In Praise of Failed Diplomacy: look back to 1820 to see 2003

March 23, 2003 - New York Times
In Praise of Failed Diplomacy
By NIALL FERGUSON

LONDON

I am saddened, saddened that this president failed so miserably at
diplomacy," moaned Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader, earlier
this week. "Probably the least successful handling of allies that we've had in a long period of time," sobbed Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House. "When did we become a nation that ignores and berates our friends and calls them irrelevant?" wailed Robert Byrd, the venerable Democratic senator.

In Baghdad the bombs are falling. But those sirens you hear in Washington aren't air-raid warnings: they're the lamentations of President Bush's critics. You can hear them in Europe too. On Wednesday, President Jacques Chirac of France accused the United States of "breaching the legitimacy of the United Nations and putting a premium on the use of force."

So was the outbreak of war against Iraq the result of a colossal diplomatic failure? Or is this war simply, as Clausewitz might have said, the continuation of policy by other means?

Consider the prima facie evidence of a blunder. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, international sympathy for the United States was almost universal. Less than two years later, America finds itself outmaneuvered on the Security Council and leading a motley "coalition of the willing," only four of whose members offered military support: Britain, Australia, Poland and ?- wait for it ?- Albania.

Yet it is worth pondering a curious footnote to French policy offered by Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador to the United States. It turned out that his country's famous Security Council veto had an escape clause: "If Saddam Hussein were to use chemical or biological weapons, this would change the situation completely and immediately for the French government."

Now we understand why France pledged to block any Security Council
resolution authorizing the use of military force to disarm Saddam Hussein. The French were, in fact, fine with Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction. They were happy to keep American forces on standby in the Persian Gulf while the inspectors played missile tag. Saddam Hussein, quite frankly, could keep his chemical and biological weapons. So long as he didn't use them.

The French have adopted this approach in the past, let's not forget. During the 1930's, for example, they watched inertly as Nazi Germany
systematically rearmed, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. When Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland in March 1936 ?- in breach of the Treaty of Locarno of 1925 ?- they again did nothing. Their strategy was to defend France behind the enormously expensive and, as it turned out, useless Maginot Line, so they reasoned that attacking Hitler would be futile. In other words, it was O.K. for Hitler to build a formidable army and march it to the French border. So long as he didn't use it

This and similar analogies with the 1930's have repeatedly been drawn
by proponents of war against Iraq. And they are helpful up to a point. Yes, Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator. Yes, it has proved difficult to disarm him by precisely the devices that failed against the dictators between the world wars: collective security, sanctions, diplomacy.

But there we must break off and acknowledge the fundamental difference between the 1930's and now. Germany by 1938 was already an
economic and military match for France. Iraq, by comparison, is a flea to the American elephant. The United States economy is 170 times larger than Iraq's. Its military capacity is at least 200 times greater. Going to war against Germany was always risky for France. Going to war against Iraq is pretty much a breeze for America.

To find a workable historical analogy we therefore need to go back further than the 1930's. We need to go back to the 1820's.

Then, in the wake of its victory in the Napoleonic Wars, Britain was the world's only superpower. In 1815 the British Navy truly ruled the waves: it was nearly three times larger than the French Navy. Britain was economically dominant too. With the industrial revolution already under way, its share of global output would double from 1820 to 1870.

In the immediate aftermath of the Congress of Vienna, Britain did not flex these growing muscles. It participated dutifully in the congresses held by the European great powers and presided over by Prince Metternich, the ultraconservative Austrian chancellor. These were the Restoration era's answer to the Security Council.

However, all this changed in 1822, after the suicide of Lord Castlereagh, the depressive British foreign secretary, and the appointment of the mercurial George Canning as his successor. What distinguished the two was Canning's unabashed determination to pursue British interests, with minimal regard for the other great powers.

In language that would surely warm Donald Rumsfeld's heart, Canning
expressly refused to take into account "the wishes of any other government, or the interests of any other people, except in so far as those wishes, those feelings and those interests may, or might, concur with the just interests of England." As far as Canning was concerned, Austria and the restored Bourbon regime in France were the powers of the past. He bluntly refused to sanction their interventions to overthrow liberal administrations in Naples and Spain in 1822 and 1823.

Nor was Canning afraid to take unilateral military action. In December 1826, in order "to defend and preserve the independence of an ally," he sent troops to Portugal to defend the young Queen Maria against a challenge by her uncle Dom Miguel, who had the backing of the new regime in Spain.

To Canning's critics, this was ?- you guessed it ?- a colossal diplomatic failure. But did it matter? Scarcely. These assertions of British power signaled a profound shift in the balance of power in Europe away from reactionary Vienna toward liberal London.

Yet there is twist in the tale. Canning did not always act unilaterally. And he did not treat all the other powers with contempt.

In 1826 the Ottoman Empire stamped out a wave of rebellion by its Greek subjects in and around the Balkans. To Metternich, this was entirely satisfactory: another revolutionary threat to the status quo had been thwarted. However, Greek sympathizers in Britain clamored for some kind of intervention, inspired by Byron's martyrdom at Missolonghi.

Canning was tempted to act. But he was acutely aware that any challenge to Turkish power could open the door to Czarist Russia, which yearned to seize control of the Black Sea straits. Here was a rival power not even Britain could ignore. So Canning struck a deal with Russia that committed the two powers to working together. They would team up to pressure the Turks into granting the Greeks limited self-government.

The other power of the future that Canning took care not to alienate was the United States of America. In August 1823 he proposed that Britain and the United States jointly guarantee the independence of Spain's former colonies in Latin America, which Canning had been quick to recognize. But President James Monroe spurned this advance, declaring that the United States alone would safeguard the freedom of Latin America from reconquest: hence the Monroe Doctrine.

There is a lesson here for the Bush administration. For after Iraq, it will have to confront another, more dangerous rogue regime: North Korea. And anybody who imagines that can be done without the cooperation of China is dreaming.

In short, even a hyperpower needs diplomacy ?- especially where the
powers of the future are concerned. "Splendid isolation" was an ironic phrase when Canning's late Victorian successor Lord Salisbury coined it, even at the zenith of British power.

My tip for Mr. Bush: you're right not to worry about upsetting the powers of the past in Paris and Berlin. But follow Canning's example. Mix unilateral power plays with smart diplomacy. Soon after that victory parade in Baghdad, Mr. President, take a plane to Beijing.
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Niall Ferguson, professor of history at New York University's Stern School of Business, is author of the forthcoming ``Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power.''