of overseeing a war unprecedented in scale, and waged on several fronts, a conflict that drained the state’s coffers and placed considerable stress on a public administration still in its adolescence. Increasingly unpopular and ever fearful of falling out of his mercurial monarch’s favor, the chief minister’s frail constitution finally gave way in 1642. He thus never got to witness the French victory over Spain at the battle of Rocroi only a few months later— a triumph that, in the eyes of many, marked a definitive shift in the European balance of power.
[10]
What lessons can be derived from Richelieu’s 18 years at the apex of government? In the third and final section, the essay engages in an assessment of the actions undertaken by this complex and remarkable figure. It conducts a postmortem of Richelieu’s grand strategy of counter-hegemonic balancing and points to its successes as well as its failures and shortcomings.
The French historian Philippe Ariès once quipped, “Time sticks to the historian’s thoughts like soil to a gardener’s spade.”
[11] As the current generation of strategic thinkers grapples with a period marked by geopolitical upheaval and political disunion, Richelieu’s era — full of its own ideological tumult and nationalist fracas — provides a particularly rich soil in which to start digging.
Richelieu's Vision
Categorizing or succinctly defining Richelieu’s approach to great power competition is no easy task. Unlike other great strategic thinkers such as Clausewitz or Machiavelli, the body of thought bequeathed to us in his voluminous writings does not easily lend itself to systematization.
[12] The cardinal was certainly deeply intellectual: He read Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish; was a major patron of the arts; and his personal library, which contained proscribed works, including books on Calvinist theology, was considered one of the finest in Europe.
[13] Above all, however, he was a statesman and a policy practitioner, less interested in articulating a set of novel theoretical constructs or in pioneering a school of thought than in harnessing knowledge for the purpose of advancing the interests and ideology of the French state. At a time when European political leaders and counselors were avid consumers of new translations and interpretations of Roman history, Richelieu warned against viewing the works of Tacitus, Cicero, or Seneca as precise instruction manuals for the present, stating, for instance, that
There is nothing more dangerous for the state than men who want to govern kingdoms on the basis of maxims which they cull from books. When they do this they often destroy them, because the past is not the same as the present, and times, places, and persons change.[14]
Indeed, one of the defining characteristics of Richelieu’s career was precisely his struggle to preserve a degree of intellectual (and political) maneuverability by circumventing the strictures that accompanied narrow ideologies, politicized confessional divisions, or overly systematized schools of thought. That said, it is also evident upon further examination that he operated under the clear guidance of an overarching vision — one that is best understood as a deep yearning for order in a dislocated world.
The cardinal’s lifelong battle against what he perceived as the forces of entropy, chaos, and decline — both within France and, on a more macrocosmic level, overseas — can no doubt be partially explained by two factors. First, Richelieu’s quest for order cannot be dissociated from his own experiences growing up in war-torn France.
[15] Second, the cardinal was a product of a historical context propitious to such thinking: early modern Europe as it transitioned from the late Renaissance to the Baroque era, and an intellectual environment marked by the blossoming of thought on
raison d’état and a revival of French exceptionalism.
Richelieu was raised in a country rent by confessional divisions, wracked with penury and famine, and haunted by the specter of its own decline. Born in 1585 into the Poitou region’s minor nobility, his family’s travails provide a vignette of the broader pressures affecting late 16th-century France. As one biographer notes, “Not a year of his [Richelieu’s] early life was passed in peace, and the waves of war and plague broke right against the frowning walls of the family castle.”
[16] Even as a young child, he would have been aware of the disastrous effects of the collapse of royal authority and of the many years of conflict that had pitted French Catholics against their Protestant, Huguenot neighbors.
[17] The verdant plains of Poitou — traditionally a major thoroughfare in times of war — remained dotted with gutted buildings and charred crops. The du Plessis lands had been repeatedly despoiled by roving war bands and brigands regularly visited their depredations on local villagers.
[18]
[quote id="1"]
This climate of bloody lawlessness extended to Richelieu’s own relatives, who had been embroiled in a Shakespearean feud with another local family, the Maussons, who ruled over a small castle about a mile and a half away. Following an ugly dispute over control of a local church, the Maussons butchered Richelieu’s uncle, Louis du Plessis. His younger brother — and Richelieu’s future father — the 17-year-old François, was serving as a page at the royal court at the time. Upon hearing the news, the teenager returned to his ancestral lands, lay in wait for the Lord of Mausson by a small bridge, and murdered him.
[19] This revenge killing was only the beginning of a remarkably successful — and blood-spattered — military career for Richelieu’s father, who became one of Henri III’s most effective commanders and executioners, personally overseeing the gruesome deaths of a number of declared enemies of the state.
[20] Following the king’s assassination at the hands of a Catholic fanatic, François du Plessis immediately pledged loyalty to his designated successor, Henri de Navarre, even though the latter had yet to convert to Catholicism. In this, he displayed a form of “supra-confessional” loyalty to the state that, in some ways, foreshadowed that of his son.
[21]
Shortly after Henri de Navarre’s coronation as Henri IV, his flinty henchman succumbed to fever. Richelieu was only five at the time and for much of the remainder of his youth his mother struggled with mounting debts and exacting circumstances. A sickly child, Richelieu compensated for his physical frailty with a remarkable intellect coupled with a voracious appetite for learning. Once he came of age, his family directed him toward the bishopric of Luçon, which he acquired in 1607, after having received a special papal dispensation for his young age.
[22] A decade later, he entered the royal court as a secretary of state, and in 1622 was named cardinal. Two years later, he ascended to the rank of chief minister, and in 1629 he was awarded the title under which we know him today — that of Duke of Richelieu — Richelieu being the small hamlet where the du Plessis tribe had been raised.
A Product of Early French Exceptionalism
From his vantage point at the height of France’s royal bureaucracy, the cardinal looked back at the past half-century of chaos, during which five French kings had either died prematurely or been assassinated by religious fanatics and his country had been ravaged by a seemingly endless cycle of war. For men such as Richelieu, these decades of unrest had not only resulted in widespread misery and the weakening of royal authority, they had also turbocharged France’s decline on the international stage. Among a certain constituency of French elites — the
politiques or
bons français — France’s inability to overcome its communal tensions had only redounded to the advantage of its European competitors, who had capitalized on those divisions. These sentiments were laid bare in pamphlets that lamented that lesser European powers had descended on a weakened France like vultures, “extinguishing the torches of their ambition in France’s blood, emptying their humors on its bosom, and importing their quarrels to its very altars.”
[23] If the people of France did not unite, warned such writers, the nation’s fate would be a grim one indeed — it would be reduced to “some little monster of a republic, to some canton (…) or some gray league” of disparate parts.
[24] And indeed, during the second half of the 16th century, foreign powers had repeatedly interfered in the nation’s domestic politics and intervened in its civil wars.
Philip II’s Spain, which had an interest in keeping France in a state of civil strife, had been especially meddlesome, supporting and subsidizing the uprising of the Catholic League during the succession crisis that followed Henri III’s death in 1589.
[25] In short, France in the late 16th century was much like Syria today: a nation crisscrossed with foreign soldiers, mercenaries, and proxies, and a spectacle of almost unremitting misery and desolation, with some modern estimates putting the numbers of casualties at well over a million out of a population about 16 times that size.
[26]
The reign of Henri IV, from 1589 to 1610, brought a measure of stability to domestic affairs, with the king proving as skilled at fostering unity as he had been at waging war. The signing of the Edict of Nantes, in 1598, ushered in a period of almost unprecedented religious toleration and a fragile peace returned to the realm. Despite his manifold accomplishments, Henri IV’s reign remained fiercely contested by religious extremists on both sides. After miraculously surviving over a dozen assassination attempts, death finally caught up with the “good King Henri” when, in 1610, an unhinged zealot stabbed him to death. His murder constituted something of a unifying trauma for a country weary of the endless spirals of bloodletting and desperate to recover its lost grandeur.
[27]
Indeed, while conventional wisdom has long held that the messianic character of French nationalism is essentially a modern phenomenon and a natural outgrowth of the universalism of the French enlightenment and revolution, historians have increasingly demonstrated the extent to which French intellectual elites from the medieval era onward already viewed their country as predestined for continental leadership and as a role model for other European monarchies.
[28] This form of pre-modern exceptionalism was structured around three main pillars, or conceptual templates. The first was France’s history of imperial glory and martial prowess, with a particular focus on the empire of Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor, and on France’s leading role during the Crusades, during which it provided the bulk of expeditionary military power. The early 17th century bore witness to a revival of interest in these myth-shrouded eras of France’s past and contemporary texts frequently reprised the medieval papal designation of the French as God’s “chosen people,” or
peuple élu.
[29] The second was a sense that French dominance was the natural “order of things,” due to the nation’s size, central position, fertile lands, and demographic heft. (The kingdom of France was the most populous in Europe).
[30] And the third pillar was a unique brand of French Catholicism — Gallicanism — that argued against excessive papal interference in domestic matters and was closely tied to France’s tradition of divine absolutism.
[31] The French monarch, or “most Christian” king, as he was formally known, was revered as a religious figure vested with certain sacred powers and abilities (such as the ability to cure scrofula and other ailments through the power of touch) and as one of God’s “lieutenants” on Earth.
[32]
[quote id="2"]
All of this was accompanied by a sense of cultural superiority that had become increasingly widespread with the diffusion of vernacular French, which many viewed as the “purest” of European tongues after Latin, and the continued circulation of exceptionalist origin myths, such as that the French were descended from the Trojans.
[33] These expressions of civilizational pride occasionally went hand in hand with territorial revisionism, as an increasingly vocal body of French jurists and pamphleteers argued in favor of the “recapture” of French imperial possessions harking back to the era of Charlemagne. In so doing, their revanchist arguments bear a resemblance to those of certain contemporary Chinese nationalists, who argue that the People’s Republic of China should hold sway over all territories once controlled by the Ming or Qing dynasties.
[34]
This cocktail of wounded nationalism and frustrated exceptionalism was rendered more potent by the rise of foreign adversaries that French elites had long perceived as their natural inferiors. While France had been consumed with internal struggles, the Habsburg powers — with their two dynastic branches in Spain and Austria — had been consolidating their strength. Writers in Paris emitted dark warnings of Madrid’s ultimate ambition to establish a “universal monarchy,” which would exert uncontested hegemony from Iberia to Bohemia.
[35] Spain — which had humiliated France during the Council of Trent and displaced it as Europe’s most redoubtable military power — was viewed as the most serious and immediate threat. Portrayed in French writings as a “mongrel,” corrupt, and upstart nation, Habsburg Spain had succeeded with the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559 in strong-arming the French monarchy into acknowledging Spanish dominance over much of Italy.
[36] This was a source of intense dismay for a whole generation of French nobles, who had been reared on the tales of their ancestors’ transalpine exploits. A social caste that had drawn much of its
raison d'être from the martial luster of foreign ventures feared that it had been trapped in a “post-heroic era.” As one soldier-aristocrat wrote at the time, commenting on the signing of the treaty, “In the space of an hour, with a simple gesture with a quill, we were forced to surrender everything, and to tarnish all our glorious past victories with a few drops of ink.”
[37] At the same time, a growing body of nobles had begun to look at France’s religious conflicts with distaste — viewing them as dishonorable, fratricidal, and barbaric — and pined for the “glory days” of foreign wars.
[38]
As a member of the minor nobility, and the son of a renowned warrior who had served across confessional lines, Richelieu was a direct product of this melancholic, fin-de-siècle zeitgeist. The sections of his writings that expound on the nature and characteristics of the French people frequently resemble those of an exasperated, yet loving, parent. His works also reflect the intellectual tradition of viewing France as uniquely positioned for European leadership and its people as destined for greatness, provided they ceased to wallow in the mediocrity brought about by internal divisions.
[39]
The cardinal was hardly subtle in his suggestion that he was destined for a leading role, with an almost sacred responsibility to inject discipline into France’s boisterous society and channel its formidable energy into the recovery of its natural place at the cockpit of European geopolitics. The latter goal would require him to pursue a bold and controversial foreign policy vision — one intellectually grounded in theories of
raison d’état.
Raison d’Etat and Authoritarianism
Few political theorists have generated quite as much heated controversy as Niccolò Machiavelli.
[40] The Machiavellian assertion of a clear and necessary distinction between private morality and state behavior was viewed as a moral affront — or at least a severe intellectual challenge — by many early modern Christian thinkers. And then, of course, there was the whiff of sulfur that came with the mere mention of the Italian humanist’s name. His works were placed on the papal index of proscribed books and he had become associated in popular culture with atheism and republicanism. In early 17th-century France, in particular, there was a radioactive quality to affirming oneself as a disciple of Machiavelli, whose very “Italianness” rendered his ideas suspect.
[41] For many political theorists of the early Baroque era, it was safer to simply bypass the works of the controversial Florentine to plumb the ruminations of the sages of the ancient world. Tacitus, in particular, was considered, in the words of Montaigne, to be a veritable “nursery of ethical and political discourses for the use and ornament of those who have status in the management of the world.”
[42] As one historian notes, 17th-century writers began to contrast Machiavellianism with Tacitism, framing them as “two terms connoting either a pejorative or a positive interpretation of raison d’état principles.”
[43]
The rise of this particular brand of Tacitism coincided with the growth of the neo-stoic movement, which drew solace from the virtues celebrated by Roman stoics such as Seneca —
constantia, self-discipline, obedience, and rationality. The spread of neo-stoicism, many have argued, was a natural reaction to decades of violence and disruption.
[44] Neo-stoicism was more than just a consolatory credo, however. It was also a philosophy of action that emphasized patriotism and public service.
[45] In that sense, it aligned neatly with the goals of many Christian political theorists of the Counter-Reformation, who had set out to prove that it was possible to advance the interests of the state without completely severing ties with the Christian ethical tradition.
[46] The flowering of such writings gave birth to a remarkably rich and sophisticated body of thought, one that largely succeeded in its mission to develop a pragmatic, yet religiously inflected, foreign policy ethos. It is through this prism that one should read Richelieu’s own writings on statecraft, rather than viewing him simply as the “French Machiavelli,” or as the harbinger of a continent-wide secularization of foreign policy.
[47] Indeed, in lieu of detaching France’s secular interests from its faith-based traditions, Richelieu and the writers and polemicists with whom he surrounded himself sought to combine the two and “endeavored to show that the good of the state coincided with that of the religion.”
[48]
In this Richelieu and his supporters were greatly aided by France’s pre-existing exceptionalist mythos and tradition of divine absolutism. The first provided the kingdom with an ideological predisposition toward strategic autonomy, while the second lent a religious “cover” for actions that might otherwise appear hostile to the interests of the Catholic Church.
French
raison d’état was deeply intertwined with the nation’s tradition of divine absolutism. For Richelieu and his absolutist fellow travelers, monarchy was not only the most effective form of government, it was also the most natural.
[49] The French monarch, by virtue of his divine nature, was infused with a purer, higher form of reason, which allowed him to pursue a more pragmatic foreign policy at a remove from the unruly passions and parochial concerns of the common man.
[50] This view of the king as the metaphysical embodiment of the state is evident throughout the works of Richelieu’s closest collaborators, with one of them writing that the king was so divinely “animated by the power of reason,” that “the interests of the state” had replaced the “passions of his soul.”
[51] At the same time, however, the corporeal structure of the state — its territorial integrity, armies, and institutions — remained profoundly mortal. Its defense could only be guaranteed by a small, trusted group of icy-veined custodians mounting an undying — and unforgiving — vigil. Richelieu thus warned that Christian charity could hardly be extended to seditious actors, for while
man’s salvation occurs ultimately in the next world … states have no being after this world. Their salvation is either in the present or nonexistent. Hence the punishments that are necessary to their survival may not be postponed but must be immediate.[52]
Indeed,
raison d’état was also inherently authoritarian. French
raison d’état theorists were not just ruthless, they were also elitists, convinced that the
arcana imperii, or mysteries of state, could only be mastered and entrusted to a select few.
[53] Having witnessed mob violence and religious cleansing on a horrific scale over the course of the past century, thinkers such as Richelieu were ever wary of the fickleness of their nation’s subjects — ordinary men and women who could fall prey to demagoguery and who, in their minds, were incapable of rising above their petty needs and brutish impulses in order to pursue the greater good.
This paternalistic and imperious view of how a nation’s grand strategy should be conducted undergirds the infamous passage in which Richelieu compares the common people to stubborn mules requiring a careful mixture of cajolement and discipline.
[54] Richelieu’s seeming dismissal of the everyday concerns of the French peasantry went hand in hand with a determination to impose order both at home and abroad — regardless of temporary hardship or foreign opposition.
This single-mindedness was more than just the sign of a merciless operator, however. Although the chief minister was suffused with the pessimism and misanthropy characteristic of authoritarian thinkers, his vision for the future of French and European foreign policy was also strangely optimistic and, some might argue, enlightened for his age.
Balancing and Collective Security
In 1642, only a few weeks before Richelieu’s death, a heroic comedy, entitled
Europe, was performed at the royal court. By all accounts, the production was terrible, with wooden performances and leaden dialogue.
[55] Partly ghostwritten by Richelieu on his deathbed, the play was an allegorical representation of the cardinal’s foreign policy. It depicted a struggle between the aggressive, wolfish Ibère (Spain) and the brave, noble Françion (France) for the heart of a delicate princess, Europe. Ibère is portrayed as a haughty, insensitive, and controlling suitor. Europe winds up asking Françion to be her protector and begs him to shield her from the lust-filled Spaniard’s unwanted attentions. The play has little artistic merit, but as a late-career encapsulation of Richelieu’s foreign policy vision, it makes for an interesting read, especially the discussions on the sovereignty of small nation-states, wars of necessity versus wars of choice, and the means by which to attain a lasting peace on the continent. As one analyst notes, the play lays out a vision for a future European defense system that would ensure peace — “but always with France in the driver’s seat.”
[56] One segment, in which Françion describes his willingness to sacrifice his own ambitions to shield Europe from Ibère’s predations, is particularly noteworthy:
The innocent and the weak will find in me the source of their support,
I was born the tutor of all young princes
My strength is what maintains the trembling provinces
Everywhere my allies implore my aid
And it is with reason, Princess, that I run to them,
For fear of otherwise being powerless in my own defense,
At last war is needed, and I am drawn into it
Not by ambition, but by necessity.[57]
This passage captures several key aspects of Richelieu’s grand strategy: his desire to position France not only as a counterweight to Spanish dominance but also as a future arbiter of state sovereignty; his conviction that France’s foreign policy should be tempered by prudence and not fueled solely by the desire for territorial aggrandizement; and his fixation on his nation’s reputation and credibility, particularly among its smaller allies.
One of the unique aspects of the cardinal’s vision to achieve a “general peace” was his desire to position France both as one of the scales in the balance and as the “holder of the [said] balance.”
[58] As the weaker party in the Franco-Habsburg rivalry, the French monarchy hoped smaller states could be incited to buy into a more benign model of European geopolitics, with France promising to act as the guarantor of their “ancient freedoms” and “sovereign rights” and as the enforcer of a continent-wide “public liberty.”
[59] Naturally, there was an element of cynicism to these pledges as well as to the cardinal’s professed desire to landscape the European jungle into a neatly manicured French garden. Richelieu’s quest for diplomatic equilibrium, along with his hopes for a durable peace settlement, were undoubtedly driven by an ambition, first and foremost, to recover French primacy. That said, notes William Church, all evidence shows that Richelieu was also quite sincere in his hopes for a more peaceful regional order and that he was “sufficiently astute to realize that a Europe-wide system of sovereign states was the only viable alternative to Habsburg universalism.”
[60] German historians, such as Fritz Dickmann and Klaus Malettke, have focused on the importance of legalism in Richelieu’s thought and diplomatic instructions and have convincingly argued that the clergyman was already thinking of a collective defense system buttressed by international law and shared security guarantees in addition to balance-of-power politics.
[61]
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Of course, Richelieu was hardly the only European thinker to tout the stability-inducing virtues of a regional power equilibrium.
[62] David Sturdy has noted that his tenure also coincided with advances in the field of philosophy (such as Cartesianism), and science (such as the discovery of celestial mechanics), which increasingly viewed the physical universe as an intricate assemblage of multiple, self-regulating states of equilibrium. “By analogy,” Sturdy ventures,
Richelieu thought of a Europe in which smaller, satellite states would orbit larger benevolent protectors, none of which would seek hegemony, but which instead would preserve in Europe a peace and equilibrium corresponding to the harmony of the heavens.[63]
There are also some more easily discernible sources of inspiration drawn from history — despite Richelieu’s distaste for warmed-over compilations of ancient aphorisms. Both the chief minister and his most trusted aide, Father Joseph — a wily Capuchin monk who “combined in his own persons the oddly assorted characters of Metternich and Savonarola” — frequently referred to the advent of a new “Augustan golden age” they hoped would dawn on European affairs following the bloody unrest of the Thirty Years’ War, much as the reign of Augustus had put an end to the chaos of Rome’s civil wars.
[64] Neo-stoicism relayed a strongly cyclical view of foreign affairs and baroque
raison d’état theorists focused intensely on the lessons to be derived from the study of the rise and fall of ancient empires.
[65] One of the most eloquent articulations of the era’s predilection for applied history was made by the Savoyard Giovanni Botero in his masterpiece
Della Ragion di Stato (The Reason of State), when he stated that, while one could learn from both the living or the dead, “a much greater field from which to learn is that offered to us by the dead with the histories written by them.”
[66]
For classically educated nationalists such as Richelieu, it appeared evident that France was in many ways the new Rome and Spain — with its kaleidoscope of ethnicities, dispersed territories, and maritime empire — was Carthage.
[67] The challenge was how to effectively implement a strategy that would allow France to buy time, gather its strength, and eventually defeat Spain, much as Rome finally prevailed over its trans-Mediterranean foe after a century of bitter struggle.
Richelieu's Strategy
The Habsburg Challenge and the Art of the Long View
When Richelieu was elevated to the rank of chief minister in 1624, France’s strategic position, locked in the heart of a war-torn Europe, appeared — at first glance — rather grim. With the kingdom surrounded on all sides by Habsburg possessions, from the Spanish Netherlands in the north to the Iberian Peninsula in the southwest, the cardinal labored to develop a strategy that would allow France to break out of its constricted geopolitical environment. This strategy was undergirded by three main assumptions.
First, France and its underdeveloped army were not yet ready to engage in direct confrontation with their battle-hardened Spanish counterparts, and a weary, fractious French political establishment was unlikely to support any drawn-out military effort. Time was therefore the recuperating nation’s most precious strategic commodity. A strategy of delay and protraction was not only required to muster its martial strength but also to forge the necessary elite consensus. Provided France could continue to buy time and bleed the Habsburgs via a league of well-funded and militarily capable proxies, Richelieu was convinced that France’s demographic and economic resources would allow it to eventually gain the upper hand in its protracted competition with Spain. As he had confidently predicted in a letter to his ambassador in Madrid in 1632,
Nowhere is Spain in a position to resist a concentrated power such as France over a long period, and in the final analysis the outcome of a general war must necessarily be calamitous for our Iberian neighbor.[68]
Second, Richelieu believed that France’s geographic predicament — its location at the center of the European chessboard and its seeming state of encirclement — could, in fact, be leveraged to its advantage. As one recent study of past rivalries has noted, great powers with extended economic and military interests must frequently grapple with two major challenges: First, they offer many points for enemies to threaten and attack, and second, their capacity to project military strength is eroded the further the contested zone is from the core of their power.
[69]
With its dispersed holdings, Spain was heavily reliant on the lines of communication that formed the connective tissue of its sprawling empire — whether by sea, or by land, via the so-called Spanish road that ran from the Netherlands through the Italian peninsula.
[70] As Richelieu later gloated in the
Testament Politique, France’s centrality and superior interior lines of communication provided it with the means to sever the various strands of Spain’s imperial web:
The providence of God, who desires to keep everything in balance, has ensured that France, thanks to its geographical position, should separate the states of Spain and weaken them by dividing them.[71]
J.H. Elliott, an eminent scholar of early modern Spain, has shown the extent to which Richelieu’s Spanish counterpart and longstanding nemesis, the Count-Duke of Olivares, was aware of the inherent vulnerabilities that came with Spain’s sprawling empire.
[72] Elliott notes that Richelieu’s fears of encirclement were paralleled by Olivares’ “obsession with the French threat to the network of international communications on which Spanish power depended. … What to France was a noose, was to Spain a life-line.”
[73]
Image 1: Map of Europe During Richelieu’s Time as Chief Minister
Richelieu did not confine his strategy of great power competition to the continental theater, however. From the very beginning of his time as chief minister he stressed the importance of seapower and resolutely focused on the development of France’s naval strength.
[74] While prestige undoubtedly played a role in Richelieu’s energetic pursuit of seapower, it was not the only motivation. His quest to see France emerge as a full-spectrum great power was also undergirded by an ambition to better compete for access to an increasingly globalized market and a desire to shield France’s maritime approaches and seaborne trade from predatory naval action.
[75] Threatening some of Spain’s most vital maritime resupply lines and further complicating its strategic planning was simply the icing on the cake.
[76] The story of Richelieu’s stewardship of the French Royal Navy is not one of untrammeled success. His efforts to vault France into the ranks of Europe’s greatest oceanic powers were chronically undermined by bureaucratic and logistical travails and the fleet’s funding was often neglected in favor of a perpetually resource-starved army.
[77] Overall, however, the cardinal’s overarching goals were more than met. By 1635, he had succeeded in creating a navy that overshadowed England’s and matched that of Spain in the Mediterranean.
[78]
Finally, Richelieu knew that France would struggle to prosecute a multifront campaign against the combined military might of the Habsburgs’ two dynastic branches. Through dexterous and continuous diplomacy, he therefore sought to forestall the advent of a formalized military alliance between Vienna and Madrid. At the same time, Richelieu worked to accentuate internal frictions within both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, supporting secessionist movements in Portugal and Catalonia, and quietly stoking the resentment of liberty-starved prince-electors in Germany.
[79] In this, Richelieu was aided by a formidable coterie of advisers, bureaucratic allies, and diplomatic envoys, who tirelessly crisscrossed the continent and produced exquisitely detailed strategic forecasts. Some of these studies, which engage in a dispassionate, multilevel analysis of the respective competitive advantages and disadvantages of different European powers, apply the same level of analytical rigor that one would expect from the best of contemporary net assessments.
[80]
La Guerre Couverte
Many of Richelieu’s first actions as chief minister focused on domestic consolidation and on preempting any perceived political threats to the reign of a youthful and unseasoned monarch.
In his earlier incarnation as bishop of Luçon, an area with a heavy Calvinist minority population, Richelieu had displayed a proclivity for toleration. Both in his actions as bishop and in his theological writings, he had repeatedly argued that Protestants should be converted by the power of reason and dialectical discussion, rather than force of arms.
[81] As a government official, however, he and other leading members of the royal council took an increasingly hardline approach to the various Huguenot enclaves that dotted French territory. Under the terms of the Edict of Nantes, these communities had been granted a strong degree of autonomy, and, with their fortified cities and independent political assemblies, appeared, in the words of Richelieu, to seek to “share the state” with the French monarch.
[82] Fears over the emergence of a parallel political structure, or of a “state within the state” with strong ties to potentially hostile foreign powers, were accompanied by a more diffuse sense of ideological peril. French absolutist thinkers fretted over the subversive appeal and longstanding popularity of Calvinist republicanism, which they perceived as profoundly antipathetic to monarchic government, among the higher echelons of the French nobility.
[83] These tensions came to a head in 1627 with the royal siege of the Huguenot port-city of La Rochelle — a massive military undertaking that was led by the king, overseen by the cardinal-minister, and involved the bulk of royal military resources at the time.
[quote id="4"]
Richelieu, whose earlier attempts at preserving peace with the great Huguenot lords had led to his being derisively dubbed the “Cardinal of La Rochelle” by his
dévot opponents, now showed himself to be methodical and ruthless in his prosecution of the year-long siege. England’s decision to dispatch a large amphibious task force in an (unsuccessful) bid to aid its beleaguered co-religionists in La Rochelle had only strengthened the cardinal-minister’s determination to forcibly subsume Huguenot communities within the French state. The monarchy’s eventual victory over the Huguenot rebels and their great power sponsor precipitated the collapse of Protestant opposition to royal rule and considerably burnished young Louis XIII’s martial credentials in the eyes of fellow European leaders. It was succeeded by the Peace of Alais, which erased most of the Huguenots’ past political privileges, while continuing, by and large, to accord them freedom of worship. Leading figures of the Huguenot uprising were pardoned or treated with clemency after having sworn fealty to the French king, and some, such as the Duke of Rohan, went on to number among some of France’s greatest generals.
[84] Subsequently, royal historians took great pains to stress that the king’s Protestant subjects had not been punished on account of their religion, but rather because they had chosen the path of armed rebellion and collusion with a foreign power.
[85]
Richelieu’s suppression of the Huguenot uprising was part of a broader effort to do away with alternative power centers or codes of loyalty within France, carried out via an expansion of the definition of treason or
lèse-majesté, and a series of policies targeting the French nobility that focused on its capacity to resist royal authority and its distinct strategic sub-culture.
[86] In 1626, for example, Richelieu ordered the destruction of all fortresses not situated on the nation’s frontiers, regardless of the religious affiliation of their proprietors. That same year, he issued a much-decried edict against dueling. While this measure may seem almost quaint to a modern reader, it was in fact hugely significant.
[87] It took direct aim at some of the French nobility’s most cherished beliefs, including their hallowed honor code. Richelieu, whose elder brother perished in a duel in 1619, was weary of witnessing promising members of the nation’s warrior caste ritually kill one another at an alarming rate.
[88]
As historians of the Ancien Régime have noted, these deadly contests fulfilled an important symbolic and social function within a French nobility still wedded to ideals of Homeric heroism and medieval chivalry.
[89] The aristocracy’s fighting ethos was undergirded by its members’ desire to demonstrate their worth to other members of their social caste and win that most precious of social currencies —
gloire. Dueling had progressively become like a religion — death in single combat was a “human sacrifice to the god of peer opinion.”
[90] Richelieu, like many of his contemporaries, was of two minds regarding the French nobility’s warrior ethos. He appreciated its age-old emphasis on courage and personal sacrifice, but also criticized its tendency toward erratic emotionalism, along with its vainglorious and self-destructive tendencies.
[91] In his later correspondence with French nobles deployed to the front, it is telling that he sometimes advised his soldier-aristocrats to rein in their natural hotheadedness and to behave with “prudence.”
[92] More than anything, the cardinal-minister wished to redirect the famed
furia francese and thirst for glory of the nobility so that it served the broader geopolitical ambitions of the French crown rather than merely the competitive impulses of a narrow and fractious social stratum.
As the monarchy cemented control, it also found itself embroiled in a series of foreign policy crises, whose management by Richelieu and his allies spurred fierce domestic controversy. Lashed by gusts of bureaucratic opposition, the chief minister strove to husband France’s military resources, bleed its enemies, and buy time. All the while, he sought, with the help of his extensive network of foreign envoys and spies, to maintain as many diplomatic channels as possible and to avert any precipitate escalation to a full-spectrum and system-wide war with a unified Habsburg foe. Richelieu consistently emphasized the importance of prevailing, first and foremost, in the diplomatic arena — at the lavish royal courts and stuffy religious conclaves where the fate of European politics was truly decided. In
Testament Politique, he opines that the ability to
negotiate without ceasing, openly or secretly, and everywhere, even if it yields no immediate fruit and the expected one is not yet apparent, is absolutely necessary for the well-being of states.
[93]
The Valtellina and Mantuan Succession Crises
The most significant crises during the
guerre couverte period occurred at the bloody peripheries and messy intersections of each great power’s sphere of interest. France and Spain vied for access and influence, probed each other’s weaknesses, and worked to dilute each other’s ability to maintain alliance structures and project power across the European theater. As the Duke of Rohan later noted, the Franco-Spanish rivalry had become the structuring force across Christendom. The two states formed “the two poles from which stemmed the pressures for war and peace upon other states,” with France seeking to play the “counterpoise” to Spanish ambitions, and the princes of Europe “attaching themselves to one or the other according to their interests.”
[94] This increasingly tense cold war was fundamentally a two-level game — a combination of geopolitical competition and interference in one another’s domestic politics — accentuating pre-existing movements of internal unrest with the hope of precipitating an abrupt dislocation of their rival’s fragile state structure.
For close to a century, since the early 1500s, France and Spain had jostled for control over the
portes or gateways that provided staging points into their respective heartlands and over the military corridors that allowed each state to safely siphon funding and troops toward their junior partners and proxies.
[95] One such artery was the Valtellina (or Val Telline), a valley that snaked through the central Alps, connecting Lombardy with the Spanish Netherlands. The Valtellina had long constituted a territorial flashpoint. Ruled by a league of Swiss Protestant lords, the Grisons, the Valtellina was of critical importance to both France and Spain. For Spain, the winding mountain passes provided one of the main land routes through which it could bolster its military presence in the Spanish Netherlands, and, if the need ever arose, provide the Holy Roman Empire with reinforcements. For Richelieu and his disciples, the prospect of Spanish dominion over the Valtellina was therefore an alarming one, adding to longstanding French fears of encirclement by combined Habsburg forces. Furthermore, were France to find itself suddenly locked out of the Valtellina, it would no longer be able to rapidly supplement the martial efforts of its own traditional allies on the Italian peninsula, such as Venice. The dispute over control of the Valtellina was driven both by concerns over military response times and logistical supply, and by status considerations and alliance politics.
In 1620, Madrid shrewdly sought to capitalize on the momentary chaos triggered by a revolt of the Catholic subjects of the Grisons by erecting a chain of military bases along the Valtellina. Two years later, its garrisons facing expulsion by allied forces of France, Venice, and Savoy, Spain reluctantly agreed to let its soldiers be replaced by papal troops. For Richelieu, however, this settlement remained inadequate, as the Vatican had allowed Spain to continue to use the Valtellina as one of its prime military thoroughfares. A few months after becoming chief minister, Richelieu sought to rebalance the situation by conducting secret negotiations with Savoyard and Swiss allies, catching Spain off guard. A small force of French and Swiss troops flowed into the Valtellina and unceremoniously expelled its papal custodians. Meanwhile, a larger French army joined forces with its Savoyard allies in a protracted siege of Genoa, in a bold attempt to neutralize one of Spain’s main bankers and truncate the southern arm of the Spanish road. This last endeavor ultimately proved unsuccessful, with Madrid succeeding in breaking through a French naval interception force in the Mediterranean and relieving Genoa by sea. France and Spain subsequently entered lengthy negotiations, which ultimately led to the signing of the Treaty of Monzon in 1626. The treaty restored control of the Valtellina to the Grisons, while enshrining and protecting the exercise of Catholicism in the valley. All fortifications were levelled and papal troops were once again dispatched to preserve the peace. Most importantly, the treaty granted equal rights of transit to both Spain and France, thus reinstating — at least in the military sphere — the old status quo.
[96]
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Barely a year later, another crisis flared up in northern Italy. In this case, tensions revolved around the Duke of Mantua’s succession. This minor dynastic squabble quickly took on geopolitical significance. The duchy of Mantua and its dependency of Monferrato were fiefs of the Holy Roman Empire, strategically located along the Po river, abutting the Spanish duchy of Milan. Following the death of Duke Vincent II of Mantua in 1627, who had failed to produce a son and heir, the duchy was claimed by his closest male relative, the flamboyant French noble Charles de Nevers. De Nevers, in a typical display of impetuosity, preemptively took possession of the duchy without consulting Vienna, as feudal protocol would have dictated.
[97] His actions precipitated the reluctant intervention of Europe’s three greatest powers — France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire — all of which would rather have focused their attention and resources elsewhere.
[98] The conflict soon devolved into a slugging match, dragging on for close to four years, and only coming to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Cherasco in 1631.
The troublesome de Nevers was ultimately granted his imperial investiture and the right to rule over his now-ravaged duchy, albeit at the price of territorial concessions. More importantly for Richelieu, the conflict imposed significant financial costs on both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, strained relations between the two partners, and forced them to divert large numbers of troops away from more critical theaters of operation for extended periods.
[99] Madrid’s decision to intervene on the Italian peninsula negatively affected its military operations in Flanders. Meanwhile, the imperial troops Olivares had been hoping would join his prosecution of the Dutch, and who were also much needed in Germany to stave off the advance of the Swedes, were instead channeled southward, toward Mantua, where they were decimated by plague.
[100] Through secretly negotiated clauses, France also gained access to the strategically positioned mountain fortress of Pinerolo in the Piedmont, which it had quietly wrested from Savoy.
[101] All in all, therefore — and despite the cost and clear risks associated with France’s decision to intervene in support of its belligerent proxy, Richelieu’s calculus seemed to have paid off — France weathered the protracted crisis far better than its two main competitors.
The Challenges of Alliance Management
The Mantuan succession crisis also showed, as David Parrott notes, that
While the rulers of the major powers may have wished to construct their political strategies in the clear light of state interest and international Realpolitik, they were frequently confronted by lesser territories whose juridical status and succession arrangements were often diffuse or ambiguous, and whose rulers were explicitly determined to assert and defend their rights as sovereigns. (…) In circumstances such as the Mantuan crisis, where the grip of the major Italian powers was for various reasons weakened, the initiatives and interests of these lesser states could lead to dramatic destabilization.[102]
Richelieu was well aware of the risks of entanglement and entrapment inherent to asymmetric alliance structures. The unexpected ramifications of the Mantuan succession crisis undoubtedly helped shape some of his more interesting — and still resonant — reflections on the challenges of alliance management. In
Testament Politique, for instance, the cardinal warns future statesmen “not to embark voluntarily on the founding of a league created for some difficult objective” unless they are sure “they can carry it out alone,” should their allies desert them. He argues this is for two reasons:
The first is based is on the weakness of unions, which are never too secure when headed by central sovereigns. The second consists in the fact that lesser princes are often as careful and diligent in involving great kings in important commitments as they are feeble in aiding them, although they are fully obligated to do so.[103]
Despite these wry observations on the fickleness of security partners, Richelieu put alliance politics at the very center of his grand strategy, seeking to develop, in parallel, two separate German and Italian leagues. The Italian league, with Savoy and Venice at its core, was designed to exert a slow stranglehold over Spanish possessions in Naples and Milan. In Germany, Richelieu sought to stoke the resentment of restive prince-electors, and to further fragment the empire’s political mosaic by supporting the establishment of a separate pro-French and anti-Habsburg Catholic League under the leadership of Bavaria.
[104] On occasion, France’s policy of political disruption bore fruit. This was evident, for instance, during the Diet of Regensburg in 1630, when Richelieu’s agents, led by the wily Father Joseph, succeeded in dealing a major blow to Emperor Ferdinand II’s power and prestige by quietly encouraging the elector counts to veto the election of his son as his successor and dismiss one of the Imperial Army’s more talented commanders, Albrecht Von Wallenstein. France’s overarching goal was to keep the Holy Roman Empire in a state of managed disequilibrium and to buy time — time that could be used to further erode the foundations of Habsburg power in Germany. This cynical policy could be implemented, the sly monk argued in a memorandum to the king, in a relatively straightforward fashion, by simply continuing the centuries-old French tradition of mediation in German affairs.
[105]
Weakening the Viennese Habsburgs also provided France with greater latitude to exert control over the lands circling its eastern periphery, in particular the duchy of Lorraine. Lorraine was technically a fiefdom of the Holy Roman Empire, and its leader, the young duke Charles IV, had become a thorn in Richelieu’s side. Bright but brash, Charles IV was less adept at balancing France and the Holy Roman Empire than his forebears. He was also far less canny at steering a middle course than, for instance, the dukes of Savoy in Italy, whose adroit manipulation of the Franco-Spanish rivalry forced grudging admiration in both Paris and Madrid.
[106] The duke of Lorraine, on the other hand, pursued a lopsided policy that was consistently and aggressively hostile to the interests of the French crown — plotting with its foreign enemies, abetting its insurgencies, and providing a safe haven for the leaders of France’s domestic opposition.
[107] Over the course of a decade, France engaged in a series of punitive raids and limited encroachments on Lothringian territory, pressuring the contumacious duke into a series of increasingly unequal and humiliating treaties, until, in 1633, Richelieu ordered a full-scale invasion and annexation of Lorraine. Charles IV eventually abdicated and fled overseas and Lothringian lords were forced to swear oaths of loyalty to the French crown.
