Terrible Twins: Turkey, Brazil and the Future of American Foreign Policy

[Valin]

The American Interest:

Walter Russell Mead
6/5/10

These days, there’s an unusual spectacle in world affairs. The United States has relatively good relations with the major powers: China, the EU states, India and even Russia are all more or less working together. But two middle powers, Turkey and Brazil, are not only asserting themselves more effectively than in the past; they have chosen to do this is ways that run counter to US policies. In particular their united and coordinated opposition to US policy on Iran has raised eyebrows and significantly complicated what was already a very difficult situation for American diplomacy. More recently, the strong reaction in Turkey to the Israeli interception of a convoy organized by Turkish groups with aid for Gaza underlines the possibility that Turkey is moving decisively away from its longtime partnership with the United States.

The new bout of activism by these middle powers is a harbinger of things to come, not only in Turkish and Brazilian foreign policy but it the policies of a number of other middle powers that can be expected to become more assertive going forward. They are going to enjoy tacit and sometimes overt support from some of the great powers who would also like to see us taken down a peg or too. The American establishment by and large was taken by surprise by the new and more difficult Brazilian and Turkish foreign policies; it’s worth looking a little deeper to see what is behind this and see what lessons if any there are for the future.

Turkey and Brazil are very different places, but in some key ways their situation is very similar. First, they are ambitious powers who live in what, during the Cold War, was an American sphere of interest where the options of smaller powers were limited. In both cases, the post Cold War world has gradually opened up fresh avenues for foreign policy. For both Turkey and Brazil, the first step to recovering more independence and playing a wider role is to complete the liquidation of the Cold War order, which they both interpret as freeing themselves of their foreign policy dependence on Washington. For Turkey and Brazil to become the kind of powers they want to be, American power must be reduced.

Second, in both countries new forces are rising to political power. Formerly both Turkey and Brazil were formally democratic but in practice power was held by a relatively small and well connected elite: international businessmen, elite opinion leaders and a small military and civilian foreign policy elite. In both countries, that is changing. Brazil’s Lula was long a radical and unacceptable figure to the Brazilian establishment; his entry into power meant that a new kind of Brazilian (poorer, less well educated, more internally focused, often darker skinned and left leaning) was coming on scene. In Turkey, the victory of the AK Party was also a kind of domestic revolution, overturning the old west-leaning, cosmopolitan and secular Kemalist establishment that had ruled the country ever since the 1920s. The new powers in Turkey are more religious, more inward-looking, more based in Anatolia than in cosmopolitan central Istanbul.

Both Turkey and Brazil are now more democratic, but that democracy does not translate into pro-American or pro-globalization. In both cases, the democratization of national life means greater power for those who feel different from and alienated by the world order that the United States is trying to build. In both cases there is a kind of intersection between realpolitik, the interests of the state, and the politics of civilization. The old cosmopolitan elites were relatively westernized and globalized in their assumptions; the new, more broadly based ones are not. In Brazil they share the historic Latin suspicion of and hostility to ‘Anglo-Saxon capitalism’ and a world order based on it. In Turkey, the new powers are much more likely to see the West as a rival and even an oppressor rather than, as in the Kemalist days, a goal and a destination.

If you combine the geopolitical and cultural realities, you see two countries whose interests are diverging from those of the United States and are also increasingly shaped by cultural forces that oppose the historical American project of building a global liberal capitalist order. That is a powerful combination of forces, and no one should think that the recent foreign policy conflicts with the United States are small things. Something fundamental is changing here, and we, the Turks and the Brazilians will only slowly come to understand what has happened and what it means.

That is not all. Both Turkey and Brazil are at a point in time when both their external and internal situations favor anti-US foreign policy moves. In the Middle East, taking an anti-American line builds Turkish influence and opens doors across the region. Fading Russian and European power in the Middle East creates a vacuum which a newly ambitious Turkey can hope to fill; anti-American and anti-Israel policies win friends and supporters for Turkey as it flexes its regional muscles. (Fading Russian power also makes Turkey less afraid of its northern neighbor; Turkey feels increasingly confident that it can manage its relationship with Russia without an American big brother to protect it.) In Latin America, strategic neglect and strategic failure by three American administrations (Clinton, Bush, Obama) have left the United States with fewer friends, more enemies, and less leverage than at any time since World War Two. Argentina, Brazil’s historical rival in South America, is confused and distracted with a weak political establishment and weak economy; alienated from the United States and concerned with internal economic issues, Argentina is in no position to undercut Brazil’s latest attempt to establish itself as the leading power in South America. By playing an anti-American card, Lula builds support for his vision and his party in Brazil, even as he relegates Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez to the second division in Latin America. In the short run, the Brazilian economy has managed the global downturn well; in the long term, the continuing rise of India and China mean that there will be more foreign consumers for Brazil’s exports and investors in its enterprises. Add to that the impact of massive off-shore oil discoveries, and it is not surprising that Brazil is feeling feisty.

So we have two countries who increasingly want to defy the United States, are able to do so, and find at least in the short term that an anti-American stance enhances their political prospects. Under these circumstances, we ought not to be surprised by the new directions in Turkish and Brazilian foreign policy.

The first question for the United States is what this means; ......(Snip)

For President Obama, the hardest part may be to give up on the dream of global multilateral solutions to the world’s big problems. Not everyone is going to go along with him on global warming and nuclear proliferation. There are powers out there who are consciously out to frustrate, block and if possible defeat the United States on important international issues — even when we are, in our own eyes at least, the ‘good guys’. They don’t oppose us because President Bush offended their moral sense and alienated their affections; they are serious adult people who believe that greater American power and success is a threat to their own security and well being and who are ready, willing and even eager to do business with dark forces in pursuit of a common agenda to frustrate the United States. They aren’t terrorists and in most cases they don’t sympathize with terrorists; they simply represent elements in the international system whose interests and in some cases vision is opposed to our own.

This means that President Obama is going to have to use power to get his way rather than relying on sweet reason and the power of his ideals. He’s going to have to persuade countries that going along with the United States is better than defying us, and to do that he’s going to have to think about how to make people pay when they make the wrong choice. Otherwise his great ideals will not come to fruition. He can kiss non-proliferation goodbye, for starters, if he can’t stop Iran from getting the bomb.

None of this means that America is losing its power in the world, but it does mean the end of the dream that our immediate goal is the abolition of foreign policy and the society of states. We are not going to replace the Westphalian order with the Parliament of Man anytime soon. Instead, foreign policy is going to be about warding off threats, dealing with opponents, building coalitions and advancing our commercial interests where we can. Globalization and democracy aren’t (thank goodness) going away, but neither will they make our problems disappear.

Hang onto your seats, friends. The world is getting more complicated — and more dangerous — all the time.