The Foreign Service Journal, May 2016

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2016 17 Hippocrates and Hobbes, Assad and ISIS BY RAYMOND SM I TH M any scholars and practitioners view the current international system as the embodiment of Thomas Hobbes’ assess- ment of the state of nature: anarchic at its core. In such a world, survival is the central value, and enhancing one’s own security relative to others the guiding maximof behavior. The words “first, do no harm,” although not actually in the Hippocratic oath, are widely considered a legitimate guid- ing principle for physicians. They rarely appear in the lexicon of statesmen, how- ever, though President Barack Obama’s foreign policy injunction, “don’t do dumb things” (sometimes renderedmore earth- ily), might be considered a variation on the theme. Unlike the physician, the diplo- mat’s primary concern is not to avoid harm to others, but to himself and his fellow citizens. Fortunately, most international trans- actions do not occur within a Hobbesian system, because they do not involve the kind of life-or-death decisions that we usu- ally refer to in the international sphere as vital interests. In this commentary, I will use the terms “Hobbesian system” and “Hobbesian rules” as shorthand for, respectively, the state of nature and the human behaviors Raymond Smith served as an FSOwith the State Department from 1969 to 1993. His many Foreign Service assignments included tours as political counselor inMos- cow and director of the Office of the Former Soviet Union and Eastern European Affairs in State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. A longtime international negotiations consultant, he is the author of Negotiating with the Soviets (1989) and The Craft of Political Analysis for Diplomats (2011). SPEAKING OUT resulting from it that Hobbes posits in Leviathan . Identifying Vital Interests If vital interests are involved, Hobbes- ian system rules presumably apply. But what rules apply when the interests involved are not vital?This is an issue that Ted Galen Carpenter recently discussed with regard to U.S. policy toward authori- tarian regimes (bit.ly/23IdeBh) . Carpenter posits a spectrumof interests ranging from vital to barely relevant, then suggests that U.S. standards for relation- ships with dictators should grow increas- ingly strict as interests move down that spectrum. Only on the very rare occasions when genuinely vital U.S. interests are involved should we enter into alliances with regimes that have odious human rights practices. Putting this principle into practice poses some practical problems, however. The first of these involves reaching agree- ment on where particular interests lie on Carpenter’s spectrum. The second involves deciding just how odious particular regimes are. U.S. policy has generally been less ethi- cal andmore pragmatic than Carpenter advises. Washington engages with dicta- torships and authoritarian regimes when it believes that significant national interests require it to—and it has defined “signifi- cant” to include interests that Carpenter sees as barely peripheral. For instance, the United States sup- ported Hosni Mubarak in Egypt for three decades. It supports evenmore brutal regimes in Saudi Arabia and in the Persian Gulf states, to name just a few. It seeks to engage the Chinese leadership, not isolate it. It asks all of themnicely—generally behind closed doors—tomoderate their policies around the edges, but does not expect any of them to take steps that would threaten their hold on power. The hope, one supposes, is that over time, out of this process of moderation, will emerge constitutional monarchies, à la Great Britain. That faint hope is the ethical underpinning for an engagement policy that narrows the universe of principles to resources and interests. It is a policy that is easy enough to administer in quiet times, because ethical principles take second place to the recognition of power realities. But these priorities are frequently stood on their head when what appears to be a genuine moderate reformmovement arises and then begins to be violently repressed by an authoritarian regime, as happened repeat- edly during the Arab Spring. In such times, the urge to do good, to uphold ethical principles, may become the dominant influence in policymaking. The same inflated view of U.S. interests that led it to support authoritarian regimes may lead it now to advocate or support their overthrow.

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