[108]
Most of the time, however, Richelieu’s behavior was not classically expansionist, as he did not seek to engage in a rigid linearization of a new, more extensive set of French boundaries. Instead, he wove a web of protectorates along the kingdom’s borders, offering to ensure the defense of weaker principalities, fiefdoms, and bishoprics in exchange for transit rights or the stationing of small detachments of French troops in strategically positioned fortresses — often overlooking key segments of the Spanish road. These garrisoned protectorates were viewed by the chief minister as serving a dual function — both as watchtowers and as potential staging areas for future military interventions.
[109]
Even as Richelieu pursued his strategy of delay, limited military involvement, and tailored assertiveness within France’s near abroad, he also sought to sap Habsburg power from afar, through a policy of indirect or subsidized warfare. This policy of remote-control balancing was not only financially onerous — involving the disbursement of increasingly large flows of subsidies to France’s Protestant proxies — but also diplomatically challenging. French envoys were sent to broker agreements and mediate disputes between France’s partners and third parties, such as Sweden and Poland, so that the former could redirect the entirety of its military machine toward the German theater.
[110] The sheer heterogeneity of France’s many coetaneous alliance structures proved to be a major, sometimes insuperable, challenge. Indeed, managing such a disparate array of security partners with competing territorial and confessional agendas eventually became almost impossible — leading a reluctant Richelieu to privilege the preservation of the alliance with Sweden over that with Bavaria.
[111]
Another chronic set of difficulties encountered by Richelieu and his envoys will be familiar to any modern student of security studies: the fact that proxies and/or client states rarely share similar objectives to those of their sponsors, and that, generally speaking, the stronger a proxy is, the less dependent and politically beholden it is to its patron.
[112] This was a clear and recurring feature of the France-Sweden relationship during Richelieu’s tenure. When France first signed the Treaty of Barwalde with Sweden in 1631, promising one million livres per annum over the course of five years in exchange for Stockholm maintaining a fully equipped army of 30,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry in Germany, Richelieu was enthusiastic. He waxed lyrical about the martial prowess of Gustavus Adolphus, the Swedish king, comparing him to Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great.
[113] Following Adolphus’ crushing victory over imperial forces at the Battle of Breitenfeld, however, the Swedish warrior-king’s relentless advance through a war-torn Germany began to foster French anxieties.
[114] His victories — too definitive and complete — ran the risk of completely unraveling France’s efforts to portray itself as a neutral arbitrator of state interests and led to a lasting rift with an embittered Maximilian of Bavaria. Richelieu also began to wonder whether Sweden, flush with the fruits of its conquests and no longer in need of French subsidies, might decide to turn its attention against France’s cluster of German protectorates. It was not without some relief, therefore, that the cardinal heard the news of the Northern Lion’s death at the battle of Lützen in 1632.
Propaganda Wars
Throughout his political life, Richelieu was constantly reminded of both the tenuousness of his position and his own mortality. An unpopular man working for a sickly king, the chief minister was the target of countless foreign plots and elaborate court machinations.
[115]
Much of the resentment directed at him stemmed from his domestic policies: his blunt and wide-ranging efforts to centralize power, increase taxation, and rein in the nobility, along with his habit of supplanting old court favorites with his own sprawling networks of clientele.
[116] His relatively moderate stance on confessional issues also stirred controversy in some quarters.
The most vivid and substantive debates, however, centered on issues of foreign policy. Richelieu’s
dévot opponents — whether in meetings of the Royal Council or via the clandestine production of vitriolic pamphlets — relentlessly assailed the core aspects of his grand strategy, most notably his alliance with and subsidization of Protestant powers, along with his decision to confront rather than align with Spain, a fellow Catholic nation. Although Richelieu’s vision was the one that ultimately triumphed, it is worth noting that there were many compelling reasons for distinguished statesmen to oppose his foreign policy.
In a country still reeling from decades of civil strife, many wanted to focus on domestic recovery and reducing the burden of taxation that helped finance France’s foreign military ventures and proxies — even if it came at the cost of appeasing Spain.
[117] France’s hamlets and villages were seething with discontent, and local uprisings — often euphemistically designated as “popular displays of emotion” (
émotions populaires) — were commonplace.
[118] In fretful whispers, perfumed courtiers would share their grisly tales from the dark forested hinterland — of peasants hacking a “tax collector to pieces and dismembering a surgeon whom they mistook for a revenue official.”
[119] For many who had lived through the Boschian hell of France’s religious wars, the fear of being catapulted into yet another cataract of anarchy and bloodletting was ever present.
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Furthermore, some argued, why not choose to align with the Habsburgs? Would that not bring about a much-needed peace, advance the cause of international Catholicism, and be preferable to funding the systematic, continent-wide slaughter of co-religionists by foreign heretics? After all, Habsburg blood flowed in Marie de Medici’s veins, Anne of Austria was Spanish, and the queen of Spain was Louis XIII’s own younger sister, Elizabeth. From some of the gilded chambers of the Louvre, Richelieu’s grand schemes thus ran the risk of appearing not only unethical, but also increasingly fratricidal.
[120]
It took over six years for the chief minister to quash this fierce internal opposition and it was only after the famous Day of the Dupes in November 1630 — when he dramatically prevailed over both the queen mother and his two main political opponents, the Marillac brothers — that he achieved unvarnished royal support for his agenda. Even after 1630, Richelieu still had to contend with the periodic opposition to his policies and fretted that the spiritual and impressionable Louis XIII might find himself persuaded by a member of his entourage to jettison his Protestant allies.
[121]
These struggles over the direction of France’s foreign policy were not confined to the corridors of power. Beyond the ornate antechambers and soaring palace walls, the future of French grand strategy was being debated in another wider and more untamed space — in the pages of the political pamphlets and news gazettes that had become a ubiquitous feature of early 17th-century France.
[122] Richelieu, like many of his European contemporaries, was acutely aware of the growing power and malleability of public opinion in the era of the printing press, and of the need to shape collective perceptions through targeted, state-directed propaganda efforts. From the earliest days of his tenure as chief minister, he moved decisively to exert control over the political media, appointing his minions to head leading publications such as
Le Mercure François, France’s first yearly newspaper, and the
Gazette, a weekly publication, and waging a tireless counter-intelligence campaign against clandestine printing activities. Richelieu surrounded himself with a “politico-literary strike force” of some of the nation’s most accomplished political theorists and polemicists, who labored to defend France’s European grand strategy from a fierce onslaught of
dévot-inspired critiques.
[123]
These critiques, particularly those penned by talented writers such as Matthieu de Morgues — one of Richelieu’s more formidable and relentless opponents — were often incisive and compelling.
[124] Not only did they consistently assail Richelieu’s Protestant alliances as “ungodly,” they also sought to depict the chief minister as a grasping and vulpine figure, an “
antichristus purpuratus,” who pursued his grandiose diplomatic schemes despite widespread popular discontent, and who, in contempt of his status as a “prince of the church,” worked to methodically undermine the Vatican.
The ideological counteroffensive launched by the
bons politiques was equally robust, clearly articulated, and often remarkably well-timed. In countless tracts, treatises, and pamphlets, the
politiques strenuously argued in defense of the cardinal’s character, stressing his personal loyalty to the king, as well as the strategic merits of his foreign policy — however disquieting the short-term costs may be. Tugging at their readers’ patriotic heartstrings, they stressed the urgency of recovering France’s “natural” primacy on the continent and warned of the long-term perils of a premature peace settlement that would confine the French monarchy to a subordinate status. In response to those who advocated an alignment with Madrid, they pointed to Spain’s history of interference in French domestic politics and to its perceived duplicity. To trust that such a history of enmity could be reversed, argued one of Richelieu’s disciples, was not only naïve, it was also a sign that one had inherited some of the seditious leanings “of a member of the old Catholic league” and had “thus ceased to be French.”
[125]
Furthermore, argued Richelieu’s supporters, one need only look at Spain’s crimes against its foreign subjects or against colonized indigenous people in the new world to see the extent of its hypocrisy.
[126] The sanctimonious Spaniards, “who held a sword in one hand and a breviary in another,” had, according to this counteroffensive, “erected a god of blood and destruction” and pursued their dream of a universal monarchy “under specious pretexts draped in painted crosses and invocations of Jesus.”
[127] Their wealth, added one noteworthy critique, was tarnished with the misery of the native American peoples whose resources they had brutally exploited.
[128] As for France’s alliances with Protestant powers, where was it written that “God had expressly declared that he wished for the Spaniards to become the masters of the Dutch,” and for Spain to emerge as the unrivalled hegemon in Europe?
[129] Emphasizing the importance of credibility and reputation in international politics, the
bons politiques invoked France’s historic role as a security patron in key regions such as the Valtelline and Northern Italy, arguing that, in the case of the Grisons, for instance, “heresy alone did not suffice to deprive them of their sovereignty and of their right to (French) protection and assistance.”
[130]
These day-to-day propaganda efforts were accompanied by a more ambitious and externally-oriented policy of cultural grandeur, whereby the industrious cleric sought to transform Paris into the artistic and academic capital of Europe — a city which would eventually outshine Madrid, Vienna, and maybe even Rome. He famously created the
Académie Française, which initially hosted many of the more proficient
politique theorists, and established the royal press, or
Imprimerie Royale, in the Louvre, which turned France into a publishing hub for high-quality books and engravings.
[131] Richelieu was particularly intent on nurturing a body of sophisticated legal theorists. These experts could then work to weaponize the rapidly evolving field of international jurisprudence — not only to lend credence to France’s territorial pretensions but also to justify French military actions in the eyes of international public opinion.
[132] This aspect of Richelieu’s diplomacy was to become abundantly evident in May 1635, when France finally formally declared war on Spain.
La Guerre Ouverte
Louis XIII was a traditionalist with a deep attachment to chivalric values and ancient courtly rites. The flamboyant manner in which war was declared on Spain — with a mounted herald delivering the message before the
Hallegate of Brussels after having been announced by trumpet — was characteristic of the French monarch. For years he had been champing at the bit, urging Richelieu to move from
la guerre couverte to
la guerre ouverte. The chief minister had consistently counseled patience, pleading with his sovereign to delay a full declaration of war as long as possible. By the spring of 1635, however, it was clear to Richelieu that this strategy, which had served France so well over the past decade, could no longer continue.
The Habsburgs’ resounding victory at the battle of Nördlingen in 1634 — during which a combined force of imperial and Spanish troops decisively routed their Swedish-led Protestant foes — abruptly reconfigured the European balance of power.
[133] France’s newly imperiled allies — Sweden and the Dutch United Provinces in particular — were increasingly insistent that their great power sponsor commit large-scale military forces to the fray. In the tense months following Nördlingen, the Vatican desperately sought to arrest the slide toward war, even offering to host a peace summit where Madrid and Paris could resolve their disputes through a process of mediated arbitration. Pope Urban VIII’s frantic diplomatic efforts were to no avail, however. Both Richelieu and Olivares had resigned themselves to the inevitability of conflict, and the massive, clunking cogs of their respective nations’ military machineries had begun to turn, as thousands of fresh troops were mobilized for war. Decision-makers in Spain — pointing to France’s much larger population and advantageous geographical position — became increasingly convinced that any protracted military struggle with France would not redound to their benefit. It was therefore necessary, argued Olivares, to seek an early end to the conflict by striking hard and fast. Military preparations were conducted “in width rather than in breadth.”
[134] The plan was to overwhelm French defenses on several fronts with the hope that the resolve of its less battle-hardened troops would crumble.
[135]
These war plans were driven, in part, by Spain’s alarm over France’s massive military buildup under Richelieu’s tenure, which included the cardinal’s attempts to create a first-class navy. The development of France’s ground forces, however, was far more spectacular and of greater immediate concern to its enemies across the Pyrenees. As the cardinal’s network of spies at the Spanish court began to apprise him of Madrid’s plans for a series of preemptive military strikes, this buildup accelerated and France fielded an army of unprecedented size on the eve of war.
[quote id="7"]
Throughout the religious wars of the previous half-century, French royal forces rarely exceeded 16,000 men.
[136] During the brief periods of peace that followed each flare-up of civil violence, the bulk of these troops were often demobilized. When larger hosts were assembled, they were frequently composed primarily of foreign mercenaries, sometimes reaching up to 70 percent of the total number, rather than troops levied on French soil. In the absence of a well-organized and institutionalized standing army, French kings relied most often on a nucleus of
gens d’ordonnance, or
gendarmerie, a small body of heavy cavalry that was the country’s only permanently mobilized and fully professional military force — not including a few small garrisons lightly sprinkled across its borders. At its peak, Henri IV’s army in 1610 may have numbered up to 55,000 men.
[137] In contrast, by the time Louis XIII and Richelieu were mobilizing for war with Spain in 1634, documents show that they were accounting for up to 100,368 soldiers in service.
[138] As military preparations continued apace, these numbers steadily grew.
[139] French officials diligently recorded numbers of raised troops between 135,000 and 211,000 in the early years of their nation’s conflict with Spain, with one scholar estimating that up to 150,000 men may have been under arms in 1635.
[140]
Before unleashing his freshly minted legions, however, the French chief minister insisted on getting France’s diplomatic house in order. Although the decision to go to war was made as early as April, he waited until France had fully cemented its renewed alliances with both the United Provinces and Sweden before dispatching the herald to Brussels. Following the envoy’s theatrical declaration, a public diplomacy campaign was launched whereby French propagandists moved to preempt their Spanish counterparts by issuing a series of manifestos clearly geared toward an international as well as a domestic audience, emphasizing the moral legitimacy of France’s actions. There is evidence that these carefully coordinated communication efforts were successful in shaping the overall narrative, as Olivares evinced frustration that the cardinal’s publicists always seemed to move faster and more efficiently than his own.
[141]
The official justification for France’s declaration of war was Spain’s capture of the town of Trier, a French protectorate, the slaughter of its small French garrison, and the abduction of its archbishop-elector in March 1625. This act of great power aggression, read the herald’s declaration, was “against the law of nations” and an “offense against the interests of all princes of Christianity.”
[142] France once again positioned itself as the guardian of smaller states’ interests and the bulwark against Habsburg ambitions of universal monarchy. This time, however, the chief minister’s legion of
lettrés was working to lay the moral underpinnings for a much more direct and overtly militarized French bid for European leadership. Louis XIII issued his own royal communiqué, arguing that while he had patiently tolerated, thus far, the constant “outrages” of Spain’s interference in France’s domestic affairs, the “Spaniards, by their arms and practices,” were now threatening the “very foundations of public liberty” in Europe.
[143] Naturally, the view from Madrid was very different. Indeed, for Olivares and his indignant acolytes, France — with its heady ambitions, exceptionalist ethos, litany of grievances, and overall truculence — was the revisionist power and great disruptor of the status quo. From the very get-go, therefore, the conflict was not framed as a mere tussle over territory and resources, but rather as a paradigm-defining battle for leadership legitimacy and shaping the international order.
Significantly, the French monarchy’s declaration of war was aimed at only one of the Habsburg branches. Richelieu hoped that Ferdinand II, already consumed with the difficult internal negotiations leading up to the Peace of Prague, would be reluctant to lend imperial military strength to the fight against France. This last-ditch attempt at alliance decoupling, however, proved unsuccessful. After months of prevarication, a reluctant Ferdinand II succumbed to the pressure exerted by the imperial court’s pro-Spanish lobby and formally declared war on France in March 1636.
[144] Richelieu was now facing the climactic struggle he had often anticipated but always dreaded: a war waged on an unprecedented scale, on multiple fronts, and against the combined might of both dynastic branches of the Habsburgs.
France’s military performance at the outset of this war was decidedly mixed. After a promising initial victory over an outnumbered Spanish force at the battle of Aveins, French forces, suffering from hunger and afflicted with typhus, encountered a series of military setbacks. In the summer of 1636, a joint Habsburg force led by Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand (the governor of the Spanish Netherlands and younger brother of King Philip IV) conducted a major counter-attack into French territory. The invading force met unexpectedly feeble resistance as it ravaged Picardy and Champagne and swept through a series of northern forts. The garrisons, untested and unsettled by their enemies’ novel use of shrieking mortar bombs, surrendered one after another.
[145] The Habsburg army, a large proportion of which was mounted, moved quickly, thrusting ever deeper into French territory, until it had captured the stronghold of La Corbie, along the Somme. Due to the rapid and unexpected nature of the troops’ advance, there was no sizable interposing military force in between them and Paris, barely sixty miles away. At the news of the cardinal-infante’s blitzkrieg-style incursion into France’s fertile northern plains, Richelieu was reportedly plunged into a deep depression. An unnerved Parisian populace directed its seething resentment at the unpopular chief minister and called for his ouster. The shaken cardinal tendered his resignation and nervously awaited his fall from grace. But although the king may have been occasionally frustrated with his adviser, he was astute enough to realize that there was no individual better suited to the position of chief minister, or more dedicated to the advancement of French prestige and interests.
He therefore crisply rejected Richelieu’s offer and the fiery Father Joseph was dispatched to shake his master out of his crippling state of despondency.
[146] Meanwhile, Louis XIII — in perhaps his finest hour — initiated a mass recruitment drive. Cantering through the cobbled streets of Paris, the monarch, who had always fancied himself as something of an Arthurian warrior-king, called upon every man capable of bearing arms to join him in expelling the hated foreigners from French territory.
In reality, however, the panic of the French royal court — while understandable — was unjustified. The Habsburg advance had proved remarkably successful, but the cardinal-infante was concerned that his forces’ supply lines were overextended and was already planning his withdrawal. The Corbie campaign had proved to “be no more than a short-lived pyrotechnical display.”
[147] It did succeed, however, in galvanizing French public sentiment and in temporarily uniting royal court factions in support of Richelieu’s war efforts. From that point, the Franco-Habsburg conflict slipped into a numbing see-saw of partial gains mitigated by temporary losses, a war of attrition that severely strained the resources, stability, and organizational capacity of the French state.
The challenges associated with coordinating the simultaneous operations of multiple armies over vast distances at a time when communications were both rudimentary and easily subject to delay or disruption were daunting. While military dispatches to Flanders or Italy would take perhaps 12 to 16 days when sent overland from France, they could take almost three months to arrive by sea from Spain. As a result, notes J.H. Elliott, it was “considerably easier to run a war from Paris than from Madrid.”
[148] Even then, there was inevitably a “lag effect,” when it came to issuing precise directives to faraway generals: the distance between Richelieu’s chambers and the frontlines was not only spatial — it was also temporal. The cardinal therefore often encouraged commanders to operate under their own initiative and to exercise their own judgment — provided they were not brash — as to when to seize opportunities to push into enemy territory. French generals could be reluctant to do so, however, if only because they feared the cardinal’s wrath in the event of failure. Indeed, Richelieu could be a singularly demanding overseer, demanding thick stacks of detailed correspondence on every aspect of the war effort and meting out severe punishment in response to perceived cowardice or military shortcomings.
[149]
More broadly, many of the civil-military pathologies affecting French higher command during the Thirty Years’ War would be familiar to any student of authoritarian regimes. Most notably, Richelieu’s focus on “coup-proofing” meant that the perceived loyalty of a noble would often count more in terms of his military advancement than his battlefield performance. As contemporary scholars in the field of security studies have noted, regimes facing significant internal threats frequently adopt sub-optimal organizational practices, basing their promotion patterns on political loyalty rather than on combat prowess.
[150] Richelieu, who, like all of his 17th-century European counterparts, operated at the heart of a complex web of patronage, was consistently torn between his desires to shore up his own power base and to shield his monarch from internal threats, as well as the need to effectively use the very small pool of able generals he had at his disposal.
[151] This sometimes resulted in confusing and counterproductive personnel policies, whereby he dismissed or disgraced competent military commanders and promoted mediocre alternatives. On other occasions, however, Richelieu could demonstrate a measure of tolerance and foresight, forgiving a proficient general’s past transgressions in favor of advancing the war effort. And at times, the canny clergyman managed to have it both ways, by preemptively absorbing promising commanders within his own networks of clientage, thus ensuring their future loyalty. This was the case, for instance, with the Count of Harcourt, whose military acumen impressed Richelieu, and who was therefore allowed to marry into the chief minister’s family despite his middling aristocratic standing.
[152] From then on, Harcourt was entrusted with a series of high-level military commands.
[quote id="8"]
The French monarchy’s perennial fear of a resurgence of domestic disorder also led it to adopt a more centralized approach to the management of military operations. Whereas most other European powers continued to subcontract the levying and management of military forces to powerful nobles and “military entrepreneurs,” the royal administration of Louis XIII insisted on preserving a degree of direct control over its expanding military apparatus.
[153] Foreign military entrepreneurs, such as the highly effective Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, could be hired for the prosecution of overseas campaigns, but armies based and recruited on French territory remained strictly answerable to royal authority. A degree of local autonomy and decentralization remained necessary, given the bureaucratic limitations of the early 17th-century French state, and French nobles or bishops could thus continue to raise troops on their own account. The levied soldiers, however, remained under the proprietorship of the French monarchy, which stubbornly refused to take the easier — but in its eyes riskier — path of formalized military delegation. France’s rejection of the military entrepreneurship system was accompanied by the expansion of a body of civil servants — the famed
intendants d’armée — whose role was to act as agents of royal authority, operating alongside French generals and co-supervising their military operations.
[154]
The decision to empower and deploy additional numbers of
intendants was part of a broader move toward greater bureaucratic control over every aspect of the French war effort, from taxation to infrastructure development.
[155] The
intendants were entrusted with a broad set of responsibilities that ranged from investigating corruption and dispensing justice, to managing funds and supervising army expenditure. One should guard oneself, however, from overstating their ability to enact immediate change and override the decisions and policies undertaken by powerful local commanders. As David Parrott notes, the popular perception that Richelieu’s
intendants were “seventeenth-century equivalents of the bolshevik commissars within the Red Army,” is in need of revision.
[156] Indeed, the relationships between field generals and royal
intendants were often overshadowed or subsumed within complex pre-existing networks of clientele, and in some cases these culturally entrenched alternative power structures severely diluted the
intendant’s authority.
[157] The general-
intendant relationship was thus most often characterized by careful negotiation, as royal agents walked an administrative tightrope, making their best efforts to enact centralized directives — which were often somewhat overambitious or outdated — all while remaining mindful of local conditions, power dynamics, and logistical constraints. In some cases, this dual command structure acted as an impediment to military effectiveness, with royal intendants frequently butting heads with the commanders of their assigned military units. In other cases, however, the relationship could prove to be far more harmonious and productive. Military correspondence, after all, flowed in both directions, through a revamped network of dedicated postal relays that aimed to reduce some of the delays in communication.
Intendants funneled reams of vital information back to the state center, keeping Richelieu and the secretariat of war somewhat better apprised of the manifold challenges plaguing the efforts of their frontline commanders.
Although France, unlike Spain, benefited from interior lines of communication, the distances remained vast and the terrain nearly impassable in many parts of the country, with thick forests, underdeveloped roads, and large, rugged mountainous regions.
[158] Problems of transportation and supply were a chronic source of concern, as were those of funding. The colossal costs of fielding such a large military force — one that sometimes included half a dozen armies operating simultaneously — placed a terrible strain on French finances, as well as on the country’s internal stability. Even before the war, in 1630, Richelieu grumblingly queried whether
There is a kingdom in the world that can regularly pay two or three armies at once … I would like to be told whether reason does not require that one better fund an army operating on enemy territory against powerful forces against whom it has been tried in combat, and where expenses and incommodities are indeterminate, rather than one that remains within the kingdom out of precaution of the harm that could befall it.[159]
This complaint pointed to one of the core quandaries confronted by the resource-hungry French armies. For the first half-decade or so of
guerre ouverte, they operated largely on their own soil and thus were deprived of the possibility of engaging in the traditional practice of collecting “contributions” in the form of rapine and punitive payments extracted from enemy territory. When French troops were deployed abroad, particularly across the Rhine, their numbers often began to melt away as soldiers fled the unfamiliar and hostile German landscapes and streamed back to their villages and homesteads. This helps explain why it was deemed preferable to wage war with foreign mercenaries deep within imperial territory, while using national troops for operations in France or within its near abroad. For much of this period, the French monarchy teetered on the edge of financial collapse, staggering from one socio-economic crisis to another and racking up sizable debts to financiers who charged exorbitant rates. On average, funds allocated to defense amounted to 72 percent of government expenditure during Richelieu’s ministry.
[160] During the years of
guerre ouverte these expenditures were rendered all the more extravagant by the crown’s continued subsidy of the Dutch and Swedes, as well as of the mercenary army of Saxe-Weimar. Unlike his Spanish rival, Richelieu could not rely on the riches from a sprawling network of overseas colonies, nor, for the reasons described above, could he hope to transfer the costs of military operations onto despoiled tracts of enemy territory.
The preservation of the kingdom’s newly aggrandized military machine was therefore largely dependent upon a massive expansion of domestic taxation. In this, Richelieu was mostly successful, with some estimates showing that the income of the French crown doubled in real terms over the course of his tenure.
[161] Per capita taxation also soared and the country’s peasantry — already reeling after a series of harsh winters and poor harvests — was plunged into an even more dire state of poverty. Throughout the war, the country was gripped by a series of rural uprisings, with some — such as the massive
croquant revolt of 1637 or the rebellion of the
Va-Nu-Pieds in Normandy in 1639 — requiring the temporary redirection of thousands of French troops away from the frontlines.
[162] A careful perusal of Richelieu’s writings show that, although he could sometimes appear dismissive of the common folk’s plight (and ruthless in the quashing of mass uprisings), he was not as callous or unyielding as some have taken him to be. He frequently expressed concern over the severity of the peasantry’s conditions, often granting temporary concessions in an attempt to stave off further unrest.
[163] His steely determination to prevail in the competition with the Habsburgs was interwoven with a deeper and more nagging fear: that the French state and people would not withstand the enormous pressures placed upon them, and that if he did not “keep a few steps ahead of financial disaster and uncontrollable social insubordination,” the country would slide back into civil war and find itself at the mercy, once again, of the predatory appetites of foreign powers.
[164]
In this, he was not aided by the hodgepodge character of France’s new army. Many of the troops he had raised over the past decade were relatively unseasoned and the question of whether it was more judicious to concentrate the minority of experienced veterans in distinct “crack” units or to sprinkle them across the force was one that frequently remained unresolved. Most importantly, France’s high command drew on a more heterogeneous set of wartime experiences than its Spanish or imperial counterparts.
[165] The generals who had remained in France during the Wars of Religion were often unfamiliar with the rapidly evolving mechanics of large-scale, infantry-intensive warfare, having spent decades engaging in shadowy struggles for territorial control or denial and conducting mounted raids against nearby opponents. Others had chosen to pursue military careers in exile, with all the attendant variations in training, tactics, and doctrine. During France’s period of civil turmoil, Huguenot lords had often left to fight alongside the Dutch, while Catholic aristocrats had sometimes served under the imperial banner in the Hungarian Marches or alongside co-religionist forces elsewhere on the continent.
[166]
The sheer variety of the military lessons gleaned by France’s warrior class, both resident and expatriate, during those tumultuous decades could, in some ways, be viewed as a strategic asset. The different terrains and adversaries confronted by Louis XIII’s armies in their continent-spanning operations — from the waterlogged plains of the Low Countries to the craggy defiles of Alpine Italy or Switzerland — certainly called for a mixture of strategies and for different forms of force structure. In other instances, however, Richelieu was clearly at pains to find enough commanders with the kind of experience needed for the most important theater of operations — the northeastern frontier. This was not only where Madrid chose to concentrate most of its elite units, it was also where the nature of the terrain (as evidenced during the Habsburg advance to Corbie in 1636) made large-scale enemy encroachments both most likely and difficult to counter. Inevitably, there were fierce debates in Paris over the distribution of finite military resources and the use of the handful of talented generals, as well as over how to prioritize the different military theaters.
[167] The northeastern front was often privileged to the detriment of other contested areas, such as Italy or the Valtelline, where — despite Henri de Rohan’s consummate military skill — the French expeditionary force eventually dissolved once the slow stream of funding and provisions sputtered to a halt.
[168]
Having enumerated the multitudinous difficulties that the Bourbon monarchy had to contend with during this period, it is necessary to stress two facts. First, despite all of these challenges — whether in command and control, logistics, or domestic stability — the French war effort was somehow maintained.
[169] Second, perhaps most importantly, France’s organizational frailties and deficiencies were hardly unique. Across Europe, chief ministers and private secretaries grappled with a similar set of challenges as the small and overburdened bureaucracies they oversaw groaned under the pressure of resourcing and coordinating protracted military operations waged on an unprecedented scale across multiple theaters.
[170] Spain’s Count-Duke Olivares was no exception to this rule, and in fact faced some far more serious problems of his own. Like Richelieu, the volcanic Spaniard had to navigate the treacherous world of court politics with its webs of patronage and cronyism. And just like his French nemesis, Olivares groused about the dearth of qualified commanders and the unreliability of his allies, and was often in a wretched mental state, overworked, depressed, and plagued with insomnia. Indeed, he often appeared on the verge of buckling under the mental weight of coordinating a multifront campaign across a far larger and less geographically cohesive space than that confronted by Richelieu.
[171] However, whereas his French rival could increasingly rely on the expansion of domestic taxation to offset some of the exorbitant costs of military operations, Olivares remained heavily dependent on the steady flow of wealth — primarily silver — from Spain’s overseas colonies.
[172] This revenue progressively dwindled as the yield of South American silver mines slowly declined and Spanish treasure fleets found themselves mercilessly hounded across the seven seas by increasingly powerful naval opponents, particularly the Dutch. The latter had made substantial inroads in Brazil and the West Indies and Spain’s transatlantic trade routes were now perpetually at risk. Dutch gains in Brazil, and Spain’s inability to protect Lisbon’s possessions from their encroachments, had the added effect of further aggravating Philip IV’s Portuguese subjects, who were already resentful over their heightened levels of financial contribution to the Spanish Empire’s collective defense.
[173]
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Spain’s system of “composite” monarchy, whereby Philip IV ruled from the Castilian heartland over a union of different territories with unique local traditions and varying levels of autonomy, was a constant source of frustration for Olivares — and of competitive advantage for Richelieu.
[174] Despite the Spanish chief minister’s zeal for internal consolidation, he faced an uphill battle in his campaign to more evenly apportion the cost of the war effort across Spain’s non-Castilian dominions. His attempts to reform and expand taxation and his plans for a “union of arms,” which proposed the creation of a reserve force of 140,000 men more equitably financed and recruited across Spanish territories, provoked widespread dissatisfaction in Catalonia and Portugal.
[175] Richelieu and his agents gleefully kept tabs on the diffusion of such sentiments and cultivated the hope that — galvanized by the pressures of war — they would eventually grow into full-fledged secessionist movements.
Both chief ministers were fully cognizant of the inadequacies of their respective state bureaucracies for the prosecution of such an onerous and large-scale war of attrition. Spain’s attempt to force France into a negotiated settlement by delivering a knock-out blow in the early stages of the war had floundered, and, as a result, Olivares now pinned his hopes on Richelieu either being forcibly ousted from power or succumbing to one of his many illnesses. This was a perfectly rational calculation. After all, the French were war-weary and Richelieu was deeply unpopular, was riddled with various ailments from crippling migraines to weeping abscesses, and had an occasionally fraught relationship with his royal patron. Moreover, were he to fall from grace, it was reasonable to assume that he and his accompanying network of
politiques would be replaced with a power structure far more amenable to Spain’s interests and world vision.
[176] Unfortunately for Olivares, the cardinal possessed both an uncanny gift for political survival and a robust counter-intelligence apparatus. As the war dragged on with no sign of resolution, the Spanish chief minister became increasingly desperate, covertly sponsoring a number of French schemes to remove the cardinal and feverishly discussing elaborate plots for his assassination.
[177] Richelieu, for his part, continued to bet on Spain’s eventual dislocation and on its inability to weather the steady onslaughts from a more concentrated and populous country such as France.
In the event, history smiled on the cardinal, who won his strategic wager. On the military front, French armies and proxies finally began to make some progress, making inroads into both Flanders and Imperial German territory. Joint Habsburg military operations became ever rarer as the Holy Roman Empire focused the bulk of its forces against the Swedes. In 1637, the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II died and was replaced by his son, Ferdinand III, a man with a greater appetite for compromise and a new willingness to shed the formalized military alliance with Spain in favor of conflict resolution.
[178] Richelieu’s fledgling navy also proved its worth, playing an important ancillary role in support of southward-facing land campaigns and winning a series of small but significant maritime skirmishes in the Mediterranean and along the Spanish coastline.
[179] A new generation of talented generals — such as Louis II of Bourbon (later known as Le Grand Condé) and Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Viscount of Turenne — came of age, and French forces consolidated their control over Artois and portions of Northern Italy as well as Alsace and Lorraine. A cordon of military outposts was established across the upper Rhine and the southern Roussillon was occupied.
[180] Most importantly, in 1640 Spain was finally engulfed by its internal tensions — as Richelieu had predicted — with both Catalonia and Portugal rebelling against their Castilian overlords and allying with France. In Catalonia, the ringleaders of the popular revolt opportunistically invoked ancient treaties from the time of Charlemagne and swore allegiance to Louis XIII, who promptly dispatched troops to garrison his new protectorate. Spain only succeeded in recapturing the renegade province twelve years later in 1652. In the case of Portugal, however, the divorce proved more permanent — after decades of bitter struggle, the Portuguese obtained their full independence in 1668.
These developments almost fatally impeded the Spanish war effort. Cursing the fickleness of his crimson-garbed foe, a broken Olivares lamented the fact that Madrid was now “reduced to a new war inside Spain which is already costing millions, at a time when we already find ourselves in terrible straits.”
[181] As Sir Richard Lodge later noted, events had
undergone a startling change since 1636. In that year the Spaniards had been victors on French soil, and their advance had excited a panic in the French capital. In 1640 France was not only secure against invasion, but its frontier had been advanced in the east, in the north, and in the south, and its great rival, Spain, was threatened with imminent dissolution. The connection with the Netherlands was already destroyed, and the French fleet in the Mediterranean made communication with Italy difficult and dangerous. In the peninsula itself two provinces were in open revolt, and one of them seemed likely to become a part of France.[182]
From then on — and although Spain would continue to wage war on its neighbor for almost two more decades — the strategic pendulum began to swing ever more strongly in France’s direction. Three years later, in 1643, the French army crushed a large Spanish force at the battle of Rocroi, in northeastern France, earning a spectacular and resounding victory.
[183]
Richelieu, however, was no longer there to see it. Exhausted and emaciated, he had finally succumbed to one of his many afflictions a few months prior, on a wintry day in December 1642. In the weeks leading up to Richelieu’s death, the king paid his longstanding adviser a final visit. Surrounded by a gaggle of nervous physicians, coughing up blood, and struggling to speak between fits of hacking coughs, the cardinal leaned toward his monarch and engaged in a final defense of his policies.
[184] Whispering that he knew his days were numbered, he confided that he could comfort himself with the knowledge that he had left the “kingdom in the highest degree of glory and reputation it has ever been, and all [the king’s] enemies cast down and humiliated.”
[185] Legend has it that a few days later, as he received his final rites, the statesman was asked whether he wished to forgive any of his numerous enemies. The cardinal responded that there was nothing and nobody to forgive. After all, he personally had never had any true enemies — other, of course, than those of the state.
[186]
Assessing Richelieu's Grand Strategy
The Embodiment of Prudentia?
In the introductory chapter to his
Testament Politique, which he entitled “General Statement of the Royal Program,” Richelieu provides a succinct overview of the kingdom’s state of affairs when he was elevated to the rank of chief minister in 1624. Addressing himself directly to the king, he delivers a grim diagnosis of France’s former fragility in the following terms:
When Your Majesty resolved to admit me both to your council and to an important place in your confidence for the direction of your affairs, I may say that the Huguenots shared the state with you; that the nobles conducted themselves as if they were not your subjects, and the most powerful governors of the provinces as if they were sovereign in their offices. (…) I may further say that foreign alliances were scorned, private interests being preferred to those of the public, and in a word, the dignity of the royal majesty was so disparaged, and so different from what it should be, because of the misdeeds of those who conducted your affairs, that it was almost impossible to recognize it.[187]
Thereupon, he continues,
I dared to promise you, with assurance, that you would soon find remedies for the disorders in your state, and that your prudence, your courage, and the benediction of God would give a new aspect to this realm. I promised Your Majesty to employ all my industry and all the authority which it would please you to give me to ruin the Huguenot party, to abase the pride of the nobles, to bring all your subjects back to their duty, and to restore your reputation among foreign nations to the station it ought to occupy. In the broadest outline, Sire, these have been the matters with which Your Majesty’s reign has thus far been concluded. I would consider them most happily concluded if they were followed by an era of repose during which you could introduce into your realm a wealth of benefits of all types.[188]
This has generally been viewed as a frank and cogent encapsulation — “a broad outline” in the cardinal’s own words — of Richelieu’s agenda and his desire to address his country’s challenges in a neatly sequential fashion, first, by consolidating the monarchy’s domestic power, and, second, by restoring its primacy and reputation abroad. In one of his missives to Father Joseph, he provided a tripartite structure for this combination of internal and external balancing, noting that upon taking office “three things” had “entered his mind”:
First to ruin the Huguenots and render the king absolute in his state; second, to abase the House of Austria [by which he meant the Habsburgs with both their dynastic branches]; and third to discharge the French people of heavy subsidies and taxes.[189]
It is interesting to note that in both cases, he was intent on alleviating the French people’s economic suffering once it was clear that France had regained its international position. This once again runs counter to the notion that he was completely insensitive to the plight of common folk. More importantly for the purposes of this study, however, Richelieu’s writings indicate that over the course of his 18 years as chief minister his day-to-day policy decisions were being made under a clear, overarching intellectual framework for restoring French grandeur, a set of “action-oriented principles” prioritizing and connecting “threats to an overarching vision of the state’s role in the world” — in other words, a grand strategy.
[190] At a time when the very notion of grand strategy is viewed with a certain skepticism, with many dismissing the concept as woolly and ethereal, or as an artificial and retrospective reordering of messy policy processes (“randomness parading as design”), Richelieu’s experience reminds us that, in some cases, statesmen do operate under the guidance of a clear long-term vision.
[191]
Naturally, the pursuit of Richelieu’s three-part agenda was not as smooth and linear as his self-promotional
Testament Politique, written in his twilight years, would suggest. As one historian notes, “rather than being a precisely ordered chronological agenda, there was a great deal of moving back and forth.”
[192] Strategy, as Sir Lawrence Freedman reminds us, is as much a matter of process as of design and this process “evolves through a series of states, each not quite as anticipated or hoped for, requiring a reappraisal and modification of the original strategy.”
[193] Whether in terms of Richelieu’s financial or military initiatives, there was a fair amount of ad-hocism and improvisation. This was due, in large part, to the manifold bureaucratic limitations of the early modern French state — but not only. Decision-making in 17th-century Europe unfolded within a very distinct and elaborate constellation of pre-existing networks of aristocratic clientelism. Richelieu was certainly adept at playing the game of patronage politics, but this relentless flow of intrigue also consumed a lot of his time and energy and rendered a purely rationalized and meritocratic approach to government almost impossible. As we have seen, these socio-cultural constraints also adversely affected France’s military performance, most notably in the early years of
la guerre ouverte with the Habsburgs. Important domestic reforms, such as the prohibition of dueling, were often unevenly applied, suspended, or even abandoned for temporary expediency, particularly if they triggered excessive degrees of aristocratic opposition.
At the same time, as one of the greatest French historians of the period reminds us, the greatness of certain leaders depends largely “on the quality of their intelligence and their effectiveness in the conditions of their epoch.”
[194] If one is to adopt this more measured and discriminating mode of evaluation, it hardly seems controversial to state that Richelieu was a singularly talented statesman and that, despite the occasionally inconsistent, incomplete, or spasmodic nature of his individual initiatives, he demonstrated a remarkable “continuity in the realization of his general aims.”
[195]
[quote id="10"]
The chief minister was the first to recognize that any successful grand strategy must possess a degree of plasticity and that security managers should preserve the ability to adapt to sudden changes in circumstances. As contemporary scholars have noted, grand strategy “exists in a world of flux” and “constant change and adaptation must be its companions if it is to succeed.”
[196] “At best,” suggests one historian, it can provide an “intellectual reference point” for dealing with evolving challenges and “a process by which dedicated policy makers can seek to bring their day-to-day actions into better alignments with their country’s enduring interests.”
[197] Richelieu was perfectly cognizant of these enduring truths and in his writings consistently and eloquently stressed the need to adhere to a political wisdom structured around compromise and adaptability — prudence in the classical sense — when advancing a country’s interests. Any quest for policy perfection or moral purity when conducting affairs of state thus ran the risk of backfiring; seeking to adhere to overly formalized rules, theories, or schools of thoughts was profoundly misguided. The best rule when taking important decisions, he quipped, was precisely “to have no general rule.”
