The Blob

An interview with Stephen Van Evera on great power competition and saving the commons.

We have launched a new issue focused on grasping the extent and the history of U.S. foreign intervention — how does the U.S. conceive of its role in the world, what has it done to maintain that role, and what has or hasn’t changed over time. A new foreign policy consensus seems to be rapidly emerging, and, per usual, the most helpful thing to do is to slow down and try to understand the context of the moment we are in. This is our seventh interview of the series.

This interview with Stephen Van Evera, Ford International Professor in the MIT Political Science Department, was conducted by franknews and condensed for clarity.

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Can you explain your background and, sort of, your overarching perspective on American foreign policy?

Look, I disagree about the entire direction of American foreign policy. My analysis of why the war happened doesn't fit the Washington view, you know, the blob view. The age of great powers conquering each other is now gone, and to focus on great power competition is to focus on a problem that really only matters if conquest is still possible. To me, the greatest threats the United States faces are to the commons.

I think it's good to sort of break down what you just said maybe a little bit further: great power competition only matters if conquest is still possible. I think that people have this idea that the US needs to be in all of these places to maintain a balance of power between, China, US, and Russia. Can you explain why, in your view, that is not true.

Conquest has always been the fundamental fear. If you go back in American history, we've intervened three times in costly way in Western Europe: World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. On each occasion, what the US was averting was the possibility of a Eurasian hegemony emerging, meaning a single state that would come to dominate the entire Eurasian landmass, including all of its industrial power. Eurasia contains more economic and productive power than the US does, and military power comes from industrial power. If you want to know the long-term latent power of a country, look at its GDP.

That’s why the US got involved. This was the logic of why Roosevelt took us into war against Germany and Japan. And it was the logic of the Cold War. And this thinking reflects, really, the behavior and thinking of all the European countries since the Habsburgs in the 1500s.

But, nuclear weapons have completely changed this. Two points: One is, nobody's going conquer anybody who has a secure deterrent. The potential costs of conquering a nuclear-armed state are so high that no rational actor would attempt it. Two, it's very easy to maintain the second-strike capability. It's not difficult for a country to ensure it can retaliate even after being attacked.

So, this was a revolution, but scholars did a very poor job of writing about it. This idea that the nuclear revolution was a defensive advantage wasn't even, I would say, even stated in a remotely clear way until the eighties. And this is a crucial thing to understand – how much do we have to worry about being conquered anymore?

So we live in a defensive-advantage world, and the implicit argument of this is that the whole Cold War was kind of a mistake, or at least the way we waged it. We waged it with a ferocious, risk-taking response to Soviet maneuvers. We nearly blew the world up in 1962. In the early fifties, the American government was talking seriously about preventive war. And we had a very dangerous doctrine, I think, a first-strike nuclear doctrine that was very expensive and also dangerous.

And we competed globally. We didn't just view the Soviets as the problem. We viewed the entire left all around the world as the problem. We fought against anybody that looked left or center, even if it wasn't the Soviets. I'm thinking of the Vietnam War, the Contra War, the war in Nicaragua, the war in Angola — even the effort to take North Korea back in the 1950s. And that was a big mistake for a number of reasons. It was very costly, it took a lot of lives, but the stakes were really small.

Anyway, you can see my grand strategy view here, which is, "Hey, chill out."

How has US foreign policy today responded to the new nuclear reality? Did they change anything?

Well the idea that nuclear revolution means we can pursue a more relaxed foreign policy is just missing. The military services hate to talk that way. They like to always keep everyone believing that there's an urgent need for more forces, because the threats are so great.

Great power competition should not be the focus. Our watch word ought to be save the commons. We want to live in a peaceful world. We want to live in an orderly world. We want to live in a world with human rights. And we ought to stand ready to assist people who are victims of aggression.

But do you think you can take this view of centering human rights or being ready to “assist victims” can exist while also sort of… chilling out? Can two things exist at the same time?

You're asking if it is possible to sell people on a chill policy where we do support human rights while not engaging in too much great power competition? I think those are separate activities.

You can only sell a foreign policy if you try to sell it. Foreign policies get implemented if they have an organized institutional base. Human rights was never considered a foreign policy mission until the later Cold War, when Americans were repeatedly asked by others to help solve their conflicts.

Americans should take seriously the idea of an informed policy focused on preventing, evading, and stopping wars. I believe we should do this for human rights reasons, because we are our brother's keeper in the world. If we can achieve this at low cost, easily and cheaply, I do not think we should spend two, three, or four percent of GDP on it. However, the United States often has the power, in my view, to prevent, abate, and limit conflicts.

You write a lot about protecting “the commons” – how does that fit into your view on foreign policy.

Whenever there is a commons, there is an issue of externalities. Why is the public square not better maintained? Because the rational interest of each individual is to exploit the public square unless there is a governance mechanism to protect it. This is the same problem we face with climate change, which requires international leadership and governance.

Countries often struggle to cooperate internationally. Special interests complain, propaganda confuses the public about national interests, and there is no organized community able to lead effective action. What is missing in the climate movement today is sufficient public support. The public underestimates both the danger and the feasibility of a solution.

But there are examples of costly international cooperation, such as World War II and NATO. During World War II, countries asked their citizens to risk their lives for a common goal. There was no major disagreement about the need for action. The same approach could work for climate change. There is a strong case for the United States to address climate change, and the solutions are cheaper than most people realize. It is easier to stop climate change than many think. The main challenge is to replace about 7% of the economy, specifically the fossil fuel sector. During World War II, the United States increased defense spending from 1.5% to over 45% of GDP and transformed its industrial base – this was possible because of national consensus and effective leadership.

The movement relies too much on scientific meetings and papers, without effective communication. They avoid repeating messages or using persuasive tactics, believing that is not scientific. It’s admirable to value truth and sound science, it is also necessary to study how social movements create the political climate needed for change.

You also write about the need strong leadership a few times. I am curious, do you think there's a an increased distance between our politicians and the military? And do you think that affects how they view war?

You raise a really good point. The military used to be much more integrated into society – society knew more about the military and the military knew about society. We had a draft all the way until the 1970s and now we have an all volunteer force. And I also think there's been some sorting of the country by culture that the military now are more culturally on the right and evangelical, which they weren't really in the forties, especially the World War II Army was. The Vietnam War caused a polarization too.

And I think it's a bad thing. I'm a big fan of ROTC. I think it's very important that military be a cross-sector of the country, that civilians know military people and military people know civilians, that our military command should be civilianized people.

Nothing is more dangerous than having a military that is a separate society, and that lives by itself and socializes with itself. This is part of the way that Germany and Japan went crazy. They had militaries that were as much cults as they were, cross-sections of society.