| 摘要 | President Donald Trump has a talent for latching onto bad ideas that elicit opposing bad ideas from his critics. For a recent example, look no further than the debate about the relationship between American military power and American diplomacy.
Since day one, the Trump administration has been disdainful of diplomacy and other tools of “soft power.” In 2017, the administration unveiled what Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, called a “hard power” budget — one that increased military spending but proposed crippling cuts to the State Department and the foreign-aid budget.
Republicans on Capitol Hill made clear that such severe cuts were a non-starter, and in 2018 Congress funded a key initiative — the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation — to compete with Chinese geo-economic influence in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond. But the administration has continued trying to take billions of dollars out of the foreign-affairs and foreign-aid budgets, most recently calling for a $4.3 billion cut in State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development funding.
Meanwhile, the mix of hostility and indifference with which the White House has treated the foreign policy bureaucracy has depleted the human capital that U.S. diplomacy depends on, spurring an alarming brain drain from the State Department and other agencies. To top it off, the White House has waged a quiet war against the World Trade Organization and other international organizations through which the U.S. has long projected its influence.
This transparently counterproductive approach to policy explains why even some of Trump’s Republican allies have opposed his proposed cuts. There is no effective strategy for dealing with China, Russia, Iran or any other rival power that does not feature a well-funded diplomatic and development apparatus that can help the U.S. compete for geopolitical and geo-economic sway.
As the U.S. transitions into an era characterized by prolonged twilight struggles — competitions in the space between peace and war — against multiple rivals, entities such as State, the Agency for International Development, and the Commerce and Treasury Departments will increasingly be on the front lines of American policy, with U.S. military power playing its essential role in the background. This will be a change from the post-9/11 era, when lethal military action was the leading edge of America’s strategy in dealing with its enemies.
It is entirely appropriate, then, to argue that the U.S. must increase investment in its diplomatic and development tools. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, for example, has proposed to redress Trump’s soft-power deficit by expanding the Foreign Service, creating a “diplomatic equivalent of the ROTC program” at American universities, and increasing scholarships for the study of critical languages. This is a serious and salutary idea.
The argument gets weaker, however, when other Trump critics argue that American diplomacy can be effective if the U.S. simultaneously disinvests in military power. A recent New York Times editorial claims that the counterpart to reinvigorated diplomacy must be an end to “limitless, sometimes wanton, military spending.”
Senator Bernie Sanders has called for dramatic — if unspecified — defense cuts as part of a pivot away from “the militaristic approach that has undermined the United States’ military authority, caused allies to question our ability to lead, drained our tax coffers, and corroded our own democracy.”
Yet it is profoundly wrong to think that shortening the shadow of American military power will not also weaken the efficacy of the country’s diplomacy. This point is evident from both the past successes and failures of U.S. policy.
Advocates of diplomacy often cite the end of the Cold War, and particularly President Ronald Reagan’s relationship with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, as proof of the wisdom of emphasizing engagement over confrontation.
They forget that it was the military buildup under Reagan and President Jimmy Carter before him that generated the leverage required to make engagement effective. This included the enormously controversial deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles to Europe.
Similarly, the Iran nuclear deal has been hailed by supporters as a triumph of diplomacy over military confrontation. But that deal, whatever its advantages and limitations, was possibly only because harsh coercive measures — including economic sanctions and the threat of force — persuaded Iran to take the diplomatic process seriously.
Shortfalls in military power, conversely, usually cause shortfalls in diplomatic effectiveness. During the endgame of the Vietnam War, the Paris Peace Accords collapsed because one side — North Vietnam — was willing to use military force to overturn the settlement and the other side — the United States — was not willing to force to uphold it.
And during the 1970s, the Soviet Union became significantly less restrained in promoting revolutionary change in the developing countries, in part because it perceived the military “correlation of forces” had shifted in its favor.
History shows that it often takes persistent diplomatic engagement to turn U.S. power into desirable policy outcomes. But U.S. military power, and its perceived willingness to use that power, profoundly shapes what can be obtained at the negotiating table.
Today, there is a vibrant debate on whether the U.S. should stay in or get out of Afghanistan, but it is an illusion to think that any peace deal will not reflect current and expected realities on the battlefield. In the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. ability to negotiate favorable deals with China, or simply to keep regional allies and partners on our side, will be critically influenced not simply by the creativity of American diplomats but by the strength of the hard power that supports them.
So, yes, let’s make reinvigorating American soft power a priority; let’s make sure that our military investments are smart and strategic; let’s honestly analyze what military interventions have achieved so far and what gains they may bring us in the future.
But let’s also remember that while diplomacy is an indispensable complement to military power, it rarely works well as a substitute. |