[198] Within large and rambunctious societies, major domestic reforms should be undertaken with care and with an eye both to the limitations of the state to enact immediate change and to the potential for societal unrest that could result from their forcible imposition. Thus,
it is sometimes a matter of prudence to water down remedies to make them more effective; and orders that conform more to reason, because sometimes they are not well suited to the capacities of those called upon to execute them.[199]
In one particularly revealing analogy, Richelieu observed that
An architect who, by the excellence of his craft, rectifies the defects of an ancient building and who, without demolishing it, restores it to a tolerable symmetry, merits far more praise than the one who ruins it to erect a new and seemingly perfect edifice.[200]
Richelieu’s interpretation of the concept of prudence should not be equated, however, with the modern interpretation of the word, i.e., caution and a penchant for ponderousness or watchful inactivity. In some cases, it was certainly necessary to bide one’s time, husband one’s resources, and build up one’s strength. Other situations, however, called for decisive action, and for a measure of boldness and alacrity.
[201] The soundness of such actions — and their eventual success — was directly tied to the validity and coherence of France’s long-term planning, for,
experience shows that, if one foresees from far away the designs to be undertaken, one can act with speed when the moment comes to execute them.[202]
The first approach, he claimed, had paid rich dividends during the period of
guerre couverte, from 1624 to 1635, and the king, he crowed, had “demonstrated a singular prudence,” by “occupying all the forces of the enemies of his state with those of his allies,” and by putting his hand “on his purse and not on his sword.”
[203] The second approach had proved necessary after the battle of Nördlingen, when it became clear that France would need to come directly to the aid of its allies “when they no longer appeared capable of surviving alone.” France chose to launch a multifront war, thus preempting and confounding Spain’s own plans to deliver a knock-out blow. Dissipating their neighbor’s strategic attention and resources had played a fundamental role in France’s success, noted Richelieu:
Pursuing such simultaneous attacks in such a variety of places—something that even the Romans and Ottomans never accomplished—would no doubt seem to many people to be of great temerity and imprudence. And yet, while it is proof of your power, it is also strong proof of your judgment, as it was necessary to focus the attention of your enemies in all places so they could be invincible in none.[204]
To what degree are these self-congratulatory statements justified? If one peruses the commentaries of his foreign contemporaries, who often admired and despised him in equal measure, the answer is quite a bit. Shortly after having received news of Richelieu’s death, a soon-to-be disgraced Olivares penned a memorandum that directly attributed “the acute situation in which we (Spain) now find ourselves” to the machinations of his hated rival, noting that under the latter’s leadership,
France against all right and reason has attacked us on every front, and has stripped Your Majesty of entire kingdoms in Spain by resorting to hideous treachery, and has provoked such a universal convulsion that the possibility of salvaging even a portion has generally been considered very slight.[205]
Even some of Richelieu’s harshest critics have been at pains to deny that the country he diligently served over the course of so many years was territorially larger, institutionally more robust, and militarily more powerful than when he came into office. As Olivares lamented, the cardinal’s policies had undoubtedly accelerated the process of Spanish decline.
[206] By the mid-1600s, third-party observers, such as the English politician Algernon Sidney, were already writing that
The vast power of Spain that within these thirty years made the world tremble, is now like a carcass without blood and spirits, so that everyone expects the dissolution of it.[207]
France’s subsidization of Spain’s many foes had bled Madrid dry, its alliance with Portugal had fractured the Iberian Peninsula, and Richelieu’s careful nurturing of his cherished fleet meant that France was now a maritime power to be reckoned with. The chief minister’s many initiatives on the cultural front, from the creation of the
Académie Française to the foundation of the
Imprimerie Royale, revitalized French soft power and buttressed the aspirational self-image of its elites. Richelieu not only set the stage for future French military dominance, he also — through his various propaganda efforts and promotion of
politique writings that stressed trans-confessional patriotism and unity — arguably laid the ideational cement for the more modern and missionary form of French nationalism that would erupt in the late 18th century. As international relations theorists have noted, a country’s strategic adjustment to evolving geopolitical circumstances is not merely the result of “shifts in the pattern of interests and power,” or in the structure of their political institutions, but also hinges upon evolutions in how that country’s leaders “visualize their world, their society’s mission in that world, and the relationship between military power and political ends.”
[208] Richelieu’s vision for French foreign policy — with France playing a leading and arbitral role in a Europe of pacified nation-states whose relations are more defined by secular than confessional interests — is one that has endured and that, one could argue, endures in the Elysée Palace to this day.
All of this, of course, came at a heavy price, a price disproportionately borne by France’s peasantry that suffered year after year of famine and privation. Years of subsidized warfare may have proven more cost-effective in terms of blood and treasure than total war, but it remained onerous and was only made possible by the imposition of crushing levels of taxation. It may well be, as the great 19th-century historian Lord Acton reluctantly posited, that European kingdoms such as France needed to traverse a period of repressive absolutism before attaining the internal coherence within which modern liberalism could flourish.
[209] This does not render any of the more brutally authoritarian aspects of the thoughts of 17th-century statesmen such as Richelieu any less distasteful or painful to a modern reader. Some historians have viewed the series of revolts of
La Fronde, which ravaged France from 1648 to 1653, as a direct result — and backlash against — the more oppressive aspects of Richelieu’s absolutist reforms. It is only fair, notes Elliott, to recognize that “The Fronde, as much as the France of Louis XIV, is the legacy of Richelieu.”
[210]
[quote id="11"]
Once again, however, France’s grand strategy under the reign of Louis XIII — who deserves his own share of credit for his kingdom’s reforms and foreign policy triumphs — should be judged in accordance with the characteristics and specificities of the era.
[211] At a time when all European rulers brutally repressed their subjects, and the lay, democratic nation-state was not even a glimmer on the historical horizon, would France’s peasants “have gained very much by remaining the subjects of a weakened realm,” delivered, yet again, to the rapaciousness of feuding warlords and foreign powers?
[212] With regard to the practice of French statecraft, in particular, there is little doubt that the achievements of the Louis XIII and Richelieu “duumvirate” were remarkable. Indeed, they appear all the more so when juxtaposed with the unilateral, hubristic, and ultimately self-defeating policies of Louis XIII’s successor, Louis XIV.
The Inexorability of Hubris?
As if to emphasize one last time the entangled nature of their complex relationship, Louis XIII followed Richelieu to the grave only a few months after the cardinal’s passing. Thereupon followed an extended period during which — Louis XIV not having yet reached maturity — Anne of Austria ruled as regent of France and Cardinal Jules Mazarin served as chief minister. Personally selected by Richelieu as his successor, Mazarin proved to be a wise choice — at least with regard to the conduct of foreign policy.
[213] While his heavy-handed approach to domestic affairs may have helped stoke the resentment which eventually led to
La Fronde, his practice of diplomacy was largely in continuity with Richelieu’s and demonstrated a keen sense of prudence along with a shrewd appreciation for the virtues of multilateralism.
[214] During the tortuous negotiations leading up to the Peace of Westphalia, Mazarin paid close attention to the interests and views of France’s weaker allies and ensured that his country’s commitments were respected. In this, he
demonstrated that alliances between strong and weak players can work best when the former operates as sponsor of the latter rather than treating them as dispensable junior partners.[215]
Unfortunately, this sagacious brand of statecraft did not survive Mazarin’s death in 1661. In the years that followed, a young, unfettered and
gloire-obsessed Louis XIV began to pursue an increasingly reckless and expansionist foreign policy. Drawing on the immense resources of a country at the zenith of its power, the Sun King launched a series of bloody wars of conquest. Over the course of his long reign, he massively increased the size of France’s armed forces, heightened internal repression, and — with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 — reprised royal persecution of the Protestant minority. This was not only ruinous to France’s civil society and economy, with the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Huguenots overseas, but also immensely damaging to its international prestige.
[216]
Louis XIV’s military expansionism and general disdain for the interests of France’s allies resulted in the country’s isolation, its eventual bankruptcy, and the formation of a series of European coalitions designed to contest French dominance. The term
raison d’état was now increasingly associated with French arrogance and assertiveness rather than with prudence and circumspection.
[217]
It is no doubt revealing that when the first edition of Richelieu’s
Testament Politique was released, several decades after the statesman’s death and at the height of Louis XIV’s reign, it was from the press of a French Protestant living in exile in Amsterdam. The posthumous publication of the cardinal’s recollections and ruminations was intended to serve a didactic purpose, by highlighting the differences between the more enlightened attitudes toward religious tolerance and foreign policy that had prevailed under his tenure, and the rank chauvinism that had come to characterize the rule of Louis XIV.
[218] Foreign commentators expressed their concern and bewilderment over France’s sudden strategic metamorphosis, and the same accusations that Richelieu and the
politiques had once levied at Madrid — of its pretensions of hegemony and universal monarchy — were now directed toward Versailles.
[219] John Lynn notes that France’s increased disdain for its allies was closely tied to its own ascendancy on the continent, which led Louis XIV to see France as “powerful enough to fight alone if it had to,” which, in turn, made him “unwilling to accommodate the interests and outlooks of others.”
[220]
This raises an important question, notes one historian:
[A]t what point, theoretically speaking, does an ascending hegemon cross the threshold from being a Westphalian guarantor of a general peace in Christendom to become something else, a predatory monarchia universalis or, perhaps, a would-be “imperial power”?[221]
More broadly, are dominant states condemned to periods of self-defeating hubris? Some contemporary political scientists have suggested, for instance, that American grand strategy is locked in a repeating cycle, oscillating between eras of isolation and international engagement, with periods of damaging unilateralism or more constructive internationalism in between.
[222] Is prudence therefore both period-dependent and a function of relative weakness (or the fear of becoming the weaker party)? Was French strategic competence under Richelieu largely a result of such perceptions of weakness? Does primacy and the absence of serious peer competitors systematically breed complacency over time, ultimately leading to hubris?
[223] If so, how can a nation either mitigate or preempt such a natural tendency?
Fully answering such complex questions is beyond the remit of this study. One remedial action, however, might be to follow the guidance of early Baroque theorists of statecraft such as Botero, and to pay closer attention both to the lessons of history and to the trials and tribulations of historical statesmen such as Richelieu. Tsar Peter the Great clearly shared this opinion. While riding through the streets of Paris on an official state visit in 1717, he suddenly called his carriage to a clattering halt, and requested to make a stop at the chapel of La Sorbonne. After standing a moment in respectful silence before the great marble sarcophagus, the Russian Tsar is reported to have suddenly exclaimed,
Great man, if you were alive today, I would shortly give you half my empire on condition you would teach me to govern the other half![224]
Iskander Rehman is the Senior Fellow for International Relations at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, and an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. The author would like to thank TNSR
’s editorial team, three anonymous reviewers, and the gracious staff of the diplomatic archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in La Courneuve, and the French National Archives, in Paris. Research for this article was made possible, in part, through the support of the Office of Net Assessment, Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense.
Image:
National Gallery
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[lead] => Renowned for his fierce intellect, mastery of the dark arts of propaganda, and unshakeable belief in the centralizing virtues of the French monarchy, Cardinal Richelieu’s actions as chief minister under Louis XIII from 1624 to 1642 have been heatedly debated by generations of historians, political philosophers, novelists, and biographers. The polarizing figure is best known for three things: his unabashed authoritarianism, his efforts to stiffen the sinews of the French state, and his decision to position France as a counterweight to Habsburg hegemony through a network of alliances with Protestant powers. This article focuses on this last aspect of Richelieu’s life and legacy: his conception and practice of great power competition. What philosophy of power and statecraft underpinned the cardinal’s approach to counter-hegemonic balancing? To what extent was Richelieu truly successful, and what insights can contemporary security managers derive from his policies and actions? Drawing on both primary and secondary literature, this essay engages in a detailed and interdisciplinary study of Richelieu’s grand strategy during the Thirty Years’ War.
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[text] => Richelieu was raised in a country rent by confessional divisions, wracked with penury and famine, and haunted by the specter of its own decline.
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[text] => The early 17th century bore witness to a revival of interest in these myth-shrouded eras of France’s past and contemporary texts frequently reprised the medieval papal designation of the French as God’s “chosen people,” or peuple élu.
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[text] => For classically educated nationalists such as Richelieu, it appeared evident that France was in many ways the new Rome and Spain — with its kaleidoscope of ethnicities, dispersed territories, and maritime empire — was Carthage.
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[text] => Richelieu’s suppression of the Huguenot uprising was part of a broader effort to do away with alternative power centers or codes of loyalty within France...
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[text] => For close to a century, since the early 1500s, France and Spain had jostled for control over the "portes" or gateways that provided staging points into their respective heartlands...
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[text] => In a country still reeling from decades of civil strife, many wanted to focus on domestic recovery and reducing the burden of taxation that helped finance France’s foreign military ventures and proxies — even if it came at the cost of appeasing Spain.
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[text] => By the spring of 1635, however, it was clear to Richelieu that this strategy, which had served France so well over the past decade, could no longer continue.
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[text] => The decision to empower and deploy additional numbers of intendants was part of a broader move toward greater bureaucratic control over every aspect of the French war effort, from taxation to infrastructure development.
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[text] => Unfortunately for Olivares, the cardinal possessed both an uncanny gift for political survival and a robust counter-intelligence apparatus.
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[text] => Richelieu’s writings indicate that over the course of his 18 years as chief minister his day-to-day policy decisions were being made under a clear, overarching intellectual framework for restoring French grandeur...
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[text] => Richelieu’s vision for French foreign policy...is one that has endured, and that, one could argue, endures in the Elysée Palace to this day.
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[1] Léon Gabriel Toraude,
Les Tribulations Posthumes de la Tête de Richelieu (Paris: Vigot Frères, 1928), 6.
[2] See Alexandra Stara,
The Museum of French Monuments 1795-1816: Killing Art to Make History (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013), 52–53.
[3] For two excellent overviews of how Richelieu has been viewed over the centuries, see Robert Knecht, “Cardinal Richelieu: Hero or Villain?”
History Today 53, no. 3 (2003): 10-17,
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/cardinal-richelieu-hero-or-villain; and Joseph Bergin, “Three Faces of Richelieu: A Historiographical Essay,”
French History 23, no. 4 (2009): 517–36,
https://doi.org/10.1093/fh/crp070.
[4] For example, see Voltaire,
Le Siècle de Louis XIV (Paris: Folio, 2015 Edition), chap. 2; Victor Hugo,
Marion DeLorme (Paris: Editions Broché, 2012 Edition); Alfred de Vigny,
Cinq-Mars (Paris: Folio, 1980 Edition); and Hilaire Belloc,
Richelieu: A Study (New York: Garden City Publishing, 1929).
[5] This is the view partially taken, for example, by Etienne Thuau in
Raison d’Etat et Pensée Politique à l’Epoque de Richelieu (Paris: Armand Colin, 1966). On the “Jacobin legend” of Richelieu, which was particularly prevalent in 19th century French historiography, see Marie-Catherine Souleyreau,
Richelieu ou la Quête d’Europe (Paris: Flammarion, 2008), 11.
[6] Jörg Wollenberg,
Richelieu: Staatsräson und Kircheninteresse: Zur Legitimation der Politik des Kardinalpremier (Bielfeld: Pfeffersche Buchhandlung, 1977).
[7] Henry Kissinger,
World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History (New York: Random House, 2014), 20.
[8] As Francis Gavin has noted, “An understanding of the past doesn’t just reveal how things relate over time; history can also expose ‘horizontal’ connections over space and in depth. … Good horizontal historical work can reveal the complex interconnections and trade-offs that permeate most foreign policies.” Francis J. Gavin,
Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 14. For a compelling discussion of the importance of historical analysis in the field of security studies, see Hal Brands and William Inboden, “Wisdom Without Tears: Statecraft and the Uses of History,”
Journal of Strategic Studies 41, no. 3 (2018): 1–31,
https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2018.1428797.
[9] As one well-known scholar of the period has noted, “the strengthening of the state within its borders he [Richelieu] believed necessary not only to discipline the French and channel their energies into the most profitable pursuits, but also to provide the indispensable material support of hostilities against the Habsburgs.” See William Farr Church,
Richelieu and Reason of State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 302.
[10] While there has been a debate among historians over whether the battle of Rocroi truly constituted a “decisive battle,” there is no doubt that the French victory over Spain was viewed by both nations’ leaderships as something of a turning point in the competition. See, for example, Fernando González de León,
The Road to Rocroi: Class, Culture, and Command in the Spanish Army of Flanders 1567-1659 (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2009).
[11] Philippe Ariès,
Les Temps de l’Histoire (Paris: Plon, 1954), 298.
[12] This point is made by Etienne Thuau, when commenting on 17th-century French theorists of
raison d’état more broadly. According to Thuau, this body of thought was too composite in its origins, elastic in its definitions, and action-oriented to constitute what we would now call an “intellectual system.” See Etienne Thuau,
Raison d’Etat et Pensée Politique à l’Epoque de Richelieu (Paris: Armand Colin, 1966), 411–21.
[13] Alfred A. Franklin,
La Sorbonne, Ses Origines, Sa Bibliothèque, Les Débuts de l’Imprimerie à Paris, et la Succession de Richelieu d’Apres les Documents Inédits, 2
nd Ed. (Paris: L. Willem, 1875), 151–71.
[14] Richelieu,
Testament Politique, 2nd Ed. (Paris: Perrin, 2017), 185. On the importance attached to the writings of Tacitus and Cicero in 16th- and early 17th-century France, see J.H.M. Salmon, “Cicero and Tacitus in Sixteenth-Century France,”
The American Historical Review 85, no. 2 (1980): 307–31,
https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/85.2.307.
[15] As one recent academic study of leaders’ decision-making notes, early life experiences matter “in part because they form a mental Rolodex that both citizens and leaders turn to when making strategic decisions in the future.” See “Introduction,” in Michael C. Horowitz, Allan C. Stam, and Cali M. Ellis,
Why Leaders Fight (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). For an excellent study of the importance of leaders’ individual threat perceptions and personalized belief systems more broadly, see Elizabeth Saunders,
Leaders at War: How Presidents Shape Military Interventions (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011).
[16] Carl J. Burkhardt,
Richelieu: His Rise to Power (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), 162.
[17] On France’s wars of religion and their effects on the French economy and society, see Nicolas Le Roux,
Les Guerres de Religion 1559-1629 (Paris: Editions Belin, 2011).
[18] Roland Mousnier,
L’Homme Rouge ou la Vie du Cardinal de Richelieu (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1992), 28.
[19] This vicious vendetta is memorably described in Eleanor C. Price,
Cardinal De Richelieu (New York: McBride, Nast and Company, 1912), 5.
[20] Roland Mousnier,
L’Homme Rouge, 24.
[21] As Jean-Vincent Blanchard notes, this was somewhat unusual, as many of Henri III’s paladins remained reluctant to swear allegiance to their new king prior to his official conversion to Catholicism in 1593. See, Jean-Vincent Blanchard,
Eminence: Cardinal Richelieu and the Rise of France (New York: Walker Publishing, 2011), 12.
[22] Richelieu had initially been on track for a military career, but this training was cut short when one of his elder brothers, Alphonse, refused to take up the bishopric of Luçon as planned, deciding instead to become a Carthusian monk. The responsibility for the bishopric then fell on the shoulders of the younger sibling, Armand.
[23] François de Clary,
Philippiques, Contre les Bulles et Autres Pratiques de la Faction d’Espagne (Tours, 1592). Author’s translation of the French.
[24] de Clary,
Philippiques, Contre les Bulles et Autres Pratiques.
[25] The League had first emerged in 1576 as a grouping of reactionary Catholic nobles in favor of a more oppressive religious policy. Over time, some leaguers had become increasingly radical and hostile to the French crown, welcoming aid from antagonistic foreign powers such as Spain and — in a few noteworthy cases — openly advocating regicide. On the ideology of the Catholic League, see Frederic J. Baumgartner,
Radical Reactionaries: The Political Thought of the French Catholic League (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1975); and Jean-Marie Constant,
La Ligue (Paris: Fayard, 1996).
[26] For a good overview of the French wars of religion, see Robert Jean Knecht,
The French Religious Wars: 1562-1598 (Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2002). See also, James B. Woods, “The Impact of the Wars of Religion: A View of France in 1581,”
Sixteenth Century Journal 15, no. 2 (Summer 1984): 131–68,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2541435.
[27] The French historian Michel Cassan has described how in the wake of the assassination French Protestant and Catholic communities, fearful of another descent into chaos and violence, preemptively renewed their “confessional coexistence pacts” in order to preserve stability. See, Michel Cassan,
La Grande Peur de 1610: Les Français et l’Assassinat de Henri IV (Paris: Champ Vallon, 2010).
[28] See the magisterial work of the French historian Colette Beaune in
Naissance de la Nation France (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1985). On late medieval, and early modern manifestations of patriotism more broadly, see Joseph R. Strayer,
On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970).
[29] The French diplomat Jacques Bongars’ compilation in 1611 of a number of historic chronicles of the Crusades under the title “Gesta Dei per Francos,” (God’s Deeds Through the Franks) proved particularly influential in reinvigorating the notion of the French as God’s chosen people.
[30] See, Myriam Yardeni,
La Conscience Nationale en France Pendant les Guerres de Religion (Paris: Editions Nauwelaerts, 1971), 32–37. It is worth noting that Richelieu also alludes to France’s demographic superiority over Spain as providing it with an edge in any long-term competition. See, for example, Richelieu,
Testament Politique, 268.
[31] On Gallicanism as a political ideology, see Jotham Parsons,
The Church in the Republic: Gallicanism and Political Ideology in Renaissance France (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 185–223.
[32] As historians such as Marc Bloch have noted, this concept of sacred kingship took root at the intersection of two traditions: the
philosophy of the French monarchy, which was defended by theorists such as Jean Bodin who viewed the king as the sole guarantor of unity and enforcer of sovereignty over an otherwise divided nation, and the
religion of the French monarchy, which drew on folk traditions and village mysticism in a predominantly rural and deeply superstitious country. See, Marc Bloch,
Les Rois Thaumaturges: Etude sur le Caractère Surnaturel Attribué à la Puissance Royale, Particulièrement en France et en Angleterre (Paris: Gallimard, 1983 Ed.); and Julian H. Franklin,
Jean Bodin and the Rise of Absolutist Theory (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
[33] See, E.C. Caldwell, “The Hundred Years’ War and National Identity,” in
Inscribing the Hundred Years’ War in French and English Cultures, ed. D.N. Baker (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), 237–65; and Paul Cohen, “In Search of the Trojan Origins of the French: The Uses of History in the Elevation of the Vernacular in Early Modern France,” in
Fantasies of Troy: Classical Tales and the Social Imaginary in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Alan Shephard and Stephen D. Powell (Toronto: Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2004), 63–81.
[34] On China’s revisionist instrumentalization of its imperial history, see Howard French,
Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power (New York: Vintage Books, 2017).
[35] This hegemonic ambition was most notoriously laid out by the Dominican friar Tommaso Campanella in his 1600 treatise,
A Discourse Touching the Spanish Monarchy: Laying Down Directions and Practices Whereby the King of Spain May Attain a Universal Monarchy. For a detailed analysis of Spanish writings on universal monarchy, see Anthony Pagden,
Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination: Studies in European and Spanish-American Social and Political Theory 1513-1830 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 37–65.
[36] On the strength of anti-Spanish sentiment, which often went hand in hand with a desire for greater French unity, see Alain Tallon
, Conscience Nationale et Sentiment Religieux en France au XVIème Siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2009), 56–58; and Yardeni,
La Conscience Nationale en France.
[37] Seigneur de Brantôme,
Oeuvres Complètes Tome III (Paris: Editions Hachette, 2013 Ed.), 615–16. Author’s translation from the French.
[38] See, Anne-Marie Cocula, “Des Héros Sans Gloire: Les Grands Capitaines des Guerres de Religion Vus par Brantôme,”
Nouvelle Revue du XVIème Siècle 12, no. 1 (1994): 79–90,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25598774; Arlette Jouanna,
Ordre Social, Mythes et Hiérarchies dans la France du XVIème Siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1977); and Nicolas Le Roux, “Honneur et Fidélité: Les Dilemmes de l’Obéissance Nobiliaire au Temps des Troubles de Religion,”
Nouvelle Revue du XVIème Siècle 22, no. 1 (2004): 127–46,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25599006.
[39] See for example, Richelieu,
Testament Politique, 268–69.
[40] As the German historian Friedrich Meinecke wrote in the 1920s, the Florentine’s provocative reflections on ethics and statecraft constituted “a sword which was plunged into the flank of the body politic of Western humanity, causing it to shriek and rear up.” See, Friedrich Meinecke,
Machiavellianism: The Doctrine of Raison d’Etat and Its Place in Modern History (New York: Routledge, 2017), 49.
[41] Following Henri IV’s assassination, his wife Marie de Medici had ruled as regent for a decade before her son Louis XIII came of age. She and her Italian adviser Concino Concini were deeply unpopular and had been frequently accused of “Machiavellianism”
— i.e., corrupt and devious behavior
— by a hostile and xenophobic French populace. See, Henry Heller,
Anti-Italianism in Sixteenth Century France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003).
[42] See, Michel de Montaigne,
Essais Tome 2 (Paris: Folio, 2009 Ed.), 157. Author’s translation from the French. On the rise of Tacitism, see Alexandra Gadja, “Tacitus and Political Thought in Early Modern Europe, c.1530-c.1640,” in
The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus, ed. A.J. Woodman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 253–69.
[43] Adrianna E. Bakos, “Qui Nescit Dissimulare, Nescit Regnare: Louis XI and Raison D’Etat During the Reign of Louis XIII,”
Journal of the History of Ideas 52, no. 3 (1991): 399–416,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2710044. Slowly but surely, Tacitus came to be viewed less as a diagnostician of the decay of civil liberties under the Roman Principate, and more as the father of prudence, and the “patron of state vigilance.” For one such example of Tacitist writing in 17th-century France, see Rodolphe Le Maistre, who famously described Tacitus as the “oracle of princes” in
Le Tibère Français ou les Six Premiers Livres des Annales de Cornelius Tacitus (Paris: Robert Estienne, 1616).
[44] See, Gerhard Oestrich,
Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Leonine Zanta,
La Renaissance du Stoicisme au XVIème Siècle (London: Forgotten Books, 2018 Edition); and Raymond Lebegue, “La Littérature Française et les Guerres de Religion,”
The French Review 23, no. 3 (1950): 205–13,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/381880.
[45] Oestrich,
Neostoicism and the Early Modern State, 29. Mark Bannister notes that French neo-stoic writings argued “in favor of a much more active and patriotic response to the onslaughts of fate than would have been advocated by the (classically stoic) ancients.” See, Mark Bannister, “Heroic Hierarchies: Classic Models for Panegyrics in Seventeenth-Century France,”
International Journal of the Classical Tradition 8, no. 1 (Summer 2001): 38–59,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/30224156, and Anthony Levi,
French Moralists: The Theory of the Passions 1585-1649 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1964).
[46] For an excellent overview of this intellectual current, see Robert Bireley,
The Counter-Reformation Prince: Anti-Machiavellianism or Catholic Statecraft in Early Modern Europe (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1990). Granted, the laborious efforts to define precisely which ethical violations were justifiable in service to the state occasionally veered into casuistry. In some instances, theorists clearly struggled to establish neat categories or “guides” of justifiable departures from Christian morality. For some of the more famous efforts at establishing such behavioral guides, see Justus Lipsius,
Six Books on Politics or Civil Doctrine (Arnhem, 1647); Scipione Ammirato,
Discourses on Cornelius Tacitus (Florence, 1594); and “Lettre du Seigneur de Silhon a Monsieur l’Eveque de Nantes,” in
Recueil de Lettres Nouvelles, ed. N.Faret (Paris: 1627).
[47] Church,
Richelieu and Reason of State, 44.
[48] Church,
Richelieu and Reason of State, 44.
[49] Thinkers such as François de Gravelles argued that the monarchical system of government was “approved by reason, and confirmed by nature,” and pointed to the hierarchical structure of various animal societies such as bee hives, which most naturalists believed at the time was centered around a king, rather than a queen, bee. See, François de Gravelles,
Politiques Royales (Lyon, 1596), 117. Author’s translation from the French.
[50] The concept of reason, or what the cardinal sometimes referred to as the “natural light of reason,” was at the heart of his political thought. Françoise Hildesheimer notes, for example, that the word “reason” features 173 times in the
Testament Politique. See, Françoise Hildesheimer, “Le Testament Politique de Richelieu ou le Règne Terrestre de la Raison,”
Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de France (Paris: Editions de Boccard, 1994): 17-34,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23407693.
[51] Jean de Silhon, quoted in F.E. Sutcliffe,
Guez de Balzac et Son Temps: Littérature et Politique (Paris: A.G. Nizet, 1959), 231. Author’s translation from the French.
[52] Armand Jean du Plessis,
Cardinal Duc de Richelieu, Lettres, Instructions Diplomatiques du Cardinal de Richelieu Vol. III (Paris: Avenel, 1853 Ed.), 665–66. Author’s translation from the French.
[53] For a seminal discussion of the concept of “mysteries of state” and its ties to absolutist ideology, see Ernst H. Kantorowciz, “Mysteries of State: An Absolutist Concept and Its Late Mediaeval Origins,”
Harvard Theological Review 48, no. 1 (January 1955): 65–91,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1508452.
[54] “All political thinkers agree that if the common people were too comfortable, it would be impossible to hold them to the dictates of their duty (...)They must be compared to mules which, being accustomed to burdens, are spoiled by long rest more than work. But as this work should be more moderate and the burdens on these animals proportionate to their strength, so it is with regard to taxes on the common people. If they are not moderate, even though they might be useful to the public, they would still be unjust.” Richelieu,
Testament Politique, 253–54. Author’s translation from the French.
[55] Léopold Lacour,
Richelieu Dramaturge et Ses Collaborateurs: Les Imbroglios Romanesques, Les Pièces Politiques (Paris: Ollendorf, 1926), 144–52.
[56] Edward W. Najam, “‘Europe’: Richelieu’s Blueprint for Unity and Peace,”
Studies in Philology 53, no. 1 (January 1956): 25–34,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4173154.
[57] Jean Desmarets,
Europe: Comédie Héroïque (Paris: Editions LeGras, 1643), Act III, Scene 2. Author’s translation from the French.
[58] Per Maurseth, “Balance-of-Power Thinking from the Renaissance to the French Revolution,”
Journal of Peace Research 1, no. 2 (1964): 120–36,
https://doi.org/10.1177/002234336400100204.
[59] See, Jörg Wollenberg, “Richelieu et le Système Européen de Sécurité Collective,”
Dix-septième Siècle 1, no. 210 (2010): 99–112; Gaston Zeller, “Le Principe d’Equilibre dans la Politique Internationale Avant 1789,”
Revue Historique 215, no. 1 (1956): 25–37; and Hermann Weber, “Une Bonne Paix: Richelieu’s Foreign Policy and the Peace of Christendom,” in
Richelieu and His Age, ed. Joseph Bergin and Laurence Brockliss (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 45–71.
[60] Church,
Richelieu and Reason of State, 297.
[61] See, for example, Fritz Dickmann, “Rechtsgedanke und Machtpolitik bei Richelieu. Studien an Neuendeckten Quellen,”
Historische Zeitschrift, no. 196 (1963): 265–319; and Klaus Malettke, “French Foreign Policy and the European States System in the Era of Richelieu and Mazarin,” in
The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848:
Episode or Model in Modern History? ed. Peter Kruger and Paul W. Schroeder (Munster: Lit Verlag, 2002), 29–45.
[62] Other illustrious contemporaries of Richelieu, such as Sir Francis Bacon in England, were arguably equally sophisticated in their discussion of balance-of-power politics. See, in particular, his essay “Of Empire,” published in 1612 and expanded in 1625, available online at
https://www.bartleby.com/3/1/19.html . As David Hume was to note a century and a half later, statesmen have always operated with such principles in mind, for the “maxim of preserving the balance of power is founded … on common sense and obvious reasoning.” David Hume,
Essays Moral, Political and Literary Vol.1 (London: T.H. Green, 1882 Ed.), 348–56.
[63] David J. Sturdy,
Richelieu and Mazarin: A Study in Statesmanship (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 63.
[64] See, Aldous Huxley,
Grey Eminence (London: Vintage Books, 2005), 108.
[65] See, Bireley,
The Counter-Reformation Prince, 238–39. The ancient historian Polybius, with his focus on
anacylosis (the life cycles of systems of government),
pragmatiké historia (political and military history), and the study of historical parallels, was held in especially high esteem. For a recent discussion of the legacy of Polybian thought and its continued relevance, see Iskander Rehman, “Polybius, Applied History, and Grand Strategy in an Interstitial Age,”
War on the Rocks, March 29, 2019,
https://warontherocks.com/2019/03/polybius-applied-history-and-grand-strategy-in-an-interstitial-age/.
[66] Giovanni Botero,
The Reason of State (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 37.
[67] Sycophantic artists often drew analogies between Richelieu and the Roman general Scipio Africanus, whether in works of art or in popular theater productions. See, for example Richelieu protégé Desmarets’ play
Scipio, written while France was at a military low point in its war with Spain. Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin,
Scipion: Tragi-Comédie (Paris: H. Le Gras, 1639); and Jean Puget de la Serre,
Le Portrait de Scipion l’Africain ou l’Image de la Gloire et de la Vertu Représentée au Naturel dans Celle de Monseigneur le Cardinal Duc de Richelieu (Bordeaux, 1641).
[68] Quoted in Carl Jacob Buckhardt,
Richelieu and His Age: Power Politics and the Cardinal’s Age (London: Allen & Unwin, 1971), 110.
[69] James G. Lacey, ed.,
Enduring Strategic Rivalries (Arlington, VA: Institute for Defense Analyses, 2014), 1–16,
www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA621612. Kenneth Boulding famously referred to this as the “loss of strength gradient.” See, Kenneth Boulding,
Conflict and Defense: A General Theory (New York: Harper, 1962), 244–47. For a broader historical discussion of the risks of “force dispersal” that go hand in hand with overly rapid imperial expansion, see Michael Mann,
The Sources of Social Power Volume I: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 140–43.
[70] For a seminal study of this logistical lifeline, see Geoffrey Parker,
The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road: 1567-1659 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
[71] Richelieu,
Testament Politique, 406. Author’s translation from the French.
[72] J.H. Elliott,
Richelieu and Olivares (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
[73] Elliott,
Richelieu and Olivares, 119–20.
[74] Peter H. Wilson,
The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 362.
[75] On Richelieu’s views on maritime trade and commercial capitalism, see Henri Hauser,
La Pensée et l’Action Economiques du Cardinal Richelieu (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1944).
[76] As the statesman was to note in the
Testament Politique, one of the motivations behind developing France’s naval might had been to compel Spain to redirect its finite flows of manpower and resources into the defense of its coastline, thus weakening its capacity to “trouble its neighbors to the same degree as it has done thus far.” Richelieu,
Testament Politique, 291. Author’s translation of the French. For Richelieu’s force-structure goals, which included a fleet of “at least 30 good warships,” see “Memoire touchant la Marine, envoyé à M. Ie Garde des Sceaux, November 18, 1626,” in
Papiers de Richelieu, ed. Pierre Grillon (Paris: Pedone, 1977
), I, 531.
[77] For an excellent and nuanced examination of the successes and failures of Richelieu’s naval endeavors, see Alan James,
The Navy and Government in Early Modern France: 1572-1661 (London: The Royal Historical Society, 2004).
[78] James,
The Navy and Government in Early Modern France, 243. On the broader difficulties faced by countries such as France, which — due to the nature of their geography — have consistently had to balance between both continental and maritime threat perceptions, see James Pritchard, “France: Maritime Empire, Continental Commitment,” in
China Goes to Sea: Maritime Transformation in Comparative Historical Perspective, ed. Andrew S. Erickson et al. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2009), 123–45.
[79] The prince-electors, or “electors,” were the most powerful rulers of the sprawling patchwork of principalities and ecclesiastical territories that composed the Holy Roman Empire. Together, they belonged to the Council of Electors within the Imperial Diet, or
Reichstag, and were charged with electing the “King of the Romans,” or Holy Roman Emperor.
[80] See, for example, the
Discours des Princes et Etats de la Chrétienté plus Considérables à la France, Selon les Diverses Qualités et Conditions, authored by an anonymous member of Richelieu’s entourage, and which — in its intellectual subtlety and granular knowledge of the European security environment — seems, according to Meinecke, to almost be describing “the action of a delicate piece of clockwork, and, on the basis of the nature, the strength and relative positioning of its springs, to demonstrate the inevitability and certain quality of its oscillations.” Meinecke,
Machiavellianism, 159. For a good overview of the discipline of net assessment, see Stephen Peter Rosen, “Net Assessment as an Analytical Concept,” in
On Not Confusing Ourselves: Essays on National Security in Honor of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, ed. Andrew W. Marshall et al. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), 283–300.
[81] As one colorful adage went, it was considered “sometimes better to let a child go snotty than to tear off its nose.” Quoted in R.J. Knecht,
Richelieu (New York: Routledge, 2013), 170. On Richelieu’s policy of religious toleration during his time as bishop of Luçon, see l’abbé L. Lacroix,
Richelieu à Luçon, Sa Jeunesse, Son Episcopat (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1890), 85–90.
[82] See, David Parker,
La Rochelle and the French Monarchy: Conflict and Order in Seventeenth Century France (London: Royal Historical Society, 1980), 15–20.
[83] For an excellent overview of the ideological challenge posed by Calvinist republicanism, see Arthur Herman, “The Huguenot Republic and Antirepublicanism in Seventeenth-Century France,”
Journal of the History of Ideas 53, no. 2 (1992): 249–69,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/270987.
[84] On the storied career of the Duke of Rohan, see Jack Alden Clarke,
Huguenot Warrior: The Life and Times of Henri de Rohan 1579-1638 (Berlin: Springer Science, 1966).
[85] See, Orest Ranum,
Artisans of Glory: Writers and Historical Thought in Seventeenth-Century France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 183–85.
[86] See, Church,
Richelieu and Reason of State, 179.
[87] Richard Herr, “Honor Versus Absolutism: Richelieu’s Fight Against Dueling,”
Journal of Modern History 27, no. 3 (1955): 281–85,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1874270.
[88] “Duels,” he later grumbled, “had become so commonplace in France that the streets of the town were being used as fields of combat, and since the day was not long enough to encompass their madness, men fought one another by star and torch light.” Quoted by Burckhardt,
Richelieu and His Age—Volume III: Power Politics and the Cardinal’s Death (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1971), 57.
[89] Pascal Broist et al.,
Croiser le Fer: Violence et Culture de l’Epée dans la France Moderne (Paris: Seyssel, 2002). Commenting on this obsessive focus on peer recognition, David Parrott observes that “the extent to which the (French) nobility in the seventeenth century still accepted and judged one another in terms of a traditional warrior culture should not be underestimated.” David Parrott, “Richelieu, the Grands, and the French Army,” in
Richelieu and His Age, ed. Bergin and Brockliss, 146.
[90] John A. Lynn,
Battle: A History of Combat and Culture (New York: Perseus Books, 2008), 143.
[91] On Richelieu’s complex rapport with the value system of the French nobility, see Orest Ranum, “Richelieu and the Great Nobility: Some Aspects of Early Modern Political Motives,”
French Historical Studies 3, no. 2 (Autumn 1963): 184–204,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/28602.
[92] See for instance his letter to the Duke of Hallwin in
Letters of the Cardinal Duke de Richelieu Great Minister of State to Lewis XIII of France Faithfully Translated from the Original, Vol. II, Letter XXV, June 04, 1635 (London: A. Roper, A. Bosville and T. Leigh, 1698).
[93] Richelieu,
Testament Politique, 347. Author’s translation from the French. The cardinal could be an exacting taskmaster, demanding a continuous flow of reports from his spies and diplomats and on occasion asking them to fine-tune their behavior in accordance with the personality traits of their foreign interlocutors. Olivares, for example, was known to be of a singularly choleric disposition. Richelieu therefore advised his ambassador to do everything he could to irritate the thin-skinned Spaniard, in the hope that he would accidentally betray his intentions in a fit of anger. This particular ploy is mentioned by Richelieu in his memoirs. See, “Mémoires du Cardinal de Richelieu Livre XXIII,” in
Collection des Mémoires Relatifs à l’Histoire de France Depuis l’Avènement de Henri IV Jusqu’à la Paix de Paris, ed. M. Petiot (Paris: Foucault, 1823), 222.
[94] Henri de Rohan,
De L’Intérêt des Princes et Etats de la Chrétienté (Paris: 1634), 105–06. Author’s translation from the French.
