Abstract
The United States, and more broadly, the West, is prone to be surprised. We are surprised by China’s pursuit of hegemony through economic and military means; by Russia’s engaging in the largest conventional war in Europe since 1945; by the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. We think that economic sanctions will fundamentally alter the calculus of our enemies—even deter a potential attack—and we are puzzled when they do not. The recent streak of surprises is not a fluke of history, an unlucky combination of events. This article contends that our surprise is due to a series of illusions that characterize our foreign policy vision. These illusions stem from a mistaken series of assumptions about the causes of political order and about the drivers of political behavior.
What Are the Effects of the Modern Illusion on U.S. Foreign Policy?
The modern worldview of state-based political order arguably predominates in contemporary American foreign policy, as especially the last three decades show. The worldview is informed by the illusion of what power can supposedly achieve. In at least three permutations—post-World War I with Woodrow Wilson; post-World War II with Franklin Delano Roosevelt; and post-Cold War with a neo-liberal bent—this tradition has understood US security as being a product of wider, multilateral institutional
The “Targeting Illusion”: What about a Corrupt People?
Much of US and even Western foreign policy assumes that the main problem with our rivals—such as Russia or China—lies with their leaders and the political systems associated with them. Thus, Russia must be pushing westward because Vladimir Putin wants to reconstruct an empire and be known to posterity as Vladimir the Great. Similarly, China must be building its military capabilities to expand the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) authoritarian reach and to protect its hold over Chinese society.
II. The “FDR illusion”: Transformation by Higher Institutions
The logic behind the illusion of any systemic benefits of toppling a bad political leader is related to the logic of a second foreign policy illusion: that international organizations or rules can have an impact on states analogous to how rearranging domestic social dynamics can produce a new and improved state-level regime. In brief, the illusion is that states, regardless of their power or particular nature, will behave in a more peaceful and harmonious way if only they are corralled by
The “Peace through Wealth” Fallacy
This third illusion arises out of an overly confident belief in the primacy of economic interests. Instead of a structure of institutional processes and rules erecting an order, in this worldview, economic interests of the various actors—individuals and states—can be corralled, expanding international harmony.
The foundational idea of this economic-political illusion is that a wealthy society creates pressures toward peace. People like the material comforts that come with wealth; they have a
An Alternative to the Illusions
Together, these powerful illusions—that a scientific and precise top-down application of military, institutional, and economic power can create order—shape Western efforts in ways that ultimately undermine security. Unbeknownst to those affected by such modern illusions, what results is a veneer of harmony under which conflict brews, rather than true order.