[95] John C. Rule, “The Enduring Rivalry of France and Spain 1462-1700,” in
Great Power Rivalries, ed. William R. Thompson (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 31–60.
[96] The Treaty of Monzon did, however, sour France’s relations with its northern Italian allies, such as Venice, as it was discreetly negotiated over their heads. In that sense, one could argue that it constituted something of “an inauspicious beginning” in international affairs. For “inauspicious beginning,” see Sturdy,
Richelieu and Mazarin, 40.
[97] On the complex rules governing the resolution of dynastic disputes in the Reichsitalien (the Italian territories falling under the sovereign jurisdiction of the Holy Roman Empire), see Karl O. von Aretin,
Das Reich: Friedensordnung und Europaisches Gleichgewicht, 1648-1806 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Verlag, 1986), 80–140.
[98] The drivers behind each power’s decision to intervene and “self-entangle” in the Mantuan succession crisis were multiple and complex. For more on the various drivers and ramifications of the Mantuan crisis, see David Parrott, “A Prince Souverain and the French Crown: Charles de Nevers,” in
Royal and Republican Sovereignty in Early Modern Europe. Essays in Honor of Professor Ragnhild Hatton, ed. G. Gibbs et al. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 149–88; and R.A. Stradling, “Prelude to Disaster; The Precipitation of the War of Mantuan Succession, 1627-29,”
The Historical Journal 33, no. 4 (December 1990): 769–85,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X00013753.
[99] Spain was frustrated by the tardiness of imperial support, whereas the Holy Roman Empire felt uncomfortably pressured into military action. For a good overview of these tensions, see J.H. Elliott,
The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 337–86.
[100] The Mantuan War severely strained Spanish financial resources, costing more than 10 million escudos. See Peter H. Wilson,
The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 458. As J.H. Elliott notes, “Flanders or Italy was an old Spanish dilemma,” and Spain clearly lacked the resources to pursue operations in both the Netherlands and Italy simultaneously. See, Elliott,
Richelieu and Olivares, 101. For a more granular overview of the military costs and tactics of the conflict see Thomas F. Arnold, “Gonzaga Fortifications and the Mantuan Succession Crisis of 1613-1631,”
Mediterranean Studies, no. 4 (1994): 113–30,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41166883.
[101] The means by which Richelieu acquired this fortress were particularly devious. Pretending to give it up during the negotiations settling the Mantuan succession, Richelieu ordered a task force of French soldiers concealed in the subterranean levels of the castle to rapidly neutralize the Savoyard garrison as soon as imperial forces left the vicinity. The Savoyards were then discreetly pressured into permanently ceding the fortress to France. See, Gregory Hanlon,
Italy 1636: Cemetery of Armies (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016), 24.
[102] David Parrott, “The Mantuan Succession Crisis, 1627–31: A Sovereignty Dispute in Early Modern Europe,”
English Historical Review 112, no. 445 (1997): 65,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/578507.
[103] Richelieu,
Testament Politique, chap. IV. These comments resemble, to a certain degree, Carl Von Clausewitz’s later observations in
On War on the inherent fragility of coalitions. For a good overview of Clausewitz’s approach to alliances and foreign policy, see Hugh Smith, “The Womb of War: Clausewitz and International Politics,”
Review of International Studies 16, no. 1 (January 1990): 39–58,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021050011263X.
[104] Most notably via the signing of the secret treaty of Fontainebleau, which lasted from 1631 to 1639, and which stipulated that each party would agree not to attack each other or lend assistance to each other’s enemies. On Franco-Bavarian diplomacy during this phase of the Thirty Years’ War see Robert Bireley,
Maximilian Von Bayern, Adam Contzen S.J. und die GegenReformation in Deutschland 1624-1635 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975).
[105] See, Père Joseph, "Mémoire au Conseil du Roi sur L’Etat des Affaires d’Allemagne, Janvier 1631," cited in G. Fagniez, “La Mission du Père Joseph à Ratisbonne 1630,”
Revue Historique 27, no. 1 (1885): 38–67.
[106] See, Toby Osborne,
Dynasty and Diplomacy in the Court of Savoy: Political Culture and the Thirty Years’ War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
[107] As Carl J. Burckhardt notes, at one time “every person who was in disfavor with the French government and acted against French interests seemed to be welcome in the neighboring state of Lorraine.” See, Burckhardt,
Richelieu and His Age, 22.
[108] Charles IV was later to renege on his abdication but remained the duke in exile until 1661.
[109] Richelieu,
Testament Politique, 239. Author’s translation from the French.
[110] These particular diplomatic efforts are clearly summarized in B.F. Porshnev,
Muscovy and Sweden in the Thirty Years’ War 1630-1635 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 4–8.
[111] The difficulties and frustrations Richelieu faced in terms of alliance management are superbly laid out in Wollenberg,
Richelieu, chap. 3.
[112] On the timeless challenges inherent to the sponsor-proxy and patron-client relationship, see Chris Loveman, “Assessing the Phenomenon of Proxy Intervention,”
Conflict, Security and Development 2, no. 3 (2002): 29–48,
https://doi.org/10.1080/14678800200590618; Walter C. Ladwig III,
The Forgotten Front: Patron-Client Relationships in Counter-Insurgency (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017); and Daniel Byman, “Why States Are Turning to Proxy Intervention,”
National Interest, Aug. 26, 2018,
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-states-are-turning-proxy-war-29677.
[113] For an excellent overview of the Richelieu-Gustavus Adolphus relationship see Lauritz Weibull, “Gustave-Adolphe et Richelieu,”
Revue Historique 174, no. 2 (1934): 216–29,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40946190.
[114] See, Michael Roberts,
Gustavus Adolphus 1626-1632 (London: Longmans, Greens and Co., 1958), 467.
[115] Surrounded by armed sentinels, and shadowed by a burly bodyguard who accompanied him even into his private chambers, the cardinal lived under the perennial fear that he might be viciously stabbed in his slumber or torn apart by a bomb surreptitiously placed under his carriage seat. At the back of his mind, there was no doubt always the cautionary tale of Concino Concini, the queen mother’s former favorite, whose murder Louis XIII had sanctioned in 1617, and whose mangled remains Richelieu had witnessed being borne across the Pont Neuf on a roaring mob’s pikes. See Jean-Vincent Blanchard,
Eminence: Cardinal Richelieu and the Rise of France (New York: Walker and Company, 2011), 82. For a good summary of the events leading up to Concino Concini’s brutal murder, see Sharon Kettering,
Power and Reputation at the Court of Louis XIII: The Career of Charles D’Albert, Duc de Luynes 1578-1621 (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2008), 63–89.
[116] Ranum, “Richelieu and the Great Nobility.”
[117] See, Church,
Richelieu and Reason of State, 202; and George Pages, “Autour du ‘Grand Orage’. Richelieu et Marillag: Deux Politiques,”
Revue Historique 179, no. 1 (1937): 63–97,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40945750.
[118] See, Roland Mousnier,
Fureurs Paysannes: Les Paysans dans les Révoltes du XVIIème Siècle (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1967); and George Mongredien,
La Journée des Dupes (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), 35.
[119] See, Lauro Martines,
Furies: War in Europe 1450-1700 (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013), 253.
[120] This point is made in Mongredien,
La Journée des Dupes, 34.
[121] On these battles for influence, see Julian Swann,
Exile, Imprisonment or Death: The Politics of Disgrace in Bourbon France (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 345-346; and Robert Bireley,
The Jesuits and the Thirty Years War: Kings, Courts and Confessors (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 190–96.
[122] As Jeffrey Sawyer has noted, these political pamphlets were produced at an astonishing rate, with one inventory of the French national library listing close to 3,500 titles from the reign of Louis XIII alone. See, Jeffrey K. Sawyer,
Printed Poison: Pamphlet Propaganda, Faction Politics, and the Public Sphere in Early Seventeenth Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 1. See also Sharon Kettering, “Political Pamphlets in Early Seventeenth-Century France: The Propaganda War Between Louis XIII and his Mother, 1619–20,”
The Sixteenth Century Journal 42, no. 4 (2011): 963–80,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23210619; and Helene Duccini,
Faire Voir, Faire Croire: L’Opinion Publique Sous Louis XIII (Paris: Champ Vallon, 2003).
[123] For a classic study of this literary lobby, see Maximin Deloche,
Autour de la Plume de Richelieu (Paris: Société Française d’Imprimerie et de Librairie, 1920). For “politico-literary strike force,” see Marc Fumaroli, “Richelieu Patron of the Arts,” in
Richelieu: Art and Power, ed. Hilliard Todd Goldfarb (Montreal: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2002), 35.
[124] Close to the queen mother, Mathieu de Morgues was initially an ally and collaborator of Richelieu before becoming his most ferocious critic in the years following the Day of the Dupes. On Matthieu de Morgues’ career and political thought, see Seung-Hwi Lim, “Mathieu de Morgues, Bon Français ou Bon Catholique?”
Dix-Septième Siècle 213, no. 4 (January 2001): 655–72,
http://dx.doi.org/10.3917/dss.014.0655.
[125] Jean de Silhon,
De l’Immortalité de l’Ame (Paris: 1634).
[126] Critiques of the Spanish treatment of native Americans was a leitmotiv in French writings at the time. In the early 17th century, France pursued a more humane (albeit deeply paternalistic) policy of “francization” — or assimilation — in its American colonies, seeking to comingle colonial and native peoples as a means of adding demographic weight to the sparsely populated new French territories. Interestingly, Richelieu was a strong proponent of this relatively enlightened approach. See, for instance, Saliha Belmessous, “Assimilation and Racialism in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century French Colonial Policy,”
American Historical Review 110, no. 2 (April 2005): 322–49,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/531317.
[127] Jérémie Ferrier, "Le Catholique d’Etat ou Discours Politique des Alliances du Roi Très Chrétien Contre les Calomnies des Ennemis de son Etat," in
Recueil de Diverses Pièces Pour Servir à l’Histoire, ed. Paul Hay du Chastelet (Paris: 1635); and Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac,
Le Prince (Paris: 1631).
[128] Indeed, “if one were to put all the gold on one side, and the blood of the Indians from which it is drawn on the other, the blood would still weigh more than the gold.” Ferrier,
Le Catholique d’Etat.
[129] "Discours sur la Légitimité d’une Alliance avec les Hérétiques et les Infidèles,” in
Mémoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, Tome V (Annexe) (Paris: Edition de la Société de l’Histoire de France, 1921), 283–88. In defense of France’s Protestant partnerships,
politique pamphleteers also drew on biblical precedents such as King David’s alliance with the Philistines.
[130] Ferrier,
Le Catholique d’Etat. There is a vibrant debate — and voluminous attendant literature — in contemporary political science on the importance to be attached to the pursuit and/or defense of credibility and reputation in foreign policy. Even a cursory reading of the writings and correspondence of early modern statesmen such as Olivares and Richelieu makes it clear, however, that — at least in their eyes — there was no debate to be had. Indeed, the quest for prestige, credibility, and respect on the international stage verged on the obsessive and was woven into the strategic DNA of 17th-century Europe’s highly personalized monarchical powers. For a recent discussion of the abiding importance of reputation in international politics, see Alex Weisiger and Keren Yarhi-Milo, “Revisiting Reputation: How Past Actions Matter in International Politics,”
International Organization 69, no. 2 (Spring 2015): 473–95,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818314000393.
[131] As Maxime Préaud notes, Richelieu felt that it “was time to give Paris, and France, publications whose quality of presentation would be up to Antwerp’s standards, whether it was typography or book decoration.” He even went so far as to encourage the French ambassador to the Hague to engage in industrial espionage by stealing the formula for the typographic ink used in the Netherlands. See, Maxime Préaud, “L’Imprimerie Royale and Cardinal Richelieu,” in
Richelieu: Art and Power, 201.
[132] Dickmann, “Rechtsgedanke und Machtpolitik bei Richelieu.”
[133] As J.H. Elliott notes, the effects of that battle had rippled throughout Europe, and had provided “an impressive reaffirmation of Spanish power at a time when many were beginning to wonder if it had not gone into eclipse.” Elliott,
The Count-Duke of Olivares, 482.
[134] R.A. Stradling,
Spain’s Struggle for Europe 1598-1668 (London, UK: The Hambledon Press, 1994), 117.
[135] Once blades were drawn, the Spanish chief minister insisted, rapidity was of the essence: “Everything must begin at once, for unless they are attacked vigorously, nothing can prevent the French from becoming masters of the world, and without any risks to themselves.” Quoted in R.A. Stradling, “Olivares and the Origins of the Franco-Spanish War, 1627-1635,”
English Historical Review 101, no. 398 (1986): 90,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/571322.
[136] James B. Wood,
The King’s Army: Warfare, Soldiers and Society During the Wars of Religion in France 1562-76 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 58–59.
[137] John A. Lynn,
Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army 1610-1715 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 41.
[138] Lynn,
Giant of the Grand Siècle, 43.
[139] Some contemporary scholars have expressed reservations over the higher figures unconditionally accepted by former generations of historians, with David Parrott noting that due to desertion rates, seasonal recruitment variations, and the general tendency by government ministers to occasionally inflate the paper strength of units, “attempts to fix upon a figure for the size of the (French) army” should be seen as “arbitrary selections of temporary high-points,” as early 17th-century armies were “institutions whose size and composition fluctuated continually.” See, David Parrott,
Richelieu’s Army: War, Government and Society in France, 1624-1642 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 178–79. Nevertheless, even if one takes such expressions of academic caution into account, there is little doubt that although the surge in French troop strength may not have equaled “the extreme estimates of some historians,” it still constituted “a quantum leap upward.” John A. Lynn,
Giant of the Grand Siècle, 56. For two additional and differing perspectives on French troop numbers, see Sturdy,
Richelieu and Mazarin, 58; and Wilson,
The Thirty Years War, 557.
[140] Lynn,
Giant of the Grand Siècle, 56.
[141] Elliott,
The Count-Duke of Olivares, 482, 490–92.
[142] See, Randall Lesaffer, “Defensive Warfare, Prevention and Hegemony. The Justifications for the Franco-Spanish War of 1635 (Part I),”
Journal of the History of International Law 8, no. 1 (December 2006): 92,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157180506777834407.
[143] See,
Lettre du Roi, Ecrite à Monseigneur le Duc de Mont-Bazon (...) Contenant les Justes Causes que Sa Majesté a Eues de Déclarer la Guerre au Roi D’Espagne (Paris: 1635). Available online at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France:
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k747876.image.
[144] According to some accounts, it was Ferdinand II’s own, more pro-Spanish son (then the king of Hungary) who finally convinced him to declare war on France. See, Robert S.J. Bireley,
Religion and Politics in the Age of the Counterreformation: Emperor Ferdinand II, William Lamormaini, S.J., and the Formation of the Imperial Policy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 227.
[145] See, Jonathan I. Israel
, Spain, The Low Countries and the Struggle for World Supremacy 1585-1713 (London: The Hambledon Press, 1997), 77.
[146] Visiting the dispirited cardinal in his plush bedchambers, the coarse-robed monk exhorted him to action in the service of France, warning him that his present weakness was not only unseemly but also ungodly and would only further “excite the wrath of God and inflame his vengeance.” Quoted in Blanchard,
Eminence: Cardinal Richelieu and the Rise of France, 163.
[147] Elliott,
The Count-Duke of Olivares, 522.
[148] Elliott,
The Count-Duke of Olivares, 506.
[149] Parrott,
Richelieu’s Army.
[150] See, Caitlin Talmadge,
The Dictator’s Army: Battlefield Effectiveness in Authoritarian Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). See also James T. Quinlavan, “Coup-Proofing: Its Practice and Consequences in the Middle East,”
International Security 24, no. 2 (Fall 1999): 131–65,
https://doi.org/10.1162/016228899560202.
[151] For a seminal discussion of the politics of patronage, see Sharon Kettering,
Patrons, Brokers, and Clients in Seventeenth Century France (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986). The fact that successful state-building often rests on the outcome of complex — and sometimes violent — negotiations between entrenched elites is something that has also been explored in the contemporary security studies literature. See, for example, Jacqueline L. Hazelton, “The ‘Heart and Minds’ Fallacy: Violence, Coercion, and Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare,”
International Security 42, no. 1 (Summer 2017): 80–113,
https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00283.
[152] These dynamics are detailed at length in Parrott, “Richelieu, the Grands, and the French Army,” 135–73.
[153] See, David Parrott,
The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
[154] See, Douglas Clark Baxter,
Servants of the Sword: French Intendants of the Army 1630-1670 (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1976).
[155] An excellent overview of the role of the
intendants in this centralization process is provided in Richard Bonney,
Political Change in France Under Richelieu and Mazarin: 1624-1661 (London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1978).
[156] Parrott,
Richelieu’s Army, 439.
[157] Parrott,
Richelieu’s Army, 434–504.
[158] Perhaps the best overview of these challenges is provided in Guy Rowlands, “Moving Mars: The Logistical Geography of Louis XIV’s France,”
French History 25, no. 4 (2011): 492–514,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/fh/crr059. Rowlands’ article delves into military logistics at a slightly later period, but the difficulties he lays out were arguably even more pronounced during Louis XIII’s reign.
[159] Quoted in Parrott,
Richelieu’s Army, 95, in the original French. Author’s translation.
[160] Richard Bonney, “Louis XIII, Richelieu, and the Royal Finances,” in
Richelieu and His Age, ed. Bergin and Brockliss, 106.
[161] See, Ronald G. Asch,
The Thirty Years War: The Holy Roman Empire and Europe 1618-1648 (New York: Palgrave, 1997), 172; and Wilson,
The Thirty Years War, 558.
[162] See, Madeline Foisil
, La Révolte des Nu-Pieds et Les Révoltes Normandes de 1639 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1970). These uprisings were often supported by local nobles, who sometimes even put their castles at the disposal of the
croquants. See, J.H.M. Salmon, “Venality of Office and Popular Sedition in Seventeenth-Century France. A Review of a Controversy,”
Past and Present, no. 37 (1967): 21–43,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/650021.
[163] See, Victor L. Tapie,
La France de Louis XIII et de Richelieu (Paris: Flammarion, 1967), 296–332.
[164] Thomas Munck,
Seventeenth Century Europe: State, Conflict and Social Order in Europe 1598-1700 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 51.
[165] Parrott,
Richelieu’s Army, 32–40.
[166] Parrott,
Richelieu’s Army, 32–40.
[167] An excellent discussion of these debates over theater prioritization is provided in David Parrott, “Richelieu, Mazarin and Italy (1635-59): Statesmanship in Context,” in
Secretaries and Statecraft in the Early Modern World, ed. Paul M. Dover (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 155–76.
[168] See, Clarke,
Huguenot Warrior, 197–215.
[169] As Peter Wilson notes, “the French monarchy might have lurched … from one financial crisis to the next, but at least it kept moving forward. The famously centrally appointed intendants, were clearly not impartial agents of royal absolutism as once thought, yet they did ensure money reached the treasury, troops were paid, and warships equipped. French troops remained ill-disciplined, but they did not mutiny like Sweden’s German army.” See, Wilson,
The Thirty Years War, 559.
[170] See, J.H. Elliott and L.W.S. Brockliss, eds.,
The World of the Favorite (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); and Dover,
Secretaries and Statecraft in the Early Modern World.
[171] Elliott,
The Count-Duke of Olivares, 286.
[172] For a good overview of 17th-century Spain’s growing economic fragilities and the decline in the value of transatlantic trade, see Dennis O. Flynn, “Fiscal Crisis and the Decline of Spain (Castile),”
Journal of Economic History 42, no. 1 (March 1982): 139–47,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050700026991.
[173] See, Ronald G. Asch,
The Thirty Years War, 150.
[174] On early modern Spain’s system of composite monarchy, see H.G. Koenigsberger, “Monarchies and Parliaments in Early Modern Europe: Dominium Regale or Dominium Politicum et Regale,”
Theory and Society 5, no. 2 (March 1978): 191–217,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/656696; and J.H. Elliott, “A Europe of Composite Monarchies,”
Past and Present, no. 137 (November 1992): 48–71,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/650851.
[175] See, Colin Pendrill,
Spain 1474-1700: The Triumphs and Tribulations of Empire (Oxford, UK: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 2002), 137.
[176] See, Stradling, “Olivares and the Origins of the Franco-Spanish War.”
[177] See, Elliott,
The Count-Duke of Olivares, 606–07.
[178] See, Lothar Höbelt,
Ferdinand III (1608–1657): Friedenskaiser wider Willen (Vienna: Aries Verag, 2008).
[179] James,
The Navy and Government in Early Modern France, 77–91.
[180] For David Sturdy, by the time Richelieu died, in 1642, it can be stated in “objective terms,” that “France’s frontiers were more secure than for many decades.” See, Sturdy,
Richelieu and Mazarin, 64.
[181] Elliott,
The Count-Duke of Olivares, 596.
[182] Richard Lodge,
The Life of Cardinal Richelieu (New York: A.L. Burt Company, 1903), 224.
[183] Russell Weigley notes that France’s victory at Rocroi (which was largely enabled by its much improved cavalry) by “no means signaled the end of its (France’s) difficulties in finding an adequate infantry, but this triumph of gendarmes, good fortune, and superior generalship nevertheless began the process of translating France’s potential ability to profit from the Thirty Years War into military actuality.” See, Russell F. Weigley,
The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 42.
[184] Most historians believe Richelieu succumbed to pleurisy.
[185] Quoted in Jean-Christian Petitfils,
Louis XIII: Tome II (Paris: Perrin, 2008), chap. XIII.
[186] “Je n’ai jamais eu d’autres ennemis que ceux de l’Etat,” quoted in G. D’Avenel,
Richelieu et la Monarchie Absolue, Vol. 3 (Paris: Broche, 2011), 89.
[187] Richelieu,
Testament Politique, 40–44.
[188] Richelieu,
Testament Politique, 40–44.
[189] Cited in A. Lloyd Moote,
Louis XIII: The Just (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 177.
[190] This oft-cited definition of grand strategy (and one of the more workable and succinct) is provided in Barry R. Posen and Andrew L. Ross, “Competing Visions for U.S. Grand Strategy,”
International Security 21, no. 3 (Winter 1996–97): 3,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2539272.
[191] For a recent sampling of such skeptical views see Ionet Popescu,
Emergent Strategy and Grand Strategy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017); and Simon Riech and Peter Dombrowksi,
The End of Grand Strategy: U.S. Maritime Operations in the Twenty-First Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018). For “randomness parading as design,” see Steve Yetiv,
The Absence of Grand Strategy: The United States in the Persian Gulf: 1972-2005 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 197. On the importance of certain exceptional individuals in shaping grand strategy, see Daniel L. Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack, “Let Us Now Praise Great Men: Bringing the Statesman Back In,”
International Security 25, no. 4 (Spring 2001): 107–46,
https://doi.org/10.1162/01622880151091916.
[192] Moote,
Louis XIII: The Just, 178.
[193] Lawrence Freedman,
Strategy: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), xi. For an excellent recent overview of the academic literature on grand strategy, see Rebecca Friedman Lissner, “What Is Grand Strategy? Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield,”
Texas National Security Review 2, no. 1 (November 2018),
http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/868.
[194] Victor L. Tapié, “The Legacy of Richelieu,” in
The Impact of Absolutism in France: National Experience Under Richelieu, Mazarin, and Louis XIV, ed. William F. Church (London: John Wiley & Sons, 1969), 59.
[195] Burckhardt,
Richelieu and His Age, 54.
[196] Williamson Murray et al.,
The Shaping of Grand Strategy: Policy, Diplomacy and War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 11.
[197] Hal Brands,
What Good is Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 190.
[198] “La meilleure règle qu’on puisse avoir en ce choix est souvent de n’en avoir point de générale." Quoted in Guy Thuillier, “Maximes d’Etat du Cardinal de Richelieu,"
La Revue Administrative 9, no. 53 (September-October 1956): 482,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40762186.
[199] Richelieu,
Testament Politique, 141.
[200] Richelieu,
Testament Politique, 139.
[201] In this, Richelieu was echoing many of the writings of other 17th-century theorists of prudence, and figures such as the Spaniard Baltasar Gracian, who pointed to the Augustan motto
festina lente — or “make haste slowly” — to later argue that “diligence carries out quickly what intelligence carries out slowly.” See, Baltasar Gracian,
The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence (London: Penguin Classics, 2011), 53.
[202]Quoted in Elliott,
Richelieu and Olivares, 155. Richelieu also memorably put emphasis on the occasional need for rapid decisiveness in his famous 1629 memorandum to the king, noting that “Men do not create opportunities but are given them; they do not order time but possess only a small part of it, the present, which is but an almost imperceptible point as opposed to the vast extent of the limitless future. To achieve their ends, men must move quickly and in good time; they must make haste among immediate, transitory things.”
Mémoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, Vol. IX (Paris: Honore Champion, 1929), 20–22.
[203] Richelieu,
Testament Politique, 66.
[204] Richelieu,
Testament Politique, 67.
[205] Quoted in Elliott,
Richelieu and Olivares, 154.
[206] For Geoffrey Parker, by their continued funding of Spain’s Protestant adversaries, in the Low Countries in particular, “It was not the Dutch who destroyed the Spanish Empire, but the French. The Low Countries’ Wars resembled a weakening hold which, when long applied, debilitates a wrestler so that he submits more easily to a new attack from a different quarter.” Parker,
The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 221.
[207] See, Algernon Sidney,
Court Maxims (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 78.
[208] Edward Rhodes, “Constructing Power: Cultural Transformation and Strategic Adjustment in the 1890s,” in
The Politics of Strategic Adjustment: Ideas, Institutions, Interests, ed. Peter Trubowitz et al. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 29. See also the seminal work, Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein, eds.,
The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).
[209] Lord Acton,
Essays on Freedom and Power (Boston, MA: 1949), 58–88.
[210] Elliott,
Richelieu and Olivares, 171.
[211] Moote,
Louis XIII: The Just; and Petitfils,
Louis XIII: Tomes I et II (Paris: Perrin, 2008).
[212] Victor L. Tapié, “The Legacy of Richelieu,” 55.
[213] The loyal Father Joseph, who would have otherwise taken on this position, died in 1638.
[214] This does not mean, however, that there were not subtle differences between both men’s approaches. For example, Mazarin was more expansionist in Italy, Alsace, and the Netherlands. That being said, there was a broad continuity in both cardinals’ policies, particularly with regard to their vision of France’s arbitral role and the attention devoted to alliance management. See, Sturdy,
Richelieu and Mazarin; Geoffrey Treasure,
Mazarin: The Crisis of Absolutism in France (New York: Routledge, 1997), 233–61; and Charles Derek Croxton,
Peacemaking in Early Modern Europe: Cardinal Mazarin and the Congress of Westphalia, 1643-48 (Selingsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1999).
[215] John A. Lynn II, “The Grand Strategy of the Grand Siècle: Learning from the Wars of Louis XIV,” in
The Shaping of Grand Strategy, 51.
[216] See, Janine Garrisson,
L’Edit de Nantes et sa Révocation: Histoire d’une Intolérance (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1985).
[217] One of the more penetrating critiques of Louis XIV’s policies was famously provided by the Archbishop Fénelon, who dismissed the cynical instrumentalization of theories of
raison d’état to abet crudely hegemonic ambitions. See, Fénelon,
Lettre à Louis XIV et Autres Ecrits Politiques (Paris: Omnia, 2011), 30–35.
[218] Joseph Bergin thus notes that “praising Richelieu’s skills (prudence, foresight, etc.) could be (…) used to contrast favorably Richelieu’s dealings with the Huguenots to the brutal and futile policies of Louis XIV.” Bergin, “Three Faces of Richelieu,” 523.
[219] See, David Saunders, “Hegemon History: Pufendorf’s Shifting Perspectives on France and French Power,” in
War, the State and International Law in Seventeenth Century Europe, ed. Olaf Asbach and Peter
Schröder (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 211–31.
[220] Lynn, “The Grand Strategy of the Grand Siècle,” 50.
[221] Saunders, “Hegemon History,” 228.
[222] See, for instance, Christopher Hemmer,
American Pendulum: Recurring Debates in U.S. Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). Robert Osgood made a similar observation in the 1980s, when he lamented what he perceived as being a U.S. “pattern of oscillation,” which “misled adversaries, unsettled friends, and dissipated national energy in erratic spurts.” See, Robert E. Osgood, “American Grand Strategy: Patterns, Problems, and Prescriptions,”
Naval War College Review 36, no. 5 (1983): 5–17.
[223] For a recent sampling of such discussions as applied to the American context, see Michael Clarke and Anthony Ricketts, “U.S. Grand Strategy and National Security: The Dilemmas of Primacy, Decline and Denial,”
Australian Journal of International Affairs 71, no. 5 (2017): 479–98,
https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2017.1342760; Hal Brands and Eric Edelman
, The Crisis of American Military Primacy and the Search for Strategic Solvency (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2017),
https://csbaonline.org/research/publications/avoiding-a-strategy-of-bluff-the-crisis-of-american-military-primacy; and Michael J. Mazarr, “The World Has Passed the Old Grand Strategies By,”
War on the Rocks, Oct. 5, 2016,
https://warontherocks.com/2016/10/the-world-has-passed-the-old-grand-strategies-by/.
[224] Roland Mousnier, “Histoire et Mythe,” in
Richelieu, ed. Antoine Adam et al. (Paris: Hachette, 1972), 246.
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(
[ID] => 1453
[post_author] => 20
[post_date] => 2019-05-21 05:00:55
[post_date_gmt] => 2019-05-21 09:00:55
[post_content] => Twenty years ago, Northern Ireland’s bloody civil war ended with the signing of the “Good Friday” Agreement.
[1] The scale of the conflict may seem small in terms of absolute numbers of those killed and wounded when compared to larger tragedies of the 20th century.
[2] Nevertheless, its duration, spanning nearly 30 years from the onset of the “Troubles” until the Agreement was signed in 1998, and its pervasive impact — not just on Northern Ireland, but on the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, and even the United States — more than justifies the importance attached to the achievement of peace. Since 1998, implementing the Agreement has proved difficult and the peace remains fragile, tested now by the fallout from Britain’s “Brexit” vote. Yet, the Agreement remains one of the most important examples of how a decades-long sectarian conflict can come to an end.
[3]
There have been many books and articles written by participants, journalists, and academics that have sought to describe the process leading up to the Agreement and to explain why it came about.
[4] Peace, like victory, has a thousand fathers, and studies of the peace process have identified a wide range of factors that arguably contributed to the outcome. Why then yet another article on this topic? My contribution seeks to “bridge the gap” between two complementary perspectives: the viewpoint of a diplomat deeply involved in the negotiations and that of a teacher and scholar of international relations and conflict resolution.
[5] My goal is twofold: to help practitioners think about how to orchestrate the various tools of diplomacy in support of current and future peacemaking efforts,
[6] and to contribute to the long-standing academic debate among historians and political scientists about causal explanations in international relations. In particular, I want to examine the interaction between structural factors (such as demographics, economics, and the end of the Cold War), the peace process, and efforts made by key individuals involved in the process.
In any analysis of this kind, the question of agency looms heavily. The Northern Ireland peace process involved many remarkable, dynamic individuals, in and out of government, who populate the narrative. It is relatively easy to describe the decisions these individuals made, while it is somewhat more complex to explain their motivations and calculus (although memoirs abound, there is always danger that the accounts are self-serving).
[7] More challenging is the question of how much, if any, difference these individuals made, or whether the deeper economic and social forces at work would have led to an end of the conflict independent of the peace process itself. The very vividness of the first-hand accounts of events and the colorful personalities of the central players may contribute to over-attribution of causality. Almost every major actor in the drama has, at one point in time, been “nominated” as the “indispensable” figure in making the Agreement possible, from David Trimble and John Hume, who were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, to Gerry Adams and his co-negotiator Martin McGuiness, George Mitchell, Tony Blair, Bertie Ahearn, Bill Clinton, Monica McWilliams, May Blood (of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition), and even the shadowy MI5 agent who helped broker key talks between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the British government in the early 1990s.
For this reason, I begin my analysis by examining the broader, structural factors, before delving into the specifics of the negotiators and the negotiation. I then turn to the motivations and goals of the principal actors: the political parties in Northern Ireland, civil society, and the three governments involved (the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States).
[8] Next, I look at the negotiating process leading up to the 1998 Agreement. Finally, my analysis turns to some conclusions about how to assess the impact of the various factors and the potential implications of that analysis for future peace processes.
The Historic, Economic, and Social Context
The conflict in Northern Ireland — the Troubles — in its violent form spanned three decades, from about 1968 to 1998. It led to the loss of thousands of lives and even more casualties, affecting Catholics and Protestants; paramilitaries and civilians in the North; British security forces serving in Northern Ireland, England, and on the European continent; and British civilians who were victims of IRA attacks in England. The violence caused billions of dollars of economic harm and left deep social and psychological scars. It had its roots in the complex history of Ireland’s relationship with Great Britain, especially the settlement that led to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and the partition of the island into the Irish Free State and the “province” of Northern Ireland, the six northern counties on the island that opted out of the Irish Free State under the provisions of the treaty. The source of the Northern Ireland conflict was, in part, political — the legacy of the dispute among Irish nationalists about whether to accept, even temporarily, the partition of Ireland. It was also social and economic. While Catholics made up most of the island, Protestants composed the majority in the six Ulster provinces. For historic and geographic reasons, the counties of Ulster were more industrialized and prosperous than the more rural south, and wealth and political power was largely controlled by Protestant elites.
[9] Thus, class, religious and ethnic distinctions, as well as a legacy of
de jure and
de facto religious discrimination against Catholics in the North all combined to set the stage for sectarian strife.
But just as the violence erupted in the 1960s, societal and economic forces began to change this equation. Differential birth rates and patterns of emigration led to a relative increase in the Catholic population of Ulster. Immediately after the partition in 1921, the percentage of Catholics in Ulster was just under 35 percent,
[10] but by the time of the 2001 census the proportion had risen to 40.2 percent, compared with 45.6 percent non-Roman Catholic Christians.
[11] Equally important, Catholics make up an even greater share of the younger population, a plurality in all age groups up to 39 in the 2011 census, with predictable consequences for the future makeup of the Northern Ireland electorate. The growing Catholic population meant that Catholics — if they chose to participate — would have a growing voice in the politics of the province, even under a pure majoritarian governance model without a formal power-sharing arrangement. Thus, provincial self-governance provided, at least in theory, an alternative, or complementary strategy to empowering the Catholic/nationalist community in Ulster. Perhaps even more significant, it opened up the prospect that at some time in the foreseeable future, a majority in the North might favor leaving the United Kingdom and joining the South, a possibility that both the Irish and British governments foresaw and implicitly endorsed by enshrining the principle of “consent” in the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985.
[12]
[quote id="1"]
Changes in the economic fortunes of the two parts of the Irish island also had an impact on the course of the conflict and the eventual peace agreement. During the second half of the 20th century, the economy of the Irish Republic was transformed, fueled to a considerable degree by the entry of Ireland and the United Kingdom into the European Union in 1973.
[13] This trend began to take effect in the 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s with the emergence of high rates of growth in the South, earning the Republic the sobriquet “Celtic Tiger.” At the same time, demographic and economic forces, combined with negative impact from the Troubles on investment prospects in Ulster, led to a relative decline in the economic performance of the North.
[14] The result was a growing convergence in living standards between the two parts of Ireland. By 2018, GDP per capita in Northern Ireland was less than half that of the Republic, although this figure, in part, reflects the outsized role of multinationals in the South. But even by more conservative estimates, the standard of living today is at least relatively comparable, North and South.
[15]
The improved economic fortunes of the South enhanced the attractiveness of the Republic as an economic partner for Northern Ireland, especially among the business community, increasing interest in cross-border cooperation. This was particularly true for border districts, which were among the poorest parts of both North and South. This trend accelerated with completion of the Single European Act in 1993, which both deepened economic ties among E.U. members and diminished the significance of the border between the North and South.
[16]
It is also important to consider how the wider international environment might have contributed to achieving peace in Northern Ireland. Some have suggested that the end of the Cold War reduced the salience of the U.S.-U.K. relationship and thus opened the door for greater U.S. engagement — including American President Bill Clinton’s willingness to incur British Prime Minister John Major’s anger by granting Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams a visa to visit the United States. To some extent, progress in solving other, arguably more difficult, conflicts — including the Oslo Agreement between Israel and the Palestinians and the Dayton Agreement, which ended the fighting in Bosnia — put pressure on the Northern Ireland protagonists to take similar “risks for peace.” Finally, growing international attention to the problem of terrorism posed challenges to the IRA’s ability to arm itself through ties with other terrorist organizations, such as Spain’s Basque separatists and Columbia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces, as well as through its previously vital ties to Libya under Muammar Qaddafi’s rule.
[17]
The Actors
The Northern Ireland Political Parties
The political landscape in Northern Ireland leading up to the 1998 Agreement consisted of two key parties on the Catholic side — the republican Sinn Fein (the political wing of the IRA) and the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party
[18] — and two on the unionist side — the Ulster Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party
[19] — along with smaller loyalist parties associated with Protestant paramilitaries,
[20] and one non-sectarian party, the Alliance Party.
The Catholic Side
Sinn Fein, as a party, has its roots in the struggle for Irish independence in the early 20th century, but its deep involvement in Northern Ireland dates from the 1960s, and particularly from the 1969 party conference when the IRA split between the “official” wing,
[21] which favored peaceful political measures to protect Catholics rights and bring about the unification of Ireland, and the “provisional” wing, which sanctioned the use of violence (both to protect the Catholic community and to force the British to abandon Northern Ireland). The “provos” viewed efforts to introduce reform measures in the North or power sharing as simply a means to perpetuate British colonial rule.
[22] In the early 1980s, Sinn Fein shifted to a dual-track strategy known as “the ballot box and the Armalite”
[23] — participating in parliamentary and local elections (IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands was elected to the British Parliament in 1981) while continuing its campaign of violence.
The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), formed in 1970 out of several smaller parties, was also committed to a united Ireland, but foreswore the use of force and focused much of its attention on the civil and political rights of Catholics under British rule. The SDLP believed that simply forcing the British out would not solve the problem — without the support of the unionist community, unification would simply continue the violent civil war (albeit under Irish rather than British sovereignty). The party emphasized the necessity for the Republic of Ireland to play a formal role in decision-making for the North. The SDLP saw this as a way to give expression to nationalists’ sense of Irish “identity,” to complement their British “citizenship” as residents of the United Kingdom.
The two parties (and their charismatic leaders, Adams and John Hume, respectively) were political rivals in the 1980s, contesting local elections in the North. Although Sinn Fein had some electoral success in its early efforts, its share of the nationalist vote fell throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, and, despite early fears, Sinn Fein was not successful in overtaking the SDLP until after the signing of the 1998 Agreement.
[24]
During the late 1980s, Sinn Fein’s views about the long-term prospects for achieving republican goals through violence began to shift. Analysts and historians have offered a number of complementary explanations for this crucial development. These include the “Ulsterization” of security, which reduced the number of British military targets and forced the IRA to attack indigenous Northern Irish security personnel;
[25] the increasing effectiveness of British intelligence and security operations; and the inherent tensions in the “ballot box and Armalite” strategy, as IRA attacks, especially those resulting in non-combatant causalities, cut deeply into Sinn Fein’s electoral support, both in the north and south of Ireland.
[26]
Adams publicly described this evolving perspective in an interview in 1988, in which he seemed to rule out the prospect of a military solution to the conflict.
[27] This set the stage for a series of meetings between Adams and Hume leading, in 1993, to a joint agreement which included two key provisions:
As leaders of our respective parties we have told each other that we see the task of reaching agreement on a peaceful and democratic accord for all on this island as our primary challenge.
We both recognise that such a new agreement is only achievable and viable if it can earn and enjoy the allegiance of the different traditions on this island, by accommodating diversity and providing for national reconciliation.[28] (emphasis added)
The discussions between Sinn Fein and the SDLP took place in parallel with secret discussions between Sinn Fein and the British government.
[29] This signal from Sinn Fein (and thus implicitly from the IRA itself) helped trigger a series of events — including the Downing Street Declaration and the decision by Clinton to grant Adams a visa to visit the United States, both discussed below — that were crucial to the 1998 Agreement. Most importantly, they led to the IRA ceasefire of 1994. Although this was not the first announced ceasefire, and although it did not last (the 1996 Canary Wharf bombing brought it to an end), it was seen both then and subsequently as a decisive shift in the trajectory of the conflict.
Sinn Fein’s turn toward taking a political approach was, in part, a response to the improved prospect that its goal of unification might be achieved through peaceful means. It may also be attributed to backlash against IRA violence and Sinn Fein’s continued electoral difficulties.
[30]
One of the key barriers to including Sinn Fein in the peace process was the nature of its ties to the IRA, the paramilitary organization responsible for most of the attacks on British and Ulster security forces and loyalist paramilitaries, as well as a number of high-visibility attacks in England, including a failed assassination attempt on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that killed one of her aides. The exact nature of the ties between the two groups was (and remains) hotly disputed, both in the lead-up to the Agreement and its implementation. Sinn Fein leaders always insisted that the two were separate and that Sinn Fein could not speak for the IRA.
[31] To some extent, this was a kind of deniability designed to give the IRA flexibility to explore what was possible using Sinn Fein as a “cut out” to explore possible outcomes of the negotiations without actually committing the IRA to accepting the political route.
[32] At the same time, there is good reason to believe that at crucial moments the Sinn Fein leadership did not have sufficient clout within the IRA to bring about Sinn Fein’s preferred outcomes, particularly on the issue of the IRA decommissioning its arms.
[33] But here, too, it is impossible to rule out the judgment that this was a familiar negotiating ploy designed to persuade the other parties (unionists, Dublin, London, and Washington) that Sinn Fein had reached the end of its flexibility. Reg Empey, a key Ulster Unionist Party negotiator and unionist member of parliament, called the argument that Sinn Fein and the IRA were distinct a “charade.”
[34]
The Unionist/Protestant Parties
The dominant Protestant party in Northern Ireland for much of the 20th century was the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), which, as the name makes clear, had as its central tenet preserving the union with the United Kingdom. Led from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s by James Molyneux, a strong figure who served as a member of parliament in Westminster, the UUP held uncompromising attitudes on the important issues facing Ulster: It opposed greater involvement and a greater voice for Catholics through power sharing in Ulster institutions (including in the short-lived provincial parliament, created in 1973), reforming the Royal Ulster Constabulary (seen by many Catholics as a sectarian force), and giving the Republic of Ireland a role in Northern Ireland affairs.
[35]
Although the UUP had strong ties to the Conservative (Tory) Party in Great Britain, there were also tensions, stemming from history, cultural differences, and economics, as well as an abiding fear that unionism was more important to the UUP (and Northern Ireland Protestants generally) than it was to Tories. This fear was stoked by the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, which opened the possibility that Ulster’s ties to the United Kingdom could be sacrificed through the political process.
[36] The 1990 statement by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Peter Brooke that “The British government has no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland” further stoked these fears.
[37]
[quote id="2"]
This unionist anxiety about depending on Westminster to protect their interests led to increasing unionist focus on autonomy and self-governance for Northern Ireland, in contrast to the arguments of “integrationists” like Enoch Powell, who argued that Ulster should be governed directly from Westminster, no different than the rest of the United Kingdom.
[38] Some unionists placed their hopes on Conservative Prime Minister John Major’s dependence on the votes of unionist members of parliament to maintain his parliamentary majority following the 1992 elections. That hope was undercut first by Major’s decision to support the Anglo-Irish “Frameworks” document of 1996, seen by unionists as a sellout to the Irish, and later by Labour’s victory in 1997. The unionists’ desire to achieve greater control over their destiny played a crucial role in the final decision to accept the 1998 Agreement, as Empey later explained:
We had been dying death by a thousand cuts for 30 years. Unionism had been excluded from the decision-making process since 1972. Throughout that period, direct rule [by the U.K. government in London] had worked against Unionism. Policy decisions had been taken on a whole range of issues that were not in the interest of Unionism.[39]
The growing focus on autonomy as a way to protect unionist/Protestant interests in Northern Ireland played an important role in the rise of David Trimble as the head of the UUP. Although Trimble had a long history in unionist politics, he was largely overshadowed by other prominent UUP leaders, both among unionist members of parliament and constituency figures. His involvement in the Drumcree Orange Order parade in 1995 propelled his rise to the top, burnishing his apparently hardline unionist credentials by ostentatiously defying the British attempt to limit a Protestant parade through a Catholic neighborhood.
[40] This association helped sustain his credibility with unionists, who, during the negotiations, were required to abandon traditional “red lines,” including participating in talks with Sinn Fein in 1997 without prior decommissioning and, ultimately, signing the 1998 Agreement without decommissioning. Although Trimble secured a majority of his party’s council in support of the Agreement, the decision triggered a split within the UUP and ultimately contributed to the UUP’s electoral eclipse by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
The second leading party on the unionist side was the DUP, formed in the 1970s. Led by the fiery Presbyterian minister, Reverend Ian Paisley, the DUP was even more rigid in rejecting any accommodation with either the nationalists in Northern Ireland (especially through power sharing) or with the Irish government in the South. The DUP largely boycotted the peace negotiations, in part because it insisted on a complete and credible renunciation of violence and prior decommissioning before sitting down with any of the parties linked to paramilitaries (republican or loyalist). Ironically, following the Agreement, the longest period of stable devolved government in Northern Ireland came during a time when the DUP shared power with Sinn Fein (2010–17).
[41]
The other key parties on the Protestant/unionist side were those associated with the loyalist paramilitaries. They were, in many respects, the counterparts of Sinn Fein/the IRA. These included the Progressive Unionist Party, headed by David Ervine and associated with the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force, and the Ulster Democratic Party, headed by Gary McMichael and associated with the Ulster Defence Association.
Although the loyalists were, during the 1970s and 1980s, the most militant of the Protestant groups, they also suffered the most from the fighting — and their decision, much like that of the IRA, to turn from violence to political negotiations gave significant momentum to the peace process. The first evidence of this new orientation emerged in the form of a split between the two principal loyalist groups, the Ulster Defense Association, which remained committed to violence, and the Ulster Volunteer Force, which began to advocate for negotiations. Ultimately, both groups declared a ceasefire shortly after the IRA ceasefire of Aug. 31, 1994, and, in the ensuing years, became an important advocacy group within the Protestant/unionist movement at difficult moments in the negotiations.
[42]
Non-Sectarian Involvement
The Alliance Party was founded in 1970 as a pro-union, but non-sectarian, party. The Alliance was the only political party that sought votes from both the nationalist and unionist constituencies.
[43] It received an estimated seven to 10 percent of the vote in the 1980s and 1990s and it participated in the Northern Ireland Forum (from which the participants in the negotiations for the 1998 Agreement were chosen) and won six seats in the first Northern Ireland Assembly election. Its leader, Lord John Alderdice, was an active participant in the all-party negotiation. One Alliance official later described the party’s contribution as a “weathervane” — making sure that proposals were neither too pro-union nor too pro-nationalist and advocating for the integrity of the process, particularly the commitment to exclusively peaceful means.
[44]
Civil Society Groups
A variety of civil society organizations functioned as peace advocates and ultimately were involved in the talks that led to the Agreement through the election of representatives from the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition to the Northern Ireland Forum and, as a result, the formal peace talks. These groups frequently complained that their representatives were excluded from key discussions, both formal and informal. It is hard to assess their specific impact on the signing of the 1998 Agreement. To some extent, they represented a concrete expression of underlying public sentiment, which yearned for an end to the violence, that would have had an impact on the traditional political leaders even in the absence of the groups’ formal participation in the talks. Some analysts have argued that civil society organizations contributed by acting as honest brokers, broadening the agenda, and building public support for the Agreement’s subsequent ratification and that their involvement helped make the Agreement more durable.
[45] Skeptics like Fred Halliday, however, have challenged the importance of civil society in the Northern Ireland peace process:
[W]hen it comes to internal conditions, the central issue remains the intentions of the main military and political players….Protest, denunciation, scorn may play a role, but this is not enough to sway the ‘hard’ men and women….it comes through a decision by the nasty people that it is, at that particular moment, more advantageous to pursue peace than war.[46]
Religious leaders were involved at various stages of the peace process, beginning as early as the 1960s, though as institutions they largely resorted to exhortation. Individual clergy, notably one Catholic priest, Father Alec Reid, did at times play a significant role.
[47]
The referendum that followed the signing of the Agreement revealed the differences between the two communities — while virtually all nationalists/Catholics voted to approve the Agreement, only about half of unionists voted “yes.” In the subsequent decision to go into government without decommissioning, the UUP ruling council split 58-42. But even on the Catholic side, a small splinter maximalist group, the “Real IRA,” continued to oppose the Agreement, including through the use of violence.
The Governments
The British Government
During the early years of the Troubles, the British government’s strategy centered around a strong commitment to the “union” and a conviction that peace could only be achieved through a tough security posture. This approach was crystallized when Edward Heath’s Tories replaced the Labour government of Harold Wilson in 1970.
[48]
In an attempt to quell the violence, in 1972 Heath abolished the Protestant-dominated Parliament of Northern Ireland, known as the “Stormont” Assembly,
[49] which had exercised limited self-government in Northern Ireland since partition. In 1973, the British government proposed a new approach, the Sunningdale Agreement, returning most of the previous powers (other than security) to a reformed Northern Ireland Assembly, which would take decisions under a power-sharing arrangement between unionists and nationalists. Sunningdale also included a role for the Republic of Ireland in the form of North-South bodies designed to foster cooperation across the island. Each of these elements were to feature prominently, 25 years later, in the 1998 Agreement. While Sunningdale was narrowly embraced by the UUP under its leader Brian Faulkner (as well as by the SDLP), grass roots unionist opposition crushed the agreement and pushed Faulkner from his leadership role.
Heath’s successor, Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was strongly unionist both by personal inclination and by Tory politics. Her hardline instincts were reinforced by the 1984 IRA attack on the Conservative party conference in Brighton in which she narrowly escaped and a key advisor was killed.
[50] Nonetheless, Thatcher’s decision to conclude the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement without consulting unionist leaders was, in retrospect, a pivotal moment toward launching the peace process. Although her goal was to gain Irish support for a tougher crackdown on the IRA, her willingness to accept an Irish role in Northern Ireland affairs stunned unionists and helped fuel a sense that devolution (regional self-government) and power-sharing, rather than dependence on Westminster, was a more reliable means of protecting unionist interests.
Thatcher’s successor, John Major, was less personally wedded to unionism, and some credit him with making the major decisions — including the Downing Street Declaration and the Anglo-Irish Frameworks document
[51] — that ultimately led to the 1998 peace agreement. Major indisputably demonstrated considerable courage in engaging with his Irish counterparts (and indirectly with the IRA). But these actions further deepened unionist suspicions, and Major’s dependence on unionist votes for holding onto his parliamentary majority constrained his room to maneuver, which led him to emphasize a permanent cessation of violence and prior arms decommissioning as pre-conditions for Sinn Fein entering peace talks, tests that nearly collapsed the process.
It was thus somewhat ironic that the 1997 election of Prime Minister Tony Blair, from the more traditionally “green” Labour Party, helped pave the way for the 1998 Agreement. Although unionists historically mistrusted Labour, Thatcher’s and Major’s actions had damaged unionist faith in the Tories. Moreover, during his first weeks in office, Blair made a major effort to demonstrate his support for the “consent” principle, which was fundamental to the unionist approach.
[52] In addition, Blair’s broad support for devolution (for Scotland and Wales as well as Northern Ireland) helped ease unionist fears that self-government for Northern Ireland was a first step toward leaving the Union or being given second-class status within the United Kingdom.
The Irish Government
The issue of Northern Ireland has played an outsized role in Irish politics. The identities of the major political parties in the South were built on their approach to unification. Fianna Fail, the party of Eamon de Valera, rejected the partition of Ireland and the continued ties to the Irish crown in the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, which created the Irish Free State. Fine Gael was the heir of Michael Collins and the pro-Treaty forces, who acquiesced in the exclusion of the six northern countries from the Irish Free State. Fianna Fail’s subsequent 1932 electoral triumph led to the enshrinement of a constitutional claim (in the 1937 Constitution) of sovereignty over the entire island of Ireland, a key point of contention in the 1998 negotiations until the very end. Fine Gael, by contrast, took a much harder anti-IRA line, opposing direct talks with Sinn Fein or the IRA.
Although the centrality of the Northern Ireland issue came, over time, to define the two parties less and less, there remained a perception that Fianna Fail was more nationalist. This was reflected in the approach of Fianna Fail Taoiseach Charles Haughey and, later, Albert Reynolds (who replaced Haughey in 1992), who worked hard to get Sinn Fein into the peace process. By contrast, Fine Gael Taoiseach John Bruton (1995–97) took a tougher line on decommissioning that was much closer to the British view and was considered more sympathetic to the unionist view on the importance of consent.
[53]
[quote id="3"]
Initially, the elevation of Fianna Fail’s Bertie Ahearn in 1997 seemed to presage a throwback to greater support for more maximalist demands of Sinn Fein and the SDLP, although Ahearn made gestures designed to reassure unionists.
[54] This more traditional Fianna Fail approach was reflected in the draft agreement Blair and Ahearn presented to the peace conference in the crucial final days of negotiation, which leaned heavily toward the nationalists’ insistence on strong and quasi-independent North-South institutions. The tabling of this draft nearly caused the talks to collapse. However, in the face of unionist revolt, Ahearn agreed, against the advice of his aides, to radically dilute these provisions in order to secure unionist agreement — a decision which has led some to nominate Ahearn as yet another candidate for the “indispensable actor” award.
[55]
The United States
Two competing forces shaped U.S. policy toward Northern Ireland during the early years of the Troubles. On the one hand, the United States and the United Kingdom shared a strong political bond, with historic roots reinforced by the Cold War. These ties inclined Washington to defer to London on what the United Kingdom saw as a domestic conflict. Pulling in the opposite direction was a large and active Irish Catholic diaspora that sympathized with the plight of the Catholics in Northern Ireland. Irish Americans were largely in favor of Irish unification, though divided between those who came to support Sinn Fein/the IRA (IRA sympathizers in the United States provided substantial financial and material support to the group)
[56] and those who opposed violence and supported the SDLP. The latter group had strong adherents in the U.S. Congress (including leaders such as House Speaker Tip O’Neill and Sen. Ted Kennedy) but the executive branch largely prioritized U.S.-U.K. ties.
Clinton had no prior involvement in the issue before taking office, but, in an unscripted moment during the presidential campaign, indicated his openness to granting a U.S. visa to Adams, who had been denied entry in the past because of his links to the IRA.
[57] As a result, unionists were apprehensive when Clinton was elected. Despite the campaign statement and the presence on Clinton’s National Security Council staff of former Kennedy aide Nancy Soderberg, during his first months in office, Clinton initially adopted the pro-British line of the State Department, which opposed granting Adams a visa without the IRA first renouncing violence. But in January 1994, Clinton decided to grant the visa at the urging of Irish Taoiseach Reynolds, members of Congress (including Kennedy, who himself changed his position at the urging of Hume), and Clinton’s White House staff. Clinton had been persuaded that it was more likely to achieve an IRA ceasefire by granting the visa without pre-condition, a judgment that seemed to be vindicated by the IRA ceasefire in August 1994, although at the time Major was furious with Clinton.
[58]
U.S. involvement following the issuance of the visa followed two tracks. First, there was an effort to promote economic development and investment in Northern Ireland to demonstrate the benefits peace could confer to both communities.
[59] This was followed by more direct diplomacy through the appointment of former Senator George Mitchell to lead the negotiations and Clinton’s own personal involvement. During his dramatic visit to Belfast at Christmas 1995, Clinton went out of his way to emphasize his consultations with Trimble, leading one former unionist member of parliament, Roy Bradford, to observe at the time that the visit “significantly changed the feeling among unionists that the American agenda is exclusively nationalist.”
[60] Clinton’s willingness to lend support to unionist positions came into play again in the peace process end game, when, in a phone call with Trimble, Clinton backed up Blair’s commitment to “bring down” the power-sharing agreement if the IRA did not begin decommissioning following Sinn Fein’s entry into government.
The Peace Process
The Formal Process
During the early 1990s, momentum began to build for launching a formal peace process for the first time since the failed Sunningdale conference of 1973. Initial talks began in 1991 (the inter-party or Brooke-Mayhew talks) involving the moderate parties — the two main unionist parties (the UUP and DUP), the SDLP, and the Alliance Party — and excluding the parties associated with the paramilitaries — Sinn Fein and the loyalist parties. The British government began a secret back channel dialogue with Sinn Fein in 1990 but the initiative failed and was shelved in 1993 because the British government insisted on a permanent end to violence as a condition of Sinn Fein’s participation in the peace process.
[61]
Following a wave of violence in October 1993, and with talks on the brink of collapse, the governments of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland issued the Downing Street Declaration in December 1993. The declaration addressed a number of the key principles to govern any settlement and opened the door for Sinn Fein to participate in formal talks following a renunciation of violence, including a “handing over of arms.”
[62] In response, the IRA, in August 1994, announced “a complete cessation of military operations,” but the two governments insisted that the action was insufficient and that the IRA had to commit to a permanent renunciation of violence and arms decommissioning to participate in negotiations. In an effort to break the stalemate, the two governments established an international body, chaired by Mitchell, to look into the decommissioning issue. The group produced a report that concluded that the IRA/Sinn Fein would never accept decommissioning as a pre-condition,
[63] but proposed instead that all parties be required to affirm a set of principles (“the Mitchell Principles”), which included, inter alia, a commitment to total disarmament.
The report provided the British government a way out of the decommissioning stalemate, and the governments in London and Dublin announced that they would convene talks in June 1996 that would be open to all parties that accepted the Mitchell Principles (but without a decommissioning pre-condition). They did insist that the IRA restore its ceasefire (which the group had broken in February 1996) in order for Sinn Fein to participate, which happened in 1997.
The process of selecting delegates was a complex formula based on elections to a Northern Ireland Forum for Political Dialogue. Delegates to the negotiations were chosen by members of the forum in a way that ensured the negotiations would be dominated by the major parties but would also guarantee the participation of smaller parties, including those associated with the loyalist paramilitaries, as well as women, Labour, and the Alliance Party.
[64] The process included arrangements for expelling any party that violated the conditions of entry. The hardline unionists (the DUP and the United Kingdom Union Party) walked out at the outset, in part, in protest of the selection of Mitchell to chair the negotiations. But the UUP stayed in, partially because it didn’t trust the British government to protect its interests.
[65] The hardline unionists walked out again when Sinn Fein was admitted to the talks in July 1997. Mitchell believes that their absence gave the moderate UUP room to negotiate, and that, had they stayed, an agreement might not have been possible.
[66]
The talks were divided into three strands: The first, chaired by the United Kingdom, was focused on governance issues for Northern Ireland. The second strand was focused on relations between Northern Ireland and the Republic, and was chaired by Mitchell and Harri Holkeri, a former Finnish prime minister.
[67] The third was focused on Irish-U.K. relations, and was chaired by the two countries’ governments. Decisions were taken on the basis of “sufficient consensus.” For Strands Two and Three, this required a majority of each side (unionist and nationalist) separately, plus an overall majority of all delegates, as well as agreement by the two governments. Strand One had similar requirements, except the Irish government had no vote.
[68] This arrangement meant that, at least theoretically, the UUP and SDLP could do a deal without either Sinn Fein or the DUP. Blair and Adams met following Sinn Fein’s entry into the talks, the first time a Sinn Fein leader had met with a British prime minister in 76 years.
[69]
The negotiations were protracted and by late 1997 were largely at a stalemate. This was followed by a rash of sectarian killings, which threatened to derail the process.
[70] In January 1998, the British and Irish governments tabled a short document that had been negotiated with Trimble.
[71] In March 1998, Mitchell announced a deadline of April 9 for conclusion of the talks. The choice of date was not entirely arbitrary, as the legislation that established the forum was due to expire in May 1998.
[72] In addition, Mitchell believed that the agreement had to be completed, and a ratifying referendum held, before the “marching season” in July, a time of high tensions in Northern Ireland.
[73] The parties reached an agreement on Good Friday, April 10, 1998, after side interventions by Blair (in the form of a written letter) and Clinton (in the form of a telephone call with Trimble) designed to assure the unionists that the agreement would not be implemented if the IRA failed to move forward with decommissioning. All told, the formal talks lasted 21 months.
The Informal Negotiations
The formal peace process unfolded in parallel with a complex set of inter-related secret and informal negotiations. These included talks between the British and Irish governments; between the British and Sinn Fein/the IRA; and between the Irish and various parties, including Sinn Fein, the SDLP, and the unionists. They also included dialogue that took place in Washington in connection with various parties’ visits to the United States and frequent contacts in Northern Ireland between U.S. diplomats and all the Northern Ireland parties.
[74] Notably, there were almost no secret negotiations between the Northern Ireland parties themselves, with the notable exception of the Hume-Adams dialogue in the late 1980s.
The secret talks allowed the parties to escape the pre-conditions barriers that impeded public dialogue with “terrorists,” but at the same time, the periodic exposure of the secret talks did pose challenges to the governments’ credibility and angered the moderate parties who felt their anti-violence stance was undermined by the governments’ willingness to negotiate with parties associated with active paramilitaries.
The Agreement and Its Aftermath
The Agreement mirrored the three-strand approach of the negotiations.
Strand One established the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive. “Key decisions” could only be taken by “cross-community” consent defined as:
- either parallel consent, i.e., a majority of those members present and voting, including a majority of the unionist and nationalist designations present and voting; or
- a weighted majority (60 percent) of members present and voting, including at least 40 percent of each of the nationalist and unionist designations present and voting.
The Executive is run by the first minister and deputy first minister, jointly elected on a cross-community basis under the same rules for making key decisions in the Assembly.
The jurisdiction of the devolved government was initially based on areas previously within the scope of the Northern Ireland government departments but could be enlarged with the approval of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Strand Two represented the North-South dimension: It created the North–South Ministerial Council and the North–South Implementation Bodies. The Agreement provided three different mechanisms for “all-island” actions: through the adoption of common policies, through coordinated policies implemented separately by the Northern Ireland and Irish governments, and through actions by North-South “implementation bodies.” To provide nationalists some confidence that the North-South dimension would not be subject to a unionist veto, the Agreement provided that the council had to agree on at least 12 “matters” for cooperation through cross-border institutions, drawn from a list of permissible subjects.
[75]
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Strand Three established the East-West dimension: the British-Irish Council and the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference. The council consists of the two national governments plus the devolved governments of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, with a focus on “practical co-operation” on issues within the competence of the devolved governments, while the intergovernmental conference involves only the two national governments and was designed to give the Irish government a voice on non-devolved issues, in particular, security issues.
The Agreement resolved the constitutional issues by enshrining the principle of consent: opening the prospect of unification with the South but only with the consent of a majority of the North. The Republic of Ireland agreed to amend its constitution to eliminate claims to sovereignty over the North,
[76] while the British government repealed the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, which, in fact, provided a British veto over the status of Northern Ireland. The Agreement protected the option of dual citizenship for residents of Northern Ireland, irrespective of whether, in the future, Northern Ireland remained in the United Kingdom or became part of Ireland. It additionally included human rights provisions that specifically addressed some of the major Catholic concerns, including the establishment of a Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. There were also hortatory provisions on issues such as economic development and linguistic diversity.
The Agreement largely sidestepped several of the substantive issues underlying the conflict. Although recognizing the importance of reconciliation and the need to address victims of violence, the Agreement established no mechanisms for this purpose. It deferred to subsequent decisions by the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning on matters relating to the timing and modalities of decommissioning.
[77] Similarly, the parties deferred to a newly created Independent Commission on Policing with regard to questions of policing and justice. Finally, the Agreement included no timetable for the withdrawal of British security forces and emergency powers.
The implementation of the Agreement has faced significant challenges over the past two decades.
[78] During the first decade following the signing of the Agreement, the British government twice had to restore direct rule, in 2000 and 2002, the second time for a period of five years. The first devolved government was led by the moderate parties (the UUP and SDLP) but subsequent elections have promoted Sinn Fein and the DUP to the fore. On the plus side, paramilitary violence has largely disappeared, though dissident groups remain a threat, and the British no longer play a direct security role. For an extended period following the Hillsborough Agreement (2010), when the two communities finally agreed on important issues not addressed in the 1998 Agreement (especially policing and criminal justice), the institutions were functioning reasonably well. The Northern Ireland economy received a significant boost in the first decade following the Agreement, notably in lowered unemployment rates. Since the 2008–09 recession, growth has been much lower, but comparable to the rest of the United Kingdom.
[79] Notably, the difference in unemployment rates between Catholics and Protestants has narrowed dramatically.
But political scandal in 2017 led to institutional paralysis, which remains unresolved.
[80] Inter-communal mistrust remains high, and volatile issues including language, parades, and symbols continue to be flash points. Despite intensive discussions since the Agreement was signed, there is still no agreed mechanism to address historical legacy issues. Brexit further complicates the prospects for the future. The DUP supported Brexit while a modest overall majority — 56 percent — opposed it. Sinn Fein has called Brexit “the most serious threat in the history of the peace process.”
[81]
Who and What Made the Agreement Possible?
We are now in a position to take on the difficult question of judging the importance of three factors — circumstance, people, and process — in achieving the 1998 Agreement.
There has been considerable debate about and attention given to the importance of individuals to the successful conclusion of the Agreement. Many of the participants themselves are quite explicit in crediting the efforts of individuals. For example, in an article written after the signing of the Agreement, Trimble singled out Blair, Ahearn, and Mitchell for credit.
[82] Mitchell, in turn, focused on Blair and Ahearn,
[83] as well as David Ervine, head of the Progressive Unionist Party.
[84] Analysts, too, have weighed in, crediting, inter alia, Adams, Major, and Reynolds.
[85] One well-connected
BBC commentator later claimed that Father Alec Reid’s role was “absolutely critical” to the peace process.
[86]
In addition, analysts have focused on the personal relationships between key actors in the peace process, both positive and negative, as well as lack of relationships, as important factors. For example, Clinton’s strong ties with Blair facilitated coordination, in contrast with his frosty relationship with Major. Major’s strong personal relationship with Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds contributed to their ability to manage the sharp substantive differences between the two countries’ priorities.
[87] Indeed, many assessments of why the process succeeded focus on trust-building exercises such as the extended Adam-Hume dialogue of 1988–93 and the decision to move the talks from Northern Ireland to the U.S. ambassador’s residence in London after the Agreement was signed but before it was implemented (providing a sharp contrast with tensions arising from the lack of personal contact or direct talks between the parties during the negotiations that produced the Agreement).
[88] Clinton’s various meetings — with Trimble in Belfast during his 1995 visit and with all the key leaders during the annual St. Patrick’s Day events in Washington D.C. — and especially his close ties with Blair, all seem to have contributed to the successful outcome as well. But subsequent difficulties with implementing the Agreement raise questions about just how much trust was generated, and, therefore, how much it might have contributed to the Agreement in the first place.
Of course, there is no definitive answer to the agency question, to the counterfactual “but for” claim.
[89] There seems little doubt, for example, that Adams’ belief in the efficacy of political action rather than violence and Trimble’s willingness to engage in power sharing represented breaks from the past that were staunchly opposed by others in their parties until the very end (and beyond). At the same time, the two men’s rise to positions of power reflected broader forces. In the case of Sinn Fein/the IRA, Adams’ interest in pursuing a political solution was strengthened by the public backlash against violence, particularly after British security forces withdrew from the front lines. Indeed, it can be argued that Adams only turned to the political solution once the “ballot box and Armalite” strategy had failed. For Trimble, political changes at Westminster, which had nothing to do with Northern Ireland, left Northern Ireland’s unionists more isolated and dependent on themselves to protect their interests through devolution. In that sense, both Adams and Trimble had the fortune of being at the right place at the right time to assume leadership.
Similarly, those who would give the laurel to Blair and Ahearn can argue that they succeeded in achieving, in relatively short time, what Major and his various Irish counterparts failed to accomplish. Yet, it is also possible to argue that what constrained Major, and what empowered Blair, was the size of the parliamentary majority — a fact that had little or nothing to do with their Northern Ireland policies.
[90] Major has also been singled out for his willingness to engage both with Dublin and Sinn Fein, but here, too, his choices were highly constrained. While the security strategy had blunted the IRA’s efforts, there was widespread belief within British security circles (parallel to thinking in Sinn Fein) that force alone could not bring the conflict to an end.
One way to try to answer this question of agency is to examine SDLP leader Seamus Mallon’s widely-quoted aphorism that the 1998 Agreement was “Sunningdale for slow learners.”
[91] The implication of his statement is that, had “faster” learners been around in 1973–74, power sharing and North-South cooperation based on the principle of consent might have succeeded much earlier and the war might have ended much sooner.
[92] Yet, it is hard to see in the context of the violence of the first years of the Troubles that there was much that unionist leader Brian Faulkner, or any other unionist leader, could have done to rally unionist support for power sharing, or that a different British prime minister (much less a different Taoiseach), through force or guile, could have countered the ferocious unionist opposition to the Sunningdale agreement. Similarly, it is difficult to see who within the IRA could have carried the day in favor of accepting the legitimacy of a reconstituted Northern Ireland Assembly and the unionist veto over Irish unification. (It is notable that Adams himself was propelled into a leadership role by his critique of the IRA’s 1975 ceasefire.)
[93] Finally, there seems to have been no plausible Conservative leader (much less one from Labour) who could have pushed the deal through over the violent unionist opposition. In other words, Sunningdale failed, not because of poor leadership (or “slow learners”), but because circumstances were not propitious for an agreement that embodied the key principles of consent, power sharing, and cross-border institutions. Put another way, the structural changes that were just beginning to work themselves out following the onset of the Troubles were a necessary condition to the acceptance of the framework that was on offer, but they were rejected by both Sinn Fein/the IRA and the unionists in 1973.
[quote id="5"]
At the same time, it is possible to imagine that the 1998 Agreement might have failed. It is plausible that crucial decisions in the run-up to the Agreement might have gone a different way — Ahearn’s decision to revise the agreement he had reached only days before on the North-South institutions, Trimble’s willingness to accept Blair’s promise on decommissioning, or Mitchell’s decision to impose a firm deadline. In other words, the structural forces may have been necessary, but alone they were insufficient to account for the fact that the Agreement happened when it did, in the precise shape that it took.
Of course, all of the central actors faced considerable constraints on their freedom of action. For example, Trimble spent an extraordinary amount of time and effort dealing with internal dissension within his party, and on several occasions was forced to renegotiate after finding that he could not sell a proposed deal to them. Adams, too, emphasized the constraints he faced from other leaders and the rank and file.
[94] Even Hume faced internal dissension when he launched his dialogue with Adams. It is reasonable to assert that these protestations also reflected a well-known negotiating tactic — “My hands are tied.”
But it is also true that many of these leaders made important choices along the way that built sufficient credibility with their constituents to give them the necessary leeway. This was dramatically illustrated following the brutal IRA attack on a loyalist headquarters in Belfast’s Shankill Road on Oct. 13, 1993. Adams’ appearance as a pall bearer at the funeral of one of the IRA gunmen led many to believe that his action would kill any hopes for making progress toward peace. Yet, two months later, Adams used his credibility with the IRA to persuade its Army Council not to reject publicly the Downing Street Declaration, issued just two months after the bombing. Both governments later acknowledged that Adams’ failure to participate in the funeral would have irreparably damaged his credibility with the IRA.
[95] More broadly, Adams and McGuinness demonstrated extraordinary dexterity in managing the almost unimaginable process of bringing the IRA leadership to accept the unthinkable changes in republican orthodoxy embodied in the 1998 Agreement. Similarly, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Mo Mowlam’s audacious decision in January 1998 to meet with the loyalist prisoners at the Maze Prison is frequently credited with saving the process, despite the outcry of the UUP.
[96] Even Trimble’s notorious “dance” with the DUP’s Ian Paisley at Drumcree can be seen in this light.
[97] As Martin Mansergh, senior advisor to several Fianna Fail Taoiseachs during the peace process, observed, “the thin centrist strand made a valuable contribution but was not nearly strong enough to support a settlement on its own.”
[98] The inclusion of parties associated with hard-line positions complicated their interactions with each other and with the governments but strengthened their legitimacy with their bases when the time came to do a deal. This argues strongly for the importance of individual choice.
Perhaps the best way to characterize the role of agency is to say that circumstance dealt each of the major players a reasonably favorable hand which facilitated agreement, but that each played the hand quite skillfully.
[99] Each saw, earlier than many others, the path forward that led to the Agreement. It is certainly possible to imagine that others who might plausibly have been in their place — even those who shared the same basic approach to the conflict — might not have sealed the deal when it came about. At the same time, the very fact that the Agreement ultimately found implementation through a pact that featured Paisley as first minister is a reflection of the power of the forces pushing to end the fighting. Agency played an important role in the timing and precise terms of the Agreement, but arguably a much less significant one in the broader turn away from violence.
A similar analysis applies to assessing the role of process — both formal and informal — in ultimately reaching the Agreement. At its core, the most significant feature of the process was the focus on inclusivity,
[100] especially the controversial decision to involve the parties associated with the paramilitaries before they unequivocally and demonstrably renounced violence, rather than seeking to achieve an agreement involving only the “constitutional” parties. From the early days of the Troubles through the early 1990s, both the British and Irish governments had pursued a different approach, seeking to marginalize the paramilitaries and limit the negotiations to the constitutional parties.
[101] By almost all assessments, the very presence in the negotiations of individuals strongly associated with the “guns” — McGuinness (Sinn Fein/the IRA), Ervine (Progressive Unionist Party), and Gary McMichael (Ulster Democratic Party) — which caused such heartburn for more traditional political leaders, proved central to bringing about an agreement that would stick. Thus, Major’s reluctant decision to find a way to begin inclusive talks following the Mitchell report proved vital.
A related feature of the process that was instrumental was the sequencing — the willingness to move the process forward without a firm commitment to a permanent ceasefire and at least initial steps toward the paramilitary groups decommissioning their arms. The decision to move from pre-conditions to “conditions subsequent” was another feature that distinguished this negotiation from the Sunningdale agreement and unblocked the stalemate that plagued the process during most of the Major years. The decision seems vindicated not only by the successful conclusion of the negotiations, but also by the subsequent IRA decommissioning and the relative low level of defection by dissatisfied members of the paramilitaries. It is not hard to imagine that a deal done by the SDLP and the UUP alone might have met serious resistance from the IRA and the loyalists, though of course, the declining effectiveness of violence, apparent by the late 1980s, might have tempered the scale and duration of the backlash.
At the same time, the inclusion of such diverse perspectives had an impact on the content of the Agreement in two important respects. First, the parties’ mutual suspicions drove them toward a consociational model that blocked vetoes. This reduced the risk of either party being outvoted and thus made the Agreement more palatable to their respective constituencies.
[102] But this came at the cost of possible paralysis. Left on their own, an agreement involving only the UUP and SDLP might well have tilted the balance toward a more flexible approach. Second, the deep divisions even within the two camps led the parties to defer important decisions on key substantive issues ranging from the future of policing to the role of the North-South bodies, setting the stage for the predictable crises that followed.
A number of commentators have focused on the role of civil society in bringing about the Agreement, both as an outside force pressing the parties and as formal participants in the negotiations. It is difficult to assess how much the grass roots peace movement helped to build opposition to violence and thus facilitate the paramilitaries’ decision to give it up. Peace groups had been active throughout the Troubles, for example, in the women’s movement in the 1980s, with only limited success in bringing an end to the fighting. Several commentators have focused on the formal role of civil society organizations in the process. Maria Power, for example, concludes that “the negotiations leading up to the agreement demonstrated the centrality the peacebuilding or community-relations sector had in conflict resolution.”
[103] Others give more measured judgments: “[W]hile the contribution of the [civil] sector was not crucial to the eventual outcome of the political negotiations in 1998, it was nonetheless positive and significant.”
[104] These assertions are difficult to assess, most importantly because the formal process itself was relatively less important compared with the proliferation of secret channels and private negotiations, which excluded civil society.
Other features of the process seem less consequential. On the whole, the formal processes, especially the Stormont negotiations, played a very modest role at best. The combination of the setting, which was sterile and forbidding,
[105] and the parties’ unwillingness to deal with each other face-to-face in public settings, relegated the formal sessions to play acting, mostly designed to reassure the parties’ constituents that they were holding fast to their uncompromising positions. Even in private, the parties rarely engaged with each other directly. This accentuated the importance of the governments (primarily the United Kingdom and Ireland, but, at critical moments, the United States as well) and Mitchell as go-betweens.
Much has been written about the role of Mitchell and his two colleagues as third-party mediators. On the substance of the negotiations themselves, the three chairs played relatively modest roles compared with the British and Irish governments. Indeed, during the crucial final days of the negotiations, Mitchell reluctantly gave the parties a draft proposal on Strand Two, drafted by Blair and Ahearn, against his own judgment since he believed the provisions were anathema to unionists and would torpedo the negotiations.
[106] As noted above, much of the negotiations took place outside the formal process, where the role of the three chairs was limited. Nonetheless, Mitchell’s personal integrity, reputation for impartiality, and patience played a valuable role in keeping the negotiations going. Similarly, the availability of the de Chastelain commission as a third-party means of validating decommissioning was critical to its attainment.
One area where the formal process arguably did make a difference was the use of deadlines, particularly to bring the negotiations to a conclusion. Mitchell imposed a two-week deadline in March 1998 ahead of marching season, which triggered an intense period of engagement leading to Mitchell’s tabling of a “composite” document on April 6, including the abortive British-Irish proposal on Strand Two, which triggered the final crisis of the negotiations.
[107] By contrast, the open-ended nature of the process following the first IRA ceasefire contributed to its breakdown in early 1996.
Lessons for Practitioners: What Does This Mean for Future Peace Negotiations?
The Importance of “Ripeness” and How to Recognize It
The experience of Northern Ireland strongly underscores a major factor highlighted in the literature on conflict resolution — the importance of ripeness.
[108] The very fact that the parties adopted in 1998 what they had rejected in 1973 strongly suggests that changed circumstances played a critical role. But this observation is of limited value to the practitioner without some guidelines for assessing when circumstances are “ripe.” While policymakers are often limited in what they can do to create the conditions that make a conflict ripe for settlement,
[109] it is a vital tool of statecraft to be able to spot an opportunity when it is emerging. It is equally important to understand when a conflict is
not ripe for negotiation: It can be argued that the premature effort leading to the Sunningdale agreement in 1973 actually contributed to prolonging the conflict.
Should this have been apparent to the British government at the time? One lesson of the Northern Ireland experience is that the secret channels developed in the late 1980s and earlier 1990s played a crucial role in providing the governments and the political parties themselves an opportunity to judge whether the circumstances were ripe for agreement before launching a speculative — and perhaps counterproductive — public negotiation. There were risks involved in secret diplomacy. The desire to preserve secrecy led the governments perilously close to public dishonesty, which, when exposed, endangered their credibility. Nevertheless, the groundwork that this diplomacy laid ultimately reduced the risks that each side took by engaging in the process. These secret contacts allowed the key parties to explore the implications of flexibility and to adapt their positions without the risk of embarrassment if the gambits proved unsuccessful and the other side unforthcoming.
[110]
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Some commentators have focused on the idea of “stalemate” as a central characteristic of ripeness. Here, it is true that Sinn Fein had concluded that it could not “bomb” its way to Irish unification. British officials, especially in the security community, similarly concluded that despite the growing efficacy of their efforts in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the IRA could not be “defeated.” Thus, some have argued that the more effective British security policies of the late 1980s and early 1990s worked to create a stalemate ripe for settlement. But it seems unlikely that stalemate by itself would have brought about the 1998 Agreement. The return to violence in the mid-1990s (after the initial ceasefire declaration in 1994), suggests that many in the IRA still considered violence (or at least the threat of violence) an important element of leverage in the negotiations. Similarly, some in the unionist community (dissenters within the UUP as well as the DUP and United Kingdom) were not convinced of the need to compromise. For this reason, I think it is more useful to see the Agreement as a result of the fact that each side could see the agreement as a “win” (at least in relative terms) rather than a product of a stalemate from which they sought to extricate themselves.
Another feature of ripeness goes to the question of how the parties assess the impact of the passage of time on their chances of achieving their goals. The parties in this case reached an agreement because their assessments of time converged. The unionists believed that time was not on their side — that demographics and the politics of the United Kingdom were steadily eroding their leverage. So they accepted a power-sharing arrangement, which they had firmly rejected as a matter of principle for decades, and acquiesced in the idea that sovereignty might be transferred from the United Kingdom to the Republic by a popular vote. In return, they got the Republic of Ireland to amend its constitution to repeal its claim of sovereignty over the six counties and secured a more limited form of North-South institutions. Trimble articulated this view in a speech shortly after the conclusion of the Agreement:
A number of responses were possible to the changed situation [the Hume-Adams process leading Sinn Fein to pursue the political track]… . I remember a parliamentary colleague saying…we should revert to saying No all the time… . The important point that I draw from this, generally speaking, is that it is not enough to be passive, to adopt a tactic or an approach that consciously or deliberately leaves the decision in the hands of other people. It is not always the way you like and you can never be certain exactly how it is going to work out.[111]
Sinn Fein, too, was influenced by its assessment of the future. On the one hand, its leaders believed they had extracted most of what they could get from the use of violence. They also feared that they would be unable to sustain the IRA’s ceasefire much longer if they failed to produce a result through negotiations. But they also perceived that by making key concessions (e.g., abandoning their insistence that Britain renounce sovereignty over Northern Ireland and accepting the principle of consent), they could turn the passage of time in their favor by achieving an agreed unification through the ballot box. Thus, both unionists’ fears about the future and republicans’ hopes for it led each side to conclude that this agreement, with all its painful compromises, was better than walking away and taking a chance on the future.
This sense of ripeness helps explain why the terrorist attacks that plagued the peace process throughout the 1990s (the IRA Shankill Road bombing in 1993 and the subsequent loyalist revenge attacks or the Canary Wharf and Manchester bombings in 1996, for example) did not derail the talks. Once the parties had made the strategic decision to seek peace, violence actually seemed to have served as an impetus rather than a barrier to compromise.
[112]
Understanding each party’s assessment of the impact of time can help the peacemaker both decide when to intervene and how to use these assessments to achieve an agreement. The Dayton Accords, which ended the Bosnian War, are instructive. It was at the moment that the Serb forces saw the tide of battle turn against them, but before the Bosnians and Croats had the means to defeat the Serbs on their own, that the United States had maximum leverage in bringing about an agreement.
The Impact of Process on the Shape of the Outcome
Many have held up the process leading to the 1998 Agreement as a model of successful conflict resolution. Whether the process contributed to the success depends, of course, on the definition of success. There is little doubt that the Agreement has led to a decrease in intercommunal violence. Including the paramilitaries made it less likely that they would attack the process or the agreement that the process produced. Equally important, it gave them a stake in taking on dissidents who wanted to challenge the Agreement. Although splinter groups persisted on both the republican and loyalist sides, their impact has been marginal.
But this process decision has come at a cost. Because the process helped lead to a consociational agreement that protects the rights of the two communities but deferred tackling many of the underlying sources of conflict (e.g., policing, economic equality, etc.), the peace continues to be fragile, sectarian tensions remain high, and the institutions created by the agreement are barely functional, at best.
[113] These concerns were raised by many of the civil society participants during the negotiations, but their voices were marginalized in favor of the priority attached to getting the men with the guns to lay down their arms.
In this respect, there are important resemblances to the way in which the Dayton process shaped the substance of the Dayton Accords, which ended the fighting in Bosnia. Both processes included the hard men who had stoked the conflict, resulting in agreements that, in somewhat similar ways, froze sectarian identity in the framework of the settlement and thus perpetuated the underlying conflict. In both cases, hopes that the passage of time and public pressure would lead to an evolution of the political arrangements away from their sectarian roots have been disappointed.
Of course, including former paramilitaries in peace negotiations does not guarantee this kind of result. In South Africa, the Africa National Congress party and the apartheid government created more unitary structures in their peace agreement, which included explicit elements of reconciliation. Nonetheless, it seems fair to say that the shape of the peace process in South Africa contributed both to the success of the agreement and its limitations. The lessons of these cases are clear: Practitioners need to consider the potential long-term costs of a peace process that focuses primarily on the short-term goal of ending the fighting. One commentator has called this the choice between a “no more shooting” and “no more fighting” type of agreement.
[114]
Empowering the Peacemakers
The analysis of the role of agency in the Northern Ireland peace process suggests that people do matter. However, the practitioner’s tools for creating “peacemakers” is limited. But practitioners can help support the people who have both the inclination and the capacity to make the choices for peace. Throughout the Northern Ireland peace process, the governments involved made conscious efforts to support those whom they believed wanted to, and were capable of, making the deal — from Clinton granting Adams a visa to his embrace of Trimble during his visit to Belfast, to Mo Mowlam’s visit to the Maze prison to meet with loyalist paramilitaries.
Of course, these kinds of efforts require finesse. Sometimes embracing a peacemaker can backfire —arguably Clinton’s support for Shimon Peres after Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination did Peres more harm than good. In Northern Ireland, there was considerable wariness about outside parties — whether from Dublin, London, or Washington — attempting to influence events in Ulster. In some cases, such outside involvement ended up raising suspicions, rather than enhancing the authority those outsiders sought to promote.
Third Party Guarantors
For the Agreement to work, it was critical for the unionists to believe that, whatever long-term risks they might run in terms of demographics, etc., the IRA’s cessation of violence — and the resort to exclusively peaceful means — was not simply tactical. To some extent, unionists saw decommissioning as reducing the IRA’s capability to return to war. But most recognized that the IRA might easily replace any arms it destroyed. More important was the unionist belief that, because the IRA had so strongly resisted decommissioning in the past, an agreement to decommission was a real sign of peaceful intent. For that very reason, however, the IRA was unwilling to take even modest steps on decommissioning until the deal was complete.
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The success in breaking this stalemate — and the unionists’ ultimate willingness to accept decommissioning as a subsequent condition of the Agreement — highlights the importance of credible interlocutors and third-party guarantors. Only when Blair gave Trimble his personal assurance that he would eject Sinn Fein from the Northern Ireland Executive if the IRA failed to decommission (a commitment reiterated by Clinton in the closing hours), did Trimble agree to go along.
[115] The British government had helped earn that credibility through its actions, for example, when Mowlam temporarily ejected Sinn Fein from the talks in February 1998 after a series of killings linked to the IRA, at the risk of collapsing the talks. Trimble’s willingness to accept the procedures for decommissioning depended on the credibility of a report from an independent commission rather than relying on the word of “interested parties.”
[116]
Sequencing
The challenge posed by decommissioning was, perhaps, the most consequential of a recurring set of problems surrounding sequencing. By the early 1990s, the contours of the Agreement had emerged, but issues of sequencing proved a major obstacle to progress. Whether Sinn Fein’s participation in talks should follow or precede a ceasefire or whether Adams’ visa to the United States should be made conditional on a cessation of violence are just two examples. As late as 1995, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Patrick Mayhew’s insistence that some act of decommission precede Sinn Fein’s entry into the talks (even after the IRA had entered into a ceasefire) nearly collapsed the whole project.
[117] Willingness to accept a condition subsequent rather than a pre-condition was a major test of how much each side was willing and able to take risks for peace. Sinn Fein, in particular, insisted that it needed prior actions by the British and Irish governments to permit it to move forward.
The problem of sequencing in regards to decommissioning returned following the conclusion of the 1998 Agreement, when the question arose of whether decommissioning had to precede Sinn Fein taking its place in the Northern Ireland Executive. This impasse was again resolved in a review conducted by Mitchell, which led to the pre-condition being dropped.
[118] As Quentin Thomas, a senior British civil servant, observed, “the question is whether one accentuates the positive and seeks to bring people in when they appear at the door of democracy and want to join talks. Or whether you hold them there and subject them to some examination to see whether their shoes are clean.”
[119] Perhaps Clinton’s decision was the easiest, as he had the least to lose if the IRA returned to violence after Adams was issued the visa. But even there Clinton risked causing complications in the U.S.-U.K. relationship.
Practitioners face strong pressure to impose pre-conditions to negotiations. They fear that entering into open-ended negotiations may be perceived as a sign of weakness and may subject them to domestic criticism for abandoning important red lines.
[120] Yet, the imposition of pre-conditions often becomes a straightjacket, as the other side is unlikely to give up valuable leverage without some confidence in the overall shape of the outcome. The secret negotiations in the lead-up to the Agreement helped reduce the danger that Sinn Fein/the IRA would simply pocket dropping the pre-conditions, but in the end the British and Irish governments understood that the only possibility of reaching an agreement was to take that risk. It was crucial that the governments establish credibility that they would enforce the conditions after the Agreement was signed. Practitioners can draw an important lesson from this on how to avoid the pre-condition trap.
Substance
The parties involved in the peace process made little effort to resolve the substantive issues that divided them. The constitutional and process issues that formed the heart of the Agreement largely involved broad issues of principles. By contrast, the substantive concerns — policing, criminal justice, social welfare — were areas where the details were as important as the principles. For these kinds of issues, the parties chose to defer resolution by handing the problem to independent commissions (for things like decommissioning and policing), to the Assembly (on devolved issues), and to the British and Irish governments (on non-devolved issues). The last minute snag on Strand Two illustrates the problem of dealing with detail. The Irish government and the nationalists wanted strong substantive commitments on the scope of North-South bodies, but in the end had to settle for broad language and hope that the specifics could be agreed to later.
[121] This approach facilitated concluding the Agreement at the expense of littering the landscape with landmines that have continued to dog its implementation. Thus, practitioners face a choice in deciding whether to tackle detailed issues of substance similar to the issue of inclusivity — whether to seize a short-term gain (e.g., stopping the fighting) at the risk of long-term costs (e.g., perpetuating underlying sources of conflict).
Conclusion
The 1998 Agreement came at a time of considerable post-Cold War optimism about the prospects for resolving long-standing political conflict, from the Middle East to the Balkans to Colombia. The passage of time has tempered those hopes, as many conflicts have proved resistant to settlement, and even those agreements that have remained intact have largely proved disappointing in bringing about true reconciliation. The 1998 Agreement certainly falls into that category, but the brutal violence has not re-emerged. As the international community contemplates future peacemaking efforts, in Afghanistan, Yemen, South Sudan, and beyond, the Northern Ireland peace process continues to offer important lessons to scholars and practitioners alike.
Hon. James B. Steinberg is professor of social science, international affairs, and law at Syracuse University and previously served as dean of the Maxwell School, from July 2011 until June 2016, and dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin from 2005 to 2009. His government service includes deputy secretary of state (2009–11), deputy national security advisor (1996–2000) and director of the State Department Policy Planning Staff (1994–96). Recent publications include, “China-Russia Cooperation: How Should the US Respond,” in Richard J. Ellings and Robert Sutter, eds., Axis of Authoritarians
(National Bureau of Asian Research 2018); “US versus China: A Technology Cold War,” Nikkei Asian Review
, March 19, 2019; and A Glass Half Full? Rebalance, Reassurance and Resolve in the US-China Relationship
(Brookings Institution Press, 2017) and Strategic Reassurance and Resolve: US-China Relations in the 21
st Century
(Princeton University Press, 2014) (both with Michael O’Hanlon).
Image:
Robert Paul Young
[post_title] => The Good Friday Agreement: Ending War and Ending Conflict in Northern Ireland
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[lead] => The 1998 Agreement that ended Northern Ireland's bloody civil war has often been attributed to many of the remarkable individuals involved in the peace process. But how much of a difference did they really make? James Steinberg explores this question by examining the interaction between structural factors, the peace process, and efforts made by key individuals involved in the process. He also looks at what lessons this history holds for future peace negotiations.
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[issue] => Vol 2, Iss 3
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[text] => The source of the Northern Ireland conflict was, in part, political — the legacy of the dispute among Irish nationalists about whether to accept, even temporarily, the partition of Ireland. It was also social and economic.
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[text] => The unionists’ desire to achieve greater control over their destiny played a crucial role in the final decision to accept the 1998 Agreement...
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[text] => Although the centrality of the Northern Ireland issue came, over time, to define the two parties less and less, there remained a perception that Fianna Fail was more nationalist.
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[text] => The Agreement resolved the constitutional issues by enshrining the principle of consent: opening the prospect of unification with the South but only with the consent of a majority of the North.
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[text] => Perhaps the best way to characterize the role of agency is to say that circumstance dealt each of the major players a reasonably favorable hand which facilitated agreement, but that each played the hand quite skillfully.
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[text] => While policymakers are often limited in what they can do to create the conditions that make a conflict ripe for settlement, it is a vital tool of statecraft to be able to spot an opportunity when it is emerging.
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[text] => Practitioners need to consider the potential long-term costs of a peace process that focuses primarily on the short-term goal of ending the fighting.
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[style] => strategist
[type] => Strategist
[style_label] => The Strategist
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[title] => Endnotes
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[1] As with almost every issue, large and small, involving Northern Ireland, even terminology is controversial and tinged with partisan overtones. In the United States, the Irish Republic, and among Northern Ireland nationalists, the agreement is commonly referred to as the “Good Friday Agreement.” Among unionist, it is often called the “Belfast Agreement.” In this essay I will use the “1998 Agreement” or simply the “Agreement,” to describe the outcome of the peace process.
[2] Approximately 3,500 people were killed during the Troubles. Of these, a little more than 1,500 were from the Catholic community in Northern Ireland, 1,250 from the Protestant community, and the rest (around 700) from outside Northern Ireland (including British security forces). See, “Statistical Breakdown of Deaths in the ‘Troubles,’” Wesley Johnston, accessed May 8, 2019,
http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/past/troubles/troubles_stats.html.
[3] This paper largely focuses on the events leading up the 1998 Agreement, but, in order to assess what happened and why, I touch briefly on subsequent developments, without going into detail into the many follow-on negotiations involving the Agreement’s implementation.
[4] This paper draws on a number of these studies, as well as my own personal involvement, beginning in the 1980s as an aide to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, and, more substantively, as director of policy planning at the State Department (1994–1996) and deputy national security advisor to President Bill Clinton (1996–2000). The studies include Eamon Mallie and David McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2001); Thomas Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process: Ending the Troubles (New York: Palgrave, 2001); George J. Mitchell
Making Peace (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999); Cathy Gormley-Heenan,
Political Leadership and the Northern Ireland Peace Process (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2007); Maria Power, ed.,
Building Peace in Northern Ireland (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011); Tim Pat Coogan,
The Trouble: Ireland’s Ordeal 1966-1996 and the Search for Peace (Boulder, CO: Roberts Reinhardt Publishers, 1996); Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon, and Henry Patterson,
Northern Ireland 1921-2001:
Political Forces and Social Classes (London: Serif, 2002); Paul Bew,
The Making and Remaking of the Good Friday Agreement (Dublin: Liffey Press, 2007); Ed Moloney,
A Secret History of the IRA (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002).
[5] At least one other scholar-participant has written extensively about the peace process: Paul Bew, long-time professor of Irish Politics at Queens University, Belfast, was an advisor to David Trimble.
[6] The idea for this essay arose out of a RAND conference designed to help those involved in the Afghanistan peace process think about lessons learned from past peace conferences. I am grateful to RAND for its support of the initial research on this project.
[7] In addition to George Mitchell, see, for example: Alastair Campbell,
The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries (London: Hutchinson, 2007); Gerry Adams,
An Irish Journal (Kerry: Brandon, 2001); Gerry Adams,
Hope and History: Making Peace in Northern Ireland (Kerry: Brandon, 2004); David Trimble,
To Raise Up a New Northern Ireland (Belfast: Belfast Press, 2001); Kate Fearon,
Women’s Work: the Story of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1999), as well as the memoirs of President Clinton, Prime Minister Major, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Marjorie “Mo” Mowlam, etc.
[8] Some might fairly argue that I have left out one key group of actors — the civil servants and policy advisors (including government ministers) who played a role that was somewhat independent of their political masters. This group includes important figures such as Peter Brooke, Quentin Thomas, Jonathan Powell, and Mo Mowlam on the British side; Martin Mansergh, Sean O’Huiginn, and Paddy Teahon on the Irish side; and Tony Lake and Nancy Soderberg in the United States — to name just a few — as well as the advisors to the various parties in Northern Ireland. For a rich, first-hand account of the role of officials on the British side, see Graham Spencer, ed.,
The British and Peace in Northern Ireland, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
[9] Within the Protestant community there were significant class and social differences. Although the dominant forces in Northern Ireland were Protestant, many Protestants were also poor or marginalized, and these differences accounted in part for the divisions and strains within the unionist community, a dimension richly documented in Dean Godson’s biography of David Trimble:
Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal of Unionism (London: Harper Collins, 2004).
[10] 1926 census. Hennessey puts the Catholic percentage at about 33 percent at the time of partition. Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 2.
[11] “2001 Census, Key Statistics, Table KS07a,” Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, accessed May 16, 2019,
https://www.nisra.gov.uk/sites/nisra.gov.uk/files/publications/2001-census-results-key-statistics-report-tables.pdf,; See also “Background Information on Northern Ireland Society,” Conflict Archive on the Internet, accessed May 16, 2019,
https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/ni/religion.htm, for the long term trends. In the most recent census, Catholics now make up 45 percent of the population, while Protestants make up 48 percent. “2011 Census: Religion in Northern Ireland,” Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency,
https://www.ninis2.nisra.gov.uk/public/census2011analysis/religion/religionCommentary.pdf. Charles Landow and Mohammed Aly Sergie,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, Council on Foreign Relations, last updated March 12, 2019,
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/northern-ireland-peace-process.
[12] “If in the future a majority of the people of Northern Ireland clearly wish for and formally consent to the establishment of a united Ireland” the two governments “will introduce and support in the respective Parliaments legislation to give effect to that wish.” To be clear, even those sympathetic to the nationalist cause did not believe that demography would change the outcome quickly. Bew,
The Making and Remaking of the Good Friday Agreement, 28.
[13] Andy Bielenberg and Raymond Ryan, “Irish Economic Development: Past, Present, Future?,”
Irish Examiner, May 20, 2013,
https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/irish-economic-development-past-present-future-231714.html; “Economies of Ireland, North and South, Since 1920,” Encyclopedia of Irish History and Culture, accessed May 8, 2019,
https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/economies-ireland-north-and-south-1920.
[14] John Bradley, “The History of Economic Development in Ireland, North and South,” Proceedings of the British Academy, no. 98 (1999): 35–68,
https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/98p035.pdf.
[15] Peter Donaghy, “Is Northern Ireland Dramatically Poorer than the Republic?,”
Slugger O’Toole, March 26, 2018,
https://sluggerotoole.com/2018/03/26/is-northern-ireland-dramatically-poorer-than-the-republic/.
[16] The importance of single market and more broadly the E.U. dimension was reflected in John Hume’s first draft of what became the Downing Street Declaration. Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 111. It’s worth noting that the challenge Brexit now poses to this “economics will drive politics” approach to all-island integration was foreshadowed in the divergent decisions of Ireland and the United Kingdom on the single currency. See Bew,
The Making and Remaking of the Good Friday Agreement, 26.
[17] For an extensive treatment of the IRA-Libya connection, see Moloney,
A Secret History of the IRA, especially the “Prologue.”
[18] The term “republican” relates back to the divisions within the anti-British forces during the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1920. Republicans rejected the residual links to Great Britain retained in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. Their efforts were partially vindicated by the creation of the Republic in 1949, which not only broke the formal ties to the United Kingdom but also included a constitutional claim, under Articles 2 and 3, to the counties of Northern Ireland. The repeal of these provisions was central to unionist support for the 1998 Agreement.
[19] There was a third, smaller mainstream party, the United Kingdom Union Party, largely the platform for a prominent, anti-agreement Protestant member of parliament from Northern Ireland, Robert McCartney.
[20] The DUP was affiliated with the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force, which, together with the Progressive Unionist Party, was affiliated with the Ulster Defence Association. The perspectives of the loyalist parties are discussed in more detail below.
[21] The “official” wing was heavily influenced by Marxist theory, and focused on the class conflict that it believed united the North and South rather than on the political identity of being “Irish,” which had spawned the IRA at the beginning of the 20th century. See Moloney,
A Secret History of the IRA, 56–79.
[22] Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 44.
[23] The phrase was coined by IRA director of publicity, and long-time Adams ally, Danny Morrison in 1981: “Will anyone here object if with a ballot paper in this hand and an Armalite in this hand, we take power in Ireland?” Moloney,
A Secret History of the IRA, 203.
[24] In the first elections contested by both the SLDP and Sinn Fein in the early-to-mid-1980s, the SDLP led Sinn Fein by 5–6 percentage points. That margin grew to around 10 to 12 percent in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Sinn Fein finally overtook the SDLP in local elections and in elections to Westminster in 2001, in elections to the Stormont Assembly in 2003, and in European elections in 2004. For complete Northern Ireland elections results, see: “Election Results in Northern Ireland Since 1973,” Elections: Northern Ireland Elections, accessed May 8, 2019,
https://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/gallsum.htm.
[25] Hennessey focuses on the “Ulsterization” of security in the North, which led to a reduced British military presence. This had the effect both of removing a major nationalist grievance and forcing the IRA to focus its violence on “Irish,” albeit Protestant, victims, rather than what they considered the colonial oppressor. Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 39.
[26] Others, especially Moloney, argue that Adams’ decision to move Sinn Fein to a political approach was part of a long-term plan conceived much earlier and which became more explicit around 1983–84. Moloney,
A Secret History of the IRA, 240. Moloney also notes the decline in the Sinn Fein vote compared with the SDLP beginning with the 1984 European Parliament elections and accelerated by the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement as well as the increasing effectiveness of British security operations and the electoral backlash stemming from a number of botched IRA operations. Moloney,
A Secret History of the IRA, 326–49. The Enniskillen bombings, which led to the death of a number of non-combatants at a Remembrance Day event in 1987 was a particular turning point. Sinn Fein/IRA leader Martin McGuinness himself later observed, “Obviously it was going to deal a damaging blow to Irish Republicanism.” Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 63.
[27] Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 41.
[28] “John Hume/Gerry Adams Joint Statement,” Sinn Fein, April 23, 1993,
https://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/15217.
[29] For accounts of these discussions and the importance of maintaining confidential channels throughout the conflict, see: Peter Taylor,
Provos: The IRA and Sinn Fein (London: Bloomsbury, 1997) chap. 22; and Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, chap. 5.
[30] The backlash also had its roots in the British strategy to move away from using British forces to provide security in favor of Northern Ireland security personnel, in particular the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The IRA could argue that violence against British forces was an attack on an “occupying force,” but attacks on the constabulary represented the killing of fellow Irish citizens.
It should be noted that some skeptics have suggested that Sinn Fein/the IRA never really embraced the political track, but rather, cynically backed the process leading up to the Agreement and ultimately the Agreement itself on the expectation that unionists would ultimately reject it, allowing Sinn Fein to revert to it traditional unification objectives after having demonstrated that compromise with Unionism was futile. See: Bew,
The Making and Remaking of the Good Friday Agreement, 30–31. Moloney disagrees, arguing that while IRA leaders Adams and McGuiness continued to make arguments of this kind to hardliners in the IRA, in fact, they had “made the choice for peace.” Moloney,
A Secret History of the IRA, chap. 17.
[31] Most in the unionist community and in Great Britain believed that Adams was a member of the IRA’s governing Army Council, an assertion consistently denied by Adams. McGuiness’ links to the IRA were clearer. Moloney makes the most detailed case in support of the argument that Adams played a central, formal role in the IRA from the earliest days of the Troubles until the Agreement itself, although even by Moloney’s account, there seemed to be a substantial disconnect between Adams’ evolving political strategy and the active (and politically damaging) actions of the IRA in the late 1980s and early 1990s, such as the use of “human bombs.” Moloney,
A Secret History of the IRA, 347–49.
[32] This was most obvious at the time the all-party talks began in 1997, when Sinn Fein accepted the Mitchell principles, allowing Sinn Fein to enter the talks, while at the same time the IRA indicated that it “had problems” with some aspects of the principles, thus preserving ambiguity about whether it had accepted exclusively peaceful means: “The Sinn Fein position actually goes beyond the Mitchell Principles. Their affirmation of these principles is therefore quite compatible with their position. As to the IRA's attitude to the Mitchell Principles per se, well, the IRA would have problems with sections of the Mitchell Principles. But then the IRA is not a participant in these talks.” “Mitchell Principles Problematic – IRA,”
Irish Times, Sept, 12, 1997,
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/mitchell-principles-problematic-ira-1.105491.
[33] In
A Secret History of the IRA, Moloney catalogues the serious challenges to Adams’ strategy during the key months leading up the Agreement.
[34] Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 281.
[35] For a rich history of the evolution of the UUP during this period, see Godson,
Himself Alone.
[36] The Anglo-Irish Agreement had a complex impact on subsequent events. As noted above, it did appear to contemplate a political process that could lead to a united Ireland, as well as conceded a role for the South in Northern Ireland affairs. At the same time, this possibility was undercut by Thatcher’s own hardline unionist sensibilities, reflected in the her famous “out, out, out” speech of 1984, in which she ruled out the three solutions for Northern Ireland proposed by the Irish government — unity, federation, or joint authority (between the United Kingdom and Ireland). Thatcher justified the concessions in the Anglo-Irish Agreement as a way to gain Irish support for tougher security measures against the IRA. Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 26.
[37] Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 72.
[38] Hennessey argues that Molyneux did not share this distrust, despite the Downing Street Declaration, quoting Molyneux’s statement, “There is no possibility of us being betrayed.” Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 92. But the subsequent release of the British-Irish Framework Documents in 1995, which proposed to create North-South bodies with more than consultative powers, badly undercut Molyneux’s credibility and helped lead to his replacement by Trimble. Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 97.
[39] Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 251.
[40] Trimble had earlier established his unionist bona fides by helping to bring down the Sunningdale Agreement in 1974, an earlier attempt at resolving the Northern Ireland conflict. Mitchell,
Making Peace, 174. Trimble himself has argued, “I am a product of the destruction of Stormont” — the decision of the British government to abolish the Protestant-dominated Stormont Assembly, first by direct British rule and then by a power-sharing arrangement with nationalists. Godson,
Himself Alone, 25.
[41] Although the UUP held a plurality of unionist votes in the first election for the Northern Ireland Assembly, the DUP supplanted the UUP in the second election in 2003 and its margin over the UUP has grown since then. “Election Results.” UUP’s troubles were earlier apparent in the 1999 European parliamentary elections, where it was outpolled by the DUP.
[42] Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 179–80. Hennessey argues, “The UFF [Ulster Freedom Fighters] and UVF [Ulster Volunteer Force] support for the peace process was the decisive difference. It robbed extreme Unionism of a cutting edge.”
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 90.
[43] Mitchell,
Making Peace, 44.
[44] See Brian Eggins,
History and Hope: The Alliance Party in Northern Ireland (Dublin: The History Press, 2015) fn. 162.
[45] See Jamille Bigio and Rachel Vogelstein, “Women’s Participation in Northern Ireland Peace Negotiations Made Them Less Likely to Fair,”
The Hill, April 13, 2018,
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/383059-womens-participation-in-peace-negotiations-in-northern-ireland-made.
[46] Fred Halliday, “Peace Processes in the Late 20
th Century,” in
A Farewell to Arms: From “Long War” to Long Peace in Northern Ireland, ed. Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke, and Fiona Stephens (New York: Manchester University Press, 2000), 285. See also the essays in Power,
Building Peace in Northern Ireland.
[47] Moloney offers a detailed look at the role of the Catholic Church and key clergy.
[48] That said, even under the Tories, there were periodic efforts to talk directly with the IRA, including the secret 1972 Cheyne Walk talks between Secretary of State for Northern Ireland William Whitelaw and an IRA delegation, including Gerry Adams, which led to an early, but brief ceasefire.
[49] One of the early Northern Ireland Prime Ministers, James Craig, called it “a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant state.” Godson,
Himself Alone, 26.
[50] Prior to taking office in 1979, Member of Parliament and Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Airey Neave, had been killed by a splinter republican paramilitary group, the Irish National Liberation Army.
[51] The British and Irish governments issued “Frameworks for the Future” in February 1995, with proposals on all three strands of the talks. Unionists most strongly objected to provisions that allowed the two governments to decide on the authority of a future North-South body, without the prior consent of a future Northern Ireland Assembly. See Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 92–99.
[52] Specifically, Blair indicated his support for the “triple lock” — the requirement that any change in the status of Northern Ireland required the agreement of the parties in the North, the public in the north through a referendum, and the approval of the British parliament. Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 104.
[53] Albert Reynolds dubbed Bruton “John Unionist.” Moloney,
A Secret History of the IRA, 435. It was during the administration of an earlier Fine Gael prime minister, Garrett Fitzgerald, that Ireland first accepted the idea that unification should only come about with the consent of the people of Northern Ireland, leading to the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985.
[54] After taking office, Ahearn announced “irrendentism is dead.” Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 106–107.
[55] Hennessey observed, “It is doubtful that any of his Fianna Fail predecessors would have had the vision to do this.”
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 167.
[56] Irish American support for the IRA, including money and weaponry such as the notorious “Armalite” (AR-15), is discussed in detail in Moloney,
A Secret History of the IRA, 114–15.
[57] Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 150.
[58] Shane Hickey, “Major Was Furious with Clinton for Granting Adams a Visa,”
Irish Times, Dec. 28. 2018,
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/major-was-furious-with-clinton-for-granting-adams-a-visa-1.3738286.
[59] This initially took the form of the Northern Ireland Investment conference in Belfast chaired by George Mitchell and U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown.
[60] Roy Bradford, “Straws in the Wind Show Signs of Hope and Change,”
Irish Times, Jan. 3, 1996,
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/straws-in-the-wind-show-signs-of-hope-and-change-1.18637.
[61] Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 70–74. Moloney argues that the secret process dates back to indirect contacts between Adams and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Tom King in 1986 or 1987. Moloney,
A Secret History of the IRA, 247. Notably Moloney argued that Adams acted without the approval of the IRA Army Council.
[62] Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 81–83.
[63] Mitchell reached this conclusion after consulting with the head of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Hugh Annesley. This conclusion was shared by Chilcot: “if you set a long time condition, a period of rehabilitation in which no violence took place, it would not happen.” Mitchell,
Making Peace, 79.
[64] Mitchell,
Making Peace, 42–45.
[65] Mitchell,
Making Peace, 50, 60.
[66] Mitchell,
Making Peace, 110.
[67] The third international chair was John de Chastelain, former chief of Canada’s defense staff.
[68] Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 102.
[69] Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 113.
[70] As a result of the violence, the governments voted to expel, at least temporarily, both the Ulster Democratic Party (linked to the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Freedom Fighters) and Sinn Fein. Although the decision risked collapsing the talks, in the end, it buttressed the credibility of the condition subsequent approach by demonstrating the government’s willingness to carry out its threats against non-compliant parties. Mitchell,
Making Peace, 134–42.
[71] Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 115–18. The document, called “Propositions on Heads of Agreement,” included almost all of the key features that ended up in the final Agreement.
[72] Mitchell,
Making Peace, 103; Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 22.
[73] Mitchell,
Making Peace, 143–46.
[74] Among the most consequential of the secret talks were the meetings between Sinn Fein and a British MI5 agent, “Fred,” which led to the Peter Brooke statement that Britain had “no strategic interest” in Northern Ireland, and to the Sinn Fein-Reynolds meeting. See Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, chap. 6. Another important secret channel was between the Irish and loyalist paramilitaries, fostered by a former unionist leader, Roy Magee. Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 140.
[75] Agriculture, education, transport, environment, waterways, social security/social welfare, tourism, E.U. programs, inland fisheries, aquaculture and maritime, health, accident and emergency services, and urban/rural development.
[76] The amendment was approved by referendum in both parts of Ireland in May 1998.
[77] Interestingly, the approach used by the Decommissioning Commission drew on the experience of disarming the Kosovo Liberation Army. See Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 276.
[78] For a summary of developments since the Agreement, and on-going issues, see Kristin Archick,
Northern Ireland: Current Issues and On-Going Challenges in the Peace Process, Congressional Research Service, March 12, 2018,
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS21333.pdf.
[79] Archick,
Northern Ireland, 19
[80] Ben Kelly, “Why Is There No Government in Northern Ireland and How Did Power-sharing Collapse?”
The Independent, April 30, 2019,
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/northern-ireland-talks-latest-power-sharing-deal-stormont-sinn-fein-dup-a8893096.html.
[81] Connla Young, “Sinn Fein Say Good Friday Agreement Facing Its Biggest Threat,”
Irish News, May 14, 2019,
https://www.irishnews.com/news/2017/12/04/news/sinn-fe-in-say-good-friday-agreement-facing-its-biggest-threat-1202189/.
[82] Gormley-Heenan,
Political Leadership and the Northern Ireland Peace Process, 37, quoting David Trimble, “The Belfast Agreement,”
Fordham International Law Journal 22, no. 4 (1999),
https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ilj/vol22/iss4/2/. Moloney argues, in
A Secret History of the IRA, that Adams’ triumph was part of a long-term strategic plan that took years to bring to fruition. It may well be that, unlike Trimble, Adams was guided by a masterplan. But the fact that it took Adams 25 years to realize this goal suggests that favorable exogenous factors, as well as Adams’ efforts, were necessary for the plan to succeed.
[83] Mitchell credits Ahearn’s willingness to reopen the “Strand Two Agreement” (against the advice of his aides), which he had reached with Blair just days before the Good Friday Agreement: “Had Ahearn insisted on the Strand Two provisions he had worked out with Blair, there would not have been a Good Friday Agreement.” Mitchell,
Making Peace, 171.
[84] Gormley-Heenan,
Political Leadership and the Northern Ireland Peace Process, 37–38, quoting George J. Mitchell “Toward Peace in Northern Ireland,”
Fordham International Law Journal 22, no. 4 (1999),
https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ilj/vol22/iss4/2/.
[85] Thus, Moloney, in arguing that the credit belongs to Adams, asserts, “The Irish peace process was a not a spontaneous phenomenon, tossed around by forces outside its control, nor was it forced upon its architects by the fortunes of war. The process was like a precooked dinner whose basic menu had largely been decided long before most of the diners knew the meal was planned.” Moloney,
A Secret History of the IRA, xvi. At other points, Moloney indulges in what feels like a parody of the “Cleopatra’s nose” version of counterfactual analysis: “If Annie Adams [Gerry Adams’ mother] had not insisted on making the move to Ballymurphy [an IRA stronghold in West Belfast], the IRA might never have been led by Gerry Adams, and Irish history would now look very different.” Moloney,
A Secret History of the IRA, 46.
[86] Peter Crutchley, "IRA Ceasefire 20 Years On: The Priest Who Brokered the Peace,"
BBC News, Aug. 31, 2014,
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-28812366. This view is echoed by Moloney: “To say that Father Alec Reid is the unrecognized inspiration of the peace process would be an understatement.”
A Secret History of the IRA, 223.
[87] Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 115.
[88] Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 218. One British government official observed, “The body language changed after Winfield. Before that it was always stiff and stilted, but afterwards they no longer seemed stiff and stilted in each other’s presence. Winfield was the psychological breakthrough.” Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 264.
[89] The narrative presented in the earlier sections of this essay is a form of “process tracing,” which helps clarify the key decisions and those responsible for the decisions. By itself, however, this approach can’t really answer “what mattered” — either as necessary or sufficient cause. For this reason, counterfactual analysis is particularly useful. For a discussion of some of the considerations and difficulties, see Jack S. Levy, “Counterfactuals, Causal Inference, and Historical Analysis,”
Security Studies 24, no. 3 (September 2015): 378–402,
https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2015.1070602; Francis J. Gavin, “What If? The Historian and the Counterfactual
.” Security Studies 24, no. 3 (September 2015): 425–30,
https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2015.1070610; and Neil J. Roese, ed.,
What Might Have Been: The Social Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking (London: Psychology Press, 1995).
[90] See for example Mallie and McKittrick’s judgment: “The election of 1997 transformed the peace process.”
Endgame in Ireland, 213.
[91] See Mary Holland, “A Very Good Friday,”
Guardian, April 11, 1998,
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1998/apr/12/northernireland.
[92] Hennessey challenges at least part of the claim, arguing that the 1998 Agreement had a much weaker North-South dimension which allowed for unionist acceptance. Thomas Hennessey, “‘Slow learners’? Comparing the Sunningdale Agreement and the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement,” in
Sunningdale, the Ulster Workers' Council Strike and the Struggle for Democracy in Northern Ireland, ed. David McCann and Cillian McGrattan (Manchester: Manchester University, 2017).
[93] See Moloney,
A Secret History of the IRA, 142.
[94] This was particularly true on the issue of decommissioning, where Adams repeatedly insisted on the limits of his influence over the IRA. His position was corroborated by the British head of the Northern Ireland police (the Royal Ulster Constabulary), Hugh Annesley, who, when asked by Mitchell at a key juncture in 1995 whether Adams could get the IRA to decommission before an agreement, replied, “No, he couldn’t do it even if he wanted to. He doesn’t have that much control over them.” Mitchell,
Making Peace, 30.
[95] Moloney,
A Secret History of the IRA, 414–16.
[96] Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 221–23.
[97] Godson describes the episode in detail. Godson,
David Trimble and the Ordeal of Unionism.
[98] Martin Mansergh, “Forward,” in
Lessons from the Northern Ireland Peace Process, ed. Timothy J. White (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013), ix.
[99] Gormley-Heenan examines this problem at some length.
Political Leadership and the Northern Ireland Peace Process, 91–96.
[100] Inclusivity has several different meanings in the context of these negotiations. The term was sometimes used to refer to the inclusion of the full range of stakeholders, including civil society, but was also used more narrowly, by Sinn Fein and the loyalists, to refer to the protagonists in the conflict. See for example, Timothy J. White, “Lessons from the Northern Ireland Peace Process: An Introduction,” in
Lessons from the Northern Ireland Peace Process, 7. Broad inclusivity of civil society was valuable but it was the inclusion of the former paramilitaries that was crucial. See Paul Dixon, “The Victory and Defeat of the IRA,” in
Lessons from the Northern Ireland Peace Process.
[101] Mitchell,
Making Peace, 19. This is an important difference between the 1998 Agreement and Sunningdale.
[102] Whether the agreement is truly a consociational agreement is a matter of much debate among political scientists, see White, “Lessons from the Northern Ireland Peace Process: An Introduction,” 4; and articles cited in footnote 2.
[103] Power,
Building Peace in Northern Ireland, 8.
[104] Feargal Cochrane and Seamus Dunn,
People Power? The Role of the Voluntary and Community Sector in the Northern Ireland Conflict (Cork: Cork University Press, 2006), 173.
[105] Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 216.
[106] See Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 164–65 and Mitchell,
Making Peace, 173. “As I read the document I knew instantly that it would not be acceptable to the Unionists.” Godson,
Himself Alone, 327. As noted above, the ensuing crisis was only resolved when Ahearn agreed to walk back the draft and dilute the provisions opposed by the unionists.
[107] In fact, the deadline actually slipped by a day; on the evening of the formal deadline the talks were still at an impasse. Mitchell,
Making Peace, 177. The deadline also helped Adams gain IRA assent to enter the talks — his critics feared that an open-ended negotiation predicated on a continued IRA ceasefire would be used as a British ploy to weaken the IRA’s operational capacity as well as its rank and file support. See Moloney,
A Secret History of the IRA, 471.
[108] The classic statement is presented by William Zartman in “Ripeness: The Hurting Stalemate and Beyond,” in
International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War, ed. Paul C. Stern and Daniel Druckman (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2000),
https://doi.org/10.17226/9897. As noted below, the approach I suggest here relies less on Zartman’s idea of a “hurting stalemate” and more on the perception by both sides of a positive gain.
[109] But not impossible. Arguably the decision to arm the Bosnians and bomb the Serbs during the Bosnia conflict, and the bombing of the Serbs in Kosovo, helped produce circumstances that made those conflicts “ripe” for settlement. See Zartman, “Ripeness,” 244.
[110] Gormley-Heenan,
Political Leadership and the Northern Ireland Peace Process, 14, quoting Paul Arthur,
Peer Learning: Northern Ireland as a Case Study (New York: Carnegie Corporation, 1999), 10. “The participants shared a concern that something needed to be done and that at the very least they should explore each others’ options. Track two presented the best opportunities to do so. The absence of the media, the physical location, the neutral back up support, all were as far removed as possible from the rawness of Northern Ireland’s political arena.”
[111] Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 257. See also, Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 19.
[112] Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 129.
[113] See Timothy J. White, “The Role of Civil Society in Promoting Peace in Northern Ireland,” in
Building Peace in Northern Ireland, ed. Maria Power, 38–40.
[114] See Maria Power, “Introduction,” in
Building Peace in Northern Ireland, 4.
[115] On Blair’s decommissioning side letter, see Hennessey,
The Northern Ireland Peace Process, 169–70.
[116] This view of the role of third parties is, thus, distinct from the focus on third parties as “neutral” mediators. What mattered most here was not neutrality but that third parties could offer something of value to the parties themselves. This more traditional understanding of the role of neutral actors in peace processes was illustrated by the creation of the Independent Commission on Policing, which produced a blue print for policing reform — something the parties themselves were unable to accomplish.
[117] Mitchell,
Making Peace, 25.
[118] The IRA completed decommissioning in 2005.
[119] Mallie and McKittrick,
Endgame in Ireland, 205.
[120] For a discussion of the problem of “open” diplomacy (without preconditions) see Oriana Skyler Mastro,
The Costs of Conversation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019).
[121] Mitchell,
Making Peace, 175.
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[post_content] => “I am sorry to report that I do not like this manuscript much.” As academics, we have all received such a note (and if you haven’t yet, you will at some point). And the negative reactions to our papers and books don’t ever go away, no matter how long you are in the profession or how distinguished your title. This was the first line of a referee report I received just last month for my latest book manuscript.
There is probably no harder part of scholarly life than sending our work out for anonymous peer review. We pour our heart and soul into our work, nurturing, digging, re-shaping our articles and books until we believe they are perfect. We carry around the arguments we make and the evidence we’ve collected in our heads throughout the day, evaluating them at all hours, from when our heads hit the pillow at night to when we get into the shower the next morning. As scholars, our arguments and research both reflect who we are and how we see the world. While we are intellectuals and pretend we are completely objective, we (understandably) become deeply and personally attached to our work. Our articles and books are like our children — we love them fiercely and, at times, irrationally, often blind to the flaws that others see. This is what makes receiving negative reviews so unsettling, especially for the young scholar.
Stay in the business long enough, and you collect stories. Years ago, I submitted an article, “The Myth of Flexible Response,” to a prestigious journal. One “anonymous” review was by someone who said he was involved in the Kennedy administration policy process I was writing on and suggested that I had no idea what I was talking about. The review was handwritten and the journal forgot to remove the initials — “CK” — at the end of the document. Since I had based much of my argument on the papers of Carl Kaysen and was quite familiar with his handwriting, the review was not especially anonymous. The journal passed on the piece. Another review, which I later learned was written by our most accomplished Cold War historian (Note: No matter how hard we try not to, we all attempt to figure out the identity of our reviewers), asked, “Are we sure the author does not suffer from dyslexia?” I have countless more stories like this, but simply recalling them is generating a cold sweat!
At the
Texas National Security Review, we have and will continue to think long and hard about how to encourage best practices in the review process. We have incorporated a number of measures, including paying our reviewers on a sliding scale depending upon how comprehensive the review is and how quickly it is returned. This has made these reviews even more rigorous than the typical review. Believe me, I know. You may have noticed that I did not write an introduction for the last issue. You may have also noticed that an article of mine appeared in our pages. This generated a whole lot of discussion and concern in our journal — how would it look for a new journal to publish an article by the chair of the editorial board? Did we have a process in place to treat my article in as demanding, ethical, and thorough a way as anyone else’s?
To my (not always pleasant) surprise, we did. I can honestly say that my article went through the most rigorous review process I have ever experienced in over two decades of academic life. There were four anonymous reviews, each well over two pages long, as well as intense internal review. All of the reviews were sharp and penetrating, with a raft of (not always welcome) suggestions, but one in particular was especially harsh. I confess I may not have handled the criticism in the most mature way. I pouted and suggested I might pull the piece and send it somewhere else, arguing that I had gotten to a point in my career where I shouldn’t have to deal with this. Who was the “obvious” idiot
TNSR had found to stand in judgment of my “obvious” expertise? It was not my best moment, to say the least. Ryan Evans — who in addition to being the publisher is also one of my best friends — never blinked. My piece, he stated calmly, would have to address all the criticisms if
TNSR was to publish it. And no, I would never find out who had reviewed my piece. After putting the article aside for a few weeks, I swallowed my pride and went through the critiques line by line and made the changes. Ryan and his outstanding team of editors worked with me closely to improve the effort. The piece was much better for it. And I still have no idea who the reviewers were, though I am grateful for their extraordinary willingness to offer me honest criticism and helpful recommendations (although reviewer number four would be an unlikely addition to my holiday card list, as petty as that may be!).
I tell this story for a few reasons. First, the process of being evaluated and assessed never ends, no matter how long you stay in the academy. It is important for young people entering the academy to know this. Criticism hurts deeply and often feels unfair. To have your best work dismissed by an unknown, anonymous voice can be devastating. The key is to remember that, no matter how unpleasant, the reviewer took the time to read your manuscript and take it seriously. No matter how painful and even wrong-headed, almost every review I’ve received has been useful, if only to help me better understand how my arguments and evidence are received. Bear in mind, too, that just because an article is rejected does not mean it is wrong or the scholarship poor. As I think about my own work, it is often the pieces that were rejected once or twice (and in one case, four times before being published) that ended up being much better and more influential works than the pieces that sailed through review on a first pass. While you should take criticism seriously, if you believe in your ideas, arguments, and evidence, and have pursued your quest with rigor, honesty, and integrity, then never give up. Keep plodding, never let the critics get you down, and keep improving and pressing. Do this and you will get published and your work will — eventually — be recognized.
The second reason I have related this story is because
TNSR is new and is working to establish its reputation as the best venue for rigorous, innovative scholarship on the most pressing questions of strategy, statecraft, and international relations. We want to be accessible and engage the world beyond academics, to include policymakers, without sacrificing the highest standards of scholarship. It is very easy for a new journal to be seen as an outlet for insiders or close friends. The great journal
International Security is often — and to my mind, quite unfairly — seen as an outlet reserved largely for scholars within a certain self-contained network in security studies. It was very important to us that we implement the most demanding standards for review so that we could establish the highest scholarly credentials. My painful, if ultimately enormously helpful, experience with the
TNSR review process convinced me we are doing well on this score.
The third reason I mention this is that we all wonder about the efficacy and fairness of the current system. Is the double-blind, peer-reviewed process that has become the norm the best way to advance knowledge? Is the current system too easily gamed, or does it encourage scholars — especially young thinkers at the height of their intellectual powers — to be risk-averse, to play small-ball, to write papers and books with the goal of getting through review, rather than expanding our understanding of the world? We all know the reasons we have the current system, but I think it is fair to ask whether it can be improved. Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein transformed our understanding of the world without it. Is double-blind peer review the worst way of evaluating scholarship, except all the others? Or are there ways we can improve the system? At
TNSR we don’t know the answer but are very interested in hearing from our audience — both readers and authors. We are willing to break current norms and practices if and when we find better ways of doing things. We encourage you to send us your thoughts.
The final reason is a plea to all future reviewers, for this journal and all others: Be comprehensive, be rigorous, but don’t be a jerk. The benefits of anonymity are obvious, but so, too, are the pitfalls. We live in an age where our social media culture often prizes snark over substance, the witty cut over the empathetic suggestion, the pithy phrase over deep reflection. When writing a review, try to imagine the scholar on the other side of the process, a person who has no doubt invested a good part of their heart, soul, and mind in the work you are reading. This is not a plea to go easy — quite the contrary. At
TNSR, we want our reviewers to bring their sharpest, most constructive insights, criticisms, and recommendations. Many reviewers, however, often forget the constructive part. If you are recommending a rejection, ask yourself, was your decision made because the ideas, methods, and evidence are lacking, or because it doesn’t comport with your long-held views (or those of your discipline or field)? Early in my career, I learned from my mentor, Marc Trachtenberg, that evidence and arguments that challenge your deepest beliefs are “like gold in your hands” — they should be embraced, encouraged, and relished. That is how we become smarter. We aren’t in this business to reify our own opinions, but to gain better understanding of enormously complex, often consequential issues. Does the article or book you are reviewing give us more purchase on a new question, new insight, even if the answer does not comport with how you understand the world? Will publication lead to energetic debate and discussion, even if you are somewhat skeptical of the claims? And if the answers to these questions are “yes,” are your critiques and suggestions oriented toward strengthening the piece, to helping the author make their strongest argument in the best possible way? Does your review offer helpful advice, demonstrate empathy, and provide the author with guidance that can help them move their project forward? And if the answers to these questions are “no,” might it be time to ask yourself some hard questions about who you are and why you are in this business? Truth be told, following the adage “don’t be a jerk” involves no sacrifice of standards or smarts or rigor. Quite the contrary, in fact.
Rest assured that the excellent scholarly contributions in this volume went through such a process, and that we at
TNSR are committed to embracing the highest standards of scholarly review. Enjoy!
Francis J. Gavin is the chairman of the editorial board of the Texas National Security Review
. He is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the inaugural director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at SAIS-Johns Hopkins University. His writings include Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958–1971
(University of North Carolina Press, 2004) and Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age
(Cornell University Press, 2012).
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[lead] => The chairman of our editorial board, Frank Gavin, introduces Vol. 2, Iss. 2 of TNSR and discusses the joys and pains of the review process, giving some advice for both reviewers and those submitting their work for review.
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Introduction
On a cold winter day in 1793, a crowd of French revolutionaries burst into the chapel of the Sorbonne. Streaming toward a large sarcophagus in the center of the apse, the mob laid into the cool marble with their rifle butts, hammering away at the central figure’s aquiline features. Howling vandals dragged a desiccated cadaver from the crypt, and a grisly — and most likely apocryphal — tale describes how street urchins were later spotted playing with its severed head.
[1] Alexandre Lenoir, an archeologist, waded into the whirlwind of mayhem and — at the price of a bayonet-skewered hand — managed to save one of baroque sculpture’s masterpieces from total destruction.
[2]
The object of the
sans-culottes' ire was a man who had been dead for over a century and a half, but who remains to this day a towering symbol of
Ancien Régime absolutism: Armand Jean du Plessis — better known as Cardinal Richelieu. The clergyman, who served as Louis XIII’s chief minister from 1624 to 1642, has long constituted one of the more polarizing and fascinating figures in the history of Western statecraft. Renowned for his fierce intellect, mastery of the dark arts of propaganda, and unshakeable belief in the centralizing virtues of the French monarchy, Richelieu’s actions as chief minister have been debated by generations of historians, political philosophers, novelists, and biographers.
[3]
Richelieu is best known for three things: his unabashed authoritarianism, his efforts to stiffen the sinews of the French state, and his decision to position France as a counterweight to Habsburg hegemony through a network of alliances with Protestant powers. It is these aspects of his domestic and international legacy — all of which are frequently viewed as closely intertwined — that have triggered the most controversy. On the one hand, there are the aforementioned critics — those that viewed the cardinal as a devious and shadowy character, the mustachio-twirling villain of
The Three Musketeers who cloaked his naked ambition and venal appetites under his crimson robes.
[4] On the other hand, there has always been an equally strong cohort of Richelieu enthusiasts. For many modern French writers, Louis XIII’s chief minister was an early patriot who contributed to the secularization (
laïcisation) of French foreign policy, and by extension, of French national identity.
[5] Eminent German historians have viewed the cleric as a symbol of diplomatic prudence and dexterity, and have compared him in glowing terms to another “white revolutionary,” Otto Von Bismarck.
[6] Henry Kissinger, a great admirer of the Frenchman, memorably characterized him as “the charting genius of a new concept of centralized statecraft and foreign policy based on the balance of power.”
[7]
This article focuses on this last aspect of Richelieu’s life and legacy: his conception and practice of great power competition. The goal is not to engage in a moral examination of his actions, but rather to debate their overall effectiveness in advancing France’s foreign policy interests during the Thirty Years’ War. What philosophy of power and statecraft underpinned the cardinal’s approach to counter-hegemonic balancing? How did he view France’s role in the world and what was his vision of collective security? Finally, what insights can be derived from Richelieu’s approach to foreign policy and great power competition? Is Richelieu the embodiment of
prudentia, or sagacious statecraft, as some have argued? Perhaps most importantly, are the policies and writings of a 17th-century clergyman relevant and worthy of scrutiny by contemporary security managers?
[8]
In an effort to answer these questions, the article proceeds in three main parts. The first section will explore the intellectual foundations of Richelieu’s foreign policy. The cardinal was a product of early European nationalism, and he — along with other segments of the country’s ruling elites — was steeped in a heavily mythicized belief in French exceptionalism. These messianic and nationalist tendencies were buttressed by the development of a sophisticated body of thought on
raison d’état — or reason of state.
Raison d’état fused foreign ideological imports, such as Machiavellianism, with neo-stoicism and France’s own tradition of divine absolutism. The net result was a philosophy of power tempered by prudence — one which sought to transcend confessional divisions in favor of domestic unity and international strength. Richelieu’s vision of foreign policy, and of an “Augustan golden age” in which France would play the arbitral role in a carefully balanced order of nation-states, can thus best be understood as a subtle amalgamation of these two intellectual currents,
raison d’état and French exceptionalism.
In the second part, the paper examines Richelieu’s strategy in action. At the beginning of the chief minister’s tenure, it was readily apparent that the kingdom of Louis XIII was in no position to directly challenge Habsburg dominance. Weakened by years of war and religious turmoil, and riven with bitter divisions, France, which only a century earlier was considered the greatest military power in the West, was in a defensive crouch, ill-equipped and reluctant to engage in a transcontinental armed struggle. Its finances were in shambles, its military system in dire need of reform, and its security elites almost irreconcilably disunited in their approach to grand strategy.
For the first decade or so of his tenure as chief minister, Richelieu sought, therefore, to recover France’s strategic solvency by strengthening its state apparatus, dampening internecine hatreds, and crushing perceived political threats to the monarchy. In the decades-long competition with the Habsburgs, Richelieu viewed time as a precious strategic commodity, and opted wherever possible for a strategy of exhaustion and harassment —
la guerre couverte (covert war) — over one of frontal confrontation. He waged war via a complex constellation of proxies, while his most able diplomats were dispatched to foment internal divisions within both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. Meanwhile, Richelieu’s attempts to craft a more flexible and dynamic form of foreign policy ran into fierce opposition from the
dévots — Catholic zealots who rejected French alliances with Protestant powers, and sought to accommodate Habsburg Spain.
Even as the cardinal sought to prevail in these bitter ideological struggles and establish some modicum of strategic consensus, he also embarked on an ambitious — and only partially successful — effort to enact internal reforms and strengthen France’s overall state capacity.
[9]
In 1635, drastic changes in the regional configuration of power forced Richelieu to reluctantly transition from
la guerre couverte to
la guerre ouverte — or open war. Until his death in 1642, the cardinal found himself in the challenging position of overseeing a war unprecedented in scale, and waged on several fronts, a conflict that drained the state’s coffers and placed considerable stress on a public administration still in its adolescence. Increasingly unpopular and ever fearful of falling out of his mercurial monarch’s favor, the chief minister’s frail constitution finally gave way in 1642. He thus never got to witness the French victory over Spain at the battle of Rocroi only a few months later— a triumph that, in the eyes of many, marked a definitive shift in the European balance of power.
[10]
What lessons can be derived from Richelieu’s 18 years at the apex of government? In the third and final section, the essay engages in an assessment of the actions undertaken by this complex and remarkable figure. It conducts a postmortem of Richelieu’s grand strategy of counter-hegemonic balancing and points to its successes as well as its failures and shortcomings.
The French historian Philippe Ariès once quipped, “Time sticks to the historian’s thoughts like soil to a gardener’s spade.”
[11] As the current generation of strategic thinkers grapples with a period marked by geopolitical upheaval and political disunion, Richelieu’s era — full of its own ideological tumult and nationalist fracas — provides a particularly rich soil in which to start digging.
Richelieu's Vision
Categorizing or succinctly defining Richelieu’s approach to great power competition is no easy task. Unlike other great strategic thinkers such as Clausewitz or Machiavelli, the body of thought bequeathed to us in his voluminous writings does not easily lend itself to systematization.
[12] The cardinal was certainly deeply intellectual: He read Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish; was a major patron of the arts; and his personal library, which contained proscribed works, including books on Calvinist theology, was considered one of the finest in Europe.
[13] Above all, however, he was a statesman and a policy practitioner, less interested in articulating a set of novel theoretical constructs or in pioneering a school of thought than in harnessing knowledge for the purpose of advancing the interests and ideology of the French state. At a time when European political leaders and counselors were avid consumers of new translations and interpretations of Roman history, Richelieu warned against viewing the works of Tacitus, Cicero, or Seneca as precise instruction manuals for the present, stating, for instance, that
There is nothing more dangerous for the state than men who want to govern kingdoms on the basis of maxims which they cull from books. When they do this they often destroy them, because the past is not the same as the present, and times, places, and persons change.[14]
Indeed, one of the defining characteristics of Richelieu’s career was precisely his struggle to preserve a degree of intellectual (and political) maneuverability by circumventing the strictures that accompanied narrow ideologies, politicized confessional divisions, or overly systematized schools of thought. That said, it is also evident upon further examination that he operated under the clear guidance of an overarching vision — one that is best understood as a deep yearning for order in a dislocated world.
The cardinal’s lifelong battle against what he perceived as the forces of entropy, chaos, and decline — both within France and, on a more macrocosmic level, overseas — can no doubt be partially explained by two factors. First, Richelieu’s quest for order cannot be dissociated from his own experiences growing up in war-torn France.
[15] Second, the cardinal was a product of a historical context propitious to such thinking: early modern Europe as it transitioned from the late Renaissance to the Baroque era, and an intellectual environment marked by the blossoming of thought on
raison d’état and a revival of French exceptionalism.
Richelieu was raised in a country rent by confessional divisions, wracked with penury and famine, and haunted by the specter of its own decline. Born in 1585 into the Poitou region’s minor nobility, his family’s travails provide a vignette of the broader pressures affecting late 16th-century France. As one biographer notes, “Not a year of his [Richelieu’s] early life was passed in peace, and the waves of war and plague broke right against the frowning walls of the family castle.”
[16] Even as a young child, he would have been aware of the disastrous effects of the collapse of royal authority and of the many years of conflict that had pitted French Catholics against their Protestant, Huguenot neighbors.
[17] The verdant plains of Poitou — traditionally a major thoroughfare in times of war — remained dotted with gutted buildings and charred crops. The du Plessis lands had been repeatedly despoiled by roving war bands and brigands regularly visited their depredations on local villagers.
[18]
[quote id="1"]
This climate of bloody lawlessness extended to Richelieu’s own relatives, who had been embroiled in a Shakespearean feud with another local family, the Maussons, who ruled over a small castle about a mile and a half away. Following an ugly dispute over control of a local church, the Maussons butchered Richelieu’s uncle, Louis du Plessis. His younger brother — and Richelieu’s future father — the 17-year-old François, was serving as a page at the royal court at the time. Upon hearing the news, the teenager returned to his ancestral lands, lay in wait for the Lord of Mausson by a small bridge, and murdered him.
[19] This revenge killing was only the beginning of a remarkably successful — and blood-spattered — military career for Richelieu’s father, who became one of Henri III’s most effective commanders and executioners, personally overseeing the gruesome deaths of a number of declared enemies of the state.
[20] Following the king’s assassination at the hands of a Catholic fanatic, François du Plessis immediately pledged loyalty to his designated successor, Henri de Navarre, even though the latter had yet to convert to Catholicism. In this, he displayed a form of “supra-confessional” loyalty to the state that, in some ways, foreshadowed that of his son.
[21]
Shortly after Henri de Navarre’s coronation as Henri IV, his flinty henchman succumbed to fever. Richelieu was only five at the time and for much of the remainder of his youth his mother struggled with mounting debts and exacting circumstances. A sickly child, Richelieu compensated for his physical frailty with a remarkable intellect coupled with a voracious appetite for learning. Once he came of age, his family directed him toward the bishopric of Luçon, which he acquired in 1607, after having received a special papal dispensation for his young age.
[22] A decade later, he entered the royal court as a secretary of state, and in 1622 was named cardinal. Two years later, he ascended to the rank of chief minister, and in 1629 he was awarded the title under which we know him today — that of Duke of Richelieu — Richelieu being the small hamlet where the du Plessis tribe had been raised.
A Product of Early French Exceptionalism
From his vantage point at the height of France’s royal bureaucracy, the cardinal looked back at the past half-century of chaos, during which five French kings had either died prematurely or been assassinated by religious fanatics and his country had been ravaged by a seemingly endless cycle of war. For men such as Richelieu, these decades of unrest had not only resulted in widespread misery and the weakening of royal authority, they had also turbocharged France’s decline on the international stage. Among a certain constituency of French elites — the
politiques or
bons français — France’s inability to overcome its communal tensions had only redounded to the advantage of its European competitors, who had capitalized on those divisions. These sentiments were laid bare in pamphlets that lamented that lesser European powers had descended on a weakened France like vultures, “extinguishing the torches of their ambition in France’s blood, emptying their humors on its bosom, and importing their quarrels to its very altars.”
[23] If the people of France did not unite, warned such writers, the nation’s fate would be a grim one indeed — it would be reduced to “some little monster of a republic, to some canton (…) or some gray league” of disparate parts.
[24] And indeed, during the second half of the 16th century, foreign powers had repeatedly interfered in the nation’s domestic politics and intervened in its civil wars.
Philip II’s Spain, which had an interest in keeping France in a state of civil strife, had been especially meddlesome, supporting and subsidizing the uprising of the Catholic League during the succession crisis that followed Henri III’s death in 1589.
[25] In short, France in the late 16th century was much like Syria today: a nation crisscrossed with foreign soldiers, mercenaries, and proxies, and a spectacle of almost unremitting misery and desolation, with some modern estimates putting the numbers of casualties at well over a million out of a population about 16 times that size.
[26]
The reign of Henri IV, from 1589 to 1610, brought a measure of stability to domestic affairs, with the king proving as skilled at fostering unity as he had been at waging war. The signing of the Edict of Nantes, in 1598, ushered in a period of almost unprecedented religious toleration and a fragile peace returned to the realm. Despite his manifold accomplishments, Henri IV’s reign remained fiercely contested by religious extremists on both sides. After miraculously surviving over a dozen assassination attempts, death finally caught up with the “good King Henri” when, in 1610, an unhinged zealot stabbed him to death. His murder constituted something of a unifying trauma for a country weary of the endless spirals of bloodletting and desperate to recover its lost grandeur.
[27]
Indeed, while conventional wisdom has long held that the messianic character of French nationalism is essentially a modern phenomenon and a natural outgrowth of the universalism of the French enlightenment and revolution, historians have increasingly demonstrated the extent to which French intellectual elites from the medieval era onward already viewed their country as predestined for continental leadership and as a role model for other European monarchies.
[28] This form of pre-modern exceptionalism was structured around three main pillars, or conceptual templates. The first was France’s history of imperial glory and martial prowess, with a particular focus on the empire of Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor, and on France’s leading role during the Crusades, during which it provided the bulk of expeditionary military power. The early 17th century bore witness to a revival of interest in these myth-shrouded eras of France’s past and contemporary texts frequently reprised the medieval papal designation of the French as God’s “chosen people,” or
peuple élu.
[29] The second was a sense that French dominance was the natural “order of things,” due to the nation’s size, central position, fertile lands, and demographic heft. (The kingdom of France was the most populous in Europe).
[30] And the third pillar was a unique brand of French Catholicism — Gallicanism — that argued against excessive papal interference in domestic matters and was closely tied to France’s tradition of divine absolutism.
[31] The French monarch, or “most Christian” king, as he was formally known, was revered as a religious figure vested with certain sacred powers and abilities (such as the ability to cure scrofula and other ailments through the power of touch) and as one of God’s “lieutenants” on Earth.
[32]
[quote id="2"]
All of this was accompanied by a sense of cultural superiority that had become increasingly widespread with the diffusion of vernacular French, which many viewed as the “purest” of European tongues after Latin, and the continued circulation of exceptionalist origin myths, such as that the French were descended from the Trojans.
[33] These expressions of civilizational pride occasionally went hand in hand with territorial revisionism, as an increasingly vocal body of French jurists and pamphleteers argued in favor of the “recapture” of French imperial possessions harking back to the era of Charlemagne. In so doing, their revanchist arguments bear a resemblance to those of certain contemporary Chinese nationalists, who argue that the People’s Republic of China should hold sway over all territories once controlled by the Ming or Qing dynasties.
[34]
This cocktail of wounded nationalism and frustrated exceptionalism was rendered more potent by the rise of foreign adversaries that French elites had long perceived as their natural inferiors. While France had been consumed with internal struggles, the Habsburg powers — with their two dynastic branches in Spain and Austria — had been consolidating their strength. Writers in Paris emitted dark warnings of Madrid’s ultimate ambition to establish a “universal monarchy,” which would exert uncontested hegemony from Iberia to Bohemia.
[35] Spain — which had humiliated France during the Council of Trent and displaced it as Europe’s most redoubtable military power — was viewed as the most serious and immediate threat. Portrayed in French writings as a “mongrel,” corrupt, and upstart nation, Habsburg Spain had succeeded with the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559 in strong-arming the French monarchy into acknowledging Spanish dominance over much of Italy.
[36] This was a source of intense dismay for a whole generation of French nobles, who had been reared on the tales of their ancestors’ transalpine exploits. A social caste that had drawn much of its
raison d'être from the martial luster of foreign ventures feared that it had been trapped in a “post-heroic era.” As one soldier-aristocrat wrote at the time, commenting on the signing of the treaty, “In the space of an hour, with a simple gesture with a quill, we were forced to surrender everything, and to tarnish all our glorious past victories with a few drops of ink.”
[37] At the same time, a growing body of nobles had begun to look at France’s religious conflicts with distaste — viewing them as dishonorable, fratricidal, and barbaric — and pined for the “glory days” of foreign wars.
[38]
As a member of the minor nobility, and the son of a renowned warrior who had served across confessional lines, Richelieu was a direct product of this melancholic, fin-de-siècle zeitgeist. The sections of his writings that expound on the nature and characteristics of the French people frequently resemble those of an exasperated, yet loving, parent. His works also reflect the intellectual tradition of viewing France as uniquely positioned for European leadership and its people as destined for greatness, provided they ceased to wallow in the mediocrity brought about by internal divisions.
[39]
The cardinal was hardly subtle in his suggestion that he was destined for a leading role, with an almost sacred responsibility to inject discipline into France’s boisterous society and channel its formidable energy into the recovery of its natural place at the cockpit of European geopolitics. The latter goal would require him to pursue a bold and controversial foreign policy vision — one intellectually grounded in theories of
raison d’état.
Raison d’Etat and Authoritarianism
Few political theorists have generated quite as much heated controversy as Niccolò Machiavelli.
[40] The Machiavellian assertion of a clear and necessary distinction between private morality and state behavior was viewed as a moral affront — or at least a severe intellectual challenge — by many early modern Christian thinkers. And then, of course, there was the whiff of sulfur that came with the mere mention of the Italian humanist’s name. His works were placed on the papal index of proscribed books and he had become associated in popular culture with atheism and republicanism. In early 17th-century France, in particular, there was a radioactive quality to affirming oneself as a disciple of Machiavelli, whose very “Italianness” rendered his ideas suspect.
[41] For many political theorists of the early Baroque era, it was safer to simply bypass the works of the controversial Florentine to plumb the ruminations of the sages of the ancient world. Tacitus, in particular, was considered, in the words of Montaigne, to be a veritable “nursery of ethical and political discourses for the use and ornament of those who have status in the management of the world.”
[42] As one historian notes, 17th-century writers began to contrast Machiavellianism with Tacitism, framing them as “two terms connoting either a pejorative or a positive interpretation of raison d’état principles.”
[43]
The rise of this particular brand of Tacitism coincided with the growth of the neo-stoic movement, which drew solace from the virtues celebrated by Roman stoics such as Seneca —
constantia, self-discipline, obedience, and rationality. The spread of neo-stoicism, many have argued, was a natural reaction to decades of violence and disruption.
[44] Neo-stoicism was more than just a consolatory credo, however. It was also a philosophy of action that emphasized patriotism and public service.
[45] In that sense, it aligned neatly with the goals of many Christian political theorists of the Counter-Reformation, who had set out to prove that it was possible to advance the interests of the state without completely severing ties with the Christian ethical tradition.
[46] The flowering of such writings gave birth to a remarkably rich and sophisticated body of thought, one that largely succeeded in its mission to develop a pragmatic, yet religiously inflected, foreign policy ethos. It is through this prism that one should read Richelieu’s own writings on statecraft, rather than viewing him simply as the “French Machiavelli,” or as the harbinger of a continent-wide secularization of foreign policy.
[47] Indeed, in lieu of detaching France’s secular interests from its faith-based traditions, Richelieu and the writers and polemicists with whom he surrounded himself sought to combine the two and “endeavored to show that the good of the state coincided with that of the religion.”
[48]
In this Richelieu and his supporters were greatly aided by France’s pre-existing exceptionalist mythos and tradition of divine absolutism. The first provided the kingdom with an ideological predisposition toward strategic autonomy, while the second lent a religious “cover” for actions that might otherwise appear hostile to the interests of the Catholic Church.
French
raison d’état was deeply intertwined with the nation’s tradition of divine absolutism. For Richelieu and his absolutist fellow travelers, monarchy was not only the most effective form of government, it was also the most natural.
[49] The French monarch, by virtue of his divine nature, was infused with a purer, higher form of reason, which allowed him to pursue a more pragmatic foreign policy at a remove from the unruly passions and parochial concerns of the common man.
[50] This view of the king as the metaphysical embodiment of the state is evident throughout the works of Richelieu’s closest collaborators, with one of them writing that the king was so divinely “animated by the power of reason,” that “the interests of the state” had replaced the “passions of his soul.”
[51] At the same time, however, the corporeal structure of the state — its territorial integrity, armies, and institutions — remained profoundly mortal. Its defense could only be guaranteed by a small, trusted group of icy-veined custodians mounting an undying — and unforgiving — vigil. Richelieu thus warned that Christian charity could hardly be extended to seditious actors, for while
man’s salvation occurs ultimately in the next world … states have no being after this world. Their salvation is either in the present or nonexistent. Hence the punishments that are necessary to their survival may not be postponed but must be immediate.[52]
Indeed,
raison d’état was also inherently authoritarian. French
raison d’état theorists were not just ruthless, they were also elitists, convinced that the
arcana imperii, or mysteries of state, could only be mastered and entrusted to a select few.
[53] Having witnessed mob violence and religious cleansing on a horrific scale over the course of the past century, thinkers such as Richelieu were ever wary of the fickleness of their nation’s subjects — ordinary men and women who could fall prey to demagoguery and who, in their minds, were incapable of rising above their petty needs and brutish impulses in order to pursue the greater good.
This paternalistic and imperious view of how a nation’s grand strategy should be conducted undergirds the infamous passage in which Richelieu compares the common people to stubborn mules requiring a careful mixture of cajolement and discipline.
[54] Richelieu’s seeming dismissal of the everyday concerns of the French peasantry went hand in hand with a determination to impose order both at home and abroad — regardless of temporary hardship or foreign opposition.
This single-mindedness was more than just the sign of a merciless operator, however. Although the chief minister was suffused with the pessimism and misanthropy characteristic of authoritarian thinkers, his vision for the future of French and European foreign policy was also strangely optimistic and, some might argue, enlightened for his age.
Balancing and Collective Security
In 1642, only a few weeks before Richelieu’s death, a heroic comedy, entitled
Europe, was performed at the royal court. By all accounts, the production was terrible, with wooden performances and leaden dialogue.
[55] Partly ghostwritten by Richelieu on his deathbed, the play was an allegorical representation of the cardinal’s foreign policy. It depicted a struggle between the aggressive, wolfish Ibère (Spain) and the brave, noble Françion (France) for the heart of a delicate princess, Europe. Ibère is portrayed as a haughty, insensitive, and controlling suitor. Europe winds up asking Françion to be her protector and begs him to shield her from the lust-filled Spaniard’s unwanted attentions. The play has little artistic merit, but as a late-career encapsulation of Richelieu’s foreign policy vision, it makes for an interesting read, especially the discussions on the sovereignty of small nation-states, wars of necessity versus wars of choice, and the means by which to attain a lasting peace on the continent. As one analyst notes, the play lays out a vision for a future European defense system that would ensure peace — “but always with France in the driver’s seat.”
[56] One segment, in which Françion describes his willingness to sacrifice his own ambitions to shield Europe from Ibère’s predations, is particularly noteworthy:
The innocent and the weak will find in me the source of their support,
I was born the tutor of all young princes
My strength is what maintains the trembling provinces
Everywhere my allies implore my aid
And it is with reason, Princess, that I run to them,
For fear of otherwise being powerless in my own defense,
At last war is needed, and I am drawn into it
Not by ambition, but by necessity.[57]
This passage captures several key aspects of Richelieu’s grand strategy: his desire to position France not only as a counterweight to Spanish dominance but also as a future arbiter of state sovereignty; his conviction that France’s foreign policy should be tempered by prudence and not fueled solely by the desire for territorial aggrandizement; and his fixation on his nation’s reputation and credibility, particularly among its smaller allies.
One of the unique aspects of the cardinal’s vision to achieve a “general peace” was his desire to position France both as one of the scales in the balance and as the “holder of the [said] balance.”
[58] As the weaker party in the Franco-Habsburg rivalry, the French monarchy hoped smaller states could be incited to buy into a more benign model of European geopolitics, with France promising to act as the guarantor of their “ancient freedoms” and “sovereign rights” and as the enforcer of a continent-wide “public liberty.”
[59] Naturally, there was an element of cynicism to these pledges as well as to the cardinal’s professed desire to landscape the European jungle into a neatly manicured French garden. Richelieu’s quest for diplomatic equilibrium, along with his hopes for a durable peace settlement, were undoubtedly driven by an ambition, first and foremost, to recover French primacy. That said, notes William Church, all evidence shows that Richelieu was also quite sincere in his hopes for a more peaceful regional order and that he was “sufficiently astute to realize that a Europe-wide system of sovereign states was the only viable alternative to Habsburg universalism.”
[60] German historians, such as Fritz Dickmann and Klaus Malettke, have focused on the importance of legalism in Richelieu’s thought and diplomatic instructions and have convincingly argued that the clergyman was already thinking of a collective defense system buttressed by international law and shared security guarantees in addition to balance-of-power politics.
[61]
[quote id="3"]
Of course, Richelieu was hardly the only European thinker to tout the stability-inducing virtues of a regional power equilibrium.
[62] David Sturdy has noted that his tenure also coincided with advances in the field of philosophy (such as Cartesianism), and science (such as the discovery of celestial mechanics), which increasingly viewed the physical universe as an intricate assemblage of multiple, self-regulating states of equilibrium. “By analogy,” Sturdy ventures,
Richelieu thought of a Europe in which smaller, satellite states would orbit larger benevolent protectors, none of which would seek hegemony, but which instead would preserve in Europe a peace and equilibrium corresponding to the harmony of the heavens.[63]
There are also some more easily discernible sources of inspiration drawn from history — despite Richelieu’s distaste for warmed-over compilations of ancient aphorisms. Both the chief minister and his most trusted aide, Father Joseph — a wily Capuchin monk who “combined in his own persons the oddly assorted characters of Metternich and Savonarola” — frequently referred to the advent of a new “Augustan golden age” they hoped would dawn on European affairs following the bloody unrest of the Thirty Years’ War, much as the reign of Augustus had put an end to the chaos of Rome’s civil wars.
[64] Neo-stoicism relayed a strongly cyclical view of foreign affairs and baroque
raison d’état theorists focused intensely on the lessons to be derived from the study of the rise and fall of ancient empires.
[65] One of the most eloquent articulations of the era’s predilection for applied history was made by the Savoyard Giovanni Botero in his masterpiece
Della Ragion di Stato (The Reason of State), when he stated that, while one could learn from both the living or the dead, “a much greater field from which to learn is that offered to us by the dead with the histories written by them.”
[66]
For classically educated nationalists such as Richelieu, it appeared evident that France was in many ways the new Rome and Spain — with its kaleidoscope of ethnicities, dispersed territories, and maritime empire — was Carthage.
[67] The challenge was how to effectively implement a strategy that would allow France to buy time, gather its strength, and eventually defeat Spain, much as Rome finally prevailed over its trans-Mediterranean foe after a century of bitter struggle.
Richelieu's Strategy
The Habsburg Challenge and the Art of the Long View
When Richelieu was elevated to the rank of chief minister in 1624, France’s strategic position, locked in the heart of a war-torn Europe, appeared — at first glance — rather grim. With the kingdom surrounded on all sides by Habsburg possessions, from the Spanish Netherlands in the north to the Iberian Peninsula in the southwest, the cardinal labored to develop a strategy that would allow France to break out of its constricted geopolitical environment. This strategy was undergirded by three main assumptions.
First, France and its underdeveloped army were not yet ready to engage in direct confrontation with their battle-hardened Spanish counterparts, and a weary, fractious French political establishment was unlikely to support any drawn-out military effort. Time was therefore the recuperating nation’s most precious strategic commodity. A strategy of delay and protraction was not only required to muster its martial strength but also to forge the necessary elite consensus. Provided France could continue to buy time and bleed the Habsburgs via a league of well-funded and militarily capable proxies, Richelieu was convinced that France’s demographic and economic resources would allow it to eventually gain the upper hand in its protracted competition with Spain. As he had confidently predicted in a letter to his ambassador in Madrid in 1632,
Nowhere is Spain in a position to resist a concentrated power such as France over a long period, and in the final analysis the outcome of a general war must necessarily be calamitous for our Iberian neighbor.[68]
Second, Richelieu believed that France’s geographic predicament — its location at the center of the European chessboard and its seeming state of encirclement — could, in fact, be leveraged to its advantage. As one recent study of past rivalries has noted, great powers with extended economic and military interests must frequently grapple with two major challenges: First, they offer many points for enemies to threaten and attack, and second, their capacity to project military strength is eroded the further the contested zone is from the core of their power.
[69]
With its dispersed holdings, Spain was heavily reliant on the lines of communication that formed the connective tissue of its sprawling empire — whether by sea, or by land, via the so-called Spanish road that ran from the Netherlands through the Italian peninsula.
[70] As Richelieu later gloated in the
Testament Politique, France’s centrality and superior interior lines of communication provided it with the means to sever the various strands of Spain’s imperial web:
The providence of God, who desires to keep everything in balance, has ensured that France, thanks to its geographical position, should separate the states of Spain and weaken them by dividing them.[71]
J.H. Elliott, an eminent scholar of early modern Spain, has shown the extent to which Richelieu’s Spanish counterpart and longstanding nemesis, the Count-Duke of Olivares, was aware of the inherent vulnerabilities that came with Spain’s sprawling empire.
[72] Elliott notes that Richelieu’s fears of encirclement were paralleled by Olivares’ “obsession with the French threat to the network of international communications on which Spanish power depended. … What to France was a noose, was to Spain a life-line.”
[73]
Image 1: Map of Europe During Richelieu’s Time as Chief Minister
Richelieu did not confine his strategy of great power competition to the continental theater, however. From the very beginning of his time as chief minister he stressed the importance of seapower and resolutely focused on the development of France’s naval strength.
[74] While prestige undoubtedly played a role in Richelieu’s energetic pursuit of seapower, it was not the only motivation. His quest to see France emerge as a full-spectrum great power was also undergirded by an ambition to better compete for access to an increasingly globalized market and a desire to shield France’s maritime approaches and seaborne trade from predatory naval action.
[75] Threatening some of Spain’s most vital maritime resupply lines and further complicating its strategic planning was simply the icing on the cake.
[76] The story of Richelieu’s stewardship of the French Royal Navy is not one of untrammeled success. His efforts to vault France into the ranks of Europe’s greatest oceanic powers were chronically undermined by bureaucratic and logistical travails and the fleet’s funding was often neglected in favor of a perpetually resource-starved army.
[77] Overall, however, the cardinal’s overarching goals were more than met. By 1635, he had succeeded in creating a navy that overshadowed England’s and matched that of Spain in the Mediterranean.
[78]
Finally, Richelieu knew that France would struggle to prosecute a multifront campaign against the combined military might of the Habsburgs’ two dynastic branches. Through dexterous and continuous diplomacy, he therefore sought to forestall the advent of a formalized military alliance between Vienna and Madrid. At the same time, Richelieu worked to accentuate internal frictions within both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, supporting secessionist movements in Portugal and Catalonia, and quietly stoking the resentment of liberty-starved prince-electors in Germany.
[79] In this, Richelieu was aided by a formidable coterie of advisers, bureaucratic allies, and diplomatic envoys, who tirelessly crisscrossed the continent and produced exquisitely detailed strategic forecasts. Some of these studies, which engage in a dispassionate, multilevel analysis of the respective competitive advantages and disadvantages of different European powers, apply the same level of analytical rigor that one would expect from the best of contemporary net assessments.
[80]
La Guerre Couverte
Many of Richelieu’s first actions as chief minister focused on domestic consolidation and on preempting any perceived political threats to the reign of a youthful and unseasoned monarch.
In his earlier incarnation as bishop of Luçon, an area with a heavy Calvinist minority population, Richelieu had displayed a proclivity for toleration. Both in his actions as bishop and in his theological writings, he had repeatedly argued that Protestants should be converted by the power of reason and dialectical discussion, rather than force of arms.
[81] As a government official, however, he and other leading members of the royal council took an increasingly hardline approach to the various Huguenot enclaves that dotted French territory. Under the terms of the Edict of Nantes, these communities had been granted a strong degree of autonomy, and, with their fortified cities and independent political assemblies, appeared, in the words of Richelieu, to seek to “share the state” with the French monarch.
[82] Fears over the emergence of a parallel political structure, or of a “state within the state” with strong ties to potentially hostile foreign powers, were accompanied by a more diffuse sense of ideological peril. French absolutist thinkers fretted over the subversive appeal and longstanding popularity of Calvinist republicanism, which they perceived as profoundly antipathetic to monarchic government, among the higher echelons of the French nobility.
[83] These tensions came to a head in 1627 with the royal siege of the Huguenot port-city of La Rochelle — a massive military undertaking that was led by the king, overseen by the cardinal-minister, and involved the bulk of royal military resources at the time.
[quote id="4"]
Richelieu, whose earlier attempts at preserving peace with the great Huguenot lords had led to his being derisively dubbed the “Cardinal of La Rochelle” by his
dévot opponents, now showed himself to be methodical and ruthless in his prosecution of the year-long siege. England’s decision to dispatch a large amphibious task force in an (unsuccessful) bid to aid its beleaguered co-religionists in La Rochelle had only strengthened the cardinal-minister’s determination to forcibly subsume Huguenot communities within the French state. The monarchy’s eventual victory over the Huguenot rebels and their great power sponsor precipitated the collapse of Protestant opposition to royal rule and considerably burnished young Louis XIII’s martial credentials in the eyes of fellow European leaders. It was succeeded by the Peace of Alais, which erased most of the Huguenots’ past political privileges, while continuing, by and large, to accord them freedom of worship. Leading figures of the Huguenot uprising were pardoned or treated with clemency after having sworn fealty to the French king, and some, such as the Duke of Rohan, went on to number among some of France’s greatest generals.
[84] Subsequently, royal historians took great pains to stress that the king’s Protestant subjects had not been punished on account of their religion, but rather because they had chosen the path of armed rebellion and collusion with a foreign power.
[85]
Richelieu’s suppression of the Huguenot uprising was part of a broader effort to do away with alternative power centers or codes of loyalty within France, carried out via an expansion of the definition of treason or
lèse-majesté, and a series of policies targeting the French nobility that focused on its capacity to resist royal authority and its distinct strategic sub-culture.
[86] In 1626, for example, Richelieu ordered the destruction of all fortresses not situated on the nation’s frontiers, regardless of the religious affiliation of their proprietors. That same year, he issued a much-decried edict against dueling. While this measure may seem almost quaint to a modern reader, it was in fact hugely significant.
[87] It took direct aim at some of the French nobility’s most cherished beliefs, including their hallowed honor code. Richelieu, whose elder brother perished in a duel in 1619, was weary of witnessing promising members of the nation’s warrior caste ritually kill one another at an alarming rate.
[88]
As historians of the Ancien Régime have noted, these deadly contests fulfilled an important symbolic and social function within a French nobility still wedded to ideals of Homeric heroism and medieval chivalry.
[89] The aristocracy’s fighting ethos was undergirded by its members’ desire to demonstrate their worth to other members of their social caste and win that most precious of social currencies —
gloire. Dueling had progressively become like a religion — death in single combat was a “human sacrifice to the god of peer opinion.”
[90] Richelieu, like many of his contemporaries, was of two minds regarding the French nobility’s warrior ethos. He appreciated its age-old emphasis on courage and personal sacrifice, but also criticized its tendency toward erratic emotionalism, along with its vainglorious and self-destructive tendencies.
[91] In his later correspondence with French nobles deployed to the front, it is telling that he sometimes advised his soldier-aristocrats to rein in their natural hotheadedness and to behave with “prudence.”
[92] More than anything, the cardinal-minister wished to redirect the famed
furia francese and thirst for glory of the nobility so that it served the broader geopolitical ambitions of the French crown rather than merely the competitive impulses of a narrow and fractious social stratum.
As the monarchy cemented control, it also found itself embroiled in a series of foreign policy crises, whose management by Richelieu and his allies spurred fierce domestic controversy. Lashed by gusts of bureaucratic opposition, the chief minister strove to husband France’s military resources, bleed its enemies, and buy time. All the while, he sought, with the help of his extensive network of foreign envoys and spies, to maintain as many diplomatic channels as possible and to avert any precipitate escalation to a full-spectrum and system-wide war with a unified Habsburg foe. Richelieu consistently emphasized the importance of prevailing, first and foremost, in the diplomatic arena — at the lavish royal courts and stuffy religious conclaves where the fate of European politics was truly decided. In
Testament Politique, he opines that the ability to
negotiate without ceasing, openly or secretly, and everywhere, even if it yields no immediate fruit and the expected one is not yet apparent, is absolutely necessary for the well-being of states.
[93]
The Valtellina and Mantuan Succession Crises
The most significant crises during the
guerre couverte period occurred at the bloody peripheries and messy intersections of each great power’s sphere of interest. France and Spain vied for access and influence, probed each other’s weaknesses, and worked to dilute each other’s ability to maintain alliance structures and project power across the European theater. As the Duke of Rohan later noted, the Franco-Spanish rivalry had become the structuring force across Christendom. The two states formed “the two poles from which stemmed the pressures for war and peace upon other states,” with France seeking to play the “counterpoise” to Spanish ambitions, and the princes of Europe “attaching themselves to one or the other according to their interests.”
[94] This increasingly tense cold war was fundamentally a two-level game — a combination of geopolitical competition and interference in one another’s domestic politics — accentuating pre-existing movements of internal unrest with the hope of precipitating an abrupt dislocation of their rival’s fragile state structure.
For close to a century, since the early 1500s, France and Spain had jostled for control over the
portes or gateways that provided staging points into their respective heartlands and over the military corridors that allowed each state to safely siphon funding and troops toward their junior partners and proxies.
[95] One such artery was the Valtellina (or Val Telline), a valley that snaked through the central Alps, connecting Lombardy with the Spanish Netherlands. The Valtellina had long constituted a territorial flashpoint. Ruled by a league of Swiss Protestant lords, the Grisons, the Valtellina was of critical importance to both France and Spain. For Spain, the winding mountain passes provided one of the main land routes through which it could bolster its military presence in the Spanish Netherlands, and, if the need ever arose, provide the Holy Roman Empire with reinforcements. For Richelieu and his disciples, the prospect of Spanish dominion over the Valtellina was therefore an alarming one, adding to longstanding French fears of encirclement by combined Habsburg forces. Furthermore, were France to find itself suddenly locked out of the Valtellina, it would no longer be able to rapidly supplement the martial efforts of its own traditional allies on the Italian peninsula, such as Venice. The dispute over control of the Valtellina was driven both by concerns over military response times and logistical supply, and by status considerations and alliance politics.
In 1620, Madrid shrewdly sought to capitalize on the momentary chaos triggered by a revolt of the Catholic subjects of the Grisons by erecting a chain of military bases along the Valtellina. Two years later, its garrisons facing expulsion by allied forces of France, Venice, and Savoy, Spain reluctantly agreed to let its soldiers be replaced by papal troops. For Richelieu, however, this settlement remained inadequate, as the Vatican had allowed Spain to continue to use the Valtellina as one of its prime military thoroughfares. A few months after becoming chief minister, Richelieu sought to rebalance the situation by conducting secret negotiations with Savoyard and Swiss allies, catching Spain off guard. A small force of French and Swiss troops flowed into the Valtellina and unceremoniously expelled its papal custodians. Meanwhile, a larger French army joined forces with its Savoyard allies in a protracted siege of Genoa, in a bold attempt to neutralize one of Spain’s main bankers and truncate the southern arm of the Spanish road. This last endeavor ultimately proved unsuccessful, with Madrid succeeding in breaking through a French naval interception force in the Mediterranean and relieving Genoa by sea. France and Spain subsequently entered lengthy negotiations, which ultimately led to the signing of the Treaty of Monzon in 1626. The treaty restored control of the Valtellina to the Grisons, while enshrining and protecting the exercise of Catholicism in the valley. All fortifications were levelled and papal troops were once again dispatched to preserve the peace. Most importantly, the treaty granted equal rights of transit to both Spain and France, thus reinstating — at least in the military sphere — the old status quo.
[96]
[quote id="5"]
Barely a year later, another crisis flared up in northern Italy. In this case, tensions revolved around the Duke of Mantua’s succession. This minor dynastic squabble quickly took on geopolitical significance. The duchy of Mantua and its dependency of Monferrato were fiefs of the Holy Roman Empire, strategically located along the Po river, abutting the Spanish duchy of Milan. Following the death of Duke Vincent II of Mantua in 1627, who had failed to produce a son and heir, the duchy was claimed by his closest male relative, the flamboyant French noble Charles de Nevers. De Nevers, in a typical display of impetuosity, preemptively took possession of the duchy without consulting Vienna, as feudal protocol would have dictated.
[97] His actions precipitated the reluctant intervention of Europe’s three greatest powers — France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire — all of which would rather have focused their attention and resources elsewhere.
[98] The conflict soon devolved into a slugging match, dragging on for close to four years, and only coming to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Cherasco in 1631.
The troublesome de Nevers was ultimately granted his imperial investiture and the right to rule over his now-ravaged duchy, albeit at the price of territorial concessions. More importantly for Richelieu, the conflict imposed significant financial costs on both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, strained relations between the two partners, and forced them to divert large numbers of troops away from more critical theaters of operation for extended periods.
[99] Madrid’s decision to intervene on the Italian peninsula negatively affected its military operations in Flanders. Meanwhile, the imperial troops Olivares had been hoping would join his prosecution of the Dutch, and who were also much needed in Germany to stave off the advance of the Swedes, were instead channeled southward, toward Mantua, where they were decimated by plague.
[100] Through secretly negotiated clauses, France also gained access to the strategically positioned mountain fortress of Pinerolo in the Piedmont, which it had quietly wrested from Savoy.
[101] All in all, therefore — and despite the cost and clear risks associated with France’s decision to intervene in support of its belligerent proxy, Richelieu’s calculus seemed to have paid off — France weathered the protracted crisis far better than its two main competitors.
The Challenges of Alliance Management
The Mantuan succession crisis also showed, as David Parrott notes, that
While the rulers of the major powers may have wished to construct their political strategies in the clear light of state interest and international Realpolitik, they were frequently confronted by lesser territories whose juridical status and succession arrangements were often diffuse or ambiguous, and whose rulers were explicitly determined to assert and defend their rights as sovereigns. (…) In circumstances such as the Mantuan crisis, where the grip of the major Italian powers was for various reasons weakened, the initiatives and interests of these lesser states could lead to dramatic destabilization.[102]
Richelieu was well aware of the risks of entanglement and entrapment inherent to asymmetric alliance structures. The unexpected ramifications of the Mantuan succession crisis undoubtedly helped shape some of his more interesting — and still resonant — reflections on the challenges of alliance management. In
Testament Politique, for instance, the cardinal warns future statesmen “not to embark voluntarily on the founding of a league created for some difficult objective” unless they are sure “they can carry it out alone,” should their allies desert them. He argues this is for two reasons:
The first is based is on the weakness of unions, which are never too secure when headed by central sovereigns. The second consists in the fact that lesser princes are often as careful and diligent in involving great kings in important commitments as they are feeble in aiding them, although they are fully obligated to do so.[103]
Despite these wry observations on the fickleness of security partners, Richelieu put alliance politics at the very center of his grand strategy, seeking to develop, in parallel, two separate German and Italian leagues. The Italian league, with Savoy and Venice at its core, was designed to exert a slow stranglehold over Spanish possessions in Naples and Milan. In Germany, Richelieu sought to stoke the resentment of restive prince-electors, and to further fragment the empire’s political mosaic by supporting the establishment of a separate pro-French and anti-Habsburg Catholic League under the leadership of Bavaria.
[104] On occasion, France’s policy of political disruption bore fruit. This was evident, for instance, during the Diet of Regensburg in 1630, when Richelieu’s agents, led by the wily Father Joseph, succeeded in dealing a major blow to Emperor Ferdinand II’s power and prestige by quietly encouraging the elector counts to veto the election of his son as his successor and dismiss one of the Imperial Army’s more talented commanders, Albrecht Von Wallenstein. France’s overarching goal was to keep the Holy Roman Empire in a state of managed disequilibrium and to buy time — time that could be used to further erode the foundations of Habsburg power in Germany. This cynical policy could be implemented, the sly monk argued in a memorandum to the king, in a relatively straightforward fashion, by simply continuing the centuries-old French tradition of mediation in German affairs.
[105]
Weakening the Viennese Habsburgs also provided France with greater latitude to exert control over the lands circling its eastern periphery, in particular the duchy of Lorraine. Lorraine was technically a fiefdom of the Holy Roman Empire, and its leader, the young duke Charles IV, had become a thorn in Richelieu’s side. Bright but brash, Charles IV was less adept at balancing France and the Holy Roman Empire than his forebears. He was also far less canny at steering a middle course than, for instance, the dukes of Savoy in Italy, whose adroit manipulation of the Franco-Spanish rivalry forced grudging admiration in both Paris and Madrid.
[106] The duke of Lorraine, on the other hand, pursued a lopsided policy that was consistently and aggressively hostile to the interests of the French crown — plotting with its foreign enemies, abetting its insurgencies, and providing a safe haven for the leaders of France’s domestic opposition.
[107] Over the course of a decade, France engaged in a series of punitive raids and limited encroachments on Lothringian territory, pressuring the contumacious duke into a series of increasingly unequal and humiliating treaties, until, in 1633, Richelieu ordered a full-scale invasion and annexation of Lorraine. Charles IV eventually abdicated and fled overseas and Lothringian lords were forced to swear oaths of loyalty to the French crown.
[108]
Most of the time, however, Richelieu’s behavior was not classically expansionist, as he did not seek to engage in a rigid linearization of a new, more extensive set of French boundaries. Instead, he wove a web of protectorates along the kingdom’s borders, offering to ensure the defense of weaker principalities, fiefdoms, and bishoprics in exchange for transit rights or the stationing of small detachments of French troops in strategically positioned fortresses — often overlooking key segments of the Spanish road. These garrisoned protectorates were viewed by the chief minister as serving a dual function — both as watchtowers and as potential staging areas for future military interventions.
[109]
Even as Richelieu pursued his strategy of delay, limited military involvement, and tailored assertiveness within France’s near abroad, he also sought to sap Habsburg power from afar, through a policy of indirect or subsidized warfare. This policy of remote-control balancing was not only financially onerous — involving the disbursement of increasingly large flows of subsidies to France’s Protestant proxies — but also diplomatically challenging. French envoys were sent to broker agreements and mediate disputes between France’s partners and third parties, such as Sweden and Poland, so that the former could redirect the entirety of its military machine toward the German theater.
[110] The sheer heterogeneity of France’s many coetaneous alliance structures proved to be a major, sometimes insuperable, challenge. Indeed, managing such a disparate array of security partners with competing territorial and confessional agendas eventually became almost impossible — leading a reluctant Richelieu to privilege the preservation of the alliance with Sweden over that with Bavaria.
[111]
Another chronic set of difficulties encountered by Richelieu and his envoys will be familiar to any modern student of security studies: the fact that proxies and/or client states rarely share similar objectives to those of their sponsors, and that, generally speaking, the stronger a proxy is, the less dependent and politically beholden it is to its patron.
[112] This was a clear and recurring feature of the France-Sweden relationship during Richelieu’s tenure. When France first signed the Treaty of Barwalde with Sweden in 1631, promising one million livres per annum over the course of five years in exchange for Stockholm maintaining a fully equipped army of 30,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry in Germany, Richelieu was enthusiastic. He waxed lyrical about the martial prowess of Gustavus Adolphus, the Swedish king, comparing him to Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great.
[113] Following Adolphus’ crushing victory over imperial forces at the Battle of Breitenfeld, however, the Swedish warrior-king’s relentless advance through a war-torn Germany began to foster French anxieties.
[114] His victories — too definitive and complete — ran the risk of completely unraveling France’s efforts to portray itself as a neutral arbitrator of state interests and led to a lasting rift with an embittered Maximilian of Bavaria. Richelieu also began to wonder whether Sweden, flush with the fruits of its conquests and no longer in need of French subsidies, might decide to turn its attention against France’s cluster of German protectorates. It was not without some relief, therefore, that the cardinal heard the news of the Northern Lion’s death at the battle of Lützen in 1632.
Propaganda Wars
Throughout his political life, Richelieu was constantly reminded of both the tenuousness of his position and his own mortality. An unpopular man working for a sickly king, the chief minister was the target of countless foreign plots and elaborate court machinations.
[115]
Much of the resentment directed at him stemmed from his domestic policies: his blunt and wide-ranging efforts to centralize power, increase taxation, and rein in the nobility, along with his habit of supplanting old court favorites with his own sprawling networks of clientele.
[116] His relatively moderate stance on confessional issues also stirred controversy in some quarters.
The most vivid and substantive debates, however, centered on issues of foreign policy. Richelieu’s
dévot opponents — whether in meetings of the Royal Council or via the clandestine production of vitriolic pamphlets — relentlessly assailed the core aspects of his grand strategy, most notably his alliance with and subsidization of Protestant powers, along with his decision to confront rather than align with Spain, a fellow Catholic nation. Although Richelieu’s vision was the one that ultimately triumphed, it is worth noting that there were many compelling reasons for distinguished statesmen to oppose his foreign policy.
In a country still reeling from decades of civil strife, many wanted to focus on domestic recovery and reducing the burden of taxation that helped finance France’s foreign military ventures and proxies — even if it came at the cost of appeasing Spain.
[117] France’s hamlets and villages were seething with discontent, and local uprisings — often euphemistically designated as “popular displays of emotion” (
émotions populaires) — were commonplace.
[118] In fretful whispers, perfumed courtiers would share their grisly tales from the dark forested hinterland — of peasants hacking a “tax collector to pieces and dismembering a surgeon whom they mistook for a revenue official.”
[119] For many who had lived through the Boschian hell of France’s religious wars, the fear of being catapulted into yet another cataract of anarchy and bloodletting was ever present.
[quote id="6"]
Furthermore, some argued, why not choose to align with the Habsburgs? Would that not bring about a much-needed peace, advance the cause of international Catholicism, and be preferable to funding the systematic, continent-wide slaughter of co-religionists by foreign heretics? After all, Habsburg blood flowed in Marie de Medici’s veins, Anne of Austria was Spanish, and the queen of Spain was Louis XIII’s own younger sister, Elizabeth. From some of the gilded chambers of the Louvre, Richelieu’s grand schemes thus ran the risk of appearing not only unethical, but also increasingly fratricidal.
[120]
It took over six years for the chief minister to quash this fierce internal opposition and it was only after the famous Day of the Dupes in November 1630 — when he dramatically prevailed over both the queen mother and his two main political opponents, the Marillac brothers — that he achieved unvarnished royal support for his agenda. Even after 1630, Richelieu still had to contend with the periodic opposition to his policies and fretted that the spiritual and impressionable Louis XIII might find himself persuaded by a member of his entourage to jettison his Protestant allies.
[121]
These struggles over the direction of France’s foreign policy were not confined to the corridors of power. Beyond the ornate antechambers and soaring palace walls, the future of French grand strategy was being debated in another wider and more untamed space — in the pages of the political pamphlets and news gazettes that had become a ubiquitous feature of early 17th-century France.
[122] Richelieu, like many of his European contemporaries, was acutely aware of the growing power and malleability of public opinion in the era of the printing press, and of the need to shape collective perceptions through targeted, state-directed propaganda efforts. From the earliest days of his tenure as chief minister, he moved decisively to exert control over the political media, appointing his minions to head leading publications such as
Le Mercure François, France’s first yearly newspaper, and the
Gazette, a weekly publication, and waging a tireless counter-intelligence campaign against clandestine printing activities. Richelieu surrounded himself with a “politico-literary strike force” of some of the nation’s most accomplished political theorists and polemicists, who labored to defend France’s European grand strategy from a fierce onslaught of
dévot-inspired critiques.
[123]
These critiques, particularly those penned by talented writers such as Matthieu de Morgues — one of Richelieu’s more formidable and relentless opponents — were often incisive and compelling.
[124] Not only did they consistently assail Richelieu’s Protestant alliances as “ungodly,” they also sought to depict the chief minister as a grasping and vulpine figure, an “
antichristus purpuratus,” who pursued his grandiose diplomatic schemes despite widespread popular discontent, and who, in contempt of his status as a “prince of the church,” worked to methodically undermine the Vatican.
The ideological counteroffensive launched by the
bons politiques was equally robust, clearly articulated, and often remarkably well-timed. In countless tracts, treatises, and pamphlets, the
politiques strenuously argued in defense of the cardinal’s character, stressing his personal loyalty to the king, as well as the strategic merits of his foreign policy — however disquieting the short-term costs may be. Tugging at their readers’ patriotic heartstrings, they stressed the urgency of recovering France’s “natural” primacy on the continent and warned of the long-term perils of a premature peace settlement that would confine the French monarchy to a subordinate status. In response to those who advocated an alignment with Madrid, they pointed to Spain’s history of interference in French domestic politics and to its perceived duplicity. To trust that such a history of enmity could be reversed, argued one of Richelieu’s disciples, was not only naïve, it was also a sign that one had inherited some of the seditious leanings “of a member of the old Catholic league” and had “thus ceased to be French.”
[125]
Furthermore, argued Richelieu’s supporters, one need only look at Spain’s crimes against its foreign subjects or against colonized indigenous people in the new world to see the extent of its hypocrisy.
[126] The sanctimonious Spaniards, “who held a sword in one hand and a breviary in another,” had, according to this counteroffensive, “erected a god of blood and destruction” and pursued their dream of a universal monarchy “under specious pretexts draped in painted crosses and invocations of Jesus.”
[127] Their wealth, added one noteworthy critique, was tarnished with the misery of the native American peoples whose resources they had brutally exploited.
[128] As for France’s alliances with Protestant powers, where was it written that “God had expressly declared that he wished for the Spaniards to become the masters of the Dutch,” and for Spain to emerge as the unrivalled hegemon in Europe?
[129] Emphasizing the importance of credibility and reputation in international politics, the
bons politiques invoked France’s historic role as a security patron in key regions such as the Valtelline and Northern Italy, arguing that, in the case of the Grisons, for instance, “heresy alone did not suffice to deprive them of their sovereignty and of their right to (French) protection and assistance.”
[130]
These day-to-day propaganda efforts were accompanied by a more ambitious and externally-oriented policy of cultural grandeur, whereby the industrious cleric sought to transform Paris into the artistic and academic capital of Europe — a city which would eventually outshine Madrid, Vienna, and maybe even Rome. He famously created the
Académie Française, which initially hosted many of the more proficient
politique theorists, and established the royal press, or
Imprimerie Royale, in the Louvre, which turned France into a publishing hub for high-quality books and engravings.
[131] Richelieu was particularly intent on nurturing a body of sophisticated legal theorists. These experts could then work to weaponize the rapidly evolving field of international jurisprudence — not only to lend credence to France’s territorial pretensions but also to justify French military actions in the eyes of international public opinion.
[132] This aspect of Richelieu’s diplomacy was to become abundantly evident in May 1635, when France finally formally declared war on Spain.
La Guerre Ouverte
Louis XIII was a traditionalist with a deep attachment to chivalric values and ancient courtly rites. The flamboyant manner in which war was declared on Spain — with a mounted herald delivering the message before the
Hallegate of Brussels after having been announced by trumpet — was characteristic of the French monarch. For years he had been champing at the bit, urging Richelieu to move from
la guerre couverte to
la guerre ouverte. The chief minister had consistently counseled patience, pleading with his sovereign to delay a full declaration of war as long as possible. By the spring of 1635, however, it was clear to Richelieu that this strategy, which had served France so well over the past decade, could no longer continue.
The Habsburgs’ resounding victory at the battle of Nördlingen in 1634 — during which a combined force of imperial and Spanish troops decisively routed their Swedish-led Protestant foes — abruptly reconfigured the European balance of power.
[133] France’s newly imperiled allies — Sweden and the Dutch United Provinces in particular — were increasingly insistent that their great power sponsor commit large-scale military forces to the fray. In the tense months following Nördlingen, the Vatican desperately sought to arrest the slide toward war, even offering to host a peace summit where Madrid and Paris could resolve their disputes through a process of mediated arbitration. Pope Urban VIII’s frantic diplomatic efforts were to no avail, however. Both Richelieu and Olivares had resigned themselves to the inevitability of conflict, and the massive, clunking cogs of their respective nations’ military machineries had begun to turn, as thousands of fresh troops were mobilized for war. Decision-makers in Spain — pointing to France’s much larger population and advantageous geographical position — became increasingly convinced that any protracted military struggle with France would not redound to their benefit. It was therefore necessary, argued Olivares, to seek an early end to the conflict by striking hard and fast. Military preparations were conducted “in width rather than in breadth.”
[134] The plan was to overwhelm French defenses on several fronts with the hope that the resolve of its less battle-hardened troops would crumble.
[135]
These war plans were driven, in part, by Spain’s alarm over France’s massive military buildup under Richelieu’s tenure, which included the cardinal’s attempts to create a first-class navy. The development of France’s ground forces, however, was far more spectacular and of greater immediate concern to its enemies across the Pyrenees. As the cardinal’s network of spies at the Spanish court began to apprise him of Madrid’s plans for a series of preemptive military strikes, this buildup accelerated and France fielded an army of unprecedented size on the eve of war.
[quote id="7"]
Throughout the religious wars of the previous half-century, French royal forces rarely exceeded 16,000 men.
[136] During the brief periods of peace that followed each flare-up of civil violence, the bulk of these troops were often demobilized. When larger hosts were assembled, they were frequently composed primarily of foreign mercenaries, sometimes reaching up to 70 percent of the total number, rather than troops levied on French soil. In the absence of a well-organized and institutionalized standing army, French kings relied most often on a nucleus of
gens d’ordonnance, or
gendarmerie, a small body of heavy cavalry that was the country’s only permanently mobilized and fully professional military force — not including a few small garrisons lightly sprinkled across its borders. At its peak, Henri IV’s army in 1610 may have numbered up to 55,000 men.
[137] In contrast, by the time Louis XIII and Richelieu were mobilizing for war with Spain in 1634, documents show that they were accounting for up to 100,368 soldiers in service.
[138] As military preparations continued apace, these numbers steadily grew.
[139] French officials diligently recorded numbers of raised troops between 135,000 and 211,000 in the early years of their nation’s conflict with Spain, with one scholar estimating that up to 150,000 men may have been under arms in 1635.
[140]
Before unleashing his freshly minted legions, however, the French chief minister insisted on getting France’s diplomatic house in order. Although the decision to go to war was made as early as April, he waited until France had fully cemented its renewed alliances with both the United Provinces and Sweden before dispatching the herald to Brussels. Following the envoy’s theatrical declaration, a public diplomacy campaign was launched whereby French propagandists moved to preempt their Spanish counterparts by issuing a series of manifestos clearly geared toward an international as well as a domestic audience, emphasizing the moral legitimacy of France’s actions. There is evidence that these carefully coordinated communication efforts were successful in shaping the overall narrative, as Olivares evinced frustration that the cardinal’s publicists always seemed to move faster and more efficiently than his own.
[141]
The official justification for France’s declaration of war was Spain’s capture of the town of Trier, a French protectorate, the slaughter of its small French garrison, and the abduction of its archbishop-elector in March 1625. This act of great power aggression, read the herald’s declaration, was “against the law of nations” and an “offense against the interests of all princes of Christianity.”
[142] France once again positioned itself as the guardian of smaller states’ interests and the bulwark against Habsburg ambitions of universal monarchy. This time, however, the chief minister’s legion of
lettrés was working to lay the moral underpinnings for a much more direct and overtly militarized French bid for European leadership. Louis XIII issued his own royal communiqué, arguing that while he had patiently tolerated, thus far, the constant “outrages” of Spain’s interference in France’s domestic affairs, the “Spaniards, by their arms and practices,” were now threatening the “very foundations of public liberty” in Europe.
[143] Naturally, the view from Madrid was very different. Indeed, for Olivares and his indignant acolytes, France — with its heady ambitions, exceptionalist ethos, litany of grievances, and overall truculence — was the revisionist power and great disruptor of the status quo. From the very get-go, therefore, the conflict was not framed as a mere tussle over territory and resources, but rather as a paradigm-defining battle for leadership legitimacy and shaping the international order.
Significantly, the French monarchy’s declaration of war was aimed at only one of the Habsburg branches. Richelieu hoped that Ferdinand II, already consumed with the difficult internal negotiations leading up to the Peace of Prague, would be reluctant to lend imperial military strength to the fight against France. This last-ditch attempt at alliance decoupling, however, proved unsuccessful. After months of prevarication, a reluctant Ferdinand II succumbed to the pressure exerted by the imperial court’s pro-Spanish lobby and formally declared war on France in March 1636.
[144] Richelieu was now facing the climactic struggle he had often anticipated but always dreaded: a war waged on an unprecedented scale, on multiple fronts, and against the combined might of both dynastic branches of the Habsburgs.
France’s military performance at the outset of this war was decidedly mixed. After a promising initial victory over an outnumbered Spanish force at the battle of Aveins, French forces, suffering from hunger and afflicted with typhus, encountered a series of military setbacks. In the summer of 1636, a joint Habsburg force led by Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand (the governor of the Spanish Netherlands and younger brother of King Philip IV) conducted a major counter-attack into French territory. The invading force met unexpectedly feeble resistance as it ravaged Picardy and Champagne and swept through a series of northern forts. The garrisons, untested and unsettled by their enemies’ novel use of shrieking mortar bombs, surrendered one after another.
[145] The Habsburg army, a large proportion of which was mounted, moved quickly, thrusting ever deeper into French territory, until it had captured the stronghold of La Corbie, along the Somme. Due to the rapid and unexpected nature of the troops’ advance, there was no sizable interposing military force in between them and Paris, barely sixty miles away. At the news of the cardinal-infante’s blitzkrieg-style incursion into France’s fertile northern plains, Richelieu was reportedly plunged into a deep depression. An unnerved Parisian populace directed its seething resentment at the unpopular chief minister and called for his ouster. The shaken cardinal tendered his resignation and nervously awaited his fall from grace. But although the king may have been occasionally frustrated with his adviser, he was astute enough to realize that there was no individual better suited to the position of chief minister, or more dedicated to the advancement of French prestige and interests.
He therefore crisply rejected Richelieu’s offer and the fiery Father Joseph was dispatched to shake his master out of his crippling state of despondency.
[146] Meanwhile, Louis XIII — in perhaps his finest hour — initiated a mass recruitment drive. Cantering through the cobbled streets of Paris, the monarch, who had always fancied himself as something of an Arthurian warrior-king, called upon every man capable of bearing arms to join him in expelling the hated foreigners from French territory.
In reality, however, the panic of the French royal court — while understandable — was unjustified. The Habsburg advance had proved remarkably successful, but the cardinal-infante was concerned that his forces’ supply lines were overextended and was already planning his withdrawal. The Corbie campaign had proved to “be no more than a short-lived pyrotechnical display.”
[147] It did succeed, however, in galvanizing French public sentiment and in temporarily uniting royal court factions in support of Richelieu’s war efforts. From that point, the Franco-Habsburg conflict slipped into a numbing see-saw of partial gains mitigated by temporary losses, a war of attrition that severely strained the resources, stability, and organizational capacity of the French state.
The challenges associated with coordinating the simultaneous operations of multiple armies over vast distances at a time when communications were both rudimentary and easily subject to delay or disruption were daunting. While military dispatches to Flanders or Italy would take perhaps 12 to 16 days when sent overland from France, they could take almost three months to arrive by sea from Spain. As a result, notes J.H. Elliott, it was “considerably easier to run a war from Paris than from Madrid.”
[148] Even then, there was inevitably a “lag effect,” when it came to issuing precise directives to faraway generals: the distance between Richelieu’s chambers and the frontlines was not only spatial — it was also temporal. The cardinal therefore often encouraged commanders to operate under their own initiative and to exercise their own judgment — provided they were not brash — as to when to seize opportunities to push into enemy territory. French generals could be reluctant to do so, however, if only because they feared the cardinal’s wrath in the event of failure. Indeed, Richelieu could be a singularly demanding overseer, demanding thick stacks of detailed correspondence on every aspect of the war effort and meting out severe punishment in response to perceived cowardice or military shortcomings.
[149]
More broadly, many of the civil-military pathologies affecting French higher command during the Thirty Years’ War would be familiar to any student of authoritarian regimes. Most notably, Richelieu’s focus on “coup-proofing” meant that the perceived loyalty of a noble would often count more in terms of his military advancement than his battlefield performance. As contemporary scholars in the field of security studies have noted, regimes facing significant internal threats frequently adopt sub-optimal organizational practices, basing their promotion patterns on political loyalty rather than on combat prowess.
[150] Richelieu, who, like all of his 17th-century European counterparts, operated at the heart of a complex web of patronage, was consistently torn between his desires to shore up his own power base and to shield his monarch from internal threats, as well as the need to effectively use the very small pool of able generals he had at his disposal.
[151] This sometimes resulted in confusing and counterproductive personnel policies, whereby he dismissed or disgraced competent military commanders and promoted mediocre alternatives. On other occasions, however, Richelieu could demonstrate a measure of tolerance and foresight, forgiving a proficient general’s past transgressions in favor of advancing the war effort. And at times, the canny clergyman managed to have it both ways, by preemptively absorbing promising commanders within his own networks of clientage, thus ensuring their future loyalty. This was the case, for instance, with the Count of Harcourt, whose military acumen impressed Richelieu, and who was therefore allowed to marry into the chief minister’s family despite his middling aristocratic standing.
[152] From then on, Harcourt was entrusted with a series of high-level military commands.
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The French monarchy’s perennial fear of a resurgence of domestic disorder also led it to adopt a more centralized approach to the management of military operations. Whereas most other European powers continued to subcontract the levying and management of military forces to powerful nobles and “military entrepreneurs,” the royal administration of Louis XIII insisted on preserving a degree of direct control over its expanding military apparatus.
[153] Foreign military entrepreneurs, such as the highly effective Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, could be hired for the prosecution of overseas campaigns, but armies based and recruited on French territory remained strictly answerable to royal authority. A degree of local autonomy and decentralization remained necessary, given the bureaucratic limitations of the early 17th-century French state, and French nobles or bishops could thus continue to raise troops on their own account. The levied soldiers, however, remained under the proprietorship of the French monarchy, which stubbornly refused to take the easier — but in its eyes riskier — path of formalized military delegation. France’s rejection of the military entrepreneurship system was accompanied by the expansion of a body of civil servants — the famed
intendants d’armée — whose role was to act as agents of royal authority, operating alongside French generals and co-supervising their military operations.
[154]
The decision to empower and deploy additional numbers of
intendants was part of a broader move toward greater bureaucratic control over every aspect of the French war effort, from taxation to infrastructure development.
[155] The
intendants were entrusted with a broad set of responsibilities that ranged from investigating corruption and dispensing justice, to managing funds and supervising army expenditure. One should guard oneself, however, from overstating their ability to enact immediate change and override the decisions and policies undertaken by powerful local commanders. As David Parrott notes, the popular perception that Richelieu’s
intendants were “seventeenth-century equivalents of the bolshevik commissars within the Red Army,” is in need of revision.
[156] Indeed, the relationships between field generals and royal
intendants were often overshadowed or subsumed within complex pre-existing networks of clientele, and in some cases these culturally entrenched alternative power structures severely diluted the
intendant’s authority.
[157] The general-
intendant relationship was thus most often characterized by careful negotiation, as royal agents walked an administrative tightrope, making their best efforts to enact centralized directives — which were often somewhat overambitious or outdated — all while remaining mindful of local conditions, power dynamics, and logistical constraints. In some cases, this dual command structure acted as an impediment to military effectiveness, with royal intendants frequently butting heads with the commanders of their assigned military units. In other cases, however, the relationship could prove to be far more harmonious and productive. Military correspondence, after all, flowed in both directions, through a revamped network of dedicated postal relays that aimed to reduce some of the delays in communication.
Intendants funneled reams of vital information back to the state center, keeping Richelieu and the secretariat of war somewhat better apprised of the manifold challenges plaguing the efforts of their frontline commanders.
Although France, unlike Spain, benefited from interior lines of communication, the distances remained vast and the terrain nearly impassable in many parts of the country, with thick forests, underdeveloped roads, and large, rugged mountainous regions.
[158] Problems of transportation and supply were a chronic source of concern, as were those of funding. The colossal costs of fielding such a large military force — one that sometimes included half a dozen armies operating simultaneously — placed a terrible strain on French finances, as well as on the country’s internal stability. Even before the war, in 1630, Richelieu grumblingly queried whether
There is a kingdom in the world that can regularly pay two or three armies at once … I would like to be told whether reason does not require that one better fund an army operating on enemy territory against powerful forces against whom it has been tried in combat, and where expenses and incommodities are indeterminate, rather than one that remains within the kingdom out of precaution of the harm that could befall it.[159]
This complaint pointed to one of the core quandaries confronted by the resource-hungry French armies. For the first half-decade or so of
guerre ouverte, they operated largely on their own soil and thus were deprived of the possibility of engaging in the traditional practice of collecting “contributions” in the form of rapine and punitive payments extracted from enemy territory. When French troops were deployed abroad, particularly across the Rhine, their numbers often began to melt away as soldiers fled the unfamiliar and hostile German landscapes and streamed back to their villages and homesteads. This helps explain why it was deemed preferable to wage war with foreign mercenaries deep within imperial territory, while using national troops for operations in France or within its near abroad. For much of this period, the French monarchy teetered on the edge of financial collapse, staggering from one socio-economic crisis to another and racking up sizable debts to financiers who charged exorbitant rates. On average, funds allocated to defense amounted to 72 percent of government expenditure during Richelieu’s ministry.
[160] During the years of
guerre ouverte these expenditures were rendered all the more extravagant by the crown’s continued subsidy of the Dutch and Swedes, as well as of the mercenary army of Saxe-Weimar. Unlike his Spanish rival, Richelieu could not rely on the riches from a sprawling network of overseas colonies, nor, for the reasons described above, could he hope to transfer the costs of military operations onto despoiled tracts of enemy territory.
The preservation of the kingdom’s newly aggrandized military machine was therefore largely dependent upon a massive expansion of domestic taxation. In this, Richelieu was mostly successful, with some estimates showing that the income of the French crown doubled in real terms over the course of his tenure.
[161] Per capita taxation also soared and the country’s peasantry — already reeling after a series of harsh winters and poor harvests — was plunged into an even more dire state of poverty. Throughout the war, the country was gripped by a series of rural uprisings, with some — such as the massive
croquant revolt of 1637 or the rebellion of the
Va-Nu-Pieds in Normandy in 1639 — requiring the temporary redirection of thousands of French troops away from the frontlines.
[162] A careful perusal of Richelieu’s writings show that, although he could sometimes appear dismissive of the common folk’s plight (and ruthless in the quashing of mass uprisings), he was not as callous or unyielding as some have taken him to be. He frequently expressed concern over the severity of the peasantry’s conditions, often granting temporary concessions in an attempt to stave off further unrest.
[163] His steely determination to prevail in the competition with the Habsburgs was interwoven with a deeper and more nagging fear: that the French state and people would not withstand the enormous pressures placed upon them, and that if he did not “keep a few steps ahead of financial disaster and uncontrollable social insubordination,” the country would slide back into civil war and find itself at the mercy, once again, of the predatory appetites of foreign powers.
[164]
In this, he was not aided by the hodgepodge character of France’s new army. Many of the troops he had raised over the past decade were relatively unseasoned and the question of whether it was more judicious to concentrate the minority of experienced veterans in distinct “crack” units or to sprinkle them across the force was one that frequently remained unresolved. Most importantly, France’s high command drew on a more heterogeneous set of wartime experiences than its Spanish or imperial counterparts.
[165] The generals who had remained in France during the Wars of Religion were often unfamiliar with the rapidly evolving mechanics of large-scale, infantry-intensive warfare, having spent decades engaging in shadowy struggles for territorial control or denial and conducting mounted raids against nearby opponents. Others had chosen to pursue military careers in exile, with all the attendant variations in training, tactics, and doctrine. During France’s period of civil turmoil, Huguenot lords had often left to fight alongside the Dutch, while Catholic aristocrats had sometimes served under the imperial banner in the Hungarian Marches or alongside co-religionist forces elsewhere on the continent.
[166]
The sheer variety of the military lessons gleaned by France’s warrior class, both resident and expatriate, during those tumultuous decades could, in some ways, be viewed as a strategic asset. The different terrains and adversaries confronted by Louis XIII’s armies in their continent-spanning operations — from the waterlogged plains of the Low Countries to the craggy defiles of Alpine Italy or Switzerland — certainly called for a mixture of strategies and for different forms of force
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